Month: January 2012
Even Taken in Full Context, Romney Lied When He Implied That Individuals Can’t Fire Insurers Under ‘Obamenycare’
“I like being able to fire people,” GOP presidential frontrunner Mitt Romney said during a campaign stop in New Hampshire yesterday.
Under “Obamacare,” which is based on “Romneycare,” which was based on a right-wing Heritage Foundation plan, individuals who don’t like what an insurer does can “fire them,” go back to the exchange and choose to purchase insurance from another private company
This assertion certainly aligns with Romney’s record. As head of Bain & Company, he made millions — we don’t know how many millions because he refuses to release his tax returns — by buying businesses, laying off employees and then re-selling the companies at a profit.
Romney’s statement yesterday was, of course, taken out of context. The statement, in full, went like this:
“I want individuals to have their own insurance. That means the insurance company will have an incentive to keep you healthy. It also means that if you don’t like what they do, you can fire them. I like being able to fire people who provide services to me. You know, if someone doesn’t give me the good service I need, I want to say, ‘You know, I’m going to go get someone else to provide that service to me.’ “
Romney appears to be proposing replacing the current employer-based health-insurance system — in which, by the by, the employer not employees, choose insurance providers — with an Ayn-Randian “every man, woman and child for himself or herself” system in which individuals purchase health insurance on the “free” market, the way they buy car or homeowners insurance.
What he’s describing is the failed system we have. Premiums for individual policies are the most expensive on the market. The people who most often need these policies — minimum-wage workers, self-employed creatives, the unemployed — can’t afford them.
Hillary for V.P.?
Nobody is thinking very hard about what’s next for Laura Bush.
Bill Keller, in a New York Times column urging Pres. Obama to draft Hillary Clinton as his running mate later this year. Keller argues that Obama should have Vice Pres. Joe Biden swap places with the Secretary of State.
60 Percent of Republicans back Romney for Nomination
6 in 10
Republican registered voters, nationwide, now believe Mitt Romney is the candidate most likely to win the 2012 Republican presidential nomination, up from 39% in December. Rick Santorum places a distant second, named by 11%.
Struggling to Understand How Rich Mitt Romney Is
It’s hard for most of us to imagine being worth a few million dollars. That’s serious greenbacks, putting us beyond worry and squarely in the land of comfort. But if we were Mitt Romney, who is worth a quarter-BILLION dollars, that would be chump change.
And while all the presidential candidates are in that comfortable, worry-free zone, Romney’s wealth, according to a fascinating piece of research in the Tampa Bay Times, blocks out the sun.
Romney refuses to say how much, if anything, he pays in income taxes
For every $100 personally owned by Romney, President Obama has $4.20, Newt Gingrich has $2.70 and Ron Paul has $2. And Rick Santorum, closely trailing a victorious Romney in last week’s Iowa caucus, has but a single buck.
But wait, there’s more.
French & Saunders Read the English Translation of an Interview with Madonna in Hungarian
Off topic, but if you watched that sad excuse for a debate among the Republican presidential candidates on NBC yesterday, you probably need a good laugh to start the week.
Here are Dawn French and Jennifer Saunders, the creative team behind “Absolutely Fabulous,” on their radio show, reading an English translation from the original Hungarian of an interview with Madonna about her movie, “Evita,” as it appeared in USA Today.
H/t: Andrew Sullivan
Tony Blankley, Right-Wing Propagandist, Dead at 62
On the show, the “left” was and is represented by Robert Scheer, formerly of the Los Angeles Times and now editor at Truthdig. The “center” was and is represented by the show’s host, Matt Miller.
After Huffington finally came to her senses and revised her ideology toward the center, she continued to participate in an essentially left-leaning but officially non-aligned position. She was replaced on the right by Tony Blankley.
Paul Supporters Reach New Low in Anti-Huntsman Ad
Words can’t adequately describe the hot mess of racism and xenophobia that is this anti Jon Huntsman ad, so we provided it here so you could see for yourself. It is, in fact, so bad that some Paulestinians claim it was actually made as part of a conspiracy on Huntsman’s part to make Paul and his nutty devotees look bad. Yes, there’s nothing that makes serial conspiracy buffs look more legitimate than allegations of a new conspiracy. Except there is no evidence in this case that anyone but Ronulans are to blame.
Huntsman has one adopted daughter from China and another from India, both of whom were abandoned as babies.
Ron Paul is zealously in favor of outlawing abortion in all cases, despite his assertion that outside of women’s reproductive decisions, government should stay out of people’s lives.
The ad questions Huntsman’s values but it looks like those of Paul and his believers are the ones in need of clarification. If women are forced to take unwanted and accidental pregnancies to term, shouldn’t adopting the resulting abandoned children be considered a virtue — if not an obligation?
How closely Paul is linked to NHLiberty4Paul, the group that produced the ad, is not known. The candidate himself claims, as with the newsletter he published that printed racist ravings, to know nothing about the matter. Paul finds himself at the mercy of unhinged folks more often than the starlet in a horror film.
Obama Thwarts GOP Political Hostage-Taking with Recess Appointment of Richard Cordray to Head Consumer Watchdog Agency
If you’re just checking in on Washington politics after the holidays and the Iowa caucuses, you’re likely hearing that Republicans in Congress and their throught-masters at Fox are in a spittle-spewing rage over Pres. Obama’s recess appointment of former Ohio Attorney General Richard Cordray to head the new Consumer Financial Protection Board, or CFPB, watchdog agency.
After successfully blocking the nomination of Elizabeth Warren, the consumer advocate and Harvard professor who had been appointed to set up the CFPB — and who is now running for the U.S. Senate in Massachusetts — last year, Senate Republicans tried to stop Cordray’s appointment during the current recess by briefly gaveling the Senate in and out of pro forma sessions every day. Obama went around this and appointed Cordray by using a precedent set by Republican Pres. Theodore Roosevelt, who, in 1903, filled more than 160 administration positions while the Senate was on break for less than a day.
Republicans were holding the Cordray nomination hostage in order to extort a major overhaul of the laws that would, in essence, defang the watchdog agency. The Republicans’ objective was to ensure that their corporate sponsors in the financial industry would be able to continue to rip off consumers, including the constituents of these hostage-taking Republicans senators, legally, as they had been when Republicans controlled Congress, the Judiciary and Executive branches during the Bush administration.
Under the sway of their minority tea-bagger base, Republicans used political extortion multiple times last year to push the national and world economy to the brink of collapse. Their motives then were simply to create havoc. The extortion over the Warren and Cordray nominations has a different goal, says Jonathan Chait:
