Month: April 2014

The days when we weren’t confused

by digby

Now that it’s obvious people are signing up for Obamacare in droves and are not having their policies cancelled willy nilly with no alternatives, Americans for Prosperity are trying a new approach:

We got a letter telling us that we were gonna be—you know, our current policy was gonna be cancelled. Even though I’ve seen reports where our insurance commissioner’s granted another two-year extension, we’ve yet to receive anything telling us that we’re gonna be extended.

It’s like living in a haze. You don’t know whether you’re gonna have insurance, or whether you’re gonna be able to afford your insurance. It was taken away from us. Or it was given back to us. Or it was taken … we don’t know what it’s been now!

Here’s the script for Part II:

Health insurance used to be so easy to understand. Before, you just filled out a little post card with your name, sent in a dollar and you were automatically covered for life, no questions asked. Premiums never went up, the insurance company always paid the bills and you never had to worry about what was covered and what wasn’t. You just went to the doctor and he took care of you. Hardly anyone got sick and everyone lived forever.

Now we have Obamacare and we are living in a haze. Why did they ruin our perfect private health insurance system?

Part III:

“If you hate Obama you’ll hate Obamacare. Take our word for it.”

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New poll numbers show danger of GOP anti-ACA strategy

by David Atkins

It looks like the recent spate of good news about Affordable Care Act enrollments is rubbing off on the American people:

Public support for the Affordable Care Act narrowly notched a new high in the latest ABC News/Washington Post poll, while criticism of Barack Obama’s handling of the law’s rollout – although still substantial – has eased from its peak last fall.

Views hardly are enthusiastic: With the year’s sign-up deadline upon us, Americans split on Obamacare, 49 percent in support, 48 percent opposed. But that compares with a 40-57 percent negative rating after the initial failure of the federal enrollment website last November.

While still shy of a majority, 49 percent support is numerically the highest on record – albeit by a single point – in more than 20 ABC/Post polls since August 2009. The previous high was 48 percent in November 2009. The low was 39 percent in April 2012; the average, 45 percent.

Taking it another way, while not statistically significant, this survey’s +1 positive score for the law is a first. Other than an even 47-47 percent in July 2012, it’s been numerically negative in every other measurement, ranging from -1 to last November’s -17, averaging -5 points.

Most of the advance in support for the law came in December, marking November’s sharply negative turn as a blip inspired by HealthCare.gov’s crash landing. Most of the gains in approval of Obama’s handling of the law, by contrast, occurred just in the past month.

Among groups, this poll, produced for ABC by Langer Research Associates, finds that support for Obamacare compared with last November has gained among young adults, nonwhites, lower-income adults, those who lack a college degree – and, in a surprising result, political conservatives. While just 36 percent of conservatives back the law, that’s up from a mere 17 percent in the fall.

The GOP has put down all their chips on the anti-Obamacare strategy for 2014. They just allowed Paul Ryan to produce another hair-raisingly immoral budget that attempts to privatize Medicare, and they’re adamantly opposed to popular policies like immigration reform and raising the minimum wage. They’re counting on voters forgetting all of that out of opposition to the Affordable Care Act.

As Americans start to fully realize that the healthcare law–if not a perfect solution by any means–isn’t nearly the problem conservatives have been claiming it is, the GOP may find itself without a single decent campaign issue going into this year’s election.

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They do renounce him

by digby

Starbucks, that is. A Louisiana woman was offended by the decorations on her frappucinos, saying they were the work of a devilish barrista:

She posted a photo of the drinks on the Starbucks Facebook page. “This is how my coffee was served to me,” the customer, Megan Pinion said. “I unfortunately can’t give you the young mans [sic] name who served it because I was so appalled that I could not bring myself to look at him.”

Yes, they apologized.

Keep in mind that it wasn’t the pentagram that offended — the woman pointed out that it’s part of the Starbucks logo (boo!) It’s the other one that bothered her. But I don’t know why. From where I sit,  it looks like it was made by a big supporter of the Herman Cain 9-9-9 plan. I’m not a big fan of Herman Cain but I wouldn’t call him Satanic…

AFAIK, this is not an April Fools joke. But it certainly could be …

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“Moderate” Democrats serving their most cherished constituency

by digby

Of course they are …

Already facing heavy Republican opposition, congressional Democrats who support raising the minimum wage to $10.10 per hour now find themselves beating back a less ambitious proposal being considered by a contingent of their own party.

The Hill reported Tuesday that Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) was discussing with Democratic senators an alternative plan that would hike the minimum wage by a smaller amount — a compromise that could potentially give cover to incumbents on both sides of the aisle in an election year. Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.) told the paper he would be open to such a deal.

Why would Democrats need cover? Are there a lot of voters who are against the minimum wage being raised?

Uhm, no.

On minimum wage, voters support raising the federally mandated minimum, 72 percent to 27 percent, including a majority of Republicans, who support it 52 percent to 45 percent, according to a Quinnipiac poll out Wednesday.

Now, it’s certainly possible that Susan Collins needs some cover.  She needs the votes of Tea Partiers who think the only people in the Nation who ever held down a job are them — so they deserve government benefits but no one else does. But what about those Democrats?  Surely they don’t believe they are going to get the votes of GOP minority who are against the minimum wage do they? That’s just nuts. If they need Republicans to vote for them, surely they can work with that GOP majority that’s in favor.

Of course, there is one constituency that really doesn’t like this legislation and it’s bipartisan: big business.  I’m going to guess that’s who they’re worried about. And it’s shameful. At least the Republicans can legitimately claim that almost half of their own misanthropic voters are against it. The Democrats who are going along with this are just being corporate love-slaves.

By the way, since Susan Collins is so compromised by her need to pretend to be a moderate while delivering for the GOP, maybe it would be good to replace her. The Democrats have a good candidate, Shenna Bellows.  You can contribute to her campaign here.

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Will President Obama use his power to take major climate action?

by David Atkins

Not much the President wants can get through the GOP Congress, to be sure. But some things the President can do on his own. Of particular interest are some climate regulations on his plate:

Draft regulations that would place tough new limits on emissions from the nation’s existing power plants has moved to the White House, according to records posted Tuesday by the Office of Management and Budget (OMB)

The Environmental Protection Agency rule, perhaps the most contentious regulatory action proposed by the Obama administration, is a cornerstone of the president’s initiative to counter the effects of climate change.

The action represents the likely last step before the draft rule is formally proposed and its details are made public. President Obama has set a June deadline for proposal, with planned enactment of the regulation the following June.

The timeline is meant to ensure the rule is in place by the time Obama leaves office.

In a description of the rule posted to the OMB’s website, the EPA reasserts its authority to enact the new standards under the Clean Air Act. The effort follows a 2009 EPA finding that “projected concentrations of greenhouse gases (GHG) in the atmosphere threaten the public health and welfare of current and future generation,” according to the EPA.

Power plants’ “electric generating units” (EGU) are the single largest stationary source of greenhouse gas, accounting for more than a third of all emissions in the United States.

The one advantage of Republican intransigence is that there isn’t a very high cost for the President in taking actions like this. Republicans are already in full battle armor, so there’s not much they can threaten with. There aren’t that many Dems left in areas where the coal industry can make or break their electoral futures, and the few that do exist can easily and safely pivot away from the President on this in their own local areas.

It appears that President Obama will be willing to put these standards into place. That’s a very important step–and it’s worth remembering that if a GOP president follows him, the standards will likely be reversed. Just another way in which there really is a big difference between the two parties.

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Lies, damned lies and secrets

by digby

Oh heck, who would have ever guessed this could possibly be true?

A Senate intelligence committee investigation found that the Central Intelligence Agency employed brutal interrogation methods that turned out to be largely useless and then lied about their effectiveness, according to the Washington Post.

As described to the Post, the Senate report contradicts the main defenses of the Bush-era torture program: That harsh methods were needed to produce actionable results, and that the program itself helped save American lives by foiling terror attacks. Instead, the CIA overstated the effectiveness of the program and concealed the harshness of the methods they used. Intelligence breakthroughs credited to the “enhanced interrogation” program by the CIA were instead gleaned through other means, and then used by the agency to bolster defenses of the program. The intelligence committee is set to vote on submitting the report for declassification on Thursday.

This is not news to anyone who’s been following the torture story for some time. But this is an official government report so it’s significant.

Here’s the thing. We know for a fact that these techniques were ordered from on high, we know the government lied about it, destroyed evidence and covered it up. We know that the government that succeeded it refused to hold anyone responsible for it even though it stated it disavowed the worst of these techniques as being contrary to American law and international norms. These things are all true.

So please tell me again why we should be so trusting that they are not lying about various other secret programs when they assure us they are not doing what they say they’re not doing even as evidence suggests they are?

This has happened in our history over and over again. Illegal and unconstitutional behavior is revealed by a whistle-blower or witness and the government staunchly denies that it’s true, then it condemns the messenger and insists that civil libertarians are being paranoid and hysterical by raising alarms. And then it turns out to be true. At which point all the reflexive supporters of the government’s national security programs shrug and say this is old news.

I’m afraid that the government’s lesson of the torture regime is quite clear and it isn’t that the government shouldn’t torture. The lesson is that they should do a better job of keeping it a secret. Same as it ever was.

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Paul Ryan’s long march

by digby

I think people may be surprised that Paul Ryan once again proposed his plan to voucherize Medicare today, knowing that it has no chance of passage and this being an election year and all.

If you aren’t familiar with his plan, here’s a succinct description from Think Progress:

Ryan’s new Medicare proposal hews to the same basic structure as his previous premium support plans — in essence, a system of insurance vouchers. Under the plan, future Medicare beneficiaries would have the option of choosing between traditional fee-for-service Medicare or a list of private health plans and receive a subsidy to help pay the chosen policy’s premium. Unlike previous Ryan budgets, however, seniors who are currently 55 or younger would be forced into this alternative system, likely breaking a pledge House Republicans made last year promising that current 55-year-olds would be able to stay on traditional Medicare.

Ryan emphasizes that his proposal still gives seniors the choice of remaining in regular Medicare. But what he doesn’t mention is that his plan makes Medicare so expensive that millions of seniors will likely be forced to switch into the private plans. While Ryan employs a different type of bidding system for private health plans under his 2015 blueprint that softens his plan’s topline effect on beneficiaries’ costs, an earlier Congressional Budget Office (CBO) analysis of Medicare premium support systems found that plans such as Ryan’s would increase traditional Medicare premiums by a staggering 50 percent.

Aside from his general misanthropy and dystopian hellcape vision of America, it’s not surprising at all that he would reintroduce this. He’s playing a long game. Indeed, the GOP, for all its caterwauling and repeal votes of Obamacare, probably understand the way the wind blows on this better than the Democrats. They certainly have a roadmap if Ryan stays at the helm of their budget battleship.

Here’s what I’m talking about. Recall what Ezra Klein wrote a couple of years ago:

If Republicans can make their peace with the Affordable Care Act and help figure out how to make the Affordable Care Act’s exchanges work to control costs and improve quality, it’d be natural to eventually migrate Medicaid and Medicare into the system. Liberals would like that because it’d mean better care for Medicaid beneficiaries and less fragmentation in the health-care system. Conservatives would like it because it’d break the two largest single-payer health-care systems in America and turn their beneficiaries into consumers. But the implementation and success of the Affordable Care Act is a necessary precondition to any compromise of this sort. You can’t transform Medicaid and Medicare until you’ve proven that what you’re transforming them into is better. Only the Affordable Care Act has the potential to do that.

So Bachmann is perhaps right to say that the president is moving us towards a day when ObamaCare — or, to put it more neutrally, “premium support” — might come to Medicare. He’s seeing whether it works in the private health-care market first and, if it does, there’s little doubt that the political pressure to extend it to other groups will be intense. The question is why Bachmann and her party are doing so much to stand in his way? The corollary to Bachmann’s accusation that the president has a realistic plan to privatize Medicare is that the Republicans, for all their sound and fury over the Ryan budget, don’t.

So in the long run, all the crowing about the success of Obamacare — regardless of the details — may be just what Dr Ryan ordered. And, apparently, just what some of the ACA wonks ordered too. Bipartisanship at last.

I think that to the extent that liberals care about “fragmentation” of the market, they would much rather have this go the other way — move us into a medicare-for-all situation rather than fold Medicare into Obamacare. Regardless of how willing people are to sign on to Obamacare, there are many complications that I think people would rather not have to deal with — especially old people who need a lot of health care. Our private insurance system, even with the subsidies, is a horrible pain in the neck to deal with. But apparently, we should all want to turn the entire health care system over to it because … well, I don’t honestly know why.

Progressives had better get organized to fight this or it can certainly happen. Might I suggest taking a page from the campaign to raise Social Security benefits and say that now is the time to start agitating again for lowering the Medicare age (or at least allowing a medicare buy-in?) If Democrats want to keep one of their most successful programs healthy, they should probably be thinking about how to expand it to more people because those who are hostile to Medicare will be working overtime to either subsume it into the maze of Obamacare or privatize it altogether. Paul Ryan’s playing the long game. Progressives need to do the same.

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The super-rich bad seeds are delicate too

by digby

Following up on David’s post below I just wanted to add that coming on the heels of that notorious “affluenza” case in Texas, this shocking sentence from Delaware really illustrates the class and race disparities in our justice system, but that’s not the only problem. It’s actually true that pampered rich people probably don’t “fare well” in prison. Neither do hardened poor people. That’s because our prison system is a disgrace. Of course, the fact that a judge can only see the horror of it when he or she is confronted with a wealthy, white criminal pretty much says it all. (Imagine what it must be like for this poor fellow in jail. Or any of the tens of thousands of mentally ill we are now housing in our depraved prison system.)

In case it’s not clear, I’m not saying society shouldn’t be protected from child molesters. Of course it should. But unless a child molester is literally sentenced to death. rape or maiming by fellow inmates, our prisons should not be governed by the law of the jungle and prisoners should not be in physical danger within their walls. And that goes for all of them, even the horrible criminals. No civilized nation should be imprisoning so many people and then housing them in inhuman hellholes.

In 1991, I was sentenced to six years in prison on a probation violation. I was originally convicted of forging a check to buy crack cocaine. When I went to prison, I was young, skinny, and bisexual. I was scared to death.

As soon as I got there, inmates started acting like they were my fi-iends so they could take advantage of me. They jumped on me and beat me. Within two weeks, I was raped at knifepoint.

Being raped at knifepoint was the worst thing I could ever imagine. The physical pain was devastating. But the emotional pain was even worse.

I reported the rape, and was sent into protective custody. But I wasn’t safe there either. They put all kinds of people in protective custody, including sexual predators. I was put in a cell with a rapist who had full-blown AIDS. Within two days, he forced me to give him oral sex and anally raped me. I yelled for the guard, but no one came to help me. I finally had to flood the cell to get a guard to come.

Because I was raped, I got labeled as a “faggot.” Everywhere I walked, everyone looked at me like I was a target. It opened the door for a lot of other predators. Even the administrators thought it was okay for a “faggot” to be raped. They said, ‘Oh, you must like it.’ No one wants to be raped. No one likes being violently attacked.

I documented the abuse, I filed grievances, I followed all of the procedures to report what was happening to me, but no one cared. They just moved me fi-om cell to cell. This went on for nine months. I went through nine months of torture – nine months of hell – that could have been avoided.

In August, I started bleeding really bad from the rectum. I didn’t want to go to the infirmary, because I was still so ashamed about what had happened to me, but I had to. They gave me a test, and that’s when I got the devastating news. I was HIV-positive. I felt suicidal. I felt like my world had come to an end. I cried and cried. I felt ashamed, embarrassed, degraded, and humiliated. I haven’t forgotten those feelings. There isn’t a day that goes by that I don’t think about this.

I agree that the rich child molester should not be forced to go into a prison like that and be assaulted, perhaps killed. But that’s only because I don’t think anybody should be assaulted and killed in prison.

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Debt collecting vultures 


by digby

Dday has a chilling piece up at the New Republic about debt collectors. The stories he tells are enough to curl your hair and the sheer numbers are even worse:

According to statistics from the Federal Reserve, one in seven Americans is being pursued by a debt collector, up from one in 12 just ten years ago. And substantial numbers of these Americans report being hounded for debts they do not owe. A new report from the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau logged tens of thousands of complaints claiming just this—that the debt in question is simply not theirs.

Can the debt collection industry be so careless as to continually harass the wrong individuals? The more you learn about how debt collection works, the more you’re surprised that they ever find the right target in the first place.

I have little doubt that this “industry” is one of the few that’s thriving in this economy. When the going gets tough, these vultures are always circling.  They make their living by subterfuge, threats and harassment.

There are rules about what these people are allowed to do but unless you enforce them, they will do whatever it takes. Know your rights.

In the meantime, read dday’s piece to see just how vulnerable we all are to these lowlives. It could happen to anyone.

If you’re rich in America, you can even get away with raping your 3-year-old daughter

by David Atkins

This is what justice looks like in these United States:

Robert Richards IV, an heir to the du Pont family fortune, served no jail time even though he plead guilty to the fourth-degree rape of his 3-year-old daughter in 2008, according to court documents. The details of that rape case,which received little media attention at the time, were revealed in the aftermath of a lawsuit filed on March 18th on behalf of Richards’ two children by his ex-wife, Tracy Richards. The former Mrs. Richards is now accusing Robert Richards of also sexually abusing their son. The lawsuit is “seeking compensatory and punitive damages for assault, negligence, and intentional and negligent infliction of emotional distress on his two children.” The suit and subsequent developments were first reported by senior reporter Cris Barrish of Delaware’s The News Journal.

Lawyers for Robert Richards IV have 45 days from the time of the March 18 filing to respond in court to the lawsuit. They could not be reached for comment and appear not to have made any public comments on the case thus far.
According to a February 2009 sentencing order in the criminal rape case, Delaware Superior Court Judge Jan Jurden concluded that Robert Richards IV “will not fare well” in prison. Jurden originally sentenced Richards to eight years in prison, then suspended that punishment in favor of Level II probation and ordered the heir — who is supported by a family trust — to pay $4,395 to the Delaware Violent Crimes Compensation Board.

See, if you’re rich you “won’t fare well in prison”, even if you’re a large man with no major problems. If you’re poor, you’ll do just fine in prison. After all, being poor in America is a sort of prison anyway, so it’s no big deal.

The rich are just made of finer, more delicate stuff and deserve to be pampered. They just need treatment, not prison, so they can go back to being the John Galts of society they are. Even the 4th-generation heirs.

It’s just another day in the new American aristocracy.

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