Tag: 2012

To the ChristieChopper!

Turns out getting Chris Christie to little league games is a National Security Issue:

Gov. Chris Christie arrived at his son’s baseball game this afternoon aboard a State Police helicopter […] the 55-foot long helicopter buzzed over trees in left field, circled the outfield and landed in an adjacent football field. Christie disembarked from the helicopter and got into a black car with tinted windows that drove him about a 100 yards to the baseball field.

I guess we should be happy the car didn’t take him to another, smaller chopper that could land on the dugout or somesuch.

As for the chopper, it’s one of two $12.5 million helicopters purchased for the state police. The intention was to use them for “homeland security duties and transporting critically injured patients.”

GOP: trusted on the economy and National Security. Who among us doesn’t rest assured that the GOP is always taking the common sense line on spending and the appropriate limits of government. Thank FSM that folks like Christie are out there on the ramparts, Defending Freedom with Our Tax Dollars.

Keep in mind, this is the guy the GOP Commentariat are begging to get into 2012. Need more helicopter fuel? Chris Christie suggests we cut Medicaid or dump infrastructure projects. These are, after all, the only reasonable, Serious Person approaches to funding the truly important things in life.

To the ChristieChopper!

Suck it, Granny

Brian Buetler, TPM: If the Biden group comes up with big cuts, trillions of dollars worth of cuts, but without substantially [cutting] Medicare, it won’t get your vote?
Mitch McConnell (R, KY), Senate minority leader: Correct
Lemkin: I mean, what’s the point of governing if you can’t tell a few old people who’ve finally run out of money to kindly go die in the streets? They should have thought of this before they agreed to take part in Medicare and/or get sick. It’s all about personal choices. Also: Death panels. Real ones. Run by Mitch McConnell and his cronies. Trillions in cuts aren’t the point of any “deficit reduction” talk by the GOP. All they want, all they have ever wanted is an excuse to foist the same old laundry list of punitive attacks on the social safety net coupled to lavish giveaways to their chosen few at the very top. That is all this is, was, or ever will be about. Time for the Democrats to start messaging accordingly. Well past time, in fact. After all, Mitch McConnell stands a pretty good chance of being Senate majority leader in 2013.

Robert Reich: The Republican Death Wish

Oh hell yes:

robertreich:

Can we be clear about that budget problem? It’s driven not by Medicare. It’s driven by the same relentlessly soaring health-care costs that are pushing premiums through the roof and causing middle-class families to shell out more and more money for deductibles and co-payments.

Some features of Obama’s new healthcare law will slow the rise — insurance exchanges, for example, could give consumers clearer comparative information about what they’re getting for their insurance payments — but the law doesn’t go nearly far enough.

That’s why Democrats should be saying this: We need to allow anyone to sign up for Medicare. Medicare is cheaper than private insurance because its administrative costs are so much lower, and it has vast economies of scale.

If Medicare were allowed to use its potential bargaining leverage over America’s hospitals, doctors, drug companies, and medical providers, it could drive down costs even further.

And it could force the nation’s broken health-care system to do something it must do but has resisted with a vengeance: Focus on healthy outcomes rather on costly inputs. If Medicare paid for results — not tests, procedures, drugs, and hospital stays, but results — it could give Americans better health at lower cost.

Emphasis added to point out that this is exactly what Democrats need to be saying. The steadily rising cost of Medicare is only indicative of the problem, it is not the problem. Never was, never will be. Paul Ryan wants to “solve” the issue by simply setting an amount that the government will pay and then telling anyone who can’t meet the difference to kindly go die in the streets.

Democrats, on the other hand, want to solve the problem by solving the problem. And how does the GOP respond? By trying to undo the ACA and any other cost-containment measure. By trying to end Medicare. And, of course, by redirecting the money harvested from the end of Medicare to the richest of the rich. Who so desperately need it.

Robert Reich: The Republican Death Wish

The Kitchen Table

I’ve said before that the “kitchen table” meme needs to die. But before it shuffles off this mortal coil, President Obama should put it to use one more time:

“My fellow Americans, we in the United States are like so many of you, sitting at your kitchen table and wondering where to come up with money to cover an unexpected expense while still keeping the lights on and food on the table. As you may have heard, the National Bureau of Economic Research recently reported that most Americans couldn’t produce $2000 on short notice without selling possessions or finding a lender to borrow it from. The government faces these questions all the time; like right now, with some members of Congress moving to prevent us from providing emergency funds to help the victims of the terrible tornado in Joplin, Missouri.

"In some ways, the problems of deficits and the debt that the federal government accumulates are no different from you, at your kitchen table, trying to come up with that desperately needed $2000 on short notice. As you all know, the United States has seen historic shortfalls over the last several years as government income has dropped dramatically as a direct result of the downturn in the global economy. At the same time, of course, we’ve had to increase various outlays and spending just to maintain existing programs or fund new recovery efforts and, of course, continue fighting two wars.

"Now, because of all this, we in the government find ourselves sitting around our kitchen table talking about the budget and our debts. The Democrats in Congress and I have suggested various cuts and other ways to tighten our belts, just like all of you have had to do through this time of economic hardship and struggle; but we also believe that since the government can currently borrow at historically low rates, we should take advantage of that capability while it’s here. More to the point: we think it would be foolish not to. It’s the difference between spending on large, unnecessary purchases and recognizing a genuine opportunity that also carries with it a long-term but sustainable debt. Much like when you bought your first home, or a car, or started a small business and the bank ensured that you could actually meet the payments at the interest rates offered; in the same way, the world market believes that the US government will remain solvent and thus continues to offer money at very low interest. This will not always be so, but we Democrats believe we should take advantage of it while we can and that we should use that extra buying power to empower the American economy on its road to recovery.

"The Republicans, on the other hand, are suggesting that we sell the furniture at whatever price the first person offers us, put the children to work at dangerous jobs, eat tainted food and dirty water to save a few cents, and finally default on our existing financial obligations such that we can pay down that mortgage on the house as quickly as possible, even if that action means incurring penalties, and they want to do all of this despite the fact that we have access to stable, reasonable long term interest rates and also have the wherewithal to make payments long into the foreseeable future. It’s like they want us to finance a car on a high interest credit card instead of through a traditional bank loan just because they want to give the people at the credit card company some more money. It doesn’t make any financial sense for the country and only functions to create wealth for the handfull of people at the very top of the financial system.

"I think I know which road you as Americans want us to take. So why not sit down at that kitchen table of yours and write or call your Congressperson and let them know?

"Thank you for listening. Good night, and good luck.”

I know I said that [I endorsed Gary Johnson]. But I think I will wait and see where he stands on other things. My bad. Sorry. I still think he is a good guy but so Is Dennis [Kucinich] and if he decided to run I would personally vote for him. If it came down to either him or Gary I’m already committed to Dennis. They both have said they support legal pot.

Willie Nelson walks back that Gary Johnson endorsement. I’d say that pretty much ends old Gary’s chances…

We have a plan. It’s called Medicare.

Nancy Pelosi, once and future Speaker of the House, reprising her prior quote on Social Security.
This is exactly where the Democrats need to be: stating clearly that there will be no significant benefit cuts to Medicare. We will achieve cuts and reduce costs through implementation of the ACA and reforms to existing money-holes like Medicare Part D; this is, in fact, the only durable way to deliver spending reduction: by lowering the overall per-person cost of medical care in the United States.
The next nearest developed country spends about ⅕th what we do per person on healthcare and gets better results by almost any metric you care to use. You control costs by controlling costs and the rate of their growth, not by setting an arbitrary benefits value that you will pay forevermore.
Note to the MSM: healthcare costs and the rate of cost growth are the issues in federal deficit and debt discussions. Why are these never, ever mentioned or asked after? If you’re truly a Serious Person when it comes to deficits, this is where you should be starting and finishing.
Source: Washington Post

I think every one of these Republican candidates running for the House is going to have a Democratic opponent who’s going to run an ad you can write today. It’s going to start [with] “even conservative Newt Gingrich, the former leader of the Republicans in the House, says ‘It’s radical, it’s social engineering.’”

[…]

Reagan had the 11th commandment, ‘Thou shalt not attack fellow Republicans.’ This is a capital offense against the 11th commandment. He won’t recover.

Charles Krauthammer, making some sense on disgraced former Speaker Newt Gingrich. Broken clock, blind pig, and etc…
Disgraced former Speaker Gingrich never had much of a chance to begin with, but taking at least four positions on the individual mandate and the Ryan plan, many of those positions within one day and all easily available on the television would seem to cap it.
However, I don’t believe for one second that The Democrat would actually use disgraced former Speaker Gingrich in this way for messaging purposes. Shrill. Better to assume that voters know all about the GOP plan to destroy Medicare and but also leave a program in existence called Medicare. Talking about that sort of thing is just rank demagoguery. Any Serious Person will tell you so.

2012

For the fifth week in a row new unemployment insurance (UI) claims came in over 400,000. The number for last week was 434,000, bring the 4-week moving average to 436,750, the highest it has been since November.

2012