Rear Cars of Massive National Train Wreck to Fly Off Track One Year Later Than Scheduled

Morning Jolt
. . . with Jim Geraghty

July 3, 2013

Enjoy the Fourth of July/Jim Is Another Year Older holidays coming up. (They're of equal importance, you know.) The Jolt will resume July 8.

Rear Cars of Massive National Train Wreck to Fly Off Track One Year Later Than Scheduled

So it turns out that massive laws passed by Congress can be delayed if the executive branch feels like it. From Bloomberg:

The Obama administration will delay a crucial provision of its signature health-care law, giving businesses an extra year to comply with a requirement that they provide their workers with insurance.

The government will postpone enforcement of the so-called employer mandate until 2015, after the congressional elections, the administration said yesterday. Under the provision, companies with 50 or more workers face a fine of as much as $3,000 per employee if they don't offer affordable insurance.

Chris Jacobs at Heritage asks some big questions:

The idea that selectively enforcing one provision of the law could "solve" all the problems inherent in Obamacare is absurd on its face. In fact, the administration's position raises more questions than it answers:

If the employer mandate will prove so devastating to businesses that it can't be enforced in 2014 -- following three years of implementation work -- why should it be enforced at all?

Will delaying implementation of the employer mandate encourage more firms to drop coverage entirely and dump their workers on to exchanges, raising the cost of taxpayer-funded subsidies by trillions?

What about individuals who can't afford to buy health insurance, yet will be forced to do so under Obamacare? Will they get an exemption from enforcement as well?

Bryan Preston:

This looks political. The unpopular law will kill jobs and drive up rage going into the 2014 mid-term elections, so the regime has decided to delay it past the mid-terms. Just like it delayed ruling on the XL pipeline. Kick the can.

Meanwhile, the individual mandate and the mandate on religious employers to provide abortifacients remain in force. If a Republican tilted things like this, they would be accused of favoring corporate interests above all."

Patterico:

I started to write a post questioning how a president can unilaterally suspend the collection of a duly passed tax, but then I decided to read the whole article I linked. This is the kind of diligence you get for your blogging dollar, folks! Anyway, the article says:

The 2010 Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act allows the Obama administration to set the starting date for the employer coverage reporting requirement that's the linchpin of the mandate. The administration had not yet announced a date, one of the officials said. Still, enforcement of the mandate had been widely expected to begin in 2014, the official said.

I guess I'll take their word for it. If this is right, maybe we can just delay enforcement . . . forever.

Avik Roy:

In the short term, the delay will have several effects. First, the mandate drives up the cost of labor, and therefore increases unemployment; delaying the mandate by one year may modestly mitigate that disincentive.

Most importantly, the delay of the mandate means that more people will want to enroll in Obamacare's subsidized insurance exchanges. Every year, fewer and fewer employers offer health coverage; given one more year to restructure their workforces, this process could accelerate.

I'll Criticize Obama's Policy on Egypt As Soon As I Can Find It

I recognize that the U.S. has limited influence over events in Egypt, and that there are few clear-cut good options and indisputably heroic figures in the Arab Spring. Having said that, the Middle East appears to be increasingly burning out of control, and the voice mail box is full from 3 a.m. phone calls.

The New York Times acknowledges we're basically sitting back and watching… again.

The vast protests gripping Cairo put President Obama in a position both awkward and familiar, recalling the winter of 2011, when he grappled with what to do about another embattled Egyptian president, a restive military, and angry young Egyptians quick to see a meddling American hand in their political drama.

Then, as now, Mr. Obama has moved gingerly, placing a call to President Mohamed Morsi late Monday evening with a message not unlike the one he delivered to his predecessor, Hosni Mubarak, two and a half years earlier: Exercise restraint and allow the protesters to express their views peacefully.

American officials have broached the possibility of Mr. Morsi's calling early elections, a senior administration official said, but added, "We are not pushing it as a preferred U.S. option." Other options include Mr. Morsi's replacing his cabinet or ousting an unpopular prosecutor.

But officials and outside analysts caution that the United States has little leverage over either the Morsi government or those demanding his ouster. With neither side open to bargaining, the administration is essentially a bystander in what some experts characterize as a do-or-die struggle for control of the Egyptian state.

Jeffrey Goldberg:

So here's a question that's nagging at me as we watch millions of Egyptians express their loathing for Mohamed Mursi, their hapless, power-grabbing president, and for his Muslim Brotherhood movement: How exactly did the U.S. come to be seen by Egyptian secularists and liberals as the handmaiden of a cultish fundamentalist political party whose motto includes this heartening sentiment: "Jihad is our way, and dying in the way of Allah is our highest hope"?

I mean, how did the U.S. fail to formulate a strategy that would advance both American interests and American values in the largest and most crucial Arab state? Within a span of just a few years, Egyptians have somehow convinced themselves that the U.S. has been an ally of both Egypt's former dictator, Hosni Mubarak, and Mubarak's main enemy, the Muslim Brotherhood.

Anyone want to field that question? Hillary? John Kerry? Susan Rice?

In the Corner, David French spotlights the incoherence of our past policy decisions:

First, on May 10, 2013, the Obama administration elected to waive human rights restrictions placed on American military aid to Egypt, freeing up $1.3 billion for the Muslim Brotherhood regime's military without the required showing that the "Government of Egypt is supporting the transition to civilian government, including holding free and fair elections and implementing policies to protect freedom of expression, association, and religion and due process of law."

In other words, the Morsi government could keep funding the military even as it brutally oppressed dissent, including Egypt's embattled Coptic Christian community.

Fast-forward to Monday, July 1, 2013. The corrupt, oppressive Muslim Brotherhood government had just faced what some were counting among the largest public protests in history. And here's our president. From the Guardian:

On Monday, the U.S. president, Barack Obama, indicated that Morsi had not yet lost his backing. "We don't make those decisions just by counting the number of heads in a protest march but we do make decisions based on whether or not a government is listening to the opposition, maintaining a free press, maintaining freedom of assembly, not using violence or intimidation, conducting fair and free elections," he said.

Wait, what? Do you not remember that you just waived those very same human rights requirements not even two months ago? How much could you possibly care about these basic liberties?

Now fast-forward to today, July 3, when we learn that the administration does actually care. From CNN:

Officials have also warned the Egyptian military that a military coup [against the Muslim Brotherhood] would trigger U.S. legislation cutting off all U.S. aid, which totals about $1.5 billion per year.

For those keeping score at home, the Obama administration waives human rights requirements when the Muslim Brotherhood is in power but then threatens to impose those very same waived requirements when the military — our decades-long ally within Egypt — threatens to assert control.

Wait, This is the Democrats' Great Hope in Kentucky? Her?

Meet Alison Grimes, the woman Democrats are thrilled to have running against Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky:

Even Alison Lundergan Grimes didn't know what she would announce to the world late Monday afternoon when she arrived at the building she used as the headquarters for her campaign in 2011. Or, at least, she didn't let on to the more than 100 supporters she called there that she had made a decision about running for the U.S. Senate until the very end of the meeting.

Interviews with more than a half-dozen people who attended the meeting -- several of whom asked not to be quoted -- yielded descriptions of Grimes' approach to the announcement as "unorthodox," "unprecedented," "fascinating" and, at times, "surreal."

Instead of telling supporters whether she was running for Senate, Grimes opened it up for them to tell her what they thought. After the first several people spoke, Grimes began calling on others by name to give their takes. After nearly an hour, a consensus emerged: she should run for the party's nomination to challenge U.S. Senator Mitch McConnell.

She'll let you know what she's decided regarding one of the most important decisions in her life… after her Committee of 100 gets back to her.

Of course, this sort of surprise, no-decision-until-the-Committee-of-100-speaks approach does have its, er, challenges:

On Tuesday, two very basic, stripped-down websites, grimesforsenate.com and alisonforsenate.com, emerged without links to contribute money. It is not yet clear whether Grimes' campaign controls those sites.

"Basic, stripped down"? That's being generous. Let me put it this way: When you look like these…

…then no, neither she nor any allied organization owns those URLs, and the person who does is hoping to get a big check for them.

As for yesterday's announcement, well… apparently it wasn't the real campaign roll-out. That comes later.

The Grimes campaign says Monday's announcement was not a rollout.

"Yesterday Alison was simply announcing her intentions to run. I'm certain when we do our rollout, you will see that this will be a top tier campaign and we will have the most professional organization in the state," responded Hurst.

Do-over!

There's a bizarre music video mocking Grimes from Mitch McConnell's team. If you want to see her real announcement -- before a "Allison Grimes for Secretary of State" banner -- you can find it here.

"Boy, is her delivery wooden." – Pinocchio.

Anyway, the primary argument from optimistic Democrats is that even though they haven't won a U.S. Senate race in Kentucky since 1992, and even though Obama is phenomenally unpopular there, and even though Mitch McConnell is going to have roughly a bazillion dollars in his campaign account, and even though McConnell's campaign team has elbows so sharp, they use them to remove staples, and even though turnout will likely be lower and more GOP-friendly in a midterm year, even though a better Democratic candidate couldn't beat newcomer Rand Paul in an open seat Senate race four years ago, and… er, wait, where was I going with this? Oh yeah, Democrats think they have a solid shot because McConnell's poll numbers are pretty mediocre.

Of course, there's this independent state House candidate in Kentucky who's touting praise of himself from McConnell.

The independent campaign of John-Mark Hack in Central Kentucky's special state House election came under fire Sunday for sending mailers with flattering comments about Hack by U.S. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell and several prominent Democrats.

Republicans and Democrats associated with Hack's opponents accused him of misleading voters by implying he had endorsements he had not received.

Anyway, if McConnell is this toxically unpopular incumbent, as Democrats believe… why does this independent candidate think it helps his odds to remind voters that McConnell likes him?

But credit where it's due; Grimes can wear a purple hat roughly the size of a minivan way better than McConnell can:

The Joker called. He wants his tablecloth back.

ADDENDA: Happy Fourth, everyone.

NRO Digest — July 3, 2013

Today on National Review Online . . .

THE EDITORS: It's not a hard call. It's time to end the Muslim Brotherhood's dictatorial rule in Egypt. Overthrow Morsi

JONAH GOLDBERG: Thanks to the work of humanity, the world has become more, not less, hospitable...even as global warming fears have risen. Inhospitable Earth

JONATHAN STRONG: There's a lack of trust between Boehner and House Republicans. Immigration and the Hastert Rule

JAMES C. CAPRETTA: The contraception accommodation is just plain bogus. The HHS Mandate Fraud Exposed

BETSY WOODRUFF: Pro-choice activist to pro-life senator in Texas: "I hope your daughter's raped." Pro-Life Texas Legislators Receive Threats

RAMESH PONNURU: Polls on abortion can be misleading. What Polls Don't 'Consistently Show' About Abortion

To read more, visit www.nationalreview.com

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