Free Republic

**SNIP** “It is not the right time for Vermont” to pass a single-payer system, Shumlin acknowledged in a public statement ending his signature initiative. He concluded the 11.5 percent payroll assessments on businesses and sliding premiums up to 9.5 percent of individuals’ income “might hurt our economy.” Vermont’s outcome is a “small speed bump,” said New York Assembly member Richard Gottfried, who’s been pushing single-payer bills for more than 20 years. But opponents says it’s the end of the road. “If cobalt blue Vermont couldn’t find a way to make single-payer happen, then it’s very unlikely that any other state...

The one state that not only embraced Obamacare but insisted on going beyond it to a full single-payer system was Vermont, the haven of hippies and expatriate New Yorkers, which has become one of the most liberal states in the nation. In 2011, it adopted a form of neighboring Canada’s government-financed health care and promised to implement it by 2017. (And Jonathan Gruber was a key architect of this plan as well as of Obamacare.) This week, however, Governor Peter Shumlin, a Democrat, admitted the state couldn’t afford the plan’s $2 billion price tag and consequent sky-high taxes, and pulled...

If you’re looking for a state with a reliable Leftward tilt, you’d be hard pressed to do better than Vermont. After all, this is the place which has repeatedly elected Bernie Sanders – a man who considers the Democrat Party too conservative for his tastes – to statewide office since 1991. So in terms of socialist experimental laboratories, this is the spot where you’d want to launch progressive initiatives and take them for a test spin. That was the plan for Governor Peter Shumlin, who had promised his constituents that they would soon be enjoying the first in the...

The shocking news Wednesday that Governor Peter Shumlin (D-VT) has abandoned plans to introduce his long promised single-payer health care system to the Vermont Legislature in 2015 was a huge victory for conservative new media. As observers on the ground in Vermont confirmed Thursday, Breitbart News led the way. “Governor Shumlin would not have reversed course without Breitbart News and Michael Patrick Leahy exposing the Gruber factor and bringing the story to front of the public discussion in Vermont,” Darcie Johnston of Vermonters for Health Care Freedom told Breitbart News on Thursday. “Breitbart News and Michael Patrick Leahy’s laser focus...

Vermont Gov. Peter Shumlin on Wednesday dropped his plan to enact a single-payer health care system in his state — a plan that had won praise from liberals but never really got much past the framework stage. “This is not the right time” for enacting single payer, Shumlin said in a statement, citing the big tax increases that would be required to pay for it.

Calling it the biggest disappointment of his career, Gov. Peter Shumlin said Wednesday he was abandoning plans to make Vermont the first state in the country with a universal, publicly funded health care system. Going forward with a project four years in the making would require tax increases too big for the state to absorb, Shumlin said. The measure had been the centerpiece of the Democratic governor's agenda and was watched and rooted for by single-payer health care supporters around the country. "I am not going (to) undermine the hope of achieving critically important health care reforms for this state...

Jonathan Gruber’s health care forecasting is failing in Colorado as Vermont’s Gov. Peter Shumlin prepares to use the economist’s math for single-payer health care. As Vermonters anxiously await a Gruber-modeled financing plan for Green Mountain Care, modeling done for Colorado’s health exchange by Jonathan Gruber Associates has proven wildly erroneous. In 2011, following Colorado’s decision to set up a state health exchange for Obamacare, the state hired Gruber to forecast enrollment trends from which the state and federal government could estimate costs. According to a presentation delivered to the Colorado Health Benefit Exchange Board on Sept. 16, 2011, and provided...

Hillary Clinton is by far the most qualified person in the United States to serve as President. If she runs, I will support her. I have known Hillary for almost twenty-five years. We first met when I was the governor of Vermont and she was the First Lady, giving us the opportunity to work together in various capacities, particularly on expanding health care access. During those years, I have learned that she is one of the most conscientious and competent people I have ever met. She has an enormous capacity to analyze and solve problems. She has a work ethic...

MONTPELIER, Vt. - Republican Candidate for Governor Scott Milne used a Monday press conference to announce he's not giving up on becoming the state's next Commander in Chief. "I think I'll be a better governor for Vermont than Peter Shumlin," Scott Milne told reporters. That selection is up to 180 Vermonters -- the men and women who hold seats in the House and Senate. The vast majority are Democrats like the Governor. "It's their choice. If they choose him, the legislature must accept responsibility for the results," Milne said. Traditionally, when no candidate secures a majority, lawmakers vote for the...

Democrats hope to take back control of the Senate in 2016, but their plans could be complicated by potential retirements. The two Democratic senators most likely to retire are Sens. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) and Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.), who represent both sides of the party’s ideological spectrum. Boxer, whose fourth term expires at the end of 2016, has a paltry $149,000 in her campaign account, less than almost every other senator facing election next year. As the nation’s most populous state, California is expensive to cover with advertising. If Boxer decides to run for reelection, she would face a major fundraising...

Vermont Right to Life Committee Treasurer Sharon Toborg emailed a warning to pro-life Vermonters this week asking them to be careful of who they trust on the telephone. It seems that someone has been calling pro-lifers in the state claiming to be from “the Pro-Life Committee” or the “National Pro-Life Committee”. The caller is asking for donations by telephone to help the pro-life movement, however, it is definitely not a call from the Vermont Right to Life Committee (VRLC) or the National Right to Life Committee, which the VRLC is affiliated with. Toborg says VRLC has not solicited funds by...

When it came time for the US Senate to vote on the Keystone XL Pipeline, Sen. Mary Landrieu’s (D-LA) “clout” did not have much of an impact on fellow Democrat senators. In fact, 35 of the senators who voted against the project were given campaign cash by Landrieu since the 2008 election cycle. Take a look here at the list of senators who don’t seem to acknowledge Landrieu’s “clout.” Sen. Tammy Baldwin (D-WI) $10,000 Sen. Richard Blumenthal (R-CT) $5,000 Sen. Cory Booker (D-NJ) $10,000 Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-CA) $7,000 Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-OH) $10,000 Sen. Ben Cardin (D-MD) $3,500 Sen....

With only a handful of legislative days left before Congress calls it quits for the holiday season, it appears increasingly likely that Democratic Leader Harry Reid will cede the Senate majority to Republicans without confirming a new attorney general, leaving Eric Holder with the job he quit almost two months ago until at least January. The process to confirm a new attorney general, which typically takes weeks, has barely begun as members of the Senate have turned their focus to the Keystone pipeline, a bill to curb the National Security Agency's powers, and dozens of lower-level administration nominees. Given the...

The US Senate has just voted down the USA Freedom Act by a vote of 58-42, leaving it just two votes shy of the 60 it needed. The bill would have ended the controversial phone record metadata collection by the NSA, but the Senate was not in favor of rolling back any of the NSA's broad surveillance powers. While telephone companies would have still collected the data in question, the records would have stayed in the hands of the phone companies and a new type of court order would have been needed by the government to access these records. Additionally,...

Latest dispatch from the "dissent is patriotic" is dead front: Howard Dean has accused people who don't share his political views of being "authoritarian people who fundamentally don't believe in democracy." Poor Howard, who declared the times to be very "frightening and disconcerting," made his astounding accusation on today's Up With Steve Kornacki while attempting to explain the Republican sweep on the statehouse level. View the video here.

Howeird Dean-- once chair of the DNC, once Governor of Vermont, who grew up at the Maidstone Golf Club in the Hamptons, attended prep school both in the US and in the UK, went to Yale, dodged the draft-- is having a meltdown again.Once famous for melting down on the air after coming in third in the Iowa caucuses, thereby ensuring he won nothing else, Dean is complaining that Obamacare was written by a bunch of elitists who don’t understand Americans.Well, duh: They’re Democrats. “The core problem under this damn law is that it was put together by a bunch...

Obamacare architect Jonathan Gruber made $4 million pimping Obamacare. ** $400,000 from Health and Human Services ** $1.6 MM from other states, and that’s just four of them. ** Another $2 milion from HHS for other work. It was a nice gig. The dude made millions because of his central role in lying to get health care passed. Video surfaced this week of Jonathan Gruber admitting the Obama administration lied to “stupid” Americans in order to get Obamacare passed. Jonathan Gruber made $400,000 from HHS. He also made an additional $3.6 million for consulting with states. Glenn Kessler at The...

Leftovers: A roundup of uncalled races By: Kevin Robillard November 6, 2014 02:28 PM EST More than 36 hours after the last polls closed, two statewide races in Alaska, the Virginia Senate race and a slew of West Coast House races have yet to be called.Here’s how things stand:THE HOUSEAZ-2: Highly touted Republican recruit Martha McSally leads Democratic Rep. Ron Barber by just under 1,300 votes. The Arizona Republic reports that only a few thousand votes remain uncounted in Cochise County, while 47,000 votes still need to be counted in Democrat-friendly Pima County.CA-7: Former GOP Rep. Doug Ose has...

Vermont legislature will pick governor, the Associated Press reports. Neither Democratic Gov. Peter Shumlin nor Republican challenger Scott Milne won the majority of the vote.

Generally left-leaning ice-cream company Ben and Jerry’s has refused to rename its “Hazed and Confused” hazelnut ice-cream flavor despite cries from activists that it’s insensitive to hazing victims. “It didn’t make sense for us to change the name,” Ben and Jerry’s spokesman Sean Greenwood told Bloomberg. “We named it after a pop-culture reference.” Greenwood said the company did not see anything about the flavor name that “even inferred” [sic] hazing. But that’s not how Lianna and Brian Kowiak of Tampa feel, who say they were “shocked” and “dismayed” to see an ice-cream flavor with that name. “The company completely...