The country’s health care bill tallied $2.7 trillion, according to the Department of Health and Human Services. Some indicators, though, suggest the slowed growth may not last. The New York Times: Growth Of Health Spending Stays Low National health spending climbed to $2.7 trillion in 2011, or an average of $8,700 for every person in…
Category: News & Opinion
Most in U.S. Say Politics in Washington Cause Serious Harm
More than three-quarters of Americans (77%) say the way politics works in Washington these days is causing serious harm to the United States, providing still another indicator of the low esteem in which Americans hold their elected officials and the way the federal government works. These results are from a Dec. 14-17 USA…
600 Teachers Apply to Learn How to Shoot a Gun at School
As of this Wednesday, over 600 teachers from 15 states have applied for a free firearms training program that a gun advocacy group, the Buckeye Firearms Association, announced it would sponsor in the wake of the Newtown school shooting. The three-day training will train teachers how to wield firearms in the case of a school…
Virginia Lawmaker Wants To Make Voting Even Harder With New ID Law
A Virginia General Assembly member intends to add more limits to the state’s voter ID law in time for the next election, warning of voter impersonation. Republican Delegate Mark Cole (VA) thinks the standing law is too flexible and will introduce a new voter ID bill that would prevent voters from using documentation like paycheck…
States Target Politically Active Nonprofits
Tax-exempt groups that spent hundreds of millions on the 2012 elections without disclosing their donors have stirred no response from federal regulators but have drawn the ire of state officials who are moving aggressively to restrict them. From California to Idaho, Montana to Maine and New York, state attorneys general and election officials are fighting…
Americans for Responsible Leadership’s IRS Application Published
An Arizona political non-profit that spent millions in 2012 supporting Republicans and opposing President Obama told the IRS in September that it would not spend money to influence elections, according to documents obtained by ProPublica. The organization, Americans for Responsible Leadership, run by a group of mostly little-known Arizona Republicans, also spent millions of dollars…
Colorado Will Expand Medicaid, Claims Cost Savings Are In Progress
The state plans to expand its Medicaid program as much as the federal health law envisions, without spending any extra money to make it happen. Kaiser Health News: Capsules: Colorado Will Expand Medicaid, Governor Announces Gov. John Hickenlooper said Colorado will expand its Medicaid program as much as the federal health care law calls for, and he said…
Newt Gingrich warns GOP on debt ceiling
Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich said Friday that the upcoming showdown over the debt ceiling isn’t a political winner for House Republicans, but dubbed it a “dead loser.” “They’ve got to find, in the House, a totally new strategy,” Gingrich said on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe.” “Everybody’s now talking about, ‘Oh, here comes the debt ceiling.’…
Obama signs bill warding off fiscal cliff
President Barack Obama has signed into law a bill to avert the fiscal cliff, a day after the House and Senate approved the much-debated legislation. Obama, who returned to his family vacation in Hawaii after Tuesday’s House vote, signed the bill via autopen on Wednesday. But new battles over taxes and spending await Washington in…
An amazing mea culpa from the IMF’s chief economist on austerity
Consider it a mea culpa submerged in a deep pool of calculus and regression analysis: The International Monetary Fund’s top economist today acknowledged that the fund blew its forecasts for Greece and other European economies because it did not fully understand how government austerity efforts would undermine economic growth. The new and highly technical paper…
Happy New Year! We gained 215,000 jobs in December.
Collected by the payroll processing firm ADP, the report has offered a more accurate first guess of the actual, final job numbers during the current economic crisis than has the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ initial release for the month. ADP has since switched its methodology a bit, but it’s definitely worth paying attention to. The…
Ten People We Are Grateful Are No Longer Members Of Congress
Under the Twentieth Amendment, “[t]he terms of the President and Vice President shall end at noon on the 20th day of January, and the terms of Senators and Representatives at noon on the 3d day of January.” Accordingly, as of this very moment, many members of 112th Congress are now unemployed. Here are ten that…
Analysis: Republicans start new Congress bruised and divided
In the wake of bruising fights in their own ranks over the “fiscal cliff” and aid for victims of superstorm Sandy – Republicans in the U.S. House of Representatives open a new Congress on Thursday more divided than ever. While their leader, Speaker John Boehner, seems in no danger of losing his position because of…
Charts: 247,131 Fatal Shootings in 8 Years
That’s a lot of bodies—247,131 to be exact. A lot of blood and grief and funerals. A lot of families devastated. But the price is far higher than this, really. Because we tend to count the bodies but seldom think much of the bodies ruined, the human potential destroyed, the teenagers relegated to wheelchairs, the…
To Stop Shootings, Americans Focus on Police, Mental Health
Americans are most likely to say that an increased police presence at schools, increased government spending on mental health screening and treatment, and decreased depiction of gun violence in entertainment venues would be effective in preventing mass shootings at schools. Americans rate the potential effectiveness of a ban on assault and semi-automatic guns as…
CNN Poll: Are GOP policies too extreme?
Just over half the public says that the GOP should give up more than the Democrats in any bipartisan solution to the countrys problems, according to a new national survey. And a CNN/ORC International poll also indicates that a slight majority of Americans sees the Republican partys policies and views as too extreme, a…
Outrageous HSBC Settlement Proves the Drug War is a Joke
Breuer this week signed off on a settlement deal with the British banking giant HSBC that is the ultimate insult to every ordinary person whos ever had his life altered by a narcotics charge. Despite the fact that HSBC admitted to laundering billions of dollars for Colombian and Mexican drug cartels among others and violating…
Supreme Court Inaction Boosts Right To Record Police Officers
The Illinois and Massachusetts laws have been used to arrest people who attempt to record on-duty police officers and other public officials. In one of the more notorious cases, Chicago resident Tiawanda Moore was arrested in 2010 when she attempted to use her cell phone to record officers in a Chicago police station. Moore…
House GOP Committee Chairs Will All Be White Men In Next Congress
House committee chairs are typically chosen based on their seniority on the committee, and most committees dont have Republican women or minorities at senior levels. In addition, there just arent that many House Republican women and minorities to go around. In the 113th Congress, which kicks off in January, House Republicans will have 20…
Michael Moore: An Open Letter to President Obama
Michael Moore put together an excellent list for those of us pushing for the President’s agenda and more. Number 10 may be the most important, and I don’t think it could be said any better. 10. ASK US TO DO SOMETHING. One thing is clear: none of the above is going to happen if you…