If you’ve been around awhile you know that we’ve already used up a generation’s worth of great slogans: “ Yes We Can,” “Hope and Change,” “Change You Can Believe In,” and - my personal favorite - “Forward!”
In addition to those blockbusters, we’ve sailed with a whole slew of minor slogans that served their purpose, butt rather quickly ran their course. Like “Win the Future” (WTF?), “Kinetic Military Action,” (KMA...WTF?) “We Do Big Things,” and “Bin Laden’s Dead, GM is Alive.”
GM may be alive, butt Detroit is on life support
“Race to Green” which was part of the "Better Buildings Initiative," which may or may not have been part of the “Win the Future” and “Startup America” campaign for “Jobs! Jobs! Jobs!,” and finally, a great 2012 campaign slogan: “An Economy Built to Last”(!???)
Except in Detroit, where it didn’t
And I’m sure you’ve enjoyed all these slogans as much as I have.
Now, though, in conjunction with the post Independence Day Friday document dump – and because “Change” is still one of our operating slogans - it looks like we’re going to adapt it to reflect a new reality; something else we’re really good at.
Butt first, let’s review the major information contained in Friday’s dump:
New regulations published Friday scaled back the federal government’s role in determining whether information submitted to new health marketplace is accurate.
After encountering “legislative and operational barriers,” the federal government will not require the District and the 16 states that are running their own marketplaces to verify a consumer’s statement that they do not receive health insurance from their employer.
“The exchange may accept the applicant’s attestation regarding enrollment in eligible employer-sponsored plan . . . without further verification,” according to the final rule.
We call this the “Don’t Ask Because We Don’t Know How To Tell” policy, butt that’s not the new slogan; after much debate and back and forth with the gang, this is what we came up with. What do you think?
You see, it appears that the Big Brains around here reached the conclusion that they just don’t have the manpower, knowhow or equipment to actually go through the trouble of verifying people’s income as mandated, so they “just-a waived it!” (h/t Father Sarducci)
That’s right; they waived the provision that requires people to verify that they qualify. They decided it would be too hard to make them prove it so we’re going to put the American people on the honor system. Just like with the Amnesty plan – “you tell us how long you’ve been here and what you owe in back taxes.” What could go wrong?
I can see how normally you might think that a major punt like this might indicate a systemic level of incompetence seldom seen outside of government. Butt in Captain Sebelius’ and her HHS crew’s defense,
how would you like to be responsible for implementing the requirements stipulated in 2,700 pages of the “Affordable” Care Act legislation and 20,000+ pages of administrative rules (so far)? Sometimes things really are too hard to do! Or as this Dilbert principle succinctly puts it: “If a job’s worth doing, its too hard,” which has the potential for future campaign slogans so I think I’ll keep it in my hard drive.
So I believe you see our dilemma: if it were easy,
a caveman could do it.
And we don’t have any cavemen around here, just really, really big-brains:
And they’re all much better at the big picture part of “transforming America” than they are with the implementation. That’s what we have little people for. Who apparently let us down.
So I’m just thinking: the next time we get a really big idea about how to “fundamentally transform America” perhaps we should pause and reflect on this for a moment:
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Cross-Posted on Patriot Action Network