Why Are Insurers Reporting Lower MLRs Ahead Of The New Regulations?
Why Are Insurers Reporting Lower MLRs Ahead Of The New Regulations?
Reuters is reporting that shares of Aetna and Wellpoint “slid on Wednesday and weighed on industry peers despite the fact that both posted strong quarterly earnings and raised their 2010 forecasts.” “A main reason for the industry’s uncertainty about the impact of the U.S. healthcare overhaul is that rules determining how much the health insurers must spend on medical costs have yet to be determined. Those details are expected to be ironed out in the next couple of months.”
Wellpoint, the nation’s largest insurer by membership, “reported a 4% increase in profit for the second quarter that helped generate earnings of $1.6 billion since the beginning of the year – a 26% increase over the same period in 2009″ and Aetna said its “second-quarter profits rose 42 percent, with a net income of $491 million, compared with $346.6 million for the same quarter last year.”
Both companies also reported lower medical-loss-ratios, as enrollment numbers declined. Kaiser Health News has this breakdown:
For the quarter, Aetna’s combined medical-loss ratio for its commercial, Medicare and Medicaid businesses was 81.8 percent, compared with 86.8 percent in the same quarter last year. The ratio for its commercial business declined to 80.1 percent for the second quarter from 85.9 percent for the same quarter in 2009…[Wellpoint] said it spent 82.9 percent of customers’ premiums on medical care during the second quarter, down from 83.9 percent during the same quarter a year ago. For all of 2010, WellPoint now expects its so-called medical loss ratio to be 83.9 percent, down from its April forecast of 84.3 percent.
In other words, insurers earned more partly because they spent less on medical care and some Democrats in Congress are already arguing that these profits should preclude insurers from raising premiums next year. “Wellpoint and Aetna are on track for great years with multi-billion dollar profits. Now it’s time for them to return those windfalls to their enrollees in the form of reduced premiums. With business booming, there is no excuse for any premium hikes or benefit cuts next year by Wellpoint or Aetna in their private sector or Medicare Advantage plans,” Rep. Pete Stark (D-CA), Chairman of the Ways and Means Health Subcommittee said in a statement.
The MLR indicator is closely watched by Wall Street investors as a sign of insurer profitability and companies have spent years strictly defining “medical care” to ensure that the so-called “loss” to profit is not too great. But now that the health care law will require insurers to spend at least 80 percent of premiums on medical care, and 85 percent for large group plans, insurers are lobbying to expand the definition to include services they had previously classified as “administrative.”
It’s unclear why insurers’ medical loss ratios are decreasing just as the government is preparing to issue new, presumably more stringent regulations. Are beneficiaries spending less on health care during an economic downturn or are insurers dropping sicker patients, stashing cash away in reserves, and investing in other business activities? The lower the MLR rate today, the more insurers would have to spend on medical expenses to meet the new requirements (if they’re at 80% today, they’ll have to jump 5 percentage points to get to 85%, which is far more difficult than starting at 84% and moving just 1 point to the new requirement). But this lower starting point gives insurers the opportunity to whine about “unreasonable” government regulations and could even convince the Secretary to use her discretion to lower the target rates. If she doesn’t of course, it could all backfire.
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Could Afghanistan’s Local Police Forces Fuel Feudalism?
Could Afghanistan’s Local Police Forces Fuel Feudalism?
Our guest blogger is Farha Faisal, a national security intern at the Center for American Progress.
Last week, Afghan President Hamid Karzai agreed to implement coalition commander General David Petraeus’ new plan to develop local police forces as a “temporary solution” for securing remote areas against the Taliban. However, this poses serious concerns for long-term stability, peace, and reconciliation in Afghanistan. While the idea of “partnering with tribes” to protect neighborhoods (as advocated by Maj. Jim Gant) seems enticing given the slow-paced training efforts of the formal Afghan security forces, we must not forget recent history. Training local militias has been tried in the past in Afghanistan—and failed.
In the 1980s, Afghanistan’s communist government spent thousands of dollars on Russian-recruited local militias, since its own security forces were unable to suppress an Afghan uprising beginning in 1979. After the Soviet withdrawal, these militias grew into powerful private armies controlled by brutal warlords, who terrorized the population as they fought each other in a devastating civil war in the 1990s, until the Taliban seized power in 1996.
Our current efforts could produce a similar outcome. By multiplying arms in local communities, coalition forces may well promote, rather than quell, the conflict. U.S. military officials and the Karzai administration retain hopes that the incorporation of these forces under the Interior Ministry, as “government formed, government paid, and government uniformed” units, will prevent such disaster. Their hope is founded on Petraeus’ earlier success in implementing such militias in Iraq in 2006 by hiring large numbers of Sunnis as local protection fighters against the insurgency. This rosy picture of local security, however, has fundamental problems.
First, the use of such local police units has been tested in the past year in Afghanistan with the creation of the Afghan Public Protection Program (2008) and the Local Defense Initiative groups (2009), but they have not yielded promising results. The efforts stumbled upon several obstacles, including units demanding bribes and imposing taxes, as well as major vulnerability in the face of insurgent attacks. NATO even disbanded their local police programs due to legitimate concerns about sedition, which still remains a worry amongst Afghan officials and even Ambassador Eikenberry. They fear individuals who will change their allegiance to the Taliban.
Second, the ethnic and political make-up in Afghanistan is vastly different from that of Iraq—the “tribal” understandings of Afghanistan do not accurately depict the social landscape, in which there are numerous forms of social organization. Yet, such tribal assumptions could actually heighten ethnic cleavages, and possibly lead to civil war. This seems even more plausible with Karzai’s current reintegration efforts. By moving the Taliban, who are mostly Pashtun, back into the political process, this could easily anger other minorities -– the Uzbeks, Tajiks, and Hazaras — who could then mobilize their local police forces on ethnic lines.
The creation of these local police forces could present a serious issue for the central government over the long term. Such units could participate in the corruption and bribery that plagues the government structure. And the attention and resources directed at these units will inevitably undermine the training efforts of the Afghan National Security Forces, which is more integral to securing our long term security objectives in the country, particularly if we hold to Obama’s July 2011 call for initial withdrawal of combat forces. Afghans themselves have expressed concern over the use of local militia in recent polls. A BBC poll from December 2009 found that 68 percent were either “not very” or “not at all” confident in the ability of local militias to provide security in their neighborhoods, and a survey by the 2004 Afghan Human Rights Research and Advocacy Consortium found that 88 percent wanted to reduce the power of former warlords.
Regardless of the name, arming local groups in Afghanistan for short-term security is a risky bet. History illustrates the potential for powerbrokers to attract the unpredictable loyalty of local armed units. With the region’s stability and long-term U.S. security objectives at stake, failure could be costly.
Former STRATCOM Commanders Come Out In Support Of START – Debate Is All But Done
Former STRATCOM Commanders Come Out In Support Of START – Debate Is All But Done
The debate over the new START treaty is essentially over. Today all but one former commander of the US Strategic Command – the Generals and Admirals in charge of our nuclear weapons – came out in support of the New START treaty. In a letter these Generals write:
As former commanders of Strategic Air Command and U.S. Strategic Command, we collectively spent many years providing oversight, direction and maintenance of U.S. strategic nuclear forces and advising presidents from Ronald Reagan to George W. Bush on strategic nuclear policy. We are writing to express our support for ratification of the New START Treaty… We will understand Russian strategic forces much better with the treaty than would be the case without it.
The letter was signed by Generals Larry Welch, John Chain, Eugene Habiger, Bennie Davies, Lee Butler and Admirals Henry Chiles and James Ellis. We can now add them to the endless and constantly growing list of military leaders and former senior Republican officials and defense experts that support that treaty.
The debate over START has essentially reached its end. No matter what evidence is shown, the far-right consisting of Senators Jim DeMint and James Inhofe, as well as the Heritage Foundation, will oppose the treaty. After months of back and forth it is clear they do so not because of the specifics of the treaty, but because it is both a treaty and it is arms-control. They are extreme ideologues that oppose arms-control, want to build new nuclear weapons, and want to restart a new Cold War with Russia by developing and then targeting a mythical missile defense system specifically at Russia. While this is entirely nuts, their opposition is at least because they are ideologically and substantively opposed to the treaty.
But fortunately for America, they are also really in the minority. Besides DeMint and Inhofe, and perhaps a sign of declining influence, few Republicans in the Senate are publicly taking Heritage’s stance on the treaty.
In fact, having made little headway on the merits of the treaty, many Republicans, such as Senators Bob Bennett, Lamar Alexander, and Bob Corker, are now signaling that they may support the treaty. But of course there is a but – and that brings us to the leadership of the Senate GOP, specifically Senator Kyl. While Heritage at least openly oppose the treaty on ideological grounds, Senator Kyl has chosen to make this not about START but about shaking down the Administration to put even more funds into the nuclear weapons complex.
In other words, Kyl and the Senate GOP aren’t talking about the START treaty anymore – they know they have lost the factual debate – and they aren’t even really talking about how the Senate is “rushing” the treaty, since the debate is now going in repetitious circles – they are now talking about what they can extract from the Administration in exchange for passing the treaty. After all their complaints about backroom health care deals, they are now threatening to kill a treaty they now concede is vital to our nuclear security just for some more wasteful nuclear pork.
New Poll Finds Only 1-In-5 Californians Now Believe Proposition 8 Was A ‘Good Thing’ For The State
New Poll Finds Only 1-In-5 Californians Now Believe Proposition 8 Was A ‘Good Thing’ For The State
As Judge Vaughn Walker prepares to issue a verdict in Perry v. Schwarzenegger, the landmark case against California’s Proposition 8, a new poll released last week by Public Religion Research Institute finds that a significant percentage of Californians, including people of faith across the California religious landscape, “say they have become increasingly supportive of gay rights over the last five years”:
– Only one-in-five (22%) Californians believe the passage of Proposition 8 was a “good thing” for the state.
– One-in-four Californians report that their views on rights for gay and lesbian people has become more supportive over the last five years, compared to only 8% who say they have become more opposed.
– If another vote similar to Proposition 8 were held tomorrow, a majority (51%) say they would vote to allow gay and lesbian couples to marry, compared to 45% who say they would vote to keep same sex marriage illegal.
– An overwhelming majority of Californians say they favor laws that would protect gay and lesbian people from job discrimination and favor allowing gay and lesbian people to serve only in the military (75% and 69% respectively). A majority (56%) favors adoption rights for same-sex couples.
Interestingly, the poll also found that “although concerns about the impact of legalizing same-sex marriage on children figured prominently in arguments by Proposition 8 supporters during the 2008 campaigns, few Californians view this as a concern.” Sixty percent actually “disagree that children would be more likely to experiment with homosexuality if same-sex marriage were legal.”
Californians were also more willing to support marriage if reassured that “no church or congregation would be required to perform marriages for gay couples” and that the law “only provided for civil marriages like you get at city hall.” When these assurances were made, support for marriage increased by a 12 to 19 points. The poll also found a correlation between how Californians saw God and support for same-sex marriage. Californians who say they are extremely likely to identify with specific images of God as judge, father, or liberator are more likely than those who less strongly identify with these specific images of God to say they would vote to keep same-sex marriage illegal.” Similarly, Californians “who believe the Bible is a book written by men and is not the word of God” were more likely to support rights for gays and lesbians.
A Field Poll released a day before the Public Religion Research Institute survey also found that “if a vote was held on Proposition 8 now, 51 percent of all Californians would vote it down.”
AZ Law Enforcement Agencies ‘Supplement’ SB-1070 With Their Own Policies
AZ Law Enforcement Agencies ‘Supplement’ SB-1070 With Their Own Policies
When Arizona legislators enacted SB-1070, they argued that it would compel police to uniformly enforce immigration law, rather than relying on discretion or local community policing policies. However, the Arizona Republic reports that “there is anything but a uniform approach.” Although all Arizona officers have have reviewed a training video, according to a survey of local law enforcement agencies, many “have supplemented that training with their own policies.” The Arizona Republic summarizes the distinct approaches that five different law enforcement entities plan on taking if and when they are required to check immigration status:
• Arizona Department of Public Safety officers will work through the agency’s dispatch centers, which will determine whether officers should contact U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, U.S. Customs and Border Protection or federally trained local agents to verify the immigration status of a suspect.
• Flagstaff has instructed officers to enforce the statute as written, although Lt. Ken Koch said the statute isn’t entirely clear. “That statute is subject to interpretation,” he said. “It’s a very fluid and dynamic situation.”
• In Yuma County, where sheriff’s deputies patrol an area that includes a shared border with Mexico, deputies will continue to work with Border Patrol agents when there are questions about a suspect’s immigration status, sheriff’s Capt. Eben Bratcher said.
• Phoenix police officers will be required to contact federal authorities to verify the immigration status of everyone they arrest, regardless of whether the suspects have one of the “presumptive IDs” such as an Arizona driver’s license that the statewide training outlined.
• Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio’s department, the most fervent agency in the state when it comes to rooting out illegal immigrants, won’t be attempting to determine anyone’s immigration status unless deputies are taking that suspect into custody for another crime.
Reporter Jeffrey Kaye notes in the Huffington Post that the training process itself has been inconsistent across Arizona. “Some agencies require officers to attend sessions of three hours or more and distribute manuals; others simply oblige their officers to watch a 94-minute video,” writes Kaye. Meanwhile, the 287(g) program which was established by Congress and allows police to cooperate with federal immigration agents in enforcing immigration law provides a four-week training program. Despite the fact that 287(g) participating officers receive significantly more training than Arizona police will, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) inspector general released a stinging critique of the 287(g) program last year.
The Obama administration has argued that it is suing the state of Arizona in part because the U.S. cannot have a “patchwork” of immigration laws. The vague provisions of SB-1070 have only added to the confusion within the state of Arizona. The law requires police officers to verify the immigration status of individuals, when “practicable,” during a lawful lawful stop or detention if they establish “reasonable suspicion” that they are undocumented. However, SB-1070 doesn’t define “practicable” or “reasonable suspicion.” And though a federal judge enjoined several of the most problematic provisions of SB-1070, including the provision requiring police to check immigration status, Judge Susan Bolton still has to issue final rulings on the multiple lawsuits challenging the law. All of her decisions will likely be repealed all the way up to the Supreme Court, regardless of how she rules.
Recently Elected Dem Senators Want More ‘Passion,’ ‘Political Clarity,’ And ‘Fight’ For Green Economy
Recently Elected Dem Senators Want More ‘Passion,’ ‘Political Clarity,’ And ‘Fight’ For Green Economy
Democrats recently elected to the U.S. Senate have pressed their colleagues to ambitiously address climate and energy reform, and are frustrated by the lack of action. In a series of interviews with the Wonk Room at Netroots Nation, Sen. Ben Cardin (D-MD), Sen. Tom Udall (D-NM), Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-OR), and Sen. Al Franken (D-MN) described the challenges of confronting climate pollution in the sclerotic legislative body, brought to a practical standstill by minority obstruction. They each discussed how the “new class” of 22 Democratic senators elected in the 2006 and 2008 waves (with independent Bernie Sanders of Vermont) have pressed for greater “political clarity” on climate by “rattling all the cages” in the Senate, alongside senior leaders such as Sen. John Kerry (D-MA).
Questioned by the Wonk Room why Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) shied away from introducing a comprehensive climate bill for full Senate consideration as energy crises pile up during the hottest summer ever recorded, the senators noted the ability of Republicans to thwart the will of the majority through the abuse of parliamentary procedures. They recognized Reid’s decision to try for quick action with a limited package in what little time is left during this Congress. However, they relished the chance to debate the promise of a green economy before the November elections, seeing the issue as a political winner:
CARDIN: I think we need political clarity. I wasn’t so concerned about having a vote before August. But we needed the clarity of the bill.
FRANKEN: If you want to rev up people, and say Democrats believe in this — one of the gaps they’re talking about is the enthusiasm gap. So maybe, politically, that is the right way to go. I think that Harry tends to want to get half a loaf or a third of a loaf rather than no loaf at all. This bill could be considered a first step. A lot of that is strategic, in terms of positioning yourself for the election. I was sort of of the school that we should go for pricing carbon, and if we lose, we lose. But that’s not what we did.
UDALL: Our two classes — the class of 2006 and the class of 2008 — I think have a real passion for all of the things you talked about and a desire to do something. We’re rattling all the cages in the committees we’re on, doing the things that we can do. But there is kind of an institutional thing going on there that slows everything down. There’s no doubt about that.
MERKLEY: This generational factor is why, if we can create a course that at least puts us on the right track for the next six to eight years, we will have with each subsequent election more and more folks coming in — based on what I hear at the university level, and graduate school level, and based on the difference between our class and the several classes ahead of us — there is just a growing commitment and passion to fighting this fight on climate and energy.
Watch Udall, Merkley, and Franken discuss their efforts to bring new passion to the climate and energy fight:
The Democrats described by Sen. Cardin as the “new class” overwhelmingly support strong green economy legislation, unlike the older generation peppered with climate peacocks. In fact, according to Politico, every one of the 12 Democrats elected in 2008 would vote for cloture on comprehensive climate and energy reform. Of the ten Democrats elected in 2006, only Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-MO) and Sen. Jim Webb (D-VA) make polluter-friendly arguments against clean energy reform.
“This is going to be a generational battle,” Merkley explained. “We’re going to have keep working and pushing because even our most optimistic bill has fairly weak goals for 2020. We’re going to have to be a lot more aggressive between 2020 and 2050 if we’re going to address carbon dioxide.”
“We can’t give up,” Cardin said during his interview, “because the stakes are too high for our country.”
Republicans Go After Long-Term Care Insurance, Introduce Legislation To Repeal CLASS Act
Republicans Go After Long-Term Care Insurance, Introduce Legislation To Repeal CLASS Act
On Monday, Rep. Charles Boustany (R-LA) introduced a bill “that could block implementation” the health law’s long term care benefits program,” known as the CLASS Act. Boustany’s bill would require the government to shut down the long-term care insurance program “if government actuaries said the program was unsound.” It’s a radical solution to a very real concern that could probably be addressed with some smaller tweaks to the current law.
First, some background. CLASS is a voluntary, government long-term care insurance program that will provide medical and non-medical services like dressing, bathing, and using the bathroom to adults who become severely functionally impaired. Working adults who enroll in the program will be able to receive the benefit — approximately $50 a day — after paying into the program for five years.
Long-term care proponents contend that the current system of financing long-term care is unsustainable. Americans spend more than $200 billion a year on long term care services in nursing homes, at home, or in assisted living facilities. “Medicaid is now the largest single provider of long-term care costs — it spent more than $100 billion last year, over one-third of its budget” and “paid more than 40 percent of the nation’s total long-term care bill.” Families and senior citizens (and Medicare to a lesser extent) pick up the rest of the tab, often spending down to “$2,000 in financial assets” to qualify for Medicaid coverage. By mid-century, the Congressional Budget Office predicts that the nation will have to spend 16% of anticipated federal revenues on Medicaid to fund care for the baby-boom generation.
So the question becomes, how do we fix this system? How do we create a system that can both relieve the burden on families and relieve this burden on government? Republicans argue that the program will be overrun by sick people who desperately need long-term-care benefits, increase costs, and push out healthier enrollees. “Health economists call this an ‘adverse-selection death spiral,’ and it would likely end in program bankruptcy,” the Heritage Foundation’s Brian Riedl noted in yesterday’s Washington Times, predicting that the government would have to consistently bail out the program with taxpayer dollars “to keep premiums low and pay out all benefits.”
But rather than repealing the program, as Boustany suggests, Congress should address some of its shortfalls. Back in November, I spoke with Howard Gleckman, a resident fellow at the Urban Institute and author of “Caring For Our Parents.” He admitted that the current CLASS Program has its pitfalls and suggested several solutions to keeping it sustainable over the long term:
- Make the program mandatory: If you have a mandatory program, you accomplish two things. The first is you of course eliminate the adverse selection problem, because everyone is in the program, and the other thing is, you are able to push down rates to level where they are pretty easily affordable for most of the population.
- Include CLASS in employer cafeteria plans: The tax deduction is not so important, but including long-term insurance insurance with other benefits raises its profile.
- Provide HHS with more money to market CLASS: The law only allows 3 percent of premiums for all admin costs. That is not enough and, in the run-up to initial sales, there are no premiums.
- Redesign premiums: In CLASS, they are fixed at the age at which you first enroll. Unless all premiums are raised (because the program is deemed insolvent) you always pay the same premium. Instead, they could adjust premiums for inflation. This would allow premiums to start very low (especially for young workers) and rise with their incomes.
As Gleckman noted just yesterday, “Fiscal conservatives such as Capretta and Riedl ought to be looking for ways to improve CLASS, rather than demanding its repeal. The millions of Americans who will need personal assistance, their families, and taxpayers would all be better off for it.” Those principles should outweigh whatever pressure Republicans are receiving from the long-term-care insurance lobby — which sees CLASS as a competitor to their private insurance product. (When in reality it may compliment the existing market place in which private insurers will be able to market supplemental “Medigap”-like coverage to CLASS beneficiaries.)
REPORT: The Politician Behind The Campaign To Repeal California’s Clean Energy Law
REPORT: The Politician Behind The Campaign To Repeal California’s Clean Energy Law
This post is part of a Progressive Media blogging series on the fossil fuel-funded Prop 23 effort to repeal California’s clean energy climate law. Read Rebecca Lefton’s posts on Prop 23’s economic impact, national repercussions, and funding from Texas oil companies.
In the California legislature, the loudest voice to kill the landmark clean energy climate change law AB32 has become Assemblyman Dan Logue (R-Chico). Described by Sacramento insiders as a “backbencher,” Logue has built a powerful coalition of former tobacco lobbyists and Texan oil companies to orchestrate Prop 23, an initiative to essentially rescind AB 32. But who is Logue?
During an interview earlier this month in Yuba City, California, Logue told the Wonk Room that he thinks that “the issue of global warming is not solved,” referring to climate change as a “scam.” Calling his repeal effort an “epic battle,” Logue claimed that the pro-Prop 23 forces would raise up to $45-50 million:
Climate Change LOGUE: I think the issue of global warming is not solved. I do not think the science has been settled. [...] This is a scam.
How Much Will Prop 23 Raise? LOGUE: But no, it could be up to forty, fifty million a piece. I don’t know if it will get there, but it will be probably the most intense petition drive in the history of the state.
Impacting The National Debate LOGUE: I got a call from the Wall Street Journal, they said if you can stop AB 32 in California, you can save the country.
Wording Of Prop 23 WR: Do you think if it was a full scale repeal, the language would turn some people off?
LOGUE: It would be more difficult to pass.
Watch it:
Logue told us that the Wall Street Journal had encouraged him to push his AB 32 repeal initiative in order to derail national efforts to address climate change. Ironically, the Wonk Room ran into the Wall Street Journal’s John Fund a week after speaking to Logue. Fund told us that he thinks people who deny the existence of anthropogenic climate change are “troglodytes.”
Originally, the initiative to repeal AB 32 was pushed by Ted Costa, a veteran right-wing activist behind many conservative initiatives and head of the group People’s Advocate. In a separate interview, Costa told the Wonk Room that he met privately with Logue, who was “crying that he had a bill to repeal AB 32.” Logue’s bill, AB 118, died in committee, but Costa said he and Rep. Tom McClintock (R-CA) advised Logue to use an initiative to instead rescind California’s clean energy law using provisions concerning the unemployment rate.
To draft the initiative, Costa said he initially worked with California GOP and tobacco lawyer Tom Hiltachk to write the language. But after submitting Costa’s initiative, Hiltachk resubmitted the Prop 23 “California Jobs Initiative” using slightly altered provisions “to get better financial backing.” According to Costa, Hiltachk lied to him, secretly pushing him out so that the money raised for the proposition could be funneled back to Hiltachk and his friends in the “million-dollar consultant” world. Before long, Costa said he received a call from a “high powered lobbyist” to tell him he was out of the process.
Costa told the Wonk Room that he became disgusted when he kept hearing Logue and others involved gleefully discussing the potential of raising $50 million from oil companies and the Chamber of Commerce. Logue believes Costa has “sour grapes” because he did not win the contract to gather signatures. Costa, however, says Logue is “full of shit” and is afflicted with “politician’s disease” for pushing an initiative just to get rich.
Kyl-Approved Judge Susan Bolton Blocks Key Provisions Of Arizona Immigration Law
Kyl-Approved Judge Susan Bolton Blocks Key Provisions Of Arizona Immigration Law
This afternoon, in a long-awaited decision, federal district court judge Susan Bolton enjoined several major provisions of Arizona’s immigration law, SB-1070. While it was speculated that Bolton would block parts of SB-1070 relating to warrantless arrests and document requirements, the judge also ended up striking down the law’s most controversial and significant provision: the requirement that police check immigration status. Bolton blocked the following sections of SB-1070 arguing that “the United States is likely to succeed on the merits in showing that…[they] are preempted by federal law” and the “United States is likely to suffer irreparable harm” in the absence of an injunction:
Portion of Section 2 of S.B. 1070: Requires police to inquire about the immigration status of anyone they stop, detain, or arrest if they reasonably suspect the person is in the country illegally.
Section 3 of S.B. 1070: Criminalizes the the failure to apply for or carry immigration documents.
Portion of Section 5 of S.B. 1070: Criminalizes the solicitation, application for, or performance of work by an undocumented immigrant.
Section 6 of S.B. 1070: Authorizes the warrantless arrest of a person where there is probable cause to believe the person has committed a public offense that makes the person “removable.”
Bolton also echoed the criticisms made by SB-1070 opponents over the past few months, noting that “requiring Arizona law enforcement officials and agencies to determine the immigration status of every person who is arrested burdens lawfully-present aliens because their liberty will be restricted while their status is check.” She additionally found that the burdensome verification requirement “will divert resources from the federal government’s other responsibilities and priorities.” However, a few problematic sections remain including the one which allows Arizona residents to sue local police if they believe they are not enforcing what remains of SB-1070 and the creation of a separate crime for knowingly transporting an undocumented immigrant under any circumstance, even in an emergency.
Ironically, on the recommendation of Sen. Jon Kyl (R-AZ) — an ardent proponent of SB-1070 — Bolton was nominated to the United States District Court for the District of Arizona by President Bill Clinton back in 2000. During her confirmation hearing, Kyl stated:
Well, there is one person in our state who’s a real expert on this in the judiciary, and that’s Judge Bolton. And because of her expertise and fairness, all of the contending interests from Arizona have been willing to place their concerns before her to be resolved, and she is right in the middle of this important litigation right now. They will be very sorry to see her leave in Maricopa County Superior Court bench. So, I have some mixed emotions in helping to nominate or to confirm Judge Bolton, but that’s how highly thought of she is.
Prior to the announcement of her decision, Kyl speculated that “she will parse the law, that is to say she will perhaps extract certain portions of it that she think might be problematic and might enjoin those portions calling additional briefings from the parties.” Before learning of Bolton’s decision, Gov. Jan Brewer (R-AZ) stated, “I’m confident Arizona will prevail.” Bolton has been described by her peers as an “impeccable” and “fearless” judge whose rulings are “well-reasoned and unambiguous.”
Conrad: ‘I Don’t Think This Is The Moment’ To Allow The Bush Tax Cuts For The Wealthy To Expire
Conrad: ‘I Don’t Think This Is The Moment’ To Allow The Bush Tax Cuts For The Wealthy To Expire
Last week, Sen. Kent Conrad (D-ND), the chairman of the Senate Budget Committee, called for a temporary extension of all the Bush tax cuts, including those for the wealthiest two percent of Americans, which the Obama administration would like to see expire. Conrad even suggested waiving pay-go rules (which apply to those cuts for the richest two percent) in order to extend the cuts without paying for them.
Conrad quickly clarified that he wasn’t embracing the Republican approach, which is simply extending all of the tax cuts forever, calling that a “formula for the decline of the United States.” Today, Conrad appeared on CNBC to keep on trying to explain his position. “Can you clarify what’s more important to you: the revenue you would generate by letting them expuire on the wealthy or the damage that it would do to a nascent economic recovery if you raise taxes,” asked CNBC’s Joe Kernen. “What should we do?” Conrad replied that taxes need to eventually go up on the rich but “I don’t think this is the moment“:
We’ve got to be very careful with the timing of what we do. There’s no question in my mind that taxes have to go up on the wealthiest among us. The question is when. I don’t think this is the moment.
Watch it:
Conrad’s argument is understandable, and far better than the Republican position of passing deficit financed tax cuts in perpetuity, but it’s still misguided. While Conrad’s aim is to preserve the tax cuts in order to boost the economy, the Congressional Budget Office has found that, of the available tax and spending options, cutting income taxes in 2011 is the least stimulative of all. In fact, such a move generates just 10 to 40 cents in economic activity for every dollar spent. Cuts for high income households are even less effective, as “higher-income households…would probably save a larger fraction of their increase in after-tax income.”
Reducing income taxes also has, by far, the lowest effect on job creation. Other options like extending unemployment benefits, cutting payroll taxes, or investing in infrastructure all have considerably higher bang for the buck. Plus, as the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities pointed out, temporarily extending the tax cuts for the wealthy induces “a substantial risk that Congress would continue extending the tax cuts and even make them permanent, creating much larger deficits for years to come.
Indeed, as the Washington Post Editorial Board wrote, “a temporary extension of the upper-income tax cuts would be the worst of both worlds. In the short term, it would be ineffective as an economic stimulus. In the long term, it would add to the deficit.” A two year extension of the cuts for the rich would cost about $75 billion, with little in terms of economic activity to show for it.
Student Claims University Violated Religious Freedom By Asking Her To Set Aside Homophobic Views
Student Claims University Violated Religious Freedom By Asking Her To Set Aside Homophobic Views
A graduate student in Georgia is suing Augusta State University for threatening “to dismiss her from its counseling program when she refused to participate in a remediation plan to increase her tolerance” towards gays and lesbians. The student, Jennifer Keeton — who says that her views against homosexuality are motivated by her Christian beliefs — is charging that ASU violated her “constitutional rights of speech, belief, and religious exercise” by forcing her to participate in the course.
“While I want to stay in the school counseling program, I know that I can’t honestly complete the remediation plan knowing that I would have to alter my beliefs,” Keeton said. “I’m not willing to and I know I can’t change my Biblical views.” According to the lawsuit, Keeton had said both in class and in writing assignments that “she believes sexual behavior is the result of accountable personal choice” and “faculty have also received unsolicited reports from another student that [Miss Keeton] has relayed her interest in conversion therapy for GLBTQ populations.”
The Alliance Defense Fund, which is backing Keeton’s lawsuit, is claiming that the counseling department is “ruthlessly attempting to cleanse Christian belief from its students,” but during a segment this afternoon on CNN, Gregg Nevins of Lambda Legal explained that ASU had to ensure that Keeton met the state’s accreditation standards and was simply requiring her to set aside her personal religious beliefs in the interest of the client:
DAVID FRENCH (ALLIANCE DEFENSE FUND): You have a counseling department that is ruthlessly attempting to cleanse Christian belief from its students….This counseling department has imposed its values, violating its own code of ethics on these students, telling them they have to change their religious beliefs, that their religious beliefs are wrong.
GREG NEVINS (LAMBDA LEGAL): That’s ridiculous. Is there any evidence that Augusta State is it taking a different position towards an anti-gay person who is not basing it on their religious beliefs? Because that would be religious discrimination if she were being singled out, but somebody else said ‘I don’t want to deal with gay people because I think they’re awful and it has nothing to do with my religion’ that would be religious discrimination. [...] Even Augusta State is a public institution, they are trying to train people for professional accreditation. They have a responsibility and it’s been upheld by the courts including a case that you lost on Monday in Michigan that’s been held that they have a responsibility to train people properly to be good counselors.
Watch it:
Indeed, ADL lost a very similar case against Eastern Michigan University “where a graduate student said she was kicked out of a master’s program after refusing to counsel a homosexual client.” In that case, U.S. District Judge George Steeh ruled that, “Plaintiff was not required to change her views or religious beliefs; she was required to set them aside in the counselor-client relationship — a neutral, generally applicable expectation of all counselors-to-be under the ACA (American Counseling Association) standard.”
The university “had a right and duty to enforce compliance” with professional ethics rules barring counselors from being intolerant or engaging in discrimination, and no reasonable person could conclude that a counseling program’s requirement that students comply with such rules “conveys a message endorsing or disapproving of religion,” the judge wrote.
Newt Gingrich Plays Loose With The Facts To Bash Muslims
Newt Gingrich Plays Loose With The Facts To Bash Muslims
In anticipation of his big Dolchstoss speech tomorrow at the American Enterprise Institute — in which he will apparently make his case for a right-wing Christian foreign policy through references to the writings of a famous leftist and a famous atheist — Newt Gingrich has an item in Human Events indicating that the speech will also come with a huge helping of crude, irresponsible Muslim-bashing.
Newt’s basic argument is that Americans are so good and religiously tolerant that we just fail to see the imminent threat that “creeping sharia” — i.e. observant Muslims — represents to the American way of life. To illustrate this threat, Gingrich draws a few anecdotes from Andrew McCarthy’s recent book, The Grand Jihad. This alone should probably be enough to discredit Gingrich’s argument. But let’s take a look anyway at the “examples” Gingrich offers of how “the American government and major public institutions have been unwilling to assert the protections of American law and American values over sharia’s religious code.”
GINGRICH: In June 2009, a New Jersey state judge rejected an allegation that a Muslim man who punished his wife with pain for hours and then raped her repeatedly was guilty of criminal sexual assault, citing his religious beliefs as proof that he did not believe he was acting in a criminal matter. “This court believes that he was operating under his belief that it is, as the husband, his desire to have sex when and whether he wanted to, was something that was consistent with his practices and it was something that was not prohibited.“
Leaving aside the fact that husbands abusing and raping their wives is by no means a practice unique to any one religion, this was a pretty horrible decision by the court. Interestingly, an appellate court thought that too, and reversed the decision, something Gingrich notes. How this demonstrates the unwillingness of the American government and major public institutions to assert the protections of American law and American values over sharia’s religious code is unclear.
GINGRICH: In May 2008, a disabled student at a public college being assisted by a dog was threatened by Muslim members of the student body, who were reluctant to touch the animal by the prescription of sharia. The school, St. Cloud State, chose not to engage the Muslim community, but simply gave the student credit without actually fulfilling the class hours so as to avoid conflict.
Yes, school administrators responded in what appears to be an irresponsible fashion, taking the path of least resistance in order to “avoid conflict.” As those who’ve interacted with college administrations before know, this is something that only ever happens when Muslims are involved.
For some reason, however, Gingrich doesn’t mention that the Minnesota chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR-MN) came out in support of the student: “The moral and legal need to accommodate individuals using service dogs far outweighs the discomfort an individual Muslim might feel about coming into contact with a dog, which is one of God’s creatures,” said CAIR-MN Communications Director Valerie Shirley.”
Maybe Newt would interpret this as just more evidence of how stealthy those jihadists are. Because that’s how conspiracy theories work.
GINGRICH: In a similar instance in November 2000, a high school senior in Owatonna, Minn., was suspended in order to protect him from the threat of violence by radical Islamists when he wrote an essay about the special privileges afforded his Somali Muslim counterparts in the school environment.
A Minneapolis Star-Tribune article on the incident reported that Owatonna High School Principal Don Johnson “said the problems began when two white students wrote papers in recent weeks that were ‘inflammatory and very disrespectful.’ One student handed out copies of his paper to friends, while the other posted his on a class blog. Both were suspended from the school of 1,600 students — about 100 of whom are Somali.”
Another article in the Owatonna People’s Press describes the atmosphere of harassment faced by the school district’s Somali minority — unfortunate, but not unlike the tensions that new immigrants have faced throughout America’s history.
None of this, however, justifies the threat of violence by radical Islamists. But wait, according to the Owatonna People’s Press:
“No threats were made,” [Owatonna High School] Vice Principal Julie Sullivan said Wednesday about the Nov. 6th incident. Sullivan did say that she was approached that day by several Somali students who were upset about what the boy had written on the class blog.
As for the idea that these nonexistent threats came from “radical Islamists,” as best I can tell that’s something that McCarthy simply made up, and Gingrich credulously repeated. Needless to say, all of this doesn’t come close to demonstrating the threat of “creeping sharia” that Gingrich is peddling.
Gingrich obviously wants to be president very badly. But he really needs to think hard about the sort of rhetorical tactics he’s embracing, and the sort of sentiments he’s cultivating, and the sort of company he’s joining in order to achieve that.
GINGRICH: Last month, police in Dearborn, Mich., which has a large Muslim population, arrested Christian missionaries for handing out copies of the Gospel of St. John on charges of “disturbing the peace.” They were doing so on a public street outside an Arab festival in a way that is completely permissible by law, but, of course, forbidden by sharia’s rules on proselytizing. This is a clear case of freedom of speech and the exercise of religious freedom being sacrificed in deference to sharia’s intolerance against the preaching of religions other than Islam.
But, as Serwer notes, it wasn't Muslims who called the police:
Police said they received a complaint from a Christian volunteer working at the festival June 18 who said members of Acts 17 Apologetics were harassing patrons and a large crowd was gathering.The group's actions, police said, were a public safety issue because they caused a large number of people to gather in a small space. Police said members of the group were arrested for failing to obey commands of the police.
This is a clear case of Gingrich failing to verify the ravings of Muslim-bashers before cutting and pasting them into his own articles. We should watch and see if Gingrich still tries to peddle these stories as "evidence" in his big AEI speech tomorrow.
MSNBC Begs Deficit Fraud Shadegg To Name One Program He Would Cut, But He Can’t Deliver
MSNBC Begs Deficit Fraud Shadegg To Name One Program He Would Cut, But He Can’t Deliver
Monday night, Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) was pressed by Chris Matthews to identify what programs he would eliminate in order to address the deficit, and all Ryan could come up with was repealing the remaining stimulus and TARP funds. Ryan was unable to name a program that affects the long-term deficit, and by advocating for the elimination of the stimulus he was endorsing a tax increase on the middle class.
However, at least Ryan was able to positively identify something that he would cut. Today, Rep. John Shadegg (R-AZ) went on MSNBC and put on an even less impressive performance. Mike Barnacle begged Shadegg to identify just one specific program that he would axe, but Shadegg fell back on the conservative tactic of calling for an across the board cut on all programs:
BARNACLE: We have had an endless stream of members of Congress and the United States Senate on here over the past two or three years and whenever they are asked the question, ’specifically, what would you cut to trim spending in the federal government,’ everybody agrees it’s a huge problem, we have to soak our faces in cement here on the set to prevent ourselves from laughing out loud at the non-answers we get. So my question to you, long-winded question here, is, can you please, I’m begging you, give me just one program you’d cut? We’ll start with just one program you’d cut.
SHADEGG: Well, there are lots of programs I would cut. I would begin by an across the board cut on all spending because I think we need to spread this…I’d say five percent across the board tomorrow on every single program, including defense, then you’d begin the process in the right direction.
Watch it:
This is extremely lazy of Shadegg, and shows that he’s fundamentally disinterested in actually addressing the deficit. An across the board cut makes no attempt to prioritize between vital, necessary programs that people depend upon and unnecessary, wasteful spending. It simply takes the same chunk out of everything. Is Shadegg willing to cut veteran’s health care or Social Security benefits by five percent tomorrow? How about border enforcement, food stamps, homeland security, the FBI, or national park funding? The list goes on and on.
But it’s not that hard to come up with something in the federal budget that actually can be cut. Here are some suggestions: the second engine for the F-35 and the C-17 transport plane, both of which the Pentagon doesn’t want. How about the $45 billion in subsidies we give to Big Oil companies? There’s a tax subsidy for NASCAR track owners that can certainly go. Agriculture subsidies and subsidies for ethanol, which both benefit huge corporations, need to be cut. There are also a handful of Army Corps of Engineers projects that are environmentally and economically disastrous that can certainly come to an end.
At the same time, revenue needs to be responsibly raised by allowing the Bush tax cuts to expire, ending the preferential tax treatment that hedge fund managers receive, reinstating the estate tax, cracking down on offshore tax havens, and closing the S-corp tax loophole. But Shadegg isn’t interested in grappling with any of the realities of the budget, instead opting for a talking point that proves nothing besides his own lack of credibility on the issue.
States Work To Implement Health Reform Even If They Oppose It
States Work To Implement Health Reform Even If They Oppose It
Texas Governor Rick Perry (R)
In Austin, legislative hearings and agency planning sessions proceed despite Gov. Rick Perry’s vow to fight “on every front available” against a law that he characterizes as “socialism on American soil.” Bureaucrats apply for federal grants and collaborate with the Obama administration at the same time that Attorney General Greg Abbott strategizes to eviscerate the law in court.
“Sometimes it seems a little schizophrenic,” acknowledged State Representative John M. Zerwas, a Republican who favors the law’s repeal but also leads a House committee that seeks to maximize its benefits to Texas. “There are plenty of laws out there that I might not agree with. But if the law of the land says we have to do it, the last thing I want is for Texas to not be prepared or not put things in place to comply.” [...]
State agency leaders said politics had not interfered to date with that task, or with new requirements to create a health insurance exchange and oversee strict regulations on health insurers.
“I don’t have any sense that I’m being held back in any way,” said Billy Millwee, the state Medicaid director.
That view was echoed by Thomas M. Suehs, the commissioner of health and human services, who said the governor “expects me to implement the federal law in the most cost-effective, efficient manner.”
Reformers have long worried that the law’s state-based implementation structure would allow red states to sabotage reform, but Sack’s piece suggests that the anti-reform states can apparently walk and chew gum at the same time.
On some level, political leaders have to appreciate the additional federal dollars the law will bring to the state (even if most of it will only last a couple of years) and protect the state’s flexibility in implementing the measure. After all, any state resistance will invite federal interference. For instance, by opting out of the interim high-risk insurance pool, Texas has already forced the federal government to implement the measure and will trigger further federal action if it fails to establish the exchanges in 2014. As one Democratic State Representative put it, “[y]ou can’t run around saying the federal government wants to take over Texas, but then when we have an opportunity to do it ourselves leave it to the federal government.” This is true enough, but one can’t shake the notion that a “schizophrenic” government — one that opposes the law publicly but is also moving forward with implementation — is not the best system for adopting such complex reforms or policing and regulating the system.
The WonkLine: July 28, 2010
The WonkLine: July 28, 2010
Welcome to The WonkLine, a daily 9:30 a.m. roundup of the latest news about health care, the economy, national security, immigration and climate policy. This is what we’re reading. Tell us what you found in the comments section below. You can also follow The Wonk Room on Twitter.
Climate Change
An “oil platform hit by a tugboat is now spewing oil and natural gas” up to 100 feet into the air near a Louisiana marsh area about 35 miles south of New Orleans, and “state of emergency has been declared in southwest Michigan’s Kalamazoo County as more than 800,000 gallons of oil released into a creek began making its way downstream in the Kalamazoo River,” coating birds and fish.
” Muscovites on Wednesday coughed their way through the hottest days of weather on record,” and more than 30,000 emergency workers “braced for flood waters from two swollen rivers” near Wuhan, capital of central China’s Hubei Province.
American Petroleum Institute president Leo Gerard complained that Congress is passing new standards for well design “before they know the root cause of what happened in the Gulf of Mexico spill. This is the ultimate malpractice.”
Immigration
Statistics obtained by the Associated Press indicate officers from Maricopa County, AZ — home to controversial County Sheriff Joe Arpaio — helped deport 26,146 immigrants since 2007, about a quarter of the national total of 115,821.
Lawyers for the U.S. Justice Department oppose a request to merge their challenge to SB-1070 with a police officer’s lawsuit, arguing that the Department is challenging more sections of the law than the police officer and “that its contention that the law is trumped by federal law differs from the officer’s arguments.”
Yesterday, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) said “that while he remains committed to pursuing a comprehensive immigration reform bill, he may be forced to settle for a narrower measure” primarily focusing on the DREAM Act and immigrant farm workers.
Economy
In a new paper, economists Mark Zandi and Alan Blinder argue that empirical data proves the policies implemented by the Bush and Obama administrations in response to the economic crisis — including the stimulus, TARP, and the bank stress tests — averted a Depression.
18 states and the District of Columbia have been chosen as finalists in the second round of the Obama administration’s Race to the Top education program. Winners will be announced in late August or early September.
“Some of the economic consequences of the Gulf of Mexico oil spill may take years to identify, and BP’s compensation fund should be flexible enough to account for long-term losses,” a panel of experts from the Exxon Valdez spill said yesterday.
National Security
“The House on Tuesday approved and sent to President Obama an overdue measure to pay for combat operations in Afghanistan and Iraq,” although “102 Democrats joined 12 Republicans in opposing the measure, illustrating a growing rift in the party over the course of the war in Afghanistan.”
“International calls for direct Middle East peace talks mounted on Wednesday ahead of a key meeting of Arab ministers as the Palestinians stuck to their demand for guarantees on borders.”
“As the Senate Foreign Relations Committee gets ready to vote on President Obama’s nuclear arms reductions treaty, several Republican senators are now hinting that they will support the agreement and are working toward bipartisan ratification.”
Health Care
Rep. Charles Boustany (R-LA) introduced a bill Monday “that could block implementation of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA) long term care benefits program.”
Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX) has introduced a bill to repeal the Independent Payment Advisory Board (IPAB).
“The health effects of being overweight or obese are well documented. Extra pounds add extra risk for diabetes, heart disease and certain cancers, even among children. But new research also documents significant social and economic consequences of being overweight since high school.”
New Study Finds Low-Risk Prostate Cancer Patients Opt For Aggressive Treatments With Few Benefits
New Study Finds Low-Risk Prostate Cancer Patients Opt For Aggressive Treatments With Few Benefits
Late last year, when the Preventive Task Force advised primary care physicians against recommending mammograms to women under 40 years of age, I defended the ruling. While physicians should take every patient’s unique medical history into consideration, if the science shows that for the average woman the test only raises raises stress levels without improving health outcomes, then the guidelines should reflect this. No health care system can accommodate an environment in which doctors order CAT scans for simple headaches or complicated surgeries for problems that can be solved with a regimen of medication, particularly when those treatments often lead to more harm than good.
Yesterday, Emma Sandoe pointed to data which showed that Minnesotans have a higher than average rate of using MRIs for lower back pain, “despite professional guidelines advising doctors” to try other treatments first. Today, NPR’s Scott Hensley reported on a study which found that “most men with low-risk prostate cancer get aggressive treatment, even though the therapies carry big risks”:
Most of these men turned out to have low-risk, slow-growing cancers, yet the great majority of them got aggressive treatment anyway. The findings appear in the Archives of Internal Medicine.
The researchers say that many American men with prostate cancer aren’t likely to benefit from this aggressive treatment. Instead, their cancers could be monitored and many would never pose a threat.
An accompanying editorial calls the nation’s experience with the PSA test a “cautionary tale.” More bluntly, the authors of the commentary write, “Unfortunately, some 2 decades into the PSA era, the promise of early detection has been tarnished.”
Widespread PSA testing and early identification of prostate cancer have led to an epidemic. Aggressive treatment of the many low-risk cancers found is the bigger problem because men who probably won’t get many benefits can suffer life-changing side effects.
This is the kind of unnecessary and harmful overtreatment that the health care law (and Don Berwick) should discourage, despite the politics or optics of the debate. Congress may have overruled the Task Force’s mammogram decision in December and then promptly politicized Berwick’s views on care quality just last month, but any serious discussion about controlling health care costs is meaningless if it doesn’t develop techniques to discourage unnecessary and harmful treatments. Hopefully, Berwick will engage in this debate once he finally testifies before Congress.
FLASHBACK: Boehner Said That Wasteful Pentagon Spending ‘All Ought To Be Eliminated’
FLASHBACK: Boehner Said That Wasteful Pentagon Spending ‘All Ought To Be Eliminated’
Today, in an 11-5 vote, the House defense appropriations committee approved the purchase of a second engine for the F-35 jet fighter, despite the Pentagon explicitly saying that the engine is a big waste of money. In fact, Defense Secretary Robert Gates has called the second engine “costly and unnecessary,” and has repeatedly recommended that President Obama veto the 2011 defense spending bill if it ultimately contains the funding. U.S. Air Force Secretary Michael Donley has referred to the engine as “another rock” on top of the F-35 program.
Making matters worse, Congress’ insistence on funding the wasteful program comes at the same time that deficit hysteria is preventing any and all measures to combat the Great Recession from easily moving on Capitol Hill. And one of the loudest voices fearmongering about further spending is House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-OH). “Republicans are offering better solutions to cut spending now and provide the fiscal discipline economists say is needed to put people back to work,” Boehner has claimed.
But when the opportunity to discard a program that the Pentagon has said isn’t worth it comes along, where is Boehner?:
The engine’s supporters, who include the House Republican leader, John A. Boehner of Ohio, contend that competition could produce better engines and reduce the risks of problems with the Joint Strike Fighter, or F-35, a single-engine jet that represents the Pentagon’s largest weapons program.
And Boehner’s insistence on perpetuating the wasteful program stands in stark contrast to his proclamation earlier this year that all wasteful Pentagon spending “ought to be eliminated”:
I don’t think any agency of the federal government should be exempt from rooting out wasteful spending or unnecessary spending. And I, frankly, I would agree with it at the Pentagon. There’s got to be wasteful spending there, unnecessary spending there. It all ought to be eliminated.
Regarding Boehner’s argument that competition will produce better engines, Pentagon officials have responded “while competition would be nice, the alternative engine program does not guarantee sufficient benefits to risk additional cost hikes or developmental problems.” But Boehner’s love for the F-35 second engine is almost certainly due to the fact that it brings jobs to Ohio. General Electric — which produces the engine — has a plant right outside of Boehner’s home district.
Boehner’s position on the second engine makes him — like many in the GOP — a deficit peacock, willing to use the deficit to score political points but not willing to make the necessary choices to eliminate it. As House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer said, “any conversation about the deficit that leaves out defense spending is seriously flawed before it begins…I fear that if we can’t decide what we can afford to do without today, we’ll be forced to make much more draconian cuts in the years to come.”
Do The 10% Of Servicemembers Who Have Responded To The DADT Survey Represent A Statistically Significant Sampling?
Do The 10% Of Servicemembers Who Have Responded To The DADT Survey Represent A Statistically Significant Sampling?
Lez Get Real is reporting that of the “40,000 of the surveys that the Pentagon sent out to servicemembers have been completed since they were emailed out on 7 July to a mixture of active duty and reserve personnel.” “That is roughly ten percent of the 400,000 that they sent out, and Department of Defense officials need to hear from the rest regarding the repeal of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell“:
The 200,000 active duty, and like number of Guard and Reserve, personnel have until 15 August to return the completed survey. The participants were selected randomly. Admiral Michael Mullen, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said that the Defense Department needs objective information and that the survey is the only way to get that. He emphasized that no one is drawing conclusions about the survey until it is finished. Admiral Mullen stated “To reach out at this point and try to predict either what they might say or what the results might say, I just think it’s too early with respect to that.” Unfortunately for Admiral Mullen, the survey may not bring in a large number of recipients due to a number of problems associated with online surveys. The number of turn ins have probably not been helped by the negative publicity that has surrounded the survey.
I wasn’t sure what to make of this news and unsure if the 40,000 surveys are a statistically significant amount from which the military can then extrapolate and reach some conclusions. Ryan McNeely tells me that it depends if the 40,000 represent a cross section of the 400,000 servicemembers or if those people were more likely to respond for some other unrelated reason. Without knowing that, it’s difficult to say if the results are representative of the force as a whole.
The point is that the servicemembers have until August 15th to fill out the survey and the Pentagon is encouraging them to do just that. The Defense Department disputes the 10% figure and says that the survey had to overcome several technical issues which has now resulted in an uptick of responses. They’re not putting out a specific number about what they expect the take-up to be or what they’ll consider “statistically significant,” but given that Secretary of Defense Robert Gates personally doubled the sample size, they seem intent on at least giving everyone the opportunity to weigh in on this, even if they won’t. And that’s of course precisely the problem with this kind of open-ended questionnaire: the only people who write back are those with the most extreme views and you end up knowing nothing about what the so-called “moderate middle” thinks. So who those 40,000 people are and how much weight the Pentagon lends to their opinions are all very significant.
Single Stimulus Program That GOP Wanted To Eliminate Has Created Hundreds Of Thousands Of Jobs
Single Stimulus Program That GOP Wanted To Eliminate Has Created Hundreds Of Thousands Of Jobs
Rep. Tom Price (R-GA)
The very first YouCut “winner” was the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families Emergency Contingency Fund (TANF ECF), which was created as part of the stimulus package. Here’s what some key GOP lawmakers had to say about the program at the time:
REP. TOM PRICE (R-GA): I’m so pleased to announce that the first program that got over 275,000 votes to cut, to do away with, is a crazy one that actually incentivizes people not to work. That’s right!
REP. ERIC CANTOR (R-VA): Not only is the new program unaffordable and duplicative, it undercuts welfare reforms made in the mid-1990s that saved taxpayers billions of dollars.
Of course, the GOP’s claims about the program had little basis in reality, as the TANF ECF is actually a successful jobs program that helps needy families and subsidizes job creation, including placing young Americans in summer jobs. And, as it turns out, the program has created hundreds of thousands of jobs across the country. In fact, it is on pace to help 240,000 unemployed individuals find jobs by the end of September.
Price’s Georgia has actually been one of the biggest beneficiaries of the program, with 20,000 jobs created in the state. Only four states — Texas, California, Illinois, and Pennsylvania — owe more jobs to the program.
“States are using funds from the TANF Emergency Fund to provide jobs to individuals least likely to find employment on their own: TANF recipients, the long-term unemployed, and low-income youth. These also are the individuals who are most likely to spend virtually all of the money they earn, thus making this an effective mechanism to stimulate the local economy,” wrote LaDonna Pavetti of the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. Yet, the House GOP feels that this program is the epitome of government waste and needs to be tossed by the wayside.
Unfortunately, the TANF ECF is running low on funds and will expire at the end of September if Congress doesn’t reauthorize it. Already, the Senate has voted down a reauthorization once. But in the states where it is helping, the program has significant Republican support. Georgia State Senator Renee Unterman (R) said that “it is imperative to maintain the capacity of the TANF ECF program to improve the lives of those hardest hit by the current economic conditions.”
Marriage Rates Are Up And Divorces Are Down In The Freedom To Marry State Of Iowa
Marriage Rates Are Up And Divorces Are Down In The Freedom To Marry State Of Iowa
In April 2009, the Iowa Supreme Court legalized same-sex marriages over the objections of conservative activists, who predicted that gay people would undermine the institution. Now, one year later, preliminary data from the Iowa Department of Public Health finds that marriage rates are up and divorces are down:
- Iowa posted the lowest number of divorces since 1970.
- 21,139 marriages occurred in Iowa last year – the most since 2000 and the first increase since 2005. The 1,573 jump in marriages over 2008 included the first-ever same-gender unions.
- 2,020 same-sex couples – 728 male partners and 1,292 female partners — were married during that time span while 16,869 opposite-gender marriages were recorded.
It’s unclear to what extent same-sex unions are responsible for the spike — the economic downturn also contributed to the statistical change — but what is certain is that the doomsday predictions of extending marriage to same-sex couples are as unfounded in Iowa as they are in Massachusetts. Change.org’s Michael Jones points out that Massachusetts — which extended marriage to same-sex couples in 2004– recorded the “the lowest divorce rates in the entire country.” “In fact, divorce numbers were so low in the Bay State last year, they rivaled statistics stemming all the way back to World War II.”
Allowing gay people to marry will certainly lead to more marriages, but I suspect that the future of the institution is shaped by far more complicated economic and social factors. If the family values groups are so convinced that marriage is the most effective social arrangement for children and adults, they should probably spend most of their time dealing with those factors rather than trying to prevent people from entering into the institution. But then again, that kind of work would create far less sensationalism, fear, or donor dollars.
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