Women of Worth

Do you know inspiring women who bring dedication, enthusiasm and passion to an important cause? Help support the women you know who embody the dedication and spirit of volunteerism through the L’Oréal Paris Women of Worth program.

In its eighth year, the Women of Worth program celebrates women who are passionate about making a difference in the world. Nominate the exceptional women in your life—the deadline is Friday, June 21—and they could win a donation to their charity of up to $35,000.

The program has honored 70 women since its inception in 2006 and has donated $725,000 to the honorees and their charities. This year, ten more women will be selected and awarded $10,000 each for their charities, with one exceptional woman receiving a donation of $25,000.

There are still 3 days left to nominate the inspiring women you know. Take a look at www.womenofworth.com to see past honorees that have been recognized for everything from starting community food programs to increasing educational opportunities for homeless children. Afterwards, make sure to nominate the women of worth you know by June 21.

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How to build a better healthcare system

By Tom Daschle, Bill Frist, Pete Domenici and Alice Rivlin

The four of us came together to change the conversation around how to improve health care and constrain cost growth. What we learned is that, until better care is prioritized over more care, our nation will continue to face a problem with health-care costs. The good news is that, through thoughtful policy, health-care practitioners can be encouraged through rewards to focus far more on what is best for their patients and less on the number of tests and procedures they can order. The even better news is that such a health-care vision can not only produce better care but also cost less.

With the Bipartisan Policy Center, we released a report with more than 50 recommendations to achieve the critical goal of improving the quality and affordability of care for all Americans while containing high and rising health-care spending. This report is the culmination of nearly a year of work, including stakeholder outreach, thorough research and substantive analytics to quantify the impact of our proposed policies.

Too often we in Washington talk about health care as though it is little more than a line item on a budget table. Those of us who have experienced the best of health care know that is not how care should be delivered or policy crafted in this most personal of issues. Our country can achieve a higher-value health-care system — meaning both higher quality and greater efficiency.

Health-care cost drivers are complex and interwoven, but the most problematic ones we identified are the inefficiencies, misaligned incentives and fragmented care delivery in the current fee-for-service reimbursement system. To address these, we seek to promote coordinated and accountable systems of health-care delivery and payment, building on what has proved successful in the private and public sectors. Organized systems of care emphasize the value of care delivered over the volume of care. These systems are often better able to meet patients’ needs and desires and are able to effectively reimburse providers and practitioners for delivering high-quality care.

Tom Daschle, a Democrat and former senator from South Dakota, was Senate majority leader from 2001 to 2003. Bill Frist, a Republican and former senator from Tennessee, was Senate majority leader from 2003 to 2007. Pete Domenici, a Republican and former senator from New Mexico, was chairman or ranking minority member of the Senate Budget Committee from 1981 to 2003. Alice Rivlin is a former director of the Congressional Budget Office. The four co-chair the Bipartisan Policy Center’s Health Care Cost Containment Initiative.

Read the full op-ed at:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/how-to-build-a-better-health-care-system/2013/04/17/a44dd478-a6d1-11e2-8302-3c7e0ea97057_story.html

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Paranoia Strikes Deep

Congressman Jeff Duncan of South Carolina, obviously agitated beyond human endurance by the IRS dumbassery that resulted in the oppression of conservative social-welfare organizations through the limitless torment of slow paperwork, is just, you know, curious about what else the IRS might have in store for folks.

"When I left there, it's been bugging me for weeks now, why IRS agents are training with a semi-automatic rifle AR-15, which has stand-off capability...Are Americans that much of a target that you need that kind of capability?...While Duncan acknowledges that the IRS has an enforcement division, he questions if that level of firepower is appropriate when they could coordinate operations with other agencies, like the FBI, especially in a time of austerity...

Read more: Paranoia Strikes Deep - Esquire

Olympia Snowe on Immigration Reform

Now that the full Senate has begun debate on the immigration reform bill that was reported out of the Senate Judiciary Committee, the next few weeks will be an interesting political lab experiment in contemporary lawmaking.

In a previous blog, I touched on immigration reform, as it has become a fascinating case study into the possibilities for bipartisan cooperation to address a major issue.

One important aspect to note is that, in contrast with many other controversial matters, there’s something politically at stake for almost everyone in arriving at some form of legislation that can actually pass into law.

For Republicans in particular, this may become something of a litmus test as to whether there is potential for the party to recognize the electoral necessity of appealing to Americans beyond their political “base.” Moreover, as The Hill newspaper recently pointed out, business and agricultural interest groups, including the Chamber of Commerce, support the legislation — even as others traditionally aligned with the Republican Party stridently oppose it.

Immigration reform is also a key (although not defining) component if Republicans are to appeal to the expanding Latino vote. As recently as 2004, President George W. Bush won 44 percent of the Hispanic vote. Yet, in 2012, the Republican Presidential Nominee garnered just 27 percent.

Read more at:
http://www.olympiaslist.org/?page_id=11

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June 14: Bipartisan Policy Center Student Loan Twitter Chat

Interest rates on subsidized Stafford loans are set to double on June 30

Tomorrow, the Bipartisan Policy Center (BPC) will host a Twitter chat on federal student loans as part of our new Citizens for Political Reform effort. BPC Senior Vice President Bill Hoagland and members of BPC's Economic Policy Project will participate in the question and answer session. Join in on Twitter at 11AM EDT to contribute your questions and thoughts to the discussion.

Hosts: @BPC_Bipartisan l @billhoagland

The Issue

We are fast approaching June 30—the date on which the current 3.4% interest rate for subsidized Stafford loans is once again set to expire. If Congress does not act, this rate will double to 6.8% for new loans, affecting millions of student borrowers. Numerous proposals are currently being considered regarding how to approach the impending expiration date. Substantive, yet bridgeable differences exist between Democrats and Republicans.

DATE Friday, June 14, 2013

TIME 11:00AM EDT

LOCATION www.twitter.com/BPC_Bipartisan

Submit your questions to @BPC_Bipartisan on Twitter with the hashtag #EngageUSA prior to or during the event. You can also email questions to info@bipartisanpolicy.org or post them on Facebook.

To follow the discussion, track the #EngageUSA hashtag or visit BPC's Twitter feed to read Hoagland's responses.

Read more on this issue at: http://bipartisanpolicy.org/sites/default/files/Direct%20Federal%20Student%20Loans.pdf

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Snowden: "hero" or "grandiose narcissist"?

Edward Snowden, a twenty-nine-year-old former C.I.A. employee and current government contractor, has leaked news of National Security Agency programs that collect vast amounts of information about the telephone calls made by millions of Americans, as well as e-mails and other files of foreign targets and their American connections. For this, some, including my colleague John Cassidy, are hailing him as a hero and a whistle-blower. He is neither. He is, rather, a grandiose narcissist who deserves to be in prison.

Snowden provided information to the Washington Post and the Guardian, which also posted a video interview with him. In it, he describes himself as appalled by the government he served...Read more

The Spite Club

By PAUL KRUGMAN

House Republicans have voted 37 times to repeal ObamaRomneyCare — the Affordable Care Act, which creates a national health insurance system similar to the one Massachusetts has had since 2006. Nonetheless, almost all of the act will go fully into effect at the beginning of next year.

There is, however, one form of obstruction still available to the G.O.P. Last year’s Supreme Court decision upholding the law’s constitutionality also gave states the right to opt out of one piece of the plan, a federally financed expansion of Medicaid. Sure enough, a number of Republican-dominated states seem set to reject Medicaid expansion, at least at first.

And why would they do this? They won’t save money. On the contrary, they will hurt their own budgets and damage their own economies. Nor will Medicaid rejectionism serve any clear political purpose. As I’ll explain later, it will probably hurt Republicans for years to come.

...Just think about this for a minute. It’s one thing when politicians refuse to spend money helping the poor and vulnerable; that’s just business as usual. But here we have a case in which politicians are, in effect, spending large sums, in the form of rejected aid, not to help the poor but to hurt them.

Read more at New York Times on June 6, 2013.

House Passes Measure to Deport Young Immigrants

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Republican-controlled House voted Thursday to resume the deportation of hundreds of thousands of immigrants brought illegally to the United States as children, a largely symbolic move in the first immigration-related vote in either chamber of Congress this year and a measure of the daunting challenge facing supporters of a sweeping overhaul of existing law on the subject.

The party-line vote of 224-201 was aimed at blocking implementation of President Barack Obama's 2012 election-year order to stop deportations of many so-called DREAM Act individuals. Democrats on the House floor reacted with boos when the provision was added to a routine spending bill for the Department of Homeland Security.

The administration has threatened to veto the overall legislation on budgetary grounds. It nevertheless stood as a stark warning from conservatives who dominate the ranks of the Republican House majority about attempts in the Senate to grant a chance at citizenship to an estimated 11 million immigrants residing in the country illegally.

And the White House reacted sharply, saying the House-passed measure would affect "Dreamers" who are "productive members of society who were brought here as young children, grew up in our communities, and became American in every way but on paper."

Read more

Chinese Hacked Obama and McCain Presidential Campaigns

By Michael Isikoff
National investigative correspondent

The U.S. secretly traced a massive cyberespionage operation against the 2008 presidential campaigns of Barack Obama and John McCain to hacking units backed by the People’s Republic of China, prompting high level warnings to Chinese officials to stop such activities, U.S. intelligence officials tell NBC News.

The disclosure on the eve of a two-day summit between the U.S. and Chinese presidents highlights what has become a persistent source of tension between the two global powers: Beijing’s aggressive, orchestrated campaign to pierce America’s national security armor at any weak point – in this case the computers and laptops of top campaign aides and advisers who received high-level briefings.

The goal of the campaign intrusion, according to the officials: to export massive amounts of internal data from both campaigns—including internal position papers and private emails of key advisers in both camps.

“Based on everything I know, this was a case of political cyberespionage by the Chinese government against the two American political parties,” said Dennis Blair, who served as President Obama’s director of national intelligence in 2009 and 2010. “They were looking for positions on China, surprises that might be rolled out by campaigns against China.”

Read more

IRS Management Could Not Locate Receipts