Here’s what I don’t get. Trump’s Treasury Secretary, Steve Mnuchin, is a rich guy. Seriously rich: on the order of a half a billion in net worth, w. a cool $70 million in 2016 earnings. If he wants to check out a cool event — a total eclipse, say, a desire I wholly understnd — he …
The Party of Fiscal Responsibility
The Republican Health Care Plan: ER’s For The Poor
In their ongoing effort to make America sicker and to ensure that more Americans die before their time, Trump and his Republican party have decided to spend more money to cover fewer people less well in Florida: The shift involves funding that the federal government provides to help hospitals defray the cost of caring for …
The Republican Health Care Plan: ER’s For The PoorPost + Comments (178)
Newsworthy Items That Have Slipped Through the Cracks: We’re Doomed
I don’t mean to panic anyone, but the US breached the debt ceiling on March 16th and the current extension on the Fiscal Year 2017 continuing budget resolution runs out on April 28th. Given the dysfunction within the majority caucuses in the House and the Senate, the fact that the new Administration’s skinny budget has …
Newsworthy Items That Have Slipped Through the Cracks: We’re DoomedPost + Comments (226)
All Hat, No Cattle
Too f**king little awfully late in the game, but the Grey Lady has come up with another good story on the long-con that is Donald J. Trump. Ross Buettner reports: …an examination of his tax appeals on several properties, and other documents obtained by The New York Times through Freedom of Information requests, shows that …
Flint and lead screenings
One of the things that puzzled me about the Flint lead poisoning is why the problem took so long to identify. Medicaid gives strong incentives to managed care organizations to test their pediatric members for lead poisoning. Michigan has their own lead policy: All Medicaid enrolled children are considered to be at high risk for …
Risk Corridors, asset valuation and favoring incumbents
Nicholas Bagley at the Incidental Economist argues that insurers will eventually be made whole on risk corridor payments even if the money is never appropriated by Congress. At Rubio’s insistence, Congress in 2014 passed a budget bill prohibiting the administration from using other funding streams—the budgetary equivalent of looking under the couch cushions for change—to …
Risk Corridors, asset valuation and favoring incumbentsPost + Comments (11)
The Super-Genius Shitweasel Strategy (Updated — Open Thread)
Today’s Supreme Court decision on Obamacare makes the law about as settled as it can be given that congress and most statehouses are run by hairspray-huffing shitweasels who occupy an alternative dimension where “flush billions down the toilet” = “fiscal conservatism.” Shortly after the Supreme Court decision today, our shitweasel governor here in FL announced …
The Super-Genius Shitweasel Strategy (Updated — Open Thread)Post + Comments (111)