On Tuesday, a federal district court judge in Texas ordered the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) to return more than $839 million that bureaucrats effectively stole from six states in a violation of the plain text of the Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare.
"This is a prime example of how the administrative state works ‐ and how difficult it can be to unravel the work of deep state bureaucrats," Louisiana Solicitor General Liz Murrill, who helped argue the case, told PJ Media.
In the ruling, U.S. District Judge Reed O'Connor ruled that the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) had unlawfully required six states ‐ Indiana, Kansas, Louisiana, Nebraska, Texas, and Wisconsin ‐ to foot the bill for health care providers, paying a fee that Obamacare clearly exempted them from.
Obamacare mandated that more Americans purchase health insurance. In order to avoid enriching health care providers ‐ known as Managed Care Organizations or MCOs ‐ the law levied a health insurance provider fee (HIPF). Due to an actuarial rule established under Alex Azar, secretary of the department of Health and Human Services, states had to pay the HIPFs, to the tune of hundreds of millions.
"The law expressly forbids imposing the fee on states," Liz Murrill told PJ Media. "It was intended to basically take back some of the profits insurers would achieve from the expansion of insurers and the associated increase in premiums (projected to come from a less sick, younger population)."
Instead, the deep state bureaucrats forced the states to foot the bill.
"Obamacare has always been an economic house of cards, and this ruling has again exposed it for what it is: a money laundering scheme," Louisiana Attorney General Jeff Landry said in a statement. "This is a prime example of the deep administrative state doing something that Congress expressly forbid."
Landry argued that the deep state broke the law it was attempting to apply. "Even though the Affordable Care Act forbid imposing the Health Insurance Providers Fee (HIPF) on states, the federal government found a way to do it anyway," he explained.
"HIPF has always been an unconstitutional fee imposed upon our State’s workers," Landry concluded. "I commend our Solicitor General Liz Murrill and the entire multi-state coalition for achieving victory in this important case." If the 'publicans weren't getting their pockets lined from this they would be repealing it... right?
It's been brewing for a few weeks and now it's a done deal.
[Daily Telegraph / Tim Blair] - It’s all over for Malcolm Turnbull, who will fall just slightly short of becoming "the longest-serving prime minister since Menzies. Possibly ever." Let’s follow the fun as it unfolds.
This morning kicked off with several Turnbull abandonments:
Liberal party ministers Mathias Cormann, Michaelia Cash, and Mitch Fifield have now abandoned Mr Turnbull just after 9.30am and want him to resign, also calling for another leadership spill today.
Mr Cormann said he had met with Mr Turnbull to tell him he no longer had the support of the majority of the Liberal Party.
Latest update is that he's out as PM but he's remaining in Parliament, which breaks his pledge to leave entirely if he lost the PM job. What a wanker!
#1
He is still prime minister although it does not look like he will last much longer. He certainly is nowhere near being the longest-serving prime minister since Menzies.
h/t Instapundit
[DailyWire] Socialist Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez claimed on Wednesday that the United States government is allowing global warming to kill Americans and provided absolutely no evidence whatsoever to validate her claims.
In her political career, only weeks old, Ocasio-Cortez has become known for making completely false statements, lying, and having a hard time understanding basic concepts and principles.
Ocasio-Cortez continued this pattern today when she claimed: "Americans are dying because of a government too coward to save the planet." My day is not complete without Alexandria's daily foot in mouth
[American Thinker] For all those Democrats and the MSM who are seeking to use Michael Cohen’s plea deal to implicate President Trump in the alleged crime confessed to by Cohen, don’t forget to use the precedent set by the highly respected institution we call the Congress of the United States of America when you make arguments that Donald Trump was trying to influence an election with a payment to silence his accusers.
The following is a list of articles from major news outlets with short excerpts; written about members of congress paying "secret settlements" for everything from sexual harassment to who knows what else ‐ because we really don’t know "what else" they did - it’s a secret.
The secrecy, or can we say cover-up, is meant to protect the identity of the elected officials involved who need to silence their accusers. You know, just in case the information might become public and affect their position in congress or -- wait for it -- the outcome of their next election.
Sexual harassment fund exposes Congress
"Under Congressional Accountability Act, taxpayers pay for secret settlements. Where's the accountability?
When sexual harassers agree on confidential settlements with victims, at least the payments come out of the harassers' own pockets or from companies that choose to employ them.
But not, as the nation has learned this month, when the harasser serves in Congress. Then, taxpayers foot the bill. And the entire episode remains hidden."
Actions have consequences, Bitch
[FoxNews] CNN’s April Ryan said White House press secretary Sarah Sanders should pay for a bodyguard Ryan has hired, accusing Sanders of "stirring" up death threats against Ryan.
"Oh, I get approached a lot, when I'm walking from my car, when I'm walking to my car, when I eat. Anywhere I go. I mean, they have put a target on my head, and I don't know who's who sometimes," Ryan told the Hollywood Reporter on Tuesday.
"I've had death threats. I've had craziness. ... Do I have a bodyguard? Yes, I do. Am I paying for it? Yes, I am. And, I think [Sanders] should have to pay for it, especially if she's stirring it up with her boss," she added.
Ryan, who's also the White House correspondent for American Urban Radio Networks, made the comments as she was promoting her new book, "Under Fire: Reporting from the Front Lines of the Trump White House," which details her experience covering the Trump administration.
"What's happening is unprecedented. ... I've been under attack. And lied on. Treated terribly. And if I don't tell the story, you won't get it. So, I'm putting it out there, because people see one side of it," she said, though not revealing why none of her employers are footing for the bill for her personal security.
Ryan insists the White House put her on a "blacklist" over her questions during press briefings, claiming the administration was "still very angry" over Ryan once asking Trump whether he is a racist.
"The asshole list blacklist. The White House blacklist ... Me, [CNN chief White House correspondent] Jim Acosta. We're on the blacklist. [CNN White House correspondent] Kaitlan Collins. People they don't like," Ryan added.
Posted by: Frank G ||
08/23/2018 00:00 ||
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#1
Do you want Sanders to pay for your liposuction too, ya fat fuck?
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
On Tuesday, a federal district court judge in Texas ordered the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) to return more than $839 million that bureaucrats effectively stole from six states in a violation of the plain text of the Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare.
[American Thinker] For all those Democrats and the MSM who are seeking to use Michael Cohen’s plea deal to implicate President Trump in the alleged crime confessed to by Cohen, don’t forget to use the precedent set by the highly respected institution we call the Congress of the United States of America when you make arguments that Donald Trump was trying to influence an election with a payment to silence his accusers.
