Mediaboss Marketing

Since President Trumps inauguration, Republicans have triggered a steady churn of outrage from the left over perceived gaffes, errors and omissions.

Some of it has been rightly deserved (see: erroneous Trump tweet on Gitmo prisoners). Some of the desk-thumping, however, has more than a hint of hypocrisy -- as that outrage machine was largely silent when similar comments were made by the Obama administration.

Here are just a few examples of statements met with thunderous criticism when uttered by Republicans, yet crickets when made by Democrats:

Carson vs. Obama

HUD Secretary Ben Carson, speaking to department employees earlier this week, sparked outrage when he referred to slaves as immigrants.

"That's what America is about, a land of dreams and opportunity," Carson said. "There were other immigrants who came here in the bottom of slave ships, worked even longer, even harder for less. But they too had a dream that one day their sons, daughters, grandsons, granddaughters, great-grandsons, great-granddaughters, might pursue prosperity and happiness in this land."

The NAACP and Chelsea Clinton were both among those offended by Carsons comparison. Actor Samuel L. Jackson tore into Carson in an R-rated tweet.

The problem was, then-President Barack Obama made a similar comparison before.

"It wasn't always easy for new immigrants. Certainly, it wasn't easy for those of African heritage who had not come here voluntarily and yet in their own way were immigrants themselves," he said at a 2015 naturalization ceremony.

The Federalistwent so far as to dig up 11 times Obama had referred to slaves as immigrants, and noted there was barely a peep of outrage each time. What changed?

Lay off the iPhones

Twitter was apoplectic when Rep. Jason Chaffetz, R-Utah, recently said Americans may have to choose between buying a new iPhone and health insurance.

"Well, we're getting rid of the individual mandate. We're getting rid of those things that people said that they don't want. ... Americans have choices, and they've got to make a choice," he said on CNN. "So rather than getting that new iPhone that they just love and want to go spend hundreds of dollars on that, maybe they should invest in their own health care.

Chaffetz was accused of everything from being OK with poor people dying to reviving the poverty is a choice argument."

Yet the criticism glossed over similar remarks made by Obama in 2014.

Asked in a Spanish-language town hall about those who said they cant afford premiums, Obama speculated about someone making $40,000-$50,000 a year, who thinks an insurance option that costs $300 a month is too much.

I guess what I would say is if you looked at that persons budget and you looked at their cable bill, their telephone cell phone bill, other things that theyre spending on, it may turn out that they just havent prioritized health care because right now everybody is healthy," he said.

Shame-rock

Some were put out after the Trump team recently put out green versions of his famous Make America Great Again hats, branded with a four-leaf clover. While said clover is considered a symbol of good luck, some Irish news outlets and others on Twitter grumbled that the three-leaf clover was more appropriate.

The shamrock is a three-leaf sprig of clover and is associated with St Patrick's Day, The Irish Independent complained. The four-leaf clover is a plant, that's rarer in abundance. It's also a sugary, oat piece that's usually found in a box of Lucky Charms cereal.

Yet Obama did something similar in 2012 when his campaign produced an OBama shirt with a four-leaf clover. While the error was noted, it produced little outrage, and even some apologists.

I think thats creative license, Kevin ONeill, a professor of Irish History at Boston College, told The New York Times. If you can add an apostrophe, why not a leaf.

Omission Outrage

A Trump White House statement on International Holocaust Remembrance Day provoked condemnation when it left out any reference to Jewish people the main target of Hitlers genocidal atrocities.

It is with a heavy heart and somber mind that we remember and honor the victims, survivors, heroes of the Holocaust. It is impossible to fully fathom the depravity and horror inflicted on innocent people by Nazi terror, the statement said.

A number of Jewish groups were critical of the omission. But former Democratic vice presidential candidate Tim Kaine, D-Va., went further by comparing the statement to Holocaust denial.

President Obama, President Bush always talked about the Holocaust in connection with the slaughter of Jews. The final solution was about the slaughter of Jews. We have to remember this. This is what Holocaust denial is, he said.

White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer blasted the controversy as nitpicking. He said: "To suggest that remembering the Holocaust and acknowledging all of the people -- Jewish, gypsies, priests, disabled, gays and lesbians -- it is pathetic that people are picking on a statement."

But Kaines comments in particular were striking considering his former running mate former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton released a statement in 2013 that also did not mention the Jewish people.

The statement said: "Each year, we gather together to commemorate the victims of one of the worst tragedies in human history. Indeed, almost 70 years after the end of World War II, we continue to honor those lives that were brutally taken during the Holocaust by the Nazis. This machinery of systematic extermination also took the lives of Roma, gays, persons with disabilities, and others deemed inferior or undesirable by the Nazis."

The statement did condemn Holocaust denial, while also mentioning other genocides, including in Cambodia, Srebrenica, Rwanda and Darfur.

Adam Shaw is a Politics Reporter and occasional Opinion writer for FoxNews.com. He can be reached here or on Twitter: @AdamShawNY.

Originally posted here:
Four times Republicans faced outrage for things Dems did first - Fox News

A

little-noticed bill moving through Congress would allow companiesto require employees to undergo genetic testing or risk paying a penalty of thousands of dollars, and would let employerssee that genetic and other health information.

Giving employers such power is now prohibited by legislation including the 2008 genetic privacy and nondiscrimination law known as GINA. The new bill gets around that landmark law by stating explicitly that GINA and other protections do not apply when genetic tests are part of a workplace wellness program.

The bill, HR 1313, was approved by a House committee on Wednesday, with all 22 Republicans supporting it and all 17 Democrats opposed. It has been overshadowed by the debate over the House GOP proposalto repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act, but the genetic testing bill isexpected to be folded into a second ACA-related measure containing a grab-bag of provisions that do not affect federal spending, as the main bill does.

article continues after advertisement

What this bill would do is completely take away the protections of existinglaws, said Jennifer Mathis, director of policy and legal advocacy at the Bazelon Center for Mental Health Law, a civil rights group. In particular, privacy and other protections for genetic and health information in GINA and the 1990 Americans with Disabilities Act would be pretty much eviscerated, she said.

Employers say they need the changes because those two landmark laws are not aligned in a consistent manner with laws about workplace wellness programs, as an employer group said in congressional testimony last week.

Employers got virtually everything they wanted for their workplace wellness programs during the Obama administration. The ACA allowed them to charge employees 30 percent, and possibly 50 percent, more for health insurance if they declined to participate in the voluntary programs, which typically include cholesterol and other screenings; health questionnaires that ask about personal habits, including plans to get pregnant; and sometimes weight loss and smoking cessation classes. And in rules that Obamas Equal Employment Opportunity Commission issued last year, a workplace wellness program counts as voluntary even if workers have to pay thousands of dollars more in premiums and deductibles if they dont participate.

Despite those wins, the business community chafed at what it saw as the last obstacles to unfettered implementation of wellness programs: the genetic information and the disabilities laws. Both measures, according to congressional testimony last week by the American Benefits Council, put at risk the availability and effectiveness of workplace wellness programs, depriving employees of benefits like improved health and productivity. The council represents Fortune 500 companies and other large employers that provide employee benefits. It did not immediately respond to questions about how lack of access to genetic information hampers wellness programs.

Rigorous studies by researchers not tied to the $8 billion wellness industry have shown that the programs improve employee health little if at all. An industry group recently concluded that they save so little on medical costs that, on average, the programs lose money. But employers continue to embrace them, partly as a way to shift more health care costs to workers, including by penalizing them financially.

Do workplace wellness programs improve employees health?

The 2008 genetic law prohibits a group health plan the kind employers have from asking, let alone requiring, someone to undergo a genetic test. It also prohibits that specifically for underwriting purposes, which is where wellness programs come in. Underwriting purposes includes basing insurance deductibles, rebates, rewards, or other financial incentives on completing a health risk assessment or health screenings. In addition, anygenetic information canbe provided to the employer only in a de-identified, aggregated form, rather than in a way that reveals which individual has which genetic profile.

There is a big exception, however: As long as employers makeproviding genetic information voluntary, theycan ask employees for it. Under the House bill, none of the protections for health and genetic information provided by GINA or the disabilities lawwould apply to workplace wellness programs as long as they complied with the ACAs very limited requirements for the programs. As a result, employers could demand that employees undergo genetic testing and health screenings.

While the information returned to employers would not include workers names, its not difficult, especially in a small company, to match a genetic profile with the individual.

That would undermine fundamentally the privacy provisions of those laws, said Nancy Cox, president of the American Society of Human Genetics, in a letter to the House Committee on Education and the Workforce the day before it approved the bill. It would allow employers to ask employees invasive questions about genetic tests they and their families have undergone and to impose stiff financial penalties on employees who choose to keep such information private, thus empowering employers to coerce their employees into providing their genetic information.

If an employer has a wellness program but does not sponsor health insurance, rather than increasing insurance premiums, the employer could dock the paychecks of workers who dont participate.

The privacy concerns also arise from how workplace wellness programs work. Employers, especially large ones, generally hire outside companies to run them. These companies are largely unregulated, and they are allowed to see genetic test results with employee names.

They sometimes sell the health information they collect from employees. As a result, employees get unexpected pitches for everything from weight-loss programs to running shoes, thanks to countless strangers poring over their health and genetic information.

Sharon Begley can be reached at sharon.begley@statnews.com Follow Sharon on Twitter @sxbegle

Go here to see the original:
House Republicans would let employers demand workers' genetic test results - STAT

House Speaker Paul Ryan explains the Republican plan to replace the Affordable Care Act at the U.S. Capitol on Thursday in Washington.

Win McNamee/Getty Images

As expected, Paul Ryan has released a sweeping proposalthe American Health Care Actto remake the U.S. health care system. Also as expected, lots of people hate it. Whats somewhat more surprising is that so many Republicans seem to hate it.

Why wont the GOP line up behind the partys Obamacare replacement? The basic story is that ideological purists dont like the fact that the House proposal creates a new system of refundable tax credits, which they see as tantamount to socialism. Meanwhile, Republican pragmatists from states that expanded Medicaid under Obamacare are afraid that Ryans overhaul will leave many of their low-income constituents high and dry. The disagreement between these two positions is ultimately a matter of political calculation. The purists, most of whom are from solidly Republican constituencies, see getting rid of Obamacare root and branch as the mission their voters sent them to Congress to accomplish, and they want to do it even if it means millions of insurance policies get canceled and swing voters go nuts. The pragmatists, who tend to be drawn from more competitive districts and states, dont want to push things quite so far.

Normally youd expect members of the same party to hammer out an agreement. The purists would recognize that the pragmatists need to win their races if the GOP is going to retain control of the House and Senate, and so theyd find a way to work together. Thats exactly the kind of deal Ryan is trying to forge. The problem is that the intra-Republican compromise hes devised doesnt make anyone happy. Thats because, to put it bluntly, Republicans have policy goals that simply cant be achieved.

David A. Hopkins, a political scientist at Boston College, offers an elegant explanation. While the Democratic Party functions as a coalition of discrete social groups, each of which wants government to help address various problems, the GOP functions more as the agent of the conservative ideological movement. This is not to say that Democrats are never ideological. Far from it. Its just that ideological liberals who, say, would have greatly preferred Medicare-for-all over the kludgy, compromised mess that is the Affordable Care Act werent willing to sink Obamacare because it was an affront to their deeply held beliefs. Instead, they sucked it up and backed the presidents health care plan, thinking it would deliver real-world benefits to their constituents. There were plenty of ideological liberals who hated having to cut deals with insurers and pharmaceutical companies and the hospital lobby yet were willing to do just that to achieve their goal of expanding coverage. Republicans, in contrast, have devoted almost no effort to placating industry stakeholders in the health sectora sector that accounts for roughly 18 percent of GDP, by the waynor are they delivering much in the way of tangible benefits to rank-and-file Republican voters.

Its not that GOP lawmakers simply do the bidding of the rich, as many on the left maintain. As Hopkins notes, that explanation doesnt explain the particulars of the Ryan bill: The rich do benefit by receiving a large tax cut, but if Republicans only cared about that issue they would have chosen to pursue a politically easier path of merely cutting taxes on the wealthy while leaving health care alone. There is something deeper at work, and Hopkins puts his finger on it.

Unlike ideological liberals, ideological conservatives arent interested in empowering the federal government to solve the problems of this or that constituency. Rather, their ultimate goal is to get the federal government out of the problem-solving business, on the grounds that problems are best solved by individuals; families; communities; and, in a pinch, state and local governments, with at most an occasional assist from the federal leviathan. This is, of course, a far cry from the status quo. The federal government is vast, and its tentacles extend into every nook and cranny of American life, whether through direct expenditures or regulations and targeted tax breaks. For ideological conservatives, the challenge is to reconcile a government-shrinking agenda with the inescapable fact that most voters are profoundly risk-averse and thus reluctant to shrink government programs that might benefit them or, for that matter, anyone who could be seen in a sympathetic light.

Ideological conservatives have spent decades trying to roll back the expansion of government, with almost no success. Most often, theyve acquiesced to more modest expansions of government in the hopes of heading off the much bigger ones sought by their ideological rivals. Welfare reform, for instance, is occasionally cited as a government-shrinking success. The truth, however, is that welfare reform substituted one set of government social programs (cash transfers to poor households) with a different set of government social programs (refundable tax credits designed to make work pay and expanded access to subsidized medical care, among other things). For the next 20 years or so, the prospects for shrinking government will be even less auspicious, as an aging population all but guarantees that federal expenditures on Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Securitythree of the most popular programs in America, all of which have long enjoyed bipartisan supportwill soar. Tyler Cowen has provocatively argued that slowing down the expansion of government is the best those of a libertarian bent can do. In the medium term, at least, its hard to disagree with that assessment.

Where does this leave the ideological right? I see two possibilities. Ross Douthat of the New York Times has outlined the ways in which Trumps vision of the GOP as a workers party could offer a way forward that is not so wedded to the cause of shrinking government. Essentially, the idea would be for Republicans to be a bit less zealously ideological and a bit more attuned to their constituents real-world interests. I believe this is a perfectly sound approach, and its one Republicans take from time to time, like when they pledge to use the power of government to combat the scourge of opioid abuse (which has devastated many heavily Republican communities) or when they decried Obamacare for trimming the future growth of Medicare to help finance coverage expansion.

But its rare to see much follow-through on such commitments. Republicans have shown no interest in reversing Obama-era cuts in Medicares future growth, a point Josh Barro of Business Insider cites as a telling example of GOP hypocrisy. Indeed, one of the more remarkable things about Ryans American Health Care Act is that its insurance-market reforms might particularly disadvantage older adults in rural areas earning working- to lower-middle-class incomes. This is a pretty decent description of the swing voters who won Donald Trump the White House and whove made the American Health Care Act something more than a glimmer in Paul Ryans eye.

Republicans priority should be ensuring that vulnerable people dont get screwed.

That leads me to a second possibility, one that would be compatible with a workers party future for the GOP while offering a more tempered small-government Republicanism. A few years ago, Paul Ryan united congressional Republicans around a clever, widely misunderstood plan for revamping the Medicare program. The basic idea was pretty anodyne. Right now, Medicare beneficiaries may choose between traditional fee-for-service Medicare (Medicare FFS) and Medicare Advantage plans, in which private insurers offer the Medicare benefit. Ryan proposed a competitive bidding system, one in which the second least-expensive Medicare Advantage or Medicare FFS plan would establish a benchmark. If a senior chose a more expensive plan, she would have to pay the difference; if she chose a less expensive one, shed get a cash rebate. Ryan didnt promise huge savings relative to Obamacare. Rather, the plan anticipated that this reformed version of Medicare would cost just as much as Obamacares version, at least at first. But the hope was that the magic of competition would eventually yield substantial savings.

Here is how Ryan should have pitched this plan: One way or another, we are going to make sure that seniors get the Medicare benefit theyve been promised. We believe we have a better way to deliver this benefit that will prove cheaper over time. If were wrong, thats on us. If it comes to that, wed sooner raise taxes than prevent seniors from getting their Medicare.

This is the right way for Republicans to talk about the cost of the safety net: If theres a conflict between rich peoples money and the lives of ordinary Americans, were going to choose the latter every time. But Ryan couldnt pitch his plan in these terms, because he needed to demonstrate that he could shrink the size of government. If he wasnt going to cut Medicare and was going to cut taxes, he had to slash safety-net spending somewhere else. Thats why he proposed wildly unrealistic reductions in the growth of federal Medicaid spending. His message wound up being completely muddled. We need to cut spending because were facing a debt crisis but were also going to cut taxes. It is vitally important that we protect the safety net for old people but were going to slash it for poor people. If Ryan had taken a different tackif he had said his goal was to ensure that poor people get off Medicaid by becoming middle-class people, and that if he was proven wrong, hed do everything in his power to see to it that the safety net was still there for themhe might be serving as Mitt Romneys vice president right now.

How can Paul Ryan and his allies send a more coherent message around the American Health Care Act? A good starting point would be to forget about cutting Obamacares taxes on households earning more than $200,000. Its not that Republicans are opposed to cutting those taxes. Its just that their priorities should lie elsewhere, namely in ensuring that vulnerable people dont get screwed. If Ryan cant get behind that message, his health care bill deserves to fail.

View post:
Why Do Republicans Hate the Republican Health Care Plan? - Slate Magazine

A police officer votes at Belmont High School on Feb. 9, 2016, in Belmont, N.H., during the New Hampshire presidential primary. The state's lawmakers are now debating bills that would tighten residency requirements for new voters. Don Emmert/AFP/Getty Images hide caption

A police officer votes at Belmont High School on Feb. 9, 2016, in Belmont, N.H., during the New Hampshire presidential primary. The state's lawmakers are now debating bills that would tighten residency requirements for new voters.

Vice President Pence has yet to begin a promised investigation into allegations by President Trump that millions of people voted illegally in November. But that hasn't stopped state lawmakers from taking action they say would limit voter fraud, even though the president's claims have been widely discredited.

Legislation to tighten voter ID and other requirements has already been introduced in about half the states this year. And in statehouse after statehouse, the debate has had a familiar ring.

"We do not have a voter fraud problem in North Dakota," Democratic Rep. Mary Schneider argued last month during a state House floor debate of a measure that would tighten that state's voter ID requirements and increase penalties for voter fraud.

"To say that there's not a voter fraud problem in North Dakota, I think that's another inaccurate statement. Maybe there have been no convicted cases but it doesn't mean that we don't have an issue," countered Republican Christopher Olson, shortly before the measure was approved by a vote of 74-16.

Proof of citizenship

In late January, Virginia Republican Bob Marshall argued in favor of a bill that would require voters in that state to provide proof of citizenship before casting ballots in state and local races.

"I've identified individuals who tell me they're not citizens, but they're on the voter database," he argued.

But Democrat Rip Sullivan said such measures will hurt legitimate voters who don't have the required documents.

"We know it to be true, that there will be Virginians disenfranchised by this piece of legislation all because of some concern about voter fraud for which there is no proof," he said. That bill passed the Republican-controlled House, but has stalled in the state Senate, also controlled by Republicans.

Around the country, the issue has split legislators along party lines. Democrats say tighter voting rules are unnecessary and discourage legitimate voters from casting ballots. Republicans say they're trying to assure voters that the system is secure, even if voter fraud isn't as widespread as Trump claims.

"I don't know if there's a lot of cheating. I just know that because of our loose laws, people feel that way," says New Hampshire Republican Sen. Regina Birdsell.

She has sponsored legislation to tighten residency requirements for voters in her state, where Trump recently claimed thousands of Massachusetts voters were bused in to cast illegal ballots. That claim has been widely discredited including by state Republicans but Birdsell says her constituents still worry people from out of state can game the system.

"I call it trust but verify," she says.

Her voting bill is one of hundreds now before state legislatures. Most are unlikely to become law, and many would actually expand voter access with things like online voter registration.

Voter ID rules

But many other bills under consideration would make it harder to vote. Just this week, Arkansas lawmakers agreed to put a constitutional amendment on next year's ballot to require a photo ID at the polls and for those casting absentee ballots. West Virginia lawmakers also considered tightening voter ID rules, and Iowa Secretary of State Paul Pate pushed a sweeping measure that would require voters in his state to show a card with a bar code to verify their identity.

Pate doesn't think fraud is rampant in Iowa but says all the talk of fraud has people worried.

"The public is now taking that perception as a reality," he says. "And my job, and other election officials, is we now have to work extra hard to try to show people all the things we are doing to protect the integrity so they can re-establish the confidence in our voting system. Because when they don't believe their vote counts, then they tend not to go vote. They go, 'Well,why should I vote?' "

Pate insists no voters will be disenfranchised by his proposal. But opponents disagree. They argue that such measures are politically motivated to suppress the votes of those who tend to vote Democratic, such as minorities who often have more difficulty meeting the proposed requirements. And they say it's being done under the guise of fighting voter fraud, which study after study shows is rare.

"Nobody says it never ever happens," says Myrna Perez with the Brennan Center for Justice, which has fought a number of state voting restrictions in court. "The question is not whether or not there's a way we can get the number down to zero. The question is are the efforts that these states are taking to try and prevent this worth who is being disenfranchised in the process."

She believes that it could be hundreds of thousands of legitimate voters. It's a debate being waged with new vigor this year in a number of states.

Excerpt from:
State Republicans Push For More Restrictive Voting Laws : NPR - NPR

House Republicans Repeat an Obama Error Wall Street Journal (subscription) It is challenging for important Republicans on Capitol Hill now. They are leading their party at a time when it is changing and the country has changed. There are fissures in terms of what they believe and what they want. There is no shared ...

Link:
House Republicans Repeat an Obama Error - Wall Street Journal (subscription)