mykeystrokes.com

"Do or Do not. There is no try."

“GOP’s Clueless Ploy To Woo Women”: Accuse Them Of Whining And Lying!

If you liked GOP messaging on contraception – from Rush Limbaugh’s attacks on Sandra Fluke to Mike Huckabee insisting women who support the ACA’s contraception mandate “cannot control their libidos” – you’ll love the latest Republican campaign against pay equity, newly minted for Equal Pay Day.

Fox News may be the funniest, insisting there’s no such thing as pay inequity — except at the White House, where an American Enterprise Institute study found women still earning less than men. From the Heritage Foundation comes this wisdom: “Equal pay and minimum wage: Two ways to hurt women in the workplace.”  No really, that’s the headline. Texas Gov. Rick Perry has called the pay gap “nonsense,” while Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker called it “bogus.” Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell has called equal pay “the left’s latest bizarre obsession” and accused Harry Reid of “blowing a few kisses” to advocates.

Essentially the GOP campaign against pay equity advocates comes down to telling women to stop lying.

Pay inequity means that women lose an average of more than $400,000 in wages over the course of their lifetimes. The infamous “77 cents on the dollar” figure approximates the overall difference between men and women, and conservatives like to claim it compares apples and oranges: Female teachers to male congressmen, for instance. The truth is, multiple studies by the American Association of University Women and others show that the gap exists across all professions and all education levels. In some fields, it’s wider, in some it’s smaller, but it’s omnipresent. And it’s much worse for African-American and Latino women, who make 62 and 54 percent of white men’s wages, respectively. (Asian American women suffer the smallest wage gap, earning 87 percent.)

Democrats believe they can ride those issues to victory in 2014, despite a tough climate for vulnerable incumbents and the propensity of its base to turn out for presidential elections but skip the midterms. One key will be turning out unmarried women, who have become one of the party’s most reliable constituencies after African-Americans. A recent survey by Democracy Corps shows that unmarried women are less likely to vote in 2014 than in 2012 – but that a strong women’s economic agenda could send many more of them to the polls.

Pay equity plus equal health insurance are the policies that score highest among unmarried women voters in the Democracy Corps poll. Right behind are proposals for paid family leave and affordable access to childcare. Democracy Corps found those issues had the capacity to significantly increase the turnout of unmarried women in 2014. Once they were read a list of women’s economic agenda policies favored by Democrats, the percent saying they were “almost certain” to vote in the midterm jumped from 66 to 83 percent.

And although those zany Heritage Foundation scholars last week told Republicans that the secret to solving their problems with unmarried women was to get more of them married, Democracy Corps found that unmarried women were skeptical of GOP policies to encourage marriage. Two-thirds favored greater emphasis on policies that enable work-family balance, to help women and children rise out of poverty, as opposed to 24 percent who backed policies that encouraged marriage.

That’s why President Obama signed two executive orders to narrow the wage gap. One prohibits federal contractors from punishing workers who disseminate information about wages (one way employers hide wage discrimination). Obama will also direct the Labor Department to collect data from federal contractors detailing wages by gender and race.  Obama is also urging Congress to pass the Paycheck Fairness Act – which it won’t – and a minimum wage hike, which is also unlikely.

The Democracy Corps poll also makes clear what many Democrats have suspected: Women like the fact that the Affordable Care Act prevents insurance companies from charging them more than men. Rep. Paul Ryan, who insists the GOP will still push to repeal Obamacare, is handing Democrats another weapon, the poll found.

There was one other interesting finding in the Democracy Corps survey: Unmarried women are very concerned about preserving Medicare and Social Security. That led pollsters to advise Democrats to include those issues in their women’s economic agenda. It makes sense: Women live longer, and are more economically insecure at every stage of life. Unmarried women in particular rely on Social Security and Medicare in old age. It’s just another reason centrist Dems should avoid the lure of the “grand bargain” that ensnared the president and his allies for years.

Earlier this year, a CNN poll found that 55 percent of Americans believe Republicans don’t understand women. That increased to 64 percent among women over 50, who represent a pillar of the GOP base. So smart, aggressive messaging on women’s economic issues could not only help Democrats turn out their base, but conceivably cut into the GOP’s. Republicans are unlikely to help their cause with a strategy that essentially calls women who worry about pay inequity “liars.”

 

By: Joan Walsh, Editor at Large, Salon, April 8, 2014

April 9, 2014 Posted by | Economic Inequality, Gender Gap | , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

“A Deepening Criminal Probe”: Christie’s Simmering Scandals Grow More Serious In NJ

Two weeks ago, New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie’s (R) handpicked legal team issued a report – it was more taxpayer-financed propaganda than legal analysis – clearing their client of wrongdoing. As part of the public-relations push surrounding the stunt, Fox News’ Megyn Kelly asked the governor, “So this report has just come out, it exonerates you completely. Do you feel exonerated?”

Christie responded, “Yes, I do. But I also always knew that this is where it would end.”

Except, literally nothing about the governor’s ongoing scandals has “ended.” On the contrary, as Rachel noted on the show on Friday night, the probe is growing more serious, not less.

A federal grand jury has begun hearing testimony in the criminal investigation of the George Washington Bridge lane closing scandal, and Gov. Chris Christie’s chief spokesman is among those who have testified, his lawyer said Friday.

The grand jury action is considered a major development in the ongoing controversy that has enveloped the Christie administration for months. What began as a preliminary inquiry into whether federal laws might have been “implicated” has morphed into a deepening criminal probe to determine whether federal laws have actually been broken.

And really, that’s just the tip of the iceberg.  Since these revelations on Friday, the developments have grown even more alarming.

David Wildstein, the former Port Authority official at the center of the George Washington Bridge lane-closings scandal, spent several days meeting with federal prosecutors in Newark last week, according to a report posted online by a Washington-based publication that says it covers “insider news” about the U.S. Department of Justice.

The publication, called “Main Justice,” is also reporting that Charlie McKenna, former chief legal counsel to Gov. Chris Christie, met secretly in mid-January with investigators in the office of New Jersey U.S. Attorney Paul Fishman.

 Esquire’s Scott Raab had a related report on Wildstein cooperating with federal prosecutor’s office, which has reportedly added to the number of attorneys working on this case.

If Christie thinks his own lawyers freeing him of responsibility “ended” the scandal, he’s going to be awfully disappointed. Look for more on this on tonight’s show.

 

By: Steve Benen, The Maddow Blog, April 7, 2014

April 8, 2014 Posted by | Bridgegate, Chris Christie | , , , , | Leave a comment

“Blood On GOP’s Hands”: How Many Would Be Covered Without Its Sabotage Plan?

The cynicism of the GOP’s anti-Obamacare strategy has been obvious forever, but some particular kinks in it only became clear as the enrollment deadline approached and it seemed the Obama administration would not just meet but beat its public-exchange enrollment target. Republicans went from shrieking about what an awful program it was to complaining that not enough people had signed up, and then, when the goal was met, complaining that not enough uninsured people had gotten coverage, and of course lying about that, too.

The lunacy of their complaint – “This program is a nightmare – but not enough people are being helped by it!” – is like the old joke about the kvetchy restaurant patron who complains the food is terrible, and the portions are too small. It would be funny if it weren’t sad.

I confess that the freakout over the federal exchange’s rocky start had me convinced the administration would miss its enrollment target. So hitting the seven million mark is cause for elation, but also anger: Imagine how many people might have enrolled if the entire Republican Party coast to coast hadn’t spent the last six months telling them not to?

Let’s take it further: Imagine if all 50 states had implemented their own exchanges, instead of just 17 of them. Imagine if all 50 states had expanded Medicaid, instead of just 27. Imagine if a well-funded noise machine, from Fox to Rush to the online swarm hadn’t publicized every glitch and every allegation of someone losing their insurance, often fabricating the problems, sometimes lying outright, while ignoring every positive story.

It’s absolutely true that this first enrollment period still leaves most of the uninsured without insurance. Still, at least 9.5 million of the uninsured now have care, thanks to the state and federal exchanges, Medicaid expansion and people buying coverage privately. (On Fox, Charles Krauthammer simply lied when he says it’s only 1 million.) It must be noted that states that built their own exchanges and expanded Medicaid did much better when it comes to covering the uninsured. The Los Angeles Times estimates that at least 27 percent of the newly insured were previously uninsured; in Kentucky, it’s 75 percent and in New York it’s 70 percent. If Republican governors and legislatures hadn’t sabotaged the program in roughly half the states, we would see numbers like that nationwide.

When you add in young people covered by their parents’ insurance and people with pre-existing conditions who can now get coverage, the number goes higher still. As President Obama noted in his Rose Garden victory lap, 100 million people have received free preventive care under new regulations for insurance plans. It’s no wonder that the latest Washington Post/ABC News poll showed approval of the Affordable Care Act topping disapproval for the first time ever, with approval jumping from 40 percent in November to 49 percent last week. Barring a major meltdown, those numbers are likely to climb too.

This is, of course, what the GOP feared – not that the plan would fail, but that it would work. Again, it’s not perfect – we still don’t know exactly who signed up, and whether the balance of young and old, sick and well will make plans affordable. But this enormous milestone should make Democrats smarter about how to make Republicans pay for their obstruction in 2014. The conventional wisdom is that Obamacare will be a millstone in the midterms, especially for red state Democrats, but conventional wisdom is often wrong.

Democrats should challenge Republicans to take away that free preventive care from 100 million Americans. Challenge them to transfer money from women back to men, by letting insurance companies once again charge women more, sometimes much more, for health insurance. Take insurance away from people with pre-existing conditions; kick young people off their parents’ plans. Roll back Medicaid expansion in the 27 states that participated. Go on and tell the American people you’re going to do that, Republicans. The midterms might not be the cakewalk you think.

 

By: Joan Walsh, Editor at Large, Salon, April 2, 2014

April 3, 2014 Posted by | Affordable Care Act, GOP, Obamacare | , , , , , , | Leave a comment

“Burying The Lede”: Obamacare Denialism Is More Futile Than Ever

So it turns out that millions of people dealt with the Affordable Care Act enrollment cutoff pretty much the way they habitually deal with the April 15 income tax filing deadline: procrastinating until the last minute to insure maximum stress and standing in line. Like mobbing shopping malls on the day after Thanksgiving, it’s the American way of life.

One result was predictably negative headlines like this classic in The Washington Post: “HealthCare.gov tumbles on deadline day as consumers race to sign up for insurance.” Because as we all know, temporary computer glitches—which never happen in the flawlessly efficient corporate sector, of course—are the big story here.

In the news business, this is called “burying the lede.” It’s the equivalent of a sports story headlined “Third inning errors mar Red Sox World Series win.” Because the real news, sports fans, is that Obamacare has met and even surpassed every enrollment projection. Oddly, millions of last-minute shoppers decided they’d be better off with health insurance after all.

Who could have guessed?

At this writing, it appears that the late buying surge will carry Obamacare beyond the 7 million enrollments projected by the Congressional Budget Office. Too bad, because that quite ruins the visual effect of a comically misleading Fox News bar graph that contrived to make the 6 million citizens enrolled as of last week appear to be a small fraction of the 7 million CBO projection, rather than 84 percent of it. An alert basset hound wouldn’t have been fooled. Do they think viewers are morons?

But more about what Ed Kilgore calls “Obamacare denialism” to come. According to a Rand Corporation study reported in the Los Angeles Times, along with the 7 million newly enrolled in private insurance plans, roughly 4.5 million previously uninsured Americans have enrolled in Medicaid since the new law came online last November. Another 3 million young adults gained coverage through their parents’ insurance plans, as Obamacare allows.

Rand estimates that another 9 million Americans have bought directly from insurance companies, although many of those were previously insured. Overall, the uninsured rate has dropped from an estimated 20.9 percent to 16.6 percent in the law’s first year—hardly the sudden revolution in American health care some dreamed of, but a creditable start.

What’s more, the numbers are dramatically better in states that worked to implement rather than obstruct the Affordable Care Act. New York State told CNBC that 59 percent of those buying health insurance through the state’s marketplace had been previously uninsured. In Kentucky, it’s 75 percent—immeasurably improving the lives of rural Kentuckians particularly.

How long will their neighbors, in, say, Tennessee be able to hold out against Obamacare as word gets around?

So how are Republicans whose congressmen have voted over 50 times to repeal the law handling the unwelcome good news? About the way they dealt with allegedly “skewed” poll numbers back in 2012. Who can forget the Weekly Standard’s bold election eve prediction? “New Projection of Election Results: Romney 52, Obama 47.” According to pundit Fred Barnes, a 10-point Romney landslide was entirely likely.

The New Republic’s Jonathan Cohn summarizes: “[Republicans] are doing what they almost always do when data confounds their previously held beliefs. They are challenging the statistics—primarily, by suggesting that most of the people getting insurance already had coverage. Some, like Senator John Barrasso of Wyoming, say the administration is ‘cooking the books.’ Others, like Senator Ted Cruz, say that the number of people without insurance is actually rising.”

We await Senator Cruz’s thunderous proof.

Meanwhile, something else that’s been happening right in the face of all those Koch-financed “Americans for Prosperity” ads lamenting that the Affordable Care Act “just doesn’t work,” is that the law’s popularity among the public has been steadily rising. The latest ABC News/Washington Post poll released this week shows Obamacare supported by more Americans than oppose it, albeit by a scant margin of 49 to 48 percent.

Interestingly, 36 percent of self-described conservatives now support the law, as opposed to 17 percent last November. How that will play into November 2014 congressional elections remains to be seen. However, it’s already become clear to the saner sort of conservative thinker that the Affordable Care Act is here to stay.

The market has spoken. The political rebellion and/or actuarial collapse dreamed of on the right clearly isn’t going to happen. “[W]herever they go and whatever they do, writes Ross Douthat in the New York Times, conservatives “will have to deal with the reality that Obamacare, thrice-buried, looks very much alive.”

Longer term, Obamacare denialism appears even more futile. The ever-prescient Kevin Drum points out that Republicans can’t dream of repealing the law as long as its namesake lives in the White House. And by 2017 the CBO estimates the law’s benefits will extend to 36 million Americans—a formidable constituency indeed.

 

By: Gene Lyons, The National Memo, April 2, 2014

April 2, 2014 Posted by | Affordable Care Act, Obamacare, Republicans | , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

“Something Is Lacking In His Character”: Paul Ryan’s Endless “I Am Not A Racist” Tour

Will Rep. Paul Ryan ever finish his self-serving “I am not a racist” tour? Maybe not, if he keeps coming up with new ways to be offensive. What was Ryan thinking Tuesday night, when he let Bill O’Reilly attack Rep. Barbara Lee as a “race hustler,” without even trying to come to her defense?

O’Reilly built a whole segment around Lee’s condemnation of Ryan’s comments about “inner city” culture as “a thinly veiled racial attack.” He invited Ryan on the show to talk about his conversation with Lee, and what he most wanted to know was whether the Oakland Democrat had apologized to Ryan. Ryan didn’t exactly answer, but he used Lee to exonerate him from charges of racism.

“She does not believe that I have these views,” he told O’Reilly. “She knows me well, and she knows that I don’t have a racist bone in my body.”

O’Reilly wasn’t satisfied: “Then why did she imply you did?”

“Well, you’ll have to ask Barbara that,” Ryan averred. The host jumped in again:

“Are you mad at her? I would be…”

“No, I’m not mad at her. I’m a big boy. I understand that if you challenge the status quo sometimes you’ll be misinterpreted…”

And that’s when O’Reilly got to the point of his segment: trashing Lee and other black leaders as “race hustlers.”

It’s intentional. With all due respect to you, because I think you’re a good man, they don’t want a conversation, they don’t want to solve the problem. These race hustlers make a big living, and they get voted into office, by portraying their constituents as victims. And it’s all your fault, and it’s my fault, it’s the rich people’s fault, and it’s the Republicans’ fault — it’s everybody’s fault except what’s going on.

And what’s going on, as you know, is the dissolution of the family, and you don’t have proper supervision of children, and they grow up with no skills, and they can’t read and speak, and they have tattoos on their neck, and they can’t compete in the marketplace, and that’s what’s going on!

Maybe Ryan got distracted by the whole neck tattoo thing, but he remained silent during O’Reilly’s tirade, just smiling meekly and nodding. Even when the bullying host paused, Ryan didn’t bother coming to Lee’s defense; he effectively co-signed O’Reilly’s attack. “Here’s what I want to do: I want to solve the problem,” he told the host. And then he went on with his stump speech about how anti-poverty programs don’t work.

So let’s get this straight: Ryan effectively uses Lee as a human shield against charges of racism, insisting “she knows I don’t have these views” and “she knows me well” and “she knows I don’t have a racist bone in my body.” But when O’Reilly trashed Lee as a “race hustler,” Ryan can’t be bothered to say a word on her behalf. Instead of smiling and nodding, imagine if Ryan had shown a little spine: “Look, Bill, Barbara and I disagree on these issues, but she is not a ‘race hustler,’ she’s a strong public servant looking out for her constituents.”

But you can’t imagine it, because Ryan likes to talk tough about the “character” of “inner city” men, while kissing the behinds of bullies like O’Reilly. Instead of squirming over charges of racism, Ryan is enjoying the acclaim they’re bringing him on the right, where he’s hailed as a teller of tough truths. And if Barbara Lee winds up collateral damage as Ryan is lionized by his wingnut admirers, so be it. I’m not going to say that’s racist, but it certainly tells me something is lacking in his character.

 

By: Joan Walsh, Editor at Large, Salon, March 27, 2014

March 28, 2014 Posted by | Paul Ryan, Racism | , , , , , , | 1 Comment

« Previous Entries     Next Entries »