Tag Archives: privacy-policy

We’re Still at War: Photo of the Day for December 20, 2013

by Stephanj0r Posted on December 20, 2013

Mother Jones

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An M1A2SEP Abrams Tank from Company C, 1st Battalion, 64th Armor Regiment ‘Desert Rogues’, 2nd Armored Brigade Combat Team, 3rd Infantry Division, sits ready while others complete the night portion of the Gunnery Table VI in the background at Red Cloud Range, Dec. 12. (U.S. Army photo by Sgt. Richard Wrigley, 2nd ABCT, 3rd ID, Public Affairs NCO)

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We’re Still at War: Photo of the Day for December 20, 2013

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Obamacare Enrollments Are Starting to Surge

by CarmonRoy Posted on December 19, 2013

Mother Jones

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Over the past 24 hours, I have managed to say not a single word about either Duck Dynasty or Pajama Boy. So what do I get for my reward? This:

HORSEBACK GUESSTIMATE WARNING: Unless it’s hidden away somewhere, California hasn’t released weekly enrollment numbers. But they’ve released numbers for October, and for the first two weeks of November, and then for October+November. Then today they released numbers for the first three days of this week: 13K on Monday, 19K on Tuesday, and 20K on Wednesday. If you put that all together and then take a reasonable swag at filling in the gaps, you get the chart above. It’s not official or anything, but it’s probably not too far off.

And what it shows is that with deadlines finally looming, all those people who have been shopping for the past month or two are finally enrolling at a furious pace. Other states are reporting a similar surge. Obamacare still has a long way to go, but things are definitely starting to perk up.

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Obamacare Enrollments Are Starting to Surge

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Even Doctors Believe in Obamacare’s Death Panels

by JackJanesgql Posted on December 19, 2013

Mother Jones

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I learned something new this morning. Two things, actually. First, Sarah Kliff points us to a recent study telling us that even a lot of doctors believe that Obamacare institutionalizes death panels:

This is just a survey of head and neck doctors, so maybe they’re just especially ignorant among the MD set. But probably not.

So what else did I learn? Well, Obamacare has never had death panels in the sense of the question above, but it does reimburse physicians for having end-of-life conversations with their patients. You know, so they can decide about things like DNR notices, how much extraordinary care they want, living wills, and so forth. All perfectly sensible, except that it’s what prompted the death panel nonsense in the first place.

And it’s gone. I didn’t know that. Apparently, after the New York Times put it on the front page in 2011, this provision was eliminated. So the yahoos won another victory, and it didn’t stop the death panel talk anyway. Hooray.

UPDATE: Thanks to a tweet from Austin Frakt, I did a little more digging and it turns out that a weakened version of end-of-life counseling remained in the bill and was implemented by a new regulation adopted in 2010:

The final version of the health care legislation, signed into law by President Obama in March, authorized Medicare coverage of yearly physical examinations, or wellness visits. The new rule says Medicare will cover “voluntary advance care planning,” to discuss end-of-life treatment, as part of the annual visit.

Under the rule, doctors can provide information to patients on how to prepare an “advance directive,” stating how aggressively they wish to be treated if they are so sick that they cannot make health care decisions for themselves.

So if a patient asks about end-of-life treatment, doctors are allowed to talk about it and bill the time as an office visit. Death panels!

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Even Doctors Believe in Obamacare’s Death Panels

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Raw Data: Inflation Is Going Down, Down, Down

by ElvinVerpmtaxda Posted on December 17, 2013

Mother Jones

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Via the Wall Street Journal, here’s how inflation has been doing over the past year. Long story short, it’s been declining steadily since the end of 2012 and is now running at about a 1 percent annual rate. Bottom line: we should be worried about unemployment, not inflation. Until the labor market gets tighter, inflation just isn’t likely to be any kind of serious problem.

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Raw Data: Inflation Is Going Down, Down, Down

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It’s Hard for a White Guy to Get Himself Arrested

by Megan Smith Posted on December 17, 2013

Mother Jones

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Over at The Atlantic, a former prosecutor named Bobby Constantino has a piece called “I Got Myself Arrested So I Could Look Inside the Justice System.” It’s oddly riveting. It starts with a description of his former career:

In between the important cases, I found myself spending most of my time prosecuting people of color for things we white kids did with impunity growing up in the suburbs. As our office handed down arrest records and probation terms for riding dirt bikes in the street, cutting through a neighbor’s yard, hosting loud parties, fighting, or smoking weed — shenanigans that had rarely earned my own classmates anything more than raised eyebrows and scoldings — I often wondered if there was a side of the justice system that we never saw in the suburbs. Last year, I got myself arrested in New York City and found out.

In a nutshell, this guy desperately tried to get himself arrested for walking around New York City with a stencil and a spray can (a class B misdemeanor) and had no luck. So he tagged City Hall. With a surveillance camera recording him. Still no luck. He turned himself in. They turned him away. He literally found it impossible to get arrested.

He finally succeeded, spent a night in jail, and went to court. And then just the opposite happened. He was initially sentenced to five days community service until the prosecutor suddenly realized the case file was flagged “no deal.” So he went back to court, and this time they insisted on throwing the book at him. The judge was so pissed off at him that he then doubled the book.

There’s more, and it’s worth a read. A white guy in a suit, it turns out, is practically invulnerable to being arrested. But when he uses this fact to embarrass the judicial system, the judicial system suddenly turns on him with a fury. Welcome to America.

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It’s Hard for a White Guy to Get Himself Arrested

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Soon, Obamacare Will Get the Blame For Your Kid’s Acne

by jjhhhjz Posted on December 15, 2013

Mother Jones

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From the Associated Press:

Americans who already have health insurance are blaming President Barack Obama’s health care overhaul for their rising premiums….In the survey, nearly half of those with job-based or other private coverage say their policies will be changing next year — mostly for the worse. Nearly 4 in 5 (77 percent) blame the changes on the Affordable Care Act, even though the trend toward leaner coverage predates the law’s passage.

….Employers trying to control their health insurance bills have been shifting costs to workers for years, but now those changes are blamed increasingly on “Obamacare” instead of the economy or insurance companies.

Obamacare has been a boon for employers and insurers who want to cut back their health benefits but don’t want to take the blame for it. They just blame Obamacare instead. This will only work for a year or two, but for now it’s a godsend. Better to have your employees pissed off at the guy in the White House than pissed off at the guy in the corner office.

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Soon, Obamacare Will Get the Blame For Your Kid’s Acne

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Beyoncé Redefines the Word "Quiet"

by Pauline80x Posted on December 15, 2013

Mother Jones

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From the Wall Street Journal:

Beyoncé Releases Latest Album—Quietly

Can we please stop this? This wasn’t some kind of stealth release. It was a brilliant use of viral marketing. Beyoncé and a few of her buddies “quietly” advertised the new album to about ten or twenty million of their closest friends, all of whom thought they were being let in on a secret and immediately went out and crashed the iTunes server farm. It was genius. Even if it only works once, it’s genius.

But quiet? Only if you have a five-year-old’s understanding of human nature. To misquote everyone’s favorite America-hating superhero, it was an awfully loud kind of quiet, man.

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Beyoncé Redefines the Word "Quiet"

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Friday Cat Blogging – 13 December 2013

by sssaa Posted on December 13, 2013

Mother Jones

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Gizmodo tells us today that squirrels were first introduced into urban parks by Philadelphia in 1847. Everyone loved it and the idea soon spread:

Central Park led the way in the second wave of squirrels introduced into American cities….Feeding the squirrels became a past time during these years, and was eventually seen by naturalists and conservationists as a way to help humans learn how to better treat animals….So next time you see a squirrel in the park, drink it in. These little critters were put there for your entertainment. But perhaps more importantly, they were put there to remind us of how man and nature must get along, even if it takes a little effort.

The little critters are everywhere now. One in particular has taken up residence in my backyard for some reason. I don’t think there’s anything to eat there, so I’m not sure what’s going on. Is he burying acorns there or something? It would be a pretty good spot, I suppose, since Domino doesn’t go outside much anymore and wouldn’t know what to do with a squirrel if she saw one. Especially in the winter, she much prefers burrowing under a nice, warm quilt. Today’s sample is another double Irish chain design, twin-sized, machine pieced and machine quilted. It nursed me back to health earlier this week when I headed downstairs during a bout of insomnia, so perhaps it has wonderful medicinal qualities too. Who knows?

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Friday Cat Blogging – 13 December 2013

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Democrats Plan to Fight For Unemployment Benefits in January

by Shelley9010 Posted on December 13, 2013

Mother Jones

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Greg Sargent reports on the latest Democratic plan to get Republicans to agree to extend unemployment benefits:

Dems who are pushing for an extension have hatched a new plan to do just that: Once Congress returns, they will refuse to support the reauthorization of the farm bill — which will almost certainly need Dem support to pass the House — unless Republicans agree to restart unemployment benefits with the farm bill’s savings.

“Under no circumstances should we support the farm bill unless Republicans agree to use the savings from it to extend unemployment insurance,” Dem Rep. Chris Van Hollen, a top party strategist, told me today. “This is a potential pressure point. We’re going to have to resolve differences in the farm bill because otherwise milk prices will spike. If past is prologue, they are going to need a good chunk of Democrats to pass the farm bill.”

Good. In normal times, of course, all the usual arguments against extending benefits would be pretty compelling. It really would provide a disincentive to go out and find work. But today, when there are three or four job seekers for every job available, that’s just not an issue. People aren’t unemployed for long periods because they’re lazy. They’re unemployed because they can’t find a job. Lots of them are married and college educated. As AEI’s Michael Strain points out, “Someone who has been unemployed for 30 or 35 or 40 weeks, and is in their prime earning years with kids and education … It strikes me as implausible that this person is engaged in a half-hearted job search.”

Even lots of conservatives agree that we should continue to extend unemployment benefits as long as the job market remains anemic. This really shouldn’t be a partisan issue.

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Democrats Plan to Fight For Unemployment Benefits in January

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Repeat After Me: There’s No Such Thing as Socialsecurityandmedicare

by trasze2aja Posted on December 12, 2013

Mother Jones

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You may see some headlines today that report on a new study showing that boomer retirees will receive way more in Social Security and Medicare benefits than they pay in taxes. But be careful. Technically, that’s true, but it’s like saying the combined population of China and Vietnam is 1.4 billion. It’s true, but all the heavy lifting is being done by China.

In this case, all the heavy lifting is being done by Medicare. According to the latest estimates from the Urban Institute, current workers are paying far less in Medicare payroll taxes than they’ll eventually receive in health benefits when they retire. (Just as current retirees are receiving more benefits today than they paid in taxes during their working lives.) That’s a problem, and it’s the reason we need to focus so much attention on rising health care costs.

But Social Security? It varies a bit depending on whether you’re single or married, but generally speaking taxes and benefits are pretty similar. The chart below shows the Urban Institute’s estimates for workers who will retire in 2030, and it’s pretty obvious that future retirees aren’t getting an especially sweet deal here. They’re just getting back what they put in.

Generally speaking, you’re always being conned when people talk about “entitlements.” That usually means Social Security and Medicare, but they’re very different things. Social Security is fine, and will stay fine with nothing more than tweaks. Medicare is a bigger problem, and it’s the one that needs the most attention.

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Repeat After Me: There’s No Such Thing as Socialsecurityandmedicare

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