Day: September 20, 2011
Decade of ‘PerryCare’ Has Made Texas an Unhealthy Place to Live
If the Tea Party has its way next year, Texas Gov. Rick Perry will become president of the United States. What we can expect from a Perry administration is a lavish inaugural, a medieval approach to science and religion, trickle-down economics and an approach to health care that places even basic medical care beyond the reach of most people, according to a report on NPR.
Only 48 percent of the Texans have private health insurance, and more than a quarter of the state’s population has no insurance at all — more than any other state. Perry has been governor for a decade, so the state of health care in Texas is a result of — let’s call it PerryCare.
Over the past eight years, citing budget constraints, Gov. Rick Perry and the Republican-controlled legislature have dropped hundreds of thousands of mostly poor and working-class Texans from the rolls of government-sponsored insurance like Medicaid and the Children’s Health Insurance Program. Nearly 6.5 million Texans are now uninsured even though the majority of them have full-time jobs.
Premiums in Texas’ unregulated health insurance industry have soared by 105 percent over the past 10 years, according to the federal Agency for Health Care Research and Quality. Texas employers have responded by raising employee deductibles, often dramatically, or by dropping their coverage entirely.
Tax Him, Please!
The O’Reilly Factor plays fast and loose with the facts
And Bill-O has a penchant for ad hominem attacks.
Bill says if we tax achievement,
There’ll be cause for bereavement —
He’ll close down his show if Obama raises his income tax.
Obama Tax Plan Has Overwhelming Support
Every single poll shows that the American public overwhelmingly supports higher taxes on the wealthy as part of a package to cut the deficit. The margins are staggering: the NYT poll shows a majority of 74 – 21; even Rasmussen shows a majority of 56 – 34. What the president proposed this morning is simply where the American people are at. If he keeps at it, if he turns his administration into a permanent campaign for structural fiscal reform, I don’t see how he loses the argument.
— Andrew Sullivan, writing for the Daily Beast.
Obama Admirers Toggle Between Being Uplifted and Feeling Used
When administration officials called around saying that the possibility of a double-dip recession was horrifyingly real and that it would be irresponsible not to come up with a package that could pass right away, I believed them… When the president unveiled the second half of his stimulus it became clear that this package has nothing to do with helping people right away or averting a double dip. This is a campaign marker, not a jobs bill… This wasn’t a speech to get something done. This was the sort of speech that sounded better when Ted Kennedy was delivering it. The result is that we will get neither short-term stimulus nor long-term debt reduction anytime soon, and I’m a sap for thinking it was possible … The White House gives moderates little morsels of hope, and then rips them from our mouths. To be an Obama admirer is to toggle from being uplifted to feeling used.
— David Brooks, writing in the New York Times.
Bachmann’s Polling Implodes – Did She Tell One Lie Too Many?
A new USA Today/Gallup poll finds that support for the presidential campaign of Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.) is imploding:
The survey, taken Thursday through Sunday, charts a GOP field that seems headed toward a showdown between Perry, with 31 percent backing, and Romney, at 24 percent.
The only other candidate in double digits is Texas Rep. Ron Paul, at 13 percent. Support for Minnesota Rep. Michele Bachmann has plummeted to 5 percent.
Veteran Republican strategist Ed Rollins, who resigned as Bachmann’s campaign manager earlier this month, says the results could signal “a drawn-out process” and extended primary fight between Perry and Romney, both of whom are likely to have ample money and other resources.
But for Bachmann, he says, “The only way she can get back in this race is to somehow win Iowa,” which holds the opening caucuses early next year.
It’s hard to know what has caused the collapse of Bachmann’s polling. It may well be that her base of hard-right, proudly ignorant Republican voters found that they prefer Texas Gov. Rick Perry over her because, well, he’s a man and she is not.
It’s also possible that she got caught telling one lie too many.
