While some of the media will try to bamboozle their audience today into thinking they know how the Supreme Court will decide the contraception-rights case heard on Tuesday, as our longtime readers know, we're not charlatans and we prefer to operate from known facts.
That doesn't mean we're not concerned with how the case will be decided this summer, or what it will means for this fall. The potentially disastrous outcome for the nation if the biased and intellectually dishonest corporate faction of the court wins is not hyperbole. Pointless speculation though, would only make us look as idiotic as many of our colleagues in the national media did last week, talking about the missing plane.
There have been plenty of facts coming out this week, on the fourth anniversary of Obamacare, about how the program is doing. Those facts may have as much to do with the outcomes of this fall's elections as either the Supreme Court decision, or all the money being poured into propaganda campaigns by right-wing billionaires.
One of those facts includes the announcement made late Tuesday night by the Obama Administration, that they will allow all those Americans who've begun enrolling in private health insurance plans through the Obamacare website, until mid-April to finish or file a formal extension. Next to the news that - unlike Nebraska - New Hampshire has decided to do the wise thing and pass Medicaid expansion, the news surrounding Obamacare seems to just keep solidifying into a positive, tangible outcome Democrats can campaign on this fall.
That's a far cry from the empty promises and complete lies about healthcare that Republicans and their supporters have heading into the 2014 election season.
As Sahil Kapur noted last Sunday, and as many of our colleagues have noted for years now, four years after claiming they would repeal and replace Obamacare with their own plan, Republicans still don't even have an alternative health care plan that their own members of Congress are willing to vote for.
What's more, as both Greg Sargent and Brian Beutler pointed out this week, the Republican sob stories and ads about how horrible Obamacare is keep evaporating. Multiple fact checkers keep revealing the lies in the multiple propaganda ads from Koch Brothers-supported groups. Even right-wing hacks like Matt Drudge are exposing themselves as frauds and charlatans on the issue of Obamacare.
The facts, as our friend Rick Ungar noted this past week, continue to roll in - and those few who are honest on the right will have to eat crow about Obamacare. The young people are indeed signing up - at the last minute, of course. Not surprisingly, women have proven better at men at navigating the tough decisions. Individual penalties have motivated a substantial number of Americans to push through the array of insurance choices and sign up.
For those Americans who have been underinsured, or who were uninsured and didn't get cut short by Republicans in their states, most Americans are now happy with the health care system in America, thanks in large part to the fact that millions finally have affordable health insurance.
That Obamacare has succeeded as well as it has is not a small accomplishment. It's a massive feat of political skill, applied to a huge problem that Democrats pulled off almost entirely on their own. What's more, Democrats used a Republican idea to accomplish this task over the last four years, while being attacked by extremist Republicans the entire time.
Democrats should be proud they have a major, substantive accomplishment to show voters this fall.
Republicans only have smoke and mirrors to show voters - along with millions of dollars in fruitless propaganda.
Wednesday, March 26, 2014
Tuesday, March 25, 2014
Hitting 'Em With The Truth
In political media, there's been a huge amount of carping and sniping since Nate Silver's announcement this past weekend that Republicans have a slightly better than fifty percent chance to take over the U.S. Senate this fall. The Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee even blasted Nate's forecast yesterday - though how they did it seemed more than a little ridiculous to both our staff and Alex Roarty over at National Journal.
Elections this year - if run fairly and legally - aren't going to be like the arcane, closeted decision-making process the Supreme Court will be going through starting today. There, nine people will decide, behind closed doors, if for-profit corporations can enforce a religious belief on their employees, and effectively be exempt from any U.S. law the corporation's controllers don't like.
In looking at the potential outcomes of the elections this year - which are still more than 220 days away - Nate's forecast isn't out of line with what anyone else is saying, as Jonathan Bernstein clearly noted over at Bloomberg on Monday. While it is true that Republicans could win control of the Senate, Democrats could also keep control - or maybe even gain a seat.
The key to clarifying the political forecasts of any of these number crunchers and experts is the same key that voters should be using to tell if politicians who are promising everything under the sun will actually deliver on those promises if elected: Ask one simple question - "How?"
For the professional political handicappers, "How" can usually be answered fairly easily. Folks like Nate Silver will often tell you how they achieve their forecasts, and virtually all of them will agree: Their forecasts are simply a snapshot, given the current conditions of the races TODAY. Just as meteorologists do, when the conditions change an hour from now, their forecasts can change too.
As for the politicians, asking them "How" they're going to fulfill their promises is actually far more important, in our estimation.
Politicians may promise the world when trying to get elected, but as the records of failed legislative proposals keep piling up, most of the politicians that billionaires like Sheldon Adelson and the Koch Brothers helped to get elected have consistently failed to deliver on issues that have been key to right-wing ideology, like banning gay marriage or outlawing abortion.
Bans against same-sex civil marriage contracts continue to be found unconstitutional, in state after state. Further, complete bans on abortion - a constitutionally legal medical procedure - continue to also be knocked down in the courts, by judges who care more about the law than they do their political patrons.
For all the rhetoric by extremists like Republican Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas, and others like him, that they're going to repeal Obamacare, they never tell you how, exactly, they're going to get President Obama to sign a bill overturning his own signature legislation.
Even if Republicans do win the Senate this fall by a slim majority, Republicans in the House and Senate won't have the kinds of supermajorities needed to override the nearly constant stream of vetoes certain to be coming from President Obama's desk.
The truth, if you ask the right question, is actually very easy to discern - both from the politicians running the races, and from those handicapping the outcomes of those races.
Whether Americans really want to know the truth, however, remains a mystery that won't be solved until at least this fall.
Elections this year - if run fairly and legally - aren't going to be like the arcane, closeted decision-making process the Supreme Court will be going through starting today. There, nine people will decide, behind closed doors, if for-profit corporations can enforce a religious belief on their employees, and effectively be exempt from any U.S. law the corporation's controllers don't like.
In looking at the potential outcomes of the elections this year - which are still more than 220 days away - Nate's forecast isn't out of line with what anyone else is saying, as Jonathan Bernstein clearly noted over at Bloomberg on Monday. While it is true that Republicans could win control of the Senate, Democrats could also keep control - or maybe even gain a seat.
The key to clarifying the political forecasts of any of these number crunchers and experts is the same key that voters should be using to tell if politicians who are promising everything under the sun will actually deliver on those promises if elected: Ask one simple question - "How?"
For the professional political handicappers, "How" can usually be answered fairly easily. Folks like Nate Silver will often tell you how they achieve their forecasts, and virtually all of them will agree: Their forecasts are simply a snapshot, given the current conditions of the races TODAY. Just as meteorologists do, when the conditions change an hour from now, their forecasts can change too.
As for the politicians, asking them "How" they're going to fulfill their promises is actually far more important, in our estimation.
Politicians may promise the world when trying to get elected, but as the records of failed legislative proposals keep piling up, most of the politicians that billionaires like Sheldon Adelson and the Koch Brothers helped to get elected have consistently failed to deliver on issues that have been key to right-wing ideology, like banning gay marriage or outlawing abortion.
Bans against same-sex civil marriage contracts continue to be found unconstitutional, in state after state. Further, complete bans on abortion - a constitutionally legal medical procedure - continue to also be knocked down in the courts, by judges who care more about the law than they do their political patrons.
For all the rhetoric by extremists like Republican Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas, and others like him, that they're going to repeal Obamacare, they never tell you how, exactly, they're going to get President Obama to sign a bill overturning his own signature legislation.
Even if Republicans do win the Senate this fall by a slim majority, Republicans in the House and Senate won't have the kinds of supermajorities needed to override the nearly constant stream of vetoes certain to be coming from President Obama's desk.
The truth, if you ask the right question, is actually very easy to discern - both from the politicians running the races, and from those handicapping the outcomes of those races.
Whether Americans really want to know the truth, however, remains a mystery that won't be solved until at least this fall.
Monday, March 24, 2014
Some Things Rarely Ever Change
Even as we took a week away to be with family, friends, and just generally relax, the world didn't stop turning. You could be forgiven thinking it had come to a stop, though, as all the so-called "news" channels on cable appeared to be stuck in the same loop for a week, repeating that they still don't know where the lost Malaysia Airlines plane is.
Some things in other news changed slightly last week. Vladimir Putin and Russia pushed forward and illegally annexed Crimea. Now, the Russians and Ukrainians are holding in a tense standoff over Eastern Ukraine, even as sanctions from the U.S. and Europe begin to really hurt Russia's economy.
Back in the U.S., most things didn't change. The spring weather was volatile. Congress did almost nothing. Democrats are still worried about the 2014 elections, but left-leaning Americans aren't actually doing much to change that. Meanwhile, the right-wing extremist and extremely wealthy Koch Brothers are still continuing to try and buy the 2014 elections, and politics in general - including the upcoming decision over the Keystone Pipeline. Republicans all over the country are still proving they're misogynists, and racists, and - like Nebraska Republican candidate for U.S. Senate Shane Osborne - still unable to tell the whole truth.
Unfortunately, over the break, one important thing did change. Republicans in Nebraska's legislature, led like a dog on a leash by right-wing, Koch Brothers-funded groups like AFP, defeated the most recent effort to expand Medicaid to Nebraska's poorest citizens.
In short, the outside groups choked off an effort to help their fellow Nebraskans led by Nebraska Republican state Senator Kathy Campbell - and now Nebraskans will have to deal with the effects of that poorly made, outside-influenced decision.
Rural Nebraskans only have to look to rural Georgia to get a glimpse of what the future of local health care looks like when you prevent hospitals from getting paid to do their duties.
For the fourth time in two years, yet another rural Georgia hospital is closing, this time the Lower Oconee Community Hospital in Wheeler County. It's the eighth rural hospital in the Peachtree State to close since 2000. As many who understand how Medicaid expansion under the ACA warned, without helping the poorest Americans to get insurance coverage, hospitals in rural areas inundated with poor patients simply can't keep their doors open.
As Steve Benen noted last week, the real-world effects of such partisan obstinacy aren’t pretty - but they are pretty stupid.
Decisions like those in Georgia & Nebraska fly in the face of the facts on health policy, in the era of the ACA. As health policy wonks like Robert Reich & Rick Ungar showed last week, the numbers about Obamacare are coming out now - and they look very favorable for both Americans and the politicians who've supported the ACA. While Republicans and scaremongers should be eating crow in the media, it's doubtful the cable "news" media will ever force them to honestly account for their lies on the issue.
Meanwhile, millions of poor, often rural Americans - including the 54,000 Nebraskans too poor to afford health insurance - are looking at a health care landscape that increasingly looks more like that in a third-world nation.
It shouldn't take an outbreak of ebola - like that going on in West Africa right now - to prove to rural voters that a third-world standard of health care isn't something to be emulated. It will likely cost a few more lives though, needlessly lost due to a lack of proper health care, for poor rural voters in places like Nebraska and Georgia to finally realize that voting for politicians who are the lap dogs of wealthy outside influences might not be in their best interests.
Some things in other news changed slightly last week. Vladimir Putin and Russia pushed forward and illegally annexed Crimea. Now, the Russians and Ukrainians are holding in a tense standoff over Eastern Ukraine, even as sanctions from the U.S. and Europe begin to really hurt Russia's economy.
Back in the U.S., most things didn't change. The spring weather was volatile. Congress did almost nothing. Democrats are still worried about the 2014 elections, but left-leaning Americans aren't actually doing much to change that. Meanwhile, the right-wing extremist and extremely wealthy Koch Brothers are still continuing to try and buy the 2014 elections, and politics in general - including the upcoming decision over the Keystone Pipeline. Republicans all over the country are still proving they're misogynists, and racists, and - like Nebraska Republican candidate for U.S. Senate Shane Osborne - still unable to tell the whole truth.
Unfortunately, over the break, one important thing did change. Republicans in Nebraska's legislature, led like a dog on a leash by right-wing, Koch Brothers-funded groups like AFP, defeated the most recent effort to expand Medicaid to Nebraska's poorest citizens.
In short, the outside groups choked off an effort to help their fellow Nebraskans led by Nebraska Republican state Senator Kathy Campbell - and now Nebraskans will have to deal with the effects of that poorly made, outside-influenced decision.
Rural Nebraskans only have to look to rural Georgia to get a glimpse of what the future of local health care looks like when you prevent hospitals from getting paid to do their duties.
For the fourth time in two years, yet another rural Georgia hospital is closing, this time the Lower Oconee Community Hospital in Wheeler County. It's the eighth rural hospital in the Peachtree State to close since 2000. As many who understand how Medicaid expansion under the ACA warned, without helping the poorest Americans to get insurance coverage, hospitals in rural areas inundated with poor patients simply can't keep their doors open.
As Steve Benen noted last week, the real-world effects of such partisan obstinacy aren’t pretty - but they are pretty stupid.
Decisions like those in Georgia & Nebraska fly in the face of the facts on health policy, in the era of the ACA. As health policy wonks like Robert Reich & Rick Ungar showed last week, the numbers about Obamacare are coming out now - and they look very favorable for both Americans and the politicians who've supported the ACA. While Republicans and scaremongers should be eating crow in the media, it's doubtful the cable "news" media will ever force them to honestly account for their lies on the issue.
Meanwhile, millions of poor, often rural Americans - including the 54,000 Nebraskans too poor to afford health insurance - are looking at a health care landscape that increasingly looks more like that in a third-world nation.
It shouldn't take an outbreak of ebola - like that going on in West Africa right now - to prove to rural voters that a third-world standard of health care isn't something to be emulated. It will likely cost a few more lives though, needlessly lost due to a lack of proper health care, for poor rural voters in places like Nebraska and Georgia to finally realize that voting for politicians who are the lap dogs of wealthy outside influences might not be in their best interests.
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