US Politics Mega-thread - Page 261

A pair of Democratic congressmen is pushing an amendment that would place an affirmative right to vote in the U.S. Constitution. According to Rep. Mark Pocan (D-WI), who is sponsoring the legislation along with Rep. Keith Ellison (D-MN), the amendment would protect voters from what he described as a “systematic” push to “restrict voting access” through voter ID laws, shorter early voting deadlines, and other measures that are being proposed in many states.

“Most people believe that there already is something in the Constitution that gives people the right to vote, but unfortunately … there is no affirmative right to vote in the Constitution. We have a number of amendments that protect against discrimination in voting, but we don’t have an affirmative right,” Pocan told TPM last week. “Especially in an era … you know, in the last decade especially we’ve just seen a number of these measures to restrict access to voting rights in so many states. … There’s just so many of these that are out there, that it shows the real need that we have.”

The brief amendment would stipulate that “every citizen of the United States, who is of legal voting age, shall have the fundamental right to vote in any public election held in the jurisdiction in which the citizen resides.” It would also give Congress “the power to enforce and implement this article by appropriate legislation.”

After investigating the issue, Pocan said he and Ellison decided this type of amendment was the best way to combat measures to restrict voting access.

House Speaker John Boehner, who by title and position should be the second most powerful person in Washington, sure doesn’t seem or sound like it.

He has little ability to work his will with fellow House Republicans. He has quit for good his solo efforts to craft a grand bargain on taxes and spending. And he hasn’t bothered to initiate a substantive conversation with President Barack Obama in this calendar year.

All of this recently prompted Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, herself a former speaker, to declare on MSNBC that if Boehner were a woman, he would be known as the weakest speaker in U.S. history.

So is Boehner weak?

“You’re missing my style, all right?” Boehner told us in an interview. “I don’t need to be out there beating the drum every day. My job as the leader is to build my team, encourage my members, help provide leadership to my members and committee chairs and let the institution work.

“It doesn’t need the heavy hand of the speaker all over everything.”

His style, in short, is not lean in. Or lean on. It’s lean back — and wait.

On May 29 2013 06:05 Gorsameth wrote:
From what I've seen I'm pretty sure its not his "style" but the fact that the hard line side of his party has decided to ignore him.
Boehner seems willing to compromise where needed and has offered such ideas at times but he cant follow through with it because part of the Republican party refuses to compromise.

Its not that he refuses to act. He is unable to.

On May 29 2013 08:58 aksfjh wrote:
Tax policy and correlation on top income brackets share of income.

+ Show Spoiler +

On May 29 2013 09:51 Sermokala wrote:
I'm very disappointed with you stealth. You usually post good news articles but what you just posted is nothing more then a tabloid peice from a tabloid website with the same journalistic value of a tmz article.

WASHINGTON -- Republican senators are fuming about President Barack Obama's attempt to fill empty seats on the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals, charging him with "court-packing" and alleging that his push to confirm nominees is all politics.

But not only is Obama not "court-packing" -- a term describing an attempt to add judges to a court with the goal of shifting the balance, not filling existing vacancies -- but Republicans' efforts to prevent Obama from appointing judges amount to their own attempt to tip the scales in their favor. What's more, some of the GOP senators trying to prevent his nominees from advancing previously voted to fill the court when there was a Republican in the White House.

As it stands, the powerful D.C. Circuit has 11 seats, three of which are vacant. Obama has signaled plans to put forward nominees for all three open slots as soon as this week. But Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) and other Republicans are pushing legislation that would eliminate those seats and keep the court where it is: with eight judges, four of whom were appointed by Democrats and four of whom were appointed by Republicans.

Grassley has argued that the court simply doesn't need to have three more judges because it has a lighter workload than other circuit courts -- a stance that Democrats say overlooks the fact that the court is second in stature only to the Supreme Court and takes on particularly complex cases. But Grassley has also suggested that Obama is trying to pack the court.

Opponents of President Barack Obama’s health-care law are gearing up for a new round of attacks, this time targeting the legislation’s insurance exchanges that would expand coverage to millions of Americans.

Heritage Action for America, the advocacy arm of the Heritage Foundation, and the Tea Party-aligned group FreedomWorks will push Congress to cut off funding for the exchanges in the debate later this year over raising the debt ceiling, the Washington-based groups said. The chairman of the advocacy group Restore America’s Voice, Ken Hoagland, said he plans to warn people through advertising about the “dysfunctional” exchanges.


While opposition to the health-care program is nothing new, the tactics are changing. Rather than focusing on repealing the law in Congress and the courts, two avenues that have failed so far, the groups are aiming to prevent the cornerstone of the legislation, the insurance exchanges, from succeeding. Their goal is to limit enrollments, drive up costs, and make it easier to roll back all or part of the law later.

“If you’re committed to making sure Obamacare doesn’t go into effect, you have to focus on the expansion and on the exchanges,” said Dan Holler, a spokesman for Heritage Action. “Once you have people under a program, it’s really hard to change that system no matter how badly it needs change.”

Democratic supporters of the health-care law said critics are afraid that the measure will be a success and therefore are out to prevent it.

High-End Health Plans Scale Back to Avoid ‘Cadillac Tax’

Say goodbye to that $500 deductible insurance plan and the $20 co-payment for a doctor's office visit. They are likely to become luxuries of the past. ...

While most of the attention on the Obama administration's health care law has been on providing coverage to tens of millions of uninsured Americans by 2014, workers with employer-paid health insurance are also beginning to feel the effects. Companies hoping to avoid the tax are beginning to scale back the more generous health benefits they have traditionally offered and to look harder for ways to bring down the overall cost of care.

In a way, the changes are right in line with the administration's plan: To encourage employers to move away from plans that insulate workers from the cost of care and often lead to excessive procedures and tests, and galvanize employers to try to control ever-increasing medical costs. But the tax remains one of the law's most controversial provisions.

Bradley Herring, a health economist at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, suggested the result would be more widely felt than many people realize. "The reality is it is going to hit more and more people over time, at least as currently written in law, " he said. Mr. Herring estimated that as many as 75 percent of plans could be affected by the tax over the next decade — unless employers manage to significantly rein in their costs.

The changes can be significant for employees. The hospital where Abbey Bruce, a nursing assistant in Olympia, Wash., worked, for example, stopped offering the traditional plan that she and her husband, Casey, who has cystic fibrosis, had chosen.

Starting this year, they have a combined deductible of $2,300, compared with just $500 before. And while she was eligible for a $1,400 hospital contribution to a savings account linked to the plan, the couple is now responsible for $6,600 a year in medical expenses, in contrast to a $3,000 limit on medical bills and $2,000 limit on pharmacy costs last year. She has had to drop out of school and take on additional jobs to pay for her husband's medicine. ...

On May 29 2013 09:44 JonnyBNoHo wrote:

You think the marginal rate is that powerful a factor?

On May 29 2013 11:29 {CC}StealthBlue wrote:


*slap*



Source




Source

On May 29 2013 17:50 aksfjh wrote:

That's some pretty solid correlation. Obviously other factors are involved, but it looks like a key player.