Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

The revolution will be supervised.

How has Obama failed you today?

We can agree to disagree, but I’m right.

A snarling mass of vitriolic vicious jackals

Usually wrong but never in doubt.

Also, too.

Impressively dumb. Congratulations.

Gastritis Broke My Calculator

Screw the Judaean People’s Front. Splitters.

Mission Accomplished!

Wetsuit optional.

This Blog Goes to 11…

Not all heroes wear capes.

This blog will pay for itself.

Shock troops for the Unitarian Jihad.

I can see Russia from this blog!

I showered with Rahm and all I got was this shitty blog.

An army of rabid, anonymous commenters

I thought we were promised Infrastructure Week

Forty-two’ said Deep Thought, with infinite majesty and calm.

Word salad with all caps

Saul Alinsky is my co-pilot

This is a big f—–g deal.

Hot Air and Ill Informed Banter

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Don't Trip, Organize

Go vote early

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I voted last night.  The Senior Center had a steady trickle of people coming in and out of the building.  Some were there to take the class on how to Flash Mob, but most were there to vote. I live in a district where there are no competitive legislative elections. I’m in a packed region of base liberal Democrats. The major questions where my vote might matter are North Carolina Supreme Court, six constitutional questions and an affordable housing bond issue that recognizes that the best way to deal with a housing shortage is to build more housing.

Early voting helps campaigns.  I am not a persuasion target.  I might be a mobilization target for campaigns as I am new to the area and my Pennsylvania history of being an unusually young super-voter has not transferred over to North Carolina data banks.  Demographically, I look like a potential mobilization target as I’m a recently registered Democrat with a short election history and my age indicates that I’m not a certain voter.  If I show up, I’m likely to vote liberal but my profile suggests that showing up might be a problem.  Campaigns will invest time, effort, energy and door knockers in getting their mobilization targets to the polls.

Early voting gives campaigns information to better target their marginal resources.  Now that I’ve voted, there is no longer a reason for a campaign to target me.  I can not be persuaded in any relevant manner and I can not be further mobilized for a vote.  If you think that you are a potential mobilization target (check out the e-mails that you’ve gotten and the phone calls made by campaigns to you — if you have gotten called more than once, you’re a target), go vote early.  Help the campaign by clearing their lists and giving them new information.

And if you think that Shelby County authorized shenanigans are likely on Election Day, vote early so that the polls won’t be as crowded.  If you vote in a precinct that routinely can see an hour long line at peak times, voting early and removing yourself from the line chops off a few seconds of the wait.

Go vote early if possible even if all you are doing is shifting your vote’s timing.  It helps.

 

 

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Comhghairdeas Éire! (Our Chance Comes In November)

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Ireland has done what, as a not-much-younger-human I would have thought impossible in my lifetime: it has legalized abortion — and by an overwhelming margin.

In doing so, it has struck a blow that will resonate worldwide, and especially here, I think and hope.  Most important, it says to the forces of reaction that all people are people (even women!) and to hell with any doctrine, policy or party that says and does otherwise.

The Irish can have nice things.  So should we — and can if we mobilize the energy that is already here to say “not on our watch” this November.

We’ll be talking about that all summer, I’m sure.  For now, lets celebrate a huge win — for a small island and all its friends.

Image: John Duncan, The Riders of the Sidhe, 1911.

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Good job Florida

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That is the third Red to Blue flip this year in special elections. The seat in a neutral environment leans Republican but will flip in this environment. This is the type of seat that will determine the majority in November. Democrats need to pick up a double handful of these types of seats assuming that they pick off most Republican-Clinton seats in November.

Given that it was a twelve point swing, this is useful information for November.

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Good news

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Give a call to your state’s governors and secretaries of state tomorrow morning. For those who refused to share information with this voter suppression commission, thank them. For those that did share your information, give them a piece of your mind.

Open thread

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GOTV for Health this weekend

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Maine is trying to expand Medicaid. There have been bi-partisan bills that have routinely passed both chambers of the Maine Legislature. Governor LePage (R-ME) has routinely vetoed these bills. That cycle may be broken next week as Maine has a ballot question on whether or not the state will accept Medicaid expansion.

So if you are in Maine or New Hampshire and have some time this weekend, help with the GOTV and help your fellow Mainiacs.

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Time to call the Senate again

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Orange Alert

Graham-Cassidy would shift money from states that have successfully implemented the ACA to non-expansion states and then ratchet down the block grants.

Time to call the Senate again.

We need to run out the clock to 12:01 October 1, 2017 at which point the healthcare reconciliation instructions expire. Encourage Senate Democrats to submit bills to the CBO for scoring so that they are back-logged and can not rapidly score anything that needs to be scored for reconciliation. Call and encourage the Sanders budget team to go to town with the Parliamentarian. 24 days need to be burned.

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An end may be in sight

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The dramatic vote at 2:20 AM where all forty eight Democrats and three Republican Senators voted against Skinny Repeal did not kill the bill. It merely killed an amendment in the form of a substitute to the underlying reconciliation compatible repeal measure. Senator Majority Leader McConnell then pulled the vehicle from consideration at that time. He reserved the right to put it back on the calendar.

The big question remained as to when the reconciliation vehicle dies. It will die if it is not passed in the fiscal year for the budget it was created from. That means it is only a viable vehicle until midnight on September 30, 2017. Once must-pass bills are taken care of (CHIP, Harvey, flood insurance, debt limit, FY-18 funding) Democrats must insist on either immediate adjournment until 12:01 AM October 1st or promise to filibuster everything including post office renaming bills to run out the clock.

Once FY-18 begins, the reconciliation instructions need to be written again and it basically forces a choice between tax cuts or the repeal buzz saw for Republicans.

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How do you like your blue-eyed boy, Mister Death

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This is an amazing ad. Tough to watch, but important in terms of the issues it raises. It’s by Randy Bryce, who is running against Paul Ryan.

I’m trying to stay away from the catnip of raising money for marquee races, but fuck, this guy’s running against Paul Ryan and he’s put together one hell of an ad. I think he deserves some money.

Goal Thermometer

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California single payer

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California is studying a single payer system. It is doing the homework to make explicit the assumptions that are needed to make the system work. Modern Healthcare has some details:

SB562 would guarantee health coverage with no out-of-pocket costs for all California residents, including people living in the country illegally. The state would contract with hospitals, doctors and other healthcare providers and pay the bills for all residents similar to the way the federal government covers seniors through Medicare.

The measure envisions using all public money spent on healthcare — from Medicare, Medicaid, federal public health funds and “Obamacare” subsidies. That’s enough to cover about half of the $400 billion cost, according to the legislative analysis.

The rest would come from higher taxes on businesses, residents or both. It would take a 15% payroll tax to raise enough money, the analysis said.

Matt Bruenig makes one very good point before I want to look at some details:

After the implementation of single payer, the report says, health expenditures in the state of California would total $400 billion per year, or 15 percent of the state’s GDP. This is 3 percentage points lower than the share of GDP the US overall spends on health care.

I have a couple of questions about the finances.

Does the analysis assume or not assume the AHCA will be passed? If it does not assume the AHCA, there is a potential $10 billion Medicaid annual gap in the financing. More importantly it is assuming some incredibly complex and currently not authorized in law much less by rule making waivers.

What happens when there is a recession? California has a balance budget constraint. Wage and capital gains income taxes tend to be pro-cyclical. They go up in good times and crash in bad times. How is this program financed in bad years?

Finally, we need to look at the distributional fight inherent within universal access programs. Single payer is exceptional for the fifty two year old making $11 an hour with either no benefits or Bronze level benefits. It is not as good of a deal for a twenty nine year old independent contractor making $39,000 a year who has a cheap policy in the individual market. It is a really bad deal for the mid-40s couple making $200,000 with exceptional coverage through work.

The American political system is most responsive to people who have a lot to lose, people who have power and people who can mobilize significant resources. In this case, that is an apt set of descriptors for the mid-40s couple making very good money.

Single payer is hard. California is trying to make explicit the trade-offs needed to get a single payer system off the ground. There are choices to be made with winners and losers from each choice made. And each set of people whose current situation is changed for the worse will scream.

Update 1 And oh yeah, how does this play nicely with ERISA, the controlling law on most employer sponsored benefits including health insurance?

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Bronze is a great age

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I want to look at one element of the CBO score. It is the offered actuarial value of plans. Under the House Bill, out of pocket maximums would be fixed but there would be no age banding. The CBO sees this having an interestingly low effect.

Beginning in 2020, the legislation would repeal those requirements, potentially allowing plans to have an actuarial value below 60 percent. However, plans would still be required to cover 10 categories of health benefits that are defined as “essential” under current law, and the total annual out-of-pocket costs for an enrollee would remain capped. In CBO and JCT’s estimation, complying with those two requirements would significantly limit the ability of insurers to design plans with an actuarial value much below 60 percent.

Mechanically, under the House bill without a follow-on phase 2 or phase 3 bill, insurers can probably design plans that have at least 55% actuarial value (AV) coverage as the minimum level of coverage. Bronze right now is 60% +/-2 points of AV.

It will be very hard for people to buy a non-Bronze plan because insurers won’t offer them except at exorbirant prices. Let’s work through my logic.

Insurers are currently required to offer at least one Silver and one Gold plan if they want to sell on Exchange. Those plans are age rated at 3:1 with subsidies absorbing almost all of the local price increase risk for the Silver plan. Under the AHCA, those requirements are not in place and the subsidy is not tied to local pricing. Young buyers who are healthy will either opt out or buy the lowest actuarial value coverage possible because it will cost them very little.

Insurers then have to look at the people who actually need coverage and cost money to cover. They’ll offer a Bronze plan to get the young people in. But if they see a 58 year old asking for a Silver or Gold plan, they know that this person is going to be hyper expensive to cover as they have just self-identified as being high risk and high expense. Insurers won’t offer actuarial value levels above the minimum requirements because they will lose money on those policies.

So we will quickly see a proliferation of $6,000 to $9,000 deductible plans and very little else. That means the 64 year old who is seeing a $10,000 a year premium increase will also see their deductibles increase by $4,000 to $7,000 a year.

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And the canary just died

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The First Congressional District in Virginia is represented by a long standing Republican, Rob Wittman. He easily won re-election in 2016 by twenty three points and Trump carried the district by 13 points. This is a district where the traditional threat to a Republican Representative is from their right flank.

Keep that in mind as we look below:

He is bailing.

This is good news for people who don’t want to throw twenty four million people off of their insurance in order to give a tax cut to people who don’t need one. Speaker Ryan has at most twenty three (currently he has 21 spare votes due to vacancies)) votes that he can afford to lose while still getting to 218. He has 23 Republicans who won in 2016 despite representing seats carried by Hillary Clinton. These are the first seats that fall in a Democratic wave if the Democratic base is pissed off. Their behavioral pattern will look a lot like Blue Dog Democrats in 2009-2010. Anything that passes the House needs could afford to have those twenty three most vulnerable Republicans defect by either voting no or finding a way to be outside of DC to not vote. At most one or two of these Representives would have to take a very hard vote that would probably cost them their seat. That is a vote that many Blue Dogs and New Dems took in 2010 and it cost them their seat.

The issue is if people like Rep. Wittman defect. A single defection can be replaced by another hard vote. But if there are a half dozen or a dozen defections from relatively safe Republican districts, then the willingness of marginal Republicans to take one for the team will decline dramatically as they will be looking out for themselves. It would be as if both Representatives from Philadelphia decided that they would not vote for the ACA and thus forcing a pair of Blue Dogs to take the hard vote.

We already know that AHCA was under threat of defections from both vulnerable Republicans and ideological maximalist Republicans. Now if mostly safe Republicans are bailing, there is great difficulty in Speaker Ryan assembling a coalition in the House. Which then leads to the following:

So our mission tomorrow is to call Congress. Demand that your Rep or your Senator will not cut Medicaid nor screw over the 50-64 year olds.

And the canary just diedPost + Comments

Come on, come on down, you’ve got it in ya

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This is great news:

Buoyed by a wave of progressive activism that began after the election of President Trump, Virginia Democrats plan to challenge 45 GOP incumbents in the deep-red House of Delegates this November, including 17 lawmakers whose districts voted for Democrat Hillary Clinton.

Is anyone going to the Not My President’s Day rally today?

My wife and I wrote post-cards to our Senators and Reps telling them to investigate Trump’s ties to Russia.

Consider this an IRL activism open thread.

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Moral March tomorrow

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The Moral March in Raleigh is tomorrow. The rally and gathering starts at 8:30 and the march itself goes off at 10:00 AM.

Saturday, February 11, 2017
Gather across the street from the Raleigh Memorial Auditorium
2 East South St. Raleigh, NC
Gather and Rally at 8:30 a.m. | March begins at 10 a.m.

The Moral March on Raleigh is part of a love and justice movement. We fight for an intersectional agenda to support public education, economic sustainability, workers’ rights and livable wages, health care For all, medicaid expansion, environmental justice, equal protection under the law without regard to race, immigration status, gender, gender identity or sexual orientation, voting rights for all, and criminal justice.

On February 11, 2017, we will gather at 8:30 a.m. in downtown Raleigh. The opening rally will begin at 9:00 a.m. and the march will begin at 10:00 a.m. after which we will begin the mass People’s Assembly on the doorstep of the State Capitol.

This year, the Moral March on Raleigh will focus on our moral duty to stand against the repeal of the life-saving Affordable Care Act, the legislative tyranny of our extremist-led General Assembly, the racist and unconstitutional gerrymandering which undermines the vote of all North Carolinians, the anti-family, anti-worker, and anti-LGBTQ hate bill 2, and the extremism and lies of Trumpism, which undermine our Democracy at the federal, state and local level. Donald Trump and his administration have undermined our Democracy and democratic institutions by making regressive federal appointments and inviting white nationalists into the White House. They have demonized our immigrant and Muslim brothers and sisters by building a wall on our Mexican border, pushing through an Executive Order which effectively bans many refugees and Muslims from our country, and blaming Latinos for voter fraud that does not exist.

I’ll be there as these are the people and allies who know how to get shit done. I need to hook into their organizing efforts. It will be fun and it will be needed.

Any other Juicers going?

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You love me, you really love me

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Via Comments by Humboldt Blue:

I’m not sure what you motherfuckers are rambling about but I followed some advice from the front page health care guy who types out dense and incomprehensible phalanxes of text and double checked my policies today with covered California. Saved my stupid ass more than a hundred dollars per month with a far better and comprehensive option. Remember, you smug bastards, it aint easy going through life as a dumbfuck and some of us take longer to catch on.

Sure, that shit may be meaningless by summer, but at least Mr. Mind-numbing Actuarial tables got through to someone.

You love me, you really love me!!!

Really, I can’t tell you how much this means to me. Little wins are what I aim for. I needed this … so thank you.

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Trump Radicalization Effect (continued)

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Anti-Muslim ban protest in Tampa, FL: 1/29/2017

Tonight was the first post-election meeting of my local Democratic organization. So many new people showed up that the building had to bring in a cop, and breakout sessions weren’t possible because the entire cavernous room was jam-packed.

During the comments portion of the meeting, one guy stood up and said he’s been a Democrat for 40+ years, but tonight was his first party meeting. A couple of people said they’d been independents until tonight but were getting off the fence to join the only party that still acts like Americans.

It was a diverse group: women and men, old and young, gay and straight, black, white and brown. They were fired up and energized by the women’s marches, the immigration support rallies and pro-ACA public meetings.

A lot of organizing happened. We worked out ways to coordinate responses to ongoing issues and expected outrages to come.

More anecdata to support the Trump radicalization effect discussed earlier here and here. Just thought I’d share. Open thread!

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