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Read the rules in the OP before posting, please.In order to ensure that this thread continues to meet TL standards and follows the proper guidelines, we will be enforcing the rules in the OP more strictly. Be sure to give them a re-read to refresh your memory! The vast majority of you are contributing in a healthy way, keep it up! NOTE: When providing a source, explain why you feel it is relevant and what purpose it adds to the discussion if it's not obvious. Also take note that unsubstantiated tweets/posts meant only to rekindle old arguments can result in a mod action. |
On January 25 2017 18:14 FiWiFaKi wrote:
If you're a public agency, you should do you best regardless of your personal political affiliation, I thought that was fairly common knowledge for a public sector employee. Whose idea it was to post photos about Trump inauguration crowd sizes from an agency account that has absolutely nothing to do with that... That's some massive incompetence and clear conflict of interest on their part, whoever authorized that kind of stuff should be removed from the public sector forever.
Trump has been more authoritarian than I would have expected, a tad scary for sure. But let's see how it goes, it's only been a couple days.
The fuss over that particular twitpic deletion was way overblown, especially if you actually read the story. That tweet should not have gone out.
The AP stories about directives specifically banning press releases from multiple agencies or agency blog updates are absolutely contemptible, though, and add credence to the administration-monopoly-on-truth narrative that people have been discussing Trump's minions implementing.
(much like so many other stories, I can guarantee media on the right will frame the two things as the same or only talk about the former)
I don't really understand any possible reason to do that unless it's rebuilding the agency infrastructure so yes-men control what goes out or generally just forcing opacity in agency operations, which both seem pretty awful.
Also: when you see it...
+ Show Spoiler +That's not the date of his inauguration
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On January 25 2017 18:14 FiWiFaKi wrote:
If you're a public agency, you should do you best regardless of your personal political affiliation, I thought that was fairly common knowledge for a public sector employee. Whose idea it was to post photos about Trump inauguration crowd sizes from an agency account that has absolutely nothing to do with that... That's some massive incompetence and clear conflict of interest on their part, whoever authorized that kind of stuff should be removed from the public sector forever.
Trump has been more authoritarian than I would have expected, a tad scary for sure. But let's see how it goes, it's only been a couple days.
"More authoritarian than I would have expected" should not be followed by "it's only been a couple of days"
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On January 25 2017 22:25 pmh wrote:
Tbh,i think the media don't even know how to do better anymore. They have forgotten what it means to be journalist. They feel they are the king of public opinion,the know it alls who know best what is going on in the word. but they are only trying to advance the agenda of their owners. And the public they see through this all slowly yet the media won't change,just continue with the same old biased crap that they have done for the like the last 20 years. They are happily continuing digging their own grave.
What media are you talking about? If you think you can put Breitbart, Fox, CNN, The Economist, The Guardian and your local radio in the same bag and make broad generalization about them while still being constructive, you are wrong.
Just like with "the establishment", any sentence that uses the expression "the media" to carpet blame it without telling who you are talking about is populist bs.
They are some fantastic newspapers, and some horrible ones, and some fantastic journalists and some horrible ones.
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On January 25 2017 19:03 kwizach wrote:+ Show Spoiler +Remember the discussions on Aetna? On November 17 2016 05:02 xDaunt wrote:Show nested quote +On November 17 2016 04:56 farvacola wrote:
To hone in on one of many flaws in that reasoning, if the Medicare expansion had gone through without Supreme Court interference, millions of borderline eligible folks in states that refused to set up their own exchanges would have been covered (there's reason to think that problems with federal exchange implementation in states without their own exchange lies at the locus of Obamacare's price control problems). That alone throws a wrench into this "all smart people knew it was going to fail" reasoning. I don't think it would have mattered: Show nested quote +Aetna's decision to abandon its ObamaCare expansion plans and rethink its participation altogether came as a surprise to many. It shouldn't have. Everything that's happened now was predicted by the law's critics years ago.
Aetna CEO Mark Bertolini said that this was supposed to be a break-even year for its ObamaCare business. Instead, the company has already lost $200 million, which it expect that to hit $320 million before the year it out. He said the company was abandoning plans to expand into five other states and is reviewing whether to stay in the 15 states where Aetna (AET) current sells ObamaCare plans.
Aetna's announcement follows UnitedHealth Group's (UNH) decision to leave most ObamaCare markets, Humana's (HUM) decision to drop out of some, Blue Cross Blue Shield's announcement that it was quitting the individual market in Minnesota, and the failure of most of the 23 government-created insurance co-ops. And it follows news that insurance companies are putting in for double-digit rate hikes that in some cases top 60%, and news that the Congressional Budget Office has sharply downgraded its long-term enrollment forecast for the exchanges.
Who could have envisioned such problems? Not ObamaCare backers. They were endlessly promising that the law would create vibrant, highly competitive markets that would lower the cost of insurance.
Critics, however, were spot on. They said that, despite the individual mandate, ObamaCare wouldn't attract enough young and healthy people to keep premiums down.
The Heritage Foundation, for example, said that under ObamaCare, "many under age 35 will opt out of buying insurance altogether, choosing to pay the penalty instead." That's just what has happened.
Critics predicted sharp hikes in premiums and big increases in medical claims. That's what's happened.
Critics said people would game the system, waiting until they got sick to buy insurance, then canceling it once the bills were paid, because of the law's "guaranteed issue" mandate. That's happening, too. In fact, administration officials are trying to tighten the rules to mitigate this problem.
Critics said insurers would abandon ObamaCare amid substantial losses. Anyone want to dispute that this is happening?
These dire predictions weren't pulled out of thin air. Several states had already tried ObamaCare-style market reforms in the 1990s, only to see their individual insurance markets collapse. A 2007 report by Milliman Inc. looked at eight states that had adopted the "guaranteed issue" and "community rating" reforms at the heart of ObamaCare.
Like Obama, these states wanted to create insurance markets where no one could be denied coverage, or charged more, just because they were sick. But Milliman found that these regulations resulted in fast-rising premiums, a drop in enrollment in the individual market, and an exodus of health insurers.
Sound familiar?
By the time ObamaCare came around, most of those states either abandoned or overhauled this regulatory scheme, only to have it reimposed on them.
ObamaCare architects figured they could avoid the fate of those state experiments by including the individual mandate and subsidies for lower income families.
However, consulting firm Oliver Wyman correctly predicted in 2009 that these wouldn't work, either. "The subsidies and mandates," it concluded, "are not sufficient to drive high participation of younger, healthier members."
Aetna's Bertolini says that what's needed now to keep ObamaCare functioning are bigger and more generous taxpayer financed insurance subsidies — i.e., bailouts. Democrats say what's needed is a "public option" so that consumers in states abandoned by private insurers will be able to get coverage.
How about instead policymakers listen to the original ObamaCare critics? For decades, they've been calling for reforms that lift myriad anti-competitive government regulations, as well as fixes to the tax code so that it no longer massively distorts the insurance market.
The resulting free market competition in health care would do what it does everywhere it's allowed to function — improve quality while improving affordability. In other words, it would achieve the things ObamaCare promised but miserably failed to deliver. Source. Edit: And to take things further, my recollection is that the Obamacare skeptics predicted that the financial collapse of Obamacare would happen right about now. On August 18 2016 11:18 Plansix wrote:Show nested quote +On August 18 2016 11:06 xDaunt wrote:On August 18 2016 11:01 Plansix wrote:On August 18 2016 10:58 xDaunt wrote:On August 18 2016 10:35 {CC}StealthBlue wrote:The big health care news this week came from Aetna, which announced on Monday it was dramatically scaling back participation in the Affordable Care Act ― thereby reducing insurer competition and forcing customers scattered across 11 states to find different sources of coverage next year.
Aetna officials said the pullout was necessary because of Obamacare’s problems ― specifically, deep losses the insurer was incurring in the law’s health insurance exchanges.
But the move also was directly related to a Department of Justice decision to block the insurer’s potentially lucrative merger with Humana, according to a letter from Aetna’s CEO obtained by The Huffington Post.
Paired with some looming rate increases for next year’s health plans, the abrupt departure of Aetna has triggered new worries that Obamacare ― a subsidized public-private system of health insurance plans competing for beneficiaries ― is in serious trouble and may even be unsustainable.
That’s despite millions who have obtained coverage through these marketplaces, contributing to a historically low uninsured rate. It’s also despite optimism about Obamacare from at least some insurers and experts ― optimism that Aetna’s own leaders had expressed just a few months ago.
Publicly, Aetna representatives this week framed their about-face as a reaction to losses the company was taking on Obamacare customers, and in particular figures from the second quarter of 2016 that the company had just analyzed, showing them to be sicker and costlier than predicted.
When reporters on Monday asked whether Aetna was also reacting to the administration’s attempt to thwart its merger with Humana, company officials brushed off the questions, according to accounts in the Hartford Courant, Politico and USA Today. Source If I recall correctly, opponents, prior to Obamacare's passing, were predicting massive rate hikes and the demise of Obamacare as a consequence of fiscal unsustainability in 2017. As just one example, Colorado is getting fucked hard, and the exchanges are going to fail next year. Except the company that is threatening to pull out said the exact opposite of what they claimed during an investor call. Then they are free to be sued by shareholders. Doesn't change the fact that Obamacare is going down in flames as predicted. Or they are lying about pulling out because they are mad about being denied a merger and they want to use that as leverage. On August 18 2016 11:11 farvacola wrote:
"Here's this thing that Aetna did, it's a clear signal that Obamacare is failing."
"Actually, Aetna has leveraged market pullouts before and there's reason to believe that that is what is happening here."
"Yeah well clearly Obamacare is failing anyhow!" Looks like farva and Plansix were spot-on: U.S. judge finds that Aetna deceived the public about its reasons for quitting Obamacare
Aetna claimed this summer that it was pulling out of all but four of the 15 states where it was providing Obamacare individual insurance because of a business decision — it was simply losing too much money on the Obamacare exchanges.
Now a federal judge has ruled that that was a rank falsehood. In fact, says Judge John D. Bates, Aetna made its decision at least partially in response to a federal antitrust lawsuit blocking its proposed $37-billion merger with Humana. Aetna threatened federal officials with the pullout before the lawsuit was filed, and followed through on its threat once it was filed. Bates made the observations in the course of a ruling he issued Monday blocking the merger.
Aetna executives had moved heaven and earth to conceal their decision-making process from the court, in part by discussing the matter on the phone rather than in emails, and by shielding what did get put in writing with the cloak of attorney-client privilege, a practice Bates found came close to “malfeasance.”
The judge’s conclusions about Aetna’s real reasons for pulling out of Obamacare — as opposed to the rationalization the company made in public — are crucial for the debate over the fate of the Affordable Care Act. That’s because the company’s withdrawal has been exploited by Republicans to justify repealing the act. Just last week, House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) cited Aetna’s action on the “Charlie Rose” show, saying that it proved how shaky the exchanges were. Source
It would behoove you to read the opinion rather than simply quote the blog of some guy who only cites select portions and may very well have an axe to grind. The big tip off is where the Court says that says the decision to withdraw from the exchanges was "partially" motivated by the anti-trust litigation and Aetna's desire to improve its litigation position. Gee, I wonder what the other part could be?
I don't have time to fully respond, but the opinion is here, and I'll give you a chance to amend your post and argument.
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Quoth the court in the introduction on page 5:
In the public exchanges, the Court finds that Aetna withdrew from competing in the 17
complaint counties for 2017 specifically to evade judicial scrutiny of the merger.
I see "specifically" in that opinion, not partially.
Indeed, I can't even find the word "partially" in that document and only 3 uses of partial? Maybe my control-F isn't finding it, docs like that can get wonky.
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On January 26 2017 00:20 TheTenthDoc wrote:Quoth the court in the introduction on page 5: Show nested quote +In the public exchanges, the Court finds that Aetna withdrew from competing in the 17
complaint counties for 2017 specifically to evade judicial scrutiny of the merger. I see "specifically" in that opinion, not partially. Indeed, I can't even find the word "partially" in that document and only 3 uses of partial? Maybe my control-F isn't finding it, docs like that can get wonky.
Go read from roughly page 132 onwards.
EDIT: Page 124 is where the Court says that Aetna withdrew from the exchanges "at least in part" for litigation-related reasons. Page 132 and onward is where Aetna presents the financial considerations.
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On January 26 2017 00:23 xDaunt wrote:Show nested quote +On January 26 2017 00:20 TheTenthDoc wrote:Quoth the court in the introduction on page 5: In the public exchanges, the Court finds that Aetna withdrew from competing in the 17
complaint counties for 2017 specifically to evade judicial scrutiny of the merger. I see "specifically" in that opinion, not partially. Indeed, I can't even find the word "partially" in that document and only 3 uses of partial? Maybe my control-F isn't finding it, docs like that can get wonky. Go read from roughly page 132 onwards.
Ah. Okay. They discuss losses. But they seem to conclude with
But the documents that team put together clearly show that they did not approach
the 17 complaint counties as part of the business decision. Those three states were not mentioned
in the draft documents before the request to include the 17 counties. And once those counties were
included in the recommendation documents, they were a separate bloc not evaluated by the same
business criteria (e.g., profitability) as the other markets. Hence, while Aetna puts on a persuasive
case that information received in July 2016 changed the value proposition for Aetna participating
on the exchanges generally, the Court nonetheless finds on the basis of all the evidence that Aetna’s
decision with respect to the 17 complaint counties was not based on that value proposition. Instead,
Aetna’s decision not to offer on-exchange plans in the 17 counties for 2017 was a strategy to
improve its litigation position.
Which to me seems to suggest the profitability margin was not a component in the view of the court after consideration of the documents.
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On January 25 2017 22:25 pmh wrote:
Tbh,i think the media don't even know how to do better anymore. They have forgotten what it means to be journalist. They feel they are the king of public opinion,the know it alls who know best what is going on in the word. but they are only trying to advance the agenda of their owners. And the public they see through this all slowly yet the media won't change,just continue with the same old biased crap that they have done for the like the last 20 years. They are happily continuing digging their own grave.
According to people intimately familiar with CNN’s finances, the network and its related media businesses will approach $1 billion in gross profit in 2016, a milestone unseen in its 36-year history. The internal estimate reflects a double-digit increase over 2015 and includes CNN’s international network, its popular website and the smaller HLN network, but it is driven primarily by its domestic channel, according to people at CNN.
Source
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Although I wouldn't be surprised if this is intended to be another personal attack on Obama. Perpetual revenge for the White House correspondents dinner roast.
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On January 26 2017 00:29 TheTenthDoc wrote:Show nested quote +On January 26 2017 00:23 xDaunt wrote:On January 26 2017 00:20 TheTenthDoc wrote:Quoth the court in the introduction on page 5: In the public exchanges, the Court finds that Aetna withdrew from competing in the 17
complaint counties for 2017 specifically to evade judicial scrutiny of the merger. I see "specifically" in that opinion, not partially. Indeed, I can't even find the word "partially" in that document and only 3 uses of partial? Maybe my control-F isn't finding it, docs like that can get wonky. Go read from roughly page 132 onwards. Ah. Okay. They discuss losses. But they seem to conclude with Show nested quote +But the documents that team put together clearly show that they did not approach
the 17 complaint counties as part of the business decision. Those three states were not mentioned
in the draft documents before the request to include the 17 counties. And once those counties were
included in the recommendation documents, they were a separate bloc not evaluated by the same
business criteria (e.g., profitability) as the other markets. Hence, while Aetna puts on a persuasive
case that information received in July 2016 changed the value proposition for Aetna participating
on the exchanges generally, the Court nonetheless finds on the basis of all the evidence that Aetna’s
decision with respect to the 17 complaint counties was not based on that value proposition. Instead,
Aetna’s decision not to offer on-exchange plans in the 17 counties for 2017 was a strategy to
improve its litigation position. Which to me seems to suggest the profitability margin was not a component in the view of the court after consideration of the documents.
Right, but I'm not arguing that Aetna did not try to improve its litigation position by withdrawing from some of the markets. My argument has always concerned the overall functioning of Obamacare at a national level, and the Court's findings clearly support my argument on that point.
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Rep. Chris Collins, one of President Donald Trump’s earliest supporters on Capitol Hill and the transition team’s liaison to Congress, said Wednesday that he sees no proof of the type of widespread voter fraud that Trump believes occurred in last year’s election.
Pushed during a back-and-forth with CNN “New Day” anchor Chris Cuomo over Trump’s claim that as many as five million people voted illegally in November’s presidential election, Collins admitted that he has no evidence to support allegations of voter fraud of the scale that the president has described.
“This is three to five million people that made a dispositive difference in his loss of the popular vote. Do you have a shred of proof of that suggestion?” Cuomo asked Collins.
“No, I don't. That's his opinion,” Collins replied. “But I'll say there are illegal votes cast and if we can tighten down we should do it.”
Trump’s allegations of voter fraud, prevalent during his presidential campaign, resurfaced Monday night when he reiterated them to congressional leaders who had come to the White House for a meeting. There is no evidence to support such allegations, although White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer said Tuesday that the president’s beliefs on voter fraud were rooted at least in part in a Pew Research study.
The author of that study said in November that his team found “millions of out of date registration records due to people moving or dying, but found no evidence that voter fraud resulted.” On Tuesday, he wrote on Twitter that “as I've noted before, voting integrity better in this election than ever before. Zero evidence of fraud.”
Still, Trump announced Wednesday morning that he would call for a “major investigation” into voter fraud, something Collins said he supported even if he saw no evidence of issues on the scale that Trump suggested. While presidential elections are decided by thousands or millions of votes, local elections are much tighter and are therefore much more susceptible to the influence of voter fraud.
“I think it's always important to make sure that we don't have illegal votes. We know we have them,” Collins said. “We should know who’s walking into the voting booth and I would support anything we do to make sure that our elections are secure, that it's only citizens voting. And if we do an investigation, and sounds like we're going to, I'm all in support of that.”
“When an illegal vote is cast for president that illegal vote’s also cast for a city councilman,” he added later. “So, I mean, the president’s entitled to his opinion and I'd like to get rid of all illegal voters and it does impact down ballot and I guess that’s my position.”
Source
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Why would anyone quote this guy? He is a joke.
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President Donald Trump thinks that unfavorable media coverage of his first weekend in office has not allowed him to "enjoy" the White House, according to a Tuesday report by the Associated Press.
Trump believed that the media would cover him more favorably after he was inaugurated, according to an Associated Press report citing two anonymous sources close to the President, but instead believes it has worsened.
The President said that the negative press has not allowed him to "enjoy" the White House on his first weekend in office, according to an anonymous source who spoke with him also cited in the report.
Trump's administration faced a rocky weekend of media coverage on its first weekend in the White House.
Thousands of marchers attended protests on Saturday along the National Mall in Washington, D.C., as well as in hundreds of other cities across the United States and around the world, many carrying anti-Trump signs. And an official estimate from D.C. Metro authority showed that the transit system had its second-busiest day ever on the day of the Women's March on Washington, far surpassing its ridership on the day of Trump's inauguration.
Following reports of low attendance at his swearing-in ceremony on Friday, Trump pushed White House press secretary Sean Spicer to issue a fiery public response, according to a Washington Post report published Sunday citing interviews with Trump's advisors and confidants as well as a number of senior White House officials.
In his Saturday remarks railing against the media, Spicer included a number of incorrect figures which were quickly highlighted as baseless. Trump, however, thought that Spicer's statement was not forceful enough, according to the Washington Post's report.
Spicer continued to condemn the media's treatment of Donald Trump in his first daily briefing with reporters from the White House on Monday, saying that it is "demoralizing" for the President to see unfavorable coverage.
"There is this constant theme to undercut the enormous support that he has," Spicer said. "I think it's unbelievably frustrating when you're continually told it's not big enough, it's not good enough, you can't win."
Source
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On January 25 2017 22:25 pmh wrote:
Tbh,i think the media don't even know how to do better anymore. They have forgotten what it means to be journalist. They feel they are the king of public opinion,the know it alls who know best what is going on in the word. but they are only trying to advance the agenda of their owners. And the public they see through this all slowly yet the media won't change,just continue with the same old biased crap that they have done for the like the last 20 years. They are happily continuing digging their own grave.
they do know what it means to be a journalist, and do it sometimes, but most people are just incapable of recognizing what good journalism or truth is anyways.
more to the point thoguh, they cover trump because trump coverage brings ratings = $$$
as long as covering trump brings in the cash, they'll keep doing it.
and they cover stupid stuff because that brings in more money than smart analysis.
most people do not actually read thoughtful coverage much. if more people wanted that, there'd be more of it.
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Have fun launching a major federal investigation into voter fraud during a federal hiring freeze, Trump. I don't think he remembers day to day what he's done anymore.
(Also, haven't Republicans spent decades arguing voter fraud issues are a state and not a federal responsibility?)
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On January 26 2017 01:24 TheTenthDoc wrote:
Have fun launching a major federal investigation into voter fraud during a federal hiring freeze, Trump. I don't think he remembers day to day what he's done anymore.
(Also, haven't Republicans spent decades arguing voter fraud issues are a state and not a federal responsibility?)
I don't really expect an investigation to take place, I'd imagine instead a lot of talking about it to open up the door for tighter voter ID laws.
Voter laws almost universally affect democrats more than republicans because any restriction tends to affect poor people the most (who on average lean democrat). With them controlling the House, Senate, and Presidency + many state governments why wouldn't they try to solidify their position with tighter voting laws? Even when Trump disagrees with Republicans, I'm sure he wants to win again in 4 years.
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I think Trump doesn't like to be seen as republican... it makes him look small.
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He will do ANYTHING to win, that much is for sure.
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On January 26 2017 01:10 NukeD wrote:Why would anyone quote this guy? He is a joke.
Why is he a joke?
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On January 26 2017 02:02 Doodsmack wrote:
He will do ANYTHING to win, that much is for sure.
not quite anything. I don't think he'd be willing to be humble for a win.
there's actually probably a fairly long list of things he wouldn't do to win.
though your metaphorical point is understood.
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EPT
