William Rivers Pitt at TruthOut is righteously appalled at the recent George W. Bush media tour. Ever the cunning "political animal," Mr. Bush waited until a man far less able to disguise his asshole-nature occupied the Oval Office, because, gosh, anyone looks good next to him. But Mr. Bush still peddles an art book of disfigured soldiers and the "liberal" media doesn't mention that he put them there. Also, they ignore his role in creating all those refugees Mr. Trump doesn't want to let in now.
In case you were wondering, Factcheck.org finds the CBO's predictions of the Affordable Care Act's effects have actually been pretty accurate. The myth that they're "wildly off" is largely the result of right-wing cherry-picking -- they love saying the CBO got the number of people insured through the exchanges wrong, as if the exchanges are the only possible way to get health insurance (i.e., as if the Medicaid expansions don't exist, and as if the individual and employer mandates aren't driving up insurance participation).
Brian Alexander at The Atlantic visits the decaying glass-manufacturing town of Lancaster, Ohio. But Lancaster hasn't gone south because its jobs have gone overseas (though that could be coming!), but because its main employer, the nationally-famous Anchor Hocking, has endured at least half a dozen ownership changes at the hands of private-sector "financial engineers." And its workforce has declined by about 80%, which is usually what happens when banksters play their shell games.
Hot on the heels of a bad CBO report, Mr. Trump's spokeshack, Sean Spicer, says that "insurance for everybody" was never the President's promise, but a "goal." Next week he'll be telling us it was more of a "wish"! Seriously, nothing about the phrases "insurance for everybody" or "everybody's got to be covered" is ambiguous, and the more excuses Mr. Trump makes when he doesn't deliver, the fewer fans he'll have. That is still how it works, right? Or is the persistence of rage all his votaries care about?
James Russell at Labor Notes describes how Connecticut state workers switched from a 401(k) to a "real retirement plan," i.e., a defined-benefit plan. A defined contribution plan, as you may know, only assures what you pay in; a defined benefit plan assure what you get out, and defined contribution plans like the 401(k) suffer at the hands of bubble markets and overcharging pension managers. We must remind each other that the best attribute of a pension plan is that it be there, not that it gets the blessing of Wall Street.
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