The Wrongologist – Page 175 – Geopolitics, Power and Political Economy

February 16, 2017

The Daily Escape:

(London library during the Blitz)

Politico reports that President Trump has actually done little since entering office despite White House aide Stephen Miller’s bragging on the Sunday Pundits:

We have a president who has done more in three weeks than most presidents have done in an entire administration.

That simply isn’t true, but the thrust of the article is that, when you tune out the noise coming from the White House, very little has actually happened. From Politico:

So far, Trump has behaved exactly like he has throughout his previous career: He has generated intense attention and sold himself as a man of action while doing little other than promote an image of himself as someone who gets things done.

Sorry, but this is characteristic of the gleeful DC narrative that Trump is failing, that he’s bumping up against the institutional/Constitutional realities of Washington. This meme seems to repeat the same mistakes that smart people made during the campaign — misreading and underestimating Trump. They see him challenged on a few things and assume that since Trump thought he’d show up, wave a wand, and make things happen immediately, and is now stymied, therefore he must be frustrated. They presume that clashes with other branches of government, or with the unfawning press, or the “resistance” from the 52% that didn’t vote for him to begin with, has made him cool his jets.

Why should we think it upsets him that his first bolts out of the gate are stymied?

Wrongo thinks that so far, Trump is winning. His fights with what he calls “the Establishment” and the “fake news media” are a win from the perspective of the Trumpets. They figure that’s what he was sent to DC to do.

If he’s not trying to learn the ropes? That goes in the plus column. And if it’s reported that he shows impatience or impulsiveness? Plus column. To his base, the furor in the media makes the infuriated ones, and those who report it, seem like smug elitists, determined to enforce the status quo through the usual DC tactics.

Really, everything Politico says are problems for Trump are the opposite. He’s ginned up a national hissy fit over his ill-conceived Executive Order on immigration, while managing to mostly get his cabinet choices confirmed (sorry Mr. Pudzer) − a cabinet more radical and unqualified than any traditional Republican would dare to nominate.

Dems obsess over each offense and announce “resistance” but have no real strategy. They raise money but can do little, while being viewed as unseemly in Trump’s flyover country.

When the Republican obstruction to Obama took shape in 2008, they assumed a posture of cooperation, only to be “disappointed” by the “extreme” positions of the President. Rarely in Obama’s first term did they announce obstruction in advance of his actions. By his second term, Democrats had lost enough seats that they no longer had the ability to override Republican inertia, and the GOP’s naked obstruction was visible.

Now Democrats have fewer votes as a minority party than the GOP had in 2016, and have no way to block anything but the most obnoxious Trump moves, assuming that a few Senate Republicans join in the blockage.

Trump has no need to figure out or to get along with Washington — in fact, that’s the opposite of what he wants. He has staked his political fortune on an “own the mob” strategy — which worked just fine in November. He doesn’t need to deliver on his election promises. He needs to let Republicans push through the horrifying agenda they’ve salivated over for decades. And he will.

He needs a riled up Establishment to blame for any stymied efforts. This means the more cartoonish his behavior the better, as the Establishment will be all too happy to jump on his missteps.

Trump won’t suffer if he never comes up the learning curve.

The rest of us, the country, the world, will. We actually need things to work.

Here is Robert Cray with “Smoking Gun” recorded in 1986. With all the Trump people who seem to be on the wrong side of the CIA and FBI, it seems appropriate:

Those who read the Wrongologist in email can view the video here.

Sample Lyric:

I’m havin’ nasty nasty visions,

And baby you’re in every one.

February 15, 2017

The Daily Escape:

(The Philology library at Berlin’s Free University. Designed in the shape of the human brain)

Trump’s National Security Adviser Mike Flynn is out. His lies or charitably, his misremembering whether his communications with the Russian ambassador included discussing the sanctions that had recently imposed by the outgoing Obama administration, were too much even for the fact-challenged Trump administration. That became patently obvious after the WaPo dropped the bombshell that Trump was warned about Flynn’s ties by the Justice Department before the inauguration.

Who notified them? Then-acting attorney general Sally Q. Yates. You remember that Yates was later fired by Trump for advising the President that his Muslim ban was unconstitutional.

She informed the Trump White House late last month that she believed Michael Flynn had misled senior administration officials about the nature of his communications with the Russian ambassador to the US, and warned that the national security adviser was potentially vulnerable to Russian blackmail.

When she notified the White House that the FBI had Flynn on tape talking with the Russian Ambassador, she also told then-Director of National Intelligence James Clapper and then-CIA Director John Brennan.

So the Trumpets had more than enough of Ms. Yates by the time she advised them that the Muslim ban wouldn’t fly.

Flynn resigned Monday night. Most Republicans say there is nothing more to see here, and that we should move along. Democrats want an independent investigation.

Whether this issue is over or not probably depends on whether you believe that Flynn was a rogue actor, operating without any cooperation or involvement by others in the Trump administration. Was something larger at work? Was it just Flynn lying to Pence, and then Flynn lying to Trump?

That’s possible, but considering the character of some of the people in this administration, from Trump to Bannon, to Miller and Conway, it seems unlikely that Flynn was acting alone.

And on Tuesday, Trump tweeted, after accepting Flynn’s resignation, that:

The real story here is why are there so many illegal leaks coming out of Washington?

We all know that isn’t the real story. Thank you Sally Yates!

Here is The Who with “Behind Blue Eyes” from their album, “Who’s Next”. It was recorded in March, 1971. It describes the Orange Overlord to a “T”:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BfuWXRZe9yA

Those who read the Wrongologist in email can view the video here.

Sample Lyrics:

No one knows what it’s like
To be a rich man
It’s a bitch, man
Behind blue eyes

No one knows what it’s like
To be hated
To be baldpated
Telling only lies

No one knows what it’s like
To be the bad man
To be the sad man
Behind blue eyes

No one knows what it’s like
To be hated
To be fated
To telling only lies

But my dreams
They aren’t as empty
As my conscience seems to be

I have hours, only lonely
My love is vengeance
That’s never free

No one knows what it’s like
To feel these feelings
Like I do

And I blame you

February 14, 2017

The Daily Escape:

(The Long Room of the Library of Trinity College Dublin, built in 1592)

Today is Valentine’s Day, so we pause from blogging about what’s wrong to thinking about what’s right with the world, the people we love.

Wrongo would like you to listen to the late great Chet Baker, the hypnotic jazz trumpeter with a fabulous voice, who lost it all to heroin. Along the way, Baker also lost many teeth, both due to addiction, and to a street fight over drugs. It’s tough to play the horn without teeth, and it took Chet a few years to scrape up enough cash to fix his mouth and then learn to play the trumpet again. He was 58 when he died in 1988.

Here is Chet Baker with “Time After Time”, words by Sammy Cahn and music by Jule Styne in 1946:

Those who read the Wrongologist in email can view the video here.

Lyrics:

Time after time
I tell myself that I'm
So lucky to be loving you
So lucky to be
The one you run to see
In the evening when the day is through
I only know what I know
The passing years will show
You've kept my love so young, so new
And time after time
You'll hear me say that I'm
So lucky to be loving you
I only know what I know
The passing years will show
You've kept my love so young, so new
And time after time
You'll hear me say that I'm
So lucky to be loving you

Monday Wake Up Call – February 13, 2017

Wrongo and Ms. Right went to a concert by Buster Poindexter on Saturday. Poindexter is a stage persona for David Johansen, a glam rocker from the 1970s, when he fronted a group called the New York Dolls. Poindexter’s thing is to look suave and sophisticated, holding a drink, while singing an eclectic song book. He tries to say something humorous as a lead-in to the next song. His first comment was that he had been drinking steadily since November 9^th.

The venue is in rock-solid conservative territory, but the line mostly drew laughs from a decidedly middle-age audience, except for one guy who screamed “bullshit” loudly and often during Poindexter’s first song. Eventually, the local police came, and the guy became a model of passive resistance, going to the floor limp, and unresponsive. After assuring themselves he hadn’t collapsed, the police ushered him out to a standing ovation, again, in a solidly Republican part of Connecticut. But think about this:

That sort of indicates that Trump voters are a forgiving lot. They were prepared to lock up Hillary Clinton for using a private email server because it jeopardized national security. Now the Trump administration is doing the same thing, and many think its no big thing. From The Hill: (brackets by the Wrongologist)

The [poll] results are surprising, considering Trump’s campaign included calling out Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton for using a private email server while she was Secretary of State.

According to Newsweek, at least four senior officials in President Trump’s White House have active accounts on a private Republican National Committee (RNC) email system. Counselor Kellyanne Conway, White House press secretary Sean Spicer, chief strategist and senior counselor Stephen Bannon and senior advisor Jared Kushner all have rnchq.org email accounts. More from Newsweek: (emphasis by the Wrongologist)

The system (rnchq.org) is the same one the George W. Bush administration was accused of using to evade transparency rules after claiming to have “lost” 22 million emails.

Think about that. If it weren’t for double standards, Republicans would have no standards at all. But maybe the crowd reaction at the Poindexter concert showed us something: Buyer’s Remorse.

Remorseful Republican voters can help bigly in 2020 (and maybe in 2018), because all it takes is a few of them to make a difference in who becomes the next president. Presidential elections are won on the narrowest of margins, so if, 3-4% of Trump voters show remorse and flip, or decide to stay home, Trump could lose by a wide margin, even while maintaining the vast majority of his support.

Moreover, if many of them are demoralized or turned off by 2018 that could flip midterm Senate seats. Think back to 2006: the Democratic Senate pickups that year were in four states Bush had won (MT, VA, MO, OH) and one he had only lost by 2.5% (PA), which ended up in a 17 point blowout. Why? GW Bush voters stayed home, or switched.

OTOH, the only Republicans up in 2018 are the ones who survived 2006 and 2012, the year the Tea Party decided to debate “legitimate rape”).

There is virtually no way to make the 2018 map good. There are only 9 Republican-held seats up for election at all; three of those would have to go to Democrats in order to flip the Senate, even if all the vulnerable Democratic seats were held. The best that can be hoped for is mitigating the damage.

As Kathleen Parker in the WaPo said:

Thus far, Trump and his henchmen have conducted a full frontal assault on civil liberties, open government and religious freedom, as well as instigating or condoning a cascade of ethics violations ranging from the serious (business conflicts of interest) to the absurd (attacking a department store for dropping his daughter’s fashion line). And, no, it’s not just a father defending his daughter. It’s the president of the US bullying a particular business and, more generally, making a public case against free enterprise.

Parker is a conservative columnist. To an objective observer, it would seem that quite a few Republicans will decide not to defend the indefensible.

To help them arise from their slumbers, which at least a few did on Saturday night, here is Buster Poindexter with Hot, Hot, Hot from 1987:

That’s Bill Murray pouring the martini @ 2:00.

Those who read the Wrongologist in email can view the video here.

Sunday Cartoon Blogging – February 12, 2017

Another week of the Trump administration is in the bag, just 205 weeks to go! No worries, they’ll make great progress in destroying the country while hurting our most vulnerable. Here is this week’s example:

Rep. Jack Kingston (R-GA) wants kids to learn early in life that there’s no such thing as a free lunch. To make sure they absorb that lesson, he’s proposing that low-income children do some manual labor in exchange for their subsidized meals.

He’s remembering fellow Georgian Congressman Newt Gingrich who suggested in 2011 that poor kids work in schools replacing janitors:

Most of these schools ought to get rid of the unionized janitors, have one master janitor and pay local students to take care of the school. The kids would actually do work, they would have cash, they would have pride in the schools…

As Atrios said, many people think being born in the lucky sperm club makes you a better human being, and those who weren’t need to learn just how horrible and inferior they are because their parents are poor.

Who doesn’t want to see kids well-nourished? Republicans. Before Reagan, charitable works were a good thing, but now we know that helping folks out just makes them weak, and unable to contribute to society.

On to cartoons. Leave it to the GOP. We now need three cans for recycling:

Nordstrom’s decides on a new spring line:

Ivanka’s dad tries to measure up:

New Education Secretary Betsy DeVos loves vouchers:

Dems adopt Tea Party tactics by shouting down Congress Critters at Town Halls:

Trump says that busloads of fraudulent voters were the difference in NH Senate race:

Trump narrowly lost New Hampshire to Hillary Clinton. On Thursday he told a group of senators that he lost because of the “thousands” of people “brought in on buses” from Massachusetts to “illegally vote” in New Hampshire. Former NH Republican Senator Kelly Ayotte, who lost in November was there.

It was reported by Politico that there was an “uncomfortable silence” in the room, and here’s why: If thousands means at least 3,000, and if a bus holds 50 people, that would be 60 buses rolling up US 93 or US 91 from Massachusetts to NH that nobody noticed.

Then came the cherry on top of Trump’s crumb cake: He told Democrats in the room (Chris Coons, Joe Manchin, Heidi Heitkamp and Jon Tester) that he was glad “Pocahontas”, his nickname for Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) was “becoming the face of the Democrats.”

That’s sure to win friends among the Dems that he needs to help confirm Neil Gorsuch as a SCOTUS Justice.

Saturday Soother – February 11, 2017

Tons of moving parts this week. Jeff Sessions and Tom Price were confirmed; the 9^th Circuit Court of Appeals handed Trump a setback in his plan to keep most Muslims out of the country, making our Overlord 0-2 vs. the justice system. The tweets continued; Elizabeth Warren was told to shut up, and Kellyanne was shut down for pumping Ivanka’s merch on a Fox news show.

But the big news for Wrongo was hearing on the BBC about National Security Advisor Michael Flynn: (brackets by the Wrongologist)

[Flynn] couldn’t be certain that he didn’t discuss sanctions with Russia’s Ambassador [Kislyak] to the US on December 29, 2016.

In December, it was rumored that Gen. Flynn had done exactly that, which brought denials from the Trump transition team. You may remember that Mike Pence said in an interview with CBS News that he had spoken with Flynn about the matter. Pence said there had been no contact between members of Trump’s team and Russia during the campaign. To suggest otherwise, he said: (brackets by the Wrongologist)

Is to give credence to some of these bizarre rumors that have swirled around the [Trump’s] candidacy.

Of course, December 29, 2016 was not during the campaign. Now, the WaPo has a blockbuster story indicating that Flynn did talk to the Russians:

National Security Advisor Michael Flynn privately discussed US sanctions against Russia with that country’s ambassador to the United States during the month before President Trump took office, contrary to public assertions by Trump officials, current and former US officials said.

Where Boys Are Boys, and You, Ms. Warren, Are Not

(Scroll to the bottom of the page for the Daily Escape)

When we allow the silencing of our Senators, we allow the silencing of our democracy. HuffPo reports:

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) rose on Tuesday and objected to a speech Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) was giving in opposition to the nomination of Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-AL) as attorney general.

McConnell took particular issue with Warren as she quoted a letter written by Coretta Scott King, Martin Luther King Jr.’s widow, when Sessions was under consideration for a federal judgeship in 1986.

McConnell invoked the little-used Rule XIX, which says that “No Senator in debate shall, directly or indirectly, by any form of words impute to another Senator or to other Senators any conduct or motive unworthy or unbecoming a Senator.” King’s letter argues that, during Sessions’ time as a prosecutor in Alabama, “Mr. Sessions has used the awesome power of his office to chill the free exercise of the vote by black citizens.” It was that portion of the letter that McConnell read back to the presiding officer, arguing that it was over the line.

The Republican presiding in the chair, Sen. Steve Daines of Montana, agreed with McConnell, ruling her in violation of the order and forcing her to sit down.

“I am surprised that the words of Coretta Scott King are not suitable for debate in the United States Senate,” Warren replied.

It seems the voices of both Sen. Warren and the late Coretta Scott King are now unwelcome in the Senate’s old boys’ club, even though Ms. King’s words were placed in the Senate’s records 30 years ago. This from Booman: (emphasis and brackets by the Wrongologist)

Rule 19 is a good rule that helps prevent canings on the Senate floor. But it really should never apply to a senator who is under consideration for confirmation to another office. If Warren and Merkley were reading these historical documents just to make Sessions look bad while they were arguing over the budget that would be a legitimate violation of the rules. But these documents [King’s letter] were germane to Sessions’ fitness for the office of Attorney General in the same way that his tax returns and voting record are germane.

Republicans regularly call their opponents corrupt traitors. The NYT reports that both Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) and Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AK) appear to have violated the rule according to its true intent, without having it invoked against them. In 2015, Cruz called McConnell a liar. But he’s a Republican man, while Sen. Warren is out of line for quoting the widow of a titan of American history. Got it.

Apparently McConnell thinks that a Senator nominated for a Cabinet position isn’t a nominee. They remain a Senator, and the ability of other Senators to criticize their nomination is subject to Rule 19. That is a misuse of the rule, and McConnell abused his power. And he did more to raise awareness about Sessions’ racist past than he did to safeguard Sessions’ “character.” Republicans know that Warren’s Senate performances have a long afterlife on YouTube, so they tried to prevent another one, but failed.

Had they let her read it, it would have been seen by only a few thousand late night C-SPAN watchers. Instead, her Facebook video reading the Coretta Scott King letter had 7.8 million views by Wednesday afternoon.

The GOP’s self-inflicted wound is shutting down a white woman reading a letter written by a black woman who lost her toweringly famous husband in the struggle for equality, a letter which criticized the racism of a Southern white man, during Black History Month. The Oregonian reported:

Hours after GOP leaders blocked Sen. Elizabeth Warren from reading a letter critical of Sen. Jeff Sessions during his confirmation hearing for attorney general, Sen. Jeff Merkley picked it up and read the document uninterrupted.

So, after they shut down one Democratic Senator, McConnell allowed a different Democrat to read the letter? What’s the difference?

Your Daily Escape: Stuttgart City Library, built in 2011

Congress Greases the Skids for Exxon

(See below for the Daily Escape)

While America’s focus has been on the Orange Overlord’s blizzard of executive orders, and his public love-making with Putin, we were distracted from some of the actions by the GOP’s Congressional worms who are intent on chewing through our regulatory protections.

Did you feel burdened by a Security and Exchange Commission (SEC) rule requiring that American corporations doing business overseas reveal how much money they’re spending in foreign countries? This is called the Resource Extraction Rule, and apparently, it has been a terrible burden for Exxon and other oil firms.

VOX reported that, on the same day the Senate confirmed Rex Tillerson as Secretary of State, the House voted to kill a transparency rule for oil companies that Tillerson once lobbied against while CEO of Exxon Mobil. Now it’s on to the Senate and the Orange Leader for action:

Using the little-known Congressional Review Act, the House GOP voted on Wednesday to kill an Obama-era regulation that would require publicly traded oil, gas, and mining companies to disclose any payments that they made to foreign governments, including taxes and royalties.

The Resource Extraction Rule is part of the 2010 Dodd-Frank Act. Back then, senators from both parties included a provision requiring greater disclosure from mining and drilling companies’ activities abroad. The hope was to cut down on corruption in resource-rich developing countries by increasing transparency.

Over the past six years, the SEC tried to craft a rule that would give the legislation teeth. But the SEC’s first attempt at regulation was struck down by the courts in 2012. The rule didn’t actually get finished until June 27, 2016. As Charlie Pierce says: (emphasis by the Wrongologist)

In other countries, resource extraction is a polite way of describing corruption and bribery on a grand scale, and it’s also a dead serious matter for local activists who are trying to take on international corporations and their native plunderers in local government.

Remember the Congressional Review Act (CRA). It is the mechanism the GOP will use to undo much of what the Obama administration did in the areas of corporate responsibility and environmental justice.

At its core, the CRA states that any “recent” regulation (the Act’s definition of recent means it only applies to those passed by the Obama administration after June, 2016) can be repealed by a majority vote of both houses of Congress. Any repeal vote taken by the Senate cannot be filibustered, and the list includes more than 50 Obama-era regulations.

So far, the Stream Protection rule that restricted coal companies from dumping debris and waste into nearby waterways has been revoked, along with the Social Security gun rule that prevented mentally impaired persons from buying guns.

Now, they’ve gutted the Resource Extraction rule.

Under the CRA, the SEC is barred from crafting a new rule that has “substantially the same form” as the repealed regulation. So, Congress has thrown a rose to the oil and gas and mining industries that will be difficult to reverse.

Despite GOP concerns, similar rules are in place in the European Union. Reporting by the United Kingdom, France, Norway and Canada shows $150 billion in payments to governments in more than 100 countries.

Sounds like something citizens should know about.

The GOP’s argument is that American oil and gas companies need to make these under-the-table payments, in order to compete in third world countries.

This is America under the GOP: We can’t afford to provide the world’s best education to our kids. We can’t afford to take care of our elderly, but we absolutely must have policies that allow Exxon and friends to bribe foreign governments.

The Daily Escape: The National Library of China, in Beijing’s educational district.

(Image by Tian-yu Xiong for the National Geographic)

New FCC Chair Guts Net Neutrality

Today we premiere a new feature, the “Daily Escape”, a photo that hopefully will take you away from all that is wrong just now. Some photos will be by Wrongo, but most will be from professionals. They will not have any particular relevance to the topic of the day. They are here to help you pause for a moment, and go to a different place.

Today’s Daily Escape: George Peabody Library, Johns Hopkins University

Now, on to what’s wrong…

The principle that all Internet content should be treated equally as it flows to consumers is called “net neutrality”. Net neutrality looks all but dead under Trump’s new head of the FCC. From the NYT:

In his first days as President Trump’s pick to lead the Federal Communications Commission, Ajit Pai has aggressively moved to roll back consumer protection regulations created during the Obama presidency.

Mr. Pai took a first swipe at net neutrality rules designed to ensure equal access to content on the internet. He stopped nine companies from providing discounted high-speed internet service to low-income individuals. He withdrew an effort to keep prison phone rates down, and he scrapped a proposal to open the cable box market to competition.

Before he became FCC Chair, Pai served as an FCC commissioner, one of the Republican minority under the Obama administration. In that role, he opposed reclassifying broadband providers as common carriers, which allows the agency to regulate them like utility companies, a necessary step if the FCC was to enforce net neutrality rules. That reclassification might be next to go.

Today consumers can pay Internet service providers for a higher-speed Internet connection, but regardless of the download speed they choose, under new Chair Pai’s plan, they might get some content faster, depending on how much their content provider has paid the service provider.

Tim Wu at the New Yorker offered some insight: (emphasis by the Wrongologist)

With broadband, there is no such thing as accelerating some traffic without degrading other traffic. We take it for granted that bloggers, start-ups, or nonprofits on an open Internet reach their audiences roughly the same way as everyone else. Now they won’t. They’ll be behind in the queue, watching as companies that can pay tolls to the cable companies’ speed ahead

The new rule gives broadband providers what they’ve wanted for about a decade: the right to speed up some traffic at the expense of others. The motivation is not complicated. The broadband carriers want to make more money for doing what they already do. Never mind that American carriers already charge some of the world’s highest prices for a service that costs less than $5/month to provide.

In the large-scale server market, Internet traffic is nearly free. In that market, a terabyte of data costs about $1/month. That’s 1000 gigabytes/month, if you are not familiar with usage of that size. The home user pays 10x to as much as 1000x more than that per month; $100 for 100 gigabytes of traffic is not uncommon. A recent offer from AT&T for 45 M/bit internet is $30/month, which includes 1TB of data/mo. So 1000 gigabytes costs $30, or $1 per 33 gigabytes, but, if you exceed ATT’s limit, the price goes up dramatically: You would have to pay $10 per each additional 50 GB.

No volume discount for you, but Netflix will get one.

Requiring access fees for faster service will be good for Netflix, since it won’t have to worry as much about competitive traffic, particularly from small companies. The ultimate result will be to lock in the current set of incumbents who control the internet, ushering in the era of big, fat, (and possibly) inefficient monopolies.

Republicans and big corporations like to say that they are against regulation because the free market should rule. That economic efficiency brings lower prices.

It is always a lie.

Monday Wake Up Call – Repair and Replace Edition

Where is the GOP plan for repealing and “replacing” Obamacare? It has been moved to an off-ramp on the Trump highway. Why? WaPo’s Greg Sargent explains: (emphasis by the Wrongologist)

For weeks now, Republicans have employed a range of tortured talking points designed to push one idea: The GOP repeal-and-delay plan will not leave anyone without health coverage, and is merely designed as a transition that will ultimately move us seamlessly to the new, improved health care system Republicans envision, with the details to be worked out later.

The GOP’s problem is that several red states could be taken out of the individual insurance market completely. The Congressional Budget Office recently examined a version of the GOP repeal-and-delay bill (one passed by Republicans in 2015 and vetoed by Obama), and concluded that insurers would exit the market, and 10% of Americans could be living in an area that had no participating insurers at all.

And that 10% of the population is concentrated in Republican areas.

Jeanne Lambrew, a former Obama administration official involved in implementing the ACA, conducted an analysis to determine where that 10% percent resides. Using data furnished by the Kaiser Family Foundation, Lambrew singled out counties that met two criteria:

They have low populations
They currently only have one insurer serving individual market customers

It’s a big list. The states include: Alaska, Utah, Wyoming, Oklahoma, Texas, Missouri, Mississippi, Alabama, Tennessee, Georgia, South Carolina, Kentucky, and West Virginia. In addition some at risk counties are in swing or blue states like North Carolina, Nevada, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Illinois. And in a few cases, entire states would lose coverage. In Oklahoma, Wyoming, Arizona, South Carolina and Alabama, individual markets would be completely eliminated.

In other words, Repealing and delaying Replacement could be a political bloodbath for Republicans, at least in the House in 2018. And the GOP knows it. At the GOP Strategy Meeting in Philadelphia, Tom McClintock (R-CA) said: (emphasis by the Wrongologist)

We’d better be sure that we’re prepared to live with the market we’ve created with repeal. That’s going to be called Trumpcare. Republicans will own that lock, stock and barrel, and we’ll be judged in the election less than two years away.

The judgement has already started. The LA Times reports that the execrable Rep. McClintock ran into a buzz saw at his raucous town hall meeting in Roseville CA:

The California congressman ultimately was escorted out by police.

KQED’s Katie Orr reported that the 200 seats for the town hall set up by the Republican in Roseville, CA were filled, and hundreds more people remained outside. More from the LA Times:

McClintock is one of many members of Congress who have been encountering protests at their district offices or town hall meetings since President Trump took office just over two weeks ago. Most protesters have been asking members to fight the possible repeal of the Affordable Care Act…

Some Republicans seem to be open to “repair” instead of replacing Obamacare. The term “Repair” was suggested by Republican wordmeister Frank Luntz. Luntz, according to Bloomberg, recommended the term because it:

Captures exactly what the large majority of the American people want…the public is particularly hostile about skyrocketing costs, and they demand immediate change.

Luntz understands that Americans want their health insurance to be both generous in terms of coverage, and affordable in terms of premiums. The ACA tries to deliver that by subsidizing poorer people’s premiums. Those subsidies cost money, and that money is partly funded by taxes on the rich.

But Republicans got elected by promising to reduce rich people’s taxes. This means whether they replace or repair, their plans involve rolling back the taxes paid by the rich. That leaves less money to subsidize insurance for the non-rich, and that means the non-rich will either pay higher premiums, or accept worse coverage.

Keeping voters in Red States on board with the GOP requires that they abandon repeal, or pass a repeal/replace bill that essentially leaves the law intact.

If they repeal the tax increases and use deficit financing, they could accomplish 90% of what their main constituents, plutocrats and the white working class, care about. Whether they are smart enough to go this route is questionable.

Time for Congress to wake up! Time is against them since they voted to repeal the ACA 50+ times, but STILL have no plan for replacing it. To help them wake up, here are Jeff Beck, Lizzie Ball (violin), Tal Wilkenfeld (bass) & Jonathan Joseph (drums), playing the Irish instrumental “Women of Ireland” live at the “Crossroads Guitar Festival” in Madison Square Garden NYC, on April 13th 2013:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0ej_X2_SggQ

Those who read the Wrongologist in email can view the video here.