TPM Reader JH has a personal story about Obamacare and distortions in the labor market. This didn’t come up explicitly in our stories today in the derptastically reported CBO report. But in addition to modestly strengthening the bargaining power of workers it is a big deal if more middle aged workers, who are near retirement, can retire without fear of losing health care coverage since that opens up slots for younger workers.
The CBO report suggesting that hours will be reduced now that people have another option for health insurance is certainly true in my situation. When my husband and I were raising our family I had to work in order to provide the family with health insurance as my husbands job did not provide insurance. I would have preferred to be a stay at home mother, but I did not have that option.
New CBO report shows Obamacare will likely drive up workers’ wages.
In their own words …
There’s a lot more fine print about what those numbers really mean, and whether the jobs were “lost.” But what matters politically is how they’ll look in attack ads. And in this election year, “2 million lost jobs” is a Republican ad maker’s dream.
Legendary GOP political operative, Nixon devotee and self-proclaimed practitioner of dark political arts, Roger Stone, is coming to the defense of David Wildstein who he says he’s known for more than 30 years. Stone says Wildstein is exactly “the kind of man you’d send to close down a bridge”, in contrast to Team Christie’s claim that Wildstein acted alone.
Yet another example of the shortcomings of most political reporters not knowing much about public policy. Republicans are hyping a CBO report claiming it says Obamacare will cost over 2 million jobs. Not what it says. It says that a lot of people who are in jobs partly or solely to hold on to health insurance will decide to drop out of the labor force.
PR company with ties to Gov. Chris Christie: We’re “wholly uninvolved” in the BridgeGate scandal, but we’re hiring a law firm anyway. (And oh, by the way, it’s Rudy Giuliani’s law firm.)
Ex-Republican oppo researcher Barbara Comstock, who was obsessed with bringing down the Clintons, has a decent shot at retiring Rep. Frank Wolf’s (R-VA) seat — that is, unless this guy who thinks Virginia should mint its own money runs. Then who knows who the Republican base will go for?
Read Daniel Strauss’ deep dive on Comstock’s attack dog past.
After Christie’s on-going self-immolation, Mike Huckabee is now the GOP frontrunner for 2016.
Fidel Castro, pushing 90, five plus years after relinquishing at least de jure power, voting to approve delegates to national and provincial assemblies. February 3rd, 2013.
Tell me again how successful that embargo has been?
Click the post headline to see full size photo.
Ed Kilgore: “Immediately after the retreat ended, House Republican Leader Eric Cantor went on Face the Nation, and pressed mildly by Major Garrett on these obvious subjects, collapsed into incoherence.”