Political Irony

Republicans claim to be the party of personal responsibility. They don’t need Obamacare, they can take care of themselves, right?

Which is why it is ironic that a poll found that significantly more Republicans are taking advantage of the provision of Obamacare that requires insurance plans to insure children up to the age of 26.

How significant? According to the poll, 63% of young Republicans had taken advantage of the new option to stay on their parent’s plan, while only 45% of young Democrats had done so.

Not asked by the poll was whether those Republicans who are benefiting from Obamacare still want to repeal it. But I would venture to guess that they do. After all, other polls have consistently shown that even people who say they want to repeal Obamacare, when asked about the individual key provisions of the bill, are strongly in favor of them.

Just a few years ago, California was a laughingstock. It was nearly bankrupt, its infrastructure was crumbling, and you couldn’t get the two political parties to agree on anything.

Sound familiar? Kinda like our national politics now?

Just two years ago, the idea that California could be a global model for anything was laughable. When Brown took office, the state was staggered by double-digit unemployment, a $26 billion deficit and an accumulated “wall of debt” topping $35 billion. California was a punch line for Republican politicos – a cautionary tale, they said, of the fate that awaits the nation should it embrace Left Coast-style economic, social and environmental liberalism. On the campaign trail in 2012, Mitt Romney joked that “America is going to become like Greece, or like Spain, or Italy, or like . . . California.”

But today you don’t hear much about California, and that’s good! So what happened? In 2011, Governor Moonbeam, AKA Jerry Brown, was reelected and with a huge dose of progressive politics has completely turned the state around.

The California that Brown inherited on his return to office appeared to be an insolvent, ungovernable mess. California’s finances have been out of wack since the late 1970s, when right-wing, anti-tax activists passed Prop 13, a constitutional cap on property taxes that also requires a two-thirds supermajority vote to raise any tax through the state legislature. Moreover, it was a Republican, Arnold Schwarzenegger, who hastened the recent fiscal calamity by slashing California’s vehicle license fee. Promising to cut the “car tax” keyed Schwarzenegger’s victory over the hapless Democrat Gray Davis in the recall election of 2003. But it also blew a $4 billion annual hole in the budget that Schwarzenegger simply papered over with bond debt.

With a stiff cocktail of budget cuts and hard-won new taxes, Brown has not only zeroed out the deficit, he’s also begun paying down the debt.

However, the revival of California was also made possible by the collapse of the Republican Party in the state.

The land that gave us Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan, tax revolts and the nation’s harshest three-strikes laws, California was a reliable red state in presidential elections from the late Sixties through the 1980s. But in a script that should sound familiar to anyone who follows national politics, California Republicans undermined their own easy dominance of state politics by moving abruptly to the right, alienating the state’s increasingly urban and Latino population with harsh stands on social issues and get-tough immigration laws.

In short, Golden State Republicans have been locked in the same “demographic death spiral” that South Carolina GOP Sen. Lindsey Graham says haunts the national party: They’re too old, too white and too rural in a state that’s trending young, multicultural and urban. … In the 2012 election, the party all but crashed and burned, as voters elected a Democratic supermajority in the legislature, rendering the GOP moot.

So maybe there is hope for the rest of us?

Yes, Brown raised taxes, despite warnings from right-wing ideologues that higher taxes would send millionaires running for the borders and cripple California’s job creators. Instead, the unemployment rate has tumbled, Silicon Valley is going gangbusters, and the housing market has recovered. “Entrepreneurs are doing so well, in fact, that state coffers got an unexpected bump this spring, thanks to a windfall of $4.5 billion, largely from capital gains.”

At the same time, Brown has launched ambitious new projects, including plans to require California to generate one-third of its power from renewable sources by 2020, and power 15% of its automobiles from electricity by 2025. California has launched its own “Cap and Trade” carbon-pollution trading market and is aggressively fighting climate change.

Brown is increasing funding for education, is funding a high-speed rail line connecting San Francisco to Los Angeles, and is making massive improvements to safeguard California’s water supply.

California is also leading the nation in the implementation of Obamacare. And instead of raising prices, even with Obamacare’s expanded benefits and without subsidies, a 25-year-old can buy health insurance for $141 a month (and 40-year-olds for $219).

Bottom line?

Today, Brown’s unique mix of fiscal restraint and big-government ambition has not only righted California, it could provide a model for Democrats nationally. Most thought-provoking: Brown is proving that a government that lives within its means can simultaneously pursue bold, liberal policies and programs. “Without fiscal responsibility, no other progress is possible,” says Gov. O’Malley of Maryland. “I’m hugely impressed with Jerry Brown.”

[thanks to Rolling Stone]

© Matt Bors

I’m not sure what to think about Syria. But I pretty much have the same questions about Syria as I did about Iraq.

What is the goal of our attacking Syria? Is it to depose Assad, like we did with Saddam Hussein? If so, what happens after we do that? Do we actually have a game plan for the Middle East, and how will attacking Syria affect that?

Or is there some other reason? Is it to punish Syria for using chemical weapons? Is it so we can appear strong? Is it so Obama can be a war president and force the Party of No to shut up for a minute?

Just tell me. WTF are we trying to accomplish and how will we accomplish it?

Aren’t these reasonable questions?

Washington Post published an editorial “Republicans should get out of the way of Obamacare“. Their argument is summed up by the last paragraph:

Congress enacted the Affordable Care Act. The Supreme Court found most of its provisions to be constitutional. Republicans, having opposed the bill and supported the legal challenge to it, are entitled to be unhappy about the outcome, though in our view they are wrong on the merits. They are not entitled to obstruct and flout the laws of the United States. On the contrary, they have an obligation to cooperate in good faith with wholly legitimate laws duly passed and reviewed by all three branches of government.

But I think they could make a much better argument.

The editorial points out that as a result of 21 states blocking implementation of Obamacare, an estimated 5 million people won’t get health care coverage. The state insurance commissioner even boasted that Georgia is doing “everything in our power to be an obstructionist“. Of course they are, because the health insurance industry has secretly thrown more than half a million dollars at them to be obstructionists.

Just imagine if states tried to do the same thing with Medicare. If 5 million people suddenly lost their Medicare coverage because Republican-controlled states decided they didn’t like the law, the Democrats would enjoy a landslide election next year.