Flyover Country

Citing ObamaCare as the primary cause, an Ohio university is dropping their student health plan.  The “Affordable Health Care Act” meant that the insurance rates were going to double.  From $600 to $1200.  Apparently in progressive math, when 2+2 = 5, then $1,200 is less than $600.

That isn’t what caught my attention, however.  Notice how the following statement is constructed.

Students now will likely have to be covered through their parents’ policy, though Reuters reported that fewer than 2000 of the school’s 2,500 students had been buying insurance from the university.

Let me rephrase what Reuters just reported and what the Fox story said.  Fewer than 4 out of 5, less than 80%, of the student population had been buying health insurance through the university.  Or, over 75% of the university’s students had been buying insurance from the university.  (Obviously, it could be just 1% (any number less than 80%) of the students on the university health plan, but for the sake of being reasonable we know that isn’t the case here or they would have reported that.)

Reuters is covering for ObamaCare.  They carefully worded the statement to make it seem like not very many students were using this insurance, so it really isn’t that big of a deal for the university to be dropping it.  In fact, a massively overwhelming majority of the students participated in the program.

Clever, but we in the new media see you, democrat media complex.  We see you.

#war.

Simply put, the left hated George W Bush for more reasons than I have room to list.  Some legit, mostly not.  They assured and crowed about the new era of relationships with world leaders under President Obama, so severely soured under President Bush that they were virtually irreparable.  One of the great savior of the world Obama’s first acts was a mind-numbing insult to our closest ally – the return of a post-9/11 gift to the British.

Today, the American and British intelligence communities are said to be furious with the Obama administration for leaking classified, operational intelligence about a bomb plot.

“In their place, I would think two and three times before sharing with the Americans, and then only do it if I had to. The problem with that dynamic is that you don’t know what you don’t know, and what opportunities you might be missing when you decide not to share. The Americans are doing a very good job of undermining trust, and the problem starts at the top.”

The timing of the information about the CIA’s foiling of a would-be bomber just a few days after Obama’s victory lap trip to Afghanistan to visit US military who fight on his behalf seemed odd.  Now we know why.

A new era of foreign relations.  If by “new era” you mean acting time and again to ensure that our British friends may never trust the United States of America again, then yes. We’re in a new era.

If the headline seems familiar, it should be.  A little over a month ago, Flyover Country reported on the chaos at a Missouri Caucus.  The Paul supporters reacted negatively, and left several comments along the lines of “shame on you and your complete mischaracterization”.  Saturday, Reason.com – a libertarian publication – published a piece titled “Anarchy at the Libertarian Party Convention”

Las Vegas - After a relatively uneventful president and vice-presidential nominating process, all hell broke loose at the Libertarian National Convention when the Libertarian Party attempted to pick a new national committee chair. The race between current chair Mark Hinkle and vice chair Mark Rutherford fell into disarray when a group of delegates associated with Lee Wrights made a push for the option of None Of The Above.

The selection of “None of the Above,” or NOTA, would exclude Hinkle and Rutherford from future rounds of ballots, while opening the race to candidates who can be nominated from the floor. Wrights said he would accept the nomination.

That sounds oddly familiar.  We told our readers about the ousting of the presumptive county chair, and how confusion reigned.  We stood by our reporting from that day.  Given the anarchy wrought by Ron Paul supporters around the state of Missouri on caucus day, and now Reason’s reporting on the same kind of antics at their national convention – we feel quite vindicated that we reported honestly and accurately the events that transpired.

The nation’s capital has yet to amass skyscrapers — defining itself instead with such iconic structures as the Washington Monument and blocks of squat-but-serious-looking federal building. But city officials want to change that situation, saying Washington is running out of commercial property and needs Congress’ help to keep their economy humming.

Mayor Vincent C. Gray has asked GOP Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif, and Delegate Eleanor Holmes Norton about possible ways to amend the city’s general height restriction of 130 feet.

Gray, a Democrat, and others say the city needs minor height variances and perhaps an allowance on the maximum number of occupants inside apartments, offices and other buildings to keep pace with the robust local economy, including a hot housing market. (emphasis mine)

While the rest of the country struggles to recover from Washington’s idiocy (Frank-Dodd, Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, etc), DC’s housing market is booming according to the mayor.  While the rest of the economy shrinks, Washington D.C. and the federal government grows.

What of the news that unemployment fell to 8.2%, which President Obama and his talking heads are sure to tout as a huge success of their policies?  Watch the other hand, because cleverly, a single number doesn’t tell the whole story.  Says Business Week:

The [unemployment] rate has fallen from 9.1 percent in August to 8.2 percent in March. Part of the reason for the rapid decline is that some people have given up looking for work. People who are out of work but not looking for jobs aren’t counted among the unemployed.

Increase the federal payrolls.  Combine an increase the federal welfare, disability, and other benefits programs with hopelessness, and folks give up looking for work.  The unemployment rate goes down.  Writes Chuck Devore over at Big Government in his piece, Number of Americans Paid Not to Work Growing Faster Than Number of Taxpayers:

The number of Americans drawing checks from the federal government via Social Security’s Supplemental Security Income Program swelled from 7.0 million in FY 2007 to an estimated 8.0 million in FY 2012, with the growth rate in the program doubling at the onset of the recession. This program is expected to cost taxpayers about $52 billion in FY 2012.

The argument from Obama and the left will be that things are just starting to turn around, that they just need more time to get the economy fixed.  Say, around 4 years or so.  Hampered by Republicans and their rich friends, Obama and the Democrats have more ideas to get the economy growing and get more Americans back to work they just can’t do because Republicans keep blocking them.

Mark Levin warns us in Liberty and Tyranny that statists never turn from their collectivist, socialist policies, no matter how much the evidence may stack up against them, no matter how miserably their ideology fails.  They always need more time, more power, more of your liberty to “level the playing field” for the poor and the middle class.

This November, the choice is clear.