You likely heard that retired Army Gen. Barry McCaffrey expressed deep concern over Gen. Michael Flynn’s appointment as National Security Advisor after reviewing some of Flynn’s “demented” tweets. Just a few moments ago McCaffrey appeared on MSNBC, seemingly at least partly reassured, after getting a “long email” from Flynn explaining himself.
I’ve mentioned this point a few times. But there are the details. Why the rush to repeal the ACA even if there’s a notional long ‘transition period’? Simple. Repealing the ACA produces a huge tax cut for the wealthiest Americans. We’ve noted that. What few have noted is that by killing the funding now, the GOP is all but guaranteeing there will never be a replacement for Obamacare and that the 20 to 30 million American who lose their insurance now will ever get it back. Think about it. The GOP is asking people to believe that they will pass a major tax hike in 2018 to fund their ‘replacement’ for Obamacare. Here are the details.
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This is from a just released Pew Poll …
A second major issue likely to be considered by the 115th Congress – possible changes to Medicare – has not resonated widely with the public. Overall, only about half of the public (51%) has heard a lot (12%) or a little (39%) about a proposal to change Medicare to a program that would give future participants a credit toward purchasing private health insurance. About as many either have heard nothing (48%) or don’t know (1%).
Since Donald Trump’s surprise election one month ago, there’s been a bubbling conversation about the mammoth conflicts of interest he will have if he is running or even owning his far flung business enterprises while serving as the head of state. I’ve suggested that the whole notion of ‘conflicts of interest’ doesn’t really capture what we’re dealing with here, which is really a pretty open effort to leverage the presidency to expand his family business. But a couple things came together for me today which make me think we’ve all missed the real issue.
There’s something disturbing about Tulsi Gabbard.
Gabbard has something of a dissident stance within the Democratic party. She resigned from the DNC during the primaries over claims of bias against Bernie Sanders. She very conspicuously met with President-elect Trump a couple weeks ago. She’s very critical of President Obama’s foreign policy which she calls a “neo-con” foreign policy. These all seem like reasonable critiques, though not all ones I’d agree with.
But she just answered a question on CNN that struck me as very troubling and made me see some of her earlier comments in a different light. It was about the number of generals Donald Trump is putting in senior cabinet positions.
Millions of people’s lives and livelihoods are on the line. So it’s not funny. But if there weren’t such dire real world consequences, Paul Ryan’s current flimflam would be straight up hilarious. Repealing Obamacare has immediate real world consequences. It will trigger providers to leave the system. It will deprive between 20 and 30 million people of the health care coverage they now have. (Here are the details of who loses their coverage, down to the state level.)
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Meet Trump’s pick for Labor secretary, CEO of the company that owns Carl’s Jr.:
I like our ads. I like beautiful women eating burgers in bikinis. I think it’s very American. I used to hear, brands take on the personality of the CEO. And I rarely thought that was true, but I think this one, in this case, it kind of did take on my personality.
Yesterday we learned that Donald Trump is having members of his presidential transition sign non-disclosure agreements. During the campaign he said that presidential appointees and nominees should, too, because he doesn’t like the idea of members of a government being critical after they leave the government. The key is that the transition, unlike the campaign, is a government entity. It has a government budget, access to government services, government offices, government emails etc. I am not sure of its technical standing or whether there is much relevant case law. But it is definitely not a private entity like a campaign.