The reason, veteran state employees said, might be the rules of the game. The Department of Social Services workers who processed the benefits were told that they should look at the applicant's self-declared take-home pay, not their gross pay, according to a worker directly involved in awarding benefits.
Another worker said that many state employees have a relatively low take-home pay because their mortgages, car insurance, and homeowners' insurance can all be deducted through the credit union. The state comptroller's spokeswoman, Tara Downes, confirmed Monday that those items, as well as union dues, health insurance premiums, and contributions to the state's version of a 401 (k) program, are routinely deducted from paychecks and make the take-home pay much smaller. http://www.courant.com/news/politics/capitol-watch/hc-state-employees-applied-due-to-take-home-pay-20111219,0,1981059.story
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Powerline writes: The headline is “Concern growing over deadlines for health care exchanges,” and it discusses the difficulties of one of the main pillars of Obamacare—the mandate that the states set up insurance “exchanges” where people and businesses can do one-stop shopping for their mandated health insurance policies. But this is no simple exchange; because of the mix of federal programs such as Medicaid and Medicare, and the various regulations pertaining to eligibility, guaranteed issue, and other features of Obamacare, the states are having a hard time figuring out how they are going to do it. And time is running out. As the Post explains, “the exchanges will need to incorporate state and federal data on income, employment and residency. Enrollment through the state and federal exchanges is scheduled to begin in the fall of 2013.”
Obamacare has a fallback position: if states can’t (or won’t) make the deadline, the federal government will step in and run the exchange out of Washington. I’ve heard rumors for months now that the Dept. of Health and Human Services is terrified of having to do this, and doubts it can be done by the deadline. The Post story would seem to lend some credence to these rumors:
It’s hard to know how far along the federal government is because the Obama administration has “been very reluctant to provide any updates on progress,” said Dan Schuyler, a director at the consulting firm Leavitt Partners in Salt Lake City, which is advising states on the exchanges. http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2011/12/hayek-vindicated-again.php
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Patriot Painter opines: Some Americans call America a republic. After all, Benjamin Franklin responded to the question about the new government as he left the Constitutional Convention in 1787 by saying, “[It’s] A Republic, if you can keep it.” And Article 4 Section 4 of the Constitution guarantees each State a Republican form of government.
But most people now call America a democracy. They are wrong, but not for the reasons you may think. They are wrong because America is fascism under the feel-good misnomer of democracy. It is simply Nazism with a pretty face.
The rule of law is gone. Our lawmakers make laws for us to live under while exempting themselves. They game the system. Many enter the Congress as paupers and leave rich. The rich get richer. How that happened was hidden for years by the corporate media.
Now, everyone knows what we have said for years: The President and Congress are owned lock, stock and barrel by Wall Street and the big corporations. They play for pay. And they stack the deck against the American people.
We know they (legally, though immorally) trade in the market on insider information. You and I would go to jail for this. Members of Congress apologize, feign contrition and say they will pass laws so they won’t do it again. But there is no recompense, no repentance. The fox is guarding the henhouse.
But the light is shining on them now. The Internet has allowed the free flow of information to make this possible. No more can the corporate media hide the malfeasance of governance from us. So they are working on laws to kill the Internet, too. http://patriotpainter.wordpress.com/2011/12/20/blame-bush-blame-obama-but-dont-look-behind-the-curtain/
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Personal Liberty writes: The focus of an upcoming global United Nations conference will be the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) goal to change how it makes decisions and analyzes problems to give it more power to regulate businesses, communities and ecosystems in the name of “sustainable development,” according to Fox News.
The news outlet reported that the major reason behind the EPA thinking is a study that the agency commissioned last year from the National Academies of Science. The study, entitled “Sustainability and the U.S. EPA,” cost nearly $700,000 and was run by a team of outside experts and staff from the academies.
Fox News reported that the aim of the study was to determine how to integrate sustainability “as one of the key drivers within the regulatory responsibilities of EPA.” The panel also wrote that part of its job is to be “providing guidance to EPA on how it might implement its existing statutory authority to contribute more fully to a more sustainable-development trajectory for the United States.”
The Associated Press reported that rules from the EPA have recently threatened to shut down more than 32 coal-fired power plants in a dozen States. http://www.personalliberty.com/news/epa-ponders-expanded-regulatory-power-800665890/?eiid=
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Thomas Sowell speaks of Newt Gingrich: Those who want to concentrate on the baggage in Newt Gingrich's past, rather than on the nation's future, should remember what Winston Churchill said: "If the past sits in judgment on the present, the future will be lost." If that means a second term for Barack Obama, then it means lost big time. http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2011/12/20/the_past_and_the_present_112470.html
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Breitbart writes: The United States on Monday said President Barack Obama would sign an executive order that would release the country's "first-ever national action plan on women, peace, and security."[Will his pandering ever stop? Laws ARE in place.] The executive order would "lay out the concrete steps the administration will take to increase our commitment to support women as critical participants in preventing and resolving conflict," a senior administration official said.
"We know that enabling women to have a voice alongside those of men in matters of international peace and security is the right thing to do," the official added.
The action plan created by Obama aims to strengthen US government measures to protect women and children from harm, exploitation, discrimination and violence, including sexual violence and human trafficking. [I just figured this out! Nowhere does it say he is to protect AMERICAN women! I suggest he intends to use our taxpayer dollars to "free" women all over the world, enemies or not, from oppression. Time will tell.] http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=CNG.36250fd7ea7d7c41d8cfe510d0060488.1c1&show_article=1
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CNS News reports: The new year will bring a new phase of Obamacare to an estimated 860,000 Medicare patients.
Under the new system, individual medical claims filed with the federal Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) will be shared with doctors and hospitals unless Medicare patients opt out of the data-sharing.
Starting on Jan. 1, 32 health care organizations from across the country will take part in a "Pioneer Accountable Care" initiative, Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius announced on Monday.
Accountable Care Organizations (ACOs) -- made possible under the Democrats’ Affordable Care Act -- are supposed to provide "coordinated care" by having a patient's multiple doctors communicate with one another -- and with the hospital -- about the best course of treatment.
The goal is to achieve better health care for patients at a lower cost, Sebelius said. Medicare patients may opt out of having their “identifiable data” shared with ACOs, CMS said. Medicare patients will receive written notification from the ACO regarding their right to opt-out, as well as information on how to do so. They will have 30 days to respond before CMS starts sharing their medical claims with an ACO, although "beneficiaries maintain the ability to opt out at any time."
http://cnsnews.com/news/article/gov-t-will-share-medicare-patients-data-new-accountable-care-organizations
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Expose Obama opines: On Thursday,Eric Holder and the Department of Justice filed suit against Arizona’s Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office run by the outspoken and flamboyant Joe Arpaio who’s made it a personal crusade to uphold U.S. immigrations laws when the feds won’t.
Six months prior to this investigation the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency (ICE) had already conducted its own investigation of sheriff Arpaio’s office and not only gave it a clean bill of health,they actually gave a raving review. The report said things like “The OI and DRO supervisors consider the conduct and performance of the MCSO … officers to be professional and meeting the requirement of the MOA.” And that they considered the working relationship between the feds and the sheriff’s office to be “excellent” and that cases brought by the sheriff’s office to be “high quality.” http://www.exposeobama.com/2011/12/20/ice-report-exonerates-sheriff-joe-arpaio/
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Computer hackers are avenging the Occupy movement by exposing the personal information of police officers who evicted protesters and threatening family-values advocates who led a boycott of an American Muslim television show.
In three Internet postings last week, hackers from the loose online coalition called Anonymous published the email and physical addresses, phone numbers and, in some cases, salary details of thousands of law enforcement officers all over the country.
The hackers said they were retaliating for police violence during evictions of Occupy protest camps in cities around the country, but law enforcement advocates slammed the disclosures as dangerous.
[Describing the man who hacked into the Florida Family Association website]: In an Internet posting, he told the family association he was reading its email, and he provided email addresses and partial credit-card information of two dozen or so of the group’s supporters. He referred to the Occupy Wall Street movement’s slogan about the “1 percent” and the “99 percent.” http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2011/dec/20/hackers-post-cops-personal-data-online/
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