Dagnabbit, don’t tease me like this, Google News.
Yeah, it turns out that that they truncated the quote there:
A Washington State Patrol trooper who worked as a bodyguard for Gov. Jay Inslee was arrested in Olympia, accused of destroying evidence connected to his son’s criminal case.
OK, here’s the situation. There are three major elements to healthcare plan decisions:
Continue reading Washington State threatens to send #Obamacare costs through the roof.
Back when Obamacare was all shiny and new, I was in the habit of calling it ‘health care rationing.’ I did this because I knew that you can’t have ‘less people uninsured’ AND ‘lower prices’ AND ‘improved services’ – and I assumed that the government would choose the first two and let the third go away on the wind. I got out of the habit of using the term ‘health care rationing’ because before the Obamacare launch it became clear that the government wasn’t going to manage ‘lower prices,’ either – and after the launch it’s becoming increasingly clear that they’re not going to manage ‘less people uninsured,’ either. In short: the word ‘Obamacare’ itself is sufficient warning.
But it remains true that we’re rationing care now. Kids’ care, too [link added: sorry!]. Continue reading #Obamacare refuses to pay for sick kids’ care in Seattle, Washington. Like it does.
Oh dear God but the Democrats have not done right by this woman.
OLYMPIA, Nov. 17.—Jessica Sanford, the Federal Way woman who got a shout-out from President Obama last month with her fan letter for the Affordable Care Act, got a rather rude awakening last week. Turns out she doesn’t qualify for a tax credit after all.
At least that’s what the letter said that she got from the state. Now she says her dream of affordable health insurance has gone poof. She can’t afford it. She’ll have to go without. “I’m really terribly embarrassed,” she says. “It has completely turned around on me. I mean, completely.”
The short version is that the vaunted Washington state exchange – you know, the one that had Democratic governor Jay Inslee bragging today about how great it is – first messed up Ms. Sanford’s subsidy calculation. Then the exchange misled her about what would happen if she signed her kid up for the Medicaid expansion (she’d lose the tax credit from having a kid). So then the state exchange told Ms. Sanford that she doesn’t actually qualify for a subsidy at all… which means that she went from a gold plan to a silver plan and now is looking at a bronze plan that is so pathetic that it’ll make more sense for her to eat the tax, instead… and even then she’ll have another surprise when it turns out that she’ll owe about $350, not $95*. Oh, and the state of Washington is possibly enrolling people on Medicaid that they have no business enrolling in the first case. It’s hard to say, given how bad the customer service is.
Yay, Obamacare. Continue reading One of @BarackObama’s #obamacare ‘success stories’ Jessica Sanford will have no insurance.
It’s more on the epic blowup between local DC Democrats and national ones, and Darrell Issa is more than happy to pick a side:
This incident shows very clearly how unwilling @SenatorReid is to negotiate. He's even holding #DC budget hostage >> http://t.co/wlNFDC2Vol
— Darrell Issa (@DarrellIssa) October 10, 2013
Continue reading This is probably going to be a story in 2014.
See, this is problem with liberal-libertarian “alliances:” God help the latter if the former disagree with them on something. Like, you know, pot legalization:
Colorado’s medical-marijuana dispensaries can sell the stuff just fine — and would-be vendors of the recreational variety hope to do the same once rules are put in place this year.
But there is little that those businesses can legally do with their cash other than put it in a safe or bury it. No bank, credit union or financial-services company can knowingly accept business accounts with any trace of a marijuana connection. If they do, it’s a federal crime.
Note the emphasis on “legal:” illegally there’s a bunch of stuff that businesses can do, starting with money laundering. I will avoid belaboring the point that it is somewhat surreal to ban a business operating legally under state law from essential and elementary business transactions, but I will make two points:
Continue reading Hey! Enjoying that all-powerful federal state there, pot legalization supporters?
I keep getting sent this link, God knows why:
A United Nations-based drug agency urged the United States government on Tuesday to challenge the legalization of marijuana for recreational use in Colorado and Washington, saying the state laws violate international drug treaties.
The International Narcotics Control Board made its appeal in an annual drug report. It called on Washington, D.C., to act to “ensure full compliance with the international drug control treaties on its entire territory.”
I mean, I’m sure that I don’t know why people might suggest that this would have ever been a topic of more than academic (undergrad) interest to me, ya, you betcha. Continue reading United Nations wants Feds to go after state pot laws.
Quick background: Seattle last year instituted a ban on plastic bags and mandated a charge for paper bags, on the grounds that doing so would force consumers to use recyclable bags. This is all ostensibly for improving the quality of life in Seattle:
“I think we’ve gotten to a place where it’s really going to work for the environment, businesses and the community in general,” Councilman Mike O’Brien said at the time.
So, how did it work? Continue reading Fallout from Seattle’s killer plastic bag ban policy.
Yes, “leaking.”
Six underground radioactive waste tanks at the nation’s most contaminated nuclear site are leaking, Washington Gov. Jay Inslee said Friday.
[snip]
The tanks, which already are long past their intended 20-year life span, hold millions of gallons (liters) of a highly radioactive stew left from decades of plutonium production for nuclear weapons.
In our 1989 report on the Department of Energy’s (DOE) management of the single-shell tanks at its Hanford Site in Washington, we reported that, based on estimates by DOE contractor staff, about 750,000 gallons of liquid waste had leaked from 66 single-shell tanks.1 Subsequently, in September 1990 the Washington State Department of Ecology learned that the volume of liquid waste that had leaked from one Hanford single-shell tank (designated as 241-A-105, commonly known as 105-A) was substantially higher than the volume reported to us and included in our report.
Continue reading Annnnnnd the Hanford Nuclear Reservation is leaking again.
Now watch as I leech content off of Twitter.
Continue reading Apparently it’s a day: Washington and hockey.
