Enough about politics for a few minutes (have no fear, we will get back to it). Let’s talk policy.
Dan Diamond:
“We knew our economy spends more than it should on health care," says Bob Kocher, a venture capitalist who served as a special assistant to the president in 2009 and 2010 and helped shape the Affordable Care Act. “And we had good battles inside the White House" over whether to preserve health jobs — which were one of the biggest drivers of those costs, but kept Americans employed at a bleak economic time.
Health care experts like Kocher and colleague Zeke Emanuel wanted reforms that would increase efficiency and tamp down the sector's growth. But “people on the jobs team were saying we need more middle-class jobs and the best place to create them was in health care,” Kocher says. “And after we lost 7 million jobs [in the recession], that argument was winning."
You can find the earlier Sanger-Katz piece from 2013 here (.pdf):
Health Care: Great for the Economy Today, Terrible Later
Hospitals like Pittsburgh’s UPMC created enough jobs to end the recession. If they keep it up, they’ll wreck the economy.
CT Mirror:
After spending six months studying new ways to control ever-growing health care costs, a state-hired consulting firm presented a plan to Connecticut's Health Care Cabinet Tuesday that calls for the largest reorganization and consolidation of health-related state agencies in two decades.
The proposal urges the creation of a new super-agency of sorts – the Connecticut Health Authority – that would absorb the responsibilities of more than a half-dozen existing state agencies. It also would create a quasi-independent oversight agency – the Office of Health Reform – with broad powers to track and limit health care cost increases in the state.
Further, the plan calls for incentives to increase networking between providers of health care services, from small-town doctors to the state's largest hospitals, that would allow the state to implement value-based payments in the Medicaid program and state employee benefits program instead of the existing fee-for-service structure. This means health care providers would be paid based on the quality of care they provide rather than flat rates for services.
Steve Schale ran FL for the Obama campaign.
You say Q poll, I say wait for other polls and average them:
May 23, 2012 - Romney Up 6 Points In Florida, Quinnipiac University Poll Finds; Rubio Has Little Impact As GOP Running Mate
Enough about Q-polls, i got yer Marist polls right here:
Oh, and I got MU Law:
How about:
How about:
Even with Q-polls, Clinton doing fine in swing states.
Ta-Nehisi Coates:
The Near Certainty of Anti-Police Violence
By ignoring illegitimate policing, America has also failed to address the danger this illegitimacy poses to those who must do the policing.
Long read, but oh, so worth it.
Jonathan Capehart:
Folks, I’ve run out of things to say. The ignorance flowing out of the mouths of politicians has me reaching for words I’ve already written. So, let me restate some of them. The best way to understand the meaning of the phrase “Black Lives Matter” is to think of it as an incomplete sentence. To those African Americans and other Americans marching to protest lives extinguished by law enforcement, the unspoken finish to the phrase “Black Lives Matter” is “as much as anyone else’s.”
To hear that, to have that message sink in, requires a level of empathy that Trump and Giuliani appear incapable of having.
Medium with a very worthy read:
An Open Letter on Identity Politics, to and from the Left
We, the undersigned, are in the uncomfortable position of reporting on a problem that we are told does not exist.
We ask you to consider a few incidents.
Christopher Hooks:
Texas' Gun Culture and Politics Made Dallas Shooting Inevitable
Dallas shooting was a powerful rebuke to the strange logic governing guns in the state
A little over a year ago, a mentally ill Dallas-area man named James Lance Boulware, angry over losing custody of his son, bought an armored van on eBay, marketed as a "Zombie Apocalypse Assault Vehicle." The van had gun ports under each of its blacked-out windows. Just after midnight one Saturday morning, with a few homemade pipe bombs and a semi-automatic rifle in-hand, he drove the van to the headquarters of the Dallas Police Department and started firing at squad cars. Many hours later, the cops, with the aid of specialized weaponry, disabled the van and killed Boulware, spending much of the day dealing with the explosive devices he left behind.
One of the strangest things about Boulware's bizarre and brief reign of terror in Dallas is how little attention it warranted by that Monday.
AP:
Donald Trump is wildly unpopular among young adults, in particular young people of color, and nearly two-thirds of Americans between the ages of 18 and 30 believe the presumptive Republican nominee is racist.
That's the finding of a new GenForward poll that also found just 19 percent of young people have a favorable opinion of Trump compared to the three-quarters of young adults who hold a dim view of the New York billionaire.
Trump's likely general election opponent, Hillary Clinton, is also unpopular with young people, but not nearly to the same extent as the real estate mogul and realty TV star. A mere 6 percent of young African Americans, 10 percent of young Hispanics, 12 percent of young Asian Americans and 27 percent of young whites see Trump in a favorable light, ratings that suggest the celebrity businessman faces a staggering task this summer to win their backing in his bid for the White House.
"I think if you want to be a moral young person, you can't support Trump," said Miguel Garcia, 20, of Norwalk, California.
You still have to get out and vote.
Matt Katz (who knows Chris Christie all too well):
Dear Mr. Trump,
I wrote a book about one of the few people you're considering to be your vice presidential nominee, Chris Christie. Yes, I know, your books have sold many more copies. But I still might be able to help you with something. Here's my unsolicited memo to you on why you should pick Christie. And why you shouldn't.
Francis Wilkinson:
Donald Trump has run the most anti-immigrant presidential campaign in modern memory. Hillary Clinton has run the most pro-immigrant campaign. After November, something’s gotta give.
If Trump wins, of course, all bets are off. Neither a wall running the length of the southern border nor a mass deportation of undocumented immigrants is likely. Yet both are possible. Beyond that, who can tell? Trump’s policies are deployed as performance enhancers, not blueprints for governing.
Clinton, on the other hand, has promised to introduce immigration reform in her first 100 days in office. “Reform” is a malleable concept. But it consists of three basic elements: investment in increased border security in the Southwest (or at least in security theater, since actual security is at an all-time high); a path to legalization or citizenship for undocumented immigrants with many years of U.S. residence; and a liberalized visa process for U.S. companies recruiting foreigners. That’s the guts of the bipartisan Gang of Eight plan, which was passed by the Senate in 2013 and subsequently buried by the House.
Monkey Cage blog:
A panel of the Permanent Court of Arbitration (PCA) at The Hague on Tuesday found in favor of many of thePhilippines’ claims in a complicated maritime and territorial dispute with China. The ruling largely invalidates China’s nine-dash line, which claims large parts of the South China Sea as Chinese territory and exclusive economic zone. It also found that China had breached the Philippines’ territorial rights and had illegally damaged the marine environment.
China’s Foreign Ministry immediately responded that “the award is null and void and has no binding force.” Last week a Chinese official called the coming ruling “nothing more than a scrap of paper.” Harvard professor Graham Allison wrote in the Diplomat that China will of course ignore the ruling, as great powers have done historically.
At the same time, analysts worry that China will respond aggressively to the provocation implied by the ruling. The Philippines, Vietnam and other countries with maritime claims in the disputed area welcomedthe ruling (although Taiwan did not).
So why do these countries get so exercised about this “scrap of paper?”
David Wallis:
As the video of the memorial goes viral, and many commentators scold Bush for inappropriate behavior, this proud liberal must say…enough.
I agreed with few—really none—of George W. Bush’s policies; he must live with himself for lying the country into the Iraq war while his economic malpractice led to the great recession. But the attacks on his method of mourning strike me as cynical and churlish—the general mood in the country right now. I felt the same way when much of the conservative media lit into Bill Clinton for laughing at the 1996 funeral of his Commerce Secretary Ron Brown, who tragically died in an airline crash while serving his country.
Pew:
Currently, Clinton also holds a 17-point advantage among Catholic registered voters, driven largely by overwhelming support for Clinton among Latino Catholics. By contrast, at a similar point in the 2012 campaign, Catholics were closely divided between support for Obama (49%) and Romney (47%). Exit polls conducted on Election Day in 2012 found that Catholics ultimately split their votes between Obama (50%) and Romney (48%).