[Zelandakh]

hrothgar, on 2017-December-01, 11:24, said:

I'm charming, really I am, and a great conversationist, and a stellar cook and ever so modest...

Is this meant to be your best Trump impression...?

[jjbrr]

hrothgar, on 2017-December-01, 11:24, said:

but, but, but...

I'm charming, really I am, and a great conversationist, and a stellar cook and ever so modest...

I have family in Worcester. Next time I'm in town, sushi's on me.

[hrothgar]

jjbrr, on 2017-December-01, 11:45, said:

I have family in Worcester. Next time I'm in town, sushi's on me.

Be careful what you promise, I am so not a cheap date...

[jjbrr]

Justin told me as much

[y66]

From Michael Flynn’s Guilty Plea: 10 Key Takeaways by Harry Litman in today's NYT:

Quote

Michael Flynn’s plea on Friday to a single count of lying to the F.B.I. is a seismic event in the special counsel investigation.

For starters, it portends the likelihood of impeachable charges being brought against the president of the United States. Mr. Flynn, a former national security adviser, acknowledged that he was cooperating with the investigation. His testimony could bring into the light a scandal of historic proportions in which the not-yet-installed Trump administration, including Donald Trump personally, sought to subvert American foreign policy before taking office.

The repercussions of the plea will be months in the making, but it’s not an exaggeration to say that the events to which Mr. Flynn has agreed to testify will take their place in the history books alongside the Watergate and Iran-contra scandals.

We’re in new — and highly inflammatory — territory. Here are 10 immediate takeaways from today’s news.

Harry who? Litman is a former United States attorney and deputy assistant attorney general.

[gwnn]

[PassedOut]

jjbrr, on 2017-December-01, 11:45, said:

I have family in Worcester.

Small world - so do I: One of our nieces is a professor at Clark University (and an alpha cook) and will be with us for the holidays.

Back to the topic at hand, I see that the White House statement refers to Flynn as a "former Obama administration official."

[Winstonm]

gwnn, on 2017-December-01, 14:26, said:

On the first day of Christmas, Bob Mueller gave to me.....

[kenberg]

PassedOut, on 2017-December-01, 14:35, said:

Small world - so do I: One of our nieces is a professor at Clark University (and an alpha cook) and will be with us for the holidays.

Back to the topic at hand, I see that the White House statement refers to Flynn as a "former Obama administration official."

I try to imagine what life is like for people who have to get up in the morning and talk like this. When I was 17 I worked for a while as a door to door salesman. That's the closest i can come to in my own experience. Or I get called on the phone and a voice tells me I have been randomly selected as the lucky recipient of blah blah blah. My idea of being down and out is having to take such a job.

[ggwhiz]

I mostly replay the news of the day on youtube and can't stomach FOX for over a minute but today was worth it.

Anchor and a panel of 4 more and I could have sworn I was watching a wake.

[kenberg]

Of course I have more questions than answers, but I am thinking of the repeal of the individual mandate. That's the end of the ACA, is it not? We were repeatedly told during the debate and passage and it seems to make sense, that the ACA cannot function without the mandate. Young healthy people will drop their coverage, and then the numbers just won't work. Some will regret that, even a young person can have unexpected major illness or an accident, but many will say why bother to insure against the unlikely. I might well have done the same when I was young. I did not carry life insurance [briefly I did, I had a motorcycle accident in my teens and my parents insisted, but I dropped it soon after] and I carried only the legally required amount of liability coverage for car insurance. I had no health insurance, but I am not sure it even existed. Nobody I knew had health insurance.

The usual figure is, I think, around 13 million people that will no longer be insured. I am not sure, but I have assumed, that for most of these13M the insurance will not be taken away but rather they will now be given a choice and they will opt out. However the numbers break down as to choice or no choice, it's just a fact that we have been told that the ACA cannot function without the mandate, and now there will not be a mandate.

So the ACA is a dead man walking. It is being replaced with nothing.

Do I have this right? I may get to what I think about it later, for the moment I am just asking if I correctly understand what has happened.

[gwnn]

WTF? Handwritten changes in the last minute, a 479-page document released about an hour before the vote happens. Is this for real?

https://www.vox.com/...blican-tax-bill

[hrothgar]

kenberg, on 2017-December-02, 07:06, said:

So the ACA is a dead man walking. It is being replaced with nothing.

Do I have this right? I may get to what I think about it later, for the moment I am just asking if I correctly understand what has happened.

Pretty much...

The Republicans decided to take away health care from 13 million people in order to provide big tax breaks for their donors.

Most every reputable Economist out there thinks that these tax cuts will have almost zero effect in goosing the economy.
Even with dynamic scoring, this will massively increase the defict.

But at least we've rolled by the state tax on the super rich and helped large companies buy back more of their shares...

Whats really sad is that NONE of this will last more than four years or so...
When the Democrats come back, they're going to repeal this all lock stock and barrel.

However, a whole bunch of people are going to suffer in the mean time.

[y66]

Via Dylan Scott at Vox:

Quote

There has never been a more outrageous, revolting, unfair process to pass a corrupted bill in the history of Congress. That Susan Collins, Lisa Murkowski, Jeff Flake, John McCain, Lindsey Graham have endorsed this makes anything positive they have done get erased. Unconscionable. -- Norm Ornstein, a congressional scholar at the American Enterprise Institute

Quote

McCain has praised the process that produced this bill as “regular order.” It’s true that the tax plan was marked up by two committees before it came to the Senate floor. But the bill that passed out of committee isn’t the one that the Senate will pass — and the changes that are being added didn’t come through the usual amendment process, but by backroom negotiations with defecting senators.

The Supreme Court has been hijacked. Obamacare is dead. The swamp has been drained. The planet is toast. Corporations and 1 percenters are great again. Four rare stakes please, and hurry.

[kenberg]

hrothgar, on 2017-December-02, 07:57, said:

Pretty much...

The Republicans decided to take away health care from 13 million people in order to provide big tax breaks for their donors.

Most every reputable Economist out there thinks that these tax cuts will have almost zero effect in goosing the economy.
Even with dynamic scoring, this will massively increase the defict.

But at least we've rolled by the state tax on the super rich and helped large companies buy back more of their shares...

Whats really sad is that NONE of this will last more than four years or so...
When the Democrats come back, they're going to repeal this all lock stock and barrel.

However, a whole bunch of people are going to suffer in the mean time.

Taking this one step at a time, focusing on the mandate, I want to get clarification on " take away health care from 13 million people ". Does it? Or does it allow 13 million people to opt out? Or is it something in between? As far as the effect on the ACA is concerned, whether it is taken away or they opt out probably doesn't matter, the ACA is dead either way. It might matter, however, for what comes next. When we look to see what, if anything, can be done it would be useful to know if these 13 million are fretting about their health care being taken away or thankful that they are now allowed to opt out. My understanding is that it is the latter but I have not seen this clearly stated. This could also be an important distinction politically. Are these 13 million people saying "We have to get the Dems back so that they can re-instate the mandate" or are these 13 million saying "Thank God that the mandate is gone, we have to keep the Republicans in power so that the mandate stays dead" ? Or is their a split among the 13 million, some one way, some the other? Truly I do not know.


I think the answers matter.

[hrothgar]

kenberg, on 2017-December-02, 08:55, said:

Taking this one step at a time, focusing on the mandate, I want to get clarification on " take away health care from 13 million people ". Does it? Or does it allow 13 million people to opt out? Or is it something in between? As far as the effect on the ACA is concerned, whether it is taken away or they opt out probably doesn't matter, the ACA is dead either way. It might matter, however, for what comes next. When we look to see what, if anything, can be done it would be useful to know if these 13 million are fretting about their health care being taken away or thankful that they are now allowed to opt out. My understanding is that it is the latter but I have not seen this clearly stated. This could also be an important distinction politically. Are these 13 million people saying "We have to get the Dems back so that they can re-instate the mandate" or are these 13 million saying "Thank God that the mandate is gone, we have to keep the Republicans in power so that the mandate stays dead" ? Or is their a split among the 13 million, some one way, some the other? Truly I do not know.


I think the answers matter.

Traditionally, when people are evaluating changes like the new Republican tax plan, they do so over the course of a 10 year window.

So, when you are calculating the impact of the tax plan on the defict, you estimate

• How much would the National debt be in ten years time under tax plan A
  
• How much would the National debt be in ten years time under tax plan B

In this case, they are comparing

The number of people who would have insurance in 10 years time under plan A with the number of people who would have insurance under plan B.

The CBO has estimated that dropping the individual mandate would cause a death spiral, leading to 13 million more uninsured.

[kenberg]

hrothgar, on 2017-December-02, 09:08, said:

Traditionally, when people are evaluating changes like the new Republican tax plan, they do so over the course of a 10 year window.

So, when you are calculating the impact of the tax plan on the defict, you estimate

• How much would the National debt be in ten years time under tax plan A
• How much would the National debt be in ten years time under tax plan B

In this case, they are comparing

The number of people who would have insurance in 10 years time under plan A with the number of people who would have insurance under plan B.

The CBO has estimated that dropping the individual mandate would cause a death spiral, leading to 13 million more uninsured.

I see. I had not understood that the 13 million was over a 10 year window. I looked up the recent CBO report and I see that I did have it (sort of) right that this will be mostly due to individuals opting out. The report says it will come from opting out, but it also says part of the reason for opting out will be increased price. What I am trying to get at here is: What portion of the 13 million will be pleased by the end of the individual mandate? Even if they are pleased it does not follow that we should be pleased since unless we are just going to let people die we would like them to have insurance. It does matter though, if we are trying to count votes. If a political campaign is based on how awful it is that 13 million will no longer be insured because of the killed mandate and the 13 million are saying "Yeah great" there could be a problem with the message.

[hrothgar]

kenberg, on 2017-December-02, 10:58, said:

I see. I had not understood that the 13 million was over a 10 year window. I looked up the recent CBO report and I see that I did have it (sort of) right that this will be mostly due to individuals opting out. The report says it will come from opting out, but it also says part of the reason for opting out will be increased price. What I am trying to get at here is: What portion of the 13 million will be pleased by the end of the individual mandate? Even if they are pleased it does not follow that we should be pleased since unless we are just going to let people die we would like them to have insurance. It does matter though, if we are trying to count votes. If a political campaign is based on how awful it is that 13 million will no longer be insured because of the killed mandate and the 13 million are saying "Yeah great" there could be a problem with the message.

I am quite sure that there are a whole bunch of "young invincibles" who would prefer to

1. Not contribute towards insurance
2. Pray that they don't have an accident
3. Take advantage of the fact that emergency rooms are legally obligated to treat them when the roll snake eyes
4. Declare bankrucpty to escape their debt

In much the same way, there are lots of people who would very much prefer not to drive without auto-insurance.

Me, I'd be MUCH better off if I didn't need to contribute towards social security. (I have lots of money in the bank, my rate of return is better than what the Social Security administration is likely to provide, and when I die I can pass that money on to someone else.

This is why you NEED to have things like the individual mandate...
Because sets of actions that are efficient for profit maximizing individuals don't create systems that work well for society as a whole...

[Winstonm]

kenberg, on 2017-December-02, 10:58, said:

I see. I had not understood that the 13 million was over a 10 year window. I looked up the recent CBO report and I see that I did have it (sort of) right that this will be mostly due to individuals opting out. The report says it will come from opting out, but it also says part of the reason for opting out will be increased price. What I am trying to get at here is: What portion of the 13 million will be pleased by the end of the individual mandate? Even if they are pleased it does not follow that we should be pleased since unless we are just going to let people die we would like them to have insurance. It does matter though, if we are trying to count votes. If a political campaign is based on how awful it is that 13 million will no longer be insured because of the killed mandate and the 13 million are saying "Yeah great" there could be a problem with the message.

Basically, the only people who will be happy are young people who think they don't need insurance and the wealthy who receive the benefits of the tax bill. The 280 million or so rest of us get a royal screwing.

[PassedOut]

Those of us who do buy insurance will wind up paying for emergency room care for those who don't, as it was before. The reason that dropping the mandate produces revenue to offset the loss of revenue from dropping the corporate rate and eliminating the estate tax is that the government won't be subsidizing insurance for those who drop it -- leaving the responsible insurance buyers holding the bag for the freeloaders -- as it was before the ACA.