Category Archives: Politics

Feeding the Paranoia

So you have a bunch of people yelling and screaming that the government can’t be trusted and is coming after us.

What does the government do?  It feeds and justifies that narrative by the IRS specifically targeting these groups and subjecting them to extra scrutiny.

The IRS has admitted and “apologized” for the fact that tax-exempt groups with “Tea Party” or “Patriot” in their names were singled out for heightened review during the 2012 election cycle, including unlawfully demanding names of individual donors, that left-leaning groups didn’t receive.

Stupid, stupid, stupid.

The South Carolina Race

From “Behind Mark Sanford’s turnaround,” Alex Isenstadt, Politico*:

“In Colbert Busch, Sanford was running against a rookie opponent who made some rookie mistakes. While the former governor barnstormed the district, Colbert Busch seemed to be in hiding. She rarely held public events — and when she did, she was sometimes in a hurry to leave.

“At a Chamber of Commerce forum last week, the Democrat delivered four minutes of remarks and was then hustled out of the room by a team of handlers. As baffled reporters trailed, Colbert Busch made a beeline for the parking lot.

“For a still largely unknown candidate who needed to introduce herself to voters, it was a head-scratcher of a moment.

“’I’ve never seen a candidate sprint like that,’ one reporter said at the time.

“Though she turned in a strong performance in the sole debate she agreed to, at other times Colbert Busch had difficulty articulating her positions. Any Democrat running in a conservative district has to thread the needle when it comes to talking about issues, but Colbert Busch had particular trouble. Asked in a CNN interview on Tuesday whether she would support the Manchin-Toomey gun control bill, she struggled to come up with an answer.”

Although Colbert Busch ultimately lost by about nine points, a couple of weeks ago, she seemed to have a nine-point lead.  So she decided to coast and not take any risks.  But as a newcomer and a Dem in a GOP district, she had to reassure voters that she would respect and represent their views and she had to do it with policy specifics.  Certainly House Dem leadership would have given her a pass to vote against them more often than other Dems.  She needed to make that abundantly clear, and to specify precisely where she would differ from her party.  Her vagueness really cost her and allowed Sanford to portray her as way too liberal for the district, as Nancy Pelosi’s twin.  She had to run against both Sanford and Pelosi. 

You don’t win by hiding and ducking.  If she’d presented herself aggressively and consistently as a conservative Dem who would sometimes subordinate both her own and her party’s positions to honor the wishes of her district, she would have had a better shot.  I’m thinking here of Rudy Giuliani’s second run for mayor, after he lost the first time.  He was told he couldn’t win without Upper West Side women, and he couldn’t win Upper West Side women without supporting abortion rights.  So he told them that while he personally opposed abortion, as mayor, he wouldn’t do anything to change or restrict abortion rights in the city. 

Congressmen are known as “Representative.”  Colbert Busch needed to convince South Carolina’s First District that she could be their representative, and she failed.  Maybe it was just a bridge too far for both her and the voters of her district.  

Bye-Bye for Bi Hillary?

The National Enquirer (yeah, I know, but often they’re right, remember John Edwards) claims that Hillary Clinton will disclose that she is bisexual in her $25 million memoir expected to be published in 2014.

The idea is to put it out there herself, ahead of 2016.  There have been rumors about her sexuality throughout the Clintons’ public life.  I always believed them because she hung out with lesbians at Wellesley.  If you weren’t one, you weren’t welcome in their inner circle.

Voting for a female president is a big deal for a lot of Americans.  It’s a leap we’ve never made before.  I just don’t know if adding bisexuality to that mix makes it too big a leap, if we can have our first woman and first openly gay president simultaneously.

Setting Him Up to Fail

“Republicans have held the administration to about one-third of the money [to implement the Affordable Care Act] that the Bush administration received from a Republican-led Congress for the lesser challenge of starting up the Medicare drug program.”

From “G.O.P Is Readying a New Offensive Over Health Law,” Jackie Calmes, NYT

 

Just Wants More Time With His Family

Chris Christie has revealed that he had secret lap band surgery in February to help him lose weight.  Lap band is certainly a better revelation than lap dance from the governor of the Bada Bing state.

He says it has nothing to do with running for prez in 2016, and everything to do with being around for his wife and four children.

So a politician saying he just wants to spend more time with his family — in this case, decades.

OK, The Deficit Problem Is Solved

Well, that was easy.  From “Health Care Spending Growth May Have Slowed Permanently,” Brian Beutler, Talking Points Memo:

“Health care spending growth has famously slowed over the past five years, significantly enough that the Congressional Budget Office recently revised its projections of Medicare and Medicaid spending over the coming decade downward by hundreds of billions of dollars.

“Now, research papers suggests the recent slowdown doesn’t just reflect temporary economic weakness, but also structural shifts in how health care is delivered and financed — possibly attributable to the Affordable Care Act — and thus might be a harbinger of a longer-term trend.

If they’re right, and the trend continues, it means workers can expect higher wages and the country’s projected medium term deficits are significantly overstated, which in turn suggests lawmakers’ continuing obsession with the current budget deficit, and deficits over the coming decade, are misguided.

“The study by Harvard researchers, featured in the latest edition of Health Affairs, finds, like all studies of this nature, that the recession and weak economy contributed significantly to the spending growth slowdown. Less generous benefits, resulting in higher out-of-pocket costs, accounted for 20 percent of it. Faced with less generous coverage and less disposable income, people consumed fewer health services.

“But the good news is that spending growth also slowed among those whose health benefits haven’t changed, including Medicare patients. And that suggests a more enduring trend.

“’Our findings suggest cautious optimism that the slowdown in the growth of health spending may persist — a change that, if borne out, could have a major impact on US health spending projections and fiscal challenges facing the country,’ the authors write.

“In a related article, health care economist David Cutler attributes the majority of the slowdown to fundamental changes — including perhaps slowing technological and pharmaceutical innovation, and increased efficiency among providers. If current trends continue, he concludes, then over the next 10 years ‘public-sector health care spending will be as much as $770 billion less than predicted. Such lower levels of spending would have an enormous impact on the US economy and on government and household finances.’”

Stick that in your pipe and smoke it, Paul Ryan!

Of course, that money will probably be spent on more war(s).

 

 

Quote of the Day

“I think the dam is about to break on Benghazi. We’re going to find a system failure before, during, and after the attacks.  We’re going to find political manipulation seven weeks before an election. We’re going to find people asleep at the switch when it comes to the State Department, including Hillary Clinton.  The bond that has been broken between those who serve us in harm’s way and the government they serve is huge — and to me every bit as damaging as Watergate.”

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R – SC)