Bill USA
Bill USA's JournalOur Democracy’s “F” Word - by Reed Richardson
I found this over on Eric Alterman's blog. This is a VERY good read(emphases my own):
http://www.thenation.com/blog/170524/other-f-word
As this election season nears its climax, campaigns of every stripe are staking out their positions on the host of challenges facing our country. But over the next few weeks, one of the most important structural problems facing our nation’s ability to govern itself will likely go unmentioned by the presidential candidates, unasked about in any of the debates, and all but ignored by the press. But make no mistake, the notion that anything will really change for the better in Washington next year is the very definition of crazy if we continue to allow our legislative process to be hijacked by the lazy tyranny of filibusters.
Honestly, it’s hard to imagine a concept more anti-democratic than the filibuster. Its history speaks of its capacity for evil and abuse—from its early etymological origins describing efforts to expand slavery to its later, more common definition as procedural ploy in the Senate used by segregation supporters to obstruct Civil Rights legislation. By allowing a single elected official to essentially flout the collective will of two branches of government barring a supermajority objection, filibusters are tailor made for obstructionism and preserving the status quo. Even more inexplicable, this odious tactic that haunts the hall of Congress appears nowhere in the Constitution—it is a creature born of bureaucratic banality.
Until recently, however, filibusters were considered but an occasional novelty, a kind of personality quirk of the Senate, because they were relatively rare. But the days of actually filibustering a bill—with cots in the Senate chambers and impassioned idealists nobly reading things like railroad schedules and the Holy Bible into the Congressional record—have been replaced with relaxed rules that allow for all-too-easy objections. And, as might be expected, some lobbyists now specialize in filibuster consultation.
As a result, the number of filibusters has skyrocketed. As demonstrated by this graph (and, to see the raw numbers, this table) of Senate cloture motions—which serve as a proxy measurement of filibuster activity—their popularity really began growing in the 92rdCongress of 1971–72. Since then, they jumped again in the 103rd and then the 110th Congresses (plateauing after each spike as their level of usage became institutionalized). In all three of these cases, I humbly point out, Republicans were in the minority in the House and the Senate.
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EVEN FOX is calling out Rmoney on dishonesty!
http://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/even-fox-calling-out-romney-dishonestyOctober 15, 2012
For more than a month, Mitt Romney has cited six debunked studies to support his mathematically impossible plan to cut tax rates by 20 percent, while balancing the budget without raising taxes on the middle class. On Sunday, Fox News Sunday host Chris Wallace pressed senior Romney adviser Ed Gillespie on the credibility of these six studies, noting that each of them have serious issues:
GILLESPIE: Six different studies have said this is entirely doable.
WALLACE: Those are very questionable. Some of them are blogs, some of them are from AEI, an independent group.
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WALLACE: One of them is a blog from a guy who was a top adviser for George W. Bush. These are hardly non-partisan studies.
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T-shirt seen at Romney rally "Put the white back in the White House"
No commentary required......
https://twitter.com/BuzzFeedAndrew/status/256913512314585088/photo/1
Tried to go to see my bookmarked msgs on DU classic - DU classic in twilight zone
What if you want to access your old bookmarks or old Journal. Are we out of luck?
Geeze, that stinks Skinnner.
Medicare Vouchers Would Raise Costs For Most Seniors, (Kaiser Family Foundation) Study Finds
http://tpmdc.talkingpointsmemo.com/2012/10/kaiser-study-medicare-premium-support.php?ref=fpaConverting Medicare into a voucher program modeled on the plan Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan have proposed would increase premiums for the majority of seniors, even ones who choose to remain in traditional Medicare, according to a comprehensive nonpartisan study (PDF) released Monday.
The Kaiser Family Foundation delved into the likely impact of transforming Medicare into a “premium support” system. Under that approach, the federal government would provide seniors a subsidy to shop for insurance plans from a menu of competing private plans and traditional Medicare. That subsidy would be capped at the value of the second least costly premium in the marketplace.
Using 2010 data as a model, Kaiser’s study found that among seniors who chose to remain in traditional Medicare, more than half would have paid higher premiums. Just under half would have paid the same. That would’ve yielded an average premium hike of $720 annually for seniors who chose to remain in traditional Medicare.
Among seniors with private Medicare Advantage plans, 88 percent would have paid higher premiums unless they switched to a cheaper plan with less generous benefits. On average, seniors already in private plans would have paid $1,044 more annually, according to the study.
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Questions someone should ask Romney in coming debate
I think these would make a good questions for Romney to answer in the upcoming debate:
"Gov. Romney in your campaign advertizing you say President Obama's 'policies haven't worked'. Are you aware of the fact that the Republicans filibustered and killed the American Jobs Act, which Moody's Analytics said would create almost 2 million new jobs and lower the unemployment rate 1 full percentage point, and that the Republicans threatened a Government closure and a U.S. default on its debt, unless the Democrats agreed to significant cuts to Government programs supporting state and local jobs such as firemen, policemen and teachers and that the Wall Street Journal published an article pointing out that were it not for cuts to Government programs the unemployment rate would be a full percentage point LOWER than it is now? Do you consider these acts of legislative brinksmanship and obstruction part of President Obama's 'policies'?
"Governor Romney, in the first debate you gave the President some advice on how to 'work across the aisle' with the other party. Were you aware that Mitch McConnell declared that the first priority of the Republicans was to make sure that President Obama was not reelected, and that the Republican Party has set records for filibustering legislation and presidential appointments, since President Obama has been in office, and that the Republicans threatened to force a Government shutdown and a U.S. default on its debt if the Democrats didn't agree to significant cuts to current year programs, and do you think that threats of forcing government closure and default on its debt has caused Businessess to be much more cautious about hiring full-time permanent workers thus slowing the recovery?"
Can anybody find reliable data on speaking time for Biden and Ryan. I can't. Seemed like the Paul
Ryan show. what happened to Radish. did she leave the room?
this is the only thing on it I could find. Tried CNN too, but could find nothing on speaking times.
http://www.samefacts.com/2012/10/campaigns/campaign-2012/one-final-thought-about-the-debate/
Natural Born Job Killers - Republicans Obstruct over 4.2 million jobs
http://www.politicususa.com/natural-born-job-killers-republicans-obstruct-4-2-million-jobs.htmlMost human beings appreciate a person who sets a long-term goal and achieves success through careful planning, dedication, and single-minded determination to see their final objective reach fruition. There are, of course, some goals that should never be made, much less achieved, and world history is replete with examples of dastardly leaders whose goals were not in the best interest of humankind and caused immeasurable damage to a great number of people. On Inauguration night in 2009, Republican leaders gathered to plot the absolute obstruction of President Obama’s economic agenda and thus far, they have been successful much to the disappointment of millions of Americans who continue to suffer the effects Republican’s goal of retarding economic recovery and job creation. The GOP makes matters worse by decrying the President’s handling of the economy when the truth is that if they had not blocked, obstructed, and stonewalled every one of the President’s plans to improve the jobs and economic picture, the economy would be much closer to achieving a robust recovery.
The only failure in Republican attempts to totally destroy the economy was their inability to obstruct the President’s stimulus the Congressional Budget Office and several independent agencies claim created over 3 million jobs. However, they have made up for that success by refusing to consider President Obama’s American Jobs Act proposed over a year-and-a-half ago, and coupled with severe austerity measures at the state and local level, they have been successful maintaining unemployment at over 8% instead of less-than 6% if they were not intent on obstruction and economic devastation.
[font size="3"]There is no doubt the Republicans know what works to improve hiring and economic growth because every Republican administration has invested in hiring more public employees during a recession, and they always depended on federal funding to increase the workforce at the federal and state level, and not giving more tax breaks to their imaginary “job creators” they claim leads to full employment. The GOP austerity measures were not limited to blocking federal money to help states hire and retain employees, because states with Republican governors and legislatures made drastic cuts in the public sector workforce and many turned down federal aid to demonstrate their contempt for their residents, and the federal government. In California, for example, a Republican in Congress, Jeff Denham, is attempting to block implementation of a much needed high-speed rail project that will create over a million jobs as the largest earth-moving project in the state’s history, and sustain hundreds-of-thousands more jobs for maintenance and operation in cities up and down the state. His argument is that the government cannot afford the cost and the money is better spent creating jobs…with more tax cuts for “job creators.” [/font]
The austerity measures Republicans are implementing have never worked during a recession and despite the abject failure of every European country that enacted austerity, they are hell-bent on following the countries that have no growth and soaring unemployment. Even the presumptive Republican presidential candidate, Willard Romney, admitted that austerity during a recession is disastrous, and yet Republicans have killed over 600,000 public sector jobs that prevented 2.3 million downstream jobs from being created. Coupled with Republican obstruction of the President’s job plan in January 2011, they have effectively prevented 4.2 million Americans from finding good, living wage jobs, or enough to bring the unemployment rate down to 5.5% in a little over a year. Instead of cutting 600,000 teaching, police, firefighter and other public jobs, if states had increased those lost jobs by one-half, the unemployment rate would be under 5% and tax revenue would be up, the deficit would be reduced, and the economy would be humming along.
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If the GOP had not obstructed the 4.2 million jobs we'd have that many fewer unemployed.
Current unemployed number: 12,100,000
Less jobs obsructed by GOP: 4,200,000
unemployed w/o GOP obstruct: 7,900,000
Number of unemployed divided by civiilian workforce: 7,900,000/154,645,000 = [font size="3"] 5.1%[/font]
Romney: CBO said 20 mil will lose employer - grp insurance due to ACA. Wrong! But I have a question
Romney's statement that the CBO estimated 20 million will lose their employer provided group health insurance due to implementation of the ACA was reviewed by Politifact and they found it to be false (see below). Romney cherry-picked a number that was included by the CBO as the top of the range of estimates of the number of people who will either choose an Insurance Exchange policy (at their option) or will lose employer coverage. The CBO's baseline number (most likely to occur) was 3 million people.
[font size="3"]But I have a question. Does the CBO or anybody else have a prediction of how many people would lose their employer provided (cost shared) group insurance - if there was no ACA? Insurance costs are going up rapidly. Employers were saying there might come a time when they can no longer afford providing group coverage for employees - before Health care reform was even being talked about. Whatever the number of people losing employer provided group coverage due to the ACA is estimated to be - there should be an estimate of those who will lose group coverage without the ACA in place.[/font]
http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2012/oct/04/mitt-romney/mitt-romney-says-20-million-will-lose-health-insur/
(emphasis my own)
Even beyond the cherry-picking, Romney is wrong to say that 20 million Americans will "lose" their insurance.
According to CBO’s "baseline" estimates, 3 million people will spurn their employer’s offer of insurance and turn instead to another source, such as the health insurance "exchanges" created under the Obama health care law. In many cases, they will do this because they consider the employer’s offering to be unaffordable or lacking too many features they need.
Romney also ignores 9 million people who wouldn’t have had an employer plan before the Obama law, but who will get employer coverage after passage of the law, perhaps because of the law’s mix of subsidies and penalties for employers.
It’s also important to remember the big picture. CBO projects that, overall, the number of uninsured Americans will drop by 29 million to 31 million due to the law.
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...another question, this one for Politifact. The 9 million who will likely obtain employer provided group health insurance .... do they mean the CBO estimate of 3 million people losing group coverage - is NOT A NET NUMBER???? If it's not, then the real number CBO should be putting out there is 6 million MORE PEOPLE WILL HAVE EMPLOYER PROVIDED - (I.E. PRIVATE) GROUP HEALTH INSURANCE - BECAUSE OF THE ACA!
By the way, I have an acronym for referring to every time Romney tells another lie: So What Else Is New ..or: SWEIN! as in: "SWEIN! Romney told ANOTHER LIE!"
GOP Plans Congressional Investigation Into September Jobs Number Conspiracy
[font size="3"] NOt with my tax dollars. THe GOP should fund this with their own money. [/font]
http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2012/10/11/994151/gop-plans-congressional-investigation-into-september-jobs-number-conspiracy/
House Oversight Committee Chairman Darrell Issa (R-CA) told Fox News on Wednesday that he would hold hearings into the September job numbers, buying into a widely-discredited conspiracy theory that President Obama faked last month’s figure to improve his re-election chances.
After the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) released an unexpectedly strong monthly jobs report last Friday — finding a dramatic drop in unemployment to 7.8 percent and revised the number of jobs added in July and August up from initial estimates, a group of conservatives led by former GE CEO Jack Welch — suggested that the numbers could have been fudged. Issa has now promised to look into the matter:
FOX HOST: We asked [Issa] … whether or not he was concerned about Friday’s jobs report and that big drop in the unemployment rate from 8.1% to 7.8%, which some economists have called fluky and as a result there have been questions about the Labor Department’s methodology in calculating the unemployment report. Now, Chairman Issa says he wants to have hearings on this, take a listen.
ISSA: The way it is being done with the constant revisions, significant revisions, tells us that it is not as exact science as it needs to be and there’s got to be a better way to get those numbers or don’t put them out if they’re going to be wrong by as much as half a point.
FOX HOST: Now, Greta [van Susteren] asked him when he wants to have these hearings…and he said, that, “we very much intend to work every day through November and December to get these kind of things done. We’re hoping that this is a good nonpartisan time,” he said.
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