[OPINION] David Sarasohn: Uncle Sam's failed mortgage-relief program

At the end of January 2009, less than a month in the Senate and a brand-new member of the Senate banking and housing committee, Jeff Merkley saw a problem in how the Obama administration was planning to deal with the Great Recession's mortgage crisis.

"Folks in key positions at the top of the Obama financial team," he cautioned, "are more oriented to Wall Street than families."

Despite Merkley's concerns, the administration proceeded with its Home Affordable Refinance Program and Home Affordable Modification Program, promising to adjust 4 million mortgages to keep families in their homes. Endangered homeowners would get in touch with their mortgage holders, get their payments reduced with the help of $50 billion in federal money set aside for the purpose, and both families and neighborhoods would be stabilized.

By that summer, the phones in government offices — and some at The Oregonian/OregonLive — were swamped by calls from applicants complaining about banks losing applications and documents, repeatedly asking applicants for the same information, telling homeowners not to make mortgage payments because they were applying for modification and then telling them they were in foreclosure because they hadn't made payments. By the end of 2009, Merkley warned, "There are some incredibly telling signs that this is not going well. The program is, so far, a huge disappointment."

By the end of the next year, the program that had promised to modify 4 million mortgages had totaled just over half a million. To the House financial services committee, Jack Schakett, Bank of America's executive for credit-loss-mitigation strategies, conceded "ineffective communications with customers, shortcomings in document maintenance, misunderstandings about program requirements and the inability to comply by some borrowers."

In 2011, Merkley introduced a bill to require banks to provide a single contact for applicants, to allow homeowners to refinance with different providers and to let bankruptcy judges modify the terms of mortgages, as they can with other debts. By then, Republicans had taken the House, and the issue was dead.

A report issued at the end of last month by Christy L. Romero, special inspector general of the Troubled Asset Relief Program, explained just how the program — which after six years has modified 887,000 mortgages, instead of 4 million — ended up as less profit than loss. With participation voluntary for the banks, all banks rejected the majority of applications — led by Citibank with 87 percent — and roadblocks in the process led virtually all applicants to be rejected the first time around. The report told of homeowners improperly rejected four times before finally, with legal help, getting approved.

"We are constantly seeing problems," Romero told The New York Times, "with the way servicers are treating homeowners and not following the rules. I don't understand why there hasn't been a stronger policing from Treasury on servicers."

To Merkley, his six-year-old doubts and objections about the program have all been painfully confirmed.

"The program was and is poorly defined," the senator said this month, and he holds to his diagnosis of the basic problem: Obama's economic advisers — Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner and National Economic Council Chairman Larry Summers — "were more concerned about strengthening the banks than helping families."

Partly as a result, the ultimate decisions were all made by the mortgage holders, often distracted by their collecting fees on overdue payments.

"There were fundamental conflicts of interest and poor design," concluded Merkley. "There is an incentive to prolong the process. The only point when it's in the interest of the banks (to complete the modification) is when a family is just about to go under."

Which, not occasionally, was too late.

The bail-out programs have now been extended through 2016, but nobody expects them to make much progress toward 4 million modifications, or in fact to make much progress at all. Merkley reports his office now gets only about one call a month on modifications — most of the people who needed help having found another approach or, more likely, having left their house.

Instead, Merkley thinks about what could have been the effect of the 3 million mortgage modifications that were promised but never achieved.

"That's a lot of families not relocated, of kids staying in their schools, of marital tensions that would have been directly reduced," he says. "It would have had a strengthening effect on the economy. It would have been a real win-win."

Instead, with the design and operation of the program, and how hard it was for homeowners to get help, the recovery didn't move as much.

But a lot of American families did.

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David Sarasohn's column appears on Wednesdays and Sundays. He blogs at davidsarasohn.com.

Via: Oregon Live

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When a raise angers workers

When Wal-Mart Stores chief Doug McMillon announced plans to boost store workers’ minimum wage earlier this year, he said the move was intended to improve morale and retain employees.

Yet for some of the hundreds of thousands of workers getting no raise, the policy is having the opposite effect.

In interviews and in hundreds of comments on Facebook, Wal-Mart employees are calling the move unfair to senior workers who got no increase and now make the same or close to what newer, less experienced colleagues earn. New workers started making a minimum of $9 an hour in April and will get at least $10 an hour in February.

“It is pitting people against each other,” said Charmaine Givens-Thomas, a 10-year veteran who makes $12 an hour at a store near Chicago and belongs to OUR Walmart, a union-backed group that has lobbied for better working conditions. “It hurts morale when people feel like they aren’t being appreciated. I hear people every day talking about looking for other jobs and wanting to remove themselves from Wal-Mart and a job that will make them feel like that.”

Some workers also said they suspect their hours are being cut and annual raises reduced to cover the cost of the wage increase for newer workers. Wal-Mart denies that and says it’s taking steps to ensure all employees have an opportunity to move into higher-paying jobs. Along with bumping up the minimum wage, it increased the amount workers receive when promoted, boosted pay for some managers and raised the maximum pay for all hourly positions.

A broader issue

Several U.S. retailers have raised the minimum wage for their workers in recent months, among them Gap, TJX and Target. The moves were widely hailed amid calls to combat wage inequality — an issue that even reached the Securities and Exchange Commission, which on Wednesday voted to force companies to reveal the pay gap between the chief executive officer and their typical worker.

However, if Wal-Mart and other retailers don’t also adjust pay for veteran hourly workers, they could face rising dissent, said David Cooper, an economic analyst at the Economic Policy Institute. Typically, when employers boost their base pay, they also give raises to those making within $1 to $2 of the new minimum to preserve a type of wage hierarchy and keep their longer-time workers happy, studies show.

“Companies want to preserve some type of internal wage ladder, so to do that they have to adjust wages of folks above the new minimum,” Cooper said. If Wal-Mart doesn’t raise wages for these workers, “folks are going to leave or start complaining more vocally,” he said.

Executives knew the minimum wage hike would make those left out feel disenfranchised, said Kristin Oliver, Wal-Mart’s U.S. human resources chief. Since then, the company has been hearing from upset employees and understands that the new wage policy could lead to increased turnover, she said.

In an attempt to retain workers who didn’t get a raise, Wal-Mart has changed its scheduling system to help workers get the hours they want and started a new training program for employees looking to advance within the company. Wal-Mart announced the scheduling changes as well as a new training program at the same time as the wage increase to address the different needs of its workers, Wal-Mart spokesman Kory Lundberg said.

“We are constantly looking and evolving what the right pay should be and we were aware of the issue,” Oliver said. “We weren’t prepared to go forward with any additional increases but have continued to look at it to see if there is something else we should do for those in the middle.”

The cost of more raises

Giving additional raises to employees already making close to the new minimum wage would cost Wal-Mart about $400 million, said Jeannette Wicks-Lim, an assistant research professor at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. She based her calculation on raises the retail industry has handed out after past increases to state and federal minimum wages. Wal-Mart declined to comment on her calculation.

Additional pay bumps could put further strain on profits, which Wal-Mart said last quarter were dragged down by the $1 billion it’s already spending on raises. Last year, the Bentonville, Arkansas-based chain generated $486 billion in annual sales and a profit of about $16 billion.

Wal-Mart has said about 500,000 of its 1.3 million U.S. employees are getting raises as part of the new pay policy and all employees will be able to benefit from the new scheduling and training programs.

“We are trying to create a situation where they have a path to higher paying positions over time,” Oliver said.

Still, that hasn’t been the takeaway for many workers.

Sal Fuentes, who makes $13 an hour operating a forklift overnights at a Wal-Mart in Duarte, California, said he expects the company to give out lower raises to him and other senior employees to compensate for the cost of raising pay for the newer employees.

“There is always some way they get the money back,” said Fuentes, who has worked at the company since 2006 and is a member of OUR Walmart. “They give you some but they are taking away something else. It has always been like that.”

While employers may think raising wages will help them compete for talent, research shows workers care more about how much a colleague is making than someone at another company.

“Workers appear to pay attention to peer wages,” said Laura Giuliano, an associate professor of economics at the University of Miami who has studied the issue. “Even a small difference can matter, and whether or not it is going to matter may well depend on whether it appears arbitrary or unfair.”

Givens-Thomas said she was happy to see her colleagues getting a raise and thinks it’s a sign Wal-Mart is moving in the right direction. Still, she said the new wage policy is bittersweet; Givens-Thomas recently moved in with her mother because she couldn’t afford her rent.

“I am impressed that they are even trying to raise the wages — I know it has been hard for them,” she said. “I would like to continue to see pay go up because it has been stagnant for so many years and people are really suffering.”

Via: The Bulletin-Oregon

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TRANSGENDER OREGON RESIDENT COLLECTED SOCIAL SECURITY UNDER MALE AND FEMALE NAMES

PORTLAND, Ore. (AP) — An Oregon resident who transitioned to a woman more than three decades ago continued collecting Social Security disability checks under her male identity, fraudulently raking in $250,000.

Court records show Richelle McDonald was born Richard McDonald in 1945. In 1974, Richard claimed disability because he was unable to work after suffering a serious arm injury when hit by a San Francisco bus.

McDonald in the 1970s also applied for a separate Social Security number under the name Richelle. She worked under that name from the early 1980s until 2012 while continuing to collect disability payments as Richard.

McDonald pleaded guilty to Social Security fraud in December and was sentenced Monday to eight months of home confinement. She must also pay restitution.

The 70-year-old apologized in court.

Via: Breitbart

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[OPINION] Lawmakers did too little for higher education

Many of our current Oregon legislators went to college at a time when our public universities were very affordable and students could cover their costs with summer jobs and part-time work during the school year. As we all are painfully aware, that is no longer the case. Tuition at Oregon's public universities and community colleges keeps heading up and up while our state contribution has fallen so precipitously that we are 47th out of the 50 states in the level of public support for higher education. We leave it to the students to figure out how to pay the difference, and much of that ends up being unsustainable debt, averaging $27,000 for the current graduating class.  

Many students are asking themselves whether college is worth the cost and the debt. Student debt impacts our state's economy as well, as young college graduates can't buy a car, much less a house, can't start a business and have to grab the first job that comes along, often one that doesn't require a college degree, just to meet interest payments on their student loans.  

The Legislature set a very ambitious goal of achieving "40-40-20" by the year 2025 (40 percent with a high school diploma; 40 percent with a community college degree; and 20 percent with a university degree or better). To get there, they eliminated the higher ed board, created the Higher Education Coordinating Commission, eliminated the Oregon University System and spun off the universities to governance by independent boards.  

What have those changes done for the cost of college? In the last few months, those independent college boards raised tuition in amounts ranging from 7.6 percent (Oregon State University), 4.2 percent (Portland State University) to 3.8 percent (University of Oregon), well above the annual rate of inflation rate of minus 0.2 percent. At the same time the University of Oregon's board recently offered a salary of $800,000 to their new president. No wonder they need to raise tuition!  

At the very end of the legislative session, the Ways and Means Committee was able to increase funding for higher education by a substantial 22 percent over the last budget. Although still not back to pre-recession levels, this was a major increase of $700 million for the universities and $550 million for community colleges. The problem is, the Legislature did not mandate that this increase in state support result in any commensurate tuition cuts for students. Rather, the PSU president has said the additional funding might help to lower the planned 4.2 percent increase in tuition and fees. But increase it they will!

Meanwhile the Washington state Legislature took a dramatically different approach. They cut tuition for their public colleges and universities by an immediate 5 percent and by an additional 10 percent to 15 percent in 2016. Any increases thereafter will be tied to increases in Washington's median hourly wage. Oregon needs to do the same.  

Oregon needs to start with a student-centered reinvestment budget, as opposed to an institution-focused reinvestment budget. This would include reining in the universities' sky-rocketing non-academic costs, increasing need-based student aid grants, lowering — or at least freezing — tuition levels and helping students meet tuition payments without incurring unsustainable debt.  

The Legislature did budget $10 million for a much scaled down "free community college" bill. This effort, while helpful to some high school graduates, will not provide any assistance to the older worker coming to community college to get advanced training nor to any students at our four-year universities.  

That's where the "pay it forward" program would have come in. "Pay it forward" offered students the opportunity to go to a public university without paying tuition upfront but, rather, making small, income-based payments after completion. Their payments would not go to out-of-state banks — currently some $200 million in student loan payments leaves the state every biennium —  but would stay right here in Oregon in a fund that would help pay for future generations of students, eventually becoming self-sustaining. Yes, the state would have to come up with the initial funding, but this is a shared responsibility model, and the students would pay back into the fund after they completed their education so that future generations of students could have the same educational opportunity.  

We have to revisit the question of student debt in the next legislative session. It is a problem that haunts the future for all of us.  

•

Barbara Dudley is senior policy adviser for the Oregon Working Families Party.

Via: Oregon Live

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Oregon Wedding Cakes Are Just the Excuse

Theoretically, liberalism picks pluralism over public morality, nowhere more so than in the intimate realm of human sexuality.

 But the regulatory state has gotten so large, and so powerful, with such extensive reach into Americans’ livelihoods, that the Left cannot resist using it to impose its sexual moral views on the rest of us. 

Take Melissa and Aaron Klein, whose little Oregon bakery refused to bake a wedding cake for a lesbian couple. It is not technically a crime to refuse to bake a gay wedding cake, so instead of being tried in a court of law, they were tried by the Oregon Bureau of Labor and Industries.

Why can gay bakers refuse to bake a Celebrate NOM (the National Organization for Marriage) cake, but Aaron and Melissa Klein must bake a gay wedding cake or pay the penalty? Because the regulatory state is now redirecting to this realm the powerful public-accommodations mechanisms that were strengthened to put an end to Jim Crow — the systematic, ugly attempt by powerful Southerners to deprive black people of equal opportunities in the economy and the culture.

 For African Americans, this was a horrendous problem. In 1906, Mary Church Terrell, an Oberlin grad and the daughter of two ex-slaves who rose to be successful Memphis business owners, gave a speech at the United Women’s Club in Washington, D.C., where she explained: 

As a colored woman I might enter Washington any night, a stranger in a strange land, and walk miles without finding a place to lay my head. . . . Indians, Chinamen, Filipinos, Japanese and representatives of any other dark race can find hotel accommodations, if they can pay for them. The colored man alone is thrust out of the hotels of the national capital like a leper. 

As a colored woman I may walk from the Capitol to the White House ravenously hungry and abundantly supplied with money with which to purchase a meal, without finding a single restaurant in which I would be permitted to take a morsel of food . . . 

As a colored woman, I cannot visit the tomb of the Father of this country . . . without being forced to sit in the Jim Crow section of an electric car . . . 

Nothing (thankfully) like this is happening to gay people. There is no complex of the economically and culturally powerful seeking to prevent their free access to ordinary American society. They have not only the courts but also the corporations on their side. Not only does Walmart fund gay-pride parades, its CEO publicly opposed Arkansas’s Religious Freedom Restoration Act.

Via: National Review

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Countering Progressives' Assault on Suburbia

The next culture war will not be about issues like gay marriage or abortion, but about something more fundamental: how Americans choose to live. In the crosshairs now will not be just recalcitrant Christians or crazed billionaire racists, but the vast majority of Americans who either live in suburban-style housing or aspire to do so in the future. Roughly four in five home buyers prefer a single-family home, but much of the political class increasingly wants them to live differently.

Theoretically, the suburbs should be the dominant politically force in America. Some 44 million Americans live in the core cities of America’s 51 major metropolitan areas, while nearly 122 million Americans live in the suburbs. In other words, nearly three-quarters of metropolitan Americans live in suburbs.

Yet it has been decided, mostly by self-described progressives, that suburban living is too unecological, not mention too uncool, and even too white for their future America. Density is their new holy grail, for both the world and the U.S. Across the country efforts are now being mounted—through HUD, the EPA, and scores of local agencies—to impede suburban home-building, or to raise its cost. Notably in coastal California, but other places, too, suburban housing is increasingly relegated to the affluent.

The obstacles being erected include incentives for density, urban growth boundaries, attempts to alter the race and class makeup of communities, and mounting environmental efforts to reduce sprawl. The EPA wants to designate even small, seasonal puddles as “wetlands,” creating a barrier to developers of middle-class housing, particularly in fast-growing communities in the Southwest. Denizens of free-market-oriented Texas could soon be experiencing what those in California, Oregon and other progressive bastions have long endured: environmental laws that make suburban development all but impossible, or impossibly expensive. Suburban family favorites like cul-de-sacs are being banned under pressure from planners.

Some conservatives rightly criticize such intrusive moves, but they generally ignore how Wall Street interests and some developers see forced densification as opportunities for greater profits, often sweetened by public subsidies. Overall, suburban interests are poorly organized, particularly compared to well-connected density lobbies such as the developer-funded Urban Land Institute (ULI), which have opposed suburbanization for nearly 80 years. 

Via: Real Clear Politics

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What Do a Family Restaurant in Oregon and a Car Dealer in Texas Have in Common?

What do a family restaurant in Oregon, a car dealer in Texas and a building supply store in Massachusetts have in common? They've found successful ways to capture the attention of customers spending more time than ever with "screens"—TVs, phones, tablets and computers. 

Those businesses joined others during a recent webcast, Take Five for Your Future, presented by Comcast Spotlight, the advertising sales division of Comcast Cable. The companies participated in Comcast Spotlight's LAMP Awards, which recognize multi-screen advertising—combining television and digital marketing. 

The benefit is two-fold: some prospective customers will see a message on one screen that they missed on the other, while another group will see the message on both screens, and thus hear that message more often. 

Amy Schearer, Chief Marketing Officer of the Philadelphia Zoo, said during the webcast that this approach allowed the tourist attraction to "reach people at multiple points during the day." The zoo's multi-screen campaign, highlighting a new exhibit for children, contributed to one of the best years for total attendance. The growth came despite a harsh winter and spring, which dampens attendance. Once Mother Nature relented, though, the campaign worked its magic. 

A recurring theme from webcast participants was the ability of cable TV and digital advertising to reach specific neighborhoods. For People's Federal Savings Bank in Massachusetts, it turned out that their network of branches aligned well with Comcast Spotlight's zones, or groupings of neighborhoods, in the market. 

According to Thomas Long, Principal of the Long Group, the bank's marketing agency, a targeted approach meant their advertising "worked smarter and harder." The result of the campaign was a 250% increase in monthly checking account sales. Also noteworthy was that the new customers coming to the bank were, on average, 16 years younger than the bank's existing customers, meaning a new generation of consumers was getting the message as a result of TV advertising on networks like ABC Family and Bravo coupled with the same commercial appearing before online video and in banner advertisements on XFINITY.com. 

That approach also worked wonders for Chace Building Supply, the Massachusetts retailer. Chace competes with several national, "big-box" retailers, a challenge for many small businesses. In addition to being able to focus advertising near its store location, what also benefited the store was the ability to reach both men and women. For men, it meant commercials in programs like ESPN's Monday Night Football and Boston Bruins games; for women, networks like Lifetime, E! and Food Network hit the mark. 

For Elmer's, the Portland restaurant chain, reaching multiple audiences meant something different: attracting new customers, including those new to the region and not familiar with Elmer's 55-year history, while appealing to long-time guests. Like other webcast participants, Elmer's took advantage of the cost savings by using its existing commercial as an online advertisement, and added a little something extra to the online ads: pictures of seasonal menu items. That had customers clicking to learn more: 12% of the 12,000+ people who watched the online video visited Elmer's website. In the hyper-competitive restaurant business, Elmer's recorded a five percent increase in total sales, a figure Director of Restaurant Support Jill Ramos called "truly a win in the restaurant industry

." Some businesses take a hybrid approach to local advertising. Ron Carter Cadillac, the Texas auto dealer, aired advertising throughout the full Houston market, with additional commercials focused on the area immediately surrounding the dealership. It was an effective strategy to maximize the marketing budget, and included a mix of morning, primetime and weekend time periods. Ron Ross also wanted to reach a younger audience than is typically thought of as a Cadillac customer, so networks like ESPN, TNT and USA were a key component in its plan. The digital advertising element of the media plan did its job, nearly doubling traffic to Ron Carter's website, while overall vehicle sales increased about 50%. Chris Premant, E-commerce and Business Development Manager for the dealer noted that those results underscore "the reality that traditional drives digital" when it comes to advertising. 

Comcast Spotlight recently began accepting entries for this year's LAMP Awards, and will announce the winners this fall.

Via: National Review

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[VIDEO] Oregon launches program to tax drivers by the mile

David Hastings is a rare American. This long-time hybrid car owner from Oregon wants to pay higher taxes for roads and bridges and says the current 30 cents per gallon state gas tax barely affects him.

"I've been free-loading on the highways for 20 years driving electric cars or hybrid cars, getting at least 40 miles to the gallon. So I haven't been paying my share," Hastings said.

Now, Hastings will pay more thanks to OReGO -- the first pay-by-the-mile program in the U.S. 

Oregon’s Department of Transportation has been working on it for 15 years as a way to eventually replace the gas tax, which has been flat due to an influx of high mileage vehicles and people driving less.

Right now the program is voluntary and being capped at 5,000 participants, but an ODOT official told Fox News the ultimate goal is to make it mandatory and change the way states pay for roads -- forever.

"We're trying to make up for a growing deficit, really, because inflation's eating away at our ability to buy asphalt and rebar and the things we need to maintain the roads," said Tom Fuller of the Oregon Department of Transportation.

According to a national usage fee alliance, 28 states are in various stages of following down the same road. However, there are also privacy concerns. Two of the three OReGO systems track and store a car’s every move.

"To put a GPS monitor in everybody's car, the government already knows too much about us as it is," Jeff Kruse, a Republican lawmaker told Fox News.

Via: Fox News

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[VIDEO] State Silences Bakers Who Refused to Make Cake for Lesbian Couple, Fines Them $135K

Oregon Labor Commissioner Brad Avakian finalized a preliminary ruling today ordering Aaron and Melissa Klein, the bakers who refused to make a cake for a same-sex wedding, to pay $135,000 in emotional damages to the couple they denied service.

“This case is not about a wedding cake or a marriage,” Avakian wrote. “It is about a business’s refusal to serve someone because of their sexual orientation. Under Oregon law, that is illegal.”

In the ruling, Avakian placed an effective gag order on the Kleins, ordering them to “cease and desist” from speaking publicly about not wanting to bake cakes for same-sex weddings based on their Christian beliefs.

“This effectively strips us of all our first amendment rights,” the Kleins, owners of Sweet Cakes by Melissa, which has since closed, wrote on their Facebook page. “According to the state of Oregon we neither have freedom of religion or freedom of speech.”

The cease and desist came about after Aaron and Melissa Klein participated in an interview with Family Research Council’s Tony Perkins. During the interview, Aaron said among other things, “This fight is not over. We will continue to stand strong.”

Lawyers for plaintiffs, Rachel and Laurel Bowman-Cryer, argued that in making this statement, the Kleins violated an Oregon law banning people from acting on behalf of a place of public accommodation (in this case, the place would be the Kleins’ former bakery) to communicate anything to the effect that the place of public accommodation would discriminate.

Administrative Law Judge Alan McCullough, who is employed by the Oregon Bureau of Labor and Industries and was appointed by Avakian, threw out the argument in the “proposed order” he issued back in April.

But today, Avakian, who was in charge of making the final ruling in the case—and is also an elected politician—reversed that decision.

Via: Daily Signal

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The Cover Oregon Cover-Up

The key measure for an effective ad campaign is an affirmative response to a simple question: “Do viewers remember the ad?” In the case of Oregon and their effort to drive people to the state’s Obamacare exchange, officials are doing everything in their power to make people forget the awful campaign, including, allegedly, deleting emails and documents pertaining to what has become an every-growing story of corruption and criminality.

Former Oregon Gov. John Kitzhaber made his name in politics as an advocate of health care reform. He was a champion of Obamacare and other government-spending schemes. When the federal spending spigot opened for states to establish their own health care exchanges, Kitzhaber and his crew were eager to be among the first in line. The Obama administration in turn was happy to rain $200 million of federal funds into Oregon to establish a model program that other states would emulate.

Trouble in paradise started when Cover Oregon began running ads touting the exchange. The ads looked like they were designed by a hippie at Woodstock who was still suffering the after-effects of a decades long acid-trip. They were emblazed in people’s minds, but not in the way state officials wanted, and instead became fodder for incessant mockery from comedians and late night talk show hosts.

There was a greater problem, however. No one signed up. No one. The web experienced problems similar to those of the federal government, but according to insiders who are now speaking to federal criminal investigators the problems were fixable with some more time. The problem wasn’t the technology; it was the people who were in charge of the operation — Kitzhaber’s political operators.

When trouble started, Kitzhaber apparently violated state law prohibiting governmental decisions from being made for political purposes. He tasked his chief political advisor, his Karl Rove in a dress and state’s self-proclaimed “Princess of Darkness,” Patricia McCaig to oversee Cover Oregon.

Via: Human Events

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Christian Bakers Respond to Government Agency’s Ties to LGBT Group

The Oregon couple who refused to bake a cake for a same-sex wedding says the case against them should be “pulled out” of the state’s administrative court system due to concerns that the government agency responsible for overseeing the trial is biased.

The Daily Signal obtained communications between Basic Rights Oregon, a prominent gay rights group, and the Bureau of Labor and Industries, which is the state agency pursuing the case against Aaron and Melissa Klein.

Based on that information, the couple’s lawyers suggested potential bias against the Kleins and requested the judge re-open the case for further investigation.

>>> Read More: Emails Raise Questions of Bias in Case Against Bakers Who Denied Service for Same-Sex Wedding

Now the Kleins, who are facing a $135,000 fine, believe their case should be withdrawn from the Bureau of Labor and Industries administrative court system completely.

“I think the case should be pulled out of [the Bureau of Labor and Industries] court and put into a civil court because I cannot get due process here,” Aaron Klein, co-owner of Sweet Cakes by Melissa in Gresham, Ore., told The Daily Signal in an exclusive phone interview.

“We were shut down at every turn, so to say that Basic Rights Oregon should have access to [Bureau of Labor and Industries Commissioner Brad Avakian], that is absolutely ludicrous,” he said.

The Kleins were forced to close their bakery after facing boycotts and public backlash.

Via: Daily Signal

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Sticker Shock for Some Obamacare Customers

By Megan McArdle

So the proposed 2016 Obamacare rates have been filed in many states, and in many states, the numbers are eye-popping. Market leaders are requesting double-digit increases in a lot of places. Some of the biggest are really double-digit: 51 percent in New Mexico, 36 percent in Tennessee, 30 percent in Maryland, 25 percent in Oregon. The reason? They say that with a full year of claims data under their belt for the first time since Obamacare went into effect, they're finding the insurance pool was considerably older and sicker than expected.

Don't panic, says Kevin Drum. This is just the opening bid in a regulatory dance that will end up somewhere very different: "A few months from now, the real rate increases — the ones approved by state and federal authorities — will begin to trickle out. They'll mostly be in single digits, with a few in the low teens. The average for the entire country will end up being something like 4-8 percent."

He's right, of course, that the proposed rates will not end up being the final rate. Regulators are going to push back on these rates as hard as they can, with some success.

But in the case of the companies cited by the Wall Street Journal, I'd bet they're not going to go down to 4-8 percent. As it turns out, the insurer filings are public information, available on state websites. And in the three cases where I could see supporting data about premium revenue and losses, those losses appear to be large. Moda of Oregon says that its claims were 139 percent of revenue, making for a margin of -61 percent. If I am reading their somewhat confusing table right, Health Service Corporation of New Mexico says it lost $23 million on revenue of $121 million. CareFirst of Maryland says that claims were 120 percent of revenue, which if we add in some money to pay for overhead, amounts to ... less than or equal to what they're asking from regulators. I can't find claims experience data for Tennessee, but that state told the Wall Street Journal that it lost $141 million on exchange plans last year.

Via: Bloomberg View

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Warren to Raise Money for Merkley in Oregon

Massachusetts senator Elizabeth Warren is bringing her name and fundraising prowess to Oregon next week to help her fellow Democrat, Jeff Merkley. Politico Playbook reports:

Elizabeth Warren heading to Oregon to help Sen. Jeff Merkley fend off an unexpectedly tough challenge: The senator is flying to Portland next Wednesday for a "grassroots fundraiser." Republicans nominated pediatric neurosurgeon Monica Wehby in Tuesday's primary, who they think can put the state on the map. Democrats have sent Andrew Zucker to be Merkley's deputy campaign manager, reassigning him from Louisiana - where he's been assisting Sen. Mary Landrieu's reelect. He ran communications for Ed Markey in the Massachusetts special election last June to fill the seat opened by John Kerry's elevation to State.

Merkley appears weaker than expected for reelection. One recent NPR poll found a third of registered voters in Oregon had no opinion or did not know of him, while other polls showed him below 50 percent support. The new Republican nominee, Monica Wehby, is considered even by GOP strategists to be a dark horse to win. Oregon remains a strongly Democratic state, but two factors give Republicans some hope in pulling off a surprise win.

The first is that Merkley might be considered an "accidental" senator. In 2008, incumbent Republican Gordon Smith had a moderately conservative record with some libertarian tendencies, but his party affiliation cost him in a year dominated by George W. Bush fatigue and high Democratic turnout to support Barack Obama for president. Still, Merkley, then the speaker of the state house, only beat Smith by three percentage points. Merkley was also didn't win a majority, winning just under 49 percent of the vote. Oregon may look and feel like a Democratic lock, but in 2008, that Senate race was one of the most watched and competitive of the cycle.

The second is that the politics of Obamacare in Oregon do not favor anyone who supports it. The implementation of the law has been a disaster, with the state-run health insurance exchange having so many problems that the program's been shut down and rolled into the federal exchange. (The FBI has been investigating the exchange, called Cover Oregon, for malfeasance, and just yesterday the state's U.S. attorney subpoenaed records from Cover Oregon.) Merkley voted for Obamacare in 2010 and continues to support the law, saying as recently as this month that it has "a lot that's going right in Oregon." As a medical doctor and former board member at the American Medical Association, Wehby has an added benefit of authority on the subject of health care, which may dominate the campaign.

Via: Weekly Standard

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