Political posterizing redux.

[Gawdzilla Sama]

I am sooooo glad I get to vote against him this year.

[Gawdzilla Sama]

[Svartalf]

I am sooooo glad I get to vote against him this year.

I'd be gladder not to have him on the ballot at all.

[Gawdzilla Sama]

I am sooooo glad I get to vote against him this year.

I'd be gladder not to have him on the ballot at all.

So very wrong. You want to have an utter asshole on the other side of the ballot, the undecided are the swing vote.

[Svartalf]

I am sooooo glad I get to vote against him this year.

I'd be gladder not to have him on the ballot at all.

So very wrong. You want to have an utter asshole on the other side of the ballot, the undecided are the swing vote.

and I trust those as far as I can throw a sumo yokozuna.

The less assholey canidate of the pair actually needed my vote this year, and his adversary had actually managed to get elected once.

[Gawdzilla Sama]

[Ian]

419391_482013601833062_990589342_n.jpg (21.1 KiB) Viewed 419 times

[Gawdzilla Sama]

"Democrats are as free as the air.

Republicans wonder why the air is free."

[Gawdzilla Sama]

[Warren Dew]

[Gawdzilla Sama]

Oh, so kind to include a woman. Is she back in the kitchen yet?

[Gawdzilla Sama]

[kiki5711]

http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter ... lth-insur/

Mitt Romney says up to 20 million will lose health insurance due to Obama health care law


We’ll take another look at the claim here.

Cherry-picking the CBO report

When we checked with the Romney campaign last June, a spokesman said the source of Romney’s claim was a March 2012 study by the Congressional Budget Office, the nonpartisan number-crunching arm of Congress. The Romney campaign re-confirmed that source after the debate.

The CBO study was undertaken to estimate the impact of the health care law on the number of people obtaining health care coverage from their employer. CBO came up with a "baseline" estimate -- its best guess. CBO settled on a range of 3 million to 5 million fewer non-elderly people obtaining coverage through their employer each year from 2019 through 2022 than would have been the case before the law was passed. Including those with individually purchased policies means a decline of an additional 1 million to 3 million Americans.

That’s nothing to sneeze at, but it’s quite a bit lower than 20 million. So where did 20 million come from?

CBO supplemented its "baseline" estimate with four alternative, and wildly divergent, estimates. One resulted in a net gain of 3 million people with employer-sponsored insurance. The other scenarios resulted in a decline of 10 million, a decline of 12 million, and -- here it is -- a decline of 20 million.

A number of other estimates by groups other than CBO have tracked with CBO’s baseline estimate, rather than with Romney’s figure. A study by the Urban Institute projected a decline of about 500,000 people. The Lewin Group predicted a decline of about 3 million people. The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services actuary pegged the number at about 1 million fewer people. And the RAND Corp. projected that about 4 million more individuals would be covered by employment-based coverage by 2016.

So the 20 million number Romney cited does come from CBO, and he hedged by saying "up to." But it’s the most extreme outcome of the five presented, and it’s not the primary estimate.

Some who "lose" coverage will do so because they find better options

Even beyond the cherry-picking, Romney is wrong to say that 20 million Americans will "lose" their insurance.

According to CBO’s "baseline" estimates, 3 million people will spurn their employer’s offer of insurance and turn instead to another source, such as the health insurance "exchanges" created under the Obama health care law. In many cases, they will do this because they consider the employer’s offering to be unaffordable or lacking too many features they need.

Romney also ignores 9 million people who wouldn’t have had an employer plan before the Obama law, but who will get employer coverage after passage of the law, perhaps because of the law’s mix of subsidies and penalties for employers.

It’s also important to remember the big picture. CBO projects that, overall, the number of uninsured Americans will drop by 29 million to 31 million due to the law.

It’s not as if no one ever loses coverage today

As we have previously noted, many Americans lose their current health plan for reasons that have nothing to do with the new law, though figuring out exactly how many is surprisingly tricky.

Bureau of Labor Statistics figures show that, on average, slightly more than 3 percent of employees leave their jobs in any given month. But you don’t have to change jobs to see your plan change. Your employer may change insurance carriers, or the insurance carrier may unilaterally modify the terms of your plan.

How common is this? The Medical Expenditure Panel Survey, sponsored by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, found that in 2007, just over 14 percent of the entire U.S. population "switched" health insurance.

All told, this churn -- which, to reiterate, is happening because of forces beyond the Obama health care law -- almost certainly dwarfs the scale of the changes Romney is talking about.

Even Romney’s cherry-picked number of 20 million amounts to 7 percent of the 270 million non-elderly people in the U.S. CBO’s preferred figure represents an even smaller share -- 1 percent to 2 percent.

Our ruling

Romney said, "Right now, the (Congressional Budget Office) says up to 20 million people will lose their insurance as Obamacare goes into effect next year."

That number is cherry-picked, and many of those 20 million will be leaving employer coverage voluntarily for better options. Romney also ignores that under the status quo, many more people today "lose" coverage than even the highest, cherry-picked CBO estimate. We rate his statement False.

[kiki5711]

WHAT HAS OBAMA DONE FOR SMALL BUSINESS OWNERS?

Revisiting President Obama’s Small-Business Tax Cut Claims
By ROBB MANDELBAUM

http://boss.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/10/0 ... /?src=recg


This summer, the number 18 has crept into President Obama’s campaign speeches — as in, “We’ve cut taxes for small businesses 18 times.” (That’s from a speech in Melbourne, Fla., last month.) The first lady, Michelle Obama, mentions it, too. And, of course, it came up frequently at the Democratic National Convention a few weeks ago, where it caught the attention of a regular You’re The Boss commenter who calls himself Einstein. (No, not that Einstein.)
“Which small businesses had their taxes cut?” Einstein recently asked. “Hate to be skeptical but I know a lot of small-business owners and independent contractors and they never heard of ANY tax cuts. All this talk of helping small business from both political parties sounds like lip service. What are the facts?”
_______________________
Happy to oblige, Einstein. Back in 2010, when the administration’s boast was that it had merely cut taxes 16 times, The Agenda wrote a post about it. Here are the White House’s 16 “tax cuts.”

From the 2009 stimulus, the Affordable Care Act, and other legislation:

• A new small-business health care tax credit.

• A tax credit for hiring unemployed workers in 2010.

• Temporary extension of bonus depreciation tax incentives to support new investment.

• 75 percent exclusion of small-business capital gains, for stock acquired in 2009 and 2010.

• Temporary expansion of limits on small-business expensing.

• Five-year carryback of net operating losses, available through fall 2009.

• Reduction of the built-in gains holding period for small businesses to seven years, from 10, in 2009 and 2010.

• Temporary small-business estimated tax payment relief.

Tax provisions in the 2010 Small Business Jobs Act (both The Agenda and the I.R.S. have published summaries):

• 100 percent exclusion of small-business capital gains, for stock acquired in late 2010 and 2011.

• A further increase to the expensing limit to $500,000 for 2011 (in 2012, the limit falls to $139,000).

• A further extension of 50 percent bonus depreciation through 2010.

• A new deduction for health care expenses for the self-employed in 2010.

• Tax relief and simplification for cellphone deductions.

• An increase in the deduction for entrepreneurs’ start-up expenses in 2010.

• A five-year carry-back of general business credits in 2010.

• Lower penalties for failing to report listed (that is, abusive) tax shelters.
Since then, the president has added two more tax cuts to the list, according to a Small Business Administration spokeswoman, who supplied an update:

[kiki5711]