The CBO score is in; and other recommended reading from around the web
The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) once again proves itself no friend of congressional Republicans or Monsieur le President, not even when it is headed by a conservative Republican placed in charge back in 2015 when John Boehner was running the show in the House. The CBO estimates 22 million people will lose insurance over ten years, 15 million in the first year, under the Better Care Reconciliation Act. I suppose Lindsey Graham offered what passes for statesmanship in the Republican ranks when he assessed the bill's prospects: "If you are on the fence ... this CBO score didn't help you, so I think it's going to be harder to get to 50, not easier." Let us hope he is right.
Yasmeen Abutaleb and Susan Cornwell, Senate Republican healthcare bill would cause 22 million to lose insurance, Reuters, June 26, 2017
Ezra Klein, The most devastating passage in the CBO’s report on the Senate health bill, Vox, June 26, 2017
Michael Tomasky, Trumpcare’s CBO Score Spells A Political—And Public Health—Disaster, The Daily Beast, June 26, 2017
I had thought I might amuse myself one of these days with a little rant about Newton Leroy Gingrich, an all-timer in the field of hypocrisy. Michael Tomasky beat me to it with Newt Gingrich, Hypocrisy Pioneer, The Daily Beast, June 20, 2017.
I’m never sure these days whether to be outraged or bored by Newt Gingrich.
Outraged because he keeps spinning further and further out of control. Peddling the disgusting conspiracy theory that former DNC staffer Seth Rich was rubbed out by Democratic operatives. Peddling the hilarious conspiracy theory that some Democratic-led deep state is trying to bring down Donald Trump (James Comey, he recently told Sean Hannity, is "part of the sickness")....
Or bored, because dumping this kind of toxic waste on our political system has been what he’s done for most of his adult lifetime?
Tomasky has become a favorite. His columns appear with some regularity at The Daily Beast, and from time to time lengthier pieces of political commentary grace the pages of The New York Review of Books.
Closing it out, Ben Tarnoff at The Guardian pretty much sums up my thoughts about the notion that the best way to run a government is to privatize everything in How privatization could spell the end of democracy. Here are three brief excerpts:
A profit-driven system doesn’t mean we get more for our money – it means someone gets to make more money off of us.....
Attacking public services on the grounds of efficiency isn’t just incorrect, however – it’s beside the point. Decades of neoliberalism have corroded our capacity to think in non-economic terms. We’ve been taught that all fields of human life should be organized as markets, and that government should be run like a business....
Nowhere is the neoliberal faith embodied by Trump more deeply felt than in Silicon Valley. Tech entrepreneurs work tirelessly to turn more of our lives into markets and devote enormous resources towards "disrupting"
government by privatizing its functions. (June 21, 2017)