A Chance Encounter on MLK Day

art credit: CertainlyHer

Jeffrey Tucker’s report on Fee.org with a Lyft driver on MLK Day:

The media narrative on American politics has become so tedious you don’t have to listen anymore. Every story seems to follow a formula, and never more so on than on the Martin Luther King holiday. Every headline proclaims how black Americans are horrified at Trump’s insensitivity to the historical plight of blacks in the civil rights movement. After all, he attacked Rep. John Lewis, which apparently violates some canon of the civic religion.

I had no interest in engaging this debate, but I did call a Lyft car this morning and my driver, a black woman raised in poverty, was very interested in doing so. The news was on and blaring how Trump was attacking the CIA, which made me laugh, and I said, “I’m no Trump supporter but that’s funny.”

She immediately shot back, “What do you not like about Trump?” I said a few things about his trade policies, but she was having none of it.

“Here it is Martin Luther King Jr. Day and I’m supposed to be all upset that Trump attacked John Lewis, but Trump is right. Lewis said he is not a legitimate president, so yeah Trump got upset. What exactly is Lewis doing to improve the lives of the poor in this town? Nothing. At least Trump has some ideas. He seems to care.”

Ok, now I’m listening.

“I’m glad Lewis marched in the protests so long ago,” she continued, “but you have to do more than march. That’s all these people do is march. Meanwhile, there are sections of Atlanta I’m afraid to drive in. And I say that as a black woman! It’s not even about race. Many blacks in this town live better than white people anywhere in the world. But there’s whole communities that have been forgotten. They are paid off with welfare checks but they don’t have skills or jobs, and they fear for their lives on their own streets.”

She was just getting going, so I wondered how far I could push this. What about Obamacare?

Explosion.

“Don’t get me started. My premiums are through the roof. I can’t afford it. Because I drive all day and night making money, I’m not poor enough to get any subsidies. So this year I’m going to have to pay $750 on my tax return because I can’t afford to buy insurance. But I can’t afford the health care either! And have you seen those deductibles? If anything should happen to you, you go bankrupt. I’ll tell you who benefited from Obamacare. Not the poor. It’s the insurance companies and the government.”

I pointed out that Hillary Clinton said she would try to improve it.

“You kidding? The whole campaign, she defended all this #@#$!. She is just like the rest of these people, all talk, no action, just like Trump said. She has been pushing a pen for 30 years. She is not affected by high premiums. Her health care is covered. She has no idea what the rest of us are going through.”

But, I said, Trump is rich and well-covered too.

“Yeah but he starts businesses and has to pay workers. He knows how to create jobs. People say he went bankrupt sometimes. That’s what you do if you are hardworking and trying to try new things. Bankruptcy is just part of business. You win and lose but at least he knows how to learn and respond. The rest of these people don’t do anything but give speeches and defend the way things are.”

 Read the rest here.
Meanwhile, over at PJ Media, Walter Hudson shared some thoughts about why we celebrate the life of Martin Luther King, Jr:

Whoever King really was, whatever he sincerely believed, the image of King worth celebrating was presented in that 1963 speech. We aspire toward a world where children "will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character." That vision of racial reconciliation, of judgment according to merit, speaks to each and every human being. It's something we can and should get behind. It evokes the American spirit, a point emphasized when King cited the Declaration of Independence. Ninety-four percent of Americans came to favor King because they associate him with that dream, not because they support whatever radicalism he later embraced.

More here.

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Gov. Kasich’s Medicaid Expansion again

art credit: KUT

Legal Insurrection reports [original links retained]

Full repeal or “roll back parts of ObamaCare”?

The ObamaCare Medicaid expansion is a horrible deal for low income Americans; it’s also where a large number of “newly covered” Americans get their new coverage.

Not only does the expansion include “automatic” enrollment in Medicaid through ObamaCare even if it’s not wanted, but expanding Medicaid to slightly higher income levels includes many who have managed to acquire a home or other assets.  Their home and assets, however, go to pay for their Medicaid bills after they die.  In essence, then, Medicaid functions as a loan from the federal government just as it always has, but because the income level has been raised, more Medicaid recipients than ever will have their assets seized to cover the cost of their Medicaid expenses.

Despite this, some GOP governors are fighting their own party to keep the Medicaid expansion in their states.

Politico reports:

Republican governors who reaped the benefits of Obamacare now find themselves in an untenable position — fighting GOP lawmakers in Washington to protect their states’ health coverage.

. . . .  President-elect Donald Trump heaped more pressure on lawmakers to find a resolution of the issue this week when he vowed to “repeal and replace Obamacare essentially simultaneously” after the Senate confirms Rep. Tom Price, his pick for Health and Human Services secretary.

But Trump’s push comes as at least five of the 16 Republican governors of states that took federal money to expand Medicaid are advocating to keep it or warning GOP leaders of disastrous consequences if the law is repealed without a replacement that keeps millions of people covered. They include Govs. Charlie Baker of Massachusetts, Rick Snyder of Michigan, John Kasich of Ohio, Asa Hutchinson of Arkansas and Brian Sandoval of Nevada.

The governors explain why they want to keep the Medicaid expansion in their states.

Politico continues:

“We are now able to provide health insurance to 700,000 people,” said Kasich, who circumvented his state Legislature to enact expansion in 2013 and who was the sole GOP presidential candidate in 2016 to defend that portion of Obamacare.

“Let’s just say they just got rid of it, didn’t replace it with anything,” he said. “What happens to the 700,000 people? What happens to drug treatment? What happens to mental health counseling? What happens to these people who have very high cholesterol and are victims from a heart attack? What happens to them?”

. . .

Part of Kasich’s argument is that the federal taxpayer dollars his state gets for Medicaid expansion is “our money,” that of Ohioans.

Hot Air explains this is not exactly the case:

Expanding Medicaid, Kasich has said, allowed him to “bring Ohio money back home,” preventing other states from getting $13 billion of “Ohioans’ federal tax dollars” in the first seven years. He circumvented a legislative ban on Obamacare expansion, waving off concerns about the cost with appeals to his experience in Congress in the ’90s.

In just three years, Kasich’s Obamacare expansion cost $11.3 billion, and not a penny of that new federal spending was “Ohio money” that would have otherwise gone to another state.

It’s not clear what President-elect Trump or the GOP Congress plan to do with or about the ObamaCare Medicaid expansion should they indeed succeed in repealing the entire law rather than picking and choosing what parts to to keep and what to “roll back.”

This report can remind voters why they should push Columbus legislators to pass the Ohio Health Care Compact, so that Ohio citizens can decide if they want to maintain or reject Obamacare. Recall that in 2011,

State Issue 3, a public vote on passage of the Healthcare Freedom Amendment in Ohio, passed overwhelmingly in all 88 Ohio counties.  In Cuyahoga County, the Amendment passed 202,010 votes (58.24%) to 144,908 votes (41.76%). [Source: Ohio GOP] 

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Tomi Lahren 's snowflakes

art credit: Pinterest

Tomi Lahren may not have Jeff Foxworthy's trademark delivery, but her "Final Thoughts" on snowflakes (The Blaze via YouTube) are worth a quick look.

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Congress certifies Trump’s Electoral College win

art credit: enVolve

It is over.

From The Hill (at 1:30pm Jan-06):

Several House Democrats tried to raise objections as a joint session of Congress met to formally count the Electoral College results certifying Donald Trump's presidential election.

Rep. Jim McGovern (D-Mass.) cited Russia's interference in the election as he raised the first Democratic objection to Trump's Electoral College victory.

Vice President Biden, who was presiding over the proceedings, ruled McGovern's objection out of order because it wasn't backed by a senator.

 . . .

Despite more attempts to stop the certification,

the process went swiftly and was over in under an hour, the final step in making Trump's White House win official.

So hopefully that will be the end of these reports and hearings about Russia“hacking” the election. See also here. 

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Obamacare: Don't tweak it. Repeal it.

art credit: netrightdaily

Jack Hellner at the American Thinker blog gets it in one opening sentence: 

Bad laws and regulations should be repealed, not tweaked – and Obamacare should go first.

Read the rest here.

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Blog Awards

New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day usually prompt retrospectives over the past year, lists of “Best of” and “Worst of,” and other round-ups. Yesterday, Doug Ross’s Director Blue website announced its Top 50 blog awards for 2016. The full list plus reader comments is here.

One website singled out by a reader is Politipage. It’s a handy aggregator for accessing some of the top conservative-leaning blogs and sources of news & analysis. I just bookmarked it. Take a look.

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Happy New Year

art credit: www.happynewyears2017.org

from the Cleveland Tea Party