ON THE RECORD: May 5, 2014: Greg Sargent (Washington Post) writes (" Dems mull whether to boycott House GOP Benghazi hearing"). He writes: "The House GOP leadership just announced that Rep. Trey Gowdy will head the newly announced special committee to probe what happened in Benghazi. Gowdy, as it happens, has already informed America that he knows that the administration is guilty of a serious cover-up, claiming he has “evidence” of a “systematic, intentional decision” to withhold untold numbers of Benghazi documents from Congress. The question now is whether House Dems will boycott the proceedings. Over the weekend, Dem Rep. Adam Schiff suggested they should, on the grounds that this will be a “colossal waste of time” that doesn’t deserve to be treated with any “credibility,” given how much has already gone into investigating Benghazi. This provoked outrage from Republicans." Without going into great detail, there are questions that need to be definetively answered and though that may not actually bother Democrats, unless they deal with it now, it will affect a potential run by Hillary Clinton or even Joe Biden (since we was VP at the time). If there is nothing then no one has anything to worry about. The Obama administration has a long history of ending debate and investigation on issues by just saying "It's over," even though nothing has really been investigated.
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ON THE RECORD: Feb 25, 2014: Greg Sargent on unveiled the "documentation" offered by Americans for Prosperity to back up its recent anti-Obamacare campaign commercial airing in Michigan. The ad featured a local leukemia patient named Julie Boonstra, complaining about her experience under Obamacare. The ad's target, Gary Peters, a Democratic candidate for Senate, demanded that the group back up its claims. The documentation does not contradict the expert debunking of the original ad performed by Glenn Kessler of the Washington Post. In the ad, Boonstra relates her old insurance was canceled "because of Obamacare," and under her new, ACA-compliant plan, "the out-of-pocket costs are so high, it’s unaffordable." The ad also implies she lost her cancer doctor in the changeover, but that turns out to be untrue. As Kessler pointed out, the costs of Boonstra's old and new plan are essentially identical. Her old plan had a "low" out-of-pocket annual maximum (how low hasn't been made public), and the new plan has an out-of-pocket maximum of $6,350. But her monthly premiums have come down from $1,100 to $571 a month. That's a savings of $6,348 for the year, which covers her maximum. So what does Americans for Prosperity say about that? They cite a story published by Politico last September, quoting a health company spokeswoman saying consumers may face "the potential for unpredictable, expensive, out-of-pocket costs in plans with higher deductibles." (SOURCE: Michael Hiltzik: Los Angeles Times: "A tea party group's lame 'documentation' of its anti-Obamacare ad")
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