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THE WEIRS TIMES & THE COCHECO TIMES, Thursday, May 26, 2011
WAIVE ME Hear that? It’s
by Michelle Malkin Syndicated Columnist
the escalating cry of American employers and workers trying to hold on to their health care benefits in the age of stifling Obama health insurance man- dates: Gang- way! Gangway!
Save me! Waive me! Obamacare refugees first began
DANCING WITH ARAFAT’S GHOST
by Oliver North Syndicated Columnist
WASHINGTON, D.C. -- On Thursday, Barack Obama went to the State Depart- ment to “mark a new chapter in American diplo- macy.” The pres- ident’s handlers boldly billed his lengthy address
“A Moment of Opportunity” for the Middle East. It was neither. Instead, he delivered a naive, revisionist lecture that was suffi- ciently utopian and self-centered to have been drafted by Jimmy Carter. Unfortunately, he also de- manded major concessions from the only democracy in the Middle East and America’s most stead- fast ally in the region, Israel. To no one’s surprise, Obama al-
luded -- for the 12th time in two weeks -- to the death of Osama bin Laden and cleverly described the terror kingpin’s demise, the withdrawal of American troops from Iraq and the U.S. drawdown
in Afghanistan, to be part of his grand design for the Middle East. After naming a litany of places where “the shouts of human dig- nity” and “self determination are being heard” -- including Tunisia, Egypt, Yemen, Bahrain, Syria and Libya -- he staked his claim: “... two years ago in Cairo, I began to broaden our engagement based upon mutual interests and mu- tual respect.” Apparently that mu- tual respect extends to everyone in the region except the Israelis. In his lecture, the president as- serted “the events of the past six months show us that strategies of repression and diversion won’t work anymore” because satel- lite television, the Internet, cell phones and social networks “al- low young people to connect and organize like never before.” He says “the United States opposes the use of violence and repres- sion against the people of the re- gion.” Yet repression and violence seem to be working just fine for the theocrats in Tehran and their SeeNORTH on 32
beating down the exit doors in October 2010. As I’ve document- ed since last fall, waiver-mania started with McDonald’s and Jack in the Box; spread to Dish Networks, hair salon chain Regis Corp and resort giant Universal Orlando; took hold among every major Big Labor organization from the AFL-CIO to the CWA to the SEIU; roped in the national- ized health care promoters at the Robert Wood Johnson Founda- tion (whose board of trustees includes health care czar Nancy Ann DeParle); and is now grip- ping entire states (Maine, New Hampshire and Nevada all re- cently got in on the act). The latest to catch the waive? West Coast liberals. Yes, smack dab in the middle of House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi’s congressional district, a cluster of San Francisco small businesses is among the latest recipients of get-out-of-Obama- care passes. As Jamie Dupree of Cox Media Group and Matthew Boyle of The Daily Caller pointed out this week, there are at least two dozen Bay Area companies -- including bars, restaurants, hotels, tourist shops, real es- tate and auto firms -- that have secured temporary, one-year reprieves from the federal law. It’s the San Francisco Treat that voters didn’t foresee until after the bill was rammed down their
throats. Another noteworthy waiver
winner: Seattle-based REI. The trendy Pacific Northwest outdoor equipment retailer’s progressive CEO and Democratic campaign donor, Sally Jewell, appeared with President Obama in 2009 to tout White House health care re- form initiatives. Two years later, REI snagged a waiver to protect the health benefits of a whop- ping 1,180 workers from the very tentacles of the big government bureaucrats Jewell embraced at Obama’s roundtable. To date, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services has granted federal health care law exemptions to more than three million American workers cov- ered by more than 1,300 unions, companies and insurers who had voluntarily offered low-cost health plans with annual ben- efits limits. Meddling Obamacare architects outlawed those private plans -- nicknamed “mini med” plans -- in the name of “patients’ rights.” But without special waiv- ers, the escapees would have been forced to hike premiums or drop insurance coverage alto- gether for mostly low-wage, sea- sonal and part-time workers. Among the most recent union affiliates to secure pardons from the one-size-fits-all health policy that their bosses spent hundreds of millions of dollars of worker dues lobbying for: - Teamsters Local 485 Health
and Welfare Fund in Brooklyn, N.Y. - Detroit and Vicinity Trow-
el Trades Health and Welfare Fund_ - Communications Workers of America (CWA) Local 1182 Secu- rity Benefits Fund - CWA Local 1183 Health and Welfare Fund - Bakers Union and Food Em- ployees Labor Relations Associa- SeeMALKIN on 22
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