This isn’t a political issue, or at least it shouldn’t be. This is about complying with our constitution and making sure our government has the information it needs to make decisions. It’s particularly important in Minnesota this year; any undercounting could easily lead us to lose a seat in Congress. Please do your civic duty and make sure very Minnesotan is counted.
Archive for the 'General' Category
I put my census in the mail today. If you haven’t already done so, please fill out yours today. The form took me maybe five minutes to fill out for my household.
Ramming it through: To pass a policy that you campaigned on with a majority vote.
You may be a bit confused because the definition has changed. Under Republican rule, it was known as Democracy.
Patrick Kennedy is furious — and I mean screaming, red-in-the-face furious — and personally, I don’t blame him. Kennedy figured out exactly why our public has become so cynical about politics when exactly two reporters showed up to cover a House debate on Afghanistan.
Cynicism is that there’s one, two press people in this gallery. We’re talking about Eric Massa 24/7 on the TV! We’re talking about war and peace, $3 billion, 1,000 lives and no press! No press! [TPM]
The video is uncomfortable, but very much worth a watch.
Real changes are coming to the way we bank. According to the NY Times, Bank of America will stop allowing overdrafts on debit card purchases in anticipation of Federal rules related to the Credit CARD Act.
In a move that could bring an end to the $40 cup of coffee, Bank of America said on Tuesday that it was doing away with overdraft fees on purchases made with debit cards, a decision that could cost the bank tens of millions a year in revenue and put pressure on other banks to do the same.
…
Banks are bracing for a new federal rule that will require them to get permission from account holders before providing overdraft services for debit purchases and A.T.M. withdrawals. That change was already expected to wipe out billions of dollars in overdraft revenue for the banks.“What our customers kept telling me is ‘just don’t let me spend money that I don’t have,’ ” said Susan Faulkner, the bank’s deposit and card product executive, who said the overdraft changes were part of a broader push to build trust among its customers. “We wanted to help them avoid those unexpected overdraft fees.”
There’s yet another great reason to pass health reform: Rush Limbaugh says he’ll leave the country if we do.
“I’ll just tell you this,” Limbaugh said to a concerned caller. “If this passes and it’s five years from now and all that stuff gets implemented — I am leaving the country. I’ll go to Costa Rica.”
Here’s the funny part, though — Costa Rica has universal health care. The Wonk Room explains:
Costa Rica’s hybrid government-private health care system provides comprehensive universal coverage to all residents — and even sells affordable policies to soon-to-be visitors like Limbaugh. The government owns several major public hospitals and operates small clinics in almost every community. Workers are required to contribute 15% of their salaries to health insurance and the unemployed “obtain public funding for all health services, including prescription drugs.”
There’s practically no developed nation where Rush could go to escape the “evils” of affordable health insurance for everybody. Perhaps his only choice is to move to a libertarian paradise.
Our student loan system right now is really pretty bizarre. Our Federal government is already a huge lender. In fact, every penny of my student loans came from the Federal “Direct Loans” program. Many people receive some of their loans from private sources — my wife, for instance, had about one-third of her loans through a private source. The government pays private loan companies billions and billions of dollars to make these private loans, which seems pretty pointless, given that my wife’s private loans have the exact same terms as her Federal loans.
Why in the world should we spend billions and billions of dollars subsidizing private loans when the government can make those loans more effectively? Not only that, the government is already making those loans to millions of students. I would love to hear somebody explain to me the fiscal sense of paying private companies billions of dollars to make loans with the exact same terms as the government’s Direct Loans.
In fact, the Congressional Budget Office estimated that ending subsidies for private lenders would save over $80 billion over ten years, even after reducing interest rates for students. Is anybody really going to tell me that we should not be doing this?
That brings us to Lamar Alexander, R-TN, and this ridiculous op-ed:
Newsweek delves into the Republicans’ arguments against reconciliation and quickly debunks seven of them:
1. Legislation needs 60 votes to pass the Senate.
2. Democrats are threatening to use reconciliation to pass health-care reform.
3. Reconciliation has never been used for health-care legislation.
4. Reconciliation has never been used for legislation this substantial.
5. Reconciliation has only been used for bipartisan bills.
6. As a senator, Obama himself was opposed to reconciliation.
7. The referee is biased.
The arguments are so specious that it takes Newsweek all of 150 to 200 words to debunk each.
In fairness, they also discuss one argument they say Republicans should be making against reconciliation, but aren’t. Read the full article here.
After I wrote a couple of days ago that we should expand the sales tax to services, a few commenters suggested that it be extended to clothing as well. I don’t have any objection to that; in fact, a combination of service and clothing would raise enough revenue that we would probably have room to actually lower the sales tax a bit.
That was a pretty timely discussion, given that Tom Bak k has just proposed expanding the sales tax to clothing:
A key legislator say he wants to expand the state sales tax to clothing and use the revenue to reduce the budget deficit and pay off a school funding shift.
Senate tax committee chairman Tom Bakk, DFL-Cook, outlined legislation today that he said will also reduce the deficit by $257 million in the first year and repay schools more than $120 million. He said in the second year the overall sales tax rate would drop by one quarter of one percent.
I’m in favor of the proposal, but to be frank, I think it’s going to have to wait until next year. It’s hard for me to imagine how the legislature is going to have the political courage to take up a proposal like this in an election year. In addition, next year we’re going to have a very lengthy debate about balancing the budget, and I think that’s the appropriate time to be dealing with an expansion of the sales tax. At the very least, though, I’m glad we’re starting to talk about this now.
If this isn’t the final nail in the coffin, I don’t know what is:
While MDE has always been the site of “let’s throw this mostly-inaccurate-spin out there and see if it sticks with the media,” things keep getting worse and worse. It’s now flat-out lies from MDE, most from Luke Hellier, and it’s widely documented. By the way, if you haven’t figured it out yet, the site they’re linking to today goes to a parody site of the Communist Party, not the official site.
MDE was incredibly effective for the GOP with Michael Brodkorb at the helm as he’s incredibly media savvy and disgustingly manipulative. Brodkorb was able to use MDE to get the media and the public to believe things that weren’t true and have that spin reported. Now I don’t know if MDE is more of a joke than a failure.
Wow. MPR’s Tom Scheck relays some words from Grant Stevensen, a Pastor at St. Matthew’s Lutheran Church in St. Paul, who is furious at Tim Pawlenty’s veto of GAMC. And he has some strong words for the Governor, to say the least:
I have a personal request of the governor. Governor please, stop talking to us about God. the governor is going around saying ‘God is in control.’ We elected you. We elected you to be making decisions for this state that will help everyone in this state. Things that will lift up the poorest in this state. Don’t pass this on to God. That’s no God we’ve ever heard of.
And please stop lecturing us about god. It’s offensive. The only God we’re aware of is the one who says ‘If you want to follow me, you’ll look our for the widows, and the orphans, for the fatherless, for the poorest in the land.’ Please stop talking to us about God. It’s offensive. We can’t take it.
I say amen to that.
I’m starting to wonder if our Senate as it works right now can really still play a role in governing this country, or if it has become an obsolete relic of an earlier time. With hundreds of bills stalled in the Senate, now one single Senator is able to block legislation supported by 99 others — and, incredibly, there seems to be nothing they can do about it.
These are a few related issues; all of which come down to abuse of parliamentary tactics in an increasingly contentious environment. First, consider the filibuster, and this fact: There have been “the same number of cloture motions between January 2009 and today as between World War I and the moon landing.” While the filibuster is a long-standing procedure in the Senate, it has never been used with this intensity before, and it’s pushing the limits of what the Senate can withstand.
One of the many and varied reasons that our health care costs have gotten so high is the impact of the uninsured. Because the uninsured can’t get primary care, when they desperately need health care they have only one place to go: The emergency room, which by law can’t turn them away, even if they can’t pay. The rest of us, of course, ultimately pay that cost as part of our own hospital bills.
Tim Pawlenty has a “solution” that’s really pretty horrifying — just stop treating the uninsured.
Appearing on Fox News’s “On the Record with Greta Van Sustren” last night, Pawlenty said the federal law that mandates ER treatment should be repealed.
“Well, for one thing you could do is change the federal law so that not every ER is required to treat everybody who comes in the door, even if they have a minor condition,” Pawlenty said. “They should be — if you have a minor condition, instead of being at the really expensive ER, you should be at the primary care clinic.”
I don’t feel that I can adequately express just how horrible that is. Pawlenty doesn’t want to make it easier for people to get primary care, but then he wants to tell them they can’t get care from the one place that won’t turn them away, because they should be going to primary care. I’m sure they are painfully aware of that fact — Pawlenty’s plan adds insult to life-threatening injury.
South Metro Dem made a comment yesterday that we would all do well to remember:
HCR has already passed the senate with a supermajority. Budget reconciliation is the appropriate process for making small changes to reconcile it with house bill.
I know, now that Scott Brown has been elected, that the Republicans would like a do-over. But the Democrats already got their 60 votes, thank you very much.
So says PolitFact:
On Nov. 14, 2008, the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service put out a report on reconciliation bills between 1981 and 2009. There have been 22 of them, including three that were vetoed by President Bill Clinton. It’s been used for health insurance portability (COBRA), nursing home standards, expanded Medicaid eligibility, increases in the earned income tax credit, welfare reform, start-up of the state Children’s Health Insurance Program, major tax cuts and student aid reform.
…
By our count, eight of the reconciliation bills were initiated by a Democratic-controlled Congress. The rest, 14, were done by a Republican-controlled Congress.
Now, some of you may want to point out that not all of those bills were particularly controversial. And PolitFact considered that. On bills that it says were passed via reconciliation to avoid a filibuster, Republicans lead 6 to 2.
But please, Republicans, don’t let that stop you from bellyaching about liberal tyranny.
The massive stimulus package passed last year to blunt the impact of the worst U.S. recession in 70 years created up to 2.1 million jobs in the last three months of 2009, the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office said Tuesday.The package boosted the economy by up to 3.5 percent and lowered the unemployment rate by up to 2.1 percent during that period, CBO said. [MSNBC]
Boy, that’s a lot more jobs than the zero Republicans keep estimating.
Also, another incredible finding by the CBO:
Direct purchasing of goods and services by the federal government and states have been the most effective provision of the act, CBO said. Among the least effective: a tax credit for first-time homebuyers and a tax cut for the wealthy.
I am shocked — SHOCKED — to find out for the tax cuts for the wealthy don’t stimulate the economy. I presume all conservatives will now stand corrected and change their policy suggestions, right?
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