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Jobapalooza Open Thread

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No April Fools joke on the country here, 215K new jobs in March and unemployment up a smidge to 5.0% even as more people entered the workforce.

The 215,000 gain in payrolls followed a revised 245,000 February advance, a Labor Department report showed Friday. Average hourly earnings increased 0.3 percent from a month earlier, while the jobless rate crept up to 5 percent as more people entered the labor force.

A still-robust pace of job creation represents a vote of confidence by employers that the U.S. will hold up against an anemic global economic backdrop. Additional tightening in the labor market that sparks bigger pay gains for American workers may convince Federal Reserve policy makers that the economy is more insulated to weakness overseas.

“We’re still in a really good spot with the labor market – – the fundamentals here are strong,” Thomas Simons, a money-market economist at Jefferies LLC in New York, said before the report. “ I have no reason to suspect we’re seeing a turning point in the labor market any time soon.”

Construction payroll growth accelerated in March, while manufacturing employment slumped. Other industries adding jobs included retail, health care, leisure and hospitality and professional services. Government hiring was the strongest since August.

The median forecast in a Bloomberg survey called for a 205,000 advance in total employment, with estimates ranging from gains of 100,000 to 250,000 after a previously reported 242,000 February increase. Revisions to prior reports subtracted a total of 1,000 jobs to overall payrolls in the previous two months.

Average private sector hourly wages up 7 cents to $25.43, black unemployment at 9.0%,  U-6 number coming in at 9.8%, headline should again read “Obama economy humming along despite Republicans crapping all over things.”

Open thread.

 

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NC GOP “Bathroom Bill” Is A Steaming Load Of Crap

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So North Carolina state Republican lawmakers called a special session of the General Assembly yesterday to stop Charlotte’s LGBTQ anti-discrimination law from going into effect on April 1, and it turns out it’s not just Charlotte’s ordinance they want to outlaw, but any real progressive change sought by cities and counties in the Tarheel State.

WBTV obtained a copy of the proposed bill, entitled “An Act to Provide for Single Sex Multiple Occupancy Bathroom and Changing Facilities in Schools and Public Agencies and to Create Statewide Consistency in Regulation of Employment and Public Accommodations,” Tuesday night.

The legislation requires that multi-occupancy bathrooms be limited to just one gender, using anatomy and birth certificates as a guide and applies to executive branch agencies controlled by the Governor as well as Council of State members and the UNC System.

A provision in the five-page bill allows school districts to use single occupancy bathrooms to make accommodations for students in special circumstances.

DOCUMENT: Click here to read the full bill

In addition to the provisions of the bill seeking to repeal the bathroom-related portions of Charlotte’s non discrimination ordinance, the bill also addresses several workplace issues.

The second part of the bill is referred to as the Wage and Hour Act. Under the act, local governments would be prohibited from setting their own local minimum wage.

The next section of the bill seeks to declare that the regulation of discriminatory practices in employment is an issue of statewide concern and, as such, must be left to the General Assembly.

Finally, the last section of the bill is referred to as the Equal Access to Public Accommodations Act, which places issues of public accommodation in the jurisdiction of the General Assembly.

So in addition to killing Charlotte’s anti-discrimination law, with this stupid bigoted bathroom bill, the NC GOP is looking to undo all local anti-discrimination, minimum wage, labor protection and equal physical access laws. because smaller, more responsive government, right?

Which just proves again that Republicans don’t care about government that works, they care about government that punishes those people whenever possible so that they become somebody else’s problem.  The best part?  It’s a combination of “bathroom bill”, home rule elimination, and “workplace protection” bill all rolled into one steaming pile of toxic GOP diarrhea.

By the way, the bill passed the NC General Assembly overwhelmingly, 83-24, the NC Senate 32-0 (as all NC Senate Democrats walked out) and GOP Gov. Pat McCrory signed this travesty into law last night.  Total time on this legislation from start to finish: about 10 hours.

They had this ready to go, in order to steamroll any opposition to it and to prevent the kind of boycott backlash from building that Georgia is facing now over similar legislation.  Blindside the opposition and dare them to react.

It’ll be up to the courts now to get the ball rolling on this.

One big hurdle, which reportedly killed South Dakota’s bathroom bill: Banning trans students from using the school bathroom that comports to their gender identity could violate federal law, particularly Title IX. The Justice Department and Department of Education interpret the law not just to ban sex discrimination in federally funded schools, but also ban anti-trans discrimination. So by passing an anti-trans bathroom law, North Carolina could risk big federal funds for public schools.

And my home state is well on its way to a complete disaster.

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Jobapalooza Open Thread

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jorbs

Another pretty damn good jobs report for February.

The U.S. generated 242,000 new jobs in February, snapping back after a modest slowdown in hiring in the first month of 2016. Economists polled by MarketWatch had expected an increase of 198,000 nonfarm jobs. The unemployment rate was unchanged at 4.9%. Employment gains for January and December, meanwhile, were revised up by a combined 30,000, the Labor Department said Friday. The government said 172,000 new jobs were created in January instead of 151,000. December’s gain was raised to 271,000 from 262,000.

Yet despite the big gain in new jobs, average hourly wages fell 3 cents, or 0.1%, to $25.35. Hourly pay rose a mild 2.2% from February 2015 to February 2016. And the amount of time people worked each week dropped 0.2 hours to 34.4 hours, the lowest level in two years. The labor-force participation rate moved up to 62.9%, the highest level since May, as more than half a million people joined the labor force.

Wage growth is still an issue, but at least labor force participation is stating to turn around.  People are coming back to the work force.  Big numbers for February and upward revisions for December and January don’t hurt either.

Most importantly the measure of underemployment dropped to a new cycle low of 9.7%, which is a big deal.  We’re definitely on the way back up, looks like.

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Centrist Dalek Horror Theater Presents: The Schoening

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As the New Hampshire primaries get underway today, former NYC Mayor Michael Bloomberg confirms this week that he is considering entering the 2016 presidential race as an independent, something that made the rounds as a trial balloon two weeks ago.  Now however Bloomberg himself is saying he’s considering making the jump.

The billionaire media mogul and three-time former New York mayor told Financial Times in an interview published Monday that he is “looking at all the options.”

Fellow New York billionaire Donald Trump has been leading polls on the Republican side for months, and Hillary Clinton only narrowly escaped Iowa with a victory over a self-described “democratic socialist.” Bloomberg, who is considering running as an independent, said Americans deserve “a lot better.”

Bloomberg has set a March deadline to determine whether he will run, and should he decide yes, he told the FT he would have to begin getting his name on ballots next month. He has signaled he could spend at least a billion dollars of his own money to sustain a campaign, according to a New York Times report citing anonymous sources briefed on his deliberations.

That’s not the funny part.  The funny part is who’s advising him.

Bloomberg’s pollster, Douglas Schoen, outlined the case for his boss’s potential White House bid in an op-ed last week for the Wall Street Journal.

Pundits are missing a large group of centrist voters who opt out of partisan primaries, Schoen argued, pointing to the low turnout in Iowa.

“That’s the new silent majority: the millions of Americans who don’t participate in Democratic or Republican primaries. They are equally as fed up with the status quo, but they have a different approach to problem-solving and different policy prescriptions than those on the ideological extremes,” Schoen wrote.

That has created an opportunity for someone to mount an independent run, he argued:

“Who fits the bill? Michael Bloomberg, a centrist with a clear (and arguably unique) record in business as an entrepreneur and in politics as a three-term mayor of New York. Mr. Bloomberg is a fiscally prudent conciliator who advances pro-growth policies and takes tough stands.”

That’s right, the guy running Bloomberg’s numbers is none other than our old friend pollster Doug Schoen, who along with his partner in crime Pat Caddell is the obnoxious No Labels/Americans Elect centrist grifter that warned Obama could never win re-election in 2012 and that Hillary had to primary him, that Obama had to champion the Simpson/Bowles Catfood Commission, that the Democrats were the real extremists, that Obama had to become a right-wing Democrat in order to attract Tea Party votes, that Trump should have gotten into the race in 2012 as in independent, and my personal favorite, that Barack Obama should have dropped out of the 2012 race completely for the good of America.

It looks like Doug has found his Trojan Horse to sink the Democrats and get his massive austerity cuts by splitting votes in favor of the GOP in Bloomberg, so if there was any doubt that a Bloomberg run is more Nader than Perot, the fact that Doug Schoen is involved should have you running for the exits.

The Centrist Daleks are back to TRIANGULAAAAAAAATE it seems, and should Bloomberg actually run, keep in mind it only takes ruining one swing state with a third party bid to throw the presidency.

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Jobapalooza Open Thread

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151,000 new jobs in January, somewhat less than the 190K forecast, but the unemployment rate fell to 4.9% and wages up, a wash on revisions.

Retailers added almost 58,000 jobs last month, the most since November 2014, and the health care industry took on another 44,000 workers. Perhaps most surprising was a 29,000 gain in hiring at manufacturers, the biggest increase since August 2013.

Payrolls picked up at producers of fabricated metals, automobiles, food and furniture.

The median forecast in a Bloomberg survey called for a 190,000 gain in overall payrolls last month, with estimates ranging from gains of 142,000 to 260,000.

December payrolls were revised down to 262,000 from 292,000 and November employment was revised up to 280,000 from 252,000. The revisions to these months subtracted a total of 2,000 jobs to overall payrolls.

Friday’s data showed a much-awaited pickup in wage growth is starting to manifest itself. Average hourly earnings rose 0.5 percent from a month earlier to $25.39. The year-over-year increase of 2.5 percent followed a 2.7 percent jump in the 12 months ended in December, which was the biggest advance since mid-2009.

So things continue to improve at  reasonable pace.  I’m sure any of the Republicans running for president this year can find a way to completely ruin that in 2017.

 

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LOSE THE MORNING

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The Politico team will be no more after the 2016 Hunger Games as founders Jim VandeHei and Mike Allen are evacuating the smoking remains of the Village by helicopter.

In what can be described only as a cataclysm in Beltway media, CEO Jim VandeHei is leaving Politico, the eight-year-old politics website that shook up Washington journalism, according to sources and reports by Huffington Postand CNNMoney.

And in what can be described only as a mega-cataclysm, Politico Chief White House correspondent Mike Allen is joining VandeHei in rushing toward the exits of Politico’s Rosslyn headquarters. Allen writes the daily franchise newsletter “Politico Playbook.” A bearer of occasional scoops, Allen is the driver of very frequent revenue. Weekly sponsorships for “Playbook” run in the $50,000 to $60,000 range this year, depending on the news cycle. And that’s not even rolling in the big money that comes from “Politico Playbook” conferences/interviews anchored by Allen. His work alone — complete with ethical issues — subsidized a platoon of Politico reporters.

It doesn’t end there: Kim Kingsley, the Chief Operating Officer is leaving as well. Kingsley has provided the glue that bridged Politico’s newsroom and its business side as the site sprinted to revenues approaching $20 million just years after launching. She headed the colonization of radio and cable-news airwaves that helped establish Politico as a preferred Washington source both for readers and advertisers. The company’s successful events business was also an obsession of Kingsley’s. Other departures are Danielle Jones and Chief Revenue Officer Roy Schwartz.

VandeHei, Allen and Schwartz will stay through the 2016 election; the others will leave on earlier timetables. Editor-in-Chief John Harris will say on board and take on the additional title of publisher.

Politico as we’ve come to know it is no longer.

The disintegration appears to be over money issues, as most business problems seem to be, and surely most of these folks will land on their feet.  But Politico’s particularly toxic brand of Beltway both-siderism has surely taken a beating in the era of LOL PMURT NOTHING MATTERS ANYMORE, and I’m thinking since the rules of Beltway “journalism” have been thoroughly napalmed over the last six months, Jim and Mike are getting off the playground where they’ve realized that they’re no longer the guys in charge of giving out all the kickballs.

I can think of a couple hundred Villagers who need to follow those two out the door, too.

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Terrifying Team Trump Tales

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CNN decides to take a look at people who support The Donald and discovers that the people who support The Donald are pretty much exactly who you’d suspect of supporting aforementioned Donald.

They are showing up in droves to see Donald Trump: Men and women, overwhelmingly white, frustrated with the country’s first black president, fearful that they are being displaced by minorities and immigrants, and nostalgic for the way America used to be.

And Trump is thriving, tapping into the fears and anxieties that have erupted into the open in an extraordinary presidential campaign.

The voters pledging their allegiance to the Republican front-runner hail from all corners of the country. They work on farms, in nursing homes and run small businesses; they’ve voted for Mitt Romney and Barack Obama and participated in the tea party movement; they are high school students who will vote for the first time this November and retirees and veterans who came of age during World War II.

In Trump, these people see the next president of the United States.

His attitude, one voter said, is that he “seems to just not give a f—.” Trump’s nativist rhetoric and hardline immigration stance is a relief for those who see a segment of the population “getting away” with breaking the law. Post-San Bernardino, the candidate’s promise to “bomb the sh– out of ISIS” exudes an uncomplicated confidence rare in other politicians. His accomplishments in the business world offer reassurance that he’ll “put the economy back where it belongs.”

Perhaps most important is Trump’s imperviousness to the typical boundaries around race. He has made provocative remarks on the subject since the earliest days of his campaign — and his supporters are listening. They are rowdy, and at times, even violent. On more than one occasion, they’ve accosted protesters, lobbing racial slurs and physical abuse.

There is a significant bloc of voters who want payback, folks, for slights real or perceived over the last 8 years, folks who want to punish Obama supporters relentlessly and leave them crushed, broken, and forever powerless, never to dare challenge them.

They want someone to put them back on top to “make American great again.”

They’ve found their guy who they think will do it and to hell with everyone else. The mob is coming and they are pissed.

“I got mine, fuck the rest of you” as a worldview?  Really is that simple.

And they’ll vote.

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The Full Weight Of History

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Ta-Nehisi Coates eloquently explains his position on the Democrats in 2016 as Hillary Clinton mentions that Lincoln was her favorite president due to his willingness to “reconcile and forgive” the Lost Cause of the South.

Yet until relatively recently, this self-serving version of history was dominant. It is almost certainly the version fed to Hillary Clinton during her school years, and possibly even as a college student. Hillary Clinton is no longer a college student. And the fact that a presidential candidate would imply that Jim Crow and Reconstruction were equal, that the era of lynching and white supremacist violence would have been prevented had that same violence not killed Lincoln, and that the violence was simply the result of rancor, the absence of a forgiving spirit, and an understandably “discouraged” South is chilling.

I have spent the past two years somewhat concerned about the effects of national amnesia, largely because I believe that a problem can not be effectively treated without being effectively diagnosed. I don’t know how you diagnose the problem of racism in America without understanding the actual history. In the Democratic Party, there is, on the one hand, a candidate who seems comfortable doling out the kind of myths that undergirded racist violence. And on the other is a candidate who seems uncomfortable asking whether the history of racist violence, in and of itself, is worthy of confrontation.

These are options for a party of amnesiacs, for people whose politics are premised on forgetting. This is not a brief for staying home, because such a thing doesn’t actually exist. In the American system of government, refusing to vote for the less-than-ideal is a vote for something much worse. Even when you don’t choose, you choose. But you can choose with your skepticism fully intact. You can choose in full awareness of the insufficiency of your options, without elevating those who would have us forget into prophets. You can choose and still push, demanding more. It really isn’t too much to say, if you’re going to govern a country, you should know its history.

Not only could I not have said it better myself, I don’t think I could have said it on my best day.

And yes, it’s entirely possible to choose a primary candidate, and then say “Hey, we would like you to take a look at this issue.”  Now I’m aware of how that line of thought started out in 2008, and it morphed into something far uglier, but the fact remains that is it possible to do.

As TNC says, “You can choose and still push, demanding more.”

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Jobapalooza 2015 Farewell Tour

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jorbs

December job numbers are a big ol’ beat.

The U.S. created 292,000 new jobs in December, as hiring sped up toward the end of the year. Economists polled by MarketWatch had expected a gain of 215,000 nonfarm jobs. The unemployment rate remained at 5%, largely because almost a half-million people joined the labor force.

Employment gains for November and October, meanwhile, were revised up by a combined 50,000, the Labor Department said Friday. The government said 252,000 new jobs were created in November instead of 211,000. October’s gain was raised to 307,000 from 298,000, marking the biggest increase of 2015.

In a surprise, average hourly wages paid to American workers fell a penny to $25.24. Still, hourly pay has risen 2.5% in the past 12 months, matching a six-and-a-half-year high. The amount of time people worked each week was unchanged at 34.5 hours. The labor-force participation rate rose a tick to 62.6%.

So for 2015 we had some damn good numbers on the job creation front and 70 straight months of private sector job growth over the last six years.  Wages are starting to come around too.

How the Fed’s rate hike will affect things in 2016, we’ll see.

Open thread.

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Rahm-Boned: First Blood Part II

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I usually reserve the phrase “cartoonishly evil” for tinpot dictators, certain former Bush administration officials, and hedge fund executives, but Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel may actually need to grow a mustache to twirl after this.

City of Chicago lawyers, after meeting with Mayor Rahm Emanuel, demanded the Laquan McDonald family bury the video showing the killing of their son by a police officer.

Emanuel said last month that Stephen Patton, Chicago’s corporation counsel, briefed him “towards the end of March” about what the dashcam video showed and about the proposed $5 million settlement with McDonald’s estate. After that briefing, Patton’s second-in-command, Thomas Platt, drafted settlement language to keep the dashcam video hidden for at least several years, according to emails reviewed by The Daily Beast (PDF).

Michael Robbins, an attorney for the McDonald estate, balked at the demand.

“The provision as drafted, that we maintain the confidentiality, of the materials—principally the dash-cam-video—until the criminal charges are concluded, which could be in effect for years, is entirely unreasonable,” he wrote to Platt on April 6. “Nor was any such broad sweeping confidentiality provision discussed during our meetings.”

“I’ll call you,” Platt wrote Robbins on April 7.

That was the same day that Emanuel was fighting for his political life in a runoff election after he failed to win 50 percent of the primary vote in the February. (Emanuel won with 56 percent against Chuy Garcia.)

Emanuel has maintained since McDonald’s death that he has never seen the dashcam video, but the emails prove the mayor knew exactly what the footage showed when city lawyers negotiated a deal that would at least delay the video’s release. Emanuel’s lawyers were offering $5 million in hush money to keep the video hidden just weeks before the runoff election.

And the biggest part of the deal—that McDonald family attorneys agreed to keep the video to themselves until criminal proceedings were concluded—just so happened to be inked the day after Emanuel was re-elected.

I mean it was rather obvious that the $5 million was offered to get McDonald’s family to stop talking, but wanting to bury the video for years under legal mumbo-jumbo on top of all that just makes Rahm a colossal asshole.

Not that he wasn’t one before.

The first draft was sent to the McDonald estate’s attorneys by Platt on March 31. The draft said that the estate would only be free to release the video after potential charges were dismissed by a prosecutor or after a criminal trial was over. Emanuel and his underlings at the Law Department would have preferred this, because it meant the video would have been buried under lengthy legal proceedings that could have taken years.

On April 8, one day after Platt’s phone call, the McDonald estate’s attorneys suddenly agreed to keep the dashcam video hidden. The only thing that changed in the settlement agreement regarding the video was the deletion of a line that said the estate agreed with the city releasing video would harm ongoing criminal investigations.

One week later, the City Council voted unanimously to approve the $5 million settlement in just 36 seconds. Emanuel banged a gavel to mark the approval and the end—or so he thought—of the greatest threat to his mayoralty.

Emanuel wrote in a December op-ed in the Chicago Tribune that the settlement couldn’t be part of a cover-up because it was the McDonald family’s attorneys who approached the city wanting to settle.

Nice guy, that Rahm.

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Bulldozers And Baloney

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So, remember in Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy how Ford Prefect managed to get Arthur Dent away from lying down in front of a bulldozer that was trying to tear down Arthur’s house by convincing the bulldozer driver that Arthur didn’t really need to be physically there wallowing in the mud, and that if the wrecking crew just assumed Arthur was going to be there and wasn’t actually there, then the bulldozer guys didn’t actually have to be there either and everyone could go down to the pub and have a pint (which is what Ford and Arthur did)?

Yeah, it’s apparently exactly like that in Oregon.

Their supplies look to be dwindling and militia men who overtook the Malheur Wildlife Refuge in Oregon have pleaded with sympathizers to send food, but law enforcement tell TPM that the men are free to resupply on their own.

“Right now, they are allowed to come and go as they want,” says Bill Fugate, a spokesman for the Oregon State police.

The unknown number of militia men involved in the stand off are calling themselves Citizens for Constitutional Freedom. The group sent an alert message to supporters Monday asking for snacks as they are holed up in the refuge center, but authorities confirm that they are free to drive to the grocery store and pick up snacks.

Fugate says that to his knowledge, law enforcement are “not monitoring what they are doing.”

“We are not monitoring their movements,” Fugate says.

Because, officer, it’s vitally important that we go to the right now and have a few stiff ones, you see, and you can just assume we’re occupying the place and we’ll get some Funyuns and Flamin’ Hot Cheetos while we’re out and then hey, we return the favor and you guys can grab some beers once we get back, see?

Hey, why not. Pretty sure General Washington would have agreed to the whole thing too.

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Bevin Makes His Move

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As promised, newly elected Kentucky GOP Gov. Matt Bevin announced today that the plan is to scrap Medicaid expansion for 400,000 Kentuckians and to replace it with…something…in 2017.

Bevin, who campaigned on a pledge to reshape Medicaid and the expansion under the Affordable Care Act, said it will take time to change the program but he expects to succeed.

“We are going to transform the way Medicaid is delivered in Kentucky,” Bevin said.

Bevin has enlisted the help of Mark Birdwhistell, a former secretary of the Cabinet for Health and Family Services under former Gov. Ernie Fletcher.

Birdwhistell, vice president for health services at the University of Kentucky, said he’s ready for the challenge.

“The people of Kentucky need a Medicaid system that is affordable and sustainable,” he said.

Bevin and Birdwhistell said Kentucky will begin work on a waiver they will ask the federal government to approve to let Kentucky establish its own Medicaid plan, as Indiana and some other states have done.

They expect to introduce the plan in 2017.

Bevin Wednesday morning voiced support for a Medicaid waiver system similar to the one used by Indiana to hold down costs and said an effort during the coming six months will show “whether this will work or not.”

Bevin went on to blame former Gov. Steve Beshear for getting Kentucky into an “unsustainable” Medicaid expansion which he called a “lie”, and mentioned Indiana’s Healthy Insurance Plan program as the model, which of course leaves the question “If Indiana’s Medicaid expansion replacement plan is working so well, why is GOP Gov. Mike Pence so upset about it being evaluated?”

Richard Mayhew can probably answer way more about this than I can, but so far to me it looks like Bevin is trying to set up Steve Beshear (and of course President Obama) to blame when a “workable alternative” to the current expansion magically fails to materialize six months down the road.

 

Richard Mayhew here: I am even more cynical than Zandar but more optimistic.  Bevin looks like he is setting up a committee to set up a committee.  It is a bureaucratic dodge as every hospital executive in the state has talked to Bevin’s people by now and told them they need Medicaid expansion to balance their books.  What will happen is the alternative plan will be more punitive, more confusing and more expensive than a straight up expansion but it will still cover 400,000 or more people in the summer of 2017.  It just won’t be called Medicaid Expansion, it will be Bevin AwesomeCare with Health Savings Accounts and Personal Responsibility Initiative Points.

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Dispatches From Bevinstan

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Somehow, I think I’m going to be writing a Stupid Shit My Governor Does column enough so that I should just make it a weekly “all in one place” kinda thing.

Anyway. now that ol’ Matt has had a few weeks in house, he’s starting to warm up to this whole “executive order” thing when it comes to those pesky same-sex mariage licenses that cause trouble over the fall.

To ensure that the sincerely held religious beliefs of all Kentuckians are honored, Executive Order 2015-048 directs the Kentucky Department for Libraries and Archives to issue a revised marriage license form to the offices of all Kentucky County Clerks. The name of the County Clerk is no longer required to appear on the form.

So a win for Kim Davis.  Who else can Bevin make happy?  You remember Steve Beshear signing an order to restore voting rights to felons?

GONE.

While Governor Bevin has been a strong advocate for the reinstatement of non-violent felony offenders’ voting and civil rights, Executive Order 2015-052 suspends the provisions of Executive Order 2015-871 as that order is contrary to the Kentucky Constitution and undermines the very right it seeks to restore by circumventing elected representatives in the state legislature and the voice of the people at the ballot box. The Office of the Governor will continue to utilize the processes and procedures under current law in the same manner as the previous administration pending further study and consideration by the Kentucky General Assembly. This Executive Order does not affect anyone whose rights have already been restored by the previous Executive Order.

Also gone, higher minimum wages for state employees and vendors

Executive Order 2015-049 relieves executive branch agencies and vendors of the obligation to comply with the higher minimum wage established by Executive Order 2015-370, except as to classified employees with status who have already received increases as a result of the Executive Order. Their remuneration will not be affected.

…and a new permanent hiring freeze on state positions.

Executive Order 2015-050 prioritizes effective and efficient management of state government operations by implementing a new moratorium on hiring. This order removes all oversight of the merit system hiring from the Governor’s Office. Unlike Gov. Beshear’s Executive Order, which had the Secretary of the Governor’s Executive Cabinet approve all personnel actions regarding merit employees, this Executive Order transfers that responsibility to the Personnel Secretary. Approval of non-merit employees will remain the duty of the Secretary of the Governor’s Executive Cabinet. Furthermore, effective immediately, all vacant positions in any agency will be reviewed to determine if they are necessary to the maintenance of essential government services.

Going to be real fun when Bevin determines that current employees are no longer essential to government services and fires tens of thousands of state workers.

The fun’s just beginning here in Bevinstan, folks!

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Huckleberry Hounded Out

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Sen. Lindsey Graham is smart enough to take his Christmas vacation early, it seems.

Republican South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham is dropping out of the presidential race.

“While we have run a campaign that has made a real difference, I have concluded this is not my time,” he said in a statement Monday

Graham, who first told CNN of his decision in an interview, faced the deadline Monday to be removed from the ballot in his home state of South Carolina. Graham has been mired at the bottom of polls – both nationally and in his home state – and could have faced an embarrassing showing in the state’s February primary.

The hawkish South Carolina senator had been the Republican field’s most vociferous early critic of Donald Trump.

Which is true, and being the “Hey guys, Trump is goddamn crazy on immigration and Muslims but let’s send tens of thousands of US troops into Syria” candidate got him a whopping 0% at the polls and seriously threatening to break the crucial 1% mark.

I’m thinking since we’re in effectively in election news dump mode until January, we’re going to see a few folks drop out over the next week or two anyway.

Time to catch up on your Netflix queue, man.

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It’s Barbaric, But Hey, It’s Home

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Apparently Aladdin and Princess Jasmine are terrorist masterminds, who knew?

 

I’m gonna go ahead and bet that factoring in Democrats that we end up with that fabulous TWENTY-SEVEN PERCENT of all American voters will agree to anything thing yet again, yadda yadda America has a dangerous military Genie deficit SO LET’S BOMB AGRABAH AND GET THAT JAFAR DUDE YEEEHAAAAAA.

On the other hand, Iago is pretty suspicious for a parrot…

EDIT: Full PPP poll results in PDF form here. Far scarier than bombing a fictional country is the very real problem that having 46% of your voters wanting a national database of Muslims presents, assholes.

EDIT 2: Yep, 19% of Democrats also want to bomb a fictional Disney sultanate.

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