Bill O'Reilly vs. The Obamacare Navigators

Last night (November 11, 2013) on the O'Reilly factor, Bill O'Reilly uses the hidden "investigations" from Project Veritas ran by James O'Keefe.  In the report, it is shown that the Obamacare navigators encourage a "client" to not file all of their income because the "client" did not report the extra income from cleaning houses, cutting friends' hair, etc.  Another navigator told a "client" to not report his tobacco use.  However, there are several problems with O'Reilly's claim that there was fraud in the first instance and deceit in the second case.

Obamacare Grandfathered Plans

Glenn Kessler, a Washington Post Fact Checker, attempts to make sense of President Obama's promise that "if you like your plan, then you can keep it."  Kessler concludes that the Obama Administration cannot simply blame the insurance companies for not grandfathering insurance plans because the reason such plans are not grandfathered is due to the fact that the cutoff date to do so began 3.5 years before Obamacare was fully implemented.  Thus, the problem was how the law was written, not that insurance companies were trying to deliberately find ways to limit consumers on grandfathered plans because it did not serve the company's best interest.  On the surface this is a logical argument to make and worth looking into.  However, Kessler fails to dig deep into the actions of the insurance companies and he draws the wrong conclusion from the evidence that he lays out to make his case against the Obama Administration.

Ethics in Editorials

I was planning on writing something on Philosophy today, but certain circumstances forced me to deal with this issue.  But first the back story.

Bill O'Reilly gave himself the self-proclaimed title as Culture Warrior.  He argues that he looks out for everyday folks.  But is this true?  I will argue with a resounding 'NO'!  To look out for everyday people you cannot claim that people simply want stuff when they vote.  As O'Reilly said on during the 2012 election night coverage on Fox,

Introduction

Hello!  Welcome to my blog.  As my first post I will introduce myself and describe what this blog will cover. My name is Brian and I am 33 years old.  I am a resident of the great city of Pittsburgh.  My educational background began at Slippery Rock University where I majored in English and had a minor in philosophy.  After I graduated I was uncertain what direction I wanted my life to go.  During this time I became interested in politics, especially the role of religion in politics thanks to Fox's Bill O'Reilly and his 'War On Christmas'.  It was at this time that I began to formulate my political views as a social Progressive.  By this I mean that all choices of an individual ought to be deemed outside the scope of government interference and that our duties as citizens ought to be continually on guard to protect minority groups and their freedom to choose and their freedom to be who they are without condemnation (i.e. homosexual, socialist, Islamic, etc.).