Despot-in-Chief Back to His Lawless Ways Yet Again

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Cue up the cries of tyranny, folks. The despot-in-chief is at his lawless ways yet again:

The Obama administration said it would allow people to sign up for plans on HealthCare.gov through April to avoid tax penalties for going uncovered in 2015. The extension, which adds more than two months to the enrollment period for health coverage this year, was announced by Health and Human Services officials on Friday.

….People who pay penalties for going uncovered in 2014 and are still uninsured will be allowed to visit HealthCare.gov until the end of April….They will be able to apply for coverage starting March 15 as long as they attest that they didn’t learn about the health law’s requirement to carry insurance or pay the fine when they filed their taxes.

This is basically a recognition of the real-world reality that a lot of people are going to be pissed off when they realize they have to pay a tax penalty for lacking health insurance. So HHS is giving them a choice: once you find out about the penalty, you can either pay it or sign up for health coverage.

Does this make sense? Is HHS within its rights to do this? Will it help lots of people who are genuinely confused about the law? Is it just a bit of ass-covering from the Obama administration, which knows it will otherwise face a big backlash from folks who have to pay a penalty?

It doesn’t really matter. It’s lawlessness. It’s tyranny. It’s Obama shredding the Constitution yet again. It’s the end of the America we love. The soundtrack for this movie is a beloved conservative classic, and it’s coming to a TV screen near you in 3, 2, 1….

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THE FACTS SPEAK FOR THEMSELVES.

At least we hope they will, because that’s our approach to raising the $350,000 in online donations we need right now—during our high-stakes December fundraising push.

It’s the most important month of the year for our fundraising, with upward of 15 percent of our annual online total coming in during the final week—and there’s a lot to say about why Mother Jones’ journalism, and thus hitting that big number, matters tremendously right now.

But you told us fundraising is annoying—with the gimmicks, overwrought tone, manipulative language, and sheer volume of urgent URGENT URGENT!!! content we’re all bombarded with. It sure can be.

So we’re going to try making this as un-annoying as possible. In “Let the Facts Speak for Themselves” we give it our best shot, answering three questions that most any fundraising should try to speak to: Why us, why now, why does it matter?

The upshot? Mother Jones does journalism you don’t find elsewhere: in-depth, time-intensive, ahead-of-the-curve reporting on underreported beats. We operate on razor-thin margins in an unfathomably hard news business, and can’t afford to come up short on these online goals. And given everything, reporting like ours is vital right now.

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