Yes, they're already on it. I wrote about this building pseudo-scandal the other day, and it appears it's gaining steam. I noticed that on Fox yesterday it came up several times as "yet another case of the Obama administration shaking down private industry." When I first read about it, the suggestion was that Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius was appealing to insurance companies rather than trying to find corporate sponsors for the purpose of educating the public about Obamacare, which is slightly different, but still not particularly scandalous.
After all, if the congress would agree to fund the outreach as any sane government would do for a big new government program, this wouldn't be necessary. But naturally, they are trying to make it fail so they don't want the public to be informed of what the new benefits are and what they need to do to get enrolled in insurance and obtain the subsidies.
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This report by the Kaiser Family Foundation about elder poverty is shocking. I don't think people realize just how many millions of people are barely subsisting in their old age, but it's many more than the government likes to admit to. Just as with the Chained-CPI, we're dealing with how they are accounted for rather than the actual numbers these people are forced to live on.
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David does a nice job unpacking the dreadful Politico gossip item in his post below. But as a long time Village observer from afar, I thought I might add a little more context. The first observation is that apparently Sally Quinn has officially passed the baton to Vandehei and Allen. How do I know this? Well, take the first sentence.
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I had the privilege of hearing Dean Baker and Mark Weisbrot speak about austerity the other night and it was as fascinating as you might imagine. I think most people who read this blog wouldn't be surprised by what they said, but I think many in the audience were people who may be depending upon more mainstream sources and were very surprised --- and alarmed --- by what they heard. It's hard to wrap your mind around. The CEPR does yoeman's work in providing the data and analysis that informs all of us and I'm very grateful for them. And Chris Hayes is also doing something on his show that's very important --- telling stories about how austerity affects real people.
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President Obama’s nomination of Hyatt heiress Penny Pritzker to be Commerce secretary gives me the perfect excuse to write about a fascinating conversation I had recently with Cathy Youngblood, a union activist and Hyatt employee who is on a campaign to get her employer to put one worker on its board of directors. She’s written [...]
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… because if he were we could dismiss him as a typical stupid hippie to whom nobody should ever pay attention (particularly when sharp analysts like Newt Gingrich and George Will exist.) But now that people who the mainstream media can respect, like Tim Kaine, are saying it, now it’s respectable:
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In case you’re wondering where the Bush apologists on your TV today are getting their bizarroworld opinions about Bush being the most awesomest president in the whole wide world, Politico conveniently published the official talking points:
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So, they’ve crunched some real numbers and determined exactly how much money the average Social Security recipient can expect to lose if the Chained-CPI is implemented. I’m going to assume that if someone told you that the government was going to seize $15,000.00 from your 401k you’d think it was a cut:
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David Frum published an interesting letter from one of his readers the other day on the Reinhardt-Rogoff brouhaha. It provides a fascinating rundown of all the cracked economics that have dominated the debate for the past few years:
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So, according to Brian Beutler, the Republicans are balking at having a conference to iron out the differences between the Senate and House budgets. This is hypocritical in the extreme,obviously, since they’ve been braying about the Democratic senate failing to produce a budget for years and now that they have one, they don’t want one. [...]
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