U.S. politics isolation tank

[WriterDom]

What they didn't print.

Harris, a Maryland state senator who works at Johns Hopkins in Baltimore and several hospitals on the Eastern Shore, also told the audience, “This is the only employer I’ve ever worked for where you don’t get coverage the first day you are employed,” his spokeswoman Anna Nix told POLITICO.

Under COBRA law, Harris can pay a premium to extend his current health insurance an additional month.

Nix said Harris, who is the father of five, wasn’t being hypocritical – he was just pointing out the inefficiency of government-run health care.

Now it could just be that a physician would know the status of his coverage and this was a dig at government run health care.

I still would like the congressional coverage that Hillary promised me. The kind that flew Ted Kennedy to Duke with no delay. Rather than ObamaCare. But Hillary didn't win because somehow the Wright story didn't break until Obama had things locked up.

 

[midwestyankee]

What they didn't print.

Harris, a Maryland state senator who works at Johns Hopkins in Baltimore and several hospitals on the Eastern Shore, also told the audience, “This is the only employer I’ve ever worked for where you don’t get coverage the first day you are employed,” his spokeswoman Anna Nix told POLITICO.

Under COBRA law, Harris can pay a premium to extend his current health insurance an additional month.

Nix said Harris, who is the father of five, wasn’t being hypocritical – he was just pointing out the inefficiency of government-run health care.

Now it could just be that a physician would know the status of his coverage and this was a dig at government run health care.
0 years under any plan the Republicans have proposed in the last decade.
I still would like the congressional coverage that Hillary promised me. The kind that flew Ted Kennedy to Duke with no delay. Rather than ObamaCare. But Hillary didn't win because somehow the Wright story didn't break until Obama had things locked up.

In point of fact, it's not at all unusual for benefits to kick in only after an employee has stayed on the job for 30 days or more. There's a certain amount of buyer's remorse in every hiring and it would be wasteful for an employer to spend the time and money to enact benefits on day 1 without real certainty that the employee will still be around, say, 30 days later. Now, I'm not saying that's the sanest or the wisest course of action but it is not at all rare. That this one doctor hasn't encountered it tells you little about the experience of the folks who work lower on the food chain.

And it tells you even less about the experiences of the 50 million people who would be completely without insurance for the next 50 years.

 

[WriterDom]

In point of fact, it's not at all unusual for benefits to kick in only after an employee has stayed on the job for 30 days or more. There's a certain amount of buyer's remorse in every hiring and it would be wasteful for an employer to spend the time and money to enact benefits on day 1 without real certainty that the employee will still be around, say, 30 days later. Now, I'm not saying that's the sanest or the wisest course of action but it is not at all rare. That this one doctor hasn't encountered it tells you little about the experience of the folks who work lower on the food chain.

And it tells you even less about the experiences of the 50 million people who would be completely without insurance for the next 50 years.

It's not unusual for it to kick in after 90 days at the XYZ Widget Company where an employee might be on a probationary period but the Congress for an elected position? You don't think that's a little fucked up? What about the president? Does he have to wait a month for governmental health care?

 

[JMohegan]

What they didn't print.

Harris, a Maryland state senator who works at Johns Hopkins in Baltimore and several hospitals on the Eastern Shore, also told the audience, “This is the only employer I’ve ever worked for where you don’t get coverage the first day you are employed,” his spokeswoman Anna Nix told POLITICO.

Under COBRA law, Harris can pay a premium to extend his current health insurance an additional month.

Nix said Harris, who is the father of five, wasn’t being hypocritical – he was just pointing out the inefficiency of government-run health care.

Now it could just be that a physician would know the status of his coverage and this was a dig at government run health care.

I still would like the congressional coverage that Hillary promised me. The kind that flew Ted Kennedy to Duke with no delay. Rather than ObamaCare. But Hillary didn't win because somehow the Wright story didn't break until Obama had things locked up.

Klein didn't need to print that part; it was in every news story covering the Harris hissy fit.

If we had single payer in this country, nobody would have to worry about this shit. Not Harris, and not the 51 million Americans currently uninsured (most for a fuckload longer than 28 days.)

 

[DeepGreenEyes]

"I want my government health care!!"

Oh good god.

I thought the graph with Klein's piece was particularly jarring:

"Yesterday, Aaron Carroll pulled together a graph looking at the number of uninsured under the status quo, the GOP's alternative health-care plan, and the Affordable Care Act. Harris presumably supports one of the first two options."

 

[WriterDom]

Klein didn't need to print that part; it was in every news story covering the Harris hissy fit.

If we had single payer in this country, nobody would have to worry about this shit. Not Harris, and not the 51 million Americans currently uninsured (most for a fuckload longer than 28 days.)

You could have passed single payer. It wasn't like republicans had a seat at the table. You could have passed anything.

Everything this regime did was in the dark. Like, I don't know, Satan perhaps? Far cry from the C-Span promise, huh?

 

[WriterDom]

What do you think about the promises so far?

1. No earmarks. Seems like I remember Obama saying the same thing at one time so not so radical. But I think it will be the end of earmarks forever. I don't see the US getting sound enough to ever let Senator Pork or Congressperson Pork run wild again.

2. Boehner flying commercial. Symbolic, but really, no matter where the parties sit, if the President and VP gets taken out in the same day, I'm not too concerned who takes over. Even if it is the Secretary of Masturbation at that point.

3. Posting of bills online 72 hours before the vote. That one I'd appreciate. Then at least I would have some confidence that at least a staffer has read the damn thing before the vote. No more of this, once you learn what's inside the bill then you'll shit your pants with happiness bullshit.

 

[rosco rathbone]

hehe

http://agonyin8fits.blogspot.com/2010/11/death-watch.html

 

[midwestyankee]

It's not unusual for it to kick in after 90 days at the XYZ Widget Company where an employee might be on a probationary period but the Congress for an elected position? You don't think that's a little fucked up? What about the president? Does he have to wait a month for governmental health care?

You missed my point. That the congress critter in question had never worked for a company that made him wait simply shows that his personal experience was not typical of the lives of other people. He has lived a privileged life so far.

I don't disagree with you that the benefits kick-in for congress folk ought not to be set up the way it is, but it is what it is, right? A mature person simply deals with it; and if he's a congress critter, he goes to work to improve health care for everyone, not just his own selfish self.

 

[JMohegan]

You could have passed single payer. It wasn't like republicans had a seat at the table. You could have passed anything.

Me? Sure, I could have passed single payer. If we lived in a dictatorship, and I were the dictator in question.

lol @ the notion that republicans had no influence on the legislative process that brought us HCR.

 

[WriterDom]

You missed my point. That the congress critter in question had never worked for a company that made him wait simply shows that his personal experience was not typical of the lives of other people. He has lived a privileged life so far.

I don't disagree with you that the benefits kick-in for congress folk ought not to be set up the way it is, but it is what it is, right? A mature person simply deals with it; and if he's a congress critter, he goes to work to improve health care for everyone, not just his own selfish self.

He was probably aware that not every working person has insurance or if they do, it doesn't always kick in the first day. But as a congressman, regardless of my background, I'd be taken aback by the government making me wait a day or a week or a month or a year for coverage for kick in. That's the ridiculous part of the story to me. But then again maybe I have a general belief that most things the government does can't be explained by logic.

 

[WriterDom]

Me? Sure, I could have passed single payer. If we lived in a dictatorship, and I were the dictator in question.

lol @ the notion that republicans had no influence on the legislative process that brought us HCR.

It wouldn't have even passed without the vote of a dead Kennedy. Yeah, republican fingerprints all over that bill. I saw it all on C-Span.

 

[rosco rathbone]

I'm in the middle of William Greider's great book about the Federal Reserve, Secrets of the Temple.

There's a whole very interesting part which explains how Populists--the supposed ancestors of the Tea Party--demanded easier credit and put forth various schemes designed to reverse the long deflation of the nineteenth century, create more liquidity, put an end to the regular bank runs that broke out every agricultural season and in general take power away from the "money trust" on Wall Street.

The Populist movement died around 1900, but within twenty years, their basic ideas had been adopted by Wall Street and resulted in the Federal Reserve.

Greider points out that the basic story we learn in American History 101 is about how the government centralised control over banking and the money supply, thus reducing the power of private financiers like JP Morgan, but in truth, the Fed was created by and for the money-center banks.

This all made good background reading for this article, which talks about Palin's opposition to the Fed.

http://www.tnr.com/article/politics/79223/fed-sarah-palin-war-quantitative-easing?page=0,0

I think the writer makes a couple of mistakes, one of which is assuming that Palin really represents the modern descendants of cash-starved farmers and small businessmen, instead of affluent suburbanites who belong, in a small way, to the creditor class.

 

[DeepGreenEyes]

What do you think about the promises so far?

1. No earmarks. Seems like I remember Obama saying the same thing at one time so not so radical. But I think it will be the end of earmarks forever. I don't see the US getting sound enough to ever let Senator Pork or Congressperson Pork run wild again.

2. Boehner flying commercial. Symbolic, but really, no matter where the parties sit, if the President and VP gets taken out in the same day, I'm not too concerned who takes over. Even if it is the Secretary of Masturbation at that point.

3. Posting of bills online 72 hours before the vote. That one I'd appreciate. Then at least I would have some confidence that at least a staffer has read the damn thing before the vote. No more of this, once you learn what's inside the bill then you'll shit your pants with happiness bullshit.

These things seem reasonable and don't bother me. What disturbs me about this Congress is that, once again, corporations will be the puppetmasters of the committees that will "oversee" them.

Not that the Dems are innocent here. The money-fueled behemoth we've created assures that. But the GOP starts with the premise that if it's good for an MNC, of course it's good for Joe Sixpack. And applying any brakes at all is job-killing socialism. Why don't we just make it honest, and create a tricameral legislature with the Senate, the House and the appointed Corporate Overlords.

 

[midwestyankee]

It wouldn't have even passed without the vote of a dead Kennedy. Yeah, republican fingerprints all over that bill. I saw it all on C-Span.

Yeah, that plan came from so far out in the left field of the political spectrum that even Frenchmen were begging their government to switch to the Obama plan.

In truth, much of the structure of the bill came from ideas proposed by Republicans in previous years. Here's a decent summary from an insurance site: Republicans to Thank for Health Care Reform.

 

[WriterDom]

Yeah, that plan came from so far out in the left field of the political spectrum that even Frenchmen were begging their government to switch to the Obama plan.

In truth, much of the structure of the bill came from ideas proposed by Republicans in previous years. Here's a decent summary from an insurance site: Republicans to Thank for Health Care Reform.

By June 2011 enrollment is projected to grow to 342,000 people at an annual expense of $1.35 billion. The original projections were for the program to ultimately cover approximately 215,000 people at a cost of $725 million.[38]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Massachusetts_health_care_reform

That's the problem in a nutshell. You can take any governmental cost projection for any program and if it only doubles, you are doing well.

 

[midwestyankee]

By June 2011 enrollment is projected to grow to 342,000 people at an annual expense of $1.35 billion. The original projections were for the program to ultimately cover approximately 215,000 people at a cost of $725 million.[38]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Massachusetts_health_care_reform

That's the problem in a nutshell. You can take any governmental cost projection for any program and if it only doubles, you are doing well.

Once again, when faced with clear refutation of your argument, you change the subject.

Man up, WD, as your mama bears like to say.

 

[WriterDom]

Once again, when faced with clear refutation of your argument, you change the subject.

Man up, WD, as your mama bears like to say.

Well, holyshit, so it's Mitt's law now? ObamaCare wasn't supported by any republicans that I'm aware of. Since democrats are so lacking in creativity, lets pass the Brewer Immigration Act. After all, she did it first so that would make it an outstanding idea for the country.

 

[WriterDom]

So we got Mitt Health care, the George W. Bush Iraqi surge in Afghanistan, Nancy back as leader after the worst buttkicking in 70 years. Now if we can just get Obama to cave in on the tax cuts it will be a pretty good year. I know you love the IRS, but now isn't the time to raise anyone's taxes. A two year delay just might help out Obama's chances in 2012. Liberals won't like it but where the fuck are they going to go? Let them eat cake, Barry.

 

[Daddy2mylilgirl]

Thank god the government let GM go under and didn't get involved.

 

[rosco rathbone]

Thank god the government let GM go under and didn't get involved.

There's been a lot of speculation that the Motor Trend COTY award was rigged this year.

 

[midwestyankee]

There's been a lot of speculation that the Motor Trend COTY award was rigged this year.

That award, like others in its ilk, is essentially rigged every year.

 

[Homburg]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nnUfPQVOqpw&feature=related

"Hi, I'm a Tea Partier."

 

[midwestyankee]

So the Conservatives4Palin site has up the first of a two-part series called "10 Qualifications Sarah Palin Has Over Five Recent Presidents (Part One)." Catch these fancy qualifications:

1. 10 years in municipal government

2. 10 years volunteer work in the Parent Teacher Association

3. 2 years pro-life advocacy

4. 1 year as an oil and gas commissioner

5. 2.5 years governing the largest state in America


I kid you not folks; this woman who wants to preside over your country thinks that 10 years of working on PTA bake sales makes her qualifed for the job of President.


Yikes, fucking yikes!

 

[Keroin]

So, y'all can feel free to strengthen your dollar any time now. I used to love getting my royalty cheques in Yankee bucks for that extra 20%. Now? Some days they take money away from me!