US Politics: Corporations are made out of people

[TrackerNeil]

-Whether you think Paul has genuine principles or not (I do, as I have argued at length here), he and Booker are doing America a tremendous service by making this a bipartisan issue. The Prison-Industrial Complex is arguably even worse for the country than the Military one. Paul's dad and Barney Frank tried something similar with marijuana

I agree with this. I'm deeply suspicious of Paul's motives, but then his motives don't really matter if he moves policy in the right direction.

[BloodRider]

-Whether you think Paul has genuine principles or not (I do, as I have argued at length here), he and Booker are doing America a tremendous service by making this a bipartisan issue. The Prison-Industrial Complex is arguably even worse for the country than the Military one. Paul's dad and Barney Frank tried something similar with marijuana

I whole heartedly agree. The privatization of prisons has entrenched perverse incentives for Corporations to profit from human misery.

Also when did the US Politic thread become a discussion on how a belief in the thoroughly debunked self / body dualism is morality?

[Ramsay Gimp]

"Meet the Muslim-American Leaders the FBI and NSA Have Been Spying On"

https://firstlook.org/theintercept/article/2014/07/09/under-surveillance/

According to documents provided by NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden, the list of Americans monitored by their own government includes:

• Faisal Gill, a longtime Republican Party operative and one-time candidate for public office who held a top-secret security clearance and served in the Department of Homeland Security under President George W. Bush;

• Asim Ghafoor, a prominent attorney who has represented clients in terrorism-related cases;

• Hooshang Amirahmadi, an Iranian-American professor of international relations at Rutgers University;

• Agha Saeed, a former political science professor at California State University who champions Muslim civil liberties and Palestinian rights;

• Nihad Awad, the executive director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), the largest Muslim civil rights organization in the country.

Not really surprising, sadly. What say the NSA's defenders now?

[Suttree]

What say the NSA's defenders now?

Is there such a thing?

-Whether you think Paul has genuine principles or not (I do, as I have argued at length here), he and Booker are doing America a tremendous service by making this a bipartisan issue. The Prison-Industrial Complex is arguably even worse for the country than the Military one.

Does anyone well versed on this topic have any idea how realistic a chance there is to move the needle here? I mean basically Paul's entire schtick is to loudly push for things that sound good but have zero chance of going anywhere.

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

Suttree,

Lev, Fez, and Shryke have defended the NSA.

[aceluby]

Does anyone well versed on this topic have any idea how realistic a chance there is to move the needle here? I mean basically Paul's entire schtick is to loudly push for things that sound good but have zero chance of going anywhere.

Not well versed, but there's a snowballs chance in hell this goes anywhere. There's too much profit in it and those people all have friends on the hill and donate to every President.

[Shryke]

Suttree,

Lev, Fez, and Shryke gave defended the NSA.

My first thought was "How many of the people on that list have essentially identical credentials and just happen to not be american?"

[Fez]

Suttree,

Lev, Fez, and Shryke gave defended the NSA.

Now who's the one keeping records of ordinary Americans?

Anyway, as the article itself notes, the government's justifications for the surveillence are classified, so its impossible to know yet if this was ethnic profiling or if there was some legitimate reason. And if it was just ethnic profiling, it sounds like it was on the part of the FBI, which has had a lengthy history with the problem, rather than the NSA itself. Its already known that the FBI needs to improve there, but that affects all aspects of its activities, and is a separate issue from whether or not the surveillence programs themselves are bad.

[lokisnow]

Props to Rand Paul and Cory Booker, that's a good bill to be pushing. Step one of some extremely badly needed prison reform.

[karaddin]

So the Michigan law requiring abortion coverage be a separate rider to normal insurance has gone into effect. My question is specifically relating to the fact that this additional coverage is only available if you get your insurance through your employer rather than buying it individually on the market - surely that's going to have a court challenge? Is this another one of those situations where you have to wait until the law has gone into effect, so that you can be said to be damaged by it in order to have standing?

The new law drops coverage of most abortions from existing policies -- even to terminate a pregnancy resulting from rape or incest. Women who buy their own individual policies, rather than getting coverage through an employer-based plan, won't be able to purchase the additional coverage, called an abortion rider, from Michigan insurers.

[Fez]

So the Michigan law requiring abortion coverage be a separate rider to normal insurance has gone into effect. My question is specifically relating to the fact that this additional coverage is only available if you get your insurance through your employer rather than buying it individually on the market - surely that's going to have a court challenge? Is this another one of those situations where you have to wait until the law has gone into effect, so that you can be said to be damaged by it in order to have standing?

Wow. I knew about the rider thing, but I didn't realize it wasn't even available on the individual market. I would've thought that any woman who was going to lose coverage could've sued and asked for an injunction against the law before going into effect.

[Lightysnake88]

Yeah, this whole NSA 'revelation' is kinda...well, typical Greenwald nonsense. The surveillance, or 'collection' dates in the article stop in 2008, so there's that. Another telling bit:

The spreadsheet shows 7,485 email addresses listed as monitored between 2002 and 2008. Many of the email addresses on the list appear to belong to foreigners whom the government believes are linked to Al Qaeda, Hamas, and Hezbollah. Among the Americans on the list are individuals long accused of terrorist activity, including Anwar al-Awlaki and Samir Khan, who were killed in a 2011 drone strike in Yemen

Additionally, collection activities against two of the five men are very clearly marked as “terminated” back in 2008. In other words, according to these documents, the FBI apparently stopped collecting the emails of Faisal Gill and Nihad Awad in May and February of 2008, respectively.

The fact the FBI is involved also puts a damper on the NSA thing. And the reporting gets even worse. "We asked the Justice Department and they wouldn't tell us"...well, duh. There's no investigation to even find out if there were warrants obtained whatsoever, or if the previous administration bypassed the law.

Anyways, googling these guys also gives us this info:

Faisal Gill: Served as spokesman and "Director of Government Affairs" for the American Muslim Council, an organization founded and led by Abdurahman Alamoudi, who in 2003 was sentenced to 23 years in federal prison for bringing over one million dollars in cash provided by the Libyan government into the U.S. (seems like a valid target to look further into).

Asim Ghafoor: Is a partner in Faisal's company and represented a bunch of terrorist-related suspects (probably the flimsiest one of the bunch).

Hooshang Amirahmadi: He was one of the presidential candidates for the 2013 elections in Iran (which makes him absolutely justified in targeting).

Agha Saeed: Often spoke in favor of Palestinian violence and attacks against Israel and is opposed to the government's surveillance of radical mosques, drawing suspicion (also pretty flimsy).

Nihad Awad: In April 2011, Rep. Frank Wolf, R-Va., cited from a fundraising letter sent from Awad to Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi, at a United States House of Representatives Appropriations sub-committee hearing. The letter said, in part, "I am pleased to send to Your Excellency in my name most solemn assurances of thanks and appreciation for the efforts you exert in the service of Islam, Muslims and all mankind through your initiative to teach Islam, spread the culture of Islam, and solve disputes, for which you are known internationally. (seems like good justification to look into).

So what we have here are like 3 valid targets and 2 questionable, and that's only from open source research. We don't know if the government really has anything suspicious on them to at least warrant some additional research at some point by the FBI.

[Commodore]

We already knew the means/methods were questionable.

Was expecting Greenwald to reveal targets not germane to national security, but that doesn't seem to be the case so far.

[Fez]

Hilarious study out by Brookings,

In fact, after controlling for other state characteristics such as low per capita income population and average insurance premiums, I observe a positive association between the anti-ACA spending and ACA enrollment. This implies that anti-ACA ads may unintentionally increase the public awareness about the existence of a governmentally subsidized service and its benefits for the uninsured

[Paladin of Ice]

-Whether you think Paul has genuine principles or not (I do, as I have argued at length here), he and Booker are doing America a tremendous service by making this a bipartisan issue. The Prison-Industrial Complex is arguably even worse for the country than the Military one. Paul's dad and Barney Frank tried something similar with marijuana

Ramsay, for all our many, many differences of opinion on policy and ways of looking at the world, you'll get absolutely no argument from me there.

Hilarious study out by Brookings,

That's great. And it reminds me of some other good news regarding the ACA; ever since it passed, the cost of Medicare has been dropping significantly, and currently stands at $1,000 less per person than the CBO estimated it would in 2010.

As Medicare and budget wonks eagerly await the 2014 edition of the Medicare Trustees’ report, the big story in the Medicare world these days is the slowdown in program spending. Based on our comparison of CBO’s August 2010 and April 2014 baselines, Medicare spending this year will be about $1,000 lower per person than was expected in 2010, soon after passage of the Affordable Care Act (ACA), which included reductions in Medicare payments to plans and providers and introduced delivery system reforms that aimed to improve efficiency and reduce costs. By 2019, Medicare spending per person is projected to be nearly $2,400 lower per person than was expected following passage of the ACA. Medicare spending projections in CBO’s August 2010 and subsequent baselines take into account the anticipated effects of the ACA, along with other factors that are expected to affect future Medicare spending. So it seems that the ACA may be having a bigger than expected effect, but something else may be going on here too.

The numbers are impressive, and the consecutive year-to-year reductions in projected Medicare spending are unprecedented. Looking back, total and per person Medicare spending have grown more slowly each year since 2010, and if trends observed in the first eight months of the 2014 fiscal year continue through the end of the year, Medicare is on track to record its fourth consecutive year of declining growth rates. On a per person basis, Medicare spending actually declined between 2013 and 2014, according to our analysis of data from the Medicare Trustees and CBO.

Health care observers are still scratching their heads trying to explain why Medicare spending is growing so slowly. A CBO analysis shows the Great Recession did not have the same effect on Medicare that it had on the slowdown in health care spending generally, which has been documented by our Kaiser colleagues. It is clear that the Medicare savings provisions in the ACA, such as reductions in provider payment updates and Medicare Advantage payments, have played a major role, and the changes included in the law may be having a bigger effect than was expected soon after the law passed. In addition, the Budget Control Act of 2011 also exerted downward pressure on Medicare spending through sequestration that reduced payments to providers and plans by 2 percent beginning in 2013. And yet even after incorporating these scheduled payment reductions in the baseline, CBO has continued to lower its projections of Medicare spending.

So what else might be going on here? In addition to scheduled reductions in Medicare’s more formulaic payment rates, providers may be tightening their belts and looking to deliver care more efficiently in response to financial incentives included in the ACA, and it is possible that these changes are having a bigger effect than expected. For example, CMS recently reported that hospital readmission rates dropped by 130,000 between January 2012 and August 2013. It is also possible that hospitals and other providers are using data and other analytic tools more successfully to track utilization and spending and to reduce excess costs. Another more straightforward factor is that several expensive and popular brand-name drugs have gone off patent in recent years, which has helped to keep Medicare drug spending in check.

providers may be tightening their belts and looking to deliver care more efficiently in response to financial incentives included in the ACA, and it is possible that these changes are having a bigger effect than expected

Who would have guessed that doing something other than whining endlessly about government policy like spoiled kids complaining when they're told they can't have all the cookies could be helpful?

[TrackerNeil]

That's great. And it reminds me of some other good news regarding the ACA; ever since it passed, the cost of Medicare has been dropping significantly, and currently stands at $1,000 less per person than the CBO estimated it would in 2010.

Of course, we'll hear from the right that this is a mere coincidence, that it's because of the recession, blah blah blah. You know, I wish conservatives could just admit that they don't think the government should do anything to ensure that Americans' health is insured. They don't care if the measure by which this happens reduces the deficit or improves the health care system or even makes humans immune to all known earthly diseases. Their problem is purely ideological, but pretending as if it is practical just clouds the issue.

[DanteGabriel]

Following up the ACA stories:

The survey found that 74 percent of Republicans said they were very or somewhat satisfied with their new coverage. Overall, 78 percent of Americans said they were satisfied: 73 percent of those enrolled in a private plan and 84 percent of those enrolled in Medicaid.

There was a minimal difference between the previously uninsured and the previously insured: 79 percent of the former were satisfied and 77 percent of the latter were, according to the survey by the group, which is generally supportive of Obamacare.

Those surveyed also reported being better off: 58 percent said that they were better off now than they were before, while 9 percent said they were worse off. And 81 percent said that they were optimistic that their new coverage would help them get the health care they need.

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/republicans-like-obamacare-commonwealth-fund

Of course I'm sure that there are all sorts of Teahadi dingbats in East Bumblefuck whose premiums have gone up, like those stories that were proliferating a few months ago that all got debunked in a matter of hours by people with functional frontal lobes and an internet connection.

[TrackerNeil]

Of course I'm sure that there are all sorts of Teahadi dingbats in East Bumblefuck whose premiums have gone up, like those stories that were proliferating a few months ago that all got debunked in a matter of hours by people with functional frontal lobes and an internet connection.

Isn't it weird that the wingnuts couldn't seem to find a single real ACA "loser"? I am sure there are some losers, but the conservative media machine isn't finding 'em. Of course, that requires fact checking and a methodical approach, neither of which are right-wing strong points.

[TrueMetis]

Isn't it weird that the wingnuts couldn't seem to find a single real ACA "loser"? I am sure there are some losers, but the conservative media machine isn't finding 'em. Of course, that requires fact checking and a methodical approach, neither of which are right-wing strong points.

I wonder if that because most of the "losers" they did find shrugged it off as worth it in the end.

[TrackerNeil]

I wonder if that because most of the "losers" they did find shrugged it off as worth it in the end.

Maybe. Or it's possible that the "losers" are people who don't typically engender a great deal of public sympathy; namely, young men. I notice that the folks conservatives try to pass off as Obamacare victims are generally middle-aged women, who are much more likely to benefit from the ACA. So they simply twist these people's stories to fit the narrative they're trying (and failing) to create.