A new study last week from the Commonwealth Fund confirmed the shocking gap between lower and higher income Americans when it comes to health insurance coverage. While only 12 percent of families making $89,400 a year (or four times the federal poverty rate for a family of four) was uninsured at some point last year, that figure skyrockets to 57 percent for a family at about $29,700. Mercifully, thanks to the Affordable Care Act (ACA), beginning in 2014 that gap will largely be erased. Unless, that is, Republicans take control of the White House and Congress. If the GOP succeeds at the polls in 2012, the health insurance income gap will get much, much worse.

Last March, a previous Commonwealth Fund study found that since the start of the recession, almost 60% of Americans who lost a job and their health insurance - 9 million people - could not afford to regain coverage. Medical costs pushed four million more into bankruptcy. Its 2010 Biennial Health Insurance Survey of over 3,000 adults ages 19-64 highlighted the devastating toll of the Bush recession which started in December 2007:

Both insured adults--who are facing higher premiums and out-of-pocket costs--and uninsured adults cannot afford adequate health care. Seventy-five million adults did not get needed health care in 2010, skipping doctor visits, prescriptions, specialist care, and recommended tests and treatments because of costs. This represents a 60 percent increase from 2001, when 47 million people reported skipping needed care because of costs. Uninsured adults were the most likely to forgo care because of costs, with 66 percent reporting they did so. However, many insured adults were also less insulated from high health care costs--31 percent of adults who were insured all year went without the health care they needed because of costs, up from 21 percent in 2001.

Likewise, 73 million people reported problems paying their medical bills or were paying off medical debt, up from 58 million in 2005. The survey finds that because of medical bills, an estimated 29 million people spent all of their savings, 17 million incurred credit card debt, 22 million were unable to pay for basic necessities like food, heat, and rent, and 4 million declared bankruptcy.

Now, a new Fund analysis revealed the yawning chasm that constitutes the "Income Divide in Health Care":

The new Commonwealth Fund Health Insurance Tracking Survey of U.S. Adults finds nearly three of five adults in families earning less than 133 percent of the federal poverty level were uninsured for a time in 2011; two of five were uninsured for one or more years. Low- and moderate-income adults who were uninsured during the year were much less likely to have a regular source of health care than people in the same income range who were insured all year.

As Sarah Kliff of the Washington Post explained, "This underscores how central the health reform law's expansion of Medicaid -- in which anyone below 133 percent of the poverty line qualifies for the program -- will be to the law's expanded coverage. Everyone represented by the yellow triangles above becomes eligible for Medicaid in 2014."

But the reach of the Affordable Care Act doesn't end there.

Continue reading »

After enjoying a seemingly harmonious relationship with city officials, police took down Occupy Newark's encampment just after midnight on Wednesday. Mayor Cory Booker had delivered coffee and doughnuts to the occupiers, and a city councilman had even stayed overnight in the tents at Military Park.

Via:

At Military Park, the site of Occupy Newark, about two dozen police officers and fire fighters disassembled what was left of the movement’s encampment and loaded much of into the back of a city truck: more than a dozen tents, a canopy, a sofa, pallets, blankets and other items.

Deputy Chief Tracy Glover of the Newark Police Department told protesters that if they did not have a permit that allowed them to be in the park after a 9 p.m. curfew, they had to leave immediately. By 1:30 a.m., most of the site had been removed. No arrests were made, although about a dozen protesters in the park taunted the officers as they worked.

“Carjackings are up 62 percent, but the tents are down,” said Teacher Iovino, 43. At its height, Occupy Newark was a cluster of tents that included a kitchen and an information area. About 30 people stayed overnight at the encampment, most of which was set up in November, and 50 to 60 people would be there during the day, said Anthony Batalla, 20, who has been there since November.

The eviction marked a shift in the city’s approach to the protesters. In November, the city’s police chief agreed to waive a permit required to assemble in Military Park. Mayor Cory A. Booker brought them doughnuts and coffee. A municipal councilman stayed there overnight, said one protester, Ibraheem Awadallah, 27.

A note sent by the city to the camp read "Respectfully, we appreciate working together, but this is over."

Now with Newark's skyrocketing crime rate, Cory Booker at least won't have to worry about those evil occupiers who helped the homeless and needy, and worked together to find solutions to problems within their communities. I have no doubt that Occupy Newark will continue their work with or without their camp, the entire occupy movement in solidarity with them. I wonder if they've already considered a new mission the next time Cory Booker comes up for re-election? Because everyone knows that a false friend is much more dangerous than an open enemy.

Protests of Scott Walker outside of the CPAC conference

Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, a rising star in conservative circles who is facing a recall after assaulting workers' rights, may face a bigger problem than the recall. He may be in legal trouble as the investigation into his administration as Milwaukee county executive continues. It seems more and more likely that the governor was part of a broad conspiracy to use government resources for political purposes.

A 51-page criminal complaint [PDF] (the "Rindfleisch complaint"), which formally charges Kelly M. Rindfleisch with four felony counts of misconduct in public office, contains factual allegations which implicate a number of individuals, listed as "interested parties," including WI's controversial Republican Governor, in a wide-reaching criminal conspiracy to misuse public employees and resources for partisan political gain.

The Rindfleish complaint was filed in the Milwaukee County Circuit Court on Jan. 26, 2012 by Milwaukee County District Attorney John T. Chisholm. It's the product of an ongoing criminal investigation (the "John Doe" investigation) of the Milwaukee County Executive Office during Walker's tenure as County Executive there. The complaint specifically involves the period during which Tim Russell and then Rindfleish served as Walker's Deputy Chiefs of Staff.

...

The factual body of the Rindfleisch complaint suggests that prosecutors are painstakingly examining evidence that may well place Walker at the center of a criminal conspiracy to illegally utilize employees within the Milwaukee County Executive Office to engage in fundraising and campaign activities on behalf of the Friends of Scott Walker and others during office hours at the expense of Milwaukee taxpayers.

Ernest A. Canning goes into great detail at Bradblog about the details of the case and how Walker ties into the ongoing investigation.

An occupy-inspired song from Gene Pfeiffer:

.. about the struggle of people to make ends meet working for less than a living wage ...about just enough ...about the change that is coming.

I started writing "A Living Wage" after my son lent me the book, "Nickel and Dimed." I finished the song after witnessing and participating in Occupy St. Louis marches and ally meetings.

We will donate the proceeds to the Occupy movement and to its Living Wage ally organizations.

DOWNLOADS: (84)

PLAYS: (1406)

Embed

What caused Andrew Breitbart's now infamous meltdown at CPAC?

Many commenters suggested that Breitbart was drunk, and this video seems to suggest just that. Listen as Breitbart is preparing to go confront the crowd, someone off-camera says that it would look bad to do so with a glass of wine in his hand.

“So what? We’re allowed to drink wine in America!” Breitbart says. A moment later, there’s the sound of breaking glass.

Then he heads outside towards to protesters, and Breitbart jumps out from behind some shrubs and decides to take it upon himself to take the occupiers to task, and starts shouting "Behave yourself! Behave yourself! Behave yourself!" Before security escorts him away he continues screaming "Behave yourself! You're freaks! You're freaks and animals! Stop raping the people! You freaks! Stop raping the people!"

Was he drunk? You decide. He certainly was disheveled, wild-eyed and vitriolic...oh, wait.

Here's the video of that epic rant again, too.

DOWNLOADS: (439)

PLAYS: (4152)

Embed

DOWNLOADS: (405)

PLAYS: (399)

Embed

Diane already posted Rick Santorum's bizarre rally in Tacoma here -- Protesters at Santorum Rally Tased, Taunted, and Dragged Away:

The Young Turks' Cenk Uygur decided to have a bit of fun with the creepy footage by combining it with some of the Blair Witch Project.

But first he reminded everyone that Rick Santorum is not just your average, everyday working class guy he's been trying to portray himself as. He ran the K Street Project for the Senate. Here's more from Salon Cenk quoted on that -- Santorum’s well-compensated love of fracking:

As the Center for Responsive Politics reports, Santorum is one of the top U.S. Senate recipients of campaign contributions from the oil and gas industry — and what makes those numbers so stunningly outsized is the fact that he remains one of the top Senate recipients even though the last time he ran for Senate was in 2006. Put another way, this is not a run-of-the-mill legislator who happened to get a few afterthought contributions from the industry; this is a guy who was such a sycophantic apostle of the industry that he received enough oil and gas money to keep him on the top-recipient list a full six years after he was voted out of office — that is, a full six years after he raised a single dollar for a Senate campaign. In baseball terms, it’s the equivalent of Hank Aaron racking up so many home runs that he was able to hold the record well after he retired — only with Santorum, it’s not home runs, it’s oil and gas cash.

He's another 99 percenter like the rest of them, bought and paid for by the oil and natural gas industries.

For me, it started when we stopped calling our country "America" and started calling it the "Homeland." And much like a frog being boiled, it all happened so gradually, some American still haven't noticed. From New York magazine:

NYPD spying is not quite as dystopian- and science fiction-seeming as a database of citizens' eye pictures. A handful of people arrested recently in New York City, including a few Occupy Wall Street protesters, are complaining that cops are insisting that the accused allow the department to photograph their irises, despite the fact that the security measure is supposed to be voluntary. "[An officer] said: 'It's not really optional. It'll take you longer to get out of here if you don't do it,'" one protesters claims. The department's spokesperson, Paul Browne, says unsurprisingly that he's never heard of such a thing.

The iris pictures were enacted in 2010 in an effort to stop prisoners from escaping their arraignments, but some lawyers complain that the program was never officially announced or commented on, and that "eye data could place the innocent under a lasting cloud of suspicion." Just recently, according to attorney-in-chief Steven Banks of the Legal Aid Society, officers have slowed the arrest process for those not consenting to the iris portraits.

Bruce Bartlett on Where the Right Went Wrong from BillMoyers.com on Vimeo.

Bill Moyers talks with conservative economist Bruce Bartlett, who wrote "the bible" for the Reagan Revolution, worked on domestic policy for the Reagan White House, and served as a top treasury official under the first President Bush. Now he's a heretic in the conservative circles where he once was a star. Bartlett argues that right-wing tax policies -- pushed in part by Grover Norquist and Tea Party activists -- are destroying the country's economic foundation.

BILL MOYERS: Heather McGhee speaks of how the neoliberal economic experience of the last 30 years – including cutting taxes on the rich and waiting for the wealth and prosperity to trickle down -- has left her generation of Millennials standing under a spigot someone forgot to turn on. After a few drips and drops, it went dry. So did the very notion of equal opportunity for all. And today we’re living in a country deeply divided between winners and losers. Nowhere is that more evident than in our tax system – so distorted by loopholes, exemptions, credits, and deductions favoring the already rich and powerful that it no longer can raise the money needed to pay the government’s bills.

Among the people who saw this crisis coming was the conservative economist Bruce Bartlett, the supply-side champion who wrote the manifesto for the Reagan Revolution. Bartlett became a senior policy analyst in the Reagan White House and a top official at the Treasury Department under the first George Bush. Yet for all those credentials, he is today an outcast from the very conservative ranks where he was once so influential. That’s because Bruce Bartlett dared to write a book criticizing the second George Bush as a pretend conservative who slashed taxes but still spent with wild abandon.

The subtitle says it all: How George W. Bush Bankrupted America and Betrayed the Reagan Legacy.

For his heresy Bartlett was sacked by the conservative think tank where he worked. Undaunted, this card-carrying advocate of free markets and small government has been a prolific writer for popular and academic journals and has just published a new book: The Benefit and the Burden: Tax Reform - Why We Need It and What It Will Take. It’s a layman’s guide through the jungle of a tax system that, thanks to rented politicians and anti-tax ideologues like Grover Norquist, enable the one percent to make off like bandits while our national debt soars sky-high. I talked to Bruce Bartlett soon after he had finished his new book.

Continue reading »

Occupy Atlanta members were busy on Monday as they occupied AT&T at Atlanta's Midtown Center to protest corporate planned layoffs. 12 protesters were arrested, but Occupy Atlanta vows to keep up the pressure, along with members of the Communications Workers of America, until the communications giant cancels its plans to layoff workers.

Via:

Police arrested a dozen protesters affiliated with Occupy Atlanta on Monday after they invaded the lobby of the AT&T Midtown Center to protest recently announced layoffs by the telecommunications giant.

Despite the arrests, Occupy Atlanta spokesman Tim Franzen said the group, joined by members of the Communications Workers of America, plans to maintain a presence outside the building, where they've set up camp on the corner of Ponce de Leon Avenue and West Peachtree Street.

The campsite is public property, according to AT&T spokesman Joe Chandler. "We are working with the authorities, as we were earlier today," Chandler said.

An Atlanta police spokesman said the 12 demonstrators arrested Monday were charged with criminal trespass and taken to Fulton County Jail.

Franzen said Occupy won't leave until AT&T rescinds its plan to lay off 740 workers.

"At a time when unemployment is at a record high in the state of Georgia, we can’t afford to lose one more job," according to a statement on Occupy Atlanta's webpage

.

AT&T did take a financial hit during it's failed T-Mobile deal - a whopping $6.7 billion loss- however, revenue was up in the 4th quarter from last year to $32.5 billion with record iphone sales and over 700,000 new customers.

While AT&T has their excuses for the layoffs, with record sales, huge profits, and more customers, doesn't that sound more like plain old corporate greed?

This will be one to watch...

Via:

A high-ranking cop who pepper-sprayed penned-in Occupy Wall Street protesters has been zapped with a lawsuit by two women who were in the line of fire.

Chelsea Elliott and Jeanne Mansfield are suing Deputy Inspector Anthony Bologna in Manhattan Federal Court for blasting them in the face with pepper-spray during a protest last Sept. 24 near Union Square.

The incident was caught on video, and 1.5 million people watched it on YouTube, prompting outrage and drawing attention to the Occupy Wall Street movement.

Bologna was docked 10 days of vacation for violating NYPD regulations.

The lawsuit claims Bologna violated the women's civil rights, and is seeking unspecified damages from Bologna and NYC for "physical pain and mental suffering."