More Weekend Reading

'Quiet Part Out Loud': RNC Lawyer Admits GOP Cheats To Win

Ron DeSantis Is Selling Vaccines To Rich Floridians

Trump’s Dismal Record on the Economy

Bill Requires National Anthem Before Games

Not Another Rich Guy for Senator

Wisconsin and local governments would receive $5.5 billion in COVID-19 aid under House bill

Elena Kagan Dismantled a Republican Lawyer and Might Have Saved Voting Rights Act in the Process

Linkages Between Labor Market Institutions and Inequality

Ronald Reagan and The Politics of Declining Union Organization

Labor Law Is Broken, Economist Says

Trade Unions and Collective Bargaining

$15 By 2025

Raising the federal minimum wage to $15 by 2025 would lift the pay of 32 million workers

Drain The Swamp

Can the people of Florida take one day off from being crazy?

‘I voted for Trump! You lost!’: White Starbucks customer accuses barista of ‘discrimination’

Jorge de Cárdenas said in an interview with the Miami New Times that he was telecommuting Wednesday from a Starbucks near the University of Miami when a customer became impatient while waiting for his drink and began screaming that he had been denied service because of “anti-white discrimination.” 

Another customer told Sanguesa he was an “a–hole” and Sanguesa said, “F— you, b—-,” Cárdenas told the New Times...

The Miami Herald reported that Sanguesa has a criminal history: In 2008, he was charged twice — one week apart — with DUIs. In 2014, he was charged with domestic violence, though that charge was later dropped, the Herald reported. 

And for years, the Miami Herald said, Sanguesa has been emailing the newspaper “with rants against Cubans, women, immigrants, gays and lesbians, President Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton.”

Time to drain the swamp, Florida, of all these misogynistic, racist assholes.

Correcting Health Care Myths

From Nicole Belle, at Crooks and Liars:

You hear it on the lips of every single one of the Republican talking heads on every single Sunday news show:President Obama promised that if you liked your healthcare, you could keep it and HE LIED!!! (cue sobbing) Millions of Americans found out that they've been dropped from their healthcare! (hand wringing commences) 

Color me skeptical that any conservative actually gives a flying fig to the healthcare woes of any average American, much less ones who had substandard policies. 

But David Gregory has never come across a Republican talking point that he didn't love, embrace and swallow up whole to faithfully regurgitate to the masses. So he dutifully confronts Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Florida CEO Patrick Geraghty about the news that 300,000 Floridians have found their policies dropped because they fall below the minimum standards of coverage set by Obamacare. Problem was, Geraghty wasn't going to play Gregory's gotcha game with people's healthcare:

“We’re not cutting people,” Geraghty said. “We’re actually transitioning people. What we’ve been doing is informing folks that their plan doesn’t meet the test of the essential health benefits; therefore, they have a choice of many options that we make available through the exchange. And, in fact, with subsidy, many people will be getting better plans at a lesser cost. This really is a transition. In fact, the 300,000 figure is the entire year. So it’s really 40,000 people for January 1, and we’re walking them through that transition.” 

Now, it's absolutely true that there will be a fraction of people who find that their costs have gone up, the specific number and amount is still up for debate. And if they don't qualify for subsidies, that will mean a higher out-of-pocket cost, at least in the short term. However, short-term partisan gains notwithstanding, the program will factor in long-term the inclusion of healthy, young people on the exchanges, which will help mitigate the ailing people who rushed for the initial coverage. Specifically, the re-insurance tax is being levied for the first three years is intended to help smooth that transition to allow for the long-term sustainability of the program. 

But why would NBC News be interested in actually informing their viewers of the realities of the program when they can have their newscasters "sell" a misleading partisan argument instead?

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