Effective April 16, Walgreens drugstores across the state won’t take any new Medicaid patients, saying that filling their prescriptions is a money-losing proposition — the latest development in an ongoing dispute over Medicaid reimbursement.
The company, which operates 121 stores in the state, will continue filling Medicaid prescriptions for current patients.
In a news release, Walgreens said its decision to not take new Medicaid patients stemmed from a “continued reduction in reimbursement” under the state’s Medicaid program, which reimburses it at less than the break-even point for 95 percent of brand-name medications dispensed to Medicaid patents.
via Local News | Walgreens: no new Medicaid patients as of April 16 | Seattle Times Newspaper.
The Democrat-controlled statist press trumpets that ‘more’ anti-abortion votes have been peeled off (they haven’t, they’re talking about the same two from last week and they may not stick), and changes have been made to get the pro-life Democrat holdouts back on board (that’s a lie too, nothing has been changed, they are talking about a ‘promise’ to change the language in ’sidecar’ legislation).
Rent-a-crowd inside.....
‘If wishes were fishes’ seems to be the thrust of the House Madam’s entire strategy. To show you how popular this whole thing is… Sarah Palin isn’t running for anything… she draws 20,000 people in appearance after appearance, she draws more than 4,000 people to a book signing. Barack Hussein Obama has trouble drawing 200 hand-picked union goons in a senior center in Ohio, while outside thousands of patriots protested the government takeover of health care and the unethical actions of the Democrat Congress. Obama trotted out and cited the obligatory medical sob-stories and cited the same sad case histories he’s been dragging out all year. He’s getting to sound a lot like the proverbial broken record.
....and the real crowd outside.
After a ‘rip and tear’ head count, John Batchelor and some of his associates came out with some advice on his nationally-syndicated radio show for Madame Pelosi… “get a plan B”. John echoed what most of the rest of the close observers of all things Washington have said, that despite Obama’s and Pelosi’s continuing proclamations of imminent victory, they don’t have the votes. Pelosi’s romancing the so called “deem and pass” tactic could well prove disastrous for Democrat hopes in 2010 and 2012 and may be resisted by many who are not willing to go down in flames with the leadership.
Resorting to such a tactic, which is patently unconstitutional, will throw the nation into a constitutional crisis and inflame the American people to levels never before seen.
Don’t forget to contact the Representatives on the list below by any means possible. Don’t just give up if you can’t get through on the Capitol phones. It’s a safe bet most will be shut down, on purpose if not by the sheer volume of calls. Email, fax, use snail mail, visit your local Senators’ and Representatives’ offices. Be persistent. Tell them we say NO!!
Tell key Congressmen listed below to vote no. Fax, call and even personally visit each in their offices in Washington DC:
PLEASE CALL! DC Office Local Office State District
Harry Mitchell (202) 225-2190 (480) 946-2411 AZ 5th District
Gabrielle Giffords (202) 225-2542 (520) 881-3588 AZ 8th District
Ann Kirkpatrick (202) 225-2315 (928) 226-6914 AZ 1st District
Jerry McNerney (202) 225-1947 925-833-0643 CA 11th District
John Salazar 202-225-4761 970-245-7107 CO 3rd District
Jim Himes (202) 225-5541 (866) 453-0028 CT 4th District
Alan Grayson (202) 225-2176 (407) 841-1757 FL 8th District
Bill Foster (202) 225-2976 630-406-1114 IL 14th District
Baron Hill 202 225 5315 812 288 3999 IN 9th District
Mark Schauer (202) 225-6276 (517) 780-9075 MI 7th District
Gary Peters (202) 225-5802 (248) 273-4227 MI 9th District
Dina Titus (202) 225-3252 702-256-DINA (3462) NV 3rd District
Carol Shea-Porter (202) 225-5456 (603) 743-4813 NH 1st District
Tim Bishop (202) 225-3868 (631) 696-6500 NY 1st District
John Hall (202) 225-5441 (845) 225-3641 x49371 NY 19th District
Bill Owens (202) 225-4611 (315) 782-3150 NY 23rd District
Mike Arcuri (202)225-3665 (315)793-8146 NY 24th District
Dan Maffei (202) 225-3701 (315) 423-5657 NY 25th District
Earl Pomeroy (202) 225-2611 (701) 224-0355 ND At-Large District
Steven Driehaus (202) 225-2216 (513) 684-2723 OH 1st District
Mary Jo Kilroy (202) 225-2015 (614) 294-2196 OH 15th District
Zach Space (202) 225-6265 (330) 364-4300 OH 18th District
Kathy Dahlkemper (202) 225-5406 (814) 456-2038 PA 3rd District
Patrick Murphy (202) 225-4276 (215) 826-1963 PA 8th District
Christopher Carney (202) 225-3731 (570) 585-9988 PA 10th District
Paul Kanjorski (202) 225-6511 (570) 825-2200 PA 11th District
John Spratt (202) 225-5501 (803)327-1114 SC 5th District
Tom Perriello (202) 225-4711 (276) 656-2291 VA 5th District
Alan Mollohan (202) 225-4172 (304) 623-4422 WVA 1st District
Nick Rahall (202) 225-3452 (304) 252-5000 WVA 3rd District
Steve Kagen (202) 225-5665 (920) 437-1954 WI 8th District
It’s been a challenge for me to address the changing political landscape since the Massachusetts special election on January 19. I was hoping that the political tsunami that swept Obama into office and gave the Democrats big majorities in both houses would be the start of a progressive wave that would carry us forward through the 2012 time.
But the replacement of Senator Kennedy with Scott Brown in Massachusetts clearly marks a new phase of political history for our country. Most political pundits are forecasting a big resurgence of political strength for Republicans in the Congress in 2010 in both the Senate and the House.
The Tea Party movement seems to be gaining momentum and now polls well in popularity compared to either of the major political parties.
Although President Obama still enjoys about fifty percent approval ratings, he is starting to look vulnerable in 2012. Congress is caught up in unprecedented grid lock and polarization. Republicans have used filibusters to block most legislative progress in the Senate.
Welcome to the political Chaostrophe of the 2012 time.
Yet things are not as bleak as they appear. My forecast is that the Democrats will lose a net of only two Senate seats in 2010 and no more than 25 House seats. To understand how this can be, we need to understand what is fueling the regressive political tides. In spite of how it looks in March, 2010, the political chaos of 2010 is a two-edged sword with negative consequences for both Republicans as well as Democrats.
It’s understandable that the sense of rapid change that we are all experiencing in this 2012 time is not welcome to many people. There is a big divide with the Republicans and tea baggers on one side resisting change and the Democrats on the other embracing it. Independents, nonpartisan voters that make up about fifty percent of the voting population, would then be somewhere in the middle.
This political scenario seems to be a world away from the 2008 elections. In that political time, the theme was change and it brought Obama a near landslide victory plus big Democratic majorities in both Houses of Congress. It was Obama’s hope and vision versus the Bush administration’s legacy that clouded McCain’s campaign.
Once Obama came into office though and the Democrats had nominal control of Congress, the bloom soon fell off the rose. There has not been an immediate transformation of our country in a positive direction.
Obama’s team was able to pull the US, and ultimately the world, away from the brink of economic disaster through a series of governmental interventions. Yet the so-called recovery leaves no one very happy. For what we really have is a chronic recession, the Great Recession. In my reading, we are in the second year of a three year economic storm.
The world is changing at a disconcerting rate in the 2012 time and there is nothing that can really slow down the rate of change. We are a civilization in crisis. And as in all crises involving human beings, the options are acting out against others or ourselves, trying to turn back the clock, or embracing transformation and making the most of the opportunities that this presents.
The Tea Party Movement seems to embody the acting out against others option. If you look at the demographics of the Tea Party Movement, it’s clear that they don’t represent a broad spectrum of Americans.
There are almost no people of color in their movement. They have a disproportionate number of males and they are pretty much all middle class and above in net worth. They could well call themselves the Privileged People’s Party as in “I’ve got mine and don’t you dare mess with me.”
Although I have no research on this point, it’s easy to imagine that 95% or better have health insurance. They are economic survivalists and would be economic vigilantes. They are like people who take up rifles in riots to protect their property in times of extreme social chaos. They model themselves after the economic vigilante behavior of the Revolutionary War era individuals who poured the English tea into the bay.
The Republicans embody the turn back the clock response to crisis. They could also be called the Privileged People’s Party except that they have a major contingent of people who aren’t that well off. And, of course, most of the “God said it, I believe it, and that settles it” religious right folks are in their camp.
This is starting to look like some apocalyptic scenario of a zero sum game conflict over diminishing resources. These conflicts are really about economic resources in spite of the ideological rhetoric about liberty and freedom used to rationalize narrow interest and self-serving behavior.
I guess as long as you believe that economic apocalypse is already upon us, economic survivalist and economic vigilante behavior might seem a reasonable course. But this is not what’s so in our country or in the world. My reading is that it’s not our future either. We’re going through a tumultuous reorganization of our economic functions and institutions. Old systems are crumbling. Yet this is far cry from total chaos and anarchy.
If you live in a world of moral or economic absolutes, then it seems reasonable to take a conservative posture in the effort to maintain economic and social structures which in your view support eternal truths.
From the rhetoric perspective, the Tea Party philosophy seems reasonable enough. The economic absolutes they hold as their principles are free markets, limited government, and fiscal responsibility. By fiscal responsibility they mean fewer taxes and no deficit spending.
All of this makes great sense if you’re a member of the Privileged People’s Party because it serves to conserve the wealth you already have. But from a national and global perspective, it’s an amazingly short sighted perspective. As the world changes, we need to adapt our economic strategies. For example, lack of sufficient regulation in financial industries almost catapulted us into another world-wide depression.
There is a genuine political Catastrophe aspect to what is happening this year and which will continue throughout the 2012 time. People are defending incompatible pictures of what’s real, true, and important. We see this in the obstructionism from the Republican Party who routinely votes as a block against any progression measure that Obama puts forward.
The assumption of the regressive political elements is that the human species won’t be able to adapt to the changes of the 2012 time. We’ll be swept into a whirlpool of chaos, anarchy, and ultimately destructive economic forces. This is what will happen unless we stop any and all attempts to tinker with our economic and social order.
There is considerable hypocrisy in the regressive movements. Tea Party activists run down to sign up for what they would otherwise condemn as socialist programs like Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid. You don’t see any of them staging a protest by refusing individual government help.
In several states, Republican politicians accepted government help from the economic stimulus while claiming it was a disastrous policy.
As long as we’re under the spell of the Great Recession, the Democrats are vulnerable. The anxieties and fears of change of the 2012 time are given a foundation in reality when the economy is struggling. Apprehension about the future is easily co-opted by those who seek to manipulate the voting public through appeals to fear.
But what we will see in the rest of 2010 is creeping prosperity. The economy is slowly getting better and even the unemployment issue is turning around. Obama’s popularity is on the rise. We could expect this to happen as the unreasonable expectations of Obama, the instant miracle worker, wear off with time.
The Republicans are not as strong as they may appear to be. They have put forward no positive agenda for the country. Moreover their embrace of the Tea Party Movement will not help them the way they think.
The Republican Party is locked in a battle between the purists and the pragmatists. To the extent that they echo the Tea Party line, they add fuel to the primary campaigns of very right wing candidates like senate candidate Marco Rubio in Florida. This opens the door for Democratic victories in unexpected places.
This has already happened in a special election in New York District 23 where the Tea Party faction sabotaged the Republican candidate forcing her to withdraw. She eventually endorsed the Democratic candidate. A seat which has been in Republican hands since 1870 went into the Democratic column.
A majority of the people in the United States think the country is going in the wrong direction. This reflects economic anxiety plus apprehension about where change is taking us as we move through the 2012 time. People want Congress and the President to do something, to take action.
The best Republicans can offer is some promise about slowing down change and trying to keep things the way they have been in the past. My reading is that people won’t buy into this completely. Change is happening whether we want it to or not. What I see happening is a significant number of people coming to understand that turning into the wave is much better than turning our backs to it.
After the November, 2010 election, there will be two fewer Democrats in the Senate and some 25 less in the House. However, I don’t see this changing the dynamics of Congress much. Many of the Democrats voted out in the House are going to be from conservative districts and their support for progressive legislation was already pretty minimal.
The Democrats are actually almost as well off having 57 Senators if they can’t get to at least 62. With 60 Senators in their caucus, every member of the caucus has virtual veto power over important legislation.
The polarization between the conservative and progressive political factions is going to continue to grow as we go further in the 2012. As it intensifies, this will give people a clear choice between starkly contrasting political philosophies.
But the spiritual intelligence of our population is also on the increase. This is justification for cautious optimism that the progressive elements will be able to prevail in spite of desperate opposition from regressive forces.
The Democratic Party is going to have to push ahead with little or no support from any Republicans on most of the big issues. The Democrats are not a unified ideological block like the Republicans. But they are capable of reaching agreements and compromises within their caucus. This is the politics of inclusion of differing viewpoints that Obama want to champion. It’s just can’t happen across the Republican, Democratic divide.
The front line in the current political turmoil is health care reform. My reading is that the Democrats are going to get it done in spite of the parliamentary obstacles and knarly process of House vote plus reconciliation. This will prove to be a tipping point away from Republican and Tea Party ascendancy towards something that looks like a quest for positive solutions.
“I think the vast differences in compensation between victims of the September 11 casualty and those who die serving our country in Uniform are profound.
No one is really talking about it either, because you just don’t criticize anything having to do with September 11. Well, I can’t let the numbers pass by because it says something really disturbing about the entitlement mentality of this country.
If you lost a family member in the September 11 attack, you’re going to get an average of $1,185,000. The range is a minimum guarantee of $250,000, all the way up to $4~7 million.
If you are a surviving family member of an American soldier killed in action, the first check you get is a $6,000 direct death benefit, half of which is taxable.
Next, you get $1,750 for burial costs. If you are the surviving spouse, you get $833 a month until you remarry. And there’s a payment of $211 per month for each child under 18. When the child hits 18, those payments come to a screeching halt.
Keep in mind that some of the people who are getting an average of $1.185 million up to $4.7 million are complaining that it’s not enough. Their deaths were tragic, but for most, they were simply in the wrong place at the wrong time.
Soldiers put themselves in harms way FOR ALL OF US, and they and their families know the dangers. (Actually, soldiers are put in harms way by politicians and commanding officers.)
We also learned over the weekend that some of the victims from the Oklahoma City bombing have started an organization asking for the same deal that the September 11 families are getting. In addition to that, some of the families of those bombed in the embassies are now asking for compensation as well.
You see where this is going, don’t you? Folks, this is part and parcel of over 50 years of entitlement politics in this country. It’s just really sad. Every time a pay raise comes up for the military, they usually receive next to nothing of a raise. Now the green machine is in combat in the Middle East while their families have to survive on food stamps and live in low-rent housing. Make sense?
However, our own US Congress voted themselves a raise. Many of you don’t know that they only have to be in Congress one time to receive a pension that is more than $15,000 per month. And most are now equal to being millionaires plus. They do not receive Social Security on retirement because they didn’t have to pay into the system. If some of the military people stay in for 20 years and get out as an E-7, they may receive a pension of $1,000 per month, and the very people who placed them in harm’s way receives a pension of $15,000 per month.
I would like to see our elected officials pick up a weapon and join ranks before they start cutting out benefits and lowering pay for our sons and daughters who are now fighting.
“When do we finally do something about this?” If this doesn’t seem fair to you, it is time to forward this to as many people as you can. ” “
As a citizen concerned about our nation’s health care system, I thought you’d like to know that the health care bill being rammed through the House contains 10 years worth of tax increases to pay for only 6 years worth of benefits. These taxes total $500 billion dollars over 10 years. Many of these taxes will affect Americans earning less than $200,000 a year, despite the President’s promise to avoid such taxes.
Here are just a few of the taxes contained in the bill:
$750 penalty per worker charged to employers who fail to provide government-sanctioned health insurance
Tax on brand name drugs—totaling $2.3 billion
Increased penalty for early withdrawal from your HSA (from 10% to 20%)
Tax on medical devices—totaling $19.2 billion
10% tax on indoor tanning services
WHAT THIS MEANS FOR YOU: Some of these taxes may affect you directly. Others, like the employer mandate, will cost our economy desperately needed jobs. Others will have ripple effects through the system that will raise prices for everyone.
THE DOCTOR’S DIAGNOSIS: America needs common sense health reform, not job-killing taxes. Future Congresses will be under pressure to raise taxes even further to pay for future years of an expanded government-administered health care system.
As this process unfolds, I will continue to work to represent you, bring common-sense to this debate, expose abuses of power and do all I can to prevent bad policy from becoming law.
Pope John Paul II Pope is ’shocked’ to hear of abuse case in Munich while he was archbishop
Shocked, eh Pope? Give him an Oscar!
“His former archdiocese of Munich has acknowledged that, while he was in charge, it dealt with a suspected paedophile priest by transferring him to a different parish where he went on to commit sex offences against children. The revelation has drawn attention to Benedict’s handling of abuse claims, both when archbishop and later as a prefect of the Vatican office dealing with such crimes, a position he held until becoming pope in 2005.
I bet he is as shocked as Obama and Biden and Hillary on the new Israeli settlements!
Another three Oscars, please!!!!!
I haven’t yet read the books by Tom Brokaw about the Greatest Generation, or the Baby Boomers. I have enough of a worldview to know that who they are and what they did. In their own way, they were courageous people who had to stand up against those people who had done wrong. And all the times that I heard people talking about the Civil Rights Movement or the people who fought the Axis Powers, I always thought, damn, man. Ours is not a generation that has done any of that. We don’t do these things. We don’t have Nazis to fight, or civil rights to save.
Certainly, gay marriage is a civil right, as is health care, and the extremists who are responsible for me having to take my shoes off every time I go to the airport need to be stopped, but these aren’t threats to the world. Realistically, these “terrorists,” they’re sad little men that simply want attention and have no means of coping with this world we live in today. They have no frame of reference.
I have followed very carefully, and much to my distraction, the rantings and lunatic ravings of Glenn Beck. At first I was fascinated by this man, this guy that, in spite of facts, truth and evidence to the contrary, would just up and invent falsehoods and spouted them on TV. No one did anything about it. After I was fascinated, I was terrified that he was going to be the undoing of this great experiment. The Constitution and the Framers never ever anticipated a world like this: internet, television, news and opinion 24 hours a day, phones with mail and a universe of knowledge at your fingertips. No one, even in the history of science-fiction, ever thought of today.
And then I wasn’t scared of him anymore. I’m not amused by him, certainly (He’s a dangerous person, strictly because he has too many people believing him. It’s like Bizarro Jesus. I honestly expect one of these days that he’s going to call the President a Pharisee and call for him to be stoned), but I’m not afraid of him. He’s a tragic figure, a sad little boy, who just wants his mommy to hold him. He’s nothing more than a frightened child. Once you realize that, you realize that he’s completely harmless. An uneducated buffoon who reads, but does not understand, a man with no real understanding of the world, who just likes to hear himself talk. A man who fears the government, and has no real reason to, apart from the fact that he should face up to the fact that he let the government get in this deep.
And I got to thinking about the rest of them, these Tea Partiers, Michelle Bachmann and Sarah Palin, people who aren’t so much sad, but very very vocal. People who rail against the government, for no real reason. they don’t understand costs, or debts or anything else, really. They just know we’re in a bad place and can’t figure out how we got there. They’re scared and they have every right to be scared.
Then there’s the banks. The hippies and post-hippies who preached individualism, tune in turn on drop out and explode. They opened their minds and found untold treasures beyond their wildest imaginings. Kings among men who currently posess more money than there is any sort of precious metal or gemstone to back up.
And they’re all over 40.
You might say that they worked hard to get there. Or, you might say that after World War II, they discovered that we had completely and utterly untouched resources for the taking. No one had bombed our cities. No one had destroyed out infrastructure. The War was 3000 miles away in both directions and we were perfectly fine. We were able to create a solid economy here, because we still had one to begin with.
That, of course, combined with the mentality of the individual, “just be yourself” generation turned into “Me, Me, Me.” Which turned into the 80s. And now, here we are.
But then I still think of my generation, and how we haven’t a battle to fight, that we’re given this world to live in and we might as well live in it. We are a lost generation, buried under mountains of debt because it’s what our parents did. It’s how you make it. Follow the American Dream.
And then, apart from a wicked few, it occurred to me: my generation might not be the Greatest or the Boomers, or Y or X or ZABFR at all.
When Haiti was hit by that earthquake, I found out that a friend of mine had started a charity to help with education. It’s still running and she was hoping to get down to the devastated country to help in any way she could. The caterers for my wedding are organic, local, free-range, fair trade and every other descriptor of good. My fiancee’s best friend works for AmeriCorps. I’m working to save a classic movie theatre for a town that desperately needs it. This article. Pittsburgh elected a man in his twenties to be the mayor, and Pittsburgh is now one of the great cities of America again. And it’s because of these things that I know what my generation is called now.
We’re the Sesame Street Generation.
We grew up believing that every last person, right down the the grouchiest grumps, are worth saving and befriending. We learned unconditional love. We learned that it’s not about me. It’s about all of us, near and far. We learned that you don’t eat a whole plate of cookies (at least not all the time). We learned that science is cool and that the numbers, ah-ah-ahhhh, the numbers are miraculous. We are Ernie and Bert, We are Grover. We are Gordon and Maria and Mr. Hooper and Bob and Oscar and Snuffy and Big Bird and we are the generation that believes, absolutely and without question, that together we can make something greater than before. We do not stagnate, because to stagnate is to die. We move forward and we pull everyone with us, no matter how weak, or how grumpy. We are full of wonder and cookies and the world is our oyster.
Our war is not fought with guns or bombs or poison gas. Ours was already won with the most dangerous weapon of all:
“His former archdiocese of Munich has acknowledged that, while he was in charge, it dealt with a suspected paedophile priest by transferring him to a different parish where he went on to commit sex offences against children. The revelation has drawn attention to Benedict’s handling of abuse claims, both when archbishop and later as a prefect of the Vatican office dealing with such crimes, a position he held until becoming pope in 2005.