Tag Archives: fantasy

The Hillary Papers: Yet Another Conservative Bombshell That Strikes Out

by Amilianp2t Posted on February 11, 2014

Mother Jones

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Jonah Goldberg watched the NBC Nightly News last night and was unhappy that they didn’t devote more time to Obama’s delay of the employer mandate. There’s a reason for that, of course: it’s not really very important and most people don’t care about it. Sure, all of us partisan junkies care about it, but that’s about it. To everyone else it’s a minor administrative rule change.

But he was also unhappy with another segment:

The highlight of the night was Andrea Mitchell’s “report” on the Washington Free Beacon’s big take-out on the “Hillary Papers.” Her discomfort was palpable. She assured viewers that the “inflammatory excerpts” weren’t necessarily in context (Mitchell the Chief Foreign Affairs Correspondent for NBC who spent much of the last year covering Sarah Palin is a great stickler for context and eschews anything inflammatory). Hillary Clinton, the front runner for her party’s presidential nomination was treated like the victim. Thank goodness she didn’t joke about putting traffic cones up on the George Washington bridge!

By chance, I happened to see that segment. What struck me was less Andrea Mitchell’s “discomfort” than the fact that this supposed bombshell seemed like a total nothingburger. When it was over, I sort of shrugged and wondered what the point was. Here’s a bit of the transcript from Mitchell’s report about the Diane Blair papers:

Tonight, the once-private papers of the woman Hillary Clinton has previously described as her closest friend are getting a lot of attention….Thanksgiving, 1996, Blair quotes Clinton saying “I’m a proud woman. I’m not stupid. I know I should do more to suck up to the press. I know it confuses people when I change my hairdos. I know I should pretend not to have any opinions, but I am just not going to. I’m used to winning and I intend to win on my own terms.”

….September 9, 1998, Bill Clinton had finally admitted his relationship with Lewinsky. Blair writes of Hillary, “she is not trying to excuse him; it was a huge personal lapse.” But she says to his credit, he tried to break it off, tried to pull away.” Blair did not survive to provide context for her diary. Now Republicans say her notes are fair game.

Um, OK. Is that supposed to be damaging? The entire Beacon story is here, and I guess there are some outtakes that can be spun as unflattering toward Hillary, but that’s about it. It’s a bit of tittle tattle about who Hillary was annoyed with at various points in time, and not much more. And even that depends for its power on just how accurately Blair represented Hillary’s views.

Maybe I’m demonstrating a lack of imagination here, but I’m having a hard time seeing this as especially damaging or bombshellish. For the most part, it strikes me as confirming that Hillary was pretty much who we thought she was: tough-minded, goal-oriented, sometimes defensive, and not always sure how to handle the tsunami of invective that beset the Clinton presidency. If you’re a Hillary hater, it will be yet more evidence that she’s Satan incarnate, but for the rest of us, I’m not sure what’s really new here.

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The Hillary Papers: Yet Another Conservative Bombshell That Strikes Out

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Boehner Gives In, Introduces Clean Debt Ceiling Bill

by ErnestoCTL Posted on February 11, 2014

Mother Jones

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John Boehner has surrendered completely on the debt ceiling. None of his proposals managed to attract majority support among Republicans, so now he plans to introduce a clean bill and leave it up to Democrats to pass it:

“House Republican leaders told members this morning that it is clear the paid-for military COLA provision will not attract enough support, so we will be bringing up a ‘clean’ debt limit bill tomorrow,” a Republican official said, referring to a plan on veterans’ benefits. “Boehner made clear the G.O.P. would provide the requisite number of Republican votes for the measure but that Democrats will be expected to carry the vote.”

…Mr. Boehner explained the decision to go forward with a “clean” debt ceiling bill as a reflection of the political reality that he simply did not have enough Republican votes to pass anything more ambitious.

“It’s the fact that we don’t have 218 votes,” he said after meeting with House Republicans, “and when you don’t have 218 votes, you have nothing.” He added that he expected almost all of the House Democrats to vote to pass the bill, though he said he would still need to muster about 18 Republican votes to get the legislation over the finish line. “We’ll have to find them,” Mr. Boehner said. “I’ll be one.”

So whom did Boehner surrender to? That’s actually a little fuzzy. Democrats were willing to support his previous plan, which would have tied the debt limit increase to a restoration of full benefits for veterans, but it was the tea party that rebelled against that plan. So in a way, this was basically a surrender to the tea party.

In any case, that’s that. Boehner has decided (probably wisely) to take one for the team and get a bill passed so that Republicans can move on. In a way, this is the best choice he could have made. He gets the debt limit off the table, which is good for the party, since it means no more public debacles getting in the way of their election-year messages. At the same time, he’s allowing virtually the entire Republican caucus to vote against it, which is also good for the party, since it allows individual candidates to rail against it and attack big-spending Democrats. And who loses? No one, really. Boehner himself will take some flack as a sellout, but he’s been taking it anyway.

So will Eric Cantor and Paul Ryan vote for the debt ceiling increase? How about Kevin McCarthy, who will theoretically be the guy in charge of rounding up those 18 votes? Good question. Wait and see.

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Boehner Gives In, Introduces Clean Debt Ceiling Bill

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Study: Health Care Reform Likely to Reduce Bankruptcy and Catastrophic Debt

by CaridadBollinge Posted on February 11, 2014

Mother Jones

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Today’s email brings word of an interesting new paper from Bhashkar Mazumder of the Chicago Fed and Sarah Miller of Notre Dame. They set out to measure the effect of the Massachusetts health care reform on bankruptcy and personal debt, a subject that’s topical for a number of reasons:

The Massachusetts plan is quite similar to Obamacare, so results from this study are suggestive of the impact that Obamacare will eventually have.
One of the primary purposes of universal health insurance is to relieve the financial stress of large unpaid medical bills.
Massachusetts is a good case study because its reform affected everyone, not just those below the poverty line.

The authors take advantage of the fact that health care reform had bigger effects on some groups than others. Most middle-aged people, for example, were already insured, so the Massachusetts reform affected them only modestly. Conversely, young people had relatively low insurance rates, so they were more heavily affected. Ditto for counties, some of which had higher initial rates of uninsurance than others.

The study exploits a very large data set of consumer finance based on reporting from credit bureaus, which provided a sample of nearly 400,000 individuals to look at. Its conclusion is unsurprising:

We find that the reform significantly improved credit scores, reduced the total amount past due, reduced the fraction of debt past due, and reduced the probability of personal bankruptcy. We find particularly pronounced reductions in the probability of having a large delinquency of over $5,000. These effects tend to be larger among individuals whose credit scores were low at the time of the reform, suggesting that the greatest gains in financial security occurred among those who were already struggling financially.

The charts below, excerpted from the study, illustrate the effect of health care reform, which was implemented in the period shown by the yellow bars. Despite the severe recession that followed, the amount of current debt stayed pretty flat while the amount of debt more than $10,000 past due declined sharply. Obamacare is not as universal as the Massachusetts reform, so its effects will probably be less pronounced. Nonetheless, it will not only provide routine health care for millions of Americans who aren’t currently getting it, it will also make their lives far less financially precarious. That sounds like a win to me.

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Study: Health Care Reform Likely to Reduce Bankruptcy and Catastrophic Debt

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In the Republican Party, the Yahoo Wing is Winning

by anjunonstennyao Posted on February 10, 2014

Mother Jones

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Thanks to massive internal disarray, Republicans are unable to agree on any kind of immigration reform plan. They can’t say that, though, so they’re blaming it on the fact that President Obama is a rogue despot who can’t be trusted to enforce the law no matter what it is. He’ll implement the parts he likes and ignore the rest, just as he’s been doing for years with his sun-king presidency. So no immigration reform.

Also thanks to massive internal disarray, Republicans are unable to agree on a plan to raise the debt limit. Plan A was to demand the end of risk corridors in Obamacare (aka the “insurer bailout”), but that went nowhere. Plan B was to repeal the benefit cut for veterans that was enacted last month, which might have gone somewhere since Democrats are probably willing to go along with that in any case. But that didn’t make the cut either because it would have made it tough for tea partiers to vote against the bill. Plan C is to “wrap several popular, must-pass items around a provision to extend the federal government’s borrowing authority beyond the November midterm elections.” But even this plan is looking shaky.

The common thread here is that the Republican Party is unable to get its act together enough to look beyond next week. Both immigration reform and a quiet debt limit increase would benefit the GOP in the long term. But both would also infuriate the yahoo wing of the party in the short term. So far, the yahoo wing is winning.

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In the Republican Party, the Yahoo Wing is Winning

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Stephen Kim Agrees to Plea Deal in North Korea Leak Case

by StevieMcMillan Posted on February 7, 2014

Mother Jones

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Yesterday I wondered whether the infamous “Friday afternoon news dump” was overblown. Does releasing embarrassing stuff on Friday really reduce the amount of coverage it gets? I’m skeptical.

Today, bmaz says the news dump is alive and well. Stephen Jin-Woo Kim, who was fingered last year as the guy who leaked North Korean intel to a reporter, agreed to a plea deal this afternoon:

As you may recall, this is the infamous case where the Obama/Holder DOJ was caught classifying a journalist, James Rosen of Fox News, as an “aider and abettor” of espionage….The fully justifiable uproar over the Rosen treatment by DOJ eventually led to “new guidelines” being issued by the DOJ. The new guidelines are certainly a half step in the right direction, but wholly unsatisfactory for the breadth and scope of the current Administration’s attack on the American free press.

But now the case undergirding the discussion in the Stephen Kim case will be shut down, and the questions that could play out in an actual trial quashed. All nice and tidy!

You can read more about it here. But I’m not sure this says much about the Friday news dump. I don’t think anyone really expected this case to go to trial, given the fact that Kim basically confessed, and I doubt that today’s announcement would have gotten a lot of attention no matter when it had happened. It’s the kind of thing that bmaz and I are interested in, but for most people it’s just a routine follow-up to a story they barely even heard about in the first place.

Plus it didn’t work! It’s not getting banner headlines or anything, but right now this story is on the front page of the New York Times, the Washington Post, Fox News Politics, Politico, and USA Today. On the wire service side, both AP and Reuters have moved pieces about the plea deal. That’s about as much attention as something like this was ever likely to get.

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Stephen Kim Agrees to Plea Deal in North Korea Leak Case

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In Rare Break With Tradition, Congress Might Actually Do Something Constructive Soon

by ArlenUAVqa Posted on February 7, 2014

Mother Jones

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In 1997, in an effort to rein in rising Medicare spending, Congress created a formula for paying doctors called the “sustainable growth rate” (SGR). Unfortunately, a few years later, this formula started calling not for sustainable growth, but for actual pay cuts. Doctors went ballistic, and Congress hastily passed a “doc fix” that deferred the scheduled cuts. Then they did the same thing the next year, and the year after that—and then in every year since then. At this point, the SGR is obviously deader than the proverbial doornail, but officially killing it would also officially count as a spending increase, which would officially increase the deficit by a lot. Nobody wants to face up to that, so every year Congress just passes a temporary extension to the doc fix and calls it a day.

But wait! In a rare display of constructive bipartisanship, Congress might actually do something about this. Sarah Kliff explains:

The problem with the sustainable growth rate is it isn’t sustainable at all….But because the doc-fix could cost as much as $300 billion to fix, legislators have stuck with [] short-term patches, which cost significantly less and are a whole lot easier to find offsets to pay for. The math changed this year, however, as health care cost growth has slowed, and the Congressional Budget Office has essentially cut in half the amount it thinks fixing the doc-fix would cost. Now, the CBO says it will cost $153 billion to repeal the sustainable growth rate, and legislators see that lower price tag as making it easier — although by no means certain — to pass legislation.

The proposal released Thursday is a thorough outline of the policies that would replace the doc-fix. What Congress wants to do differently this time around is, by 2021, put as much as nine percent of doctors’ reimbursements at stake if providers can’t hit certain quality standards. It would also include a bonus pool of $500 million for the doctors who do provide really great care.

This is no slam dunk. Congress still has to find $153 billion in offsets, after all. And it’s certainly possible to put a cynical spin on this: there’s no money available for the long-term unemployed, but for doctors? No problem! But I’d be less cynical. After all, it’s not as if doctors won’t get their current pay rates one way or another. This is just a matter of facing up to reality and admitting that SGR didn’t work and never will. That’s basic good governance, and we can use all of that we can get.

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In Rare Break With Tradition, Congress Might Actually Do Something Constructive Soon

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Big Brother Turns Out to Be a Little Less Big Than We Thought

by s02xc3x Posted on February 7, 2014

Mother Jones

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Here’s the latest on the NSA’s phone record collection program:

The National Security Agency is collecting less than 30 percent of all Americans’ call records because of an inability to keep pace with the explosion in cellphone use, according to current and former U.S. officials.

….In 2006, the officials said, the NSA was collecting nearly all records about Americans’ phone calls from a number of U.S. companies under a then-classified program, but as of last summer that share had plummeted to less than 30 percent.

….The bulk collection began largely as a land-line program, focusing on carriers such as AT&T and Verizon Business Network Services. At least two large wireless companies are not covered — Verizon Wireless and T-Mobile U.S., which was first reported by the Wall Street Journal.

Wait a second. If you’re a terrorist planning, say, the destruction of electric power west of the Rockies, all you have to do is make sure everyone on your team has a Verizon cell phone? Huh.

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Big Brother Turns Out to Be a Little Less Big Than We Thought

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Rick Santorum is Still the Same Creepy Guy He Was in 2012

by JosefHueber Posted on February 7, 2014

Mother Jones

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A quick note on the Republican presidential field. In the course of making the case for Paul Ryan as the front runner a few days ago, I failed to mention Rick Santorum as a possible challenger. That was a mistake. He’s going to run, and he belongs on the list.

That said, come on. Is anyone taking him seriously? Yes, he won a few primaries in 2012, but only as the last man standing in the Anyone But Romney marathon. That doesn’t demonstrate an ability to win, it just demonstrates an unusual level of pigheadedness. Santorum was willing to stay in the race for months even though he never polled more than a few percent and was obviously widely disliked. Only when everyone else was gone did conservative voters reluctantly turn to him as their final, forlorn hope of stopping the Romney juggernaut.

So sure, Santorum is going to run. He might do better this time around because his name recognition is higher. But he’s still the same creepy dude he was last time and he still has the charisma of a sea slug. Even the Christian Right obviously finds him a little too self-righteous and a little too shudder inducing. I wouldn’t put him even in the top five of possible 2016 contenders.

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Rick Santorum is Still the Same Creepy Guy He Was in 2012

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Let’s Blame Obamacare For Everything!

by ELMIrishxpc Posted on February 6, 2014

Mother Jones

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AOL has decided to change the way it handles 401(k) retirement accounts. Instead of matching employee contributions monthly, it will make one lump-sum match at the end of the year. This screws employees and makes more money for AOL in two ways. First, they no longer contribute any matching funds at all for people who leave in the middle of the year. Second, employees don’t earn interest on their matching funds throughout the year.

So what’s behind this Scrooge-like nickel and diming? Can you guess? Can you? Here’s CEO Tim Armstrong:

In the CEO chair, let me give you an example of the decisions we have to make as a company: Obamacare is an additional $7.1 million expense for us as a company….As a CEO and Management Team, we had to decide “Do we pass the $7.1 million of Obamacare costs to our employees or do we try to eat as much of that as possible and cut other benefits?”

It’s Obamacare’s fault! The all-purpose punching bag gets the blame again. AOL’s health care expenses went up this year, just as they have every year since the company was founded, but this time it’s Obamacare’s fault. Why? Well, why not? It’s a mighty handy excuse, isn’t it? And it certainly distracts everyone from the fact that AOL is shafting its employees even though it just announced its best results in a decade.

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Let’s Blame Obamacare For Everything!

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There’s One Group of Voters Who Likes Chris Christie More Than Ever

by KristinaRosenba Posted on February 5, 2014

Mother Jones

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Jonathan Bernstein notes today that Chris Christie’s poll numbers have actually risen among one particular group of voters: tea partiers. It’s a small sample from a single poll, so you don’t want to take this to the bank until we get confirmation. And yet:

If true (and again: see caveats above), it’s a fascinating finding, confirming that for at least some non-trivial group of Republicans, all a politician has to do to win their favor is to get attacked by anyone outside of the conservative bubble.

Which is, to put it bluntly, pathetic.

But it does suggest — at least a little — the appeal of a Sarah Palin or a Herman Cain….Or, for that matter, the continuing appeal of Newt Gingrich to some conservatives despite his frequent and major deviations on public policy over the years. If the core credential for being a Real Conservative is to be attacked (by liberals? by the “neutral” news media? by prosecutors?), then demagogues, charlatans and the inept have a real advantage over responsible, competent politicians. Which really is a problem for the Republican Party, but beyond that, is an even more important problem, I would think, for actual ideological conservatives — that is, people who care about public policy and ideology, as opposed to being purely concerned with tribal allegiances.

Partisans are always susceptible to circling the wagons when one of their own is attacked. But conservatives have turned victimization into a high art over the past few years—led, as Bernstein points out, by the high priestess of grievance and victimization herself, Sarah Palin. When reports surface that make you look bad, just spin them as desperate attacks against real American values by East Coast elitists and you’re golden. After all, if the lamestream media says you did something bad, then you must actually be doing something very, very good, amirite?

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There’s One Group of Voters Who Likes Chris Christie More Than Ever

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