Senate GOP leaders endorse bill to extend Obamacare subsidies to 2017

April 24, 2015April 23, 2015 ~ susie ~ 1 Comment

Yeah, I don’t see this bill doing what the Republicans hope it will. Everybody knows which party has promised to get rid of Obamacare, and delaying it by a year isn’t going to fool many people:

WASHINGTON — The Senate’s top five Republican leaders have cosponsored legislation to extend until 2017 the Obamacare insurance subsidies that may be struck down by the Supreme Court this summer.

The legislation, offered by Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI), one of the most politically vulnerable Senate incumbents in 2016, would maintain the federal HealthCare.gov tax credits at stake inKing v. Burwell through the end of August 2017.

The bill was unveiled this week with 29 other cosponsors, including Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) and his four top deputies, Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX), John Thune (R-SD), John Barrasso (R-WY) and Roy Blunt (R-MO). Another cosponsor is Sen. Roger Wicker (R-MS), the chairman of the conference’s electoral arm.

Such a move would seek to protect the GOP from political peril in the 2016 elections when Democrats would try to blame the party for stripping subsidies — and maybe insurance coverage — from millions of Americans in three dozen states. A defeat for the Obama administration in aKing ruling would likely create havoc across insurance markets and pose a huge problem for Republicans, many of whom have been pushing the Supreme Court to nix the subsidies.

“This bill is a first step toward reversing the damage that Obamacare has inflicted on the American health care system,” Johnson said.

He recently explained the rationale for the legislation, warning that Democrats would swarm the GOP with attacks and horror stories about “individuals that have benefited from Obamacare” and lost their coverage.

Democrats would probably demand a fix to make the subsidies permanently available if they go down. But they would be hard-pressed to vote down a bill to temporarily extend them if Republicans were to bring it up.

It’s about time

April 22, 2015April 21, 2015 ~ susie

Heroin is a scourge everywhere now. So are mental health problems. It would be nice if someone actually did something about it, yes?

‘Extensive plumbing problems’ to close Walmart store

April 20, 2015April 20, 2015 ~ susie

Just one of those coinky-dinks that seem to dog Walmarts that see union activity. I’d love to hear them explain why all those workers have been told they will have to reapply after the “plumbing” is fixed:

Some employees accused Wal-Mart Stores Inc on Friday of closing a location in the Los Angeles area for six months in retaliation for workers demanding for better wages and benefits.

The largest U.S. retailer denied the accusation, saying it was temporarily closing five stores in four states to address recurring plumbing problems. The closures include a location in Pico Rivera, California, that has been a center of protests by workers in recent years.

A group of employees backed by the United Food and Commercial Workers Union described the move as “retaliatory” in a statement and said it would hold a news conference on Monday to lay out its case. Wal-Mart had not requested any city plumbing permits for the Pico Rivera store, the workers and city officials said.

Pico Rivera City Manager Rene Bobadilla described the sudden manner in which the company closed the store as “abnormal” but said the city had offered its help to expedite the work needed to be done to get the store open again.

“It’s the first time I’ve encountered this. It is not a normal thing to happen,” Bobadilla said. He declined to comment further on Wal-Mart’s actions. “The only fact is they are saying they have a sewer problem and they are going to be closed for six months.”

Bobadilla said he was focused on helping the 533 employees impacted by the closure to find work and services.

Wal-Mart said in an emailed statement that it made the decision to close the Pico Rivera location and four other stores because they all required extensive repairs.

Big Chicken

April 16, 2015April 15, 2015 ~ susie ~ 1 Comment

Charles Pierce on Chris Christie’s new proposal to slash Social Security and Medicare:

The really hilarious part is that Christie is pitching his personal form of granny-starving as a boon to younger Americans, because what is a more obvious solution to the problem of unemployed American youth than to propose a policy that guarantees that American workers will stay on the job until they are nearly 70, and that only works if you assume that every human-resources department in the country will be raptured off to cost-cutting heaven and not notice the line of septuagenarians working on the factory floor? Bold! Again! There is something entirely sick about the desire among our political elites to make the lives of the poor and elderly worse so as to demonstrate how important and serious those elites are. There is a consensus here that exists some place outside the world in which most people live.

Clinton talking to progressive economists

April 13, 2015April 12, 2015 ~ susie

I don’t know why any of you would be surprised by this. Clearly, she has nothing to lose and everything to gain by running a populist campaign (which is what she did the second half in 2008) and she’s smart enough to know that people are hurting:

In the run up to her presidential campaign launch, expected Sunday, Hillary Clinton has been working to put together an economic agenda that incorporates progressive ideas on economic inequality.

Clinton’s team has been making a concerted effort to reach out to progressives economists and activists, and last week joined a meeting on inequality organized by economist Joseph Stiglitz and the Roosevelt Institute, a progressive think tank, msnbc has learned.

The Washington, D.C., meeting included officials from the labor unions SEIU and AFL-CIO, congressional staffers, representatives from advocacy groups like Color of Change, American Women, and the Black Civic Engagement Fund, and others, including former Clinton pollster Stan Greenberg.

The aim was “creating an agenda to combat inequality that goes further than anything we’ve seen so far and rewrites the rules of how our economy and markets are structured,” Roosevelt Institute spokesperson Marcus Mrowka told msnbc.

After the meeting, Stiglitz held a private dinner with three Clinton aides at the restaurant Poste. Clinton was represented by speechwriter Dan Schwerin and Anne O’Leary, a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress who also works on a Clinton Foundation-related initiative. Roosevelt President and CEO Felicia Wong was also in attendance.

Dan Geldon, an adviser to Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren, whom some liberals are pushing to run against Clinton, attended the larger meeting, but did not attend the dinner.

Stiglitz is influential among progressives, who view him as one of the Democratic Party’s counterweights to the influence of former Bill Clinton Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin. Clinton herself has earned criticism from some on the left for ties to Wall Street and fears she would follow in Rubin’s footsteps.

Ted Cruz wants to privatize Social Security

April 10, 2015April 9, 2015 ~ susie ~ 3 Comments

Of course he does! I’m sure all the Republican candidates want to do it:

Harwood: You announced your campaign at Liberty University. You’re appealing to Libertarians. The Libertarian Party platform in 2012 calls for Social Security to be phased out. Are they wrong as a matter of philosophy?

Cruz: Oh, I understand why they call for that. But I don’t agree with them. What I would like to see is several things. Number one, for those on Social Security or near retirement, no changes whatsoever. Honor the commitments. But for younger people, people in my generation, we should gradually increase the retirement age. Secondly we need to change the rate of growth of Social Security benefits so they match inflation rather than exceed inflation. Those two reforms on their own take Social Security from bankruptcy into solvency. But the third piece, and it’s what Bush fought for, is personal accounts. I think it is transformative to allow younger workers to put a portion of their taxes into a personal account that they own, that they control, and that they can pass onto their heirs.

Driving while poor

April 9, 2015April 8, 2015 ~ susie ~ 2 Comments

See, it’s not just Ferguson. This is a pattern all over the country:

In California, a driver who commits offenses as minor as driving without a seatbelt or littering faces a $490 fine, according to a new report by a coalition of civil rights groups, entitled “Not Just a Ferguson Problem: How Traffic Courts Drive Inequality in California.” Worse, if the driver, who may not be able to afford to pay such a fine, does not pay it off quickly enough or fails to appear in court, the consequence is a suspended license – a consequence that prevents them from driving to work to earn the money they need to pay off their fine. The result is a Catch-22, where the only way to raise the money to gain back their license to drive is to drive without a license and risk even more fines for doing so.

This predicament mirrors law enforcement practices in Ferguson that were exposed by the Department of Justice in March. Before the DOJ revealed patterns of egregious racial profiling and discrimination in the city, a group of civil rights attorneys filed a lawsuit claiming municipal courts in Ferguson were arresting and jailing an alarming number of people for unpaid traffic violations and other minor offenses. In 2013 alone, 33,000 arrest warrants were issued for Ferguson residents and people living in nearby counties, as courts raked in $2.6 million. But before the lawsuit was filed, most people weren’t aware of the egregious amounts of debt incurred from court fees each year.

Sadly, Ferguson isn’t the only place in America with a court system that thrives off of poor people’s debts. In California, four million people possess suspended licenses for failing to pay traffic citations — many of which have nothing to do with driving — and are subsequently thrust into a hole of debt they cannot climb out of.

Baltimore will be the next Detroit

April 6, 2015April 5, 2015 ~ susie ~ 2 Comments

Here we go again. When do people stand up and fight back?

Starting this week, 25,000 households in Baltimore will suddenly lose their access to water for owing bills of $250 or more, with very little notice given and no public hearings.

Rita, a renter in Southeast Baltimore who asked to remain anonymous for this story in order to protect her two children from being taken away, told ThinkProgress she was served with a shutoff notice last week. Maryland law states that a child that is “neglected” may be taken out of his or her home and put into foster care. One characteristic of “neglect” as defined by the Maryland Department of Human Resources is a child with “consistently poor hygiene” that is “un-bathed, [having] unwashed or matted hair, noticeable body odor.”

“I love my kids, and I’d do anything for them,” Rita told ThinkProgress. “But if I turn on the shower or the sink and there’s no water, how can I give them a bath?”

Food and Water Watch researcher Mary Grant explained that making water unavailable to residents is a major health risk, and that if Baltimore were to deprive 25,000 households of water, diseases would have a high chance of propagating throughout densely-populated neighborhoods.

“There is direct risk associated with lack of access to water,” Grant told ThinkProgress. “When you lose your water service, you lose water to wash your hands to flush the toilet, there is risk of disease spreading.”

City officials like Department of Public Works director Rudy Chow claim that residents using water without paying are to blame for the $40 million in overdue water bills. In fact, the Baltimore Sun found more than a third of the unpaid bills stem from just 369 businesses, who owe $15 million in revenue, while government offices and nonprofits have outstanding water bills to the tune of $10 million. One of those businesses, RG Steel (now bankrupt) owes $7 million in delinquent water bills all by itself.

“It’s interesting that the city isn’t targeting those businesses first,” Grant said.

According to Grant, Baltimore has steadily increased water usage rates over the past three years by a total of 42 percent, once another 11 percent rate increase takes effect this July. The Baltimore Sun reported that the public works department elected to raise the rates in 2013, when 19,500 customers owed $29.5 million. While the city has pointed out that there are payment plans available for residents behind on water bills, Grant said the help is far too small to make any real difference for overdue households.

“There is low-income assistance, but it’s only a one-time payment of $161,” Grant said.

Approximately half of Baltimore’s 1.8 million residents rent their homes, and many are counting on property owners to promptly pay water bills. Even if a landlord is not making payments, Baltimore’s water department refuses to open new water accounts for any

You don’t expect us to do anything, do you?

March 30, 2015March 29, 2015 ~ susie ~ 1 Comment

This reminds me of when George W. Bush admitted there was such a thing as global warming, but quickly reassured his donors he had no intention of doing anything about it:

Appearing at a candidate forum in late January, three likely Republican presidential contenders — Senators Ted Cruz, Marco Rubio and Rand Paul — all made a striking confession: They considered “the increasing gap between rich and poor” to be a problem.

But on the question of whether the government should intervene to solve it, Mr. Cruz and Mr. Paul rejected that approach, and Mr. Rubio appeared to agree with them.

When “government takes over the economy,” Mr. Cruz said, “it freezes everything in place. And it exacerbates income inequality.” He proposed lowering taxes and loosening regulations instead.

The heat is on

March 26, 2015March 25, 2015 ~ susie

Time for them all to come clean about their education “reform” agenda:

The National Education Association, the largest U.S. labor union, is pushing to make public schools a front-burner domestic issue throughout the 2016 presidential race, union leaders said Wednesday.

“We have 3 million members who want desperately to know what the candidates have to say to really, seriously improve public education,” NEA President Lily Eskelsen García told reporters. “We intend to activate those 3 million members, the parents, even the students.”

The union, which represents one out of every 100 Americans, has begun its presidential endorsement process, the earliest point it has engaged in a presidential campaign cycle, García said.

Although only one candidate, Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.), has declared his intention to run for the White House, the NEA has sent questionnaires to 19 “viable” candidates to begin the vetting process for an endorsement, said Carrie Pugh, the union’s political director.