Democrats versus Republicans

[craigimass]

I did read it.
I was wrong - it is definitely less than 4 pages - more like 2.

Patients’ Choice Act 2009

It looks like something cobbled together in a few hours. Basically, employers would LOSE their ability to deduct health care benefits. Instead, each person would get to deduct some of theirs...of course, such a deduction does many people absolutely no good, since they don't pay large amounts of Fed. Income tax.

The plan does nothing to save money....nothing at all. To be honest, either do 1/2 (or more) of the plans being discussed by other republicans or democrats. Sure, they all give lip service to preventative care, but the devil is in the details. My 15K+ plan now didn't even pay for my last physical.

If I might liken it to the current mess with the Federal Budget, it would be like saying that we can solve the fiscal problems of the government by just getting a little better price on the food and office supplies that they buy. Yes, that is true. We could put a tiny dent in it that way, but to solve it we need VAST cuts...or VAST increased revenue.

In health care, we have already had the vast increases, and the system seems to get worse as we spend more and more. As with Federal Spending, the difference is VAST - something like 40% higher than we should be paying for covering everyone. You cannot save 30 or 40% and stop double digit increases with talking points. The problem, IMHO, is systemic.

Of course, as I said before you have nothing to worry about. Comprehensive health care reform will NOT be passed. The money changers will win. After all, who is going to voluntarily cut off the flow of trillions to corporations owned and run by the likes of Romney, Frist and many others (including, I'm sure, many Dems).

[erps]

Solar activity and U.S. surface temperature are closely correlated, as shown in Figure 5, but U.S. surface temperature and world hydrocarbon use are not correlated, as shown in Figure 13.

Thanks Cam,

I marked that one as a favorite so I could reference that set of graphs later. BTW, if the cross posting is for my benefit, I got the point with the first shout down in G.W. thread and I apologize. If not....then carry on.

[ssneade]

damn cam, i didn't realize one shot at the bed wetter would get you so bent out of shape. from now on i will remain strictly on topic.and deal only with the thread title.

my apologies,
scott

[camaraderie]

My point is apparently still needing to be made with the instigator. The havoc will continue until he desists. Apologies to others affected...those sucked in by his trolling have nothing to apologize for.

[ssneade]

aw it's alright with me. makes for good reading.

[craigimass]

Maybe you guys will listen to one of your own - like a warmonger, neocon who ran the CIA.
James Woolsey, Hybrid Hawk | Mother Jones

Yeah, James Woolsey, Neocon:
"He wrote the foreword to 50 Simple Steps to Save the Earth From Global Warming, appeared in Who Killed the Electric Car? and Leonardo DiCaprio's The 11th Hour, and cofounded a group to wean Americans from foreign oil."

"Being a green neoconservative is becoming less lonely, Woolsey says, especially as more hawks come to see energy as a security issue. He tells a story about an argument with a friend who is a global warming skeptic. When Woolsey explained how improvements to the electrical infrastructure could make it safer from terrorists, his friend replied, "Oh, well, that's fine, then—we can do all that as long as it's not because of this fictional global warming." Former House leader Newt Gingrich recently came out in support of renewable energy, and the members of Woolsey's Set America Free Coalition include such prominent hawks as Daniel Pipes, Frank Gaffney, and Cliff May. "It's less that hawks are going green as that hawks and greens have some common interests," May explains."

Cam, you can have all the temper tantrums you want. I'm not reading them anyway. So spit on the food as you like.....your friends must love it!

[camaraderie]

Fuzzy Math
According to an MIT study, cap and trade could cost the average household more than $3,900 per year.
by John McCormack
04/22/2009 12:00:00 AM

It's just another inconvenient truth: If Americans want any of the government remedies that would supposedly save a planet allegedly imperiled by global warming, it's going to cost them. Just how much it will cost them has been a point of contention lately. Many congressional Republicans, including members of the GOP leadership, have claimed that the plan to limit carbon emissions through cap and trade would cost the average household more than $3,100 per year. According to an MIT study, between 2015 and 2050 cap and trade would annually raise an average of $366 billion in revenues (divided by 117 million households equals $3,128 per household, the Republicans reckon). But on March 24, after interviewing one of the MIT professors who conducted the study on which the GOP relied to produce its estimate, the St. Petersburg Times fact-check unit, Politifact, declared the GOP figure of $3,100 per household was a "Pants on Fire" falsehood. The GOP claim is "just wrong," MIT professor John Reilly told Politifact. "It's wrong in so many ways it's hard to begin." According to Politifact, Reilly's report included an "estimate of the net cost to individuals" that "would be $215.05 per household. A far cry from $3,128." Running with Politifact's report, bloggers at Think Progress called the GOP's claim a "deliberate lie," a "myth", and an "outright lie". On April 1, MSNBC's Keith Olbermann said that cap and trade's "average additional cost per family six years from now would be 79 bucks, minus the amount foreign gas prices would drop based on decreased demand, and minus lowered health care costs, because of the cleaner atmosphere. Thirty-one bucks, 3,100 bucks, it's all the same to Congressman John the mathlete Boehner, today's worst person in the world." On April 8, MSNBC's Rachel Maddow said of the GOP's figure: "No. Pants on fire. The MIT guy says 'no.' That's not what the study says. Not true. You can't say that." From Politifact to Think Progress to MSNBC, Reilly's rebuttal of the GOP cap-and-trade estimate made its way to the Democratic caucus in the House of Representatives. During an April 2 floor debate, New Jersey Democrat Rob Andrews criticized Republicans for citing a study that "the author claims is just being blatantly misrepresented," and the staff of the House energy committee chairman, Massachusetts Democrat Edward Markey, wrote that the figure was "more fuzzy math from Republicans." The falsity of the $3,100 per household cap-and-trade estimate became a well-established fact among members of the press. News outlets that reported Reilly's criticism of the GOP's figure included not only liberal outlets like The New Republic and The Washington Independent, but mainstream publications like Congressional Quarterly, The Hill, Politico, McClatchy, and the Wall Street Journal. Minnesota Republican Michele Bachmann faced harsh criticism after citing the $3,100 figure in an April 7 Minneapolis Star-Tribune op-ed. "Bachmann: I, Too, Know More About Climate Change Than MIT Scientist," sneered one headline at the website TPM. "Whether Bachmann is ignorant or dishonest is unclear," wrote The Washington Monthly's Steve Benen. When the Star-Tribune's opinion page editor Eric Ringham was contacted about Bachmann's use of the figure, he apologized for letting her include it in her column. "It wasn't on my radar. I'm embarrassed to have let it go unchallenged," Ringham told Think Progress. "You can rest assured this study is never going to be represented in the paper again . . . without confirmation it's being accurately portrayed." But, as the saying goes, a lie can make its way halfway around the world while the truth is putting its shoes on. During a lengthy email exchange last week with THE WEEKLY STANDARD, MIT professor John Reilly admitted that his original estimate of cap and trade's cost was inaccurate. The annual cost would be "$800 per household", he wrote. "I made a boneheaded mistake in an excel spread sheet. I have sent a new letter to Republicans correcting my error (and to others)." While $800 is significantly more than Reilly's original estimate of $215 (not to mention more than Obama's middle-class tax cut), it turns out that Reilly is still low-balling the cost of cap and trade by using some fuzzy logic. In reality, cap and trade could cost the average household more than $3,900 per year. The $800 paid annually per household is merely the "cost to the economy [that] involves all those actions people have to take to reduce their use of fossil fuels or find ways to use them without releasing [Green House Gases]," Reilly wrote. "So that might involve spending money on insulating your home, or buying a more expensive hybrid vehicle to drive, or electric utilities substituting gas (or wind, nuclear, or solar) instead of coal in power generation, or industry investing in more efficient motors or production processes, etc. with all of these things ending up reflected in the costs of good and services in the economy." In other words, Reilly estimates that "the amount of tax collected" through companies would equal $3,128 per household--and "Those costs do get passed to consumers and income earners in one way or another"--but those costs have "nothing to do with the real cost" to the economy. Reilly assumes that the $3,128 will be "returned" to each household. Without that assumption, Reilly wrote, "the cost would then be the Republican estimate [$3,128] plus the cost I estimate [$800]." In Reilly's view, the $3,128 taken through taxes will be "returned" to each household whether or not the government cuts a $3,128 rebate check to each household. He wrote in an email: It is not really a matter of returning it or not, no matter what happens this revenue gets recycled into the economy some way. In that regard, whether the money is specifically returned to households with a check that says "your share of GHG auction revenue", used to cut someone's taxes, used to pay for some government services that provide benefit to the public, or simply used to offset the deficit (therefore meaning lower Government debt and lower taxes sometime in the future when that debt comes due) is largely irrelevant in the calculation of the "average" household. Each of those ways of using the revenue has different implications for specific households but the "average" affect is still the same. [...] The only way that money does not get recycled to the "average" household is if it is spent on something that provides no useful service for anyone--that it is true government waste. He added later: "I am simply saying that once [the tax funds are] collected they are not worthless, they have value. If the Republicans were to focus on that revenue, and their message was to rally the public to make sure all this money was returned in a check to each household rather than spent on other public services then I would have no problem with their use of our number." Most Americans probably care a great deal whether they would get to spend that $3,128 themselves or the government spends it on programs to put a chicken in every pot and a Prius in every garage. And the fact is, it's anybody's guess how cap-and-trade revenues would end up being spent. Obama has suggested he would like to use most of cap-and-trade revenues to fund his "making work pay" middle- and lower-class tax credit ($400 per individual and $800 per family per year). Congressional Democrats have left the door open to spending the revenues to "invest in clean energy jobs and cost-saving energy efficient technology," as Rep. Markey's staffers have written. After corresponding with Reilly, I contacted Politifact's reporter Alexander Lane and editor Bill Adair to ask if they would correct their report that the GOP's estimate of cap and trade's cost is a "pants on fire" falsehood. Lane wrote in an email: "The detail of my piece that you think needs correcting seems to be in flux...". The "detail" to which he referred was Reilly's admission that the real cost per household would be $800--not $215 per household as Politifact originally reported. While the discrepancy between these figures was solely Reilly's fault, Politifact's report contained inaccuracies that it should have been able to avoid. Politifact accepted Reilly's logic that the $3,128 collected per household via taxes translates to a net-cost of $0 per household. It reported that "results of a cap-and-trade program, such as increased conservation and more competition from other fuel sources, would put downward pressure on prices," but it didn't make clear that Reilly's estimate of the "real cost"--which didn't include the $3,128 per household--already accounts for these downward pressures. "Moreover," Politifact added, "consumers would get some of the tax back from the government in some form." In fact, Reilly assumed that all--not "some"--of the tax revenue would be returned. Politifact and other news outlets reporting on Reilly's criticism of the GOP's estimate have not made it clear that taxpayers would "get" some or most of this money back through government spending. When I asked Bill Adair over the phone last week if Politifact would correct its report, he didn't answer the question and ended our conversation by saying: "You're getting me at a really bad time. I would love to talk about this any time tomorrow." Adair did not reply to further inquiries. On Monday, Politifact won a Pulitzer prize. It has not yet corrected its report.* John McCormack is a deputy online editor at THE WEEKLY STANDARD. Correction: An earlier version of this article incorrectly reported that Reilly's estimated "real cost" per household was $800 for a family of four. In fact, Reilly calculated this $800 cost for the average-sized American household--2.56 people, the same figure Republicans used in their calculation. *Update: On May 6, Politifact updated its report.

[sailaway21]

Beat it, troll.

[camaraderie]

Climate plans could cost families $1,600

By Tom LoBianco (Contact) | Thursday, May 7, 2009

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<****** type="text/javascript">document.write(''); <****** type="text/javascript" src="http://c2l.media.newsworthyaudio.com/Partners/WashingtonTimes/Audio/WashingtonTimes/news_2009_may_07_climate-proposals-would-cost-families-1600.js">UPDATED:
Federal proposals to curb carbon emissions will cost American households $1,600 a year, the chief budget analyst for Congress said Thursday.
Any measure that curbs greenhouse gasses by capping emissions and issuing permits for allowable carbon dioxide — called a cap and trade system — would invariably be passed on to consumers in higher costs, said Douglas W. Elmendorf, director of the Congressional Budget Office.
The CBO analysis released Thursday updates research of previous cap and trade proposals and estimates that a 15 percent reduction in greenhouse gasses would cost American families between $700 and $2,200 a year in increased energy and consumer goods prices. The average cost to families would be $1,600, according to the analysis.
The debate over how much a cap and trade plan would cost families has continued on Capitol Hill as lawmakers push for broad limits on greenhouse gas emissions.
Industry leaders have lobbied Congress over the last few weeks seeking free carbon permits under the proposed cap and trade system, although Mr. Elmendorf said firms would pass on higher costs to consumers regardless of how carbon allowances are distributed.
"Those firms would not ultimately bear most of the costs of the allowances," Mr. Elmendorf said in his testimony before the Senate Finance Committee. "Instead, they would pass those costs along to their customers (and their customers' customers) in the form of higher prices. Such price increases would stem from the restriction on emissions and in most circumstances would occur regardless of whether the government sold the allowances or gave them away."
Republican and Democrat lawmakers have split on the analysis of a 2007 MIT study of the costs of a cap and trade plan, but most analyses have settled that the costs of curbing greenhouse gas emissions would be passed along to consumers.

[craigimass]

Hey, Cam.
When you are done with the GW proving, move to the Iraq WMD. I'm sure you still have the links from 6 or 7 years ago when you "proved" that.

He He.....