Waivers, Waivers, Who Got the Waivers?

So far we've got two big groups who have waivers.  We first heard that McDonald's was seeking a waiver for their workers.  This was immediately denied by the White House spokespeople.  Then we got this from Investors Business Daily:

The Unraveling Of ObamaCare
So now McDonald's has its waiver, for 115,000 workers, not just 30,000. Jack in the Box also has a waiver, as do 28 other companies and organizations. The largest waiver, for 351,000 people, is for, appropriately enough, a union — specifically the United Federation of Teachers Welfare Fund, a New York brotherhood that covers teachers.

The United Agricultural Benefit Trust, a California-based cooperative that provides such low-cost minimal coverage to farmworkers, was allowed to exempt 17,347 workers. Even what has been dubbed RomneyCare gets a waiver, with Massachusetts' universal health coverage bureaucracy getting an exemption for about 5,000 people.

Remember the days of sharing the burden and spreading the wealth? These 30 waivers exempt coverage for around a million workers, teachers, farmers and young people who can now go to the polls with a little less angst. The rest of us working for other companies and small businesses who got no waivers aren't so lucky.

The irony here is that most of these million workers are on the lower end of the income scale, the very people ObamaCare was supposed to help by getting them the insurance they couldn't afford on their own. They nearly got priced out of the market.

Then on the heels of that announcement comes this:

Union Pushes for ObamaCare Then Is Granted Waiver
by Kyle Olson
The irony would be humorous if it weren’t so sad: The United Federation of Teachers, the New York City branch of the American Federation of Teachers, which pushed ardently for ObamaCare has now requested – and received – a waiver from its mandates.

The UFT is a member of New York State United Teachers (NYSUT). In September 2009, the NYSUT’s website published “Health care reform: facts vs. myths.” Here’s an excerpt:

* Myth: Health care reform will force you out of your current insurance plan or force you to change doctors.
* Fact: You can keep your existing insurance; reform will expand your medical options, not eliminate them.

ObamaCare was such a great idea at the time - the AFT gave hundreds of thousands of dollars to Healthcare for America Now, the leading organization pushing for the government takeover of health care.

It was announced Thursday that the UFT has requested and received an Obamacare-waiver after it discovered their members would end up losing their health insurance plans. Uh oh.

Be sure to go to the IBD site and Big Government to read these articles and others. Very interesting.

Teachers and Jobs and Obama

And editorial in Investor's Bussiness Daily:

Rose Garden Thorn
Federal Spending: When the president urged Congress last week to pass $26 billion in emergency aid to help save the jobs of laid-off teachers, one of his human props was out of place. It was a mistake he may regret.

Flanked in the Rose Garden by teachers, President Obama said last Tuesday: "We can't stand by and do nothing while pink slips are given to the men and women who educate our children or keep our communities safe."

Later in the day, Obama signed the bill that Democrats say will save the jobs of 300,000 teachers and police officers who've been laid off due to budget problems in state and local governments.

While that claim is debatable — so far, federal spending legislation intended to save jobs has failed miserably — this one isn't: The Obama team made a mistake with one of its human props, an error that will draw attention to an uncomfortable issue .

The scene didn't look unusual. Next to Obama during his morning plea from the Rose Garden were two teachers, one of them Shannon Lewis, who had been laid off at Hampshire High School in West Virginia. Everything looked so normal that we even included in our I&I pages a photo of her at the evening bill signing.

But Lewis wasn't laid off because the government could no longer afford to pay her. She was laid off "because of an enrollment decline in Hampshire County," the Charleston Daily Mail reports.

"Even if the state were in boom times, the current school aid formula would not support her salary."

Which brings up a question the White House is going to wish hadn't been asked: How many other teachers are there who, like Lewis, lost their jobs not because of low tax revenues but simply because they were not needed, and will now be paid ... for what?
There might not be many. But this question leads to another place the White House doesn't want to go:

Public school employment, the Cato Institute reported in its @ Liberty blog, has increased 10 times faster than public school enrollment since 1970 — and the result has been stagnant test scores.

Despite these facts, Democrats continue to funnel money into teachers' pockets, rewarding them for a job poorly done. And the party is getting a rich return. Democrats are heavily supported by teachers union money — the top two teachers unions make 95% of their political donations to Democrats, according to opensecrets.org — and union members' votes.

This is another set of unsavory facts the Democrats want the public to forget. But when the party's top operator tries to hoodwink voters by bringing in what amounts to a shill for a photo op, he reminds everyone of this unwholesome alliance.

Every time one of these funding mistakes is shown I wonder how much we should multiply it by, tens, hundreds, thousands or more? And remember, with this bill they cut school lunch money to keep their union buddies at work.

About that Protest at the private home

Read about all the alarming connections:

President Obama Deeply Connected To Organizers Of Recent Angry Street Mob Actions

by Andrew Marcus

President Barack Obama and his administration, is shamefully deeply connected to the people and organizations that recently organized street mob protests, terrifying a teenage child in his own home, and storming bank buildings (violating how many Federal laws?) in a show of uncivil disobedience (intimidation).

Read it all.

DC Police = Union Thugs? Apparently its true

From Big Journalism:

D.C. Metro Police Escorted SEIU Protesters to Bank Of America Executive’s Home

Posted by Archy Cary

The family of Greg Baer, Bank of America executive, is located in a jurisdiction protected by the Montgomery County Police Department (MCPD), which responded promptly to a disturbance call from his neighborhood last weekend.

According to Corporal Dan Friz, an MCPD spokesperson in Rockville, Maryland, the department received a disturbance call from one of Baer’s neighbors at 4:10 pm last Sunday. Four MCPD units arrived at Baer’s Greenville Rd. address at 4:15 pm. At least two Metropolitan Police Department units from the nearby District of Columbia were already at the scene when they arrived.

Why? Because police cars attached to the Washington MPD’s Civil Disturbance Unit had escorted the SEIU protesters’ buses to Baer’s home. Such cross-jurisdictional escort activity is not uncommon for both departments according to Friz and Metro Police Department spokesperson Officer Eric Frost. Still, the District police did not inform their colleagues of what was about to happen in one of their Maryland neighborhoods.

Nina Easton wrote of this earlier this week.  She is a neighbor of the Baer's  We would not even know of this if they had not targeted a person next to a reporter/commenter.

Fortune columnist and Fox News contributor Nina Easton is calling a recent protest outside her neighbor's home a form of "personal intimidation." Easton writes, "Last Sunday... 500 screaming, placard-waving strangers [were] on a mission to intimidate my neighbor." That neighbor is Greg Baer, a deputy general counsel at Bank of America.

Easton says 14 school buses brought demonstrators from the Service Employees International Union and the National Political Action Group, carrying signs and bullhorns up Baer's front steps to denounce bank foreclosures. She writes Baer's teenage son was alone in the house and locked himself in the bathroom until his dad was able to get home.

The SEIU maintains the protesters did nothing illegal and remained peaceful.

This is happening in and around our Nation's capitol.  Aided by their police. This is shocking and frightening.  And they want to be able to vote on our presidential elections.