Real Americans Like Obamacare So Conservatives Resort To Shameless Lies

Real Americans Like Obamacare So Conservatives Resort To Shameless Lies

Halloween is approaching and the hobgoblins of conservative media are already spinning nightmarish tales of the Affordable Care Act (aka ObamaCare). Actually, they have been doing it for quite some time, dating back to at least March 2010 when Tucker Carlson’s Daily Caller published an article headlined [3] “IRS looking to hire thousands of armed tax agents to enforce healthcare laws.” Fox News reposted the article on its community web site and Fib Factory, Fox Nation [4] despite the fact that it was a complete fabrication and was debunked [5] by the Annenberg Center’s FactCheck.org

This year the campaign to recast a program that makes health insurance accessible to millions of Americans as a plague of locusts has risen to fever pitch. The Republican Party and conservative media has pulled out all the stops in a strategy aimed at scaring people from signing up with the hope that low enrollment will collapse the system. President Obama had the same concerns last month when he said…

    “What you’ve had is an unprecedented effort that you’ve seen ramp up in the past month or so that those who have opposed the idea of universal health care in the first place — and have fought this thing tooth and nail through Congress and through the courts — trying to scare and discourage people from getting a good deal.”

These are not the hackneyed GOP talking points about death panels, job killers and government bureaucrats coming between patients and doctors. These are far more fanciful efforts that stretch the limits of credulity and appear to have more in common with satire than actual news reporting. But this is what it has come to as Obamacare has finally reached the consumer stage and conservatives are desperate to keep people from discovering its benefits.

1) Fox News Warns That If You Sign Up For ObamaCare Hackers Will Steal Your Life Savings [6]
On an episode of “The Real Story” on Fox News, host Gretchen Carlson introduced an ominous new strain of fear-mongering to demonize Obamacare. She interviewed John McAfee, the anti-virus software developer who is presently a fugitive from a murder investigation in Belize. He made a wild accusation that visitors to Healthcare.gov are going to be victimized by hackers who will steal their identities and/or drain their bank accounts.

Neither Carlson nor McAfee actually provided any evidence of such a threat. In fact, when directly asked about it, McAfee diverts from the question and lays out a completely different threat that has nothing whatsoever to do with the Obamacare website. He alleges that nefarious individuals could set up their own unaffiliated websites in the hopes of luring naive people to take advantage of. Of course, that is a threat that exists for every website, and has since the Internet began. Visiting Healthcare.gov does not expose anyone to these phony sites as implied by the fear-mongers at Fox.

2) WorldNetDaily Reports “Obama ‘Crashing Health-Care Site On Purpose’” [7]
This article asserts that the President is so afraid that insurance shoppers will learn that Obamacare is really more expensive than the old system that he deliberately caused the website to crash to keep people from seeing the rates. No one is defending the botched launch of the insurance exchanges. However, the notion that the technical glitches were intentionally caused by Obama is delusional.

WND’s argument (supported by links to Rush Limbaugh) that rates will increase leaves out the subsidies and tax credits that are available for many applicants. With these adjustments, premiums for most people will be substantially lower. The administration would, therefore, be anxious for consumers to have access to that information and would not be putting obstacles in their path.

3) Rand Paul: Take Obamacare Or Go To Jail [8]
Tea Party darling Rand Paul has made innumerable false statements about virtually every policy that has emanated from the White House. But none are more surreal than his comment, “They say take [Obamacare] or we will put people in jail. People say we aren’t going to put anybody in jail. The heck they won’t. You will get fined first. If you don’t pay your fines, you will go to jail.”

That’s interesting coming from someone who has frequently complained that no one in Congress has read the Affordable Care Act. If he had read it himself he would have known that the law explicitly prohibits criminal consequences for non-payment of fines. It states “In the case of any failure by a taxpayer to timely pay any penalty imposed by this section, such taxpayer shall not be subject to any criminal prosecution or penalty with respect to such failure.” It rarely gets more clear than that, but the mission to frighten the public exceeds the motivation for truth on the part of GOP scare-meisters.

4) Right-Wing Think Tank Mortified That Obamacare Website Links To Voter Registration Form [9]
This is a particularly curious horror story as it seeks to raise an alarm over something that ought to be regarded as a civic duty. Nevertheless, the conservative MacIver Institute (a Koch brothers-funded [10] operation) published an article [11] that implied there was some sort of heinous objective on the part of the Obama administration for having included a link to a voter registration form on the Obamacare website. This startling revelation is met with foreboding by MacIver and a flurry of right-wing media outlets that disseminated MacIver’s story, including National Review, Glenn Beck’s TheBlaze, Breitbart News, the Daily Caller, and Fox News. All of their reports agreed that this was a clandestine attempt to register only Democratic voters despite the absence of any partisan framing. MacIver even asks specifically “[W]hat does registering to vote have to do with signing up for Obamacare?”

The core of the right’s trepidation is rooted in a more fundamental aversion to the act of voting itself. It is why they are continually erecting new barriers to voting. Democrats, on the other hand, have sought to expand voter turnout with bills like the 1993 National Voter Registration Act [12] (aka Motor Voter) that mandates certain government agencies provide people with access to voter registration. In fact, that 20-year-old law requires that Obamacare administrators make voter registration available. MacIver, and similarly mortified conservative comrades, are either unaware of this, or are deliberately feigning ignorance in order to rile up their conspiracy-prone base.

5) Weekly Standard Finds Imaginary Threat On Obamacare Website [13]
The ultra-conservative Weekly Standard dispatched its crack reporters to ferret out what it portrayed [14] as an ominous security threat on the Healthcare.gov website. What it found were comments in the site’s source code that said that “You have no reasonable expectation of privacy regarding any communication or data transiting or stored on this information system.” The Standard notes that these comments were not visible to users and were not part of the site’s terms and conditions. But that didn’t stop them from implying that users would be still be bound by it because “the language is nevertheless a part of the underlying code.” Not really. It’s only a part of some inoperative text that carries no more obligation than some discarded notes.

This is another situation where you have to wonder whether these people are embarrassingly stupid or brazenly dishonest. There is a reason this language was not visible. It was deliberately removed with the use of HTML comment tags by the site’s programmers. It was undoubtedly edited out because it was not an accurate expression of the site’s privacy policy. It does not mean that users are agreeing to a secret clause permitting the government to spy on them as the Standard implied. If any of these “reporters” had a 14-year-old at home they could have learned what this is about. But that would have interfered with their goal, which is to leave Americans with the false impression that some hidden danger lurks beneath the surface of Obamacare.

6) Fox News Fears ACORN Is Back To Push ObamaCare [15]
The Curvy Couch Potatoes over at Fox & Friends had a jolly old time resurrecting their fear of a community organizing enterprise that no longer exists. ACORN was wrongly hounded out of business by right-wing opponents after pseudo-journalist and convicted criminal James O’Keefe distributed some deceitfully edited and libelous videos. But that hasn’t stopped conservative media from exhuming the corpse whenever they are in need of a sensationalist story, as demonstrated by Fox co-host Elisabeth Hasselbeck, who announced that “We’re getting information that ACORN operatives are trying to sign people up for the Affordable Care Act.”

While ACORN was never found to have engaged in any unlawful activity, there was a bill passed that prohibited them from receiving federal funds. However, there is nothing in the law that prevents organizations with former ACORN staff from getting federal grants. In fact, there isn’t even any current law that prevents ACORN from getting grants as the previous ban was not included in the latest Continuing Resolution. Fox is brazenly misrepresenting the facts in an attempt to reignite fears of the old ACORN bogeyman. They upped the terror ante by further alleging that ACORN would use your personal medical and financial information against you politically. They never revealed how that would occur, or to what end, but that isn’t the point. Their only interest is spreading fear, no matter how irrational and unsupported.

Conclusion

The zealousness with which these right-wing propagandists pursue their disinformation campaign is evidence of their own fear that Americans will come to appreciate having access to affordable healthcare. Therefore, they see their mission as derailing the program before that eventuality unfolds. Their tactics get more extreme and absurd the closer the program gets to gaining acceptance. A particular target of their attack is young people whose participation is important for the program to succeed. Consequently, opponents have launched a well-funded campaign (thanks to the Koch brothers) to scare off young consumers. Generation Opportunity has already released the now notorious “Creepy Uncle Sam” videos that make false implications of government intrusion into medical care. Next they are embarking on a 20-city college tour to mislead students.

PolitiFact has reviewed 16 claims made by Obamacare detractors and found all of them false. Twelve of those were designated “Pants On Fire” lies [16]. If there is one question that begs to be asked, it is this: If Obamacare is so terrible, why do opponents have to tell so many lies about it?

Obamacare is a free market solution - you buy insurance from privately owned insurance companies to health care cost that were raising 14% a year. Which meant that many patriotic hard working Americans either could not get insurance or they were going bankrupt trying to pay big medical corporations for their medical care. We could have just made Medicare, a government run socialized health insurance program available for everyone over 18, but conservatives did not want that either. Reality check: conservative Republicans thought it was moral to lie the country into a war in Iraq that cost $3 trillion dollars, but think it is immoral for patriots to have health care insurance. No wonder most of the nation thinks conservatism is just another name for wacky nutbars. 

Lying Conservative Clowns Betsy McCaughey, George Will, Krauthammer and Radicals at Fox News Try To Claim Obama Chipping Away Constitution

Lying Conservative Clowns Betsy McCaughey, George Will, Krauthammer and Radicals at Fox News Try To Claim Obama Chipping Away Constitution

Right-wing media have attempted to manufacture the claim that President Obama is abusing executive power by delaying implementation of the health care law's employer mandate and directing federal prosecutors to avoid maximum drug sentences in some cases, despite the legality of both practices.

Right-Wing Media Claim Health Care Delay Is Unconstitutional

Betsy McCaughey: Obama Is "Chipping Away At The Constitution." In an Investor's Business Daily op-ed, former New York Lieutenant Governor Betsy McCaughey claimed that President Obama's move to delay the employer mandate provision of the Affordable Care Act "reveals how disconnected this president is from this nation's history and constitutional principles":

    With the exception of Richard Nixon, these presidents -- from Eisenhower to Reagan to Clinton and both Bushes -- have not tried to exempt themselves from the Constitution.

    Article II, Sec. 3 of the Constitution commands the president to faithfully execute the law. Courts have consistently ruled that presidents have little discretion about it. Obama can't pick and choose what parts of the Affordable Care Act he enforces and when. [Investor's Business Daily, 8/13/13]

Wash. Post's George Will: "Obama's Unconstitutional Steps Worse Than Nixon's." In an August 14 Washington Post column, George Will claimed that Obama does not have authority to delay the employer mandate, calling his "unconstitutional steps worse than Nixon's":

    Serving as props in the scripted charade of White House news conferences, journalists did not ask the pertinent question: "Wheredoes the Constitution confer upon presidents the 'executive authority' to ignore the separation of powers by revising laws?" The question could have elicited an Obama rarity: brevity. Because there is no such authority.

    [...]

    Neither does the Constitution confer on presidents the power to rewrite laws if they decide the change is a "tweak" not involving the law's "essence." Anyway, the employer mandate is essential to the ACA. [The Washington Post, 8/14/13]

Krauthammer: "Of Course It's Unconstitutional" To Delay The Mandate. On the July 9 edition of Fox News' The O'Reilly Factor, host Bill O'Reilly asked Fox News contributor Charles Krauthammer, "Do you think it's unconstitutional for the president to take an existing law that he signed and say we're not going to force part of that law, the employer mandate? Is that unconstitutional?" Krauthammer replied, "Of course it's unconstitutional. The Constitution says the executive has to faithfully execute the laws and here it is faithfully ignoring a law it doesn't like in the same way it wantonly passed the DREAM Act unilaterally, an act that the Congress had rejected. It is absolutely lawless in the things it does. This is only the latest example." [Fox News, The O'Reilly Factor, 7/9/13 via National Review Online]
Experts Argue That Obama Administration Has Authority To Implement Delay

Constitutional Scholar Simon Lazarus: Delay Is "Well Within The Executive Branch's Lawful Discretion." In a post in The Atlantic, Constitutional Accountability Center Senior Counsel Simon Lazarus wrote that the delay is "a sensible adjustment to phase-in enforcement, not a refusal to enforce" and "well within the Executive Branch's lawful discretion":

    The relevant text requires that the President "take care that the laws be faithfully executed." Scholars on both left and right concur that this broadly-worded phrasing indicates that the President is to exercise judgment, and handle his enforcement duties with fidelity to all laws, including, indeed, the Constitution. As McConnell himself notes, both Republican and Democratic Justice Departments have consistently opined that the clause authorizes a president even to decline enforcement of a statute altogether, if in good faith he determines it to be in violation of the Constitution. But, McConnell contends, a president cannot "refuse to enforce a statute he opposes for policy reasons." While surely correct, that contention is beside the point.

    The Administration has not postponed the employer mandate out of policy opposition to the ACA, nor to the specific provision itself. Thus, it's misleading to characterize the action as a "refusal to enforce." Rather, the President has authorized a minor temporary course correction regarding individual ACA provisions, necessary in his Administration's judgment to faithfully execute the overall statute, other related laws, and the purposes of the ACA's framers. As a legal as well as a practical matter, that's well within his job description. [The Atlantic, 7/17/13]

SCOTUSblog's Denniston: Supreme Court Gave Agencies Discretion Regarding

Implementation. In a post on Constitution Daily, legal expert Lyle Denniston pointed out that "Article II does not say that a law shall be carried out at all cost, so every President operates on the assumption that federal agencies can be given some leeway in how they do it." Denniston pointed to a recent Supreme Court case as relevant, writing that the court "just last month went a long way toward requiring federal courts to trust the government agencies that execute the laws to interpret for themselves just what authority Congress has given them in their areas of official activity":

    Given the complexity of modern government operations, very few of the laws that Congress passes are completely self-executing; most if not all of them require regulations to put them into actual effect. And writing regulations is the business of the federal agencies.  An array of government agencies have been working for more than three years, for example, to write the rules for the new Affordable Care Act - the vast new law regulating the entire health care financing system.

    The Supreme Court just last month went a long way toward requiring federal courts to trust the government agencies that execute the laws to interpret for themselves just what authority Congress has given them in their areas of official activity.  What an agency decides is the range of its power, that ruling said, should be given considerable deference by the courts.

    Very telling in that decision in the case of City of Arlington, Texas, v. Federal Communications Commission is that it was written by Justice Antonin Scalia, the Court's strongest believer that the courts should be very strict in following the letter of the laws that Congress passes.  The actual text, not what someone said about it, is what controls, he has said, over and over. Scalia, a former professor of administrative law, seems quite tolerant of agency discretion. [Constitution Daily, 7/10/13]

Fox Claims Drug Sentencing Guideline Change "Unlawful"

Krauthammer: Obama Administration Decision To Avoid Mandatory Minimum Sentence Is "Unlawful." On Fox News' Special Report, Charles Krauthammer reacted to Attorney General Eric Holder's decision to direct federal prosecutors to avoid triggering mandatory minimum sentences for certain drug-related charges by claiming the change is "unlawful":

    KRAUTHAMMER: What he's done now, what he's proposed with these drug laws is worse than just suspending the parts of the law and instructing prosecutors not to prosecute. He also is telling prosecutors who already have prosecutions in place that they can withhold evidence so that the defendant won't get a maximum or a mandatory penalty. I mean, that is illegal. That's unlawful, that's -- I mean, that is simply shocking that that would be the instruction from an attorney general.

    I think as one former attorney general, deputy attorney general said, if you did that in a private case, you would be accused of a felony if you were prosecuting it and you were withholding evidence. And it is epidemic. It isn't only in this, it is in the Obamacare law, the administration's own law, the parts of which it is suspending. It is in the DREAM Act, which is a unilateral suspension. [Fox News, Special Report with Bret Baier, 8/12/13 via Media Matters]

Fox & Friends Lists "Overruling Congress On Drug War Sentences" As Evidence Of Abuse Of Power. On the August 16 edition of Fox News' Fox & Friends, guest host Shannon Bream claimed that "there are questions about abuse of power" and that "we've seen this administration, not just the president but others in the administration, decide when they're going to" uphold Article II of the constitution "and when they aren't." Co-host Brian Kilmeade asked if he's "breaching the Constitution," listing, among other things, "overruling Congress on drug war sentences." [Fox News, Fox & Friends, 8/16/13]
Holder Advised Prosecutors To Exercise Authority They Currently Possess

NY Times: Prosecutors Have Broad Discretion On Charges. In a 1988 article on the decision to not bring charges against Reagan Attorney General Edwin Meese over his involvement in the Iran-Contra Affair, The New York Times noted that prosecutors have "almost unfettered authority to decide" how to prosecute cases, including "what evidence to present":

    The decision of an independent prosecutor this week not to seek criminal charges against Attorney General Edwin Meese 3d has focused new attention on the broad and controversial power granted to American prosecutors in deciding who shall be brought to justice.

    Far more than in any other democracy, American prosecutors have almost unfettered authority to decide whom to charge, what crimes to identify, what penalties to seek, what bail to urge, what witnesses to call, what evidence to present, what persons to give immunity from prosecution, what plea bargains to make and what sentences to negotiate.

    [...]

    The discretion afforded American prosecutors is defended on the ground that it provides for case-by-case flexibility and ultimately more leniency for deserving defendants. But critics say it has been abused with considerations of race, class and political affiliation. Draft protesters, users of small amounts of marijuana and minor traffic offenders have challenged verdicts and sentences by showing that others were not prosecuted for similar crimes, and prosecutorial bias has been charged in jury selection and death penalty cases.

    The subject has grown so controversial in recent years that it has been the focus of more than 200 law review articles and 280 Federal court cases since 1985. That does not count the thousands of scholarly law articles, speeches and the cases in state and local courts.

    ''It's a fundamental topic in the criminal justice system,'' said Philip B. Heymann, a professor of law at Harvard who was the Assistant United States Attorney General in charge of the criminal division from 1978 to 1981.

    Mr. Heymann, who heads the Center for Criminal Justice at Harvard, said prosecutors have the authority not to bring charges even when they think they can prove a crime has been committed. He noted that such decisions are necessary in part because there is so much crime in the United States; prosecutors could not possibly process all of it.

    The Federal courts have consistently upheld a prosecutor's powers. ''The discretion allowed prosecutors,'' the Supreme Court said last year in a trademark infringement case, Young v. United States, ''is so broad that decisions not to prosecute are ordinarily unreviewable.'' Only in cases of flagrant abuse, including criminal activity by a prosecutor, may a court overrule a prosecutor's decision, the Court has said. [The New York Times, 7/22/88]

Wash. Post: Decision To Change How Criminal Complaints Are Made Is A Change He Can Make On His Own; Other Initiatives Require Legislative Action. The Washington Post reported that Holder's memo to prosecutors represents a change to drug policy he can do on his own authority:

    The attorney general can make some changes to drug policy on his own. He is giving new instructions to federal prosecutors on how they should write their criminal complaints when charging low-level drug offenders, to avoid triggering the mandatory minimum sentences. Under certain statutes, inflexible sentences for drug crimes are mandated regardless of the facts or conduct in the case, reducing the discretion of prosecutors, judges and juries.

    Some of Holder's other initiatives will require legislative change. Holder is urging passage of legislation with bipartisan support that is aimed at giving federal judges more discretion in applying mandatory minimum sentences to certain drug offenses. [The Washington Post, 8/12/13]

Conservative Policy Analysts: Holder Has Authority For His Directive. On National Review Online's The Corner blog, Vikrant P. Reddy and Marc A. Levin from the Texas Public Policy Foundation's Right On Crime initiative explained that the attorney general has the authority to suggest prosecutors use their discretion to reduce sentences, but recommended it be followed up with legislation:

    The attorney general has exercised his authority to provide guidance to federal prosecutors to exercise discretion in applying mandatory minimums in drug cases to ensure that the longest sentences are reserved for kingpins. Nonetheless, this administrative action comes five years into this presidency and could be undone at the whim of this or any future attorney general. Therefore, statutory reforms are still needed to ensure that the law provides a reasonable range of punishment for low-level federal drug offenses such that there is enough prosecutorial and judicial flexibility to craft sentences that fit the crime. [National Review Online, The Corner, 8/13/13]

Gosh, conservatives keep telling us they are experts on the Constitution and legal theory, yet these conservative zealots are not even familiar with legal actions and precedents set by conservatives. Could it be that Betsy McCaughey, George Will, Krauthammer and Radicals at Fox News are acting like petulant anti-American brats who think its fine when conservatives do it, but the end of the world when Democratic patriots do the same thing.

Fox News Acts Like Iranian Propagandists, Fabricates Quote To Accuses Super Patriot Jay Carney Of Calling Benghazi A "Phony Attack"

Fox News Acts Like Iranian Propagandists, Fabricates Quote To Accuse Super Patriot Carney Of Calling Benghazi A "Phony Attack"

Fox News dishonestly accused White House spokesman Jay Carney of calling the September 2012 attacks in Benghazi, Libya, a "phony attack" -- a complete fabrication that in no way reflects the comments Carney actually made.

During the July 31 White House press briefing, Carney responded to a question challenging President Obama's criticism that Congressional Republicans have been fixated on "phony scandals." Carney said:

    I think we all remember a few weeks ago when Washington was consumed with a variety of issues that, while in some cases significant, there was an effort underway to turn them into partisan scandals.  I don't think anybody here would doubt that.  And what we've seen as time has passed and more facts have become known -- whether it's about the attacks in Benghazi and the talking points, or revelations about conduct at the IRS -- that attempts to turn this into a scandal have failed.

While the hosts of The Five discussed the press briefing, Fox aired on-screen text that directly quoted Carney calling Benghazi a "phony attack."

Carney had identified as "phony" the fabricated controversy over talking points related to the Benghazi attack. At no point during the press briefing did Carney say that Benghazi itself was a "phony attack."

The great thing about loving the USA and being a true patriot, is that unlike Anti-American Fox News we do not have to make up scandals to use as propaganda.