Bill Maher blog : Whack-a-Mole Accounting

By Bill Maher



No one seems to be talking about how “putting our financial house in order” and “slashing the federal budget,” while sounding good on the surface, simply transfers responsibility to provide critical entitlements to the states.

Go ahead, cut education, federal funding for municipal projects, Medicaid, food stamps and unemployment benefits. That may make you feel like you’re striking a blow for “ending the culture of dependency,” but kids still have to learn, aging classrooms still need to be renovated, books still need to be bought, teachers still need to be paid, bridges and roads still need to be built and repaired, and poor and out-of-work people will still get sick and hungry and need diapers. Having the feds stop paying to solve these problems doesn’t make the problems go away; it just transfers the onus of solving these problems to the states. The good news: Paul Ryan has reduced your federal income tax responsibility to 10%. The bad news: your state government now needs 55%.

Or do they? Maybe the federal government can stop paying for these things and states run by Republican governors and legislatures can finally start governing based on the cherished conservative principle of “Fuck you, every man for himself.”

Writing for the AP, Carla K. Johnson and Kelli Kennedy point out that many Republican-run states are refusing to abide by the part of Obamacare that shifts Medicaid responsibility to the states. Out of one side of their mouths, they demand federal cuts and out of the other they refuse to pick up the slack.

The national health law calls for individuals to be covered at an income under $15,400 and a family of four at an income under $30,650 – but that’s too generous for a few southern states. According to the AP, “In South Carolina, a yearly income of $16,900 is too much for Medicaid for a family of three. In Florida, $11,000 a year is too much. In Mississippi, $8,200 a year is too much. In Louisiana and Texas, earning more than just $5,000 a year makes you ineligible for Medicaid.”

More from the AP story: “Medicaid now covers an estimated 70 million Americans and would cover an estimated 7 million more in 2014 under the Obama health law's expansion. In contrast, Ryan's plan could mean 14 million to 27 million Americans would ultimately lose coverage, even beyond the effect of a repeal of the health law, according to an analysis by the nonpartisan Kaiser Family Foundation of Ryan's 2011 budget plan.”

And it’s hardly premium coverage. Medicaid sucks and most doctors refuse to even treat patients on it. It’s so shitty you’d be better off with an actual safety net. Should poor people just go fuck themselves?

POSTED BY BILL MAHER AT 11:36 AM

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NewsDaily: Poll shows most Americans favor Medicaid expansion

NewsDaily (2012-07-31) -- Most Americans back the idea of extending health coverage to their low-income neighbors through the government's Medicaid program, unless it means higher costs for their own state, according to a new poll.

NewsDaily: Poll shows most Americans favor Medicaid expansion:

art: http://www.todaysseniors.com/pages/Medicare_Supplemental.html

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Morning Joe's Mika goes after birther Donald Trump

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

The Morning Joe's Mika lowers the boom on "The Donald." Rightardia suspects "The Donald" who is obviously a country club Republican is trying to bridge the gap with the Tea Party with his birther nonsense. 

Would you like to know what a billionaire president would o to the country? Take a gander, at Rick Scott, the grifter governor of Florida.

Scott is changing the law so the state doesn't have to maintain a database on narcotics like Oxycontin (Hillbilly heroin), Medicaid recipeints will be forced into private clinics and state workers will have to be drug tested.

Unlike recently elected federal officials who have to transfer their assets to a blind trust, Scott transferred the ownership of his company, Solantic, to his wife.

Soalntic will greatly benefit by the change to Florida law on Medicaid and mandatory drug testing for state employees.

Most of the Hillbilly heroin in Eastern Kentucky is from Florida because of the lax law that Mike Fasano, the GOP State Senator District 11 fixed. Rick Scott wants the law repealed.

Do you think the state wills save money with any of these changes? Medicaid charges will likely double and  it will cost the state as much as $300,000 annually to drug test even one per cent of Florida's employees.

BTW in the latest polls we have seen, Donald Trump is not a player.

Trump is now claiming that the long form Certificate of Live Birth (COLB)  might list Obama's religion as Muslim.

You would think Trump would have better things to do than act like a right wing stooge.

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Republicans convene medical death panels in Arizona

This is not politics. People will die because they cannot get transplants in AZ.

Gov. Jan Brewer approved a budget cut based on faulty information that came through insurance and partisan channels. Brewer refuses to convene a special session of the legislature to fix the mistake.

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The Right Wing consists of liars and the gullible

Rep Alan Grayson said the Right Wing Consists of the Liars and the Gullible on December 04, 2009. See http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_WW_DtGyib4

Here is a classic example of this: Sen. John Cornyn from Texas is facing a tough re-election fight. Her refers to Medicare advantage as an option that Seniors will lose. This is the 'private version' of Medicare that is heavily subsidised by the Federal government.

Obama wants to cut the subsidies which, of course, will make this program less lucrative to seniors and require the health care industry to raise the premiums to keep it afloat.

In addition Medicaid, that Cornyn calls a gulag, is a program of last resort. Medicaid pays the bills for the poor that have not health insurance and go to the emergency room when they become critically ill. Medicaid results in a hidden $1100 tax on all private health insurance plans. If there is no new public option in the final health care bill, Medicaid will be the only public option left standing.



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Here is the House Minority Whip's Eric Cantor's plan for middle-income Americans who have lost their health insurance after being laid off by a company.

First, you should sell all of her lifetime possessions to pay for the excessive medical costs.  Once you are penniless, you will then qualify for health programs for the poor like Medicaid that most Republicans don’t support. If this fails, Mr. Cantor advises you to do this: beg for charity at the local churches, synagogues and mosques.

Of course, the churches told President Bush they were not in the charity business when he tried to pawn the US welfare system onto them as a faith-based initiative early in his first term. 

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U.S. poverty rate hit 11-year high in 2008

September 10, 2009 | 8:03 a.m.

By Don Lee

The nation's poverty level jumped to an 11-year high, household incomes sank and the number of people without health insurance rose slightly to 46.3 million, the Census Bureau reported today.

The Census Bureau said that median household incomes fell 3.6% from 2007 to $50,303 last year. That was the biggest decline since 1991. It was caused by millions of job cuts by employers in 2008.In addition, Bush tax policies have also affected the drop in middle class income.

People without medical coverage increased from 45.7 million in 2007. This was expected to have risen more sharply last year. The overall number was lowered by expanding government safety-net programs and rising Medicare enrolment. Many aging baby boomers had enrolled in Medicare. The number of uninsured children fell to 7.3 million from 8.1 million in 2007. This was due to the S-CHIPS bill that was signed into law shortly after President Obama took office.

The uninsured rate of 15.4% for medical insurance last year was not statistically different from 2007.

However, analysts expect the number of uninsured and the official poverty rate, which is 13.2 per cent, to keep rising this year and next. Although the U.S. economy is expected to resume growing in the second half of this year, about 3.8 million payroll jobs have been eliminated since January. Unemployment, currently at 9.7%, is projected to grow slightly.

More workers and their families this year have slipped into poverty or lost their health coverage, or both. Only 58.5% of the nation's population last year were covered by private insurance provided through their employers. the Census Bureau indicated that percentage has been steadily decreasing.

About 39.8 million people fell below the poverty line last year including more than 14 million children.

don.lee@latimes.com

Rightardia comment: A lot of this can be explained by 20 years of GOP rule in Washington. When a GOP Congress was elected during the Clinton era, the Aid to Dependent Children (ADC) program was eliminated that ended the major welfare program in the US. The only other important welfare programs that survived were Food Stamps and Medicaid. 

Supply side economics aka trickle down that started during the Reagan era and continued during the Bush presidency made the rich richer and fractured the middle class. George W. Bush even tried to give the remainder of the US welfare programs early in his presidency to churches. The churches weren't interested. 

A real irony in the US is that the states that have the highest poverty rates and the highest percentage of citizens that don't pay income tax are hot beds of conservatism.


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When the going gets tough, the tough get going

Rightardia comment: Obama has activated his political organization, Organizing for America. A lot can change in the next year and the Democrats have resiliency. A recent Gallup Poll also indicates that Republicans in Congress have a 13 per cent approval rating. Democrats in Congress have a 55 per cent approval rating. Independents represented by Blue Dog Democrats aren't much better than the GOP at 22 per cent.

If a dimwit like George Bush could gain congressional seats in the 2002 elections, the Democrats should be able to as well. If there is a will, there is a way. A lot will depend on how the Democrats handle health care.

The Democrats do have a nuclear keep it simple stupid option. Extend Medicare to other Americans. We have CHIPS, S-CHIPS, and Medicaid. All could be rolled into a single unified program and additional age groups could be phased in over time.

JOSH KRAUSHAAR | 8/31/09 4:50 AM EDT

Some of the most prominent and respected handicappers predict an election in which Democrats suffer double-digit losses in the House. this will not be enough to provide the 40 seats necessary to return the GOP to power.

Top political analyst Charlie Cook wrote that “the situation this summer has slipped completely out of control for President Obama and congressional Democrats.”

"Many veteran congressional election watchers, including Democratic ones, report an eerie sense of déjà vu. The chances of Democratic losses going higher than 20 seats is just as good as the chances of Democratic losses going lower than 20 seats.

At the mid-August Netroots Nation convention, Nate Silver, a Democratic analyst whose uncannily accurate, stat-driven predictions have made his website 538.com predicted that Republicans will win between 20 and 50 seats next year. He further alarmed an audience of progressive activists by arguing that the GOP has between a 25 and 33 percent chance of winning back control of the House.

“A lot of Democratic freshmen and sophomores will be running in a much tougher environment than in 2006 and 2008 and some will adapt to it, but a lot of others will inevitably freak out and end up losing,” Silver told POLITICO. “Complacency is another factor: We have volunteers who worked really hard in 2006 and in 2008 for Obama but it’s less compelling [for them] to preserve the majority.”

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