Category: Ezra Klein

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Ezra Klein Healthcare Politics

Matt Drudge Opts Out Of Obamacare – Ignores Question from Ezra Klein

Yes, Matt Drudge is the same conservative hero responsible for much of the daily Republican talking points. If he wants to, Drudge, the owner of the omline conservative’s bible called The Drudge Report, could afford to pay for his healthcare out of pocket.

Pocket change.

Today,  Matt took to Twitter and tweeted that he has chosen to opt-out of Obamacare for life. And he was advising his less fortunate followers to do the same.

The tweet caught the eyes of Ezra Klein. Klein tweeted a question to Drudge: “Are you going to be uninsured? Or are you just buying qualifying insurance (in which case you’re not opting oyt)?”

Ezra point? That any policy sold in America must meet certain standards as laid out in Obamacare. So if Drudge is buying a policy on his own, it will still be governed under Obamacare rules.

As of now, Drudge hasn’t responded.

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Ezra Klein Politics

Ezra Klein Wonders – Is This The Laziest Congress Ever?

With their “big” accomplishments consisting of, umm… nothing and a constant war on women, Ezra Klein of Wonkblog wonders if this Congress is the laziest Congress ever!

Six months into its term, there’s little evidence that the 113th Congress will be the worst Congress ever. But they might be the laziest.

On Monday, simply by doing nothing, they allowed the interest rate on student loans to double, from 3.4 percent to 6.8 percent. That might be permissible if they were busy with more important things, like inventing a cure for cancer that’s also a source of endless clean energy. But they’re not even working this week.

The 112th Congress passed 220 laws. That’s the fewest of any Congress since we began keeping track in 1948. But the 113th Congress is on track to pass even fewer laws than that. “Just 15 bills have become law this year, compared to 23 over the same period in 2011,” writes Dashiel Bennett at the Atlantic Wire. It’s the do-nothingest Congress ever!

That doesn’t make it the worst Congress ever. In fact, it doesn’t even make it the worst Congress lately. Looking back at my 14 reasons the 112th Congress is one of the worst congresses ever, the 113th still has a ways to go. For instance, they haven’t derailed the recovery and nearly crashed the global economy, as the 112th managed to do during the debt-ceiling shenanigans of 2011. And that list doesn’t even include sequestration, which the 112th created and didn’t manage to avert. The 113th Congress has inflicted a bit of damage by doing nothing — those student loans being a great example — but the 112th Congress almost blew up the world through gridlock.

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Ed Schultz Ezra Klein MSNBC Tid Bits

Is Ed Schultz Losing His MSNBC Job To Ezra Klein

Since the departure of Keith Olbermann from MSNBC some years back, Ed Schultz has unofficially picked up Keith’s banner and ran with it. He is now considered by some one of the most liberal host on the cable network. And with that label, Ed’s primetime television slot at 8PM weeknight receives a decent size audience. But according to reporting by The New York Times, Ed’s show may soon be history.

Brian Stelter, a Times Media reporter wrote a piece about the future of MSNBC and compared the liberal leaning network to Fox News – the more conservative network. And coming to the end of the piece, Brian wrote:

Several MSNBC employees, who spoke about programming plans on the condition of anonymity, said the most likely candidate for a new show was the Washington Post columnist Ezra Klein, a frequent substitute for Ms. Maddow. Mr. Klein may start with a weekend time slot, but these people said the 8 p.m. weekday time slot held by Mr. Schultz was also a possibility.

Mr. Griffin, meanwhile, declined to comment on whether the performance of his prime-time lineup would provide a boost to the channel’s subscriber fees.

Of course the denials would come. When asked about this claim by Mediaite,  a spokesperson for MSNBC released the following statement:

“We’re very happy with the performance of our primetime lineup, which topped Fox News Channel three nights this week. There are no changes planned.”

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Ezra Klein Politics

Ezra Klein Answers – “Are You Better Off Today Than You Were 4 Years Ago?”

The two men running for President and Vice President on the Republican ticket have proven time and again that they are not afraid to tell a lie. Lies that have been debunked on numerous occasions and we are sure there will be many more lies debunked in the future.

But it seems lies are not the only hallmark of the Republican ticket. They are also good at stealing, as the two are parading around asking a question they stole from Ronald Reagan’s 1980 presidential campaign, “are you better off now than you were 4 years ago?” The question suggests that since President Obama took office, things in America have gotten worse.

Well here are the facts. Ezra Klein explains.

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Ezra Klein michael steel Politics

John Boehner Says No To Job Creation Plan

The nation is suffering. People are in desperate need of work. With an unemployment figures now standing at 9.2%, every concerned party is trying to come up with a plan to put Americans back to work. President Obama has said he will present his plan when Congress returns to work in September, and other Democrats are trying to come up with solutions as well.

One plan being floated around by John Larson, a Democratic Representative from Connecticut, would include jobs creation as part of the duties of the newly formed Super Committee. Larson’s plan would demand the Super Committee, in addition to their main task of coming up with $1.5 trillion in savings, come with a plan to create jobs and lower the unemployment to 5.5% by 2014.

Seems like a great plan. Instead of passing bills through the regular congress and having those bills die in the Republican controlled House of Representatives, Larson’s plan will leave job creation up to the Super Congress, knowing that if this body fails, then the same “triggers” will be activated – cutting from both the military and entitlement programs, as well as revenue increases. This trigger will hurt both Democrats and Republicans, thus a true effort to compromise will be made.

But John Boehner is already pulling the breaks on this plan. Ezra Klein posed the question to Boehner’s office on Friday and filed this report;

 I ran Larson’s proposal by House Speaker John Boehner’s (R-Ohio) office on Friday afternoon, and it was immediately shot down. The response: Deficit reduction will spur job creation and, therefore, the super committee does not need to take on an additional mission.

“As every economist and every rating agency has made clear, getting our deficit under control is the first step to help get our economy growing again and to create jobs,” said Michael Steel, spokesman for Boehner. “Without knowing the specifics of this proposal, my concern would be this is some sort of new window-dressing for the same tired old, discredited Washington stimulus spending proposals.”

But this reaction is obvious – If Americans work, Republicans lose. So Republican’s job now is to make sure America stays unemployed. That way, they hope to win in the next election.

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Ezra Klein Politics United States

Ezra Klein Is Wrong On This Issue

Steve Benen of The Washington Monthly ran an interesting piece, stating that judges who voted against the Affordable Care Act, or what the conservatives are calling ObamaCare, receive more press attention than those who voted for the bill.

He then broke it down by the numbers showing that on verdict 1, which supported the Democratic position of Health Care, received an average of 581 words from The Washington Post, The New York Times, The Associated Press and Politico.

On verdict 2, which also went in favor of the Democrats and the Obama administration, received an average of 438 words per article from the same four news agencies.

However, when verdict 3 came out by Federal District Court Judge Henry E. Hudson, whose decision went against the Democrats, the same four news agencies wrote an average of 1648 words in articles. Then yesterday, January 31st, another Federal Judge in Florida issued verdict 4 against the Health Reform Bill, and receive an average of 1742 words from the four. Mr. Benen question was, “If there’s a sensible explanation for this, I’d love to hear it.”

Ezra Klein, who writes for the Washington Post responded to Mr. Benen’s article saying,

“I actually think there is a sensible explanation for this: The two judges who ruled for the bill upheld the status quo. And they went first. So their rulings changed nothing. No one could accuse me of harboring an anti-ACA agenda, but I didn’t give those rulings much coverage.

The two judges who ruled against the bill called for enormous changes to the status quo, and enormous changes to the status quo are almost the definition of what “news” is. These two rulings have genuinely called the bill’s future into question, and that’s a big story.”

Well, although I tend to agree with Ezra Klein on many issues, and besides the fact that we share the same first name, I’ll have to disagree with his position on this matter.

Benen is right! There is simply no sensible explanation for the one-sided coverage. And although some may claim the sensationalism of a Federal Judge voting against the status quo is the “definition of what news is,” I prefer to think of the sensationalism of a life changed, if the Health Care reform law remains in effect. Now that’s news!

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