Conservatives Finally Announce Alternative To Obamacare: Just Go To The Emergency Room

BY IGOR VOLSKY/Think Progress 

Heritage president and former South Carolina senator Jim DeMint continued his campaign to convince Republicans to shut down the government in a ploy to defund the Affordable Care Act on Wednesday, telling a town hall in Tampa, Florida that “This might be that last off-ramp to stop Obamacare before it becomes more enmeshed in our culture.” The law “is not about getting better health care,” he continued. Uninsured Americans “will get better health care just going to the emergency room.”

The claim may be a standard line for today’s Republicans, but it is a stark departure for DeMint and the think tank he now leads. In 1989, the Heritage Foundation was at the forefront of advocating for a requirement to purchase coverage through as system of regulated health care marketplaces, the very centerpiece of Obama’s health care reform, and later lobbied Congressional Republicans to offer the initiative as an alternative to President Bill Clinton’s health proposal.

More than a decade later, Heritage boosted former Gov. Mitt Romney’s (R-MA) health reform law and the individual mandate included in it, describing the requirement as “one that is clearly consistent with conservative values.” A Heritage health care analyst said Romney’s proposal would reform the state’s “uncompensated-care payment system,” force residents to take “personal responsibility” for their health care and prevent them from simply showing up “in emergency rooms.”

Indeed, DeMint himself backed the effort when he endorsed Romney for president in 2008.

“That’s something that I think we should do for the whole country,” DeMint told Fox News. “And the governor just looked at the numbers like a good businessman and realized that we could give people private insurance policies cheaper than we could provide free health care.”

The so-called “free” care at emergency rooms is a result of The Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act or (EMTALA), which requires hospitals that accept Medicare or Medicaid funding to treat patients for emergency medical conditions regardless of legal status or ability to pay. But EMTALA only applies to medical emergencies like heart attacks or serious injury. It does not offer any treatment for chronic conditions, leaving the millions of Americans with diabetes who need regular access to medication to stay alive, or asthma patients, or women diagnosed with breast cancer without access to care.

Studies also show that not all emergency room patients have equal outcomes. The uninsured who suffer “traumatic injuries, such as car crashes, falls and gunshot wounds, were almost twice as likely to die in the hospital as similarly injured patients with health insurance.”

More Louisiana Republicans Blame President Obama For Hurricane Katrina Response Than Bush

BY REBECCA LEBER/Think Progress

According to a Public Policy Polling survey, 29 percent of Louisiana Republicans say President Obama is more to blame for the botched executive branch response to Hurricane Katrina while just 28 percent blamed George W. Bush. A plurality of 44 percent said they were unsure who was more responsible, even though Hurricane Katrina occurred over three years before Obama entered the presidency when he was still a freshman Senator.

When the Hurricane hit in 2005, Bush was slammed by both parties for errors pre- and post-Katrina. Later, a congressional report determined that a lack of presidential leadership failed the people of New Orleans. But Bush praised the federal response at the time, saying FEMA director Michael Brown was doing “a heckuva job.” Since Obama took office, he has directed federal funding to rebuilding New Orleans hospitals.

President Obama received some better reviews for at least one storm that actually occurred while he leads the executive branch. After Hurricane Sandy storm hit the East Coast, Republican governors Chris Christie and Bob McDonnell, praised federal efforts.

Even Brown’s criticism of Obama during Sandy came across as a compliment, because the disgraced FEMA director slammed Obama for responding “so quickly” to the oncoming storm.

Colorado Legislator: Poverty Higher Among ‘Black Race’ Because They Eat Too Much Chicken

BY JOSH ISRAEL/Think Progress

In a meeting of the state’s Economic Opportunity Poverty Reduction Task Force Wednesday, Colorado State Sen. Vicki Marble (R) delivered a long monologue suggesting that the reason for poverty among certain minority groups was that they eat too much chicken and barbecue.

Discussing statistics about racial disparities in the poverty rate, KVDR Denver reports, Marble claimed that the studies ignored drug addiction and poor diets common among Latino- and African-American families.

MARBLE: When you look at life expectancy, there are problems in the black race: sickle-cell anemia is something that comes up, diabetes is something that’s prevalent in the genetic makeup and you just can’t help it… Although I’ve got to say, I’ve never had better barbecue and better chicken and ate better in my life than when you go down south and you — I mean love it and everybody loves it. The Mexican diet in Mexico with all of the fresh vegetables. And you go down there and they’re much thinner than when they come up here… they change their diet.

Listen to the hearing here.

A July study by the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization found that obesity rates are actually higher in Mexico than in the United States.

Another task force member, Rep. Rhonda Fields (D) responded, saying, “The title for this committee is Economic Opportunity Poverty Reduction; and one of the things I will not tolerate is racist and insensitive comments about African Americans, the color of their skin. What you mentioned that we eat — I was highly offended by your remarks.” She added that she would not “engage in a dialogue where I’m in the company, where you are using these stereotyped references about African American and chicken and food… this is not what this committee is all about… it’s not about chicken.”

The chairman then adjourned the meeting so the task force’s members could “all take a deep breath.”

In a statement Wednesday night, Marble said, “My comments were not meant to be disparaging to any community… I am saddened they were taken in that regard. I take my responsibility seriously and I hope our work on this committee will offer real solutions to the health and financial challenges of our vulnerable populations.”

Fox's Malkin Invents Conspiracy Theory That Forever 21 Was Intimidated Into Silence On Obamacare

MIKE BURNS/Media Matters For America:

Fox News contributor Michelle Malkin invented a conspiracy theory that the clothing chain Forever 21 was intimidated by the Obama administration into claiming that its decision to cut worker hours was not a result of the health care law.

Media outlets are reporting that Forever 21 is cutting the hours of some full-time employees and reclassifying them as part-time. In a statement on Facebook, the company said that the cuts affect "less than 1% of all U.S. store employees" and have nothing to do with the Affordable Care Act:

Forever 21, like all retailers, staffs its stores based on projected store sales, completely independent of the Affordable Care Act. After a recent evaluation, Forever 21 realigned its staffing needs to better reflect sales expectations. This realignment impacted less than 1% of all U.S. store employees. Forever 21 values all of its employees and made every effort to affect as few employees as possible in this realignment.

Despite the company's explicit refutation and a lack of evidence to support her conspiracy, Malkin argued that Forever 21 was cowed into denying that the Affordable Care Act played a role in its decision to reduce worker hours.

On America Live, Malkin said that Forever 21's statement on its decision was evidence that "the intimidation campaign of this White House has worked rather effectively." Malkin added that companies that have "had the audacity to talk about the connection between Obamacare and cutting benefits and cutting full-time employees to part-time" were "punished," so "of course a company is going to deny that it had anything to do with Obamacare."

Where's the adult dialogue from the right-wing media?

Visit NBCNews.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Did the British Have Good Reason to Detain Greenwald's Partner?

 by Spandan C/The People's View:

Yesterday, Glenn Greenwald made an international incident out of the fact that his partner was detained in London's Heathrow airport for questioning. But in a comical twist only Greenwald can tie himself into, Greenwald can't seem to settle on whether in this trip, his partner was his errand boy or just an uninvolved person. On the one hand, Greenwald's tirade against the British authorities mentions:

 “This is obviously a serious, radical escalation of what they are doing. He is my partner. He is not even a journalist.”

Well, neither is Glenn, but I digress. So on the one hand, Greenwald's partner, David Miranda, is an uninvolved bi-stander. But on the other Miranda was carrying documents on his trip to Berlin for Laura Poitras, Greenwald's colleague in reporting the Snowden stories. The Guardian - Greenwald's employer -paid for the trip.

And that, fellow traveler, brings us to what could be the real reason Greenwald and his employer are trying to make this an international incident and concentrating fire on the British authorities. In public, they may be focusing on the fact of the detention, but in private, they are soiling their undergarments not over the detention itself, but over this:

 David Miranda, the partner of Guardian reporter Glenn Greenwald, was held for nearly the maximum time authorities are allowed to detain individuals under the Terrorism Act’s Schedule 7, which authorizes security agencies to stop and question people at borders. Greenwald saidMiranda’s cellphone, laptops and memory sticks were confiscated.

Now, Greenwald of course claims that this was a blatant attempt to intimidate journalism. Except, what if it wasn't? What if the equipment seized contains evidence of criminal activity?

Huh? Whacha talkin' 'bout, Mister? Follow me.

Back in June, Greenwald backpedaled ferociously on an important story: after bragging about how he had been working with Snowden since February (i.e. before Snowden took the latest job from which he stole the classified data), he suddenly insisted that he didn't even know Snowden's name till May. At that time, I pointed out a distinct possibility as a reason for this ferocious backtracking: if it's true that he had been working with Snowden since February, one could legitimately raise the issue of whether the information Snowden obtained was gathered on Snowden's own initiative or instigated by Glenn Greenwald and/or Laura Poitras.

Greenwald isn't the sharpest lawyer you'll ever meet, but he's nonetheless a lawyer. He knew the clear implications of that line. If he, his cohort or his employer had any role in instigating the theft of US national security documents, he would go from being a reporter immune from prosecution under the first amendment to an accessory to espionage and theft, and no law or Constitutional amendment would cover his behind.

One person - that we knew of - knows the answer to that question, of course, and that's Edward Snowden, who is now been granted asylum by the bastion of free press and transparent government that is Vladimir Putin's Russia. At the time, I had assumed that without Snowden spilling the beans, it would be difficult to meet the legal standard of proof it would take to nab Greenwald.

But imagine a scenario under which - through intelligence gathering operations - the US and/or the UK government has found sources to corroborate that exact story. Imagine a scenario in which intelligence has found evidence to link Greenwald as an instigator to Mr. Snowden's crime rather than just a reporter, and the detention and questioning of Mr. Miranda and confiscation of his equipment was in fact to gather physical evidence to prove this crime. If that's the case, it wouldn't be any wonder that Greenwald would be very, very worried.

And if that's the case - if the British and American intelligence is closing in on just what (more preciselywho) made Edward Snowden do what he did, and just who helped him plan his escape, and the evidence points to Glenn Greenwald - then of course, the detention of Mr. Miranda is in fact part of a criminal and terrorism investigation, and not, as Greenwald would like you to believe, an attempt to intimidate journalists.

Of course, no one but the British authorities really know exactly why they detained Miranda. Even if this is the case, there is no guarantee that what was confiscated would actually produce evidence strong enough to use in a criminal case against Greenwald or his associate(s). It could also be that the British simply got news that Greenwald's partner may be traveling with stolen property (classified documents from the US government). And yes, admittedly, as I outlined in my June piece, I am rather convinced - based on circumstantial evidence and logic - that Greenwald's role in this whole affair is more than just that of a reporter, so I leave it up to the reader to decide how likely one believes the above scenario to be. But at the very least, there is no reason to jump to Greenwald's preferred conclusion that it was an attempt to intimidate anyone rather than aiding the investigation of espionage.

Release of Sen. Ted Cruz’s Canadian birth certificate sparks questions about dual citizenship

By Scott Kaufman/Raw Story

On Sunday, Sen. Ted Cruz (R-T) released his birth certificate to the Dallas Morning News. The official document is from the Edmonton branch of the Province of Alberta’s Department of Health, and indicates that the Republican presidential hopeful was born in Calgary to a Cuban father and an American mother. To those who believe natural-born citizenship requires birth on United States soil, like Donald Trump, a Cruz candidacy would present similar eligibility issues to those that both President Obama and his opponent, Sen. John McCain, faced during the 2008 election. Constitutional scholars, including Cruz himself, think the “birther” issue is irrelevant, given that Cruz’s mother was born in Wilmington, Delaware. Her American citizenship, they claim, makes him a natural-born, instead of a naturalized, citizen of the United States.

The requirement that Presidents be natural-born stems from an idea most succinctly articulated by Alexander Hamilton in “Federalist #68,” in which he notes “the desire in foreign powers to gain an improper ascendant in [American] councils. How could they better gratify this, than by raising a creature of their own to the chief magistracy of the Union?” In the case of Cruz, his status as a natural-born citizen would seem to preclude him from being such a creature.

However, Canadian lawyers inform the Morning News that Cruz’s Calgary birth automatically granted him Canadian citizenship because his father, Rafael Cruz, had moved to Canada in the 1960s and was considered a permanent resident at the time of Cruz’s birth in 1970. Canadian law stipulates that the child of a permanent resident is conferred Canadian citizenship.

The result is that Cruz apparently currently retains his citizenship in both the United States and Canada. No one claims that Cruz is a Canadian Manchurian candidate but, as the last two presidential elections have proven, any question about a candidate’s eligibility to hold the Office of the Presidency will find traction in certain portions of the electorate.

Unless, that is, Cruz publicly renounces his Canadian citizenship. His spokeswoman, Catherine Frazier, indicates that is unlikely to happen: “Senator Cruz became a U.S. citizen at birth, and he never had to go through a naturalization process after birth to become a U.S. citizen. To our knowledge, he never had Canadian citizenship, so there is nothing to renounce.”

UPDATE: Cruz renounced his Canadian citizenship on Monday afternoon, but said he had nothing against the country.

“I got my U.S. passport in high school,” he said in a statement reported by the Associated Press.

“Because I was a U.S. citizen at birth, because I left Calgary when I was 4 and have lived my entire life since then in the U.S., and because I have never taken affirmative steps to claim Canadian citizenship, I assumed that was the end of the matter. Now The Dallas Morning News says that I may technically have dual citizenship. Assuming that is true, then sure, I will renounce any Canadian citizenship. Nothing against Canada, but I’m an American by birth and as a U.S. Senator, I believe I should be only an American.”

Black singer says white woman assaulted him over Trayvon Martin song

By Ronnie Cohen/Reuters/Raw Story

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) – An African American performer who was shoved after he dedicated a song to slain Florida teenager Trayvon Martin at a California music festival filed a lawsuit on Monday against the white woman who he said assaulted him onstage.

Prosecutors have charged Dinalynn Andrews-Potter, 43, with assault and elder abuse stemming from the onstage incident last month as Lester Chambers performed on the day a Florida jury reached a verdict in the racially charged killing.

Chambers, the 73-year-old former lead singer for the Chambers Brothers, had urged the Alameda County district attorney to charge his assailant with a hate crime for shoving him while he was performing a peace-seeking spiritual on July 13 in the northern California city of Hayward.

But investigators determined the incident lacked the racial animus needed to support such charges.

Chambers’ civil lawsuit calls the assault “a racially motivated public attack,” saying Andrews-Potter attacked Chambers with punched fists and racial slurs. It accuses her and the San Francisco suburb of Hayward, which sponsored the blues festival, with damages for battery, elder abuse, interfering with his exercise of civil rights, negligent supervision and negligence.

The disturbance, captured on video, happened minutes before a Florida jury acquitted George Zimmerman in the shooting death of the unarmed black teenager Martin in a verdict that spurred nationwide protests.

Oakland civil rights attorney John Burris filed the lawsuit in Alameda County Superior Court on behalf of Chambers, best known for the hit song “Time Has Come Today.”

“This was an egregious attack upon an 73-year-old African American blues legend that took place moments after Mr. Chambers had dedicated a song about Martin Luther King … to the family of Trayvon Martin,” he said in an email. “This has all the appearance of a hate crime.”

The lawsuit says the attack left Chambers “humiliated and ashamed” and unable to perform for at least eight months.

Video of the performance shows Chambers singing into the microphone with a band backing him up when a woman rushed to the stage, jumped up and shoved him so forcefully he fell backward into sound equipment.

Andrews-Potter could not be reached for comment.

ACA Supporting Business Owner Trounces Obamacare Bashing House Republican At Town Hall

By: Jason Easley/politicususa

In a must see video, a business owner takes ACA repeal supporting House Republican Rep. Joe Heck to task for wanting to repeal Obamacare. House Republicans might want to rethink running against the ACA in 2014.

Video:

Q9: ACA. I hear reps from GOP say it’s going to hurt business, hurt business, hurt business. But I am a business person, and I have been paying a living wage with benefits for decades. When I pay a living wage with insurance for decades, I pay for the people who don’t have insurance. People with insurance pay $600 every year for people who don’t have insurance when they go to the emergency room. You mentioned, it would get people that are not insured, insured. It’s also suppose to better the cost curve, and it has been saving me costs. It has put money in my pocket. I received tax credits for doing what I’ve always done; giving my employees access to health care and pay for that. No co-pay for wife’s well woman exam. No co-pay for child check-up. The insurance exchanges are ready to rock on the first [of January]. I already looked. Same company I’m buying insurance now, I’ll be able to buy the same policy, 90% less and still get my tax credit. Having people buy and insurance instead of go to the emergency room, If that’s going to foul up the system because people are getting health care that’s just wrong. Why would you oppose the ACA if it was passed by congress, passed by the senate, signed by the president, upheld by the supreme court and re-affirmed by the reelection of the President of the United States who won your district? Why would you revoke something that’s helping me now? It’s bending the cost curve and it’s going to bend the cost curve in the future? Why Congressman? Why?

Rep. Heck: First let me start off with the actual passage of the ACA. Again I wasn’t there. It passed in a Democratically controlled House and a Democratically controlled Senate. [Follow-up comment: Thank God] Passed in middle of night. Just like Immigration Senate bill, nobody had chance to read it. Democrats that drafted it say it’s a train wreck. There are good things in the bill to keep and there are bad things. The president’s re-election wasn’t an affirmation of the ACA. The President won by 8/10ths of a point. I won by 8 points here, more than President, and I ran on fixing ACA. The help you’re getting through those small business tax credits, what are you going to do when those go away? They are not there forever. [Follow-up comment: the cost curve is being bent.] The cost curve isn’t being bent. [Follow-up comment: the cost curve is being bent for me sir.] You might be the exception. Some people benefit. The vast majority aren’t. You talked about the $600 everybody was paying for the uninsured, there’s no such thing as free preventative health care. You might not be pay for it but somebody’s got to pay for it. And that payment is going to be spread across everybody that’s insured. It goes from group ratings to community ratings. Big businesses, those with over 50 FTE, are those that are truly impacted by the health care. Those with less than 50, there are good things in this bill that will help them. [Follow-up comment: And that's most of the businesses in this country.] Not really. Not less than 50. Once you have more than 50 employees. [Follow-up Q: And that's if you employee more than 50 without health insurance?] No. They have to meet the requirements the government as set. That’s going to increase your costs.

This exchange is similar to one that happened to fellow Obamacare bashing House Republican Patrick McHenry of North Carolina at a town hall earlier this month:

House Republicans are finding out that it isn’t 2009 anymore. They can’t just make stuff up to scare people about the ACA. People are experiencing some of the benefits of the new law, and just like the constituent in the video (Ron Nelson), they want to know why Republicans want to take away the good things that the ACA is doing?

Interestingly, the first response of Rep. Heck’s office was to label Nelson an OFA plant. Nelson admitted that he has attended some OFA meetings, but he is not an organizer for OFA, and he does live in Rep. Heck’s district. The problem that House Republicans all over the country are facing is that they can offer no practical truthful reason for repealing the ACA.

The mood is changing on Obamacare, and House Republicans may have made a fatal blunder by assuming that what worked in 2009-2010 will still work in 2013-2014. Now that people are experiencing the law for themselves, it is more difficult for Republicans to lie about it.

The Obamacare issue could end up working against House Republicans next year. If this happens it might be a tough election night for John Boehner and his crew of destruction by obstruction House Republicans.

How Republican Obstructionism Could Hand Congress To Democrats

BY RUY TEIXEIRA/Think Progress

Why are Republicans so freaked out?

At this point, they have a good chance — perhaps around 50-50 — of picking up enough seats to take the Senate, while Democrats’ chances of picking up the 17 seats they need to regain control of the House look considerably smaller than that. And yet, as one Politico story put it, “it is almost impossible to find an establishment Republican in town who’s not downright morose about the 2013 that has been and is about to be.”

Politico suggests the reason for the glumness is fear about the political fallout from the GOP’s unyielding, nihilistic approach to governance on issues like Obamacare and the debt ceiling. That problem may be far worse than they imagine. A close scrutiny of the data reveals several demographic weak points that the current wave of Republican crazy could activate, leading to the outcome they dread the most: Democratic control of both houses of Congress.

Start with minorities. It’s not well-known, but Republicans in 2010 benefited not only from relatively low minority turnout (standard for an off-year election) but also from relatively low minority support for Democratic candidates. Emphasis here is on the relative: minority support for House Democrats in 2010 was 73-25 — high, but below the 77-22 margin that minorities averaged in the three off-year elections that preceded 2010. If minorities snap back to 77-22 Democratic support as a consequence of Republican misbehavior, and the expected 2 percentage point increase in the share of minority voters from population trends emerges, then the Republican 6.8 percentage point margin in 2010 will be immediately sliced in half. And if the minority vote goes even stronger for the Democrats, reaching 2012 levels, that would eliminate about three-quarters of the Republicans’ 2010 advantage all on its own.

Another demographic problem for the GOP comes from a more surprising quarter: seniors. As Erica Seifert of Democracy Corps noted in a recent memo:

There’s something going on with seniors: It is now strikingly clear that they have turned sharply against the GOP. This is apparent in seniors’ party affiliation and vote intention, in their views on the Republican Party and its leaders, and in their surprising positions on jobs, health care, retirement security, investment economics, and the other big issues that will likely define the 2014 midterm elections.

We first noticed a shift among seniors early in the summer of 2011, as Paul Ryan’s plan to privatize Medicare became widely known (and despised) among those at or nearing retirement. Since then, the Republican Party has come to be defined by much more than its desire to dismantle Medicare. To voters from the center right to the far left, the GOP is now defined by resistance, intolerance, intransigence, and economics that would make even the Robber Barons blush. We have seen other voters pull back from the GOP, but among no group has this shift been as sharp as it is among senior citizens.

It is therefore quite plausible that the GOP will benefit far less from senior support in 2014 than in 2010. If the senior share of voters returns to normal levels (19 percent) and the Republican margin among this group drops to its post-2000 average (6 points, about where it is right now in the Democracy Corps polls) that would take care of the rest of the GOP margin from 2010, getting the Democrats slightly past the break-even point in the popular vote.

Of course, given the well-known GOP advantage in translating seats to votes, Democrats probably need to do substantially better than breaking even to attain a majority in the House. That won’t be easy, but there are certainly potential avenues to shift the 2014 House vote even farther in Democrats’ direction. There is the youth vote, for example, which was relatively poor for the Democrats in 2010 (55-42) and could certainly improve, as well as possibly turn out in larger numbers. The latter could also be true of the minority vote, whose projected 2 point increase in voter share, is due solely to population increase. If relative minority turnout is better in 2014 than 2010, then there will be an even larger increase in minority vote share over 2010, pushing the Democrats’ margin farther toward what they need to take the House.

Make no mistake about it: the Democrats face an uphill climb. But the possibilities outlined above inch closer to reality every day the GOP continues its coordinated campaign to alienate anyone interested in functional governance.

Nine Term North Carolina Senator Resigns To Fight New Voter Suppression Law

BY IAN MILLHISER/Think Progress

North Carolina state Sen. Ellie Kinnaird (D) announced today that she is resigning her seat in the state legislature after 17 years of service. Instead she will work full time to reverse the blizzard of right-wing legislation enacted by Republicans since they took over the state government last January. In a message posted on her website, Kinnaird wrote that a major focus of her post-legislative work will be “a grass-roots project to make sure everyone in the state has a proper voter ID so that no votes are denied, even though” a recently enacted voter suppression law “is aimed at exactly that – repressing the vote.” Kinnaird’s replacement will effectively be chosen by Democratic officials.

In 2010, Republicans took over both houses of the state legislature for the first time since 1870, thanks in no small part to the spending of a single very wealthy Republican — wholesale magnate Art Pope. After Republican Gov. Pat McCrory took office last January, state lawmakers have pursued an agenda focused on voter suppression, shutting down abortion clinics, shifting the state’s tax burden onto poor people, and allowing gun owners to bring firearms into bars.

Earlier this month, McCrory signed into law the nation’s strictest voter suppression law. Among other things, this law includes cuts to early voting, a strict voter ID requirement and prohibitions on certain kinds of voter registration drives. All of these provisions are likely to restrict low-income and minority voters from exercising their right to vote — thus making the electorate more Republican and less Democratic.

Fox News "Reports" on SNAP: Binging, Losers, And "Too Much Food"

 SIMON MALOY/Media Matters For America:

Roughly 45 minutes into Fox News' "special" investigation into the Department of Agriculture's Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP, or "food stamps," per the outdated parlance), host Bret Baier posed a question that gets right to the heart of what Fox News specifically, and conservatives generally, are trying to accomplish with regard to public attitudes toward social welfare programs. "Shouldn't there be at least some stigma?" Baier asked, referring to people who accept SNAP benefits. Baier's just-asking-questions lament about the lack of stigmatization was all part of Fox News' slipshod and flagrant piece of agitprop intended to shame the needy and promote public resentment of the government safety net.

Everything about Baier's special, "The Great Food Stamp Binge" -- from the title to its absurd focus on a thoroughly unlikable miscreant named Jason Greenslate who proudly abuses SNAP benefits -- was designed to provoke hostility to the idea of nutritional assistance programs. Greenslate, a California musician who refuses to work and spends his monthly SNAP benefits on sushi and lobsters, is an anomaly in a program that has proven to be both efficient and effective. According to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, "fewer than 2 percent of SNAP benefits are issued to households that do not meet all of the program's eligibility requirements." The USDA estimates that just one cent of every dollar of SNAP benefits is lost to "trafficking," a type of fraud. "About three out of four SNAP households included a child, a person age 60 or older, or a disabled person," per the Congressional Budget Office.

Greenslate, who is in no way representative of the typical SNAP recipient, was the subject of two separate segments, totaling nearly nine minutes, of Fox News' hour-long special. Baier proclaimed him "the new face of food stamps." 

Greenslate is "the new face of food stamps" for no other reason than Fox News wants him to be. Baier offered no data to back up this assertion, and no fact-driven justification for even including Greenslate in the report. But this freeloading oaf is an easy-to-hate villain, someone the viewer can immediately dislike and a convenient punching bag for small-government agitators. Near the program's close, Fox News reporter John Roberts, interviewing Greenslate, attempted to shame him -- and every other recipient of SNAP benefits. "It used to be that, you know, that if somebody was on food stamps it's like 'hey, they're on food stamps, you know... loser,'" said Roberts.

It should also be pointed out that Greenslate's monthly benefit is $200, meaning that he is responsible for, at most, $2,400 of waste per year. The government spent $78 billion on SNAP in fiscal year 2011. That means Fox News spent almost 9 minutes investigating and exposing SNAP waste that totals (roughly) 0.000003 percent of the total SNAP budget.

You expect this sort of nonsense from Fox News' stable of determinedly ignorant pundits and opinion hosts, but Baier is a journalist. He's the anchor of Fox News' flagship news show. With "The Great Food Stamp Binge" he created a deliberate caricature of SNAP recipients as lazy and parasitic while one of his news division colleagues called them all losers. Again, this is coming from the "news" side.

The heavy-handed propaganda aspect of Baier's special was balanced by its feather-light journalistic touch. It's not clear how someone "investigating" the rise of SNAP recipients could barely even mention the massive economic recession that was the primary driver of that increase, but Baier somehow managed to do exactly that, speaking of the spike in SNAP recipients from 2008-2009 as something that just sort of happened when Barack Obama came into office.

It is true that the stimulus package was "one big factor" in the "explosion" of the SNAP program, but there were a host of other contributing factors. According to the CBO: "About one-fifth of the growth in spending can be attributed to temporarily higher benefit amounts enacted in the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009. The remainder stems from other factors, such as higher food prices and lower income among beneficiaries, both of which have boosted benefits."

The recession only got a brief mention by Baier as he read the results of a Fox News poll asking respondents what they believe explains the "record number of people on food stamps." According to Baier, 40 percent said the "severity of recession simply means that more qualify for assistance today, however a larger number" -- 53 percent -- "believe the government has made it too easy to get assistance and people are taking advantage of that." The data show that those 53 percent are mistaken, but that doesn't comport with the message Fox News is trying to push that SNAP recipients are freeloading losers. So, in the spirit of journalism, Baier ignored the data.

What emerged was a twisted version of the American welfare state based on cherry-picked data points and, frankly, insulting stereotypes of the poor and disadvantaged. And the reason Fox News and other conservatives have to so badly distort programs like SNAP is because SNAP is actually quite an effective program. Conservatives bemoan that there's not enough of a "stigma" attached to seeking help from the feds, but it seems to me that the stigma is already ingrained into our perception -- just think about John Roberts waxing nostalgic about the time we all sneered at the "losers" on "food stamps." The near collapse of the economy and the ensuing catastrophic job losses drove a lot of people to seek government assistance. My guess is that in the last few years a great many of those people who signed up for SNAP weren't all that happy to do so, but grateful that the program was there. Limited-government proselytizing can only go so far when the government is helping to keep you and your kids from going hungry.

But that, of course, assumes that hunger and malnutrition are maladies that afflict Americans -- an assumption that Fox News isn't prepared to make. For the special, Baier sat down with Robert Rector, a senior research fellow at the Heritage Foundation who argues that the "poor" -- quotations his -- in America aren't really poor because they have air conditioning and cable TV. Rector dismissed out of hand the notion that anyone in America could possibly be underfed, and actually argued that "American poor people are not malnourished; they in fact eat too much food."

The USDA, meanwhile, found that from 2010 to 2011 the number of households experiencing very low food security -- "food intake of some household members was reduced and normal eating patterns were disrupted at times during the year due to limited resources" -- increased to 5.7 percent, or 6.8 million households.

But those people -- the ones SNAP is designed to assist -- didn't get a whole lot of attention from Fox News. Instead we had Bret Baier presenting the story of a dirtbag California surfer as "the new face of food stamps."

Far-right pushes "Mock Obama Day"

Visit NBCNews.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

GOP’s rodeo of racism blows up

BY JOAN WALSH/Salon

It’s been quite a week for anti-Obama racism. At the Missouri State Fair Sunday, rodeo fans cheered to see a “clown” in an Obama mask get run down by a bull. On Friday in Florida the president faced a gaggle of protesters on the way to address a disabled veterans’ group; one carried a sign reading “Kenyan Go Home.” Three days earlier, Arizonans protested Obama’s visit by singing “Bye Bye Black Sheep.” One man mocked him by calling him “47 percent Negro;” another held a sign that read, “Impeach the Half-White Muslim!”

Also on Sunday, the same day as the Missouri State Fair incident, ABC’s “This Week” hosted the birther-in-chief, Donald Trump, who was fresh from a visit to the right-wing Family Leadership Summit in Iowa and a golf outing with GOP House Speaker John Boehner. When Jon Karl asked him, “You don’t still question [Barack Obama] was born in the United States, do you?” Trump let loose his tiresome birther spew. “I have no idea,” Trump replied. “Was there a birth certificate? You tell me. You know, some people say that was not his birth certificate. I’m saying I don’t know. Nobody knows and you don’t know either, Jonathan.”

With Republicans like Boehner and Iowa’s Family Leader embracing Trump as a loyal and treasured party figure, and mainstream media figures like Karl treating him like a legitimate newsmaker, it’s clear that the party, and some of the media, learned nothing from its 2012 drubbing. Reince Priebus’ infamous “autopsy” has itself gone wherever it is that fraudulent ideas go to die. Calling for more “inclusion,” the report didn’t outline policy change but rather better communication strategies to avoid repelling young voters, women, African-Americans and Latinos. “Our policies are sound, but I think in many ways the way we communicate can be a real problem,” Priebus said in March.

But now they’ve given up even on changing the way they communicate.

It’s not just Trump; one candidate after another in Iowa demonized Obama, and/or his electoral coalition. Rep. Steve King, he of the “calves the size of cantaloupes” remark, told the audience to ignore guidelines on what churches can do politically and “go ahead and defy the IRS.” King is said to be mulling his own 2016 presidential run; we can only dream. Sen. Ted Cruz got big ovations for advocating the repeal of not just Obamacare but the IRS.

But the scary demagogue award has to go to Cruz’s father, Rafael, an immigrant from Cuba who accused Obama of trying to eliminate God and impose socialism on the U.S. After all, he’d seen it happen before. “A young charismatic leader rose up, talking about ‘hope’ and ‘change,’” Cruz yelled, as the crowd booed. “His name was Fidel Castro.” Got it? Obama = Castro. Cruz doesn’t mention that he actually supported Fidel Castro’s revolution against Cuban dictator Fulgencio Batista, then turned against him. Now we know where the Texas senator got his penchant for demagoguery and distortion. (Imagine replacing Marion Robinson in the White House with Rafael Cruz.)

Although the Iowa convening didn’t feature anyone in an Obama mask being chased by bulls, or “Kenyan Go Home” signs, and nobody sang “Bye Bye Black Sheep” to the president, it made clear that the GOP project of inclusion is a farce. Judging from Iowa, the 2016 primary field is set to be every bit as extreme as in 2012 but without even the patina of diversity provided by Herman Cain and Michele Bachmann. And it will play to an increasingly shrill and xenophobic primary base where three nasty racist anti-Obama events can take place in one week, with near-complete silence from Republican leaders.

I should note that the Missouri State Fair rodeo was so sickening that Republican Lt. Gov. Peter Kinder had to denounce it as “disrespectful” to the president, adding, “We are better than this.” Fairgoer Perry Beam told the Associated Press that “everybody screamed” and “just went wild” when an announcer asked if they’d like to see “Obama run down by a bull.”

“It was at that point I began to feel a sense of fear. It was that level of enthusiasm,” the 48-year-old white musician said. Another clown approached and began to play with the lips of the Obama mask. “There would have been no reason to play with his lips if he were a white president,” Beam said. “They mentioned the president’s name, I don’t know, 100 times. It was sickening. It was feeling like some kind of Klan rally you’d see on TV. I’ve never seen anything so blatantly racist in my life,” he added. “If an old country boy picks up on something like that, imagine what a person of color would think.”

Meanwhile, John Boehner golfs with birther-in-chief Trump, while he headlines ABC’s respected Sunday news show. The GOP seems content to live on the fumes of Obama-hatred. It’s not a strategy for a post-Obama politics, but they seem to reckon there are enough rodeo clowns out there to get them through 2014.

92-year-old black woman sues just hours after North Carolina gov. signs voter ID law

By David Edwards/Raw Story

Just hours after North Carolina Gov. Pat McCrory (R) signed a sweeping voter ID measure into law, a 92-year-old African-American woman has sued the state claiming that her constitutional rights had been violated.

At a bill signing with no formal ceremony on Monday, McCrory quietly signed the Republican bill that will require a voters to present a government-issued ID, cuts early voting days, stops same-day registration, ends “straight ticket” party voting, makes it harder for students to vote and gives poll watchers new powers for challenging voters.

The first lawsuit, filed by the NAACP, says that 92-year-old Rosanell Eaton will be disenfranchised after voting for 70 years.

Mrs. Eaton, who was born at home, has a current North Carolina driver’s license, but the name on her certified birth certificate does not match the name on her driver’s license or the name on her voter registration card,” the lawsuit notes. “Mrs. Eaton will incur substantial time and expense to correct her identification documents to match her voter registration record in order to meet the new requirements.”

In a statement on Monday, Advancement Project Director Penda Hair pointed out that North Carolina was the first state to sign a “discriminatory voting law” since the Supreme Court struck down parts of the Voting Rights Act.

“With the stroke of his pen, Gov. McCrory has transformed North Carolina from a state with one of the nation’s most progressive voting systems, where we saw some of the highest voter turnout rates of the last two presidential elections, into a state with the most draconian policies we’ve seen in decades, policies that harken back to the days of Jim Crow,” Hair explained.

The American Civil Liberties Union, the ACLU of North Carolina Legal Foundation, and the Southern Coalition for Social Justice filed a second lawsuit targeting provisions that suppress early voting, voter registration and “out-of-precinct” voting.

In a video posted to YouTube on Monday, McCrory argued that he had enacted “common-sense reforms.”

“Many of those from the extreme left who have been criticizing photo ID are using scare tactics,” McCory asserted. “They are more interested in divisive politics than ensuring that no one’s vote is disenfranchised by a fraudulent ballot.”

Rosanell Eaton was expected to appear at a press conference on Tuesday with state NAACP President Rev. William Barber and other plaintiffs.

Watch this video from WRAL, broadcast Aug. 13, 2013.

Watch this video from Gov. Pat McCrory, broadcast Aug. 12, 2013.

Watch this video from Rev. William Barber, broadcast July 16, 2013.

 

 by Taboola