Tuesday Open Thread [12.6.11]
Multiple Choice Mitt still doesn’t know his own mind on extending the payroll tax cuts:
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2uN46DsfkbM[/youtube]
According to TPM, Libertarians are freaking out over the fact that Newtie is gaining some momentum:
This week, Cato vice president Gene Healy penned a piece in the Washington Examiner urging conservatives not to settle on Newt. “Newt’s hardly the ‘anti-Romney,’” Healy cautions, “he’s Mitt Romney with more baggage.”
Go read the whole thing and then LYAO at the idea that Libertarians ≠ Republicans.
BALTIMORE — A Baltimore jury convicted a political aide to former Maryland Gov. Robert Ehrlich today of conspiring to suppress black voter turnout during the 2010 gubernatorial election.
A man who’s skills will be in demand and enhanced by the story below:)
Paul Schurick was found guilty of four counts, including conspiracy to violate state election laws and attempting to influence a voter’s decision whether to go to the polls through the use of fraud.
Schurick had testified that he rejected campaign consultant Julius Henson’s black voter suppression strategy but later approved an automated telephone call sent on Election Day to about 110,000 Democratic voters in heavily black jurisdictions. The call told them to relax because Gov. Martin O’Malley had already won.
effing ACORN!!! trying to rig the elections to democr……. wait.
Anyone read the blog ZeroHedge? Tyler Durden posts up an internal memo from BOA showing that that the thing they really don’t want to have to deal with is OccupyYourHomes.org. Today is the National Day of Action on Foreclosures for OWS (don’t know of local events), but this disruption of business as usual has gotten BOA’s attention. Well done, OWS!
New Castle County is auctioning over 300 foreclosed homes next Tuesday. Maybe you recognize friends or family on the list. After last month’s peaceful visit from Occupy Delaware, I expect the County to have some surprise new public access procedures up its sleeve.
In the category of The More You Know, The Better It Looks, the LA Times publishes an op-ed detailing the Obamacare experience of one woman with breast cancer.
It isn’t perfect or everything that everyone wanted, but it is covering more people who wouldn’t have had said coverage and that is a good thing.
Occupy Delaware is working on weatherizing their encampment and need some help:
Cass: Jon Walker at FDL comments on the LATimes op-ed piece you linked to (thanks for that, BTW):
“As of August, 2011, less than 35,000 people have enrolled in the plan, due to its cost and strict requirements. … The Democrats insisted on creating a byzantine system of inefficient private insurance exchanges, so that billions in pay offs would be unnecessarily funneled to the health insurance industry, all in the name of “helping the uninsured.” The Democrats also foolishly focused on getting an arbitrary CBO score that was disconnected from the country’s health care needs. That needlessly limited how many people would actually receive help.
“If they had instead put the nation’s needs first, there could be millions of people like Ms. Ward extolling the new law right now instead of only a few thousand. Because of these absurd self-imposed restrictions, the bulk of the coverage expansion was delayed until 2014, after voters decide whether or not Mr. Obama deserves another term.”
And?
This woman was talking about the Pre-existing Condition Insurance, a thing that is meant to specifically be a safety net for a smaller group of people — people with pre-existing conditions who are either denied coverage or who are offered coverage at crazy premiums. She isn’t getting insurance from any of the exchanges yet. I don’t even know what to say about the rest — the CBO score is part of the process and isn’t meant to measure need, just financial performance. And even if they had somehow managed to pass *Fill In The Blank*, it wouldn’t have been available even by now if you’ve been following the rulemaking on the rest of the ACA. There are alot of moving parts to this thing, and some are implemented and the main events are still to come.
So while people of FDL are still wringing their hands over some fantasy, how about the fantasy that the newly required Medical Loss Ratio will blow up insurance companies?
I really don’t follow Obamacare details enough to know one way or other about any of it. Nice to see your response never varies, though. It sure boosts your credibility.
Not that judgments on my credibility mean much from someone who by his own admission isn’t even following the thread.
🙄