Insurers Stem Losses, and May Soon Profit, From Obamacare Plans

Source: MSN/NY Times

In contrast to the dire pronouncements from President Trump and other Republicans, the demise of the individual insurance market seems greatly exaggerated, according to a new financial analysis released Friday.

The analysis, by Standard & Poor’s, looked at the performance of many Blue Cross plans in nearly three dozen states since President Barack Obama’s health care law took effect three years ago. It shows the insurers significantly reduced their losses last year, are likely to break even this year and that most could profit — albeit some in the single-digits — in 2018. The insurers cover more than five million people in the individual market.

After years in which many insurers lost money, then lost even more in 2015, “we are seeing the first signs in 2016 that this market could be manageable for most health insurers,” the Standard & Poor’s analysts said. The “market is not in a ‘death spiral,’ ” they said.

It is the latest evidence that the existing law has not crippled the market where individuals can buy health coverage, although several insurers have pulled out of some markets including two in Iowa just this week. They and other industry specialists have cited the uncertainty surrounding the Congressional debate over the law, and the failed effort two weeks ago by House Republicans to bring a bill to the floor for a vote.

Read more: http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/insurers-stem-losses-and-may-soon-profit-from-obamacare-plans/ar-BBzy9kg

HuffPo - Top Democrats To Headline March For Release Of Trumps Tax Returns

Anyone else planning on showing up at a Tax March protest on April 15th?

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/top-democrats-headline-march_us_58e4f300e4b03a26a3680fb7

Senior Democratic lawmakers are due to speak at a march on April 15 ― the day when Americans’ tax returns are typically due ― to demand that President Donald Trump release his tax returns.

“The Tax March,” as the progressive groups organizing it have dubbed it, will begin with a rally and speeches at the U.S. Capitol, followed by a parade that passes the Trump International Hotel, as well as the FBI and IRS buildings. Over 100 smaller marches are due to take place in cities across the country.

Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), ranking member on the Senate Finance Committee; Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Calif.), ranking member on the House Financial Services Committee; and Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.) will join a host of faith, policy and grassroots leaders scheduled to speak on Trump’s continued lack of financial transparency.

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A broad of array of liberal groups and labor unions are convening for the Tax March, including MoveOn.org, Public Citizen, Demos, Credo, the Working Families Party, the National Women’s Law Center and the American Federation of Teachers.

Democratic Congressman Rips Trump For His Unconstitutional Strike On Syria

Source: PoliticsUSA

During an interview on MSNBC, Rep. Ted Lieu (D-CA), a member of the House Committee on Foreign Affairs, said that Trump’s missile strike against Syria was unconstitutional and warned the president not to do it again.

Rep. Lieu said, “Clearly, the president can take limited actions that the Congress has authorized such as going against terrorists who were involved with 9/11 or in terms of Iraq when Congress authorized the use of force in 2002, but there’s been no congressional authorization to launch fifty-nine cruise missiles at a country that has not attacked us. Donald Trump’s action last night was unconstitutional. He should not do it again.”

MSNBC’s Katy Tur asked Lieu if he would have voted for authorization if Trump had come to Congress. The congressman from California answered, “I might have if he would have articulated a strategy, and that is one of my fundamental problems with what he did. There has been no coherent strategy from the Trump administration. Last week, they signaled they were okay with Assad even though he had previously killed hundreds of thousands of people in Syria and used chemical weapons. Last night, they attacked the Assad regime. We need to know what is the Trump administration thinking and what is their long-term strategy in Syria?”

The questions that Rep. Lieu asked are why Trump didn’t go to Congress for approval before he launched missiles against Syria. The Trump administration has no Syria plan. The administration’s message has been inconsistent on Assad. It was appropriate for the US to respond, but the way that Donald Trump carried out the response was unconstitutional.

Read more: http://www.politicususa.com/2017/04/07/democratic-congressman-rips-trump-unconstitutional-strike-syria.html

Rolling Stone - What to Make of Trump's About-Face on Syria

Why did Trump oppose intervention when over a thousand Syrians were killed in chemical attacks, but launched a missle strike almost immediately after about 80 people were killed shortly after declaring that the U.S. was no longer in the business of opposing the Assad regime?

A reasonable argument could have been made for intervention if the U.S. had been consistent in explaining why the international community could not tolerate the casual use of WMDs. But, to offer mix messages and military action with the impulsivity of a tweet is dangerous.



http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/features/what-to-make-of-trumps-about-face-on-syria-w475725

There are several ways to look at Donald Trump's abrupt about-face on Syria. One is that Thursday night's Tomahawk missile strike on an airbase near Homs – a so-called "proportional response" to the Assad regime's apparent sarin gas attack on Tuesday – was a cave to the Pentagon and a signal that at long last "the adults have taken control," as a military source, echoing the entire D.C. foreign policy establishment, puts it. Some believe a nascent national security strategy may be in the works. On the other hand, Trump is Trump.

Thursday evening, shifty eyed and uncomfortable in front of dual teleprompters at Mar-a-Lago, Trump made a scripted assertion that it was in the "vital national security interest of the United States" to prevent and deter the spread and use of deadly chemical weapons like sarin. "The use of that term, 'vital national interest,' was most welcome, and I agree," says one former Pentagon official. "The prevention of the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction is in our vital national interest as well as the vital interests of our allies. Now the administration needs to flesh out our remaining vital national interests and build a strategy that meets those interests."

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"People are so hungry to believe that they have a solid, 'presidential' commander-in-chief at the helm that they are willing to overlook everything Donald Trump said before Thursday – including on Monday and Tuesday," says Daniel Benaim, senior fellow at the Center for American Progress, and a former Obama administration official. "But there's nothing presidential about launching missiles in service of a policy that didn't exist until a few days ago. And when it comes to each new declaration that now is the moment when Trump finally became 'presidential,' people get tired of buying the same horse twice. Launching a few missiles from offshore is in some ways the easy part, and the one that better fits the impulsive nature of a president who seems to think more in macho gestures to win news cycles than long-term politico-military strategies to end wars.

"The bigger question is whether the experienced members of Trump's team can help him leverage this short-term burst of American power projection toward a strategy to hasten the end of a civil war that has been wrecking the country and sucking foreign powers into a vortex of instability," Benaim says. "Strategy – not strikes – should be the measure of presidential leadership."

Ezra Klein - Trumps foreign policy is dangerously impulsive

The cruise missile strikes President Donald Trump launched in reprisal for Bashar al-Assad’s chemical weapon attack in Syria are well within the norms of American foreign policy. But they fall far outside the stated boundaries of Trump’s foreign policy, and reflect an administration bereft of a consistent, considered approach to the world — an approach that would make America’s actions predictable to both our friends and enemies, and guide the commitments we’re willing to make in the event of escalation or reprisal.

What we are seeing, instead, is a foreign policy based on Trump’s gut reactions to the images flashing before him on cable news. And that’s dangerous.

Last week, despite Assad’s horrific, ongoing slaughter of his own people, the Trump administration was comfortable seeing him retain power. In March, Nikki Haley, Trump’s ambassador to the United Nations, said, “Our priority is no longer to sit there and focus on getting Assad out.”

This was consistent with Trump’s long-held view on Syria, which was that America should stay the hell away. Unlike many Republicans, his criticism of President Barack Obama wasn’t for failing to follow through on infamous “red line” comments but for making them at all.

Foreign Policy Review (2016) - Trumps Syria Strategy Would Be a Disaster - Precient

While Trump does his best to blame President Obama, will the media note that candidate Trump was a big fan of Assad's regime and wanted to partner with Assad:

http://foreignpolicy.com/2016/11/17/trumps-syria-strategy-would-be-a-disaster/

The president-elect wants to ally with Assad and Russia to fight the Islamic State – but he’s going to end up empowering extremists and causing chaos across the Middle East.

Late last week, President-elect Donald Trump explained for the first time since his election victory his position on the crisis in Syria. In his remarks, he laid out his determination to ramp up the fight against the Islamic State and to cease support to those fighting President Bashar al-Assad’s regime:

I’ve had an opposite view of many people regarding Syria.… My attitude was you’re fighting Syria; Syria is fighting ISIS; and you have to get rid of ISIS. Russia is now totally aligned with Syria, and now you have Iran, which is becoming powerful, because of us, is aligned with Syria.… Now we’re backing rebels against Syria, and we have no idea who these people are.

This is an extraordinary simplification of a highly complex crisis. But the president-elect’s views on Syria do evince some consistency — just not the consistency he apparently intends. Trump says he wants to focus on destroying the Islamic State. The main effect of the policies he describes, however, would be to eliminate the moderate opposition to the Assad regime and to empower extremism.

Before considering all the disastrous effects of Trump’s policy, we should examine why even his stated justification for it doesn’t hold water. A brief history lesson should suffice to demonstrate the Assad regime’s lack of counterterrorism qualifications. This is the government whose intelligence apparatus methodically built al Qaeda in Iraq, and then the Islamic State in Iraq, into a formidable terrorist force to fight U.S. troops in that country from 2003 to 2010. Hundreds of American soldiers would probably still be alive today if it had not been for Assad’s state-backed support to the Islamic State’s direct predecessors.

The 'Greenwald Left' Continues to Deny the Russiagate Story

While Trump and his minions on the right attack media attack stories regarding Trump's connection to Russia as Fake news, Glenn Greenwalfd, Ed Schultz and the TYT runs interference on the left. Of course, these talking points are the same as those made by Trump and his allies even though they come from folks who claim to be progressives.

http://thedailybanter.com/2017/03/the-greenwald-left-continues-to-deny-the-russiagate-story/

1) The "conspiracy theory" theory.

Despite the volumes of persistent and thorough reporting from The New York Times, The Washington Post, BBC, McClatchy, NBC News (Engel, Maddow, O'Donnell, Hayes), CNN and open source outlets like Pro Publica, not to mention concurrent investigations by the FBI, CIA, NSA, and the pro-Trump Congress, there are quite a few liberals claiming Russiagate is merely an unproved conspiracy theory.

* * *
2) The "we're mean, too, and we totally deserve it" theory.

This is a very typical Greenwaldian attitude: America meddles in other elections, so we had it coming. Okay, would these same people excuse or even forgive a foreign invasion and the installation of a hostile regime in Washington just because we've engaged in regime change and nation-building? I would hope not, but probably. Indeed, Putin appears to be working on that one. No amount of harm inflicted upon the United States is unacceptable to this crowd, as long as they can point to something similar in our national history. It's nearsighted deflection at its worst.

* * *

3) The "we never had a democracy in the first place" theory.

This is perhaps the most uniquely liberal reaction so far. Lacking anything of substance to say by way of either disproving or counterpointing the Russiagate reporting, these people would rather just go for the trite, overplayed, crowd-pleasing zinger. Is our election system in danger from gerrymandering, voter ID and voter purges? Hell yes. Are democratic elections a thing of the past? No way -- unless Putin and Trump did what many reputable experts believe they did. If these liberals were so concerned about democracy, they'd be completely on board with sussing out this story and its myriad repercussions. Instead, they're merely blowing it off with quick and mostly meaningless nods to their personal cynicism.

* * *

Bottom line: it's absolutely this level of defiant ignorance that allowed Putin to so-easily infiltrate our social media and news cycles in the first place, with his pervasive disinformation campaign and hacked documents. Every single one of these commenters proved the point of my article by illustrating how Putin was able to turn unwitting Americans into his personal invading army: each one sharing, "liking" and retweeting his message, willingly, enthusiastically, while stubbornly refusing to accept they were suckered by the largest scale foreign invasion on U.S. soil since the war of 1812.

LA Mag - Theres a Trump Tax Returns March Happening in April, and Its Going to Be Huge

I was thinking of flying out to DC for the National protest on the mall, but I am glad to hear that there is large local protest closer to home.

http://www.lamag.com/culturefiles/theres-trump-tax-returns-march-happening-april-going-huge/

Might as well invest in that new pair of sneakers. The national farce that is Trump’s plan of action shows no sign of stopping, and neither do the protests. Following the Women’s March, this past weekend’s demonstrations at LAX and airports nationwide, and the announcement of a March for Science, there’s now a Trump Tax Returns March going down on tax day, April 15. (Reminder: You should really get to work filing your taxes.)

Donald Trump STILL has not released his tax returns, which is concerning since the information therein would reveal a lot about our new president. Kellyanne Conway and Trump himself have repeatedly claimed that the American people don’t care about the tax returns. That’s objectively false. (FYI, the petition on the White House website demanding Trump release his tax returns just broke records.) So, as the past two weeks have demonstrated, the most visible way to assert that we do in fact care about the shady stuff Trump is doing, is to gather en masse an yell about it in public.

The march is already planned for at least 34 cities, including Los Angeles, where it will begin in Pershing Square downtown and progress to city hall. Currently the local march is at 16,000 RSVPS, with 39,000 “interested”—which, you just might notice, is more than any other city. Sorry, we get a little competitive.

Any Response from Ted Cruz On Trump's Budget?

Ted Cruz's act is to try to out-crazy everyone in order to appeal to the hard right. It will be interesting to see how he tries to get to the right of Trump's proposed budget.

There Has Been A Concerted Effort To Discredit Progressive Figures Like Maddow

During the run-up to the general election, this message board was filled with posts consistently attacking progressives like Rachel Maddow from the left for being corporate shills by being supportive of Hillary Clinton versus Donald Trump.

However, now that Trump is President, Rachel Maddow has been unmatched in connecting the dots with respect to Trump's Russian connections. Rather than be distracted by Trump's attention grabbing tweets, Maddow has steadily dived into Trump's conflicts of interests and Russian connections, which could be addressed through a full disclosure of his taxes. In response, Rachel Maddow has been receiving some of her highest ratings in the past few years despite the fact that she has not joined in the temptation to follow or rebut the latest Trump talking point. She has been setting her own agenda.

Many folks on this Board have been greatly appreciative of her journalism. Yet, in response to the disclosure of a few pages of Trump's tax returns, which did occur, there is a sudden concerted attack on Rachel Maddow from folks on the "left." Trust your gut and be leery of trolls or long threads with numerous kicks attacking well known Democrats or folks on the left. They are hardly the problem. Trump and his supporters are the problem.

https://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/31/world/europe/russia-finland-nato-trolls.html?_r=0

Effort to Expose Russia’s ‘Troll Army’ Draws Vicious Retaliation

HELSINKI, Finland — Seeking to shine some light into the dark world of Internet trolls, a journalist with Finland’s national broadcaster asked members of her audience to share their experience of encounters with Russia’s “troll army,” a raucous and often venomous force of online agitators.

The response was overwhelming, though not in the direction that the journalist, Jessikka Aro, had hoped.

As she expected, she received some feedback from people who had clashed with aggressively pro-Russian voices online. But she was taken aback, and shaken, by a vicious retaliatory campaign of harassment and insults against her and her work by those same pro-Russian voices.

“Everything in my life went to hell thanks to the trolls,” said Ms. Aro, a 35-year-old investigative reporter with the social media division of Finland’s state broadcaster, Yle Kioski.