To put it simply, Assad is most likely going to win this. Hizbollah has clearly turned the facts on the ground for him, and Syrian public opinion appears to have decisively turned against the rebels. 10% support is too low, it can keep them going low-grade, but it’s not sufficient to win it. This is [...]
Let us begin our wonderful journey of discovery to find out how the PPACA (Patient Protection and Affordable Care act, commonly known as ObamaCare) is going to work out for you and me and people like us.*
* * *Q: How much are penalties for non-compliance with the ACA’s mandate, and how do they work?
A: You pay whichever is less: (1) The national average of the Bronze plan, or (2) a penalty.
For the penalty, you pay whichever is greater: (a) A dollar amount or (b) a percentage of income, pro-rated by the number of months you were not covered. (So, if the dollar amount were $95 — as itsometimes will be — and you were not covered for three months, the penalty would be $95 / 3 = $31.)
The dollar amount and the percentage of income are both phased in, starting with the Federal taxes you pay for 2014, in 2015. (The dollar amount, at least next year, is almost certainly less than the Bronze plan, even if we don’t have a Bronze plan to look at.) After phase-in, the dollar amount is adjusted for COLA. You pay the penalty at tax time. However, the IRS can’t put a lien or levy on you if you don’t pay the penalty.
This a little more complicated than the story you read in the press, and may cost you more money than you think. Spoiler alert: You could end up paying more than $95, which is the figure everybody quotes. I’m going to focus mostly on what happens next year, before the complete structure of penalties for non-compliance phases in.
This post introduces and explains a new series, “PPACA FAQ” which is a joint venture between The Confluence and Corrente. lambert, the proprietor of Corrente, is the author and “I” in the post below:
KatieBird and I, with assists from Hipparchia and Rainbow Girl, are starting a new series, whose title is as you see:
PPACA is, of course, the “Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act” which, being none of those things (except a big Act), is informally known as ObamaCare.
What motivates Republicans? Winning. That’s all they care about. They play to win.
You can never turn your back on them.
The 2012 election may have illustrated where their high water mark is. They may never be able to capture the popular vote again in their lifetime. But they managed to gerrymander the House so it makes little difference anyway.
And why do they want to win soooooo badly? Why does anyone want to win? It’s power and control. When you win, no one can make you pay taxes. That’s the gist of it. It doesn’t really matter what happens to the rest of the country and all of the pitiful sob stories of downtrodden workers and students indentured for the rest of their lives. They don’t need to care about that as long as they got what they spent all that money to achieve and that is control. Control over their lives, completely unfettered from the responsibilities towards others. That is worth a small fortune.
So, the NYTimes seems a little baffled as to why the Democrats waited so long before explicitly spelling out what the sequester was going to mean to state and local governments. The NYTimes is surprised that the Democrats underestimated and misunderstood the Republicans- again:
The White House released warningsfor every state on Sunday in the hope that angry voters would besiege Republican lawmakers like Mr. McConnell and the House speaker, John Boehner, to stop the $85 billion in cuts, known as a sequester. President Obama wants to replace the sequester with a mix of tax increases on the rich and less damaging spending reductions. Republicans say they won’t consider any proposal that isn’t all cuts, so the sequester is all but certain to begin this week.
The White House strategy on the sequester was built around a familiar miscalculation about Republicans. It assumed that, in the end, they would be reasonable and negotiate a realistic alternative to indiscriminate cuts. Because the reductions hurt defense programs long held sacrosanct by Republicans, the White House thought it had leverage that would reduce the damage to the domestic programs favored by Democrats.
It turns out, though, that the defense hawks in the party are outnumbered. More Republicans seem to care about reducing spending at all costs, and the prospect of damaging vital government programs does not seem to bother them. “Fiscal questions trump defense in a way they never would have after 9/11,” Representative Tom Cole, a Republican of Oklahoma, told The Times. “But the war in Iraq is over. Troops are coming home from Afghanistan, and we want to secure the cuts.”
[...]
The White House should have released these kinds of details months ago, when there was more time to make a strong case to the public against these cuts. Instead, administration officials failed to discuss the consequences, fearing political blame while confidently predicting the Republicans would cave. The result of that miscalculation — and of the Republican disdain for the health of the economy and those who depend on government services — will become clearer in just a few days.
Ok, hold the phone for a sec. Isn’t it the mainstream press that is always encouraging, cajoling, mocking, screaming, insisting that the Democrats “compromise” in some mysterious “bipartisan” fashion with the Republicans?? Why is the NYTimes surprised that the Republicans insist on nothing but cuts? Why is that a shock at all to the paper of record? Hasn’t it been reading its own news? This is what Republicans do.
Republicans have made no secret about the fact that they want to cut their way out of any kind of shackles to the rest of the country. It’s been staring us in the face for decades now.
So, now they are going to force the president to cut. Duh.
And he’s going to do it. Because he’s not as smart as all the 25 year old male Democratic activist assholes thought he was. Oh, sure, he’s academic smart, sort of, but he’s not politically smart. He’s no Bill Clinton.
Oh, THAT’S right. We’re not supposed to like politically gifted people. I mean, why would we need a politician as president? That’s so 20th century.
And sure the public is going to get all mad and stuff at the cuts. But they’re not going to get mad at Republicans. Noooo, they’re going to get mad at Democrats. They’re going to get mad because there’s a Democratic president in the White House and the Senate is controlled by Democrats. The Republicans only own the House. Even the dullest Joey Bagodonuts out there can freaking count.
But Republicans are going to step it up even more. Yeah, they’re not stupid. They’re going to let go of their resistance to marriage equality. Of course they are. That’s a no-brainer. Sure their base is foaming at the mouth, offensively homophobic. But their base is dying. They only used their base so they could engineer as much power as they could in the form of the gerrymander. They don’t need them now.
How does that make you feel, you so-called Christians? How does it make you feel that you’ve compromised every Christian virtue and become the intolerant, vicious, judgmental, mean spirited, ugly people that the Republicans goaded you to become only to be discarded when the Republicans realized that you were a drag on them?
And now that they’ve embraced marriage equality for gay couples, that’s just going to highlight the problems that the Democrats have with women. And they DO have a problem. It’s massive. Why do you think Hillary Clinton is still popular in spite of all efforts by the party (and it’s her own party that’s doing it) to crush her? It’s because women are desperate for some kind of rational human being with ovaries to stand up for them. So, we can confidently predict that the next candidate for the Democrats is going to be female. But unless she’s Hillary, who already resisted the siren song of the financier class only to be publicly humiliated by them in 2008, the female Democratic candidate is going to be compromised by them. We’ll probably end up with some Kathleen Sebellius type who will continue to act like the presidency is some student council position where the status quo prevails and rocking the boat is not allowed.
I don’t even want to think about what is going to happen next year when the ACA kicks in and a whole new class of people are pissed off about what a mess healthcare reform is without cost controls. Not only that but I believe the the McKinsey report about employers using it as an excuse to lay people off. In fact, just signing the law was an excuse to lay people off far enough in advance so that there will be no obvious correlation when workers are hired back as contractors responsible for their own damn healthcare. It’s a corporate shareholder’s wet dream to go “weightless”. How conveeeeenient that it all happens during an election year and Fox News is not dead yet.
This is what you get when you put a bunch of 25 year old male activists in charge of the party and have them enthralled to the Machiavellian power brokers and Republican carpetbagging financier donors of that party. You get a president who doesn’t have a clue about how to play even one dimensional chess against the Republicans during the worst economic crisis in 80 years.
Marriage is, of course, a vitally important institution, and one supported by the federal government through benefits and other programs that rely on marital status. An interest in preserving marriage as limited to heterosexual persons, however, does not justify Section 3. Tradition, no matter how long established, cannot by itself justify a discriminatory law under equal protection principles.
WASHINGTON — The Obama administration on Friday proposed yet another compromise to address strenuous objections from religious organizations about a policy requiring health insurance plans to provide free contraceptives, but the change did not end the political furor or legal fight over the issue.
The proposal could expand the number of groups that do not need to pay directly for birth control coverage, encompassing not only churches and other religious organizations, but also some religiously affiliated hospitals, universities and social service agencies. Health insurance companies would pay for the coverage.
The latest proposed change is the third in the last 15 months, all announced on Fridays, as President Obama has struggled to balance women’s rights, health care and religious liberty. Legal experts said the fight could end up in the Supreme Court.
Kathleen Sebelius, the secretary of health and human services, said the proposal would guarantee free coverage of birth control “while respecting religious concerns.”
Now, I am delighted that the LGBT community’s argument that traditional marriage is just “traditional” is getting the recognition it deserves. That tradition is usually based on religious principles that many of us don’t subscribe to and in actuality, those religious principles undermine marriage and family integrity.
But I can’t for the life of me figure out why women are so damn powerless with the Obama administration and why the argument “Tradition, no matter how long established, cannot by itself justify a discriminatory law under equal protection principles” gets no traction with the White House when applied to over half the Americans in this country . Tradition is destiny for women in Obama’s America.
Where is NOW now that their Feminist in Chief is traditionalizing the religious role of women in American society? And why are people like Culture of Truth mum on that subject?
The title was inspired by one of Katiebird’s text messages. One of my neighbors smelled burning rubber and called the fire department. It could have been just a fascinating but horrific thing to watch, except that all of our houses are connected. A fire broke out in a row of townhouses in the next development over and took out eight units. So not cool.
Anyway, I went out to take pictures to document the event and didn’t smell anything but apples and cinnamon from her unit. She has elementary school aged kids and I’m assuming they eat a lot of Mott’s. No fire. No smoke. She must be having a seizure. I hear you can get funny smells just before one.
Doesn’t John Roberts suffer from seizures? I think I remember reading that somewhere. He was on vacation and had one. Odd, I thought, but probably happens to everyone at least once in a lifetime. This was not the case with Roberts, if I remember correctly. He has had more than one. Anyway, probably no big deal. I’ve never heard of seizures turning a conservative into a liberal. But maybe it made him a bit more sympathetic to the people with pre-existing conditions who can’t get insurance. If Roberts didn’t have a lifetime appointment to the Supreme Court, he might very well be uninsurable due to his infrequent seizure history.
But then I started thinking about the pre-existing condition crowd and the Walker strategy in Wisconsin. My mind went on one of its unchaperoned frolics again. Wasn’t it Pelosi who said that the ACA was very carefully constructed? One of the questions put before the court was whether the ACA was severable. Could you strike down the individual mandate without affecting the young adult on parent’s insurance, anti-rescission and pre-existing conditions sections? I’m guessing that you really can’t because without the individual mandate, there is no mechanism for paying for the other provisions. So, striking down the mandate while leaving the other provisions intact, or striking the ACA down altogether, would have been pretty bad optics during the election year, especially for the Republicans. So, maybe the Democrats, with the helpful advice of the health insurance industry, have crafted a sort of divide and conquer strategy. In this case, the pre-existing condition crowd is coercing us to get onboard. We’ve been divided into two groups and the fate of one hinges on the other.
I can’t say I blame the pre-existing, anti-rescission crowd for desperately wanting the ACA to stand. The problem is that they seem to be incredibly happy to force the rest of us into extremely high premium plans without cost controls or competition. And because they are content and because their individual stories stir our sympathies, any attempt to change the ACA in the future may be very hard to do without a congressional hearing featuring an epileptic giving a gut wrenching story about how lowering the costs for millions of Americans would negatively impact their healthcare needs. It doesn’t even have to be true. The health insurance industry will use it as a fear tactic to keep rates high for all of us. Make one false move and the grand mal cases get it first. That’s how propaganda and manipulation has worked for politicians in the past. They’re good at this stuff. But in this case, I think the Democrats who constructed this policy were in on it too. They will use the vulnerable to force the rest of us into high cost private insurance. There will not be an affordable alternative with cost controls and competition until this crop of Democrats are gone.
I’m glad that people who weren’t previously covered now have what they need. But I fear that they took whatever they could get and what happened to the rest of us really didn’t matter. That strategy has been successful so expect the same thing to happen to Social Security as well.
The fallout of this law won’t hit us for awhile but it’s coming. There’s only so much blood you can extract from Americans before there is nothing left to tap. We are losing our standard of living, some of us sharply, in the past decade. Everything costs too much, not because of inflation so much but because we just don’t have money anymore. Housing isn’t really getting any cheaper, gas prices stay stuck on “high”, home heating and cooling- ridiculous. Fees for everything are skyrocketing. Everytime you turn around, some private entity or public utility has their hands out for more. Student loans are burdensome. And now, everyone will be forced to buy private health insurance like we are forced to buy auto insurance. We’ll be made to feel irresponsible if we don’t forgo every other responsibility in our lives to make our payments on time. How much can we afford to cut back on food, clothing, education, etc, before it just isn’t sustainable anymore? Did the Democrats give any thought to this while the industry lobbyists and professional orgs were lining their pockets and whispering sweet nothings in their ears?
BTW, the silver lining in all of this is that the price of prescription drugs is probably going to fall quite a bit because new drugs aren’t getting approved, leaving us with more and more cheaper generics. So, whatever you think of big pharma, they’re not going to make out all that well under the ACA unless they produce the generics themselves and keep the prices artificially higher than they might have otherwise been.
The whole scenario reminds me of an article I saw in Forbes or one of those financey type journals recently about how you know when a company is on its way out. Unfortunately, I neglected to instapaper it. But I do remember the general idea. At some point, the irrational exuberance that went to the heads of the owners after they have a couple of lucky breaks starts to hit reality. Scoring a big one and growing larger without thinking down the road about sustainability leads to desperate measures to shore up profits, eventually leading to the company eating its own and going under. By the time they realize their mistakes from two steps back, it’s generally too late to do anything to correct course. That’s what’s happening to Pfizer right now and the pharma industry in general. But I could see it happening to the Democrats as well. They thought they scored the big kahuna when they got Obama elected and they let it go to their head with the ACA. But they haven’t put the work into fixing the underlying problems with healthcare in this country and there is only so much money that can be extracted from Americans before impoverishing us reaches its limits. There is a finite amount of money and we are hitting it. That puts us in an even tighter spot in the future when employers can no longer afford to offer benefits, more people get hired on as contractors, wages refuse to rise, more money gets siphoned off to big insurance companies, the rest of the economy struggles because no one can afford to buy anything but the bare necessities and the cycle continues to have an impact on business.
There’s going to be a reckoning for failing to tackle the big interests that stand in the way of lower cost health care for everyone. You can’t delay the inevitable forever. And some of us voters are getting sick of being invisible to the politicians who are not giving us their best efforts and taking the political risks that are necessary to make the system less exploitative. If you are a politician and you went into it to be a good public servant, part of that commitment means you may have to fall on your sword to do the right thing. Do it or get out.
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Re: The Waldo Canyon Fire in Colorado Springs
Will the Republicans and Libertarians finally see the light in Colorado Springs? Will the prayer of thousands of religious conservatives prevent destruction followed by looting? Probably not but maybe hiring more police and firemen might. Hey, where are all those brave vigilantes when you need them?
Oh, well. Maybe they can all retreat to their churches and ride it out. But do these churches have an obligation to help everyone? What about gay couples who are burned out and their families? What about Muslims? Do they have to put up with a sermon, bow their heads and pray before eating, agree to be saved? Just curious. Inquiring minds want to know.
Quoth one:
“In this community that has seen so much division through the years, there’s a strong sense of unity that ‘we’re all in this together,’” Ridings said in an e-mail newsletter to EPA members. “From what I’m hearing, Christians in town are doing a wonderful job of living out Matthew 5:16, letting their lights so shine that others would see their good works – gifts of money and food, homes and churches as shelters – and glorifying God.”
Oh, please, gag me with a spoon. Is he saying that they wouldn’t be doing all of these things without God holding a stick over their heads? What does glorifying god have to do with anything? Presumably (wait for it), God will be credited for visiting his wrath on Colorado Springs for some offense after this is all over. What kind of psychopath is this god anyway?
BTW, I just love the bumperstickers that say, “Focus on your own damn family”
When all of this is over and Coloradans petition FEMA for emergency relief, it would teach them a lesson if we gave them a really hard time about it and held up some bill they were hoping for in order to get it or made all of the parishioners at New Life Church pee in a cup. Or made them sit in their own filth for days waiting for the national guard in a convention center or prevented them from traveling to Denver to stay with relatives. But that would be wrong. It would be wrong not because we are Christians but because we are AMERICANS and we are all in this together.
I doubt this lesson will sink into to the pious, self-righteous, hardass, stingy, snobs who live in Colorado Springs. Fortunately for them, fellow Americans who are in distress are not subject to intelligence or character tests.
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My “frolic” for today is to finish up the zillion projects I have going at one time. I will be busy. I’ve promised myself a dip in the pool later if I’m good. And then, I might take on this crazy idea: faking a Beni Ourain rug with a cheap wooly bully base layer from Lowes and some fabric dye. I must be nuts but I really like the look and I can’t afford to buy one for $6000. This solution is much more in my price range. This is what it will look like (Or something like it):
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One more thing: I rarely feature ads because they drive me crazy but this one has been popping up on my youtube subscriptions and I like it so much, I thought I’d share it. If you’ve ever been a parent of a driven kid, not necessarily an athletic one but one who trains themselves to do something with such an intensity that they are completely oblivious to the mess they are making, you’ll love this ad. Some of the kids in this commercial are amazing. But the setting is so ordinary. Just typical suburban living rooms, kitchens and hallways. The message is that spilled milk (or tuna wiggle, fruit compote and duck fries) is ok when it comes to your kids chasing their dreams. I agree. Anyway, kudos to Bounty. Great job. Now, if only your papertowels were a little less expensive…
Boehner: “What I’m concerned about is a law that’s driving up the cost of health care, and making it harder for employers to hire people.”
1.) The LAW doesn’t drive up the cost of health care. Rather, it does absolutely nothing to rein costs in. That’s what makes it such a bad law- it’s every Republican’s wet dream, including the opportunity to now call it a tax! It will now become the new political football between the parties, replacing the abortion bugaboo that’s just about run its course. You could say that like Roe v. Wade, the ACA is also one of those laws that is incomplete and doesn’t address the underlying issues but will be used as a proxy until we all cry uncle in 40 years. Except for the individual mandate, it doesn’t follow any of the principles of good health care policy which would include increased competition and cost controls.
2.) Employers find it hard to hire people because employees insist on getting paid. Many Republican politicians come from states that once didn’t pay people as a matter of principle.
Boehner: “The number one concern for families and small business people is the cost of health insurance, and the Republican health care reforms will in fact lower health care costs.”
HOW does that work, John? You guys don’t have a plan that doesn’t leave every man, woman and child vulnerable to high cost insurance plans or no plan at all. Come to think of it, this is what ACA does too, except now more people will have the opportunity to hand over their small personal fortunes and savings accounts to insurance companies. What is it Republicans have to be angry about? You’ve got nearly everything you ever wanted. Was it because a plan than no one but a Republican could love was forced upon you?
I want to move to Micronesia.
Update VI: I find myself hating the ACA because of the individual mandate even though in principle, I know that universal coverage is needed for a health care policy to be effective. The reason is that with the ACA, we have disincentivized competition and cost controls. Without those two pieces in the policy, this thing is going to feel like an albatross around the neck for the consumer and the Democratic party. Sure, you can go without a high cost policy but when you do end up going to the hospital for some emergency that could have been treated with a lower cost insurance plan, you’re going to get socked with a tax when you are least able to pay it.
The characteristics of good health care policy are not a mystery and yet, this president and his party has declined to implement them in this law. (See this excellent Frontline episode on what those characteristics are and how our elected officials have completely f^*(ed us over with the ACA)
As Lambert says, you can’t buff a turd. This is the worst of all worlds for the vast majority of people who are forced to buy insurance on the individual market. You’re made to feel irresponsible if you don’t put paying your health insurance the very first priority among a long list of monthly expenses. There is no public option, insurers are not required to offer a reasonably priced option, no Tricare, no Medicare for All, no mandatory expansion of Medicaid. And zero cost controls on hospitals or providers. You’re either a “have” or a “have-not” now.
Bottom line: Poor policy is no substitute for no policy, especially now that it has been “decided” and is “over”.
Thanks Dems. You deserve everything that’s coming to you.
Obama: For those who don’t currently have health insurance, “this law provides an array of quality affordable private health insurance plans to choose from.”
Define “affordable” and “quality”, or “array”. For that matter, why can’t we have a public option?
Obama: “Today the Supreme Court also upheld the principle People who can afford health insurance should take the responsibility to buy health insurance”
Has he seen what individual policies cost in NJ where the “array” starts at about $1000/month for a basic, high deductible policy?? Who the hell can afford that?!
“This decision is a victory for the American people,” said Representative Nancy Pelosi, the Democratic leader in the House. “With this ruling, Americans will benefit from critical patient protections, lower costs for the middle class [Really? That's not what my source in the health insurance business is saying. She says more consolidation among big companies, less competition], more coverage for families and greater accountability for the insurance industry.”
Jim Kessler, the senior vice president of Third Way, a liberal research group in Washington, said the president’s campaign team and his Democratic allies now had a challenge ahead of them to explain the ruling.
“I think it’s a big win for Obama if they handle it right,” Mr. Kessler said. “What they need to be saying is to declare that the fight is now over. It’s been decided by Congress. It’s been decided by the courts. This is now over. It’s in the past.”
You gotta give the Democrats credit for utter cluelessness. No one does it better. Yes, let’s craft an expensive, inadequate bill that burdens average Americans with private sector insurance premiums at a premium or slap them with a tax when they don’t pay it, and “tell them tough titties if they don’t like it because it’s over, looooosers. We’re done talking about conservative non-plans or medicare for all or public options. Did you hear us, nation? It’s OVER! Get in line, let’s Unify. ”People all over the world, join hands, get on a LOVE train, LOVE train…”
(Karl Rove sits in a corner and smiles like a Cheshire Cat.)
In a way, this concretizes (is that a word?) all of the worst aspects of insurance into law. There will be no competition. Sure, the insurance companies will gripe about not being able to deny coverage mercilessly but they’ll get over it.
{{damn}} I was really hoping for Tricare.
Update III: IANAL but this tweet by Dave Dayan concerns me greatly:
SCOTUSblog: “The individual mandate survives as a tax.” Does that mean the commerce clause version is dead, but a tax version conceivable?
Yes, this makes sense to me. In a way, we are all forced to pay into the medicare system even if we can’t use it until we get older. We pay for it with payroll taxes. So, if the universal mandate is to stand, it has to be through a similar tax. Otherwise, the ACA would force people to purchase insurance at whatever price the market would bear, which is what is happening now. So, would this push us *closer* to medicare for all?? What are the chances that this SCOTUS would actually do something positive for the public?
Or, are they anticipating a firestorm from the private sector and libertarians, as Digby has suggested? This might actually put Obama in more of a pickle this year if the answer is to raise taxes and spurn the free market. No one would be happy except the uninsured.
And who cares about them, right?
{{sneaky bastards}}
Other questions:
1.) If you don’t have a job, how can you pay the tax?
2.) Would there be a mechanism to pay the tax at time of service?
3.) Would this make it more or less likely that employer provided health insurance benefits would continue?
Amy Howe of SCOTUSblog sums it up this way:
In Plain English: The Affordable Care Act, including its individual mandate that virtually all Americans buy health insurance, is constitutional. There were not five votes to uphold it on the ground that Congress could use its power to regulate commerce between the states to require everyone to buy health insurance. However, five Justices agreed that the penalty that someone must pay if he refuses to buy insurance is a kind of tax that Congress can impose using its taxing power. That is all that matters. Because the mandate survives, the Court did not need to decide what other parts of the statute were constitutional, except for a provision that required states to comply with new eligibility requirements for Medicaid or risk losing their funding. On that question, the Court held that the provision is constitutional as long as states would only lose new funds if they didn’t comply with the new requirements, rather than all of their funding.
Soooo, is this a win for Romney? Or Obama? Does this mean that we still have to pay through the nose? Because that would be a loss for all of us, unless we get to pay a tax at the point of service, which wouldn’t be so bad if you set aside funds to cover it, I guess. But what kind of money are we talking about here?
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The ruling should be out sometime this morning and, presumably, all hell will break loose. If it stays intact, Romney will have to figure out a way of condemning pretty much the same healthcare bill he signed into law in Massachusetts. If it is rejected, in whole or in part, Obama is going to have to figure out how to run on a new “accomplishment”.
Either way, we’re stuck with outrageous health insurance bills.
So, to the poll:
What’s that you say, Bernie? Medicare for all? It’s short, it’s got a good beat, you can dance to it:
And the military has socialized medicine. {{snort!}} Yep, pretty much. I was raised on socialized medicine.
Jeffrey Toobin weighs in. He thinks the individual mandate is in jeopardy based on oral arguments.
Body: Dear Lord. Suit: McDonald's wages put on costly debit card A Pennsylvania woman has filed suit to avoid fees she may be charged to get her McDonald's wages from a debit card. Single mom Natalie Gunshannon has filed suit over bank fees that allegedly include $1.00 to check her balance, $1.50 to withdraw cash and $15 to replace a lost card. Th […]
I was cruising the sidebar at Making Light and very nearly didn't click the link to "The MOOC Moment and the End of Reform," which at first glance might seem to be an arcane discussion of an educational fad, until I realized it was an elegantly restrained and yet scathing analysis of how incredibly stupid ideas are normalized by the pseudo-int […]
What motivates Republicans? Winning. That’s all they care about. They play to win.
