Fact-esque

Huge Health Insurance Price Hikes for Small Businesses - What a Good Idea!

OK, Quiz Time: If you were a health insurance corpo exec during the first national discussion of healthcare reform since Truman, a time when the public is pressing for a public option on the assumption that it is going to be way cheaper than anything private for-profit investor-driven health insurors have any intention of offering what with the continuous price hikes we've seen for the last 30 years running alongside a deteriorating healthcare system in which everything is a pre-existing condition and it always seems to turn out that nothing is covered and said public already, like, hates your guts, would you: Raise rates on smll businesses, the core of GOP and conservaDem voters, both of which parties are desperately trying to protect your profits in the face of enormous public opposition?

Would I go too far if I assumed your answer to that question is a resounding "Good grief, NO!" If not and that's actually your answer, um, you're wrong. That's precisely what the insurers are doing and promise they will continue to do right up to the point a real public option makes them completely irrelevant.

Is Jake Tapper That Stoopid? Nope, Just Unintentionally Honest

Avedon Carol links to a Media Matters post in which Eric Boehlert quotes ABC's Jake Tapper as being "completely baffled by the White House designation of Fox as a non-news propaganda channel. Which, of course, it is and has been for years as we all have reason to know. Avedon's jaw dropped - figuratively, natch.

I can find no better example of how right-wing our "mainstream" media is than the fact that they are so upset that the White House acknowledged that Fox News is Republican propaganda, not news. I mean, just look at Jake Tapper.

Boehlert himself seems confused by Tapper's confusion.

Oh my, Tapper has no idea how Fox News is different than ABC News, and he works there. Tapper can't tell what Fox News does differently that his own network. And Tapper was clearly irked that the White House had offered up an opinion that one of the Village's "sister organizations" wasn't professional. "Why is that appropriate for the White House to say?" Tapper demanded to know. (Hint: As a Beltway rule, Democratic White Houses are forbidden from calling out the press by name.)

Boehlert then in essence puts himself in the position of defending ABC - a daunting task which I personally wouldn't care to take on - by listing a number of the ways by example. They're worth going through with your little clicker for sure, very educational, but doing so doesn't really get at Tapper's point. It's not that Eric is wrong exactly about the superficial differences, it's that he isn't exactly right, either. And he isn't exactly right because he's looking at today instead of next year or the year after. Jake is talking about where "journalism" in the MSM is going, and it ain't toward Robert R Murrow.

Foreign Co's Do What US Co's Can't...And in the US

OK. Here's the deal: US corpo's consistently claim they can't make money in the US unless they can underpay workers, strip their benefits, and kill their unions, and that that's why they have to outsource, globalize, and hire illegals. Americans, they say archly, don't want to work any more, don't have a work ethic, and spend more time worrying about their vacations than their jobs.

They say this despite the 1000 applications for every 25 jobs that show up, the 60+ hrs/wk Americans put in, the vacations they don't get and the holidays the corpo's ignore. They say this despite loading up many employees with the responsibilities that used to be handled by 5 people at the same time they cut salaries and benefits, which they call "a rise in productivity" and then brag about as if their management skills were the reason for it.

So if we're such schmucks and so useless, why do foreign companies want to hire us? And how come they can make money where their American counterparts can't?

Friday Palin: Rogue Elephant Even Scares Other Elephants

TBogg notes that on Sunday's MTP all the Pub panelists (that's pretty much all MTP has any more) were wetting their collective panties over the possibility that Sarahcuda could actually end up being the 2012 nominee. Steve Schmidt, McCain's campaign manager (and presumably the brains behind the Palin pick in the first place) called it "a catastrophic election result". GOP strategist Mike Murphy said it would be "a disaster".

But it was David Brooks (with an assist from Murphy) who was so terrified of her potential that he threw away his most fundamental knowledge (and it's pretty fundamental; Brooks has never been known for a) subtlety or b) his ability to understand anything more complicated than a plastic bowl) of political realities and replaced it with this fantastic cosmic cartoon:

"She will not be, because people just don't like that style of politics," Brooks said. He explained that primary voters -- Democrats and Republicans -- don't go for harsh politics, or what he called "a margin on the edge."

(emphasis added)

Um, they don't? Since when? Has there been a sea-change in the makeup of the Republican base in the past 24 hrs? Are they suddenly sane? I don't think so. I think Sarah is just the beef the red meat base would prefer to feed on, and since it is that red meat/fundie/whacko base that comes out for primaries and iac runs the party, that puts her in a very good position to sail home to victory, sliding in on the blood and guts of her disemboweled opponents (which, I'm sure, is just how Sarah Moose-Killer would like to win it).

Norwood Nurses Join SEIU: Michelle Malkin Falls Down Backwards and Foams at the Mouth

Well, not yet. Maybe tomorrow when she finally hears about it.

Nearly 600 workers at Norwood Hospital, ranging from respiratory therapists to housekeepers, will join the Service Employees International Union as the result of an election yesterday.

***

Norwood became the third hospital in the Caritas Christi Health Care system, based in Boston, to unionize this year. More than 800 employees at St. Elizabeth’s Medical Center, the flagship of the six-hospital Catholic chain, in April affiliated with the same labor union, Local 1199 of the SEIU United Healthcare Workers East.

Malkin hates that. In fact, she hates unions, apparently because they promise better working conditions and pay to workers. Well, that's what she said. Calling SEIU's organization of home health care workers a "home invasion" - a term which used to be applied to criminals who broke into your house and robbed you with AK-47s or whatever but which Malkin now feels free to apply to people who ask you to let them help you live better - here's what she thought was so terrible:

Over the last month, home-based providers started have been receiving unexpected visits from out-of-state union lackeys trying to recruit them with the promise of health care benefits and more money.

(emphasis added)

Monstrous! Oh, and she doesn't like any of that voting business, either.

Say What? Dept: Jonah's Whale & Teh Stoopid

You know, if it wasn't just a minority of pants-wetting, nose-picking, pearl-clutching, batshit-insane, Beckian conservatives, I'd think maybe there was something in the water or swirling around in the air that's eating people's brains. What does one do with, oh, say, something like this?

There is, of course, an important principle here, and if all of Montana's residents were black, it would be easier for everyone to see it. Montanans' votes don't count as much as Rhode Islanders' -- in fact, a Montanan's vote only counts for nearly three-fifths of a Rhode Islander's. That America's slave population was counted by the same ratio under the original Constitution is usually cited, rightly, as one of the document's greatest sins. A lawsuit filed in federal court in Mississippi last month hopes to force Congress to remedy the status quo's assault on the one-person, one-vote principle by increasing Congress to as many as a paltry 1,761 members.

Beyond principle, there are practical reasons to expand Congress. For decades, presidential candidates have promised to change the "way Washington works." But once elected, they're soon captured by their own congressional parties, which are in turn beholden to the "old bulls" and constituencies rooted in interests outside their districts.

A Congress of, say, 5,000 citizen-legislators would change that overnight. Would it cost more money? Yes. But today's huge staffs could be cut, and perks and pork might even be curtailed by using the old chewing gum rule: If there's not enough for everyone, nobody can have any.

(emphasis added)

That, b's & g's, is Jonah Goldberg in today's LAT. Bear in Mind that they fired Richard Scheer to make room for Jonah's considerable...um...non-intilekshual bulk.

Ben Nelson Protects Medicare Advantage (And Big Pharma)

Prime Blue Dog Ben Nelson, who hasn't made many non-Republican friends lately - or ever - has just sold the New York Times a Bridge to Nowhere, convincing one Robert Pear that, really, Medicare Advantage isn't a huge giveaway to Big Pharma that costs seniors A LOT of $$$ they wouldn't otherwise have to pay for their drug treatments, it's..well, let him tell it in his own inimitable way.

The bill taken up this week by the committee would cut Medicare payments to insurance

companies that care for more than 10 million older Americans, including nearly one million in Florida. The program, known as Medicare Advantage, is popular because it offers extra benefits, including vision and dental care and even, in some cases, membership in health clubs or fitness centers.

Yuh. At 3X normal rates. And of course health clubs and fitness centers are very well known for the massive numbers of senior citizens who go there to work on their abs and get shinier, more healthy quads, running on treadmills and bench-pressing free weights. And since when is there no vision or dental care with Medicare? When did that happen? Or does "extra" mean they pay for rhinestones on the hornrims?

Ross Douchehat: The NYT Hired Him...Why, Exactly?

If David Brooks was a dumb move, what do you call the NYT's scooping up the worst conservative columnist this side of Jonah G? Inspired? Or suicidal?

Douthat, in that patented, barely acknowledged aside that smirks, "Everybody knows that", announced in his column today that the problem with Bush was that he was a - hold onto your braces - "crypto-liberal" president.

Friday Palin: "The Winged Witch-Monkeys Didn't Show Up Because I Scared Them Off"

In what has to be one of the most brazen bits of credit-grabbing in GOoPer history, Sarahcuda announced yesterday that the non-existent "death panels" don't exist because she scared Obama into abandoning them. In effect, Palin's declaring victory in an imaginary war. And she wants credit for it. (Via Norwegianity)

In an op-ed in Wednesday's Wall Street Journal, Sarah Palin suggests that there won't be any "death panels'' under health care reform legislation after all. Only in her telling, this is thanks to her diligence in sounding the alarm, and the scared-witless response from those for whom "it rang true.''

Labor Day - Is That Anything Like Arbor Day?

Mark has a sizzling collection of Labor Day pieces and editorials that even on a day devoted to workers can't seem to remember what they are or what they do. Maybe that's because movement conservatives, as Salon's Michael Lind notes, have just about convinced everybody that workers, especially unionized workers, are the enemy.

According to many free-market conservatives, economic growth is almost exclusively the result of investment decisions by a small number of rich individuals – the "wealth creators." The wealth creators, according to the conservative press, are constantly being threatened from above by government, which seeks to destroy wealth by taxation, and from below by workers, particularly those organized into unions, who threaten to destroy wealth by insisting that capitalists share a decent amount of their profits with employees. The entire basis of conservative "trickle-down" economics is the idea that the economy will grow faster if the supposed wealth creators keep more of the profits of private enterprise, with less going to taxes and worker compensation.

If you believe this theory, then Labor Day should be a cause for national mourning. We should all pause to mourn the loss of capital that might have gone to a fifth or a sixth mansion or a private jet, but instead was conscripted against its will to pay for a public school or higher wages in a factory.

We should weep for the capital that might have given its life for high-end caterers but instead was forced by government to be spent on public hospital nurses. And we should grieve for the dollars that were wasted on public police protection, when they might have gone instead to private security guards in a gated community.

But there was one Labor Day editorial worth reading because it laid out, in print, finally, the awful secret of the Chicago Boys School of Economics, Milton Friedman, Founder.