The Sleeping Giant Has Awakened!

We’d like to begin today with the following point of information.

In the interest of full disclosure we would like to go record as stating that we love Rachel Maddow.

If we had a daughter we would be most happy if she were the embodiment of the host of MSNBC’s “The Rachel Maddow Show.  Smart and witty, Maddow manages to use her very large Stanford educated brain to clarify weighty matters in a way that those of us who are less gifted can comprehend. 

It is in that light that we credit a segment she aired last Friday night as the inspiration for today’s rant.  For you won’t find any graduates of the Rand Paul School of Plagiarism here.

Since BaraK Obama was elected to a second term there have been four major social issues that have been swallowed up by the black hole that is the current United States Congress.  They are: background checks for all gun purchases, immigration reform, increasing the minimum wage and the Employee Non-Discrimination Act that says you can’t fire someone on the basis of their sexual orientation. 

Each of these issues is highly favored among a vast majority of the electorate:

-Background checks for all gun purchases – 81% approval rating overall, ranging from 80%-83% among Independents, Democrats AND Republicans.

-Immigration Reform – 87% approval rating overall, ranging from 86%-88% among Independents, Democrats AND Republicans.

-Increasing the minimum wage – 76% approval rating overall, ranging from 58%-91% among Independents, Democrats AND Republicans.

-Employee Non-Discrimination Act – 73% approval overall, ranging from 60%-80% among Independents, Democrats AND Republicans.

Given their wide ranging popularity…why haven’t these issues passed through congress?

The answer of course is because congress is controlled by 40-50 radical right wing Tea Party Republicans dedicated to standing in the way of everything the president proposes.  Their weapons of choice: the filibuster and the threat of a primary challenge against any lawmaker who dares to stand in their way.  The result of this obstructionism is a politically polarized and paralyzed federal government, either unwilling or unable to conduct the people’s business.

There are 300,000,000 Americans.  222,000,000 are of age and eligible to vote.  Why are 222,000,000 million eligible voters allowing 40-50 right wing radicals to control their destiny?

A few weeks ago the country was facing a government shutdown.  85% of the country opposed a government shutdown.  Yet the Tea Party was almost giddy at the prospect.  Once the deed was done one Tea Partier after another appeared in public literally ecstatic over what they had achieved.  At that time, we along with many others warned that if the Republican Party allowed the radical right to shut down the government, it would mark the beginning of the end of both to both Tea Party and the Republican Party’s relevance on the national political stage.  It appears that our prediction is coming to fruition.

Recently there were primary elections in two very conservative districts in the Deep South; one in Florida, the other in Alabama.  Both seats were held by Tea Party Republicans.  Both incumbents were challenged by candidates who favored a more moderate pragmatic form of governing.  Both challengers favored fixing the ACA rather than repeal.  Both favored background checks on all gun purchases.  Both favored ENDA.  Both favored immigration reform including a tough stringent path to citizenship.  Both made it clear that they were NOT members of the Washington establishment.

Both moderate challengers won.

Wisconsin Republican Governor Scott Walker was recently asked to describe his vision of a successful Republican candidate for the presidency in 2016.  Walker said he felt the candidate had to be a Washington outsider…preferably a governor who knew how to balance budgets and get things done.  Obviously Walker was referring to himself.  Can you say Walker/Christie or Christie/Walker in 2016?

We most certainly are not members of the Scott Walker fan club.  Yet we believe the governor is right on this issue.  People are tired of Washington gridlock and they are voicing their displeasure at the ballot box.  Tea Partiers in ultra conservative districts are finding themselves the victims of a primary challenge.  And it is certainly no coincidence that Walker is playing the “Washington outsider” card for all its worth.  Especially given that the presumptive frontrunner for the presidency is the consummate Washington insider…Hillary Clinton.

The sleeping giant has awakened.  222,000,000 prospective voters are beginning to speak out against the gridlock in Washington.  Incumbents and challengers are getting the message.   

Republicans and Tea Party members beware.  Voters want to see progress.  They want to see stuff getting done.  Simply being the party of “NO” is no longer an option.

We sense that there is real change in the air.  But this time it is cloaked in neither Red nor Blue.     

    

Dems In Disarray!

The Democrats are in disarray…digging themselves into one huge credibility hole.

Yesterday, with the help of their leader, they dug the hole even deeper.

Frantic congressional Democrats stormed the White House the past few days giving the president an earful over the train wreck that is the ACA rollout.  As always, their concern was not about the American people or the affects this flawed rollout may be having on their constituents’ lives.  Their concern, of course, was all about the manner in which the ACA mess was negatively impacting their chances of keeping their jobs.

The president unfortunately responded to their hysteria.  Looking all the worse for wear, a beleaguered Obama went before the public to apologize once again for the problems with the ACA.  He deflected blame from his hysterical Democrat colleagues and then announced a wrongheaded solution that will only cause more problems for him down the road. 

You undoubtedly recall that the president had promised the nation that under the ACA:  “If you like your current health care plan you can keep it.”  Faced with the uproar from the millions of Americans who were receiving cancellation notices because their health plan did not meet the minimum coverage standards under the ACA, the president attempted to fix the problem.  He announced a plan that would allow policyholders and insurers to maintain their policies for one year even if they didn’t meet the ACA minimum requirements.  The “fix” also requires insurance companies to explain to policy holders the deficiencies in their policies as compared to the minimum coverage required under the ACA.

It comes as no surprise that Speaker Boehner derided the president’s effort; saying that the only way to fix the problems caused by the ACA is to scrap the law in its entirety.

Where oh where do we begin?

First of all…the White House needs to stop putting the president out there to say: “I didn’t know!”

“I didn’t know we were tapping the phones of AP White House reporters.”  “I didn’t know the NSA was eavesdropping on Americans’ phone calls and emails.”  “I didn’t know the ACA website wouldn’t work.”  If he is being truthful, that he really didn’t know these things, then he needs to find people who will tell him what he needs to hear not what he wants to hear.  In his remarks yesterday he sounded as if he were exasperated by his lack of forewarning about the ACA website.  Let’s hope his exasperation results in some changes in the White House.  He might start by including in his inner circle and outsider who understands the intricacies of the insurance industry.

Next, the president needs to get his chin off his chest and fight for what he believes in.  Mr. President, if you believe in the ACA fight for it.  Those junk insurance policies that you are waffling on undermine the very core of the ACA.  Let them be cancelled.  These policies cost next to nothing because they provide next to nothing. 

ACA detractors say that people should be able to choose the coverage they want.  We agree in principle.  But in reality the same people who buy those low cost “catastrophe” policies will still be going to the doctor when they become sick or injured.  And we will be the ones paying the freight when their “catastrophe” insurance carrier says, “sorry no coverage” or when they can’t come up with their huge deductibles.  If you want to fix the cancellation problem, Mr. President, fix the damn website.  Then those folks will be able to find something that suits their needs and doesn’t place a financial burden on the rest of us.

As for your “fix” to the problem…it has no teeth.  Your decree that those individuals who had their contracts cancelled should be reinstated and allowed to keep their coverage is unenforceable.  You can’t force the insurance carriers to reinstate the policies…and if they do reinstate them…you can’t force the carriers to do so at the same premiums.  The insurance industry has spent the past three years figuring out how they were going to handle this roll out and how they were going to account actuarially for all the changes required of them under the ACA.  You can’t just wipe all that out with a wave of the hand and a simple “Never mind.” 

Finally, with regard to Speaker Boehner and his cadre of detractors, your response should be short and simple.  “I’m not going to respond to those who have nothing constructive to say.  If you don’t like this law then show the American people a detailed alternative.  It’s easy to sit on the sidelines and criticize.  Pass a bill for once.”

There is a very real chance that the ACA rollout will mark the beginning of the end for the Obama presidency.  That will certainly be the case if the administration continues down its current path.

Set politics aside Mr. President.  End the insular bunker mentality.  Seek out those who will tell you the truth… 

…and fix the damn website!              

     

   

US Budget Deficit Drops 24%...but nobody is listening as ACA dominates the conversation.

The Obama administration projected that 450,000-500,000 individuals would sign up for health care coverage during the first month of the ACA rollout.

Yesterday the administration finally released the numbers.

26,794 health plans sold through the plagued federal website.

79,391 health plans sold through the state run exchanges

106,185 total health plans sold during the first month.

Not good!

An insular White House says that they are working on a number of administrative solutions that over the next few months will fix the current difficulties.  They urged people to be patient.  They have said publically that the website will be fixed by the end of the month and once the website is fixed these problems will go away.  But privately White House staffers are saying that’s not going to happen.

Not good enough.

Democrats are enraged.  A number of House Democrats descended on the White House yesterday and in a closed door meeting demanded that the administration fix the problem…now!  They informed the president that if the White House didn’t offer a viable solution by tomorrow many of them would join Republicans in supporting a bill sponsored by House Energy and Commerce Chairman Fred Upton.  The Upton bill allows individuals to keep their current coverage even if it doesn’t meet the minimum standards under the ACA.  “The president made a promise,” they said.  “He has to keep it.” If passed such a bill could gut the very foundation of the ACA. 

Senate Democrats are equally upset.  Many of them will meet with the president today to voice their displeasure.  Several Democrat Senators have joined with Republicans to craft a bill that would implement a transition period by delaying the deadline for enrollment for one year.  The Landrieu Bill could also do irreparable damage to the ultimate success of the ACA.

The president is not up for re-election, but many House and Senate Democrats are.  The ACA debacle is killing them.  Democrats don’t want an “administrative solution.”  Democrats want to go on record as wanting people to be able to keep their current health plans as the president promised.  Democrats want a vote.

The cacophony of noise over the ACA is drowning out any attempt by the administration to change the narrative.

According to the Associated Press, the Treasury Department just announced that the US government deficit for the first month of the 2014 budget year is down 24% compared to this time last year.  The AP tells us that the government “ran an annual deficit in 2013 of $680 billion, the lowest in five years and the first in that period below $1 trillion.”

This is great news! 

But nobody is listening.

The president needs to do something with the ACA to change the current narrative that is killing his administration.

We expect some type of announcement today.    

   

      

Unable To Win An Election, GOP Resorts To Gimmicks

For the third time in two weeks Senate Republicans have blocked the president’s nominee to fill one of three vacancies on the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. 

The DC court is considered the one of the most powerful courts in the land, second only to the Supreme Court, because it holds jurisdiction over challenges to executive orders and government regulatory policy.  It is no coincidence that several Supreme Court justices have come from the DC Circuit. 

The 11 seat court is currently occupied by 4 Democrat appointments, 4 Republican appointments and three vacancies.

Republicans used the filibuster to block a vote on the president’s nominee knowing the Democrats could not produce the 60 votes needed to end cloture.  The act sent Democrats into a tirade…again…renewing their threat to amend the senate rules to allow approval of the president’s nominee by a simple majority.  The only thing stopping Majority Leader Reid from using his authority to act on the threat is the knowledge that his party will one day find itself in the minority and wish to make use of the filibuster rule.

For their part, Republicans said that they were not blocking the president’s nominees for political reasons but simply because they did not feel that the court’s workload warranted filling the three vacancies.  They accused the president of trying to “pack” the court.

This assertion is as disingenuous as it is factually incorrect.

First of all “packing the court” is what FDR was doing when he tried to add 6 seats to the already 9 seat court to he could push through his agenda unabated by his opposition.  The president is simply attempting to fill the three vacant seats that already exist…something he has every right to do.

And the nonsense about the court’s workload is just pure unadulterated political bull.  Republicans are simply continuing to do what they have done for the 5 years the president has been in office…use every tool at their disposal to stop his agenda.  If a Republican were sitting in the White House you can rest assured that he/she would be filling those seats…workload be damned.

Congressional Republicans have abused the filibuster to the extent that the government cannot function.  Maybe Harry Reid should change the rules as is his right.

If Republicans want to run the show in Washington they might stop using gimmicks and start by winning an election.    

  

Bubba Puts Obama Between A Rock And A Hard Place

The smartest politician in the Democratic Party just weighed in on Obamacare. 

Somewhere President Obama is cringing.

In a recent interview, former president Bill Clinton said that President Obama should keep his promise and allow all Americans who like their current insurance coverage to keep it.

“I personally believe, even if it takes a change in the law, the president should honor the commitment the federal government made and let them keep what they’ve got.”  Clinton made his remarks during a website interview with OZY.com.

Clinton was offering his solution to the situation where, contrary to the President’s assertion that “if you like your health care coverage, you can keep it…period,” 5 million Americans have received cancellation notices from the health insurance companies because their policies do not meet the minimum coverage standards established under the Affordable Care Act.  Clinton says that the president has to keep his promise.

Either your word is good…or it isn’t.

The problem for the president is that if he amends the law not only does he weaken the very foundation on which the law was based, he plays into the hands of his political rivals who have been looking for any flaw to embolden their desire to defund or repeal the bill.

A recent released Quinnipiac Poll shows the president’s approval ratings at an all time low of 39%.  To put this into perspective…that mirrors George W. Bush’s approval rating in the aftermath of his handling of the Hurricane Katrina disaster.

Perhaps even more damaging is the Quinnipiac number that shows that 52% of those polled no longer trust the president.  It is the first time since taking office that he has lost the trust of a majority of Americans.

The botched ACA website is one thing.  If the website is fixed as promised by November 30 then PERHAPS people will enroll and the positive stories will begin to outweigh the negative.

But the broken promise is a whole different animal.  It is a genie that you can’t put back in the bottle.  It kills any chance that the president might have had on immigration reform, tax reform or anything else on his agenda, at least until after the mid-terms.  In fact this whole botched rollout/broken promise issue is certain to haunt Democrat candidates in 2014.

Bubba has put Obama between a rock and a hard place.  But the truth is the truth…the president made a promise and broke it.  He has to fix this.

There is one piece of news on which the president can take some comfort. 

The same Quinnipiac Poll showed the approval rating for congress at 9%...that’s 9%!!!

We’d like to meet some of those 9% who think congress is doing a good job.  It would be a VERY interesting conversation.

Must be family members…      

Defining The Narrative

If you are following the media coverage of the rollout of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) you cannot help but come away with the impression that this piece of legislation is an unmitigated disaster of unprecedented magnitude.  The narrative leads you to believe that the implementation is so flawed and the concept of universal health care so complicated that the only reasonable recourse is to scrap the entire thing and start over. 

That is what the Republican Party wants you to believe.  And they are doing an excellent job of conveying that message through the media.

The question that comes to our mind is: “Why.”  Why are the Obama administration and the Democratic Party allowing this to happen?  Why are Democrats allowing their opponents to define the narrative on their most significant legislative accomplishment in decades?

We stipulate that the website is a disaster.  That the cancellation notices received by individuals holding junk policies should have been both foreseen and better handled. We agree that the 5% of the population impacted by these notices is not an insignificant number.  And we concur that having a minuscule 50,000 people sign up in the first month is far below expectations.

But why are we only hearing these negative stories?

Why aren’t we hearing about the millions of people who lost their jobs and would have lost their health care as well if not for the ACA?

Why aren’t we hearing about the tens of millions of people who are able to get coverage even though they have a pre-existing condition…something they could not have done before the ACA?

Why aren’t we hearing about the tens of millions of high school and college grads who have no prospects of immediate employment with benefits but are able to maintain coverage under their parents’ policy thanks to the ACA?

Why aren’t we hearing from the tens of millions who would have faced bankruptcy simply because they got sick but are able to avoid financial ruin thanks to the ACA?

Why aren’t we seeing testimonials from these individuals on the news?

Why aren’t ACA surrogates pointing out ad nauseam that the cost of health care rose only 4% in the last two years thanks to the ACA…the lowest increase in decades?

Why aren’t we seeing ads touting the success of the state run exchanges in signing up individuals in dire need of heath care and contrasting them with those states that refused to participate leaving millions of their citizens at risk?

Why aren’t we seeing ads featuring personalities who cater to the 18-34 years olds explaining why they should sign up?

Why aren’t we seeing surrogates reminding people of what it would be like if Republicans got their wish and dismantled the ACA?  “Lose your job…lose your coverage.”  “Got a pre-existing condition and need coverage…tough!”  “Just got graduated and can’t find a job…you won’t find health care coverage either.”  “Are you having sticker shock because your health care coverage premium has increased 40% over the past 4 years…too bad?”

Why we aren’t seeing surrogates asking the ACA detractors one simple question over and over and over again:  “You don’t like the ACA…fine!  What’s your alternative?”  “Because going back to the old days where skyrocketing health care costs were bankrupting families and threatening the economy is not an acceptable alternative.”

Have Democrats and the administration been doing some of this “push back”?  Yes!  But it has been sporadic and disorganized.  They need a comprehensive marketing plan to sell this law and remind us  of all the good things that it has provided for the American people.

The biggest mistake that Democrats have made in the ACA rollout is allowing Republicans to define the narrative…

…because there is more to the ACA than a website.

  

   

Trash Day!

If you follow politics you are probably familiar with the phrase: “put it out with the trash.”  For the uninitiated, here is a primer.

Friday is ‘trash day” in Washington DC…specifically, Friday night after close of business.  That is when Washington insiders release volumes of information to the media; most of it nonsense…most of it irrelevant to the manner in which we live our daily lives.

It is among this mountain of nothingness that political class likes to disseminate information that may be politically damaging or embarrassing to whatever their cause might be at the time.  The hope is that the media will overlook the information as they scour this dumpster of material.  The theory is that even if the media manages to find the embarrassing nugget their reporting will fall during the weekend news cycle.  There it will reach smaller numbers and a less interested populace and hopefully lose its legs by Monday morning.  Thus the meaning of “put it out with the trash.”

That was certainly House Majority Whip Kevin McCarthy’s plan when late last Friday night he informed the media that the House would not be voting on immigration reform this year.

As the third ranking member in the Republican Party, McCarthy has been pressured for months by Hispanic special interest groups to vote on the senate’s immigration reform bill.  They protested outside his office and badgered him constantly whenever he appeared in public.  Finally McCarthy relented and addressed the question. 

“Will the House take up a vote on the senate’s immigration reform bill?”  “Not his year” McCarthy said.  “There isn’t enough time.”  McCarthy vowed to take up the matter next year.

Not enough time?  Even under Eric Cantor’s lazy congressional schedule of “two weeks off for every one week worked” there are still 13 remaining days when the House will be in session.  The senate bill was passed last June.  Its components have been debated ad nauseam for the past five months.   How long does it take to vote?  Five minutes?  Yea or Nay?  Red button or green button!  Done!

The truth is that the senate bill has bi-partisan support and will pass in the House if Speaker Boehner allows a vote.  But Republicans want no part of this bill.  Because if there is one thing Republicans care about as much as keeping their own jobs…its preventing this president from doing his.  The president wants to pass immigration reform.  Republicans will do anything to keep him from getting a win.

McCarthy’s vow to take up the matter next year is simply a lie.  When was the last time you saw anything of consequence passed during an election year? 

Whatever happened to the “kinder, gentler more inclusive Republican Party that we were promised after the last elections?  Remember!  Romney had just gotten his butt kicked by the president.  Republicans retreated behind closed doors to finger point and figure out away to avoid another embarrassment in the future.  They emerged from that conclave promising to work with Democrats, to be more inclusive, to reach out to women and minorities.  They even produced a slick pamphlet out lining all the wonderful things they were going to do to be a “more inclusive” party. 

The only thing Republicans have done since that meeting is to vote to defund or repeal Obamacare 40+ times.

Republicans are stalling on immigration reform.  They will stall again next year as well.  They are gambling that in 2014 they can maintain control of the House and gain control of the Senate.  Then they will craft their own immigration reform bill…one that is heavy on fences, walls and alligator filled moats bet missing any path to citizenship.

Meanwhile, if you want any real news out of the Republican Party you’ll have to look in the trash.