Liberal, Irreverent

Wednesday, April 18, 2012

PPACA is complicated. Why? Obama wanted to accommodate the private market

PPACA is too complicated. But the reason is because of the Obama administration attempted to accommodate the private health insurance market. Private insurance companies would get 30 million new customers with a check in hand. The dream of every business. Reform would have been much simpler if PPACA would have just been Medicare For All.

Will the private insurance companies thank and appreciate that effort? Of course not. They campaigned and will campaign against Obama and democrats.

Instead of proposing real progressive ideas that work, Obama wanted to appease the right and got what he bargained for: wasted his political capital and runs the risk of getting his bill nullified by an activist and political SCOTUS.

Lesson for next time. When you have the power use it to push real liberal solutions, not watered down version designed to appease, that at the end do not solve the problem and do it appease.

Wednesday, April 11, 2012

Romney Campaign on Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act: "We will get back to you on that"

From politico

During a conference call held earlier in the morning, a Romney aide was unable to answer a straightforward question about the former governor's position on the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act of 2009, which Obama signed into law amid heavy Republican opposition.

"We'll get back to you on that," the aide replied, when asked about the law by The Huffington Post.

Roughly two hours later, Romney's campaign clarified his stance -- but not before the Obama campaign got in a few licks, sending out a statement of disapproval from Ledbetter herself.

Darrell Issa Political Hypocrisy on GSA Oversight

From Politico:

A March 2007 piece on NPR said:
"Republicans stuck up for Doan. Darrell Issa of California noted that she has been running GSA for just eight months: 'In your eight months, I think you've probably found what I found in my nearly seven years now: That this is a bureaucracy that will resist you at every point, isn't it?' Doan's reply: 'You're absolutely right.'"

At another hearing three months later, Issa told Doan "I think you've done a very good job of explaining that you are consistent, that you have in fact told the truth and the whole truth, and that, if you've made any mistake, it's been, in fact, allowing those leading questions and what-ifs from people who were trying to make a case on you, from a prosecutor who was not independent in the sense of unbiased but in fact who gets paid to try to find makeable cases, who asked you unreasonable questions and clearly, clearly lied about the fact that this would be kept private -- either lied through his action or lied through his subordinates' action when information that was given under oath, confidentially, under that assurance, consistent with the federal laws, was leaked. And I'm sorry. I'm sorry for your agency and for those men and women who may have gotten 3s or 4s or 2s, not necessarily perfect scores but in fact deserved not to have their private lives and their performance made public."