This hedgehog is blinking in the bright sunshine and thinking, “But I’m nocturrrrrnalllllllll!!!” Please feel free to discuss whatever.
Archives for January 2014
Open Thread
Remember to buy your calendar. And pray for Louie Gohmert, who can’t afford insurance because Obama. $174K a year plus a $950/month insurance subsidy just doesn’t go as far as it did before we had a blah president.
Ezra’s Gone
Ezra Klein is leaving the Bezos Daily Bugle, possibly to go to Vox media, which publishes the Verge and SB Nation. He apparently tried to get Bezos to invest in a new venture, but Bezos was unwilling to throw down “eight figures”.
If Vox is starting a politics site, I’d be interested in reading it, because they’ve done great work with the Verge. Maybe this means that Ezra will be giving up his plan to be the next Broder, which would also be good news.
Anguish and Pain
In a state where I attended college and pay taxes, the Governor is telling me pro-life/conservative people aren't welcome. Such ignorance.
— Meghan McCain (@MeghanMcCain) January 21, 2014
In case you’re wondering about the source of Meghan’s butthurt, here’s the whole story. Short version: Andrew Cuomo made the observation that there’s no place for far-right Republicans in the politics of New York if Republicans ever want to elect a statewide candidate. This, of course, was transformed by the right wing outrage brigade into a comment by Cuomo on whether those kinds of Republicans were welcome in the state.
As a New Yorker, let me assure Meghan that we’ll be happy to have her here as long as she pays taxes on her trust fund disbursements. But, as a New York resident, Meghan would do well to remember the crushing defeat of Teanderthal / Horse Porn Enthusiast Carl Paladino, who espoused the far-right beliefs Governor Cuomo was referencing. His 37% showing in that race was what New Yorkers thought of Carl’s politics. If Meghan would stop getting her news from Sean Hannity, she might understand that 63% of her fellow residents don’t like Carl’s flavor of conservatism, and her party will be beat like a rented mule in every statewide race until they shitcan their bigotry, sexism and stupidity.
I Tried My Imagination, But I Was Disturbed
Here’s a snapshot of the vaccine-preventable outbreaks since 2008. Those green spots are whooping cough. The red ones are measles. Jenny McCarthy should be proud:
[…] During the period represented by the map’s data, the US was home to thousands of cases of pertussis. Pertussis, also called whooping cough, went largely unreported in the underdeveloped world: 58 cases were noted in Sudan in 2013, while north Afghanistan suffered 350 cases in a cluster outbreak in 2012.In contrast, the state of Wisconsin alone saw more than 7,000 cases of the disease between 2011 and 2013. In California, the number was over 10,000. At least 10 babies died in the state from the disease in 2010. In 2009, there were no news reports of vaccine-preventable diseases in the state of Washington. In 2012, the state suffered five distinct outbreaks of whooping cough, totaling 7,000 cases of a disease that was once close to eradication. Similar outbreaks have occurred in Australia and the UK — both countries with advanced vaccination programs. This discrepancy could be due to the map’s data source: the Council of Foreign Relations relied on news reports to collate its information, and reliable reporting from the developing world is usually trickier to find than news from inside the US or UK. But the outbreaks also appear to have intrinsic links to the anti-vaccination movements present in these economically advanced countries.
Jenny’s still on the View, in case you were wondering about ABC’s commitment to allowing different, though equally valid, points of view.
I Tried My Imagination, But I Was DisturbedPost + Comments (78)
Family composition and subsidies
I’m late to this as this weekend’s kerfluffle about marriage and poverty rates. Let me start with the appropriate level of snarking from Lawyers, Guns and Money:
Speaking of conservatives who want to pretend to talk about inequality while not actually talking about it, Edroso finds this gem from Kathleen Parker:
Obviously, marriage won’t cure all ills. A single mother could marry tomorrow and she still wouldn’t have a job. But in the War on Poverty, rebuilding a culture that encourages marriage should be part of the arsenal.
See, if you want to make it to the real big leagues, it’s better to let snarky critics refute your smarm than just doing it yourself. I’ll leave the rest to Roy:
There are strong arguments for actual long term gains from marriage in that two people and two close-tie support networks provide for a system of shock absorbers and support that one person can’t easily match, but a decent chunk of the “marriage” gain is a coding artifact of how poverty is federally defined. This coding error does lead to some people having an incentive to not get married. This is not unique to Obamacare, it is an artifact of any progam that relies on federal poverty guidelines and household size. The first person in a family unit has a federal poverty level of $11,490. Each additional member of a family unit adds $4,020 in 2013. This arrangement assumes Ozzie and Harriet nuclear families with signficant economies of scale. It does not account for co-habitating long term relationships .
When I first moved in with my long term girlfriend and future wife, we filed separate tax returns.That year, we were both under the federal poverty level as individuals because we were grad students. If we had married that year for love or health insurance we would have been significantly over the poverty level for a family unit of two. Yet, there would have been no additional resources available to us. We still would have been broke.
My friends Annie and Beth have been together for almost as long as my wife and I have been. They’re not married as our state is governed by bigots. Last year, Annie did not work too much as she was laid off at the start of the year, and then took time to take care of her mother. Beth worked all year and did well for herself. Beth has insurance through work, and her work offers domestic partner benefits for employees who live in bigot states (SSM states benefits only extend to married couples for Somewhat Evil Medium Size Corp), so Annie was covered as well. However, Annie went on the Exchange and since she had minimal income and is not married, she qualified for a very large subsidy and Silver cost-sharing assistance. If the two of them were in a federally recognized marriage, she would not have qualified for any subsidies for two reasons. First, one person in the marriage had access to affordable employer provided health insurance. Secondly, the combined income of the family would have been over 400% of federal poverty line. These corner cases do exist, and it is an artifact of how poverty is defined in America.
A marriage neutral poverty measure that somehow looked at household size and characteristics of the relationships between the people in the household so that two committed adults with significant ties between them (financial, longevity of relationship, cats etc) would be an improvement. Such a marriage neutral poverty measure would treat Annie and Beth the same as my wife and I and it would remove some perverse incentives. It would be an administrative bear to set-up as it would have to differentiate the roommate relationship I had with one of my best friends in college when I lived with her for two years. We split the bills and I argued ferociously against buying a bunny for anything other than dinner. This must be differentiated from a long term romantic relationship with my girlfriend, then fiancee and now my wife. The simplest take might be a formula where Adult Value is a constant so the poverty level would be Adult Value+Adult Value + X(kids value) instead of the current Single Adult value+X(related others) formula where the Adult Value is someplace around the current Single Adult value.
Let’s Not Forget!
It’s here with a white furry vengeance (with maybe some pink paws and a pink nose and an aftermarket tail), and you know you want to get yours. So do it. And then buy one for your pet crazy friend. And then one for your pet friendly family. Because if there is one thing I have learned, pet lovers travel in packs, just like their brood.
*** Update ***
The old Tunch videos make me laugh every time I watch them:
The funniest thing is that compared to Steve, Tunch is just so teeny tiny looking. Steve is just so much bigger. Tunch had the big belly and all, but Steve has him by at least 6 inches in length, and the long hair just makes him look so much more massive. I guess I never realized how much of Tunch’s size was his straight up catitude.
And it’s ok to get a little moist in the eyes when you watch the Tunch videos. I did, but only in the most German way possible with a slight moistening in the corner of my eye before biting into apple cake.