CO-04 (Special Election)
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(R) Greg Lopez
(R) Trisha Calvarese
90%
10%
President (To Win Colorado)
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(D) Joe Biden*
(R) Donald Trump
80%
20%↓
CO-01 (Denver)
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(D) Diana DeGette*
90%
CO-02 (Boulder-ish)
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(D) Joe Neguse*
90%
CO-03 (West & Southern CO)
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(D) Adam Frisch
(R) Jeff Hurd
(R) Ron Hanks
40%
30%
20%
CO-04 (Northeast-ish Colorado)
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(R) Lauren Boebert
(R) Deborah Flora
(R) J. Sonnenberg
30%↑
15%↑
10%↓
CO-05 (Colorado Springs)
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(R) Dave Williams
(R) Jeff Crank
50%↓
50%↑
CO-06 (Aurora)
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(D) Jason Crow*
90%
CO-07 (Jefferson County)
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(D) Brittany Pettersen
85%↑
CO-08 (Northern Colo.)
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(D) Yadira Caraveo
(R) Gabe Evans
(R) Janak Joshi
60%↑
35%↓
30%↑
State Senate Majority
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DEMOCRATS
REPUBLICANS
80%
20%
State House Majority
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DEMOCRATS
REPUBLICANS
95%
5%
September 13, 2019 07:25 AM UTC
35 Comments
The man with the very good brain who bankrupted casinos in Atlantic City is well on his way to doing the same thing to the United States. The budget deficit passed $1 trillion for the fiscal year – and the fiscal year isn't over yet. Did you catch the laughable Kevin McCarthy (the patriot who takes Trump his favorite candy) say his first priority as speaker would be tackling spending?
In other news David Dennison declares war on clean water and the DOJ is officially weaponized and hunting *rump’s enemies. After 2
83 mass shootings already booked in 2019six deaths from vaping someone is finally concerned about 'the children'.Oh, and somehow a major news network managed to air a political ad with AOC's face on fire.
#BeBest
Hard to decide who blows more smoke up the old mans' ass, McCarthy or Pompeo.
McCarthy is a power hungry weasel, but I think Pompeo is just reveling in being important and collecting data for his eventual book.
My take on last night's debate
No "e" in Kamala.
She identifies as Indian and black – but I know what you mean by African American and I agree an all anything* ticket is doubtful.
*I know all white male is pretty common.
But selecting a VP at the nominating convention is about choosing a solid VP of course, but politically it's supposed to be about improving the electoral math. Harris would need electoral juice in WI or maybe AZ
Someday, not yet, but someday, someone will require Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders and others who are supporting "Medicare for All" to answer what the tax rates will be to finance this idea. A few weeks ago Chris Matthews asked Warren multiple times how high the tax rate will be to finance her "Medicare for All" plan. She refused to answer the question, but repeated that "overall costs for taxes and health insurance" would be lower. I understand her point, but I don't believe that will be true for all taxpayers. Regardless, at some point she will have to acknowledge that tax rates will be raised to, I don't know, 60%? Let's see how that plays in the general election should she be our nominee.
American voters today aren’t particularly adept at nuance.
I predict October 5th.
The beauty of Bernie and Warren is that only rich people will pay for these taxes.
In a political campaign, the details of "Medicare for All" don't matter because it is a marker, an aspirational goal, like many political issues. What was it going to cost to put a man on the moon? What will it cost to de-carbonize the economy? The actual legislation will have to go through the sausage grinder, and that is where the details will be handled.
And yet we wonder why people are so cynical about vacuous promises made but never capable of being fulfilled.
Because they are simply aspirational.
You mean like the vacuous promise that we can change the country from the middle?
It seems a basic tenet of "moderates" that change can be made by "working with conservatives"…that bi-partisanship is the answer to progress. That, somehow, it will be different when the bankers and corporations and the filthy stinking rich people (the Sackler family, say) who control them come to Jesus and realize the error of their ways.
Yesterday I attended a progressive picnic in Mesa county. Someone asked Joe Salazar how you get oil and gas workers to willingly abandon their industry and be happy to retrain and change their profession.
He responded by saying, "I don't have an answer for that." But I did. I told the crowd, "spend you energy elsewhere." It is unlikely oil and gas workers will ever accept their future, but the ever shrinking prices of nat gas and oil will make up their minds for them.
Is it something less than "aspirational" to believe Mitch McConnell will suddenly change his ways? Are you going to shame the NRA into policy reversals? Doubtful.
Big money doesn't negotiate…Big money dictates.
I was paying $1,200 per month for individual health insurance policy the year before the ACA came into effect. After the ACA went into effect, my premium – with the same deductible – went to $651 per month. That was the effect of the vacuous Affordable Care Act. Maybe there is something to "market solutions."
And I didn't need to wait in line all day at the Dept. of Health and Human Services, Division of Care Management, Office of Primary Care Provider Assignments, to get assigned to a primary care provider by the government.
Or to wait at the DHHS, Division of Pharmaceutical Care, to get prescription refilled.
I simply went onto the Colorado state portal and shopped.And by the way, another old ditty from the GOP talking points of yesteryear – that the lowest level of government sometimes governs best – proved to be true in 2011 when the federal government exchange website turned out to be such a train wreck while the CO site worked fine.
But go ahead, keep chasing after those lofty promises of great things from E.W. ("I have a plan for that") and B.S. ("Free stuff for all")
Promises which are going scare the shit out of more than half the country and re-elect Trump.
Thanks for that tired, unlikely, supposition. I am not convinced by your unsupportable confidence in corporate responsibility.
The ACA did nothing for me. I live in a "rural" area that did not seem to benefit from the plan created by the Heritage Foundation and the AEI. The functional problem with private health care is the 35%profit margin of health insurers.
In the years I was paying thousands of dollars in insurance premiums to United Health Care, I could never quite afford a plan that didn't have a massive deductible. The result? In the 15 years I sent them premiums, the total they spent on my coverage was the postage to tell me of premium increases.
During that time, the CEO of United Heathcare was pulling down an 8 figure salary…as much as $75,000,000/ year.
I still have to pay $115/month to a private company, even on Medicare. You know as well as I do Bernies' plan will never pass. What will emerge under Democratic leadership when we win, will be an option to enter Medicare at any age. We will have to fight to keep the Republicans and moderate, insurance company loving Democrats from watering benefits down to the point of being uncompetitive. That is the next battleground.
That wasn't a market solution. That was heavy-handed government intervention. You're welcome.
Maybe we wouldn't mind the heavy hand intervening on prescription drug pricing? Didn't TwoScoops promise us he'd deal with that? Like we did in clean energy and ending cannabis prohibition, we're once again leading the conversation.
“Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will. Find out just what any people will quietly submit to and you have found out the exact measure of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them, and these will continue till they are resisted with either words or blows, or with both. The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppress.”
~ Frederick Douglass
👍
And the corollary to Douglass' profoundly wise observation: moving the Overton window on health care discussions. Eight years ago, the "Public Option" was politically unfeasible. Now it is the most conservative of all the various plans being debated.
That is significant progress.
https://www.sanders.senate.gov/download/options-to-finance-medicare-for-all?inline=file
As expected, this link to Sanders' options to finance Medicare for all provides a lot of tax increases, mostly on businesses and the wealthy, but also on middle class taxpayers. Because this white paper does not tell us how much his plan will actually cost (!) I assume all of the options are required to pay for his plan.
That dog won't hunt.
From the linked white paper:
pretty sure you have been warned about facty reasonableness.
No one wants your truthiness.
We want flames! with great big blazing all caps. Names and innuendo. Farm animal references and any kind of over the top implication you can muster.
<watching>
Sudafed: I saw the reference to the "typical working family" making $50,000 as supposedly saving $4,400. Lots of questions about their assumptions there. Whatever.
More pertinent is an analysis of his other tax increases. The total revenue gains from his "options" is $1.6 Trillion per year. (A trillion here and a trillion there, and pretty soon we're talking about real money.) Some of these increases will hit those making $250,000 per year.
The largest revenue generator @ $420 Billion/year is eliminating the employer paid premiums which are currently exempt from payroll and income taxes. I am confused. Apparently, employer paid premiums must be something like $1.4 Trillion (resulting in a 30% reduction of taxes = $420 Billion). But, that's not a tax revenue generator unless employers will still have to pay the $1.4 Trillion in health care benefits. So, they have to pay $1.4 Trillion without any tax benefit?
This plan needs a lot of vetting, but bottom line it entails raising $1.6 Trillion per year in taxes. It will not pass and it's dishonest to let Bernie supporters believe that it has a snowball's chance that it will pass.
That's weird. That's how Voyageur refers to me when he's trying to mock me. At any rate, here's some information from a paper from the Sanders institute.
I'm sure there are other ideas about paying for it, and the costs, floating around. I know there was a Koch study that suggested that Medicare for All saved $200 billion across 10 years.
But, I'd settle for us paying the same amount as we do now for healthcare and making it possible for tens of millions of folks who have no coverage or can't afford to use theirs to be able to have the healthcare we all deserve. Socializing the costs and the benefits isn't a problem for me.
I call you Sudafed because I can spell that!
If I like my current health care coverage, can I tell Bernie to f…k off?
CHB — aren't you on Medicare? Doesn't that mean you're already benefitting from BernieCare?
Warren is also solidly in the Medicare for All camp, although she has hinted that she might be open to other plans “if they work”.
Vox published an analysis of a RAND study of New York State’s public health plan puts some numbers on how a single payer plan would affect consumer costs and health outcomes. Here’s a Rand study chart, comparing status quo (SQ) vs the New York Health Act (NYHA) over time :
As you can see, overall expenditures for status quo vs public health plan are similar; the difference is that consumers are getting more comprehensive health services, accessing health care more and earlier, paying no premiums or copays, and administrative costs are way down under NYHA.
And, therein lies the fundamental and most important difference between Warren and Sanders, across the board . . .
. . . Warren will support other ideas that work; Bernie is simply incapable of supporting any other than Bernie.
In Warren’s world, it’s all roads that lead to better. In Bernie’s world there’s only one road, which should always lead to Bernie.
That about sums up Bernie, Dio.
Not having a TV I hadn't seen the candidates live & in-person before. I watched some of the debate, and I was impressed with how personable, articulate and impressive all the candidates were. Well, sometimes it is a little confusing to listen to Joe Biden.
Even the candidates I'm not interested in are valuable to the Democratic Party. It is more beneficial to have a deep bench, rather than a single, designate heir to Obama.
The Denverite on the Denver Sheriff
firingresignation. Their headline about asking questions about electing sheriffs seems to push for the idea that Denver should elect its sheriff. Why in the world would an election for essentially the manager of the city jails and abandoned vehicles be an improvement over the mayor appointing someone? If anything it would mean that sheriffs would almost never "resign" to spend more time with their families, but would instead stay until the next election.If the city council thinks the mayor is failing to find good sheriffs maybe they should look at taking that power for themselves instead of saying, "Oh, well more democracy will solve that. Elections solve every problem."
DENee, I take your point about electing sheriffs not necessarily curing the problem of incompetent or biased sheriffs. But I invite you to take a look at Fort Morgan, Colorado, where there is a lovely incestuous arrangement between the police chief, the city manager, and city council.
City Council appoints the city manager. The City Manager appoints the police chief. Only City Council members ever have to stand for election. So what happens when the police chief has to arrest his boss, the city manager, for assault on a child?
Not a whole lot, it turns out. Jeffery Wells, who is a real jerk by most accounts, is still City Manager, having gone through trial and a very lenient sentence. And the police chief still is under his supervision.
This is why we should have recall elections.
The guy is embarrassing.
My grandfathers were too – but they never ran for public office. And they both rest in peace.
Trump Requests Permanent Reauthorization of NSA Mass Spying Program Exposed by Snowden
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/15/us/politics/trump-nsa-call-records-program.html
This is a bad idea.
Why can't they at least call it what it is:
The End of The 4th Amendment and a huge hit on the 5th, Patriot Act.