OK Republicans Implementing “Obama Care”

On Friday, Feburary 25, 2011 OK Governor Mary Fallin issued a press release announcing “Oklahoma Will Accept $54 M “Early Innovator Grant” to Support Oklahoma-Based Health Insurance Exchange.” 

Noticably missing from the announcement is the fact that the “Early Innovators” grants are to fund implementation of the Information Technology (IT) infrastructure needed to operate Health Insurance Exchanges, a cornerstone of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, aka “ObamaCare.”

The grant application, officially called the Cooperative Agreements to Support Innovative Exchange Information Technology Systems, is a 41-page document outlining the purpose, authority, and background of the funding “opportunity”, as well as eligibility requirements states must meet in order to qualify. 

The application also notes the specific sections of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (and the Health Care and Education Reconciliation Act, together referred to as the Affordable Care Act) authorizing the funding of the grant.

Oklahoma was one of seven initial grant awardees, with our state getting the largest dollar amount – $54,582,269.  The grantee in Oklahoma is the Oklahoma Health Care Authority.

According to Grants.gov, the expected number of awards is 51 – all 50 states, plus the District of Columbia.

All of the exchanges are to be interoperable and usable by other states.

Exchanges – Cornerstone of the PPACA

The creation of Health Insurance Exchanges is a cornerstone of  PPACA (ObamaCare), without which there would be no socialized health care plan.  The plan requires an IT infrastructure to be in place in order to function.  No Exchanges, no ObamaCare.

These insurance Exchanges are mentioned 278 times in the Act.

The specific section of PPACA (ObamaCare) noted in the grant application are:

Page 5 of the grant application cites Section 1311 of the PPACA.
 
“C. Background
On March 23, 2010, the President signed into law the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. On March 30, 2010, the Health Care and Education Reconciliation Act of 2010 was signed into law. The two laws are collectively referred to as the Affordable Care Act. The Affordable Care Act includes a wide variety of provisions designed to expand coverage, provide more health care choices, enhance the quality of health care for all Americans, hold insurance companies more accountable, and lower health care costs. Among its provisions, the law provides grant funding to assist States in implementing parts of the Affordable Care Act.

Section 1311 of the Affordable Care Act provides funding assistance to the States for the planning and establishment of Health Insurance Exchanges (“Exchanges”). The Affordable Care Act provides that each State may elect to establish an Exchange that would: 1) facilitate the purchase of qualified health plans (QHPs); 2) provide for the establishment of a Small Business Health Options Program (“SHOP Exchange”) designed to assist qualified employers in facilitating the enrollment of their employees in QHPs offered in the SHOP Exchange; and 3) meet other requirements specified in the Act.”

Pages 6 & 7 of the application cite Section 1323 of the PPACA:

“The products of this Cooperative Agreement will be available to all States and the District of Columbia for evaluation and adaptability throughout the process so that non-grantee-States will not have to wait until a complete product is finished to test for adaptability for its existing systems. As IT systems are developed, attention should be paid to assuring that information gathered will be accessible for evaluation purposes. U.S. Territories that establish Exchanges under Section 1323 will be eligible to participate in the evaluation and adaptability process and the products developed under this Cooperative Agreement will be available to them.”

Pages 7, 17, 21, 28, and 29  of the application cite Section 1561 of PPACA:

Key Principles of Exchange IT capabilities for Early Innovators
• The organization governing the design, development, and implementation of the core capabilities must follow standard industry Systems Development Life Cycle (SDLC) frameworks including the use of iterative and incremental development methodologies. The governing body must also be able to produce requirement specifications, analysis, design, code, and testing that can be easily shared with other interested and authorized stakeholders (i.e., other States, consortia of States, or any entity that is responsible for establishing an Exchange).
• The design must take advantage of a Web Services Architecture (using XML, SOAP and WSDL or REST) and Service Oriented Architecture approach for design and development leveraging the concepts of a shared pool of configurable computing resources (e.g., Cloud Computing).
• The services description/definition, services interfaces, policies and business rules, must be published in a web services registry to support both internal and external service requests that are public and private, and be able to manage role-based access to underlying data.
• Per Section 1561 of the Affordable Care Act, all designs must follow the standards thatare currently outlined in the recommendations published by the Office of the National Coordinator (ONC). For details on Section 1561 Standards, see: http://healthit.hhs.gov/portal/server.pt?open=512&mode=2&objID=3161.
• Per National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) publications, the design and implementation must take into account security standards and controls. (For details on NIST publications, see: http://csrc.nist.gov/publications/PubsSPs.html)

Health Insurance Exchange Legislation

Currently there are several live bills implementing the Health Insurance Exchange but two worth noting are SB 960 by Sen. Bill Brown, and HB 2130 by Rep. Kris Steele.

Health Insurance Exchange Impact on Independent Brokers

Several independent insurance brokers in Oklahoma are concerned about the impact the exchanges will have on their businesses.  The exchanges operate contrary to the free enterprise system and most likely will put the independent insurance broker out of business.  Click here to hear the 2/27/11 interview with Mark Croucher of WHY-Insurance. 

To contact Governor Fallin about this issue:
Phone: 405-521-2342

To call Senate Pro-Temp Brian Bingman:
Phone: 405-521-5528
Email: bingman@oksenate.gov

To call House Speaker Kris Steele:
Phone: 1-405-557-7345
Email: krissteele@okhouse.gov

More on this subject in the weeks ahead.

Reminder – OKC Action Forum Thursday, October 7, 2010

The next OK-SAFE Action Forum will be this Thursday, Oct. 7, 2010.

Location: The Village Library, 10307 N. Penn Ave., The Village Library, The Village, OK (north OKC)

Time: 6:30pm – 8:15 pm.

Subjects covered will include a brief power point on the Earmark process, how the appropriation process works, who are the requestors and recipients of the money in Oklahoma.  Discussion will also cover the subject of HUB Zones, (federal designations), enterprise zones & opportunity zones (state designations), and which technology companies are linked to them.

Be prepared for a lively group discussion on the 11 state questions on the upcoming November 2, 2010 Oklahoma ballot.  OK-SAFE’s State Question Summary is available on our website at www.ok-safe.com, just click on Non-Partisan Oklahoma Voter Guide or download pdf here.

After the Octoer 7th meeting the  OK-SAFE Action Forums will be changing to a different meeting schedule, with the dates of the meetings to be determined as needed and convenient for attendance.  This move will allow for more time for research, open up the calendar for a different meeting schedule and allow for more content.

It will also help alleviate the ‘so many meetings to attend’ anxiety many  Oklahoma activists have expressed having and which has shown to be counterproductive.

Stayed tuned for notices of future meeting times, dates, and locations.

See you at 6:30 pm, Thursday, Oct. 7 at The Village Library in Oklahoma City, OK.

Ah, consensus! Compromising one’s values for a politician’s promise…

“Ah consensus … the process of abandoning all beliefs, principles, values and policies in search of something in which no one believes, but to which no one objects; the process of avoiding the very issues that have to be solved, merely because you cannot get agreement on the way ahead.  What great cause would have been fought and won under the banner ‘I stand for consensus’?” — Margaret Thatcher

The Oklahoma primary, held Tuesday, July 27, 2010, resulted in less than encouraging outcomes for those who know what time it is in America and what is at stake in OK: the continuation of big government assaults on life, liberty and property; the chipping away at this country’s remaining foundations.  In essence, the end of this country as we have known it.

The most-watched race was the OK Governor’s race, a contest between the establishment’s choice, Congresswoman Mary Fallin (a voter of the Bailout and other big-government bills), and OK Senator Randy Brogdon, the constitutional conservative with the grassroots support and the on-point message. Faux conservative vs. the  real deal.

Faux won the primary.  But just barely.

On the Republican ticket, 54% of the primary vote went to Fallin; 46% voted against Fallin.  (Brogdon, projected by ‘experts’ to get 18% of the vote actually garnered almost 40%, with the other two Republican primary candidates drawing roughly 5.5% of the Republican vote). 

This 54/46 vote split is a pretty accurate reflection of the ideological breach in the Republican party.

On the Democrat side, current OK Lt. Governor Jari Askins won over the favored Drew Edmondson, the current Attorney General:  50.28% Askins, 49.72% Edmondson.  Just about down the middle.  

The ‘experts’ were wrong on both the projected Brogdon numbers and the expected Edmondson win. 

The dating game begin.

During the debate and leading up the election Fallin, characterized as a ‘mama grizzly’ by Sarah Palin, ignored the grassroots, refused to debate Randy Brogdon at every opportunity, ran away from tough questions, avoided any situation where there was a hint of being held accountable for her voting record, and wouldn’t committing to reducing the size of government.  

Very un-grizzlyish.  More pudding-ish.

The primary is over and the numbers make it obvious that Fallin does not have enough support to win in November without the committment of that 46% anti-Fallin block.  Hence, the courting and wooing of the Brogdon supporters has begun.  [There are currently more registered Democrats than Republicans in the state of Oklahoma and the Fallin camp knows that in order to win they need all the grassroots votes, plus votes from the Democrat side.]

The skilled and well-practiced establishment machine has already approached a sampling of the grassroots groups and has apparently convinced a few of them that they can be part of driving a ‘hard bargain’ with the Fallin camp, and that if they get behind Fallin-the-grizzly they’ll get certain pieces of legislation passed next session, i.e. Open Carry, no RFID chips in the OK driver’s license, and the Firearms Freedom Act.

Bunkum.  

This is a con-game, played election after election.  It’s a play that works to persuade the grassroots folks to go along with the agenda-driven establishment, filled with promises and assurances. 

The grassroots will be told such things as ‘We got the message loud and clear – 46% voted for someone else,’ or  ‘46% want smaller government,’ or ‘states really do need to stand up to the Federal government,’ and the ever-present ‘help us and we’ll make sure you’ll have a seat at the table.’

The result of buying into this routine will be as it always has been – folks will be used, then ignored after the election. 

Compromising on core principles has never resulted in a good or righteous outcome.  (Think back through your own life – when did compromising on a value or a Godly principle ever net a good result?  What righteous cause in history was ever won by giving up on a core principle, such as the right to life, liberty and property?  What people ever became free because they made a deal with the king?)

If the Oklahoma grassroots groups, who have grown in number and who are right on the issues, compromise their positions for a politician’s promise, their movement will regress and they will once more become meaningless, inconsequential, and to be ignored.

Packaging a candidate?  

Read a little bit recently about the election of Jimmy Carter, the insider who was marketed as an outsider by the political machine, and who was described by one ardent supporter thusly, “He’s a conservative to conservatives, a moderate to moderates, a liberal to liberals.  Jimmy Carter has believability!”  He was packaged and sold to the public by a political machine who knew what the public wanted to hear and see.

But inside the packaging was the real Jimmy Carter and his 4 years in office (1977-1981) proved disastrous.

The political machinery, in order to grab that 46% voting block, will begin marketing Mary Fallin as a constitutional conservative to the constitutionalists, as a tea party candidate to the tea partiers, and as limited-government to the limited-government camps.  Expect to hear and see quotes from the Founding Fathers, Declaration of Independence, etc.

This package will be as genuine as Jimmy Carter.  As Bush and Obama, and all the other fictionalized political characters out there.  And the public will buy it. 

Again.

Truth revealed re: Palin endorsement of Mary Fallin

Below is a response to the recent weird endorsement by Sarah Palin of Congresswoman Mary Fallin, a 2010 Republican candidate for Oklahoma governor.  Fallin’s elitist leanings and bailout vote is well known in Oklahoma, as well as her recent marriage to a D.C. Democrat.   Fallin, with almost $750,000 in campaign contributions,  is a corporatist, not a Tea Party/Grassroots candidate, but look who endorsed her:  Sarah Palin.  What’s up with that?

Email the Palin camp at info@sarahpac.com

Dear Sarah PAC,

 

The decision to endorse big-government, bailout-voting Mary Fallin for governor of Oklahoma is a telling one, revealing how the establishment Republican machine works and what the ‘Sarah Palin’ product is really about.

 

Palin’s role? To secure the “Tea Party/grassroots” support for big-government corporatists in the Republican primaries and to give political cover to the insiders using her.

 

Oklahomans know that D.C. insider Mary Fallin has the same attitude toward regular citizens that the BP Chairman has toward the people affected by the oil spill – they are ‘the small people.’ The ‘small people’ live in the wrong zip codes and can be ignored. 

 

Oklahomans know that Mary Fallin is an aloof, slightly dim candidate who doesn’t answer questions or debate issues.  Surrounded by elites, Fallin knows she doesn’t have to do anything except follow the dictates of the big-government types who are funding her campaign and remember to say “Constitution” once in a while in her speeches. 

 

Thank you for shedding light on Palin’s real purpose and role in this election: providing cover for the same corrupt establishment that got Americans into the situation we’re now facing.

 

While it is always better to have the truth revealed, it would have been better for Oklahoma for Palin to stay out of this election.

Amanda Teegarden

Republican Precinct Chair

Tulsa County Republican Executive Committee member

Tulsa, OK

 

OK-SAFE Action Forums – Tulsa/OKC

Save these Dates –

OK-SAFE, Inc. Action Forum meeting are held twice monthly -on the 1st Thursday of the month in Tulsa, OK and on the 2nd Thursday of the month in Oklahoma City, OK.

November 2009 Action Forum dates:

I) November 5th, 2009 – Tulsa Action Forum – concluded.

II) November 12th, 2009 – OKC Action Forum:

Location: The Village Library, 10307 N. Pennsylvania Ave., The Village, OK (north OKC area)

Time: 6:45pm-8:15pm

Subject: PPT entitled Fusion Centers or I Spy for the Intelligence Enterprise; plus discussion on the real agenda behond the proposal to ban texting while driving.

December 2009 Action Forum dates:

I) December 3rd, 2009 – Tulsa Action Forum, Hardesty Regional Library, 93rd & S. Memorial Rd., Tulsa, OK  6:45pm – 8:15 pm.

II) December 10th, 2009 – OKC Action Forum, The Village Libary, 10307 N. Pennsylvania Ave., The Village, OK 6:45pm – 8:15 pm.

Mark your calendars and make plans to attend these informative, action oriented meetings.

Reminder – The OK 2010 Legislative Session begins Monday, Februrary 1, 2009 – Be ready to lobby for legislation that works to restore constitutionally limited government and which upholds state’s rights.

Read and become familiar with Fusion Centers and the concepts behind them which radically changed the purpose of law enforcement and which foster the growth of the federal government.  See the OK-SAFE website for details.

Read the booklet Understanding Sustainable Development by Freedom Advocates.  Link posted on the OK-SAFE website.