Daily Catch: Covered California Enrolling GOP to Vote Democrat, Koch Wars, Speechless Sebelius, and more

It Begins: Is Obamacare going to be used to recruit voters into the Democratic Party? In La Mesa, Calif., a couple received a voter registration card – pre-marked with an “x” in the box next to Democratic Party – after signing up for Covered California, the state’s Obamacare exchange. The letter and voter registration card came directly from Covered California. The couple has always registered to vote Republican.

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White House to Target Bovine Flatulence: From DailyCaller.com: “The White House has proposed cutting methane emissions from the dairy industry by 25 percent by 2020. Although U.S. agriculture only accounts for about 9 percent of the country’s greenhouse gas emissions, according to the Environmental Protection Agency, it makes up a sizeable portion of methane emissions — which is a very potent greenhouse gas. Some of these methane emissions come from cow flatulence, exhaling and belching — other livestock animals release methane as well.”

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Big Labor Beat Down: The National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) is taking pushback from Republicans in the U.S. House and Senate. The NLRB used to be the federal board tasked with arbitrating disputes between labor and management. But under the Obama administration it has become a vehicle used to reward some of President Obama’s biggest campaign contributors – the unions. Two bills making their way through Congress would prevent unions from holding “ambush” elections and allow companies to keep workers information private. Presently, unions can hold elections just two weeks after petitioning for one and, under recent NLRB rule changes, they can acquire employee contact information, including home address, cell phone number, email, etc., from employers. Employee contact information, in tandem with ambush elections, allow national labor unions to grow their numbers through coercion, bullying, and stealth.

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Speechless: Health Secretary Kathleen Sebelius can’t find her words after a reporter tells her how unpopular Obamacare is in Oklahoma.

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Koch Wars: National Review Online’s Eliana Johnson details the national effort to turn unpopular Obamacare into a 2014 election sweep. It’s the “inside story of the Koch-funded ads giving Democrats fits.”

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The Uninsured: A soon-to-be-released report from RAND Corporation indicates that only one-third of all Obamacare signups were previously uninsured. The goal of Obamacare, of course, was to provide insurance to the uninsured. Although the Obama administration is touting more than 6 million enrollments at HealthCare.gov, the feds have been silent on how many of these individuals were previously uninsured.  

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Minimum Wage: U.S. Sen. Susan Collins is negotiating a minimum wage hike compromise with her senate colleagues, according to TheHill.com. Collins is reportedly aiming for a deal that avoids the potential loss of 500,000 jobs predicted by the Congressional Budget Office.

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Wasserman Shultz, Meet Fact-Checker: Democratic National chairperson Debbie Wasserman Schultz attacked Hobby Lobby’s lawsuit against Obamacare and as a result found herself on the wrong end of the Washington Posts “Fact Checker” column. In an MSNBC segment about Obamacare’s contraceptive/abortion coverage mandate, the Florida congresswoman said that 60 percent of women use birth control for something other than family planning. WaPo’s Glenn Kessler dug into the issue and found Wasser Schultz is dead wrong.