Wednesday, 31 August 2011
FiveThirtyEight: Despite Keys, Obama Is No Lock
A set of data points that help predict presidential election winners may have a good track record, but 2012 could upset the equation.
The Caucus: Tea Party Groups to Protest Romney in N.H.
Mitt Romney's candidacy has exposed divisions within the Tea Party, especially in New Hampshire, where some groups plan to protest his speech in Concord on Sunday.
The Fix: Palin: The GOP's Pelosi?
Sarah Palin's unfavorable rating has spiked to a new high, adding further fuel to the argument that her presidential campaign may be doomed before it begins.
Commerce Secretary Locke nominated for China ambassador post
President Obama on Wednesday officially nominated Commerce Secretary Gary Locke as the next U.S. ambassador to China, continuing a reshuffling of top administration officials over the past several months.
NRC Probes Nuclear Plant Near Va. Earthquake
The NRC Calls for Further Investigation at Earthquake Affected Plant
Tuesday, 30 August 2011
Audit shows 98% of federal funds earmarked to help uninsured haven't been spent
The Pre-Existing Condition Insurance Plan (PCIP) was set up in the Affordable Care Act as a stop-gap means of providing insurance to those who have been refused by private insurers because of pre-existing conditions. This program was included to cover those people until they'll be able to receive coverage under the new law in 2014. Unfortunately, the PCIP doesn't seem to be working.
The Government Accountability Office reported that the government has so far spent just 2 percent of the $5 billion allocated by the health care reform law for the program, which launched last summer as the Pre-Existing Condition Insurance Plan. Administration officials initially said as many as 375,000 people would sign up in 2010 alone.[...]Officials previously worried that the $5 billion allocation would not last until the program is phased out at the end of 2013, but concern has now shifted to persuading more people to sign up. Earlier this year, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services lowered premiums and said applicants could provide a doctor's note instead of an insurance company's rejection letter to prove a pre-existing condition. An official said at the time that the agency could do nothing about the six-month requirement because it was written into the law.[...]
Other enrollment obstacles cited by the GAO include a lack of awareness about the program and the cost of premiums, which can be steep in some places. A 50-year-old in Alaska, for instance, has to shell out $1,048 a month.
Health Secretary Sebelius is going to have to figure out something to reduce those barriers and spend the money, by whatever means she can find: further reducing the premiums, finding a way (executive order?) around the six-month waiting period, more outreach, whatever it takes. There's a tremendous need for this coverage, for this money to be spent on the people who need it. There can't be a repeat here of the HAMP fiasco, where money intended to help people in need ends up just going toward deficit reduction.
Nuclear Panel Expanding Team to Check for Quake Damage
The Nuclear Regulatory Commission has sent inspectors to determine what steps are needed to determine if Thursday?s earthquake seriously damaged the North Anna nuclear power plant in Virginia.
Right Turn: Didn't Obama pledge to complete 3 free-trade deals?
The Wall Street Journal reports: "U.S. Trade Representative Ron Kirk on Monday appealed to congressional leaders to begin work "without delay" toward ratifying a free-trade deal with South Korea, even as Republican leaders continued to press to link such action with movement on trade pacts with C...
FEMA Funding: DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano Warns Against 'Political Gridlock'
A fight is brewing on Capitol Hill over emergency funding for FEMA.
Midday open thread
The last Sunday in August? Already? Fall will be upon us before we know it. And all you east coasters, stay safe. Not a cloud in the sky here in Los Angeles. To the links!
- In case you missed it, Rick Perry has doubled down on his assertion that social security is a ponzi scheme:
Earlier that day at the The Vine Coffeehouse, Perry told a voter that Social Security was ?ponzi scheme for these young people.?
?The idea that they?re working and paying into Social Security today, that the current program is going to be there for them, is a lie,? he said. ?It is a monstrous lie on this generation, and we can?t do that to them.?
Does he expect to win seniors with that mouth?
- For all you "football" fans out there: Manchester 13, London 3.
- How Rick Perry created Texas massive budget crisis. So much for the Texas economic miracle.
- Wait, did I mention that Rick Perry is a flip-flopper? After angering social conservatives not too long ago by declaring that same-sex marriage was an issue for states to decide owing to his belief in the Tenth Amendment, Perry has now reversed himself by signing NOM's pledge to oppose same-sex marriage everywhere. And you thought Mitt Romney had a hard time finding consistency.
- The most important paragraph you will ever read about the European "government debt" cirisis:
The European sovereign debt crisis is little more than a huge ?bait and switch? perpetrated on the publics of Europe, by their governments, on behalf of their banks. We need to remember that what we refer to today as the ?European Sovereign Debt Crisis? began as a private sector financial crisis back in 2008, when ?too big to fail banks,? writing deep out of the money options on taxpayers, quite unexpectedly (to some) blew up. Fearing a financial Armageddon, governments transformed private bank debt into public debt via bailouts, lost revenues, lower growth, higher transfers, and yawning deficits. The unavoidable result across the European continent was a massive increase in government debt. While painting this as a story of fiscal irresponsibility has some plausibility in the Greek case, it simply isn?t true for anyone else. The Irish and the Spanish, I and S in the eponymous ?PIGS? were, for example, considered ?best in neoliberal class? in terms of debts and deficits until the crisis hit. Public debt is a consequence of the financial crisis, not its cause.
And as David Atkins at digby's place writes, that leaves European nations with two choices:
But as the financial sector continues to careen further and further out of control worldwide, the challenge faced by sovereigns worldwide is this: either become subservient entities to the global financial institutions that truly govern the fates of the world's citizens, or reassert their authority and independence while allowing reckless banking institutions to fail.
Most nations are choosing the former, both because they lack the courage to do the latter, and because they lack the vision to imagine what kind of system might need to be created in a post-too-big-to-fail world. The world's economies are now massively interdependent, with most of those interdependencies lubricated by liquidity provided by the big banks.
And that is a ticket to global social malaise.
- Final thought: if Ron Paul were President, there would be no FEMA. If Eric Cantor were president, there might still be a FEMA, but you'd have to stop funding your kid's school to repair the hurricane damage. Makes me wonder how on earth the Republican Party is still a viable political entity in this country.
Paul slams FEMA in speech
The Texas congressman says no national response to Hurricane Irene is necessary.
Anti-Federal Spending Gov. Rick Scott Wants To Accept One Federal Grant So That He Can Apply For Another
Gov. Rick Scott (R-FL) has made his opposition to federal funding — for everything from the Affordable Care Act to high-speed rail — extremely well known. As Igor Volsky has noted, Scott’s opposition to federal grants makes no sense, but that hasn’t stopped him from refusing them while claiming that they “ultimately create obligations that [...]
Monday, 29 August 2011
NJ: GOP presidential field soft on immigration?
Analysis: In the upcoming presidential campaign, however, the proponents of tighter immigration restrictions appear to be a constituency without a candidacy.
Pet hoarding horrors
In addition to being bad for animals, animal hoarding can cause health problems in humans 
Late afternoon/early evening open thread
What's coming up on Sunday Kos ?.
- In the "The Case For Partisanship: Why The Country Needs Ideological Clarity," Armando will argue that along with a need to understand what policies work and don't work to help address the nation's grievous problems (instead of the post-partisanship craved by the Washington establishment), what the country needs are clear choices and clear answers as to what government can and should do in our current time of crisis.
- DemFromCT will take a look at FDR?s era and the passage of Social Security, the heart of the New Deal, on the 75th anniversary of lifting millions of seniors out of a life of poverty.
- On the 48th anniversary of the 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, where Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. delivered his "I Have A Dream" speech at the Lincoln Memorial, Denise Oliver-Velez will discuss the life and activism of Bayard Rustin, key organizer of the march and his role in civil rights movement history.
- Hunter will regale us with Tales of Adventure!
- Mark Sumner will revisit some economic basics. It's not the rich who create jobs... it's jobs that create the rich.
- Treasury Secretary Geithner wants to let bygones be bygones on foreclosure crisis and sweep potentially large-scale criminal behavior under the rug to do it. Dante Atkins will object.
- Steve Singiser returned from his vacation to discover that America still loves its teachers. Some of the other data unearthed in the annual Phi Delta Kappa/Gallup poll on American views toward education, however, are pretty disturbing.
Watch: Perry Faces Kid's Evolution Question
A woman in New Hampshire pushes her son to question the GOP candidate.
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