Not the only thing that mattered, but I'll go with the obvious one: the Senate going nuclear is a very big deal.
What didn't matter? I'll stick with filibusters, and agree with Adam Ramey that if the legislative filibuster goes, it's not going to matter much...as long as there's divided government. Although even then, "less than you think" could still be a big deal, so I suppose this isn't a very good "didn't matter." Sorry; I've been so focused on the nuclear business that I hardly know what else happened this week, and all the things I can think of actually did matter.
But maybe you have more. What do you think mattered this week?
Saturday, November 23, 2013
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Late this week, I came across something related to the subject of "sticker shock." For some reason I can't explain, I found myself watching Erin Burnett on CNN and she reported that despite administration promises, some young, low-income people are not receiving subsidies for insurance acquired through the exchanges. In passing, toward the end of the story, she reported that the administration said it was because the premiums came in lower than expected. Frankly, I thought that last part called for a little more elaboration. To be fair (to CNN if not Burnett), the CNN website did have more elaboration. Note that the quotes in this case come from the Kaiser Family Foundation, not administration spokesmen.
ReplyDelete[start]
"The way the subsidy works is by capping the percent of your income that you'd have to spend on a silver premium," said Cynthia Cox, a policy analyst at the Kaiser Family Foundation, referring to the medium-level insurance plan the government uses as the baseline. "But if the premium before subsidies is already so low that it falls below your income cap, then you wouldn't qualify for a subsidy even if your income would otherwise qualify for one."
This means that in places like Minneapolis, Minnesota, where premiums are especially low, a 40 year old making $28,725 a year would get no help from the government to purchase insurance. In that case, this individual would be earning just 250% of the federal poverty level, far below 400% where the subsidies are supposed to end.
"While you don't qualify for subsidies your premiums are already lower," Cox pointed out. "So in this example, this person is only going to be paying $154 a month whereas the same person living somewhere else would be paying $193 a month after subsidies."
[end]
So in these cases, the sticker shock seems to be a bit less than advertised, even for some young people. Nevertheless, as far as CNN was concerned, the takeaway was that the administration promised subsidies and these people weren't getting them. The headline was: "CNN Analysis: No Obamacare Subsidy for Some Low-Income Americans."
Nancy Pelosi outdid herself on Meet the Press, beating her old "We have to pass the bill ..." in terms of grotesque prog incompetence. I would recommend starting at 0:48 because watching her is extremely painful, and most will want to minimize exposure.
ReplyDeleteNote that only people who are disgusted by unabashed, moronic, robotic lying will believe that this mattered.
Opapa induced the Senate to push his nationalized pre-K plans which are being scoffed at by Brookings fellow Whitehurst. There is no end to the prog-ism. You guys will push for nationalization of everything, wondering why that doesn't seem to improve matters.
ReplyDeleteJohn Boehner signed up for Obamacare! http://www.salon.com/2013/11/22/whoops_obamacare_turns_out_to_be_great_deal_for_boehner/ Surely that matters! Or not. There were some more numbers out for enrollment that seem to confirm that the demand is there, the problem just continues to be website issues. Also there's a lot of turmoil inside the Minneapolis Federal Reserve with a number of senior researchers being fired or forced out. It's not really clear why this is happening, but if represents a major break with the hard money/inflationista school of thought that's dominated the Minneapolis branch for decades it could matter in the long run (the University of Minnesota along with the University of Chicago are the main bastions of the hard money "freshwater" school of economics and the U of M's econ department has always been closely linked to the Minneapolis Fed.)
ReplyDeleteHere's a question I would like to throw out to the anti-Madison people: Does the limiting of filibuster change your analysis at all? That is do you think there's more room in the system for self-correction than you thought previously? Or do you see it more as a deck-chairs-on-the-Titanic type of thing? Just curious.
Does the filibuster development change your view on the urgency of Ginsburg's retirement?
ReplyDeleteProgressive darling Venezuela is now in hyperinflation. This happens as darling of Krugman and Yglesias (Argentina) is now jailing people who question gov numbers on inflation. Bring on the looting, starvation, and lost life savings! It's good to be prog!
ReplyDeleteWhat the hell is a "prog?"
DeleteI think he means fans of Yes, Emerson Lake and Palmer, King Crimson etc. You know prog rock.
DeleteI thought those fans were known as Rusty Ventures.
DeleteProg : Progressive :: Con : Conservative
DeleteThe Prog Thomas Frank used Con in "What's the Matter With Kansas" and other Progs copied him, so it makes sense to extend the meme with "Prog."
I know that they made only two albums, but I'd like to include UK in the list (the album with Bruford instead of Bozio)
It's a lot more helpful to eschew mean-speech. Insults interfere with telling the truth, because they make people less interested in what you have to say if they don't already agree with you. So using terms like "prog" or "con" mean that you aren't interested in coming to an agreement with anyone.
DeleteWhat mattered this week was that President Kennedy was assassinated and everything changed, for America and for me, for the next fifty years. Even though it happened in 1963, recalling it (without aid of TV or Internet, but with 2 books--Thurston Clare's JFK: THE LAST HUNDRED DAYS and Jeff Greenfield's IF KENNEDY LIVED) was the most important event of my week. And an opportunity to get this anniversary mentioned once on this site.
ReplyDeleteYes, and the NYT had a couple pieces blaming the "conservative city of hate" for his murder instead of a twisted Communist. If Oswald had lived, he'd probably have been prison-married to his Prog lawyer like the leftist Carlos the Jackal now is.
DeleteA deal with Iran over their nuclear program could matter over the long run.
ReplyDeleteI have an unusual opinion when it comes to filibusters. I don't like them and I would prefer to see them abolished. However, the area were the filibuster is most defensible is judicial appointment due to the power of the judiciary along with lifetime appointment. Being that the GOP said they would filibuster anyone it had to go but if we're going to allow filibusters anywhere it should be for court appointments.
ReplyDeleteSo far it seems that for some people the only thing that mattered this week was keeping their big fat foundries up their tightly puckered little backyards.
ReplyDeleteFilibuster reform mattered; the Iranian nuke deal mattered. Didn't matter: Kennedy nostalgia; more Republican denunciations of Obamacare.
ReplyDeleteI'll second the importance of the interim nuclear deal with Iran, about which I wrote this earlier in the week:
ReplyDeletehttp://foreignpolicyblogs.com/2013/11/18/the-iran-deal-and-the-skeptics/
The next steps, however, are depressing. Beyond the difficulties of negotiating a final agreement with Iran, (a) any treaty would have to be approved by two-thirds of the Senate, and (b) any reduction in sanctions under an agreement would require the approval of both houses, since the most severe sanctions were imposed by an act of Congress.
(I wrote essentially the same comment a minute ago, but it never appeared. My apologies if it now comes up twice.)
Hasn't been mentioned on this blog yet, but a collection of underdeveloped nations are petitioning the UN for reparations for environment damage due to climate change:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-11-21/emerging-nations-seek-to-streamline-climate-compensation-demands.html
Obviously, the EU and the US are having none of it. The amount of money could rise to the tens of trillions. But the UN has a mechanisms for this kind of petition, and if it can't be blocked, it might provoke the first world into some pretty rash actions.