monitoring Trump and relevant contemporary events

Counselor to the president Kellyanne Conway said Monday morning that she is unconcerned by any potential political repercussions that the Republican Party might suffer in upcoming elections as a result of the legislation to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act currently making its way through the House of Representatives.

Instead, Conway said, she is focused on helping those who she claimed have been hurt by former President Barack Obama’s signature healthcare legislation

“I'm not looking at a political calculation whatsoever now. I'm not thinking about the next election,” Conway said on ABC’s “Good Morning America.” “I'm thinking about the millions of Americans who don't have care and don't have coverage and who want it and need it and who were expecting it through
Obamacare.”

The White House and Republicans are bracing for bad news in the Congressional Budget Office score of the new GOP health plan, which could come as early as Monday. It is expected to find that the GOP effort — which President Trump has endorsed — could leave many millions without coverage, and on the Sunday shows, top Trump advisers sought to discredit the CBO’s finding in advance.

But all of this should be seen in a much larger context. We’re seeing a broad White House effort to corrode the very ideal of reality-based governing, something that includes not just a discrediting of institutions such as the CBO but also the weakening of the influence of science and data over agency decision-making and the deliberate misuse of our democracy’s institutional processes to prop up Trump’s lies about his popular support and political opponents...

thack45 wrote:

reality just keeps on being true.

Wealthy Would Get billions in Tax Cuts Under Obamacare Repeal Plan

...Two of the biggest tax cuts in Republican proposals to repeal the Affordable Care Act would deliver roughly $157 billion over the coming decade to those with incomes of $1 million or more. … People making $200,000 to $999,999 a year would also get sizable tax cuts. In total, the two provisions would cut taxes by about $274 billion during the coming decade, virtually all of it for people making at least $200,000.

America is now governed by a president and party that fundamentally don’t accept the idea that there are objective facts. Instead, they want everyone to accept that reality is whatever they say it is … what’s really at stake is whether ignorance is strength, whether the man in the White House is the sole arbiter of truth.

Tom Price: Republicans will use right-wing hackwork to pretend Trumpcare won’t take insurance away from millions. Critics have rightly noted that Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price lied on Meet the Press Sunday when he predicted “nobody will be worse off financially” under the American Health Care Act. This and other comments from leading Obamacare-repeal architects will haunt them for years if they somehow pass AHCA into law.
But Republicans have been making false promises about health care reform for years. The newsier tipoff from Price was that Republicans are going to promulgate their health care lies with dishonest right wing think tank analysis projecting that AHCA will cover more people than currently have insurance under the ACA.

“I think we’ll have folks that are evaluating this and modeling this come out and say, ‘yes, indeed, this plan will in fact cover more individuals than are currently covered,’” Price told NBC’s Chuck Todd.

This is part and parcel of the GOP’s preemptive effort to discredit the Congressional Budget Office, which is expected to score AHCA as a humanitarian catastrophe. But, to be clear, it is bullshit. Credible analysts, on both the left and the right, project that AHCA will cause millions of people to lose their insurance. The only question is how many millions. Republicans in Congress want to paper over an ongoing and growing public relations fiasco with the health care equivalent of voodoo economics. Consider yourselves warned.

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Or, more likely, he thinks that if he can badger and bully enough he'll get a compliant media to serve him. And if that doesn't work, then at least he can continue to convince his base of malformed brains that he's a victim and that they must turn to right wing media to learn the real truth. Unfortunately, that last one seems to be working.

Exactly. It's sheer brilliance, eh?

Trump’s decision to fire Bharara ignited speculation that it was designed to blunt investigations like the Fox News probe. In November, Trump had promised Bharara he could remain in the job. But on Friday, he reversed course and requested Bharara’s resignation along with 45 other Obama-appointed U.S. attorneys. (Adding to the intrigue, Trump’s prosecutor purge came less than 24 hours after Sean Hannity said on Fox News that Trump should “purge” the Justice Department of Obama-appointed officials.)

Given that Fox News is Murdoch’s most profitable division, the prospect of indictments is a serious problem. “They’re really worried,” one source close to the network said. Another insider said that Fox News executives considered the investigation “political” because Bharara had been appointed by Barack Obama. Which is why, for Murdoch, it must be a relief that Bharara’s replacement could be an ally. According to the Times, Trump’s short list to replace Bharara includes Marc Mukasey — who just happens to be former Fox News chief Roger Ailes’s personal lawyer.

Considering Mukasey’s close relationship with Ailes, he would surely come under pressure to recuse himself from the Fox News probe if he were appointed by Trump to succeed Bharara. “I have no comment,” Mukasey said when I reached him on Sunday evening and asked if he planned to do so, should he get the job.

.Two of the biggest tax cuts in Republican proposals to repeal the Affordable Care Act would deliver roughly $157 billion over the coming decade to those with incomes of $1 million or more.

I am confident that most American People will see through Trump's bullshit.

Trump’s decision to fire Bharara ignited speculation that it was designed to blunt investigations like the Fox News probe.

I saw Conway talking just last September and she looked about ten years younger.

The costs were already rising and the quality was already falling. And lots of people were either uninsured or had "affordable" policies which were sub-optimal.

Right — so instead of working to solve the problems with the ACA (and of course there would be problems with any complex legislation addressing a longstanding social problem) conservatives worked to sabotage the bill and campaign for its total repeal.

It's a weird mind set. We see health care as a right, like education. Making people pay for it sets them against each other. It's not a good thing.

That's the difference between Socialism and Fascism, Socialism tries to mitigate against selfish behaviour by trying to make society more equitable whilst Fascism actually celebrates selfishness and actively exploits it. The only people doing well out of this are the fat cat Wall Street insurers. We cut those people out of the picture, and instead of paying them profits the money goes into health care provision.

How unusual for the GOP to write policy that funnels money up to the very wealthy. Three cheers for Trump populism.