Independent News

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What is there to say about Fox News and the right-wing-o-sphere that hasn’t been scratched by the nails of demons into the toilet stall walls of hell? Every day, every hour, every minute, Fox News and the propaganda machines it has birthed are either selling their audience lies, misinformation, and disinformation about the world, or selling them pillows, telling them to sell their gold, and saying that the way out of debt is to give Magnum P.I. your home in a reverse mortgage. 

The Fox-News-o-sphere has been doing double time sticking its head both up its own behind and also deep into the sand. Impossible to do, you say? You can say a lot of things about Fox News but you can’t say they aren’t willing and able to continue to surprise you when it comes to how low they can go. At this point the fact that a hole hasn’t ripped open in the space-time continuum under the Fox News studios is arguably the most surprising thing.

There has been a lot of news lately about audio of GOP House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy saying all kinds of relatively sober things about how much of a disaster Donald Trump and the Jan. 6 insurrection at the Capitol were. He even happened to mention how crappy people like Florida man Matt Gaetz are. The problem is: The GOP is nowhere near sober in their public-facing acceptance of the fascism being called for by the MAGA wing of the party. McCarthy has one thing going for him—being craven and a liar seems to work just fine with the MAGA crowd, regardless of how much evidence is laid before their feet.

RELATED STORY: Kevin McCarthy is in large trouble with his fellow Republicans after more recordings released

Let’s see what Fox News is doing to facilitate the dissemination of news and information to its audience.

Later on, Fox News’ Howard Kurtz had Glenn Greenwald on to talk about Elon Musk and how great his ideas on free speech are. Surprisingly (see: not surprisingly) they didn’t discuss any of Elon’s stated mentions of what he thinks “free speech” is. They didn’t because this …

…doesn’t make much sense.

Any-the-ways! Kurtz brought up and defended Fox News’ lack of coverage, instead opting to continuously discuss the media’s lack of luster over Hunter Biden’s alleged laptop leak in the days leading up to the November 2020 election. Kurtz’s argument, the one he laid out to his interviewee Greenwald, is that the McCarthy story isn’t a “big story.” Greenwald, who has been spending most of his time recently talking about Hunter Biden’s laptop, had to admit that it showed clearly that Kevin McCarthy is lying, but made sure to offer up the defense (while saying he wouldn’t know why one would want to defend McCarthy) that “it’s a very hard job to manage a Republican caucus with 250 very disparate voices with Donald Trump hovering over you. There was a lot of emotions surrounding 1/6, but we should demand from our political leaders the basic obligation not to tell lies to the public, and the fact that he got caught red-handed should be a pretty significant event for him.”

But, was it a big story? Greenwald, who has spent a considerable amount of the past year talking about Hunter Biden’s laptop, said that he thinks what happened was that “emotions were high” after the “Jan. 6, riot,” and it is definitely a “news story,” but guess what he says next? “If we did flood-the-zone coverage every time a politician lied we would never do anything else as journalists.” Greenwald ended by telling the Fox News host—on the network that continues to cover the Hunter Biden laptop and insist that President Joe Biden is maybe lying about something for the last year and a half—that “covering it is reasonable, but excessively covering it is what happened because obviously there’s a partisan agenda involved.”

Wild stuff. You see what Greenwald did there? He conflated a politician lying about wanting to ASK THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES TO RESIGN FROM OFFICE with “politicians lying.”

That first Fox News story count was from like April 22. I’m sure things picked up a few days later.

Wrong again!

What does Republican Sen. Ron Johnson of Wisconsin have to add?

Gotcha! But Walter, you say, this is Ron Johnson talking out of his ass two weeks ago; surely things are different now?

“Highest level.” In an unrelated story, Sen. Ron Johnson is a corrupt, racist, lying, POS.

Listen to Markos and Kerry Eleveld talk Ukraine and speak with Wisconsin Democratic Party Chair Ben Wikler on how hitting back at Republicans helps win elections on Daily Kos’ The Brief podcast

This post was originally published on this site

Around these parts, we’ve been fighting for progress for a long time. Twenty years, to be (almost) exact. Daily Kos might have started with seven sentences from one man, but my goodness, it’s become so much more, and done so much. And each of you have been a part of that, with your action, your donations, and yes, your writing on our open platform. 

As our May 26 anniversary looms, we’ve been celebrating the best of the millions upon millions of stories written here, by Staff and Community alike. Over the last few weeks, I’ve been challenging everyone—including you, dear Community—to ponder our writings here on Daily Kos over the last 20 years and pick a personal best.

It’s been a blast collecting submissions from the Community Contributors Team, our Daily Kos staff (part one and part two), Kos himself, and you, dearest Community. And now, it’s time for another installment of This Is My Best (TIMB)—focused again on Community writing. 

For those who are new to this series, here’s a quick recap:

Some years ago, I’m told, there was a wonderful series called This Is My Best (TIMB), which encouraged Community members to share their own writing that they were most proud of, rather than the writing of others. One part self-promotion, one part self-confidence, all parts awesome, TIMB encourages writers to press pause on their role as their own worst critics and take some time to toot their own horns.

Let’s dive right in. As noted last week, these stories are intimate and reflective, deeply researched, and political. And they mean a lot to the people who wrote them. So give ‘em a read!

And remember: If you don’t see your story below, we’ll be keeping the party going right up until our joyful 20th anniversary on May 26!

GARY NORTON

Why the debt limit fight will be a political face-off with no gimmicks or constitutional crisis (2013)

The title of this article is certainly long-winded. But it was an attempt to quell some of the hyperbolic and somewhat frantic arguments and concerns surrounding the debt limit face-off between President Obama and the Republicans in Congress.

For people who were not here at the time the Republicans were threatening to have our government default on its obligations by refusing to raise the debt limit. This was a major issue at the time. Raising the debt limit had always been done as a matter of course until the Republicans decided they could weaponize the issue, first with Bill Clinton and later with Barack Obama. By 2013 the Republican threats reach their zenith the president Obama stared them down ending not only that crisis but also republican attempts to use at in later dates.

I am highlighting this article because it attracted many informed comments and seems to have been appreciated by a large number of readers. It gave me an opportunity to talk about a subject that I had some familiarity with from my work in government and that enabled me to weave together politics and the law. Sometimes otherwise dry subjects can really be interesting when they are explained with sufficient detail and are made accessible to people with no background in the subject. I thought this article hit that sweet spot pretty well.

CFK

Resistance and joy: The story of Jacques Lusseyran (2006)

This is the first story I ever wrote for Daily Kos and I still think despite writing 771 stories over the years, it is my most heartfelt one. We are still here and we are still a vital community who gets things done. I celebrate us!

ALGEBRATEACHER

WYFP: Marry me (2013)

This is from a time when I hosted WYFP nine years ago, almost to the day. Mrs. algebrateacher and I are doing fine. I am retired now. We have been fixing up the house in preparation for the next lots-and-lots of years together because that’s what married people do.

PTOLEMY

Saving the republic: The Star Wars prequels finally make sense in the 2016 election (2016)

This piece on the looming authoritarian threat in 2016, as seen through the Star Wars prequels [is my best]. Because I was right. And because the Sith always return.

1BQ

R.I.P., Dad (2008)

[It’s my best] because I cried while writing it.

MAGNIFICO

Hugs (2012)

[It] may not be the best thing I’ve ever written, but I think it really captured the joy we had with Obama’s re-election in 2012.

SOLLACE

The futures of the GOP (2021)

Honestly, I think my first post is my favourite. I like it because 1) it helped me organize my thoughts for the video dialogue on which I was working at the time; and 2) it resulted in some interesting discussion.

My only regret is that I didn’t stick around right after posting so that I could have interacted with the commentariat. I posted it with the expectation that it would sink without trace, and wandered off for the rest of the day, but I woke up the next day to find a good discussion going on, with some thoughtful comments. I had wanted to be more of a participant and less of a lurker, and I’d blown it!

Oh well. Anyway, despite losing that chance for interaction, it remains my favourite. It’s a reminder that I shouldn’t underestimate myself. 🙂

APPY

Pow Wow (Commemorative for Matthew Gives Plenty) with my many feathered friends (2021)

Although it did not attract a lot of attention when originally published, I feel Pow Wow is an impactful diary on several counts. There is the obvious significance of the occasion on which it is based. For another, it is a different approach for my cultural activism by encouraging readers to participate in an interactive way and on their own level. It also helps bring focus to the importance of better understanding and protecting Indigenous culture. I defer to Meteor Blades’ comment that it “needs more eyes..

CAMERON PROF (as BKSKINNER)

A white Jewish male: My perspective on why we all need to pay for slavery reparations (2020)

I have been lucky enough for a pretty dumb guy, to have been blessed with people on here that for some reason enjoy my writing. I have written many thousands of diaries on here first under my old handle of BFSkinner and now under my current one. Some diaries get 500 plus comments, I give myself a pat on the back and go on for another day.

The one diary, though, that I am most “proud” of writing reached far fewer eyeballs: 66 diary recs with 27 TJ recs. The diary was written in a topic I no longer broach on here, for multiple reasons: being Jewish. It talked about how I as a Jewish guy could find no other reason to not favor giving reoperations, it is a situation of a no-brainer. For all the work and the vast majority of that forced and undetpaid and underappreciated made by the black community we owe them.

OCEANDIVER

The Daily Bucket: Friendly Seal is a mom!! (2016)

Everything I write is about nature and the environment. To me, humans are just a minor part of the world but the twisted perception we have of our importance is what’s led to pretty much all the problems that have emerged, from environmental to political to pandemic, you name it. My little diaries describe what I pay attention to in the natural world; I post them in the nature community groups Backyard Science (Daily Buckets) and Birds and Birdwatching (Dawn Choruses). We invite readers to join us daily and weekly—the comment threads are a great way to focus attention on Mother Earth and to honor her.

Here’s one diary dear to my heart, about a friend in my local bay. I call her Friendly Seal.

HARICOT BLUE

The Unfathomable Stupidity of Rich White Men (2020)

This was a fun one to write and obviously touched a nerve at the time (in the heat of the BLM protest movement) but I’m afraid my optimism about the BLM protests presaging a genuine revolution against our Pasty Plutocratic Patriarchy has proved unfounded.

P CAREY

Books That Changed My Life: The Brothers Karamazov (2014)

Though published years ago and when I was fairly new at posting on Daily Kos, this is (if not my best) the diary I would single out. And while the writing is rough and I have learned much since, the energy of the piece still moves me. Ostensibly about a book that changed my life, it is more a requiem on the death of my youngest, dearest brother.

NONLINEAR

The handbook for dissenting voices here on Daily Kos (2021)

I think it is my best because I believe it addresses a question that is at the very heart of why Daily Kos is unique. It asks how can we encourage writers to express ideas and feelings outside the Daily Kos mainstream. It doesn’t do it by asking the question directly but rather by providing an answer.

OCCAMS HATCHET

Calling bullshit on the fear mongers (2006)

I really kinda like this one, because it’s timeless: Republicans are still all and only about fear (which begets hatred), so most of this still applies. (Plus ngl, I loved it when we could drop f-bombs around here and nobody said boo, lol.)

CLIO2

LGBTQ Literature: Nonbinary ways of being (2021)

DK writers and commenters greatly aided my own gender exploration. This diary reviews four volumes of personal accounts by a variety of nonbinary individuals, with some reference to my own life. And with a coda in—how DK!—cat pix. 😉 Both a thank you and the piece of writing here I’ve been most proud to own.

GREG DWORKIN

Mr. Roosevelt’s social insurance​​​​​​​ (2011)

I stumbled on this exhibit and the visuals were just so evocative of a long gone era, while the story still hits home.

That’s it for this week, so get to reading!

It’s not too late to submit your own TIMB story, of course. To make my job easier (and data entry much faster—give some love to Christopher Reeves for his help on that front), please use this format for your submission:

Linked title of story (year published)

A sentence or two in your own words—not an excerpt from the story—about why it’s your “best.”

See you in the comments!

RELATED: Daily Kos Turns 20: Let’s showcase our best work! Up next: The man who started it all—Kos himself

One more thing: If you’ve already submitted, there’s no need to do it again, and we are only accepting one story per person. And if you simply can’t narrow down your choice before comments close, we’ll be back with another installment (and opportunity to submit) next week, when I’ll have even more Community submissions.

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Walmart, the original big-box vendor based in Bentonville, Arkansas, has always looked for ways to promote its wholesome family image. Sure, there are plenty of stories about Walmart killing communities and small businesses. Boy, though, one thing they did do was offer people with disabilities an opportunity to work as a greeter, right? It was a job that put Americans with disabilities out front and made them visible. Well, it was until 2019; that’s when Walmart cut the greeter position at over 1,000 stores, leaving many disabled staff members without a job. 

Before all of that, though, Walmart was a champion for those with disabilities, right? Not if you ask the jury that heard the case of Marlo Spaeth. Spaeth has Down syndrome. After working for almost 16 years at her Walmart location with high performance evaluations for her work, Spaeth was switched to a new position. Because she had difficulty adjusting to her new schedule, Walmart fired her in July 2015. Spaeth asked for a 60-minute adjustment to her new schedule to match her prior work schedule, but the company refused. She asked to be rehired in a similar role, and the company refused to consider her application. That was the moment that Spaeth decided to fight back.

From CNBC:

Then, after nearly 16 years of working there, Walmart abruptly fired her in 2015. Spaeth, who has Down syndrome, was devastated.

Her sister and legal guardian, Amy Jo Stevenson, said that Spaeth quickly “receded into a shell” and lost the sense of purpose she got from the job at the Walmart Supercenter in Manitowoc, where she had thrived on interacting with customers and had received praise from supervisors in performance reviews.

Devastated. Sixteen years of her life seemed to have been snatched away from her. After hearing a four-day court case brought by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, a jury in Green Bay, Wisconsin, came back quickly with a record judgment of $125 million dollars. The verdict was meant to be a symbol of the level of her pain and suffering, as well as a reflection of the deliberate action that Walmart had taken to seemingly move an employee with a disability around internally in a way that set them up to fail so they could be fired.

Markos and Kerry talk Ukraine and speak with Wisconsin Democratic Party chair Ben Wikler on how hitting back at Republicans helps win elections

In 2020, Walmart reported $129 billion in profit, not counting other businesses where Walmart heirs have ownership stakes. The ownership group is reported to be worth roughly $240 billion, with each family member sitting on around $62 billion. For Walmart, though, Spaeth’s case isn’t over. 

While the judge reduced the verdict to $300,000, the maximum allowed in the state, according to Spaeth’s sister, she was still excited about the possibility of going back to work at Walmart. 

Walmart makes an interesting claim in its appeal, according to Disability Scoop:

“So while Walmart knew that Ms. Spaeth had requested a return to her prior fixed schedule, nothing in Walmart’s knowledge suggested that this request was linked to her Down syndrome,” reads the court filing, which requests a new trial. “Walmart did not act with malice or reckless indifference towards Ms. Spaeth’s rights.”

There is an interesting thing to note here: Walmart is effectively going to contend that it had no way of knowing that Down syndrome impacts a person’s ability to adjust to a schedule and that after a schedule has been the same for almost 16 years, it is not surprising that changes to that schedule would be exceptionally difficult for that person.

Walmart simply wasn’t aware that Spaeth had Down syndrome, it seems, or they never took it into consideration. Walmart just didn’t see her, or her disability. They knew her for 16 years, but never saw Spaeth for this part of who she was. So they must be blameless, right? 

Note: this article originally had an incorrect profit margin pulled which has been corrected.

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Polling shows a majority still support mask mandates on airplanes and public transit, but as has been the case throughout the pandemic, the intensity is with the opposition. The people who previously were having violent temper tantrums over being required to wear masks now get their way thanks to a decision by a single Trump-appointed judge … and some are shifting quickly to trying to impose their preferences on their mask-wearing neighbors.

Because it’s not just about personal freedom for people who have bought into the Republican culture war on masks. (Never mind that the freedom they’re ostensibly seeking is to dismantle the concept of public health and spread a dangerous virus.) It’s about dividing the nation and defeating opponents. And, as many of the tweets about how this divide has played out in the days that followed the judge striking down the mandate show, it’s about the feelings of anti-maskers taking precedence over the comfort and safety of people who still wear them.

RELATED STORY: An unqualified Trump judge strikes again, voids CDC mask mandate at airports, transportation hubs

This one is from Donald Trump’s surgeon general, so, uh, I’d think he’d have had plenty of experience with this phenomenon.

In response to a taunting reply, Adams added, “My wife is being treated for cancer, and people like you got WAY more upset about being asked to wear a mask than ive gotten about being asked not to wear one to protect my wife’s life.”

Here’s someone who had a great response:

Many people in the replies to that one suggested answering that you have COVID but will take the mask off if your neighbor really wants. Here’s a little twist on that:

Last week a tweet asking what people would say if they got that question drew a lot of good responses:

If you plan to fly or ride public transit while masked in the near future, do you have a response planned to rude questions? What is it?

RELATED STORY:

There is no ‘return to normal’ for disabled people in a pandemic

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Republicans are flogging a culture war focused on public schools, but it doesn’t seem to be landing with the parents of actual schoolchildren. A new NPR/Ipsos poll of parents of school-aged children finds people generally happy with their kids’ schools and teachers, and not foaming at the mouth over race and LGBTQ issues.

Education rated as the third-highest concern of parents in the poll, but 88% of respondents agreed with the statement, “my child’s teacher(s) have done the best they could, given the circumstances around the pandemic,” and 82% agreed that “my child’s school has handled the pandemic well.” Republicans have largely moved on from trying to whip up rage about how schools have handled the pandemic, though, focusing more on demonizing marginalized groups and arguing that parents should be allowed to micromanage the curriculum. (Right-wing white parents, anyway.) But that’s not getting a lot of traction, either.

RELATED STORY: From ‘critical race theory’ to ‘grooming,’ the real Republican agenda is ending public education

Three out of four of the parents polled agreed that “my child’s school does a good job keeping me informed about the curriculum, including potentially controversial topics.” Small minorities said the ways their children’s schools taught about the issues being pushed by Republicans actually conflicted with their own family’s values: 18% for gender and sexuality, 19% for race and racism, and 14% for U.S. history.

Listen to a breakdown of the May primaries on Daily Kos Elections’ The Downballot podcast with David Nir and David Beard

And those numbers, small as they are, don’t mean that 19% of people think their kid’s school is too liberal on race and racism or 14% on U.S. history—the people who said the schools’ teachings clashed with their family’s values were as likely to be Democrats as Republicans. A Native American parent in Texas, for instance, told NPR, “It’s more of a water-down effect … [the teachers] kind of whitewash the way that history is taught to their kids.” That parent wants his kid taught more about the French and Indian Wars, the Spanish-American War, and about slavery during the Revolutionary War, NPR reports. By contrast, a white parent in Wisconsin who thinks the schools are too liberal on these issues cited her son being asked to identify his pronouns and a teacher making “snarky comments about white privilege.” Equally valid and serious concerns about the quality of education, amiright?

If you listen to Christopher Rufo, one of the right wing’s major gurus on waging culture wars in the schools, critical race theory is a “two to one issue,” a surefire winner for Republicans. Go figure, though: The main poll he cites was conducted by the right-wing Manhattan Institute. But what about Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin’s victory in November after he campaigned against critical race theory? Well, recent data has suggested that Youngkin’s advantage came from senior citizens, not from the parents of school-aged children, and it’s not the first data undermining the narrative that enraged parents turned the election to Youngkin.

Demonizing LGBT people and foaming at the mouth that teaching about racism or the contributions of Black and brown people oppresses white kids by making them feel “humiliated” might energize the Republican base, but it’s not a majority message. Banning books because they have LGBT characters or depict slavery as the brutal system of kidnapping, torture, and rape that it was is not a majority message.

Republicans are attacking teachers. They’re attacking vulnerable kids. They’re trying to micromanage what all kids can learn according to their very specific values, to the active exclusion of all others. These things matter—they are actively harming people—and they’re also not the political winners Republicans are confidently portraying them to be. The media needs to internalize these things in shaping its coverage, rather than allowing the Republican operatives regularly billed as “concerned parents” in their Fox News appearances to define what the parents of schoolchildren look like or think. And equally, Democrats need to fight back, vigorously and boldly, because Republicans really are overstepping on this.

RELATED STORIES:

A look inside banned Florida math textbooks suggests Republicans simply lied about what’s in them

Citing ‘humiliated’ white people, Mississippi governor signs anti-critical race theory law

Forget CRT—new poll shows what Republicans really don’t want taught in schools

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Sen. Elizabeth Warren has lots of plans for how Democrats can use the next 200 days before the election to fight for people. Congressional leadership is ready to take her up on one of them. Warren has advocated for legislation giving the Federal Trade Commission authority to investigate price gouging. Put the bill on the floor, she says, and “dare the Republicans to vote against it. A clean, simple bill.”

“Let’s put it to the Republicans. Do they care about price gouging from the perspective of helping the consumers? Or from the perspective of letting the big corporations continue to get away with it?” Democratic leadership indicated Thursday that they’re all for it.

“There’s no excuse for big oil companies to profiteer, to price gouge or exploit families,” House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said Thursday. “Congress must do more to beef up the FTC’s ability to crack down on potential gas price manipulation and price gouging,” added Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer. “Republicans will face a dilemma: Which side are they on?” Schumer said. “On the consumer and lowering gas prices? Or on the side of the big oil?”

Sen. Maria Cantrell (D-WA), who chairs the Commerce Committee, wants the FCT to have this power. She explained that the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission has authority to investigate and punish energy market manipulation—and has had for a few decades. That same regulatory power needs to exist for transportation rules, as well. “We need to make sure that there is a policeman on the beat,” Cantwell said. “It doesn’t seem right that we should have more transparency on a product like wheat or corn than we would on oil.’’

Draft legislation would create a unit within the FTC to monitor transportation fuel pricing and which would have the authority to levy fines and penalties. The idea in the draft is to double the maximum penalty for wholesale oil market manipulation to as much as $2 million/day for each violation.

While leadership didn’t say, moving forward with the bill will also force Joe Manchin to take a side, because his buddies in the industry are really unhappy with the idea. “Using the power of the FTC to undertake political investigations of American energy companies will not lower gas prices by a penny,″  Anne Bradbury, CEO of the American Exploration and Production Council, said of the proposal. “At a time of historic inflation and economic contraction, Americans deserve real policies that boost domestic oil and gas production,’’ she said.

Which is kind of a problem for them—why would they be protesting the idea so much if they weren’t right now engaged in price gouging? If they had nothing to worry about, why would they be worried about being investigated?

“Here’s the bottom line: They’re not using the money for domestic energy production,” Schumer said of the $77 billion in profits the big U.S. producers made last year. “They’re using it for stock buybacks. They’re using it to make their shares go up. We wouldn’t be here if the oil companies were using it to make the American consumer’s price cheaper.”

“Oil companies last year made record profits on these tragedies almost like vultures,” Schumer said. “We have the Ukraine tragedy. We have the COVID tragedy. And did they try to make things better? No, they come in and made record profits.”

“In this time of war and any time, there’s no excuse for big oil companies to pretend to profiteer, to price gouge or exploit families,” Pelosi added. “That is why Democrats are moving forward with forceful action that will stop and hold accountable oil and gas companies for profiteering and manipulating markets. This is a top priority for all of us.”

Related stories

Headlines start to catch up to the Republicans’ cynical strategy on Russia and gas prices

This week on The Brief: The geopolitical dangers of relying on rogue states for our energy needs

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Politico:

The Rise and Fall of the Star White House Reporter

For years covering the White House was a kind of golden ticket in the media. Then came the Biden administration.

But during the age of Biden, a perch inside the James S. Brady Press Briefing Room has become something altogether different. It’s become a bore.

Andrew Sprung/American Prospect:

How the Texas Legislature Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the ACA Marketplace

It’s all about pretending a boatload of federal cash helps the free market.

The Lone Star State, remember, is one of 12 states that have refused to enact the ACA Medicaid expansion, thus denying almost a million of its own residents health insurance funded almost entirely by the federal government. What’s more, until 2021, it was one of just three states to refuse to actively regulate its own ACA marketplace at all. That meant it ceded rate review (that is, scrutiny of insurers’ proposed annual premiums and authority to accept or reject them) to the federal Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS).

The Medicaid expansion is still dead in the water there. But last June, Texas’s legislature unanimously passed, and Gov. Greg Abbott signed, a bill (S.B. 1296) that not only established state rate review for the marketplace, but also effectively directed the Texas Department of Insurance to mandate that all insurers price their gold plans well below the price of their comparable silver plans, and also increase the margin by which bronze plans are priced below silver.

If that sounds bizarre, you are right. Texas is taking advantage of odd quirks in the Affordable Care Act’s design to get dirt-cheap exchange coverage for its residents. Other states could stand to learn from its example.

Charles Gaba/ACA Signups:

Not Joking: Texas Republicans Pass Law Which Dramatically Improves The ACA. CMS Should Follow Suit.

So what’s the point of Silver Loading?

Well, the key to this is that the formula for the premium subsidy tax credits (APTC) is based on the cost of the benchmark Silver plan…but the subsidies themselves can be applied to ANY plan.

Notice how the Gold plan is now priced LOWER than the Silver plan? That means that an enrollee can now get a Gold plan (which have lower deductibles/other cost sharing) for less than (or around the same as) a Silver plan instead. Even more important, it means that the APTC subsidies are increased, thus making Bronze plans free (or dirt cheap) for many subsidized enrollees…and even some Gold plans.

War on the Rocks:

IS HUNGARY UKRAINE’S BIGGEST PROBLEM IN THE EUROPEAN UNION?

The most controversial non-Western relationship that Orbán has cultivated is with Putin. Orbán ran on a platform of making utilities more affordable, and so securing cheap energy supplies was a major priority for his administration. When Hungary’s long-term gas contract with Gazprom expired in 2015, Putin personally went to Budapest to sign a new sweetheart gas deal that flew in the face of regional, European priorities to decrease energy dependence on Moscow. Orbán and Putin also signed a deal for Russia’s nuclear-energy giant Rosatom to finance and build a new nuclear power plant at Paks. Orbán also critiqued E.U. sanctions against Moscow in the wake of the annexation of Crimea, arguing that Europe “shot itself in the foot” by alienating Russia.

Cultivating close relations with China and Russia is key to Orbán’s mobilization strategy. As an illiberal populist, Orbán mobilizes his base with anti-Western and anti-European Union sentiment. Orbán is speaking to Hungarians who feel let down by the promise of European accession. While overall the quality of life in Hungary improved after it joined the European Union, the gap between Hungary and its Western neighbors on the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development’s “Better Life” index and GDP per capita remain significant and, moreover, many rural voters have not enjoyed the same opportunities as the liberal elite in Budapest. For Orbán, China and Russia offer an alternative to the Western liberal democracy that he blames for stymieing Hungarian greatness.

WaPo:

DEVOURING THE RAINFOREST

Cattle ranching, responsible for the great majority of deforestation in the Amazon, is pushing the forest to the edge of what scientists warn could be a vast and irreversible dieback that claims much of the biome. Despite agreement that change is necessary to avert disaster, despite attempts at reform, despite the resources of Brazil’s federal government and powerful beef companies, the destruction continues.

But the ongoing failure to protect the world’s largest rainforest from rapacious cattle ranching is no longer Brazil’s alone, a Washington Post investigation shows. It is now shared by the United States — and the American consumer…

In the two years since Washington lifted a moratorium that was imposed on raw Brazilian beef over food safety concerns, the United States has grown to become its second-biggest buyer. The country bought more than 320 million pounds of Brazilian beef last year — and is on pace to purchase nearly twice as much this year. The biggest supplier is the beef behemoth JBS, whose fleet of brands stock some of America’s major retail chains and businesses: Kroger, Goya Foods, Albertsons (the parent company of Safeway, Jewel-Osco and Vons).

CNN:

New text messages reveal Fox’s Hannity advising Trump White House and seeking direction

CNN obtained Meadows’ 2,319 text messages, which he selectively provided in December to the House committee investigating the January 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol. While the logs show Meadows communicating with multiple Fox personalities, as well as a number of journalists from other organizations, Hannity stands out with 82 messages. The texts, including dozens of newly disclosed messages, offer a real-time window into how Hannity, a close friend of Trump, was reacting to the election and its aftermath…

Hannity has said he is not a journalist, and Fox does not hold him to traditional journalistic standards. He is more akin to a GOP activist and entertainer, like some of his fellow Fox hosts. In addition to Hannity, Fox’s Laura Ingraham, Tucker Carlson, Maria Bartiromo and Brian Kilmeade all sent messages to Meadows as well.

A spokesperson for Fox did not respond to a request for comment.

USA Today:

Jan. 6 committee aims for June hearings on Capitol attack. Will they affect the 2022 elections?

The Jan. 6 committee investigating the Capitol attack plans hearings in June and a report this fall, putting its findings in the middle of campaign season.

Members of the committee have acknowledged the urgency of their investigation into what led to the attack Jan. 6, 2021, what happened that day and how to prevent it from occurring again. But legal battles, including one from former President Donald Trump that went all the way to the Supreme Court, have delayed the committee’s work as new lines of inquiry emerged.

Holding weeks of hearings in the heart of the primaries could highlight partisan reaction to the results. But experts say the findings of a panel led by Democrats into Trump and his Republican supporters would be political whenever they are released.

“It’s always politics season,” said Peter Loge, a media professor at George Washington University and former chief of staff for a Democratic member of Congress.