BUCKNACKT'S SORDID TAWDRY BLOG
We should not be a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in an attractive & well preserved body, but rather to skid in sideways, chocolate, bier or wein in hand, body thoroughly used up, totally worn out and screaming "WHOO-HOO, WHAT A RIDE!!!!!!"
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Showing posts with label gop/tea-bagger christianity. Show all posts
Showing posts with label gop/tea-bagger christianity. Show all posts
I want to know why so many of these republican dominated state legislatures, so many of these republican governors, the vast majority proclaiming their Christianity as guiding them in their decisions, continue to LIE to the citizens of their states about Planned Parenthood, continue to block Medicare expansion in their states, continue to cut funding for much needed social safety net programs, continue to serve the the 1% at the expense of the middle class, the working class, the poor, families, vets, seniors.....Planned Parenthood isn't abortion central and isn't murdering babies for body parts. They provide medical services for women, men, children, families who can't afford to pay for health care. AND I really want to know why these republicans, mostly white men, rail against the intrusion of all government into our personal lives and then pass "christian sharia" laws regulating the lives of women. The religious and political hypocrisy is glaring and disgusting. Please sign this petition campaign from +Daily Kos , and don't forget....
Republicans are continuing their endless crusade against women’s reproductive rights in state legislatures across the country.
With the nation's attention directed at Congress, they are trying to dismantle Planned Parenthood state-by-state.
HERE'S another gop / tea-bagger Christian, joni ernst IA who also feels her religion allows deception, manipulation and lying to get what she wants, in the case elected to the US Senate. Not only does she disgrace her faith buy her lying, she also disgraces the US Military because she touts her record in the military as one of her qualifications to be Iowa's next US Senator. If she is the best qualified, why does she have to lie? To make her Bold Progressive opponent Rep Bruce Braley D IA the better choice? This from +PolitiFact .....
"Iowa has the fourth
fastest-growing personal income in the United States, while nationally,
the real wage has decreased over the past eight years that Congressman
(Bruce) Braley has been there by 2.7 percent."
— Joni Ernst on Saturday, October 11th, 2014 in a debate
By Louis Jacobson on Wednesday, October 15th, 2014 at 1:36 p.m.
Republican Senate candidate Joni Ernst debated her Democratic rival on Oct. 11, 2014. We checked one of her claims.
During an Oct. 11, 2014, debate,
Republican Joni Ernst and Democrat Bruce Braley -- who are facing off
in one of the nation’s most pivotal Senate races -- sparred over the
economy.
At one point in the debate, Ernst compared "Washington, D.C., ways" with "Iowa values."
She pointed to "records of failure coming from this administration,
and followers like Congressman Braley, versus our Iowa values and the
way we have conducted business in the last four years. With my good
supporter, (Republican Gov.) Terry Branstad, we have implemented strong
economic policy here in Iowa -- lower taxes, reduced job-killing
regulations, and a balanced budget, and we are putting more of our
hard-working Iowans back to work with new, good-paying jobs. Iowa has
the fourth fastest-growing personal income in the United States, while
nationally, the real wage has decreased over the past eight years that
Congressman Braley has been there by 2.7 percent."
But we wondered: Is her statistical comparison between Iowa and the
United States valid? We took a closer look. (Ernst’s campaign did not
respond to an inquiry.) 'Iowa has the fourth fastest-growing personal income in the United States.'
On the first part of the claim, Ernst has a point, according to data
from the Bureau of Economic Analysis, the federal government’s official
source of data about personal income.
In the most recent quarter for which data is currently available -- the second quarter of 2014 -- personal income in Iowa
increased by 2.4 percent over the previous quarter in Iowa. Only three
states had faster growth -- Nebraska (2.7 percent), North Dakota (2.7
percent) and Idaho (2.5 percent).
But some context serves to undercut the significance of this achievement.
The statistics for such short periods of time tend to be "noisy" --
that is, the numbers bounce around a lot. As an illustration, let’s look
at the statistics for the couple of quarters before the 2.4 percent
increase. Moving backward one quarter at a time, personal income growth
in Iowa clocked in at -0.6 percent, -0.5 percent, 1.0 percent, 0.0
percent, and -0.2 percent. This paints a very different picture of
personal income growth in Iowa.
To effectively detect genuine trends, you need to study a longer
period of time. Let’s take a look at how Iowa did for full-year periods
rather than quarters.
Between full-year 2012 and full-year 2013, Iowa had the 18th-highest
percentage change in personal income among the 50 states, which is quite
a bit weaker than the fourth-place finish Ernst cited.
Iowa fared even more poorly between 2011 and 2012, when the state
ranked 43rd nationally. This, too, is quite a different picture than the
one she painted in the debate. 'Nationally, the real wage has decreased over the past eight years … by 2.7 percent.'
Not if you look at median weekly earnings of full-time wage and salary workers.
According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the median weekly wage nationally in 2013 -- the most recent full year available -- was $776, up from $671 in 2008. Once you adjust
the 2006 figure for inflation in 2013 dollars, it works out to be
$775.37 -- meaning there was basically no change at all between 2006 and
2013. It’s virtually the same if you inflation-adjust the data for 2005 -- there’s no significant change in median weekly earnings between 2005 and 2013.
"What I always say when writing about wage developments, at least
after the number of employed Americans started rising again in 2010, is
that real wages are basically flat," said Gary Burtless, an economist
with the Brookings Institution.
Meanwhile, the comparison Ernst offered -- of strong Iowa growth amid national stagnation -- is flawed, for two reasons.
• She’s comparing two different statistics. Personal
income and real wages aren’t the same thing. Real wages are a component
of personal income, but not the only one. They are derived from
separate data sources, and they use very different methodologies.
• She’s comparing two different periods of time. You
can’t simply compare the most recent quarter with the past eight years
and get a meaningful contrast. It’s comparing apples and oranges.
All this said, Ernst does have a point: Real wages have grown faster
in Iowa over the past eight years then they have nationally. If you
start the clock in 2005, real wages in Iowa increased by 1.6 percent by
2013, and if you start the clock in 2006, they increased by 1.8 percent
by 2013. And she also has a point that stagnant real earnings growth
over eight years is nothing to be proud of, even if she exaggerates by
blaming this situation on Braley. (Lots of factors shape the economy
beyond just one minority-party member of Congress.) Our ruling
Ernst said that "Iowa has the fourth fastest-growing personal income
in the United States, while nationally, the real wage has decreased over
the past eight years that Congressman Braley has been there by 2.7
percent."
Iowa did rank fourth nationally in personal income growth, but only
for the most recent quarter, and when compared to earlier quarters, this
high rate seems like a statistical anomaly. Meanwhile, she’s wrong that
real wages declined by 2.7 percent over the past eight years, although
she does have a point that Iowa did somewhat better on this score than
did the nation as a whole.
Equally problematic, Ernst’s comparison between Iowa’s economy and
the nation’s is questionable because it appears to compare quarterly
data for one statistic to eight years of a different statistic.
Economists say this isn’t a sound method. The claim contains an element
of truth but ignores critical facts that would give a different
impression, so we rate it Mostly False.
Joni Ernst, comments in a debate with Bruce Braley, Oct. 11, 2014
Bureau of Economic Analysis, SA1-3 Personal income summary, 2011-2012 and 2012-2013
Bureau of Economic Analysis, SQ1 Quarterly personal income, accessed Oct. 13, 2014
Bureau of Labor Statistics, State Occupational Employment and Wage Estimates, May 2013, May 2008, May 2006, May 2005
Bureau of Labor Statistics, Median weekly earnings of full-time wage and salary workers by detailed occupation and sex, 2013, 2008, 2006, 2005
Bureau of Labor Statistics, inflation calculator, accessed Oct. 13, 2014
Email interview with Gary Burtless, senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, Oct. 13, 2014
Email interview with Tara Sinclair, George Washington University economist, Oct. 13, 2014
CHRISTIAN sen pat roberts r tb KS, in a confusing perversion of his faith, deliberately deceived, manipulated, and lied about people loosing their health insurance in Kansas due to Obamacare / the ACA. His justification for doing so is to hold on to his US Senate seat. WHAT A TESTIMONY! Here it is, from +PolitiFact .....
"20,000 Kansans lost their health insurance because of (Obamacare)."
— Pat Roberts on Wednesday, October 1st, 2014 in a Web video
By Lauren Carroll on Thursday, October 9th, 2014 at 6:39 p.m.
A recent video by
Sen. Pat Roberts, R-Kan., attacks his opponent, independent Greg Orman,
and says 20,000 Kansans lost their insurance because of the Affordable
Care Act.
In an unexpectedly tight race, Republican Sen. Pat Roberts of
Kansas is doing everything he can to paint his opponent -- independent
Greg Orman -- as a liberal henchman.
One of Roberts’ favorite points is Orman’s stance on the Affordable
Care Act. Orman says he does not support the health care law, but he
also says pushing legislation to repeal it is impractical, because President Barack Obama would simply veto it.
In a recent Web video, Roberts treats that view as support for Obamacare.
The ad starts out with video of Orman shaking hands with
constituents, one of whom asks him a question about repealing Obamacare.
Orman replies, "That’s an interesting question," and moves on down the
line.
"Greg Orman won't repeal Obamacare," the ad’s narrator says, "even
though 20,000 Kansans lost their health insurance because of it."
Roberts was expected to easily win a fourth term (the last time Kansas elected a Democrat to the Senate was in 1932).
Then, Democratic candidate Chad Taylor dropped out, and independent
Orman surged in the polls. Now the race is a toss-up. Some see a Roberts
win as necessary for Republican Senate control in 2015.
Both candidates say they do not support Obama’s health care law, but
we wanted to know how the law had affected Kansas -- did 20,000 people
really lose their health insurance?
The answer, it seems, is no. How many Kansans lost insurance?
We asked Linda Sheppard, health policy adviser for the Kansas
Insurance Department, how many Kansans had lost their insurance due to
Obamacare. She said the state does not require health insurance carriers
to report when people go on or off coverage, so there’s no way to
definitively know the answer.
However, Sheppard said insurance carriers do have to check in with
the department when they decide to terminate a policy. So 20,000 people
losing health insurance would have likely come to her attention.
"We are not aware of any wide-scale cancellation of policies," she said.
Here’s what happened. About a year ago, in October 2013, Kansas’
largest insurance carrier -- Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Kansas --
sent letters to about 9,450 policyholders, according to numerous news reports.
Those members would be unable to renew their plans for 2014 because
those plans do not comply with new standards under the Affordable Care
Act.
Sheppard told us there are no official numbers for how many people
received these notices from insurance carriers other than Blue Cross and
Blue Shield of Kansas.
Roberts’ ad cites the 20,000 figure from an October 2013 story out of Kansas Watchdog, a conservative news website. That story says Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Kansas City (which is primarily based in Missouri
but also serves two Kansas counties) sent out notices to about 10,000
Kansan policyholders, on top of the 9,450 from Blue Cross and Blue
Shield of Kansas.
For Roberts, this is where the story ends. But in reality, the
thousands of people who received these letters did not end up without
insurance.
The following November -- after the failed roll out of HealthCare.gov
(Kansas uses the federal marketplace) -- Obama announced that people
who had recieved these nonrenewal notices could keep their policies
through 2014.
Then in March of this year, Kansas agreed to another transitional policy that allowed all of these policies to continue through 2016.
It’s Sheppard’s understanding that Kansas insurance companies turned
around and retracted those nonrenewal notices -- meaning the thousands
of people who received those notices were able to keep their health
insurance.
Retracting the nonrenewal notices caused some behind-the-scenes
challenges for the carriers, but "for the consumer it was pretty easy,"
said Scott Brunner, senior analyst at the Kansas Health Institute, a
nonprofit think tank.
Of course, these policyholders could have chosen not to renew. They
could have picked a different plan, switched to a different provider or
dropped insurance altogether -- but they were not forced out of health
insurance by the Affordable Care Act.
"It is disingenuous to focus on those who lost insurance without
acknowledging that it doesn’t mean they are currently (uninsured)," said
Roberta Riportella, a professor of community health at Kansas State
University who supports the Affordable Care Act.
Roberts’ ad also ignores that the number of uninsured Kansans who have gained coverage under the Affordable Care Act.
Because the state does not meticulously track the number of insured
folks, and the law only became fully implemented this year, it is hard
to know with certainty how many people gained insurance as a result of
Obamacare.
But about 57,000 Kansans are now enrolled in the health insurance
marketplace, Riportella said. If Kansas follows national estimates, then
roughly half of those people were previously uninsured.
There’s no evidence to suggest that more people are uninsured now
than before the Affordable Care Act was implemented, Brunner said.
"The expectation would be that with the Affordable Care Act that the number would continue to decline," he said. Our ruling
Roberts said, "20,000 Kansans lost their health insurance because of (Obamacare)."
There’s no official information to corroborate Roberts’ claim.
Several thousand Kansans received notices that their insurance plans
could not be renewed because they did not comply with Obamacare
standards, but the notices were retracted about a month later.
Meanwhile, about 57,000 Kansans obtained insurance on HealthCare.gov. If
the state follows the national trend, roughly half of these people were
uninsured before the law.
We rate Roberts’ claim False.
