All-purpose news and politics thread: Two Steps Beyond!

[JBatmanFan05]

On the effectiveness of Medicaid work requirements:
Work requirements in welfare reform actually work

President Trump’s administration made clear that work requirements are now allowed in Medicaid waivers, and the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services just issued guidelines for the approval of work requirements. The administration has now strongly encouraged states to include these requirements in Medicaid waivers.

Much like welfare reform, this would be a welcome change that would move able bodied Medicaid recipients back into the workforce. The traditional Medicaid population such as the elderly, disabled, the blind, pregnant women, foster children, and many others would not be affected by work requirement waivers.

When the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) analyzed the Affordable Care Act (ACA), it found that the ACA would reduce work, in large part because of Medicaid expansion. Single, childless, able-bodied adults were made eligible for Medicaid under the ACA, and CBO estimated that many of these individuals would work less since they no longer needed full-time jobs to maintain health insurance. Indeed, labor force participation in the U.S. has fallen and public policies like Medicaid expansion, which can deter work, have contributed to this.

Critics of work requirements in Medicaid will say that healthy Medicaid recipients will struggle to find work, and the requirements are unfair and burdensome. However, evidence shows that healthy Medicaid recipients do find work if they need to maintain health insurance. When Tennessee ended a Medicaid expansion program for healthy adults, academic research followed the Medicaid recipients. It found that many of them found work or increased the hours they worked in order to obtain health insurance.

Like the debate over welfare reform, Medicaid recipients have the ability to work and earn wages and they will have the added benefit of gaining experience in the workplace, learning new skills, and earning additional income. Without the work requirement, an individual’s skills will degrade the longer they are out of work, and the harder it becomes to find a job.

States that expanded Medicaid are eager to be able to use waiver requirements to help their Medicaid programs. Ten states currently have a Medicaid waiver that incorporates some form of work requirements pending with the federal government.

Other states like Ohio are working to submit a new waiver with some type of work requirements. These work requirements do not impose a 40-hour work week and many requirements can be fulfilled through charitable work, job training, or other educational programs.

Work requirements in welfare reform were a successful recognition that work is valuable for individuals, families, and societies. Encouraging people not to work but to become dependent on government reduces economic mobility and can reduce a person’s lifetime income. Encouraging healthy people to work more, which will likely result in higher future earnings, should not be controversial but rather common sense.

In short — work requirements work.

[PaulBullion]

I have absolutely no cynicism that wasn't earned by years of experience. There are bad people in circles of power, it comes with the territory. I am willing to vote either side if it is best for the Country. Are you?

I'm willing to actually see a difference between the occasional Democrat letting special interest influence his or her vote, and Republicans working towards a fascist state. Are you?

[Scott Taylor]

I'm willing to actually see a difference between the occasional Democrat letting special interest influence his or her vote, and Republicans working towards a fascist state. Are you?

Absolutely!

For the record, I don't think Democrats would ever work towards a fascist state. Its just not them.

[aja_christopher]

And people didn't believe Hillary when she said there was a basket of deplorables on the Trump train. She was wrong about one thing. It's not a basket. There's probably a lot more than we care to admit....millions probably if we can extrapolate from some of the polls.

"Let me suggest there are two types of deplorables — the self-proclaimed white nationalists who share his views and the people who think racism is of so little consequence that it’s worth having a racist in the White House to get what they want (e.g. a tax cut). That equation — we’ll fuel racism, operate in a world of lies and non-facts, ban Muslims, etc., to get a list of policy items — is frankly deplorable as well. Would they say the same if Trump’s comments incited riots? If he set out to repeal anti-discrimination laws? Apparently there is no end to what he could do or say because, they say, “But Gorsuch!”

For conservatives who have long held themselves out to be defenders of the Constitution and supporters of the American creed, this represents a gross betrayal of their principles — which look less every day like principles and more like sticks with which to beat the left.

...the constant effort to reinterpret Trump, to make sense of nonsense and to obscure his ignorance and racism is as tiresome as it is insincere. The man who called Mexicans rapists, who declared he wanted to ban Muslims, who criticized a judge because he was a Mexican American (and therefore, in Trump’s twisted mind, could not do his job), who painted African Americans as all living in crime-infested squalor, who said there were good people among the neo-Nazi marchers in Charlottesville, who praised and pardoned Joe Arpaio after he violated the rights of suspected illegal immigrants and who does not have a single nonwhite high-ranking White House staff adviser (and the smallest percentage of female and nonwhite Cabinet officials since Ronald Reagan) is a racist. We have not had a president in the memory of any living American who so unabashedly displayed such racist views and assumptions.

And yet many Republicans continue to defend him.

The GOP cannot claim to be the party of Lincoln, and as such it has lost its moral legitimacy to govern and is indeed deplorable."

[PaulBullion]

Michael Cohen, the president’s lawyer, arranged a $130,000 payment to former porn star Stormy Daniels a month before the election.

[PaulBullion]

Michael Cohen, the president’s lawyer, arranged a $130,000 payment to former porn star Stormy Daniels a month before the election.

Ms Daniels just made her twitter account private.
Anyone here among her 411k followers and wants to ask her if the tool sizes matches the tiny hands?

[ZombieHavoc]

We gotta get over worrying about what motivates the Trump voter/supporter. They aren't changing their minds, and we can get on without them, so everyone needs to refocus.

The country is basically done, so our best hope is just to get dems elected so we can function somewhat. The divide is going to be there forever and there is no bipartisanship any more, so who cares why the other people voted for who they did.

[Ragged Maw]

Absolutely!

For the record, I don't think Democrats would ever work towards a fascist state. Its just not them.

Errrr, I will say that a liberal-run “regime” would far less likely involve murder to keep people in line. However, I do think a Demolition Man may have been on to something. Not all dystopias need to involve secret police putting black bags over peoples heads and shipping them off in the night.

[PaulBullion]

Michael Cohen, the president’s lawyer, arranged a $130,000 payment to former porn star Stormy Daniels a month before the election.

At what point will Melania go back to Vladimir Putin?

[PaulBullion]

In related weird news from a few years ago:

Stormy Daniels Calls Off Senate Bid

"Simply because I did not fit in their mold of what an independent working woman should be, the media and political elite have sought to relegate my sense of civic responsibility to mere sideshow antics," Daniels (whose real name is Stephanie Clifford) said in a statement released today.

"They did this not simply for the sake of expediency but because to have a woman of my background challenge the core conscripts of our political and social culture is simply too much for a system that holds that only lawyers and insurance salesmen are qualified to lead," she continues.

Although a registered Democrat throughout her life, Daniels made headlines last week when she proudly switched partiesafter learning the Republican National Committee reimbursed an outing at a topless, bondage-themed nightclub.

[GOLGO 13]

Michael Cohen, the president’s lawyer, arranged a $130,000 payment to former porn star Stormy Daniels a month before the election.

Why would Mr. Trump pay this good, Christian, Republican woman $130K for before the elections?

[TheInvisibleMan]

man now I cant watch her stuff anymore

not that she was on the regular rotation, but still

[Iron Maiden]

"Let me suggest there are two types of deplorables — the self-proclaimed white nationalists who share his views and the people who think racism is of so little consequence that it’s worth having a racist in the White House to get what they want (e.g. a tax cut). That equation — we’ll fuel racism, operate in a world of lies and non-facts, ban Muslims, etc., to get a list of policy items — is frankly deplorable as well. Would they say the same if Trump’s comments incited riots? If he set out to repeal anti-discrimination laws? Apparently there is no end to what he could do or say because, they say, “But Gorsuch!”

For conservatives who have long held themselves out to be defenders of the Constitution and supporters of the American creed, this represents a gross betrayal of their principles — which look less every day like principles and more like sticks with which to beat the left.

...the constant effort to reinterpret Trump, to make sense of nonsense and to obscure his ignorance and racism is as tiresome as it is insincere. The man who called Mexicans rapists, who declared he wanted to ban Muslims, who criticized a judge because he was a Mexican American (and therefore, in Trump’s twisted mind, could not do his job), who painted African Americans as all living in crime-infested squalor, who said there were good people among the neo-Nazi marchers in Charlottesville, who praised and pardoned Joe Arpaio after he violated the rights of suspected illegal immigrants and who does not have a single nonwhite high-ranking White House staff adviser (and the smallest percentage of female and nonwhite Cabinet officials since Ronald Reagan) is a racist. We have not had a president in the memory of any living American who so unabashedly displayed such racist views and assumptions.

And yet many Republicans continue to defend him.

The GOP cannot claim to be the party of Lincoln, and as such it has lost its moral legitimacy to govern and is indeed deplorable."

What's worse than those in the GOP defending Trump is that there is far too much silence that makes them complicit in Trump's racism, misogyny, autocracy, kleptocracy and whatever else he's done that should never have been accepted. At least George Will and Joe Scarborough had the integrity to publicly declare that they no longer consider themselves Republicans. There should be more of this.

[Dalak]

Elect this Stormy



Note: This video is from the 2005 DVD release

[PaulBullion]

Another look into Trump's racist mind:

A career intelligence analyst who is an expert in hostage policy stood before President Donald Trump in the Oval Office last fall to brief him on the impending release of a family long held in Pakistan under uncertain circumstances.

It was her first time meeting the president, and when she was done briefing, he had a question for her.

"Where are you from?" the president asked, according to two officials with direct knowledge of the exchange.

New York, she replied.

Trump was unsatisfied and asked again, the officials said. Referring to the president's hometown, she offered that she, too, was from Manhattan. But that's not what the president was after.

He wanted to know where "your people" are from, according to the officials, who spoke under condition of anonymity due to the nature of the internal discussions.

After the analyst revealed that her parents are Korean, Trump turned to an adviser in the room and seemed to suggest her ethnicity should determine her career path, asking why the "pretty Korean lady" isn't negotiating with North Korea on his administration's behalf, the officials said.

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news...nicity-n837181