Month: May 2013

Chuck Schumer’s very odd double-digit insurance cost increase claim.

So this video of a report on the news that people’s health premiums may be going up significantly next year (the number quoted was 10%: that will be important in a moment) is going around.  It shows, in fact, Senator Chuck Schumer (D, NY) making what turned out to be a couple of fascinating comments along those lines:

Here’s the transcript of the relevant commentary from Sen Schumer:

“Our insurance department is empowered to protect families, and we’re going to watch them like a hawk to make sure that they do, because it they don’t these, these rates could go through the roof.”

 “Is it because of Obamacare?”

 “It’s in part because of Obamacare, but health care has been going up in double digits for years and years and years…”

Now that‘s interesting.  Not just because of the accidental admission by Schumer that Obamacare is going to raise your rates (which, by the way, President Obama promised wouldn’t happen): but also because I’m not exactly sure where the Senator got that double-digit thing.  Continue reading Chuck Schumer’s very odd double-digit insurance cost increase claim.

Why we’d like Gomez to win MA-SEN.

So, my RS colleague and buddy Dan Spencer has written up something about the Gomez-Markey race for MA-SEN (short version: Ed Markey is not handling well the news that he’s not the overwhelming favorite shoo-in, right out of the gate), and I just want to note something here: yes, we need the seat.

This is tactical, folks.  Right now we’re at 45-55 in the Senate.  To get to 51 we either need to net six seats, or else net five seats and flip Angus King.  This… could be done.  There are paths to that.  But if we win MA-SEN now then the Democrats have to fight on their own turf in MA in 2014.  They’ll spend resources that they don’t want to spend to take it back, because if they don’t then we just need either five seats, or four-plus-King.  Five seats are a hell of a lot easier to get than six.

Continue reading Why we’d like Gomez to win MA-SEN.

…Since when do police LIEUTENANTS need to be union?

Yeah, I think that maybe we don’t need this much unionization.

Portland Mayor Charlie Hales has taken the unprecedented step of trying to break up the city’s police commanding officers’ union.

“Managers should be clear they are managers,” Hales said Thursday. “It just doesn’t make sense to have people who are in management positions be in a union.”

Of course, you’d expect that attitude from me; after all, my dad was union, and he would have said the same thing.  Workers are workers. Management is management.  You need that clear line of division between the two if you ever expect to get a fair deal.  You lack that division, your deals can appear tainted.  And over the long term, tainted union deals are generally more trouble than they’re worth.

Moe Lane

(Via @laborunionrpt)

Abraham. Lincoln. Was. Not. Passive.

There’s a lot of nonsense in this Slate article desperately trying to argue that no, really, it’s not a bad thing that Barack Obama can’t get anything done; but somehow this particular passage is particularly egregious.

“Leading from behind” is a necessary form of presidential leadership, but now it’s mostly become an epithet. No one would make a film about Lincoln’s passivity, though that was an essential part of his nature, and political genius.

Let me establish something about Abraham Lincoln, right here, right now: it is useless to discuss his Presidency in any terms besides that of military necessity.  Everything that Abraham Lincoln did was designed to cleave to two basic objectives: Continue reading Abraham. Lincoln. Was. Not. Passive.

BLS jobs report: 7.5% / 165K / 63.3%.

Remember how I was hoping for good news this morning?  Yeah, well, we didn’t get it.  From the National Journal:

The federal government’s latest snapshot of the unemployment rate offered few bright spots on Friday. The economy added 165,000 jobs in April—slightly better than March’s revised number of 138,000 jobs. Unemployment went down one percentage point to 7.5 percent, and health care, retail trade, and the food services industry added positions.

The glaring caveat to this jobs report is the huge number of Americans who remain out of the workforce. Called the labor force participation rate in wonk speak, that number held steady in April at 63.3 percent: the lowest level since 1979.

Continue reading BLS jobs report: 7.5% / 165K / 63.3%.

Looks like UKIP is having a good election cycle…

…over in the UK. Gaining 76 seats so far in British council elections, and I’m not going to even remotely pretend that I know more than the Wikipedia article on the subject.  I do know that local government in England is as complex as all get-out; that the Conservatives got their butts kicked last night; that Labour clawed back some ground yesterday, while the Liberal Democrats did not; and that this will all have an effect on the next set of British Parliamentary elections.  I also know that, if you want to play in a national legislature, you absolutely have to start winning elections on the local and state/provincial level, first: that’s where you draw from to get your national candidates.  So UKIP is definitely now on the board.

I think.

Yeah, that Obamacare thing? …That’s maybe problematical for Democrats in 2014.

(Via Hot Air Headlines) I am weeping over this.  Really and truly: my eyes still burn with the angry residue of hot tears.

At Tuesday’s press conference, President Obama delivered an unfocused eight-minute defense of his central legislative accomplishment in office – the Affordable Care Act. In the face of intraparty criticism that implementation of his health care law will be a “train wreck,” new polls showing support for the law near all-time lows, and even the Democratic nominee in next week’s House special election calling the law “extremely problematic”– there’s plenty of evidence piling up to believe health care will be a political millstone for Democrats in 2014.

…No, wait, sorry.  The tears were actually from the Cheerio that I managed to somehow inhale earlier this evening, and then spent the next ten minutes trying to expel from my lungs.  The National Journal article is instead merely hysterical, in a distinctly anticipatory (not to say, predatory) sort of way.

My bad.

Moe Lane

Why John Boehner’s middle name is not ‘Albatross.’

Surely the National Journal is asking a rhetorical question here, yes?

When Mark Sanford debated a cardboard cutout of House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi in his South Carolina race last week, it was a replay of a tried-and-true Republican strategy: Demonize Pelosi and wrap her like a stone around your opponent’s neck.

The tactic can be effective, torn from a well-worn playbook that dates from nearly a decade ago. But it does beg a question: Why isn’t Speaker John Boehner targeted in the same way by Democrats?

Continue reading Why John Boehner’s middle name is not ‘Albatross.’