Tag Archives: Daily Kos

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Cartoon: Jesus rebranded


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Good news from the Trayvon Martin tragedy


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Keep fighting, Sarah Burris, Daily Kos

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Tell YOUR House Rep.to Please sign the discharge petition


 

Daily Kos
Daily Kos (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Please join with Daily Kos and the Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee (DLCC) by sending an email to your member of the House of Representatives, telling him or her to sign the discharge petition that would force a vote on ending the Bush tax cuts for the wealthiest 2%. Click here to send an email.

House Republican leaders are refusing to hold a vote on ending the Bush tax cuts for the wealthiest 2%. However, there is a way we can get around them and force a vote to take place.

If 218 members of the House of Representatives sign what is known as a “discharge petition,” then the House will have to hold a vote, no matter what Republican leaders think.

House Democrats filed a discharge petition on Tuesday, and already 178 members have signed it. We only need 40 more.

Please join with Daily Kos and the DLCC by emailing your member of the House of Representatives, telling him or her to sign the discharge petition, or thanking him or her for signing it.

Keep fighting,
Chris Bowers
Campaign Director, Daily Kos
P.S. Please help keep Daily Kos strong by chipping in $3.
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Medicare Advantage …


Medicare Advantage is George Bush’s plan to “privatize” Medicare and it FAILED.

Posted by Steven Bradley:

Paul Ryan‘s plan doubles down on this failed plan to “privatize Medicare” giving millions to insurance companies.

In contrast President Obama gives savings back to seniors by filling the prescription “donut hole.”

Ryan proposes giving all the donuts ($) to the insurance companies.

“Medicare Advantage” failed to reduce costs through competition in the marketplace. Costs under these “Advantage” plans skyrocketed as expenditures for things like “health club memberships” were incurred to entice membership.

The Republican plan is real “crony capitalism.” It feeds profits and waste back into an already bloated insurance industry.

Don’t let Republican ads fool you into thinking that “Medicare Advantage” and “Medicare” are the same thing.

The privatization of Medicare through Medicare Advantage is a bad idea.

It’s an idea that has already been proven a failure.

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Further information below

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The Affordable Care Act — The law makes significant reductions to Medicare Advantage, a subset of Medicare plans run by private insurers. Medicare Advantage was started under President George W. Bush, and the idea was that competition among the private insurers would reduce costs. But in recent years the plans have actually cost more than traditional Medicare. So the health care law scales back the payments to private insurers.

http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2012/sep/06/bill-clinton/clinton-says-ryan-attacked-obama-medicare-cuts-ref/

Note:

This article shared on the Daily Kos under pen name “Jack Ryan”.  Share it with others on Facebook, twitter, and in e-mail.

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2012/10/24/1149298/-Medicare-Advantage-is-George-Bush-s-plan-to-privatize-Medicare-and-it-FAILED

Let people know “Medicare Advantage” is no advantage at all.  It depletes Medicare funds for all.  Republican political candidates are presenting the “reining in of exorbitant costs of this private insurance plan (Medicare Advantage) as cuts to Medicare.

REPUBLICAN MEDICARE LIE EXPOSED

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a message from Alan Grayson … unemployment


I recently happened to be at an event where billionaire George Soros was being interviewed. The right wing hates Soros because he is: (a) liberal, (b) rich, and (c) fearless. [I could also make a case that they hate Soros because he is (d) Jewish, but I leave that up to you.]

Soros said a lot of things, but he said two sentences that I wish that everyone could hear. This is what he said:

“You can’t cut your way out of a recession. You have to grow your way out of a recession.”

The simple truth in those nineteen words seems to have eluded our policymakers, both Democratic and Republican, for the past four years. Here is a chart that proves it:

The chart has been featured regularly at Daily Kos, but it comes from the Calculated Risk Blog. It graphs job losses during and following each post-WWII recession, month by month, as a percentage of total employment.

As you can see, the job losses in America since 2008 are not only the worst in postwar history, but also feature the weakest “recovery.” In every single other recession, employment returned to peak levels in less than four years. (In fact, leaving aside the Bush Recession of 2001, employment returned to peak levels in less than three years.) Yet here we are, four years after the Great Recession started, still almost four percentage points under peak employment.

Which is five million jobs. Five million people who can’t find work. Five million people with no income.

So, as Soros and I might ask on Passover, “why is this recession different from all other recessions?” There is a simple answer: the austerity fetish. The bizarre notion that cutting is healing.

The Wall Street Journal recently confessed that without local government layoffs – police officers, firefighters, teachers and others – unemployment would be a full percentage point lower. I think that that’s an underestimate. If those police officers and firefighters and teachers still had jobs, we would be safer, and our children smarter. But beyond that, as those public employees spent their earnings, a lot of carpenters and waiters and real estate agents and cashiers would be able to get back to work.

And we have no one to blame but the cut-cut-cut policymakers, in whichever party. As Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman put it three weeks ago:

Consider, if you will, the current state of our nation. Despite hints of economic progress, we’re still in the midst of an immense disaster, in which unemployment and underemployment are devastating millions of American lives. And none of this need be happening! There has been no plague of locusts; we have not lost our technological know-how. Americans should be richer, not poorer, than they were five years ago. Yet economic policy across the board has become almost passive, has essentially accepted this disaster instead of trying to end it.

Soros and Krugman are right. It’s time to end this man-made economic disaster. It’s time to stop slashing our own economic wrists. It’s time for jobs.

Courage,

Alan Grayson