Read this, particularly the following…
WASHINGTON – House Minority Leader John Boehner says he would vote for President Obama's plan to extend tax cuts only for middle-class earners, not the wealthy, if that were the only option available to House Republicans.Of course The Orange One said that.
Because he knew that Sen. Mr. Elaine Chao would say the following in the Senate (here)…
Senate Republicans will oppose any effort to renew soon-to-expire Bush administration tax cuts if upper income taxpayers are excluded from the reductions.Jed Lewison at Daily Kos has some nice commentary of this also (here).
A spokesman for Senate GOP Leader Mitch McConnell said Monday that every Senate Republican has pledged to oppose President Barack Obama's tax-cutting plan. Obama would renew the tax cuts for most people, but let the top income tax rate rise back to almost 40 percent on family or small business income over $250,000.
From California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's official Twitter feed last evening:Two immediate thoughts: 1) The point of the joke made by Tina Fey as Palin was that the one-time veep candidate was trying to claim her state’s proximity to Russia as the basis for some kind of imagined foreign policy experience, and 2) With this supposed story, I think the proverbial “fifteen minutes” for Twitter are officially up (and once again, would that our corporate media judged every possible newsmaker and outlet as thoroughly as they seem to critique "Saturday Night Live").
"Over Anchorage, AK. Looking everywhere but can't see Russia from here. Will keep you updated as search continues."
Ouch. His fellow Republican, 2008 vice presidential nominee and former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, didn't actually tell ABC-TV's Charlie Gibson, back in 2008, that she could see Russia from her home in Wasilla. She said:
"They're our next door neighbors and you can actually see Russia from land here in Alaska, from an island in Alaska."
But thanks to Saturday Night Live, Palin will forever be linked to the joke "I can see Russia from my house."
But more to the point, though, when I hear about Palin, Alaska and Russia, what I don’t think of immediately is that hilarious graphic with Our Ol’ Buddy Vlad Putin’s head looking across the globe in the direction of The Great White North (I’ll try to find it...can't recall where it is at the moment).
(Oh yeah, this is it...funny.)
No, what I think of first is the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, better known as UNCLOS, an item I posted about two years ago during a certain presidential election here (and based on this, at least one Daily Kos diarist shares my concerns also, since, in ’07, when Russia made its famous claim to own the North Pole, it also made a less famous claim to own 18,000 square miles of Alaskan sea territory.).It should be noted, by the way, that UNCLOS was signed but not ratified, and ratification was favored by the Bushco cabal (no immediate word on whether ratification is favored by the Obama Administration, but I’d be surprised if it isn’t). Because we haven’t yet ratified it, though, we don’t have the same legal footing to question tactics in our hemisphere by Russia, China, or any other potentially adversarial power.
So, instead of chuckling over some silly little dustup between two Republican governors, one who no longer holds office and the other who is on the way out, let’s get some vital questions about our sovereignty and oil rights settled instead, OK?
Faced with the fact that the new health-care law was driving up insurance premiums, Health and Human Service Secretary Kathleen Sebelius warned that the administration would have "zero tolerance" for anyone who blamed them for those price hikes.Hardy har har (and I mean no disrespect to our HHS secretary, but I can think of a lot scarier people than Kathleen Sebelius – I just hope I don’t have nightmares now where she confronts me in a dark alley with a menacing look on her face, and gives me…A GOOD SCOLDING!).
Insurance companies that persist in telling the truth could face dire consequences. "We will not stand idly by as insurers blame their premium hikes . . . on the requirement that they provide consumers with basic protections," she wrote in a letter to the insurance industries' trade association.
At the very least, she noted "bad actors" could be excluded from new government-run health-insurance exchanges that will begin operation in 2014 under the law. That could cost insurers as many as 30 million customers nationwide. People also might not be able to use government subsidies to buy insurance from companies that don't toe the administration line. What's next? Only companies that write checks to the Democratic National Committee can participate? Have too many employees contribute to the wrong candidate, and you get a visit from the insurance commissioner?
WAAAAAHHHHHH!!!!!!!
Seriously, though, this Daily Kos post from mcjoan pretty much called this move…
I don't think there's a soul who paid any attention to this process who didn't know this would happen (i.e, raising rates and blaming it on HCR), which is one of the reasons the seat the insurers had at the negotiation table was problematic to so many. That the insurers were operating in good faith was more than many could swallow, and now that suspicion is justified. They were going to raise premiums regardless, because that's what they do. This way they get to raise premiums and get to blame it the law they tried so hard to kill.And give this post a read and tell me again why I’m supposed to feel sorry for the oh-so-put-upon health insurance providers (and let me know when “Obama care” tries to pull something like this so I can be outraged over an actual problem, OK?).
And get a load of this from Tanner…
The new health-care law requires insurers to provide coverage even for people who are already sick and forbids them from charging sick people higher premiums than healthy people.Oh yes, God forbid that insurers be compelled to do the right thing and actually treat sick people, as opposed to letting them die a slow, inexorable death and contest their treatment, and you could debate that that’s what happened here (first item).
The following should also be noted about the new health care law (here)…
Starting in 2011, insurers will have to spend at least 80% of every premium dollar on medical care. If they don't, they have to rebate the difference to consumers. So a giant rate hike would have to be traceable back to a giant increase in medical receipts. If it's not, all that money would have to be rebated to enrollees, and it wouldn't do insurers any good. In other words, rate hikes between now and 2014 would just mean rebates for the affected consumers.Continuing with Tanner..
Making matters worse, ObamaCare utterly fails to control rising health-care costs. In fact, a new report from the government's own actuaries concludes that total US health-care spending will rise faster as a result of the new law than if we had done nothing.I’m not sure exactly what equation Tanner is using to calculate “rising health care costs,” but here and here is evidence that health care reform will reduce the deficit according to the Washington Post and multiple CBO reports.
In conclusion, Tanner tries to scare us with some OOGA-BOOGA! quote from President Gerald Ford and the size of government. Well, two can play that game (if you believe that more affordable access to health care should be a basic right for all Americans, and sometimes, the correct thing to do isn’t always the most popular thing to do)…
History and experience tell us that moral progress comes not in comfortable and complacent times, but out of trial and confusion.I think I like that quote better.
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