“There are no longer any good outcomes for McConnell — politically speaking. There are bad ones and less bad ones. And putting the onus on other senators means there will be more blame to go around when all of it comes to an end.”
…
The effort to “repeal and immediately replace” Obamacare “will not be successful,” McConnell admitted. In its place in the coming days, he would call for a vote to open debate on the House-passed bill — unpopular among most senators — with the aim of amending that bill with the straight-up repeal bill that his more conservative members desire.
…
He was giving the conservatives the chance to vote on a straight-up repeal. But first they would have to record their vote for a House bill they loathe.
[with no guarantees that the amendments attached to the bill as a result of the open debate will be the ones they want – a repeal amendment that may not pass versus other possible amendments that could pass]
It’s all about shifting blame. If ultraconservatives vote “no” = no debate, McConnell can put the blame on their shoulders. If the ultraconservatives vote “yes” = start a debate on the House bill, they are potentially back in business if enough moderates vote “yes,” too. Either way, McConnell has given himself options for finger-pointing and lessening the effect of his failure on his power.
Robby Mook, Clinton’s 2016 campaign chief, and Matt Rhoades, who managed the 2012 run of GOP nominee Romney, are heading up the project at the Harvard Kennedy School’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs in one of the first major efforts outside government to grapple with 21st century hacking and propaganda operations — and ways to deter them.
…
The bipartisan project aims to develop ways to share key threat information with political campaigns and state and local election offices; create “playbooks” for election officials to improve cybersecurity; and forge strategies for the United States to deter adversaries from engaging in hacks and information operations, among other things.
…
During the 2016 campaign, the Obama administration struggled to win buy-in from several GOP state election officials for offers of help from the Department of Homeland Security to secure their electoral systems. Several officials objected on grounds that such help would represent a federal takeover of the states’ role managing elections.
The initiative leaders say they have spoken with state officials from both parties, and hope that as a bipartisan, nongovernmental group they will be able to win cooperation and trust where the federal government could not.
Per Wikipedia: Arthur “Art” Buchwald was an American humorist best known for his long-running column in The Washington Post, which in turn was carried as a syndicated column in many other newspapers. His column focused on political satire and commentary.
Gov. John Kasich’s statement on the Senate health care reform bill posted to his Twitter account on 7/14/17:
Vice President Mike Pence seemed to respond to Kasich’s criticism of the bill during a speech on Friday to the National Governors Association. Pence mentioned Kasich’s name….
“In Ohio alone,” Pence said, “nearly 60,000 disabled citizens are stuck in waiting lists (for Medicaid), leaving them without the care they need for months or even years.” Although the transcript is not clear, Pence seemed to suggest that Kasich must be “very troubled” by that wait list.
The waiting lists Pence referred to apply to Medicaid’s home and community-based services, and have not been affected by the program’s expansion under the ACA. States have long had waiting lists for these services, and the Henry Kaiser Family Foundation’s executive vice president, Diane Rowland, noted that waiting lists in non-expansion states are often longer than in expansion states, which currently receive a 95 percent federal match for their newly covered beneficiaries.
Kasich spokesman Jon Keeling said in an interview that Pence’s suggestion that 60,000 disabled Ohioans remain on waiting lists “is not accurate,” adding that to suggest Medicaid expansion hurt the state’s developmentally disabled “system is false, as it is just the opposite of what actually happened.”
In raw figures, Ohio raised the ceiling income for Medicaid eligibility for the aged, blind and disabled from $7,603 to $8,910. At the same time, the state liberalized the asset limit — that is, how much an enrollee could own outside of a car and house — to $2,000 from $1,500.
Want some points to argue against “Obamacare is imploding!” rhetoric? The LA Times has an interesting article for you.
Basically, the probability of being in a county with only one insurance option for the exchanges increases significantly if you have a Republican governor. Not including North Carolina that has only had a Democratic governor since January, if you live in a state with a Democratic governor you have a “1.8% probability of only having a singer insurer” in the exchange. If you live in a state with a Republican governor, “there is a 20.7%” chance.
There “two main ways in which Republic governors have been effective in sabotaging Obamacare”:
Refusing to expand Medicaid:
which pulls many lower-income people out of the exchanges – “people who tend to be less healthy and have higher medical bills on average.”
It reduces the risk to exchange insurers to have “this higher-cost population” out of the exchanges.
Neglecting to promote Obamacare:
less health people don’t need to be advertised to, they know they need insurance
more healthy people need the advertisement to buy into the system and balance out the risk.
fewer healthy people in the exchanges increases risk and decreases profitability for the insurers.
And thirdly, being a pain to work with doesn’t help:
Republican governors and insurance commissioners “were often less cooperative with insurance companies”
Democratic governors cajoled insurers to enter and stay and meet “reasonable regulatory concerns”
If you’re reading this, you might be in that market. The prospective student whom BJU is recruiting most “aggressively” is most likely non-white, working class, often lives in South Carolina (because the state funds are easiest to transfer), and needs scholarship funds to attend college.
These prospective students are new to Bob Jones University and perhaps new to fundamentalism entirely.
Successful applicants will receive a scholarship in the name of the Christian Learning Centers for the balance of their tuition bill, less $2,000, which equals approximately 7.5 hours per week worked in an on-campus job during the academic year. This is a tuition-only scholarship… .
The exact scholarship amount will be the balance due after Pell grants, state scholarships, BJU aid and the $2,000 work component are deducted from the cost of tuition. The Christian Learning Centers will also inform winning students of on-campus job opportunities to help fulfill the work component. While the scholarship is not dependent on employment, we feel the work component makes the scholarship students feel more vested in their educations, and thus, more likely to succeed.
An applicant must … qualify as a minority under the scholarship guidelines from BJU.
So wait a second. Bob Jones University is offering “work scholarships” only to minority students. White students don’t work those jobs?
Let’s summarize this again:
There’s a set of scholarship monies available to students of color at Bob Jones University only if they work on campus.
Still don’t believe it? According to the Greenville News, the Phillis Wheatley Center “students” – a local African-American community center in Greenville’s Nicholtown – as well as a similar group in Orlando have been offered these same “work scholarships.”
John Matthews, BJU’s VP for Advancement, explains:
There are students particularly in the inner cities, usually students of color, that the university wants to be part of their student body “but they’re going to need extra help.”
“The university, in recent years, has been giving more and more money away to make it affordable but there’s still a gap for students to get here. The EFC Zero scholarship is meant to be one last scholarship fund that we can give to students on top of all the other funds we’re giving away to make it affordable for a student who has no money to give to come to college,” he said.
The scholarship is called the EFC Zero Scholarship because EFC, the Expected Family Contribution, is the government’s term when a family completes the FAFSA, the entry door for finding available financial aid for college., Matthews said. It’s also when the government determines if the “zero” dollars to contribute to college costs, he said.
“We find young people willing to work a little bit. We have jobs we supply where students can work minimum wage and above and earn about $2,000 a year to help pay for college,” Matthews said.
No other students at Bob Jones University are offered work scholarships except students of color. White students work in campus job programs unconnected to their tuition. Students of color get scholarships if they work on campus.
Prospective student of color, is this what you want for your college career?
Having lived in Gville and seen and interacted with the Bob Jones community, I’m not surprised. They’re very active in local politics and are the prime movers behind the resistance to enacting the holiday recognizing MLK. I once overheard a member refer to MLK as “a heretic” and was reassured that, unlike other people around here, “they” wouldn’t hold the fact that I was raised Catholic against me.
On the surface they preach God’s love and most often interact in a very warm, Southernly manner. Make no mistake, though, it is a cult, and they feel completely justified in some pretty horrific ways of thinking.
Hearseeno 