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Month: November 2013

Clearing the Obamacare cobwebs

Clearing the Obamacare cobwebs

by digby

Josh Barro has written a remarkably lucid and concise explanation for the current confusion about Obamacare:

The fight we’ve been having for the last week over the president’s broken “If you like your health plan, you can keep it” promise has not been very informative.

To hear liberals tell it, this is mostly a story of people losing their grip on “junk insurance.” If people are paying more, it’s because their new insurance plans will be better, and very often subsidies will offset the higher premiums anyway. That’s not the whole truth.

To hear conservatives tell it, health care reform is disrupting an individual market that was working pretty well before government interference. That’s not true either — the existing individual market is so dysfunctional that more than 3/4 of people who lack group coverage go uninsured. The existing market mostly works well for people who are healthy and have moderate to high incomes; the goal of the ACA is to make it work for everyone.

And the ACA will do that, making insurance accessible and affordable to tens of millions of people who lack it now. Some people who are already insured through the individual market will be better off, too: Their premiums will go down and/or their plans will get more comprehensive.

But at the same time, the law will make several million people worse off, by driving their premiums up, pushing them into plans that are less comprehensive, or causing insurers to switch them to plans with narrower provider networks that don’t include their preferred doctors or hospitals.

He lays out the particulars in five short paragraphs. It’s worth reading for the clarity.

But there’s a problem. He concludes with this:

ACA supporters need to argue not that these people don’t exist or that their circumstances only changed because of greedy insurance companies; they need to argue that their losses are more than offset by the gains of the sick and uninsured who will get better and more affordable coverage under the law.

I’m sure that many people are moved by altruism and fully understand that some must pay more so that others can have insurance. But many of the people I know who are being hit with higher premiums live in or near expensive cities where many salaries above the cut-off for subsidies (around 45k for a single person) don’t go very far. After factoring in housing and transportation they don’t actually have a lot of disposable income. So this is going to hurt.

I have been talking about this for a long time. Lecturing middle class workers and small business people who are already feeling squeezed about how they should be happy to be the only people who will have to sacrifice for the greater good in this scheme just doesn’t strike me as a big winner. Unfortunately, it seems to be the only rationale on offer.

*Corrected name of author. My apologies.
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Oh SNAP. (Why the Democrats in congress voted against poor people.)

Oh SNAP. (Why the Democrats in congress voted against poor people.)

by digby

I mentioned the other day that the Democrats who are now vociferously protesting the draconian food stamp cuts committed political malpractice by voting for cuts in the first place. Dday has all the details and it illustrates perfectly just how pernicious bipartisan deficit fever (and “adult-in-the-room” syndrome) has been during this economic recovery:

Cast your mind back to those bygone days of 2010. The stimulus was chugging along, and the 13.6 percent increase in food-stamp benefits, officially known as SNAP (Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program), was one of its most effective measures. Food stamps are among the most effective ways to deliver direct assistance to people in need, and because it’s a benefit that involves consumer purchases, it props up the retail sector as well. Every dollar increase to SNAP generates around $1.70 in economic activity, according to Moody’s Analytics.

The increased SNAP benefit was supposed to phase out gradually, by letting inflation catch up to the higher benefit level. Because of smaller-than-expected increases in food prices, the money allocated in 2009 would have lasted until at least 2016. But Democrats, in full control of the government, decided SNAP money could serve as a funding source to funnel to other needs. For example, the stimulus was too small to reverse the carnage caused by the Great Recession, especially in the states, where thousands of teachers were being fired, and Medicaid beneficiaries were losing their coverage. In 2010, Democrats had the idea for a $26 billion supplemental state fiscal-aid bill, to fill those education and health-care gaps.

Earlier that year, Democrats proudly wrote and passed a statutory “pay as you go” bill, on a party-line vote, forcing all new federal spending to be offset by reductions elsewhere in the budget. The state fiscal-aid bill would have to be paid for, and the Obama Administration immediately looked to SNAP as a cookie jar they could raid. According to then-House Appropriations Committee chair David Obey, “Their line of argument was, well, the cost of food relative to what we thought it would be has come down, so people on food stamps are getting a pretty good deal in comparison to what we thought they were going to get. Well isn’t that nice? Some poor bastard is going to get a break for a change.”

Liberal politicians and advocates reckoned that the state fiscal-aid package filled an immediate need, while the SNAP rollback wouldn’t take effect until years later, presumably when fewer people would need the assistance. In the end, Democrats used $11.9 billion originally intended for SNAP to fund the state fiscal-aid bill, accelerating the phase-out of the increased stimulus benefit to 2014. But everyone on the left insisted that they would push to restore those cuts before they took effect. Progressive allies like Chuck Lovelace, legislative director for AFSCME, the public-employees union, told me back then, “we intend to go back and work to restore that benefit at the appropriate time.” Liberal senators like Ron Wyden, the Oregon Democrat, agreed, telling the Huffington Post, “we’re going to be able to find a way to ensure that there’s help for needy folks in terms of assistance with hunger.”

But instead of immediately working on restoring the funds, Democrats would raid SNAP again. First Lady Michelle Obama has made a priority of the child obesity epidemic, and she heavily promoted the Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act of 2010. The bill, which reauthorized the child-nutrition program that delivers free school lunches to needy children, allocated $4.5 billion to implement new standards for healthier foods and to increase access to free school lunches. Because of the pay-as-you-go rule, this also required offsets. And SNAP proved an inviting target once again. In August 2010, the Senate partially financed their version of the bill with a $2.2 billion cut to SNAP, leaving the increased benefits to phase out by October 2013. This was the equivalent of paying for more school lunches for poor children by taking away their future breakfasts and dinners.

I’m sure everyone in the country is impressed that Democrats are the adults in the room who gleefully instituted Pay-Go in the middle of an epic economic crisis. I know I am.

Read the whole thing. The story just gets worse.If you’ve been reading this blog you know what I think about how the Democratic White House’s adoption of austerity rhetoric, Grand Bargains and “reform” has harmed the progressive agenda. The story of how progressives in congress reacted to it is nearly as depressing.

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And we have a winner!

And we have a winner

by digby

…. for the dumbest tweet of election night:

His argument, by the way, was that McAuliffe didn’t win big enough …

Update: Lulz. This is a parody account. Oops. Remind me not to drunk blog on election night anymore …

(In my defense, election night is also my wedding anniversary.)

Update II: Kilgore has a rundown (and refutation) of the Village CW that has McAuliffe somehow being the loser.

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The Stalker Society

The Stalker Society

by digby

Another traitor weighs in. One who’s seen the inside up close and personal:

While Gore said he favoured surveillance to ensure security, he described the efforts made public by the former Central Intelligence Agency employee as “outrageous” and “completely unacceptable.”

“I say that as someone who was a member of the National Security Council working in the White House and getting daily briefings from the CIA,” he said…

Gore said the revelations are disturbing to say the least.

“He has revealed evidence of what appears to be crimes against the Constitution of the United States,” he said.

Gore said governments throughout history have understandably conducted surveillance to protect their security but added that efforts have gone to “absurd” lengths and are counter-productive.

“When you are looking for a needle in a haystack, it’s not always wise to pile more hay on the haystack,” he said quoting a scholar on the CIA…

“I think they will have to pull this back,” Gore told a brief question period at McGill University where he delivered the Beaverbrook Annual Lecture. “I think you will see a reining in.”

He said he was not just concerned about overblown efforts in government surveillance but also by corporations who mine the Internet for information on users’ viewing and buying habits so they can target advertising.

“We have a stalker economy,” Gore said.

He added that there is already a backlash in foreign countries that is costing U.S. firms business. Gore said the other countries — he did not name them — have complained they fear the U.S. companies will turn over whatever data they acquire on consumers to the NSA.

Many Democratic Villagers have a loathing for Gore which I cannot attribute to ordinary politics. I guess they know him better than I do. But since their judgment is so wrong in virtually every other way I’m not inclined to take their word about this either.

All I know is that Gore has spoken out strongly over the past decade on important issues, from the invasion of Iraq (at a time when it was assumed he’d run again) to this, which practically brands him a traitor, and I’m going to guess that’s part of the problem as well. What with all that icky climate change stuff, he’s just a little bit too much of a dirty hippie to be trusted.

He calls this a stalker economy and I think that’s apt. I certainly feel that way, but I mostly attribute that feeling to be an old person who over values my personal privacy. But I think “stalker society” describes it better. The government surveillance is a whole lot more sinister than consumer surveillance — after all, I tend to doubt most corporations care about my politics or with whom I associate. And even if they did, they have no power to come to my house and arrest me if they see some “pattern” that makes me look suspicious in their minds. So it’s the government stalking that is the real threat. Still, making stalking so ubiquitous that people become inured to the idea is certainly helping the government’s cause.  I’m glad to see that Gore’s done some thinking about it and is speaking out.

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The dream will never die

The dream will never die

by digby

I hate to say good-bye to the Cooch, but it’s not looking good. Still, he can take heart: the vision lives on:

Headlining the final rally of Ken Cuccinelli’s underdog campaign for Virginia governor, Ron Paul suggested the “nullification” of Obamacare on Monday night.

“Jefferson obviously was a clear leader on the principle of nullification,” the former Texas congressman said of the third president. “I’ve been working on the assumption that nullification is going to come. It’s going to be a de facto nullification. It’s ugly, but pretty soon things are going to get so bad that we’re just going to ignore the feds and live our own lives in our own states.”

I’d imagine we’ll hear those exact words from his good son Rand in the future.

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The War on Women serves many purposes. That’s why rich wingnuts are funding it.

The War on Women serves many purposes. That’s why rich wingnuts are funding it.

by digby

Just when it seems like everyone is trying to convince everyone that business is no longer funding right wing causes now that Ted Cruz proved that Republicans are big fat losers, along comes Adele Stan with a blockbuster piece at Rh Reality Check to blow that assumption to smithereens:

There is little doubt that the rash of anti-choice measures that flooded the legislative dockets in state capitols in 2013 was a coordinated effort by anti-choice groups and major right-wing donors lurking anonymously behind the facades of the non-profit “social welfare” organizations unleashed to tear up the political landscape, thanks to the high court’s decision in Citizens United.

While similarly classified groups exist in progressive circles, they have nowhere near the funding provided to right-wing groups by wealthy, business-focused donors. Of the top-ten outside spending “social welfare” groups engaged in the 2012 elections, all but one were either right-wing or conservative.

Helping to drive the right-wing offensive in the states and in Congress is a network of deep-pocketed business titans convened by the billionaire brothers Charles and David Koch, principals in Koch Industries, the second-largest privately held corporation in the United States. Like the Kochs themselves, many of the donors in the brothers’ networks signal disinterest in fighting against women’s rights or LGBTQ rights, yet anti-choice groups have seen their coffers swell with millions of the network’s dollars.

“If you want to promote a pro-corporate agenda, you’re only going to get so far,” Sue Sturgis, the Durham, North Carolina-based editorial director of the progressive website Facing South, told RH Reality Check. “But when you start weaving in these social issues like abortion and other reproductive rights issues, then you’re gonna appeal to a broader range of people, and a very motivated voting bloc. They will turn out. So it serves your larger cause.”

Keep in mind that the Koch Brothers alone are worth 75 billion dollars. So, even if a couple of corporate CEOs ostentatiously speak out against the “wacko-birds” and the Chamber of Commerce issues a few tepid threats, there’s still plenty of money to throw at far right politics.

Lee Fang at the Nation also refuted this growing meme that the far right billionaires are backing away from the GOP. Seriously, it’s silly. They’ve been at this for a long time and they know what their goals are. Why would they give up when they’re achieving them?

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Don’t worry, old people can’t count

Don’t worry, old people can’t count

by digby

In case you were wondering how the granny starvers were planning to explain to their elderly constituents why they voted to cut their benefits, wonder no more. They plan to lie:

The so-called “chained CPI” is an alternate version of the consumer price index that the government uses to calculate cost-of-living adjustments for Social Security and other programs. The Congressional Budget Office says switching to the chained CPI would reduce Social Security spending by $127 billion over 10 years.

But the House Ways and Means Committee, which oversees Social Security and is led by Rep. Dave Camp (R-Mich.), said the policy would have given seniors a bigger increase than they’ll be getting from the regular inflation gauge next year.

“If the more accurate chained CPI was used to determine the 2014 cost of living increase, seniors would see a 1.7 percent increase as opposed to this year’s increase of 1.5 percent,” Ways and Means Republicans said on their website. “What does a 1.7 percent increase mean? On average, that is an extra $21.60 each month for seniors to use on groceries, bills and medicine. “

The Alliance for Retired Americans, an advocacy group that opposes Social Security cuts, says the Republicans of the Ways and Means Committee are lying. “The chained Consumer Price Index would be a cut in benefits –- that is why conservatives support it,” alliance director Edward F. Coyle said in a statement.

(Click over to the link to see the full explanation of why that’s an abject lie.)

It takes some chutzpah, but then these jerks have been lying about Social Security so long and getting away with it, you can’t actually blame them. After all, even the Democrats are busy selling it down the river these days.

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Torture dispatch: Rape by instrumentality. Police find probable cause to use forced colonoscopy

Rape by instrumentality


by digby

Anal rape is often considered a “funny” aspect of prison culture in America and an inevitable kind of rough justice for anyone who finds himself caught up in the maw of the legal system. It appears we’re finding new and novel uses for it:

Eckert’s attorney, Shannon Kennedy, said in an interview with KOB that after law enforcement asked him to step out of the vehicle, he appeared to be clenching his buttocks. Law enforcement thought that was probable cause to suspect that Eckert was hiding narcotics in his anal cavity. While officers detained Eckert, they secured a search warrant from a judge that allowed for an anal cavity search.

The lawsuit claims that Deming Police tried taking Eckert to an emergency room in Deming, but a doctor there refused to perform the anal cavity search citing it was “unethical.”

But physicians at the Gila Regional Medical Center in Silver City agreed to perform the procedure and a few hours later, Eckert was admitted.

While there…

1. Eckert’s abdominal area was x-rayed; no narcotics were found.

2. Doctors then performed an exam of Eckert’s anus with their fingers; no narcotics were found.

3. Doctors performed a second exam of Eckert’s anus with their fingers; no narcotics were found.

4. Doctors penetrated Eckert’s anus to insert an enema. Eckert was forced to defecate in front of doctors and police officers. Eckert watched as doctors searched his stool. No narcotics were found.

5. Doctors penetrated Eckert’s anus to insert an enema a second time. Eckert was forced to defecate in front of doctors and police officers. Eckert watched as doctors searched his stool. No narcotics were found.

6. Doctors penetrated Eckert’s anus to insert an enema a third time. Eckert was forced to defecate in front of doctors and police officers. Eckert watched as doctors searched his stool. No narcotics were found.

7. Doctors then x-rayed Eckert again; no narcotics were found.

8. Doctors prepared Eckert for surgery, sedated him, and then performed a colonoscopy where a scope with a camera was inserted into Eckert’s anus, rectum, colon, and large intestines. No narcotics were found.

Throughout this ordeal, Eckert protested and never gave doctors at the Gila Regional Medical Center consent to perform any of these medical procedures….

I think that speaks for itself.

But keep in mind that doctors and nurses have been performing “anal” torture duty in the CIA and the military for quite some time. Recall this from Jane Mayer’s book The Dark Side:

“A former member of a C.I.A. transport team has described the ‘takeout’ of prisoners as a carefully choreographed twenty-minute routine, during which a suspect was hog-tied, stripped naked, photographed, hooded, sedated with anal suppositories, placed in diapers, and transported by plane to a secret location. A person involved in the Council of Europe inquiry, referring to cavity searches and the frequent use of suppositories during the takeout of detainees, likened the treatment to ‘sodomy.’ He said, ‘It was used to absolutely strip the detainee of any dignity. It breaks down someone’s sense of impenetrability. The interrogation became a process not just of getting information but of utterly subordinating the detainee through humiliation.’ The former C.I.A. officer confirmed that the agency frequently photographed the prisoners naked, ‘because it’s demoralizing.”

Or this, reported in the New York Times:

None of the approved techniques, however, covered some of what people have now said occurred. Mr. Kahtani was, for example, forcibly given an enema, officials said, which was used because it was uncomfortable and degrading.

Pentagon spokesmen said the procedure was medically necessary because Mr. Kahtani was dehydrated after an especially difficult interrogation session. Another official, told of the use of the enema, said, however, “I bet they said he was dehydrated,” adding that that was the justification whenever an enema was used as a coercive technique, as it had been on several detainees.

Or this, which I wrote several years ago:

There have been many similar reports of forced sodomy and other sexual abuse collected by the Center for Constitutional Rights, which have routinely been dismissed as some kind of slick propaganda training by Al Qaeda. Now we have a former Guantanamo prison guard also validating the charges — and implicating medical personnel (which is another sick aspect of this that we’ve discussed at length, but still don’t know the extent of.) Scott Horton reports:

T]the Nelly account shows that health professionals are right in the thick of the torture and abuse of the prisoners—suggesting a systematic collapse of professional ethics driven by the Pentagon itself. He describes body searches undertaken for no legitimate security purpose, simply to sexually invade and humiliate the prisoners. This was a standardized Bush Administration tactic–the importance of which became apparent to me when I participated in some Capitol Hill negotiations with White House representatives relating to legislation creating criminal law accountability for contractors.  

The Bush White House vehemently objected to provisions of the law dealing with rape by instrumentality. When House negotiators pressed to know why, they were met first with silence and then an embarrassed acknowledgment that a key part of the Bush program included invasion of the bodies of prisoners in a way that might be deemed rape by instrumentality under existing federal and state criminal statutes. While these techniques have long been known, the role of health care professionals in implementing them is shocking.

Forced colonoscopy wasn’t part of the prisoner plan as far as I know, but I’m sure they would have used it if they’d had the right technology available. Our military and CIA personnel spent a lot of time probing detainees’ anuses. It was a major part of the program.

We don’t know if any of the unethical police and medical personnel who participated in this recent horrifying act of official rape had ever been in the military. But even if they weren’t, it’s not surprising that this sort of thing would be done — after all, they had a warrant. And these days we are constantly legalizing and excusing abusive authority, so it’s easy for people to rationalize that what they are doing is completely above board as long as they have the official paper in their hands.

I don’t recall much of an outcry about these acts perpetrated by American personnel when they were revealed a few years back. I was personally pretty stunned that this was just treated as business as usual. And I’d imagine people care even less now:

A new study by the American Red Cross obtained exclusively by The Daily Beast found that a surprising majority—almost 60 percent—of American teenagers thought things like water-boarding or sleep deprivation are sometimes acceptable. More than half also approved of killing captured enemies in cases where the enemy had killed Americans. When asked about the reverse, 41 percent thought it was permissible for American troops to be tortured overseas. In all cases, young people showed themselves to be significantly more in favor of torture than older adults…

“Over the past 10 years, they’ve been exposed to many new conflicts,” says Isabelle Daoust, who heads ARC’s humanitarian law unit. “But they haven’t been exposed to the rules.”

“For young people, to put themselves in place of a soldier is a level of empathy that most people simply don’t have anymore.”

The reasons may be even more nuanced than that—a combination of social and political factors new to the national conversation since the Bush administration claimed that today’s enemy was different from the ones we’ve fought in the past. Intelligence attained through controversial interrogation techniques, Bush’s lawyers at the Department of Justice argued, may be the only way to save American lives. A 2006 dossier detailing the U.S. government strategy to combat terrorism described the difficulty of pursuing new enemies who constantly “evolve and modify their ways of doing business.” As a result, the document suggested, the military would have to evolve its understanding and treatment of the enemy.

Legal scholars see societal influences that may be responsible for de-stigmatizing torture, including increasingly graphic media. “I think it suggests the national conscious is becoming more and more corroded and more accustomed to the violation of fundamental principles of human rights and international law,” says Lawrence Tribe.

Also too this:

In his statement last week, the president said: “This is a time for reflection, not retribution. I respect the strong views and emotions that these issues evoke. We have been through a dark and painful chapter in our history. But at a time of great challenges and disturbing disunity, nothing will be gained by spending our time and energy laying blame for the past.”

After all, they throw the book at whistleblowers and even journalists. This can’t be that much of a big deal, right?

There is a price we’ve all paid for normalizing torture in our society, whether it’s through the “comic” use of electricity via the taser or our blase attitude toward the torture regime of George W. Bush. I don’t think the scope of just how much we destroyed the basic moral fabric of our culture will be seen for many decades.

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