Toxic Misfits: Donald Trump, Birthers And Other Hazardous Materials
It seems that there is no end in sight. You can’t turn to any television channel or listen to any radio station without hearing something that has to do with Donald Trump and his vile birther rants. One wonders when will it all end. Some have given Trump a pass in this regard. Many believe that he is simply doing it for the attention while others, for some odd reason, see his actions only as a joke.
It seems that this whole “birther” issue began with Jim Geraghty, a conservative blogger for National Review and National Review On-line. The spark for the birther campaign began by Geraghty suggesting that President Obama’s first and middle names were not the same as listed on his birth certificate. The embers were kindled by Jerome Corsi in an interview on Fox News where the idea that Obama’s birth certificate was fake. This quackery has been non-stop since.
This birther theory was elevated to a different level of insanity by Orly Taitz, who not only believes that Mr. Obama was not born in the United States, but also believes that Hawaii cannot be considered part of the United States “unless it can produce an authentic statehood certificate”. Taitz, mind you, emigrated from the Soviet Union to Israel and then to the United States and is a dual citizen of Israel and the U.S. In her view, “the islands of Hawaii appear to be colonies of Kenya”. As such, “everyone born in Hawaii is legally not an American but a Kenyan”. Never mind that these assertions have no basis of fact. Joshua Wisch, Attorney General of Hawaii has repeatedly noted that the presidents certificate of live birth is on file in the archives of the Department of Health of Hawaii.
Then you have the likes of Andy Martin, Michael Savage, G. Gordon Liddy, Lars Larson, Bob Grant and…. oh yes, Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Lou Dobbs, Chuck Norris, Sarah Palin, Michele Bachmann, Newt Gingrich, Roy Blunt and David Vitter.
The latest participant in this land of make believe is none other than Donald Trump. Over the past several weeks, Trump seems to have gone out of his way to etch his place in history as the “birther of all birthers”. He has been given numerous opportunities by the media, often unchallenged, to espouse again and again what he surely knows to be flat out lies. Despite “prima facie” evidence, Trump has chosen to continue down a path that can be best described in every category as bigoted, racist and divisive.
I have been trying to figue out why this gang of “misfits” continue to propagate this charade on the American people. Surely they cannot believe that actions of this nature will endear them to the majority of the American people, or do they? It really makes you wonder if they are merely front persons for the real behind the scenes “power players” whose goal is to completely alienate and isolate certain segments of the population. This idea seems to have worked very well in the past with groups such as the teaparty and the christian right. Could it be that they are attempting to expand their grasps to include even more radical segments?
Power, radicalism, extremism, racism, bigotry, hate, fear…they all work, but at what cost to the rest of the country. There is a bigger picture here…one larger than Trump or Bachmann or Newt. The “power players” are all about the preservation of an aggressive, radical and dangerous conservative ideology…an ideology that is appealing more and more to the fringe and most noxious elements of our society…nothing more and nothing less.
Continued unfettered tolerance of these types of behavior is merely an assent of their vile actions and intents. That is just not acceptable. At some point, good people will have to take a stand and put a stop to the shananigans of these toxic misfits.
By: Raemd95, April 20, 2011
Tea Party: The Welfare State Is Out Of Control But Leave “My” Medicare Alone
About a month ago, Politico ran a much-discussed piece, insisting that the Republican Party and its base have become “fanatically anti-spending.” Tea Partiers, the article added, are obsessed with “cut, cut, cut,” and “taking a cleaver to government spending.”
I’ve pushed back against this, but a new Marist poll out today makes this much easier. The poll asked respondents:
“Do you support or oppose doing each of the following to deal with the federal budget deficit: cut Medicare and Medicaid?”
Among all registered voters, 80% opposed these cuts. Among self-identified Tea Party supporters, 70% opposed these cuts. Among self-identified Republicans, 73% opposed these cuts.
We’re talking about taxpayer-financed, socialized medicine, which Tea Partiers should oppose reflexively if they’re desperate to “cut, cut, cut.”
Except, they’re not.
When pressed on the radical nature of their agenda, congressional Republicans consistently claim the “American people” are on their side, even suggesting they have a popular mandate to pursue drastic policy measures that voters didn’t know about last year. But the data is hard to ignore — not only does the American mainstream oppose GOP cuts to Medicare and Medicaid, but even the Republicans’ own base isn’t on board.
I often think of this piece from Matt Taibbi, who attended a Tea Party rally last summer.
After Palin wraps up, I race to the parking lot in search of departing Medicare-motor-scooter conservatives. I come upon an elderly couple, Janice and David Wheelock, who are fairly itching to share their views.
“I’m anti-spending and anti-government,” crows David, as scooter-bound Janice looks on. “The welfare state is out of control.”
“OK,” I say. “And what do you do for a living?”
“Me?” he says proudly. “Oh, I’m a property appraiser. Have been my whole life.”
I frown. “Are either of you on Medicare?”
Silence: Then Janice, a nice enough woman, it seems, slowly raises her hand, offering a faint smile, as if to say, You got me!
“Let me get this straight,” I say to David. “You’ve been picking up a check from the government for decades, as a tax assessor, and your wife is on Medicare. How can you complain about the welfare state?”
“Well,” he says, “there’s a lot of people on welfare who don’t deserve it. Too many people are living off the government.”
“But,” I protest, “you live off the government. And have been your whole life!”
“Yeah,” he says, “but I don’t make very much.”
The point is that congressional Republicans are desperate to make devastating cuts, and think they’re on safe political ground. GOP officials might be surprised to learn just how many Americans rely on government spending, and want to keep the benefits that apply to them.
By: Steve Benen, Washington Monthly, Political Animal, April 19, 2011
Health Care Reform in Massachusetts: State Model for the Affordable Care Act Is Working And Broadly Popular
The Affordable Care Act was signed into law one year ago. It is modeled in large part on the landmark Massachusetts health reform law enacted four years earlier in 2006. Opponents of the Affordable Care Act often attack it by distorting the facts about the Massachusetts experience. They selectively alternate between snapshots of and trends in Massachusetts and comparisons between Massachusetts and the United States.
The most appropriate way to assess the impact of the Massachusetts law is to compare changes over time in things like health coverage and premium costs in Massachusetts to changes over time in the United States as a whole. We use that approach below to debunk many of the myths opponents propagate regarding Massachusetts’s experience with health care reform.
Massachusetts increased health coverage while coverage declined in the rest of the country.
Myth
The Massachusetts law failed to significantly reduce the ranks of the uninsured in the state.
Fact
The Massachusetts health reform law dramatically increased the insurance rate in the state over a period when the national health coverage rate declined. As of the end of 2010, 98.1 percent of the state’s residents were insured compared to 87.5 percent in 2006 when the law was enacted. Almost all children in the state were insured in 2010 (99.8 percent). In comparison, at the national level the health insurance rate dropped from 85.2 percent in 2006 to 84.6 percent in 2010.
Employers continued the same level of health coverage in Massachusetts while dropping people in the rest of the country.
Myth
The Massachusetts health reform law is eroding employer-sponsored health insurance.
Fact
The number of people in Massachusetts with employer-sponsored health insurance has not dipped below 2006 levels since passage of the health reform law. Approximately 4.3 million people in Massachusetts obtained health insurance through their employer in 2006. This figure increased to 4.5 million in 2008 before returning to 2006 levels in 2010. In comparison, the number of nonelderly people in the United States with employer-sponsored health coverage declined from 161.7 million in 2006 to 156.1 million in 2009.
Since passage of Massachusetts’s health reform law, a larger share of the state’s employers have offered health insurance to their workers when compared to the United States as a whole. At the national level only 60 percent of employers offered health coverage to their employees in 2005. This is significantly lower than Massachusetts’s rate of 70 percent at that time. The Massachusetts rate increased to 76 percent in 2009, which is 7 percentage points higher than the national figure for 2010.
People buying insurance on their own in Massachusetts are paying lower premiums. Premiums in the nongroup market have increased in the rest of the country.
Myth
Massachusetts residents are paying higher premiums in the nongroup market as a result of the health reform law.
Fact
Nongroup health insurance premiums in Massachusetts have fallen by as much as 40 percent since 2006 because health reform brought healthy people into the insurance market. In contrast, at the national level nongroup premiums have risen 14 percent over that period of time.
More than 98 percent of Bay Staters met the law’s individual insurance requirement.
Myth
A significant portion of Massachusetts residents are ignoring the mandate and only purchasing health insurance when they need care.
Fact
The size of Massachusetts’s individual market more than doubled after passage of the health reform law. This boost and the accompanying drop in the average cost of individual premiums were due in part to more healthy—and previously uninsured—individuals entering the market. Only 1.3 percent of the state’s 4 million tax filers who were required to and did report their coverage status were assessed a penalty for lacking coverage in 2008, the last year for which complete data are available. About 26,000 of these 56,000 people were actually in compliance for part of the year.
The cost of health care in Massachusetts is in line with expectations.
Myth
The Massachusetts law is bankrupting the state.
Fact
The fiscally conservative Massachusetts Taxpayers Foundation, or MTF, finds that under reform, “State spending is in line with what [the organization] expected.” An MTF report released in 2009 found that state spending on health reform increased from $1.041 billion in fiscal year 2006 to a projected $1.748 billion in fiscal year 2010—an increase of $707 million over the four-year period, half of which is covered by the federal government.
Higher-than-expected enrollment in Commonwealth Care, the state-subsidized health insurance program, initially raised fears that policymakers had dramatically underestimated the number of low-income uninsured in Massachusetts. These concerns, however, were unfounded. Commonwealth Care enrollment peaked in mid-2008 with 176,000 members. The MTF attributes the initial rapid growth in Commonwealth Care enrollment to the state’s early success in getting residents signed up for the program.
The majority of people in Massachusetts like the health reform law, and it has gotten more popular over time.
Myth
The Massachusetts health reform law is highly unpopular among members of the public, the business community, and policymakers.
Fact
Support for the law is strong among members of the public. Sixty-one percent of the Massachusetts nonelderly population approved of the law when it passed in 2006. Two years later, 69 percent of nonelderly adults viewed the law favorably. In a survey of employers conducted in 2007—shortly after passage of the health reform law—a majority of Massachusetts firms surveyed agreed that “all employers bear some responsibility for providing health benefits to their workers.”20 A survey of employers conducted a year later—after the individual and employer mandates were implemented— found that a majority of firms believed the law was “good for Massachusetts.”
The Massachusetts health reform law was also a bipartisan achievement, drawing support from both sides of the aisle throughout the process. The law was passed by a Democratic legislature with support from its Republican members and then signed by GOP Gov. Mitt Romney.
Massachusetts is building on its 2006 reforms to promote better quality care at lower costs.
Myth
Current Gov. Deval Patrick is proposing to ration health care in Massachusetts.
Fact
Gov. Patrick’s proposal would make Massachusetts a leader in nationwide efforts to reform health care delivery and bring down costs. The governor has proposed new tools for achieving integrated care—by holding providers accountable for working with each other and their patients to coordinate and delivery higher-quality care at a lower cost.
These innovative tools encourage providers to deliver better care—replacing the current payment system’s set of incentives that provide more care regardless of value. Indeed, more care can sometimes be harmful to patients. Hospital-acquired infections and medical errors are among the most common causes of preventable deaths and injuries in U.S. hospitals. Medical errors accounted for 238,000 preventable deaths in Medicare and cost the program $8.8 billion from 2004 to 2006. A recent study found that sepsis and pneumonia caused by hospital-acquired infections resulted in 48,000 deaths in 2006 and cost the program $8.1 billion.
Conclusion
The Massachusetts health reform law is a success story from every perspective. The state has expanded health coverage to almost all of its residents, maintained a strong market for employer-sponsored health insurance, gained the support of the business community and the public, and is moving forward in containing costs. We can look forward to a similar positive experience across the nation as we implement the Affordable Care Act modeled in large part on the Massachusetts law.
By: Nichole Cafarella and Tony Clark, Center for American Progress, April 13, 2011
Government Shutdown: It’s Not Really About Spending
If the federal government shuts down at midnight on Friday — which seems likely unless negotiations take a sudden turn toward rationality — it will not be because of disagreements over spending. It will be because Republicans are refusing to budge on these ideological demands:
• No federal financing for Planned Parenthood because it performs abortions. Instead, state administration of federal family planning funds, which means that Republican governors and legislatures will not spend them.
• No local financing for abortion services in the District of Columbia.
• No foreign aid to countries that might use the money for abortion or family planning. And no aid to the United Nations Population Fund, which supports family-planning services.
• No regulation of greenhouse gases by the Environmental Protection Agency.
• No funds for health care reform or the new consumer protection bureau established in the wake of the financial collapse.
Abortion. Environmental protection. Health care. Nothing to do with jobs or the economy; instead, all the hoary greatest hits of the Republican Party, only this time it has the power to wreak national havoc: furloughing 800,000 federal workers, suspending paychecks for soldiers and punishing millions of Americans who will have to wait for tax refunds, Social Security applications, small-business loans, and even most city services in Washington. The damage to a brittle economy will be substantial.
Democrats have already gone much too far in giving in to the House demands for spending cuts. The $33 billion that they have agreed to cut will pull an enormous amount of money from the economy at exactly the wrong time, and will damage dozens of vital programs.
But it turns out that all those excessive cuts they volunteered were worth far less to the Republicans than the policy riders that are the real holdup to a deal. After President Obama appeared on television late Wednesday night to urge the two sides to keep talking, negotiators say, the issue of the spending cuts barely even came up. All the talk was about the abortion demands and the other issues.
Democrats in the White House and the Senate say they will not give in to this policy extortion, and we hope they do not weaken. These issues have no place in a stopgap spending bill a few minutes from midnight.
A measure to prohibit the Environmental Protection Agency from regulating greenhouse gas emissions came up for a Senate vote on Wednesday and failed. If Republicans want to have yet another legislative debate about abortion and family planning, let them try to pass a separate bill containing their restrictions. But that bill would fail, too, and they know it, so they have chosen extortion.
The lack of seriousness in the House is reflected in the taunting bill it passed on Thursday to keep the government open for another week at an absurdly high cost of $12 billion in cuts and the ban on District of Columbia abortion financing. The Senate and the White House said it was a nonstarter. Many of the same House members who earlier had said they would refuse to approve another short-term spending bill voted for this one, clearly hoping they could use its inevitable failure in the Senate to blame the Democrats for the shutdown. What could be more cynical?
The public is not going to be fooled once it sees what the Republicans, pushed by Tea Party members, were really holding out for. There are a few hours left to stop this dangerous game, and for the Republicans to start doing their job, which, if they’ve forgotten, is to serve the American people.
By: Editorial, The New York Times, April 8, 2011
GOP DeathWish?: Republicans Pushing To Revamp Medicare Could Find Themselves Voted Out Of Office In The Next Election
One of the biggest and most frequent mistakes in politics is for a party to misread its mandate. When it happens, independent and swing voters get angry and punish a candidate or a party on Election Day. Because American politics is a zero-sum game, punishing one party means rewarding the other party—even when the latter is not necessarily deserving of support. Frequently, the party that benefits from the spanking mistakenly interprets it to mean that the public is embracing every aspect of its agenda. Republicans shouldn’t forget that their party had dismal favorable/unfavorable poll ratings last fall. They won because they weren’t Democrats.
There is no question that the Republican base, conservatives, and supporters of the tea party want to take a meat ax to government spending. When Republican congressional members return home and meet with their constituents, they are encouraged to vote against continuing resolutions and for deep spending cuts. These supporters have intensity, and they adamantly oppose any compromise with Democrats.
It would be a blunder, however, to think that such views drove the election. Republicans, conservatives, and tea partiers did not throw Republicans out of their House and Senate majorities in 2006, and they did not vote to increase the size of the Democratic majorities and elect Barack Obama president in 2008.
Independent voters were the ones who cast their ballots for Democrats by an 18-point margin in 2006 because they were mad at President Bush and upset about the war in Iraq, not to mention Republican scandals and the general performance of the GOP Congress. Two years later, these same voters were still angry at the president, were afraid of the financial crisis, and didn’t care for GOP presidential nominee John McCain.
In 2010, these independent voters were unimpressed by the economic-stimulus package, didn’t like cap-and-trade environmental regulation, and really didn’t like the Democratic health care package. Those over or approaching 65 years of age also feared that health care reform would erode Medicare benefits. Even those unaffected by the reforms rallied to defend Medicare.
Polling is very clear. Most voters want to see the federal budget balanced and spending cut. However, they don’t want Social Security, Medicare, or Medicaid touched, and, oh yes, they don’t want taxes increased. Now, anyone with an IQ over room temperature knows that all of this is impossible. Spending on Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid, along with interest on the national debt, amounts to approximately half the federal budget.
There is no doubt that significant budget cutting is necessary and that Medicare and Medicaid must be reformed. No one can doubt the courage or sincerity of House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan, R-Wis. But it’s little short of suicidal to drop a Medicare reform package—even a voucher plan that would be optional for those currently older than 55—into tough budget negotiations stymied over Republican demands for deep spending cuts. Democrats have some experience with older voters going ballistic, even with changes that wouldn’t affect them.
For many seniors, doing anything to Medicare that can’t be portrayed as an increase is essentially a cut, and they will fight it to their last breath. From a political standpoint, Medicare reform is very dangerous territory. House Republicans are not just pushing the envelope—they are soaking it with lighter fluid and waving a match at it.
One can understand why Republicans are pushing so hard. Their base is demanding that they do so. And if congressional Republicans resist, many of them can look forward to primary opposition next year. But it seems that GOP members of Congress have become so consumed with pleasing their base that they are ignoring general-election voters and the independents who drive the wild gyrations in American politics.
Congressional Republicans would be well advised to pay attention to the results of the latest Pew Research Center poll (conducted March 30 to April 3 among 1,057 adults) that asked Americans whether they would prefer that their lawmakers stand by their principles even if it meant that the government would shut down, or whether they would rather have their lawmakers compromise on a budget even if they didn’t agree with it. Among Republicans and Republican-leaning independents who agree with the tea party movement, 68 percent said they would rather have a lawmaker who stands by his or her principles. But among all Republicans, only 50 percent said stand by their principles, while 43 percent said compromise. Among all adults, 55 percent said compromise; among independents, 53 percent said compromise, with 36 percent siding with the principles option.
The bottom line: GOP primary voters are very different from general-election voters. It would be a very shortsighted strategy for Republican members—especially those in swing districts—to focus too much on primary voters. A lot of Democrats did the same thing in 2009 and 2010. Many are now former members of Congress.
By: Charlie Cook, National Journal, April 7, 2011
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