Washington state's health care exchange shut down hours after open enrollment begins

SEATTLE –  Washington's health care exchange shut down after the first few hours of open enrollment Saturday as state officials and software engineers tried to resolve a problem with tax credit calculations.
Officials at the exchange said Washington Healthplanfinder, which opened at 8 a.m., appeared to be working fine at first. When the exchange's quality control system reported the problem, they decided to shut the whole system down at about 10:30 a.m. to fix it.
The tax credits were off by just a few dollars in some cases, exchange CEO Richard Onizuka said. He said the system would remain down until it can give consumers who want to buy health insurance accurate information.
On Saturday afternoon, officials estimated the site wouldn't reopen until Sunday morning, but the actual timing will depend on how soon a software fix can be tested for potential side-effects.
Exchange officials could not say how many people had signed up for insurance before the problem was discovered, but spokesman Michael Marchand said about 2,000 people were using the exchange each hour during the two hours it was open on Saturday morning.
Officials decided to shut down the exchange -- which was working well otherwise -- instead of fixing the problem later because they learned after the previous open enrollment period that even small issues are difficult to fix after registrations are complete, Marchand said.
"It's really bittersweet," Marchand said. "The site worked so much better than last year."
It was also disappointing because the quality control group did such a good job catching the problem just by looking at numbers on a spreadsheet, he added.
"It's a feat that would make auditors jealous," Marchand said.
Katie O'Brien, 21, who stopped by a signup event for the Washington exchange on her way to work at Southcenter Mall in Tukwila, Washington, said she was happy to pick up some information since she has a health condition that requires medication and she recently lost her insurance when she quit working at Starbucks.
O'Brien said she didn't have time to sign up on Saturday, because she was almost late for work at Hot Topic, so she wasn't concerned that the exchange website was down.
O'Brien, who makes less than $400 a month, said she was happy to learn that she may be eligible for nearly free insurance.
"I'm actually pretty uneducated about it," she said of insurance available through the exchange.
Open enrollment for health care insurance continues through Feb. 15, and officials are hoping as many as 85,000 people sign up in Washington state this season. They also hope all of the about 145,000 people who bought insurance during the first open enrollment period, which began Oct. 1, 2013, will renew for another year.
Those who run the exchange had been hoping their computer system would handle traffic better than it did last year, when it shutting down and rejected applications for reasons like a hyphen in a last name. About a thousand people who bought insurance the first time around are still having problems getting their payments credited and that money transferred to their insurance companies.
Gregory Boxly, 62, who has been paying more than $500 a month for insurance since he retired, said the Healthplanfinder event at Southcenter Mall reminded him he needed to do more research to find out if he could get cheaper insurance through the exchange.
He said he was concerned that insurance through the exchange may not pay for dental or vision care, but he'll check out the choices when the website is working again. He wasn't concerned about waiting to log on.
"I worked in IT," he said with a smile, adding that computer problems are inevitable.
People who do not buy insurance will have to pay a fine when they file their income taxes. Those fines start at $95 or 1 percent of 2014 household income, but the minimum fine in 2015 will be $325 per uninsured person or 2 percent of household income.
Consumers will find more choices this time around, with more insurance plans and more companies on the state's exchange. Rates have gone up slightly overall but some people will find cheaper insurance.

What Obama has accomplished Cartoons

New ISIS video claims beheading of American hostage Peter Kassig

The Islamic State terror group has claimed to have beheaded American hostage Peter Kassig, an aid worker and former Army Ranger, in a graphic new video.
In the nearly 16-minute video uploaded to social networks on Sunday, a black-clad militant with his face concealed stands before a severed head that he claims is that of the U.S. aid worker.
The authenticity of the footage has not been verified. National Security Council spokesperson Bernadette Meehan said in a statement that intelligence officials were "working as quickly as possible to determine its authenticity.
"If confirmed, we are appalled by the brutal murder of an innocent American aid worker and we express our deepest condolences to his family and friends," Meehan said. The video was posted shortly after President Obama departed for Washington from the G-20 summit in Australia.  
Ed and Paula Kassig, Ed's parents, released a statement early Sunday saying they were aware of the reports of their son's death and were awaiting confirmation of their authenticity. They also asked that media outlets not post any images or video distributed by Islamic State, better known as ISIS. 
"We prefer our son is written about and remembered for his important work and the love he shared with friends and family," the statement read, "not in the manner the hostage takers would use to manipulate Americans and further their cause."
The video also showed what appeared to be the mass beheading of more than a dozen captured Syrian soldiers, but did not show the beheading of the person identified as Kassig. Showing the execution of the soldiers is a departure from previous videos, which did not depict the act of beheading. The soldiers' executioners are not wearing masks in the video and warn they will carry out similar actions outside the region.
The new video is longer than its predecessors and shows multiple hostages executions as opposed to concentrating on a single hostage's death. It also attempts to tie ISIS leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, to Usama bin Laden and Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the founder of Al Qaeda in Iraq, from which Islamic State claims descent. 
Sky News reported that the man featured in the video spoke in English with a British accent. The Associated Press reported that his voice had been distorted to make him harder to identify. It was not immediately clear whether he was the same militant who has appeared in other beheading videos and has been referred to as "Jihadi John" in accounts given by former hostages of their captivity. 
The video identifies the militant's location as Dabiq, a small town in the northern Syrian province of Aleppo, near the Turkish border. The urban setting is another departure from previous beheading videos, which were filmed in the remote desert of northeastern Syria. 
Kassig would be the fifth Western hostage killed by ISIS, in less than three months, and the third American. Previous Western beheading victims were American journalists James Foley and Steven Sotloff, as well as Britons David Haines, a former Royal Air Force engineer, and Alan Henning, a taxi driver from northwest England. The group is also holding British photojournalist John Cantlie, who has appeared in several other videos released by the group functioning as a de facto spokesman. 
It is not clear when the video was filmed. Last month, a Twitter account linked to ISIS posted a message warning that Kassig had only days to live. Sources in the intelligence community told Fox News that the message was being tracked. 
ISIS has beheaded and shot dead hundreds of captives -- mainly Syrian and Iraqi soldiers -- during its sweep across the two countries, and has celebrated mass killings in a series of slickly produced but extremely graphic videos. The group has declared an Islamic caliphate in the areas under its control in Syria and Iraq, which it governs according to a harsh version of Shariah law. The U.S. began launching air strikes in Iraq and Syria earlier this year in a bid to halt the group's rapid advance and eventually degrade and destroy it.
A video released last month appeared to show Kassig, of Indianapolis, kneeling as a masked militant says he will be killed next, after Henning's purported beheading. Kassig had been held in Syria since October 2013. 
Kassig formed the aid organization Special Emergency Response and Assistance, or SERA, in Turkey to provide aid and assistance to Syrian refugees. He began delivering food and medical supplies to Syrian refugee camps in 2012 and is also a trained medical assistant who provided trauma care to injured Syrian civilians and helped train 150 civilians in providing medical aid.
After he appeared in the video, Kassig's parents released a public plea for their son's release, which included claims that Kassig had converted to Islam while in captivity and taken the name Abdul Rahman. 
The release of the video comes approximately a week after Syrian friends of Kassig called for his  release, also saying that he had converted to Islam and was trying to help those afflicted by the country's three-year-old civil war. 
One of the friends, Amjad al-Moghrabi, told reporters in the northern Lebanon city of Tripoli: "We are demanding the Islamic State to release him, if they know Islam. He is a Muslim and has not participated in what his country is doing", a reference to the airstrikes
Dr. Ahmad Obeid, a friend of Kassig said "our demand is to release him and to return to his family because as a person he helped us and we should ask for mercy for him."
"He is unfortunately detained so we are calling for his freedom because he supported our cause and we cannot leave him and let them hurt him," Obeid said.

Rep. Issa to Homeland Security Sec. Johnson: Turn over Secret Service report by Monday

Rep. Darrell Issa wants Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson to turn over by Monday evening a readable copy of a report detailing Secret Service missteps during a Sept. 19 White House security breach.
Among the problems revealed in the report is that a White House security tactical unit had never before entered the White House and were not trained to navigate the interior of the mansion.
The Ohio Republican congressman, who chairs the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, set a Monday deadline for Johnson to turn over the report, which details how a mentally unstable man was able to scale a White House fence and enter far inside the mansion.
Lawmakers have been able to view the report, but parts have been blacked out and they were not allowed to keep a copy for further review.

Christie's fondness for engaging audiences attracts hecklers, others seeking headlines

New Jersey GOP Gov. Chris Christie has forged a reputation as an imposing lawmaker who can get the job done by sheer will and force. But his confrontational style also poses a liability should he make a 2016 White House bid -- attracting hecklers, political rivals and others intent on disrupting his message to spotlight their own.   
Though Christie’s brash style has long been a topic for conversation, it has resurfaced amid political talk moving from the midterms to the next presidential election and Christie telling New Jersey resident Jim Keady to “sit down and shut up.”
Keady, who challenged Christie at a recent public event about his Superstorm Sandy recovery efforts, is a well-known activist.
Keady got his start by raising concerns about working conditions in overseas Nike factories, which led to a 2008 ESPN story and an HBO documentary.
And he has now turned his attention to the lingering Sandy-recovery effort, particularly drawing attention to roughly $800 million of $1.1 billion earmarked to rebuild the Jersey Shore that remains in federal coffers.
Keady has acknowledged that his actions at the Oct. 30 event -- which began with him holding a sign that in part read “finish the job" -- were indeed acts of civil disobedience and that his heckling kept the cameras rolling.
He has done at least five radio or on-camera interviews since the event, held in his hometown of Belmar, N.J. However, Keady rejects the accusation that he tried to bate Christie into a shouting match.
“That was about roughly 6,000 households failed by the (federal recovery) program,” Keady, an independent and former Asbury Park city council member, told FoxNews.com.
Christie’s tough-talking persona and rise to national prominence started long before 2010 when he became the state’s first Republican governor after four consecutive Democratic administrations.
He started attracting attention during six previous years as New Jersey’s U.S. attorney general, as he tried to eradicate decades of political corruption.
And his efforts as governor to cut government waste and reel in public-employees pensions under a Democrat-controlled General Assembly have only furthered his reputation.
Christie has indeed rankled his share of reporters, teachers and others.
But opportunists along the way have come to realize that a sharp, public exchange with the governor can turn his speech into an outburst and give their message a national spotlight.
Marie Corfield, the New Jersey teacher in the much-talked, Sept. 2010 town hall exchange with Christie, has long been associated with progressive and Democratic politics, including the group Blue Jersey and making a failed 2013 bid, as a Democrat, for the state legislature.
The 52-year-old Christie seems acutely aware that people are using him and his events.
He suggested to Corfield -- who now bills herself as “that teacher in that Chris Christie YouTube video” -- that she was “putting on a show,” and he accused Keady of trying to get his “15 minutes of fame.”
Those exchanges and others, videotaped and posted on YouTube, have collectively attracted more than 1 million views and appear destine to become fodder for attack ads should Christie indeed run for president.
The Christie-Keady exchange was in fact videotaped by a staffer from American Bridge 21st Century, a self-described progressive group committed to “holding Republicans accountable for their words and actions” and that encourages people at town hall meetings to record them.
“Boring Republicans need not apply for the 2016 presidential race,” said David Payne, a GOP strategist and vice president for Washington, D.C.-based Vox Global. “We need a fighter, a campaigner, a winner. Sometimes it’s refreshing to see a politician tell a heckler in the crowd to ‘sit down and shut up.’ But if Christie looks mean, he won’t make it through the Republican primary, let alone the general.”
Michael Czin, a Democratic National Committee spokesman, anticipates that such video clips will appear in campaign ads and that Christie’s political rivals will have his public events recorded by so-called campaign trackers.
However, he thinks Christie has an image problem that goes beyond potential attack ads and that he lost the support of the news media last year after rouge aides extracted political revenge by closed some bridge-access lanes without notice, causing massive gridlock.
“It’s not just trackers,” he said. “Christie and his team promoted and elevated his outbursts. But it crossed the Rubicon with Bridgegate. It extended from teachers and veterans … to where it was dangerous.”
Ben Tulchin, a Democratic strategist and president of San Francisco-based Tulchin Research, argues that Christie’s declining poll numbers after Bridgegate could hurt his ability to raise 2016 campaign money and essentially settle the debate about whether his public image is a problem.
“In the TV era, the president is in your living room all of the time,” Tulchin said Wednesday. “If a voter feels uncomfortable with you, then it’s really, really hard to prevail.”
Some of Christie’s other public exchanges appear more damaging -- including two in July 2012.
Within days, Christie referred to a reporter as an “idiot” for asking a question unrelated to the press conference. And he testily responded to a male passerby’s comment while walking with his family on the Seaside Heights, N.J., boardwalk, calling the guy a “big shot” and telling him to “keep walking.”
“Christie’s natural spontaneity can be an asset, even if it comes with risks,” Payne said. “At the presidential campaign level, every trait gets more scrutiny. So Christie will need to look strong, perhaps even tough. But not mean.”

Michael Brown case: Ferguson teen's parents and double standards

On October 24th, Benjamin Crump, an attorney for Michael Brown's family, told MSNBC that "All Michael Brown's family has asked from day one is equal justice for their son. The concept of due process, this notion of all the laws in the legal proceedings being fair for them, just like it is for a police officer."
I have to wonder how they define fair.
A grand jury has been reviewing evidence in the case against Officer Darren Wilson for the death of Michael Brown since August 20.  

Ms. McSpadden is being investigated for felony robbery in an incident involving her mother-in-law and the sale of "Justice for Mike Brown" merchandise.  However, Ms McSpadden asked the police not to release the incident report.

This week, the grand jury heard from Dr Michael Baden, a forensic pathologist hired by the family's attorneys to perform an autopsy. This autopsy was done in addition to the one performed by the County Coroner, and another performed by a federal pathologist.  
Attorney Crump has complained that when leaks happen he cannot have confidence in the grand jury, but another attorney for the family didn't hesitate to tell the St. Louis Post Dispatch that Baden is testifying.
It is unusual for an expert hired by one of the parties to address a grand jury.  Typically the evidence presented is meant to be objective and the people who testify are meant to be not interested (or paid).  
There has been no leak to support the idea that the same opportunity to offer paid witnesses is being afforded for Officer Wilson. We have not heard that anyone retained by his attorney has presented to the grand jury, and in fact Wilson's own lawyer is not allowed to speak during the proceedings. Lawyers for Officer Wilson have also chosen not to speak to the media, in contrast to those hired by the Brown family.  But all they want is equal justice...
There are some who have questioned the timing of Dr Baden's testimony.  Lisa Bloom, an attorney who often provides commentary for various media outlets, tweeted this week that it is "amazing that the prosecution only called him before the grand jury this late"
Lisa Bloom (@LisaBloom)
11/12/14, 6:08 PM
Dr. Michael Baden is a renowned pathologist retained by Mike Brown family. Amazingly prosecutors only called him before grand jury at this late date.
Maybe she has heard a leak that we haven't, because without other information this is not amazing at all.  
It could be that after almost two months the grand jury is only now hearing from all of the pathologists who reviewed the evidence.  
Ms.Bloom doesn't mention that Dr. Baden has been given access to all of the evidence reviewed by the state's pathologist, or that the family attorney wouldn't say whether he expected Baden to present an interpretation contrary to the state's pathologist. Without a full transcript of the grand jury proceedings, it is hard to agree that this is amazing.  
I find it far more amazing that Michael Brown's mother, Lesley McSpadden, does not seem to want the same fairness and transparency to apply when she is investigated for a crime.  
Ms. McSpadden is being investigated for felony robbery in an incident involving her mother-in-law and the sale of "Justice for Mike Brown" merchandise.  However, Ms McSpadden asked the police not to release the incident report and the report was only released after a judge said the law mandated it.
It seems that for Ms McSpadden and her attorneys, the idea of equal justice and the laws being the same for all depends on the circumstance and the persons accused. And now, as the grand jury continues to hear evidence, Brown's parents have flown to Geneva to present to the UN Committee Against Torture. They've submitted a statement requesting the UN to recommend immediate arrest of Officer Wilson.  Brown's mother, Lesley McSpadden, said "We need the world to know what is going on in Ferguson and we need justice."
It is hard to imagine how this quest for justice at the UN can be fruitful when there will be no evidence presented and no presentation by Officer Wilson or someone on his behalf.  The Committee does not have the evidence necessary to determine whether an arrest is appropriate or warranted, and yet they are asked to recommend arrest all the same.  It seems that Attorney Crump's call for due process doesn't extend to the United Nations either.
When calling for justice it is important to remember that while Lady Justice is blind,  hypocrisy is something one feels in the gut.