Under Obamacare, you can quit your dead-end job and work for yourself. Conservatives hate that

The always dependable wingnut blogger Jim Hoft supplies us with our sample headline here. It’s usually the case that Hoft is only useful for pointing and laughing at for his clumsy and transparent attempts at propaganda. But in this case, he’s pretty much representative of the new rightwing take on this latest turn of Obamcare events:

Washington Post: Count Polly Lower among those who quit their jobs because of the health-care law.

It happened in September, when her boss abruptly changed her job description. She went from doing payroll, which she liked, to working on her boss’s schedule, which she loathed. At another time, she might have had to grit her teeth and accept the new position because she needed the health benefits.

But with the health-care law soon to take effect, she simply resigned — and hasn’t looked back.

“It was wonderful. It was very freeing,” said Lower, 56, of Bourbon, Ind., who is now babysitting her 5-year-old granddaughter full time. With the help of federal subsidies that kicked in Jan. 1, she is paying less than $500 a month for health coverage for herself and her husband.

Obviously, Lower isn’t “living off the government teat,” as Hoft puts it, because you can’t eat healthcare and insurance won’t pay the rent. What she was able to do was quit a job she hated with a lousy employer and find a better way to pay the bills. While it’s not a very ambitious or long-term business plan, she has become an entrepreneur .

Turns out conservatives hate that.

And why wouldn’t they? These are the same people who think asking for more than the minimum wage makes you some sort of freeloader. These are the sort of people who mock workers for drawing a paycheck. These are the people who think reducing income inequality is a form of class warfare.

Want to quit your soul-crushing, dream-smashing job and start your own business — or even take some time off to get a better education or just find a job better suited to your skills?

Not if conservatives have anything to say about it.

It’s never been clearer that the right isn’t about what’s good for working people — i.e., the vast majority of Americans. It’s about what’s good for employers. It’s about cheap labor and few rights for workers. And now wage slavery. That can’t figure out how to make being trapped in a dead-end job look good, so they — like Hoft — try to make being able to leave that job look bad.

And since the best they can come up with is chuckleheaded spin worthy of Jim Hoft, they’re not going to have a lot of luck.

Does a CBO report really say Obamacare means 2 million will lose their jobs? In a word, no

Or at least, only if you misunderstand it —which, sadly, is easy to do when major news outlets are misreporting the story. The right is, of course, running wild with the story and it seems no one has actually bothered to sit down and read the damned thing. There’s a rampant misunderstanding of how jobs are measured in the Congressional Budget Office’s report and this is resulting in confusion — which the right and Republicans are running in to exploit. TPM’s Dylan Scott has the skinny (emphasis mine):

What the CBO really found was that the numbers of hours worked would decrease under Obamacare, by roughly 1.5 percent to 2 percent between 2017 and 2024. The report then translated those lost hours into the equivalent of 2.5 million jobs. But that doesn’t mean 2.5 million jobs are going to disappear from the U.S. economy.

The CBO report, in fact, specifically undermines that claim.

Those lost hours will “almost entirely” be the result of people choosing to work fewer hours because of Obamacare — not because they lost their jobs or can’t find a full-time job.

"The report explicitly says that Obamacare isn’t going to force businesses to cut jobs on any grand scale," Scott reports. "What it is going to do is change how much Americans work." Obamacare will actually free people to work less, since insurance coverage won’t be dependent on full-time hours. 35 hours a week is better fit for your family? Great. Knock yourself out. It’s not like you’ll lose your health coverage or anything.

No wonder the GOP is eager to spin this thing right out of the gate; if Americans find out what it really means, they’re not going to be interested in messing with Obamacare at all, much less repealing it.

Success: the GOP's worst nightmare

Nick Anderson: Obamacare Disaster

[h/t: azspot]

Predicting the GOP evolution on Obamacare

Bob Englehart, The Hartford Courant.

Santorum capitalizes on Mandela’s death by comparing Obamacare to apartheid

Politico: As condolences and reflections followed the passing of Nelson Mandela, Rick Santorum linked the injustices the former South African president fought and Obamacare.

“He was fighting against some great injustice, and I would make the argument that we have a great injustice going on right now in this country with an ever-increasing size of government that is taking over and controlling people’s lives — and Obamacare is front and center in that,” Santorum said Thursday on Fox News’s “The O’Reilly Factor.”

Yeah, because making sure people don’t go bankrupt over a health emergency is exactly the same as a brutal system of racial oppression that made even the Jim Crow south look like a beacon of equality. If Mandela fought against apartheid, Santorum’s fighting against Obamacare, and Obamacare is just as bad as apartheid, then logic dictates that Rick Santorum is as towering a figure in the struggle for justice as Nelson Mandela.

Rick’s not trying to politicize the death of a great man to inflate his own importance at all. Is he?

But while we’re on the subject of racial equality, maybe Rick could tell us more about how the “blah people" are sucking up taxpayer dollars in the form of welfare. See, because he’s so much like Mandela and all…

Website problems keep WI vets from gaining special driver’s license

Appleton Post-Crescent: Wisconsin military veterans are excited about a special new driver’s license, but the state’s rollout of the honorary license program is drawing complaints of glitches and miscues.

State officials announced earlier this month that veterans could soon obtain a driver’s license marked “Veteran” to help them earn discounts and other perks in their daily lives.

To qualify, veterans only must obtain written certification of their military status from the state Department of Veterans Affairs.

But some veterans seeking certification have been confused by the state’s website, and others have been unable to get help through an overloaded toll-free telephone line.

As a result, veterans in Brown County and elsewhere in the state have sought assistance from their county veterans service officers, who say they were enlisted to clean up the state’s mess without adequate warning.

“We’re not happy campers,” said Brown County veterans service officer Jerry Polus. “It’s really driving us crazy.”

Well, everyone knows that when a law involves a problematic website, that means the entire law is bad and must be repealed. There really is no other solution. So if veterans miss out on some good deals they would’ve otherwise gotten, that’s a real shame. But what are you going to do?

I’m sure we can expect Wisconsin Republicans, led by the Governor, to begin work on repealing this “trainwreck” of a law immediately.

Poll: most want Obamacare fixed, not scrapped

Some bad news for Republicans on more than one level.

Greg Sargent: With Obamacare facing its deadline for website functionality, Republicans appear absolutely, irrevocably, 100 percent certain the law’s total collapse is at hand, or even already complete. However, they may be the only ones who are convinced of this.

A new CNN poll tests public opinion on the law in a way I haven’t seen before — and it shows Republicans are the only group who believe the law’s problems can’t be solved and that it should now be pronounced a failure. Independents and moderates believe it can still work.

To be sure, opposition is running high, at 58 percent, as in many other polls, and virtually no one believes the law is a success, which is as it should be. This means, again, that the rollout continues to put Democrats in serious political peril. But disapproval does not necessarily translate into giving up on the law, which matters, because it goes to whether people will enroll in the numbers necessary to make it work over time.

The poll finds 53 percent of Americans say it’s too soon to tell if the law will succeed or fail, versus 39 percent who pronounce it a failure. That latter sentiment is driven by Republicans: Independents say it’s too soon to tell by 55-41; moderates by 58-35. But Republicans overwhelmingly believe it’s a failure by 70-25.

In polling, Republicans always seem to find themselves outside the mainstream. And the people who will make it work believe it can in huge numbers.

"Crucially, young Americans — who are important to the law’s success – overwhelmingly believe the problems will be solved (71 percent)," Sargent reports. "Part of the campaign by Republicans to persuade Americans that the law’s doom is inevitable is about dissuading people from enrolling, to turn that into a self fulfilling prophesy."

And, as always, the polling shows that those who support the law and those who believe it doesn’t go far enough outweigh those who think Obamacare goes too far — 54% - 41%. Again, the GOP is outside the political mainstream.

But the failure for the GOP is in getting their messaging to take hold with anyone but those who were already sold. They’ve been predicting a “trainwreck” for years, a rushed rollout practically hands one to them on a silver platter, and they still can’t win over majorities in any demo but their own. Not only is this a failure on the party’s part, but it also demonstrates the limitations of the rightwing noise machine. The Fox/talk radio/wingnut blogger alliance seems to be doing a fine job of preaching to the choir, but a pretty lousy job of evangelism. They stand on soap boxes at busy intersections, shrieking the Gospel of Saints Koch at the top of their lungs. But for anyone but themselves it’s just street noise, indistinguishable from honking horns, barking dogs, and crashing garbage cans.

Not only does this have bad things to say about the future of the anti-Obamacare movement, but for the Republican Party itself. All the demographics they dominate are dying off or becoming insignificant and all the ones they want to win over aren’t even paying attention to what they’re saying.

Republicans would be a lot better off working with public opinion than against it. They need to drop their insistence that everyone listen to them and instead listen to what other people are saying. In other words, they need to shut their big yaps, stop trying to tell everyone what to think, and hear what the American people say they want.

The Affordable Care Act may have had a rocky start, but if they aren’t careful, the GOP could be facing an even rockier end.

[photo via Wikimedia Commons]

Polling demonstrates why Obamacare isn’t going anywhere

Ed Kilgore: In more “no game change” news, Ron Brownstein reports today that a new and very detailed United Technologies/National Journal Congressional Connection Poll shows little change in basic attitudes towards Obamacare since the last survey of its kind in July:

Amid all the tumult over the law’s troubled implementation, the survey found that public opinion about it largely follows familiar political tracks and has changed remarkably little since the summer on the critical question of what Congress should do next. On that measure, support for repeal has not significantly increased among any major group except Republicans and working-class whites since the Congressional Connection Poll last tested opinion on the question in July.

At present, asked if Congress should repeal Obamacare, leave it alone for now, or provide more funds to help its implementation, repeal is opposed by a 59-38 margin, with, as Brownstein noted, repeal sentiment being mainly confined to Republican and Republican-leaning parts of the electorate. That means two things: Republicans will continue to be encouraged by their “base” to screw up the Affordable Care Act, and Democrats will have little real political incentive to cave.

Backing up this poll is a Reuters/Ipsos poll showing that support for Obamacare overall has dropped by a statistically insignificant 3 points since the last time they polled the issue. The Affordable Care Act still isn’t popular, but the appetite for sweeping changes just isn’t there.

Republicans have vowed to try to repeal the law, but the poll showed they could face some obstacles because some elements of the law, such as requiring insurance companies to cover people with pre-existing conditions, remain popular.

Asked their views on the troubled Obamacare launch, 65 percent favored at least some changes in the health law. But some respondents favored only smaller changes such as delays in the deadline for requiring everyone without health insurance to sign up for coverage.

So a tweak here or there, but otherwise they’re cool. What these steady numbers show is that opinions of the issue are pretty much fixed along partisan lines. As with the National Journal poll, there’s no opening here for Republicans to gain ground and no reason for Democrats to give any up.

Repeal gets deader by the day.

[photo by LaDawna Howard]

White House announces ‘fix’ for cancellations

Not sure it’s the way I would’ve gone, but here’s the skinny on it.

Wall Street Journal: The Obama plan, which the official said could be implemented without passing legislation, would allow insurance companies to extend “substandard” plans in 2014 only if they are already in existence. Unlike the House bill, the administration plan wouldn’t allow insurance companies to offer such plans to new customers.

The policy also would require insurance companies, if they extend such policies, to notify these customers that alternative policies might be available under the government insurance exchange and to tell them what benefits they wouldn’t be getting if they remained with their current plans.

A little bit of a gamble, but not much of one. Ever since the cancellations controversy began, I saw “If you like your plan, you can keep it” as a bet. The idea was that the exchanges would be up and running, you’d find out what was available to you, and you wouldn’t like your old policy anymore.

And this is one way to keep that gamble alive. Insurers offering these junk plans have to tell customers they are junk plans and point out what it is that’s wrong with the policies. Then consumer can eventually go see for themselves what’s what and — unless they’re so insanely opposed to Obamacare that they’d lose money rather than participate — make the switch.

We’ll see how people who have a better grasp of the intricacies of the economics of Obamacare take it, but for now, it doesn’t seem like the worst way to handle things. Faint praise, I know. But I’d rather not gamble at all, so I’m still not convinced it’s the best.

[photo via Wikimedia Commons]

The real insurance cancellation scandal is over. Obamacare fixed it

Los Angeles Times, 2007: One of the state’s largest health insurers set goals and paid bonuses based in part on how many individual policyholders were dropped and how much money was saved.

Woodland Hills-based Health Net Inc. avoided paying $35.5 million in medical expenses by rescinding about 1,600 policies between 2000 and 2006. During that period, it paid its senior analyst in charge of cancellations more than $20,000 in bonuses based in part on her meeting or exceeding annual targets for revoking policies, documents disclosed Thursday showed.

The revelation that the health plan had cancellation goals and bonuses comes amid a storm of controversy over the industry-wide but long-hidden practice of rescinding coverage after expensive medical treatments have been authorized.

The practice was known as “rescission.” Companies hired people to go through the insurance forms of people undergoing expensive medical treatment, looking for typos or minor inaccuracies. If you forgot to mention a tooth filling — boom! — no chemotherapy for you. You’d have no insurance coverage at all and a pre-existing condition. You were screwed. This was the unregulated, free-market approach that Republicans tell you is so wonderful and perfect.

Obamacare made the practice illegal and in May of 2010, this particular corporate scam ended industry-wide.

"[Insurance companies] look for anything that they could say ‘you didn’t tell us about,’" Dale Rice, whose 17 year-old daughter’s coverage was pulled in the middle of a health crisis, told the Chicago Tribune. “They hope that people just lay down and die and don’t fight.”

The insurance industry was denying coverage and literally allowing people to die after taking their money for years. That’s a cancellation scandal and going back to that is not an option.

People explaining why they prefer the Affordable Care Act over 'Obamacare'

Pew poll shows both sides would take blame for govt. shutdown, but is it accurate?

Pew Research: If the federal government shuts down because Republicans and the Obama administration fail to agree on a budget, there will be plenty of blame to go around. Public Divided Over Who Would be More to Blame if Gov’t Shuts DownAbout as many say they would blame the Republicans (39%) for such a standoff as say they would blame Obama (36%), with 17% volunteering that both would be equally to blame.

This parallels the divided sentiment on the eve of the budget standoff in the spring of 2011, which was ultimately averted. But opinions are notably different today than they were during the budget battle of 1995. A November 1995 Washington Post/ABC News survey asked a similar question and found that 46% said a shutdown would mainly be the fault of the Republican Congress; just 27% said the bulk of the blame would fall on the Clinton administration.

The Pew Research Center survey, conducted September 19-22, 2013 among 1,003 adults nationwide, finds that the public is divided over whether a budget deal will be reached by the Sept. 30 deadline for shutting down the government: 46% say the two sides will reach a budget agreement, 45% say they will not.

I’ve got a little problem with this poll. Just two weeks ago, CNN polled the same question and found that 51% would blame Republicans, while only 33% said they’d blame Obama. And a National Journal insiders poll was even worse. In that, there was a bona fide consensus — 96% of Democratic insiders said the GOP would take the blame, while 90% of Republicans agreed. Keep in mind, these are people who seeing polling data on a weekly basis, if not more often. They know where the trends are going. That poll was released September 21 — just days ago.

So all signs indicate that this is maybe a not so accurate snapshot of Americans’ national mood.

[photo by Photo Phiend]

Boehner pretends to be in control of runaway train

Agence France-Press: The House of Representatives doubled down Wednesday on a gamble to strip funding for “Obamacare” as part of a stop-gap budget, inching the US government closer to a shutdown.

Congress has until September 30, the end of the fiscal year, to pass a temporary budget measure or see closures of all federal agencies and programs just as the administration seeks to extend the government’s legal borrowing limit and secure Syria’s chemical weapons.

House Speaker John Boehner appeared to cave in to the conservative wing of his Republican Party, which has threatened to vote against any deal on a temporary budget — known as a continuing resolution, or CR — unless it defunds President Barack Obama’s landmark health care law and keeps this year’s automatic spending cuts in place.

"This week the House will pass a CR that locks the sequester savings in and defunds Obamacare,” Boehner told reporters after meeting for an hour with his caucus.

"Boehner dismissed accusations he has lost control of his caucus, many of which revolted last week against a Boehner bill that would have allowed the Senate to easily strip out language to defund Obamacare as part of the CR," the report goes on. Let’s stop pretending that Boehner is anything other than a figurehead here, not a leader. He doesn’t twist arms, he has his arm twisted. So basically what’s happening here is that Boehner has acted as spokesperson for the Tea Party, announcing that the wingnut tantrum will be going along as scheduled.

However, the tantrum — like all tantrums — is unlikely to accomplish anything. It’s basically bluster, hoping that someone in Democratic leadership might be bluffed into blinking. “To be clear about what this means, all that has changed today is that GOP leaders have just confirmed they are not yet willing to face the inevitable reckoning that will take place when they admit House Republicans don’t have the leverage they need to block Obamacare,” explains Greg Sargent. “House GOP leaders have simply confirmed that they can’t overcome internal conservative demands for a Total War posture against the health law, and — for now, anyway — will continue to placate those demands, even though those leaders themselves think this posture is insane, unworkable, and self destructive.”

Republicans can either shut down the government and enjoy the fruits of that articular disaster or they can cave, accept that Obamacare is a done deal, and move forward like adults. But one thing is clear here;in the end, the only choice left to Republicans seems to be the manner in which they’d prefer to lose.

Stories to Watch: 3/24/12

I'll be out tomorrow. I'm heading up to a small plot of land my mother has up north, to clean up after a tornado that hit last year (no one was there at the time). The big stuff has all been cleared out by lumberjacks or something, so basically we're going to pick up scattered trash. So updates will probably be few to none. Now here's the news...


Geraldo Rivera's son does not agree with his father that wearing a hoodie in Florida means you're asking for it.


Unless a Romney staffer compares their candidate to a dry erase board, Healthcare Reform and the Affordable Care Act will be the issue next week. Expect plenty of crazy talk from the right.


The current of history continues to flow toward tolerance. Sorry haters, but this is a losing battle for you.


Bill Maher's starting to sound a little panicky. The false equivalence doesn't help any.


The White House seems to be 110% behind Elizabeth Warren's run for the senate.


The US media has lost interest in middle eastern freedom movements.


People who comment on articles at Fox News are assholes.


Finally, no tacocopters for you. Which is probably a good thing. One thing you don't want in your obit is "Died when his plane was brought down by an errant taco delivery robot."

Related articles

• Geraldo Rivera: Trayvon Martin Made Himself a Target With Hooded Sweatshirt (thehollywoodgossip.com)
• Geraldo Rivera Tweets Insanity! [Photos] (collegecandy.com)
• Supreme Court to Debate Affordable Care Act Next week - and plaintiff's case has imploded (scienceblogs.com)
• SCOTUS Preview Part II: Clement's Misleading Brief (thinkprogress.org)

Stories to Watch: 11/8/11

More fun with RSS feeds. After putting together the Progressive News Must-Read Superfeed, I wanted to do something with it that was easy. So I fed it into the Progressive News Must-Read Twitterfeed. That's basically a bot account that tweets the first item at the moment in the Superfeed, once every half hour -- I'll crank that up later, but I have to do some research on it first. I'm not sure offhand how many hits I can send to Twitter's API in a day. It's nowhere near as comprehensive as the Superfeed, but it gets the job done when you're on Twitter. I'll put icons for all this stuff on my blogs later -- probably this weekend, if not sooner. Now here's the news...


A second Cain accuser steps forward.


Erick Erick joins the anti-Mittens jihad, which is going to be embarrassing when Romney wins the nomination and all the righties try to pretend he's the best thing ever.


President Obama threatens to veto an anti-net-neutrality bill if it reaches his desk.


The Affordable Care Act passes constitutional muster in a very conservative court.


OWS is on the right track; income inequality works really well for the Wall Street crowd.


Republican dirty tricks in the Ohio elections.


In Italy, Silvio Berllusconi says he's ready to resign.


Gallup finds that GOP voters are beginning to realize that Herman Cain probably isn't a wonderful guy.


Finally, watch to see how these races turn out tonight.

Related articles

• Fifth woman comes forward with story of unwanted advance from Herman Cain (dailykos.com)
• And Then There Were Five Herman Cain Accusers [Herman Cain] (gawker.com)
• Despite Ratings Drop, Herman Cain Remains Top For GOP Primary (huffingtonpost.com)
• Herman Cain: Accuser Is Lying (blogs.wsj.com)

Stories to Watch: 10/26/11

Geez, it's getting cold. I'm calling an early snow this year. Wait and see. Now here's the news...


After police riot in response to Occupy Oakland, an Iraq war vet is in critical condition after being shot in the head with a "police projectile."


In the aftermath of the widely and thoroughly documented police brutality, Oakland Mayor Jean Quan issues a statement commending Police Chief Howard Jordan "for a generally peaceful resolution to a situation that deteriorated and concerned our community." The gall it takes to release such a statement is, quite frankly, astonishing.


The shifting sands of Rick Perry's birtherism shift yet again.


Fox News blames the non-existent ACORN for the Occupy movement. Seriously, that's just lazy. It's time to cook up a new batch of Fifth Columnists who have the advantage of actually existing, guys.


Rep. Chelsea Clinton?


The Obama administration pushes student loan reform, addressing a common complaint among the 99-percenters.


Hold onto your hat, because things are going to get stupid. The Supreme Court will begin hearing challenges to the Affordable Care Act as soon as Nov. 10. Expect the wingnuts to take to twitter shrieking about "death panels" again.


Finally, Rick Perry actually buys an ad promising a pretty disappointing rate of job growth.

Related articles

• Occupy Oakland: Photos of violent night emerge on Twitter (latimesblogs.latimes.com)
• Occupy Oakland: Police justified in taking action, chief says (latimesblogs.latimes.com)
• Occupy Oakland: More than 100 arrested; police defend tactics (latimesblogs.latimes.com)

Stories to Watch: 9/27/11

It will not stop raining. It's been like a week. The window of opportunity for further grilling is slowly closing. Panic sets in. Now here's the news...


Huge scandal as it's revealed that the White House strong-armed Ford into pulling ads critical of the auto bailout. The only problem with this story is that it seems to be completely made up.


The GOP plans to create a whole bunch of jobs by investigating Planned Parenthood for no good reason.


A local Los Angeles nutjub is dragged out of an Obama speech after shouting that the President is the antichrist. An LA County supervisor says the guy routinely shows up to county board meetings to make lunatic statements. "He talks about Jews in his diatribes and seems very anti-Semitic," says Michael Antonovich. "I don't have the impression he's dangerous, but he has issues that could use some help."


Turns out that cutting Keith Olbermann loose was about the worst thing MSNBC could've done, ratings wise.


The Tea Party specializes in solving problems that don't actually exist.


When the guys at the foundation dedicated to perpetuating the policies of Herbert Freakin' Hoover don't like your jobs plan, it's probably awesome.


The White House is extremely confident that the Affordable Care Act will survive a SCOTUS test.


Tea Party hero Rick Perry doesn't know what the original Tea Party was all about.


Finally, John Huntsman may be disqualified from an Oct. GOP debate due to low poll numbers.

Related articles

• Reblog: Heckler Shouts "Antichrist" At Obama (alan.com)
• Heckler Calls Obama 'The Antichrist': VIDEO (towleroad.com)
• Without Keith Olbermann, MSNBC on verge of falling behind CNN (dailykos.com)
• Morgan Freeman vs. Herman Cain: Is the Tea Party Racist? (usnews.com)

News Roundup for 9/21/11

Surprisingly, people like this got healthcare reform all wrong

-Headline of the Day-
"In U.S., Significantly Fewer 18- to 25-Year-Olds Uninsured."

Remember that whole healthcare socialism thing that was going to destroy America? Turns out it doing a really lousy job of destroying America. The National Center for Health Statistics reports that a million more people between ages of 18 and 26 are insured now, but they're the government so they probably lie.

Time to double check. Gallup called up about 90,000 people and found, sure enough, the numbers between 18 and 26 are on the rise. "The provision of the Affordable Care Act that allows children up to the age of 26 to remain on their parents' plans appears to be having an immediate effect on the number of Americans who report they have health insurance," they report. "Since it went into effect in September 2010, the percentage of 18- to 25-year-olds who report being uninsured has significantly declined by four percentage points."

So what's the rightwing, teabagger, super-uber-patriot response to this news?

Silence. See, when something proves them wrong, it's like it never even happened. (Gallup)


-How to get things done in Washington-
Turns out, it is possible.


Click to embiggen

Turns out the term "rarer than hens' teeth" is only a slight exaggeration. (Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal)


-Bonus HotD-
"Poll: Two-thirds of Americans want taxes raised on the rich."

If this is "class warfare," then one side is seriously outgunned. (Raw Story)