Will the Supreme Court end health insurance for
millions of young people

post from Daily Kos on 17 April 2012 06:58:20 PM. © Daily Kos

Supreme Court 2010 The grim reapers?
Here's what's at stake for the Affordable Care Act, and for millions of Americans, as the Supreme Court considers its ruling on whether to strike down the law or parts of the law:

Because of a provision in the Affordable Care Act that enables young adults to remain on their parents' insurance plans until age 26, [Sarah] Adkins received health coverage just as her kidney was shutting down from an untreated kidney stone.
She hadn't been able to find a full-time job with benefits after graduating from college nearly two years earlier. Without health insurance, the freelance graphic designer had avoided treatment for her chronic kidney stones -- even painfully trying to pass a stone herself in a moment of desperation.
After the Affordable Care Act took effect in September 2010, Adkins was able to go on her father's plan and have emergency kidney surgery. "The doctor told me my kidney was shutting down and if I continued to avoid treatment, I could have died. I was only 24," she said. [...]
Less than a quarter, or 24%, of workers between the ages of 19 and 25 were offered health insurance by their employers in 2010, down from 34% in 2000, according to the Employee Benefit Research Institute, an independent public policy organization. [...] Nationwide, the average premium per person for an individual policy was $2,580 a year in 2010, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation.

This age group is often castigated for their attitude of invincibility, for being free-riders in the insurance system that the rest of society pays for. The reality is that many of these young people, often drowning in student loan debt, are lucky to find any job, much less one that offers benefits. They roll the dice, like so many Americans are forced to, and take the chance that they won't get something like a kidney stone that could lead to kidney failure. That they don't get in a car wreck on the way to work. That the tooth they haven't been able to take care of doesn't become infected.

It could be a Sarah Adkins, or it could be Susan Gardner's daughter, born with a serious heart defect that has only been more complicated by the necessity of having to worry about how to pay for the treatments and procedures and drugs that give her a normal life.

Either way, these are representative of the lives that the Supreme Court will hand down a sentence on in a few months. Because that's what it really is, when you come down to it, whether or not tens of thousands of uninsured Americans will be sentenced to death because of a lack of health insurance.

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Tony Perkins blames prostitute scandal on
gay people

post from Daily Kos on 17 April 2012 06:45:06 PM. © Daily Kos

Tony Perkins You depress me.It's a typical day in America, so here's two crazy religious homophobes commiserating with each other on how neither Barack Obama nor Mitt Romney really hate the gay folks enough to satisfy religious homophobes (and really, isn't the entire purpose of religion to allow people to judge and control other people's sex lives? It's not? How odd, I could have sworn that was it).

One of the right-wing bigots in this case is Family Research Council head Tony Perkins, which makes it noteworthy because Tony Perkins is an omnipresent media voice for right-wing bigots. Want to know what a faux-religious right-wing jackass thinks about an issue? Call up Tony Perkins, he's their poster child. So here he is on the radio with fellow crazy right-wing bigot Janet Mefferd:

Mefford: [...] But we as Christians can?t stand stop fighting on this issue, Tony, so what do we do when we?re faced with a race where maybe we feel like the candidates are way too similar on this and both of them are wrong?
Perkins: Yeah, you know that?s a great point. Just for a moment step back and look at the implications of this, over the weekend we saw the news of the President?s Secret Service detail in Colombia and the issue of them hiring prostitutes and now the White House is outraged about that. Actually in a meeting this morning my staff asked, ?why should the President be upset?? It was actually legal; it was legal there to do that, so why should we be upset? Well, the fact is we intuitively know it?s wrong, there?s a moral law against that.
The same is true for what the President has done to the military enforcing open homosexuality in our military. You can change the law but you can?t change the moral law that?s behind it. You can change the positive law, the law that is created by man, but you can?t change the moral law, it?s wrong. So what you have is you have a total breakdown and you can?t pick and choose. Morality is not a smorgasbord; you can?t pick what you want. I think you?re absolutely right, this is a fundamental issue going forward because if we say ?let them do what we want,? what?s next? You cannot maintain moral order if you are willing to allow a few things to slide.

Got that? The Secret Service prostitute scandal is because gay people have been allowed in the military. Because it's weakening our morality, and making non-gay people do non-gay sex-for-hire things, and when you call them out on it they say, "I couldn't help it, there's gay people in the military now!"

I was going to go into great detail as to what the flying hell Mr. Tony Perkins might be thinking, but instead I'm just going to give up here. Not being a bigot causes you to hire prostitutes. Got it. If you can decipher any deeper logic than that behind Mr. Jackass Q. Moron's remarks, please let us know in comments. Because I can't even translate that level of stupid. Perkins should get some sort of award for that one.

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Bowles-Simpson Returns in Senate Budget Committee

post from Firedoglake on 17 April 2012 06:30:12 PM. © Firedoglake

Kent Conrad, the retiring Chairman of the Senate Budget Committee, just announced that the markup for the FY 2013 budget will commence tomorrow. And instead of creating model legislation, he will simply take the recommendations proposed by the Chairmen[...]

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White House Dismisses Allegation That It Covered
Up GSA Scandal

post from TPMMuckraker on 17 April 2012 06:01:39 PM. © TPMMuckraker

Rep. John Mica (R-FL) seemed to indicate on CNN this morning that the White House tried to cover up the the overspending scandal at the General Services Administration, but the White House says Mica is greatly overstating its knowledge of the GSA inspector general's investigation.

"People from the White House knew about it, did nothing, kept it quiet, until just a few days ago when a statement was released by the President condemning the act," said Mica, whose House Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure committee had a hearing on the GSA scandal on Tuesday. "We think that, again, they've held this information."

Mica appears to be referencing an exchange that took place during yesterday's House Oversight Committee hearing on the GSA scandal. GSA Chief of Staff Michael Robertson said he told Kim Harris of the White House counsel's office about the ongoing IG investigation last spring. But the White House points out that a staffer was only notified of the ongoing GSA investigation in passing. Robertson issued a statement yesterday clarifying his testimony.

"To clarify the point I made in my testimony today, I only mentioned in passing the existence of an IG investigation as I bumped into a White House staffer that I regularly worked with on GSA issues," Robertson said in a statement, adding that the communication took place in late May or June of 2011.

A White House official told TPM that the communication was incidental and took place in the hallway after an unrelated meeting. The official said there was no specific mention of any particular conference or the details of the overspending and that the White House is notified of ongoing inspector general investigations on a regular basis.

Inspector general investigations are supposed to be independent, and interfering in the matter before the probe completed would have gone against longstanding precedent.

Mica's appearance on Starting Point with Soledad O'Brien is embedded below.

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ALEC Disbands Task Force Responsible for Bills
Scott Walker Signed

post from MAL Contends . . . on 17 April 2012 06:00:56 PM. © MAL Contends . . .

By Brendan Fischer

Under growing public pressure and the departure of multiple corporate members, the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) has announced it is disbanding the Task Force that has been responsible for some of the organization's most controversial pieces of legislation. Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker introduced several bills approved by that Task Force when he was a legislator in the 1990s and early 2000s.

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Coolest Shot

post from Talking Points Memo on 17 April 2012 06:00:43 PM. © Talking Points Memo

Jeff Malet captured Discovery as it flew past the iconic Smithsonian "Castle." [...]

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As Long As We're Doing Space Pics ...

post from Talking Points Memo on 17 April 2012 06:00:43 PM. © Talking Points Memo

Today NASA released this fantastic shot from Hubble.[...]

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Ed Schultz Blasts Unmitigated Disaster Dick
Cheney

Ed Schultz Blasts ?Unmitigated Disaster? Dick Cheney

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Ed Schultz didn't have any kind words for "unmitigated disaster" Dick Cheney for this bit of projection at the Republican state convention in Wyoming over the weekend where he attacked President Obama and issued dire warnings to his fellow Republicans about the prospects of his reelection -- Unmitigated Disaster Dick Cheney Calls Obama An ?Unmitigated Disaster?.

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Open thread: About that War on Women ...

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Did George Washington Lead a Cell of Kenyan
Communists

In 1790, Congressislamunistofascists, including 20 men who helped in the drafting of the Constitution (the one in the National Archives, not the secret, real one that Glenn Beck often cites), passed a law requiring an Obamarian insurance mandate. Like Marx's "Communist Duck Soup Manifesto," the bill required ship owners to purchase medical insurance for their seaman. President, or should I say "Commissar," George Washington signed the bill into law.

Eight years later, a Congressional cell of Kenyan Communists, one that included five framers of the Constitution (again, the one in the National Archives), passed a law requiring seaman to buy their own insurance.

Putting aside whether spermatazoan-Americans even needed health insurance during the Federalist Era--they did not risk head injuries from slamming into latex walls until much later--why did patriots allow Commissar Washington and his Congressional politburo to violate Beck's Secret Constitution with such a mandate? Where were Sam Adams and his Tea Party?

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