That’s right, sleaze.

AARP sold out every senior citizen, member or not, when they endorsed the left’s monstrous HealthCare bill.

When government says it’s set to do something for the little guy, hang on to your wallet.

The latest evidence for this came in a congressional report released last week, showing that the seniors lobby (and insurance giant) AARP stands to make more than $1 billion as a result of ObamaCare.

The game works this way: The new health-care law contains more than $136 billion in cuts to the Medicare Advantage program, which now covers one in five seniors. As a result, according to Medicare’s chief actuary, at least 7 million seniors will be forced out of their Medicare Advantage plan and back into traditional Medicare.

But since traditional Medicare lacks several Medicare Advantage benefits, many will have to buy so-called “Medigap” policies to make up the difference. And who’s the nation’s largest marketer of Medigap plans? The AARP.

An 18-month congressional probe found that the AARP stands to make $55 million to $166 million in one year alone from seniors switching from Medicare Advantage to AARP Medigap plans. Over the next 10 years, it would earn more than $1 billion from new customers. Business is good if you can get the government to put your competitors out of business.

And AARP’s self serving slice of the pie is just the tip of an iceberg. To continue this very revealing Michael Tanner column:

The AARP isn’t the only big ObamaCare winner to come to light in the last few days. A hearing by the House Energy and Commerce’s Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations disclosed that labor unions and big businesses — including General Electric, Verizon, AT&T and IBM — have received nearly $1.9 billion in payments under the new health-care law to help offset health-insurance costs for early retirees.

The biggest single recipient: the United Auto Workers, which got nearly $207 million in taxpayer money. By the time the feds finish handing out funds to well-connected companies and unions, it’s expected to have cost taxpayers $5 billion.

The program doesn’t even require companies or unions to demonstrate any “financial need” for the subsidy. As a result, it enables companies to incentivize early retirement for older employees, saving the companies money and improving their balance sheets — with taxpayers footing the bill.

This is nothing new, of course. ObamaCare has benefited special interests and big businesses from the start. The major pharmaceutical firms got a requirement that all insurers must cover their products. That’s one reason why Big Pharma spent more than $150 million on ads in favor of the bill.

Other provider groups and beneficiary constituencies are pursuing a similar strategy. They’ve been lobbying a government panel that will determine the benefits that must be included in every insurance plan. At recent hearings, interests ranging from the in-vitro-fertilization industry to autism groups showed up to demand their share of the spoils.

Even large insurers played the game: They got a mandate requiring everyone to buy their product. Sure, they’ll have to adjust to some costly new regulations, and those added benefits will be expensive, but they can simply pass the costs on to consumers via higher premiums. After all, what can consumers do? If they decide not to buy insurance, the government will punish them.

Nor should we forget that politically connected firms and unions have regularly received waivers from ObamaCare’s worst provisions.

So one year in, ObamaCare’s big winners are becoming clear: Big Business, Big Labor and special-interest lobbies. The only losers are the American people.

America’s sure come the wrong a long way since the last of the true statesmen-in-government died out… A long time ago.

As far as I’m concerned, if a couple of people of the same sex want to sleep together or “whatever”, in private and keep it private, more power to ‘em.

That said, however…

From the Washington Times:

Four branches of the military have begun sending training material to 2.2 million active and reserve troops as a prelude to opening the ranks to gays, with instructions on, for example, what to do if an officer sees two male Marines kissing in a shopping mall.

In a word…Disgusting!

At least, he’s the only one who made any sense in this instance.

The Supreme Court ruled decisively Wednesday that a fringe anti-gay group has a constitutionally protected right to stage hateful protests at the funerals of dead servicemen, saying “such speech cannot be restricted simply because it is upsetting or arouses contempt.”

In one of the year’s most closely watched cases, the Supreme Court in an 8-1 decision upheld a lower-court ruling to throw out a multimillion-dollar judgment that the father of a dead U.S. Marine from Maryland had won against the Westboro Baptist Church.

Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr., in writing the majority opinion, noted that “speech is powerful” and can “inflict great pain.”

“On the facts before us, we cannot react to that pain by punishing the speaker,” the chief justice wrote. “As a nation, we have chosen a different course — to protect even hurtful speech on public issues to ensure that we do not stifle public debate.”

Public debate? What the slugs from Westboro Baptist Church contribute is nothing more than unconscionable harassment of grieving families to an extent that rather than a friendly ruling by the Supreme Court, they should be hit with a blanket restraining order from going within 100 miles of the funeral of any slain American military hero.

Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. rebuked the majority and wrote in a blistering dissent that “our profound national commitment to free and open debate is not a license for the vicious verbal assault that occurred in this case.”

Justice Alito wrote that Westboro Baptist’s attacks “make no contribution to public debate” and “allowing family members to have a few hours of peace without harassment does not undermine public debate.”

Westboro Baptist’s “outrageous conduct caused the petitioner great injury, and the court now compounds that injury by depriving the petitioner of a judgment that acknowledges the wrong he suffered,” Justice Alito wrote.

“In order to have a society in which public issues can be openly and vigorously debated, it is not necessary to allow the brutalization of innocent victims like the petitioner.”

Those Westboro Baptist Church creatures would best serve our nation by crawling back under their stone.

As I mentioned in a previous post, I am one of those that believe in the Constitution.

More importantly, I believe that those we elect to govern this great nation should view the Constitution as, as Seth once put it here at Hard Astarboard, their employee handbook.

Then along came a whole bunch of politicians over the last few decades who saw fit to reinterpret that august document to meet their very unconstitutional political agendas, the Obama Administration and the Pelosi/Reid Democrats by far the worst offenders.

They saddled us, among other things, with the dreaded Healthcare Bill.

This bill is like a festering rash that is increasingly difficult to eradicate, as the new Republican majority in the House is discovering, so now the states have had to take matters into their own hands. Given that the Healthcare Bill has absolutely no respect for states’ rights (which are of major import in the Constitution), they seem to have an uphill battle to negotiate.

With efforts to repeal the health care law stalling on Capitol Hill, Republican lawmakers in states across the country are turning to another tool in the Constitution to try to limit the law’s reach — interstate compacts.

To backers, it’s almost like discovering a secret weapon hidden within the Constitution. Compacts, which are roughly like treaties between states, have the force of federal law, and a coalition of lawmakers and conservative activists and academics say they could just as easily be used to pry back from the federal government some areas of responsibility, including health care.

…it’s almost like discovering a secret weapon hidden within the Constitution…

This is tantamount to freedom loving Americans having to use portions of the Constitution to try and stave off forces of totally anti-America socialism coming from their own government, the same people who are supposed to be following the Constitution to begin with.

This strikes me as very wrong.

Shame on Obama and shame on every last one of those Democrats in Congress who have the audacity to describe themselves as Americans!

The whole article is here.

On another and lesser note, when Seth finally gets his already too-long problem out of the way and returns to join us in normal living, I somehow doubt that he’ll want to stay in New York, at least within the five boroughs.

Thanks to efforts by the little brat my husband calls “the pint sized Napoleonic maggot” (Michael Bloomberg), as of May 23rd, it will be illegal to smoke in public parks or concourses or on beaches within the jurisdiction of New York City.

This is the same mayor who elected himself transfat police, and whose administration couldn’t handle a simple snow emergency that went down on his watch. Yes, that one, the one who bribed the corrupt city council to allow him to run for a third term, whom Seth once said is doing his level best to tear the heart and soul out of New York before he leaves office.

While neither Wolf nor I smoke, Seth does (semi-copiously at times). For the last two and a half years, it’s been his only vice, believe it or not, as he actually quit consuming alcoholic beverages back then.

However, figuring what cigarettes cost in southern and some other states ($4.50 - $6.50) vs what they cost in New York City ($13.00 and change, I understand), it’s pretty obvious that the city and state collect at least $7.00 a pack in taxes. Now, there is no way you can tell me that between Manhattan, Brooklyn, Queens, the Bronx and Staten Island anything less than a million packs a day are sold. So, that’s seven million times seven, or forty nine million a week?

Yet the same corrupt New York politicians who enjoy having all that tax money to waste and allocate to enterprises profiting their equally corrupt friends in the private sector are more than happy to oppress the same people who pay those taxes by making it more and more difficult to use the merchandise they pay all those taxes on.

You’ll notice that while they officially attack the rights of cigarette smokers, they won’t make tobacco products illegal and therefore lose all that tax revenue…

Anyway, that’s why I have the feeling that whenever he gets back to New York, Seth’s stay here will be relatively short.

I just read this week’s Ann Coulter column, Look For the Union Fable and thought I’d post it in case anyone coming to visit Hard Astarboard hasn’t seen it yet.

A sampling:

The need for a union comes down to this question: Do you have a boss who wants you to work harder for less money? In the private sector, the answer is yes. In the public sector, the answer is a big, fat NO.

(snip)

It used to be widely understood that collective bargaining has no place in government employment. In 1937, the American president beloved by liberals, FDR, warned that collective bargaining “cannot be transplanted into the public service.” George Meany, head of the AFL-CIO for a quarter century, said unions were not appropriate for civil servants. As recently as 1978, the vast majority of states prohibited unionization of government employees.

(Snip2)

But government workers think the job of everyone else in the economy is to protect their high salaries, crazy work rules and obscene pensions. They self-righteously lecture us about public service, the children, a “living wage” — all in the service of squeezing more money from the taxpayer to fund their breathtakingly selfish job arrangements.

Read the entire column.

I spent the first third of my life in Cuba, and unlike the liberals and the Democrats they control, I know exactly what it’s like to live under the thumb of a communist dictatorship. Yes, people, communism, despite all the “power to the people” bullshit these misguided American (progressive?) “useful idiots” equate with socialist/communist/”people’s” governments, that’s exactly what the government of Fidel Castro is: a dictatorship, and an oppressive one it is.

I was thrilled to come to a country where Democracy is the order of the day, where the government really belongs to the people. Where the will of the people is reflected in the candidates they choose to represent them, and each citizen’s vote counts to that end.

I have never missed voting since I became a U.S. citizen, an American.

Having said that, I have experienced quite a bit of disappointment over the last few years, what with those we have elected to lead us ignoring the will of we, the people as they pursue agendas geared more toward the playing of pure politics than the governing of our country according to the will of those of us who put them where they are.

Like my husband and our dear friend Seth, a few years ago I stopped considering myself a Republican, as the GOP had pretty much become like the Democrats in too many ways, thinking they knew more about what’s good for we, the people than we do and acting accordingly.

We merely consider ourselves Conservatives, and yearn for the government to return to their previous adherence to the Constitution, the great document that served this nation so well before they began treating it like it was yesterday’s news.

With the Tea Party movement came a restoration, in large part, to the Constitutional observance that was responsible for America’s success to begin with, and since those true Americans went to work awakening the public and supporting politicians with conservative values, the Democrats, who had only just hit the country with a blitzkrieg of far left legislation have been voted out of their congressional majority and the majorities in a number of states. I was looking at a poll based map the other day that showed that numerous blue states had become more evenly mixed between Democrats and Republicans.

So, to the topic of this post:

After the Democrats won their fleeting majority in the House, then speaker Nancy Pelosi famously told the Republicans that “we don’t have to listen to you anymore!”

Now they do, not only on the federal level but state level as well.

Cut to Wisconsin, and Governor Scott Walker and the state Republicans’ push to take away the economically stifling collective bargaining power of public employees’ unions. The state simply can’t afford to mollycoddle the unions anymore, and the Republicans in the majority now want to pass a bill to remedy the union problem.

However, the unions are the biggest contributors to Democratic campaigns.

The result? The Democrats left the state, ran out on their responsibilities to the people, the voters, their constituents, in order to deny their state senate the quorum they need to pass the necessary bill.

They ran out on the people!

Yes, that’s democracy demeaned, that elected officials should do such a thing.

And now, the Democrats in Indiana have done the same thing, because of a bill that, among other things, would prohibit employees from being required to pay union dues or representation fees as a condition of employment ran out on the people they took an oath to represent because, being bought and paid for by the unions, well, we can definitely see where their priorities are; Certainly not with the people.

Democracy demeaned by Democrats in two states so far, Democrats deserting the people as they flee their states with their tails between their legs.

Democrats who apparently don’t respect the American political system unless it maintains a majority of their own party members, which is the same as saying that they don’t respect the voters whose collective decision placed the Republicans in charge.

When confronted with Democratic majority extremes the Republicans, as I recall, didn’t run away.

They didn’t demean democracy.

Mrs. Wolf here.

Chuck has joined up with my husband and Seth in what is hopefully to be the final chapter of a difficulty Seth got himself into (not by fault, but due to his loyalty to a man who was employed by him, but I suppose that was all explained previously, or will be, when it’s all over, by one of the unholy trinity who usually post hereabouts) almost two years ago.

In the meantime, I have inherited the duty of attempting to keep things afloat, as Wolf would say. Chuck disappeared about a month and a half ago and left it all to me, but I’ve been so busy that this is actually my first opportunity to stick my two cents into the scheme of things.

What I want to post today is an article from todays New York Post that, knowing Seth as I have for over thirty years, would be right up his alley. He does, after all, tend to get his hackles up when he perceives that the government (the folks who are supposed to protect and defend us against all enemies, foreign and domestic) exhibits a complete lack of security competence in one matter or another, thereby failing, or potentially failing, in its protective duties.

Here we have a case in point

It’s enough to drive someone mad.

In a stunning security lapse, the federal General Services Administration mistakenly shipped nearly three dozen license plates marked “U.S. Government — For Official Use Only” to a humble Queens accountant, The Post has learned.
The foul-up is part of a troubling pattern of lost license plates at the agency, which handles plates for every federal office except the military.

“I don’t know how it happened. Mistakes can happen, but I guess in this day and age, you want to be careful,” said Antonio Guadagnino, who received the package, addressed to him, via UPS at his small Astoria office.

“If they ended up in the wrong hands, they could be used to get into secure places. Not everyone is so honest,” added Guadagnino, who said that he never held a federal contract and that his business consists mostly of personal income-tax returns.
Unsure of what to do with the plates, he handed them over to state Sen. Michael Gianaris, whose district office is in the same building.

But, Gianaris said, the GSA didn’t appear overly concerned.

“The reaction we got was that this was business as usual,” he said.
“This is not a time in our nation’s history to be screwing around with federal identification. What would happen if they wound up in someone else’s hands, someone who thought he could profit selling them — or worse?”

The GSA didn’t even bother to make arrangements to claim the plates until The Post made inquiries Friday. Only then did it rush over to take them.

Of course “it” did.

While Seth would kind of steam over stupidity like this (just imagine some disciple of Osama bin Laden behind the wheel of a vehicle sporting a set of these “official business” government plates driving through the gates of a nuclear power plant or some other volatile compound with a trunk full of explosives), my husband, having been turned profoundly sardonic by over 30 years of what he terms in-depth military and related “behind the scenes” government experience, would just laugh uproariously as he always does at unadulterated idiocy-slash-negligence, that or just shake his head in utter disgust, then pour himself a glass of Jack Daniels.

Now, just imagine how much more of this kind of thing goes on that we don’t hear or read about.

Chuck here.

I can’t believe it’s been a month since our last post here at Hard Astarboard, but I’ve been pretty swamped trying to cope with my not altogether wanted, but unfortunately needed by close and therefore important friends, sojourn in New York, minding the store while Seth and Wolf are off doing what they’ve gotta do.

Having said that, and sorry to be missing those guys this time of year, knowing that they’re foregoing any kind of seasonal festivity to get done what needs doing, to our Christian friends, on behalf of Seth, Wolf and Yours Truly,

MERRY CHRISTMAS and to all, HAPPY NEW YEAR!

Chuck here.

First off, in the Duh! Department:

The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) has been connected to the terrorist organization Hamas, a federal judge said in a July 2009 ruling just unsealed.
“The government has produced ample evidence to establish the associations of CAIR, ISNA, NAIT, with NAIT, the Islamic Association for Palestine, and with Hamas,” U.S. District Court Judge Jorge Solis said in the July 1, 2009, ruling.

CAIR, the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA) and the North American Islamic Trust (NAIT) had protested to Solis that they were incorrectly named as unindicted co-conspirators in the 2008 trial of the Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development. Among the allegations, HLF was accused of having provided more than $12 million to Hamas. After a 2007 mistrial, five former HLF officials convictedon 108 counts, ranging from money laundering to conspiring to provide material support to terrorists.

Like we hadn’t a clue…

Meanwhile, just down the hall in the Moxi Department:

The so-called ground zero mosque recently applied for a $5 million federal grant from a fund designed to rebuild lower Manhattan after 9/11, reports The Daily Beast’s John Avlon.

Developers of the controversial Park51 Islamic community center and mosque located two blocks from ground zero earlier this month applied for roughly $5 million in federal grant money set aside for the redevelopment of lower Manhattan after the attacks of September 11, according to two sources with direct knowledge of the matter.

{Snip!}

While news of the application has not previously been made public, developer Sharif El-Gamal outlined it in closed-door meetings, according to two individuals he spoke with directly. The thirtysomething, Brooklyn-born El-Gamal is motivated more by real estate ambition—one of these sources describes him as aspiring to be the next Donald Trump—than Islamic theology or ideology.

Park51’s developers clearly have a legal right to apply for the grant. A list of Frequently Asked Questions that accompanied the application specifically states that religious organizations can make funding requests for capital projects “as long as the request is for a facility or portion of a facility that is dedicated to non-religious activities or uses.” According to an individual familiar with the Park51 application, it requests funds to cover a number of cultural, educational and community development aspects of the proposed 13-story building—but the prayer room is excluded from the grant application.

Here’s where we hunker down and see if A) the “revelations” about CAIR’s involvements in terrorism will have the effect of curtailing the government’s ass kissing on terrorism’s PR agency, and B) whether or not the same government agrees to pay for Islamofascism’s tribute to their 9/11 “victory” the Park51 Islamic “Cultural Center”.

What we’re doing now is hunkering…

It never does, no matter what happens among the panoramas of our political landscape, whether the leftist controlled Democrats are in charge or the Republicans have regained control after a stark demonstration of Democrat dominance has reawakened the voting public to the BOHICA (bend over, here it comes again) effect that always follows the advent of a new majority coming from the left side of the aisle.

The “it” in question is the never ending assault from the left on the elements of our marketplace that made it, in two centuries, the most formidable in the history of the world.

From ever vigilant Red State, we have Killing the Private-Sector: What Democrats in Congress couldn’t do for union bosses, the NLRB will.

As unemployment continues to rise as a result of the Obama administration’s anti-business climate, the union-controlled National Labor Relations Board is about do what a Democrat-controlled Congress could not do—give unions the ability to kill unionize more companies.

We’ve known this was coming for a while now, but after union bosses blew a few hundred million of their members’ money trying to save what Democrats they could on Tuesday, they now know that their number one legislative agenda item, the Employee Free ANTI-Choice Act is all but dead. Union bosses don’t seem to be too upset though. Why should they? After all, they’ve already engineered Plan B and, now, they’re ready to implement it.

Union leaders on Wednesday said they would focus their efforts on regulatory agencies that govern labor and union-organizing matters, and push for job-creating programs such as new infrastructure projects.

That means unions will turn their attention toward agencies such as the Department of Labor or the National Labor Relations Board, now that there’s little hope Congress will act on legislation such as the Employee Free Choice Act, a bill that would make it easier for unions to organize without secret ballot elections.

[snip]

The NLRB doesn’t have the authority to overhaul labor law, but it could make administrative changes to shorten the time between when a union files for a unionization election and when the election is held at a company, a change unions say is needed to cut down on unfair anti-union pressure tactics by employers.

Gridlock in Washington could compel unions to put more resources into organizing new members, especially low-wage laundry and restaurant workers, and those in health care where unions have had recent successes, labor experts said. They might use more campaigns to allege unfair labor practices at companies, and work more with international unions.

Read the entire article here.

I suppose that in any great country, there are always going to be crooks and scumbags people like our union leaders who have no compunction about bringing down their nations’ economies at the expense of millions just to put some sleazily “earned” lucre in their own pockets, and there will always be a few treasonous politicians who support their efforts.

It’s enough to make you sick.