Veritas Project exposes Enroll America, Team Obama’s Rule No. 17

Before James O’Keefe and the Veritas Project, conservatives could only speculate whether liberals and government officials would facilitate prostitution or fraud.

While it is gratifying to know that our suspicions were correct, it is sad for the country that we were right. O’Keefe’s latest expose of Enroll America and the resignation of Chris Tarango, the group’s Texas communications director, also highlights a familiar problem for the mainstream media covering President Barack Obama and his administration. After weeks, months or years of ignoring a scandal, how does the MSM explain that out-of-the-blue some liberal is resigning? When Americans ask why someone just quit, the MSM has no choice but to explain it was over a scandal they never bothered to tell you about.

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In the case of Tarango, the young man was way, way too open about his group’s commitment to Obama and his policies. It was not a surprise, conservatives suspected it all along. Enroll America’s board of directors is packed with not only friends of ObamaCare, but individuals from companies that will directly benefit from the president’s healthcare reforms: Teva Pharmaceuticals, Maryland Citizen’s Health Initiative, Families USA, National Association of Community Health Centers, Blue Shield of California, Kaiser Permanente, the American Hospital Association and, of course, sadly, the Catholic Health Association of the United States, led by pro-abortion advocate Sister Carol Keehan. The non-partisan watchdog Cause of Action filed a July 29 complaint with the IRS about Enroll America that escaped the notice of the MSM. At the time, the group’s executive director Daniel Epstein said it was absurd to grant Enroll America non-profit status, when it was obviously the marketing arm of profit-seeking entities. “If Enroll America is designed to benefit insurance companies instead of the American public, then its charitable status no longer applies,” he said. “An organization that has been granted tax deductible status but is actually depriving the American people of taxable revenue warrants an investigation,” he said. No, conservatives were not surprised when O’Keefe caught Tarango dead to rights on video. The surprise was that liberals have become so comfortable about their invulnerability to criticism that they will spill the beans to strangers. In the video, the former communications director explains to an undercover Veritas investigator that Enroll America, Organizing for America, the legacy of the Obama for America team and Battleground Texas, a grassroots political group, are all made of “Obama 2012 people,” who went in three different directions, but are all working together. The investigator pressed Tarango to give him confidential personal data of ObamaCare enrollees, so his fake group, Committee for a Progressive Future, could use it as part of a get-out-the-vote drive. Although he admits it is illegal, Tarango said he can get the list and give it to the investigator, and his only concern is that the enrollees might not be active voters, so the effort might be a waste of money.

“Rule No. 17,” “Do whatever it f@ck*ng takes.”

Tarango also repeatedly refers to “Rule No. 17,” which he described as: “Do whatever it f@ck*ng takes.” Well, turns out we all knew Obama and his foot soldiers operate by Rule No. 17--heck look what Majority Leader Harry Reid (D.-Nev.) pulled last week to bury the filibuster—we just never knew what it was called. As liberals continue to do whatever it takes, conservatives need to step up their game, too. I do not mean matching criminal activity with criminal activity, but we have to stop acting like we are facing opponents who have America’s best interests at heart—and fight them as if our nation depended on it.