Source: http://news.feedzilla.com/en_us/stories/politics/top-stories/157042417?client_source=feed&format=rss
mark madoff disturbia ufc results hines ward steelers nick diaz michael myers
Saturday, November 5, 2011
Friday, November 4, 2011
FACT CHECK: The myths of Obamacare in GOP campaign (AP)
WASHINGTON ? To hear some Republican presidential candidates tell it, the president's pen is a magic wand that can make "Obamacare" vanish in one day and sweep in cheaper health care, economic growth and lots of jobs in businesses freed from the health care law's heavy hand.
But there is no such fairy dust in Washington.
Across the board, the contenders pledge to repeal the health law they denigrate as "Obamacare." In doing so, some are more realistic than others about what they can achieve and how fast.
The Republican case against the law comes with a dose of myth-making that may raise false hopes among voters who wish it could, in fact, simply go "poof." If the overhaul is to fall, it won't happen overnight with a new GOP administration. Any dismantling promises to be just as much of a slog as was its creation.
Mitt Romney has been the most persistent in claiming that as president, he would free states from the law's requirements with an executive order on his first day in charge, even though he would have no authority to do so. Rick Perry has held out the prospect of lower health insurance premiums once the law is gone, citing research that actually tells a mostly different story.
Herman Cain would like to turn repeal into a birthday present of sorts. He says if Congress moves fast enough he'd sign the repeal March 23, 2013 ? his son's birthday and the third anniversary of the law's signing.
All place the law's repeal as a chief component of their plans to grow the economy and jobs, rightly noting the overhaul's myriad regulations but overselling the ability of one act of legislative subtraction to lift all boats.
A look at some of the claims in the Republican campaign and how they compare with the facts:
ROMNEY: "One thing I'd do on Day One if I'm elected president is direct my secretary of health and human services to put an executive order granting a waiver from Obamacare to all 50 states. It is bad law. It will not work. And I'll get that done on Day One." ? Claim in Sept. 7 debate, which he echoed in most other debates.
PERRY: "And I'll promise you, on Day One, as the president of the United States, that executive order will be signed and Obamacare will be wiped out as much as it can be." ? Sept. 7 debate.
CAIN: "I'm going to un-pass it on my son's birthday." ? Nov. 2 forum with the GOP's Congressional Health Care Caucus.
MICHELE BACHMANN: "With all due respect ... issuing an executive order will not overturn this massive law." ? Sept. 7 debate.
THE FACTS: Bachmann is right, and it's not the first time she corrected her rivals on the matter.
A president cannot overturn a law with an executive order. Moreover, the health law lays out an onerous process for letting individual states off the hook from its requirements; that process cannot begin until 2017.
For a state to be granted a waiver, it must show that it will provide coverage that is at least as comprehensive and affordable as under the federal law. Also, a state has to insure a comparable number of its residents, and its plan must not add to the federal deficit by shifting costs to Washington. Finally, a state has to enact its own health law setting up the system envisioned in its waiver request.
Romney's assertion also implies that all states would want to get out of the health care law. That's a doubtful proposition for Democratic-leaning states.
Cain recognizes that for the law to be repealed, Congress must act. But presidents don't set the congressional calendar, and even if Republicans can secure a 60-vote majority that gives them control of the Senate, the train of legislation seldom runs on schedule.
___
ROMNEY: "On Day One, granting a waiver to all 50 states doesn't stop in its tracks entirely Obamacare. That's why I also say we have to repeal Obamacare, and I will do that on Day Two with a reconciliation bill, because, as you know, it was passed by reconciliation, 51 votes. We can get rid of it with 51 votes." ? Oct. 11 debate.
THE FACTS: This is a strategy to undermine the law by starving it of money. Its only real chance is if Republicans win congressional majorities as well as the presidency or at the very least a rash of improbable Democratic defections in Congress.
Although not a single-day project, it represents one threat to Obama's law, if one with political risk and tough odds. Some core parts of the law are not dependent on annual budgeting.
Going beyond the budget process to repeal the law in full is an even steeper climb. It would require a larger Republican congressional majority to move forward and to clinch 60 votes in the Senate ? all this as the law increasingly takes root in the nation's medical and insurance system.
The law extends coverage to uninsured citizens and legal immigrants by providing tax credits to help middle-class households buy a policy and by expanding Medicaid for low-income people. It would require almost all people to carry health insurance, either through an employer, a government program or by individual purchase. It would set up health insurance markets in every state to make it easier for individuals and small business to buy coverage. It's financed through tax increases and Medicare cuts.
___
PERRY: "According to CBO's own calculations, repealing Obamacare will reduce the cost of health insurance premiums and reduce federal spending on health care." ? His economic plan.
THE FACTS: No one can be sure what would happen with premiums absent the health care law, but Perry's use of a Congressional Budget Office analysis was selective, at best.
The nonpartisan congressional accountants forecast that repeal of the law would raise premiums for people who get coverage from large-employer plans, not lower them, and that premiums could go either way for small-employer plans. About half the population is covered by such work-based insurance.
The CBO says repeal of the law probably would result in lower premiums in the individual insurance market, which covers about 4 percent of the population.
But there are important caveats. Many policyholders would probably end up paying more because they would not get the insurance subsidies provided under the law, the analysis says.
Individual insurance policies on average would provide fewer benefits, and cover less of an enrollee's health care expenses, than will be provided by the insurance exchanges coming into effect under the law.
The analysis also projected that repealing the law would increase the federal deficit.
___
Online:
CBO report: http://tinyurl.com/3h4uxav
volcker rule matthew stafford rosie o donnell brady quinn brady quinn nick fairley barry sanders
Thursday, November 3, 2011
Robert Koehler: The News of Empire
"Mr. Obama and his senior national security advisers have sought to reassure allies and answer critics, including many Republicans, that the United States will not abandon its commitments in the Persian Gulf even as it winds down the war in Iraq and looks ahead to doing the same in Afghanistan by the end of 2014."
I pluck a paragraph from the New York Times and for an instant I'm possessed by Alfred, Lord Tennyson, aquiver with puzzlement down to my deepest sensibilities. I hold you here, root and all, little paragraph. But if I could understand what you are, root and all, and all in all, I should know what empire is, and hubris . . . and maybe even, by its striking absence, democracy.
The paragraph contains the careful verbiage of exclusion, which is the only language in which the geopolitical powers that be are able to communicate.
The paragraph, one of many that could have been plucked for study and put under the microscope of outrage, is from a story just before Halloween, by Thom Shanker and Steven Lee Myers, informing us that, while the United States will be pulling troops out of Iraq at the end of the year, the regional war is anything but over: The U.S. military will be massing troops in Kuwait, sending more warships to the region and tightening its military alliance with the six nations that make up the Gulf Cooperation Council (including Saudi Arabia and Bahrain), in order to develop "a new security architecture" in the Gulf and establish its "post-Iraq footprint."
Or in the words of Secretary of State Hillary Clinton: "We will have a robust continuing presence throughout the region." And this, she explains, "is proof of our ongoing commitment to Iraq and to the future of that region," which we care about because it "holds such promise" -- oh God, the compassion is killing me -- "and should be freed from outside interference to continue on a pathway to democracy."
What's striking, first of all, is that the "news" is presented to us, under the guise of objective reporting, as a fait accompli: Our supreme leaders have the following plans, the cursory details of which they are nice enough to let us in on.
There is no countertide present in reporting that emanates from the national defense beat -- no acknowledgement of a rising national disgust at war or our enormous military failures of the past decade, which the plans the Times story outlines merely continue. There's no acknowledgment even of obvious contradictions or hypocrisies, such as the fact that our presence in the Gulf arguably constitutes the very "outside interference" from which, according to Clinton, the region should be freed.
And certainly there isn't the least irreverence: no suggestion, for instance, that we have an interest in this oil-rich region beyond a deep love for the people and their democratic aspirations; or that our partners in the Gulf Cooperation Council are autocrats who brutally repress dissent and, ahem, democracy.
The story reads, instead, like interlocking blocks of propaganda dropped into place, not so much disseminating information as protecting the security state planners from questions and challenges. This is the news of empire.
Note that when the story does acknowledge critics, those critics are Republicans, that is to say, empire fanatics as opposed to empire moderates, thus implying that the only reasonable question our post-Iraq footprint raises is whether we should be "post-Iraq" at all. ". . . American military officers and diplomats, as well as officials of several countries in the region, worry that the withdrawal could leave instability or worse in its wake."
This much should be clear: War is a given. Got it?
And war could follow more than one trajectory. If there's a "security collapse" in Iraq, our troops in Kuwait could quickly redeploy to the country we've already destroyed. But those same troops could also respond to "a military confrontation with Iran."
Perhaps the most telling quote in the Times story was from Bahrain's foreign minister, Sheik Khalid bin Ahmed al-Khalifa. With the United States out of Iraq, a regional alliance is necessary because, he said, "Now the game is different."
Yeah, well . . .
The only thing wrong with this comment is that this isn't a game: not our eight and a half years in Iraq, our decade in Afghanistan or our possible invasion of Iran. Innocent people have died and will continue to die in horrific numbers, toxins will spread, lives will be destroyed. The consequences cannot be contained. They are bleeding now and will continue to bleed into the future. But the Times story affects no awareness of this; it has the depth of a gamer review.
Is there a democracy at either end of the missiles, warships or troop deployments? Suddenly I'm back on the sidewalk with the Occupy movement, which has arisen at last in this era of passive citizenship to confront the embedded helplessness and hopelessness that come with the corporatocracy and its subservient media.
Citizens are standing up to the assumptions of empire. Their numbers are small -- for the moment -- but their spirit could prove to be irresistible.
- - -
Robert Koehler is an award-winning, Chicago-based journalist, contributor to One World, Many Peaces and nationally syndicated writer. His new book, Courage Grows Strong at the Wound (Xenos Press) is now available. Contact him at koehlercw@gmail.com or visit his website at commonwonders.com.
? 2011 TRIBUNE MEDIA SERVICES, INC.
?
Source: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robert-koehler/the-news-of-empire_b_1074470.html
derrick mason derrick mason lamichael james lamichael james epstein glen campbell harrisburg pa
Video: After uproar, Bank of America drops $5 fee
Sorry, Readability was unable to parse this page for content.
Source: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21134540/vp/45130411#45130411
donald driver koch industries dexter season 6 ben roethlisberger homeland homeland andy rooney 60 minutes
Wednesday, November 2, 2011
Video: Big Economic Week Ahead
Sorry, Readability was unable to parse this page for content.
Source: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21134540/vp/45105884#45105884
boise state football vanderbilt seth macfarlane costumes bobby flay clemson football the new girl
Tuesday, November 1, 2011
Russia launches first space flight since crash (Reuters)
MOSCOW (Reuters) ? Russia launched its first unmanned space flight to supply the International Space Station Sunday since an August crash left a half-sized crew on the orbital outpost and raised concerns over Moscow's role as the sole space flight provider.
The Progress freighter blasted off from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan as scheduled at 6:11 a.m. EDT, carrying supplies to the station, a $100 billion project funded by 16 nations currently orbiting about 240 miles above Earth.
"The vehicle is reported to be going by the book, it is on the money," NASA TV said on its website www.nasa.gov.
It showed the freighter take off under bright sunshine in the Kazakh steppe, carrying nearly 3 tons of food, fuel and supplies including oxygen and clothes and even iPads.
It is expected to dock Wednesday at the station, which is as large as a five-bedroom house and took the United States more than 10 years to build. It is used to conduct research and test new technologies in the unique environment of microgravity.
All Russian space flights were suspended after the Progress failure, leaving a half-size, three-member crew on the space station consisting of U.S. station commander Mike Fossum, Russian cosmonaut Sergei Volkov and Japan's Satoshi Furukawa.
A new crew is now expected to fly to the outpost on November 14, arriving two days later.
Since the retirement of the U.S. space shuttles this summer, Russian Soyuz capsules are the only ships capable of flying crews to the station, a service that currently costs NASA about $350 million a year.
NASA is seeking $850 million this year to help U.S.-based private companies develop space taxis, with the goal of breaking Russia's monopoly on station crew ferry flights before the end of 2016.
(Reporting by Amie Ferris-Rotman; Editing by Sophie Hares)
f8 catherine the great dark shadows ted haggard ted haggard neutrino carly fiorina
Sandip Roy: "Every Bloody Indian Cooperated to Nail Me": The "Betrayal" of Raj Rajaratnam (Huffington post)
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)