I suspect that IRA considers 1999 to be "irrelevant" because a Democrat, Bill Clinton, was in the White House.

And as for those alleged 4M jobs that Trump has 'created' since 2017, I suspect that a large percentage of them would have fallen into one of the first two columns in the third graph in my previously referenced item.

The question that you should be asking is, "How many more people are being covered by health insurance than before Obamacare?" BTW, that number is very close to 20M. When you consider that before Obamacare, there were nearly 49M Americans without any sort of health insurance, this is a very significant improvement. As for your figure of 8.5M applying for insurance under the ACA in 2018, do you honestly think that this number was NOT impacted as a result of the actions taken by the Trump administration to CHANGE the process of applying and qualifying for insurance under the ACA?

OCU

Fallwell, Jr and his wife are like Jim and Tammy Baker without a Jessica Hahn. That we know of ..

#3 | Posted by AMERICANUNITY

At least get the spelling of their names right. It's "Jim and Tammy Bakker". There are a lot of "Baker" families out there who won't appreciate your attempt to link them to these despicable people. Besides, "Bakker" is Dutch, while "Baker" is Anglo-Saxon, or for at least one family, it's what their ancestors decided to change the family name to, from the German "Becker".

OCU

This is exactly what the Supreme Court recommended to Congress in their opinion in the Citizens United case, if money is speech, the only way to protect the country from outright corruption was for Congress to enact full-disclosure laws. The Court couldn't do that as that would be 'making law', something that's reserved for the Legislative branch of government. The problem with Citizens United was that Conservatives were very happy with the outcome, as long as Congress ignored the actual words written by the Court.

OCU

I was trying to find some stats on this but it seems like people are trying to hide the data. What I would like to know is:

The NUMBER (not %) of people in the US covered by employer funded health insurance. My theory would be that the increased employment picture since 2008 along with increasing job quality since 2016 probably covered more people that Obamacare. But, I don't have the stats to analyze.

#13 | Posted by iragoldberg

It took me a SINGLE Google search, all of 2 seconds (link provided below).

Note that 3+ million LESS people had employer-provided health insurance in 2017 than in 1999 (second graph in the item below).

But it's the third graph that tells the tale for why something other than employer-provided health insurance is needed in America, where (for 2017) less than 15% of working households at or below the Federal Poverty Level had employer-provided health insurance, whereas households making more than 400% of the Federal Poverty Level, 84% of them had employer-provided health insurance. And when you look at the country as a whole, less than 59% of all working households had employer-provided health insurance. How do we address the more than 41% of working households which have NO access to employer-provided health insurance? And for the record, in 1999, better than 67% of working households had employer-provided health insurance. That's a drop of 9% in 18 years.

How is this 'cheering on the' fed? With Trump's attention span of a Gold Fish, I'm sure that all he sees is how this puts money on his pocket.

OCU

try growing up near Fermi 1. It gives you an interesting perspective on nuclear power.

#7 | Posted by Alexandrite

I used to live in Carleton, MI. In fact, when I was a kid and just before they started to fuel the reactor, my cousin was working for one of the electrical contractors and he arranged for a tour of the facility which included a chance to walk inside of the containment structure. I was about 15 years old at the time and remember how they talked about how this plant, the first (and last) commercial fast-breeder reactor, was going to produce so much nuclear fuel as a byproduct, that the actual production of electricity would be virtually free. Of course that was before the core almost melted-down in 1966, which gave the world the 'China Syndrome' expression.

OCU

And they held a parade thru Pence's ancestral home town and only six people showed-up to watch the entourage of limos pass thru town on it's way to the pub run by Pence's cousin. I suspect that there are were more Secret Service agents standing along the route than there were locals trying to get a glimpse of the second family.

OCU

Well, I'm convinced. If a bunch of inbred coal miners clap, it's got to be good.

#3 | Posted by goatman

After all, look at how they behave when Donald Trump is on the stage telling them that coal will be king again.

OCU

But will the residents of the annexed sections of the West Bank be given Israeli citizenship and thus the right to vote? If not, then what would have changed? After all, Arabs living in Israel proper are considered to be citizens and vote in local and national elections.

OCU

And despite what Trump has been telling people at his rallies, there has NOT been a single mile of new 'wall' erected since he took office nearly 32 months ago:

What did you expect . . . all they have to do is look at what their 'boss' in the White House is raking in and they feel they should get a piece of the action as well...

OCU

When Ronald Reagan was Governor of California he noticed that a lot of poor people (and many of them weren't white) were going to state colleges for free. He put a stop to that in short order.

OCU

They couldn't give away most of that wasteland.

#15 | Posted by lee_the_agent

Yea, but these grifters will make it sound so good that they'll get some modest amount for the taxpayers, but not too much as we want to "keep the customer happy" because these people will need places to land after Trump's out of the White House.

OCU

Sorry, I DID misspell it, but not in the way that you think.

Actually, 'nyet' is the English pronunciation of the Russian word 'het', which means 'no'.

At least I got the 'da' correct.

OCU

I suspect that this is just the beginning, and it's going to get hectic since they technically only have until January 19, 2021 to get all the deals done that the Trump people have promised to their buddies in the so-called 'mineral extraction' industry. I suspect that we will see a step-up in corruption now that it's starting to feel like the clock is ticking on the Trump administration.

OCU

This is not the last international situation like this that we're going to be seeing between now and the 2020 elections. People like Netanyahu fear that Trump will not be there to back him up come 2021 and so he had to make his moves like this now, while Trump is still in the White House. He knows that no matter who is sitting in the White House some January 2021, if it's not Trump, he's not going to get all that mush support from the US as he is now.

OCU

I heard a report that Trump doesn't like the idea of depending on foreign spies to help gather intelligence. He thinks that asking someone to betray their country by passing intelligence to the US is wrong.

OCU

Or like Hillary did with her insecure server in her basement?

#17 | Posted by fishpaw

Which unlike several government servers, Hillary's was NEVER successfully hacked. In fact, it turns out that of most all the servers in and around Washington, including BOTH the DNC AND the RNC, Hillary's server were perhaps the most secure of any. And as for the classified information, at the time that Hillary was accessing those documents, they were NOT classified. It was only AFTER she was no longer Secretary of State that those documents were reclassified.

OCU

I suspect that Trump's people just assumed that since the Bahamas are part of the British Commonwealth that their citizens were naturally white. However, when they saw the news feed showing that first batch of Bahamian refugees disembarking from the cruise ship in Miami, as seen in the news clip referenced below, and realized that the majority were black, that they suddenly decided that they needed to change the rules. After all, with an election coming next year, his people have to be very careful not to give the wrong impression to Trump's base about America's humanitarian policies. After all, if these had all been white European descendants, that would have been seen as reinforcing Trump's promise to "Make America White Again", but if these people see black refugees, even if many of them speak better English than they do, being welcomed at ports of entry in places like Florida, well, what sort of message does that send to a Trump die-hard supporter...

My Detroit Lion's had it in the bag agasint the Cardinals, that is, right-up until 43 seconds left on the clock. In the end, neither team got a win as it ended 27-27 after the OT:

The money was probably needed for Trump's vanity wall.

OCU

And now the Pentagon is about to sign a new five-year refueling contract with the airport near Trump's Scotland golf course, when they could stop at any of five current American Air Force bases in the UK where fuel and housing costs for crews would be less, but then that money wouldn't be going directing into the pockets of Donald J. Trump and his family. Note that the Air Force has been refueling at his regional airport under a previously undisclosed contract which was signed shortly after Trump took office in 2017, but that was only a two-year contract which is running out.

Nearly 60% of the Pentagon projects which are being tapped for money for Trump's vanity wall are already coming from blue states. If Mitch had his way, that number would be closer to 100%.

OCU

I guess that's as good a reason as any for buying hundreds of $1500 Herman Miller executive office chairs using the taxes paid by American middle-class, working families.

OCU

And now the Trump campaign is fund-raising off the Alabama 'Sharpie-gate' incident by selling Trump-branded felt-markers at the rate of $15 for five pens. Note that you can get the same marker, sans Trump's name, for less than a buck apiece at Staples.