Costs are determined by the number of people who sign up, the more people signed means lower costs for all.
One Big Insurer Explains Why Obamacare Premiums Are Rising So Much
By Millie Dent 21 hours ago
The Blue Cross and Blue Shield Association just released a new study that helps explain why some big health insurers are struggling to make money under Obamacare — and have jacked up premiums in many cases.
The insurance giant’s newly covered customers were sicker, required more care and had higher medical costs than individuals who were already covered.
Blue Cross looked at the medical services used by people who enrolled in its plans before and after the implementation of the Affordable Care Act in 2014. The study was based on claims for 4.7 million people.
Compared to the company’s previously insured population, new enrollees in individual Blue Cross and Blue Shield health plans in 2014 and 2015 were found to have higher rates of certain conditions and diseases, including hypertension, diabetes, depression, coronary artery disease, human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) and Hepatitis C.
HIV was more than three times as common among newly enrolled customers compared to those who already had coverage, the report found. Hepatitis C was more than twice as common.
The relatively poor health of people enrolled under Obamacare is not surprising given that many of the newly covered had gone without health insurance before and thus were not able to get medical treatment for their illnesses. That history also helps explain why newly enrolled consumers in 2014 and 2015 also used more medical services than those who had purchased coverage prior to 2014. In the first nine months of 2015, new enrollees filled 35 percent more prescriptions than those who had purchased coverage prior to 2014. Hospital admission rates jumped 84 percent higher, the report found, and the frequency of visits to doctors and other medical professionals shot up by 26 percent.
Insurers expected the newly enrolled would be more expensive to cover, but Blue Cross and others underestimated just how much more expensive they would be and how much more medical care the new customers would need.
The result, in many cases, has been a spike in premiums: Blue Cross plans have seen substantial rate hikes. “As we see increases in uses of services, the premium has to go up to cover the services,” says Alissa Fox, vice president of policy at the insurer.
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One hope is that, as these newly insured get treated for their most urgent and long-standing medical issues, they will require somewhat less, or less expensive, care going forward.
But the Blue Cross data also serves as a reminder of why it was important for Obamacare’s success that a large pool of people — healthy and unhealthy, young and old — signed up for coverage, as a way to keep a lid on cost increases. And the Congressional Budget Office projected in a report issued last week that about 12 million people will get their insurance through Obamacare exchanges this year, down from a projected 13 million as of January and a forecast of 21 million a year ago.
Those numbers, combined with the figures from Blue Cross and Blue Shield, suggest that the painful Obamacare transition period for insurers will last a while longer.
If you’re tired of hearing Donald Trump go on about his ratings and polls, if you’re mystified by the Twitter War of the Candidates’ Wives, if you can’t understand why Wolf Blitzer interviews a former contestant on “The Apprentice” as if she were a political authority, then I’ve got a video you really need to watch.
The video I’m showing you here, courtesy of C-Span’s archive, is of a presidential candidate speaking in 1987, at a moment of tectonic upheaval in our politics and media. Chances are pretty good you’ve never seen it, or even heard about it, and there’s a reason for that.
Before I tell the remarkable story of that eight-minute speech, though, let’s put it in the context of our moment.
Recently, a bunch of commentators — among them the president of the United States — seem to have latched on to the idea that the media is culpable in enabling Trump’s antic march to the Republican nomination. In the New York Times, my former colleagues Nicholas Kristof and Jim Rutenberg have both written columns in the past week asking whether we, as an industry, need to be more accountable.
Regular readers of this column know that I wrote early and often on this theme, including a column last December about the destructive “symbiosis” between Trump and the media — a term very much in fashion now.
In fact, not long ago I wrote an entire book on the collision of entertainment and political journalism, called “All the Truth Is Out,” which seems to have accidentally anticipated the Trump phenomenon. I borrowed from the brilliant work of the social critic Neil Postman, whose 1985 book “Amusing Ourselves to Death” feels more relevant today than it probably did then.
But the guy who really predicted all of this was Gary Hart, the protagonist of “All the Truth Is Out.” And man, did he try to sound the alarm.
At this time in 1987, Hart was rather like the Hillary Clinton of his day, only more talented and more visionary; he had been the presumed nominee of the Democratic Party since narrowly losing in 1984, and the Gallup Poll had him beating George H.W. Bush — then the sitting vice president — by double digits. A man of staggering intellect, he was talking even then about the rise of stateless terrorism and the arrival of a high-tech economy.
But his campaign unraveled in the space of five surreal days, during which reporters from the Miami Herald hid outside Hart’s home in order to catch him spending time with a younger woman. Hart found himself undone by the first modern political sex scandal — the inevitable result of myriad forces that were just then reshaping the media, from the echoes of Watergate to the birth of the mobile satellite.
What happened next is interesting and almost entirely forgotten.
Driven from the campaign trail in New Hampshire, Hart repaired to his cabin in the Denver foothills, where he and his family were literally penned in by a fleet of satellite trucks and news choppers. His aides wrote him the kind of withdrawal statement we’ve come to expect from scandalized politicians — contrite, gracious, bland.
Hart couldn’t sleep after reading that speech. It made him want to vomit. He called his close friend Warren Beatty (who would later make the film “Bulworth,” not incidentally) and talked through what he wished he could say instead.
Then, the next morning, Hart drove the canyon road down to Denver, stepped before the national media and calmly delivered one of the most stinging and prescient indictments of an American institution you will ever see.
“In public life, some things may be interesting, but that doesn’t necessarily mean they’re important,” Hart said, decrying a process that he said reduced reporters to hunters and candidates to the hunted.
“And then after all that, ponderous pundits wonder in mock seriousness why some of the best people in this country choose not to run for high office,” Hart went on. “Now I want those talented people who supported me to insist that this system be changed. Too much of it is just a mockery. And if it continues to destroy people’s integrity and honor, then that system will eventually destroy itself.
“Politics in this country, take it from me, is on the verge of becoming another form of athletic competition or sporting match.”
He closed by paraphrasing his idol, Thomas Jefferson: “I tremble for my country when I think we may in fact get the kind of leaders we deserve.”
Whenever I talk about my book to audiences around the country, I close with those lines. Invariably, I look up to find shocked and silent voters nodding their heads, amazed at how eerily that captures our present reality.
So why haven’t you heard anything about this seminal speech? I’ll tell you why. Because within 24 hours of its delivery, despite the polls showing that the public mostly sided with Hart over the reporters, America’s elite media, led by its columnists and editorial boards, rose up in unison to mock and discredit it.
“Instead of saying goodbye with a measure of dignity, respect and introspection,” A.M. Rosenthal, the Times’ former editor, wrote on the paper’s op-ed page, “Gary Hart told us he had decided that Gary Hart was a wonderful man after all and that everybody was responsible for Gary Hart’s political demise except Gary Hart.” (Watch Hart’s speech and decide for yourself if that was the point.)
Hart’s monologue was instantly buried in an avalanche of defensiveness and moral posturing. “It wasn’t just that I was blaming the media,” Hart recalled when we talked this week. “It was that I was a bad guy, and it was good riddance to a bad politician.”
For 29 years after that moment, until I directed him to it this week, even Hart hadn’t watched that video clip. Nor did he bother to continue pressing his case, despite a stream of offers to give speeches or appear on talk shows.
“I was not put on earth to pick a fight with the media and carry it out,” he told me. “I couldn’t repeat the theme of that talk without the headline inevitably saying, ‘Hart attacks the press,’ and I just didn’t want to do that for the rest of my life.
“There was no capacity for thoughtful reflection,” Hart said. “It was all me versus them.”
By the time I got into the business of political journalism in the late 1990s, 24-hour cable news — mindless, sensational, personality-obsessed — was driving the conversation. Then came the Internet, with its frenzied competition for clicks. By 2007, Politico (which does some excellent work, to be fair) was calling itself the ESPN of news, which is pretty much exactly what Hart had prophesied.
And so we systematically created a process perfectly suited to a manipulative, reality-TV performer like Trump (or Sarah Palin before him) — and just as hostile to a guy like John Kasich, who talks about governing as complicated work. We spend half of any given debate talking about poll numbers and strategies, mean tweets and sordid allegations, because the game of politics is so much more alluring than the practice of statecraft.
I asked Hart if, on a week like this one, when battery charges against Trump’s campaign manager were vying for airtime against his war with Ted Cruz over their spouses, he felt vindicated at last.
“No,” he said quickly. “No. No.” After all, he explained, no one (other than me) ever saw the need to revisit what he said all those years ago.
I raise the Hart video this week because if you read this latest flood of self-criticism, some of it from commentators who have worked in our business for decades, you might come away thinking that something transformative has just taken us by surprise. You might get the impression that a tsunami of triviality has suddenly overwhelmed our media, and we barely had time to suck in air and duck our heads.
But don’t let anyone tell you that this is all just about Trump’s suckering us, or about some convergence of recent trends we couldn’t have foreseen. It is, in fact, a generational reckoning — the failure of executives and anchors and reporters-turned-cable-personalities, many of them in our most serious news outlets, who for decades refused to confront the creeping realities of their industry, as surely as a generation of political leaders refused to confront the realities of fiscal and global instability.
Leslie Moonves, the chairman of CBS, did a pretty nice job of encapsulating that failure when he talked about Trump’s campaign this way last month: “It may not be good for America, but it’s damn good for CBS.”
We can say, as Moonves surely would, that we were just responding to market forces beyond our control. We can say that voters, and not us, get to decide what matters and what doesn’t. We can point out that we’ve gone to great lengths to expose the depth of Trump’s ignorance and inconsistency.
What we can’t say is that we weren’t told it would happen.
Article from American Prospect
Barack Obama Is Looking Better and Better Paul Waldman
March 28, 2016
His approval ratings are up. It might have something to do with the
clowns on the other side.
Imagine the pain your average Republican must feel when he opens his
morning paper. His party is not just riven by internal dissent, but
looks like it will nominate a spectacularly unpopular candidate to be
its standard-bearer in 2016, with a campaign that gets more farcical
every day, bringing ignominy upon a party that has suffered so much
already. And now, to add insult to injury, the president he loathes with
such fervor is looking … rather popular with the American public.
Barack Obama’s approval ratings are now above 50 percent in daily Gallup
tracking, and have been for weeks. He’s risen higher in public esteem
than he’s been in three years. Every poll taken in the last month and a
half shows him with a positive approval rating.
You might say that it’s no great achievement to be above 50 percent.
After all, didn’t Bill Clinton and Ronald Reagan leave office with
ratings around 65 percent? Indeed they did. But even Clinton’s
presidency occurred in a different era, when party polarization was not
as firm as it is now. These days—and in all likelihood for some time to
come—if a president can stay at 50 percent, he should be counted a
remarkable success.
That polarization runs through everything Americans think, know, and
learn about the president. There’s always been a large gap between how
members of the president’s party view him and how members of the other
party view him, but if you look over the history for which we have
polling data (going back to Eisenhower in the 1950s), you see what has
changed over time. With just a couple of exceptions, those in the
president’s party usually give him around 80 percent approval, give or
take a bit. For instance, Ronald Reagan averaged 83 percent among
Republicans and George H.W. Bush averaged 82 percent, while Bill Clinton
averaged 80 percent among Democrats.
It’s in the opinions of the other party that there has been a
transformation. Presidents used to routinely get 30 or 40 percent
approval from the other party; it would only dip down into the 20s when
things were going really badly. But George W. Bush’s presidency and then
Barack Obama’s have been characterized by levels of disapproval from the
other side we haven’t seen since the depth of the Watergate scandal.
This is one of the signal characteristics of public opinion in our time:
negative partisanship, in which Americans define their political
identity not by their affection for their own party, but by their hatred
for the other guys.
In fact, Obama is the first president since polls existed to have never
gone above 25 percent approval from the other side, not even in the
honeymoon glow of the first days of his presidency. He could defeat
ISIS, make America secure and prosperous, save a baby from a burning
building, then cure cancer and invent a pill that would let you eat all
the ice cream you want without gaining any weight, and no more than a
handful of Republicans would ever say they think he’s doing a good job.
Which means that if his ratings have gone up, it’s because he’s doing
better among everyone who isn’t a Republican. Why is that? There are
multiple reasons, but one factor that always plays a key part in
presidential approval is the strength of the economy, though presidents
get both more credit and more blame for it than they deserve. And today,
even if income growth is lagging much more than we’d like, unemployment
is under 5 percent and there have been 72 consecutive months of job
growth, the longest streak on record. There are plenty of things wrong
with the American economy, but the most visible thing to many people
(apart from gas prices, which are near historic lows) is whether you can
find a job if you need one, and today you can.
And then there’s the biggest political story of the year, the Republican
presidential nomination campaign. Put simply, it’s been an utter
catastrophe for Republicans—and a marked contrast with the guy they’re
all vying to replace. Where Obama is calm and reasonable, the Republican
candidates are shrill and panicky. Where he’s thoughtful and informed,
they’re impulsive and ignorant. Republicans are constantly trying to
argue that Obama is frivolous—he played a round of golf while something
important was happening somewhere!—but you won’t catch him arguing with
his opponents about the size of their hands or attacking their
spouses. You can disagree with Obama on matters of substance, but he’s
nothing like the clowns Republicans are deciding between.
So juxtaposed with the freak show of the Republican primaries, Obama
looks better all the time. And ironically, of all the Republicans who
ran for president this year, only one almost never singled out Obama for
heaps of abuse: Donald Trump. Trump says that our leaders are idiots,
but he includes all kind of people in that criticism. He barely talks
about Obama, unlike the candidates he has vanquished, who regularly
asserted not just that Obama is a terrible president but that he has
intentionally tried to destroy America, a bit of talk-radio lunacy many
of them incorporated into their rhetoric back when it seemed like you
could win the nomination by being the one who says he hates the
president more than anyone else.
Yet none of the Republicans make for a clearer contrast with Obama than
Trump, the buffoonish vulgarian who wouldn’t know class if hit him in
the head with a gold-plated hammer. And while the Republicans talk
endlessly about what a cesspool of misery and despair America is, Obama
looks to be chugging toward the end of his presidency with most
Americans thinking he’s done a pretty good job.
Ten days before Justice Antonin Scalia died, launching the political battle over who would fill his vacancy, Chief Justice John Roberts delivered a speech slamming the Supreme Court nomination process. In remarks at Boston’s New England Law,The New York Times reports that Roberts denounced the politicization of the process that he says is really just meant to ensure that nominees are qualified for the job.
“We don’t work as Democrats or Republicans,” the chief justice said, “and I think it’s a very unfortunate impression the public might get from the confirmation process.”
Roberts pointed out that while nominees back in his day were easily confirmed, the last three justices — Samuel Alito Jr., Sonia Sotomayor, and Elena Kagan — have all faced split votes from the Senate. “Look at my more recent colleagues, all extremely well qualified for the court and the votes were, I think, strictly on party lines for the last three of them, or close to it, and that doesn’t make any sense,” Roberts said. “That suggests to me that the process is being used for something other than ensuring the qualifications of the nominees.”
President Obama nominated Merrick Garland to the Supreme Court last week, despite Republicans’ promises that they will deny any Obama nominee in favor of letting the next president fill the vacancy. It has become clear that the Congress is essentially Racist and disingenuous. Vice President Biden made it clear in a recent speech that the GOP Congress has taken excerpts from a prior speech to avoid doing the job of vetting a candidate for the Supreme court. For the past 7 years we (voters) have been operating under a dysfunctional Government due to the Political machinations of our Congress. Voters are better than the people we elected to represent us but we seemingly have not considered this. Our Federal lawmakers are no more than 535 people who are taking our money for a job poorly done or not done at all. If this were a contractor or service, we as consumers would be up in arms so the question is: Why are we not taking these people (Congress) to task for not doing their job?
The current elections and the recent 12 years of Government gamesmanship have been a time of hardship for our country, We have candidates whose purpose appears to be dividing our country rather than uniting it. The meanness and hate evidenced at these rallies is unsettling at the least and dangerous at most. After watching the excerpts of the physical and verbal assaults, I was reminded of the 60’s when dogs and water hoses were the order of the day. I have a book of Lincoln’s quotes and in reading it I found something that does not resonate now but should . This is a quote attributed to Lincoln: “If the people remain right, your public men can never betray you… Cultivate and protect that sentiment ( that the principles of liberty are eternal) and your ambitious leaders will be reduced to the position of servants instead of masters”
We have a neer do well Congress whose sole purpose is to run the country the way they want to run it no matter what we want or need and they (Congress) have persuaded us that they are doing what they do in our interest. I would like to believe that the dissatisfiedvoters understand what the candidates say is not what they will or can do if elected. We already have a majority of elected officials who are divisive, disingenuous and often liars all for the sake of their parties not for the people who voted them in and who they so often invoke when they have a media event. These are the same people who have enacted laws that provides them with a cost of living increase without a vote (how many of us knew about this?). The recent issue regarding the Supreme court is another political ploy to side track the working of the Government. We are the victims of this irreverent Congress who we elected to work on our behalf but spend more time working for their party and themselves. We need to stop the train of idiocy created by Congress and demand solutions that benefit us. A letter costs 1/2 of k just a dollar to mail, emails work just as well. When elections are over we need to continue to press Congress for solutions and demand satisfaction.
Comments Off on Guantanamo Camp Cost $900,000.00 Per Prisoner Per Year
This posting from The Huffington Post shows what the cost to keep Guantanamo Camp open and what should be spent on the actual facility to bring it up to standards. Where could this amount be better used? We have several “High Security” prisons in the U.S. but due to politrics and fear mongering these facilities and the apparent boon to the communities as far as material resources like jobs, products sold to the facility and traffic from products being brought in has not happened. Maximum security is just that maximum security and would cost a lot less in the United States than off shore. This move would free up military forces now engaged in guarding this facility for other duties. The move would be n money saved and well spent.
WASHINGTON, May 3 (Reuters) – It’s been dubbed the most expensive prison on Earth and President Barack Obama cited the cost this week as one of many reasons to shut down the detention center at Guantanamo Bay, which burns through some $900,000 per prisoner annually.
The Pentagon estimates it spends about $150 million each year to operate the prison and military court system at the U.S. Naval Base in Cuba, which was set up 11 years ago to house foreign terrorism suspects. With 166 inmates currently in custody, that amounts to an annual cost of $903,614 per prisoner.
By comparison, super-maximum security prisons in the United States spend about $60,000 to $70,000 at most to house their inmates, analysts say. And the average cost across all federal prisons is about $30,000, they say.
The high cost was just one reason Obama cited when he returned this week to an unfulfilled promise to close the prison and said he would try again. Obama also said that the prison, set up under his Republican predecessor George W. Bush and long the target of criticism by rights groups and foreign governments, is a stain on the reputation of the United States.
“It’s extremely inefficient,” said Ken Gude, chief of staff and vice president at the liberal Center for American Progress think tank, who has followed developments at Guantanamo Bay since 2005.
“That … may be what finally gets us to actually close the prison. I mean the costs are astronomical, when you compare them to what it would cost to detain somebody in the United States,” Gude said.
The cost argument could be a potent weapon at a time of running budget battles between Obama and the Republican-controlled House of Representatives, and of across-the-board federal spending cuts that kicked in, in March. The “sequestration” as it is known, is due to cut some $109 billion in spending up to the end of September and has cut government services small and large.
Just one inmate from Guantanamo, for example, is equivalent to the cost of 12 weeks of White House tours for the public – a treasured tradition that the Secret Service says costs $74,000 a week and that has been axed under sequestration.
A single inmate is also the equivalent of keeping open the control tower at the Northwest Arkansas Regional Airport for 45 months. That control tower, another victim of cuts, costs $20,000 per month to run.
The $900,000 also matches the funding for nearly seven states to help serve home delivered meals to the elderly. Sequestration has cost Meals on Wheels a median shortfall of $129,497 per state, the organization says.
Or measured in terms of military spending and national security, the cost of four inmates represents the cost of training an Air Force fighter pilot – based on the Department of Defense’s figure of $3.6 million per pilot.
WHY THE HUGE COST?
The huge cost of running the prison and judicial complex stem from its offshore location at a 45-square-mile U.S. Naval Base on the southeastern coast of Cuba. Because ties between the two countries are almost nonexistent, almost everything for the facilities has to be ferried in from outside.
When the military tribunals are in session, everyone from judges and lawyers to observers and media have to fly into Guantanamo on military aircraft. Food, construction materials and other goods are shipped in from outside, experts say.
But despite the high cost of the camp, and despite the fact that Republicans traditionally demand belt-tightening by the federal government, a Republican aide with the House of Representatives Armed Services Committee said there was little point in asking if the price was worth it because “there isn’t an alternative at the moment.”
“No one has any particular affection for Guantanamo Bay, but no one has come up with a practical solution that’s better,” the aide said.
Obama needs to produce a plan for what to do with the detainees at Guantanamo “who are too dangerous to release,” Representative Buck McKeon, the chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, said in an opinion piece in USA Today this week. “Until a better solution is offered, at Guantanamo they must stay,” he wrote.
Among current inmates, nine have been charged with crimes or convicted, 24 are considered eligible for possible prosecution, 86 have been cleared for transfer or release and 47 are considered too dangerous for release but are not facing prosecution.
But until now, worries about security have prevented the idea of transferring some or all of the inmates to the United States from getting much traction.
Obama pledged to close the prison within a year after first taking office in January 2009 but his efforts ran aground, partly because of congressional opposition, from both Republicans and some in his own Democratic Party, to transferring prisoners to the United States.
Inmates started a hunger strike in February that has swelled to some 100 prisoners and has led to force-feeding of 23 of the prisoners. With the camp back under a critical spotlight, Obama told a news conference on Tuesday he would renew efforts to shut it down. He has an array of options, some of which would be more achievable than others.
Gude said it was difficult to figure out how much the United States has spent overall on Guantanamo detention facilities since it began housing prisoners there in 2002 because administrations only recently have been noting the expense in a budget line item.
“I don’t know if I’ve ever seen an estimate but it is certainly more than $1 billion by a comfortable margin, I would say, probably more than $2 billion,” Gude said.
Above the annual operating cost, capital spending on the prison could rise again if the Pentagon receives the funding it says it needs to renovate the place.
General John Kelly, the head of Southern Command, which is responsible for Guantanamo, told a House of Representatives panel in March that he needed some $170 million to improve the facilities for troops stationed at the base as part of detention operations. Kelly said the living conditions were “pretty questionable” and told the panel, “We need to take care of our troops.” (Reporting By David Alexander; Editing by Frances Kerry and Tim Dobbyn)
Comments Off on Senator Franken Explains and Exposes
Senator Al Franken addressed the Senate’s failure to the country:
Senator Al Franken (D-MN) addressed the new justice vacancy in the Supreme Court on February 24. In opening, Franken told the Senate Judiciary Committee that “swift” action needed to be taken. He offered his “thoughts and prayers” to the family of the late Justice Scalia, adding he did not share Scalia’s views on the U.S. Constitution, nor on the country, and that Scalia had a great sense of conviction and humor. Franken then quickly gets down to the business at hand:
“Let us all remember that each and every senator serving in this body swore an oath to support and defend [the] Constitution,” said Sen. Franken in prepared remarks. “It is our duty to move forward. We must fulfill our constitutional obligation to ensure that the highest court in the land has a full complement of justices.”
Franken reminds the audience that the U.S. Constitution Justice Scalia loved is the same U.S. Constitution that allows the president to nominate a new justice, and with the “Advice and Consent of the Senate,” appoint a judge to the Supreme Court.
The senator notes with disgust that it took less than an hour after news of Scalia’s death hit the public for the GOP to announce they would not take up the business of considering a replacement until after the presidential election. Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) said the American people should have a voice in the selection of the next Supreme Court justice.
The only problem with the Majority Leader’s reasoning, Franken adds, is that the American people have spoken. Twice.
He reiterates that President Barack Obama was elected and reelected by a solid majority of the American people who understood his role is to uphold his duties according to the Constitution and that includes appoint a Supreme Court justice should a vacancy occur.
Here’s where it gets good. One of the highlights of this speech was when Franken suggests the GOP apply their own reasoning to the Republican-led Congress.
If we were to truly subscribe to the Majority Leader’s logic and extend it to the legislative branch, it would yield an absurd result.
Senators would become ineffective in the last year of their term.
The 28 senators who are now in the midst of their reelection campaigns and the 6 senators who are stepping down should be precluded from casting votes in committee or on the Senate floor.
Ten committee chairs and 19 subcommittee chairs should pass the gavel to a colleague who is not currently running for reelection or preparing for retirement.
Bill introduction, and indeed the cosponsor ship of bills, should be limited to those senators who are not yet serving in the sixth year of their terms. When a Republican says it’s been standard practice over the last 80 years to not confirm Supreme Court nominees during a presidential election year, Franken says, “I know that’s not true. And I’m not the only one,” mentioning several sources including the indisputable SCOTUS blog, which says, “historical record does not reveal any instances [in over a century] of the Senate failing to confirm a nominee in a presidential election year because of the impending election.” In closing, Senator Franken states the Supreme Court is a central pillar of our democracy. The women and men who sit on that bench make decisions that touch the lives of every single American—regardless of party or political persuasion. Franken urges his colleagues to “reject the impulse to put politics before our sworn duty” to uphold the Constitution. There is a video of Franken’s entire speech.
In his speech, Senator Al Franken describes the hypocrisy, negligence, and obstructiveness of Republicans that has taken place the entire seven years President Obama has been in office.
Franken tells the committee (and the public) that the day before, every Republican member of the Senate Judiciary Committee sent a letter to the Majority Leader vowing to deny a hearing to the president’s eventual nominee, saying they will not hold hearings on any Supreme Court nominee—until after their next president is sworn in on January 20, 2017. Franken calls their actions an historic dereliction of the Senate’s duty. He brings up that “Chairman Grassley gathered only Republican Committee members in a private meeting where they unilaterally decided, behind closed doors, to refuse consideration of a nominee.” Franken calls the action to refuse a hearing “shameful, and I suspect that the American people share that view.“
This post from “The Rude pundit” is indeed Rude an coarse however to keep it in context I have altered some words. And as an add of my opinion,: perhaps the “Justice” will answer to a higher Justice.
Yesterday’s Supreme Court hearing was on the insultingly dumb Texas law requiring family planning clinics where abortions are performed to meet rigid standards that virtually no other medical clinic where outpatient procedures are done must meet. The three women justices kicked so much ass that asses miles away felt it. Justices Ginsberg, Sotomayor, and Kagan, along with liberal male Justice Breyer, were all over Texas Solicitor General Scott Keller, taking apart the absurdity of his argument that the closure of all but 10 clinics in the entirety of Texas wasn’t an “undue burden” on the women of the huge fucking state.
Of course, back on the conservative side, Clarence Thomas didn’t say a goddamned thing, having gone back into a decade-long hibernation, like a particularly dumb and cruel cicada. Anthony Kennedy was at his weaselly peak in figuring out how not to make a decision. And John Roberts attempted to undo the arguments of clinics’ attorney Stephanie Toti. The ghost of Antonin Scalia was screaming from Hell.
But the king dickhead of the day was Samuel Alito, the bespectacled worm of the court. Alito took it upon himself to try to get Toti to admit that the clinics didn’t close because of the law. This mattered to him more than the lives of the women or the distance they had to travel or the money they had to spend or anything else, even though he was utterly f**king wrong:
JUSTICE ALITO: Well, there is very little specific evidence in the record in this case with respect to why any particular clinic closed. Basically, your argument is that the law took effect, and after that point, there was a decrease in the number of clinics…As to how many, of the total that you claim closed, do you have direct evidence about the reason for the closure?
MS. TOTI: Well, 11 of them, Your Honor, closed on the day that the admitting privileges took effect.
JUSTICE ALITO: Yeah. And as to how many…how many are you claiming total closed as a result of the law?
MS. TOTI: To…to date, roughly 20 clinics have closed.
JUSTICE ALITO: And of the 20, how…as to how many do you have direct evidence?
MS. TOTI: I…approximately 12, Your Honor, direct evidence.
JUSTICE ALITO: Because if…if you go through this now we’re not talking about a huge number of facilities.
A few minutes later, Justice Kagan punched Alito right in the nutsack when she said, “Is it right that in the two-week period that the ASC requirement was in effect, that over a dozen facilities shut their doors, and then when that was stayed, when that was lifted, they reopened again immediately?” Toti said that was true. Kagan then put mighty fist to tiny balls as she concluded, “It’s almost like the perfect controlled experiment as to the effect of the law, isn’t it? It’s like you put the law into effect, 12 clinics closed. You take the law out of effect, they reopen?”
Who knows how this will go at this point. But, obviously, there could be a law called “Keep That F**kin’ Baby, Whore of Babylon” and Alito would justify it somehow.
How the Republican Elite Created Frankentrump
To rouse its voters, the GOP exploited hate, anger, and paranoia—and set the stage for the tycoon.
—By David Corn
Thu Feb. 25, 2016 6:00 AM EST
After Donald Trump’s third win in a row, pundits and political observers are beginning to accept a stark reality: This guy may become the Republican Party standard bearer in the 2016 presidential election. (The morning after the bigoted, bullying tycoon triumphed in the Nevada caucuses, the Drudge Report splashed a headline simply declaring, “The Nominee,” below a photo of Trump.) And tweeters, scribes, and analysts throughout the political-media world began wondering if the GOP elite could do anything to stop him from seizing control of the Republican Party. Whether possible or not to de-Trumpify the GOP at this point, Republican insiders, pooh-bahs, and bigwigs only have themselves to blame for Frankentrump. In recent years, they have fomented, fostered, accepted, and exploited the climate of hate in which Trump’s candidacy has taken root. For the fat-cat donors, special-interest lobbyists, and elected officials who usually run the Republican show, Trump is an invasive species. But he has grown large and strong in the manure they have spread across the political landscape.
A short history of GOP-approved hate could begin with the 2008 campaign. After Sen. John McCain selected little-known Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin as his running mate, there was an explosion of right-wing loathing. Palin led this angry crusade of animosity. She accused then-Sen. Barack Obama, the Democratic presidential nominee, of “palling around with terrorists” and pushing socialism. She suggested that only certain areas of the United States were “pro-America.” (She had to apologize for that.) It was all part of a mean-spirited attempt to delegitimize Obama and his supporters. At McCain-Palin rallies, the atmosphere was ugly. Supporters of the Republican ticket wore T-shirts and carried signs branding Obama a communist. Some shouted “kill him” or “off with his head.” Little of this was discouraged. At a town hall meeting in Minnesota, one woman told McCain that Obama was an “Arab.” When McCain, to his credit, replied that this was not so, others in the audience shouted “terrorist” and “liar,” referring to Obama. McCain noted that he respected Obama and admired his accomplishments, and the crowd booed him. The hatred that Palin had helped to unleash was too much for McCain to tamp down.
And it only intensified once Obama took office. Of course, much of this was fueled by the conservative provocateurs and windbags, led by Rush Limbaugh and the like. But elected Republican officials and leading GOPers, who had adopted a political strategy of never-ending obstructionism to thwart Obama, often enabled the hate. While delivering a speech to a joint session of Congress in 2009, Obama was heckled by Rep. Joe Wilson, a South Carolina Republican who shouted, “You lie.” Wilson apologized, but following his outburst, he received a surge of campaign contributions and went on to win handily his next election. Meanwhile, a dozen or so GOP members of Congress were pushing birtherism—the notion that Obama had been born in Kenya, not Hawaii, and was some sort of usurper of the presidency. This conspiracy theory seemed tinged with racism, despite the denials of birthers, and ran parallel to other right-wing claims that Obama was a secret Muslim or a secret socialist or both. The big point was obvious: He wasn’t a real American, he had achieved power through furtive means, he had a clandestine agenda, and Obama hatred was fully warranted.
Top Republicans played footsie with all this. In the fall of 2009, then-Rep. Michele Bachmann called for a Capitol Hill rally to protest Obamacare. Several thousand people showed up. Protesters questioned Obama’s citizenship, depicted him as Sambo, or called him a traitor. Referring to Obamacare, the crowd shouted, “Nazis! Nazis!” The atmosphere was full of animus. And here’s the thing: The entire House Republican leadership, led by Rep. John Boehner, was there. Boehner did not admonish the crowd for its excessive rhetoric. In fact, he joined in, declaring Obamacare the “greatest threat to freedom I have seen.” Clearly, he and his lieutenants believed the hate-driven energy of these activists and voters could fuel the Republicans’ bid to take control of the House. So the more red meat, the merrier. Republicans fed the paranoia, claiming Obamacare would bring about “death panels” and ruin the country (as would Obama’s stimulus bill, his climate change bill, his budget, and almost every other initiative he advanced). In March 2010, after another Capitol Hill rally headlined by Bachmann, tea partiers reportedly hurled racial epithets at members of the Congressional Black Caucus and shouted anti-gay chants at then-Rep. Barney Frank. Rep. Emanuel Cleaver (D-Mo.) said one of the protesters had spit at him.
The Republican effort to portray Obama as the other never waned. In 2010, Newt Gingrich, the former speaker of the House and a future presidential candidate, told two reporters that Obama was “outside our comprehension” and “that only if you understand Kenyan, anti-colonial behavior, can you begin to piece together [his actions].” He claimed Obama had played “a wonderful con” to be elected president, was “authentically dishonest,” and had a worldview that was “factually insane.” This was a heavy indictment, but one that echoed what conservative writers, bloggers, and talkers were saying. Though out of office, Gingrich remained a party leader, and his remarks were an indicator of the state of play on the right and within the party.
After the House Republicans’ bet on the tea party paid off and they gained control of the House in the 2010 midterm elections, the party’s dance with hate did not stop. In 2011, as the GOP’s 2012 presidential candidates jockeyed for position, they pandered to those voters who considered Obama a dangerous phony. While pondering a second presidential run, former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee claimed Obama’s perspective was skewed because he had grown up in Kenya and had been subjected to plenty of anti-imperialist talk. Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney did not go full birther. But he pitched a related line, declaring, “The Obama Administration fundamentally does not believe in the American Experiment.” In other words, Obama was not truly American. A top Romney campaign adviser, John Sununu, put it more bluntly, noting he wished the president “would learn how to be an American.” Romney also claimed (falsely) that Obama had gone on a global “apology tour”—another dig designed to suggest Obama was essentially a foreigner.
Though Romney did not contend Obama was a covert Kenyan, he warmly accepted the endorsement of the nation’s most prominent birther: Donald Trump. Appearing with Trump at his Las Vegas hotel before Nevada’s GOP caucus in February 2012, Romney praised the real estate magnate and noted it was awesome to be backed by Trump: “There are some things that you just can’t imagine happening in your life.” By this point, Trump had sent investigators to Hawaii—or said he had—to investigate Obama’s birth, and he had even suggested Obama might be a Muslim. With this meeting, Romney signaled that Trump was fine company for the GOP. Trump’s over-the-top birtherism was not a disqualification. The Republican tent had room for this reality-denying reality television celebrity. (Romney, his former strategist Stuart Stevens tells me, did say no to Trump’s requests to campaign with Romney and to speak at the GOP convention.)
After Obama’s reelection, the hate machine churned on. Republicans continued to whip the false meme that Obama was bent on taking all guns away from Americans. They routinely claimed not that his policies were wrong but that he was feckless and weak—or dictatorial and authoritarian. Last year, Rudy Giuliani said, “I do not believe the president loves America.” And Dick Cheney claimed Obama operates as if he wants to “take America down.” (That’s a theme Sen. Marco Rubio has, uh, repeatedly, pushed on the campaign trail, contending that the president is deliberately weakening the United States.) Texas Gov. Greg Abbott and Sen. Ted Cruz, another presidential wannabe, gave credence to the wacky notion that Obama was going to invade and seize control of Texas.
It’s been a long run of Republicans accepting, encouraging, and exploiting uncivil discourse, anti-Obama hatred, and right-wing anger. (Republicans also welcomed nearly $300,000 in campaign contributions from Trump since he went birther.) The GOP raised the expectations of its Obama-detesting base and primed the pump for Trump. There is not much wonder that a xenophobic and misogynistic bigot and bully who bashes immigrants and calls for a Muslim ban—and who also slams the Republican insiders for rigging the system—should now find a receptive audience within the GOP’s electorate. For years, Republicans gave their voters a taste for the reddest of meat. That increased the appetite for more. And here comes Trump the butcher with a heaping plate.
Oh, the clichés abound. You play with fire. The chickens come home to roost. Hoisted on your own petard. You reap what you sow. The call is coming from inside the house. The GOP elite laid the foundation on which Trump is building the biggest, classiest—really classy—most beautiful insurgent presidential campaign in all of US history. And there may be no emergency exit.
Comments Off on How Long Can You Expect Your Roof or Fridge to Last
In case you need to know or not.
An inspection won’t always reveal the state of your plumbing, especially if it’s inside a slab and walls.
A major home repair can tax any budget. But you don’t have to be surprised when something in your home goes kaput.
It’s possible to know, more or less, how long most home components are likely to last and plan for their replacement. Plus, knowing the life span of appliances and home fixtures can help you decide when to repair and when to replace.
The most expensive components of a home are generally the roof, electrical system, plumbing, furnace and air-conditioning systems. The stakes are high for homeowners because replacing any one of these systems can mean a bill of four or five figures.
“The main systems are 90 percent of repairs of a house,” says Cannon Christian, president of Renovation Realty, which repairs and sells homes in Southern California. “Everything else is pretty much minor.”
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Exactly how long your heating, plumbing, roof, air conditioning, water heater and other home components will last varies, of course, based on the quality of the items, how well they’ve been maintained and where you live.
Knowing the life span of home components is also helpful if you’re looking at homes to buy. A home that needs all its major systems replaced can cost you a lot more than the purchase price. That’s a reason to get a thorough home inspection, pin down the age of major systems and then negotiate from there.
“Each of these things is really ammunition for buyers,” Christian says. If systems are old, ask for concessions or a lower price. “Are you going to get everything you asked for? No. More than likely, you’re going to get some help buying it.”
An inspection won’t always reveal the state of your plumbing, especially if it’s inside a slab and walls. But if a home was built with galvanized pipe, used in most homes before the 1960s, anticipate that it will need to be replaced sooner rather than later. “You can’t tell what’s going on until you notice something” is beginning to fail, Christian says of plumbing. “As soon as you do, you want to correct it immediately.”
Before you replace your air-conditioning system, furnace, water heater or appliances, see if your utility company offers any rebates or incentives, Christian suggests. Kansas City Power & Light, for example, offers rebates on air conditioning systems and Energy Star-rated refrigerators and freezers. You can check for rebates at your utility company or at the Energy Star website.
In general, if an appliance is more than six or seven years old, and the repair will cost more than half the amount of a new one, it’s better to purchase a replacement, advises Angie Hicks, founder of Angie’s List.
“Replacing an appliance with a newer, more efficient one can also save in energy costs,” Hicks wrote on the Angie’s List website. Angie’s List has an info graphic giving the average cost of appliance repairs, average maintenance cost, cost of a replacement and some advice on deciding whether to repair or replace.
The National Association of Home Builders did a survey of manufacturers, trade associations and researchers in 2007 and produced a report called “The Life Expectancy ofHome Components,” with estimates of life spans for everything from appliances to windows. Based on the association’s research and the research of others, here is how long you can expect these 10 home components to last.
Roofs: Slate, copper and tile roofs can last more than 50 years. Homeowners with wood shake roofs should expect them to last about 30 years, while fiber cement shingles last about 25 years and asphalt shingle/composition roofs last about 20 years, the NAHB found. Climate and weather conditions, such as snow, hail and hurricanes, can cut the life span of all types of roofs.
Air-conditioning system: These last 10 to 15 years. Having your unit serviced every year or two, keeping filters clean and trimming bushes around the outdoor unit can keep your it working longer, but eventually the components wear out.
[Water heater: A conventional electric or gas water heater typically lasts about 10 years. If you have a tankless water heater, expect it to stick around for about 20 years.
Appliances: Expect most popular appliances to last no more than 15 years: refrigerators (six to 15 years), ranges (10 to 15 years), washers and dryers (eight to 12 years) and dishwashers (eight to 10 years), Angie’s List reports. The NAHB estimates the life span of a microwave to be nine years. In its report, the NAHB also noted that appliances are often replaced before they quit working because consumers want new styles or technology.
Furnace: A furnace lasts 15 to 20 years. If your furnace is nearing the end of its life, upgrading to a newer, more energy-efficient model can also cut your heating bills.
Decks: Because of weather, the life span of a deck varies. In optimal conditions, a wood deck can last 20 years, the NAHB study found. A deck can last 20 to 25 years in dry areas, but is likely to last only 10 to 15 years in the South, where there is more rain and humidity.
Doors: Exterior doors made of fiberglass, steel and wood will last for decades, or the lifetime of the house, as will closet doors, according to the NAHB study. Screen doors last about 40 years, and vinyl doors typically last about 20 years.
Floors: Wood floors last 100 years or more, as do marble and slate floors if they are maintained well. Tile floors can last 75 to 100 years, and terrazzo lasts more than 75 years. Linoleum lasts about 25 years and vinyl up to 50 years, while laminate floors have a life expectancy of 15 to 25 years. Most carpet needs to be replaced every eight to 10 years, even if it’s maintained well.
Gutters: Aluminum gutters last about 20 years, while copper gutters last about 50 years.
Windows: Wood windows can last more than 30 years, while aluminum windows are expected to last 15 to 20 years.
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