IRS Could Face Blame for Obamacare’s Unexpected Tax Bite

Politico.com:

Obamacare’s rollout dented the Department of Health and Human Services in just the first month. Up next year: the Internal Revenue Service.

A key piece of the health care law gives Americans making less than 400 percent of the poverty line subsidies to buy insurance. But if buyers don’t alert the insurance exchanges to big life changes throughout the year — like a divorce, promotion or new job for them or a spouse— they could wind up with sticker shock at tax time.

It’s a new responsibility for this group — many of whom are just struggling to sign up.

The IRS, for its part, must make sure consumers don’t get blindsided — or it will face a bunch of angry taxpayers who didn’t realize they would owe Uncle Sam money back, tax experts said.

“If I were the IRS, I would be very concerned that I’m going to be viewed as the villain when people have to pay back money the government gave them for health insurance,” said Chris Condeluci, who was Senate Finance Committee GOP tax counsel during drafting of the Affordable Care Act.

There is time. Potential “repayments” to the government will not come due until 2015, when recipients file next year’s taxes. But the new rule for reporting these life changes begins this January.

RELATED: MSNBCers Wonder Whether Troubled Obamacare Will Be Vindicated by History

Glenn Greenwald Snarks at MSNBC: I Defend Snowden Like You Defend Obama ’24 Hours a Day’

Mediaite.com:

Journalist Glenn Greenwald appeared on MSNBC Thursday, one day after Edward Snowden delivered a Christmas address to television viewers in the UK and around the world from Russia. Things got heated when MSNBC anchor Kristen Welker cited critics who’ve accused Greenwald of “crossing a line” in his defense of Snowden. “What do you say to your critics who say you’ve become more of a spokesman for Edward Snowden?” she asked. 

“I think that’s ludicrous is what I say to that,” Greenwald shot back. “Every journalist has an agenda. We’re on MSNBC now, where close to 24 hours a day the agenda of President Obama and the Democratic Party are promoted, defended, glorified, the agenda of the Republican Party is undermined. That doesn’t mean the people who appear on MSNBC aren’t journalists, they are.” 

He said that every journalist has a “viewpoint” and he doesn’t hide the fact that he finds Snowden’s decision to expose the NSA’s surveillance programs “heroic.”

I think the point is not so much about MSNBC and what happens here,” Welker said in defense of her employer, “but more that sometimes when you talk about Edward Snowden you do defend him, and some people wonder if that crosses a line.”

“Sure, I do defend him just like people on MSNBC defend President Obama and his officials and Democratic Party leaders 24 hours a day.” When Welker pushed back that “not everyone on MSNBC does that 24 hours a day,” Greenwald conceded that it’s “not everybody, but a lot of people do.”

After comparing Snowden to figures like Chelsea Manning and Daniel Ellsberg, Greenwald said, “I absolutely do defend what Edward Snowden does and I don’t pretend otherwise.”

RELATED:  Like Clockwork, Joy Reid Is Annoyed About Glenn Greenwald Sniping at MSNBC

Politiks As Usual: In The News 12/15/13

Kerry Comments Add to Mystery About Rogue CIA Agent Missing in Iran

Hillary Clinton, Too Cozy With Banks?

Has Hollywood Seen The Light? Biblical Films Abound!

Ron Christie to MSNBC Guest Claiming Tea Party Is 'Racial': 'I Will Not Sit Here and Allow You to Say That'

Arapahoe High Gunman: Republicans Are the Party of 'Let 'em Die'

3 Reasons Why Our Teenagers Can't Find Jobs

Honeymoon Cut Short: Court Overturns Australia’s First Same-Sex Marriage Law

Is Conservatism Being Marginalized On Capitol Hill - by Conservatives?
 
O, Come Let MSNBC Adore Lord Obama
 
Ex-Gay Group Files Sexual Orientation Discrimination Complaint with Department of Justice
 
Pope Francis Addresses ‘Ultraconservatives’ (and Limbaugh?) Calling Him a Marxist
 
Mike Huckabee Talks 2016, But Is Anyone Listening?

Stupid, Race-Baiting, MSNBC Host Melissa Harris-Perry Says “ObamaCare” Was a Word Coined by Wealthy White Men to Diminish Obama’s Accomplishments

Right. And "Bush Tax Cuts" and "RomneyCare" were terms coined by poor, black people to diminish George W. Bush and Mitt Romney's accomplishments. In other words, Melissa Harris-Perry is a total idiot:

Via RCP. By coincidence, Charles Cooke has a piece out today on the alternate universe you too can inhabit if only you Lean Forward far enough:

America II, as anyone who watches the channel will discover rather swiftly, hosts a supermajority of well-meaning multi-culti, progressive types whose foolproof plans for explosive economic growth, uniform social justice, and general human utopia are constantly being undone by a blossoming white-supremacist movement, split apart by neo-secessionists, and existentially threatened by traitors whose defining characteristic is a never-quite-explained hatred for progress. America II features no gray areas whatsoever: All local variation is apartheid, each and every identification requirement is the second coming of Jim Crow, all criticism of the government is sedition. It’s exhausting.

On a network where smirking references to “teabaggers” are treated as witty, Harris-Perry’s attempt to rehabilitate “ObamaCare” as some sort of slur practically qualifies as clever. How to square the fact that O himself now uses the term with the quasi-religious belief that any Republican messaging about him, no matter how innocuous and easily explained by basic partisanship, must be proof of racism in America II? Simple: Claim that “ObamaCare” was a slur, but now, by embracing the word himself, Obama’s taken the power back. If you find that unpersuasive, remember, decoding conservative criticism of O for alleged racial subtexts is a sort of parlor game on MSNBC. Previously identified dog-whistles include “IRS,” “Chicago,” and my favorite, “golf.” Usually the game ends with some variation of “and that’s why it’s racist,” but MHP’s argument has a whole second part to it. Consider this bar raised.

Legal Insurrection has a nice post tracking the origins of the word “ObamaCare,” including a claim from none other than Anthony Weiner that he coined the term himself. Which, if true, partially vindicates Harris-Perry: A wealthy white man really is responsible. By the way, as I write this, there are roughly 575,000 results for “RomneyCare” on Google. On this site alone, that word appears in more than 250 posts. 

RELATED:  No, Melissa Harris-Perry, “Obamacare” was not conceived by rich white men

Politiks As Usual: In The News 12/8/13

Chris Christie's Hispanic High Wire Act Could Pay Off or Prove Fatal

Five Times Obama Made It All About Himself

RIP, Christmas

Sen. Paul Knocks Call For More Long-term Jobless Aid

Teen Pregnancies Drop a Whopping 52 Percent in Two Decades 

Who Is Josh Ackley and What Is He Doing with the Girl Scouts?

The 5 Worst Books For Your Children

1,148,000 Fewer Americans Have Jobs Today Than 7 Yrs Ago

Skeptic: Feds' Latest Global-Warming Report A 'Shill' For Funding 

The Ugly End of the Duke Lacrosse Story

The Pro-life Movement Ignores the Black Community At Its Peril: Jailed Black Pastor

Gay Waitress Loses Job After Investigation Into Whether Customers Denied Tip

Liberal's Latest Excuse For Barack Obama: He'd Be A Better President If We Repealed 22nd Amendment

Fast and Furious. Benghazi coverup. Historically-low approval ratings. 6 wars since becoming POTUS. Godless, social agenda. Catering to white liberals on everything. Blacks faring better under Bush than Obama. Rollout for Obamacare an utter fail...the list goes on. But if you're a rabid Obamabot, surely it's a "RACIST!!!" GOP and that nonsensical 22nd Amendment that's holding Barry O. back from being the best POTUS he could be:

Last week Frank J. Fleming, one of the funniest bloggers around, tweeted: "At this point in the Obama presidency, we were supposed to be talking about how we needed to repeal the 22nd Amendment," which limits presidents to two terms. 

We laughed and gave Fleming a retweet. On Wednesday we observed that it's hard for a political humorist to keep up with the real-life absurdities of the Obama crowd. To illustrate the point, along comes Jonathan Zimmerman, a historian at New York University, with an op-ed in the Washington Post arguing that we need to repeal the 22nd Amendment.

Now of course the way this was supposed to work was that Obama would be such an amazing president that he would come to seem indispensable. There were people who felt that way about Reagan and Clinton in their last years in office. Probably someone somewhere would still stake that claim on Obama's behalf, but we doubt even Slate would publish such a far-fetched argument, never mind the Washington Post.

So Zimmerman doesn't argue that Obama deserves a third term to continue his great success, only that "Barack Obama should be allowed to stand for re election [again]" and that "citizens should be allowed to vote for--or against--him." Where it gets funny is in Zimmerman's resort to the 22nd Amendment as an excuse for the failures of Obama's first and second terms.

Zimmerman opens with a 1947 quote from Sen. Harley Kilgore, a West Virginia Democrat, who "condemned [the] proposed constitutional amendment" on the ground that, in Kilgore's words: "The executive's effectiveness will be seriously impaired, as no one will obey and respect him if he knows that the executive cannot run again." (We're pretty sure Zimmerman has the chronology backward here: Kilgore's quote preceded the proposing of the amendment and was part of the debate over whether Congress would do so.)

There's no denying Obama's effectiveness has been seriously impaired. As Zimmerman notes, the president's approval rates have plunged--to 37% in one poll--and amid the ObamaCare disaster, "many of Obama's fellow Democrats have distanced themselves from the reform and from the president." The administration's purported recent deal with Iran, likewise, is drawing "fervent objections" not just from hawkish Republicans but from Northeastern Democrats like Sens. Chuck Schumer and Bob Menendez.

If Obama were running for re-election, Zimmerman thinks that wouldn't happen: "Democratic lawmakers would worry about provoking the wrath of a president who could be reelected. Thanks to term limits, though, they've got little to fear." But "the scariest problem of all," Zimmerman claims, is that Obama does not "have to fear the voters," so that "if he chooses, he could simply ignore their will."

Right off the bat it seems obvious that Zimmerman has committed a fallacy of causality. We puzzled over whether to call it post hoc or cum hoc before realizing it's a rare example of an ante hoc ergo propter hoc fallacy. Zimmerman is asserting without evidence that events in the present are being caused by an event in the future, namely Obama's leaving office for good on Jan. 20, 2017.

Why is this fallacious? For one reason, because it does not describe the behavior of all two-term presidents since the 22nd Amendment went into effect. Only Nixon and George W. Bush are generally regarded to have had disastrous second terms. Eisenhower, Reagan and Clinton all had some difficulties in their second terms, but none that proved crippling to their effectiveness or poisonous to their public standing.

There have also been disastrous one-term presidents--Carter for sure, and we'd also count Lyndon B. Johnson. Because LBJ took office with less than half of President Kennedy's term left, he was eligible to seek a full second term in 1968. He withdrew in the face of a surprisingly strong primary challenge from the antiwar left. In terms of his ability to influence Congress, LBJ arguably had been the most effective president of the 20th century, at least during his 1964-65 heyday. By 1968 he was washed up.

The proximate cause of Obama's current decline in esteem and authority is the failure of a project he undertook during his first term--ObamaCare. That he has in common with Nixon (the Watergate burglary and coverup) and George W. Bush (the Iraq war). Given that all three of these presidents sought and won a second term, it seems far-fetched to speculate that the prospect of a third term would have led to substantially better decision making in the first term.

As for Zimmerman's fear that Obama may ignore the will of the voters, all we can say is he must've been out of the country in 2010 when ObamaCare was passed. It is preposterous to suggest that so willful a president would be more responsive if only he had the legal possibility of being president for life. Further, it is difficult to deny that the requirements of re-election in 2012 were behind the administration's abuse of the Internal Revenue Service, the Benghazi coverup, and the fraudulent claim that "if you like your plan you can keep it." Does anyone think the prospect of a third Nixon term in 1976 would have averted Watergate?

RELATED:  End presidential term limits

New York Times’ Obama Cheerleading Harms The Nation

NYPost.com:

Poor Barack Obama. Ending his fifth year as the world’s most powerful man, he is running out of scapegoats and fairy tales. Blaming George W. Bush has lost its punch, and the ObamaCare debacle is shredding the myths he is competent and honest.

Still, before he rides off into that sunset of self-pity and low poll ratings, he ought to invite his remaining friends over for a heart-to-heart. That way he can tell The New York Times that its fanatical support does him no favors.

Instead, it feeds his arrogance and reinforces his belief that he can solve any problem with another speech. The unflattering truth doesn’t stand a chance — ­until it is too late.

Not that the president would admit any of that, of course, but the Obama Protection Racket, led by the Times, cuts both ways. It is a key reason he has defied political gravity for so long, and also why he is now in deep trouble. As watchdogs became lapdogs, the presidential bubble grew impenetrable, isolating him from ordinary Americans and the trickle-down pain of his policies.

From the broadcast networks to MSNBC and most large papers, Obama got the benefit of every doubt. The double standards were a daily disgrace so routine, they mostly provoked a shrug instead of outrage.

The ObamaCare debacle is the exception that proves the rule. Wall-to-wall complaints are forcing the media to report that the law’s Web site is a lemon and that its rules are causing millions of people to lose insurance plans they liked.

The mainstream media is acting only because the story is too big to ignore. Had it been mildly skeptical sooner, it could have exposed the law’s destructive rules and prevented the disaster.

Yet the Times, especially its editorial page, remains his most devoted cheerleader. The latest example is embarrassing enough to make a Gray Lady blush.

After the president’s repeated promise that “If you like your health-care plan, you can keep it” was proven false, the editorial page tried to clean up his mess. On Nov. 2, it charged that Republicans were stoking “consumer fears and confusion” by highlighting reports of people losing insurance.

Then came the coverup: “Mr. Obama clearly misspoke” when he made those promises, the editorial said, before dismissing the problems as an “overblown controversy.”

The “misspoke” defense set off a firestorm, and even the paper’s gentle public editor suggested it was too kind. Naturally, the editors defended their decision not to accuse the president of an outright lie.

Yet even Obama concluded he had to apologize. His recognition of the uproar will result in changes, if only because Senate Democrats are running for their lives.

The episode graphically illustrates how the Times has harmed the nation by reflexively protecting Obama, facts be damned.

Instead of just expressing its own liberal views, the editorial page serves as the propaganda arm of the administration, the Jay Carney of print media. Its daily drumbeat of shrill partisanship leaves it indistinguishable from Dem party hacks who spend their waking hours demonizing Republicans.

RELATED:  Ed Schultz: Why is the mainstream media rooting so hard for ObamaCare to fail?

ObamaCare’s Marriage Penalty: Cohabitating Couples Will Pay Less For Healthcare Than Married Couples

LifesiteNews.com:

Would you pay $10,000 a year to stay married to your spouse? Some American couples are being faced with exactly that decision as they consider their health insurance options under ObamaCare.

One of the most controversial provisions of ObamaCare is that it requires all Americans to purchase health insurance, whether they want it or not, or face hefty fines. To facilitate enrollment, the government has set up health care “exchanges” in all 50 states and Washington, D.C., where people can compare and purchase insurance plans. The government has promised subsidies to help those who cannot afford the higher premiums, but the way the subsidies are calculated mean they could pay up to $10,000 more per year.

The marriage penalty is a result of the way the government calculates poverty. While the poverty line for a single person’s income is $11,490 per year or less, a married couple is considered above the poverty line if their combined income exceeds $15,510. People are eligible for subsidies under ObamaCare if they make up to four times more than the federal poverty limit – $45,960 for a single person, or $62,040 for a married couple. But unmarried couples living together will have their incomes assessed separately – meaning that as long as each of them makes less than the individual cutoff, they can remain eligible for subsidies while bringing in a joint income of up to $91,920.

In 2010, the Heritage Foundation warned of this hidden marriage penalty in a report criticizing the ObamaCare bill for its “profound anti-marriage bias.” They also pointed out that focusing on the yearly penalty misses the bigger picture: the penalty is assessed over and over again throughout the couple’s life, meaning the real cost of marriage is much, much higher.

According to the group’s calculations, a married couple who remained married throughout their lives might pay more than $200,000 in penalties under ObamaCare.

“Most people feel that marriage is a healthful institution that society should encourage and strengthen,” wrote Robert Rector, the report’s author. “Inexplicably, [ObamaCare] takes the opposite approach. At nearly all age and income levels, the bill profoundly discriminates against married couples, providing far less support to a husband and wife than to a cohabiting couple with the same income.”

RELATED:  NY Daily News Editorial Attacks America’s ‘Immaturity’ for Showing Anger Over Obamacare’s Lies

Liberal Rolling Stone Magazine Desperately Tries (And Fails) To Get Bob Dylan To Profess Love For Obama

Mediaite.com:

Whenever Bob Dylan decides to give an interview, it becomes a monumental event. Despite being one of the most important American social figures of the last 50 years, Dylan has always been reticent with the press and, at times, outright hostile to their ceaseless prodding. Snagging an interview with Dylan is almost as impossible as spotting Sasquatch (although getting him to make a cameo on Pawn Stars apparently isn’t that difficult).

The latest edition of Rolling Stone features one of those rare interviews, timed with the release of Dylan’s 35th studio album Tempest. Interviewer Mikal Gilmore spends most of the time asking decent questions about the legendary musicians’ life, including accusations of plagiarism that arose from Dylan’s 2001 record Love & Theft album (Dylan says: “wussies and pussies” make such claims about him). 

But for another chunk of the interview, Gilmore spends an uncomfortable amount of time prodding Dylan to confirm his support for President Barack Obama and label the president’s critics racist.

The discussion first got political when Dylan expressed his belief that slavery has unfortunately stained this country’s fabric since its founding: “This country is just too fucked up about color,” he said. “People at each other’s throats just because they are of a different color. It’s the height of insanity, and it will hold any nation back – or any neighborhood back,” he continued before explaining that perhaps if slavery had ended in a more peaceful way, we would have progressed faster in terms of race relations.

Gilmore then saw an opportunity to ask whether he believed the Obama presidency would signal an important sea change in American race relations. “I don’t have any opinion on that,” Dylan responded. “You have to change your heart if you want to change.”

The interviewer pressed further, remarking that there has been great backlash since Obama’s election. Dylan’s response: “They did the same thing to Bush, didn’t they? They did the same thing to Clinton, too, and Jimmy Carter before that. [...] Anybody who’s going to take that job is going to be in for a rough time.”
Unsatisfied, Gilmore came right out with what he really meant to ask: Isn’t the backlash against Obama rooted in racism? “I don’t know,” Dylan said.

Gilmore then took a few more swings, mentioning that Obama’s critics call him a socialist and un-American. Dylan responded: “[A]s if you’ve never heard those kind of words before. Eisenhower was accused of being un-American. And wasn’t Nixon a socialist? Look what he did in China. They’ll say bad things about the next guy, too.”

When Gilmore tried for a fourth time to elicit a they-hate-him-because-he’s-black response out of Dylan, the musician said: “Do you want me to repeat what I just said, word for word? What are you talking about? People loved the guy when he was elected. So what are we talking about? People changing their minds? Well, who are these people who changed their minds? Talk to them.”

As the bizarre exchange continued, Gilmore asked whether Dylan votes. Seemingly scoffing at the question, Dylan responds with the generic: “We live in a democracy. What do you want me to say? Voting is a good thing.”

Then Gilmore wanted to know what Dylan thinks of Obama. The musician has met the president several times, most recently when he was honored at the White House (while wearing sunglasses indoors!) with the Presidential Medal of Freedom. At first Dylan remarks that “You should be asking his wife what she thinks of him,” and then he gets understandably cranky with the interviewer: “He loves music. He’s personable. He dresses good. What the fuck do you want me to say?”

Oh, but it doesn’t end there! Gilmore tried again, asking whether Dylan would like to see Obama re-elected. “I’ve live through a lot of presidents! And you have too! Some are re-elected and some aren’t. Being re-elected isn’t the mark of a great president.” 

Gilmore then brought up the time Dylan said, while on-stage the evening of Obama’s inauguration, “It looks like things are gonna change now.” Clearly Gilmore wanted Dylan to profess his love of the president, but instead the musician said: “Did I go down to the middle of town and give a speech?. [...] I don’t know what I could have meant by that. [...] I’m not going to deny what I said, but I would have hoped that things would’ve changed. I certainly hope they have.”

Reason‘s Brian Doherty has likely the most accurate analysis of Gilmore’s prodding:

It all feels peculiarly quasi-totalitarian–you must praise the Great Leader!–as well as sad and childish, like Gilmore can’t get through a meeting with one of the major cultural forces of his time without getting that force to ratify Gilmore’s political beliefs, like Dylan’s his cultural dad whose approval must be sought for a political love that maybe even Gilmore is seeing is based in little concrete.

Dylan’s refusal to join in on political idol worship really shouldn’t surprise anyone. For decades, he has been resistant to political pigeonholing from both sides.

Left-wing folkies thought they owned him in the early ’60s, but then he went rogue and seemingly denounced the hierarchical madness of the movement via songs like “Maggie’s Farm” and “My Back Pages.” At one point he became reclusive, shrugging off the left-wing countercultural icon label that had been placed upon him: “Like Abraham destroying his father’s idol shop, only it was my own idol shop,” he said.

He has also confounded the left with a retroactive statement of positive feelings for Barry Goldwater; a bizarre (but somewhat brief) foray into evangelical Christianity; and his 1983 song “Neighborhood Bully,” a not-so-subtle defense of the State of Israel.

But he is no right-winger either. Many of his songs scorn the military-industrial complex (“Masters of War,” “With God on Our Side”), and others rail against a criminal justice system favorable to white people (“Hurricane,” “The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll”). 

His reluctance to play the game should serve as inspiration for those of us who feel disillusioned with a two-party system that has become, at its core, a competition amongst used car salesmen. Platitudes are exchanged, harsh words are spewed, the promise of “reform” is parroted over and over again, but nothing ever really changes. And if it does, it’s not because some politician in a big office made it so.
Dylan understands that. 

“Politics is entertainment,” he once told the UK Telegraph. “Politicians are interchangeable.”

Although political candidates of all stripes have endorsed him, we can be thankful Dylan will likely never endorse them.

RELATED: The Badgering of Bob Dylan, Or, Tell Us You Love Obama, Bob! Please!

Shocker Alert: Even Bill Maher's Getting Tired Of Media's Obama Worship

Amazing . . . Maher even goes so far as to compare the liberal media's continued fawning of Barry to that of Lindsay Lohan--now that's funny:

President Obama should just join the cast of "I'm a Celebrity, Get Me Out of Here!" It's not that farfetched; he's been on everything else. I'm still a fan, but there's a fine line between being transparent and being overexposed. Every time you turn on the TV, there's Obama. He's getting a puppy! He's eating a cheeseburger with Joe Biden! He's taking the wife to Broadway and Paris -- this is the best season of "The Bachelor" yet!

I get it: You love being on TV. I love my bong, but I take it out of my mouth every once in a while. The other day, I caught myself saying to a friend, "Don't tell me if he's fixed the economy yet, I'm Tivo-ing it."

Remember during the campaign when John McCain attacked Obama for acting like a celebrity and we all laughed at the grumpy old shellshocked fool? Well, it turns out he was right. Sorry, senator. I'm sending a nice gift basket of high-fiber muffins your way.

It's getting to where you can't turn on your TV without seeing Obama. Who does he think he is, Dick Cheney? Come on, sir, you don't have to be on television every minute of every day. You're the president, not a rerun of "Law and Order." Save some charisma for a rainy day. Taking strangers from a TV show on a tour of your house? We have that show; it's called "Cribs." And letting reporters ask you questions like "You like to be the one who picks out the shaving cream, don't you?" Or as it's called today, "journalism." I was willing to give the guy the benefit of the doubt until I saw him take Brian Williams into his bedroom, and at the end of the bed there was a teleprompter and it said, "Who's your daddy?"

I mean, selling the personal part to stay popular, I'm all for it, but you got us already. We like you, we really like you! You're skinny and in a hurry and in love with a nice lady. But so's Lindsay Lohan. And like Lohan, we see your name in the paper a lot, but we're kind of wondering when you're actually going to do something.

Denis Leary Declares Obama "Greatest President In History"

Reason No. 5672 on why celebrities should STFU about politics and just do what they get paid to do.