Thursday, October 24, 2013

[VIDEO] DID MSNBC'S CHRIS HAYES USE 'KKK' IMAGE FOR CRUZ, PAUL, RUBIO?


Chris Hayes, host of MSNBC's All In, has a favorite tactic--though not an original one: connecting today's Republicans with the racist Democrats of the old South. In June, he rewrote history bycasting George Wallace as a Republican--an error for which, to his credit, he later apologized. On Wednesday, he appeared to use a more subtle tactic to connect the Tea Party's Ted Cruz, Rand Paul, and Marco Rubio to the Ku Klux Klan.

In a segment on possible Tea Party contenders for the Republican Party's nomination in the 2016 presidential race, Hayes used a graphic (above) that portrayed Cruz, Paul, and Rubio as kings in a deck of cards--and that, rather conveniently, spelled out the initials "K K K." (Hayes did not say the word "kings" during the segment.)
The use of KKK imagery--historically associated with Democrats, not Republicans--to describe the Tea Party would not be unique to Hayes. Rep. Alan Grayson (D-FL) recently used a burning cross to provide the "T" in "Tea Party" in a fundraising email. Hayes's "dog whistle" was more clever, but--if intentional--no less offensive.
There is a hazard, of course, in taking offense too quickly at bad jokes, and there is always the possibility that Hayes was unaware of the graphic, or even that the KKK reference was entirely coincidental. However, given Hayes's past record, and the constant obsession of fellow MSNBC anchors with making false accusations of racism against the Tea Party and the Republican Party, Hayes has arguably exhausted the benefit of the doubt. 

Census: 49% of Americans Get Gov’t Benefits; 82M in Households on Medicaid

Kathleen Sebelius, Barack Obama, Nancy Pelosi(CNSNews.com) - In the fourth quarter of 2011, 49.2 percent of Americans received benefits from one or more government programs, according to data released Tuesday by the Census Bureau.
In total, the Census Bureau estimated, 151,014,000 Americans out of a population then estimated to be 306,804,000 received benefits from one or more government programs during the last three months of 2011. Those 151,014,000 beneficiaries equaled 49.2 percent of the population.
This included 82,457,000 people--or 26.9 percent of the population--who lived in households in which one or more people received Medicaid benefits.
Also among the 151,014,000 who received benefits from one or more government programs during that period: 49,901,000 who collected Social Security; 49,073,000 who got food stamps; 46,440,000 on Medicare; 23,228,000 in the Women, Infants and Children program, 20,223,000 getting Supplemental Security Income;13,433,000 who lived in public or subsidized rental housing; 5,098,000 who got unemployment; 3,178,000 who got veterans' benefits; and 364,000 who got railroad retirement benefits.
Via: CNS News
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Teachers' unions fight bill that would bar sex offenders from schools

A bipartisan bill that would stop convicted sex offenders from working in schools has been passed by the House but is running into a foe as it heads to the Senate: major teachers' unions like the National Education Association and the American Federation of Teachers.
Kyle Olson, with the Education Action Group Foundation told Megyn Kelly Wednesday night on “The Kelly File” that the unions’ objection to the bill proves “unions are out to protect the adults…they are not out for the interests of the children.”
“We should have zero tolerance for issues like this,” Olson said. “We have zero tolerance policies for weapons, a kid who bites a Pop Tart into a gun or has a Hello Kitty bubble-maker will be suspended or expelled if they have those sorts of things…”
The measure would require school systems to check state and federal criminal records for employees with unsupervised access to elementary and secondary school students, and for people seeking those jobs. Workers refusing to submit to the checks would not be allowed to have school positions.
In letters to lawmakers, the unions have claimed the measure might jeopardize workers' protections under union contracts.

Most Americans accumulating debt faster than they’re saving for retirement

A majority of Americans with 401(k)-type savings accounts are accumulating debt faster than they are setting aside money for retirement, further undermining the nation’s troubled system for old-age saving, a new report has found.

Three in five workers with defined contribution accounts are “debt savers,” according to the report released Thursday, meaning their increasing mortgages, credit card balances and installment loans are outpacing the amount of money they are able to save for retirement.

The imbalance is expanding even as policymakers are encouraging people to set aside more by offering generous tax breaks and automatically enrolling workers in retirement accounts that in some cases automatically escalate the amount of money over time.

Currently, workers with retirement savings accounts put aside more than 11 percent of their pay for retirement — 5 percent in their own accounts, and 6.2 percent in Social Security.

Despite that — and despite the $2.5 trillion the report says employers have poured into defined contribution accounts from 1992 to 2012 — the retirement readiness of most Americans has been slipping, according to the report by HelloWallet, a D.C. firm that offers technology-based financial advice to workers and conducts research of economic behavior.

“Policy has tunnel vision. It tends to tackle problems on a piecemeal basis. The impact of policy on consumer finances is a bit like playing a game of Whac-A-Mole,” said Matt Fellowes, founder and chief executive of HelloWallet and a former Brookings Institution scholar. “We raised the victory flag as people increased retirement contributions, but in reality the ability of people to retire is a function of lots of different variables, most important of which is what they are doing on the other side of the ledger.”

Via: Washington Post
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Celebrities who promoted ObamaCare now quiet in wake of website debacle

In the heady days after the October 1 launch of the Affordable Care Act -- better known as ObamaCare -- Lady Gaga, Amy Poehler, Nina Dobrev, Rosario Dawson, Sarah Silverman, Olivia Wilde, Alicia Keys, Jennifer Hudson, Pearl Jam, Lance Bass, John Legend, Alyssa Milano and Kerry Washington joined the President to encourage Americans to #getcovered.
Since then, technical glitches and website snafus have so marred the ObamaCare website that the team who built it has been called to testify before Congress on Thursday. But there will be no celebrities flanking them on Capitol Hill, as the stars that helped launch the initiative are now being advised to walk away.
One well-placed Hollywood agent told FOX411 that while Obama and ObamaCare are separate issues, and that you can support one without the other, public relations teams across the industry are cautioning their clients to now lay off the latter. Even Oprah Winfrey, one of the President’s most influential mouthpieces during his first election, reportedly refused to get on-board and lend a hand.
“Hollywood has gone from pushing #getcovered to heading for cover,” Dan Gainor, VP of Business and Culture at the Media Research Center told FOX411. “Stars like Lady Gaga and Sarah Silverman pushed their ObamaCare propaganda to more than 67 million fans on social media. But don’t expect them to be honest about the situation.”

Obamacare concern: Health care users start to get kicked off insurance plans

Boehner predicts more losers than winners by end of month

The health care law’s honeymoon period is over.

For several years, Obamacare provided new benefits: Children could stay on their parents’ plans longer, insurance companies couldn’t impose lifetime benefit caps, and seniors got extra help in buying prescription drugs. But during the past two months, some consumers have been kicked off plans, and they and others are having to navigate the complexities of health care exchanges.



House Speaker John A. Boehner, Ohio Republican, said Wednesday that more people have been kicked out of their health care plans thanks to recently activated provisions than have been able to sign up in the exchanges — an equation he said underscored the problems with the law.

“When you begin to look at these hundreds of thousands of people, I think what you’re going to see at the end of October are more Americans are going to lose their health insurance than are going to sign up at these exchanges,” Mr. Boehner told reporters.

Consumers have reported tremendous difficulties in signing up through the federal online portal, HealthCare.gov. That has led Republicans and even some Democrats to urge President Obama to extend the enrollment period and/or delay imposing tax penalties on those who fail to sign up — thus violating the law’s “individual mandate” requiring most Americans to get insurance.

As those difficulties emerge, meanwhile, Kaiser Health News reported this week that hundreds of thousands of Americans have received notices from their insurers canceling their policies: 300,000 from Florida Blue and 160,000 from Kaiser Permanente in California, in addition to thousands from other major insurers.

Via: Washington Times

George Will: 'When They Fix the Website, Their Real Problems Will Begin'

George Will, "Special Report," 10/23/13: When they fix the website, their real problems will begin. They're going to look back on the last few weeks as the good old days. When people hack their way through the thicket of difficulties and get to the real choices that Obamacare offers, particularly the 2.7 million young people they're counting on to sign up and the young people say, 'this is awfully expensive for something I don't want,' and recoil, That is the difficulties today are actually keeping people from seeing the bad choice they're going to have to make once they get onto the site.

51% Favor Delaying Individual Mandate, 34% Oppose

Just over half of U.S. voters still want to delay the requirement that everyone must have health insurance, but support for delaying that mandate is down, despite the ongoing problems with government exchange websites set up to provide health insurance.

The latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that 51% of Likely U.S. Voters think the Obama administration should delay the individual mandate because of the problems experienced by the health insurance exchanges. Thirty-four percent (34%) disagree and oppose any delay in the requirement that every American have health insurance by January 1. Fifteen percent (15%) are not sure. (To see survey question wording, click here.)

(Want a free daily e-mail update? If it's in the news, it's in our polls). Rasmussen Reports updates are also available on Twitter or Facebook.

The survey of 1,000 Likely Voters was conducted on October 22-23, 2013 by Rasmussen Reports. The margin of sampling error is +/- 3 percentage points with a 95% level of confidence. Field work for all Rasmussen Reports surveys is conducted by Pulse Opinion Research, LLC. See methodology.



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