Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Shallow, uninformed, and lacking identity

Yeah, with this crowd one never knows.

I really should read my own blog.

I know this must be bad for Joe Biden, I just don’t know how.

When I decide to be condescending, you won’t have to dream up a fantasy about it.

Too often we hand the biggest microphones to the cynics and the critics who delight in declaring failure.

Second rate reporter says what?

A sufficient plurality of insane, greedy people can tank any democratic system ever devised, apparently.

Wow, I can’t imagine what it was like to comment in morse code.

Infrastructure week. at last.

But frankly mr. cole, I’ll be happier when you get back to telling us to go fuck ourselves.

Reality always lies in wait for … Democrats.

Not all heroes wear capes.

When do we start airlifting the women and children out of Texas?

Teach a man to fish, and he’ll sit in a boat all day drinking beer.

Fuck the extremist election deniers. What’s money for if not for keeping them out of office?

Too often we confuse noise with substance. too often we confuse setbacks with defeat.

Let there be snark.

A Senator Walker would be an insult to the state and the nation.

Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Battle won, war still ongoing.

We still have time to mess this up!

I see no possible difficulties whatsoever with this fool-proof plan.

Within six months Twitter will be fully self-driving.

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Yes, The Gender Pay Gap Actually Exists

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Every year on tax day, we get a reminder of the gender pay gap, and the counter-reminder from the “well, actually” douchebags on the right about “the gender pay gap is a myth“:  That women choose to earn less money by going into less physically demanding, safer, and lower-paying positions, and men choose to go into more physically demanding, dangerous, and higher-paying positions overall.

But that cannot explain the gap when comparing similar positions:

It is well known that in 2013—the most recent year for which data are available—women working full time, year round earned an average of $0.78 for every dollar earned by men working full time, year round. Since this statistic compares all working women and all working men, it does not control for the different types of jobs that individuals hold. In all but one of the occupations for which data are available, however, women earn less than men.

GWGbyOccupation-webtable12015-04-14-1429049404-7107757-GWGbyOccupationwebtable2

 

Also note that these are occupations with wildly different percentages of women in each field, ranging from women comprising 17.49% of production and operating supervisors to 84.8% of general office clerks.  There’s not an issue with burly manly strength and size needed to be a personal financial advisor last time I checked, but women earn only 62 cents on the dollar compared to men for that occupation.  The one job where women earn more?  Stock clerk, even though they make up roughly a third of them nationally.

And please take note that three jobs among those with the worst gender pay gap are physician, teacher, and CEO, successful jobs that require education and only one of the three is considered “pink collar”, teacher.  The counter to that is again, “Women choose to have kids and be caregivers, so they’re not working as much.  They’re not working as much, so they have less experience and fewer hours worked. They have less experience and fewer hours worked, so they get paid less.”

But that can’t explain the gap either.  We know women in the US are having fewer children, and waiting longer to get married (if at all) particularly those women who are more educated (you know, like doctors.)  And if anything, as more and more jobs move away from physical work towards information management, working from home is becoming more popular and more feasible for everyone.

Not only does the gender gap still exist, but when you factor in race it gets even worse.  No, the gender gap is not 100% “discrimination”.  But it’s not a myth either, and there are some serious structural problems in society that make this gap persist.  Pretending that it’s something “bitchy liberals made up” doesn’t mean it’s not real, and that people aren’t getting hurt by it.

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Giving Out Free Passes

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Apparently Dave Weigel feels like he’s been getting a lot of crap from conservatives lately, because he takes to Bloomberg News to give a spirited defense of Rudy Giuliani with a classic “Well, I’m just informing you what conservatives think” angle.

Suddenly, though the calendar reads February 2015, Democrats were in October 2016 gaffe-police mode. Conservatives rolled their eyes at socket-singeing speed. “Raise your hand if you think ‘but they won’t say whether Obama loves America” could really put Hillary over the top in Nov 16,” joked Commentary editor-in-chief John Podhoretz. The Washington Free Beacon compared the media coverage of Giuliani tothe far skimpier coverage of the Bill, Hillary & Chelsea Clinton Foundation’s money to foreign donors. The media seemed to be covering the story Democrats wanted them to cover. There was more at work, though.

The media was lecturing from inside a bubble. All Thursday, the offices of potential Republican candidates were asked to react to Rudy Giuliani. “The gist of what Mayor Giuliani said — that the president has shown himself to be completely unable to speak the truth about the nature of the threats from these ISIS terrorists — is true,” said Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal. Senator Ted Cruz declined to comment. Former Florida Governor Jeb Bush said through a spokesperson that he did not “question President Obama’s motives.”

And of course we have this:

This is a deep source of conservative frustration. They want to accuse Obama of radicalism the way that they once accused undergraduate Saul Alinsky-scholar Hillary Clinton of radicalism; the way that they see the media reading into Paul Ryan’s Ayn Rand-fandom, or the Koch brothers’ patriarch being a member of the John Birch Society. And when they try, they’re accused of othering, and racism.

They’ll keep trying. Some of the anger at Obama grows out of the belief that, as a candidate, he was sold as more moderate than he was. He was challenged not by a Rudy Giuliani, but by Arizona Senator John McCain, who prevented aides from attacking Obama over the words of Pastor Jeremiah Wright, and waited until their final debate to bring up former Weather Underground terrorist and Obama friend Bill Ayers.

At the 2008 Republican convention, one speaker went so far as to argue that Obama had a great, uniquely American life story. McCain and Obama, this speaker said, “they’re both good and patriotic men with very different life experiences that have led them to this moment of shared history.” He mocked Obama, but then he came back around to praise. “His rise is remarkable in its own right. It’s the kind of thing that can happen only in America.”

Now, Weigel thinks he’s being clever here by again presenting this entire thing as “what conservatives believe” rather than it being what he does, but that’s a nice little device that allows him to write 95% of a Daily Caller rant and get away with it.

Nice work if you can get it.  Classic “view from nowhere” stuff.

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One Of These Things Is Not Like the Other

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[trigger warning: Megan McCardle]

Shorter McMegan: Some job security for your 50k a year job is exactly the same as earning 2 billion dollars in largely untaxed income as a hedge fund manager.

How this moron continues to fail upward is beyond me.

One Of These Things Is Not Like the OtherPost + Comments (112)

Inside Out, and Round and Round

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This just arrived in my mailbox. You can’t make this stuff up:

Dear DPM –

My name is [redacted] and I work for the publisher of Megan McArdle’s new book, THE UP SIDE OF DOWN. I’d love to send you a free copy for a look into what I feel can be a very transformative contribution to the timely conversation of failure and what that means for success. Do let me know if you’d like a copy for consideration as a topic on Balloon-Juice.com

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I’m being oppressed and made better off

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Conservatives are having fun with stories like the following:

Ian Hodge, 62, is one of nearly 13,000 central and eastern Pennsylvanians who will soon need to shop for health insurance because Highmark Inc. is discontinuing their coverage at the end of the year.

Highmark has announced it is withdrawing five of its insurance plans that don’t comply with the Affordable Care Act, key parts of which take effect Jan. 1.

The hash-tag #TCOT is flinging poop under the quip “Obama lied, my health plan died”.
 
Let’s look at the details as to why Highmark is cancelling these plans:
 

The new regulations, for instance, prohibit insurers from denying coverage to applicants who have pre-existing health problems….

Highmark’s Classic Blue is a guaranteed-issue plan, meaning the Hodges and other customers were not required to inform Highmark of their health status to get coverage. But applicants couldn’t count on coverage for any pre-existing condition for their first 12 months under the plan….

Under the Affordable Care Act, beginning Jan. 1, all insurers must issue policies regardless of an applicant’s health history.

The guaranteed issue policies were Pennsylvania’s “solution” to some people with pre-exisiting conditions who fell through the cracks.  The individual insurance market in Pennsylvania is segregated (until Jan. 1, 2014) into two broad groups.  The first is medically underwritten individual insurance.  The risk pool for medically underwritten insurance is younger and healthier than typical.  The second group is the guaranteed issue group which has older and sicker individuals in it.  Jan. 1, 2014 changes this paradigm as all health insurance written on or after that date will be community rated so this distinction no longer serves any purpose.
 
Mr. Hodge from the article was paying $1041.85 per month for him and his wife for Highmark Classic Comprehensive Blue.
 
I only could easily find the 2012 product sheet for this plan.  It looks like the 2012 version at that rate for a married couple would have an in-network deductible of $3,000 with co-insurance above that at 80% on the next $30,000 for total family potential out of pocket of $9,000.  After $30,000 in medical expenses, the plan covers everything after that.  Pre-exisiting conditions are not covered for the first year.
 
That coverage is not too good.  It is inadequate and unaffordable coverage under Obamacare regulations.  Under Obamacare, the policy above is Catastrophic at best.
 
Looking back to yesterday’s data dump from HHS, the lowest Gold plan in Pennsylvania for a 27 year old is $205 per month.  Given that rates can not vary by age by more than a factor of 3, that Gold plan for Mr. and Mrs. Hodges can not be more than $615 per month per person.  Buying as a family will probably reduce that rate to be equal to what they are paying now.  This calculation does not include any tax subsidy.  Gold would be a massive improvement in coverage over what they have now.
 
Using the Kaiser Family Foundation Zip code specific calculator, Silver plans are available to a family of 2 in a random Lancaster County zip code for $5,070 under the typical case scenario,  total costs for the family of two without tax credits would be no more than $10040 before subsidy.  That is significantly less than the $13,000 in premiums the Hodges are currently paying.  Throw in the fact that the value of coverage has increased dramatically, the Hodges will be significantly better off.
 
Stop the oppression by improving the material condition of people….
 
 
 

 (updated a math error)

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“Nothing wrong with being a tax and spend Republican!” is how I’ll greet her

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I wrote here about helping with a campaign to pass a public school bond issue.

This is a majority Republican town, and this is the first time I’ve worked with the same group of people we usually work against in elections. I think The Committee for the school levy is made up almost entirely of Republicans because the leader of the effort is an executive at a manufacturer here and he’s a Republican donor, voter and GOP Party person. His employer has given him as much company time on this as he needs because it’s a genuinely local company, they’re privately held and they believe the school issue is important to their ability to attract sales people and managers. The (now-retired) CEO of this company asked the school board to request an evaluation by the state public school facilities commission on the feasibility of renovating versus replacing our schools in 2009 and the state came back with all but the high school as “replace” so that drove their decision to head up a new school building campaign rather than a renovation.

We meet in the company conference room. It’s nice to have this big local employer behind something I support (for once) with all these fabulous resources. I could get used to it. I now understand the lure of wing nut welfare.

I’m finding that the Republicans involved in the campaign bring up the fact that I’m a Democrat a lot more than is strictly necessary. I’m not clear why this is. My sense is it’s to let me know that while we may be working together on this there will be no concessions as far as Conservative Principles. After they tell me I’m a Democrat they bring up the Kasich tax cuts. I think they keep hitting on this with me to let me know that while they’re for this particular tax increase, they’re still solidly in the “job creators get huge income tax cuts so as to grow the economy” camp. Their argument is that Kasich cut income taxes so therefore people should support increased property taxes for schools. It’s a wash!

I don’t agree with it as a practical matter and I also think it’s a lousy campaign tactic. This is a school district where 40% of the kids qualify for free or reduced lunch. Income tax isn’t a huge issue for the younger, lower income “sporadic voter” parents we need to reach if we want a winning turnout, although it’s clearly a huge issue for the Republicans on The Committee. The fact is Kasich’s income tax cut won’t benefit those families at all and Kasich increased sales taxes, so the parents I hope to reach will pay more taxes, not less. In addition, we have lost 1.6 million a year in state operating funding for our public school system under the Fox News personality-turned-governor. Despite my concerns, they’re in love with this “it’s a wash!” idea, so hopefully it flies with higher-income Republicans like them because they’re not budging.

Although I think their tax argument is dumb and based more on partisan fervor than facts or voter demographics or persuasiveness, I don’t hate all of their campaign ideas. One thing they’re saying that appeals to me is that the schools we use now were built beginning in 1917, someone paid for them, and it wasn’t the people who use the schools now. “It’s Our Turn” is the slogan.

One thing I hate about modern conservatism is what I see as the dead-beat, moocher nature of the Republican approach to replacing or maintaining public assets. I’m baffled by people who rely on a public asset like a public school (or park or swimming pool or road or library) yet seem to believe those things spring from the ground spontaneously the day they arrive and then disappear the moment they personally and individually no longer need a 2nd grade classroom or a walk in a park or a swim or a route to work or a library book. I like this slogan. Harkening back to citizens of yore is also a good approach because local history is a hobby here. The newspaper does a monthly feature with photos from the Olden Days and there is a section of the public library devoted to town history.

I asked for suggestions on the campaign in the last post and The Committee picked up one of the suggestions I made (given to me by a commenter here) that goes to the It’s Our Turn idea, and it’s this:

scav says:
August 9, 2013 at 12:23 pm
Is there anything interesting to be gained from looking into, publishing past efforts the community made into building schools? When was the first one built, how many since, old photos of ground-breakings, graduations, etc. Schools did provide built foci for communities etc and emphasizing that historical and ongoing effort might help with some people. Might pull one or a few short priming newspaper articles out of it. An effort, a commitment rooted in the past and builing toward the future, that sort of thing. Dick and Jane through the periods and generations?

It’s about to get weirder because I’ll be working on GOTV with the woman who was the local volunteer lead for Romney’s campaign. I meet with her next week. I know her (slightly) and she’s a bona fide wing nut, so we’ll see how that goes.

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