WASHINGTON (AP) — President Barack Obama is allowing thousands of Liberians living in the United States to remain in the country for an additional year and a half.

A presidential memorandum issued Friday applies to Liberians who fled the country amid years of civil war and who are living in the United States under “deferred enforced departure status.”

Their stay was to have expired on March 31, but Obama is directing the Department of Homeland Security to extend it by 18 months.

Large enclaves of Liberians live in states including Rhode Island, New York, Minnesota and the Carolinas.

U.S. Sen. Jack Reed, a Rhode Island Democrat, is praising the extension and says Liberians have become part of the “fabric of communities across the United States.”

———————————————

Who are we kidding. The Liberians are here to stay…for…ever.

By Nate Beeler
Washington Examiner Cartoonist

WaPo

For his final rally to pass his signature health-care initiative, President Obama chose Virginia, a familiar and comfortable place that the president seems to count on for these types of moments.

Obama kicked off his general-election campaign with two stops in the state, including one in Prince William County. He returned to Northern Virginia for his final stop, drawing thousands to a Manassas rally not far from the George Mason University arena where he’ll speak to about 10,000 people on Friday. A day after those stops, he became the first Democrat in 44 years to claim the Old Dominion.

Since then, however, Virginia hasn’t been quite so accommodating. Despite Obama’s personal campaigning, Democrats lost the state’s three top jobs last fall, getting trounced in each race by more than 15 points. Republicans having been using their perch in Richmond since then to stoke sentiment against Washington.

Gov. Robert F. McDonnell delivered the Republican rebuttal to Obama’s State of the Union address from the state capitol. Last week, Virginia became the first state to pass a law making a key piece of the federal health-care reform package illegal — a measure that would not have passed without support from some Democrats. And Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli II (R) said this week that he will mount a constitutional challenge if the bill passes.

Even tried-and-true Fairfax Democrats, who helped give Obama a 21 percentage-point advantage over Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) 16 months ago, said they have noticed a shift in the political landscape.

Tawny Hammond, 48, a Democrat from Springfield who voted for Obama, attributed the change to an “organized opposition.” On health care, Hammond said that although she feels “pretty strongly” about extending coverage for the young and unemployed, she and her like-minded friends are turned off by the political process.

“I think the health-care bill should go further than what it does, but we had to make compromises,” Hammond said. “That’s just a sad reality.”

Still, Virginia offers Obama the same opportunities it did during his campaign — a chance to speak directly to the skeptical and win over political independents.

“Virginia is pretty close to the political mood of the country,” said state Sen. J. Chapman “Chap” Petersen (D-Fairfax), who represents the district Obama will visit on Friday. “If he can speak to the folks in Virginia and make his case and sway their opinion, he can really do it in any swing state.”

Obama will be making his pitch to a smaller, but more crucial, constituency: the state’s Democratic congressmen, at least four of whom are facing vigorous GOP challenges in the fall, including Rep. Gerald E. Connolly, who represents parts of Fairfax and Prince William counties.

Connolly has been an outspoken proponent of reform but remains on the fence about this weekend’s vote as he examines the final package.

Pat S. Herrity, a Fairfax County supervisor from Springfield and one of two Republicans competing to challenge Connolly, announced Thursday he’ll be protesting outside Obama’s George Mason rally.

He won’t be alone.

Local Republicans have organized a rally, as has a tea party organization from Loudoun County and Americans for Prosperity, which has been lobbying against the bill since the summer.

“We want them to trash this bill and start over with smaller bills that address the actual issues,” said Spike Williams, a Fairfax Republican helping to plan the committee’s rally.

In Richmond, McDonnell this week sent a letter to House Minority Whip Eric Cantor (R-Va.) expressing concern that the bill would raise costs and require people to buy insurance.

Cuccinelli said in an interview that the requirement is one of several grounds he is examining for a suit against the bill if it passes. He said requiring people to enter into a private contract exceeds the federal government’s constitutional power to regulate interstate commerce.

“I think we have a very strong case,” he said. “People are seeing government take over various aspects of our economy, and it doesn’t sit well with people.”

Former Gov. Timothy M. Kaine (D), who now heads the Democratic National Committee, has been blitzing the airwaves saying Americans will reward Democrats at the polls after they see lower premiums and insurance that cannot be denied based on pre-existing health conditions.

“Governor Kaine is convinced that once the bill is passed and becomes law, Americans and Virginians will see the value in it and it will be very popular with the American people,” said DNC spokesman Frank Benenati. “Republicans will be the ones with egg on their face.”

Saul Alinsky

By Aaron Klein

A Chicago nonprofit on which President Obama served as paid director provided startup capital and later funding to Midwest Academy, an activist organization described as teaching tactics of direct action, confrontation and intimidation, WND has learned.

Also, in 1998, Obama participated on a panel discussion alongside Midwest Academy founder Heather Booth, an extremist organizer and dedicated disciple of radical community organizer Saul Alinsky.

The Woods Fund, a nonprofit on which Obama served as paid director from 1999 to December 2002, provided startup funding and later capital to the Midwest Academy. WND first reported Obama sat on the Woods Fund board alongside William Ayers, founder of the Weather Underground domestic terrorist organization.

Midwest was co-founded by Booth’s husband, Paul Booth, a founder and the former national secretary of Students for a Democratic Society, the radical 1960s anti-war movement from which Ayers’ Weathermen splintered.

In 1999, Booth’s Midwest Academy received $75,000 from the Woods Fund. In 2002, with Obama still serving on the Woods Fund, Midwest received another $23,500 for its Young Organizers Development Program.

Midwest describes itself as “one of the nation’s oldest and best-known schools for community organizations, citizen organizations and individuals committed to progressive social change.”

It later morphed into a national organizing institute for an emerging network of organizations known as Citizen Action. Midwest teaches Alinsky tactics of community organizing.

Discover the Networks describes Midwest as “teach[ing] tactics of direct action, confrontation, and intimidation.”

In August 1998, Obama participated in a panel discussion following the opening performance in Chicago of the play “The Love Song of Saul Alinsky,” a work described by the Chicago Sun-Times as “bringing to life one of America’s greatest community organizers.”

Obama participated in the discussion alongside other Alinskyites, including Booth, political analyst Aaron Freeman, Don Turner of the Chicago Federation of Labor and Northwestern University history professor Charles Paine.

“Alinsky had so much fire burning within,” stated local actor Gary Houston, who portrayed Alinsky in the play. “There was a lot of complexity to him. Yet he was a really cool character.”

Booth herself is a notorious radical community activist and self-described dedicated disciple of Alinsky, of whom she says: “Alinsky is to community-organizing as Freud is to psychoanalysis.”

Booth’s vision of uniting various left-leaning organizations and factions has also been the subject of her two books: “Toward a Radical Movement and Citizen Action” and “The New American Populism.”

Former 1960s radical and FrontPageMagazine Editor David Horowitz describes Alinsky as the “communist/Marxist fellow-traveler who helped establish the dual political tactics of confrontation and infiltration that characterized the 1960s and have remained central to all subsequent revolutionary movements in the United States.”

Horowitz writes in his 2009 pamphlet “Barack Obama’s Rules for Revolution. The Alinsky Model”:

“The strategy of working within the system until you can accumulate enough power to destroy it was what sixties radicals called ‘boring from within.’ …. Like termites, they set about to eat away at the foundations of the building in expectation that one day they could cause it to collapse.”

As WND reported, Obama approached Northwestern University professor John L. McKnight – a loyal student of Alinsky’s radical tactics – to pen a letter of recommendation for him when he applied to Harvard Law School. Under the tutelage of McKnight and other hardcore students of Alinsky, Obama said he got the “best education I ever had, better than anything I got at Harvard Law School.”

In a letter to the editor of the Boston Globe, Alinsky’s son praised Obama for stirring up the masses at the 2008 Democratic National Convention “Saul Alinsky style,” saying, “Obama learned his lesson well.”

The letter, signed L. David Alinsky, closed with, “I am proud to see that my father’s model for organizing is being applied successfully.”

Enlarge

Bill Gertz–Washington Times

The Pentagon allowed five captured al Qaeda members currently held at the Guantanamo Bay prison to use laptop computers in detention, raising concerns among security officials that the terrorism suspects could pass sensitive data to terrorists in the future, according to U.S. officials.

The computers, without Internet access, were provided to Sept. 11 mastermind Khalid Shaikh Mohammed and four other suspected 9/11 conspirators at the prison at the U.S. naval base in Cuba after approval by senior Pentagon officials in September 2008.

The battery-powered laptops were kept in the detainees’ cell areas, and limitations on their use were imposed, defense officials said. The practice continued until January, when charges against the five were temporarily dropped after Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. announced the men would be tried in civilian court, not by military commission.

Mr. Holder then backed off plans to hold trials in federal court in New York City and said this week that a decision on where to conduct the trials is expected in the coming weeks.

In addition to Mohammed, the other al Qaeda members who were given computers were Walid Muhammad Salih Mubarak Bin Attash, Ramzi Binalshibh, Ali Abdul Aziz Ali and Mustafa Ahmed Adam al-Hawsawi.

The computer access was granted by Guantanamo authorities before an Oct. 6, 2008, ruling by Marine Corps Col. Ralph H. Kohlmann, a military judge, that formally granted the five terrorism suspect the right to use computers, said Col. Les Melnyk, a Pentagon spokesman.

Col. Melnyk said that prior to the ruling “the government’s prosecution team agreed to provide a number of the materials requested by the defense – including computers – in advance of the ruling, having already determined that this was the fairest, safest and most secure way for ‘pro se accused’ to mount an appropriate defense.” The term “pro se” describes defendants who represent themselves in legal proceedings without lawyers.

The five al Qaeda members were “provided access to stand-alone computers without Internet access in order to review discovery material provided by the government, conduct legal research and prepare for their defense” against charges related to the Sept, 11 attacks, Col. Melnyk said.

The laptops, the ruling stated, include word-processing software and legal documents related to military law. The ruling bars Internet access, PowerPoint software, a DVD writer, and printers or scanners.

Pentagon spokesman Geoff Morrell said the laptops were confiscated and sealed until further action in the cases.

The detainees’ access to laptops and their interaction with lawyers is one element of an ongoing CIA and Justice Department investigation into whether lawyers representing the detainees compromised the safety of covert CIA interrogators. Lawyers showed the prisoners privately obtained photographs of CIA interrogators in an attempt to have the terrorism suspects identify the interrogators in order to call them as witnesses in future trials.

The agent-identification effort is part of a joint program of the American Civil Liberties Union and National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers called the John Adams Project.

CIA counterintelligence officials have expressed serious concerns that intelligence on the interrogators’ identities may have leaked or will be passed out of Guantanamo through the lawyers. The agency also is opposing efforts by the Justice Department to support the John Adams Project in granting foreign terrorists the same constitutional rights granted to criminal defendants.

Former CIA Director Michael V. Hayden said the legal effort to identify CIA personnel is troubling.

“This is a big deal,” he said.”You cant be stalking CIA officers in Northern Virginia, taking pictures of them, and then showing the pictures to the detainees at Guantanamo. Besides the actual event, I am outraged that it was a one-day story, and no one has followed it up. These men and women had their picture taken getting into their car after kissing their spouses and going to work. Its unbelievable.”

The CIA security concerns triggered a dispute last week with Justice Department lawyers sympathetic to the John Adams Project.

A senior Justice Department official has recused himself from the investigation as a result of the dispute, and Patrick J. Fitzgerald, the U.S. attorney in Chicago who prosecuted a case involving the unauthorized disclosure of a CIA officer’s identity, was brought into the probe after the recent discovery of CIA officers’ photos at the Cuban prison.

One official opposed to giving the detainees the laptops said it was a mistake because the legal precedent opens the way for lawyers to appeal in court for the detainees to be granted Internet access – a concern shared by outside analysts.

“It is a slippery slope,” said Tom Joscelyn, a specialist on detainees with the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies. “It is basically moving the ball inch by inch. This is one more thing that we are giving to them, and there is really no good reason that Khalid Shaikh Mohammed deserves a laptop.”

Air Force Gen. Douglas M. Fraser, commander of the U.S. Southern Command, was asked about security at the prison, which is in his area of operations, during a Capitol Hill hearing on Thursday.

“If a counselor wants to visit a detainee in Guantanamo, there is a very specific location where they meet,” Gen. Fraser told the House Armed Services Committee under questioning from Rep. Howard P. “Buck” McKeon, California Republican and the panel’s ranking member.

“They’re able to meet there. We monitor it visually, either with someone watching or someone watching on a videotape, but no audio associated with that, and that’s primarily for security that we continue to watch visually,” he said.

Any messages left by lawyers for detainees are reviewed by a legal team, he said, though the general added that attorney-client privilege prevents the review of other communications. “No one at [Joint Task Force] Guantanamo monitors any of the conversations between counsel and the detainees,” he said.

Asked whether attorneys for detainees provided them with information on military operations, intelligence, arrests, political news and the names of U.S. government personnel, Gen. Fraser said he was aware of a “couple of instances” when information was passed to lawyers on plans for moving detainees.

Other security concerns at the prison are sent to the Pentagon, and “we, in turn, turn that over to the Department of Justice,” Gen. Fraser said.

In a related development on Thursday, Mr. McKeon wrote to Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates to ask whether detainee operations in Cuba were “compromised” by the John Adams Program.

In the March 18 letter obtained by The Washington Times, Mr. McKeon renewed his concerns that “the department’s detainee operations have been – and may continue to be – compromised” by the John Adams Project.

“Of greater concern is that the John Adams Project may have put military and U.S. government personnel at risk,” Mr. McKeon stated.

He asked for an immediate response to a request made in September for a committee briefing on the project and called “unacceptable” the Pentagon’s failure to respond to a request made in January.

In the Senate, Sen. Christopher S. Bond, Missouri Republican and vice chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, also expressed concerns about Guantanamo detainees learning the identities of covert CIA interrogators.

“Reports that ACLU attorneys showed photos of CIA operatives to terrorists make it pretty clear whose side the ACLU is really on,” Mr. Bond said in a statement. “It’s not enough that our terror-fighters have to fight al Qaeda; now they have to watch out for the ACLU. This is one battle where it’s critical the administration have the CIA’s back, not the ACLU’s.”

Frank Gaffney, director of the Center for Security Policy, said the laptops for detainees “seems to be yet another in a series of ill-advised and ultimately potentially dangerous concessions to the terrorists.”

“At the very least it is reinforcing their impression that the U.S. government is engaged in submission to them and their agenda,” he said.

The Washington Times

The Obama administration is poised to ban offshore oil drilling on the outer continental shelf until 2012 or beyond. Meanwhile, Russia is making a bold strategic leap to begin drilling for oil in the Gulf of Mexico. While the United States attempts to shift gears to alternative fuels to battle the purported evils of carbon emissions, Russia will erect oil derricks off the Cuban coast.

Offshore oil production makes economic sense. It creates jobs and helps fulfill America’s vast energy needs. It contributes to the gross domestic product and does not increase the trade deficit. Higher oil supply helps keep a lid on rising prices, and greater American production gives the United States more influence over the global market.

Drilling is also wildly popular with the public. A Pew Research Center poll from February showed 63 percent support for offshore drilling for oil and natural gas. Americans understand the fundamental points: The oil is there, and we need it. If we don’t drill it out, we have to buy it from other countries. Last year, the U.S. government even helped Brazil underwrite offshore drilling in the Tupi oil field near Rio de Janeiro. The current price of oil makes drilling economically feasible, so why not let the private sector go ahead and get our oil?

The Obama administration, however, views energy policy through green eyeshades. Every aspect of its approach to energy is subordinated to radical environmental concerns. This unprecedented lack of balance is placing offshore oil resources off-limits. The O Force would prefer the country shift its energy production to alternative sources, such as nuclear, solar and wind power. In theory, there’s nothing wrong with that, in the long run, assuming technology can catch up to demand. But we have not yet reached the green utopia, we won’t get there anytime soon, and America needs more oil now.

Russia more sensibly views energy primarily as a strategic resource. Energy is critical to Russia’s economy, as fuel and as a source of profit through export. Russia also has used energy as a coercive diplomatic tool, shutting off natural gas piped to Eastern Europe in the middle of winter to make a point about how dependent the countries are that do business with the Russians.

Now Russia is using oil exploration to establish a new presence in the Western Hemisphere. It recently concluded four contracts securing oil-exploration rights in Cuba’s economic zone in the Gulf of Mexico. A Russian-Cuban joint partnership will exploit oil found in the deep waters of the Gulf.

Cuba has rights to the area in which drilling will be conducted under an agreement the Carter administration recognized. From Russia’s perspective, this is another way to gain leverage inside what traditionally has been America’s sphere of influence. It may not be as dramatic as the Soviet Union attempting to use Cuba as a missile platform, but in the energy wars, the message is the same. Russia is projecting power into the Western Hemisphere while the United States retreats. The world will not tolerate a superpower that acts like a sidekick much longer.

By Chelsea Schilling

If you were President Obama, how would you feel if someone wanted to impeach you?

That’s the question Microsoft Xbox LIVE asked WND after it banned a teenager from using “mpeach obama21″ as his gamertag, or online username.”This name is actually, it’s not likeable,” a Microsoft Xbox LIVE spokesman identifying himself as Jordan said. “If you were Obama, what would you feel if you saw this?”

Father Chad Willis told WND his 15-year-old son tried to log into his Xbox game console to play online, but the screen alerted him to the following message: “In accordance with Xbox LIVE policy, the gamertag mpeach obama21 is no longer allowed. Please change your gamertag before playing on Xbox LIVE.”

Xbox LIVE bans ‘mpeach obama21′ gamertag

Willis said creating a new gamertag costs Xbox LIVE points and, therefore, money.

Jordan referenced the following Xbox LIVE policy as reason for the ban:

• Don’t create a gamertag, profile content, or in-game content that other users may be offended by, this includes comments that look, sound like, stand for, hint at, abbreviate, or insinuate any of the following: profane words/phrases, topics or content of a sexual nature, hate speech (including but not limited to racial, ethnic, or religious slurs), illegal drugs/controlled substances, or illegal activities.

• Don’t create a gamertag, profile content, or in-game content that references controversial religious topics, notorious people, organizations, or sensitive current or historical events that may also be considered inappropriate.

“(mpeach obama21) could fall under sensitive current or historical events,” Jordan explained. “Obama being president of the U.S. is a historical event for most of the people there. Microsoft doesn’t tolerate such things. Microsoft Xbox wants to be a fun place for everyone.”

Asked whether Xbox policy prohibits political speech, he replied, “Well, it doesn’t actually say anything about politics, but it could pertain to historical events.”

Jordan insisted the policy would apply to “mpeach Bush” gamertags as well.

By Peter Ferrara

When Ben Franklin first emerged from the Constitutional Convention, he was asked by a passerby, “What government have you given us?” Franklin replied, “A Republic, if you can keep it.”

For 220 years, until last year, we did keep it. America was a democratic constitutional republic, governed by the rule of law, a beacon of liberty to the entire world. But no more. After just one year of Barack Obama’s fundamental change, aided by the far left House Speaker Nancy Pelosi from San Francisco, and the easily confused Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, America has been transformed from a Constitutional Republic into a Banana Republic.

We Will Deem It Not Passed

Exhibit A is President Obama’s frenzied government takeover of health care, which fevered Democrats insist they will “pass” by any means necessary, even illegal, unconstitutional means. The economy continues to flounder, unemployment still hovers at nearly 10%, and Iran persists in building nuclear weapons, which they vow to use against our allies and even against us. But Barack Obama is focused like a laser on bringing to America outdated socialized medicine concepts from deep into the last century, all the way back to Teddy Roosevelt, as he said in a recent speech.

The latest Banana Republic style abuse is the so-called Slaughter Strategy, named not for the impending political slaughter of Congressional Democrats it will help engender this fall, but after temporary House Rules Committee Chairman Louise Slaughter (D-NY). Under that scam, House Democrats will pass a “rule” that “deems” the Senate health care takeover bill to have passed the House. House Democrats will then pass a “reconciliation” bill amending that Senate bill, on a strict party line vote. Whatever you want to call whatever the House and Senate passed will then go to El Presidente for his signature.

The Senate will then be expected to pass the House reconciliation bill, again on a strict party line vote, without a conference committee on the amendments and without the 60 votes required to end debate in the Senate under the filibuster rule. This under the leadership of the President who campaigned starting in 2004 on bringing to America a new era of “post-partisanship.” No one has given any thought to what happens if the Senate is not able to pass the House reconciliation bill. Are the House reconciliation amendments then part of the final law or not?

In any event, Newt Gingrich got it right in saying that last year Democrats were passing bills without reading them. This year, they are passing bills without voting on them.

As constitutional law scholar Michael McConnell explained in the Wall Street Journal on Monday, under Article I, Section 7 of the Constitution, “passage of one bill cannot be deemed to be enactment of another.” In other words, passing a reconciliation bill different from the Senate health bill cannot be deemed passage of the Senate health bill. McConnell continued,

The Slaughter solution attempts to allow the House to pass the Senate bill, plus a bill amending it, with a single vote. The senators would then vote only on the amendatory bill. But this means that no single bill will have passed both houses in the same form. As the Supreme Court wrote in Clinton v. City of New York (1998), a bill containing the “exact text” must be approved by one house; the other house must approve “precisely the same text.”

Moreover, the rules of the House and the Senate provide for reconciliation for “legislation that makes adjustments to spending or revenues to reconcile current law to a budget resolution that has passed Congress,” as McConnell also writes. Republicans have never used reconciliation for legislation that has not met this definition. But this is manifestly not what is involved in the Obamacare health takeover bill, which adopts massive new entitlements, expands existing ones, and enacts sweeping regulation of insurance and health care, with close to 100 new bureaucracies, boards, commissions and programs.

If Democrats claim to have passed Obamacare through this Banana Republic methodology, the new Republican Congressional majorities elected this fall can and will “deem” Obamacare not to have passed. For no actual legislation with identical texts will then have passed both the House and the Senate, as the Constitution requires. The new Speaker of the House and the new Senate Majority Leader can and will instruct Congressional officers to remove the Obamacare provisions from the U.S. Code. The new House and Senate majorities can and will also refuse to fund any of the provisions of Obamacare, including the 100 new bureaucracies, boards, commissions and programs. Naturally, this will leave the state of the law unclear, and disputed, just like in a typical Banana Republic.

Rest assured, Republican members of Congress and state Attorneys General will also sue for declaratory judgments that Obamacare is unconstitutional because it was not passed in accordance with law (and for other reasons). And the new majorities will also move to repeal whatever you want to call whatever the Democrats will claim that they have passed. But even before any of that, next year the new Congress will deem Obamacare not to have passed.

Obamacare and Banana Republic Deficits

Another indicator that America has sunk into Banana Republic status is the runaway deficits and national debt under the Obama budgets. As discussed in this column last week, the federal deficit this year is projected to hit a world record $1.6 trillion, with deficits totaling nearly $10 trillion over the next 10 years. The national debt held by the public will quadruple to $20.3 trillion by 2020, with the total gross federal debt soaring to $27.5 trillion, rivaling Greece.

Contrary to the claims of President Obama, his socialized medicine health care takeover will increase rather than reduce the deficits and debt. The claim that it will reduce the deficit is based on the assumption that the already below market Medicare payments to doctors and hospitals will be reduced by 21% in the first year, falling farther and farther behind market rates in the following years. This would create havoc and chaos in health care for America’s seniors. But if Congress does not allow those cuts to go into effect, Obamacare will further explode the deficit.

Overall, CBO documents reveal that the claim that President Obama’s socialized medicine plan will reduce deficits is based on the assumption of $2.5 trillion in Medicare cuts over the next 20 years. Medicare already suffers an unfunded liability of $38 trillion, according to Medicare’s own government actuaries. What Obama and Congressional Democrats are proposing is to loot $2.5 trillion from Medicare to spend on new entitlements under Obamacare, and leave Medicare with that intractable unfunded liability.

Unnoticed is that Obamacare also contains hundreds of billions in additional cuts for Medicaid as well. But Medicaid already so badly underpays doctors and hospitals that 40% of them won’t even take Medicaid patients. Cutting those reimbursements under Medicaid even more will wreak havoc and chaos on the poor on Medicaid as well. If the resulting public outcry also prevents those cuts from going into effect, the deficit will balloon further.

Almost $300 billion in additional deficit reductions allegedly result because many employers will supposedly terminate their employee health insurance under Obamacare and pay workers higher wages instead, resulting in higher payroll tax revenues. So much for Obama’s claim, which he is still making, that if you like your health insurance you will be able to keep it. But those payroll tax revenues are devoted to financing Social Security benefits, and so are not available to offset the costs of Obamacare.

A similar trick is adopted for the CLASS Act, which is a new federal insurance program for long-term nursing home benefits also included in the Obamacare legislation. Over $100 billion in additional deficit reductions are assumed from counting the premium payments coming in under this program in the early years as reducing the deficit, even though those funds are devoted to paying future benefits under that program. Such double counting is a staple of Banana Republic budget practices.

Removing all these budget tricks exposes Obamacare as increasing federal deficits by almost $500 billion over the first 10 years, and $1.4 trillion over the following 10 years. But there is still another budget trick that no one has accounted for yet. CBO assumes that only 30 million workers will receive the new health insurance subsidies under Obamacare for families earning as much as $88,000 per year, with 162 million still receiving employer provided insurance and consequently not eligible for the subsidies. But if employers drop coverage for their workers and pay the much lower penalty for non-coverage instead, this cost will soar, further increasing federal deficits and debt under Obamacare.

Banana Republic Corruption

Still another indicator of America’s new Banana Republic status is the political corruption and vote buying surrounding Obamacare. Well-known is the Cornhusker Kickback, the special deal involving increased Medicaid funding for Nebraska in return for Nebraska Sen. Ben Nelson’s vote for the Senate health bill. Also well-known is the Louisiana Purchase, which added $300 million in special federal funds for Louisiana to the Senate bill in return for Sen. Mary Landrieu’s vote. Obama’s union cronies are also exempted from the Cadillac health insurance tax that would apply to others.

Another special deal in the Senate bill is for seniors in the state of Florida. Almost one-fourth of seniors nationally have chosen private sector Medicare Advantage plans for their coverage under Medicare, because they believe they get a better deal from that private coverage. But President Obama is ideologically opposed to that private option under Medicare, so Obamacare includes steep cuts to Medicare Advantage that Medicare’s own actuary estimates will cause most seniors to lose their Medicare Advantage coverage. But the Senate bill includes a special deal for seniors in Florida, exempting their Medicare Advantage coverage .

The Senate bill with these special deals is what President Obama is now trying so desperately to get through the House, by hook or crook as described above. Undoubtedly, additional such vote buying corruption is going on now to sway critical House votes. President Obama just appointed the brother of Utah Congressman Jim Matheson (D) to a federal judgeship to sway his vote. More such deals will be exposed in coming weeks. Such political corruption is common, accepted practice in a Banana Republic.

Banana Republic Demagoguery

President Obama is now barnstorming the country trying to sell his government takeover of health care with crass demagoguery also typical of Banana Republics. He bewails insurance company profits, yet the profit rate for the health insurance industry is a meager 2.2%, leaving many health insurers on the edge of bankruptcy. Such profits are a negligible proportion of total health costs.

President Obama assails health insurers for raising premium rates. At his socialized medicine pep rally at Arcadia University on March 8, Obama complained, “Just last month, Anthem Blue Cross in California tried to jack up rates by nearly 40 — 40 percent. Anybody’s paycheck gone up 40 percent?” “Nooo,” the audience proletariat chimed back.

But the Anthem Blue Cross rate increases are just a foretaste of what will happen under Obamacare. For those increases resulted from state government regulation imposing new benefit requirements on health insurers, just as Obamacare will do, in spades. Obamacare will require health insurers to provide all the costly, politically correct benefits the government mandates. At his Arcadia University rally, President Obama wowed the proles proclaiming, “If this reform becomes law, all new insurance plans will be required to offer free preventive care to their customers starting this year — free check-ups,” just a few paragraphs after he blistered insurance companies for raising rates to pay for other mandated benefits.

Most costly, Obamacare will mandate guaranteed issue, requiring insurers to accept all applicants no matter how sick with expensive illnesses such as cancer or heart disease, and community rating, requiring insurers to charge the same to all, within narrow confines, again regardless of how sick when they first applied. That has proven to cause rates to soar when adopted by states in the past. Careful, mathematically transparent studies from WellPoint and others have demonstrated that under the Obamacare requirements, insurance premiums will soar, doubling and tripling for some young families and workers.

The states already have plenty of authority to regulate health insurance premiums. The issue is really just a matter of math, not ideology or profiteering. State regulators know they must ensure that the insurance companies have enough income to pay their promised benefits, as well as mandate reasonable rates. But the Obamacare demagogues are heedless of that basic math, and would just as soon drive all the insurers out of business, leaving the government with a complete takeover.

But President Obama persisted in his Arcadia University demagoguery, proclaiming that under Obamacare, “This year, insurance companies…will be banned from dropping your coverage when you get sick. And they will no longer be able to arbitrarily and massively hike your premiums.”

Here is how regulation is supposed to work under current law, so conservatives will know they do not have to defend the indefensible. Insurance companies are not allowed to drop coverage for people after they become sick, unless the insured misled the company about his true medical condition when applying. For such cases, conservatives have advocated subsidized, uninsurable risk pools providing full safety net coverage so the uninsured who contract costly illnesses such as cancer or heart disease will still have somewhere to go to get essential coverage and care.

Moreover, insurers are supposed to be prohibited from arbitrarily raising rates for those who become sick after coverage as well. Rate increases must apply to everyone in the same original rate class reflecting their health condition when they originally applied, regardless of how sick they subsequently become.

Such regulation is required for health insurance to be real insurance protecting consumers from high health costs when they become sick. To the extent loopholes have developed in this regulation over time, or the regulation is not working, these regulatory requirements can and should be updated and enforced.

Obama’s Legacy

President Obama and his lefty Democrat allies expect their new socialized medicine entitlement, once passed, to be permanent, untouchable, and beloved by the public, just like Social Security and Medicare. That is why they are so crazed to get it passed by any means and at any cost. But not living in the real world, they fail to understand that Social Security and Medicare are bankrupt under the government’s own numbers, and are about to be fundamentally reformed themselves. It is beyond the power of even the authoritarian government to which the current ruling Democrats aspire to repeal the laws of arithmetic, even though that is the root of their ideology. The Tea Party movement, by contrast, understands all this perfectly well.

As a result, President Obama’s legacy will not be permanent socialized medicine as he fancies, but the Tea Party free market reforms his misgovernment and misrule will politically enable.