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…
Category: State Government
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…
Expanding Medicaid Would Save Florida $100 Million Per Year
Obama has won re-election and the health law’s implementation is marching forward, Scott has showed some signs that he may consider softening his stance. And a new report from Georgetown University’s Health Policy Institute could give him even more reason to do, since it concludes that Obamacare’s Medicaid expansion would save Florida about $100 million…
Many states not prepared for health-care law
Participating states must set up a call center as well as a Web site that allows people to easily find and understand health plans, in much the way that Orbitz and Travelocity help people find airline flights. Moreover, many Republican-led states resisted the exchanges in the hope that the Supreme Court would strike the health…
Brown, Warren meet for second debate tonight
Senator Scott Brown and Elizabeth Warren, the Harvard Law School professor and Democrat trying to unseat him, have their second debate Monday night in a setting almost befitting the gladiators. They were meeting for an hour before a crowd of 5,700 at the University of Massachusetts Lowell’s Tsongas Center. David Gregory, host of the NBC…
California Takes a Big Step Forward: Free, Digital, Open-Source Textbooks
This week, California took a big step forward in the march toward online education. Governor Jerry Brown signed into law a proposal to create a website that will allow students to download digital versions of popular textbooks for free. The new legislation encompasses two bills: One, a proposal for the state to fund 50 open-source…
Cherokee Nation Chief Demands Apology From Scott Brown Campaign
The principal chief of the Cherokee Nation is calling on Sen. Scott Brown, R-Mass., to apologize for a video that allegedly shows members of his staff imitating “stereotypical ‘war whoops chants.’” As WBUR’s Curt Nickisch reported Tuesday for All Things Considered, Brown’s supporters were filmed imitating “tomahawk chops” at a rally in Dorchester, Mass., over…
U.S. state officials in stealth mode on health exchanges
Republicans working on exchanges have been accused of party disloyalty, and that opposition has intensified after the Supreme Court upheld the Affordable Care Act in late June. In Colorado, Tea Party members tried to expunge Republican Amy Stephens for co-sponsoring exchange legislation. In Michigan, the conservative advocacy group Americans for Prosperity circulated petitions to kill…
Groups race against time to get Florida voters registered
Voting-rights groups that virtually stopped registering voters in Florida for a year as they challenged the state’s new restrictions on elections now are scrambling to get people there registered for the November 6 election. The effort in Florida – a large, politically divided state that is crucial in the nationwide race between Democratic President Barack…
States Watch Calif. As It Builds Exchange; Red State Officials Wrestle With Opposition To Law And Need To Implement It
News outlets report on both the progress and difficulties states are facing as they attempt to establish health exchanges and meet other health law requirements. Meanwhile, Vermont is hoping to move beyond the federal law as it tries to set up a single-payer system. The New York Times: California Tries To Guide The Way On…
The Health Care Law is Saving Americans Money
Last September, we also put in place new rules that ensure that every single rate increase of 10 percent or more is reviewed on either the state or federal level. For the first time, we have been able to guarantee Americans that no matter what state they live in, insurers will no longer be able…
Massachusetts’ Clean Economy Sees Massive Growth, Now Hosts 71,000 Jobs In Cleantech
Government investment and support for clean, renewable energy development is paying off handsomely in Massachusetts, where the clean energy economy grew 11.2% between July 2011 and July 2012. The state’s fast-growing clean energy sector now employs 71,523 people at 4,995 clean energy businesses across the state, according to a Massachusetts Clean Energy Center (MassCEC) report released Aug….
White House Kills $473 Million in Earmarks
President Barack Obama’s administration eliminated $473 million in old transportation earmarks today, telling states to reallocate the money by the end of the year or lose it for good. Old earmarks for projects that have not yet been built, from fiscal years 2003 to 2006, have been effectively nixed. Appropriations bills for those years contained…
The Conservative Takeover of State Judiciaries
Since the New Deal, despite several attempts, no state in our nation has shifted to a system for seating state court judges that makes these judges more vulnerable to politics. But that might well change this year. This November, ballot measures in three states would politicize state courts in an unprecedented way, calling into serious…
Ten Takeaways From Pennsylvania’s Voter ID Trial
The two-week trial challenging the constitutionality of Pennsylvania’s voter ID law ended today. Here’s what we learned from the proceedings. Suffice to say, Pennsylvania Republicans didn’t come out looking very good. 1. A lot of voters don’t have valid voter ID. University of Washington political scientist Matt Barreto, a witness for the plaintiffs (the suit…
Iowa’s GOP Governor Blasts Romney Campaign On Wind Tax Credits: They Need To ‘Come Out Here To The Real World’
Now that Mitt Romney’s campaign has officially declared the candidate’s desire to kill tax credits for wind while maintaining tax credits for the mature oil and gas industries, Midwestern Republicans are not happy. Iowa Republican Representative Tom Latham said Romney’s decision “shows a lack of full understanding of how important the wind energy tax credit…
CHART: How State And Local Budget Cuts Are Holding Back GDP Growth | ThinkProgress
As the Tax Policy Center noted, “in 2011, the state and local sector contracted 3.4 percent, the largest decline since World War II.” Budget cuts have actually knocked several tenths of a percentage point off of national GDP in each of the last two years and in the first half of 2012, as this chart…
CBO Confirms: The Health Care Law Reduces the Deficit
This afternoon, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) released its latest look at the Affordable Care Act – the health care law. This report affirms that repealing the health care law would deny tax credits for millions of middle class families and result in higher deficits and fewer Americans with insurance. Once again, the Congressional Budget…
Health Providers Support Medicaid Expansion As Govs Draw Line In The Sand
Even as state executives such as Texas Gov. Rick Perry and Florida Gov. Rick Scott remain firm in their opposition to the health law’s Medicaid expansion, health providers such as Cleveland Clinic CEO and President Tony Cosgrove express their support for it. The Associated Press: Working Poor Stand At Center Of Medicaid Debate Families like…
MN GOP Evasiveness On Voter Photo ID Leads To Court Challenge
Several groups will tell the Minnesota Supreme Court on Tuesday that language for a proposed constitutional amendment voters will see on the ballot in November is misleading. An UpTake video review of how Republicans drafted and answered questions about the “voter photo ID” amendment indicates they did not want the ballot language to be very detailed…