The new wrinkle today in the House GOP’s desperate effort to round up enough votes to repeal Obamacare is another proposed amendment to the bill. It is designed to win over moderates but would actually do very little to move the dial on the key policy imperatives of the bill. It’s important to understand that because the tone and tenor of the political coverage will tend to downplay it. It’s much more fun to cover the will they or won’t they get the votes and the shuttle diplomacy up and down Pennsylvania Avenue than to grapple with the underlying policy implications of the bill.
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I wanted to share some background perspective on The Trumpcare Long March and whether there’s a chance Trump will still be able to repeal Obamacare and toss 20+ million off their healthcare care coverage. Read More
Trump to meet with two key House GOPers opposed to Trumpcare.
Trump lashes out at Clinton and Comey in late night Twitter outburst.
It seems Sebastian Gorka isn’t quite fired after all. And it’s Trump himself who’s protecting him.
EXCLUSIVE: Dr. Gorka tells @JakeTurx that he personally met with @POTUS on Monday and got assurances that he’s not being asked to step down. pic.twitter.com/2gVFtRZ8fF
— Ami Magazine (@Ami_Magazine) May 2, 2017
Here’s how ridiculous the Trumpcare 3.0 situation has gotten. A few minutes ago, Rep. Rodney Davis was on MSNBC telling plain falsehoods, lying about Obamacare and also – in a weird mix of plaintiveness and disingenuousness – complaining that the Democrats in the House weren’t coming forward to help them repeal Obamacare.
Beyond the disingenuousness, he actually seemed slightly sad because their situation is so hapless and helpless.
Here’s the video … Read More
I wanted to share some thoughts on the role of bigness and monopolies in our lives today. I want to preface this by noting that what you’ll read here are things that many of you have almost certainly experienced yourselves. They are most definitely what we call ‘first world problems.’ My point in sharing them is not to say ‘woe is me’ but to describe some basic and recurring experiences which illustrate a larger point.
Let’s talk about buying cable and Internet service, shall we? Read More
The fun thing for Republicans about this morning’s push to pass Trumpcare 3.0 in the House is that it’s so close that basically each of the remaining undecided Republicans will reasonably be the “deciding” vote that lost health care for 20+ million people and got rid of protections for people with pre-existing conditions. So not, “House Republicans passed” it. But you, Rep. X cast the deciding vote that lost these 20+ million people lost their health care. You did it. It was you.
Fun times. Read More
I post this not tied to any immediate issue but because I found it as interesting as TPM Reader JL did. I will say that it ties pretty clearly to an issue that I’m thinking a lot about and plan to write more about: monopolies and their role in today’s economy.
The following is not especially relevant to any of the topics I see on TPM but thought you’d be interested.
So … something I’ve been increasingly aware of and which strikes me as hugely important is the influence of the Megatech Gang of Five: Alphabet, Amazon, Apple, Facebook, and Microsoft. I think the MTG5 will increasingly dominate huge parts of the technology world because of their vast scale. They have immense resources to invest in the future of AI, virtual reality, etc., etc. And because they all touch so many aspects of our digital lives (“our” including businesses as well as individuals) they have the incentive to continue to do so.
Take a look at this article in Politico. There’s not really much I can add to it. It simply goes through the run of interviews President Trump did yesterday, replete with random statements, predictions that deeply unsettled either world markets or foreign states and generally seemed to be the work of a man simply tossing off ideas, rambling or simply drifting in and out of consciousness. Perhaps he was experiencing some sort of collapse of cognition.