Soooooo… Apparently CafePress is no longer doing wall calendars, so now we need to find a place which does.
Any ideas?
by John Cole| 28 Comments
This post is in: Readership Capture
Soooooo… Apparently CafePress is no longer doing wall calendars, so now we need to find a place which does.
Any ideas?
This post is in: Open Threads, General Stupidity
by John Cole| 27 Comments
This post is in: Readership Capture
We are working on the calendar, but we are both clueless in cafepress and broke things.
Does anyone have any experience with it?
This post is in: Excellent Links, Hail to the Hairpiece, Open Threads, Republicans in Disarray!, Assholes, Riveted By The Sociological Significance Of It All
EVANGELICALS: Lord, if I'm wrong show me a sign!
*Trump Tower bursts into flames*
EVANGELICALS: …any sign at all!
— Jesse McLaren (@McJesse) January 8, 2018
WATCH: Smoke billows out of Trump Tower as firefighters respond to electrical fire https://t.co/kHlN77LRoc
— Raw Story (@RawStory) January 8, 2018
For once, the NYC Trump Tower tenants may have reason to be grateful to Trump — or, more correctly, Trump’s Secret Service detail. I went through a “routine” rooftop equipment-related “smoke event” some twenty years ago, when I was working in Boston’s Hancock Tower. Being rushed down sixty flights in the underlit emergency stairwell, while security guards ran up & down yelling at us and each other, is not one of my favorite life memories. Sounds like the SecServ guys alerted firefighters before the building had to be evacuated.
Meanwhile, smart review from Michael Hiltzik, at the LA Times — “I knew everything in Wolff’s ‘Fire and Fury’ even before it was published. Here’s how”:
… [T]he proper way to think about “Fire and Fury” is not as a book, but as an event. The vast majority of people discussing it over the next few weeks — assuming the furor lasts that long — will not have read it. When the Sunday cable talk shows went into full cry over it, they focused largely on the West Wing’s reaction to it…
But having done the reading homework myself, I can tell you that the first 30% of “Fire and Fury” is an engaging read, full of little frissons of revelation. It’s not badly written, though portions show the effects of hasty editing to meet a deadline.
After the first third, however, it becomes boring, repetitious and, ultimately, depressing. There just isn’t much for Wolff to say about the White House after he’s said it once, and the discouraging thought that his cast of characters are in place because of a quirk of the American presidential electoral system that surprised them as much as it shocked outsiders soon outweighs any pleasure one might get from watching them bite each others’ heads off…
Wolff identifies the principal camps during his time as a fly on the wall as those of Bannon; first daughter Ivanka Trump and her husband, Jared Kushner; and former Chief of Staff Reince Priebus, who was replaced by John F. Kelly at the end of July. This started to be widely known even before inauguration day.
But Wolff may actually have made a signal contribution to Trumpology here by making clear how much each gang leaked to undermine the others. Despite the obligatory paragraphs in all those inside-the-West-Wing scoops in the big papers about how many sources they were based on (how many people work in the White House, anyway?), it appears from Wolff’s book that those stories really all emanate from the power jockeying among those three groups; sometimes it’s one camp leaking against the other two, sometimes two camps in temporary alliance against the third.
This just tells you that the correct rule of thumb to apply when reading any of these yarns is the Latin term “Cui bono?” (“Who gains?”)…
That being said, Cui bono from the agenda for the evening?
Monday Evening Open Thread: Somebody Burning Copies of <em>Fire & Fury</em>?Post + Comments (164)
by Betty Cracker| 178 Comments
This post is in: Open Threads, Sports
by DougJ| 72 Comments
This post is in: C.R.E.A.M.
Another day, another Republican House retirement. Let’s kick in some money into the fund that’s split equally among all Democratic eventual nominees in all House districts currently held by Republicans.
Thought you might might like this picture of my dog with Santa. When we hit 25K on this, I’ll put up some baby pictures.
I’m looking for pound notes, loose change, bad checks, anythingPost + Comments (72)
This post is in: Anderson On Health Insurance
Health Affair’s new ACA blogger, Katie Keith, writes about the first of many lawsuits concerning Cost Sharing Reduction (CSR) subsidies:
On December 28, 2017, Maine Community Health Options (MCHO)—a nonprofit insurer in Maine—filed what is believed to be the first lawsuitagainst the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) for failing to reimburse marketplace insurers for cost-sharing reductions (CSRs) for 2017. MCHO seeks an estimated $5.6 million in CSR payments for the 2017 plan year….
MCHO’s claims are relatively straightforward. In brief, MCHO alleges as follows. As an insurer participating in the marketplace, it is required to offer CSR plans and is guaranteed to be reimbursed by the government for doing so under Section 1402 of the ACA and its implementing regulations at 45 C.F.R. 156.430. By failing to make CSR payments, the government deprives insurers of funds that they are statutorily entitled to for participating in the marketplace in 2017. The lack of congressional appropriation is irrelevant because the government has a statutory obligation to make CSR payments and insurers have the right to receive them.
The language in the law is that the insurers “SHALL” offer CSR and the government “SHALL” pay insurers for this added benefit on a regular and timely basis. I am not a lawyer but I know “SHALL” is a very powerful word denoting strong obligations.
There are two sets of CSR lawsuits that are possible. The Maine Co-op is filing the first type that should be the most straightforward. They are asking only for CSR payments for the last three months of 2017 as they were able to mitigate their damages in 2018 by raising their Silver rates. This one is fairly straightforward.
The more complex potential CSR lawsuit starts with the 2017 lawsuit and then adds in an ongoing recoupment of costs after net mitigation through Silver Loading. That lawsuit would be complex and a guarantee only of billable hours.