Tuesday, October 25, 2016

Republicans pounce on Obamacare after White House announcement

The unravelling of Obamacare

Republicans blasted the White House on Monday after President Barack Obama’s administration announced that premiums for his signature health care law will rise sharply next year and many consumers would be down to just one insurer.
Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump, while campaigning in Tampa, Fla., emphatically declared Obamacare “over.”
Trump added that his Democratic rival, Hillary Clinton, "wants to double down and make it more expensive and it's not gonna work. ... Our country can't afford it, you can't afford it." He promised his own plan would deliver "great health care at a fraction of the cost."
Trump’s running mate Indiana Gov. Mike Pence echoed his partner’s words, saying on Twitter “Higher premiums, less competition & fewer choices lie ahead for Obamacare. Hillary Clinton wants more of the same.”
Before taxpayer-provided subsidies, premiums for a midlevel benchmark plan will increase an average of 25 percent across the 39 states served by the federally run online market, according to a report from the Department of Health and Human Services. Some states will see much bigger jumps, others less.
Moreover, about 1 in 5 consumers will only have plans from a single insurer to pick from, after major national carriers such as UnitedHealth Group, Humana and Aetna scaled back their roles.
"Consumers will be faced this year with not only big premium increases but also with a declining number of insurers participating, and that will lead to a tumultuous open enrollment period," said Larry Levitt, who tracks the health care law for the nonpartisan Kaiser Family Foundation.
Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis., accused Democrats of only wanting to double-down on Obamacare instead of fix it and vowed that Republicans would “replace it with real, patient-centered solutions that fit your needs and your budget.”
“The president recently compared Obamacare to a Samsung Galaxy Note 7, and he's right: this disastrous law is blowing up. But at least you can return the phone,” Ryan added.
Sen. Ben Sasse, R-Neb., urged the White House to admit that the health care law wasn’t working.
"We’ve reached this point because Obamacare is built on the lie that Washington’s bureaucrats are smart enough to plan health care for millions of Americans. At every turn—whether it’s CO-OPs collapsing, premiums skyrocketing, or big insurers bailing—the American people have paid the price. More spin won’t solve this—it’s time for the White House to admit that this law isn’t working."
HHS essentially confirmed state-by-state reports that have been coming in for months. Window shopping for plans and premiums is already available through HealthCare.gov.
Administration officials are stressing that subsidies provided under the law, which are designed to rise alongside premiums, will insulate most customers from sticker shock. They add that consumers who are willing to switch to cheaper plans will still be able to find bargains.

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"Headline rates are generally rising faster than in previous years," acknowledged HHS spokesman Kevin Griffis. But he added that for most consumers, "headline rates are not what they pay."
The vast majority of the more than 10 million customers who purchase through HealthCare.gov and its state-run counterparts do receive generous financial assistance. "Enrollment is concentrated among very low-income individuals who receive significant government subsidies to reduce premiums and cost-sharing," said Caroline Pearson of the consulting firm Avalere Health
But an estimated 5 million to 7 million people are either not eligible for the income-based assistance, or they buy individual policies outside of the health law's markets, where the subsidies are not available. The administration is urging the latter group to check out HealthCare.gov. The spike in premiums generally does not affect the employer-provided plans that cover most workers and their families.
Overall, it's shaping up to be the most difficult sign-up season since HealthCare.gov launched in 2013 and the computer system froze up.
Enrollment has been lower than initially projected, and insurers say patients turned out to be sicker than expected. Moreover, a complex internal system to help stabilize premiums has not worked as hoped for.

Early voting suggests tight race in key states despite Clinton camp boast

Hillary Clinton’s campaign is touting some “eye-popping” advantages in early voting, in an apparent effort to energize Democratic voters, but preliminary figures suggest the race remains tighter than her aides acknowledge.
The preliminary numbers appear to show Clinton, the Democratic presidential nominee, with an edge in several of the roughly 10 battleground states that will decide the 2016 White House race.
“We're seeing eye-popping vote-by-mail application numbers,” Clinton campaign manager Robby Mook said on “Fox News Sunday.”
In Arizona and North Carolina, for example, more registered Democrats than Republicans have indeed cast early ballots.
But such numbers are open to interpretation, including how many Democrats in those two states voted for Clinton.
Meanwhile, early data shows Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump with potential advantages of his own in battleground states Florida, Ohio and elsewhere.
Only some of the 37 states that allow early voting make public the number of registered Democrats and Republicans who requested early ballots and voted early, so final numbers won’t be known until Election Day.
Still, the Clinton campaign seemed bolstered in recent days by mail-in balloting in battleground Florida, where in-person voting started Monday in a majority of counties.
Early Florida numbers showed about an equal number of Democrats and Republicans had requested a record 3.1 million early ballots, compared with 2008 when Republicans led 49-to-32 percent and President Obama still won the state.
However, registered Republicans now have a slight lead -- 1.8 percentage points -- in the nearly 1 million ballots received by Friday.
Trump, on a swing through Florida on Monday, made another push for supporters to cast their votes now.
“You got to get out there. Who’s voted already?” Trump asked a cheering crowd in St. Augustine. “If you’re not feeling well on Nov. 8, we don’t want to take a chance.”
Clinton said in battleground North Carolina on Sunday: “From now until Nov. 5, you can vote early. It’s a big deal. You get to vote today, right after this event.”
Mook also pointed out Sunday that in Nevada, officials saw a “record turnout” in Democratic stronghold Clark County, which includes Las Vegas.
However, Trump has throughout the campaign appeared to have the support of some potential crossover voters, including Latino immigrants who back his tough message on illegal immigration.
A recent CNN/ORC poll, for example, found 33 percent of registered Latino voters in Nevada support Trump, compared to 54 percent for Clinton.
The Clinton campaign declined Monday to provide details on the states to which Mook and vice-presidential nominee Tim Kaine referred Sunday.
Kaine told NBC’s “Meet the Press” that the campaign “like(s) the early voting activity and the absentee-ballot requests coming in.”
Kendra Stewart, College of Charleston political science professor, said Monday that Kaine and Mook are “doing exactly what they should be doing by trying to use this as an opportunity to create enthusiasm within the party in the hopes of a bandwagon effect.”
However, she cautioned about the effort perhaps “leaving some Democratic voters less motivated to vote if they feel like their candidate doesn’t really need them” and giving the Trump campaign the opportunity to use the underdog strategy to try to rally supporters to get out and vote.
Elliott Fullmer, a Randolph-Macon College political science professor, suggested either camp could play up select early-vote trends.
“I don’t think it would be a surprise for a campaign to think any positive momentum would play well,” Fullmer said Monday. “And the more they can discuss an advantage in early voting, they will.”
According to the University of Florida’s U.S. Elections Project, roughly 6 million Americans have already cast early votes, which do not include absentee ballots.
More than 46 million people are expected to vote before Election Day -- or as much as 40 percent of all votes cast.
The District of Columbia also allows early voting. Included in the 37 states that allow early voting are Colorado, Oregon and Washington, which have only mail-in balloting.
Clinton holds a 6 percentage point lead over Trump in national polls, according to the RealClearPolitcs average.
Clinton -- who has been the frontrunner for the entire race -- also has leads in battlegrounds states New Hampshire, Pennsylvania and Virginia.
Trump leads in battlegrounds Georgia, Iowa, Missouri and Ohio.
Though neither Georgia nor Ohio break down early balloting by party affiliation, Trump appears to have an advantage in both states.
In Ohio, such requests are down 10 percent among black voters, who in recent decades have tended to vote for Democrats. And requests among Ohio’s increasing white population, a voting bloc in which Trump appears to do well, is up 3 percentage points, to 91 percent.
In Georgia, ballot requests and returns among black voters trail 2012 levels.

Republicans banking on carefully built House firewall

A map of an average congressional district would be - if one could channel the Founders’ intention - a fairly straightforward geometrical thing. But politics has distorted the geometry of modern congressional districts in a big way.
"Goofy kicking Donald Duck," is how one observer described a map of Pennsylvania's 7th congressional district - just one of several gerrymandered districts that Republicans are pinning their hopes on as a firewall against a Democratic run on November 8.
Having lost the White House and Congress in 2008, Republicans undertook a complex plan to win control of state legislatures around the country in the 2010 mid-terms. The first step was redrawing congressional districts.
Christopher Jankowski, a GOP strategist and former Executive Director of "Red Map," was one of the architects of the plan.
"The GOP has a built-in advantage from 2010 that continues to pay dividends and that advantage is going to prevent the House from flipping, certainly this year," he told Fox News.
In 37 of the 50 states, it is the legislature's role to draw congressional districts based upon population shifts recorded by the once-in-a-decade census. In those states, the party that controls the legislature can shape congressional districts in whatever way it sees fit, no matter how geometrically or geographically challenged they may appear.
North Carolina's 12th District is another case in point. That state's Republican-controlled legislature redrew the 12th into an amorphous shape that straddles and roughly parallels Interstate 85. The district is not much wider than the highway itself in some areas. One critic quipped, "You could drive down I-85 with both doors open and kill everybody in the 12th District."
But the bizarre shape effectively consolidated a big chunk of the state’s minority population into one district - ensuring minority representation in Congress, but also helping white, conservative GOP candidates in adjacent districts to win races by big margins - virtually guaranteeing their re-election through several cycles.
In Michigan’s 7th District, GOP redistricting sealed Democrat Mark Schauer's fate as a one-term congressman. "They drew a seat they expected to win and sort of took me out of the picture, just like they did with dozens, literally dozens of people just like me around the Congress," he told Fox News.
Schauer didn’t get mad over his loss, but he got even. He is now heavily involved with a super PAC, Advantage 2020, which is helping Democrats try to retake control of state legislatures before the 2020 census. Schauer has plenty of company.
In a swing through the West last week, President Obama told a Las Vegas crowd, "We gotta have more Democratic members of Congress in the House of Representatives."
To that end, the President is working with former Attorney General Eric Holder to develop the National Democratic Redistricting Committee to do what Republicans did in 2010 - take back the House and the statehouses and to preserve what they hope to win.

Top adviser on Clinton Wall Street speeches: 'It's pretty bad'

A veteran and trusted Hillary Clinton adviser ripped the Democratic presidential nominee after seeing transcripts of post-State Department speeches Clinton gave discussing Wall Street, ObamaCare and Russian President Vladimir Putin, according to emails released by WikiLeaks.
Mandy Grunwald, an adviser to Clinton’s current White House bid, offered a particularly frank assessment on Jan. 23 after seeing the text of three speeches given to Goldman Sachs in 2013.
“It’s pretty bad,” Grunwald wrote to a cadre of top Clinton aides. “She is critical to some extent of what led to the crash but the more memorable stuff is totally accomodationist.”
Grunwald cited Clinton saying the Dodd-Frank financial regulatory legislation was enacted because “people needed to do something for political reasons” and claiming “I’m not interested in pointing fingers.”
Grunwald has been in the Clinton orbit since 1992 when she was director of advertising for Bill Clinton’s presidential campaign. Grunwald remained a close adviser to Hillary after that election and later worked as head of campaign media relations on her failed 2008 presidential bid.
The email, uncovered in Monday’s WikiLeaks dump of emails hacked from Clinton Campaign Chairman John Podesta, came as Clinton was battling populist and uber-liberal challenger Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, a fierce critic of Wall Street. Grunwald may have also been especially sensitive to the language Clinton used since Grunwald worked on Elizabeth Warren’s successful Senate campaign in Massachusetts. Warren and Sanders arguably are the most vocal Wall Street critics on Capitol Hill.
EMAILS SHOW CLINTON PRAISED PUTIN DURING SPEECHES
During the primary campaign, Sanders repeatedly called for Clinton to release her post-State Department speeches. Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump has echoed that demand, though Clinton repeatedly has refused to do so.
Portions of the speeches, however, eventually were disclosed in a lengthy document citing remarks that could prove harmful to Clinton’s campaign. That file was contained in WikiLeaks releases.
But Grunwald's criticisms stretched beyond Clinton’s financial sector comments.
“There are also some very tepid comments about Obamacare,” she wrote. “And a ton of foreign policy stuff, including some naïve sounding comments about Putin – that could cause a whole separate set of issues – but [aide] Jake [Sullivan] should review all that.”
Clinton has been particularly critical throughout the general election of Trump’s praise of Putin and views on Russia. But the Goldman Sachs speeches show that Clinton could also be cordial with the former KGB operative.
“I would love it if we could continue to build a more positive relationship with Russia,” Clinton said during a June 4, 2013 speech at Goldman Sachs’ IBD Ceo Annual Conference.
During the same speech she said: “We would very much like to have a positive relationship with Russia and we would like to see Putin be less defensive toward a relationship with the United States so that we could work together on some issues.”

Monday, October 24, 2016

Idiot Democrat Voter Cartoons

Michael Moore: Any Trump supporter like 'a legal terrorist'

Democrat supporting Trump reacts to Gettysburg speech

Michael Moore saw Hillary Clinton’s “basket of deplorables” and he raised her a “legal terrorist.”
The controversy-seeking filmmaker used the phrase during a Rolling Stone interview published Friday to describe “any” supporters of Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump. Moore’s metaphor came on the heels of Democrat presidential nominee Clinton saying some Trump supporters fit in a “basket of deplorables,” a comment for which she later apologized.
“[Voters] can go in there and, even though you're not necessarily in favor of Trump and you don't like him that much and you know he's a little crazy, you also know he's going to blow up the system,” Moore said when asked about the turn of phrase. “The system that took your job and house away from you. You get to get back at the system now and blow it up and this is the only day you can do it legally.”
Though Moore was a prominent backer of Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders during the Democrat primary, it didn’t take him long to switch allegiance to Clinton, the Democrat presidential nominee. Moore’s new film, “Michael Moore in Trumpland,” is less an excoriation of Trump than a love song for Clinton, as the director tells it.

A Message from McDonald’s Hispanic

¿Quieres que tu hijo pueda ir a la universidad?

McDonald’s y RHMC®/HACER® están ofreciendo 5 becas ...

“I wrote a chapter in my very first book 20 years ago called ‘My Forbidden Love for Hillary,’” Moore said. “There's nothing to come around on. I was for Hillary before Hillary was for Hillary.”
CRITICS: MICHAEL MOORE'S 'TRUMPLAND' ALL ABOUT HILLARY
As if “legal terrorist” wasn’t a provocative-enough description, Moore also compared Trump to a child molester.
“You have to protect the population from him like you do with a pedophile,” Moore said. “A pedophile doesn’t need to be in prison; they’re sick. They have to be separated from us so they don’t hurt children. But you have to treat it that way.”

Clinton ally aided campaign of FBI official's wife

How the McAuliffe probe could spell trouble for the Clintons

The political organization of Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe, an influential Democrat with longstanding ties to Bill and Hillary Clinton, gave nearly $500,000 to the election campaign of the wife of an official at the Federal Bureau of Investigation who later helped oversee the investigation into Mrs. Clinton’s email use.
Campaign finance records show Mr. McAuliffe’s political-action committee donated $467,500 to the 2015 state Senate campaign of Dr. Jill McCabe, who is married to Andrew McCabe, now the deputy director of the FBI.
The Virginia Democratic Party, over which Mr. McAuliffe exerts considerable control, donated an additional $207,788 worth of support to Dr. McCabe’s campaign in the form of mailers, according to the records. That adds up to slightly more than $675,000 to her candidacy from entities either directly under Mr. McAuliffe’s control or strongly influenced by him. The figure represents more than a third of all the campaign funds Dr. McCabe raised in the effort.
Mr. McAuliffe and other state party leaders recruited Dr. McCabe to run, according to party officials. She lost the election to incumbent Republican Dick Black.

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A spokesman for the governor said he “supported Jill McCabe because he believed she would be a good state senator. This is a customary practice for Virginia governors… Any insinuation that his support was tied to anything other than his desire to elect candidates who would help pass his agenda is ridiculous.”
Among political candidates that year, Dr. McCabe was the third-largest recipient of funds from Common Good VA, the governor’s PAC, according to campaign finance records. Dan Gecker received $781,500 from the PAC and $214,456 from the state party for a campaign that raised $2.9 million, according to records; and Jeremy McPike received $803,500 from the PAC and $535,162 from the state party, raising more $3.8 million that year for his candidacy.
The governor could recall only one meeting with Mr. McCabe—when he and other state Democrats met with the couple on March 7, 2015, to urge Dr. McCabe to run, according to the spokesman.
The FBI said in a statement that during his wife’s campaign Mr. McCabe “played no role, attended no events, and did not participate in fundraising or support of any kind. Months after the completion of her campaign, then-Associate Deputy Director McCabe was promoted to Deputy, where, in that position, he assumed for the first time, an oversight role in the investigation into Secretary Clinton’s emails.”

Clinton camp denies looking to Senate races, red states to cap foregone victory

The Clinton campaign on Sunday denied assertions that it thinks the White House race is now a lock and has moved toward trying for a blowout victory over Republican rival Donald Trump while attempting to take control of the Senate.

“We’re not taking anything for granted,” campaign manager Robby Mook told “Fox News Sunday,” repeating a familiar line from Clinton aides and surrogates.
Mook made the comment one day after Clinton, the Democratic presidential nominee, devoted a big chunk of her speech in Pittsburgh to touting Katie McGinty, the Democrat challenger for a Senate seat in Pennsylvania, and trying to connect the GOP incumbent, Sen. Pat Toomey, to Trump.
“If he doesn’t have the courage to stand up to Donald Trump, are you sure he’ll be able to stand up for you?” Clinton asked the crowd.
When asked about the speech afterward, Clinton told reporters, “As we’re traveling in these last 17 days, we’re going to be emphasizing the importance of electing Democrats down the ballot.”
Mook on Sunday acknowledged the campaign was indeed making late forays into traditionally Republican-leaning states such as Arizona, Indiana and Missouri -- where polls show the presidential race has tightened and Democratic Senate candidates are in position to upset an incumbent GOP senator.
He said the campaign has put resources into Arizona-- or at least shifted them from places like Florida -- because of Trump’s “divisive rhetoric,” including the “shameful things” he’s said about Arizona GOP Sen. John McCain, who is seeking a sixth term.
“Every campaign wants to win by the biggest margin possible,” Mook said, dismissing the suggestion that the campaign wants a mandate victory on Nov. 8 to cement Clinton’s position of authority with voters. "So that would be great. But we’re not running away with this. This race is going to be competitive up until the end.”
Earlier on "Fox News Sunday," Trump campaign manager Kellyanne Conway also said the race is not over and that three new polls show Clinton’s averaged 6-percentage point lead being cut in recent days.
“We’re not giving up,” said Conway, vowing more TV ad spending in the finals 16 days, amid Clinton failing to break the key, 50-percent threshold in the handful of battleground states that will decide the race.
Democratic vice-presidential nominee Virginia Gov. Tim Kaine gave a response similar to Mook’s when asked on NBC’s “Meet the Press” about the campaign perhaps now being focused on so-called “down ballot” races and whether he thinks the White House race is over.
“Neither Hillary nor I do,” he said. “And if you look at our schedules, you'll see we don't take anything for granted. It's been a season of surprises. … We’re not taking anything for granted.”
Still, Kaine and Mook acknowledged being encouraged by the early-voting numbers, includes those for mail-in ballots, which Mook called “eye-popping.”
As of Saturday, more than 5.3 million early votes had been cast, far ahead of the pace at this time in 2012.
Balloting is underway in 34 out of 37 early-voting states, both in person and by mail.
The Clinton optimism appears based on the number of registered Democrats vs. registered Republicans who have voted early.
More than 46 million people are expected to vote before Election Day -- or as much as 40 percent of all votes cast.

Tuesday, October 25, 2016

Republicans pounce on Obamacare after White House announcement

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Average Obamacare premiums to rise 22 percent

Obama administration confirms double-digit premium hikes

Pence dings Obama on comparing Obamacare to Samsung