ObamaCare architect says lack of transparency helped law pass, cites 'stupidity of the American voter'

 

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 ObamaCare architect Jonathan Gruber said that lack of transparency was a major part of getting ObamaCare passed, and that it was written in such a way as to take advantage of "the stupidity of the American voter." 
Gruber, the MIT professor who served as a technical consultant to the Obama administration during ObamaCare’s design, also made clear during a panel quietly captured on video that the individual mandate, which was only upheld by the Supreme Court because it was a tax, was not actually a tax.
“This bill was written in a tortured way to make sure CBO did not score the mandate as taxes. If CBO scored the mandate as taxes, the bill dies. Okay, so it’s written to do that.  In terms of risk-rated subsidies, if you had a law which said that healthy people are going to pay in – you made explicit healthy people pay in and sick people get money, it would not have passed… Lack of transparency is a huge political advantage. And basically, call it the stupidity of the American voter or whatever, but basically that was really, really critical for the thing to pass… Look, I wish Mark was right that we could make it all transparent, but I’d rather have this law than not.” 
[The video was from an Oct. 17, 2013 event hosted by the University of Pennsylvania.]

US troops arrive in Iraq's Anbar province amid ISIS fight

A team of about 50 military personnel are visiting a U.S. military airbase in Iraq’s Anbar province after President Obama authorized the deployment of up to 1,500 more American troops to bolster Iraqi forces in the region in the fight against the Islamic State.
A Defense Department spokesperson confirmed to Fox News that the group was visiting the Al-Asad Air Base to “conduct a site survey of facilities for potential future use as an advise and assist operation location in support of Iraq Security Forces.”
The spokesperson added that some of the personnel were carrying weapons, but strictly to protect the force.
The military personnel were surveying the area for a planned deployment in Anbar province, where fighting with Islamic State militants, also known as ISIL or ISIS, has been fierce.
On Friday, U.S. President Barack Obama authorized the deployment of up to 1,500 more American troops to bolster Iraqi forces in that province and elsewhere. The plan could boost the total number of American troops in Iraq to 3,100. There now are about 1,400 U.S. troops in Iraq, out of the 1,600 previously authorized.
A U.S.-led coalition has been launching airstrikes on Islamic State militants and facilities in Iraq and Syria for months, as part of an effort to give Iraqi forces the time and space to mount a more effective offensive.
The Islamic State had gained ground across northern and western Iraq in a lightning advance in June and July, causing several of Iraq's army and police divisions to fall into disarray.

VA secretary pushes major overhaul, firings at agency

Veterans Affairs Secretary Bob McDonald on Monday announced a complete restructuring in the wake of the scandal over excessive wait times and poor care that critics blamed for patient deaths. 
The changes come a day after the secretary revealed on CBS' "60 Minutes" his intention to fire or otherwise discipline more than 1,000 workers -- and hire thousands more doctors and health care workers. 
Asked during the interview how many employees should be fired, McDonald said the disciplinary report given to the Veterans Affairs committees in the House and the Senate "has about 35 names on it" and he's got "another report that has over 1,000" names. All VA firings are subject to review by an administrative judge, complicating any push to remove employees. 
The separate overhaul announced Monday, on the eve of Veterans Day, is designed to make it easier for veterans to access the sprawling department and its many websites. McDonald called the restructuring the largest in the department's history and said it will bring a singular focus on customer service to an agency that serves 22 million veterans. 
"As VA moves forward, we will judge the success of all our efforts against a single metric: the outcomes we provide for veterans," McDonald said. The VA's mission is to care for veterans, "so we must become more focused on veterans' needs," he said. 
As part of the restructuring the department will hire a chief customer service officer and create a single regional framework that will encompass all aspects of the agency, from health care to benefits, loan centers and even cemetery plots, McDonald said. The VA now has nine organizational maps and at least a dozen websites, many with their own user names and passwords. 
Eventually, McDonald would like all veterans to have one user name and password for all VA services. McDonald hopes to complete the reorganization, nicknamed "MyVA," within a year. 
Meanwhile, the new secretary discussed his plans for cleaning house at the VA during the interview with CBS' "60 Minutes." 
“I was incensed. I was incensed,” McDonald said of the scandal and cover-up at his agency. “Our veterans have earned these benefits. They earn them with their lives in danger.”
In the interview, McDonald said the VA is taking "aggressive, expeditious disciplinary action, consistent with the law" against more than 1,000 of its 315,000 employees.
McDonald's comments represent a departure from his previous public remarks. At a news conference last Thursday, he said the VA has proposed disciplinary action — up to and including firing — against more than 40 employees nationwide since June.
Asked in the “60 Minutes” interview how many doctors and nurses and other medical professionals he needs to hire, McDonald said “we probably need about 28,000.”
In a live streaming seminar at the Washington Post on Monday on veterans hiring, McDonald said the VA is making progress in other areas.
“We've cut the disability claims backlog by 60 percent in the last 20 months. We completed 1.3 million claims for veterans in 2014,” he said. “That’s 150,000 more than last year.”
He added: "Veterans give VA health care higher ratings than patients at most private hospitals."
The hardest part of McDonald’s mission thus far is hiring the thousands of new doctors, nurses and medical staff. He's in the midst of a recruiting campaign at medical schools and universities where he points out to prospective employees that, for all its faults, the VA is at the forefront of medical care in the treatment of traumatic brain injury and PTSD and in the use of prosthetic limbs. 
As for the looming disciplinary measures, some Republican lawmakers have criticized the VA for moving too slowly to fire managers involved in covering up wait times and other problems.
But McDonald said the agency is moving as fast as it legally can. 
"We've got to make it stick," McDonald told CBS. "We propose the action, the judge rules and the individual has a time to appeal."
Only one of four senior employees recently targeted for removal by the VA has been fired, a fact Republican lawmakers cite in criticizing McDonald's implementation of the new law, which gives McDonald wide authority to fire poor-performing employees and streamlines the appeals process.
Two of the targeted employees retired. A third was granted an extension allowing her more time to reply to the VA's decision.
The VA has been under intense scrutiny since a whistleblower reported that dozens of veterans may have died while awaiting treatment at the Phoenix VA hospital, and that appointment records were falsified. Since then problems have been revealed at VA health care sites across the country.
The scandal led to the ouster of former VA Secretary Eric Shinseki and to a new law making it easier for veterans to get VA-paid care from local doctors. The agency has been overwhelmed by the influx of veterans from wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the aging of Vietnam War veterans and expanded eligibility for benefits as a result of exposure to Agent Orange and other problems.

Veterans, families, sue six banks claiming they helped Iran fund terror groups

 More than 200 veterans and their families have filed a lawsuit against six banks, accusing them of helping Iran transfer millions of dollars to groups targeting U.S. soldiers during the war in Iraq. 
The Wall Street Journal reports that five of the banks accused in the lawsuit, filed in federal court in Brooklyn Monday, are HSBC, Barclays, Standard Chartered, Royal Bank of Scotland, and Credit Suisse. A sixth bank named in the suit is the Britain-based subsidiary of Bank Saderat Iran.
The suit alleges that the banks helped Iran move billions of dollars through the U.S. financial system, with some of the money ending up with Iran's elite Revolutionary Guard Corps and its proxies like Hezbollah, which orchestrated attacks against U.S. forces in Iraq. 
The Journal reports that several of those attacks are documented in the lawsuit, including one in 2007 in which four U.S. soldiers were abducted and later executed. The suit claims that documents retrieved from captured militants implicated Hezbollah and the Revolutionary Guard Corps in that incident.
The lawsuit comes on the heels of a September jury verdict that found Jordan's Arab Bank liable for providing financing to the Hamas terror group. In that case, the jury ruled that the bank must compensate victims of over two dozen attacks in Israel and the Palestinian territories linked to the group. Arab Bank is currently appealing the verdict.
The veterans' lawsuit asks for a jury trial and unspecified damages. 
Some multinational banks have already paid millions of dollars to settle similar actions brought by the Justice Department. In 2010, Barclays paid $500 million to avoid prosecution for allegedly engaging in transactions with banks in countries targeted by U.S. sanctions, including Iran, Cuba, Libya, and Sudan. Earlier this year, France's largest lender, BNP Paribas agreed to pay $8.9 billion to settle claims it covered up $30 billion in transactions with Iran, Syria, and Sudan as recently as 2009.

Supreme Court could weigh in on same sex marriage bans by next June

With a ruling last week by the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals on same sex marriage bans, it appears likely the Supreme Court will ultimately weigh in on the contentious issue, possibly before their term ends in June 2015.
Until recently, all of the federal appeals courts that considered state bans on same sex marriage had struck them down. Then the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals broke with that trend last week, upholding bans in four states. In a 2-1 decision, the Sixth Circuit essentially held that states should have the authority to decide questions regarding marriage.
Appeals regarding same sex marriage bans did reach the nation's highest court earlier this year, but because there was no conflict in the federal circuits, the Justices declined to hear the cases.
Now that a split exists, the Court is much more likely to have to confront the subject, possibly by the middle of next year. Advocates both for and against same sex marriage agree on that, but not much more.
Elizabeth Wydra, Chief Counsel for the Constitutional Accountability Center, said, "Simply because a majority of people vote to ban same sex marriage does not mean they can ignore the guarantees and requirements of the Constitution."
Wydra is among those who believe same sex couples have a "fundamental right" to marriage, based on the Equal Protection Clause found in the 14th Amendment. She remains cautiously optimistic that a majority of the Justices will agree.
Supporters of traditional marriage see a chance to argue before the Supreme Court as a new opportunity, at a time when many are urging them to give up the fight.
Jordan Lorence, Senior Counsel for the Alliance Defending Freedom, said he believed "public policy" issues should be at the top of the Justices' considerations, adding, "The Supreme Court should step out of the way and let this be decided by the people, by the state legislatures."
If an appeal from the Sixth Circuit moves expeditiously, and the Justices agree to take up the case, it could be heard in the spring and decided by late June 2015. It's also highly possible that the procedural timeline pushes the case into the Court's next term, starting in October 2015.
Also Monday, Justice Sonia Sotomayor granted an emergency request from Kansas officials who argued they should not be forced to begin issuing same sex marriage licenses while the legal dispute over the state’s law remains active. Sotomayor has ordered the opposing parties to file a response by 5pm ET on Tuesday.