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…
How Muslim Unrest Has Created a Crisis for Romney
That the left heaped scorn on Romney’s gambit came as no surprise. But the right reacted almost as harshly—with former aides to John McCain, George W. Bush, and Ronald Reagan creating an on-the-record chorus of disapproval, while countless other Republican officials and operatives chimed in anonymously. “This is worse than a Lehman moment,” says a…
Paul Ryan Promises To Lead From Behind
And we have to be able to work with Congress on those details, on how to fill it in and more to the point we don’t want to cut some backroom deal that they did with Obamacare where we hatched some plan behind the scenes and they spring it on the country. We want to…
Romney: My Magic Tax Plan Will Repeal Math
This was a vague enough plan that Romney believed he could get by without making any of the ramifications clear, except the good stuff about cutting tax rates. But the Tax Policy Center ran the numbers and found that, even if you granted Romney a series of optimistic to wildly implausible assumptions, he would have to raise…
Mitt Romneys Disastrous Energy Plan
The smirk appeared on Mitt Romney’s face near the end of his acceptance speech at the Republican National Convention. President Obama, he said, had “promised to begin to slow the rise of the oceans” and to “heal the planet.” Here Romney paused, giving the crowd in Tampa a moment to savor the fact that he…
Greed and Debt: The True Story of Mitt Romney and Bain Capital
Last May, in a much-touted speech in Iowa, Romney used language that was literally inflammatory to describe America’s federal borrowing. “A prairie fire of debt is sweeping across Iowa and our nation,” he declared. “Every day we fail to act, that fire gets closer to the homes and children we love.” Our collective debt is…
Obama Up by 4 Points Among Likely Voters (58% of Americans Say He’d Take Romney in a Fight)
With fifty-four days to go, voter opinions are coming into focus, and Esquire and Yahoo! News have joined forces to examine how voters view the presidential candidates and how President Obama and Mitt Romney conduct themselves: Who do you trust to take us to war? Who better understands American families? Who’s a bigger liar? What…
Romney Asked VP Shortlisters for Ten Years of Tax Returns
As part of its vetting, the Romney campaign required at least some of the candidates on the short list—including the eventual winner of the GOP veepstakes, Ryan—to submit fully 10 years of tax returns, according to a knowledgeable source. The requirement was consistent with the past practices of both Republican and Democratic campaigns. Indeed, in…
The Romney campaign gets desperate
When campaigns are losing, they get desperate. And when they get desperate, they make riskier political decisions. And so, Tuesday night, the Romney campaign made a risky decision. They released this statement: I’m outraged by the attacks on American diplomatic missions in Libya and Egypt and by the death of an American consulate worker in…
Obamacare Is Working
Despite predictions from opponents that Obamacare was going to take away your private health care and force everyone into government coverage, the numbers show definitively that’s not happening. For the first time in a decade, the rate of private health insurance coverage didn’t go down. The biggest beneficiaries of the new law are young people…
Pizza Shop Owner Scott Van Duzer on Bear-Hugging President Obama
What’s your reaction to the angry people who are flooding your restaurant’s Yelp page with bad reviews because you hugged the president? You see the good and bad in people. That’s what’s wrong with our country. I tell people, whether you’re Republican or Democrat, he’s both of our president. He should be treated with respect,…
Romney’s Insensitivity To LGBT People: ‘I Didn’t Know You Had Families’
David Wilson and Julie Goodridge, two of the plaintiffs whose case led to the legalization of marriage equality in Massachusetts, described meeting with Romney to discuss their experiences. According to Wilson, “it was like talking to a robot. No expression, no feeling.” At one point, Romney remarked, “I didn’t know you had families.” Goodridge recalls…
Everything You’ve Heard About Failing Schools Is Wrong
I was calling education officials in search of a school that would let me spend time inside its classrooms. I was looking for a grassroots view of America’s latest run at school reform: How do we know when schools are failing, and why is it so hard to turn them around? Is the close to…
The GOP Throws a Tampa Tantrum
A major American political party, shorn of all moderating influence, has finally, unalterably, gone insane. The striking thing is how many of the estimated 15,000 journalists who were with me in Tampa for the 2012 convention were missing this story of a lifetime—one sixty years in the making. To be fair, the dramaturgy confused a…
Ann Romney Contradicts RNC Speech, Admits Privilege
A decidedly off-message statement from Ann Romney on Sunday’s Meet the Press was overlooked by the media, since everyone focused on Mitt Romney’s false claim that he would make sure people with prior conditions can purchase health insurance. Ann Romney made a noteworthy admission in the same interview, and the Progressive Change Committee is launching…
Romneys Shifting Stance On Health Law Makes Waves
The GOP presidential nominee’s comments Sunday that he would keep parts of the health law triggered questions about how he would cover those with pre-existing conditions, and reinforced doubts within his own party about his commitment to repealing the overhaul. Campaign aides attempted to clarify the comments. The New York Times: It Will Be Tricky…
Yelp flamewar breaks out over pizza owner’s Obama bearhug
The latest comments on Big Apple Pizza’s Yelp page aren’t about anchovies. After President Obama stopped by and received a bear hug from owner Scott Van Nuzer, comments started being posted on the pizza shop’s page on Yelp, a site for posting reviews of local businesses. With two 5-star reviews dating back to 2009, Big Apple…
STUDY: Obamacare Led To Record Drop In Uninsured Young Adults
According to the National Health Interview Survey, 33.9 percent of people between the ages of 19 and 25 lacked health insurance in 2010. The following year, after the Obamacare provision had taken effect, that number dropped to 27.9 percent. By the CDC’s estimates, that means 1.6 million young people gained coverage between 2010 and 2011,…