Hullabaloo

Monday, April 01, 2013

 
Baby Otter therapy

by digby

That is all:



Via Jezebel:

That is all.


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digby 4/01/2013 07:00:00 PM

 
From the nobody knows nothin' files: ACA confusion

by digby


Imagine if they'd been able to just extend the existing Medicare program to everyone:

[A]t the recent AcademyHealth National Health Policy Conference, where state and federal officials and interest groups lined up to present long lists of policy questions that confront them as they grapple with implementation of the Affordable Care Act and mounting public budgetary pressures.

For instance, in the “Opportunities & Challenges for State Officials” session, New Mexico’s Medicaid Director Julie Weinberg described the unknowns surrounding how “churn” between private and public coverage will change and how new Medicaid eligibility standards will impact enrollment processes.

Patty Fontneau, the executive director of the Colorado Health Benefit Exchange (Colorado’s health insurance exchange), outlined the challenges involved in providing decision support to consumers to assist in the selection of a plan from many often-confusing choices.

Something these many challenges have in common is that they are difficult to solve and all require good evidence to shape rational, effective policy.

Yet, throughout the conference venue, policy leaders seemed to lack the detailed evidence as well as a systematic way of locating and acquiring that relevant evidence from across a national research community.

When Lisa Simpson, president and CEO of AcademyHealth, asked top congressional staffers in the Congressional Plenary how researchers could better feed evidence into the Washington policy process, there were few specific or concrete answers.

I wasn’t surprised. In the past, when I’ve asked other elected officials or legislative staff how they get information, they say it usually comes down to a small network of personal relationships. The process of outreach is more often focused around building political consensus through stakeholder engagement than gathering scientific evidence. This strikes me as a very incomplete and imperfect way to shape policy, particularly considering our public investment in research.

The complexity of the program isn't the only problem, or the fact that the people who have answers aren't readily identifiable, if they exist at all. The post goes on to explain that even in the best of all possible worlds, there exist few processes to properly determine efficacy and nobody knows where to turn to find them.

This argues for something less complex in my mind but then that's my bias anyway, so perhaps that's not really relevant. The problem for the average person is mitigated by the fact that most people are covered either by their jobs, government and veterans insurance programs Medicare of medicaid. These issues are unlikely to impact them in any obvious way. But it certainly appears that the people who are administering these new programs have their hands full just understanding what they are, much less how they will work. Should be a very interesting era. Lord help them if it doesn't end up saving money ... er, bending the cost curve.


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digby 4/01/2013 05:30:00 PM

 
When a stable voting bloc disintegrates in an instant

by digby

In the latest installment of Rick Perlstein's series questioning the "demographic inevitability" of a long term Democratic reign, he discusses what really does make for long term political change:

Seemingly stable blocs can shatter in something like an instant. Even, for example, urban blacks, which Democrats can reliably count on to vote their way at numbers upwards of 90 percent in every election. Little more than a generation ago, though, urban blacks in industrial states were considered a swing vote. Teddy White energy to the point in Making of the President 1960: Yes, a majority would vote Democrat, but the Party of Lincoln still retained the loyalty of a significant number of "Negroes" that just how many voted Republican in states like Illinois would determine—did determine, in fact—whether John F. Kennedy or Richard Nixon became president. Within four short years, of course, that once-solid conventional wisdom had melted into air. It changed in a flash: A Democratic president signed a historic Civil Rights Act and the Republican presidential nominee voted against it. Lyndon Johnson told Bill Moyers "I think we just delivered the South to the Republican party for a long time to come." There was a corollary: just as indubitably they'd delivered themselves the loyalty of blacks.

There's a moral to this story: it is what a party and its leaders do that determines the loyalty of its voters.

As much so, what determines the loyalty of voters is how well a party and its leaders tell clear, effective stories about what they do.

Imagine that. He then talks about the confusion surrounding Obamacare and how people think it lacks features it wants when it actually has them and vice versa. And he compares it to another major program that had a similarly slow roll-out:

While the Social Security system did not kick in right away either, people were confident about what it would do—because it was communicated so effectively. After he signed the law in 1935 he had signs hung in every post office reading, "A Monthly Check to You for the Rest of Your Life." That was the year before Roosevelt won the biggest reelection landslide in history. Then, the program really started delivering. It was one of the ways Roosevelt ensured new Democratic politicians were minted for another seventy-five years and counting.

Rick concludes by saying that he sometimes thinks every generation of Democrats should create a program that will mind followers for the next 75 years and wonders if Obamacare will do that. I think it's possible, if over time they are able to make the case for making it universal in a seamless way. They have to figure out how to hide this Rube Goldberg system they have crated so that people only see the result, which is affordable, universal health care that can't be taken away. Other countries manage to do this.

But I couldn't help but wonder if we'll have 75 years of newly minted Democrats if, in the same breath, the Party sells off those signature New Deal programs for a "new deal" for the sake of some temporary deficit reduction that no one will remember after the day it was signed. I don't know if it will cause a stable voting bloc to "disintegrate in an instant," but I'm going to guess that the lasting effects of that agreement would put a damper on any 75 year project.


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digby 4/01/2013 04:00:00 PM

 
Dancing with the GOPers

by digby

Even as the Sunday shows were atwitter with predictions that a deal is close on immigration reform, Greg Sargent reports that Marco Rubio took the occasion to cast doubt on the prospects for success by joining other Senators who are calling for the process to slow down:

“We will need a healthy public debate that includes committee hearings and the opportunity for other senators to improve our legislation with their own amendments,” he said on Sunday. “Excessive haste in the pursuit of a lasting solution is perhaps even more dangerous to the goals many of us share,” he said on Saturday.

As my Post colleague Evan Soltas points out, Rubio has effectively built himself a “very clear escape hatch” on immigration. If he needs to bail, he’s got his excuse: The process was rushed, or Democrats were unfair procedurally to Republicans.

As Greg points out, the opponents of reform are the ones who've been saying the process is going too fast and should be slowed down. So Rubio's really playing both sides and in a rather crude and obvious way.

But I don't really get why Rubio's so nervous about this. He's the perfect (possible) presidential candidate to convey the message. He could be a hero to some Hispanics and with his personal story and accomplishments he gives hardcore GOP types who want to do this but can't find a way out of their position, permission. Why is he balking?

This makes me think that the GOP establishment is more conflicted about this than they're letting on. They know their voters and while it's obviously imperative that they at least try to attract latinos, they are having a very hard time figuring out how to do it without causing an uprising. After all, they've just recently had to slack off on gay rights and I think they may be concerned that this will be a bridge too far. They're going to have to do a very delicate dance. And it looks to me as if Rubio, who should be the best on to lead it, has two left feet.

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digby 4/01/2013 02:28:00 PM

 
You poor kids had better perform or we'll starve your whole family

by digby

Dickensian England was a compassionate welfare state by comparison:

According to KnoxNews, Tennessee legislators are attempting to pass legislation to cut the welfare benefits of parents with children who don't meet attendance and performance requirements. The bill, SB 132, is sponsored by Sen. Stacey Campfield, R-Knoxville, and Rep. Vance Dennis, R-Savannah, and has passed committees in both the House and Senate, and now heads to another House committee, and to the Senate floor for vote.

The state Department of Human Services originally opposed the bill, but then worked with Campfield and Knox to add exceptions for kids with disabilities (both physical and learning) or if parents take school-approved steps to attempt to improve the child's progress.

Dennis told the House Health Subcommittee the measure now only applies to "parents who do nothing." He described the measure as "a carrot and stick approach."

Sorry Junior. If you don't do your homework, little sister doesn't get any dinner. I hope you're proud of yourself, you little bastard. Sure, mommy's sick and you have to care for the little tyke, but I'm afraid that's no excuse. Get A's or starve. It's character building. (Of course there's no need to build the characters of the kid who come from well-off families and fail in school. They're born with good character, amirite?)

Needless to say this will do wonders for the state budget. If you can stop feeding all those lazy schoolkids and their families, you'll automatically have more money for tax cuts! Which is the best thing for everyone.

This punitive behavior toward the poor is nothing new, but it seems to be getting worse. Perhaps when all of our elites are pushing austerity it gives some people permission to unleash their worst instincts. In any case, they seem to be doing it.

More on this at Think Progress
digby 4/01/2013 12:08:00 PM

 
Too bad about the poor people

by digby

This was tweeted by the National Republican Campaign Committee this morning:

None of that is true, so why do they remain so hostile?

Because Republicans hate Medicaid, of course:

"Not in South Carolina," Gov. Nikki Haley declared at the recent Conservative Political Action Conference. "We will not expand Medicaid on President Obama's watch. We will not expand Medicaid ever."

Widening Medicaid insurance rolls, a joint federal-state program for low-income Americans, is an anchor of the law Obama signed in 2010. But states get to decide whether to take the deal, and from Virginia to Texas – a region encompassing the old Confederacy and Civil War border states – Florida's Rick Scott is the only Republican governor to endorse expansion, and he faces opposition from his GOP colleagues in the legislature. Tennessee's Bill Haslam, the Deep South's last governor to take a side, added his name to the opposition on Wednesday.

Haley offers the common explanation, saying expansion will "bust our budgets." But the policy reality is more complicated. The hospital industry and other advocacy groups continue to tell GOP governors that expansion would be a good arrangement, and there are signs that some Republicans are trying to find ways to expand insurance coverage under the law.

Haslam told Tennessee lawmakers that he'd rather use any new money to subsidize private insurance. That's actually the approach of another anchor of Obama's law: insurance exchanges where Americans can buy private policies with premium subsidies from taxpayers.

Yes, the new plan is to allow states to come up with some way to pretend to be covering the working poor with sub-standard insurance policies that make corporations rich and keep poor people sick. But until they get that lovely "tweak":

Yet for now, governors' rejection of Medicaid expansion will leave large swaths of Americans without coverage because they make too much money to qualify for Medicaid as it exists but not enough to get the subsidies to buy insurance in the exchanges. Many public health studies show that the same population suffers from higher-than-average rates of obesity, smoking and diabetes – variables that yield bad health outcomes and expensive hospital care.

"Many of the citizens who would benefit the most from this live in the reddest of states with the most intense opposition," said Drew Altman, president of the non-partisan Kaiser Family Foundation.

That's just such a shame. The Medicaid expansion was one of the pillars of Obamacare, perhaps the most truly liberal new policy to come out of this administration. Which I suppose explains why Republicans who would benefit from it are against it. They just assume that if the other team thinks it's a good idea it must be wrong. (Also too: it will help certain subsets of the population they don't think deserve it.)

Whit Ayers, a leading Republican pollster, was more measured, but offered the same bottom line. "This law remains toxic among Republican primary voters," he told The Associated Press.

Sad.

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digby 4/01/2013 10:35:00 AM

 
The recurring Guantanamo nightmare

by digby

I wish this was an April Fool's joke, but it isn't:

There are a hundred and sixty-six prisoners at Guantánamo Bay. Military officials told reporters earlier this week that thirty-one—almost one in five—were engaged in a hunger strike. By Friday, the number was thirty-seven, or closer to one in four. Eighty-six—more than one in two—have been cleared for release, meaning that the government doesn’t think that it has a case against them or even that they pose a threat, but it is keeping them locked up anyway, and has no imminent plans to let them go. Only six of the prisomers—just about one in twenty-eight—are facing trial. That means that there are six times as many prisoners on hunger strikes as there are those who have actual charges lodged against them.

Why a hunger strike? Those fractions—one in four, one in two, one in twenty-eight—are, by all accounts, related. The strikers have some specific complaints—like about searches of Korans—but there is no doubt that people are refusing to eat because of frustration about this story having no end at all. Many of the hunger-strikers had been the most compliant prisoners, the ones who got to go to art classes and live in group settings, not the most recalcitrant. Rosenberg, on a recent trip, saw the guards throwing out lunch after lunch that the prisoners in communal cellblocks had refused.

Six and eighty-six, as bad as those numbers are, do not account for the full roster of prisoners. There are dozens more whom the Administration has decided to just hold, even though it does not have enough evidence to charge them, supposedly on the grounds that they seem scary. Because of their pasts, or because of the embarrassment that the story of their time at Guantánamo might cause? Without a trial, who can say?

Apparently, Gitmo is currentlybeing run by one of those General Geoffrey Miller types who is cracking down, thus bringing the prisoners understandable frustration to the boiling point. Also too: indefinite detention and the Monte Cristo effect.

President Obama may not be able to close Guantanamo and maybe the congress had tied his hands and made it impossible for him to release certain prisoners. Very Serious People tell us endlessly that the president of the United States is mostly a ceremonial position that has no power to do much of anything, but there is no reason in the world that the administration cannot make it a priority to at least treat the prisoners who have been determined to be innocent of any wrongdoing with humanity, generosity and decency. Why are they subject to punitive measures by prisoner officials at all? Making Guantanamo comfortable wouldn't make up for the fact that they are being wrongfully imprisoned, nothing will. But it's honestly the least we can do.

The Commander in Chief of the armed forces can do something about this and he must. It's completely unacceptable.


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digby 4/01/2013 09:43:00 AM

 
Get ready for more from the Appalachian trail

by David Atkins

It looks like prodigal son Mark Sanford will be coming back into the fold:

Former South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford's opponent is showing some momentum in the closing days of the Republican primary campaign for the state’s open House seat — but it may be too late to help him win Tuesday's vote.

Attorney Curtis Bostic, who finished second to Sanford in a preliminary vote March 19, has secured some high-profile backing in the final week of the campaign.

Former Sen. Rick Santorum (R-Pa.) stumped with him last Wednesday in the district and conservative commentator Ann Coulter also endorsed him.

Coulter called Sanford the “Todd Akin of South Carolina” — a reference to the failed GOP Senate candidate in Missouri — because of scandal over the ex-governor’s past marital infidelities...

But Bostic, a social conservative and former Charleston city councilman, has a steep hill to climb if he is to mount an upset.

He finished a distant second in the first round of voting, with 13 percent, compared to Sanford’s 37 percent.

And despite the high-profile endorsements, there are no clear evidence Bostic has done much to rally the voters who backed other candidates in the first round of voting.

I don't much care about the sex lives of politicians. It matters far more how they vote on issues than what they do in their private lives, which is mostly a problem for themselves and their families. But it's jarring to hear the hypocrisy of those who make a big deal of of sexual morality in public claiming to know that God has forgiven them when they transgress themselves.

Of course, "redemption" is an important part of the social conservative ethic as well. It's part of the culture that one can preach fire and brimstone about the moral lives of others while committing flagrant ethical transgressions oneself, provided that those transgressions be followed with sackcloth and ashes contrition and even more vocal protestations of faith. Sanford knows his audience, and he's playing them like a fiddle.

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thereisnospoon 4/01/2013 07:30:00 AM

Sunday, March 31, 2013

 
Your helpful charts 'o the day

by digby

These were compiled by Dave Johnson at Campaign for America's Future:

In each of the charts below look for the year 1981, when Reagan took office. 

Conservative policies transformed the United States from the largest creditor nation to the largest debtor nation in just a few years, and it has only gotten worse since then:
Working people’s share of the benefits from increased productivity took a sudden turn down:
This resulted in intense concentration of wealth at the top:
And forced working people to spend down savings to get by:
Which forced working people to go into debt: (total household debt as percentage ofGDP )
None of which has helped economic growth much: (12-quarter rolling average nominalGDP growth.)*

There are, of course, many reasons for all this. But there is no doubt that we've been in the clutches of conservative economic orthodoxy since 1980 and this is the result. Whether it's the cause or whether it's because it has no capacity to react to external events properly doesn't matter. It has failed. And is still failing. #Austerity

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digby 3/31/2013 06:00:00 PM

 
King Pinocchio and the men with guns

by digby

This is nice.  Via TPM: 

Now, one might expect that if the NRA wanted to portray President Obama as a gun grabbing bureaucrat they wouldn't show a picture of him in an act which they exalt, wouldn't you? Wouldn't you assume that NRA people would like seeing their president using a gun?

I'm going to guess there is some subtext here, maybe something that tickles the lizard brain a little The obvious one that comes to mind is this:

But that's probably just too crude. Sure Fox News fetishized a couple of aging "new" black panthers who stood outside a polling place once, but that doesn't mean there's any racial angel with the NRA.

So, it's more likely just a symbolic way of showing that the president is the leader of "The Men With Guns", which means the government which wants to take your guns so that you can't fight back when it becomes a tyranny. Like it sort of is already under "King Pinocchio"  because it's trying to take your guns. Therefore, you must "stand and fight." With your guns. If you get my drift.

The good news is that they had the good sense not superimpose crosshairs on the picture of the president.  Baby steps.

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digby 3/31/2013 04:30:00 PM

 
White Flour! redux.  When clowns are the only answer

by digby

So there was a KKK rally in Memphis yesterday.  Yes, they'still around.  And as Kathy Geier reports here, they're considered pretty cool guys by at least some in the media:

I read the piece, which is by reporter Samantha Bryson, with ever-increasing slack-jawed amazement, my eyebrows raised so high they nearly met my hairline. Clearly an attempt to portray the kinder, gentler side of the Klan, it is an epic journalistic fail. Here’s the first line: “There’s a lot to be angry about if you’re in the KKK.” Well, that’s one way of putting it! It goes on from there:

As local leader of the Loyal White Knights, Edward the Exalted Cyclops organized a barbecue last month to make plans for Saturday’s demonstration to show that white people still have rights. 

Edward curses sparingly, drinks rarely, and keeps his hair clipped short — his tribute to his old-fashioned Christian values. 

Does that read like a pitch-perfect Onion parody, or what? I mean, Edward the Exalted Cyclops? Hosting a barbecue?? And yes, you might, I suppose, describe decades of brutal racist terror and violence as “old-fashioned Christian values”— but only if you are a very mischievous atheist or anti-clerical-ist indeed.

The story describes plans for a Klan rally in Memphis today to “celebrate white people’s rights.” Yes, it really says that — unironically, and without challenge! According to one Klansmen, it is a protest against attempts “to erase white people out of the history books.” There are many other inadvertently hilarious moments in this LOL-rich article; my favorite is “communists (known as liberals today)” (and no, that’s not a quote from a Klansman — those are the reporter’s own words).

Read on for more amusement...

There's a way to deal with these people, by the way. This is a post of mine from a while back:

Monday, September 03, 2007

 
White Flour!

by digby

Via Perlstein, here's a hilarious story about a Klan rally. For real.

Saturday May 26th the VNN Vanguard Nazi/KKK group attempted to host a hate rally to try to take advantage of the brutal murder of a white couple for media and recruitment purposes.

Unfortunately for them the 100th ARA (Anti Racist Action) clown block came and handed them their asses by making them appear like the asses they were.

Alex Linder the founder of VNN and the lead organizer of the rally kicked off events by rushing the clowns in a fit of rage, and was promptly arrested by 4 Knoxville police officers who dropped him to the ground when he resisted and dragged him off past the red shiny shoes of the clowns.

“White Power!” the Nazi’s shouted, “White Flour?” the clowns yelled back running in circles throwing flour in the air and raising separate letters which spelt “White Flour”.

“White Power!” the Nazi’s angrily shouted once more, “White flowers?” the clowns cheers and threw white flowers in the air and danced about merrily.

“White Power!” the Nazi’s tried once again in a doomed and somewhat funny attempt to clarify their message, “ohhhhhh!” the clowns yelled “Tight Shower!” and held a solar shower in the air and all tried to crowd under to get clean as per the Klan’s directions.

At this point several of the Nazi’s and Klan members began clutching their hearts as if they were about to have a heart attack. Their beady eyes bulged, and the veins in their tiny narrow foreheads beat in rage. One last time they screamed “White Power!”

The clown women thought they finally understood what the Klan was trying to say. “Ohhhhh…” the women clowns said. “Now we understand…”, “WIFE POWER!” they lifted the letters up in the air, grabbed the nearest male clowns and lifted them in their arms and ran about merrily chanting “WIFE POWER! WIFE POWER! WIFE POWER!”

This is the funniest thing I've read in years. It's perfect, sublime.

And if this part is true, then it makes my year:

After the VNNers left in their shiny SUVs to go back to Alabama and all the other states that they were from the clowns and counter demonstrators began to march out of the area chanting ‘WHOSE STREETS? OUR STREETS!”

But the cops stopped the clowns and counter protestors. “Hey, do you want an escort” an African-American police officer on a motorcycle asked. “Yes” a clown replied. “We are walking to Market Square in the center of town to celebrate.”

The police officers got in front of the now anti racist parade and blocked the entire road for the march through the heart of Knoxville. An event called imagination station was taking place and over 15,000 thousand students and their parents were in town that weekend. Many of them cheered as the clowns, Knoxvillians and counter protestors marched through the heart of Knoxville singing and laughing at the end of the Nazi’s first attempt at having a rally in Knoxville.

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digby 3/31/2013 03:00:00 PM

 
Hayes and Krugman talking about stuff is must-see TV

by digby

Man, @chrislhayes is good. I am watching his interview with Krugman and it is completely different from other appearances by Krugman on TV.
— Jay Rosen(@jayrosen_nyu) March 31, 2013

I think he's talking about this from the Best of Up with Chris Hayes and boy is he right.

Visit NBCNews.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Boy that really says it all.

I'm hopeful that Chris will be able to continue to do this sort of interview on the new show but in any case, we know he'll be bringing the same perspective which is, as Rosen indicates, unique among these cable news hosts.

Update: Krugman rsponds to David Stockman's incoherent rant in this morning's NYTimes, thank God. And he does it in his own inimitable fashion:

Shorter David Stockman:

We’ve been doomed, yes doomed, ever since FDR took us off the gold standard and introduced unemployment insurance. What about those 80 years of non-doom? Just a series of lucky accidents. Now we’re really doomed. I mean it!

Actually, I was disappointed in Stockman’s piece. I thought there would be some kind of real argument, some presentation, however tendentious, of evidence. Instead it’s just a series of gee-whiz, context- and model-free numbers embedded in a rant — and not even an interesting rant. It’s cranky old man stuff, the kind of thing you get from people who read Investors Business Daily, listen to Rush Limbaugh, and maybe, if they’re unusually teched up, get investment advice from Zero Hedge. Sad.

Sad indeed. But as hopeful as I find the idea of a populist alliance on right and left, as Mike Konzcal contemplates in this fascinating, must-read piece, I worry that too many good people will take Stockman's bizarre holistic view at face value rather than see the pieces of his ideas that are useful and discard the rest.

Update: Tweet from Brad Delong:

Inbox, re David Stockman: "OMG--what a freakish screed… gold-buggery, debt obsessed, Hunger Games-style dystopia...

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digby 3/31/2013 01:30:00 PM

 
"The poverty rate among families is back up to 1996 levels" --- so let's do some more "reform" shall we?

by digby

Here's a heartwarming story about the greatest country in the world.  It tells how our vaunted federalist system, where states are often squeezed by tight budgets, leaves only the federal government to pick up the slack when the economy goes south.  Unfortunately, we've had a 30 year jihad (70?) on federal government programs that have left them struggling as well.

I wish I could say that this is the result of GOP obstruction and intransigence, but unfortunately it's just as much a result of Democratic "reform" efforts.  Get a load of this:

This story of a program financed by states that hasn’t been able to keep up with demand is the same for another huge part of the social safety net: welfare, or as we know it now, TANF. TANF does even worse than unemployment: it reaches just 10 percent of the children living with unemployment parents and just 30 percent of those living in poverty. The program used to do much better: in 1996, it reached 70 percent of poor families with children living in poverty. But then there was welfare reform, which turned it from a cost-sharing model to a block grant. Rather than the federal government sharing the costs with the states, the government now doles out lumps of cash and mostly lets states handle the rest. That lump doesn’t change even if the economy gets worse and more people live in poverty—and hasn’t even kept up with inflation.

While welfare reformers initially claimed victory as rolls fell during a booming 90s economy, the numbers have continued to fall even as jobs have disappeared. The poverty rate among families is back up to 1996 levels, but TANF’s caseload has fallen by 60 percent since then.

The author goes on to explain how other programs have been struggling to fill the gap --- as she points out, these people have no less need for food and shelter than they ever did. But the strain on these other programs is substantial. And anyway, they are now being targeted as well.

This is a real headline:

Opinion: Food-stamp reform can combat obesity

In fairness, that article only proposed to educate food stamp recipient about healthier food choices, so it isn't what it looks like. There are many permutations of "food stamp reform" some of them quite reasonable (although hardly a high priority.) But there are a whole lot of people out there advocating for a different kind of "reform." Bascially it comes down to fighting "dependency", which now means, evidently, dependency on food.

This is the Freedomworks proposal, which is very similar to Paul Ryan's, and it's signed by a whole bunch of right wing groups:

Use block grants: Replacing the annual appropriation with a block grant would give states an incentive to control costs. This is an improvement over current policy, in which states have an incentive to procure as many federal dollars as possible. Last session, Rep. Huelskamp introduced a bill (H.R. 6567) that proposed to merge the six food welfare programs in the Farm Bill into a single block grant.

Apply income and asset tests to categorically eligible households: A major driver of the growth in food stamp spending is state-based efforts to increase benefits and expand eligibility. An increasing number of recipients are automatically, or “categorically,” eligible for benefits based on their participation in other programs. According to the Congressional Budget Office, adding income and asset tests to categorical eligibility requirements would trim average annual outlays by $12 billion over 10 years.
Roll back spending on Title IV to FY2008 levels: Federal outlays for nutrition programs in 2008 were $37.6 billion; in 2013, they will total $82.0 billion. Returning spending to FY2008 levels would strike a balance between fiscal responsibility and providing a reasonable social safety net.

Separate Title IV from the rest of the Bill: Nutrition assistance is unrelated to the agricultural subsidies contained in the rest of the bill and it deserves its own treatment in separate legislation. Washington needs to stop rolling massive programs together in order to secure votes and shield programs from much-needed reform. Last session, Sen. Ron Johnson made a motion to send the bill back to the Agriculture Committee with instructions to strike Title IV—the title dealing with food stamps (SNAP) and other nutrition programs. We urge you to take this important step this year.

Basically, they want to pretend that there has been no increased need since 2008, which is false. And then they want to turn this over to the states, many of which will then use it to squeeze their poor, just as they have with all the other "devolutions" to the states. (I'm going to guess that they want to separate out the agricultural subsidies from the rest of it so they can continue to reward Big Ag with taxpayer money as Jesus intended.)

Read the whole article and you'll find that for all the recent sturm und drang about hordes of lazy moochers allegedly taking advantage of federal programs, real poverty is rising in this country and we have a much more porous safety net. And if the politicians of both parties in Washington have their way, it's not going to improve much. After all, their austerity policies may well doom us to more of the same for many years to come.

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digby 3/31/2013 12:00:00 PM

 
Shorter Ross Douthat

by tristero

I don't have any good reasons - and neither does anyone else - but I'm against gay marriage. 

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tristero 3/31/2013 10:30:00 AM

 
Smell the sulfur

by digby

So, I woke up this fine morning, got my coffee and checked out my twitter feed to find that the Right is Up In Arms because google decided to honor Chavez instead of Jesus today.  I thought to myself, "well, Hugo Chavez is a controversial figure and maybe honoring him on Easter is an odd things to do." Then I found out that it's Cesar Chavez organizer of poor farm laborers and thought, "Jesus would so love that!"

But the right wingers are appalled, even though Cesar Chavez's birthday, March 31st, today, is officially "Cesar Chavez Day" the "investigative reporter" who first sounded the alarm implies that it's a political favor by Google since its CEO is an Obama supporter. Therefore, this is a Democratic Party plot --- indeed, a White House plot, to demean Easter Sunday, the resurrection, and Jesus himself.  What could be more obvious.

Meanwhile, the outrage builds:

Because, it's sacrilegious, that's why!

Google honors Cesar Chavez on Easter | The Daily Caller dailycaller.com/2013/03/31/goo… via @dailycaller— Jim Treacher (@jtLOL) March 31, 2013

10 old-school Playboy bunnies, because it’s Easter [SLIDESHOW] dailycaller.com/2013/03/30/10-…
— Jim Treacher (@jtLOL) March 31, 2013

Because Playboy bunnies are the only decent way to celebrate Easter. Honoring a man who helped the poorest of the poor is just another slap in the right wing's face. Which is the same as slapping Jesus.

Felices Pascuas, everybody ...


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digby 3/31/2013 09:00:00 AM

 
Rand Paul pulls a Wayne LaPierre redux

by David Atkins

Rand Paul and the NRA, joined at the hip:

Sen. Rand Paul says there’s “a certain amount of hypocrisy” that the same Hollywood celebrities and prominent politicians — including President Barack Obama and New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg — who are calling for gun control are also benefiting from armed protection themselves.

“I don’t begrudge any famous person like Mayor Bloomberg, or the president or the president’s family for having protection — I think they all should. There’s enough crazy people out there that would attack on the right or the left. But I think when you are being protected by people who have weapons by responsible people, I can’t see why you would be opposed to that for other people,” Paul, a Kentucky Republican, said Thursday on Fox News’s “Hannity” to guest-host Eric Bolling.

That should remind you of this NRA insult to the intellect:



Because, you know, the rules that go for high-profile targets like politicians and celebrities who often have to go outdoors in disguise are exactly the same rules everyone else should live by. That makes sense.

These people, including Senators like Rand Paul, aren't that bright. The arguments they're making could be taken apart by 1st grade students.

But they're backed by people with big money, and by a lot of people who are desperate to take out their murder fantasies on all the "moochers" coming to "take their stuff." Since they can't say those things out loud in modern America, they instead resort to these sorts of arguments that no one above room temperature IQ would take seriously.


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thereisnospoon 3/31/2013 07:30:00 AM

Saturday, March 30, 2013

 
Saturday Night at the Movies

Field of nightmares

By Dennis Hartley

Generally speaking, a field of wheat is a field of wheat; nothing more, nothing less. However, in the realm of crime thrillers, such benign rural locales can harbor ominous underpinnings (Memories of Murder, The Onion Field and In Cold Blood come to mind). And so it is in The Silence, a low-key, quietly unsettling genre entry from Germany. In the hands of Swiss-born writer-director Baran bo Odar (who adapted from Jan Costin Wagner’s novel), a wheat field emerges as the principal character; an unlikely venue for acts running the gamut from the sacred to profane, as unfathomably mysterious and complex as the humans who commit them within its enveloping, wind-swept folds.

A flashback to the mid-1980s, involving the disappearance of a 13-year old girl, whose abandoned bicycle is found amidst the aforementioned waves of grain, sets the stage for the bulk of the story, which begins 23 years later with an eerily similar incident at the same location involving a girl of the same age. A team of oddly dysfunctional homicide detectives (several of whom worked the former unsolved case) sets about to investigate. However, Odar quickly discards standard police procedural tropes by revealing the perpetrator to the audience long before the police figure out who it is. Interestingly, this narrative choice echoes another German crime thriller (arguably the seminal German crime thriller), Fritz Lang’s M. And, just like the child-murderer in Lang’s film, this is a monster hidden in plain sight who walks “among us”… personifying the banality of evil.

Putting the “mystery” on the backburner allows Odar to focus on the aftermath of tragedy. The loss of any loved one is profound; but the loss of a child, especially via an act of violence, is particularly devastating to surviving family members (so poignantly evident to us all in the wake of Sandy Hook). In that respect, I was reminded of Atom Egoyan’s 1997 drama, The Sweet Hereafter. Like Egoyan, Odar deep-sixes Cause and makes a beeline for Effect, peeling away the veneer of his characters like the layers of an onion, enabling his talented ensemble to deliver emotionally resonant performances. Consequently this haunting film is not so much about interrogations and evidence bags as it is about grief, loss, guilt, redemption…and an unfathomably mysterious field of wheat.

Saturday Night at the Movies review archives

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Dennis Hartley 3/30/2013 05:30:00 PM

 
Hydroponic tomatoes: a gateway drug?

by digby

Imagine if they'd had some oregano growing in the basement:

Adlynn and Robert Harte sued this week to get more information about why sheriff's deputies searched their home in the upscale Kansas City suburb of Leawood last April 20 as part of Operation Constant Gardener — a sweep conducted by agencies in Kansas and Missouri that netted marijuana plants, processed marijuana, guns, growing paraphernalia and cash from several other locations.

April 20 long has been used by marijuana enthusiasts to celebrate the illegal drug and more recently by law enforcement for raids and crackdowns. But the Hartes' attorney, Cheryl Pilate, said she suspects the couple's 1,825-square-foot split level was targeted because they had bought hydroponic equipment to grow a small number of tomatoes and squash plants in their basement.

"With little or no other evidence of any illegal activity, law enforcement officers make the assumption that shoppers at the store are potential marijuana growers, even though the stores are most commonly frequented by backyard gardeners who grow organically or start seedlings indoors," the couple's lawsuit says.

The couple filed the suit this week under the Kansas Open Records Act after Johnson County and Leawood denied their initial records requests, with Leawood saying it had no relevant records. The Hartes say the public has an interest in knowing whether the sheriff's department's participation in the raids was "based on a well-founded belief of marijuana use and cultivation at the targeted addresses, or whether the raids primarily served a publicity purpose."

"If this can happen to us and we are educated and have reasonable resources, how does somebody who maybe hasn't led a perfect life supposed to be free in this country?" Adlynn Harte said in an interview Friday.

The suit filed in Johnson County District Court said the couple and their two children — a 7-year-old daughter and 13-year-old son — were "shocked and frightened" when deputies armed with assault rifles and wearing bulletproof vests pounded on the door of their home around 7:30 a.m. last April 20.

"It was just like on the cops TV shows," Robert Harte told The Associated Press. "It was like 'Zero Dark Thirty' ready to storm the compound."

During the sweep, the court filing said, the Hartes were told they had been under surveillance for months, but the couple "know of no basis for conducting such surveillance nor do they believe such surveillance would have produced any facts supporting the issuance of a search warrant."
[...]
When law enforcement arrived, the family had just six plants — three tomato plants, one melon plant and two butternut squash plants — growing in the basement, Harte said.

The suit also said deputies "made rude comments" and implied their son was using marijuana. A drug-sniffing dog was brought in to help, but deputies ultimately left after providing a receipt stating, "No items taken."

God bless America.

These people are former CIA employees and don't seem inclined to let this go. They don't say what kind of work they used to do for the agency, but it's always interesting to see how the police and national security apparatus employees feel when their government behaves toward them as if constitutional principles and moral values only apply in certain circumstances. They don't like it. In fact, nobody does.

Hopefully they'll follow through with their suit. It will be interesting to see if a judge or jury concur that buying hydroponic equipment is adequate probably cause to roust people in their homes.

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digby 3/30/2013 04:00:00 PM

 
Hey, I think Jindal and Walker are jokes too.  Who doesn't?

by digby

This article by Dan Balz predicting that the great Republican hope will emerge from the ranks of Governors seems like it could have been written in 1998.

But I wonder if maybe one of his editors forgot to take out some notes?

Walker and Jindal could be two of a number of governors who become presidential candidates in the future. 

gahhaha.

That's what it says. And I can certainly understand someone having that reaction.


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digby 3/30/2013 02:30:00 PM

 
Almost Gone

by digby

I know this has been out for a while, but I hadn't heard it before today:

I happened to be watching a July, 2012 Crosby, Stills and Nash concert on cable when Nash introduced this song in a very heartfelt way. The audience didn't seem to know how to respond to it when he started talking about it. They ecstatically responded at the end.

Protest music is powerful, even when performed by dirty old hippies.

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digby 3/30/2013 01:00:00 PM

 
The undisputed wingnut welfare queen

by digby

I have to admit that this shows so much chutzpah, even for her, that I have to grant her my grudging admiration. In a world of sanctimonious phonies and hucksters, nobody does it with more upfront obviousness:

Sarah Palin attempted to relaunch her political career and her political action committee, SarahPAC, on Thursday with a Web video called “Loaded for Bear,” which presented the former Alaska governor as the new kingmaker for conservative populists in the GOP.

The video riffed off her speech at CPAC, in which Palin railed against “the big consultants, the big money men, and the big bad media.” But there’s an irony alert ahead: the current stated purpose of SarahPAC is to raise money ahead of the 2014 election—most of which will be spent on conservative consultants.

Don't believe me? Well, this is a perfect time to page through SarahPAC’s Federal Election Commission filings, which—helpfully enough—were just released yesterday.

Seen through the lens of the invaluable Center for Responsive Politics, Palin’s PAC spent $5.1 million in the last election cycle (more than it raised in that time period, raising some questions about Palin’s claims of fiscal responsibility).

But the real news comes when you look at how donors’ money was actually doled out: just $298,500 to candidates. The bulk of the rest of it, more than $4.8 million, went to—you guessed it—consultants.

That’s some seriously hypocritical overhead.

In total, Palin’s PAC spent $980,000 on campaign expenses, $1.3 million on administrative costs (including almost a million dollars on postage), and three-quarters of a million on fundraising. Hidden in all of this—amid the direct mail and the media buys—is consultants’ cut of every dollar spent.

That's a lot of money don't you think? To what end? And how much of those "expenses" went to keep Palin and her family living high on the hog, I wonder?

But it's an old story, isn't it?

As the reporter of his piece says:

It’s a reminder of Eric Hoffer’s immortal line that “Every great cause begins as a movement, becomes a business, and eventually degenerates into a racket.”

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digby 3/30/2013 11:00:00 AM

 
What about the children?

by digby


“We must embrace the need for modest reforms—otherwise our retirement programs will crowd out the investments we need for our children.” President Obama, State of the union address, 2013

Is that really true?

Here's Dean Baker:

The Very Serious People in Washington have been running around arguing that the country should be very worried about the aging of the population. The story is that we face an enormous crisis because the ratio of workers to retirees is projected to fall from 2.8 to 1 in 2013 to just 2.0 to 1 over the next two decades. This declining ratio is supposed to mean that our children will face an enormous burden in supporting a rapidly growing population of retirees.

While this projection produces much hand wringing and head nodding among the Very Serious People (VSP), fans of arithmetic know that it provides little basis for concern. The reason for the lack of concern is often given by the VSPs themselves. When pushing the scare story they often throw in the tidbit that the ratio of workers to retirees used to be 5 to 1 back in the 1960s.

Of course the country is far richer on average today than it was in the 1960s even though we have much lower ratio of workers to retirees. The secret is productivity growth. Output per worker hour is more than twice as much in 2013 as it was in the 1960s. As a result, we can both have a larger share of output diverted to supporting retirees and have higher living standards for both workers and retirees.

The same story holds going forward. In 20 years average output per worker is conservatively estimated to be more than 40 percent higher than it is today. This means that even if workers were to see an increase in their payroll tax of 2 or 3 percentage points (almost certainly more than would actually be the case – we can also raise the cap on taxable wages) they would still have much higher after-tax wages in 2033 than they do today.

Furthermore, the longer-term story looks even brighter. After 2030 the demographic picture actually improves slightly as us pesky baby boomers die off and then is projected to worsen very gradually through the rest of the century as the life expectancies continue to rise.

This means that the gains of productivity growth will be able to go to active workers in these decades with no additional burdens due to demographics. That would mean wages could rise by another 15 percent by 2043 and another 15 percent on top of this by 2053. There is nothing close to the story of impoverishing our children pushed by the VSPs.

Unfortunately, we do have a problem, but it's not because the old people are sucking up all the money by living too long. It's something else entirely:

At this point alert readers are jumping up and down yelling that most workers have not been seeing the gains of productivity growth over the last three decades due to the upward redistribution of income over this period. If this trend continues then workers will have little increase in before-tax wages to offset any tax increases that might be needed to support Social Security.

This is completely true and precisely the point. The real threat to our children’s living standards has nothing to do with the possibility that Social Security might require additional tax revenue in the decades ahead. The threat to their living standards is the risk that the upward redistribution of the last three decades will continue for the decades into the future. If this proves to be the case, then the top 1-2 percent of the population will get almost all of the gains of economic growth and most of our children and grandchildren will see nothing.

The demographic argument is misdirection. The wealthy elites are trying to get people to believe that the problem is that that workers just can't contribute enough to keep up with all the takers (which they themselves are too, when they expect to collect in their old age.) But they are. The problem is that the wealthy are keeping it all for themselves.

Krugman hit this yesterday too, from another angle. He points out that the argument for austerity has switched from being an immediate crisis that requires us to cut spending immediately or face Armageddon to a long term crisis that requires us to cut spending over the long term or our children will face Armageddon:

... Pundits who spent years trying to foster a sense of panic over the deficit have begun writing pieces lamenting the likelihood that there won’t be a crisis, after all. Maybe it wasn’t that significant when President Obama declared that we don’t face any “immediate” debt crisis, but it did represent a change in tone from his previous deficit-hawk rhetoric. And it was startling, indeed, when John Boehner, the speaker of the House, said exactly the same thing a few days later.

What happened? Basically, the numbers refuse to cooperate: Interest rates remain stubbornly low, deficits are declining and even 10-year budget projections basically show a stable fiscal outlook rather than exploding debt.

So talk of a fiscal crisis has subsided. Yet the deficit scolds haven’t given up on their determination to bully the nation into slashing Social Security and Medicare. So they have a new line: We must bring down the deficit right away because it’s “generational warfare,” imposing a crippling burden on the next generation.

What’s wrong with this argument? For one thing, it involves a fundamental misunderstanding of what debt does to the economy.

Contrary to almost everything you read in the papers or see on TV, debt doesn’t directly make our nation poorer; it’s essentially money we owe to ourselves. Deficits would indirectly be making us poorer if they were either leading to big trade deficits, increasing our overseas borrowing, or crowding out investment, reducing future productive capacity. But they aren’t: Trade deficits are down, not up, while business investment has actually recovered fairly strongly from the slump. And the main reason businesses aren’t investing more is inadequate demand. They’re sitting on lots of cash, despite soaring profits, because there’s no reason to expand capacity when you aren’t selling enough to use the capacity you have. In fact, you can think of deficits mainly as a way to put some of that idle cash to use.

Yet there is, as I said, a lot of truth to the charge that we’re cheating our children. How? By neglecting public investment and failing to provide jobs.

So, once again, fixing problems that don't exist while ignoring the ones that do.

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digby 3/30/2013 09:52:00 AM

 
Hurting the cause of universal healthcare

by David Atkins

It should be fun defending this:

Premiums on California's individual health insurance market will increase an average of 30 percent as a result of President Obama's healthcare law, a new study predicts.

The state agency that will implement the law, Covered California, said premium increases are most likely to hit middle-income people who do not receive healthcare coverage through their employers.

The figures released Thursday come the same week Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius conceded that healthcare reform could cause some premiums to rise. The remark quickly drew fire from Republicans, who say the law will be disruptive and expensive for the government and consumers.

People like me, in other words, who until very recently bought healthcare as small business owners or independent contractors on the individual market are going to get hosed.

On the other hand, it's great to know the Supreme Court is making sure pharmaceutical companies can continue to charge outrageous amounts for products created by taxpayer-funded research.

The worst part of this is that it's going to be very difficult to convince a struggling independent contractor/businessperson on the fence that the solution to this problem is more government intervention in healthcare--even though that is indeed the solution. For quite a large number of people, this sort of thing is going to make them more hostile to expanded social insurance.

The only way this resolves well is for a few big blue states to create single-payer systems. The sooner the better.


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thereisnospoon 3/30/2013 07:30:00 AM

Friday, March 29, 2013

 
Your Cold Dead Hands

by digby

I happened to have Fox on in the background the other day and heard this commotion and had no idea what it was about:

Here's the offending video:

Cold Dead Hand with Jim Carrey from Jim Carrey      

Anyway, Carrey responded to Fox's meltdown today, (via LGF):

Since I released my “Cold Dead Hand” video on Funny or Die this week, I have watched Fux News rant, rave, bare its fangs and viciously slander me because of my stand against large magazines and assault rifles. I would take them to task legally if I felt they were worth my time or that anyone with a brain in their head could actually fall for such irresponsible buffoonery. That would gain them far too much attention which is all they really care about. I’ll just say this: in my opinion Fux News is a last resort for kinda-sorta-almost-journalists whose options have been severely limited by their extreme and intolerant views; a media colostomy bag that has begun to burst at the seams and should be emptied before it becomes a public health issue. I sincerely believe that in time, good people will lose patience with the petty and poisonous behavior of these bullies and Fux News will be remembered as nothing more than a giant culture fart that no amount of Garlique could cure. I wish them all the luck that accompanies such malevolence

Man are we in a news trough or what?

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digby 3/29/2013 06:30:00 PM

 
Getting some really old skin in the game

by digby

Why is it that whenever I hear the phrase "skin in the game" I think of this?

The NY Times says that one of the "entitlement reforms" that might just get bipartisan support is a change in Medicare deductibles and co-pays:

As they explore possible fiscal deals, President Obama and Congressional Republicans have quietly raised the idea of broad systemic changes to Medicare that could produce significant savings and end the polarizing debate over Republican plans to privatize the insurance program for older Americans.

While the two remain far apart on the central issue of new tax revenue, recent statements from both sides show possible common ground on curbing the costs of Medicare, suggesting some lingering chance, however small, for a budget bargain.

Mr. Obama assured House and Senate Republicans during recent separate visits that he could support specific cost-saving changes to Medicare and deliver Democratic votes, though only as part of a “balanced” package that had additional revenues.

Several changes are likely to once again be in his annual budget, which will be released on April 10, after Congress returns from its break. Mr. Obama also plans a dinner with Senate Republicans that night.

In particular, participants say, the president told House Republicans that he was open to combining Medicare’s coverage for hospitals and doctor services. That would create a single deductible that could increase out-of-pocket costs for many future beneficiaries, but also could pay for a cap on their total expenses and reduce the need to buy Medigap supplementary insurance.

Representative Eric Cantor of Virginia, the No. 2 House Republican, proposed much the same in a speech in February. “We should begin by ending the arbitrary division between Part A, the hospital program, and Part B, the doctor services,” he said. “We can create reasonable and predictable levels of out-of-pocket expenses without forcing seniors to rely on Medigap plans.”
[...]
Both the administration’s and Mr. Cantor’s interest in restructuring Medicare’s Parts A and B dates to 2011, when various proposals were considered by a deficit-reduction group headed by Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. that included Mr. Cantor.

The goal is to discourage people from seeking unneeded treatments, shrink health spending and offset the costs of a cap on beneficiaries’ total out-of-pocket costs. Such a cap would reduce beneficiaries’ need for extra insurance. About 90 percent of beneficiaries in the traditional Medicare program have supplemental coverage through Medigap policies, employers’ retiree plans or Medicaid for low-income people.

Many health-policy economists have called for creating a single, unified deductible. The current two deductibles reflect separate legislative tracks that came together in the creation of Medicare in 1965. The deductible for Part A hospital care is relatively high ($1,184 this year), while that for Part B doctor care is relatively low ($147). Patients also have co-payments for many services.

Despite the bipartisan interest, the politics of merging Part A and Part B are complicated.

Glenn M. Hackbarth, chairman of the Medicare Payment Advisory Commission, a group of nonpartisan experts that advises Congress, said a combined deductible could increase costs for those who use only doctor and outpatient services — a majority of beneficiaries in any year. It could reduce costs, he said, for the roughly 20 percent who require hospitalization.

So it's basically going to result in 80% of Medicare recipients paying more than they currently do. Got it.

But you have to love this:

Proponents, including some in the administration, acknowledge the political risks of increasing most beneficiaries’ costs, even in exchange for capping their total costs, as in cases of catastrophic illness. A 1988 law protecting against catastrophic costs caused such an outcry among older Americans, who faced an extra tax, that Congress quickly repealed it.

But administration officials say the 1988 law affected current beneficiaries, while Mr. Obama would apply any changes only to people becoming eligible for Medicare after 2016.

Now that's what I call clever ..

So far, the changes the president has proposed do not go as far as a single deductible and a cap on catastrophic costs. Instead, Mr. Obama has called for increasing the Part B deductible, which has risen much less than medical costs. He also proposed that beneficiaries pay something for home health care, which is among Medicare’s fastest-growing and most fraud-prone expenses; people just released from the hospital would be exempted.

Third, Mr. Obama proposed a 15 percent surcharge on Medigap plans that cover all or nearly all of a beneficiary’s initial annual expenses. Economists say that such coverage leaves beneficiaries insensitive to costs, increasing Medicare’s spending and the premiums beneficiaries pay.

This sounds very much like Bob Corker's proposal from a few months ago. Trudy Lieberman explained it in Columbia Journalism Review: (H/t to Susie Madrak)

Wonks who subscribe to this premise speak of making people have more “skin in the game,” making them pay more, in other words, for medical services, on the grounds that they’ll then use less of them. The National Association of Insurance Commissioners, in a recent letter to Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, took a stand against the idea that seniors use more medical care when it is cheaper and recommended against making seniors pay more out-of-pocket. But the “more skin in the game” idea remains alive and well.[...] 

All people on Medicare would pay what’s called a “unified deductible”—the amount a patient pays before insurance kicks in—of $550 instead of a the current separate hospital deductible ($1,184 this year) and a separate medical deductible (now $147). The new deductible would mean that people using medical services—which most do—will be exposed to an out-of-pocket cost four times higher than they have now before Medicare pays for their care.

What about having your Medigap policy cover these gaps, as they have been doing? Not under Corker’s plan they won’t. His bill prohibits any Medigap from paying this new unified deductible. More “skin in the game.” And in future years Corker would like to prohibit seniors from buying Medigap insurance altogether, exposing them to the full cost of coinsurance as well as the deductible.

Seniors would face additional out-of-pocket costs once they satisfy the unified deductible, too, under Corker. They would then pay 20 percent of all Medicare-covered services, including home healthcare and the first 60 days of a hospital stay that are not now subject to any coinsurance—in effect expanding the services subject to cost-sharing.

After seniors pay all of the deductible and the amount of coinsurance they’ve paid hits $5,500, Corker would allow the amount of the coinsurance to drop to five percent for any of the remaining bills, until they’ve reached the yearly maximum—$7,500. Corker then restricts Medigap payment to half of the 20 percent coinsurance amount (50% of $4,950). (The bill is unclear about coverage for the 5 percent co-insurance between $5,500 and $7,500.)

It’s complicated, but the takeaway is that it is expensive. A senior would be faced with paying the first $550 of their medical expenses, $2,250 of their coinsurance, plus the premium for their Medigap policy. A couple without a Medigap policy would pay all of those out of pocket costs —$15,000. That could be quite tough for many seniors, especially those whose only income is from Social Security.

Consider: since half of all Medicare beneficiaries have incomes of $24,000 or less, those with even moderate medical expenses might have to tap assets to cover the higher costs, apply for Medicaid, or choose another option for getting Medicare benefits.

Basically, if this is part of some big budget deal (Grand Bargain) it means they're making Medicare recipients pay down the deficit. They don't anticipate any blowback from the Democrats since it's a Democratic president who's proposing it and they figure that since it will go into affect in 2016, after the president is out of office, the dumbshits who enter Medicare after that won't know the difference and he won't get blamed. It's all good.

Lieberman concluded:

Reporters wading into the weeds here will have to look beyond the carefully crafted press release language, which won’t fully describe the impact of the proposed changes—whether Corker’s or anyone else’s. His bill summary that says the legislation would “update cost-sharing requirements to reflect 21st century health insurance practices” sounds benign enough, but it hardly begins to tell the whole story.

The New York Times reporters sort of spelled it out but made sure to comfort readers with the fact that unnamed "economists", who are apparently some sort of demi-gods whose edicts must be followed --- assured them that this is absolutely necessary.

Unless the administration waffles on getting some revenue, it likely won't even come up. But if they do manage to find a way to finesse the Republicans' sensitivity to even fake tax hikes, I suppose this could actually happen.



digby 3/29/2013 04:30:00 PM

 
Breaking the gay line

by digby


I'm afraid we still have a way to go:

On February 15 of this year, Robbie Rogers, a former member of the U.S. Men’s National soccer team and a professional player in both Europe and the United States, posted on a personal blog that he was gay. Rogers would have been the first openly gay player in major American professional sports, but he announced his retirement in the same post. In a New York Times article today, Rogers didn’t rule out a return to the pitch but said he had no choice but to retire. “I need to be a little selfish about this,” Rogers told the New York Times.

This week, rumors swirled that a National Football League player was contemplating coming out as gay in the near future. That prompted Seattle Seahawks defensive end Chris Clemons to tweet that a player coming out would be a “selfish act” that would “immediately separate a lockerroom and divide a team.”

That makes for an odd juxtaposition, the now openly gay former athlete thinking he’s selfish for coming out in his own way and the straight athlete who thinks it would be selfish for a player to come out at all. Clemons, who later tweeted that he had no problem with gay athletes but thinks they should leave their love life at home, could learn from the story of Rogers, who lived as a gay man in secret for years. Until last year, Rogers hadn’t told his family, his friends, or his teammates. He didn’t go to gay bars or date other men. It was, he told the Times, a terribly unhealthy way to live, though coming out has enabled him to find peace.

Obviously, this will change. There will be a gay Jackie Robinson at some point who will endure the taunts of the bigots to break the gay line. And you can already see that the arguments have changed from "get out faggot" to "don't divide the team" (at least in public) so there's been progress already. But come on: this is 2013 and most of these guys are young and have known plenty of gays. It's not as if we're dealing with old white guys here. I don't even really believe they give a damn --- it just feels like phony posturing at this point. Get with the program already.

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digby 3/29/2013 01:30:00 PM