Category: Social Safety Net

Just When Thought that the ‘Phants Could Not Get Any More Repulsive

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They have slipped a provision into the payroll tax extension which would deny unemployment compensation for people who lack a high school diploma:

For legislation to extend the payroll tax cut through the end of 2012, House Republicans are expected to push for a provision on unemployment insurance (UI) that is appalling even by current Washington standards. Neither President Obama nor Congress should accept any payroll-tax legislation that includes it. Here’s why:
The provision, part of a full-year payroll-tax bill that the House passed in December, would deny UI benefits to any worker who lacks a high school diploma or GED and is not enrolled in classes to get one or the other — regardless of how long the person worked or whether he or she has access to adult education, which itself has been subject to significant budget cuts in the past few years and is heavily oversubscribed.
The proposal would deny UI benefits to hundreds of thousands of workers — many of them middle-aged — who have worked hard, played by the rules, and effectively paid UI taxes for years and who then were laid off due to no fault of their own.

This would violate the basic compact that the UI system has embodied since its creation under President Roosevelt in 1935 — that people who have amassed a sufficient record of work, and on whose behalf UI taxes have faithfully been paid, may receive UI benefits for a temporary period if they are laid off and are searching for a new job.

Republicans need to find a way to blame the victim. It’s in their DNA.

Just put on the f%$#ing glasses, and look.

Just really look, and understand that these are two sorts of people with the ‘Phants, the aliens, and the people who gleefully say, “I, for one, welcome our new insect overlords.”

It Sucks to be John Boehner

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Yes, I know, orange, likely drinking problem, looks like a poster child for sex without partners, so it always sucks to be him.

It’s just that today, it sucks even more, because he had to back down on his attempt to short circuit the 2 month extension of payroll tax cuts and unemployment benefits.

The problem here is that he backed out on a deal that he cut with, among other folks, the Senate Republicans, because he has no control of his caucus, and once the members of his caucus realized that they looked like complete prats, though not as complete as John Boy, they got in his face too.

When one looks at the basic mechanics of the office of Speaker of the House, and excludes the prism of ideology, Boehner is still the worst speaker in recent memory:  He can’t count votes, and he can’t hold onto them, and he cannot protect his caucus from their own worst impulses.

The word is that it’s Eric Cantor who is setting himself up for this sh%$, because he wants the gavel, but Boehner, having attempted an unsuccessful coup against Gingrich in the 1990s, should know what is going on, and how to deal with it.

Adventures in the Law Enforcement Industrial Complex

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It turns out that no one has every really tried to do a comprehensive census of child sex workers, and when researchers from the John Jay College of Criminal Justice conducted a census of those in New York City, they discovered that conventional wisdom on this problem is wrong:

  • Pimps are a very small (10%) part of the picture.
  • About half of the child prostitutes surveyed were male. (45%)
  • They were majority local (56%) and overwhelmingly US citizens(90+%).
  • A large majority (70%) had contacted social service agencies for help.
  • 95% said that they did this out of economic need.

The money quote here is, “In other words, the typical kid who is commercially exploited for sex in New York City is not a tween girl, has not been sold into sexual slavery, and is not held captive by a pimp.”

How does this involve the “Law Enforcement Industrial Complex”?  Like this:

Curtis and Dank were amazed by what their research had revealed. But they were completely unprepared for the way law enforcement officials and child-advocacy groups reacted to John Jay’s groundbreaking study.

“I remember going to a meeting in Manhattan where they had a lot of prosecutors whose job was to prosecute pimps,” Curtis recalls. “They were sort of complaining about the fact that their offices were very well staffed but their workload was…not very daunting, let’s say. They had a couple cases, and at every meeting you go to, they’d pull out the cherry-picked case of this pimp they had busted, and they’d tell the same story at every meeting. They, too, were bothered by the fact that they couldn’t find any pimps, any girls.

“So I come along and say, ‘I found 300 kids’ — they’re all perky — but then I say, ‘I’m sorry, but only 10 percent had pimps.’

“It was like a fart in church. Because basically I was saying their office was a waste of time and money.”

As to what this means in terms of policy, what does this mean>

Well, the obvious is that staffing DA’s office on the basis of what you saw on Law and Order: Special Victims Unit, is not a good policy.

What is also clear from this study is that these children need long term support, and not just transitional support:

For example, the John Jay study found that when asked what it would take to get them to give up prostitution, many kids expressed a desire for stable, long-term housing. But the widely accepted current social-service model — shelters that accommodate, at most, a ninety-day stay — doesn’t give youths enough time to get on their feet, and instead pushes them back to the streets. The findings also point to a general need for more emphasis on targeted outreach, perhaps through peer-to-peer networks, as well as services of all kinds, from job training and placement to psychological therapy.

One interesting question here is whether the numbers are different, particularly with regards to foreign sex workers, in countries with stronger social safety nets, because it sounds like this is largely being driven by our general lack of a meaningful social safety net.

Of course, there are a lot of problems in the US that would be solved by a better social safety net.

It’s On Girl!

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AFL-CIO president Richart Trumpka just said that Obama has aligned himself with the teabaggers:

The most powerful union official in the country offered reporters his harshest critique of President Obama to date Thursday, questioning Obama’s policy and strategic decisions, and claiming he aligned himself with the Tea Party in the debt limit fight.

“This is a moment that working people and quite frankly history will judge President Obama on his presidency; will he commit all his energy and focus on bold solutions on the job crisis or will he continue to work with the Tea Party to offer cuts to middle class programs like Social Security all the while pretending the deficit is where our economic problems really lie,” AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka told reporters at a breakfast roundtable hosted by the Christian Science Monitor.
Trumka dismissed Obama’s recent job creation proposals — an extended payroll tax cut, patent reform, free trade deals — as “nibbly things that aren’t going to make a difference,” and said the AFL-CIO might sit out the Democratic convention if he and the party don’t get serious.
“If they don’t have a jobs program I think we’d better use our money doing other things,” Trumka said.

I do not think that Barack Obama has the slightest clue just how disappointed his “base” is with him, and if he did, I think that he would be dismissive of the fact.

Get ready for President Bachmann. (honest to God, how did the ‘Phants find someone scarier than Sarah Palin?)

Some Sanity on Non-Profits in Illinois

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In Illinois, the state Department of Revenue regularly certifies non-profits, with the idea making sure that they behave in a not-for-profit manner, as opposed to accumulating mountains of cash and overpaying their executives.

Well they have now denied tax exemptions to three hospitals, and are reviewing 15 more because they are abrogating their responsibility to serve their communities:

The Illinois Department of Revenue has denied property tax exemptions to three hospitals and is reviewing applications from 15 others, officials said Tuesday, signaling that the state plans to get tough on nonprofit hospitals it believes operate more like businesses than charities.

At stake are millions of dollars in tax revenues that the hospitals could contribute to cities, parks and schools by paying taxes.

Northwestern Memorial’s Prentice Women’s Hospital in Chicago’s Gold Coast neighborhood, Edward Hospital in Naperville and Decatur Memorial Hospital in Decatur were informed of the decisions Tuesday morning, Revenue Department officials told The Associated Press.

They follow last year’s Illinois Supreme Court ruling that found a central Illinois hospital wasn’t doing enough free or discounted treatment of the poor to qualify for an exemption, obligating it to pay $1.2 million in local property tax payments per year.

The hospitals have 60 days to ask an administrative law judge to review the decisions. In Illinois, property taxes are collected by county governments, and the Department of Revenue decides which institutions are eligible for tax exemptions.

This is actually something bears on my personal past, not from the hospital angle, but from the undeserving non-profit angle.

A little over 20 years (!) ago, I incorporated a not-for profit tax exempt corporation as a 501(c)3 that puts on Science Fiction conventions, which in that case meant that I represented it as an educational organization.  While technically legal, I’ve always felt that the organization was more properly a 501(c)7, a social organization.

I filled out the forms, and chased them through the state and federal bureaucracies.  And it was all technically legal, and I did not materially misrepresent anything in the applications

That being said, even at the time, I felt that this was an undeserving use of this status.

I was aware of the differences between a (c)3 and a (c)7 at the time, but we felt that we needed the ability for people to deduct donations, and (more importantly) the postage discount available for the (c)3.

The more scrutiny that is placed on organizations that use these sorts of status as a shield (501(c)4 tend to be used as political front group, for example), the better.

There are a lot of slimy things under the rocks that are section 501 of the IRS code.

H/t Washington Monthly.

BTW, It Ain’t Just US Conservatives Who Want to F%$# Us All

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Because British Prime Minister David Cameron’s brain trust is hard at work:

Ministers yesterday disowned controversial ideas floated by David Cameron’s strategy guru, including the scrapping of maternity leave and consumer rights and the closure of jobcentres.

Steve Hilton came under fire after it emerged that he had put forward numerous proposals to boost Britain’s fragile recovery. His friends blamed the disclosure on obstructive civil servants who do not admire his free-thinking approach to policy.

The 42-year-old former advertising man, who cycles to work and walks around Downing Street in a T-shirt and socks, is seen as one of Mr Cameron’s closest two advisers – the other being the Chancellor, George Osborne. The Prime Minister admires Mr Hilton’s original thinking although he often backs Mr Osborne when the two men clash. Insiders say Mr Hilton has a “scattergun” approach to policy ideas, many of which do not get off the ground. The suggestions leaked yesterday look certain to join the list.

What the f%$3 is wrong with this people?

Guess Who Loses If There Is a Default?

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Surprise, surprise, it won’t be the Banksters, because the bond holders will get priority over the people who will actually suffer as a result:

The U.S. Treasury will give priority to making interest payments to holders of government bonds when due if lawmakers fail to reach an agreement to raise the debt ceiling, according to an administration official.

The official requested anonymity because no announcement has been made. The Treasury has said about $90 billion in debt matures on Aug. 4 and more than $30 billion in interest comes due Aug. 15. Overall, more than $500 billion matures in August.

The $90 billion in six-month Treasury bills maturing Aug. 4 pared losses after the comments. Obama administration officials will brief the public no earlier than after financial markets close tomorrow on priorities for paying the nation’s bills if the $14.3 trillion limit isn’t raised, a Democratic Party official said earlier.

“The announcement is reassuring, but there’s really no alternative to favoring the bondholders,” said Christian Cooper, head of U.S. dollar derivatives trading in New York at Jefferies Group Inc., which as one of the 20 primary dealers is obligated to bid in Treasury sales. “The alternative would point to a default”

The alternative would be children not going to bed hungry, uninspected meat poisoning people, and old people not eating cat food, but no one in Washington, DC gives a crap about them.

The Debt Ceiling Showdown is Blazing Saddles

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One Move, and the N***** Gets It

Yves Smith’s interview on The Real News Network, is a cogent description of what is wring here, and makes reference to that classic scenes from Mel Brooks’ masterpiece, Blazing Saddles.

It’s 8 minutes and 27 seconds well spent.

Her thesis, and it is one that I support, is that the “Debt Ceiling Crisis” is largely an artifact of the Obama administration’s desire to gut cut Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid.

It’s screw granny theater.

Yes, I Heard His Speech, and It Pissed Me Off…

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Same sh%$, different day, it’s the culture of Washington, both sides are at fault, if we do nothing disaster looms.  (False: doing nothing means letting the Bush tax cuts expire in 2012, and deficits drop by a lot)

It seemed to be more of a plaintive whine that people just don’t get how awesome he is, or they would go all happy non-partisan.

This is all largely an artifact of his own making, he could have gotten this all done in December, but Obama wanted an opportunity to cut Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid, so we have this hostage situation.

That’s not what pissed me off the most though, it’s that, because of the speech, Maddow was preempted by that fatuous f%$# Lawrence O’Donnell.

I know that it’s not rational, but his voice sets my teeth on edge.

We Need to Primary Him Now!!!

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I’m beginning to think that the Republicans, the ½ sane ones anyway, may have been right in their criticisms in 2008 when they tried to portray him as a self-absorbed narcissist.

I am increasingly convinced that he obsessed with his own legacy such a degree that he just does not care about right and wrong.

He thinks that he is so damn awesome that he can somehow create a post partisan partisan paradise, with sparkle ponies!

To be fair, it could be that he’s just enamored by the idea that government should be private companies run by his Harvard buddies, but the effect is the same.

The latest episode in this is that he is trying to cut a deal with Republicans on the debt ceiling which is all cuts, including Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid:

President Obama and House Speaker John A. Boehner rushed Thursday to strike agreement on a far-reaching plan to reduce the national debt but faced a revolt from Democrats furious that the accord appeared to include no immediate provision to raise taxes.

With 12 days left until the Treasury begins to run short of cash, Obama and Boehner (R-Ohio) were still pursuing the most ambitious plan to restrain the national debt in at least 20 years. Talks focused on sharp cuts in agency spending and politically painful changes to cherished health and retirement programs aimed at saving roughly $3 trillion over the next decade.

More savings would be generated through an overhaul of the tax code that would lower personal and corporate income tax rates while eliminating or reducing an array of popular tax breaks, such as the deduction for home mortgage interest. But the talks envisioned no specific tax increases as part of legislation to lift the debt limit, and the tax rewrite would be postponed until next year.

Democrats reacted with outrage as word filtered to Capitol Hill, saying the emerging agreement appeared to violate their pledge not to cut Social Security and Medicare benefits as well as Obama’s promise not to make deep cuts in programs for the poor without extracting some tax concessions from the rich.

………

After a lunchtime meeting between Lew and Senate Democrats, Majority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.) made no attempt to hide his anger, telling reporters that his caucus would oppose the “potential agreement” because it appeared to include no clear guarantee of increased revenue.

“The president always talked about balance, that there had to be some fairness in this, that this can’t be all cuts. There has to be a balance. There has to be some revenue and cuts. My caucus agrees with that,” Reid said. “I hope that the president sticks with that. I’m confident that he will.”

Congressional and administration officials said the White House informed Democratic leaders about the talks after Obama met privately with Boehner and House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.) late Wednesday. Congressional aides, speaking on the condition of anonymity to detail private discussions, said the White House acknowledged that the emerging agreement is “to the right of the Gang of Six” — a bipartisan Senate debt-reduction framework unveiled this week — and far removed from what Democrats have said would be acceptable.

Obama summoned top Democratic leaders in both the House and the Senate back to the White House later Thursday for further discussions.

Barack Obama is the Manchurian Democrat.

To be fair, sources within the Obama administration are denying this, but as John Aravosis notes, in terms identical to when they killed the public option in secret:

Obama White House’s Dan Pfeiffer on rumors that they sold out the public option:

A rumor is making the rounds that the White House and Senator Reid are pursuing different strategies on the public option. Those rumors are absolutely false.

In his September 9th address to Congress, President Obama made clear that he supports the public option because it has the potential to play an essential role in holding insurance companies accountable through choice and competition. That continues to be the President’s position.

We all know how that went.

Obama White House on the rumors that the President has sold out on the budget deal:

A White House spokesman called the claims from aides “not credible” — the result of having a “3rd hand version of the facts.”

And here’s more on the record from – wait for it – Dan Pfeiffer:

pfeiffer44 Dan Pfeiffer
Anyone reporting a $3 trillion deal without revenues is incorrect. POTUS believes we need a balanced approach that includes revenues.

Barack Obama is going to f%$# the American people, and he’s going to f%$# the Democratic party, and while he does not understand it, he’s going to make Sarah Palin President, because the American people hate the idea of cutting entitlements, and like taxing the rich, and he’s decided that we are all idiots, so he’s setting it up so that Republicans will be completely insulated from the consequences of gutting Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid.

He’s Proposing Means Testing Medicare? Is He Nuts?

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One of the reason that Social Security and Medicare are popular are because they both apply to everyone.

When you start trying to exclude people for being too rich, you remove a powerful constituency that supports the programs, and save next to no money, and set the stage for a lower level, until finally the programs are just for the poor, and they are easier to kill.

Well, at his press conference, this is what Barack Obama proposed:

“The fall back position, the third option, and what I consider the least attractive option, is one in which we raise the debt ceiling without making any significant progress on reducing the deficit,” he said.

Obama specifically highlighted the possibility of additional means-testing for Medicare as a way to achieve savings, noting that his proposal would not affect current beneficiaries.

“You can envision a situation where for somebody in my position — me having to pay a little bit more — would be appropriate…and that could make a difference,” Obama said during a Friday press conference.

Will someone please primary the bastard before he destroys the last vestige of the New Deal? Please?

His narcissistic interest in accomplishing big things, even when they are bad big things, is profoundly troubling.

They Should Worry

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It appears that senior Senate Democrats are worried that Obama’s eagerness to gut Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid is threatening to squander their advantage on those issues:

Top Democrats in charge of keeping the Senate in Dem hands and maintaining the political health of the party — DSCC chair Patty Murray and messaging chief Chuck Schumer — have privately expressed frustration that deep Medicare cuts risk squandering the major political advantage Democrats have built up on the issue, people familiar with internal discussions say.

Senators Murray and Schumer, along with other Dems like Debbie Stabenow and Mark Begich, have warned against deep cuts in recent leadership meetings, a source familiar with the meetings says, another sign of the unrest that the possibility of serious entitlements cuts is creating among Congressional Democrats.

“We shouldn’t be giving away our advantage on Medicare,” said a source familiar with Murray’s thinking, in characterizing her objections in private meetings. “We should be very careful about giving away the biggest advantage we’ve had as Democrats in some time.”

This, by the way, is why the Democrats won’t retake the house, and will lose the Senate, in 2012.

Because it’s increasingly Obama finds the concept doing anything that might benefit the party as distasteful and gauche.

When I Called Him the Manchurian Democrat, I Had No Idea…

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Nancy Pelosi heard that Barack Obama was looking at gutting cutting social security, and it sounds like her response was to call him out:

After a contentious White House meeting with President Obama and other Congressional leaders, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) returned to the Capitol and drew an important red line: Members of her caucus won’t vote for a grand bargain to raise the debt limit and reduce future deficits if the final deal includes cuts to Medicare and Social Security benefits — and that means it probably won’t pass.

“You [asked], ‘could the changes compromise the vote?'” Pelosi said at a Thursday afternoon briefing near the House chamber. “I said yes.”

It’s widely believed that House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) will need Democratic votes to raise the debt limit. Democratic leaders, including House Minority Whip Steny Hoyer (D-MD) have offered to help him out — but not on Boehner’s terms alone. Pelosi has her own terms.

“We have been very clear Democrats are not supporting — House Democrats are not supporting any cuts in benefits for Social Security or Medicare,” she said.

I think that her calling him a bitch, which is what she did, might have something to do with the fact that he gave no advanced warning of his decision to Congressional Democrats:

Multiple senior House Democratic aides tell TPM that caucus members were caught off guard by news stories about President Obama’s push for deeper deficit and spending reductions — and particularly about the White House’s willingness to cut Social Security as part of a grand bargain to raise the debt limit.

At a private caucus meeting Thursday morning, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) told her members that if Obama’s serious about putting Social Security on the chopping block, he’d left her in the dark about it. And after an at-times-contentious meeting about how open Dems should be to significant entitlement cuts, leaders departed to the White House to read Obama the riot act.

And just to ensure that the day is a complete mess for Barry, his proposal to kill the New Deal and give it to the bankers was just enthusiastically endorsed by the craziest motherf%$#er in Congress, Allen West:

Reports that President Obama could discuss with Republicans the idea of cuts to Social Security and Medicare is picking up praise from a source that doesn’t usually have anything good to say about the President: Rep. Allen West (R-FL).

In fact, this is coming from a man whose military career ended after a torture-related incident, who has called Obama a “low-level socialist agitator”, and who has said that Medicare will destroy America: “I gotta tell you something: if you support Medicare the way it is now, you can kiss the United States of America goodbye.”

Seriously, when you look at how this is handled has me wondering if the production staff who created Gigli are running the White House staff.

It’s not only bad policy, it’s criminally stupid politics.

At some point, you have to start wondering if this crap is just stupid, or it’s what he really wants.

He Doesn’t Care About Policy, He Wants a “Legacy”

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And he knows that “only Nixon could go to China,” so Obama wants to be the President who gut social security:

President Obama is pressing congressional leaders to consider a far-reaching debt-reduction plan that would force Democrats to accept major changes to Social Security and Medicare in exchange for Republican support for fresh tax revenue.

At a meeting with top House and Senate leaders set for Thursday morning, Obama plans to argue that a rare consensus has emerged about the size and scope of the nation’s budget problems and that policymakers should seize the moment to take dramatic action.

As part of his pitch, Obama is proposing significant reductions in Medicare spending and for the first time is offering to tackle the rising cost of Social Security, according to people in both parties with knowledge of the proposal. The move marks a major shift for the White House and could present a direct challenge to Democratic lawmakers who have vowed to protect health and retirement benefits from the assault on government spending.

“Obviously, there will be some Democrats who don’t believe we need to do entitlement reform. But there seems to be some hunger to do something of some significance,” said a Democratic official familiar with the administration’s thinking. “These moments come along at most once a decade. And it would be a real mistake if we let it pass us by.”

(Emphasis mine)

Barack Obama is the Manchurian Democrat.

There is no formulation of right or wrong, there is no formulation of good policy, there is simply a “to do” list, where what is actually done does not matter.

What Liberal Pushback Should Look Like

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Thomas Geoghegan, has just written an OP/ED suggesting that Social Security and taxation should be increased, not decreases:

As a labor lawyer I cringe when Democrats talk of “saving” Social Security. We should not “save” it but raise it. Right now Social Security pays out 39 percent of the average worker’s preretirement earnings. While jaws may drop inside the Beltway, we could raise that to 50 percent. We’d still be near the bottom of the league of the world’s richest countries — but at least it would be a basement with some food and air. We have elderly people living on less than $10,000 a year. Is that what Democrats want to “save”?

“But we can’t afford it!” Oh, come on: We have a federal tax rate equal to nearly 15 percent of our G.D.P. — far below the take in most wealthy countries. Let’s wake up: the biggest crisis we face is that most of us have nothing meaningful saved for retirement. I know. I started my career wanting to be a pension lawyer. In the 1970s, lawyers like me expected there to be big pots of private pensions for hourly workers. By the 1980s, as factories closed, I was filing hopeless lawsuits to claw back bits and pieces of benefits. Now there are even fewer bits and pieces to get.

A recent Harris poll found that 34 percent of Americans have nothing saved for retirement — not even a hundred bucks. In this lost decade, that percentage is sure to go up. At retirement the lucky few with a 401(k) typically have $98,000. As an annuity that’s about $600 a month — not exactly an upper-middle-class lifestyle. It’s too late for Congress to come up with some new savings plan — a new I.R.A. that grows hair, or something. There’s no time. We have to improve the one public pension program in place. Should we means-test it? No. I don’t care if they go out and buy bottles of Jim Beam: let our elderly have an occasional night out at a restaurant.

The most paralyzing half-truth in this country is that people hate taxes. People are willing to pay taxes that they spend on themselves. Two-thirds of those surveyed in a CBS/New York Times poll in January were willing to pay more taxes to save Social Security at its modest level. To “save” it, most of us don’t need to pay. We could lift the cap on high earners, the 6 percent of workers who make over $106,800 a year. If earnings above the cap were subject to the payroll tax with no increase in benefits to high earners, there would be no deficit in the Social Security trust fund in 2037, as projected.

If people are willing to pay more just to “save” Social Security, they should be glad to pay more to raise it.

I cannot imagine a such a full throated defense of basic human decency as government policy from any Democrat on the national stage, and that is a large part of the tragedy that is the Democratic party.

90% of All Nursing Home Patients End Up On Medicaid

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Which means that it’s an issue that the Republicans will use to scare old people, but Obama and the Congressional Democrats are negotiating draconian cuts in the program, because they have some sort of twisted political suicide pact thing going on:

This would be brutal for the poor, particularly in Republican states, but even in blue ones. Governors are champing at the bit to cut enrollment and increase cost sharing. State budgets are still strained, and Medicaid is among the highest expenditures. Much of Medicaid spending goes to keep poor seniors in nursing homes, so a lot of the cuts would get targeted there. Which means that you can call this the “Force Your Mother-in-Law to Move In With You Act.”

Keep in mind that fully half of all the coverage expansions in the Affordable Care Act come from a Medicaid expansion. A removal of MOE [maintenance of effort requirements, which prohibit states from gutting the program] would basically undercut that; even though the federal government would pick up all the costs of the Medicaid expansion, states want to reduce their current level, and so the coverage expansion will just unravel. Or, the feds will put the burden on the states, and the states will just opt out of it. You’re talking about millions and millions of beneficiaries losing their coverage.

Un-dirtyword-believably stupid, particularly when Medicaid is a vehicle for much of the theoretical improvements in coverage under Obama’s precious Affordable Health Care Act.

I’m beginning to think that, notwithstanding his intellect, Obama really is not interested in doing anything beyond checking off boxes on something that resembles a standardized test, whether it makes a difference or not.

Ironically, that is his education policy.

Vermont Governor Signs Single Payer Law

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Of course implementing the law over the next 3-5 years is problematic, since it requires a waiver from HHS, and I don’t think that Obama will stop sucking up to the insurance and finance industries and allow that to happen:

In order to actually enact the system, the state needs a waiver from the Affordable Care Act health reform law. Currently, the federal government will start handing out state waivers in 2017 — three years after Vermont wants to implement its system. Rep. Peter Welch (D-VT) has introduced an amendment that would move the waiver date up to 2014, an idea that President Obama has endorsed.

While I am sure that Obama would love to have the ability grant a waiver moved up, he is as insistent of the prerogatives of the executive as Dick Cheney ever was, there is no way that he would allow Vermont to set in motion a series of events that would transform healthcare delivery nationwide.

Basically, if Vermont is allowed to implement single payer,  businesses will start to move there, because healthcare is such a huge part of their personnel costs, and other states will start to feel pressure to follow suit, which should, eventually, lead to something like single payer being implemented nation wide.

The Giants Win the Pennant! The Giants Win the Pennant! The Giants Win the Pennant!!!!*

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Democrat Kathy Hochul, has won the special election in New York’s 26th Congressional district, largely because people do not want the Republicans to f%$# with Medicare.

Note here that she also won with some solid numbers, she got 48% of the vote, as versus Republican Jane Corwin’s 42% of the vote, and teabagger nutjob Jack Davis’s 8%.

You have to figure that even if Davis were not in the race, she would have won.

Note that this is not only one of the most firmly republican districts in New York, but one of the more heavily ‘Phant districts in the country, and it wasn’t even close.

*If you are American, and have not heard of the Shot Heard ‘Round the World, shame on you. If you are not American, click the link.