Trump budget cuts meals on wheels to fund defense contractors

"The preliminary outline for President Donald Trump's 2018 budget could slash some funding for a program that provides meals for older, impoverished Americans.

The budget blueprint suggests cutting funds for the Department of Housing and Urban Development by about $6.2 billion, a 13.2% decrease from its 2017 funding level.

Here's what Trump wants cut

Almost half of those savings will come by eliminating the $3 billion Community Development Block Grant program, which provides money for a variety of community development and anti-poverty programs, including Meals on Wheels."

Mick Mulvaney defends meals on wheels cuts

"At a news conference Thursday, Mick Mulvaney, President Trump’s budget chief, defended proposed cuts to the Meals on Wheels program, which provides food aid to needy senior citizens, by saying the program is one of many that is “just not showing any results.”



https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2017/03/16/trump-budget-chief-says-meals-on-wheels-is-not-showing-any-results-hes-wrong/?utm_term=.076df1fe6814

Jaws Drop As Trump WH Claims Starving Seniors By Killing Meals On Wheels Is Compassionate

Trump Budget Director Mick Mulvaney told reporters today that eliminating food for senior citizens via the Meals On Wheels program was the compassionate thing to do because if a program can't demonstrate results, it should get cut. 

By Jason Easley



When Mulvaney was asked about the elimination of funding for Meals On Wheels, he answered, “I think you know that Meals On Wheels is not a federal program. It’s part of that Community Development Block Grants (CDBG) that we give to the states, and then many states make the decision to use that money on Meals On Wheels. What I can tell you about CDBG's is that’s what we fund. Right? So we spend $150 billion on those programs since the 1970's. The CDBGs have been identified as programs since I think the second Bush administration as ones that we just not showing any results. We can’t do that anymore. We can’t spend money on programs just because they sound good. Meals On Wheels sounds great. Again, that’s a state decision to fund that particular portion, but to take the federal money and to give that to the states, and say look we want to give you federal money for programs that don’t work. I can’t defend that anymore.”

Later Mulvaney was asked if this is a hard-hearted budget. He answered, “I don’t think so. In fact, I think it is one of the most compassionate things we can do to. You’re only focusing on half of the equation. Right? You’re focusing on recipients of the money. We’re trying to focus on both the recipients and the folks who give us the money in the first place, and I think it’s fairly compassionate to go to them and say look, we’re not going to ask you for your hard earned money anymore.”

In other words, screw the starving elderly and the kids who are going to go without afterschool programs, people like Donald Trump aren’t giving you their “hard earned” money anymore.

Meals on Wheels helps 2.4 million seniors have access to food while being able to stay in their own homes. The results for the program can be seen in both nutritional terms and increased independence for millions of Americans. Meals on Wheels saves taxpayers $34 billion a year in healthcare costs.

This is a vital program for America’s communities, and anyone who claims otherwise is not telling the truth. The selfish argument about taxpayers isn’t going to fly in this case.

The Trump administration has gone from being out of touch with America to trying to starve Americans.

'I Might As Well Have Not Voted': Details Of GOP Health Plan Leave Trump Voter Appalled

By Brad Reed

Donald Trump this week signaled his support for the House Republicans’ new health care bill — but it looks like that legislation is going over like a lead balloon with his base.

Not only are the Trump diehards at Breitbart News bashing the plan as “Obamacare 2.0,” but even some casual voters are worried about the president’s plan.

ABC News this week talked with North Carolina resident Martha Brawley, a 55 year old woman who cast a ballot for the first time in her life for Donald Trump. Brawley says that she voted for the president on the hopes that he could bring down the cost of health care — but she’s been appalled so far by what she’s seen from the Republican Congress.

“I voted for Trump hoping that he would change the insurance so I could get good health care,” she told ABC News. “I might as well have not voted.”

Brawley was particularly upset when she learned that, under Trumpcare, she would receive a paltry $3,500 tax credit to buy insurance. At the moment, she gets a federal subsidy of around $8,688 to buy insurance from Obamacare.

“All these people who talk in politics have insurance,” she told ABC News. “People like me don’t.”

One Brief Example Of The Insane Hypocrisy Of The GOP On The Health Care Bill

Posted by Rude One

It's really one of the weirdest things in the American Health Care Act, the bullshit bill that bullshit Republicans rolled out so their bullshit president could declare that he was St. Donald fighting the Affordable Care Act dragon. From pages 10-16, the bill's authors lay out the conditions by which MegaMillions and Powerball and other winners would have to pay for their own damn health insurance. That new part takes up a tenth of the length of the entire 66 page bill that escaped Mario Kart character Sean Spicer jigged around and pointed at for its brevity, contrasting it with the monstrously huge stack of pages that make up Obamacare (yeah, the black guy's was bigger and you could do more with it).

And the lottery section is just bizarrely precise in talking about the conditions when a lottery winner wouldn't be able to get Medicaid: "a State shall, in determining such eligibility, include such winnings or income (as applicable) as income received— (I) in the month in which such winnings or income (as applicable) is received if the amount of such winnings or income is less than $80,000; (II) over a period of 2 months if the amount of such winnings or income (as applicable) is greater than or equal to $80,000 but less than $90,000; (III) over a period of 3 months if the amount of such winnings or income (as applicable) is greater than or equal to $90,000 but..." You get the idea.

Obsessively detailed, no?

This is easy to mock in a "God, how fucking dumb are they?" kind of way. Except, instead, looking at why this language is in the bill reveals something just a little more sinister about the hypocrisy under which the GOP is operating to commit this health care fuckery.

One of the reasons that Republicans are desperately trying to cram the bill through like a limp cock on an unlubed asshole is because the Congressional Budget Office hasn't finished its scoring of the bill to see what its effects might be. When the CBO is done, it will likely reveal that the AHCA is, as previously mentioned, a bullshit bill that will cost a ton of money and kick millions of people off health insurance. Republicans in the House, at least, are trying to maintain the illusion that they're not just complete twat mites who want to straight up murder people to give the wealthy a tax cut, but, yeah, that's pretty much what's going on.

A cynical reader might be thinking, "Well, sure, everyone loves the CBO when it gives them the numbers they want. What's the big deal?" But that's not quite cynical enough.

See, the lottery exclusion up there was actually first brought up in 2016 because, apparently, there are enough winners to make a big damn difference: "Using the typical per capita cost for Medicaid adults, this provision would reduce direct spending by $475 million over the 2016-2026 period." You know who came up with that nearly half-billion dollars in savings because of a seemingly odd provision? The Congressional Budget Office.

That's the depth of hypocrisy occurring here. The Republicans need the CBO's figures to write their goddamn bill, but they are running scared from the CBO when it comes to the final bill's effects on Americans. That's the incredible dickishness involved here.

Paul Ryan: "Did You Know Insurance Works Like Insurance?"

Posted by Rude One

Blithering ass pimple Paul Ryan, a man who looks like he's perpetually contemplating how he can get away with getting fucked by a horse dick, said one of the stupidest things anyone in politics has said recently, and that's even counting every word out of Donald Trump's dumb, leathery, old man mouth.

Using the filmstrip of the damned that is PowerPoint, Ryan attempted to explain what is so bad about the Affordable Care Act's insurance mandate, and, in doing so, demonstrated that you can make anything seem sinister with a colorful pie chart.

"The fatal conceit of Obamacare is that we’re just gonna make everybody buy our health insurance at the federal government level. Young and healthy people are going to go into the market and pay for the older, sicker people. So the young, healthy person’s going to be made to buy healthcare, and they’re gonna pay for the person, you know, who gets breast cancer in her 40's, or gets heart disease in his 50's," Ryan said.

You following that so far? Now let's have some motherfuckin' pie: "So take a look at this chart. The red slice here are what I would call people with pre-existing conditions, people who have real healthcare problems. The blue is the rest of the people in the individual market, that’s the market where people don’t get health insurance with their jobs, or they buy it themselves. [For the record, the blue is about 80% of the pie] The whole idea of Obamacare is the people in the blue side pay for the people on the red side. The people who are healthy pay for the people who are sick. It’s not working, and that’s why it’s in a death spiral."

In other words, the insurance works, well, just like fuckin' insurance works. Exactly like insurance works. Every kind of insurance. Your car insurance? Homeowner's? Yep. But, hell, let's put insurance aside for a moment.

By Ryan's reasoning, there is no reason for there even to be a society, let alone a government. Some of you don't have children and you pay property taxes, which, in most states, goes to fund schools, which you don't use because, hey, you don't have any fuckin' children.

Jesus fuckballs, this is even more of a scam than health insurance because there's a good chance you're gonna go to a doctor some day. If you never have kids, you never take advantage of the school system. Why the fuck should you have to pay for it?

You know why we pay for schools for other people's kids? Because that's what the fuck you do or your entire society turns to shit (unless we start sending kids back to work all those coal mine jobs that Trump has promised). And that's why you pay for other people's health care. Because if you don't, you will end up paying, through emergency room visits, lost productivity, and more.

My insurance that I've paid during this relatively healthy time of my life is a hedge against the time when I get cancer from the soon-to-be poisoned water or have a heart attack from watching cock knobs like Ryan attempt to explain why the basic model for the existence of insurance is wrong. I'm not gonna forego insurance because I'm paying for someone's chemo now. What a fuckin' tool I'd be.

And, look, we shouldn't even be talking about fuckin' health insurance. We should be talking about a national health care system that eliminates the profiteering corporations. But we're Americans, and, goddammit, we want people to suffer because we think it's better that people have a fantasy idea of "freedom." Motherfucker, we have jobs and shit to do. And Ryan wants you to take the time to figure out how to get the best price on that stent surgery that you need. That's not freedom. That's fucking with people's lives and making them believe they are free when they are just slaves in your chains of market forces.

Towards the end of his TED-talk from hell, Ryan gave away the game, the real reason why the House GOP is attempting this nonsense: "We, as Republicans, have been waiting seven years to do this. We, as Republicans, who fought the creation of this law and accurately predicted that it would not work, ran for office in 2010, in 2012, in 2014 and in 2016 on a promise that we would -- if given the ability, we would repeal and replace this law. How many people running for Congress and the Senate did you hear say that? How many times did you hear President Donald Trump, when he was candidate Donald Trump, say that? This is the closest we will ever get to repealing and replacing Obamacare. The time is here. The time is now. This is the moment. And this is the closest this will ever happen."

We're all just victims of a tautology that has ensnared the GOP. They swore up and down that they would repeal the Affordable Care Act, and now that they can repeal the ACA, they have to repeal the ACA because they said they would repeal the ACA and now they can repeal...

Except they can't unless they get a critical number of Americans to think, "Wait, I shouldn't pay for shit I'm not using right this second," which, sadly, is probably a convincing argument to the selfish pricks who voted for these assholes like Ryan.

(By the way, the ACA isn't in a "death spiral." Premiums have gone up for just 3% of all Americans with health insurance. That's what we're arguing about here. It's all a fucking game.)

Welcome to Trumpcare™

Republicans Could Be Heroes On Obamacare (And Liberals Should Let Them)

Posted by Rude One

Let me be honest: I'd rather have my prostate checked by Wolverine on a vengeance rampage than help an elected Republican in Congress. But if you are one, chances are you're either facing crowds of angry constituents (and, really, and, c'mon, you can lie to your Twitter followers all you want, but it's mostly your constituents who are showing up) at town hall meetings where they force you to defend the idiot president and your own campaign promises, the ones that really promise to hurt them or their familes, or you're cowering like a beaten puppy in a corner of your local office, avoiding anyone who might tell you to your face what you know is true: "You're full of shit."

Face it, GOP scum. Now that the black guy and that Clinton woman are out of the way as a lightning rod for all the misdirected hatred you could foster, you have nothing between you and the voters. There is no buffer. And anything you do is something you own. Yeah, motherfuckers, acting is a whole lot harder than obstructing. It's a lot easier to talk about killing something than to actually drown the cat or bludgeon the milk man.

But when it comes to the Affordable Care Act, you have painted yourself into a corner and then placed landmines all around the floor. For seven years, it's been a constant chant of "repeal," followed by "repeal and replace," which was already a retreat, an admission that you needed to do something about the uninsured in the United States, that the government had to be involved to some degree, even if it was just with bullshit tax credits.

Now, since the election and certainly in the town halls, what you're hearing, Sen. Tom Cotton of Arkansas, Rep. Jason "Little Rat-Faced Bitch" Chaffetz of Utah, Rep. Diane Black of Tennessee, and so many more, is that the ACA or, you know, Obamacare, is doing what it was supposed to do: give people who previously didn't have access to health insurance a chance to go to the doctor and get treatment without having to choose between medicine or food. People who previously didn't have that access, those who got policies through the exchanges and through expanded Medicaid, have learned that they like being treated like human beings whose lives have worth.

And when you, the GOP Congress men and women, tell them that you are gonna come up with a plan that'll be even better, that you can't give your constituents all the details because it's "still being worked out" or some such shit, that someone's cancer treatment might be interrupted while you attempt to figure out what "replace" is supposed to mean, that to get cancer treatment under the Affordable Care Act is to not want "freedom" or have "individual responsibility," as Vice President Mike Pence alluded to in a tweet, then you are telling those voters that they do not deserve to be treated like human beings. You're saying, senators and representatives, that their cancer treatments and medicine and other health care, their lives, aren't worth the effort to save.

So, yeah, they're pretty fuckin' angry. You've lost on this issue. You can be jerks about it and dick people over. Or you can admit you lost.

Here's the deal, though. I've got a solution. It's so easy that you will come out of the whole thing looking like the most democracy-loving motherfuckers in history, like goddamned heroes. Listen. No, shut the fuck up, GOP assholes, and listen:

You tell the voters that you heard them. Tell your constituents that you understand how important the Affordable Care Act has been. And tell them that because they have spoken so passionately and made so much sense that you are now going to listen to them. You can make a big fuckin' show about it. "Republicans want to take care of all Americans," you can say. Hell, you can even remind us all about how the ACA was a Republican idea to begin with (which, let's be honest, is the reason you can't come up with a replacement).

You don't have to admit error. You can say that you "evolved," which seems to be the term now for "Boy, I was a fucking prick about that. Sorry." And then you can say that instead of "repeal and replace," you're going to "reform and repair" Obamacare.

And you can essentially do nothing. No, really. You can do absolutely nothing except for a few tweaks that it needs to help out the marketplace in some states. Then you can say, "See? We fixed it. Republicans fix things." Hell, Democrats might go along with it, and you can claim a bipartisan victory, that phantom of something that we used to think was important. Your idiot president can make one of his barely coherent speeches about how he fixed the ACA and now it's "Trumpcare."

Now, sure, sure, you're wondering, "Won't people think we're liars and hypocrites?" To which I can only say, "What the fuck do you think people think you are now, GOP?" But, to put it another way, right now, Republican voters are fucking nuts. They honestly believes that millions of people voted illegally. They really think that Donald Trump is doing a good job. A good many of them are convinced that kids are being raped in the basement of a DC pizzeria because "cheese." You just say that this was what you wanted all along. You wanted to hear from your constituents and you listened. And if Trump tweets that out, you're golden. The stupidity of your voters will be your cover.

As for us liberals, we'll gnash our teeth. But, ultimately, we're liberals. We want people to have access to health care. Democratic members of Congress and candidates will likely campaign on, "Oh, c'mon, we were right all along." As well they should. And maybe they'll win with that. However, GOP, you will definitely be losing a lot of races if you take away Daddy's heart surgery and Mommy's chemo.

Oh, dear, sweet, terrible GOP, you have lost Obamacare as an issue. Because Obamacare without "Obama" is just "care," and do you want to be the party that takes that away from millions of Americans?

(Note: Yeah, they probably do.)

GOP Rep tries the "death panel" line at town hall

Rep. Gus Bilirakis (R) fields questions at a healthcare reform listening session in New Port Richey, Florida. The false claim of 'death panels' in the ACA was PolitiFact's "Lie of the Year" in 2009.



"..The point is that we are all capable of believing things which we know to be untrue, and then, when we are finally proved wrong, impudently twisting the facts so as to show that we were right. Intellectually, it is possible to carry on this process for an indefinite time: the only check on it is that sooner or later a false belief bumps up against solid reality, usually on a battlefield."

George Orwell

Revealing Video Proves Why Democrats Are Full Of Shit

Single payer healthcare has been on the tongues of Democratic politicians for decades, including Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton. They've never delivered.

Jimmy Dore breaks it down.

Paul Ryan Promises 'Unified Republican Government' Will Destroy America in 2017

Take away healthcare because it's hurting you. Take away corporate taxes (and raise yours). Take away regulations that protect you from clean air, water, and food.

By Hrafnkell Haraldsson


Paul Ryan promises, “In 2017, we’ll deliver results.” The results, unfortunately, if Republicans can be bothered to do anything at all, will be uniformly bad for Americans.

We’ve heard this song and dance before. The changes are being billed as an improvement, a “better way” and they even have a fancy new website full of lies to back it up. But the Republican-controlled House of Representatives has never been about anything but empty talk while they do literally nothing, at best, solutions in search of problems.

The real actions Ryan plans to take are attacks on the American people on behalf of big corporations.

“Relief from Obamacare—this law is hurting families and it’s only going to get worse. Relief from this broken tax code that is costing us jobs, competitiveness, and growth. Relief from overreach and needless regulations that are crushing livelihoods and industries across this country.”

In other words, Take away healthcare because it’s hurting you. Take away corporate taxes (and raise yours). Take away regulations that protect you from clean air, water, and food. Livelihoods aren’t being hurt – yet. But they will be if Ryan gets his way.



“At the start of this year, we as House Republicans made a number of commitments to the American people.

“First, we pledged to open up the process—to find common ground for the good of the country. If you look at how we are wrapping up our work for the end of the year here, we’ve done just that: 21st Century Cures. The National Defense Authorization Bill. The water resources bill.

“These initiatives all went through the committees. They are all bipartisan. And they are all House-Senate agreements.

“That is how we should do things here. It’s important, because that’s exactly how things should work.

“The most overarching thing we set out to do—going all the way back to our retreat in Baltimore almost a year ago—was that we would raise our gaze. We would go from being seen as simply being an opposition party to being a proposition party. And with 7 out of 10 Americans unhappy with the direction our country is headed, we felt we had a duty—a moral obligation—to offer our fellow citizens a better way forward. And that’s exactly what we did.

“We did not just check the box to win an election, or we didn’t do this so I could just [promote] a website—better.gop—a thousand times with you. The idea was, if we actually won the election by campaigning on solutions and ideas, we would be ready to govern.

“And here we are. We are ready to hit the ground running, and we need to hit the ground running. We gave the people a very clear choice, and now the people have given us very clear instructions: deliver results and deliver relief.

“Relief from Obamacare—this law is hurting families and it’s only going to get worse. Relief from this broken tax code that is costing us jobs, competitiveness, and growth. Relief from overreach and needless regulations that are crushing livelihoods and industries across this country.

“That is what a unified Republican government will be about. It will be about helping our people reach their potential, and making America great again.

“So 2016 was about raising our gaze. 2017 is going to be about doing big things for our country.”

The words “unified Republican government” ought to throw fear into the hearts of every American. The Republican plan for 2017 is a disaster. The Republican plan is a mockery.

The real burden, from Ryan’s perspective, is that placed by government on corporations to prevent them from poisoning and killing us all in search of a profit.

Sarah Palin To Lead VA - WTF!!!!

Trump is rumored to appoint Sarah Palin to lead a very important government agency. Cenk Uygur and Ana Kasparian, hosts of The Young Turks, break it down. Tell us what you think in the comment section below. https://www.tytnetwork.com/join



“Trump eyeing Sarah Palin for Veterans Affairs?

The Department of Veterans Affairs’ massive network of hospitals and clinics has been under a microscope since scandalously long waiting lists and allegations of cover-ups burst into public. The management morass seemed so intractable that in 2014, President Obama pushed out a decorated former general, Eric Shinseki, and hired a former chief executive of Procter & Gamble, Robert A. McDonald, to sort it out.

Now, according to people close to the transition, Mr. Trump is thinking of taking Veterans Affairs in a new direction, handing its reins to former Gov. Sarah Palin of Alaska.

Given Mr. Trump’s passionate campaign pledges to the nation’s veterans, the response — if she is chosen — would be ... interesting.”

Read more here:
http://www.nydailynews.com/opinion/sarah-palin-isn-qualified-lead-va-article-1.2894189

Hosts: Cenk Uygur, Ana Kasparian

Cast: Cenk Uygur, Ana Kasparian

Bernie Sanders Goes On The Warpath As Trump Nominee Signals Cuts To Social Security

By Jason Easley on Tue, Nov 29th, 2016 at 5:40 pm

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) blasted Donald Trump for lying about protecting Social Security after the president-elect nominated a man who is dedicated to killing Social Security and Medicare to run HHS. 

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) blasted Donald Trump for lying about protecting Social Security after the president-elect nominated a man who is dedicated to killing Social Security and Medicare to run HHS.

Sen. Sanders reacted to Trump nominated Rep. Tom Price (R-GA) to run HHS in a statement, “Donald Trump asked workers and seniors to vote for him because he was the only Republican candidate who would not cut Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid – programs that are of life-and-death importance for millions of Americans.

Now, he has nominated a person for secretary of Health and Human Services, Rep. Tom Price, who has a long history of wanting to do exactly the opposite of what Trump campaigned on. Rep. Price has a long history of wanting to cut Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid.

What hypocrisy! Mr. Trump needs to tell the American people that what he said during the campaign were just lies, or else appoint an HHS secretary who will protect these programs and do what Trump said he would do.”

Sanders is correct. There is no way that Trump would nominate a man who is deeply committed to cutting Social Security and Medicare if he had any intention of keeping the programs fully funded and in place. The nomination of Rep. Price to HHS indicates that the Trump administration is going to be targeting two programs that are beloved by the American people.

Trump has signaled that he is about to make the one move that will turn Bernie Sanders into an immediate and lifelong political enemy of the incoming administration. Sen. Sanders will fight tooth and nail to protect Social Security and Medicare.

Donald Trump is coming for the Social Security and Medicare of those who voted for him. 

Democrats tried to warn seniors that this would happen if they voted for Trump, and it looks like all of their warnings are about to come true.

Tom Price isn’t coming to HHS to save Social Security. Price is coming to destroy it.

They're Coming For Medicare - Be Ready

By Karoli Kuns

 

One of the best ways we can fight Trump right now is on the battlefield of Medicare. I'm sure everyone remembers how angry and stirred up Republican masses got at the idea of even one small change to Medicare.

Throughout his campaign, Trump assured his adoring followers that there would be no cuts to Medicare and Social Security. He tried to run to the left of Clinton on it, saying he would save it and make it better for everyone.

Those of us familiar with such empty promises knew that "make it better" was code for cuts, but his followers were having no part of it. Now is the time for battle, and the first battleground is going to be Medicare.

As I write, Paul Ryan is drafting his legislation to privatize Medicare and cut benefits. The Republican Congress has promised they will shovel this legislation through using budget reconciliation as their goal.

To make it palatable for today's seniors, Ryan has also promised that the current Medicare system will remain in place for people age 55 and above. That's a terrible idea, as Jonathan Cohn explains:

If at the same time Republicans shrink Medicaid, those seniors will suffer even more, since today the poorest seniors can use the program to pay for whatever medical bills Medicare does not.

Ryan promises that the proposal would not affect seniors who are 55 or older, since the new system wouldn’t begin operating for 10 years. But realistically the entire Medicare program would change once premium support took effect ― private plans would almost certainly find ways to pick off the healthiest seniors, for instance ― and, at best, the damage would simply take longer to play out.

Ryan’s Medicare scheme includes one other element ― a provision to raise the eligibility age gradually, so that seniors would eventually enroll at 67, rather than 65. Particularly in a world in which the Affordable Care Act no longer exists, 65 and 66 year olds searching for private coverage would find it harder to obtain, more expensive and less generous than what they’d get from Medicare today.

There are two things to keep in mind here.

First, our response must be swift and vocal. That means that you must have the telephone numbers of your elected representatives at hand and be prepared to call them and register your opposition to any cuts to Medicare. No slacktivism. No online petitions. In-person telephone calls to your representatives, personal visits, and visible opposition.

Second, health policy is always complex. Always. People don't understand it. One of the reasons Medicare is so popular is because it's simpler than any private insurance plan. People pay a payroll tax and when they're 65 they enroll in a Medicare plan that covers most of their costs. They can buy a supplemental plan at low cost to cover what traditional Medicare doesn't. It's simple, and it's elegant, and it works. It's going to be up to us to keep this message clear and plain everywhere. When we talk to people, when we post on social media, and when we comment on blogs.

Do not let them use muddy terms and oversimplify their plans, like they did with the Affordable Care Act. They are the ones slogging through complex policy. Know your facts, be armed with them, and be prepared to fire a volley at anyone lying about their plans.

Make no mistake. This is the battleground. Gear up for it. Forget the distractions with outrageous claims and just stay focused on fighting. If we fight, we will win.

Now we know the real reason Aetna bailed on the Affordable Care Act

By Bob Bryan

On Monday night, news broke that one of the five largest insurers in the US, Aetna, was leaving 70% of the counties in which it offers insurance through the Affordable Care Act's public healthcare exchanges.

The move was seen as a huge blow to the future of the act, making Aetna the third large insurer, after United Healthcare and Humana, to significantly reduce its Obamacare business.

Aetna cited the large losses that the company has incurred from the exchange business — $200 million in the second quarter alone — when explaining its decision to roll back its business.

These statements, however, appeared to be a dramatic turnaround from the company's first-quarter earnings call in April, when CEO Mark Bertolini said the firm planned to stay in the exchanges and that the company was "in a very good place to make this a sustainable program."

Now, however, it appears a large reason for the shift in tone was the Department of Justice's lawsuit to block Aetna's merger with rival Humana.

A July letter, acquired by Huffington Post reporters Jonathan Cohn and Jeffrey Young, outlined Aetna's thinking on the public exchanges if the deal with Humana were blocked. The letter from Bertolini to the DOJ outlined the effect of a possible merger on its Affordable Care Act business.

For one thing, Bertolini notes that the cost savings from the Humana deal would allow the companies to further expand coverage into parts of the US.

"As we add new territories, given the additional startup costs of each new territory, we will incur additional losses," the letter said. "Our ability to withstand these losses is dependent on our achieving anticipated synergies in the Humana acquisition."

Additionally, the letter seemed to foretell the move on Monday. Here's the key passage (emphasis added):

"Our analysis to date makes clear that if the deal were challenged and/or blocked we would need to take immediate actions to mitigate public exchange and ACA small group losses. Specifically, if the DOJ sues to enjoin the transaction, we will immediately take action to reduce our 2017 exchange footprint.

 

"We currently plan, as part of our strategy following the acquisition, to expand from 15 states in 2016 to 20 states in 2017. However, if we are in the midst of litigation over the Humana transaction, given the risks described above, we will not be able to expand to the five additional states. 

"In addition, we would also withdraw from at least five additional states where generating a market return would take too long for us to justify, given the costs associated with a potential breakup of the transaction. In other words, instead of expanding to 20 states next year, we would reduce our presence to no more than 10 states."

 

In other words, the cost of fighting the DOJ would make Aetna unable to sustain the losses incurred from the public exchanges.

According to a letter from the DOJ provided by Aetna, the DOJ asked the company what the effect would be on the firm's Affordable Care Act business if the merger were not completed. Thus, Aetna responded with its letter.

A spokesperson for Aetna said the decision to roll back the coverage was not because of the DOJ's lawsuit, but rather realizing the full details of the losses. The statement from the spokesperson reads, in part:

"In the time since we submitted our written response to DOJ and provided a courtesy copy to [the Department of Health and Human Services], we gained full visibility into our second quarter individual public exchange results, which — similar to other participants on the public exchanges — showed a significant deterioration. That deterioration, and not the DOJ challenge to our Humana transaction, is ultimately what drove us to announce the narrowing of our public exchange presence for the 2017 plan year. 

"If the Humana transaction is eventually blocked, which we don't believe it will be, the underlying logic of our written response to DOJ would still apply with regard to the public exchanges where we will participate in 2017." 

In the original letter from Aetna to the DOJ, Bertolini said that if the company lost the lawsuit and the deal were eventually scuttled, Aetna would drop its remaining Affordable Care Act business and leave the public exchanges entirely.

The DOJ declined to comment.

The DOJ blocked the merger between Aetna and Humana, along with the merger of fellow big-five insurers Anthem and Cigna, on the grounds that consolidating the industry would lead to lower competition and higher costs for consumers.

"They would leave much of the multi-trillion health insurance industry in the hands of just three mammoth companies, restricting competition in key markets," Attorney General Loretta Lynch said when announcing the lawsuit to block the mergers.

Typically the number of independent options available to consumers is correlated with lower costs.
"If the big five were to become the big three, not only would the bank accounts of the American people suffer, but the American people themselves," Lynch said.

The companies countered that the merger would not affect consumers and would allow the combined firms to be more cost-efficient and sustainable.

Read the full letter from Bertolini, via The Huffington Post, here »

Gig economy workers: Independent contractors or indentured servants?

By Julie Gutman Dickinson


(Credit: Reuters/Chris Keane)
This article originally appeared on Capital & Main.

What if millions of American workers were being denied health insurance, job security and the most basic legal protections, from overtime pay to workers compensation to the right to join a union? What if tens of billions of dollars in taxpayer revenues — money desperately needed to address everything from crumbling roads to education to health care — were never making it to local, state and federal treasuries? What if thousands of companies were violating the law with impunity?

That is exactly what is happening in the United States today, thanks to a rampant practice known as worker misclassification — illegally labeling workers as independent contractors when in fact they are employees under the law. In some cases it’s occurring in plain sight, in others it’s more hidden — but regardless of the circumstances, it is taking an enormous toll on the country.

According to the Economic Policy Institute (EPI), workers misclassified as independent contractors can be found in nearly every industry, and the phenomenon has grown considerably with the rise of the gig economy. Uber, the ride-hailing company, has become the poster child for worker misclassification, with numerous lawsuits alleging that Uber wrongly classifies its drivers as independent contractors. But Uber is hardly alone — examples of worker misclassification can be found in scores of new sectors, from house cleaners to technical workers.

Workers misclassified as independent contractors are also legion in established sectors of the economy, notably residential construction, in-home caregiving and the port trucking industry. Conditions for these workers have been compared to indentured servitude, and for good reason.

Misclassification enables employers to get away with widespread wage theft and a range of other illegal practices.

In a 2015 report, EPI described the advantages to employers of misclassifying workers. “Employers who misclassify avoid paying payroll taxes and workers’ compensation insurance, are not responsible for providing health insurance and are able to bypass requirements of the Fair Labor Standards Act, as well as the 1986 Immigration Reform and Control Act.” If this weren’t enough, the report continues, “misclassified workers are ineligible for unemployment insurance, workers’ compensation, minimum wage and overtime, and are forced to pay the full FICA tax and purchase their own health insurance.”

How do employers get away with such violations? The answer is complex, involving anemic labor laws, lax enforcement of the protections that do exist and the savvy exploitation of both by companies in key industries. While some businesses misclassify their workers out of ignorance, others do it very deliberately, and have spent millions of dollars defending the practice.

A case in point is the port trucking industry, which was deregulated in the 1980's, leading to a proliferation of companies whose business model was predicated on the use of independent contractors. That model has resulted in a workforce of close to 75,000 truck drivers at ports across the country laboring in mostly abysmal conditions. Among the indignities endured by drivers are such neo-Dickensian schemes as negative paychecks — an inconceivable but well-documented occurrence in which drivers labor full time or more, yet actually owe money to the trucking companies they work for due to paycheck deductions for everything from truck payments to insurance to repairs.

In the last several years, port truck drivers and their labor, community and political allies have begun to successfully challenge misclassification, winning a series of legal victories, particularly in California. Every government agency that’s conducted an investigation into the practices of the port trucking industry — from the United States Department of Labor and National Labor Relations Board to the California Labor Commissioner and Economic Development Department — has determined that port drivers are employees, not independent contractors. The state’s labor commissioner alone has issued more than 300 decisions on misclassification of drivers in Southern California, and drivers have prevailed in every decision, winning over $35 million in back pay.

How can these successes be replicated and enhanced to end misclassification? Three strategies stand out:

Litigation: The successful track record in California has proven that misclassification is vulnerable to sustained litigation. An important factor is whether elected and appointed officials are willing to aggressively pursue or support such litigation — if not, the efforts will yield far less favorable results.

Policy changes: The enactment of policies that clamp down on misclassification, increase penalties and ban law-breaking companies from operating can have significant impact. However, as with litigation, this strategy depends on the presence of lawmakers willing to take on the issue.

Worker organizing: In Los Angeles, port truck drivers frustrated with the exploitative conditions in their industry have waged a multi-year campaign to expose the practice of misclassification. That effort, which has included multiple strikes, has been supported by a broad coalition of community groups — a potent combination that has played a crucial role in challenging the trucking industry’s “independent contractor” business model.

Taking on misclassification is important not just to workers, but to businesses and taxpayers as well. In the current system, law-abiding companies are forced to compete with low-road operators, creating an uneven playing field. Likewise, the cost to taxpayers in lost revenues from employers that illegally misclassify workers as independent contractors is enormous, cheating government out of resources that could and should be used for the common good.

Reining in worker misclassification and the abuse of so-called “independent contractors” is one of the more daunting challenges in taking on economic inequality. But any serious plan to address the nation’s economic divide must include an aggressive strategy to take on this costly epidemic.

Congresswoman Who Used To Receive Welfare Wants To Drug Test Rich People Who Get Tax Breaks

By Bryce Covert

CREDIT: AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite

Rep. Gwen Moore (D-WI) has had enough of the growing movement to drug test poor people who need government assistance. So on Tuesday, she’s introducing a bill that she says will make things fairer.

Her “Top 1% Accountability Act” would require anyone claiming itemized tax deductions of over $150,000 in a given year to submit a clean drug test. If a filer doesn’t submit a clean test within three months of filing, he won’t be able to take advantage of tax deductions like the mortgage interest deduction or health insurance tax breaks. Instead he would have to make use of the standard deduction.

Her office has calculated that the people impacted will be those who make at least $500,000 a year.

“By drug testing those with itemized deductions over $150,000, this bill will level the playing field for drug testing people who are the recipients of social programs,” a memo on her bill notes.

Moore has a personal stake in the fight. “I am a former welfare recipient,” she explained. “I’ve used food stamps, I’ve received Aid for Families with Dependent Children, Medicaid, Head Start for my kids, Title XX daycare [subsidies]. I’m truly grateful for the social safety net.”

Ten states require applicants to their cash welfare programs to undergo a drug test. States are currently barred from implementing drug testing for the food stamps program, but Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker (R) has sued the federal government to allow him to do so and has gotten some Congressional Republican support.

Moore has been frustrated to witness attempts to tie those who avail themselves of the safety net to drug use. “Republicans continue to criminalize poverty and to put forward the narrative, the false narrative in fact, that people who are poor and reliant upon the social safety net are drug users,” she said.

Republicans continue to criminalize poverty

 

In fact, evidence from test results among states that test welfare recipients indicates that they are no more likely to use drugs than the general population — in fact, they may be less likely.

That didn’t stop House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-WI) from using a drug rehab center as the backdrop while he unveiled his poverty plan last week. “I think this is what tipped me over the edge,” Moore said, “rolling out his poverty initiative in front of a drug treatment program to sort of drive that false narrative forward.”

House Speaker Paul Ryan speaks at a drug rehab facility in the Anacostia neighborhood of Washington, Tuesday, June 7, 2016, where he proposed an overhaul for the nation’s poverty programs. CREDIT: AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite

Moore also wants to use her bill to question why some recipients of government aid are treated differently than others. “On the one hand, poor people…are entitled to things like Medicaid and SNAP [food stamps],” she said. “People who take tax deductions and particularly those in the top 1 percent…are not entitled to anything.” But they still benefit from a large pot of government money.

The government loses about $900 billion in revenue to tax expenditures every year, which mostly flow to the wealthy.

When it comes to drug abuse, “There are no boundaries with regard to class or race,” she said. “If these poor people who are entitled to SNAP for survival are required to be drug tested, then certainly those people who claim $150,000 or more in tax deductions should be subjected to the same in order to receive this benefit from the government.”

Moore also thinks that while there is no evidence that drug testing welfare recipients saves states any money, drug tests for wealthy taxpayers could be different. “We would save a lot of money on this,” she said. “When you add up all of the tax expenditures, all the money we give really wealthy people, it really rivals the amount we spend on Defense, Social Security, Medicare.” The mortgage interest deduction, which overwhelmingly benefits people making more than $100,000, alone cost $70 billion in 2013, or 0.4 percent of GDP.

When you add up all the money we give really wealthy people, it really rivals the amount we spend on Defense, Social Security, Medicare.

 

Her bill will also help illuminate this very fact: that so much is spent on tax expenditures, not just on direct aid programs like welfare and food stamps. “We think it’s important to engage in some transparency and accountability around tax deductions,” she said.

Moore is not the only lawmaker in Congress who has raised questions about unequal treatment between the poor who make use of government programs and everyone else who needs them. In February, Rep. Rosa DeLauro asked why only recipients of food stamps were being considered for drug testing but not the farmers who also make use of programs run by the Agriculture Department.

But Moore is very serious about pushing her bill forward. “I’m motivated,” she said. “I’m going to work on it very seriously. I’m going to try to get cosponsors.”

She also wants to “engage the wealthy in this poverty debate,” she said. “I would love to see some hedge fund manager on Wall Street who might be sniffing a little cocaine here and there to stay awake realize that he can’t get his $150,000 worth of deductions unless he submits to a drug test.”

Republicans Only Care About Children Before They're Born

By Thom Hartmann



Indiana Rep. Todd Rokita wants to limit access to free lunch for poor children.

When it comes to children, Republicans are hypocrites.

They go on and on about how "pro-life" they are, but they really only care about "humans" before they're born. After that, they couldn't care less.

Case in point: the so-called "Improving Child Nutrition and Education Act of 2016," the brainchild of Indiana Rep. Todd Rokita that would decimate a key part of the federal free lunch program.

This bill is about as mean-spirited as it gets, and to understand why, you first need to understand something about how the federal free lunch program works.

Thanks to something called "community eligibility," students at certain schools automatically qualify to get a free lunch if 40 percent of their classmates live in poverty.

Although it may not sound like much, this is a really big deal.

Under community eligibility, high poverty schools no longer have to fill out the mountains of paperwork they'd normally have to fill out to get individual students enrolled in the free lunch program.

Everyone is enrolled, and as a result, these high poverty school are now free to focus on other problems like, you know, educating their students.

Sounds like pretty good idea, right? Not only are you keeping kids healthy, you're also cutting a lot of red tape.

That's something everyone can get behind.

Everyone that is, except for Representative Rokita.

Rokita's "Improving Child Nutrition and Education Act of 2016" would raise the poverty threshold necessary to participate in community eligibility to 60 percent.

Again this might not sound like much, but in the context of how the free lunch program actually functions, it's a really, really, big deal.

If Representative Rokita's bill becomes law, more than 7,000 schools serving almost 3.5 million students would be affected.

Those schools would no longer get to use community eligibility to automatically enroll all students in the free lunch program and would instead have to go back to the old application system, student by student, with its mountains and mountains of paperwork.

This isn't quite a death sentence, but for high poverty schools that are already struggling to deal with things like violence, drugs and broken homes, it's just another thing to deal with, and an unnecessary one at that.

Obviously, there's a certain amount of irony in the fact that Representative Rokita, a Republican, is pushing a bill that would create even more red tape.

But then again, Republicans have always been fine with "big government" if it means demonizing poor people.

So that's not that shocking.

No, the really shocking thing here is the fact that this is the same Representative Rokita who is 100 percent on board with House Republicans' kangaroo court investigation of Planned Parenthood.

That investigation, of course, is based on a total lie, and it's cost taxpayers' so much money that House Republicans have had to dip into Congress' reserve fund to help pay for it.

You really couldn't ask for a better example of the screwed-up priorities of so-called "pro-life" Republicans like Representative Rokita.

They'll go out of their way to protect a mass of cells that is only philosophically a child, but once it comes to real, live, breathing children, suddenly there's no money, suddenly cost is an issue, suddenly we need to talk about cutting spending.

And here's the thing: Republicans don't even really care about "unborn children" - the whole "pro-life" thing just a front.

Sure, some of them probably believe that abortion is the next Holocaust, but in the grand scheme of things, most of them know that all the outrage about Roe v. Wadeis just a way to keep the suckers in line.

How do you know? Well, if Republicans really cared about kids they'd stop their blockade of Medicaid expansion.

They'd also stop supporting the war on drugs that creates the school-to-prison pipeline. They'd stop turning our schools into profit-making engines for the billionaire class; and they'd stop trying to cut
Head Start, food stamps and welfare for single moms.

They'd also pass federal funding for Flint, Michigan.

The list goes on.

When it comes down to it, most Republicans don't give a rat's ass about US children.

If you're an elected Democrat who is open to cutting Social Security, or Medicare or S.N.A.P., Fuck you.

By cali

It doesn't matter if you call yourself a Democrat. It's not excusable because you support marriage equality. It's not enough that you support reproductive rights. Being a social liberal isn't enough.

Period.

If you're an elected Democrat who leaves the door open to cuts in Social Security and the safety net, it won't go unnoticed.

And yeah, Fuck you.

A Democrat Wants To Cut Social Security?

By Colonel Rainsborough  

Just today, I read a story about a clueless California Republican who declared that Social Security was a bad idea.  After laughing about how hopeless the Republicans have become, I read this:

theintercept.com/...
Sen. Mark Warner, D-Va., called on an audience of business and political elites earlier this week to respond to populist anger by lobbying harder for a deficit-reduction package that would reduce corporate tax rates and cut public retirement programs such as Social Security.

As the children would say, “DaFuq?”

Although a dominant populist sentiment is that the system is already rigged in favor of the rich, Warner suggested that the “business community” needs to get more involved in politics or face unpleasant repercussions.

“If you don’t think the frustration of Americans with our overall system, — not just our political system, but our business system, our tax code — is at the boiling point, then Katy bar the door!,” he said. “The walls that are gonna have to be built, may not be at borders, they may be around neighborhoods the way they are in many Third World countries around the world,” Warner warned.

The cure for corrupting corporate power is MORE corporate influence?  I am not making this up.  While the panelists acknowledged that the public is angry about inequality, the proposed cure is more inequality.

I especially like the idea that Warner anticipates that rich people will have to live in walled communities to protect themselves from angry, unwashed peasants.  Oh, wait…Most of them already do…

Wait, I think I misinterpreted his idea.  He wants to build the walls around OUR neighborhoods.  Palestine, after all, is such a successful community planning experiment.

Warner was speaking on Monday at the Milken Institute’s 2016 Global Conference. 

Yeah, that Milken — the guy who was convicted in 1990 of securities fraud and tax evasion.  Perhaps in the near future, there will be a conference named after Bernie Madoff.

Apparently, Sen. Warner was unhappy that the awful Simpson-Bowles “Grand Bargain”plan was not accepted.

The commission put together a plan that called for corporate tax reform focused on cutting the corporate tax rate and entitlement reform based on policies such as raising the Social Security retirement age. Obama never embraced the plan, but a group of lawmakers, including Warner, known as the “Gang of Six” put forth legislation that mirrored its recommendations.

“We’d have gotten 70 votes if the establishments on both sides had not shot down our effort,” Warner complained on Monday.

We would have gotten away with it if it had not been for those lousy…