;)
The Commentariat -- April 2, 2014
Internal links, graphics & related text removed.
Amy Goldstein & Juliet Eilperin of the Washington Post: "President Obama announced Tuesday that more than 7 million Americans have signed up for health plans under the Affordable Care Act, the most ambitious federal effort in nearly half a century to widen access to coverage. The tally, which signified a sharp turnaround from the troubled beginnings of enrollment last fall, was driven upward by a late rush of consumers seeking coverage in the days and hours before the deadline of midnight Monday to enroll in health plans for 2014." ...
... CW: It was a good speech, worth your watching:
... Shit-tastic. Edward-Isaac Dovere & Carrie Brown of Politico: "There was a word White House officials had for Monday, the final day of Obamacare enrollment: 'S--t-tastic.' 'S--t,' because they couldn't believe that the website had crashed again, and they couldn't get it back for hours. '-Tastic' because this time, the problems were actually because of traffic so high that it caught even the most optimistic people in the White House by surprise." ...
... Jonathan Cohn of the New Republic: "... the available data points offer hints about what is happening. And while they don't add up to a clear, definitive vindication of the law, they are enough to justify some real optimism -- the kind that hasn't been possible since October 1, the day healthcare.gov launched, crashed, and nearly took the whole liberal cause into cyberhell with it." ...
I think they're cooking the books on this. -- Sen. John Barrasso (RTP-Wy.), on White House reports of ObamaCare sign-ups
Even by GOP standards, this was a rather extraordinary moment. A member of the Senate Republican leadership -- indeed, the chair of the Senate Republican Policy Committee – went on national television to accuse the White House of perpetrating a fraud based on nothing but his own hopes. -- Steve Benen
... Brian Beutler of Salon: "Over the past several days we've been presented with a wealth of evidence that the conventional theory of the Affordable Care Act and the coming midterm elections is flawed.... Democrats and their allies are also, finally, defending the law in earnest.... Republicans don't have a good answer to the shifting on-the-ground reality, so they're denying it altogether.... And if Obamacare fatigue creates the space Democrats need to make the election about multiple policy issues, then Republicans will have a huge problem on their hands." ...
... Ed Kilgore is less optimistic than Beutler: "Let's face it: our friends on the Right have managed to keep the embers of Benghazi! glowing for a year-and-a-half. They will find ways to demonize Obamacare every day at least through November." ...
... Steve M. is not "doing the Snoopy dance" over ObamaCare sign-ups, either. ...
... Sahil Kapur of TPM: Conservative writers discover that ObamaCare helps a lot of people; elected GOP officials -- still pushing repeal. ...
... OR, as the Politico headline has it: "ObamaCare Critics: 'Homina, Homina, Homina." (A revision, oddly, from "Hubida, Hubida, Hubida."
... Steve M. changes his view: "... I've assumed that the media's national narrative on the health care law would just continue to be driven by Republicans, but I've been pleasantly surprised at this week's press -- Democrats actually seem to have changed the Obamacare story. It's now a triumph-over-adversity story...." ...
... CW: Steve & Ed Kilgore may have been right in the first place. One Politico story is not a sea-change. David Nather, the author of Politico story, is not one of Politico's wingers. He co-wrote a book on the ACA with former Senate Democratic Leader Tom Daschle....
... Ferinstance, as Andy Borowitz "reports," "Accusing them of involvement in 'a widespread conspiracy to save President Obama's failed health-care program,' Rep. Darrell Issa (R-California) today subpoenaed the approximately seven million Americans who have signed up for Obamacare so far." The beat goes on. ...
... Arit John of the Atlantic picks the best & worst pundit predictions on the success/failure of ObamaCare. Guess what? The libruls wuz right. ...
... ** Hobby Lobby Hypocrites. Molly Redden of Mother Jones: "... while it was suing the government [over its owners' religious objections of contraceptive coverage], Hobby Lobby spent millions of dollars on an employee retirement plan that invested in the manufacturers of the same contraceptive products the firm's owners cite in their lawsuit. Documents filed with the Department of Labor and dated December 2012 -- three months after the company's owners filed their lawsuit -- show that the Hobby Lobby 401(k) employee retirement plan held more than $73 million in mutual funds with investments in companies that produce emergency contraceptive pills, intrauterine devices, and drugs commonly used in abortions. Hobby Lobby makes large matching contributions to this company-sponsored 401(k)." Thanks to Akhilleus for the link. ...
... Speaking of hypocrisy, Driftglass reprises an amazing four-year-old letter from conservative Russell King begging his fellow conservatives to behave like sane adults. Apparently, conservatives had their eyes shut & their fingers in their ears & were shouting lalalalala.
Spencer Ackerman & James Ball of the Guardian: "US intelligence chiefs have confirmed that the National Security Agency has used a 'back door' in surveillance law to perform warrantless searches on Americans' communications. The NSA's collection programs are ostensibly targeted at foreigners, but in August the Guardian revealed a secret rule change allowing NSA analysts to search for Americans' details within the databases. Now, in a letter to Senator Ron Wyden, an Oregon Democrat on the intelligence committee, the director of national intelligence, James Clapper, has confirmed for the first time the use of this legal authority to search for data related to 'US persons'."
Russell Berman & Bernie Becker of the Hill: "Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) on Tuesday unveiled a budget that proposes to cut $5.1 trillion over a decade in a bid to erase the federal deficit, setting the stage for another election-year battle over the size of government and the future of Medicare and Medicaid. The nearly 100-page blueprint will likely be the last formal budget proposal from Ryan, the Republican chairman of the House Budget Committee, who wants to move to the more powerful Ways and Means Committee next year. [READ BUDGET HERE.]" ...
... Sy Mukherjee of Think Progress: Ryan's budget "contains many of the same cuts to social safety net and low-income assistance programs as his previous proposals -- including sweeping changes to Medicare that would turn the health care program for the elderly into a 'premium support' plan that forces American seniors to pay more for their coverage." CW: Apparently, Ryan thinks an excellent way to show his compassion for the poor is to make sure the elderly poor carry much of the load of his phony deficit reduction plan. Maybe the ex-altar boy should recommend his plan to Pope Francis. ...
... Charles Pierce: Ryan's budget "is going nowhere, obviously, but it once again illustrates that Ryan's devotion to zombie-eyed granny-starver does not arise from his profound concern about The Deficit, but, rather, is based in a nearly theological opposition to the government's efforts to do anything except raise an army and protect the prerogatives of the upper classes."
Ros Krasnyl of Reuters: "The Republican-led U.S. House of Representatives on Tuesday advanced a bill that would require U.S. government weather agencies to focus more on predicting storms and less on climate studies. The chamber passed the measure, HR 2413, on a voice vote. Prospects in the Democrat-controlled Senate are uncertain, although the House version had 13 Republican and 7 Democrat co-sponsors." CW: Also, no more field studies on pots of gold at ends of rainbows, which the House deemed -- "like climate change, based on a nonscientific theory."
Pete Kasperowicz of the Hill: "The House on Tuesday passed legislation to provide economic assistance to Ukraine and sanction Russia, sending the package to President Obama a few weeks after Russia formally took control of Ukraine's Crimean peninsula. In a 378-34 vote, members passed a bipartisan, bicameral bill to provide $1 billion in loan guarantees to Ukraine, as well as security aid. The Senate-amended H.R. 4152 also codifies sanctions against Russia in response to its military intervention into Ukraine."
Ben Clayman & Eric Beech of Reuters: "General Motors Co CEO Mary Barra on Tuesday called her company's slow response to at least 13 deaths linked to faulty ignition switches 'unacceptable,' but could not give U.S. lawmakers many answers as to what went wrong as she pointed to an ongoing internal investigation." The Washington Post story, by Michael Fletcher & Steven Mufson, is here.
Mary Walsh of the New York Times: "Officials of Caterpillar sparred with members of a Senate panel on Tuesday, defending more than a decade's worth of tax practices that put most of the company's profits out of reach of United States tax authorities. Members of the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations came to a hearing on corporate tax avoidance armed with extensive evidence that since 1999, Caterpillar had been channeling its most profitable operations through a subsidiary in Switzerland, where it negotiated a tax rate of just a fraction of the American rate. They said the case exemplified ploys that American companies use to keep an estimated $2 trillion of profits offshore."
James Ball: "The new CEO of Mozilla, the not-for-profit organisation behind the Firefox web browser, declined on Tuesday to offer a rationale for his 2008 donation in support of California's gay marriage ban, insisting he would remain in post despite a backlash over his appointment. Giving interviews for the first time since he was announced as the new boss of Mozilla on 24 March, Brendan Eich repeatedly refused to be drawn on his stance on gay rights amid a widespread row over his $1,000 donation in support of the successful Proposition 8 ballot measure."
Dana Milbank: Sheldon Adelson, the Koch brothers "and other wealthy people, their political contributions unleashed by the Supreme Court's Citizens United decision, are buying the U.S. political system in much the same way Russian oligarchs have acquired theirs." Meanwhile, Congress can't solve real problems for real people because they don't have billionaire backing.
Philip Bump of the Atlantic: "The source of black poverty isn't black culture; it's American culture."
Presidential Election 2016
Adam Edeson of the New York Daily News: "Chris Christie says he isn't letting the still-evolving Bridgegate scandal weigh down his potential 2016 plans. The embattled New Jersey governor told Fox News Channel's 'The Kelly File' that the political problems arising from the suspicious closures of multiple traffic lanes on the George Washington Bridge last year won't affect whether he'll run for president. 'If you don't have baggage they'll create baggage for you. That's politics in America today,' Christie said." ...
... CW Translation: Actions have no consequences. "They" would try to do in Mother Teresa.
Beyond the Beltway
Tony Merevick of BuzzFeed: "After simultaneous debate in both chambers of the Mississippi Legislature Tuesday, state lawmakers approved a religious freedom bill that some have argued could lead to discrimination against LGBT people and others. First in the House, the bill passed 79-43, and later, Senate lawmakers approved the bill with a wide majority. Gov. Phil Bryant [R] is expected to sign the bill into law." CW: Calling this crap "a religious freedom bill" is a crime against journalism.
Right Inside the Beltway
Mark DeBonis & Aaron Davis of the Washington Post: "Muriel E. Bowser, a low-key but politically canny District lawmaker, won the [Washington, D.C.] Democratic mayoral nomination Tuesday, emerging from a pack of challengers in a low-turnout primary to deny scandal-tarnished incumbent Vincent C. Gray a second term. The 41-year-old D.C. Council member triumphed in the latest in a string of District elections to reveal a city unsettled over the shape of its future. Bowser's win heralds many more months of uncertainty as she faces a substantial general-election challenger while a lame-duck Gray is left to steer the city amid the threat of federal indictment." ...
... Manuel Roig-Franzia of the Washington Post profiles Bowser. ...
... The Post's Robert McCartney calls the election "a vote for honest government."
News Ledes
USA Today: "The Supreme Court took another step Wednesday toward giving wealthy donors more freedom to influence federal elections. The justices ruled 5-4, in a decision written by Chief Justice John Roberts, that limits on the total amount of money donors can give to all candidates, committees and political parties are unconstitutional. The decision leaves in place the base limits on what can be given to each individual campaign."
AP: "Charles H. Keating Jr., the notorious financier who served prison time and was disgraced for his role in the costliest savings and loan failure of the 1980s, has died. He was 90."
Guardian: "Workers at a scrapyard in Thailand's capital accidentally detonated a large bomb believed to have been dropped during the second world war, killing at least seven people and injuring 19 others, police said."
AFP: "Romania has approved an increase in American troops at its military airbase on the Black Sea as Washington continues to shift its main transit base for Afghanistan away from Kyrgyzstan, a report said Tuesday."
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Reader Comments (11)
This paragraph from the Charles Keating obit posted on the NYTimes this morning makes me wonder—why anyone ever gave Alan Greenspan the (undeserved) respect and position of power for so long? He saw no 'foreseeable risk" back then with Keating...and later, as Fed Chair, he couldn't see the risk and the bubble developing right in front of him!
"Mr. Keating hired Alan Greenspan, soon to be chairman of the Federal Reserve, who compiled a report saying Lincoln’s depositors faced “no foreseeable risk” and praising a “seasoned and expert” management. And Mr. Keating called on Senators Alan Cranston of California, Donald W. Riegle Jr. of Michigan, John Glenn of Ohio and Dennis DeConcini and John McCain of Arizona, all recipients of his campaign largess, to pressure the bank board to relax its rules and kill its investigation."
At least, Keating got some prison time.
Re: Yea, but what have you done for me? WARNING: Personal opinion to follow. I am for Obamacare, hell, I'm for single payer universal health care because I think it is in the best interest of the country. Hell, I am for the socialization of the insurance industry. But if you ask the group of people closest to me; guys and gals that have too high of an income to qualify for Obamacare and too low to afford quality healthcare, I don't think many would say that Obamacare is a positive voting point for the Democrats. My premiums went sky high this year just like last year and just like next year. Higher and higher. To me and others like me the Democrats talk a good game about helping the "middle class"(?) blue collar worker but it sure isn't Obamacare. So I would not count on collecting my group's vote next year. I would not vote right but I guess is that there are plenty of voters that tilted left last election that will tilt back right. WARNING: you are following a large personal opinion
@JJG: None of my business, of course, but I'd love to know if you went shopping on the exchange & found you couldn't get a better deal.
Also, you know that your current premiums are paying for some benefits you likely didn't have before: like the insurer's inability to boot you if you fall off a ladder or to place annual &/or lifetime limits to you coverage. Also, some preventive care benefits are now "free" & insurers must pay for some rehabilitative services.
But, yeah, single payer.
Marie
@JJG
Sounds likes we are on the same page! In the last 5 years our insurance premiums and related costs have increased dramatically. Our insurance is through my husband's work (of which they pay a portion) and it sucks! Our premiums and deductibles are high, and increase each year. I visited the exchange to see if we might get a better plan at an affordable cost. No.
I went for a routine physical in August 2013. Under Obamacare cholesterol screening is included as a preventive care benefit: https://www.healthcare.gov/what-are-my-preventive-care-benefits/. So I was quite surprised to receive a bill for this test for the first time ever! I went in circles calling insurance company, doctor and even my local state representative. The best (and confusing) answer I received was from a person in the billing department at the doctor's office. She said my insurance company considered a deductible, although the doctor had coded it as a preventive test.
So, yes, I'm still waiting for health care reform (single payer)!!! Meanwhile, we try not to get sick.
The Russell King open letter to conservatives, republished by Driftglass and linked above, is eye-popping. And misery inducing.
We go along, day to day, and ingest the quotidian outrages from the right, piling them up in some closet in our brains, but rarely stepping in all the way to see the horrifying totality, the sum of all the outrages, the crippling hatred, the cynical hypocrisy, the vicious lies. It's as if there's a Dorian Gray-like group portrait of the Republican Party and their supporters tucked away somewhere. They all continue to look fairly normal (well, except for Bachmann, maybe Ryan...), average human beings. But the picture grows ever more gruesome and monstrous, a representation of the increasingly blighted soul of the party: hate-filled, vindictive, and, sorry, but there's no other word for so much of what they stand for, evil.
Outside they're all spit and polish, boy's regular haircuts, starched white shirts, conservative dresses and shoes, maybe even the occasional Pat Nixon cloth coat. But inside, they're the walking dead.
Read through the King letter. When you think you're almost at the end, continue to scroll down and your mouth will open as you scan through what would be pages and pages of shameful, mendacious, perfidious, criminal behavior that makes you wonder if we'll ever recover from this right-wing plague of violence and hatred.
Then it occurs to you that through the long slog of outrages, very few of them have merited more than a few lines from the media. In its totality, the catalog of hatreds and violations of basic humanity is appalling, harrowing. Why hasn't there been a push back of equal force?
Don't bother. The question is rhetorical. It's perhaps the tsunami of outrages from the right that makes these horrors just everyday occurrences.
And they know that. And at least some of them have to know that not only are they on the wrong side of history, they're losing and they will lose. And they can't stand it.
As G.B. Shaw once said, "Hatred is the coward's revenge for being intimidated".
Ain't it the truth.
And one gigantamundo intimidator of the right is that hell-spawned nemesis of Bible thumpers and real estate developers, SCIENCE (you have to say this like Thomas Dolby does in "She Blinded Me With SCIENCE!").
Sometimes you just have to say, WTF.
So here we are again. Wingnuts don't like what science has to say about global warming so what to do? I know! Pass a law against using science. And while we're at it, let's add something about how the NOAA better get better at something real. Like magic. Because that's pretty much what you'd need to predict exactly where and when tornadoes will appear and where they're likely to go, as Jim Bridenstine (R-WhereTheFuckElse? Oklahoma) wishes they would do instead of bothering all those nice people out there with climate change nonsense.
It's really not very far off from what North Carolina recently did when they made it against the law to use science to predict changes in sea level as that would make conservatives unhappy and make it difficult for North Carolina real estate developers to get funding to build multi-million dollar oceanfront mansions that will be underwater in a few decades.
Soooooo inconvenient. And a job killer as well!
So just make science against the law. The Church did it with Galileo. And despite the fact that there are STILL idiots who claim the Church was right, everyone who can pass a drug and tox screen knows the truth.
But that won't stop the morons from shoveling shit against the tide. And that tide keeps on rising (but don't ask Bill O'Reilly how the tide works...he don't know, he don't wanna know. Lalalalalala...)
She Blinded Me With SCIENCE! (So I made it illegal.)
RE today's McCutcheon SCOTUS decision:
Have thought for years that universal education and democracy are often awkward bedfellows, but because the ends of both education and democracy are worth the effort (and the occasional disappointments), the struggle is worth it. The attempt to educate everyone in a democratic republic isn not a zero-sum game. What benefits one has the potential to benefit all.
The obvious tension between unbridled capitalism and democracy, however, is a vastly different kind of struggle, possessing as it does both different ends and means. Vast wealth for some at the expense of the majority is always antithetical to democracy. While the rising tide trope contains a smidgeon of truth, the last thirty years (Gilded Age Redux) demonstrates even that smidgeon is fast disappearing. What is good for one is clearly not good for all.
With that in mind, this not wholly rhetorical question, asked admittedly before I have read the entire decision: what were the Supremes, upon whom we rely to protect and extend our democratic ideals, thinking?
I'll read the entire decision later tonight. Then maybe I'll have the answer.
It isn't bad enough that the Koch brothers fund shenanigans and spread their particular brand of noxious skullduggery on a national level, now they want to fuck with local governments in states they don't even live in or have any business with.
So people in Nashville have, for some years, been trying to get some high speed local bus transportation for people moving between the west and east sides of the city. A great idea. Great for business, great for residents. But suddenly, a group opposed to government doing anything for anybody but the rich got a huge influx of cash and help from the local chapter of the Koch hit-man group, Americans for Prosperity (aka Prosperity Only for Certain Americans). Republicans in the Tennessee senate got their marching orders and dutifully killed the funding for this bus line, based on the word of the Kochs.
This is beyond the fucking pale.
First, what do they care if the people of Nashville want to improve their transportation options and bring some additional dollars into the local economy? The Nashville MTA site cites examples of great benefits from similar projects in other cities:
"...cities like Charlotte and Austin, where high-quality public transportation systems are attracting new jobs and residents. Many of the cities that have implemented BRT have experienced dramatic economic growth as a result of their investment. For example, in Cleveland, a city that is otherwise experiencing economic challenges, the Healthline helped generate an estimated $4 to $5 billion worth of investment. And in Eugene, Oregon, $100 million worth of construction projects are underway near the Franklin EmX line."
Aren't Republicans, at least nominally, supposed to be for business expansion, economic improvement, and jobs, jobs, jobs?
Not if the government has anything to do with it, apparently. At least that's my thinking.
Stomping on the Nashville bus line was a test to see how easy it would be to inflict their will, from afar, on citizens and a state government. Plus, it allows them and other haters of improvements stemming from state and local governments, to point to this and say "See? The PEOPLE didn't want it."
Invidious, arrogant, conniving, presumptuous assholes.
We control the vertical. We control the horizontal. We are the Kochs. Worship us, slaves.
Ken,
Regarding the Court's latest outrage (see, they come at you in a flurry, every day) against democracy, with, of course, their concerned looks and serious "Ohh...the First Amendment is wicked important" hats on, is another in an interminable line of examples of how the right exists in their own vacuum packed, hermetically sealed universe.
Justice Breyer said it well:
"...the court’s ruling 'rests upon its own, not a record-based, view of the facts,' and 'eviscerates our Nation’s campaign finance laws.'"
Even though Little Johnny and the Dwarfs left the per-candidate contribution limit intact, for now, that will likely fall as well in the right's next challenge against democracy that isn't bought and paid for.
The Court only needs to look at the damage done in just a few years since their Citizens United (that name!) decision (except they probably don't see any damage. They see success for the wingnuts). Hell, look at what the Kochs are doing in Nashville, funding hit squads around the country to kneecap ideas they don't agree with. Who knows how many other situations are infected by the untraceable money the Court has unleashed?
And now this.
Public financing is the only way out of the current hacks-for-hire mire.
Akhilleus, when I lived in Richmond, VA, I learned why some people fight public transport like they are doing in Tennessee. Some people don't want to make it easier for the minorities to leave the inner city to work in the suburbs. These same people would have no intention of riding the public trains with "those" people, so why should they fund it?
Thanks, Akhilleus. Publicly financed elections are the only way to go.
To ride another (hobby) horse, my medically-educated wife tells me the Hobby Lobby suit is based on a false distinction, that of so called emergency contraception (ECPs and the standard model. This from "women's health.gov :"
Are emergency contraceptive pills (ECPs) the same thing as the "morning after pill"?
"Yes. ECPs are often called the "morning after pill," which is wrong because ECPs don't have to be taken the morning after. You should always take ECPs as soon as you can after having unprotected sex, but some kinds can work up to 5 days later."
BUT
"Higher dose of REGULAR birth control pills (can also work as ECP's) — The number of pills in a dose is different for each pill brand, and not all brands can be used for emergency contraception."
Wonder if the HL lawyers, let alone the Supremes, particularly the male ones, will figure this out?