Saturday, June 15, 2013

What Mattered This Week?

I'm pretty much with the people who suspect that US involvement in Syria will matter less than it may seem, but at the same time that the overall Syria conflict does matter. 

As far as something that doesn't matter? Skirmishes about the "Hastert rule" and immigration over on the House side. It's all for show. John Boehner isn't going to try to bully this thing through unless most of his Members want him to. Whatever they say for the cameras.

11 comments:

  1. Jan Brewer getting the Medicaid expansion improved matters a lot for the people of Arizona.

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  2. This week the Washington Post seems to have hidden itself behind a black veil.

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    1. Hey, that's (among other things) me! I suppose I'll have to be more careful to run "elsewhere" posts. AFAIK, clicking through from here, or twitter, shouldn't count against the paywall quota.

      I should note that WaPo is overall terrific -- Wonkblog alone is worth the paywall money -- but I understand that not everyone is going to buy everything out there.

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  3. What happened to the people who comment on the actual question?

    Anyway, I'd say what mattered this week is that Boehner said GOPers will again demand budget cuts equal to the debt ceiling rise, which if it is true (and I didn't inadvertently read an old story) and if it is the first time he said it this round, could mean serious trouble ahead, given everything else that's going on.

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  4. From Reuters, Wal-Mart (like so many other companies) appears to be hiring fewer full-time workers in response to Opapacare. Why did the progs who wrote that bill work so hard to tie health insurance more tightly to employment? And why did they do such a terrible job of figuring out the incentives?

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    1. Probably because they're not member of the master race.

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    2. That's a fair response; we should expect them to make more errors than Hitler's crew, but are they trying to make intelligent revisions? Were they just so peeved at not being able to craft NHS in the US that they drank and drafted?

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    3. @backyard, if they're working on 'intelligent revisions," they're have to be for some future date. You probably noticed that practically nothing is getting through Congress. Just imagine how Dem-proposed health care changes would fare in the House... (Duh)

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  5. I know that several progs who supported Opapacare were saying a few years ago that having health insurance coupled to employment was a lunatic idea. As we watch O-Care seemingly push employment in the wrong direction, how many of them are talking about this now? Maybe they expect to be stymied in Congress (even though McCain's healthcare plan was predicated on breaking the connection and ~all libertarians have pressed it for years) but I can't see why that would make the subject unworthy of mentioning to progs whose hearts race at the mention of new legislation.

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  6. The attention that Edward Snowden has been getting matters. It will now be more difficult for him to be caught and prosecuted. And any trial that does occur will just focus more unwanted attention on the current administration and the security-industrial complex in general.

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