Feel free to extrude your nuggets of wisdom and whimsy here, for this is an open thread!
Archives for 2014
This Is What Deportation Does To A Family
It’s always more powerful to put a face to an epidemic. Like Piper Chapman has put a face on women in the prison system, Diane Guerrero, best known for playing the spunky Maritza on Orange Is the New Black, recently revealed on CNN the heartbreaking story of her parents being deported back to their native Columbia:
“I got home, and their cars were there and dinner was started and the lights were on, but I couldn’t find them,” she said, choking up. “It was really hard.” When Pereira asked about her relationship with her parents now, the actress lost her composure. … “But I love them so much,” she continued. “And I just hate that they have gone through this. And I know I’ve been by myself, but I feel like they have lived a very lonely existence.”
Frankly, we’re not sure what’s worse–Guerrero’s family being ripped apart or that no government officials ever informed her of what happened or checked on her despite the fact that she is a US citizen and only 14 at the time.
Team Blackness also discussed the train wreck that was the new Aaliyah movie, another Cosby rape allegation, and a rape by a Ferguson police officer of a pregnant woman while she was detained.
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This Is What Deportation Does To A FamilyPost + Comments (33)
Good faith and good works
Kaiser Health News has some good news for people who live in states whose elites are functional sociopaths that refuse to take free Federal money to expand Medicaid. The exchanges won’t claw back money from people who stated that they thought they would be Exchange subsidy eligible (more than 100% of Federal Poverty Line) but are not because they made too little money:
Right about now, some low-income people who just barely qualified for subsidies on the health insurance marketplace are starting to worry: What if my income for the year ends up below the poverty level? Will I have to pay back the premium tax credits I received…
Their concern stems from an unfortunate wrinkle in the health law. Premium tax credits that make coverage on the health insurance exchanges more affordable are available only to people with incomes between 100 and 400 percent of the federal poverty level ($11,490 to $45,960 for an individual this year). People whose income is below the poverty line don’t qualify….
No repayment will be required. According to a Treasury Department rule, if the insurance marketplace estimates that someone’s income will be between 100 and 400 percent of poverty and it turns out that his income for the year is below the poverty threshold, the individual won’t be on the hook for any premium tax credits he received.
Income estimates for subsidies are just that, estimates. 2014 subsidy levels were based on the combination of 2013 reported income on federal tax returns as a default and 2014 estimates if people thought the tax return did not reflect their situation or there would be a material change in expected income. The IRS will be reconciling estimated 2014 income as used by the Exchanges to issue subsidies and reported 2014 income on the tax returns that are due by April 15, 2015. If estimated income is over actual reported income, the filer may get an additional tax refund to help pay for the 2014 insurance premiums. If the estimated income is less than actual income, and premium subsidies were received, some of those premium subsidies will be clawbacked by the IRS.
The Exchanges are set up for good faith estimates. There is an expectation that if circumstances change (lay-off, promotion/pay raise at work, new job, kid being born etc) people will log back into the Exchange and update their information which will update their subsidy going forward. The goal is to minimize the reconciliation. The IRS also recognizes that peoples’ incomes change, so the expecation is good faith estimates are made. If you’ve been making between $36,000 and $41,000 for the past three years straight, and then you estimate that you would have only made $22,000 in 2014 but report $39,000 for taxes, that probable is not good faith. If in that scenario, you estimate you’ll make $37,500 but actually make $41,000, that is a reasonable miss.
The loophole here is that if you estimate that you’ll make 100.1% of Federal Poverty Line for 2015 which is just enough to qualify you for Cost Sharing Assistance Silver Plus plans at 2% of your income and a large subsidy, but your actual reconciled income is 95% of FPL, you’re home free. This is for two reasons. The first is purely pragamatic in that if you are making under poverty line, the ability of the IRS to actually collect anything is fairly low and not worth the effort. Secondly, it is a soft and incomplete work around to the optionality of Medicaid expansion. I would expect an amazingly high number of people in Texas to have 100.1 to 102% of FPL as their estimated income compared to the same demographic adjusted population group in California. It is an expensive work around as Medicaid is cheaper than commercial insurance, but it helps some people hurt by the assholes on the court.
Good faith is still the key. If you project you’ll make 100.1% of FPL and then made 12% of FPL, that invites a fraud investigation. If you make 97% of FPL, that is an honest mistake.
Look at mother nature on the run
I’m not that much of an environmentalist. My wife thinks i use too much aluminum foil and paper towels. I’m not concerned about GMOs or anything like that.
But climate change is a whole ‘nother thing. A worldwide temperature increase of 5+ degrees in 80 years is a hard-mother fucking fact of life, but it’s a fact of life our ass is gonna have to get realistic about. I don’t think we will though, because many wingers and most centrist pundits would rather make Al Gore jokes than try to stave off calamity. Science is hard, let’s go talk about how fat Al Gores is.
In that spirit, let’s have a thread documenting all the idiotic “it’s cold today so fat algore is a poopyhead” stuff that’s been on the internets the last few days.
For The Greater, Chickeny Good
That gallus gallus domesticus needs right proper intercoursin’, it does, and here’s the fella to do it.
House Republicans have hired a noted constitutional lawyer to oversee a lawsuit against President Barack Obama for alleged executive overreach.
Jonathan Turley, a professor at The George Washington University, has argued in favor of the suit against Obama’s executive order delaying the employer mandate provision of Obamacare.
This is Republicans’ third lawyer since the suit was initially passed in July. Two previous lawyers dropped the case and the House has yet to file the lawsuit in federal court.
“Professor Turley is a renowned legal scholar who agrees that President Obama has clearly overstepped his constitutional authority,” said Michael Steel, a spokesperson for Speaker John Boehner. “He is a natural choice to handle this lawsuit.”
Turley’s such a “patriot” that he’s taking up the case to put Obama in his place, like he has a personal crusade to see him burn over any GOP-created garbage just to get at him over civil liberties?
HOOCOODANODE.
(h/t D58826 in the comments).
Enter Several And Various Villagers
Ladies and gentlemen and various pets of the assembled, I give to you the Washington Post Editorial Board on President Obama’s executive action.
He is vowing to go it alone on immigration. On Iran, he is reportedly designing an agreement that he need not bring to Congress. He already has gone that route on climate change with China.
The legal or constitutional case for each is different, but the rationales overlap: Congress is broken, so Mr. Obama must act. Two-thirds of Americans did not vote in the midterms, and the president must represent them, too. He has tried compromise, and the Republicans spurned him.
We will not relitigate that last contention except to note that behind the legislative disappointments of the past six years lies fault on both sides.
Exeunt VARIOUS VILLAGERS, Stage RIGHT.
Six years into this farce where the Republicans met before the President took office and decided to try to destroy him and it’s still Both Sides Do It! It’s the fault of both sides the way serial arson is the fault of both the arsonist and the flammable objects that allow themselves to be immolated. And it always will be, now and forevermore, as the ashes swirl into lurid and provocative shadows dancing in front of the flames of the Republic, or something. Alas, and probably alack as well.
Cry WHY WON’T HE LEAD, and let slip the thinkpieces of bipartisanship fetishism.
Open Thread
I haven’t checked, so I am sure I am stepping on eight posts, but I have finally found something I actually miss about drinking.
I AM COLD ALL THE DAMNED TIME. I was never cold before. I would wear shorts from March to November, and if it was over 35, even then. Now, I have flannel sheets and flannel pj’s and wool socks and slippers and robe and I’m yelling at the damned dogs to get in or get out because standing in the doorway for 15 seconds while they make up their minds is FR-FR-FR-FREEZING. Plus, my shoulders now hurt like hell in cold weather. I even have a little space heater I keep in my room for at night.
Still worth it, but I feel like a 90 year old man. I wear winter jackets now. I never wore winter jackets.