Valentine Cartoon

Cornell students erupt over health care fee

                                                      Welcome to Obama's World.

Students at vaunted Cornell University are plenty smart enough to know they should not have to pay a penalty for not buying the school's health insurance if they already have coverage, but that's exactly what a new policy at the Ivy League school requires.
The $350 "health fee" for opting out of the school’s insurance plan was announced in a memo school President David Skorton posted on Cornell’s website last week, according to higher education blog The College Fix. But it is just setting in with the student body, and many attending the Ithaca, N.Y., school are not pleased. Under the Affordable Care Act, students must have insurance, but making those already covered pay an extra fee to skip the school's plan is not sitting well.
“Effective next academic year, 2015-16, we will be introducing a student health fee for those not enrolled in the Cornell Student Health Insurance Plan (SHIP),” read the memo. “As a physician, parent and president, I am proud of our university's long history of providing quality medical, mental health, education and prevention services on campus. These essential services play a critical role in student well-being and, therefore, success. Yet funding these services — and creating access to them for all students — has been a growing fiscal challenge, and a personal concern of mine.”
The announcement sent students into a fervor, leading to a series of rallies on campus and hashtag activism, with #FightTheFee trending on the social media website.



Students who do not opt in to the $2,352 per year plan must pay the $350 fee, which “most likely” won’t be covered by financial aid, according to campus newspaper The Cornell Review. The newspaper also said the university plan is run through Aetna, whose CEO, Mark Bertolini, is a Cornell MBA grad. In addition the fee, students will have to pay a $10 co-pay fee when visiting the school’s health center.
The recent announcements prompted 150 students to storm the school’s main administrative building as well as Skorton’s office. Reports from the review suggest that the president had gotten into several “testy exchanges” with several students regarding their issue with the new policy.
Despite heavy opposition from the student body, it appears that Cornell is doubling down on the new policy. Cornell Vice President for Student and Academic Services Susan Murphy said in her own statement on Wednesday that “the fee is necessary to create a sustainable model for health services while also increasing accessibility and protecting student privacy.
“It is our responsibility to work together, to make sure everyone in our community who needs help gets it. That is a burden, and a benefit, we all share,” She said.

Pols warn Obama actions could let illegal immigrants who paid no taxes get gov’t payouts

Lawmakers are warning that President Obama's immigration executive actions could open the door for millions of illegal immigrants to qualify for hefty tax "credits" regardless of whether they've filed or paid taxes in the past.
All they need is a Social Security number.
Obama's November announcement paves the way for up to 4 million illegal immigrants to obtain Social Security numbers and work permits. After some initial confusion, IRS Commissioner John Koskinen told Congress this week that this would make them eligible for what's known as the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) providing they've been working.
"If you get a Social Security number, you can then file for this year if you're working, and if you earned income in the three years before that and filed, you'll be eligible," Koskinen told a House oversight committee hearing.
Further, he said, they would likely be able to get that credit even if they hadn't filed for three years. According to some estimates, the tax credit combined with others could add up to billions over the next decade.
The Earned Income Tax Credit is what's known as a refundable tax credit, intended for working people who have low to moderate incomes. The average credit varies based on their number of children, but can be worth over $6,000 per year.
For critics of Obama's immigration plan, the potential for illegal immigrants to claim this once they're in the program represents another problem. 
"These are not tax 'refunds' but direct, free cash payments from the U.S. treasury to low-income illegal immigrants who owe no taxes," Sen. Jeff Sessions, R-Ala., said in a statement. "It is a dramatic cash transfer from lawful residents to unlawful residents, required by the president's imperial amnesty.
"There can be no legal or moral justification for rewarding illegal entrants in this way. Not only is it unfair to strapped taxpayers, but it will encourage countless more to enter the U.S. illegally or to illegally overstay their visas."
During a Senate Finance Committee hearing earlier this month, Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, noted that a top IRS official determined as far back as 2000 that individuals granted what's known as "deferred action" -- which is the term for what Obama is using -- would "be able to amend returns for the previous years to claim the EITC for years they worked illegally in the United States once they obtain their Social Security number."
In other words, illegal immigrants granted de facto legal status by the Obama administration in the coming months could qualify for credits this year, and even retroactively for past years, whether they paid taxes or not.
In a letter sent last week to Treasury inspector general, Sens. Ben Sasse, R-Neb., and Ron Johnson, R-Wis., noted that "under EITC rules, anyone eligible for the program can also ask for payments to cover the three prior years as well. This means that an illegal alien with a new Social Security Number can get a payment of more than $24,000 for years they were working illegally."
This issue comes to light as Republicans in Congress aim to the undo Obama's executive actions. House Republicans recently passed a Department of Homeland Security funding bill that includes a rider reversing Obama's immigration actions. The bill is currently stuck in the Senate.
The Joint Committee on Taxation, giving a sense of what these credits are worth, recently released an estimate showing the passage of the 2015 DHS funding bill would decrease government payouts for the EITC, as well as child tax credits, by $10.2 billion over the next 10 years. 
Presuming Obama's immigration actions go forward as planned, they could be adding to an already growing taxpayer tab for illegal immigrant credits and benefits. A 2011 inspector general report found taxpayer money paid to illegal immigrants claiming the separate child tax credit had quadrupled over a five-year period to $4.2 billion in 2010.

Embattled Oregon Gov. Kitzhaber announces resignation

Crying cause her Sugar Daddy lost his job?

Oregon Gov. John Kitzhaber announced Friday he would resign amid a mounting ethics scandal involving him and his fiancée -- even as he remained defiant, lashing out at the media and former allies. 
“I am announcing today that I will resign as governor of the state of Oregon,” Kitzhaber said in a written statement. 
The resignation, which will go into effect Wednesday, marks the end of one of the longest political careers in Oregon’s history. Last month, Kitzhaber was sworn in to serve an unprecedented fourth term as the state's governor. 
But the rapidly accelerating political pressure to resign, coupled with various investigations and intense media scrutiny, proved too much to withstand. The governor took a few parting shots at his critics in his statement on Friday, calling it "deeply troubling to me to realize that we have come to a place in the history of this great state of ours where a person can be charged, tried, convicted and sentenced by the media with no due process and no independent verification of the allegations involved."
He added: "But even more troubling -- and on a very personal level as someone who has given 35 years of public service to Oregon -- is that so many of my former allies in common cause have been willing to simply accept this judgment at its face value. It is something that is hard for me to comprehend -- something we might expect in Washington, D.C. but surely not in Oregon.” 
Two days ago, Kitzhaber had said he had no intention of resigning, despite growing pressure from almost every single top lawmaker in Oregon, including his friends and one-time political allies.
“It is not in my nature to walk away from a job I have undertaken — it is to stand and fight for the cause,” he wrote in his lengthy statement Friday. Kitzhaber maintained he has broken no laws but understands he has “become a liability to the very institutions and policies to which I have dedicated my career and, indeed, my entire adult life.”
The decision capped a wild week in which Kitzhaber seemed poised to step down, then changed his mind, but ultimately bowed to calls from legislative leaders that he quit the state's top job. 
Secretary of State Kate Brown, a Democrat like Kitzhaber, was expected to assume the office and become the first openly bisexual governor in the country. Unlike most states, Oregon does not have a lieutenant governor, and the state Constitution puts the secretary of state next in line.
Kitzhaber has been embroiled in a series of controversies involving his fiancee Cylvia Hayes. The pressure mounted earlier this week. First, the state attorney general, who is also a Democrat, confirmed she had opened a criminal investigation. Then, the governor summoned the secretary of state from Washington, D.C., to meet with him, only to inform her he would not resign -- the governor, according to the Associated Press, briefly decided to resign, and then changed his mind while the secretary of state was en route to Oregon.
Then on Thursday, the two top-ranking Democrats in the legislature called on Kitzhaber to step down.
Kitzhaber had hired prominent Portland criminal defense attorney Janet Hoffman amid the drama. Investigations, including another reportedly launched by the FBI, center around Hayes, who has pocketed more than $200,000 as a consultant during the same time she was the acting first lady as well as an adviser to the governor.
On Thursday, Oregon’s Senate President Peter Courtney said he and House Speaker Tina Kotek both asked Kitzhaber to step down.
“I finally said, ‘This has got to stop,’” Courtney said after he and Kotek met with the governor. “I don’t know what else to do right now. It seems to be escalating. It seems to be getting worse and worse.”
The spiral marks a remarkable fall for a politician in his fourth term as governor, and who has been an elected leader in Oregon for 37 years.

In close vote, Utah House OKs firing-squad proposal

A hotly contested proposal that resurrects Utah's use of firing squads to carry out executions narrowly passed a key vote Friday in the state's Legislature after three missing lawmakers were summoned to break a tie vote.
The Republican-controlled House of Representatives voted 39-34 Friday morning to approve the measure, sending it to an uncertain fate in the state's GOP-controlled Senate. Leaders in that chamber have thus far declined to say if they'll support it, and Utah's Republican Gov. Gary Herbert won't say if he'll sign it.
Senate President Wayne Niederhauser, a Republican from Sandy, again declined to tell reporters on Friday if he'd support it.
Rep. Paul Ray, a Republican from Clearfield who is sponsoring the measure, said after the vote Friday that he thinks it will be just as close in the Senate, and he hasn't started trying to press his case in that chamber.
Lawmakers in House of Representatives initially voted 35-35 on the proposal Friday morning. But Ray asked for three missing lawmakers to be summoned to the floor, where they all voted in favor.
During that time, Riverton Republican Rep. Dan McCay switched to vote in favor, allowing the measure to pass 39-34. When asked later by The Associated Press about the switch, McCay smiled and walked away without commenting.
Ray argues that a team of trained marksmen is faster and more humane than the drawn-out deaths that have occurred in botched lethal injections. His bill would call for a firing squad if Utah cannot get lethal injection drugs 30 days before an execution.
Critics say the firing squad is a gruesome relic of Utah's Wild West past and would bring international condemnation upon the state. That criticism and excessive media attention was one of the reasons many lawmakers voted in 2004 to stop allowing condemned prisoners to choose death by firing squad.
A handful of inmates on Utah's death row were sentenced before the law changed and still have the option of going before a firing squad in a few years once they have exhausted any appeals. It was last used in 2010 when Ronnie Lee Gardner was executed by five police officers with .30-caliber Winchester rifles.
For years, states used a three-drug combination to execute inmates. But European drug makers have refused to sell the drugs to prisons and corrections departments out of opposition to the death penalty.
Drug shortages and troubles with administering lethal injections have led several states to begin revisiting alternatives during the past year
A bill to allow firing squad executions is working its way through Wyoming's Legislature, while lawmakers in Oklahoma are considering legislation that would allow that state to use nitrogen gas to execute inmates.
Ray has argued the firing squad is the fastest, most reliable method and the most humane way to kill someone.
The Washington, D.C.-based Death Penalty Information Center, which opposes capital punishment, says that a firing squad is not a foolproof method because the inmate could move or shooters could miss the heart, causing a slower, more painful death. One such case appears to have happened in Utah's territorial days back in 1879, when a firing squad missed Wallace Wilkerson's heart and it took him 27 minutes to die, according to newspaper accounts.
Several opponents of the firing squad bill and the death penalty in general said they were disappointed by Friday's vote but encouraged that it passed on such a slim margin.
"The fact that it was so close in our state is really exciting," said Anna Brower with the American Civil Liberties Union of Utah. "I think there are legislators who, while they may have complicated feelings about the death penalty, understand that this particular method is not good advertising for Utah."

Iran's supreme leader wrote letter to Obama, report says

Iran’s supreme leader reportedly sent a secret letter to President Obama responding to his calls to improve relations between the two countries.
The Wall Street Journal reports Iran’s top political figure Ayatollah Ali Khamenei wrote to Obama in recent weeks responding to the president raising the possibility of cooperation in fighting the Islamic State terror group if a nuclear deal is secured.
However, the Iranian cleric’s response was “respectful,” but noncommittal, an Iranian diplomat told the journal. A senior White House official declined to confirm the existence of the letter.
U.S. officials told the paper that a letter sent in Obama’s first term outlined 60 years of abuses the supreme leader says the U.S. committed against the people of Iran. 
One White House official confirmed to the Wall Street Journal that Obama received the letter in 2009.
The letter signified the thawing of frozen ties between the U.S. and Iran. However, the effort to knock the wall down between the two counties comes at a crossroads as the U.S. set a deadline to yield an agreement in its nuclear negotiations or Washington will take steps to deny the country any possibility of making a nuclear bomb.
Obama has said the breakdown in negotiations could fuel even more instability in the Middle East and undercut U.S. efforts to combat ISIS militants in Iraq and Syria, whom Iran is also waging war against.
Iran and the U.S. have previously failed to reach an agreement in the nuclear discussions. When talks broke down last, Khamenei said he would not approve a “bad deal.”