- Joe Lieberman and his Medicare Gift : CJR
- The plan is deceptively referred to as “Medicare benefit simplification,” … “What they are proposing is not simplifying the benefit to help consumers but to save the federal government money, and they do that by increasing costs to consumers and providing a disincentive to use medical services.” …
In his press release he says: “We can only save Medicare if we change it. Our plan contains some strong medicine but that’s what it will take to keep Medicare alive.”
What will it take to keep seniors alive?
- The fruits of immigration | Marginal Revolution • by Alex Tabarrok
- A tough new law cracking down on illegal immigrants and those who hire or “harbor” them has created a severe shortage of agricultural labor in Georgia right at harvest time. …
To combat the shortage, Governor Nathan Deal has authorized using criminal offenders out on probation to replace the mostly Latino migrant workers. It’s not working out so well: …
In short, we have turned good workers into criminals and turned criminals into bad workers, losing on both ends of the deal. Incredible.
- Is That All You Got? | Talking Points Memo • by David Kurtz
- Republicans are taking the country to the brink of default demanding spending cuts that will signify their commitment to fiscal responsibility, smaller government and austerity — but for reasons that are political in the macro and micro sense, they can’t come up with a list of cuts that actually gets the job done. …
So the question today for House Republicans and everyone else involved in these so-called negotiations — the questions our reporters will be asking — is why can’t they come up with $2 trillion in spending cuts. And if they can, show them to us.
- Obama Warns Social Security Checks May Not Go Out August 3rd Without Debt Limit Deal | Firedoglake • by David Dayen
- $23 billion in Social Security checks need to go out August 3rd. The current estimate of tax receipts coming in that day is around $12 billion. …
If the President has failed to create the impression that a lack of increase of the debt limit would constitute a national crisis, I think he just blew past that now.
Of course, given the topsy-turvy nature of the negotiations over the past week or so, we don’t know who this threat is really directed at. Probably all of Congress in equal measure. Again, they could all end this manufactured crisis tomorrow by sending over a bill to increase the debt limit, period.
- Review: Sky Island a Lyrical Look at Climate Change – Miller-McCune
- The first casualties as the Earth heats are islands. Rising seas chew away their edges and, in a few cases, swallow them whole.
But not all islands are surrounded by water. Nature writer Weldon Heald coined the term “sky island” in 1967 as a poetic expression for the disconnected mountains of the American Southwest, mountains whose cooler, wetter habitats were severed from their peers by vast seas of desert or grassland.
- Website Demystifies Redistricting – Miller-McCune
- The once-a-decade reshuffling mandated by the Constitution now has a comprehensive source that helps to explain its complex details.
- How to Bolster Your Willpower at the Supermarket – Miller-McCune
- The act of flexing our arm to bring something appealing closer to us morphs into an unconscious belief that an object we are drawing close to us must be desirable.
“We propose that we may not always approach rewards because we want them,” the researchers write, “but that we may want rewards because we are approaching them.”
[My bookmarks live at delicious.com/camryl. In case it needs to be said: I don't agree with every word of everything I link to. Also, signal boosts are awesome! --L.]
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