there Is a backstory about Khizr Khan and Donald Trump

Clinton Cash: Khizr Khan’s Deep Legal, Financial Connections to Saudi Arabia, Hillary’s Clinton Foundation Tie Terror, Immigration, Email Scandals Together

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AP Photo/Mark J. Terrill

by MATTHEW BOYLE1 Aug 2016Washington, DC34,690

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Khizr Khan, the Muslim Gold Star father that the mainstream media and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton have been using to criticize Donald J. Trump, has deep ties to the government of Saudi Arabia—and to international Islamist investors through his own law firm. In addition to those ties to the wealthy Islamist nation, Khan also has ties to controversial immigration programs that wealthy foreigners can use to essentially buy their way into the United States—and has deep ties to the “Clinton Cash” narrative through the Clinton Foundation.

Khan and his wife Ghazala Khan both appeared on stage at the Democratic National Convention to attack, on Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton’s behalf, Donald Trump—the Republican nominee for president. Their son, U.S. Army Captain Humayun Khan, was killed in Iraq in 2004. Khizr Khan, in his speech to the DNC, lambasted Donald Trump for wanting to temporarily halt Islamic migration to America from countries with a proven history of exporting terrorists.

Since then, Clinton operative George Stephanopoulos—who served as a senior adviser to the president in Bill Clinton’s White House and is a Clinton Foundation donor as well as a host on the ABC network—pushed Trump on the matter in an interview. Trump’s comments in that interview have sparked the same mini-rebellion inside his party, in the media and across the aisle that has happened many times before. The usual suspects inside the GOP, from former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush to Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) to House Speaker Paul Ryan to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell to Ohio Gov. John Kasich, have condemned Trump in one way or another. The media condemnation has been swift and Democrats, as well their friends throughout media, are driving the train as fast as they can.

VIDEO: FBI INTERVIEWS CLINTON IN EMAIL PROBE: CAMPAIGN

But until now, it looked like the Khans were just Gold Star parents who the big bad Donald Trump attacked. It turns out, however, in addition to being Gold Star parents, the Khans are financially and legally tied deeply to the industry of Muslim migration–and to the government of Saudi Arabia and to the Clintons themselves.

Khan, according to Intelius as also reported by Walid Shoebat, used to work at the law firm Hogan Lovells, LLP, a major D.C. law firm that has been on retainer as the law firm representing the government of Saudi Arabia in the United States for years. Citing federal government disclosure forms, the Washington Free Beacon reported the connection between Saudi Arabia and Hogan Lovells a couple weeks ago.

“Hogan Lovells LLP, another U.S. firm hired by the Saudis, is registered to work for the Royal Embassy of Saudi Arabia through 2016, disclosures show,” Joe Schoffstall of the Free Beacon reported.

The federal form filed with the Department of Justice is a requirement under the Foreign Agents Registration Act of 1938, which makes lobbyists and lawyers working on behalf of foreign governments and other agents from abroad with interests in the United States register with the federal government.

The government of Saudi Arabia, of course, has donated heavily to the Clinton Foundation.

“The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia has given between $10 and $25 million to the foundation while Friends of Saudi Arabia has contributed between $1 and $5 million,” Schoffstall wrote.

Trump, of course, has called on Hillary Clinton to have the Clinton Foundation return the money.

“Saudi Arabia and many of the countries that gave vast amounts of money to the Clinton Foundation want women as slaves and to kill gays,” Trump wrote in a Facebook post back in June, according to Politico. “Hillary must return all money from such countries!”

“Crooked Hillary says we must call on Saudi Arabia and other countries to stop funding hate,” Trump posted in a separate Facebook posting at the time. “I am calling on her to immediately return the $25 million plus she got from them for the Clinton Foundation!”

Of course, to this day, Hillary Clinton and her Clinton Foundation has kept the money from the Saudi Arabian government.

Schoffstall’s piece in the Washington Free Beacon also notes how Hogan Lovells lobbyist Robert Kyle, per Federal Election Commission (FEC) records, has bundled more than $50,000 in donations for Clinton’s campaign this year.

Khan’s connections with the Hogan Lovells firm run deep, according to a report from Law.com written by Katelyn Polantz.

“Many lawyers at Hogan Lovells remember the week in 2004 when U.S. Army Capt. Humayun Khan lost his life to a suicide bomber,” Polantz wrote. “Then-Hogan & Hartson attorneys mourned the death because the soldier’s father, Khizr Khan, a Muslim American immigrant, was among their beloved colleagues.”

Polantz wrote that Khan worked at the mega-D.C. law firm for years.

“Khan spent seven years, from 2000 to 2007, in the Washington, D.C., office of then-Hogan & Hartson,” Polantz wrote. “He served as the firm’s manager of litigation technology. Although he did not practice law while at Hogan, Khan was well versed in understanding the American courts system. On Thursday night, he described his late son dreaming of becoming a military lawyer.”

But representing the Clinton Foundation backing Saudi Arabian government and having one of its lobbyists bundle $50,000-plus for Clinton’s campaign are hardly the only places where the Khan-connected Hogan Lovells D.C. mega-firm brush elbows with Clinton Cash. 

The firm also handles Hillary Clinton’s taxes and is deeply connected with the email scandal whereby when she was Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton set up a home-brew email server system that jeopardized classified information handling and was “extremely careless” according to FBI director James Comey.

“A lawyer at Hogan & Hartson [Howard Topaz] has been Bill and Hillary Clinton’s go-to guy for tax advice since 2004, according to documents released Friday by Hillary Clinton’s campaign,” The American Lawyer’s Nate Raymond wrote in 2008, as Hillary Clinton ran for president that year. “The Clintons’ tax returns for 2000-07 show combined earnings of $109 million, on which they paid $33 million in taxes. New York-based tax partner Howard Topaz has a broad tax practice, and also regularly advises corporations on M&A and executive compensation.”

Breitbart News’ Patrick Howley, in a deep investigative piece on Hillary Clinton’s email scandal, late last year uncovered how Topaz’s firm—which employed Khan while Topaz did Hillary Clinton’s taxes—is also connected to the email scandal.

“Topaz was a partner at Hogan & Hartson, which later merged to become known as Hogan Lovells, where Topaz continues to practice. The firm’s lawyers were major donors to Hillary Clinton’s first presidential campaign,” Howley wrote.

For her private email system, Clinton used a spam filtering program MX Logic.

“Hogan & Hartson handled the patent for MX Logic’s email-filtering program, which McAfee bought the small company for $140 million in 2009 in order to acquire,” Howley wrote. “The MX Logic company’s application for a trademark for its SPAMTRAQ program was filed in 2004 on Hogan & Hartson stationery and signed by a Hogan & Hartson attorney. Hogan & Hartson has been responsible for MX Logic annual reports. The email company’s Clinton links present more evidence that Clinton’s political and legal establishment was monitoring her private email use.”

If that all isn’t enough, that same Hogan & Hartson law firm—now Hogan Lovells—employed Loretta Lynch, the current Attorney General of the United States. Lynch infamously just a few weeks ago met with Bill Clinton, Hillary’s husband and the former president, on her private jet in Phoenix just before clearing Hillary Clinton of any wrongdoing when it came to her illicit private email server system.

Khan’s own website for his own personal law firm KM Khan Law Office shows he represents clients in the business of buying visas to enter the United States. One of his specific areas of practice, according to the website, is “E2 Treaty Investors, EB5 Investments & Related Immigration Services.”

Sen. Chuck Grassley, the chairman of the U.S. Senate’s Judiciary Committee, has detailed how the EB5 immigration program is “riddled with flaws and corruption.”

“Maybe it is only here on Capitol Hill—on this island surrounded by reality—that we can choose to plug our ears and refuse to listen to commonly accepted facts,” Grassley said in a statement earlier this year. “The Government Accountability Office, the media, industry experts, members of congress, and federal agency officials, have concurred that the program is a serious problem with serious vulnerabilities. Allow me to mention a few of the flaws.”

From there, Sen. Grassley listed out several of the “flaws” with the EB5 immigration program that Khan works in:

– Investments can be spent before business plans are approved. 

– Regional Center operators can charge exorbitant fees of foreign nationals in addition to their required investments.  

– Jobs created are not “direct” or verifiable jobs but rather are “indirect” and based on estimates and economic modeling.

– Jobs created by U.S. investors are counted by the foreign national when obtaining a green card, even if EB-5 money is only a fraction of the total invested.

– Investment funds are not adequately vetted. 

– Gifts and loans are acceptable sources of funds from foreign nationals.

– The investment level has been stagnant for nearly 25 years.

– There’s no prohibition against foreign governments owning or operating regional centers or projects.

– Regional centers can be rented or sold without government oversight or approval.

– Regional centers don’t have to certify that they comply with securities laws.  

– There’s no oversight of promoters who work overseas for the regional centers.

– There’s no set of sanctions for violations, no recourse for bad actors.

– There are no required background checks on anyone associated with a regional center.

– Regional centers draw Targeted Employment Area boundaries around poor areas in order to come in at a lower investment level, yet the jobs created are not actually created in those areas.

– Every Targeted Employment Area designation is rubberstamped by the agency.

– Adjudicators are pressured to get to a yes, especially for those politically connected. 

– Visas are not properly scrutinized. 

– Visas are pushed through despite security warnings.

– Files and applications lack basic and necessary information to monitor compliance.

– The agency does not do site visits for each and every project.

– There’s no transparency on how funds are spent, who is paid, and what investors are told about the projects they invest in.

That’s not to mention the fact that, according to Sen. Grassley, there have been serious national security violations in connection with the EB5 program that Khan works in and around already. In fact, the program—according to Grassley—was used by Middle Eastern operatives from Iran to attempt to illicitly enter the United States.

“There are also classified reports that detail the national security, fraud and abuse. Our committee has received numerous briefings and classified documents to show this side of the story,” Grassley said in the early February 2016 statement. “The enforcement arm of the Department of Homeland Security wrote an internal memo that raises significant concerns about the program. One section of the memo outlines concerns that it could be used by Iranian operatives to infiltrate the United States. The memo identifies seven main areas of program vulnerability, including the export of sensitive technology, economic espionage, use by foreign government agents and terrorists, investment fraud, illicit finance and money laundering.”

Maybe all of this is why–as Breitbart News has previously noted–the Democratic National Convention made absolutely no mention of the Clinton Foundation or Clinton Global Initiative. Hillary Clinton’s coronation ceremony spent exactly zero minutes of the four nights of official DNC programming talking about anything to do with perhaps one of the biggest parts of her biography.

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FROM AMERICAN THINKER BLOG 08/01/16

Is there a backstory about Khizr Khan and Donald Trump? By Eileen F. Toplansky What is one to make of the Democratic Convention speech of Khizr Khan, a Pakistani­born Virginia lawyer whose son Humayun was killed in action in Iraq in 2004? According to Byron York: Khan's brief speech wasn't a finely­detailed case. But he suggested that Trump's Muslim ban and Mexican border wall proposals are unconstitutional. Specifically, Khan cited the words 'liberty' and 'equal protection of the law' in suggesting that Trump's policies violate the Constitution. But, in fact, "there's simply no sense in which a border wall violates the Constitution." There is also "nothing unconstitutional about deporting people who are in the United States illegally." York emphasizes that "[a]s far as a Muslim ban is concerned, Trump ... amended his proposal to focus on immigration from countries 'compromised by terrorism.' But assume that Khan was addressing Trump's original, more extensive, proposal: a temporary ban on foreign Muslims from entering the United States." In fact, the 14th Amendment of the Constitution applies to "all persons born or naturalized" in the United States. It does not refer to foreign persons in foreign countries. Trump made it clear that this ban "would not apply to U.S. citizens, members of the U.S. military and others with a legal right to be in the United States." Whether one approves or disapproves of Trump's building a wall, deporting illegal immigrants, and temporarily banning the entry of foreign Muslims, the fact is that Trump's proposals are not unconstitutional. In an effort toward clarification, Donald Trump released a statement: Captain Humayun Khan was a hero to our country and we should honor all who have made the ultimate sacrifice to keep our country safe. The real problem here are the radical Islamic terrorists who killed him, and the efforts of these radicals to enter our country to do us further harm. Given the state of the world today, we have to know everything about those looking to enter our country, and given the state of chaos in some of these countries, that is impossible. Moreover, Trump reiterated that "Captain Khan, killed 12 years ago, was a hero, but this is about RADICAL ISLAMIC TERROR and the weakness of our 'leaders' to eradicate it!" But is there even more to the story about Khizr Khan? According to Theodore Shoebat and Walid Shoebat, Mr. Khizr Muazzam Khan is a promoter of Islamic sharia law and a co­founder of the Journal of Contemporary Issues in Muslim Law (sharia). In fact, in the past, Khizr Khan has shown "his appreciation for an icon of the Muslim Brotherhood" by the name of Said Ramadan, who "wrote material for the Muslim Youth Movement of Malaysia, an organization that has been promoting Islamic revivalism and indoctrination to recruit young people in Malaysia to jihadism." Mr. Said Ramadan was the son­in­law of Hassan al­Banna, the founder of the Muslim Brotherhood including Ahmad Bahefzallah, the boss of Huma Abedin (Hillary Clinton's aide)[.]" Should this connection give us pause?

Shoebat writes that "Khizr Khan currently runs a law firm in New York called KM Khan Law Office, a firm that specializes in 'immigration services.'" According to Shoebat, "[t]o understand the inception of Muslim immigration one must study the Muslim Minority Affairs, a paradigm created by Saudi jurisprudence which sparked during the times Khan lived in Saudi Arabia while collaborating with the Saudi kingdom. It is likely that Khan is a Muslim plant working with the Hillary Clinton campaign, probably for the interest of Muslim oil companies as well as Muslim immigration into the U.S." Khizr M. Khan used to work for Hogan & Hartson and Lovells, which has ties to the Clinton Foundation. Accordingly, "Hogan Lovells LLP, another U.S. firm hired by the Saudis, is registered to work for the Royal Embassy of Saudi Arabia through 2016, disclosures show. Robert Kyle, a lobbyist from the firm, has bundled $50,850 for Clinton’s campaign." In fact, Shoebat relates how "[m]any lawyers at Hogan Lovells remember the week in 2004 when U.S. Army Capt. Humayun Khan lost his life to a suicide bomber. Then­Hogan & Hartson attorneys mourned the death because the soldier’s father, Khizr Khan, a Muslim American immigrant, was among their beloved colleagues." Shoebat emphasizes that "Saudi interests with using Khan to advance Muslim immigration and advance Muslim Sharia is a lengthy subject [.]" "Then there are the ... ties to Hillary Clinton’s aide Huma Abedin as well. The House of Saud had used Huma’s father Sayed Zaynul Abedin’s work regarding the Muslim Minority Affairs in the West, published in 1998 as part of 29 works to construct a plan to conquer the U.S. with Islam." Shoebat maintains that "[i]t is obvious that Khan is upset, that a Trump victory will eliminate and destroy decades of hard work to bring in Islamic immigration into the United States which was spearheaded by agents in Saudi Arabia like Khan and Huma Abedin’s father (Sayed Z. Abedin)." Huma Abedin has never been properly vetted, and this takes on even greater urgency now that Clinton is running for the presidency. The mainstream media continues to cover up the Muslim Brotherhood's enormous clout in the Obama administration. Each day brings new revelations about the financial influence and "access" the Saudis have exerted on the Clinton team. Patrick Poole, a national security analyst, asserts that "[t]here are massive conflicts of interest. It's beyond comprehension." So is it wrong to impugn Khan's motives? He appears to be a man in mourning for his son. Was Mr. Khan merely being used by the Clinton campaign to advance Clinton's agenda? Or is there an even larger issue concerning the influence such people as Abedin and Khan exert concerning Clinton's bid for the highest office in the land? The questions need answers.

Last Laughs in Europe

by Mark Steyn
Steyn on Europe
September 28, 2015

Reader Artie Bleppo complains, in all-caps, about the priorities of my week in review:

POPE CAME TO THE USA, O ALMIGHTY GLOBAL CONTENT PROVIDER

So what? His speeches were fatuous and evasive pabulum, and already forgotten. I am not a Catholic but I understand that, unlike the position of Archbishop of Canterbury, where total contempt from the congregants more or less comes with the job, the Bishop of Rome is generally held in some respect by his church. So last week, out of deference to Catholic readers' sensibilities, I confined myself to an aside:

Best to talk about the dangers of "climate change", as the Pope is doing this week, even as in the heart of Christendom the post-Christian future is showing up at the express check-in.

As the years go by, I like to write about what matters. And in this last seven days, the Mohammed cartoons and the "refugee" tide now engulfing Europe both matter more than "POPE CAME TO THE USA". His Holiness in fact has chosen not to matter, even as European politicians take decisions that will guarantee "Christendom" will be non-Christian. There is something shallow and decadent about a pontiff who prioritizes "climate change" even as every last Christian is driven from the Archeparchy of Mosul. What will they say of such a pope? That he fiddled with the thermostat while Rome burned?
And let's not even mention his appalling response to the Charlie Hebdo slaughter. So I wrote nothing about his remarks to Congress - just as he wrote nothing about my remarks in the Danish Parliament. So we're quits.
~Speaking of which, we were a merry band, all things considered, at Christiansborg Castle. I thank my friend Katrine Winkel Holm, of the Danish Free Press Society, and her delightful sister, Marie Krarup, defense spokeslady for the Danish People's Party, for arranging to host us behind the fortress-like walls of Parliament - so nobody could bust in and shoot us, as they didat a similar free-speech event in February. I was heartened to meet fellow free-speechers who had traveled from Sweden, Norway, Germany, Switzerland, Britain and even Canada. My fellow panelists included Henryk Broder, author of The Last Days of Europe; Vebjørn Selbekk, whom the quislings of Norway's government treated disgracefully for publishing the cartoons; and Douglas Murray, who's already written up the event in The Spectator:

My main message for the audience was to keep in mind that freedom has never been particularly popular. Most people prefer their security and comforts to freedom and although history shows that although everyone benefits from being free, it has always been a small minority who actually pursue and protect the cause. I suppose one has to wrestle whatever comfort one can from that. It was a terrible thing to see the security now needed in Denmark, as elsewhere, for people who are simply asserting their right to write and draw what they want, even – shock horror – things that might be mildly critical of the founder of one religion. That a journalist or historian should need bodyguards in 21^st century in an indictment on our continent. But still, surveying the room on Saturday I think we've got enough people. A few Danes, a few Swedes and Norwegians. A few Americans and a couple of Brits might be all that is needed. Perhaps by the 15^th anniversary things will be better.

Perhaps. On Europe's present course, though, the security we'll need in 2020 doesn't bear thinking about. But I'll be there.
~A transcript of Vebjørn Selbekk's powerful speech can be found here:

We had interviewed leading Norwegian cartoonists. One of them was Finn Graaf. He is maybe the hardest hitting cartoonist in the history of the Norwegian press. One of his specialities is drawing Israeli prime ministers as Holocaust camp guards. He has done that with almost every Israeli prime minister since Menachem Begin in the late Seventies.
But Mister Graff told us that he would never draw the prophet Mohammad. Not because he had more respect towards the Muslim faith than other religions or ideologies. No, he bluntly put it this way in the interview:
'I have to draw the line somewhere. I do not want to get my throat cut. Therefore I will refrain from drawing Muhammad.'

One-way "hard-hitting" isn't really hard-hitting at all, is it? As I said ten years ago, it's the easiest thing in the world to be tediously provocative with those who refuse to be provoked.
~My own remarks came last, and can be heard below. I'll post the other speeches, as we get them. But click below to listen:




The Free Speech Society has a report here:

Steyn gjorde gældende, at problemet er de vestlige samfunds mangel på selvtillid. Vi tror ikke længere på os selv og vores grundlæggende værdier. Vi er villige til at give køb på dem. Terrorismens mål er at kapre debatten og terrorisere os til at undlade visse emner. Og den har succes med det, anførte Steyn.

Which comes out as:

Steyn claimed that the problem is the western world's lack of self-confidence. We no longer believe in ourselves and our basic values. We are willing to trade them away. Terrorism's goal is to hijack the debate and terrorize us to steer clear of certain subjects. And it's had great success with it, argued Steyn.

This Swedish report concludes thus:

Därefter slutade konferensen. Några av deltagarna fick splittra upp sig eftersom den förhandsbokade restaurangen blivit rädda för att befatta sig med TFS och de inresta föreläsarna.

Which translates to something like:

After that the conference ended. Some of the participants had to split up because the pre-booked restaurant became afraid to deal with the Free Speech Society and the speakers they'd invited.

That's true. They did. We were escorted by officers from the PET, the Danish Security Service. But the minute the restaurant discovered that, the management - some joint called Fiat - canceled. Compared to what happened to Charlie Hebdo, that's a small price to pay, but it is still a price, and a telling one. Those who defend freedom for all wind up with less than anybody: airlines that won't fly them, theatres that won't book them, and even crappy Italian restaurants that won't serve 'em a few pasta shells at the end of a hard day defending liberty.
One more quote from our Swedish correspondent:

Mark Steyn lovade dock från talarstolen att nästa gång så ska han tala på Det Konglige Teater som en fri människa inför fria människor och inte bakom låsta dörrar med säkerhetskontroller och vakter på det danska riksdagshuset.

Which translates as me getting a bit carried away:

Mark Steyn, however, promised from the podium that next time he'll speak at the Royal Theatre as a free man before free people, and not behind locked doors with security checks and guards from the Danish Parliament.

We'll see how that works out.
~Nobody needs the Pope to hitch up his robes and be the last world leader to jump on the climate bandwagon. But it might be helpful for him to take the lead in saving the heart of Christendom. Indeed, some might think it's part of the job description, no?

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The White House attacks a cancer patient

How Low Can They Go?

The White House attacks a cancer patient. 

By

James Taranto

connect

 

November 4, 2013

It's been just over a month since ObamaCare's disastrous launch, and it's just over three years until the scheduled election of Barack Obama's successor. It's going to be a long three years. The exposure of Obama's signature "achievement" as both incompetent and fraudulent (with its economic inviability yet to be realized) is also showing the administration's true face. It is an ugly one, and we can expect to see a lot more of it while Obama remains in office.

This morning the White House went on the attack against a cancer patient who is also a victim of ObamaCare. Edie Littlefield Sundby of San Diego explains in today's Wall Street Journal that she's been managing a case of stage 4 gallbladder cancer, an affliction whose five-year survival rate is just 2%. Having survived the diagnosis by seven years so far, she beat very long odds--and she did so with the help of an excellent insurance plan that covered care at three hospitals, two in California and one in Texas.
In touting ObamaCare, Obama asserted at least two dozen times (in slightly varying language) that if you like your health plan, you can keep it. As Sundby explains, she is a victim of Obama's fraudulent sales pitch:

Since March 2007 United Healthcare has paid $1.2 million to help keep me alive, and it has never once questioned any treatment or procedure recommended by my medical team. The company pays a fair price to the doctors and hospitals, on time, and is responsive to the emergency treatment requirements of late-stage cancer. Its caring people in the claims office have been readily available to talk to me and my providers.

But in January, United Healthcare sent me a letter announcing that they were pulling out of the individual California market. The company suggested I look to Covered California starting in October.

Covered California is the state ObamaCare exchange, one of those that, unlike the administration-built federal one, has some degree of technical functionality. Thus Sundby was able to log in and check out her options, which--contrary to Obama's "new and improved" sales pitch, that people whose policies are canceled will get better insurance--were unsatisfactory. No plan available to her would cover both her primary-care doctor at the University of California, San Diego, and her oncologist at Stanford.
 
Sundby asks: "What happened to the president's promise, 'You can keep your health plan'? Or to the promise that 'You can keep your doctor'? Thanks to the law, I have been forced to give up a world-class health plan. The exchange would force me to give up a world-class physician."

This morning Dan Pfeiffer the fast-talking flack tweeted out a piece from ThinkProgress.org, a leftist propaganda outfit. Titled "The Real Reason That the Cancer Patient Writing in Today's Wall Street Journal Lost Her Insurance," the piece, by one Igor Volsky, claims that "Sundby shouldn't blame reform." Volsky instead blames United Healthcare, which, he writes, "dropped her coverage because they've struggled to compete in California's individual health care market for years and didn't want to pay for sicker patients like Sundby":

"The company's plans reflect its concern that the first wave of newly insured customers under the law may be the costliest," UHC Chief Executive Officer Stephen Helmsley told investors last October. "UnitedHealth will watch and see how the exchanges evolve and expects the first enrollees will have 'a pent-up appetite' for medical care. We are approaching them with some degree of caution because of that."

Get that? The company packed its bags and dumped its beneficiaries because it wants its competitors to swallow the first wave of sicker enrollees only to re-enter the market later and profit from the healthy people who still haven't signed up for coverage.

Sundby is losing her coverage and her doctors because of a business decision her insurer made within the competitive dynamics of California's health care market.

All this may be true, but it begs the question. The addition of a phrase to that last sentence shows why: Sundby is losing her coverage and her doctors because of a business decision her insurer made within the competitive dynamics of California's health care market under the regulatory structure established by Obama's comprehensive "reform."

Obama did not qualify his pitch by stating that if you like your health plan, you can keep it unless your insurer makes a business decision to the contrary within the competitive dynamics of your state's health care market.

To the contrary, he represented ObamaCare as protecting consumers from precisely that sort of cruel business decision, and he has not backed away from that fraudulent promise: At a speech last Wednesday, he asserted that the only policies being canceled were "substandard" ones offered by former "bad-apple insurers" whose practices ObamaCare reformed.

Over the weekend a New York Times editorial parroted that line, claiming that "insurers are not allowed to abandon enrollees" and that "people forget how terrible many of the soon-to-be-abandoned policies were." But even the Times editors can't quite defend the if-you-like-your-plan-you-can-keep-it fraud. The best they can do is equivocation: "Mr. Obama clearly misspoke when he said that."

To misspeak means to express oneself imperfectly or incorrectly. It implies either a careless choice of words or an unintended candor (as in a "Freudian slip"). Obama did not misspeak. As The Wall Street Journal reported over the weekend, the slogan was the result of careful deliberation. Whereas "some White House policy advisers objected to the breadth of Mr. Obama's 'keep your plan' promise," "political aides" insisted upon it. The latter prevailed. In an interview with the Journal, one unidentified former official "added that in the midst of a hard-fought political debate 'if you like your plan, you can probably keep it' isn't a salable point."

The story closes by quoting a "policy expert" who shrugs off the deception:

Jonathan Gruber, an economics professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, said the law's impact on existing insurance arrangements was "a social policy decision the government made" and the president's description of it was "pretty low on the totem pole of political overstatements."

Suppose the deliberations the Journal describes had taken place in a corporate suite rather than a government one and had concerned a commercial rather than a political advertising slogan. In that case, we'd be talking about a criminal conspiracy to defraud consumers.

Yes, it's unrealistic to expect politicians to be held to the same standard of honesty as corporate executives. But what does astonish us about the Obama administration is the relentlessness and aggression of its efforts to blame others and evade political accountability. The tone is set at the top by a president who, at age 52, retains an adolescent's aversion to adult responsibility.

Still, you'd think a political professional would recognize that Edie Sundby's story calls not for an attack but for a show of compassion, even if one lacks the capacity for the real thing.

LIES, Lies and More lies

November 1, 2013 8:30 PM

A Phalanx of Lies

 

Remember that health insurance you could keep?

 

By  Mark Steyn

CNN has been pondering what they call “a particularly tough few days at the White House.” “Four out of five Americans have little or no trust in their government to do anything right,” says chief political analyst Gloria Borger. “And now Obama probably feels the same way.” Our hearts go out to him, poor wee disillusioned thing. We are assured by the headline writers that the president was “unaware” of Obamacare’s website defects, and the NSA spying, and the IRS targeting of his political enemies, and the Justice Department bugging the Associated Press, and pretty much anything else you ask him about. But, as he put it, “nobody’s madder than me” at this shadowy rogue entity called the “Government of the United States” that’s running around pulling all this stuff. And, once he finds out who’s running this Government of the United States rogue entity, he’s gonna come down as hard on him as he did on that videomaker in California; he’s gonna send round the National Park Service SWAT team to teach that punk a lesson he won’t forget.

Gloria Borger and CNN seem inclined to swallow the line that the president of the United States is not aware that he is president of the United States: For the media, just a spoonful of bovine manure makes the Obamacare medicine go down. It remains to be seen whether the American citizenry will be so genially indulgent. Hitherto, most of what the president claims to be unaware of, they are genuinely unaware of: Few people have plans to vacation in Benghazi, or shoot the breeze with Angela Merkel on her cell phone. But Obamacare is different: Whether or not the president is unaware of it, the more than 2 million Americans (at the time of writing) kicked off their current health-care plans are most certainly aware of it.

For as long as I can remember, I’ve been opposed to government health care because, as I’ve said in at least two books, it fundamentally redefines the relationship between the citizen and the state into one closer to that of junkie and pusher. But that’s a philosophical position. Others prefer constitutional arguments: The federal government does not have the authority to do what it’s doing. Dear old John Roberts, chief justice of the United States, twisted himself into a pretzel to argue that, in fact, the government does. But he might as well have saved himself the trouble and just used Nancy Pelosi’s line: Asked by a journalist where in the Constitution it granted the feds the power to do this, she gave him the full Leslie Nielsen and said, “You’re not serious?” She has the measure of her people. Most Americans couldn’t care less about philosophical arguments or constitutional fine print: For them, all Obamacare has to do is work. That is why the last month has been so damaging to Big Government’s brand: In entirely non-ideological, technocratic, utilitarian terms, Obamacare is a bust.

The Canadian and British health systems get by on the principle that, as bad as they are, for enough people they’re good enough, and you don’t have to think about it. Obamacare doesn’t even meet that modest standard, and it’s not clear it ever will. You have to think about it constantly, alert to every potentially catastrophic regulatory tweak that might scuttle your next prescription refill. On Day One, the junkies were eager for their fix: As the administration crowed, the site received 4.7 million unique visits. By the following morning, the HHS “war room” was informed that “six enrollments have occurred so far.” That’s six as in half a dozen, as in fewer people than in just one vehicle of Obama’s 40-car motorcade. Kathleen Sebelius had successfully enrolled one American for every assistant secretary of health and human services. Oh, no, wait: She has seven assistant secretaries, so there was one free, waiting for that seventh enrollee. One in every 783,333 visitors managed to close the deal: Dr. Obama could make house calls to every one and still have time for a round of golf.

In order to meet its target of 7 million enrollees by March 1, Obamacare needs to enroll approximately 46,358 Americans per day. So on its opening day it fell 46,352 short. Were it to maintain that enrollment rate, Obamacare would reach its target of 7 million enrollees in the year 5209. That’s longer than waiting for a hip replacement on the Scottish NHS.

At the same time as dozens of Obamacare enrollees were being signed up, millions of other Americans were having their health insurance canceled — including so many pundits of left (Kirsten Powers), right (Michelle Malkin), and center (David Frum) that the Pulitzers should introduce a prize for Best Suddenly Uninsured Writing. Among their number was Matthew Fleischer, who wrote in the Los Angeles Times:

Most young, middle-class Americans I know are happy that millions of previously uninsured people will receive free or heavily subsidized insurance under the Affordable Care Act.
We just didn’t realize that, unless we had health insurance at work, we’d be the ones paying for it.

The reason he didn’t realize it is because the president lied to him, not just once in a casual aside, but on dozens of occasions, and very bluntly: “If you like your health-care plan, you can keep your health-care plan. Period.” But the entire premise of Obamacare was that, in order to cover (some of) the uninsured and (in many cases) uninsurable, other Americans were going to have to pay significantly more. Obamacare was always intended to be the Great Disruptor: Avik Roy reports that, by 2010, administration officials knew that 93 million Americans would lose their current plans under Obamacare. Small businesses are cutting back on full-time workers; medium businesses are dumping employees’ spouses and children from their plans; and the largest businesses are eating nine-figure bottom-line increases. Delta Airlines claims that it will spend an extra $100 million on health-care expenses next year: Even with cutbacks on complimentary mini-pretzels, a tenth of a billion is a big sum to recover. Meanwhile, the Obamacare plans won’t recognize your preferred doctor, and major hospitals won’t recognize the Obamacare plans.

My old comrade David Frum was somewhat insouciant about the extra $2,400 a year he’ll have to find for his new Obama-approved health arrangements. These days, comparatively few Americans are that liquid, and for most an extra $200 a month will have to be clawed away from real things of value. “Not only will I pay more,” grumbled Mr. Frum, “but I have had to divert many otherwise useful hours to futzing around with websites and paperwork.”

But that’s life in the Republic of Paperwork, isn’t it? The remorseless diversion of time and energy to “futzing around.” That’s why so much of American life seems to be seizing up, why so many routine features of human existence require time-consuming bureaucracy-heavy painstaking navigation (to borrow a term from Obamacare’s “customer-service representatives”). America would benefit from an opposition party that offered a serious de-futzing of the nation: a platform on the scale of Mrs. Thatcher’s privatization program in 1979 or Sir Roger Douglas’s in New Zealand in the Eighties that offered to make ordinary life comprehensible to non-wonks once more. Instead, the Obama crowd have bet that, after the usual whining, you’ll settle down and get used to it: higher co-pays, higher premiums, higher deductibles, higher mountain of paperwork, higher futzing. But the fact remains that nowhere in the Western world has the governmentalization of health care been so incompetently introduced and required protection by such a phalanx of lies. Obamacare is not a left–right issue; it’s a fraud issue.
— Mark Steyn, a National Review columnist, is the author of After America: Get Ready for Armageddon. © 2013 Mark Steyn