WhiteHouse - Fausta's Blog

September 30, 2009 By Fausta

ACORN’s tentacles

Matthew Vadum has been studying ACORN and its labyrinthine connections, which include Obama’s close advisor
Patrick Gaspard. Gaspard signed a letter identifying himself as a member of the SEIU State Council and the Working Families Party; As Matthew points out, the ACORN website states,

“ACORN members spearhead[ed] formation of the Working Families Party, the first community-labor party with official ballot status in New York state in more than 50 years.”

Additionally, Moe Lane shows that Gaspard continues to assist the WFP in local elections.

American Power has more on the links between ACORN and Obama that point, in Stanley Kurtz’s words, to “a persistent and shared political-ideological alliance.”

And a thirst for power.

September 3, 2009 By Fausta

“Obama Aides Aim to Simplify and Scale Back Health Bills,” says the NYT

NYT headline today: Obama Aides Aim to Simplify and Scale Back Health Bills, as well they should.

The Senate and House bills are all-encompassing and tremendously complicated. Law professor William Jacobson has been reading ONE of the healthcare bills, HR3200, by selecting one page at random every day, and the results are mind-boggling. Take a look:

Yesterday he was reading page 479, and here’s what he found, Throwing Darts at HR3200 – Day 4 (Birth of a New Entitlement)

The page selected for today’s post is page 479 of the House Bill, which contains the final paragraphs of the 19-page long Section 1302, “Medical Home Pilot Program.” As you will see, whether this is a “pilot” program or a “permanent” program depends upon what the meaning of “pilot” is (I think you know where I am going with this). We may be seeing in Section 1302 the birth of a new home health care entitlement.

Or today’s post, Throwing Darts at HR3200 (Cutting Hospital Readmissions), where he looks at page 294:

Suffice it to say that someone has spent a lot of time drafting a formula in Section 1151 to create an incentive for hospitals which have high readmission rates to lower those rates under threat of decreased Medicare payments. The key thing is that these calculations do not take into account whether any one particular patient’s readmission was unnecessary. Rather, this is a macro-level analysis of an entire hospital based on “excess” readmission rates.

And, by the way, the formula used is complex enough that Jacobson says,

Maybe a hospital administrator could follow the calculation and explain it in plain English, but I cannot.

So it is a good thing that “Obama Aides Aim to Simplify and Scale Back Health Bills.”

However, that’s not what the NYT article actually describes. Instead,

“It’s so important to get a deal,” a White House official said, speaking on the condition of anonymity in order to be candid about strategy. “He will do almost anything it takes to get one.”

Come to think of it, it makes perfect sense for the White House to make it look like they “Aim to Simplify and Scale Back Health Bills,” when it actually it’s all part of a sales pitch since, as Taranto (h/t Instapundit) put it,

We know July was a long time ago, but we distinctly remember back then that the administration was demanding that Congress pass ObamaCare before the August recess. And the president is only now getting around to telling us what ObamaCare even is?

And that’s a very good question.

August 25, 2009 By Fausta

10% unemployment

Obama Raises ’10 Deficit Outlook 19% to $1.5 Trillion

U.S. unemployment will surge to 10 percent this year and the budget deficit will be $1.5 trillion next year, both higher than previous Obama administration forecasts because of a recession that was deeper and longer than expected, White House budget chief Peter Orszag said.

The Office of Management and Budget forecasts that the U.S. economy will shrink 2.8 percent this year, worse than the 1.2 percent contraction the OMB projected in May. For next year, the budget office said the gross domestic product will grow 2.0 percent, less than the 3.2 percent expected in May. By 2011, the economy would be well on its way to recovery, growing at a 3.8 percent annual rate, according to the administration’s mid-year economic review, released this morning.

The CBO is as pessimistic,

Separately, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office today predicted that the jobless rate would average 10.2 percent next year, gloomier than the White House projection

In plain words, the GDP decline is twice as bad as Obama WH predicted.

Oh yes, America’s fiscal situation is a dreadful mess. Take a look:

As a percentage of the total economy, the United States looks to have an astounding debt-to-GDP ratio of 11 percent this year, with that number declining to around 4 percent from 2015 though 2019. And total debt held by the public will rise to 68 percent of GDP by that year versus 33 percent in 2001.

Those numbers, however, are actually a bit on the rosy side. In his blog, Douglas Elmendorf, director of the Congressional Budget Office, notes that the forecasts presume no change in current tax laws, such as the continued existence of the Bush tax cuts and the alternative minimum tax (AMT), which grabs more and more taxpayers ever year at a lower and lower income level.

Such forecasts also assume annual spending increases grow at the rate of inflation. But tomorrow is rarely the same as today in Washington. A more realistic scenario — if the AMT were indexed for inflation, most of the Bush tax cuts continued and spending rose as it has in the past — would see the deficit at 8.5 percent of GDP in 2019. That is a level, before the current crisis, not seen since World War Two.

These are third-world economy numbers. Towering inferno numbers.

August 10, 2009 By Fausta

Government healthcare through the back door

Michael Barone writes on Government Health Care in Stealth Mode, discussing this fishy video:

Barone says,

Many employers, single-payer advocates hope, will be happy to let their employees go onto the government plan. The Lewin Group, cited often by various analysts, estimates that a government-option plan, depending on how the law is written, could move as many as 100 million households off private insurance and onto the government plan in a few years.

Obama has never made his ultimate goal a secret; it’s the same as Schakowsky’s and Hacker’s. The video shows him saying in October 2003, when he was running for the U.S. Senate, “I happen to be a proponent of a single-payer health care program.” He adds, “We may not get there immediately,” noting the Democrats must “take back” the White House and both houses of Congress — a condition fulfilled last Jan. 20.

Campaigning for president in May 2007, he says, “But I don’t think we’re going to be able to eliminate employer coverage immediately.” That seems to imply that his goal remains the same as it was in 2003. “There’s going to be potentially some transition process — I can envision a decade out, or 15 years out, or 20 years out, where we’ve got a much more portable system.” Which of course government health insurance would be. You couldn’t get away from it. The president’s defenders depict this video and others like it as a patchwork of irrelevant and misleading statements. They also cite Obama’s oft-repeated pledges that any health care bill he would sign would let you keep the insurance you have. They don’t address the point, raised by Hacker, that you can’t keep it if your employer stops offering it.

Scott Johnson asks, Does Linda Douglass know about this?

Meanwhile, the Congressional Budget Office is at it again: Congressional Budget Expert Says Preventive Care Will Raise — Not Cut — Costs because

the added costs of widespread use of preventive services tend to exceed the savings from averted illness

To which Douglass replied,

“to work, prevention has to be targeted. Proven services need to be directed to populations that need it, as the CBO letter suggests.”

Can’t help but ask myself what does she mean by “populations that need it.” Doesn’t everyone need preventive care?

UPDATE
Via RightPundits, the healthcare bill is a whopper:

Go read the rest (click on graph).

Via I Think, a common sense approach:

If the goal is to make each of us pay the health costs linked to our own indulgences, there’s a more efficient way to do it: Simply make everyone pay his own medical bills — and scrap nationalized health care altogether.

Lifestyle dictators will have none of that, of course. They’d rather end personal financial responsibility for health-care costs and then claim government has a right to mandate how we live — since it pays the bills.

Which is why a vote for government health care is a vote for government-run life. Let’s hope Americans understand that be fore ObamaCare goes to the floor.

Dissent Is Not Un-American

The Cost Explosion: Pelosi and Hoyer also claim their plan will “lower costs.” But this has been thoroughly refuted by the Congressional Budget Office (CBO). In fact, the House plan significantly expands health care costs and it is Pelosi and Hoyer who have gamed the system to try and conceal this truth from the American people. The House plan delays any real spending increases until 2013 so that Obama allies like the Washington Post’s Steven Pearlstein can claim the bill only increases government health care spending “by about $140 billion” In reality, once all of the House bill’s spending takes effect, Obamacare will be spending $245 billion a year. And in the out years? CBO director Doug Elmendorf said this: “In sum, relative to current law, the proposal would probably generate substantial increases in federal budget deficits during the decade beyond the current 10-year budget window.”

August 6, 2009 By Fausta

The “fishy” healthcare dissident database

Byron York:
Obama’s dissident database could be secret — and permanent

On Monday, White House director of new media Macon Phillips posted a note on the White House web site complaining of “disinformation about health insurance reform.” “These rumors often travel just below the surface via chain emails or through casual conversation,” Phillips wrote. “Since we can’t keep track of all of them here at the White House, we’re asking for your help. If you get an email or see something on the web about health insurance reform that seems fishy, send it to flag@whitehouse.gov.”

Imagine the outrage if GWB had that request put on the White House website. But never mind that: we’re talking about a White House database of political opponents that will be both secret and permanent:

Senate Judiciary Committee lawyers studying the proposal say that although there is no absolutely settled law on the matter, the White House plan is likely not covered by the Privacy Act, which prohibits government agencies from keeping any records “describing how any individual exercises rights guaranteed by the First Amendment unless expressly authorized by statute or by the individual about whom the record is maintained.” Therefore, it appears the White House can legally keep records of the emails and other communications it receives in response to Phillips’ request.

Those lawyers also point out that the White House is not covered by the Freedom of Information Act, which means it would not have to release any information on the plan to members of the public who make a request.

In addition, the lawyers say the collected emails likely will be covered by the Presidential Records Act, which requires the White House to preserve and maintain its records for permanent storage in a government database. Phillips’ request suggests that whatever information the White House receives on health-care reform “disinformation” will be used to further the goal of passing a national health-care makeover, which is, of course, one of the president’s main policy initiatives. Such material, and whatever the White House does with it, would qualify as presidential records. Only after more than a decade would such records be publicly available.

John Cornyn is questioning the database:

Cornyn, who also leads the Republican effort to expand its 40-seat minority in the Senate, asked how the White House would use the information collected, what actions if any the White House would take against citizens linked to “fishy” claims, and whether they would be told about being flagged.

This is about stifling simple political dissent.

White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs disavows any knowledge of the WH website actions,

The blog and tips email was because, Gibbs said, “we have seen, and as I’ve discussed from this podium, a lot of misinformation around health care reform. Some of it I think spread purposely. We have used on many occasions the Web site to debunk things that are simply not true. We ask people if they have questions about health care reform and about what they’re hearing about its affects on them, to let us know and we’d provide them information to show that that wasn’t true.”

Continued Gibbs: “but nobody is collecting names.”

Meanwhile, during the AARP meeting on healthcare,

a surprise comment from the audience: the AARP man states,

“AARP does not endorse any legislation. AARP does not endorse any member of Congress,”

when a member of the audience interjects,

“But Danny Glover is an AARP spokesperson, and he’s shaking hands with Hugo Chavez. And he’s your spokesperson.”

I wonder if Barbara Boxer would consider the guy who said it as being overdressed.

UPDATE, Friday 7 August
AARP – Assuming All Roll Pliantly

August 1, 2009 By Fausta

Be your guest!

Politico has it:

“I’m sure they have their political reasons for doing that, but I think it’s not what quote, hospitality, unquote is all about,” said Letitia Baldrige, who headed Jacqueline Kennedy’s White House staff in the early 1960s. “We’ve got to relax about this. To have people to the White House and worry about the price of things is laughable.”

“I don’t know what the menu was, but I’m sure it wasn’t braised pheasant,” she said.

The White House did not say what was served for lunch or how much the attendees were charged. A spokeswoman said White House staff collected the credit card numbers separately from the event.

Maybe they’re trying to make up for the ‘Cash for clunkers’ fiasco, where a $1 billion was set aside, and pfft, it’s now gone.

Happy Hour at the White House
The White House frequently charges guests for their meals.

Politico.com reports that the White House frequently asks for credit-card numbers from corporate CEOs who visit the White House so they can be billed for the cost of their lunch or other meals there when they meet with Mr. Obama.

”From time to time, White House guests are asked to reimburse for their meals, the reasons include ensuring there is no conflict or appearance of a conflict,” says White House spokeswoman Jen Psaki. “That is consistent with our tough ethics rules and we will continue the practice when appropriate.”

And,

Indeed, in previous administrations any meals offered guests were covered by official entertainment expense accounts provided for the president’s use. The fussiness of Team Obama also strikes political observers as inconsistent. “It may look good to hit CEOs up for meals, but it’s all for show,” one Democratic consultant told me. “Somehow I doubt that union leaders who show up at the White House are similarly asked to cough up dough for what they consume.”

They probably get free meals and 25 DVDs instead.

Be your guest!

Update
Welcome, Instapundit readers. Please visit often!

May 3, 2009 By Fausta

To “The Obama Brand”, let’s add a court jester

Yesterday the Wall Street Journal inaugurated their glossy magazine, which is all you can expect and more (including that ad with the ever-sexy septuagenarian), and their cover story was resident White House publicist – official title “social secretary” – Desirée Rogers.

Rogers sees her job as selling brand Obama:

“We have the best brand on earth: the Obama brand,” Rogers says. “Our possibilities are endless.” Like all brands, the Obama brand has a “crown jewel,” she explains, and that crown jewel is the White House. Think of it like Unilever’s Dove, a consumer brand Rogers says she admires. Having started with a simple bar of soap, the utilitarian Dove brand now boasts such grooming products as shampoo, body wash and deodorant. In 2004, its “Campaign for Real Beauty” featuring plus-size and older models generated a flood of publicity, boosted sales and made the brand seem approachable and public-service-oriented. “You basically need to understand what your customers want and need,” Rogers says.

Brand Obama is a marketer’s dream, says Michael Sitrick, chairman of Sitrick and Company, a public-relations firm that specializes in handling sensitive situations and has worked with billionaire Ron Burkle and socialite Paris Hilton. Rogers and the rest of the Obama team have an idyllic American family to work with “straight out of a 1950s sitcom,” Sitrick says. They “really get it from a public-relations perspective.” Not since Jacqueline Kennedy redecorated the White House and used it as a showcase for arts and culture, which helped create the Camelot mystique, has a first family so captured popular fascination, first-lady historian Myra Gutin says.

Whether this approach has much to do with the dignity of the office remains in question, but clearly it has to do with unmitigated propaganda, and will have a heck of a lot to do with the buckets of money to be made by the Obamas after Pres. Obama leaves office, and by his staff members after they leave their jobs in this administration.

Not that there aren’t jobs available as it is. As you all know, the Treasury and Health Departments are still trying to fill dozens of vacancies, a curious state of things considering the real economic crisis, and the pseudo-crisis with swine flu.

But the focus is on the Obama brand. Priorities. After all, when you know that you are above the prosaic rules of etiquette and protocol and that you are the one who will set the tone, the trend and the form of all events that you grace by your exalted presence, you got to have someone to bring across that message.

Rogers is doing a heckuva job. Reuters says that Barack Obama is revelling in presidential power and influence unseen in Washington for decades.

All the more timely to take up Roger Kimball’s proposal for a new position at the White House:

Since we’re rolling back the clock on quaint traditions like democracy and free speech, I’d like to suggest we consider resuscitating an office that flourished in the age of monarchs. I mean the office of court jester.

courtjester_5

Why a court jester, pray tell? Haven’t we got enough clowns in Washington as it is?

Ah, but it’s not how many, it’s what kind of clown:

In the age of monarchy, indulging in free speech, especially on matters political, was a dangerous pastime. Kings, emperors, and others who proclaim that “we are the ones we’ve been waiting for,” who actually believe that, with their ascension “the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal” — such folks have a serious problem with hubris, not to say narcissism.

As anyone who can pronounce “Aeschylus” knows, hubris is followed regularly by nemesis, and it was to forestall that eventuality that monarchs of yore instituted the office of the court jester or fool. Here was one person allowed to speak his mind, to impart unpalatable truths to the sovereign. Queen Elizabeth (the first, not the one hugged by Michelle Obama) even rebuked her fool for not being sufficiently candid. (It was a narrow path, though, that the fool had to walk: Lear threatened to whip his fool for speaking free.)

The White House has not yet gotten around to announcing the position. That’s hardly surprising. They’ve been awfully busy these last 100 days and more, what with all that “spreading the wealth around,” taking over the auto industry, demonizing conservatives, setting terrorists free, plotting to nationalize health care, conspiring to impoverish us all not just by raising taxes but also through the ruinous cap-and-trade proposal that will cost the average household about $3,100 a year.

Roger has an excellent idea; just imagine the “endless possibilities” for that brand.

UPDATE
The Husband, upon reading this post,
“When you said you posted on a Court Jester for the Obama administration, I thought the post was on Joe Biden.”

April 28, 2009 By Fausta

There was going to be a DC AF1 flyover, too

After yesterday’s Air Force 1 flyover, which freaked out thousands of people around Manhattan (particularly when they saw, as my friend did, that the low-flying planes turned around and buzzed around some more),

I was reading the Wall Street Journal this morning and found this bit of information:

The New York photo shoot wasn’t the only one planned. The White House had scheduled a follow-up session on May 5 or May 6 in Washington, D.C., according to two government officials.

The geniuses at the White House simply do not have a clue about what September 11 was about. Gerard Vanderleun does:

For those that weren’t in New York at the time, or for those who were and have now forgotten, it wasn’t just the first day that was full of terror. The terror went on for months afterwards. In my office on the 12th floor of a building across from Penn Station it seemed to have faded a bit after two months, but then there was a day. On that day, about 20 blocks south of the office, a gas leak in a building went off. It leveled the building and was heard, loudly, for at least 50 blocks.

Even though I was twelve floors up, it was less than two minutes until I was down 12 floors of fire stairs and out on the street. I wasn’t alone. The most of the inhabitants of most of the skyscrapers all around me were out there too. The rest were coming but they were on higher floors. Everyone was scanning the sky and moving towards whatever open space they could find. It was not a relaxing moment.

But what do the “smart and bright” boys and girls of Obama Land on the Potomac know about that? Having the F-16 fighter come in behind the jumbo was just an extra-dollop of mental retardation slopped on just to make it rich enough.

Of course, the brainiacs looking for the perfect on-location live photo of AF1 circling the Statue of Liberty, the Pentagon, or the Capitol probably think that this is all overreacting.

After all, there’s nothing to worry about, is there?

UPDATE
Moe Lane also posted on the second photoshoot. He’ll be my podcast guest today at 11AM Eastern. We’ll talk about this and more. Join us!

UPDATE 2
Welcome, Obi’s Sister‘s readers.