◼ President Obama’s old friends in the ACORN crime syndicate have decided to get a piece of the big-money Obamacare action. United Labor Unions (ULU) Local 100 in New Orleans, which is run by ACORN founder Wade Rathke, announced on its Facebook page that it’s gearing up “to do mass enrollment and help navigate people into the marketplaces in Arkansas, Louisiana, and Texas under the Affordable Care Act!” - Matthew Vadum/American Spectator
Be afraid. Wherever Rathke goes, lawlessness follows.
...“Local 100’s role as a Navigator, suggest[s] the program is less about health care and more about building a new progressive infrastructure,” says longtime ACORN-watcher Mike Flynn of Breitbart.com.
Among the other left-wing groups hopping on the Obamacare navigator bandwagon are the Democrat-friendly Planned Parenthood, National Urban League, and Virginia Poverty Law Center Inc.
Other left-wing groups have signed up with the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) as “Champions of Coverage.” They vow to promote enrollment by emailing their members, hanging posters, giving out fact sheets and brochures, holding conference calls, or promoting enrollment in other ways.
Among the Champions of Coverage are Families USA, League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC), NAACP, Service Employees International Union (SEIU), and U.S. PIRG Education Fund.
Enrollment will be a dangerous free-for-all because Obamacare “navigators” are barely regulated at all. By the way, the only reason there are any “navigators” is to help the left, as HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius has more or less admitted. Imposing rules would only interfere with community organizers’ ability to wreak havoc and spread the gospel of so-called social justice....
These community organizers will have access to “social security numbers and tax information” and HHS isn’t even planning on running background checks before sending them out into the field. “Besides the obvious identity theft concerns, this is a frightening development in light of the political activities and invasion of privacy, which the IRS and others have engaged in during the Obama presidency,” Jindal says.
But as we’ve learned in the Obama era, this kind of craziness is par for the course with community organizers.
◼ Seedco: Obamacare's Fraud-Stained Navigators - Michelle Malkin/Townhall
Welcome to ObamaWreck! Americans nationwide spent Tuesday struggling with the much-hyped "Affordable Care Act" health insurance exchanges. Server meltdowns, error messages and security glitches plagued the federal and state government websites as open enrollment began. But when taxpayers discover exactly who will be navigating them through the bureaucratic maze, they may be glad they didn't get through.
U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius controls a $54 million slush fund to hire thousands of "navigators," "in-person assisters" and counselors, who are now propagandizing and recruiting Obamacare recipients into the government-run exchanges. As I warned in May, the Nanny State navigator corps is a serious threat to Americans' privacy. Background checks and training requirements are minimal to nonexistent. A history of fraud is no barrier to entry.
Case in point: the seedy nonprofit Seedco. This community-organizing group snagged lucrative multimillion-dollar navigator contracts in Georgia, Maryland, Tennessee and New York. The New York Post reports this week that the outfit "is partnering with dozens of agencies, such as the Gay Men's Health Crisis, Food Bank for New York City and the Chinese American Planning Council, in each of (the Big Apple's) five boroughs." They'll have access to potential enrollees' income levels, birthdates, addresses, eligibility for government assistance, Social Security numbers and intensely personal medical information.
