The Patriot Post Wednesday Digest 10-23-2013

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The Patriot Post Wednesday Digest 10-23-2013
From The Federalist Patriot
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Wednesday Digest

Oct. 23, 2013

THE FOUNDATION

“In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place, oblige it to control itself.” –James Madison

GOVERNMENT AND POLITICS
Rollout Was Bad, but the Law Is Worse

Barack Obama had just the solution to the train-wreck rollout of Healthcare.gov: He gave a speech. He assured us Monday in the Rose Garden that “nobody’s more frustrated by that than I am” about his own website not working. Small comfort. “There’s no excuse for the problems,” he said. “There’s no sugarcoating it.” He had, of course, just spent 10 minutes trying to sugarcoat it and would continue to do so for the remainder of his lengthy remarks. In fact, the president spent 30 minutes not explaining what happened or why.

Not to worry, though, there’s good news: “The product is good,” he says, and even though the website doesn’t work, people “can still buy the same quality affordable insurance plans available on the marketplace the old-fashioned way, offline – either over the phone or in person.” So he gave an 800-number to call, but, if callers didn’t get a busy signal, they were redirected to … the website. And the website refers people to the phone number. Press “3” for the Pony Express.

The speech was certainly little more than an infomercial intended for low-info voters. Obama was flanked by a baker’s dozen people out of whom only a couple had successfully signed up for coverage1, though he claimed, “Thousands of people are signing up and saving money as we speak.” No, that was actually just one guy in Iowa trying a hundred times2. And by all means, let the successful few tell us how much they’ve “saved.”3

Obama’s magnetic personality isn’t going to fix the law’s implementation just because he says the law is great. Because of the massive failure, the White House is even seemingly open to more delay4 while a “tech surge” works to rewrite millions of lines of code5 in some indeterminate time. How many more millions of dollars will that cost?

HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius admitted that the site had “almost no testing” – the consumer end wasn’t tested fully until Sept. 26, five days before rollout, and it failed those tests – and that Obama didn’t know of the problems until after the rollout. Republicans calling for Sebelius' resignation, however, are missing the point: To suggest she should be held responsible for the Healthcare.gov debacle implies that a better HHS Secretary might have made it work. Fact is, the failure of the rollout is but a metaphor for the reality that no government bureaucracy is ever going to successfully manage 18% of the U.S. economy, much less a basic commerce website for insurance comparisons.

Obama did say one thing Monday that was more true than he perhaps intended: “The Affordable Care Act is not just a website.” Indeed, as The Wall Street Journal notes6, ObamaCare’s “real goal … is to centralize political control over health care,” and conservatives should keep that in mind as we continue to oppose the law and Democrats are saddled with full ownership of health care.

RIGHT START

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ECONOMY
Sept. Unemployment Numbers Finally Here

Due to the government slowdown, the Labor Department didn’t publish the September jobs report until Tuesday morning. As usual, the news is mixed at best. Employers added an unimpressive 148,000 jobs in September, which isn’t even enough to keep up with population growth. August was atypically revised upward and July downward for a net gain of just 9,000 more jobs.

Headline unemployment edged down to 7.2% from 7.3% last month and is at its lowest point since November 2008. As has been the case for the last couple of years, however, the rate decline is due in large part to more people leaving the workforce than finding work. More than 11 million people want a job and can’t find one, and millions more are stuck in part-time work when full-time jobs are needed. According to Bloomberg8, “Through August, the U.S. had recovered 6.8 million of the 8.7 million jobs lost as a result of the 18-month recession that ended in June 2009.” All told, a record 90 million Americans aren’t working9 – 10 million more than when Obama took office.

As Michael Feroli, chief U.S. economist at JPMorgan Chase & Co., put it, “It’s not like we’re falling off a cliff, but there’s a failure to get any spark in employment.” Indeed, the Obama “recovery” has been anything but, and it pales in comparison with previous recoveries under presidents of both parties. Government spending and regulations, as well as taxes for every taxpayer, have grown tremendously in the last five years, and that’s taking its toll.

NATIONAL SECURITY
Interpol Chief: Fight Terrorism With Armed Citizens

In September, terrorists waged a days-long attack on a Kenyan mall, killing dozens. This week, Ronald Noble, secretary general of the international policing agency Interpol, discussed the problem of “soft targets,” using the mall as an example. “Societies have to think about how they’re going to approach the problem,” he said. “One is to say we want an armed citizenry; you can see the reason for that. Another is to say the enclaves are so secure that in order to get into the soft target you’re going to have to pass through extraordinary security.”

But here’s where we did a double take: “Ask yourself,” he added, “If that [mall attack] was Denver, Colorado, if that was Texas, would those guys have been able to spend hours, days, shooting people randomly? What I’m saying is it makes police around the world question their views on gun control. It makes citizens question their views on gun control. You have to ask yourself, ‘Is an armed citizenry more necessary now than it was in the past with an evolving threat of terrorism?’ This is something that has to be discussed.”

Fortunately, there were a couple of armed citizens who took action in Nairobi, saving many lives. But for a European bureaucrat to understand something that the American Left vociferously opposes is really something. Armed citizens can’t always prevent attacks, but they can at least be equipped to respond to evil. Our Founders certainly understood that national security begins with armed citizens. That’s why they codified that God-given right in the Second Amendment.

CULTURE
New Jersey Legalizes Same-Sex Marriage

Proving itself the kindred spirit to the radical left, New Jersey last week became the 14th state to legalize same-sex marriage – that is if you can call a dictum from the state Supreme Court a true legalization. As background, a decision by a lower court to allow same-sex marriage in the Garden State is currently on appeal to the state Supreme Court, but Republican Gov. Chris Christie requested a stay of the ruling, pending review by the high court. Rejecting the request 7-0 – and leaving no mystery on how it will rule on the appeal – New Jersey’s compulsively activist court announced10 that it could “find no public interest in depriving a group of New Jersey residents of their constitutional right to equal protection while the appeals process unfolds.”

Surprising virtually no Jersey conservatives, Christie – who with one breath vetoed a same-sex marriage bill last year and with the next signed a bill11 this year banning “conversion therapy” for minors struggling with homosexuality – promptly dropped his appeal, announcing through his spokesman that “the court has now spoken.” Perhaps conservatives can take comfort that at least Christie didn’t go as far as New Jersey Senator-elect Cory Booker, who immediately chose to officiate12 at several same-sex “marriages.” But then again, with marriage – the very building block of society – on the line, conservatives are unlikely to forget the white flag waiving over the governor’s mansion.