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   Dan Savage, the brilliant and foul-mouthed sex columnist, has become one of the most important ethicists in America. Are we screwed?
 The federal government is supposed to issue new rules about debt levels for students in for-profit colleges. In the meantime, the states are working on their own regulations.
 Washingtons budget hawks want to decimate the federal workforce to shrink the deficit. It will have the opposite effect.
 There arent nearly enough counterterrorism experts to instruct all of Americas police. So we got these guys instead.
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July 31, 2010
HEALTH-CARE SCHEME SCUTTLED IN FLORIDA.... It's a fairly straightforward strategy: get a measure on the state ballot in opposition to health care reform; boost right-wing turnout; and expect those voters to support GOP candidates while they're at the polls. We saw a similar strategy play out in 2004 with far-right activists getting measures on the ballot to prevent marriage equality. Assuming that Republican voters hate the Affordable Care Act at least as much as gays, there's an effort underway to repeat the model in a variety of states. One party official conceded, "What we're trying to do is give voters an added reason to show up to the polls." In Florida, the GOP-led state legislature did just that. Yesterday, a state judge threw the scheme out.
Imagine that -- right-wing Republicans making "manifestly misleading" claims about health care policy. Who would have imagined? Of course, it's a cynical exercise anyway, since state measures, even those approved by voters, can't trump federal law. But the point had nothing to do with policy, and everything to do with Republicans' get-out-the-vote efforts. While the issue in Florida is being appealed, identical efforts are continuing elsewhere. Ben Armbruster noted, "[N]ext Tuesday, Missouri voters will vote on a similar measure challenging the health insurance mandate Congress passed with the reform bill last year. The proposal 'would prohibit governments from requiring people to have health insurance or from penalizing them for paying health bills entirely with their own money.'" —Steve Benen 9:55 AM Permalink | Trackbacks | Comments (9)
Comments
And Circuit Court Judge James Shelfer can expect the death threats to start. Posted by: ComradeAnon on July 31, 2010 at 11:12 AM | PERMALINKThat ballot initiative would need some amazing power behind it. Imagine no waiting, because after all, the appointment book is just another waiting list: you call your doctor -- or any doctor, for that matter -- and they could fit your appointment in on your schedule, not on theirs. No matter that doctors can only see a certain number of patient each day. Posted by: meander on July 31, 2010 at 11:15 AM | PERMALINKMy relatives tell me that the Teabaggers tried to put a constitutional amendment on the ballot for November in Ohio to exempt the state from the ACA, but they couldn’t get the hundreds of thousands of signatures on petitions. The Teabaggers claim they will try again for 2011. Posted by: Joe Friday on July 31, 2010 at 12:57 PM | PERMALINKThis is so ironic, especially coming from Florida, where there are so many retirees (medicare recipients) who decry government health care, Florida is also the home of hundreds of millions in medicare fraud. I guess they have theirs, but don't want anyone else to be covered.I am retired and I get medicare, whatever happens to me, I want everyone in the country to be able to have affordable health care, we will not belong in the industrialized world (or the christian world) if we do not care for others. Posted by: js on July 31, 2010 at 3:40 PM | PERMALINKThe proposal 'would prohibit governments from requiring people to have health insurance or from penalizing them for paying health bills entirely with their own money.'" And where in the ACA, exactly, is that provision? What? They made it up??? Oh noooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooos. Posted by: efgoldman on July 31, 2010 at 5:47 PM | PERMALINKSurprise surprise. Yesterday I was at the local Wal-Mart, which is up in Porter Ranch, the last bastion of Republican ChristianWrong Idiot World in Los Angeles, to buy cat food (only place I can buy it cheap enough to supply all the kitties here at Le Chateau du Chat). There were two little creeps soliciting people to "sign the petition to repeal Obamacare!" So I didn't walk over and punch their lights out (which was my first emotional response), but rather stood around for 15 minutes and watched 12 white, over-50, one-paycheck-away-from-bankruptcy morons sign the petition, and listened to them bring up every single discredited right wing lie about health care reform - in their world, all that was still and always true. We really do live in two alternate, mutually-exclusive, realities. Mencken was right: nobody ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the (Republican) American public. Posted by: TCinLA on July 31, 2010 at 10:05 PM | PERMALINKI love love love that what drives the Tea Partiers nuts is the mandate. Yes, by all means, let's do away with the unpopular mandate while keeping the very popular ban on insurance companies rejecting patients for pre-existing conditions. Then, everyone will wait until they get sick before getting insurance and the private health insurance industry will go bankrupt as a result. With no private companies offering health insurance, we end up with a single-payer system. Yes, by all means, let's do away with the mandate. Posted by: rickterp on July 31, 2010 at 11:35 PM | PERMALINKThanks TCinLA @ 22:05. That was great writing. Look at it this way, somebody had to pay for those signatures which attracts the GOP base only. Posted by: Kevin (not the famous one) on August 1, 2010 at 12:51 AM | PERMALINKNot exactly true about the previous comment about Ohio. Just some local people that worked in a small area and not a state-wide initiative. Posted by: Ed H on August 2, 2010 at 9:03 PM | PERMALINK
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