"If you look at these kinds of reforms, where they've been tried before -- say the state of Kentucky, for example -- you basically make it impossible to underwrite insurance," Ryan said, according to an advance transcript. "You dramatically crank up the cost. And you make it hard for people to get affordable health care."
I think it's clear that God has a position on many of the things we deem political today, from life to theft to the doctrine of covetousness, which by the way seems to be the promotion of the left. You know, they talk about 'income inequality,' well what is that but covetousness? So how could somebody support that cause if they're biblical believing Christians?
In a new memo to the Obama administration, the Congressional Hispanic Caucus has laid out a list of specific demands it wants the president to follow in order to unilaterally ease the pace of deportations — suggesting the pressure on Obama to act may soon become overwhelming.
The memo — which hasn’t yet been released and will be presented to Department of Homeland Security officials on April 9th — calls on Obama to do whatever possible to ease deportations of all those who would be impacted by the Senate-passed immigration bill, and as such, represents a significant escalation of pressure on Obama from Dem lawmakers.
The memo’s basic aims are not new. They were previously developed by the CHC, which then led the President to call a private meeting with Hispanic lawmakers and urge them to hold off on pressuring him publicly, while the Department of Homeland Security reviews options for making deportation policy "more humane.”
The memo insists Obama has the power to expand the same prosecutorial discretion it used to suspend deportations under DACA to parents and siblings of DACA recipients. It argues that they, too, are “low priority” deportations, and points to thousands of children who are in foster care because parents have been deported. It also argues that the administration can expand “parole in place” to temporarily protect immediate relatives of U.S. citizens — such as spouses, children, and parents — from deportation, claiming family unity is a “significant public benefit.”
These steps do not constitute unilaterally legalizing anyone, but judging by the Obama administration’s public statements, officials may not believe he has the legal right to take them. Some experts have said he has more legal leeway than the administration has admitted, though the legal debate remains convoluted.
Mozilla prides itself on being held to a different standard and, this past week, we didn’t live up to it. We know why people are hurt and angry, and they are right: it’s because we haven’t stayed true to ourselves.
We didn’t act like you’d expect Mozilla to act. We didn’t move fast enough to engage with people once the controversy started. We’re sorry. We must do better.
Brendan Eich has chosen to step down from his role as CEO. He’s made this decision for Mozilla and our community.
Mozilla believes both in equality and freedom of speech. Equality is necessary for meaningful speech. And you need free speech to fight for equality. Figuring out how to stand for both at the same time can be hard.
Our organizational culture reflects diversity and inclusiveness. We welcome contributions from everyone regardless of age, culture, ethnicity, gender, gender-identity, language, race, sexual orientation, geographical location and religious views. Mozilla supports equality for all.
I’d forgotten about it, but friends reminded me that the LA Times obtained a list of people who gave, for and against, to the fight over the Prop 8 referendum in 2008. They put the whole database online and made it searchable. Search it today and, sure enough, there’s Eich with a $1,000 donation in favor. Under California law, that disclosure is perfectly legal: The state is authorized to provide certain personal information about anyone who donates more than $100 to a ballot measure. Why the state is allowed to do that, I’m not sure. The reason you want transparency when donating to a candidate is to prevent an elected official, who’s supposed to serve the public interest, from being secretly coopted by huge sums of money provided by a special interest. In a ballot measure, though, the money being spent is designed to influence the public itself. They’re the final arbiter of the public interest, no?
To determine the well-being of Americans, Gallup-Healthways surveyed hundreds of thousands of Americans in 189 metropolitan areas in the U.S. in 2012 and 2013. The survey recorded the physical and emotional health of the residents, as well as financial, employment, and social indicators, among others. The resulting Gallup-Healthways Well-Being Index allows for comparisons between places and over time.
In America’s most miserable cities, residents were less likely to be in good physical health and far more likely to report unhealthy behaviors. Residents in all of the nation’s 10 most miserable areas were more likely to smoke than the average American. In the second most miserable area, Charleston, West Virginia, slightly over 35% of people said they smoked — the worst rate in the nation.
While income wasn’t a direct measure in the index, differences in income were quite prominent between America’s most content and miserable areas. In each of the 10 cities with the lowest well-being scores, incomes were lower than the typical American household. In three of these metro areas -- including the worst-off metro area, the so-called Tri-State region of Huntington-Ashland, comprising parts of West Virginia, Kentucky and Ohio -- median household income was less than $40,000 in 2012.
Roughly 51% of residents in the Hickory region of North Carolina were considered to be struggling, based on self-evaluations of their current lives and futures, compared to just 44% of Americans. Residents were less optimistic about their futures than respondents in all but seven other cities. About 19% said they did not have enough energy to keep pace with their daily lives within the previous 24 hours, which was close to last nationwide. Additionally, only 77.4% said they had not been sad within the past 24 hours, among the lowest rates in the nation. Possibly adding to the unhappiness of residents was the area’s economy. The median household income was just $37,364 in 2012, among the lowest in the country.
White House officials sought valuable primetime air for a rare, impromptu Tuesday night address to tout the accomplishment of signing up more than 7 million people under the Affordable Care Act.
But network officials refused to make the kind of accommodation they did previously for the announcement that Osama Bin Laden had been killed, for instance, and Obama was left instead cutting into the much smaller audiences ofEllen and other daytime shows.
Three sources familiar with the request confirmed the White House asked for the primetime slot in their effort both to emphasize a bright moment following the challenging roll out and, more important, to try to reintroduce the country to a law that remains unpopular. One top White House official referred BuzzFeed to another top official for comment on the conversation with networks, but the second official did not respond to a request for comment.
People familiar with the request declined to reveal which network blocked the primetime address, but broadcast networks have traditionally been much more reluctant than cable networks to provide the White House with evening air time.
Conservative billionaire Charles Koch hit back against Democrats' attacks calling him "un-American" in the pages of the Wall Street Journal on Wednesday, citing his corporate record and denouncing political cronyism.
"The more government tries to control, the greater the disaster, as shown by the current health-care debacle," he wrote in an op-ed. "Collectivists (those who stand for government control of the means of production and how people live their lives) promise heaven but deliver hell."
"Instead of encouraging free and open debate, collectivists strive to discredit and intimidate opponents. They engage in character assassination," he added, saying he was the target of "almost daily" attacks.
American voters oppose the Affordable Care Act 55 - 41 percent and 40 percent are less likely to vote for a candidate who supports Obamacare, while 27 percent are more likely and 31 percent say this will not affect their vote.
Immigration also is a possible pitfall for candidates, as 39 percent of voters say they are less likely to vote for a candidate who supports a path to citizenship for illegal aliens, while 29 percent are more likely and 29 percent say it won't make a difference in their vote.
Reversing a slight shift to the Republican column, 40 percent of American voters now say they would vote for a Democrat for Congress this year, while 38 percent go Republican. Independent voters would vote Republican 35 - 27 percent.
Raising the minimum wage is more popular as 50 percent say they are more likely to vote for a candidate who supports raising the minimum wage, with 25 percent less likely and 24 percent saying it won't affect their vote.
No, Mr. President. No way, Mr. President. We do not accept, we do not acquiesce in, this deplorable piece of legislation. The debate is not over. The debate will continue. It must continue. What is at stake is sound health care policy for America. But what is also at stake is reversing your attempt, Mr. President, to transform a free country committed to limited government into merely another nation burdened with the worst aspects of big-government nanny-statism.
Mr. President, you have been elected our 44th president. We of course accept that, and we understand that you will continue to fight for your legislation and threaten to veto attempts to repeal and replace it. But we do not accept that you get to decide that the debate is over. We do not accept that you acquire any moral authority by claiming to enlist "history" on your side. We do not accept that your attempt to expand welfare state at the expense of individual liberty and the rule of law is true "progress."
President Obama, you might wish the debate were over. You might think you can intimidate us into conceding the debate is over. But you are wrong. The Republican party stands committed, acting through democratic means and as the agent of a self-governing people, to repealing and replacing Obamacare.
Propelled by a flurry of last-minute sign-ups, more than 370,000 Kentuckians are now enrolled in Obamacare, pleasing state officials who had pushed hard to get Kentuckians covered by private insurance or Medicaid before Tuesday's midnight enrollment deadline.
More than 1 out of every 12 Kentuckians — or 8.6 percent of the state's population — now has health insurance through kynect, the state's health-exchange set up to offer Obamacare coverage.
"We are thrilled with the level of interest and enrollment that we've seen," kynect's executive director, Carrie Banahan, said in a statement.
The Supreme Court pressed ahead on Wednesday with the majority’s constitutional view that more money flowing into politics is a good thing — even if much of it comes from rich donors. By a five-to-four vote, the Court struck down the two-year ceilings that Congress has imposed on donations to presidential and congressional candidates, parties and some — but not all — political action groups.
The main opinion delivered by Chief Justice John G. Roberts, Jr., said confidently that corruption in politics will be kept in check by caps — left intact — on how much each single donation can be. Removing the ceilings on the total amounts that may given in each election cycle will not undermine those limits, Roberts predicted.
The decision was not as sweeping as the Court’s ruling four years ago, removing all restrictions on what corporations and labor unions can spend of their own money in federal campaigns (Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission), which has led to billions of dollars spent on politics. Even so, the practical result of the new ruling is almost sure to be that wealthy individuals will be able to spread their money around among more candidates and political groups.
Donors will get into legal trouble, the ruling emphasized, only if they demand a specific favor in policy or legislation in a direct exchange for the money they give. That is the only kind of corruption that the First Amendment will allow the government to attack, the decision stressed.
The Chief Justice’s opinion said that other recent changes in campaign finance law will work to reduce the risks of abuse, and it offered several other ideas for new limits that it implied might be constitutional. Whether the votes are there in Congress to pass any of those suggestions is problematic.
“Money in politics may at times seem repugnant to some, but so too does much of what the First Amendment vigorously protects,” Roberts wrote. “If the First Amendment protects flag burning, funeral protests and Nazi parades — despite the profound offense such spectacles cause — it surely protects political campaign speech despite popular opposition.”
"In a series of cases over the past 40 years, we have spelled out how to draw the constitutional line between the permissible goal of avoiding corruption in the political process and the impermissible desire simply to limit political speech. We have said that government regulation may not target the general gratitude a candidate may feel toward those who support him or his allies, or the political access such support may afford. They embody a central feature of democracy—that constituents support candidates who share their beliefs and interests, and candidates who are elected can be expected to be responsive to those concerns."
Until today, federal laws prevented an individual from directly giving more than $123,200 to political candidates and committees during any two-year election cycle — an amount already so high that only a few hundred donors reached it in the 2012 election.
After today’s ruling in McCutcheon v. Federal Election Commission, a single donor will be able to give $3.6 million dollars in one election cycle — money that political parties can funnel into specific campaigns with the full knowledge of who gave it.
The five-vote majority in favor of virtually unlimited corporate and individual spending in our elections is a rock solid one. Four days after almost every Republican candidate danced the hootchie-koo in Vegas to try and gain the support of a single, skeevy casino gazillionnaire, the majority tells us that there is no "appearance of corruption" in this unless somebody gets caught putting a slot machine in the Lincoln Bedroom on behalf of Sheldon Adelson. Money talks. Big money repeats itself, over and over, age after age.
"It's not like people are going to be able to write out million-dollar checks to the Republican Party or to an individual candidate," Priebus said Wednesday, a few hours after the ruling, in an interview with MSNBC. "All we're saying is the idea that you have aggregate limits -- in other words, you can't give the full amount to ten candidates running for office around the country, or you can't give the full amount to the Congressional committee, the Senate committee in the RNC, doesn't make any sense."
Dean Chambers, notorious unskewer of 2012 presidential election polls, has his critical eye on a new metric: Obamacare enrollment.
"The Obamacare enrollments numbers are bogus. They don't even know how many have really paid for what they supposedly signed up for, and the 'back end' for the billing process of the Obamacare web site is not even functioning yet," he wrote in a Tuesday post on the law's 7 million announced sign-ups.
Sadly, that's about as far as Chambers gets in explaining his rationale. The Obama administration lied about unemployment to win reelection, so of course, they would lie about enrollment for the president's signature health care law, he says. The detailed explanations thattypified his 2012 coverage are nowhere to be found.
It's worth remembering that Chambers has company in high places, including the No. 4 Republican senator who accused the Obama administration of "cooking the books."
I think they'll find a way to demonize Obamacare forever. Look at what they've done with abortion. Look at how they continue to attack the social safety net as a "hammock." They demonize abortion and public assistance as immoral and destructive to society -- as long as a significant chunk of the white heartland gets health care from either work or Medicare, they can do that forever with Obamacare as well. And Obamacare has enough flaws that the number of people who love it may always be less than the number of people Republicans encourage to loathe it. (And if happy beneficiaries are poorer than the general population, they're less likely to vote than the middle-class haters.)
Representative Paul D. Ryan of Wisconsin on Tuesday will lay out a tough, election-year budget that purports to come into balance by 2024, in large part through steep cuts to Medicaid and food stamps and the full repeal of President Obama’s health care law, just as millions begin to see its benefits.
But even with those cuts, Mr. Ryan, the House Budget Committee chairman, is counting on a boost of economic growth to balance the budget, a boost he says will be gained by reducing the deficit. Many economists believe such dramatic spending cuts — especially those affecting the poor — would have the opposite effect, slowing the economy and lowering tax receipts.
“This budget stops spending money we don’t have,” writes Mr. Ryan, the Republican party’s vice-presidential nominee in 2012 and a possible presidential contender in 2016. “A balanced budget will foster a healthier economy and help create jobs. This will ensure the next generation inherits a stronger, more prosperous America.”
In his plan, military spending through 2024 would actually rise by $483 billion over the spending caps established in the 2011 Budget Control Act “consistent with America’s military goals and strategies,” while nondefense spending at Congress’s annual discretion would be cut by $791 billion below those strict limits.
In all, Mr. Ryan says, spending would be cut by $5.1 trillion over the next decade. More than $2 trillion of that would come from repealing Mr. Obama’s health care initiative, the Affordable Care Act, a political move that has become much more difficult with the closing of the first enrollment period. As many as 10 million Americans have gotten health insurance through the law, either through private policies purchased on insurance exchanges, through expanded Medicaid or private policies purchased through brokers but subsidized by the law.
As with past budget proposals, Mr. Ryan seeks to eliminate the Affordable Care Act’s Medicaid expansion, then turn the health care program for the poor into block grants to the states — saving $732 billion over the decade. He would also cap and block-grant food stamps, starting in 2020, cutting that program by $125 billion in five years. The budget relies on imposing new work requirements on food stamp and welfare recipients.
Such an approach “empowers recipients to get off the aid rolls and back on the payrolls,” Mr. Ryan writes.
But the toughest cuts would come from domestic programs that have already been reduced steadily since 2011, when Republicans took control of the House. Mr. Ryan’s 2024 domestic spending figure would be lower in nominal dollars than such spending was in 2005. Adjusted for inflation, it would be a 29 percent cut from today’s levels, and 28 percent below the average level of Bush administration spending.
In 2006 the electorate was 79 percent white. Didn't hurt the party; boosted by the Iraq War backlash, Democrats won 47 percent of the white vote, up from 41 percent in 2004.
Then came 2008, the best Democratic election in a generation. Barack Obama won only 43 percent of the white vote in an electorate that was 74 percent white.
In 2010 the electorate vanilla'd up again—77 percent white this time—and the white vote for Democrats collapsed. They won only 37 percent of it, and only 34 percent of white men.
Now, here's the part that worries Obama. In 2012 the president won re-election despite his share of the white vote tumbling to 39 percent. How'd he do it? Whites made up only 72 percent of the electorate. Michael Dukakis had won exactly as much of the white vote as Obama, and look how he turned out. Twenty-four years of growing racial diversity and a black candidate at the head of the ticket worked wonders.
In 2014 the Democrats fret that the electorate will slip back to 2010 levels of diversity. They prevented a similar tumble in Virginia last year, but Virginia's now a stronger Democratic state than the ones where most competitive Senate races are taking place—Alaska, Arkansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Montana, North Carolina. (Democrats already expect to lose South Dakota and West Virginia, both states that have fallen out of the competitive range in presidential elections.)
Across the country, immigrant-rights advocates report mounting disillusionment with both parties among Latinos, enough to threaten recent gains in voting participation that have reshaped politics to Democrats’ advantage nationally, and in states like Colorado with significant Latino populations. High hopes — kindled by President Obama’s elections and stoked in June by Senate passage of the most significant overhaul of immigration law in a generation, with a path to citizenship for about 11 million people here unlawfully — have been all but dashed.
Sen. John Barrasso (R-Wyo.) on Sunday dismissed the White House’s recent announcement that Obamacare enrollment had reached more than 6 million people, calling it a meaningless figure.
“I don’t think it means anything. … I think they’re cooking the books on this,” said Barrasso on “Fox News Sunday.”
Even by GOP standards, this was a rather extraordinary moment. A member of the Senate Republican leadership – indeed, the chair of the Senate Republican Policy Committee – went on national television to accuse the White House of perpetrating a fraud based on nothing but his own hopes.
It’s hard to overstate how difficult it is to take Barrasso’s complaints seriously. For one thing, note the extent to which the far-right senator wants to have it both ways. When enrollment totals were low, Barrasso said the figures were very important. When enrollment totals surged, Barrasso said the figures don’t mean anything. At least some form of intellectual consistency would be a welcome change of pace, but it’s apparently in short supply.
For another, there’s literally no evidence to suggest the enrollment totals are illegitimate or have been “cooked” for political purposes. For a Senate leader to make such a reckless accusation out of frustration – a U.S. senator is apparently annoyed by American consumers gaining access to affordable medical care – is deeply irresponsible.
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