ObamaCare: A Christmas Gift from the Poor to the Rich

My article from the Dec. 20, 2013 issue of FrontPage Magazine:

ObamaCare: A Christmas Gift from the Poor to the Rich

By Matthew Vadum

The increasingly desperate Obama White House is encouraging Obamacare supporters to make Christmas a living hell for those Americans still not convinced that putting the federal government in charge of health care is a good idea.

Because Obamacare will go into an actuarial death spiral if enough young people refuse to enroll, and because it’s a day ending in a “Y,” it’s time for yet another sleazy, lowbrow attempt to strong-arm young, healthy Americans into buying overpriced Affordable Care Act-compliant insurance that they don’t need and in many cases can’t afford. And why is such health insurance unaffordable to the young and the poor? Because Obamacare imposes ridiculous, expensive mandates, for example, forcing old men to cover women’s birth control while forcing young people to cover geriatric medical care.

To trick young, poor, healthy people into subsidizing older, sicker, wealthier people, the Obama administration wheeled out First Lady Michelle Obama, America’s flamboyant answer to the shopping-crazed kleptocrat Imelda Marcos, to sell Obamacare coverage to those who don’t want it or need it.

And to appeal to the young “hipster” community, Obama’s stormtroopers at Organizing for Action (OfA) posted an ad on Twitter showing a young bespectacled man in one-piece pajamas, sitting on a comfortable couch with a warm drink. “Wear pajamas. Drink hot chocolate. Talk about getting health insurance,” reads the accompanying ad copy.

It might be funny if it weren’t so pathetic.

But to the incorrigible, true-believing leftists of the Obama administration, everything is political and nothing is sacred. Precious family time must give way for the good of the all-important state. In a spine-tinglingly creepy scene that might have come out of totalitarian East Germany or the Soviet Union, the Obamas lectured assembled mothers on the need to indoctrinate their children into embracing the three-year-old health care law that is tearing America apart.

The Racism of Gun Control

My piece from the March 4, 2013 issue of FrontPage Magazine:

The Racism of Gun Control

By Matthew Vadum

Black conservative leaders warn that new gun control proposals threaten Americans’ most fundamental civil rights.

Star Parker, founder and president of the Center for Urban Renewal and Education (CURE), recalled the racist pedigree of gun control laws and the grave dangers they create, not just for blacks, but for all Americans.

“I believe that it is our duty to stand together and challenge the proposals currently on the table in the Senate, which invoke painful memories of Jim Crow laws and black codes,” said Parker.

“Black history is rife with government demands for background checks in order to qualify for constitutional rights,” she said at a Washington, D.C. press conference. “All Americans should be concerned.”

The effort to stem further gun control measures comes as left-wing legislators lead a crackdown on the Second Amendment.

Amnesty 2013

From the Jan. 30, 2013 issue of FrontPage Magazine:

Amnesty 2013

By Matthew Vadum

Left-wingers are once again pushing a so-called comprehensive immigration reform package that helps their cause more than it helps America.

The proposal, still in rough outline, was unveiled at a Capitol Hill press conference Monday. It makes vague promises, the same promises that have been echoing in the corridors of power for decades, of finally enforcing the nation’s porous border with Mexico. It comes days after left-wing groups vowed to lay the groundwork to turn Texas deep Democrat blue.

The plan is backed by a bipartisan group of senators known informally as the Gang of 8. The four Democrats are Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin (Illinois), Robert Menendez (New Jersey), Chuck Schumer (New York), and Michael Bennet (Colorado). The Republican half of the gang consists of John McCain (Arizona), Marco Rubio (Florida), Lindsey Graham (South Carolina), and freshman senator Jeff Flake (Arizona).

The proposal has less to do with helping immigrants, legal or otherwise, and more to do with helping politicians.

Obama Prepares to Community-Organize America

My article from the Jan. 22, 2013 issue of FrontPage Magazine:

Obama Prepares to Community-Organize America

By Matthew Vadum

In his latest unprecedented move in American history, President Obama announced he is converting his campaign apparatus into a permanent in-your-face campaign aimed at furthering Obama’s divisive, radical politics.

The new tax-exempt advocacy group, Organizing for Action, will “play an active role” in “mobilizing around and speaking out in support of important legislation” during Obama’s second term, the president said last week.

In the same vein, in his second inaugural address yesterday, Obama bullied the opposition. Reinforcing his long-running “spread the wealth” theme, the president hectored successful people, declaring that “our country cannot succeed when a shrinking few do very well and a growing many barely make it.”

Obama also seemed to signal in his mercifully brief oration that he’s going to go all-out to make government bigger.

Americans, he said, “reject the belief that America must choose between caring for the generation that built this country and investing in the generation that will build its future.”

Now, like a Third World caudillo, Obama will be able to pursue his policies from inside government and from outside through his OfA thug army.

OfA is a less violent version of Mussolini’s black shirts and Hitler’s brown shirts, or of the government-supported goon squads that Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez and Cuba’s Castro brothers use to harass and intimidate their domestic opponents. OfA units brought muscle to the recent fight in Wisconsin over that state’s out-of-control government labor unions. OfA has bludgeoned Democrats that Obama deemed insufficiently left-wing, especially red-state congressional Democrats who had been wavering on the issue of Obamacare.