RedStateVT Presents the Worst of 2013

Here it is! Our annual list. Happy reading.

President Obama
Readers may be surprised to learn that Obama does NOT appear every year on RedStateVT’s annual list. (See, we are an objective blog!) “If you like your health plan, you can keep it” will go down as one of the biggest (maybe THE biggest?) presidential lies of all time. Of course, “I didn’t set a red line” was a good one as well….


Obamacare
Twenty thousand pages of sheer madness. 


Kathleen Sebelius 
“Hold me accountable for the debacle. I’m responsible.” 

Done.  We hold Sebelius accountable for the debacle.  Then she does not even have the decency to resign!


Wendy Davis
Urged on by Dems, Davis seeks to build a race for Texas governor (and a national profile) on a filibuster of modest requirements to abortion in the state. For example, the abortionist has to have an affiliation with an area hospital. In case, you know, something goes wrong. 


The Kardashians
Everything that is wrong with America encapsulated in one dysfunctional family. Wait; don’t we say the same thing every year?


Gay
No doubt as Gay looks back on 2013 it has much to be happy about. In fact, it was a marvelous year. Same sex marriage is out of the closet and well on its way to national legitimacy. But as always, Gay overplayed its hand. In 2014, this may come back to bite Gay on the backside. Average Americans who – like RedStateVT – believe that people should be free to love who they love are nonetheless getting fed up with the vilification of anyone who dares to disagree with Gay.  Fundamentalist Christians, Jews and Muslims all live by a moral code passed down for hundreds (if not thousands) of years. Society is better because of their focus on morality, charity and fellowship. What to do about their rejection of homosexuality? How about stop talking about your sexual preferences all the time?

As usual, Coulter gets it right:
The first time someone stands up to a bully and the sky doesn't fall, the tyranny is over. The gay mafia was out of control, drunk with power. This time, they got their wings clipped. (AnnCoulter.com, 12/31/2013)


Chris Matthews
Matthews makes the list for one action and one action only. (Yes, we ignore the daily nonsense he spews because it is expected.) We cannot, however, ignore his infantile and fawning interview with President Obama last month.  It was journalism at its most embarrassing. 


Hillary Clinton
Hill makes the list for one issue and one issue only: Benghazi. The death of brave Americans should never be politicized and never callously dismissed.  She did both.  “Who cares what caused it?” goes down as one of the most abominable utterances by any U.S. public figure…ever. 


Detroit Democrats
It took decades, but through hard work Democrats registered their biggest score. 

They killed a city.


Peter Shumlin and Vermont Progressives
Here is what Shummy and the Progs focused on in 2013: decriminalizing marijuana, assisted suicide, closing Vermont Yankee (with its 650 jobs and cheap, reliable power), single payer healthcare (no info on how to pay for it), drivers licenses for illegals, taxes on soda and more taxes.  In short, a grab bag of fringe Lefty issues. 

Too bad they did not spend any time figuring out how to attract more companies to the state and grow the job base. 

Visions and Revisions

Ebb and Flow
A Westchester County (New York) attorney with a practice focused on estate planning for high net worth individuals tells us something fascinating: the high-end real estate market in the wealthier suburbs of Manhattan is booming. Why? Wealthy New Yorkers are fleeing Manhattan to get away from the city's mayor-elect, Comrade Bill de Blasio who makes absolutely no secret of his plan to tax the rich to pay for his universal pre-K socialist dream...among other schemes. Which proves once again that as long as we have some semblance of a capitalist economy money will flow to the areas where it can be used most efficiently by the individual...and not the government.


To Err
Insurers said that they had found many discrepancies and errors and that the government was overstating the improvements in HealthCare.gov. (NYT, 12/15/2013)

Insurance companies who chose to partner with Obamacare in the hopes of reaping the spoils are finding that they made a Faustian bargain. They will continue to be Obama's whipping boy when things go badly and they will be forced to deal with the mess that Healthcare.gov has made of the enrollment process. See the following as well:

The government’s overriding message to insurers is: Do whatever you have to do to maximize enrollment and to provide coverage by Jan. 1 to anyone who wants it. Federal health officials have told insurers that they can sort out the details and work out financial arrangements with the government later. (NYT, 12/15/2013)

Translation: make Obama look good on the enrollment numbers and Obama will make you whole. Insurers should believe it at their own risk.


Liberation
Events this week beg the question: where among the 1.56 billion Muslims is our Mandela? Where is our Mahatma? Where is our Mandiba? Where our liberator?

Instead of rearing a Mandela, someone who could bring people of different faiths together to build a more peaceful world, Muslims attempt to assassinate a Malala before maturity. We are undeserving of such great souls and yet the need has never been greater. (Qanta Ahmed, Foxnews.com, 12/13/2013)

Wonderful column which echoes a point that RedStateVT has made in the past. Where is the Palestinian Gandhi?


Rolling
In explaining the disastrous rollout of Obamacare, President Obama told Chris Matthews he had discovered that “we have these big agencies, some of which are outdated, some of which are not designed properly.”

An interesting discovery to make after having consigned the vast universe of American medicine, one-sixth of the U.S. economy, to the tender mercies of the agency bureaucrats at the Department of Health and Human Services and the Internal Revenue Service. (Charles Krauthammer, Washington Post, 12/12/2013)

Nobody can dissect Obama quite like Krauthammer. This may be his best column yet on Obama's failures.

Speaking of Matthews, we were recalling his recent nauseating interview with the president. Recall that he said: "I'm going to put you on the spot now." One could see Obama visibly tighten thinking he might actually get a real question (in violation of the rules of engagement no doubt worked out in advance between MSNBC and the Obama press people). The question Matthews asked was this: "Hillary Clinton or Joe Biden?" There was NO way that Chris Matthews was going to ask a question which might jeopardize his invitation to the White House Christmas party. 


School Days
School property taxes may be going up even more than first expected.

The Vermont Department of Taxes warned lawmakers last month that they would need to raise the statewide property tax rate by 5 cents this coming year to meet rising school costs. (WCAX.com, 12/13/2013)

Just one of many tax increases that will be brought to you by Vermont Progressives (Motto: There is NO amount of social re-engineering that we cannot accomplish together ... with your tax dollars!)


Selective
Federal health officials announced on Wednesday that some 1.2 million people selected plans on federal or state exchanges during the months of October and November. That included 803,000 people who applied to the exchanges and were found eligible for Medicaid or a related Children’s Health Insurance Program that provide public insurance for the poor — in addition to nearly 365,000 people who chose private plans. (NYT, 12/16/2013)

It's Obamacaid.

Liberals blew up American health care for all citizens in order to provide free health care to some. A typical Liberal solution to a problem.

Forced Error

North Carolina
But with Republicans controlling all branches of the state government for the first time in more than a century, the legislature pushed through a wide range of conservative change. The Republicans not only cut taxes and business regulations, as many had expected, but also allowed stricter regulations on abortion clinics, ended teacher tenure, blocked the expansion of Medicaid, cut unemployment benefits, removed obstacles to the death penalty, allowed concealed guns in bars and restaurants, and mandated the teaching of cursive writing. (NYT, 8/13/2013)

Vermont
But with Progressives controlling all branches of state government, the legislature pushed through a wide range of Liberal change. Progressives raised taxes, decriminalized marijuana, put the state on a path toward single payer healthcare, legalized assisted suicide and enacted draconian energy policies. (RedStateVT.blogspot.com, 8/14/2013)


Echoes
Soon after the 10th anniversary of the foundation bearing his name, Bill Clinton met with a small group of aides and two lawyers from Simpson Thacher & Bartlett. Two weeks of interviews with Clinton Foundation executives and former employees had led the lawyers to some unsettling conclusions.

The review echoed criticism of Mr. Clinton’s early years in the White House: For all of its successes, the Clinton Foundation had become a sprawling concern, supervised by a rotating board of old Clinton hands, vulnerable to distraction and threatened by conflicts of interest. It ran multimillion-dollar deficits for several years, despite vast amounts of money flowing in. (NYT, 8/13/2013)

Whitewater. Just saying.....


Authenticity
To make a second impression, Snowden would need to come home, make his case and face his accusers. It would mean risking a lengthy jail term, but also trusting the fair-mindedness of the American people, who, I believe, will not allow an authentic whistle-blower to be unfairly punished. (Thomas L. Friedman, NYT, 8/13/2013)

And so we have the Liberal viewpoint: Snowden is an "authentic" whistle-blower. Even Obama would not cop to that.

Dueling Factions

Taxing
Rep. Janet Ancel, D-Calais, wanted House members to keep in mind all the taxes her committee considered but rejected as it deliberated how to raise the extra funding the House budget would require.

So she opened her presentation on the tax bill with a list of the rejected proposals: imposing taxes on heating fuel or break-open tickets, or raising the rate on capital gains or capping mortgage deductions.

Critics wanted to keep the spotlight on all the taxes the House Ways and Means Committee selected to raise $27 million in the next budget year.

The list includes changes in the income tax, additions to items subject to the sales tax, increases in the tax on tobacco products and a one-year increase in the tax on meals.

Ancel argued the package a majority of the Ways and Means Committee recommended was “fair and equitable.”

A majority, almost exclusively Democrats and Progressives, agreed and voted 85 to 55 to give the bill preliminary approval. (Burlington Free Press, 3/27/2013)

Vermont Progressives develop a new strategy for countering voter complaints about new taxes: "Yes, but look at all the things we are not taxing!"

To his credit, Governor Shumlin argued against the new taxes.


Paint By Numbers
The deputy mayor, Joseph J. Lhota, never went to see the painting. Just hearing about it was enough.

The eight-foot-tall portrait of the Virgin Mary, a semi-abstract collage hanging at the Brooklyn Museum, contained clumps of elephant dung and cutouts of female genitalia from pornographic magazines. Mr. Lhota, a Roman Catholic, was horrified. “As a concept,” he said in a recent interview, “it was offensive.”

In fall 1999, that personal revulsion turned into public policy. Overnight, he became the tip of an unbending Giuliani spear aimed at the museum, seeking to cajole, browbeat and threaten the 190-year-old organization into removing the work of art. (NYT, 3/27/2013)

In a profile of a NYC candidate for mayor, the New York Times replays Lhota's role in the Guiliani administration's attempt to get the Brooklyn Museum (funded by taxpayer dollars) to remove a vile and offensive painting. Clearly the Times viewed these attempts, then and now, as a grievous assault on free expression.

Of course, this is the same New York Times that published cartoons deemed offensive to Islam. Thus establishing their creds on the point that all religions should be able to tolerate artistic mocking. 

Oh, wait....the Times DIDN'T publish those cartoons?


In The Lobby
“You don’t doubt that the lobby supporting the enactment of same-sex marriage laws in different states is politically powerful, do you?” he asked the lawyer. (NYT, 3/27/2013)

Chief Justice John Roberts tries to redeem himself. 


The Marrying Kind
Our point is not to raise a parade of unlikely horribles. It is that for the Court to transform the definition of marriage for one group fundamentally restructures it for all groups and makes it harder for society through its representatives to rule out anything that adults want to call "marriage." (WSJ, 3/27/2013)

Those in favor of gay marriage make the rather absurd argument that it is a "right."  Says them. As Conservatives often point out, Liberals seek the moral highground - and attempt to avoid a substantive debate on topics dear to them - by declaring their position to be a fundamental right...legalized dope, abortion, gay marriage. All are "rights." The short excerpt above succinctly captures the essence of the rebuttal. 


Keyless
But a carbon tax/fee is the key to controlling climate change. (Gail Collins, NYT, 3/28/2013)

More proof (you didn't really need it, did you?) that Liberals believe that all problems in the world can be solved by more taxes.


Stamped Out
The Wall Street Journal today provides some frightening statistics on the percentage of people in the country and state-by-state that receive food stamps.

Nationwide the number is 15%. (This is not a misprint.) Wait it gets worse. In Vermont it is 16%. In Maine it is 19%. In Oregon it is 21%  And in the District of Columbia it is 23%. 

The numbers are staggering.