Rep. Steve “Pigmuck” King Lets His White-Nationalist Freak Flag Fly — Again

by 10:16 pm. It has 19 Comments.

Rep. Pigmuck really does want to keep his title as Worst Person in Congress. I was kinda hoping, even in today’s Republican party, he’d be forced to backtrack a little on this. Nope!

… “If you go down the road a few generations, or maybe centuries, with the inter-marriage, I’d like to see an America that is just so homogenous that we look a lot the same,” he said…

King said differences had nothing to do with their humanity, but their backgrounds: “It’s the culture, not the blood. If you could go anywhere in the world and adopt these little babies and put them into households that were already assimilated into America, those babies will grow up as American as any other baby.”…

You will be assimilated — what could be more all-American?

Well, not to say ‘condemn’… at least not in person…

… House Speaker Paul Ryan, also a Republican, “clearly disagrees” with King’s comments, a spokeswoman told reporters.

“The speaker clearly disagrees and believes America’s long history of inclusiveness is one of its great strengths,” Ryan spokeswoman AshLee Strong said in a statement.

White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer declined to weigh in on the comments when asked about them during the press briefing Monday….

Iowans: You want to tell the rest of us about Kim Weaver? Has she any chance at all?


But it did not affect the steady sell of junk

by 9:21 pm. It has 80 Comments.

I just read an interesting series of tweets about the politics of TrumpCare, and what effect its passage might have politically.

I feel like everywhere I turn the past few days, I see articles about deaths from opioid overdose. I was stunned to see that the number of people who died from synthetic opioid overdoses in 2015 was up 72% over 2014, and that the total number of opioid overdose deaths each year is now about the same as the number of people who died in car accidents. According to Vox, about 2.8 million people could lose access to drug treatment if ACA is repealed.

Trump did very well among voters in areas most affected by the opioid epidemic. In October, the Trump campaign claimed it had a plan to end the opioid epidemic. Hard to imagine that plan involved getting rid of everyone’s access to drug treatment programs.





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And the canary just died

by 8:47 pm. It has 63 Comments.

The First Congressional District in Virginia is represented by a long standing Republican, Rob Wittman. He easily won re-election in 2016 by twenty three points and Trump carried the district by 13 points. This is a district where the traditional threat to a Republican Representative is from their right flank.

Keep that in mind as we look below:

He is bailing.

This is good news for people who don’t want to throw twenty four million people off of their insurance in order to give a tax cut to people who don’t need one. Speaker Ryan has at most twenty three (currently he has 21 spare votes due to vacancies)) votes that he can afford to lose while still getting to 218. He has 23 Republicans who won in 2016 despite representing seats carried by Hillary Clinton. These are the first seats that fall in a Democratic wave if the Democratic base is pissed off. Their behavioral pattern will look a lot like Blue Dog Democrats in 2009-2010. Anything that passes the House needs could afford to have those twenty three most vulnerable Republicans defect by either voting no or finding a way to be outside of DC to not vote. At most one or two of these Representives would have to take a very hard vote that would probably cost them their seat. That is a vote that many Blue Dogs and New Dems took in 2010 and it cost them their seat.

The issue is if people like Rep. Wittman defect. A single defection can be replaced by another hard vote. But if there are a half dozen or a dozen defections from relatively safe Republican districts, then the willingness of marginal Republicans to take one for the team will decline dramatically as they will be looking out for themselves. It would be as if both Representatives from Philadelphia decided that they would not vote for the ACA and thus forcing a pair of Blue Dogs to take the hard vote.

We already know that AHCA was under threat of defections from both vulnerable Republicans and ideological maximalist Republicans. Now if mostly safe Republicans are bailing, there is great difficulty in Speaker Ryan assembling a coalition in the House. Which then leads to the following:

So our mission tomorrow is to call Congress. Demand that your Rep or your Senator will not cut Medicaid nor screw over the 50-64 year olds.


Seriously, Just go Fuck Yourself to Death

by 6:56 pm. It has 103 Comments.

This fucking guy:

Former Gov. Pat McCrory says the backlash against House Bill 2 is making it difficult for him to land a new job after he left office.

McCrory has been appearing frequently on national media outlets to defend the controversial LGBT law, but he hasn’t announced what’s next for his career. In a podcast interview recently with WORLD, an Asheville-based evangelical Christian news website, McCrory talked about his challenges on the job market.

The former Republican governor says HB2 “has impacted me to this day, even after I left office. People are reluctant to hire me, because, ‘oh my gosh, he’s a bigot’ – which is the last thing I am.”

Later in the interview, McCrory wouldn’t say if he’s being considered for a job in President Donald Trump’s administration. But he praised Trump, calling him “a breath of fresh air.”

McCrory said the liberal groups opposing HB2 have harmed his reputation. “If you disagree with the politically correct thought police on this new definition of gender, you’re a bigot, you’re the worst of evil,” he said. “It’s almost as if I broke a law.”

Republicans are the least self aware motherfuckers on the planet.





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Monday Evening Open Thread: Embrace the New Dystopia…

by 6:11 pm. It has 69 Comments.

… Or at least crack jokes about it. Humor isn’t a cure, but it’s a very useful palliative while we’re working on the cure.

Apart from jests, what’s on the agenda for the evening?


Medicaid and adults with disability

by 4:42 pm. It has 18 Comments.

From this morning’s post on Medicaid, Ohio Mom asks an excellent question:

But don’t most states also use Medicaid to support adults with disabilities? As I’ve noted before, a year in a group homes costs $30,000-40,000 in my area, and it is Medicaid that pays for it.

For me, as a mom of a kid with autism, this aspect of Medicaid is BIG. Can you address this, David?

So often, adults with disabilities get overlooked.

Yes, Medicaid is often a payer for adults with significant challenges. Medicare will pay the medical costs of individuals who qualify for SSDI payments but that is not the entire universe of people with challenges. Medicaid is the payer of last resort for individuals on Supplemental Security Income (SSI). This is a cohort of people with significant medical and behavioral health challenges. States have been pushing over the past two generations to move people out of institutional and in-patient settings to supportive housing and supporting services within the community.

The challenge is that SSI qualified individuals as a cohort are expensive because their needs are numerous. Here is where service limits will often come into play. The service limits can either be hard counts that an individual can only get 10 units of service per time period even if the medically necessary recommendation is for 22 units of service or for the creation of wait lists. Adults who are SSI eligible will get some assistance. The policy challenge is that adults, especially those with significant but not visibly obvious and sympathetic conditions are weak claimants with strong cases. They are one of the groups that will get whacked whenever the states are facing a funding crunch due to either a decrease in tax revenue, an increase in enrollment or per capita caps with a policy or social shock.





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CBO Score for the Republican plan is in

by 4:18 pm. It has 215 Comments.

And it is ugly:

TLDR: This is not bad for young, healthy and wealthy. Horrendous for anyone who thinks that there is a reasonable chance that they will not be one of those categories at any point in their lives.

I can’t figure out the politics of the GOP kicking the ever living snot out of their base of people who are 50+. Take a look at the situation for the individual earning 175% FPL. Their actuarial value drops from 87% due to Cost Sharing Reduction subsidies to 65%. That is roughly a $4,000 increase in deductible.

The 21 year old is better off under AHCA. The 40 year is slightly worse off. The 64 year old is beaten senseless.

I am betting that the 24 million net coverage loss number is a function of cohort replacement of older and sicker 50+ individuals leaving the individual market and getting replaced by 21 year olds in low cost markets who benefit from a 5:1 age band to get low cost and low utilization Bronze plans.

Okay, here are the lowlights:





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The wingers will give us vouchers to buy the rope we hang them with

by 11:22 am. It has 297 Comments.

Here’s a pretty good run-down of all the reasons why TrumpCare is such a big political loser for Republicans, including this

Democratic operatives are already testing which ones resonate the most in swing districts.

If Dems can win in GA-6, that should be the final nail in the coffin for this shitty bill. (No, I don’t expect it to be passed before the special election.) So let’s give some more money to Jon Ossoff.

Goal Thermometer


Medicaid 101

by 8:34 am. It has 61 Comments.

Medicaid is going to be a big area of debate, so let’s go over the mechanics of Medicaid in any state. I will be speaking at a very high level and without too much state specific detail. This is not a state specific guide-book to Medicaid. It is just a reference guide to build a light framework.

What is Medicaid
Medicaid is a federal-state partnership program that originated in 1965 to pay for health care and long term care for people who can not afford it. Eligibility has expanded significantly over time. The program varies significantly by state.

Who gets covered
There are several major groups that are eligible to receive coverage. Each state has to meet minimum baselines and can elect to change eligibility criteria to expand coverage to certain groups. But let’s break it down now:

  • Old people in nursing homes
  • Sick to very sick people
  • Poor kids
  • Poor pregnant women
  • Working poor adults (Medicaid Expansion in the ACA)

These are massive overgeneralizations and are a bit flippant. Eligibility varies by state. Some states like Massachusetts would cover childless adults up to or over the federal poverty line even before the ACA passed. Other states like Florida won’t cover non-chronically ill childless adults at any income level.

Who pays for Medicaid
We all do. Medicaid is a federal-state partnership. For non-expansion groups, the Feds pay between one and three dollars for every dollar a state spends. For Expansion the feds under current law as of Monday morning pay nineteen dollars for every dollar the state spends, this will decrease to nine federal dollars for every state dollar. It is usually paid for out of general revenue instead of a dedicated tax like Medicare or Social Security.

What are the benefits
Medicaid is comprehensive health insurance. It covers the typical hospital, doctor, prescription, rehab charges. It also will cover some dental and vision services. Additionally, Medicaid tends to be one of the biggest payers for mental and behavioral health services in the country. Since Medicaid also acts as a long term care supplement, it will spend a lot of money on nursing homes and long term home care.

How is care paid for
There are two primary methods of paying for care. In some states, there is a fee for service component where the state (or a contractor for the state) processes claims and acts as a pass through entity for federal money. This is becoming less common. The more common method is some type of Medicaid Managed Care Organization (MCO) which is an HMO for Medicaid. Here the state gives the MCO a fixed sum of money every month to cover the expenses of its members. Each state will do things differently. Some states are 100% MCO with a sole source MCO covering all benefits. Other states will split physical health, behavioral health and long term care into separate MCO contracts. Other states will have a hybrid fee for service and MCO model. It varies. [DISCLAIMER— I used to work as a data analyst for a Medicaid Managed Care Organization, UPMC Health Plan — I don’t think the MCO model is intrinsically evil ]

Do I know someone on Medicaid?
I would be shocked if you did not.

Who should I talk to about nursing home assistance
Give the wonderful people at your local Area Agency on Aging (AAA) a call. They know this stuff cold and they know your state laws way better than someone on the internet ever will.

If I’m not old, how do I apply
There are a lot of pathways. The first is to go on Healthcare.gov or your state exchange and apply. Currently there is a “no wrong door” process where the exchanges will forward your information onto the state Medicaid program if you look like you qualify. If you don’t want to deal with that, contact the local county assistance office. If you can’t find that, call the local hospital and ask to speak to a social worker. They might not be able to get you started but they will be able to tell you where to go to get started.





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Monday Morning Open Thread: People Power

by 5:55 am. It has 158 Comments.

Probably a more viable alternative, at the present moment:

CORAL GABLES, Fla. — It had all the trappings of a campaign rally: the signs, the Bruce Springsteen songs on repeat, the clipboard-hugging volunteers in matching T-shirts.

But the 2,000-odd people in the University of Miami’s basketball arena were there to hear Anthony Romero, the executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union, try to recruit them into a legal army.

“It didn’t take a lot of work to fill this auditorium,” Romero said, as the screens surrounding him showed mass protests against President Trump. “People want to be deployed. They don’t just want to write you a check, or sign a petition. They want to be engaged. You want to be protagonists with us.”

The ACLU is spending millions of dollars on a plunge into grass-roots politics — a “People Power” campaign. It’s the newest and largest development from a sprawling “resistance” movement that regularly moves faster than the Democratic Party’s leaders can think and isn’t waiting on politicians for cues…

“We’ve seen this exponential growth in people becoming card-carrying members of the ACLU,” Romero said in an interview after his speech. “They’re younger. They’re in every state around the country. The biggest danger was in not doing something like this, where people get apathetic and they fall asleep.”

There’s little apparent risk of that, and the biggest organizations on the left, broadly defined, are staffing up to give it direction. The Center for American Progress is planning a grass-roots conference for “rising” activist groups in California next month, and an ideas conference in Washington one month later. Super PACs such as American Priorities have become promotion machines for the Indivisible movement, which in just a few months has begun to organize some local chapters as official nonprofit groups.

But no organization is transforming as quickly or as boldly as the ACLU. Since the 2016 election, it has tripled its membership to more than 1.2 million and raised more than $80 million, with plans to add 100 staff members to a team of about 300…

Here’s the ACLU website’s update. You can watch a recording of the whole session here.

More, from the Christian Science Monitor:

… The event marked a distinct strategic shift for the civil liberties group, which has traditionally focused on courtroom litigation. The ACLU’s new campaign, PeoplePower, is the organization’s first grassroots mobilization effort in its nearly 100 years of existence, leaders say, driven by a recent surge in membership and widespread activism efforts across the country in the months since President Trump’s election victory. Since November, group membership has tripled to more than one million, with more than 135,000 people signed up to take part in the PeoplePower campaign as of Saturday.

“Before, our membership was largely older and much smaller,” ACLU executive director Anthony Romero told Reuters. “Our members would provide us with money so we could file the cases and do the advocacy. What’s clear with the Trump election is that our new members are engaged and want to be deployed.”…

Speaking at the event on Saturday, Mr. Romero said priority issues for the campaign are immigration, free speech and religious freedom rights, civil and reproductive rights, and LGBT rights.

“We will bring all the lawsuits necessary to defend these rights,” he said, as reported by the Associated Press. “We’ll do the work in the courts. You do the work in the streets. People are motivated. They want to be engaged.”

The Resistance Training coincided with the ACLU’s launch of a new grassroots online organizing platform, PeoplePower.org, a tool to help people planning a local protest or rally connect and coordinate with others around the country. The site will also provide details of ACLU initiatives…

Apart from staffing The Resistance, what’s on the agenda as we start another week?


On The Road

by 5:00 am. It has 37 Comments.

Good Morning All,

This weekday feature is for Balloon Juicers who are on the road, travelling, etc. and wish to share notes, links, pictures, stories, etc. from their escapades. As the US mainland begins the end of the Earth day as we measure it, many of us rise to read about our friends and their transient locales.

So, please, speak up and share some of your adventures, observations, and sights as you explore, no matter where you are. By concentrating travel updates here, it’s easier for all to keep up-to-date on the adventures of our fellow Commentariat. And it makes finding some travel tips or ideas from 6 months ago so much easier to find…

Have at ’em, and have a safe day of travels!

Should you have any pictures (tasteful, relevant, etc….) you can email them to picstopost@balloon-juice.com or just use this nifty link to start an email: Start an Email to send a Picture to Post on Balloon Juice

Hope you had a great weekend – pictures after the fold…

Read more →


Late Night Horrowshow Open Thread: “A man with no fixed address”

by 1:55 am. It has 46 Comments.

Dolt45’s Brain (Bane?) as described by the Washington Post:

In the three years before he became Donald Trump’s chief strategist, Stephen K. Bannon lived as a virtual nomad in a quest to build a populist political insurgency…

He owned a house and condo in Southern California, where he had entertainment and consulting businesses, a driver’s license and a checking account. He claimed Florida as his residence, registering to vote in Miami and telling authorities he lived at the same address as his third ex-wife.

At the same time, he routinely stayed in Washington and New York as he engineered the expansion of Breitbart News and hosted a live Breitbart radio program. By 2015, Bannon stayed so often at Breitbart’s townhouse headquarters on Capitol Hill that he kept a picture of a daughter on a mantle piece, beneath a portrait of Abraham Lincoln…

The issue of Bannon’s legal residency has been simmering since last summer, shortly after he became chief executive of Trump’s campaign. The Guardian reported in an Aug. 26 story that he was registered to vote at a then-vacant house and speculated that Bannon may have signed an oath that he was a Florida resident to take advantage of the state’s lack of state income taxes. In California, where Bannon had lived and owned property for more than two decades, income tax can exceed 12 percent…

In the digital age, when most Americans leave a clear footprint of their whereabouts, Bannon left a meandering trail filled with ambiguity, contradictions and questions. The Post found that Bannon left a negligible footprint in Florida. He did not get a Florida driver’s license or register a car in the state. He never voted in Florida, and neighbors near two homes he leased in Miami said they never saw him. His rent and utility bills were sent to his business manager in California.

Bannon’s former wife occupied the premises, according to a landlord and neighbors.

At the same time Bannon said he was living with his ex-wife, she was under investigation for involvement in a plot to smuggle drugs and a cellphone into a Miami jail, a law enforcement document obtained by The Post shows…

The two were married in 2006, when Bannon was 53 and Clohesy was 36. They divorced in California in 2009. She had moved to Florida in 2008, “starting a new life in Miami,” Bannon said in court papers during the divorce. But the two remained in touch, and she worked on three political documentaries he directed in 2011 and 2012…

The $4,900 monthly rent was a big jump for Clohesy, who declared on the lease application that her most recent apartment had cost her $950 a month, documents show. But by his own account, Bannon could afford it.

He stated on the application that he earned $750,000 a year as chairman of Breitbart News Network, a figure that has not been previously reported. He also earned $270,000 as executive chairman of Arc Entertainment, a film distribution company based in Santa Monica, Calif.

In addition, Bannon received about $100,000 in salary that year as part-time chairman of the Government Accountability Institute, a new nonprofit charity in Tallahassee, according to filings with the Internal Revenue Service. Bannon, two Breitbart writers and other conservative activists had launched the organization a year earlier and it produced reports and books that were promoted by Breitbart. Bannon claimed he worked 30 hours a week at GAI, according to IRS filings…

On April 2, 2014, more than a year after Bannon signed the lease on the residence in Coconut Grove, he registered to vote in Florida and listed the Opechee Drive address as his legal home. Bannon did not have to show an ID to register. He provided the last four digits of his Social Security number to verify his identity.

One of the allures of Florida is its zero income tax rate for in-state residents. The Post was unable to determine what state Bannon claimed as his primary residence for the purpose of income tax…

On Feb. 18, 2015, Bannon ended the water and sewer service at Opechee Drive and switched the service to Onaway Drive, less than a half mile away in Coconut Grove, records show. Five days later, Bannon changed his voter registration to Onaway Drive.

The Opechee house was left in disrepair, according to an email between the landlord and Bannon and interviews with the landlord.

Padlocks had been placed on interior doors — or the doors had been removed altogether. A hot tub was destroyed.

“[E]ntire Jacuzzi bathtub seems to have been covered in acid,” the landlord wrote in the February 2015 email to Bannon…


Late-Night Sweet Little Leftovers Open Thread

by 12:24 am. It has 52 Comments.


.

Mmm, hamantaschen. My family wasn’t Jewish, but every sensible New Yorker takes advantage of ethnic bakeries during their various holidays. Purim, this year, actually ran from Saturday sundown to Sunday evening…


Shout at the devil

by 9:28 pm. It has 97 Comments.

I went to a town hall meeting yesterday for local Congressman Tom Reed. The audience was moderately hostile but Reed handled himself well. Some Congressional representatives get rattled by heckling, and if they do, you should heckle. Getting in your opponents’ head is half the battle. For others, like Reed, it’s better to be polite but persistent. You might think a Congressional representative like Reed “wins” in this case, but that’s not necessarily the right way to look at it, because reps who handle town hall crowds well also tend to say the kinds of reasonable, honest things that can be used against their caucus when their caucus is trying to pass truly horrible legislation like TrumpCare. Maybe you could argue that the rep still “wins” this way if the legislation fails, but there’s nothing wrong with that if it’s in the service of killing terrible legislation.

Reed was less than enthusiastic about TrumpCare. He said he wouldn’t vote for it before there was a a CBO score, and that he might conceivably vote against it if he didn’t like the CBO score. He also implied that he didn’t see the current bill as a final product but just a starting point.

In fact, a lot of Republican members of Congress are expressing reservations about TrumpCare at town hall meetings. Dean Heller’s comments were somewhat similar to Reed’s though more pointed and more supportive of ACA.


Weird Read: What Bodies Does Trump Want to Bury?

by 5:45 pm. It has 142 Comments.

Not a euphemism, for once. The Washington Post‘s David A. Fahrenthold on “The mystery of Donald Trump and the New Jersey cemetery“:

In rural New Jersey, the president’s business has proposed an unusual real estate project.

It wants to build a cemetery.

Or maybe not. Or maybe two.

According to plans filed with local and state authorities, the Trump Organization has proposed to build a pair of graveyards at the site of its tony Trump National Golf Club Bedminster course.

One would be small: 10 plots overlooking the first hole. It was intended — or so they said — for Trump and his family. “Mr. Trump . . . specifically chose this property for his final resting place as it is his favorite property,” his company wrote in a filing with the state in 2014…

The other proposed cemetery would have 284 lots for sale to the public. There, buyers could pay for a kind of eternal membership in Trump’s club — even if it isn’t clear Trump himself would ever join them…

But Trump has been talking about cemeteries here for 10 years — and he has shown the same unpredictable decision-making style about his death that he has about so many things in his life. His plans have gone through at least five major overhauls. Trump has reconsidered his own burial spot at least twice.

Local officials were left puzzling, wondering what angle Trump was playing.

Did the world’s most famous Manhattanite really want to be buried in nowheresville New Jersey?…

******
President Trump already has a family burial plot: His parents and his brother Fred are buried together at All Faiths Cemetery in Queens.

So it was a surprise, back in 2007, when Trump announced he wanted a mausoleum for himself in New Jersey…

The plan was big: 19 feet high. Stone. Obelisks. Set smack in the middle of the golf course. In Bedminster — a wealthy horse-country town 43 miles west of New York City — officials had some concerns about hosting a reality TV star’s tomb. The huge structure would seem garish, out of place. And there were ongoing worries that the spot might become an “attractive nuisance,” tempting curiosity-seekers to trespass on club grounds.

Trump offered a concession.

The tomb would be versatile.

It could also be a festive wedding . . . tomb.

“We’re planning a mausoleum/chapel,” Trump said, according to a news report from the time…

Trump withdrew the plan to be buried in New Jersey. But five years later, he was back with another one. Now, the mausoleum was out — but, instead, he had a plan to build a large cemetery with more than 1,000 graves, including one for him.

The idea, apparently, was that Trump’s golf-club members would buy the other plots, seizing the chance at eternal membership…

The town was, again, skeptical. So Trump whittled it down to just 10 graves, enough for himself and his family members.

Which family members, exactly?

“Only the good Trumps,” Russo said, according to a video of the town land-use board. He did not elaborate…

******
… Could this whole thing have been a scheme to reduce the Trump Organization’s real estate taxes? After all, nonprofit cemeteries pay no taxes on their land.

That’s possible, experts said.

But, in this case, the savings would hardly be worth the trouble. That’s because Trump had already found a way to lower his taxes on that wooded, largely unused parcel. He had persuaded the township to declare it a farm, because some trees on the site are turned into mulch. Because of pro-farmer tax policies, Trump’s company pays just $16.31 per year in taxes on the parcel, which he bought for $461,000.

“It’s always been my suspicion that there’s something we don’t know” about the explanation behind the seemingly inexplicable cemetery plan, said Bedminster land-use board member Nick Strakhov. So why were they doing it?

“I did not ask,” Strakhov said. “It’s an obvious question.”…

For I am Trumpymandias, King of Kings!… Probably it’s just some errant impulse on Lord Smallgloves’ part, another futile attempt to prove that he’s a world-historical figure and not just a jumped-up Queens slumlord’s Fortunate Son.

Best response from the Washington Post comments:

Bill Payer
Q. Who is buried in Trumps tomb?
A. Nobody but rumor has it that is where his tax returns went to spend eternity.