She added that her own performance didn't go completely to plan either. 'Some of my notes were pitchy to me. [But]It was so exhilarating. The whole thing it was so big. That's a once-in-a-lifetime thing.'
Under the threat of armed concealed carry liberals, Gov. Walker is afraid, very afraid. And like all fearful conservative victims, Scott Walker needs added protection, until the state levels the playing field by passing right to carry laws. When that finally happens, we will all be safer. Until then, the liberal threat posed by gun toting Democrats angry over politicians who won't listen to the will of the people, is real and can't be ignored by the paranoid.(AP) — The security detail assigned to new Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker is 50 percent larger than it was under his predecessor ... State Patrol Col. Ben Mendez told The Associated Press on Monday that the decision to increase the unit from four to six officers was done in response to the larger size of Walker's family, the ongoing threat level and the need to staff the unit adequately.
Capital Times: Taxes too high? Actually, as a share of the nation's economy, Uncle Sam's take this year will be the lowest since 1950 .... And for the third straight year, American families and businesses will pay less in federal taxes than they did under former President George W. Bush ... Income tax payments this year will be nearly 13 percent lower than they were in 2008, the last full year of the Bush presidency. Corporate taxes will be lower by a third, according to projections by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office.
The result is that families making as much as $50,000 can avoid paying federal income taxes, if they have at least two dependent children. Low-income families can actually make a profit from the income tax, and the wealthy can significantly cut their payments.
At the request of The Associated Press, The Tax Institute at H&R Block compared 2008 and 2010 tax bills for families at various income levels, showing how their taxes have changed since Obama took office. Income tax rates remain unchanged. But many taxpayers are seeing their bills drop under Obama because of more generous tax credits for college students, working families, homebuyers and the working poor. Many of the changes were enacted as part of the big economic stimulus package passed in 2009.Remember the "failed" stimulus?
The Hill: It would cut the top income tax rates, eliminate income taxes on capital gains, dividends, and interest, and abolish the corporate income tax, estate tax, and alternative minimum tax. At the same time, it would raise taxes on the middle class by creating a new consumption tax on most goods and services.
By 2080, Medicare would be cut 76 percent below its projected size under current policies, according to the Congressional Budget Office. In other words, the vouchers that would replace Medicare would receive one-quarter of the resources that Medicare would otherwise use.
A medium earner (someone earning $43,000 in today’s terms) retiring in 2080 would receive Social Security benefits worth 46 percent less than the currently scheduled amount. A higher earner (earning $69,000) would receive a 56 percent reduction, and someone who earns the maximum taxable amount (currently $106,800) would receive a 61 percent reduction.
Rep. Ryan’s reverse-Robin-Hood approach of cutting taxes for the wealthy, raising taxes for the middle class, slashing Social Security and Medicare, and letting debt rise for decades to come isn’t the answer.
Paul N. Van de Water is a senior fellow at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.
The Atlantic Wire: Ryan would save the government money by shifting the burden to individuals. Right now, individuals are feeling pain, but not the full cost of what it would mean should the federal government bear down and cut costs. It is rationing, Klein says, and Ryan is fearless in broaching it.
RepublicanRedefined: I came across a great piece Erick Erickson at Red State: The Republicans are cutting $74 billion from fiction. What I mean is the GOP is claiming they are cutting $74 billion from what Barack Obama wanted in 2011. There’s just one problem — the Democrats left power without ever passing Barack Obama’s budget. In other words, the GOP is cutting $74 billion from a budget that does not even exist.
In reality, they are cutting $35 billion from the continuing resolution that continues to fund the federal government. That’s all. Just $35 billion.
Representative Ryan has spent months talking about “double counting” and “playing with numbers” and that is precisely what he is doing here. He’s talking about a proposed budget that never came to fruition and he’s talking about budget cuts that a five year old could tell you don’t add up to $100 billion.
Man up or shut up Mr. Ryan. You’re geeky gimmicky little math routine is wearing out its welcome.
Well, are you un-nervous yet? The game was a bit of a nail bitin' bastard. The thing looked like a run-away until everybody got hurt for the 2nd half. AAAHHHH!!!!! I kept drinking and drinking and drinking hoping to make everything alright. I think I said the F word about 20 times and mutha F about 25 times and "come on girls, let’s go" at least 15 times. Did I mention the excessive drinking? I heard downtown Madison went crazy.
A new law intended to provide better information on physicians' fees and the prices for hospital services offers consumers nothing of value so far.
The Health Care Transparency law, which took effect Jan. 1, provides no information that consumers might actually want, such as what health plans pay hospitals on average for a normal birth or an angioplasty or to repair a rotator cuff. Nor does the law, at least initially, provide accurate information on physicians' fees.
The law requires hospitals and doctors to provide price information on request. That information just doesn't have any relation to what you and your health insurance plan will actually have to pay. Rather, it requires disclosing the equivalent of a sticker price or manufacturer's suggested retail price - a price that almost no one pays ... opposition from insurance companies and hospitals.
Giving consumers better information on prices theoretically could help people become better consumers of health care and help make the health care system more efficient. The reality is more complicated because the price of a service is only one component of the total cost of an episode of care. What really matters is the outcome - whether the treatment works and how quickly the patient recovers.
"What you want to know is how much did the whole episode of hip surgery, including the physical therapy and other things afterwards, cost and could the patient actually go back to work or not," said John Toussaint, a physician and president of the ThedaCare Center for Healthcare Value. "That's what you want to know."
Price information also has become more important as more people have health plans with high deductibles. Prices for specific services can vary by thousands of dollars among hospitals and health systems. They also vary from health plan to health plan. That's because the prices are the result of negotiations between health plans and health systems. The result is that two patients can have the same surgery by the same surgeon on the same day at the same hospital but the bill for each will differ. And their bills may be thousands of dollars higher or lower than the price that a hospital across town receives for the same type of surgery.
Yet the prices negotiated by health plans and health systems are confidential. Health plans offered by Humana and Anthem Blue Cross and Blue Shield provide estimates on the total cost of an episode of care, including physician fees, at hospitals, surgical centers and other settings throughout the Milwaukee area. combination of sticker price less overall discount still has no relation to what commercial health plans pay for a specific service, such as a colonoscopy or carpal tunnel surgery.
"It's definitely not helpful for a patient to get a sense of the contract price when comparison shopping," said Coreen Dicus-Johnson, a senior vice president with Wheaton Franciscan Healthcare.
How will the "charge" information help consumers? "That's a legitimate question. What is the value that consumers will get from this?" Currans-Sheehan said. "I can't answer that. That's not my role."
Washington (CNN) -- It's now official. Starting Tuesday, members of Congress may receive generous health care benefits -- subsidized by Uncle Sam. But Democrats are crying hypocrisy, saying Republicans who want to repeal the health care law for Americans should not accept similar benefits for themselves. "It's hypocritical … to repeal the law … that the president signed into law -- to provide for the first time for many Americans in 2014 access to what we as members of Congress have," employer-provided health care, Representative Joseph Crowley, D-New York, told
The Federal Employees Health Benefit Program is subsidized by the government, the cost of the plans are relatively low because the pool of federal workers is so big. That's the same theory behind the exchanges being set up for most Americans as part of the new health care law.
Florida Representative Allen West dismisses Democratic accusations that he and other lawmakers like him are hypocrites. West calls that Democratic "propaganda."
GOP leadership aides insist there is nothing wrong with lawmakers accepting government-subsidized health care benefits, since the government is their employer. "The speaker … gets his health coverage through his employer. That has nothing to do with opposition to Washington Democrats' unconstitutional, job-destroying health care law," said a spokesman for House Speaker John Boehner.
They may be small in number, but some of Boehner's freshmen GOP colleagues disagree. They say their opposition to the health care law is in fact connected to the government-subsidized insurance offered to them. Representative Paul Gosar, R-Arizona has a health savings account for his family, and has seen his premiums increase 30% in the last year … if Gosar were to opt in to federal health benefits, he would be able to cover his entire family for about $300 a month. Under his current plan, he has to pay approximately $1,700 a month out of pocket.
Of all taxpayers who declare business income, about 2 percent declare enough income to see tax increases if the rates on the top brackets expire. Most small business owners would not see a tax increase, though the most profitable small businesses would.
Republicans often say they're opposed to the tax increases because they will hit small businesses, but the numbers don't really support that … most small businesses aren't nearly that profitable. In fact, Internal Revenue Service data shows that of all taxpayers who declare business income, only 2 to 3 percent declare that much. We rated this Pants on Fire.
(It’s also) wrong because gross sales are all the money a business takes in. Under longstanding IRS rules, businesses get to deduct most expenses before reporting their final taxable income. That includes things like employees' pay, supplies, a car or truck, fuel costs, advertising, and more.This tax truth should be thrown into the discussion:
The United States of America is overtaxed "compared to our competitors." The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development compiles data on how much government’s tax; they measure it as the proportion of tax revenues compared to the size of the economy. In those terms, the United States is fairly competitive in terms of overall tax burden, with revenues of 28 percent of gross domestic product in 2007. That's lower than the average of 36 percent among 30 major countries. Only South Korea, Mexico and Turkey were lower than the United States.Keep in mind, those other major countries also include universal health care in their governments tax bills.
So you, sir, a nice individual, I'm sure you're a fine guy (probably not too much fun at a ball game, unlike Bill Clinton), but still, you illustrate that people like you just have to be defeated, not met halfway and gotten along with. I mean politically.
NY Times: The wife of Justice Clarence Thomas … is rebranding herself as a lobbyist and self-appointed “ambassador to the Tea Party movement.” She promised to use her “experience and connections” to help clients raise money and increase their political impact ... she was looking forward to a new role involving “lobbying on Capitol Hill.”
Common Cause, a liberal group that has been critical of potential conflicts at the Supreme Court caused by Ms. Thomas’s work, said her new position, combined with Justice Antonin Scalia’s recent address before a closed-door seminar of the Tea Party Caucus, provided further evidence of “the politicization of the court. The level of bias we’re seeing is really troubling.”
O'REILLY: Sometimes your positions are far left.
COLMES: All right, fine. But am I anti-American?
O'REILLY: I don't think you're anti-American. But certainly the far left is taking anti-American positions.
COLMES: But look, but let's stop this name-calling. Let's stop demonizing anybody you don't agree with and call them anti-American.
O'REILLY: I just ran a "Talking Points Memo" that backed up, all right, with four specific things that this is an anti-Semitic, anti-American network and I could do 40 of them.
COLMES: But you said those were people on the network as guests.
(CROSSTALK)
O'REILLY: There is no counter. Why don't you grasp this? I'm getting a little mad at you. Grasp this! There is no counter on it, you got it? There is no counter on it!
COLMES: Yes, I hear what you say. It's free speech.
O'REILLY: So it's this, yes, it's free speech. Shouldn't be praised by a pinhead like Donaldson.
Limbaugh made light of foreign journalists, including two reporters from the New York Times, being rounded-up in Cairo today because being detained while covering a story of huge import to this nation and the world, by a regime that has spent decades torturing such people is, of course, hilarious... later on in the very the same show, after he's learned that two Fox "News" reporters had been beaten and hospitalized following detention in Egypt, suddenly Rush gives a damn, and says he was just "kidding before about The New York Times"... Moral depravity. As appalling as it gets.
For the record, as White House correspondent Paul Brandus tweeted last night as the round-up was beginning, "79 journalists were killed around the world last year - just for trying to tell a story."
jsonline: U.S. Rep. Paul Ryan proposed spending cuts on Thursday for the remainder of the current fiscal year totaling $74 billion.
Talkingpointsmemo: Rep. Peter Defazio (D-OR) proposes that people be allowed to opt out of the insurance mandate altogether -- but if they do, they will not be allowed to free-ride on the new health care system.
Under his plan, the Personal Responsibility in Health Care Insurance Act, a person opting out "must file an 'affidavit of personal responsibility' with the state exchange. Such a filing will waive their rights to: 1) Enroll in a health insurance exchange; 2) Enroll in Medicaid if otherwise made eligible; and 3) Discharge health care related debt under Chapter 7 bankruptcy law," DeFazio wrote in a letter to colleagues Tuesday.
Under his plan, if a person wants back into the system, they'd need to buy insurance on their own, out of pocket, for five years.
Defazio: “In 2008, the uninsured received approximately $45 billion worth of uncompensated care from hospitals, doctors, and other providers, after out-of-pocket payments and government and charity program contributions. Oregon families pay an extra $1400 a year ($1,100 nationally) on higher insurance premiums to cover those who do not have insurance. This is effectively a hidden tax on families and businesses.”
TPM: One plan is modeled on an existing incentive built into the Medicare prescription drug benefit: Create an open-enrollment period for people who want to buy health insurance, and assess a penalty on anybody who tries to enter the insurance market after that window closes.
From e-School: Two civil-rights groups are seeking a federal review of public school education in Texas, accusing state administrators of violating federal civil-rights laws as a result of social studies curriculum changes approved last year by the Texas Board of Education. The request asked that implementation of the social studies curriculum changes and new standardized tests be stopped for being racially or ethnically offensive or historically inaccurate. They accused the board of mis-education of minority students and rules leading to underrepresentation of minorities in gifted and talented school programs. Also for using accountability standards to impose sanctions on schools with high numbers of minority students.
NAACP President Gary Bledsoe said "this is like in your face, like showing the ultimate in disrespect...to suggest the positive aspects of slavery or to exalt Jefferson Davis of the Confederacy is just an abomination."
All 47 Senate Republicans who oppose the legislation argue that not only is it paid for with accounting gimmicks like double-counting Medicare savings…
...and using 10 years of taxes for six years of spending, it calls for "high taxes, less choices
...and bureaucrats making health care choices for Americans."
But Sen. Max Baucus, D-Mont, the chairman of the Senate Finance Committee lamented those who say the $1 trillion, 10-year bill costs too much.
"It does cost a trillion dollars. But it raises a trillion dollars so it costs nothing," he said, adding that many of the people who will pay fees for the service support the legislation.
jsonline: Numerous absentee ballots could be invalidated without voters' knowledge if a voter identification bill is passed, Milwaukee city officials are warning … it also would require absentee voters to send photocopies of their identification cards with their ballots … absentee ballots aren't opened until Election Day, the commission could need more workers, at an undetermined cost, to help check the identification and process the ballots that day … election officials would try to contact the voters to ask if they could produce the needed identification by the next day … But many voters cast absentee ballots because they are out of town or otherwise unavailable on election day … If an absentee ballot isn't accompanied by photo identification and the voter can't be reached, the ballot would not be counted.
State lawmakers should revise the bill to require voters to show their identification when they request an absentee ballot, not when they cast it … would give staff more time to ensure voters have proper identification.
Committee members voted, 3-2, to recommend that the full council oppose the bill. The panel voted 4-0 to back (the) proposed changes and to push for issuing state ID cards at more sites.
Think Progress: In a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing today on “The Constitutionality of the Affordable Care Act,” President Ronald Reagan’s former Solicitor General — Harvard Law Professor Charles Fried — tore into the reasoning of Judge Roger Vinson’s decision striking down the Affordable Care Act, saying the issue should be a “no brainer”:
Fried: "I am quite sure that the health care mandate is constitutional. … My authorities are not recent. They go back to John Marshall, who sat in the Virginia legislature at the time they ratified the Constitution, and who, in 1824, in Gibbons v. Ogden, said, regarding Congress’ Commerce power, “what is this power? It is the power to regulate. That is—to proscribe the rule by which commerce is governed.” To my mind, that is the end of the story of the constitutional basis for the mandate.
The mandate is a rule—more accurately, “part of a system of rules by which commerce is to be governed,” to quote Chief Justice Marshall. And if that weren’t enough for you—though it is enough for me—you go back to Marshall in 1819, in McCulloch v. Maryland, where he said “the powers given to the government imply the ordinary means of execution. The government which has the right to do an act”—surely, to regulate health insurance—“and has imposed on it the duty of performing that act, must, according to the dictates of reason, be allowed to select the means.” And that is the Necessary and Proper Clause. [...]
I think that one thing about Judge Vinson’s opinion, where he said that if we strike down the mandate everything else goes, shows as well as anything could that the mandate is necessary to the accomplishment of the regulation of health insurance."
Fox News: A group of South Dakota lawmakers has introduced a bill that would require almost everyone in their state to buy a gun once they turn 21. Turns out it's not a serious attempt. Rather, the lawmakers are trying to make a point about the new health care law -- that an individual mandate is unconstitutional, whether it requires everyone to buy health insurance or, in South Dakota's case, a firearm.
Rep. Hal Wick, one of five co-sponsors, told The Argus Leader: "Do I or the other co-sponsors believe that the state of South Dakota can require citizens to buy firearms? Of course not. But at the same time, we do not believe the federal government can order every citizen to buy health insurance?"
"Congress could require that people buy and consume broccoli at regular intervals," Vinson writes, because "people who eat healthier tend to be healthier, and are thus more productive and put less of a strain on the health care system."
The Wisconsin Policy Research Institute calls for an overhaul of the state's decade-old licensing rules, instead giving control to local officials with a system that places more emphasis on teachers' subject-matter knowledge and effectiveness. The state also should explore removing licensure requirements altogether for charter schools, which are publicly funded schools that operate independently with more freedom from state laws, the report by the Thiensville-based institute recommends.
"I think parents and principals should have much more authority about who's in the classroom and who isn't," said Mark Schug, an emeritus professor at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee who wrote the report
Christina Brey, spokeswoman for the Wisconsin Education Association Council, the state's largest teachers union, said "That worked back when we had a horse-and-buggy society. Should we go back to the time when we needed only a high school diploma to teach? That doesn't move our state forward."
Schug contends … aspects of the licensing regime are left to individual teachers seeking licensure and relicensing, opening the process up to the possibility of fraud.
Julia D'Amato, principal of Ronald Reagan College Preparatory High School in Milwaukee, agreed. "The system is flawed," said D'Amato, who was interviewed by the researchers for the report. "There's too many ways that people can - I'm not going to say fake it - but not follow through on what they need to do."
