Is he tired of winning yet?

BREAKING: No Vote Today on Health Care!

Vote not happening today to repeal ACA and replace with TrumpCare!

#TrumpCare (Because he hates that name!)

Subtle, Very Subtle

By now you should all have learned that Governor Corbett, behind in the polls by double digits and presumably in desperate need of an election year boost, has announced:

...that the state has secured agreement with the federal government to implement the portion of his Healthy Pennsylvania plan that will improve and bring financial stability to the state’s Medicaid program so that the state can increase access to quality, affordable health care through the private insurance market.

In the words of Kate Giammarise at the P-G:

Pennsylvania’s working poor could start receiving subsidized health insurance as early as Jan. 1 now that the federal government has approved the state’s proposed Medicaid overhaul.

Federal regulators approved much of Gov. Tom Corbett’s “;Healthy PA” plan, the state and federal governments confirmed Thursday, ending months of negotiations between the two parties. Enrollment in what’s being called the “Healthy PA Private Coverage Option” will begin Dec. 1.

Mr. Corbett’s plan, unveiled last year and formally submitted to the federal government for review in February, would not directly expand the state’s Medicaid program, but would instead offer federal subsidies to low-income Pennsylvanians to purchase private insurance. As many as 600,000 uninsured Pennsylvanians could be eligible, according to the state’s latest estimates.

Guv'mint subsidies?  Redistributing the wealth to help the poor?  That's a guv'mint take over of the economy!  Impeach Obama!

Give it time.  Give it time, for surely our friends in the Pennsylvania Tea Party will be screeching that very soon.

Back to reality.  While it's good news that hundreds of thousands of the states poor could be receiving subsidized health insurance soon, not everyone's happy with the deal.

From Pennlive.com:

"Today's agreement begins to dig Pennsylvania out of the hole Governor Corbett and lawmakers created when they rejected funding to expand health care coverage to half-a-million low-income Pennsylvanians. There never should have been a coverage gap in Pennsylvania, and we share the relief of hundreds of thousands of uninsured Pennsylvanians in knowing it's finally on track to close," said Antoinette Kraus, of the Pennsylvania Health Access Network, in a news release, referring to the fact that the coverage became available Jan. 1 in states that accepted the Obamacare version.

And from Michael Morrill of Keystone Progress:

"The Obama administration's approval today of 'Healthy Pennsylvania,' Governor Corbett's insurance industry giveaway, will leave thousands of working families without insurance unnecessarily. Because the Corbett administration refused to accept a simple expansion of the medicaid program, thousands in Pennsylvania have gone without insurance they so dearly need, and thousands will still be left out in the cold because the approved deal will create unaffordable premiums.

"There is no reason to give more money to the insurance companies when there was an easy alternative that would have used that money to directly aid the families that need it most -- expanding medicaid as 20+ other states have already done. Instead, the Corbett administration has decided to play politics with the health of thousands of Pennsylvanians in an effort to funnel millions of dollars into the pockets of wealthy insurance companies."

And our friends on the right must surely be unhappy as well. From Alex Nixon and Brad Bumsted of the Trib:

The conservative Commonwealth Foundation commended Corbett for pushing back against Medicaid expansion, but said he should “walk away” from the plan as approved.

“Given the federal government's unwillingness to grant Pennsylvania work search requirements or meaningful cost-sharing, it's in the best interest of Pennsylvanians to walk away and pursue other avenues to truly expand health care access,” the Harrisburg nonprofit said in a statement.

And there's the subtle.  That's the Tribune-Review, remember.  Which, via its editorial page, has denounced Obamacare forever.  Prior to his passing, Richard Mellon Scaife owned the Tribune-Review.  Prior to his passing, Scaife presided over a number of foundations.  Prior to his passing, those foundations gave lots of money to various conservative institutions over the years.

Turns out that about 35% of the foundational support received by the above mentioned Commonwealth Foundation came from those Scaife-controlled foundations - amd there's not a peep out of Nixon and Bumstead about all the money their former boss gave to the conservative institution they were quoting.

Subtle, very subtle.

The VOTE

Ok, so the disaster's been avoided.  For now.

From the AP (by way of the P-G):

Up against a deadline, Congress passed and sent a waiting President Barack Obama legislation late Wednesday night to avoid a threatened national default and end the 16-day partial government shutdown, the culmination of an epic political drama that placed the U.S. economy at risk.

The Senate voted first, a bipartisan 81-18 at midevening. That cleared the way for a final 285-144 vote in the Republican-controlled House about two hours later on the bill, which hewed strictly to the terms Obama laid down when the twin crises erupted more than three weeks ago.

In The House, they made a few changes. From the NYTimes:

Most House Republicans opposed the bill, but 87 voted to support it. The breakdown showed that Republican leaders were willing to violate their informal rule against advancing bills that do not have majority Republican support in order to end the shutdown. All 198 Democrats voting supported the measure.

So they sidestepped the Hastert Rule.  Interesting.  Here's how the AP characterizes the bill:

Simplicity at the end, there was next to nothing in the agreement beyond authorization for the Treasury to resume borrowing and funding for the government to reopen.

But I'm more interested in the 18 Senators and 144 House members who voted against the bill.

Against a bill that averted a national default (and the resulting economic chaos that was sure to follow).  Against a bill to reopen the guv'ment (allowing hundreds of thousands of guv'ment employees to get back to work).  Who could possibly vote against that?

Pennsylvania Senator Pat Toomey, Pennsylvania House Members Scott Perry, Joseph Pitts, and of course, Keith Rothfus, that's who.

They voted to keep the memorials closed, they voted to damage the nation's credit rating and send the world into another economic crisis.

All in a stupid attempt to stop the Affordable Care Act.

Something to remember when they're up for re-election.  Or they're quoted in the news about anything.

An interview with a member of the Tea Party Caucus in the House

More On GOP House Members And Their Tea Party Overlords

From The President of the United States Of America:

At midnight last night, for the first time in 17 years, Republicans in Congress chose to shut down the federal government. Let me be more specific: One faction, of one party, in one house of Congress, in one branch of government, shut down major parts of the government -- all because they didn't like one law.

This Republican shutdown did not have to happen. But I want every American to understand why it did happen. Republicans in the House of Representatives refused to fund the government unless we defunded or dismantled the Affordable Care Act. They've shut down the government over an ideological crusade to deny affordable health insurance to millions of Americans. In other words, they demanded ransom just for doing their job.

Can we start calling the Tea Party Caucus zealots from now on?  How about bullies?  How about ignorant ideologues who have no idea what governing means?

I am surprised they didn't demand the president's REAL birth certificate (or a confession for Benghazi, or the IRS or Climategate) as a prerequisite for "bipartisan negotiations" where they get everything they want and the twice elected president gets nothing in return.

Shutdown

Yes, the federal government has been shut down. Here's Jon Stewart's great take on it. The only thing missing from it is the fact that there are enough votes in the House to pass a clean Senate bill. The blame lies with 30 to 60 representatives--call them, oh I don't know, TEA PARTY members--and House Speaker John Boehner who fears them.

  (If you're in Pittsburgh, you can learn more about the Affordable Care Act at this event today.)

Fun With Math - Right Wing Style!

Today, our friends on the Tribune-Review editorial board went with this:

Confirming the disconnect between the empty-promise pretenses on which ObamaCare was sold and its real-world effects in practice is a new report from Medicare actuaries that says health spending in ObamaCare's first 10 years will be about $621 billion higher than it would be without that train wreck of a law. That's $7,450 more in health spending per family of four through 2022, according to Duke University health-policy expert Chris Conover, writing for The Apothecary, a Forbes blog.

$7,450?  that's a lot of money!  But of course, this is right wing math which almost always means it's misleading.  And misleading it is.  Here's how Conover came by that result, as quoted in Wonkette:

So I have taken the latest year-by-year projections [of additional health spending attributable to the Affordable Care Act], divided by the projected U.S. population to determine the added amount per person and multiplied the result by 4.

Makes sense, right?  Except it's extremely silly.  And here's why (from thinkprogress):

One economist interviewed by ThinkProgress, the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities’ Paul Van de Water, described this calculation as one of the stupidest things he’s read in a long time and likened it to arguing that college costs will increase for a “typical” family if the federal government adopts policies that help lower-income Americans afford college education. Yes, the nation will spend more on education if more students enroll in colleges and universities, but the “typical” student already attending college won’t; she or he will continuing paying tuition at more or less the same rate, while the newly-enrolled student will presumably benefit from some sort of subsidized tuition rate.

The same is true here. The so-called “typical” family that Conover describes already receives health care insurance through their employer. The existence of 30 million newly-insured people — many of whom will receive tax credits if they purchase insurance in the law’s exchanges — won’t do much to move their premiums in one way or another. (Health advocates hope that the law will slow the rate of growth in health care spending, but that’s a long-term proposition.)

Thinkprogress has more on Conover's misleading math.  First from an MIT professor:

“This is a typically misleading use of data by opponents of Obamacare,” MIT’s Jonathan Gruber added. “The bottom line is that the government has consistently reported that Obamacare will raise national health spending by about 1 to 2 percent.” “This is a small fraction of the typical 5 to 7 percent annual growth rate in health care – and is a small price to pay for insuring 30 million or more Americans.”

And then in an update from Kenneth Thomas, a Poli-Sci professor from University of Missouri-St. Louis:

Forbes’ most-read story of the day (with over 26,000 Facebook shares and 3400 tweets as I write this) is simply false. Between all the new taxes and the premiums from the newly insured, you can cover the total increase in health care spending. The typical, already insured family isn’t going to see increases due to the rise in overall health care spending. You add 30 million new insured at a far lower cost than what we currently spend per person. And the editors didn’t catch a blatant error on present value.

You can read Thomas' entire debunking here.

All in all typical bad math from the same crowd that bad maths climate science.

The Trib. Again. This Time It's ObamaCare. Again.

A few notes from today's Thursday Wrap:

Uh-oh, don't look now but the Oracle of Omaha, Warren Buffett, says it's time to scrap ObamaCare and start over. “Attack the costs first and then worry about expanding coverage,” he told Money Morning. Bottom line: If President Obama has lost the usually ardent support of Mr. Buffett, ObamaCare is a lost cause. [Bolding in original]

Uh-oh, don't look now but the crack research team at the Trib has done it again - or rather failed to do it.  Adequate research, that is.

Take a look at this from the Scaife supported Newsbusters:

When Warren Buffett proposed higher taxes on millionaires in 2011, the media gushed and fawned giving him and his views airtime as if Elvis Presley returned from the dead.

Will they be as fascinating by the Oracle of Omaha stating that ObamaCare should be scrapped? [Emphasis added.]

Before moving on, let's all note the use of the phrase "Oracle of Obama."  Good clue that this was the braintrust's source for their Thursday Wrap blurb.  Anyway, Newsbusters then quotes the Monday Morning piece:

"Attack the costs first, and then worry about expanding coverage," he said.

And so on.

So what's the problem?

This is the problem for the Trib.   It's what's posted above the story at Newsbusters:

Executive editor's note: Due to an error made by a secondary source, the piece below incorrectly claimed that Warren Buffett had called for the repeal of Obamacare in 2013. The interview which was cited actually took place in 2010. We regret the error.[Emphasis added.]

In fact, the Money Morning piece that Scaife's own Newsbusters page links to no longer contains that "Attack the costs..." quotation.

So let's sum up.  The Scaife's braintrust at the Trib uses a quote to assert that Warren Buffet thinks that "Obamacare should be scrapped" while another Scaife supported "news" source corrects itself and says that it's piece (one that used the same quotation) was incorrect in saying exactly the same thing.

Oh, and that "Attack the costs..." line was actually from 2010.

If you can't even get this stuff right, then what good are you at all?

Then there's this:

The New York Post reports that under ObamaCare, doctors will be required to ask you “Are you sexually active?” and “If so, with one partner, multiple partners or same-sex partners?” To which any true-blue American should respond, “Tell the president it's none of his (expletive deleted) business.”

What they didn't tell you is that it wasn't a report from the Post, it was a column by Betsy McCaughey.

And as Wonkette points out:

If there’s anyone we can trust for her expertise on health care policy, it’s Betsy McCaughey, the genius who decided that if Medicare pays for seniors to meet with a doctor to discuss living wills, that’s a DEATH PANEL.

And then Mediamatters elaborates:

As Wonkette pointed out, McCaughey offered no evidence for her claims that the ACA changes existing practices. In fact, despite her fearmongering, sexual history questions are routine medical practice. The Centers For Disease Control calls such questions "an important part of a regular medical exam or physical history" and recommends that "[a] sexual history needs to be taken during a patient's initial visit, during routine preventive exams, and when you see signs of sexually transmitted diseases (STDs)." In fact, the very questions that McCaughey claims doctors will now be pressured to ask are the exact questions the CDC recommends doctors ask their patients.

In a post on The Incidental Economist, Aaron Carroll, a professor of pediatrics and director of the Center for Health Policy and Professionalism Research, accused McCaughey of inventing inaccurate "reasons to dislike Obamacare," pointing out that doctors ask about sexual history "because having multiple sexual partners greatly increases your risk of sexually transmitted infections. They're looking out for my health, and want to advise me best on how to manage it."

It's always amazing to me how Scaife's braintrust can get so much absolutely wrong in such a tiny space.  But once you fully grasp the depth and breadth of their various mendacities, how can you trust anything they have to say?

Really? Objective NEWS From The Trib?

I saw this commercial a few days ago:


The text (the best of what I could make of it):

"...reporting the truth.  We ask the tough questions and never give up until we've covered the complete story and then report it to you.  Accurately.  Sure we lean to the right on our editorial [...] but when it comes to hard news, right down the middle.  The Trib.  Conservative views, objective views.  Get it right.  Now.

Ok, fine.  So they're promising "objective" news reporting "the complete story" while admitting to "lean[ing] right" on the op-ed page.

So what should we make of this recent news coverage:

The head of a conservative think tank said Wednesday that withholding funding for President Obama's health care overhaul could halt some government services, but it's worth the political risk.

“The reason we're not wincing on that is because the alternative is really, really serious,” former South Carolina Republican Sen. Jim DeMint, president of the Washington-based Heritage Foundation, said during a meeting with Tribune-Review editors and reporters.

If Tom Fontaine (the reporter of this story) was giving us "the complete story" then why didn't he mention that his boss (ie the owner of the paper he works for, Richard Mellon Scaife)  is vice chairman of the Board of Trustees for the very foundation he's covering?

Or that foundations his boss controls have given tens of millions of dollars to the Heritage Foundation?

Or that the idea for the individual mandate actually came from the Heritage Foundation?

That's right.  That part might need some further explaining so here's Avik Roy (Romney advisor and senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute) writing at Forbes.com:

James Taranto, who writes the Wall Street Journal’s excellent “Best of the Web” column, put forth a lengthy and informative discussion yesterday on the conservative origins of the individual mandate, whose inclusion in Obamacare is today its most controversial feature on the Right.

And those "conservative origins" are described by Taranto at the above link at the Wall Street Journal:

Heritage did put forward the idea of an individual mandate, though it predated HillaryCare by several years. We know this because we were there: In 1988-90, we were employed at Heritage as a public relations associate (a junior writer and editor), and we wrote at least one press release for a publication touting Heritage’s plan for comprehensive legislation to provide universal “quality, affordable health care.”

So why wasn't any of this mentioned in a news report outlining the Heritage Foundation's resistance to Obamacare?  Especially a news report that included:

DeMint thinks it will drive up health care costs and insurance premiums.

He said the national tour is the largest effort of its kind by Heritage. Its political arm, Heritage Action for America, is spending hundreds of thousands of dollars on ads targeting several Republican congressmen who have not gotten on board with plans to defund the health care law — including Sen. Richard Burr, R-N.C., who called defunding the plan the “dumbest idea I've ever heard.”

The effort is being tied to a government funding bill that expires Sept. 30. Congress needs to pass legislation, including money for the law, or risk letting parts of the federal government shut down.

“I don't care if the government shuts down. It's no good anyway. Obamacare has to go,” said Michele Zolnier, who drove from Hermitage in Mercer County, to attend the town hall meeting.

Complete story?

Sorry, Tom.  Not today.

Jack Kelly Sunday

Oh, the hypocrisy!

In his column at the Post-Gazette this Sunday, Jack Kelly swerves a full 180.  He starts with:

Is obeying the law optional?

President Barack Obama seems to think it is -- at least insofar as it applies to him.

The administration announced this month that it plans to delay enforcement of the provision in Obamacare which requires employers with 50 or more full-time employees to provide them with health insurance (which contains certain government-mandated provisions), or pay a fine of $2,000 per worker.

Section 1513(d) of the Obamacare law states clearly that "The amendments made by this section shall apply to months beginning after December 31, 2013."

This is important because the Constitution says the president "shall take care that the laws be faithfully executed" (Article II, Section 3).

Jack's fellow travelers over on the Scaife editorial board have already tried this one and in general I am surprised that our friends on the right would even think of writing this.

Where the hell were they when this happened?

In October, 2005 Senator John McCain (a well-known Republican) offered up an amendment to the Department of Defense, Emergency Supplemental Appropriations to Address Hurricanes in the Gulf of Mexico, and Pandemic Influenza Act, 2006 (H.R. 2863) which became Title X of the bill.  It states:

No person in the custody or under the effective control of the Department of Defense or under detention in a Department of Defense facility shall be subject to any treatment or technique of interrogation not authorized by and listed in the United States Army Field Manual on Intelligence Interrogation.

And specifically:

(a) In General.--No individual in the custody or under the physical control of the United States Government, regardless of nationality or physical location, shall be subject to cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment.

(b) Construction.--Nothing in this section shall be construed to impose any geographical limitation on the applicability of the prohibition against cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment under this section.

(c) Limitation on Supersedure.--The provisions of this section shall not be superseded, except by a provision of law enacted after the date of the enactment of this Act which specifically repeals, modifies, or supersedes the provisions of this section.

(d) Cruel, Inhuman, or Degrading Treatment or Punishment Defined.--In this section, the term ``cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment'' means the cruel, unusual, and inhumane treatment or punishment prohibited by the Fifth, Eighth, and Fourteenth Amendments to the Constitution of the United States, as defined in the United States Reservations, Declarations and Understandings to the United Nations Convention Against Torture and Other Forms of Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment done at New York, December 10, 1984.

The Amendment was agreed to overwhelmingly by the Senate (The vote was 90-9. Even Rick Santorum voted for it).

The whole bill passed both the House and the Senate and was signed by President George W. Bush, who included this section in the now infamous "signing statement" attached to the bill:

The executive branch shall construe Title X in Division A of the Act, relating to detainees, in a manner consistent with the constitutional authority of the President to supervise the unitary executive branch and as Commander in Chief and consistent with the constitutional limitations on the judicial power, which will assist in achieving the shared objective of the Congress and the President, evidenced in Title X, of protecting the American people from further terrorist attacks. Further, in light of the principles enunciated by the Supreme Court of the United States in 2001 in Alexander v. Sandoval, and noting that the text and structure of Title X do not create a private right of action to enforce Title X, the executive branch shall construe Title X not to create a private right of action. Finally, given the decision of the Congress reflected in subsections 1005(e) and 1005(h) that the amendments made to section 2241 of title 28, United States Code, shall apply to past, present, and future actions, including applications for writs of habeas corpus, described in that section, and noting that section 1005 does not confer any constitutional right upon an alien detained abroad as an enemy combatant, the executive branch shall construe section 1005 to preclude the Federal courts from exercising subject matter jurisdiction over any existing or future action, including applications for writs of habeas corpus, described in section 1005.

You may need to read that twice to get a better idea of what's in there.

But here's how Charlie Savage of the Boston Globe described what Bush did:

When President Bush last week signed the bill outlawing the torture of detainees, he quietly reserved the right to bypass the law under his powers as commander in chief.

After approving the bill last Friday, Bush issued a ''signing statement" -- an official document in which a president lays out his interpretation of a new law -- declaring that he will view the interrogation limits in the context of his broader powers to protect national security. This means Bush believes he can waive the restrictions, the White House and legal specialists said.

Though they try to reassure the skittish terrorist-enablers:

''We are not going to ignore this law," the official said, noting that Bush, when signing laws, routinely issues signing statements saying he will construe them consistent with his own constitutional authority. ''We consider it a valid statute. We consider ourselves bound by the prohibition on cruel, unusual, and degrading treatment."

But, the official said, a situation could arise in which Bush may have to waive the law's restrictions to carry out his responsibilities to protect national security. He cited as an example a ''ticking time bomb" scenario, in which a detainee is believed to have information that could prevent a planned terrorist attack.

Not that means much:

David Golove, a New York University law professor who specializes in executive power issues, said that the signing statement means that Bush believes he can still authorize harsh interrogation tactics when he sees fit.

''The signing statement is saying 'I will only comply with this law when I want to, and if something arises in the war on terrorism where I think it's important to torture or engage in cruel, inhuman, and degrading conduct, I have the authority to do so and nothing in this law is going to stop me,' " he said. ''They don't want to come out and say it directly because it doesn't sound very nice, but it's unmistakable to anyone who has been following what's going on."

Interestingly, something Savage writes in the very next paragraph also resonates this story:

Golove and other legal specialists compared the signing statement to Bush's decision, revealed last month, to bypass a 1978 law forbidding domestic wiretapping without a warrant. Bush authorized the National Security Agency to eavesdrop on Americans' international phone calls and e-mails without a court order starting after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

Authorizing previously unauthorized NSA eavesdropping?  Ignoring laws banning the torture of human beings?  Anyone remember those offenses?  Jack?  Don't you?

And yet when the Obama Administration delays by a year the implementation of a section of the Affordable Healthcare Act, that's when the conservatives from Maine to Malibu judge as the time to point out the President's legal obligations under Article II.

Oh, the hypocrisy!

The Braintrust Gets It Wrong. Again.

I hope everyone had a good fourth.

But there's still work to be done, still misinformation to be corrected, still Tribune-Review op-eds to be debunked.

Like this one, today:

The Obama administration just jumped out of the frying pan and into the fire with its abrupt Tuesday decision to delay a signature provision of ObamaCare.

Not only is the move to delay, until 2015, implementation of a mandate that larger employers (of 50 or more workers) provide health care insurance for their employees or face a $2,000 fine for each nakedly political — it postpones an onerous diktat with backdraft political implications until after the 2014 midterm elections — the administration's arbitrary decision to flout the law is patently illegal. [Emphases added.]

Arbitrary?  Well, let's see about that.  Here's how the Treasury Department explains the "abrupt" and "arbitrary" decision:

Over the past several months, the Administration has been engaging in a dialogue with businesses - many of which already provide health coverage for their workers - about the new employer and insurer reporting requirements under the Affordable Care Act (ACA). We have heard concerns about the complexity of the requirements and the need for more time to implement them effectively. We recognize that the vast majority of businesses that will need to do this reporting already provide health insurance to their workers, and we want to make sure it is easy for others to do so. We have listened to your feedback. And we are taking action.

The Administration is announcing that it will provide an additional year before the ACA mandatory employer and insurer reporting requirements begin. This is designed to meet two goals. First, it will allow us to consider ways to simplify the new reporting requirements consistent with the law. Second, it will provide time to adapt health coverage and reporting systems while employers are moving toward making health coverage affordable and accessible for their employees. Within the next week, we will publish formal guidance describing this transition. Just like the Administration’s effort to turn the initial 21-page application for health insurance into a three-page application, we are working hard to adapt and to be flexible about reporting requirements as we implement the law.

So not so abrupt or arbitrary, huh?  But take a look at the why of the delay: to give businesses more time to meet the requirements of the law.

And what does business have to say about this delay?  From the New York Times:

Employer groups were quick to applaud the delay. At the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, which has strongly opposed the law, Randy Johnson, senior vice president for labor, immigration and employee benefits, said in a statement, “The administration has finally recognized the obvious — employers need more time and clarification of the rules of the road before implementing the employer mandate.”

E. Neil Trautwein, a vice president of the National Retail Federation, said the delay “will provide employers and businesses more time to update their health care coverage without threat of arbitrary punishment.”

And why is there a need for a delay?  This from the Washington Post:

The decision comes as a result of years of bumps and setbacks for the overhaul, including legal challenges and political opposition that have hampered its implementation. Last summer, the Supreme Court upheld the law but struck down a mandatory expansion of Medicaid. State officials and businesses held off changing their policies through the 2012 presidential campaign because Obama’s GOP opponent, Mitt Romney, had promised to repeal the law.

Basically, business has been delaying implementing the policies hoping that either the Supreme Court overturns the law or Romney killed it.  In case you missed it, neither happened.

And so now they're running short of time and the Administration just gave them another year.

And yet to Scaife's braintrust, it's an "abrupt" and "arbitrary" decision designed to help out in the 2014 midterms.

But will it have much of an effect?  According to Brian Beutler at Talkingpointsmemo, not so much:

The provision in question — the so-called “employer mandate” — is intended to entice large employers to provide insurance to their full-time employees, and create a disincentive for large employers who might be tempted to unload their health care costs on to taxpayers by nudging their employees into Obamacare’s subsidized insurance exchanges.

Crucially, though, experts note that these incentives are fairly trivial in the grand scheme of employer sponsored insurance, and they don’t expect that the temporary delay of this particular penalty will have major consequences for the insurance market under Obamacare.

“[T]here is very little in the ACA that changes the incentives facing employers that already offer coverage to their workers, and fully 96 percent of employers with 50 or more workers already offer today,” write Linda J. Blumberg, John Holahan, and Judy Feder of the Urban Institute. “Competition for labor, the fact that most employees get greater value from the tax exclusion for employer sponsored insurance than they would from exchange-based subsidies, and the introduction of a requirement for individuals to obtain coverage or pay a penalty themselves, are the major factors that will keep the lion’s share of employers continuing to do just what they do today with no requirements in place to do so.”

In other words, even in absence of Obamacare’s $2000-a-head penalty, employers still have very real incentives to offer their employees health benefits. And if the delay will only have a modest impact on the insurance market, then it should also have a modest impact on the law’s fiscal consequences.

Funny how much real reality differs from the false reality projected by the Tribune-Review editorial board - you know, once someone bothers to introduce facts to the discussion.

Jack Kelly Sunday

A message to my friends at the Post-Gazette:

This is how you fact-check Jack Kelly.

In today's column on the "cost" of ObamaCare, Jack writes:

The Congressional Budget Office estimated a loss of 800,000 jobs over 10 years.

Luckily for you, me, Jack and everyone else, the Washington Post fact-checked this more than two years ago.

Here's how they set up the checking:

A long and rather dry discussion of nation's budget outlook at the House Budget Committee has exploded with a frenzy of politics after a brief exchange, highlighted in the video clip above, between Rep. John Campbell (R-Calif.) and Congressional Budget Office director Douglas W. Elmendorf. The CBO last August had estimated that the new health care law over the next decade would reduce the number of overall workers in the United States by one-half of one percent, and Campbell got Elmendorf to utter the words "800,000."

And the facts:

The CBO first discussed this issue, briefly, in a budget analysis last August. Boiled down to plain English, the CBO is essentially saying that some people who are now in the work force because they need health insurance would decide to stop working because the health care law guaranteed they would have access to health care.

Think of someone who is 63, a couple of years before retirement, who is still in a job only because they are waiting to get on Medicare when they turn 65. Or a single mother with children who is only working to make sure her kids have health insurance.

And yet this debunked factoid shows up in a Jack Kelly column about how ObamaCare is going to cost the president's "young supporters."

Huh?

To my friends at the Post-Gazette: THIS IS HOW YOU FACT-CHECK JACK KELLY.

Another Reason Not To Trust The Braintrust

Scaife's Tribune-Review today published an op-ed explaining

Why states should say “No” to ObamaCare’s Medicaid expansion.

As part of their argument, they use some research from a well-known think tank:

An analysis by Grace-Marie Turner of the nonprofit Galen Institute (funded in part by the pharmaceutical and medical industries) provides some insights.

Ha.  You see where this is going, don't you?

According to The Bridge Project, PhRMA (the trade group representing the above mentioned "pharmaceutical and medical industries") has given $101,125 (adjusted for inflation, $107,913.74) to the Galen Institute from 2008 to 2010.

Don't get me wrong, it's good to point out that Galen's received some financial support from the industry it is, in turn, supporting with it's own research.  But do I need to point out that over a longer period of time (1998 to 2011) the Galen Institute's received even more money, $480,000 (adjusted for inflation, $569,978) from the Sarah Scaife Foundation?

The same foundation controlled by the owner of the paper publishing the op-ed?

Why qualify the story by pointing out that PhRMA money supports, in part, the Galen Institute while ignoring the much larger pile of money (by the way, that's about 4.78 times as large unadjusted or about 5.28 times as large adjusted for inflation) channeled to Galen by a Scaife Foundation?

Or maybe the answer is obvious.

The Bishops Speak...

And guess who they want Catholics to vote for (without actually saying it, nudge-nudge wink-wink)?

From Selena Zito at the Trib:

Roman Catholic bishops in Pennsylvania are urging the faithful to remember the church’s teachings on marriage, education and religious liberty when voting on Tuesday, calling this presidential election a “historical challenge.”

The Pennsylvania Catholic Conference chose All Saints’ Day to issue its election statement reminding Catholics that “most urgent political issues — ranging from the economy, immigration and abortion to global security — raise profoundly moral questions.”

“Because politics is the place where competing moral visions of a society meet and struggle, our democracy depends on people of conviction fighting for what they believe in the public square, yet doing so with an abiding respect for one another,” the bishops said.

Here's the statement.

And even though this is Zito is political reporter here, Zito the conservative columnist just can't resist the conservative spin:

The bishops warned against efforts to redefine the nature of marriage, to exclude parental authority in school choice, to encroach upon Catholic health care and social services and to erode religious liberty — an apparent reference to a Health and Human Services mandate on contraceptives and federal funding for abortion in Obamacare. [Emphasis added.]

There is no federal funding for abortion (except for rape and incest and when the life of the mother is in danger) - the Hyde Amendment has guaranteed that for decades.

And if there's any question whether federal funds can be used in Obamacare, there's an Executive Order that answers that question:

The Act maintains current Hyde Amendment restrictions governing abortion policy and extends those restrictions to the newly created health insurance exchanges. Under the Act, longstanding Federal laws to protect conscience (such as the Church Amendment, 42 U.S.C. 300a-7, and the Weldon Amendment, section 508(d)(1) of Public Law 111-8) remain intact and new protections prohibit discrimination against health care facilities and health care providers because of an unwillingness to provide, pay for, provide coverage of, or refer for abortions.

How could political reporter Selena Zito not know this?  And if she does, then it's simply dishonest to write what she wrote.  (Again, which is it with these folks at the Trib?  Incompetence or dishonesty?)

But let's move on to the Bishops' statement.  When they write:

Religious liberty itself – “our first, most cherished freedom” – is no longer secure. At first glance, this may seem otherwise because religious freedom is so deeply ingrained in our national history. But democracy has no special immunity to losing its soul by little steps. As Alexis de Tocqueville, the great chronicler of early American democracy, observed more than 150 years ago, “it is especially dangerous to enslave men in the minor details of life” – because the more the state provides, the more it inevitably controls.

Events have proven this true. In recent years a pattern of legislative and judicial actions has emerged in our country that undermines religious liberty and jeopardizes the contributions of religious bodies in the public realm. Government policies that seek to impose morally repugnant services on religiously affiliated medical providers...

And:

Consider today’s aggressive efforts to redefine the nature of marriage, to exclude parental authority in the choice of the best education for their children, and to force Catholic healthcare and social services to end their ministries unless they violate their religious identities through mandated support of practices contrary to the very sanctity of human life. [Emphasis added.]

Who do you think they want Catholics to support?  Notice how they framed the issue.  Now look at reality.

What's being discussed here is not The Church being forced to "end their ministries" in anyway.  It's about access to insurance (that they're not paying for) for women (who may or may not be Catholic but who work for a Catholic institution) who want contraceptives.  That's what the bishops oppose.  And in doing so, they're imposing their own faith in the name of religious liberty.

Amazing how faith, yet again, gets in the way of reality.

Things to do before/around President Obama's Pittsburgh visit

As you all should know by now, President Barack Obama will be holding a free, public rally at CMU today (you need to already have a ticket to get in). Why not make a day of it!

Counter the Pawlenty/Jindal GOP/Romney Campaign Event

Via the Post-Gazette's Early Returns:

OK, forget all that Is-Pa-Still-A-Battleground hand-wringing: tomorrow is shaping up to be a crazy and fun day in Pittsburgh for presidential politics.  

President Obama of course is coming in for a campaign rally at CMU Friday afternoon, but Republicans are bringing in big guns of their own for a counter-rally across Oakland in the morning, starring former Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty and Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal (right). The GOP/Romney campaign event is at 10 a.m. at Soldiers & Sailors Hall.

Via the AFL-CIO:

Event Details:
When: Friday, June 6, 9:15 a.m.
Where: Across from the Soldiers and Sailors Hall parking lot. 4141Fifth Avenue (OAKLAND) Pittsburgh, PA 15213



Thank You, Mr. President! We <3 Obamacare!

What: 'We'll have a large homemade banner that says, "Thank you Mr. President. We ♥ Obamacare" and lists the major pieces of the law that will make an enormously positive impact on all of our lives. We'll invite folks passing by to stop and add a thank you message or sign their name, and we'll be giving out great information about the law so folks can quickly understand what's in the law and how it helps them.'

When: Friday, June 6, 12:00pm until 3:00pm
Where: Meet near the entrance to the Morewood parking lot (on Forbes, just before the intersection of Forbes and Morewood).
Hosted By: Pennsylvania Health Access Network
More Info/RSVP: Facebook

Rally to Celebrate the Affordable Care Act

It's constitutional, bitchez!

We're liberals -- win, lose -- we rally!

Via One Pittsburgh:

Rally to celebrate the Affordable Care Act and tell Corbett we demand a PA Healthcare Exchange
When: Today! June 29, 2012, Noon
Where: Piatt Place 301 5th Avenue, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania 15222 (map)
What: The Affordable Care Act has been upheld by the Supreme Court, guaranteeing that millions of Americans will receive healthcare! As Attorney General, Tom Corbett filed a lawsuit against the ACA. We are going to rally to celebrate the SCOTUS decision and to remind Corbett that WE WON and that we demand he stops dragging his feet to create PA's healthcare exchange.

RSVP at link above or via MoveOn.

(Graphic via Facebook)

SCOTUS Tweet of the Day

Roberts is the Severus Snape of the Supreme Court.
— Erin Gloria Ryan (@morninggloria) June 28, 2012

Supreme Court Chief Justice Snape Strikes a Blow for ObamaCare:

Bwahahaha!

Happy Dance! (Even though Single-Payer would have been far better)

Decision can be read here.

ObamaCare upheld by US Supreme Court

Via SCOTUSblog:

10:13
Tom:
The bottom line: the entire ACA is upheld, with the exception that the federal government's power to terminate states' Medicaid funds is narrowly read.

10:15
Tom: Chief Justice Roberts' vote saved the ACA.

10:18
Amy Howe:
The money quote from the section on the mandate: Our precedent demonstrates that Congress had the power to impose the exaction in Section 5000A under the taxing power, and that Section 5000A need not be read to do more than impose a tax. This is sufficient to sustain it.  

10:20
Amy Howe:
The court reinforces that individuals can simply refuse to pay the tax and not comply with the mandate.  

10:20
Amy Howe:
On the Medicaid issue, a majority of the Court holds that the Medicaid expansion is constitutional but that it w/b unconstitutional for the federal government to withhold Medicaid funds for non-compliance with the expansion provisions.

10:26
Lyle:
Justice Ginsburg makes clear that the vote is 5-4 on sustaining the mandate as a form of tax. Her opinion, for herself and Sotomayor, Breyer and Kagan, joins the key section of Roberts opinion on that point. She would go further and uphold the mandate under the Commerce Clause, which Roberts wouldn't. Her opinion on Commerce does not control.