ThinkProgress Logo

Politics

SC senator: We’ve ‘got one raghead in the White House, we don’t need a raghead in the governor’s mansion.’

By Amanda Terkel on Jun 3, 2010 at 9:33 pm

Today, the Christian Broadcasting Network published a story about Nikki Haley, the frontrunner to become South Carolina’s GOP gubernatorial nominee, saying that she “recently changed the language on her website to reflect a more Christian tone.” The story said that although Haley has “gone out of her way to make sure people know she is a Christian,” she was raised in the Sikh faith and placed more emphasis on that tradition when she ran for the state legislature in 2004. This evening in an interview with Pub Politics, state Sen. Jake Knotts (R-SC) — who is supporting a different candidate — slammed Haley by using a racial slur:

We already got one raghead in the White House, we don’t need a raghead in the governor’s mansion.

The South Carolina Republican Party has issued a statement condemning Knott’s remarks, saying, “Senator Knotts should apologize for his inappropriate comments, so that we can put this unfortunate incident behind us and focus on issues important to moving our state forward.”

Health

Georgia Passes Frivolous Law Nullifying Health Reform, California Moves Forward With Implementation

By Igor Volsky on Jun 3, 2010 at 7:30 pm

Yesterday, Georgia Governor Sonny Perdue — who is also suing the federal government over health care reform — signed the “Healthy Georgians Act of 2010,” a bill providing that no law, regulation or rule can force anyone in the state to “participate in any healthcare system.” Georgia is only the 4th state to actually enact anti-mandate legislation. Missouri has approved a ballot initiative for August 3, along with Florida and Arizona, both of which have placed measures on the November ballot.

The fine folks at Progressive States tell me that 25 states have now rejected anti-mandate bills:

A relatively small number of states are actually succeeding in passing nullification bills — probably because the federal law still supersedes any state effort — and while these stories are flashy, the real heavy lifting is being done in states like California, where legislators are “taking the initial steps to implement the complex series of overhauls prescribed by the federal government.” “More than 20 bills have been introduced and as many as a dozen might be voted on this week as lawmakers face a deadline to pass bills out of their house of origin.” Yesterday, the assembly passed a bill requiring health insurers “to obtain prior approval before raising premiums, copayments or deductibles” and also approved a measure “that would require health insurers to offer maternity coverage in all health plans.”

In fact, while support for reform has flat-lined nationwide, about “half of California voters say they support the nation’s new health care law to some degree.” According to a Field poll, “30 percent strongly support the nation’s new health care law, and another 22 percent somewhat support it.” Fifty-eight percent say the new law is an “important first step but many more changes still need to be made,” according to the poll.

Education

Perdue Rebuts Other GOP Governors: Common Academic Standards Set A Floor, Not A Ceiling, For Students

By Pat Garofalo on Jun 3, 2010 at 6:30 pm

This week, Govs. Bob McDonnell (R-VA) and Rick Perry (R-TX) declined to participate in the second round of the Obama administration’s Race to the Top program, a $4 billion initiative that provides competitive grants to states that implement education reforms. Both governors relied on the false argument that adoption of the National Governors Association’s common academic standards (which earns a state 40 points on its application, out of 500) would force them to lower their own state’s standards.

Common standards “would likely weaken the rigorous college- and career-ready standards and assessments already in place in our state,” Perry said. “They would require us to essentially reduce the quality of Virginia’s standards, and we just can’t do that,” McDonnell opined, adding that “we think those common standards ought to be a floor not a ceiling.”

As I’ve pointed out, according to the Race to the Top executive summary, the common standards are, in fact, a floor and not a ceiling. And Gov. Sonny Perdue (R-GA), who co-chairs the NGA’s education initiative, agrees, as evidenced by his statement yesterday at an event unveiling the final version of the standards:

Complacency can’t lead us into the doldrums, and our nation can’t afford to be second class in education…I see a direct link in education and economic development. What are the opportunities and the rightful responsibilities of our states to get students, not at a ceiling, but at a floor of expectations?

The new standards have also been met with praise by the American Federation of Teachers. “Imagine in football if one team made a first down in 7 yards and the other in 10 yards. That’s not fair,” AFT President Randi Weingarten said. “Once the states adopt this, that’s when the preparation really begins to take this from ‘should’ to ‘will.’” According to the New Teacher Project, Race to the Top “has already accelerated education reform by decades in some states.”

Perdue is right to frame the push for higher standards in terms of their economic benefits. According to research done by McKinsey & Company, a management consulting firm, if the educational achievement gap between America’s lowest and highest performing states had been narrowed “GDP in 2008 would have been $425 billion to $700 billion higher, or 3 to 5 percent of GDP.”

In addition, “if the United States had in recent years closed the gap between its educational achievement levels and those of better-performing nations such as Finland and Korea, GDP in 2008 could have been $1.3 trillion to $2.3 trillion higher.” “This represents 9 to 16 percent of GDP,” the firm found.

It’s been clear since McDonnell began making his claim that it simply isn’t true, but as Monica Potts pointed out, McDonnell “has a complicit press in helping spin this into an anti-federalist stand.” It’s good to see another Republican governor set the record straight.

Related Posts

Politics

Beck Blames One Of Fox News’ Largest Shareholders, Saudi Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal, For 9/11

By Lee Fang on Jun 3, 2010 at 6:24 pm

Glenn Beck and his employer On his television program this afternoon, Glenn Beck declared that Prince Alwaleed bin Talal, the largest stockholder of Fox News outside of the Rupert Murdoch family, “flew … the plane into the trade centers.” Beck started his rant as a defense of Israel’s actions against the aid flotilla to Gaza, but eventually began hypothesizing about if a similar flotilla was sent to Manhattan by Saudi Arabia. Beck said this had already happened essentially, when Prince Alwaleed offered $10 million dollars to then-Mayor Rudy Giuliani (R-NY) in the wake of the 9/11 attacks.

Beck repeatedly burst into moral outrage, demanding why people are held “to a different standard” and why the media refused to be “consistent” with its reporting. Of course, during his monologue, Beck never mentioned that the very Saudi Prince Beck accused of being behind the 9/11 attacks is a close friend of his own boss, Rupert Murdoch, or that Beck’s employment at Fox News is financed by that same Prince. Without a tinge of irony in his voice, Beck implored his listeners not to trust any offering of money from Prince Alwaleed, despite the fact his own salary depends on him:

BECK: Didn’t we almost kind of do that? Do you remember what happened right after 9/11 with Rudy Giuliani? Do you remember Saudi Arabia came and said, we want to help. This guy [pointing at Prince Alwaleed bin Talal al-Saud] came over and said ‘I want to give you a $10 million dollar check.’ Rudy Giuliani said, you see that over there? I don’t think we want your help. You already sent us help. And you flew that help into the plane, into the the trade centers. The same prince later blamed the U.S. policy for the attacks. Giuliani said, take your check, we don’t want your money. There is no way America, that if it was us, that we would allow that to happen. Why do we hold people to a different standard? [...]

BECK: We answered this question on the beating. We just have to be consistent.

Watch it:

Prince Alwaleed has grown close with the Murdoch enterprise, recently endorsing James Murdoch to succeed his father and creating a content-sharing agreement with Fox News for his own media conglomerate, Rotana. As ThinkProgress has reported, many conservative activists have been enraged at Fox News for allowing Prince Alwaleed to dictate its content. For instance, Prince Alwaleed had boasted in the past about forcing Fox News to change its content relating to its coverage of riots in Paris. Curiously, Fox News has also rejected television ads criticizing America’s dependence on Middle East oil, a source of wealth for the Prince Alwaleed family.

Related Posts

Yglesias

Endgame

By Matthew Yglesias on Jun 3, 2010 at 6:14 pm

Welcome back to free admission:

— Coping with a 12-hour time change is hard.

— The EPA and the American Power Act.

— This is why my blog doesn’t have a name either.

— Raguram Rajan’s book is excellent, but he has an unfortunate insistence on clinging to a bogus narrative about the Community Reinvestment Act, Fannie & Freddie, and affordable housing initiatives.

— Danish political humor.

— Beijing Qianhai Hospital of Femoral Head.

— Oil disaster will get much worse.

My favorite Chinese band (on an admittedly tiny sample) is Carsick Cars. Here’s “You Can Listen, You Can Talk”

Politics

At Heritage Event, George Allen Rips RomneyCare Plan That Heritage Helped Draft

By Lee Fang on Jun 3, 2010 at 5:37 pm

Former Sen. George Allen (R-VA), who gained national notoriety after hurling a racial slur at an Indian-American man working for his opponent’s campaign in 2006, has a new book about sports and politics called What Washington Can Learn from the World of Sports, which he publicized at an event today at the Heritage Foundation. During his remarks, Allen continually attacked the health reform plan passed this year as a “monstrosity” and claimed that it was based on the Massachusetts health care system, which Allen ridiculed as “costly and foolish.”

ThinkProgress asked Allen if his attacks on the Massachusetts health system were in any way a critique of former Gov. Mitt Romney (R-MA), the creator of the Massachusetts system. Allen quickly laughed and said he would not get “into personalities.” But ThinkProgress followed up, asking if his attacks were a critique of the Heritage Foundation, which helped to draft Romney’s plan. Allen became clearly confused, repeating that he doesn’t “like the law” before asking a nearby Heritage staffer if they had indeed assisted with the crafting of Romney’s health plan:

TP: I heard during your speech you said no other states had emulated what they did in Massachusetts, the “costly foolish” plan they have there. Only the Federal government had emulated that plan.

ALLEN: Right.

TP: Is that a critique of Mitt Romney –

ALLEN: It’s a critique of the law, I’m not getting into personalities.

TP: What about the Heritage Foundation, which helped write that law?

ALLEN: Well, I don’t know who wrote the law. I don’t like the law. [...] You wouldn’t write a law such as this. [turning to a Heritage staffer] Alright, here’s someone from the Heritage Foundation. Did the Heritage Foundation write the Massachusetts law?

Watch it:

The Heritage staffer, Becky Norton Dunlop, replied that Heritage simply submitted ideas for Romney’s health plan — which were promptly rejected by the “Democratic legislature.” However, as ThinkProgress reported earlier this year, Heritage touted its role in crafting Romney’s health plan for years after its passage, taking credit for the most substantive parts of the plan, including the individual mandate, the Medicaid expansion, and even the insurance exchange. In fact, in the video above, Romney himself bragged that Heritage officials “worked with us and was at the celebration” for his health plan, which he termed “ultimate conservatism.”

Health

Hospitals Smack Insurers: You Shouldn’t Reclassify Administrative Costs As Medical Expenses To Inflate MLR

By Igor Volsky on Jun 3, 2010 at 5:30 pm

On Tuesday, the National Association of Insurance Commissioners — which has already issued a series of interim reports — officially notified the Department of Health and Human Services that it would not meet the agency’s deadline for submitting recommendations for the new medical loss ratio (MLR) requirements and promised to “complete this project as soon as possible.”

The new health care law tasks the NAIC with establishing “uniform definitions and standardized methodologies for calculating the medical loss ratio and rebates outlined in the law,” subject to the Secretary’s certification. It also “permits health insurers to add their costs for “activities that improve health care quality” to their costs for “reimbursement for clinical services provided to enrollees” for purposes of calculating their MLR under the PPACA.”

During the open comment period, the health insurers asked for fairly broad provisions that would allow insurers to reclassify certain costs as “activities that improve health care quality”, thus inflating insurers’ medical loss ratio percentage without improving efficiency. Now, the American Hospital Association is using the delay to its advantage and urging the NAIC to issue recommendations that would prevent insurers from counting past administrative expenses as medical costs. In a letter to the group, the lobby argued that “costs and expenses that are classified as activities that improve health care quality need to meet specific criteria“:

We would caution that the addition of the health care quality component should not be construed to permit health insurers to reclassify as health care quality costs that the insurers historically considered to be the administrative costs of doing business.

The MLR regulations must clearly define which activities do and do not improve health care quality and restrict the ability of health insurers to subjectively make such a determination. The AHA recommends that resulting regulations require that the activity be performed by a professional licensed to perform the service or activity, and employ a decision tree analysis to distinguish between an activity that is intended to limit services or reduce expenditures (e.g., utilization management) or to improve health (e.g., a diabetes management program, care coordination or shared-savings programs).

Before health care reform became law, insurers had every incentive to limit the growth of their medical loss ratio, which is closely monitored by Wall Street investors as an indicator of profitability. In other words, insurers used to keep strict definition s of medical expenses to deflate their MLR and please investors. Now, they’re looking to shift the gameby announcing to Wall Street, ‘our MLR is going to go up by a couple of points but don’t worry we’re shoving administrative costs into it.’

Yglesias

How To Stimulate Without Increasing The Deficit At All

By Matthew Yglesias on Jun 3, 2010 at 5:28 pm

Robert Waldmann crafts a proposal to stimulate short-run aggregate demand without increasing the short term deficit. Just make the tax code more progressive on a temporary basis:

I think the solution is a temporary increase in the progressivity of the tax code. A temporary tax cut for the poor will cause a large increase in their spending as many of the poor are liquidity constrained. A temporary tax increase for the rich will cause a small decrease in their spending as few of the rich are liquidity constrained.

Explicitly temporary tax cuts do not all become permanent. There is no movement to extend the temporary tax cuts in the stimulus bill, even though Obama promised permanent tax cuts which were to be identical except five fourths as big. It might be hard to let a temporary tax increase for the rich expire. So my approach might reduce the deficit in the long run.

Waldmann conjectures that “none of the people who claim they oppose further stimulus because it will add to the bet will support my proposal” and I’m likely to agree with him. But it should work. It’s been disappointing to me to see how bad our political institutions are at responding to an economic downturn. There’s a lot of different moving pieces to economic policy, and as Waldmann’s exercise shows it’s generally possible to craft ideas that meet all sorts of broad constraints. In a sane world, Congress would be interested in exploring these options and pick one of them. Instead, we’ve had an assortment of small-bore “jobs bills” none of which seems especially well thought or or appropriately sized to the scope of our problems.

Climate Progress

Jindal jumps the shark, crashes into oil-spoiled Gulf

By Joe Romm on Jun 3, 2010 at 5:03 pm

Faced with devastating BP disaster, Louisiana’s governor demands … more deepwater drilling ASAP?

A stunning new letter by the oil-addicted governor of Louisiana gives the lie to right-wing claims that environmentalists are to blame for the BP oil disaster.

On Wednesday, Bobby Jindal, who blames everybody but himself for the environmental disaster hitting his state, wrote to President Obama and Interior Secretary Ken Salazar pleading with them to end the deep water drilling moratorium immediately.

Jindal has been trying to position himself as the can-do guy in the face of the worst environmental disaster in US history, but fundamentally like so many Louisiana politicians, he is beholden to Big Oil, and thus inherently oblivious to the consequences of the states addiction to petro-dollars.  My latest Salon piece discusses the shameless letter he wrote and what it says about pro-pollution politicians like Jindal — and Palin.

Read more

Older

Switch to Mobile
ThinkProgress Signup Overlay Skip and Continue to ThinkProgress Skip and Continue to ThinkProgress

Sign Up