Category Archives: Politics

A Virginia Squeaker

What was supposed to be a fairly easy victory for Terry McAuliffe over Ken Cuccinelli for the gubernatorial race in Virginia turned into a much closer than expected win for Terry McAuliffe.  Results aren’t final yet, but the most recent results show McAulliffe at 48.0% to Cuccinelli’s 45.5% with Libertarian Robert Sarvis claiming 6.6% of the vote.

It’s been all Obamacare all the time in Virginia the past few weeks.  Cuccinelli’s been heavily touting the website troubles and reports of individuals losing their insurance as ammunition against McAuliffe.  Despite McAuliffe’s win, it certainly looks like Obamacare hurt him some if the polls leading up to the election were accurate.

If Democrats were smart, they’d be doing some heavy internal polling of Sarvis voters to determine who they would have voted for if Sarvis wasn’t in the race.  Generally, a Libertarian candidate would be expected to pull votes away from the Republican candidate, but Cuccinelli’s a special kind of crazy that I don’t think would resonate with Libertarians.  It would be really bad news for Democrats if this election showed people leaning Democrat voting Libertarian.  Obamacare is a Libertarian’s second worse nightmare next to sharing one’s toys in a sandbox so this could actually be the case.

In other Virginia election news, Democrat Ralph Northam beat uber crazy E.W. Jackson to become Lieutenant Governor.  This is important because the Virginia Senate is currently even and the Lieutenant Governor casts the deciding vote in ties.  The Attorney General job looks like it’s going to Republican Mark Obenshain who is currently in the lead by less than 300 votes out of over two million cast, so no clean sweep in Virginia for the Democrats.

Around the nation, complete dick and likely Republican Presidential candidate Chris Christie won handily in New Jersey, the only state where being a dick is considered a distinguished mark of character.  The most progressive candidate on the ballot anywhere, Bill de Blasio won in a landslide and will be the first Democratic mayor of New York in 20 years.  Tea Party favorite Dean Young lost to Republican (and former Democrat) Bradley Byrne for Alabama’s 1st Congressional District.  Perhaps some sort of sanity is returning to the Republican party.  And finally, Generic Democratic Candidate A beat Generic Democratic Candidate B for Mayor of Boston.

Marriage Equality Comes To Illinois

A same-sex marriage bill passed both houses of the Illinois legislature yesterday and Governor Pat Quinn has promised to sign the bill.  This means that gay couples will be able to marry each other as of June 1st, 2014.  Bam!  I wonder what it was like in Boystown last night.  Probably a bit crazy.

This makes Illinois the 15th state to recognize same-sex marriage.  The tide is really turning.  There was a recent poll out of South Carolina that showed only 52% of residents are against same-sex marriage.  You might think, “well that’s still a majority”, and you’d be right, but this is South Carolina!  For a bit of perspective, in 2006, South Carolina passed an amendment banning same-sex marriage with 78% voting in favor of the amendment.  South Carolina, you’ve come a long way, baby.

And the beat goes on.

 

Russell Brand Should Vote

This video of Russell Brand talking about being a political editor is making the rounds.  There’s a lot of stuff that he says that is quite true.  He nails the biggest societal problems and berates the current political systems for completely ignoring them quite effectively.  I don’t agree with all his revolutionary conclusions, but he and I agree about the things that need to change.

The one thing that I vehemently disagree with him on is his decision to not take part in voting.  His reasons for not voting are mostly valid, but there is still something to be said about the gesture of voting.  Get out there, get a ballot and turn it in blank.  Show your disdain for the system that way at the very least.  Really, though, if you can’t find even one person worth voting for (or at least against in terms of judges), you really are part of the problem.  The national political stage does suck.  It’s filled with prima donnas and sociopaths.  Someone may come around once in a while worth voting for, but that is not the norm.  Local elections, however, are arguably more important and can easily become a source of candidates worth voting for.  There’s your revolution.

We’re Still In A Pretty Big Hole

If you’re reading this blog post, chances are you can count the number of ways you were affected by the recent Great Recession on one hand with all its fingers cut off.  This makes it very hard to grasp how serious of an event it was and still is.  At the bottom of the Great Recession, the United States lost around 6.2% of its jobs.  We’re talking 10 million job losses in about two years.

Well, the bottom of the recession was over three years ago now and we’re still not back to the number of jobs we had when the Great Recession started.  Despite adding 7.5 million private sector jobs since the bottom, we’re still 1.4 million private sector jobs down from when we started.  And that doesn’t even include the 700,000 public sector jobs that were lost and will likely never return.

The jobs that were lost were about 60% mid-wage jobs.  Only 27% of the job gains were in mid-wage jobs while 60% were in low-wage jobs.  So not only are down in the number of jobs, the jobs that have been created are much lower in value than the jobs that were lost originally.  This is what’s happening to the middle class.

What I am hopeful for is a silver lining in all of this.  With mid-wage earners who have a modicum of political support being shifted to low-wage earners who generally have zero political support, we’re finally seeing some attention paid to how impossible it is to live on a low-wage job.  While the high costs of low wages at Wal-Mart has been looked into for a long time, the same is finally being done at fast food restaurants.  We’re starting to see instances of workers organizing at this level.  If this organization continues, we may finally see some sectors that have been traditionally low-wage pushed into the mid-wage range bringing millions out of poverty as a result.  Maybe, just maybe, we’ll see a living wage law come out of all of this.

An Election Of Some Note

There was a special election in New Jersey yesterday to fill the U.S. Senate seat of Frank Lautenberg who died earlier this year from pneumonia.  New Jersey, you may remember, is currently run by Governor Chris Christie who was the Republican flavor of the moment prior to Ted Cruz.  Christie took a bit of heat for calling the special election from pretty much everyone.  He refused to appoint a Senator which pissed off the Republicans and he called for a special election instead of holding the election on the regular election date which pissed off Democrats since voter turnout would be much more difficult.  The special election also cost New Jersey millions of dollars more which pissed of governmental waste hawks like Chris Christie.  Ha!  Just kidding, there are no governmental waste hawks in government.

Anyway, the special election was between Democratic Newark Mayor Corey Booker and Republican perennial candidate for something Steve Lonegan.  The fact that this was a special election usually puts the Democratic candidate in a tough position since turnout for off cycle elections like this generally favor the Republican.  Corey Booker fairly handily beat Steve Lonegan with 54% of the vote despite this.  That means that Corey Booker is only the fourth African-American to be elected to the U.S. Senate.  He is also the first African-American to be elected to the U.S. Senate via a special election.  That may not seem like a big deal, but it is.  It reflects the changing political landscape in New Jersey, but I would also argue in the whole country.

A black man was able to bring enough people to the polls in an off election.  This should strike fear in the hearts of the Republican party.  Without significant minority outreach, they will just continue to look more and more like the fringe political party they are.

Wow, House Republicans Are Asshats

Say you were in a battle that you knew you couldn’t win given the rules that were in place.  What would you do?  If you answered “Why, change the rules at the last minute, of course!”, you may be a House Republican.

There is (or was) a House rule that says if a House bill is brought up for a vote in the Senate twice and is rejected both times any member of the House may call for a straight vote of the corresponding Senate bill.  That’s a straightforward enough rule.  It keeps things moving and prevents gridlock.  But the modus operandi of House Republicans is gridlock so they can’t have that.  To prevent the possibility of a vote ever coming up for the Senate bill, on September 30th, mere hours before the government shutdown, House Republicans altered that rule.  Instead of allowing any House member to call for a vote, they changed the rule so that only the House Majority Leader can call for a vote.  Who is the House Majority Leader you may ask?  Why Eric Cantor (R-VA), of course.  So there will be no straight vote on the already passed Senate bill to fund the government and the shutdown can last indefinitely.

But yeah, go ahead and blame Democrats for the shutdown.

C’mon, Jon Stewart, Really?

Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius was on “The Daily Show” on Monday night to talk about black holes or Obamacare, I forget which.  Same difference.  Hey oh!  Normally, I find Jon Stewart to be a fairly informed interviewer, but his discussion with the Secretary seemed more Chris Matthews than Jon Stewart.

He kept trying to get an answer from Sebelius on why they delayed the implementation of the small business requirement for a year but wouldn’t delay the individual requirement.  Even during his Moment of Zen lead in, he was still remarking on how he doesn’t understand it.  In his defense, Sebelius repeatedly answered his question like a politician.  Meaning, there was absolutely no substance to her answers.  It was all fluff.  It is frustrating as hell when politicians do that, but it’s not the first time that’s happened to Jon.  Usually he just says what the politician is really thinking and the politician just smiles noncommittal.  That didn’t happen this time.

There is an obvious reason to me as to why the individual requirement needs to go in right away.  Maybe I’m way off base on this, I don’t know.  The answer to me is pre-existing conditions.  Delaying the individual requirement would not delay the requirement for insurance companies to cover pre-existing conditions.  Everyone who has been denied coverage because of a pre-existing condition is going to flock to the new marketplace.  I’m not sure how many people this is, but judging from the number of people that I know who fall into this segment, it’s pretty large.  If the individual requirement was delayed for a year, most healthy uninsured individuals wouldn’t sign up.  Insurance companies would have to account for that and the premiums would have to go up in response.  This would be a huge blow to Obamacare.

The whole reason why Republicans are so keen on delaying parts of Obamacare is they know this would happen.  They would have some great ammunition for their base to eat up.  “See how expensive Obamacare is!”  Then they can push an agenda of Obamacare repeal for the midterm elections with some excellent talking points.  People are too busy with their lives to recognize the difference between costs for a pool consisting mostly of people with pre-existing conditions and a pool that represents the general population.  They’ll just see the price tag and be all “OMG Obamacare is going to bankrupt us!”.

The small business requirement covers a much smaller potential pool and is more difficult for small businesses to navigate so delaying it is not such a big deal.  Most “small businesses” already offer their employees health insurance.  Remember, we’re talking businesses with over 50 employees here.

Now, I don’t know why Sebelius can’t just say all that.  It is pretty impolitic to say that there are electoral concerns with the potential delay, but she could have easily have done so without mentioning that portion of it.  Regardless, Jon Stewart is a smart, funny man surrounded with a staff of smart, funny people.  He should have been able to figure that out for himself.

Limiting Principles

This is a repost of something I wrote prior to this blog that a friend recently reminded me of.  This was written in March 2012 when the Supreme Court was deciding on the constitutionality of Obamacare:

There was lots of talk at the Supreme Court today about there needing to be a ‘limiting principle’. Basically, the question is, if the U.S. government can mandate insurance purchases, what’s to prevent them from mandating broccoli purchases?

I don’t get these ‘limiting principle’ arguments at all. Where in the Constitution does it say “You can do x. But not all the time.”? The Constitution IS the limiting principle!. The Enumerated Powers tells us exactly what our Congress can do. As long as the law fits an Enumerated Power and doesn’t violate anything else in the Constitution, it’s fair game.

But, beyond that, there are plenty of limiting principles. The limiting principle is the lack of political will that caused universal healthcare 40+ years to be a reality. The limiting principle is elections that can change laws if they are sufficiently unpopular.

So, yes, Congress can probably mandate that you can buy broccoli under the Commerce Clause. But Congress can also declare war on Canada. Congress can also borrow one trillion dollars. Congress can also print one gazillion dollars. If you think the Enumerated Powers grants Congress too much power, change the Constitution or change your representatives. Because, in this fine Republic, the limiting principle is us.

Now That’s Some High Quality Parody

I present to you OBAMACARE! the text adventure.  A sample:

You are standing in an open field in west of a white apartment complex, with a boarded front door.  There is a small mailbox here.

> e

The door is locked. There is evidently no key.

> kick door

I don’t understand that.

> chicago jackboot thug kick

I don’t understand that.

> black panther power

You don’t understand that.

> power of greyskull

Fine. By the Power of Greyskull you open the door. You are in the kitchen of the white townhouse.  A table seems to have been used recently for the preparation of food.  A passage leads to the west, and a dark staircase can be seen leading upward.  To the east is a small window which is open. On the table is a computer open to Healthcare.gov.

Congress Successfully Avoids Near Catastrophe

Subtitle: Inert Congress Passes Inert Gas Law

Who said Congress can’t do anything important?  Oh, right, me.  This time, though, they actually accomplished something.  The Great Helium Shortage of 2013 has been narrowly avoided.  It’s less popular than the strategic oil reserve, but the U.S. also has a strategic helium reserve.  It was started when blimps looked like they could actually be a thing.  Oops.  The U.S. has been selling this helium on the open market since 1996, but the law authorizing it was about to expire.  Now, this may not seem like a big deal until you realize that sales from the helium reserve account for 50% of total helium sales in the U.S.  Ouch.  This could have been disastrous.  You may think of helium as just a gas that is used for party balloons and making your voice squeaky, but it’s used in all sorts of high tech manufacturing processes as well.  Luckily, a new law was passed that avoided the shutdown of the reserve.  The helium must flow.

Even this no-brainer legislation almost didn’t happen.  There was lots of argument on what to do with the money made from the sale of the helium.  In the end, an agreement was struck that would put a token amount towards deficit reduction and the rest towards other program.  Only one no-name person in the House voted against it.  The measure passed the senate 97-2.  Guess who voted against it?  If you guessed Ted “there ain’t a thing alive I won’t obstruct” Cruz, you win a party balloon.  The other was Jeff Sessions who, while I can’t fathom his reasons for voting against it, has proven to be quite the asshat in the past.