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A new study by Jonathan Gruber, one of the Affordable Care Act’s (ACA) chief economic architects, suggests that roughly two-thirds of new Medicaid enrollees in 2014 were eligible for the program under previous state eligibility criteria—meaning that they were not made eligible by the ACA. If accurate, then a much smaller share of new Medicaid enrollees were made eligible for the program by the ACA than Washington experts commonly believe. For example, the Congressional Budget Office’s (CBO) most recent projection is that only one of six new Medicaid enrollees were eligible for the program before the ACA. Gruber’s results, combined...

<p>More cities are recognizing Native Americans on Columbus Day this year as they revive a movement to change the name of the holiday to celebrate the history and contributions of indigenous cultures around the country.</p> <p>As the U.S. observes Columbus Day on Monday, it will also be Indigenous Peoples Day in at least nine cities for the first time this year, including Albuquerque; Portland, Oregon; St. Paul, Minnesota; and Olympia, Washington.</p>

DETROIT (WXYZ) - Detroit Police have arrested two of six suspects involved in the gang rape of a woman and the robbery of her friend on the city's west side. They have also identified a third person and are currently looking for him. According to police, Antoine Edward-Ikie Orr, 18, and Jordan Alexander Reese, 17, were arrested on July 23. Chico Lee Bruce, 22, is still at large. On July 16 around 10 p.m., a 21-year-old woman and her 22-year-old male friend were walking in the 10300 block of West McNichols near Wyoming, when six men approached them. One of...

This guy will never park there again. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CmcJd1v7gTE

It seems to me to just be dark. I want complex characters not predictably depressing. Its like Gertrude Stein said about Oakland California: there is no there there. I always value FREEPER input.

On Monday, three Jewish boys were found dead, murdered by the terrorist group Hamas: Eyal Yifrach, 19; Gilad Shaar, 16; and Naftali Frenkel, 16. Frenkel was an American citizen. The three were kidnapped while hitchhiking some three weeks ago. In the interim, President Barack Obama said nothing about them publicly. His wife issued no hashtags. His State Department maintained that $400 million in American taxpayer cash would continue to the Palestinian unity government, which includes Hamas. Presumably Frenkel did not look enough like Barack Obama’s imaginary son for him to give a damn. Or perhaps Frenkel hadn’t deserted his duty...

Detroit spent as much as $537,000 per home renovating 30 houses starting in 2011 under a federal program to fight blight before selling most for less than $100,000 each, according to a newspaper's investigation published on Thursday. The Detroit Land Bank transformed eyesores into gems, with features such as glass-tiled bathrooms, stainless steel appliances, underground sprinkler systems and, in some cases, geothermal heating, The Detroit News reported A goal was to entice middle class families into the East English Village and Boston Edison neighborhoods. Land bank Executive Director Richard Wiener, who took over in January, said officials "are now moving...

Twitter 0 Reddit Share 27 Email Related Stories â– China's economic shift set to throw the West off-balance â– China passes U.S. to become world's largest trader â– U.S. economy ekes out 0.1 per cent GDP growth The U.S. economy was battered even more than first suspected by the harsh winter, actually shrinking from January through March. The result marked the first retreat in three years, but economists are confident the downturn was temporary. Gross domestic product contracted at an annual rate of 1 percent in the first quarter, the Commerce Department said Thursday. That was worse than the government's initial estimate last...

Republican challenger Tom Cotton still holds a narrow lead over incumbent Democrat Mark Pryor in Arkansas’ U.S. Senate race. The latest Rasmussen Reports statewide survey of Likely Arkansas Voters finds Cotton, a U.S. congressman, with 47% support to Pryor’s 43%. Four percent (4%) like some other candidate in the race, while six percent (6%) remain undecided. The survey of 500 Likely Voters in Arkansas was conducted on February 4-5, 2014 by Rasmussen Reports. The margin of sampling error is +/- 4.5 percentage points with a 95% level of confidence

To become a good engineer of business major, a student must first study the all-important subjects of race and ethnicity — at least according to student government leaders at the University of Michigan, who are working to extend the liberal arts college’s race requirements to all colleges of the university. The Central Student Government, aims to reform the requirement that all students in the College of Literature, Science and the Arts study race and ethnicity before graduation. Moving forward, all students–even those in the Colleges of Engineering and Business — would be forced to take a class with a racial...

At the same point in their 2nd term: 1823 days in Office: Bush 43% Obama 40%

There often is a tendency for those concerned about the size and scope of government to feel like everything is getting perpetually worse. But a full look at the evidence shows this isn't so. While critics claim that free trade and globalization are merely a "race to the bottom," the world as a whole has been quietly reducing poverty, disease, famines and war by embracing the free market. University of Michigan-Flint economist Mark Perry has a chart showing the remarkable decrease in the world poverty rate, which has fallen 80 percent, from 26.8 percent in 1970 to 5.4 percent in...

Could Republicans lose their House majority if the budget showdown and the upcoming debt-ceiling fight go badly for them? Anything can happen, of course, and the polls showing that Republicans are likely to catch more of the blame than President Obama for Washington's dysfunction are making some Democrats more optimistic about their prospects of regaining control. Still, the odds of a Democratic takeover of the chamber are slim. Even though the gap between Republicans and Democrats in the House is only 17 seats, it would take a pretty big wave to get Democrats up to 218. We have seen waves...

America's current demography -- with Democratic voters clustered in central cities, certain... Nate Cohn has a good piece in the New Republic explaining to its mostly liberal readers why Democrats don't have a good chance to regain a majority in the House in 2014, despite the supposedly massive unpopularity of House Republicans. The bottom line: There aren't many target seats (only 17 House Republicans represent districts that voted for Barack Obama in 2012) and Democrats don't seem to be running strong candidates in many of them. Another statistic could be cited: Obama carried only 209 congressional districts, while Mitt Romney...

Loose talk by senior members of the Obama administration may have condemned Shakil Afridi, a Pakistani doctor who assisted America's hunt for Osama bin Laden, to 33-year term in prison on trumped-up charges. According to Fox News, an official 357-page report by the Pakistani government that examined the security failures that allowed the U.S. to evade that country's defenses in the raid on May 2, 2011 concluded that Dr. Afridi was implicated by a "statement by the U.S. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta, who was the CIA Director when May 2 happened, confirming the role of Dr. Afridi in making the...

Muslims rioted in Sweden for a week, burning cars and attacking police. This is just the latest in an unremitting Islamic campaign, a continent-wide jihad initiative leaving death and destruction in its wake. It is a glimpse into the present and future of Europe, due to its disastrous and suicidal immigration policies, and a cautionary tale for America. And it isn’t just in Sweden. It’s in France as well, where there have been periodic Muslim riots, featuring the same car-burnings, screams of “Allahu akbar,” and attacks on police. All over the continent, we see the effects of Muslim immigration in...

Former White Sox catcher Carlton Fisk has been charged with DUI after police in New Lenox said they found him passed out in a pickup truck in a farm field. Fisk, 64, was at the wheel with the engine running when police arrived around 7:25 p.m. Monday, according to Deputy Chief Bob Pawlisz. Fisk was disoriented when officers woke him, and he declined a blood-alcohol test. An open 1.75-liter bottle of liquor also was in the car, Pawlisz said. Fisk was treated at Silver Cross Hospital and released Tuesday morning after posting bail and is scheduled to appear in Will...

The federal government has been paying welfare benefits to the dead and withholding Medicare benefits from the living, according to a new report from the Inspector General (IG) of the Social Security Administration (SSA). The report, released October 12, set out to determine whether some individuals were improperly receiving Supplemental Security Income (SSI) payments after having their Medicare benefits terminated because they were considered deceased. SSI, which provides income support to needy individuals who are aged, blind, or disabled, is administered directly by the SSA. Medicare, which provides health insurance to the aged and disabled, is administered by the Centers...

SHAWMUT - Montana is increasingly harnessing the power of wind. Thursday marked the official groundbreaking ceremony for a wind turbine project in Shawmut. Senator Max Baucus set the groundwork for the plant during a 2010 trip to China that brought him face to face with officials from the second largest wind turbine company in the world, Goldwind. "I went and talked to them. I said hey, you know, we're a great state. And a lot of people don't know about Montana." That's when Goldwind agreed to come to Big Sky Country and struck a deal for the 20-megawatt plant. Tom...

The forecast of the 2012 presidential election by Michael Berry and Kenneth Bicker, political science professors at the University of Colorado, that was released in August has been updated with more current economic information, and the result is the same: a Romney win as the economy continues to falter. It takes 270 Electoral College votes to win the presidency, and Berry and Bicker are projecting that Governor Mitt Romney will win 330 of the 538 votes up for grabs in November, while President Obama will receive just 208, down from the 213 they predicted in August. It’s the economy. The...