Last Friday, we noted we didn't have time to fully cover what Eugene Robinson called the GOP's continued fantasyland behavior on Obamacare, or the simple fact as Jonathan Bernstein puts it that there won't be any GOP alternative to Obamacare because they don't have ANY plan to replace it. We've got time now, though.
We'd originally planned on addressing other issues today, since the GOP's failed rhetoric on Obamacare has already been addressed by everyone from Paul Krugman and Jared Bernstein on the left, to Juan Williams, Newt Gingrich, and the conservative-leaning Rand Corporation on the right. In other words, people who have a great deal of experience on issues like health care and federal policy making.
However, after an embarrassingly slanted op-ed piece by Senator Deb Fischer was published in a newspaper in her home state over the weekend, filed with outright lies and misinformation, we felt it was our duty to point out her mistakes. After all, on the issue of Obamacare, the Republican Party currently resembles no one so much as the foolish swindlers in the iconic children's story, "The Emperor's New Clothes." Apparently, they've even swindled one of their own in Fischer.
We won't belabor Sen. Fischer's significant inexperience in federal health care policy, or in policy making at the Federal level, or that the piece bearing her name makes a mockery of its own headline. We won't even ding Fischer on the fact that her opinion piece has all the hallmarks of being written mostly by her staff, who were obviously cribbing off talking points from the Heritage Foundation, or stealing talking points from articles at The Hill.
We'll simply note the real facts, and let Fischer's ridiculous rhetoric lie, just as she did.
First, no one forced the small business owner that Sen. Fischer quotes in her piece to hire an outside consultant. There are many organizations that have broken down the health care law into easily understandable pieces and made that info available for free, online - including the government's own Healthcare.gov. The only way Sen. Fischer's small franchisee will be assessed a penalty is if the business owner picks unaffordable plans for her workers. That would force those workers onto the exchange, where they will get a subsidy, paid for in part by the penalty to their employer.
Secondly, Fischer and her staff appear to have been purposely lying and confusing numbers regarding the costs of premiums. The non-partisan CBO estimated the impact on premiums - but not the numbers Fischer was quoting. In fact, the premium increases Fischer cited actually all happened PRIOR to the ACA kicking in - meaning private insurance companies were raising the premiums on their own, OUTSIDE of the law over the past few years, in order to pad their own pockets before they're forced to give affordable coverage.
Small businesses, by the way, are NOT, in fact moving to part-time work staffs or dropping coverage. As Jonathan Cohn cited on Friday, that UPS decided to drop spousal coverage is a business decision that many companies are making today, since most spouses today work and can get coverage on their own.
Further, as the Rand Corporation pointed out, the delay in full implementation of the employer mandate will not have any serious effects in the short term. In fact, the delay in full implementation is specifically in part because people like Fischer have been spreading lies, fear, and misinformation - making the clear implementation of the law that much more difficult.
Finally, Fischer's point that she is committed to "scrapping the ACA and replacing it" with some amorphous Republican plan is the biggest lie of all. The Republican Party has had FIVE YEARS to come up with something - ANYTHING - different. As even Newt Gingrich admitted this month, the Republican Party has NO REPLACEMENT PLAN. None.
That those who paid Fischer's way to DC are now terrified that Nebraskans will see the freshman Republican Senator has no policy clothing of her own is obvious, made ever more clear by the words they shoved under her byline this weekend.
That any Senator would allow themselves to be made a fool of by the special interests that bought them and brought them to Washington is a failure in judgment we simply can't see as anything but incompetent.
Monday, August 26, 2013
Friday, August 23, 2013
Puppets & Perspective
There never seems to be enough time in any one week to cover all the topics we'd like you to hear about. The story of Antoinette Tuff and her disarming of a school shooter in Atlanta is one we didn't get to touch on this week.
We also ran out of time to tackle the GOP's continued fantasyland behavior on Obamacare, as Eugene Robinson detailed in the Washington Post. Entire U.S. Congressional delegations - like the five members from Nebraska - continue to act like right-wing puppets on the health care issue, all pandering to the same far-right fringe voters, while ignoring anyone who doesn't parrot the same message. As Greg Sargent noted yesterday, the day of political reckoning for weak Congressional Republicans like that is coming soon, and it's likely to be a nightmare for them.
Nightmares and dreams are both on our minds this weekend, as the memorials and celebrations surrounding the fiftieth anniversary of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr's iconic "I Have A Dream" speech and his legendary protest march are filling the Washington, DC area.
A recent Reuters poll confirmed that fifty years after Dr. King's infamous "March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom" Americans say we still haven't achieved his dream. In fact, the two biggest problems America faces today are the very same problems King was fighting back then: A lack of jobs that pay a fair and living wage, along with continued racial, economic, and systemic injustices within our government.
Statistics bear out these sad facts about our nation today. Wages for working Americans have remained flat for more than a decade, and the median income for Americans still hasn't been able to climb up to where it was before the Great Recession began in 2007. For African Americans, the numbers are even worse, as the economic gap between blacks and white hasn't budged for 50 years.
As Dr. King's son, Martin Luther King III noted in a recent editorial for USA Today, the Supreme Court's attack earlier this summer on the Voting Rights Act has set back our nation fifty years or more. The subsequent attacks on voting rights in states like Texas and North Carolina are thankfully being fought against by Attorney General Eric Holder and the Department of Justice - but, to paraphrase Dr. King, we can't be satisfied when some of our fellow Americans are denied the right to vote while others believe they have nothing left to vote for.
Even in the midst of so many lingering problems, as Dr King himself said that day, on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, "Let us not wallow in the valley of despair." We simply need to keep things in perspective.
Fifty years ago, many would have considered it a foolish dream that an African American man would be our President today. Now, we're in the midst of President Obama's second term and the idea that a woman could be our next president surprises almost no one.
Those two facts alone should remind us all that almost anything is possible. Keep dreamin'.
We also ran out of time to tackle the GOP's continued fantasyland behavior on Obamacare, as Eugene Robinson detailed in the Washington Post. Entire U.S. Congressional delegations - like the five members from Nebraska - continue to act like right-wing puppets on the health care issue, all pandering to the same far-right fringe voters, while ignoring anyone who doesn't parrot the same message. As Greg Sargent noted yesterday, the day of political reckoning for weak Congressional Republicans like that is coming soon, and it's likely to be a nightmare for them.
Nightmares and dreams are both on our minds this weekend, as the memorials and celebrations surrounding the fiftieth anniversary of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr's iconic "I Have A Dream" speech and his legendary protest march are filling the Washington, DC area.
A recent Reuters poll confirmed that fifty years after Dr. King's infamous "March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom" Americans say we still haven't achieved his dream. In fact, the two biggest problems America faces today are the very same problems King was fighting back then: A lack of jobs that pay a fair and living wage, along with continued racial, economic, and systemic injustices within our government.
Statistics bear out these sad facts about our nation today. Wages for working Americans have remained flat for more than a decade, and the median income for Americans still hasn't been able to climb up to where it was before the Great Recession began in 2007. For African Americans, the numbers are even worse, as the economic gap between blacks and white hasn't budged for 50 years.
As Dr. King's son, Martin Luther King III noted in a recent editorial for USA Today, the Supreme Court's attack earlier this summer on the Voting Rights Act has set back our nation fifty years or more. The subsequent attacks on voting rights in states like Texas and North Carolina are thankfully being fought against by Attorney General Eric Holder and the Department of Justice - but, to paraphrase Dr. King, we can't be satisfied when some of our fellow Americans are denied the right to vote while others believe they have nothing left to vote for.
Even in the midst of so many lingering problems, as Dr King himself said that day, on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, "Let us not wallow in the valley of despair." We simply need to keep things in perspective.
Fifty years ago, many would have considered it a foolish dream that an African American man would be our President today. Now, we're in the midst of President Obama's second term and the idea that a woman could be our next president surprises almost no one.
Those two facts alone should remind us all that almost anything is possible. Keep dreamin'.
Thursday, August 22, 2013
The Latest Edition
As people who work in the media, we try to remind ourselves regularly that the rest of the world, or even the rest of America, is often not nearly as "up" on all the latest news stories as we are, or like those you read in our daily extended edition.
That said, we've been sharply critical of our American news media for some time now, as most of our regular readers are aware. What passes for news today, whether on TV, on the radio, in newspapers, or online is often a sickly-sweet combination of celebrity news, gossip, and fluff that's usually missing a key ingredient: News.
Without the ability to be properly informed, it's no real surprise to us that Americans can't even agree on objectively proven ideas in science or economics today. Battles like the one highlighted by Greg Sargent yesterday, between educated voters and ignorant politicans, have become all too common in the news too, as politicans seek to prove their ignorance as a badge of honor to a certain subsection of voters. It doesn't help that often, corporate media executives are more frightened about losing advertisers than about their teams producing honest, quality content.
Thankfully, we've been noticing a positive shift in the American news landscape lately. Over the last two days, that shift has become significant, with the launch of America's latest cable news channel, Al Jazeera America.
As former Nebraskan Ana Marie Cox pointed out accurately in The Guardian, "Al Jazeera America is the news channel Americans deserve." With a top-notch staff cherry-picked from CNN, NBC, CBS, ABC, and elsewhere in the media world, that description already seems completely accurate.
From Richelle Carey and Antonio Mora, to Ali Velshi, Joie Chen, and Soledad O’Brien, to John Seigenthaler and David Shuster, the programming AJAM is producing is already more substantive and more informative than much of what their competitors are offering. They're also getting the jump on top stories too, having announced both the Bradley Manning verdict and the earthquake in Mexico before their competitors, while those same competing stations like Fox News were busy discussing weighty matters - like the reunion of pop music group N'Sync.
AJAM isn't the only recent positive change in the news landscape we've noticed.
MSNBC has been stealing some of the best writers and journalists in the business from different publications all over the print and internet world. Many of those are journalists we've linked to regularly in the past, and will continue to do so in the future.
We've also been watching HuffPost Live, and its growing and solid influence on more traditional media organizations. Online magazines like Quartz are also pushing our industry in new directions, like the story we cited earlier this week by Tim Fernholz about the Suez Canal.
The push that all of these new and upgrading news and media organizations are giving is one of quality first – a direction that's been sorely lacking in the media industry at most levels for far too long.
We realize that, for now, many of our readers are still stuck with too few quality media outlets - a local TV news show, a newspaper, or a radio station - that are too afraid to do real news well.
We have little doubt, however, that with the latest additions to our greater news media fraternity pushing them to do better, the days of all fluff "news" for the most common media outlet you have access to may be coming to an end faster than anyone had previously thought.
That said, we've been sharply critical of our American news media for some time now, as most of our regular readers are aware. What passes for news today, whether on TV, on the radio, in newspapers, or online is often a sickly-sweet combination of celebrity news, gossip, and fluff that's usually missing a key ingredient: News.
Without the ability to be properly informed, it's no real surprise to us that Americans can't even agree on objectively proven ideas in science or economics today. Battles like the one highlighted by Greg Sargent yesterday, between educated voters and ignorant politicans, have become all too common in the news too, as politicans seek to prove their ignorance as a badge of honor to a certain subsection of voters. It doesn't help that often, corporate media executives are more frightened about losing advertisers than about their teams producing honest, quality content.
Thankfully, we've been noticing a positive shift in the American news landscape lately. Over the last two days, that shift has become significant, with the launch of America's latest cable news channel, Al Jazeera America.
As former Nebraskan Ana Marie Cox pointed out accurately in The Guardian, "Al Jazeera America is the news channel Americans deserve." With a top-notch staff cherry-picked from CNN, NBC, CBS, ABC, and elsewhere in the media world, that description already seems completely accurate.
From Richelle Carey and Antonio Mora, to Ali Velshi, Joie Chen, and Soledad O’Brien, to John Seigenthaler and David Shuster, the programming AJAM is producing is already more substantive and more informative than much of what their competitors are offering. They're also getting the jump on top stories too, having announced both the Bradley Manning verdict and the earthquake in Mexico before their competitors, while those same competing stations like Fox News were busy discussing weighty matters - like the reunion of pop music group N'Sync.
AJAM isn't the only recent positive change in the news landscape we've noticed.
MSNBC has been stealing some of the best writers and journalists in the business from different publications all over the print and internet world. Many of those are journalists we've linked to regularly in the past, and will continue to do so in the future.
We've also been watching HuffPost Live, and its growing and solid influence on more traditional media organizations. Online magazines like Quartz are also pushing our industry in new directions, like the story we cited earlier this week by Tim Fernholz about the Suez Canal.
The push that all of these new and upgrading news and media organizations are giving is one of quality first – a direction that's been sorely lacking in the media industry at most levels for far too long.
We realize that, for now, many of our readers are still stuck with too few quality media outlets - a local TV news show, a newspaper, or a radio station - that are too afraid to do real news well.
We have little doubt, however, that with the latest additions to our greater news media fraternity pushing them to do better, the days of all fluff "news" for the most common media outlet you have access to may be coming to an end faster than anyone had previously thought.
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