NEWS ROUNDUP
Medicare split, where’s Teddy, Squeeze…
Friday, August 24, 2012
MEDICARE
► From AP — At 55 and 53, couple split by Romney/Ryan Medicare plan— Mike O’Malley is 55; wife Sharon is 53. So they’re on opposite sides of the age cutoff in Mitt Romney’s Medicare plan. Mike would qualify for traditional Medicare. But Sharon, in the new program, would get vouchers to purchase insurance. Eventually she might have to pay more for health insurance than Mike, if costs grow faster than the amount the government provides. “I’m going to be the one who’s not going to have the health care,” Sharon said. “It makes you nervous when you pay all this money into the system and it won’t be there when you need it.”
► In the (Aberdeen) Daily World — Herrera Beutler talks health care at Willapa — “I look at the Paul Ryan proposal, and maybe it’s not perfect but it’s the only proposal that anyone has written down and say ‘let’s have a debate,’ ” Herrera Beutler said.
EDITOR’S NOTE — Wait. What?! You, and every other Republican from Washington’s delegation, voted for Ryan’s imperfect Medicare voucher privatization because it’s “the only proposal anyone has written down”?! You should read more.
ELECTION
► At PubliCola — Eyman’s two-thirds requirement has killed jobs, harmed state residents, report says — Initiative hawker Tim Eyman’s I-1185, which would renew the requirement that two-thirds of the state legislature vote for any tax increase, would have devastating impacts on the state’s ability to create jobs, invest in health care and education, and erode public safety, a new report from the Washington Budget and Policy Center concludes.
► In today’s Seattle Times — Former state GOP leader Dale Foreman endorses Cantwell — Foreman, a Wenatchee attorney, apple grower and chairman of the U.S. Apple Association, said he is supporting the two-term incumbent’s re-election over Republican challenger Michael Baumgartner because of her work in support of the apple industry.
► From AP — Romney uses secretive data mining — Mitt Romney’s success in raising hundreds of millions of dollars in the costliest presidential race ever can be traced in part to a secretive data-mining project that sifts through Americans’ personal information – including their purchasing history and church attendance – to identify new and likely, wealthy donors, The Associated Press has learned.
► In today’s Seattle Times — Judge rejects Libertarians’ bid to keep Romney off Washington’s ballot
NATIONAL
► In the Tri-City Herald — Murray, Hastings visit Tri-Cities to sell party’s message — Democratic U.S. Sen. Patty Murray urged members of the House of Representatives to pass the Senate bill extending the cuts for the middle class now — she said everyone agrees taxes shouldn’t be raised for the middle class — and then debate whether the cuts should be extended for wealthier Americans. Across the river in Pasco, GOP Rep. “Doc” Hastings told the Tri-Cities Regional Chamber of Commerce that Congress must address the nation’s “crushing burden of debt” and reform Social Security and Medicare.
EDITOR’S NOTE — How exactly does holding middle-class tax cuts hostage to extending tax cuts to the wealthiest 1% address “the crushing burden of debt”?
► At AFL-CIO Now — Trade deficit with China cost 2.7 million jobs — A new report shows that between 2001 — when China was admitted into the World Trade Organization — and 2011, the U.S. trade deficit with that nation eliminated or displaced 2.1 million manufacturing jobs. Those jobs represent more than half of all U.S. manufacturing jobs lost during that time.
► In today’s Washington Post — Where is today’s Teddy Roosevelt?(by Harold Meyerson) — What’s missing from both of today’s parties is the kind of full-throated assault on corporate power that Teddy Roosevelt, Eugene Debs and sometimes even Woodrow Wilson made 100 years ago. What’s missing is Roosevelt’s demand that government counter that power. “The limitation of governmental power, of governmental action, means the enslavement of the people by the great corporations,” Roosevelt said in September 1912. With wealth and power again concentrated at the top, that’s a sentiment that today’s political discourse sorely lacks.
T.G.I.F.
► For today’s T.G.I.F., one of the entire staff of The Stand’s all-time favorite bands: Squeeze and “Another Nail in My Heart.” If you — yes, you — don’t have the album Argybargy by Squeeze, go get it. Right now. You can thank us later.
Enjoy, and have a great weekend — brought to you by the Labor Movement.
The Stand posts links to Washington state and national news of interest every weekday morning by 9 a.m.