Openthread:Lastchancetoousta

Open thread: Last chance to oust a Republican senator this year

posted at 6:41 pm on August 7, 2014 by Allahpundit

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Yes, I realize it’s Thursday, not Tuesday. What can I tell you? Tennessee goes its own way when scheduling primaries.

The bad news: Grassroots conservatives are staring at an ohfer this year in the Senate if Lamar Alexander beats Joe Carr tonight. The good news: Even though they haven’t unseated anyone, they’ve made lots of incumbents sweat. Dave Weigel posted a list today comparing the margins of victory in the primary for Senate Republicans targeted by righties with their margins of victory the last time they ran. Some, like Thad Cochran and Pat Roberts, were unopposed last time; others, like Mitch McConnell and Lindsey Graham, had token opposition. They all finished with a smaller share of the vote this year than they did previously. In fact…

If Alexander ends up short of 50% tonight, that'll be 3 senate GOP incumbents this year to earn less than 50% of the vote in primaries.

— Harry Enten (@ForecasterEnten) August 7, 2014

There are no more easy victories. Holding a seat nowadays means voting more conservative than you might like in the Senate and working hard on the trail to smother your challenger — and even then, as Mississippi proves, a runoff with lots of Democratic crossover votes might be necessary to rescue the incumbent. If Alexander wins tonight, take that as a comfort. The princes of the Senate no longer hold their seats as a matter of right.

Which brings us to Tennessee. What are the odds of Carr knocking off Alexander? Not great — the incumbent’s outspent the challenger five to one. Then again, Eric Cantor also outspent Dave Brat and got crushed thanks to an issue that’ll figure prominently in tonight’s race too, namely, immigration. Alexander was one of the 14 Republicans who voted for the Gang of Eight bill on comprehensive immigration reform last year. Carr’s been hammering him on that, as have Laura Ingraham (who campaigned for Brat against Cantor and campaigned recently for Carr) and the boss emeritus, who made the case against Alexander on Ingraham’s radio show earlier this week. There’s been almost no polling on the race so there’s no way to tell how close Carr is. The last one, taken more than a week ago, showed him within 12 points. According to Harry Enten of FiveThirtyEight, though, the tea leaves suggest that Alexander’s more ripe for an upset tonight that Pat Roberts was two days ago:

Republican incumbents also tend to do worse the more moderate they are, and Alexander is more moderate than Roberts. Per DW-Nominate’s first dimension, Alexander has the seventh most moderate record of any Republican senator in the 113th Congress. Although it’s on the more conservative end of defeated incumbents, Alexander’s score is within the range of other incumbent Republicans who have lost in primaries in the past decade…

Additionally, Republican incumbents tend to do worse when they’re seen as insiders, and Alexander is rated as more insider-y than Roberts. It was this measure on which Cantor looked most vulnerable. Per DW-Nominate’s second dimension, Alexander is ranked 12th among Republicans in the current Senate. Roberts comes in at 16th. Roberts’s score isn’t too far from Alexander’s, but it leaves Alexander in the more vulnerable position.

Finally, Republican incumbents have done better when they’re more firmly against immigration reform.

Alexander’s grade on immigration from NumbersUSA was a C+, the same as Thad Cochran, who barely survived his primary. And Cochran, for all his faults, voted no on the Gang of Eight bill. If amnesty’s going to take anyone down this cycle, it’s Alexander. (Er, right, Lindsey Graham?)

Tennessee is split between the eastern and central time zones so the polls close at different times. Part of the state will finish voting at 7 p.m. ET and the rest will finish at 8. You can follow results at RCP, Politico, or Ace’s Decision Desk. Here’s one of Alexander’s recent ads, in which he insists — no joke — that he voted against amnesty last year. He’s been arguing lately that what we have is de facto amnesty right now, ergo, voting for a terrible comprehensive bill that would have given illegals probationary legalization with no guarantees of better border enforcement was somehow a vote against amnesty. That’s how honest this guy is.

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Tags: GOP, Joe Carr, Lamar Alexander, republican, Senate, Tennessee

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RobertsbarelyscrapespastWolfinKansas

Roberts barely scrapes past Wolf in Kansas

posted at 10:41 am on August 6, 2014 by Ed Morrissey

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Before the polls closed in Kansas yesterday, I predicted that the Republican primary for the US Senate race would be closer than people expected. The incumbent, Sen. Pat Roberts, hadn’t spent much time at home of late — and may not even own a home there at all any more — and losing touch with constituents was what doomed Eric Cantor. Roberts won, but only by single digits against his Tea Party challenger:

Veteran Republican Senator Pat Roberts fought off a Kansas primary challenge by a Tea Party-backed doctor who had promised a “family feud” with his distant relative President Barack Obama if elected, results on Wednesday showed.

Roberts secured 48 percent of the vote and Milton Wolf 41 percent in the four-candidate field, according to final but unofficial results, the Kansas secretary of state said.

Roberts has had a 47-year career in Congress and faced conservative challenger Wolf, who said he wanted to “save the Republic.”

Wolf acknowledged a distant family tie to Obama but built his campaign on promises to repeal many of the Democratic president’s policies. In an interview with CNN, Wolf promised “the mother of all family feuds to save America,” if elected.

Roberts didn’t even get to 50% in a state he’s represented for decades, against a novice candidate. He’ll win re-election easily in November, though; more than four times as many voters turned out in the GOP primary than in the Democrats’ competitive Senate primary. Democrats have a huge enthusiasm problem, and not just in Kansas, either.

The media line has been that this year’s results are a defeat for the Tea Party. Both CBS News and The Hill ran articles yesterday on the “fade” of the Tea Party, and today’s New York Times takes a more subtle approach to the same theme:

Senator Pat Roberts of Kansas held off the Tea Party insurgent Milton Wolf on Tuesday to defeat what may have been hard-line conservatives’ last chance at knocking off an incumbent Republican senator this year. …

The primary in Kansas on Tuesday, as well as the votes in Michigan and in Washington State, proved to be more about the power of incumbency than the Republicans’ civil war.

Tea Party incumbents generally held off challenges from establishment Republicans, and establishment incumbents beat back challengers from the right.

Well, maybe, but it’s far too early to declare the Tea Party dead. In my column for The Week, I argue that the Tea Party is a long-term phenomenon that is already succeeding in forcing the Republican Party and its incumbents to define themselves in terms of small-government conservatism:

The true test of the Tea Party won’t be in primary victories this week or this year, but in the impact of the conservative grassroots movement on the Republican Party. We have already seen incumbents who have rarely if ever had to deal with intraparty challengers shift their focus and message in response. The lack of banner wins in 2012 certainly didn’t persuade most of these incumbents to dismiss that pressure — in fact, the ones who succeeded most were the ones who prepared soonest and most vigorously.

When the New Left brand of progressivism arose in the 1960s, its candidates didn’t win a lot of elections at first either. It took two decades for the pressure of the movement to shift the center of the Democratic Party away from its traditional, blue-collar liberalism. In the late 1980s, the trend worried Democrats enough to form the Democratic Leadership Council to push back and recruit moderates to run for office, the most successful of which was Bill Clinton in 1992. By 2008, his wife blew her opening for the presidential nomination in part by falling short of the progressive credentials of Barack Obama.

The lesson here is not to count primaries in the short run. Look for the way incumbents have to defend their record, and wait for the grassroots to produce change organically over the long run.

We’ll also see Lamar Alexander defending his Senate seat tomorrow against Rep. Joe Carr, who picked up an endorsement from Laura Ingraham. Alexander routinely gets criticized by the grassroots, but he’s also been taking a page from Lindsey Graham and putting in plenty of retail-politicking effort in Tennessee over the last couple of years. There has been very little polling in this race, but what there has been looks similar to Kansas — the incumbent up by low double digits but looking vulnerable. Even if Alexander manages to survive, though, it won’t be because voters have rejected the Tea Party but because the incumbent has embraced it.

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Tags: Joe Carr, Kansas, Lamar Alexander, midterms, milton wolf, Pat Roberts, Tea Party, Tennessee

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UAWdecidestoskipelectionandformunion

UAW decides to skip election and form union at VW anyway

posted at 1:01 pm on July 12, 2014 by Jazz Shaw

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I just returned from another trip to Tennessee where I was able to catch up with a few folks from the Volkswagen plant in Chattanooga and see how things were developing. The conversations there had shifted quite a bit from earlier in the year when the vote regarding UAW unionization was raging, and recent reports make it clear that the big auto union isn’t going to be content with licking their wounds from their recent loss. As Ed reported back in April, the UAW had withdrawn their request for a hearing before the National Labor Relations Board, which some saw as a sign that the fight was pretty much over.

But from what I was hearing, union organizers weren’t looking at things that way at all. There was talk of going ahead and forming an “informal” bargaining unit anyway. And now it looks like they are making it officially unofficial.

Five months after the United Auto Workers (UAW) failed in its bid to unionize Volkswagen’s Chattanooga, Tenn., manufacturing plant, the union is giving it another go. But this time, they’re not bothering with the traditional election route.

Instead of calling on the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) to administer an election, the UAW has decided to form a voluntary association called Local 42. At least initially, the group will not collectively bargain on behalf of the plant’s whole workforce, and it will not collect dues. Yet if a majority of the plant’s employees agree to join Local 42, there is a chance that Volkswagen will recognize it as the workers’ exclusive bargaining agent, granting it full union privileges without the need for an election.

“We’ve had ongoing discussions with Volkswagen and have arrived at a consensus with the company,” said UAW secretary-treasurer Gary Casteel in a statement. “Upon Local 42 signing up a meaningful portion of Volkswagen’s Chattanooga workforce, we’re confident the company will recognize Local 42 by dealing with it as a members’ union that represents those employees who join the local.”

The phrase “Local 42″ sounds like something straight out of a sci-fi movie where the aliens move into a local landfill, but the opinion of the UAW secretary-treasurer may be a bit on the overly optimistic side. For their part, VW simply stated that they ”have no contract or other formal agreement with UAW on this matter.” There is also no formal definition of what the UAW means when they say “a meaningful portion” of the workers there. But some of the workers, speaking to the local paper, were a bit more clear.

Mike Burton, a VW worker who opposes the union, said the UAW is wasting its time and money again.

“It’s like buying a car and leaving it at a dealership for a couple of years until you’re able to drive it,” he said, calling the UAW’s action grandstanding and “a show.”…

Mark Cunningham, of the Beacon Center of Tennessee, said the UAW will “no doubt use this camel’s nose under the tent to pressure members to join its ranks.”

“All this comes despite workers having clearly rejected the union at the ballot box in a legally binding election,” he said.

I didn’t get to speak with the VW management directly this month, but it’s not inconceivable that they might strike up some sort of agreement for talks with the new, unofficial organization. All along, VW has taken an attitude of just wanting to get some sort of “works council” in place, such as the ones established in Europe. They have no interest in having a union become an anchor around their necks and drive them into financial ruin, but they do want to establish a mechanism where workers can communicate directly with management, being able to voice concerns – particularly about worker safety and operating conditions – and provide feedback on ways to improve their processes. Of course, if they officially get in bed with the UAW, they’ll probably wind up getting a lot more than they bargained for.

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Tags: Tennessee, unions, United Auto Workers, Volkswagon

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Surprise:UAWfoldsinVWdispute posted

Surprise: UAW folds in VW dispute

posted at 10:41 am on April 21, 2014 by Ed Morrissey

Thus marks the end of the United Auto Workers’ foray into unionizing Southern auto manufacturing. Despite cooperative management at Volkswagen, the UAW failed to convince workers in its Chattanooga facility to unionize. The union alleged interference and demanded a hearing at the National Labor Relations Board to force a revote, but unexpectedly withdrew just before the hearing was scheduled to start:

The United Auto Workers Union, in a surprise move, on Monday gave up its fight to force a revote by workers at Volkswagen‘s plant in Chattanooga, Tenn., a retreat that leaves the union with an uncertain future.

The withdrawal came an hour before the UAW was to go before the National Labor Relations Board to plead for a new election and comes after it had appeared prepared for a long and bitter fight. Earlier this month, the UAW issued subpoenas to 19 people, including Tennessee Gov. Bill Haslam and Sen. Bob Corker. The union had alleged public comments against the union by Messrs. Haslam and Corker interfered with the February election, which the UAW lost by a vote of 712-626.

“The UAW is ready to put February’s tainted election in the rearview mirror and instead focus on advocating for new jobs and economic investment in Chattanooga,” UAW President Bob King said.

The measure of UAW’s desperation came in its efforts to “subpoena” politicians to provide testimony in today’s hearing. Corker and Haslam had already laughed off the attempt:

“Everyone understands that after a clear defeat, the UAW is trying to create a sideshow, so we have filed a motion to revoke these baseless subpoenas,” Todd Womack, Corker’s chief of staff, told the Tennessean. “Neither Sen. Corker nor his staff will attend the hearing on Monday.”

Hagerty and Haslam’s respective staffs said they had not scheduled appearances before the NLRB either but did not explicitly rule it out either.

Haslam rejected the invitation over the weekend:

UAW subpoenaed two dozen officials, alleging that politicians interfered in the election through public statements on behalf of VW. That would have been a novel argument, to say the least, since the NLRB isn’t a political-speech referee. Furthermore, VW had cooperated with UAW on their efforts, while perhaps not being entirely enthusiastic, so UAW couldn’t point to any employer action on which to invalidate the election.

In the end, they didn’t have a leg on which to stand in today’s hearing, and absent any compelled testimony, their case would go nowhere fast. The longer they argued, the worse they would make their position, which turned out to be surprisingly strong in the narrow defeat at VW. The better part of valor in this case is definitely discretion; the only question is whether the UAW learned that lesson in time.

Tags: Bill Haslam, Bob Corker, NLRB, Tennessee, United Auto Workers, Volkswagon

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Hm:AddRep.MarshaBlackburntoyour2016

Hm: Add Rep. Marsha Blackburn to your 2016 pools, people

posted at 9:41 pm on April 10, 2014 by Mary Katharine Ham

An aide for Rep. Marsha Blackburn today suggested she’ll “test the waters” for a possible 2016 run for president. The tough, diminutive Tennessee mom of two is serving her fifth term in the House. She’s admirably unafraid to walk into the lion’s den at MSNBC, and often comes out swinging with success. She also takes an active interest in tech policy, reaching out to conferences and communities not used to a lot of visits from Republicans.

PORTSMOUTH, N.H. — Tennessee Congresswoman Marsha Blackburn will consider running for president in 2016 — if she sees an opportunity to do so, an aide to the 7th District Republican told RealClearPolitics.

Blackburn is scheduled to be one of the speakers at a New Hampshire Republican rally this weekend but was not previously known to be mulling a White House bid.

“If there’s a door to kick down, she’s willing to kick it down,” the aide, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said. “These are the kinds of events you go to — test the waters, and see what the reaction is.”

Blackburn is a staunch social and fiscal conservative who was first elected to Congress in 2002, and a presidential run by her would be a long shot by any measure.

But with no women known to be plotting a 2016 bid on the Republican side, she has the potential to stir up the pot in a wide-open race for the nomination.

“There is kind of a void to fill there,” the Blackburn aide said of the likely GOP presidential field. “Whenever there’s been a need for leadership or someone to get out there and fight the fight, she’s always been the first in line and she’s not afraid of it. She’s not afraid to go toe to toe with anybody.”

She’s sharp with a great Southern-woman demeanor and accent for bringing the hammer down on someone without looking like a jerk. Should be fun to watch her.

Tags: 2016, GOP primary, marsha blackburn, Tennessee

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MoreunqualifiedmedicalservicesshowingupunderObamacare

More unqualified medical services showing up under Obamacare

posted at 2:31 pm on March 1, 2014 by Jazz Shaw

Nearly a year ago now, I took a look at an unsettling trend in medical practices in the age of Obamacare. As states struggle to keep up with restrictions and fiscal strains under the provisions of the new law, people were looking to both cut costs and make up for a decreasing number of doctors. One area which was being considered was lowering the bar for who could be licensed to perform certain practices. This was of particular concern in the area of eye care, where Kentucky was looking at expanding the role of optometrists (who are not medical doctors), allowing them to perform certain procedures typically left to ophthalmologists.

It seems that this trend has not gone away as Obamacare gears up to full speed, and a similar move is now under consideration in nearby Tennessee.

60 Plus Association, the nation’s leading conservative senior advocate organization is calling on Tennessee lawmakers to oppose House Bill 555 and Senate Bill 220. These bills would allow optometrists – who are not medical doctors and do not go through surgical residency training– to inject anesthesia into the tissues surrounding the eye and perform scalpel surgery on the eyelid. The proposal to expand the legal scope of practice by non-medical eye care providers follows along a similar path that optometrists and legislators in California are currently pursuing in their implementation of the Affordable Care Act (ACA), commonly referred to as ObamaCare…

Jim Martin, Chairman of 60 Plus, explained that among the many problems related with Obamacare, it is resulting in states considering proposals to re-define who can practice medicine and surgery. “It’s one thing for politicians in California to be pushing these radical proposals to implement Obamacare, but why would lawmakers in Tennessee even consider similar legislation that dumbs down patient safety standards,” Martin said. “Our seniors were promised we could keep our health plans and our doctors. Neither promise rang true. But what is true is that Obamacare is tempting states into legislating a new type of doctor or surgeon, one that doesn’t have to go through medical school or residency to perform surgery, but rather to the state legislature instead.

As the article mentions, there has been a similar move underway in California, and it’s no less controversial there. They tried the same thing in Louisiana last year, but the public outcry was such that it was abandoned by its own sponsor. While the temptation to lower the bar and make up for shortfalls under Obamacare is obviously compelling for legislatures, it’s hard to find any unbiased observer who thinks this is a good idea.

I would like to stress yet again that this is not a knock against optometrists. I see one myself on a yearly basis and they do very important work. But if they don’t have the same level of training as an ophthalmologist in terms of performing surgical procedures or the duties of an anesthesiologist, do we really want to begin assigning them this work simply because a new federal law is driving qualified professionals out of the marketplace? That sounds like a very dodgy tradeoff.

Gee… if only someone had warned us about all of this before they voted the law into place. (/sarc)

Tags: health, ObamaCare, Tennessee

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UAWaskstheNLRBtoinvestigate“interferenceby

UAW asks the NLRB to investigate “interference by politicians and outside special interest groups”

posted at 4:41 pm on February 21, 2014 by Erika Johnsen

Last Friday, the United Auto Workers’ push to finally gain a foothold with a foreign-owned assembly plant in the South went devastatingly awry when the Volkswagon workers at the intended Chattanooga plant voted against joining the ranks of Big Labor. I’ll refer you to Jazz’s thorough rundown for more on that dramatic turn of events, but you know the UAW was never going to graciously bow out of this one. The union has been steadily declining in membership and influence — UAW workers assembled 5.91 million of the 10.9 million cars and trucks made in the U.S. in 2013, down from 10.8 million of the 12.6 million in 1999, according to Bloomberg — and they saw this as their big chance to start reinvigorating their dominion in the changing auto market.

Ergo, via Reuters:

The United Auto Workers filed an appeal with the U.S. government on Friday, asking it to set aside the results of an election last week where workers at a Tennessee Volkswagen plant voted not to join the union.

Citing what it called “interference by politicians and outside special interest groups,” the union said the U.S. National Labor Relations Board would investigate the election and decide if there are grounds to scrap it and hold a new one.

Labor lawyers and academics said last week it would be difficult for the union to make a case for setting aside the election. They said labor law does not limit what can be said in a union election campaign by politicians, as long as they are stating their own views and not doing the bidding of management.

They do say denial is the first stage of grieving. Over to George Will:

Sixty years ago, some 35 percent of the U.S. workforce was unionized, almost entirely in the private sector. Today, 11.3 percent is unionized . About half (49.6 percent) of this minority are government workers whose union dues do much to elect their employers. UAW membership has plummeted as far and fast as Detroit has — from 1.5 million in 1979 to about 380,000 in 2012. In 2011, UAW President Bob King said, “If we don’t organize these transnationals, I don’t think there’s a long-term future for the UAW.” …

It is commonly, and carelessly, said that Washington bailed out “the” automobile industry. Actually, government bailed out two of the three companies in one of the two U.S. auto industries — the UAW-organized one. The other industry, located in the South and elsewhere — Americans making 30 percent of the vehicles Americans purchase — did not need rescuing because it does not have a UAW presence, which helped ruin General Motors, Chrysler and their headquarters city, Detroit.

Tags: Big Labor, business, Tennessee, unions, United Auto Workers

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TennesseeVWworkersREJECTunionizationbidbyUAW

Tennessee VW workers REJECT unionization bid by UAW

posted at 8:31 am on February 15, 2014 by Jazz Shaw

People around Chattanooga, Tennessee have been on pins and needles this past week, awaiting the results of a vote by workers at the Volkswagen manufacturing plant in their area deciding whether or not they would invite United Auto Workers into their town to organize workers. The wait is over, and the workers have told the giant auto workers ‘ union to pack sand.

Workers at a Volkswagen factory in Tennessee have voted against union representation in a devastating defeat for the United Auto Workers union’s effort to make inroads in the South.

The 712-626 vote released late Friday was surprising for many labor experts and union supporters who expected a UAW win because Volkswagen tacitly endorsed the union and even allowed organizers into the Chattanooga factory to make sales pitches.

“This is like an alternate universe where everything is turned upside down,” Cliff Hammond, a labor lawyer at in Detroit, told The Wall Street Journal, noting that companies usually fight union drives.

That’s actually a fairly disingenuous reading of VW’s position. As it happens, I was right in Chattanooga for the past couple of weeks working on an unrelated project and was able to speak with a number of people on both sides of the issue, as well as follow all of the local coverage. VW never seemed to be in favor of the UAW. They simply wanted to provide the employees with some form of works council, similar to what they normally have in Europe, allowing them effective lines of communication with the management. Whether that was a locally organized structure or through the auspices of a union didn’t seem to much matter.

But the workers themselves and all of their neighbors were not short on opinions. One of the big questions seemed to be exactly what it would cost them to invite the UAW into their plant and what they would get in return. As this recent editorial in the local paper reflected, many of the workers had a clue as to where their dues money would be going.

First and foremost, the UAW enters the room. With it, VW employees who choose to join will dole out two and a half hours of pay per month for what the union says is a — wink, wink, nudge, nudge — strike fund. But the UAW would never strike the nice plant that allowed it a foothold in the South, right?

Where, in fact, does the UAW in general, among other places, put its money? In the 2013-14 campaign cycle so far, according to the Center for Responsive Politics, it has given $71,901 to Democrat candidates and zero, zip, nada to Republican candidates.

In the 2012 cycle, it gave $1,427,731 to Democrat candidates and $45,053 in efforts against Republican candidates. Republican candidates, meanwhile, got nothing.

VW workers, that would be your money.

Contrary to national popular opinion, the locals are still not big fans of Democrats – or politicians in general, from what I saw – and flushing part of their paychecks into a political machine rather than ensuring the security of their families was not a popular option. Still, the expensive campaign by the union swayed many of the workers into voting for the proposal… but not enough. Meanwhile, VW seemed to handle the entire affair with class.

Sebastian Patta, vice president for human resources, said, “While there was intense outside interest in this election, our managers and employees inside the plant maintained high quality production and continued to work together in a calm and respectful manner.”

“Our commitment to Tennessee is a long-term investment. We look forward to continuing to work with the state of Tennessee and the city of Chattanooga to support job creation, growth, and economic development today and into the future,” Fischer added.

Less reported in the course of this debate was the potential expansion of the plant and how Tennessee would handle it. VW has been looking to add yet another production line in Chattanooga for sports utility vehicles. This would generate even more jobs, both directly and indirectly. When the company first moved into the area, the state put together a generous package of incentives to help them get off the ground. There was already talk of a smaller, secondary package to get the new line started, but local politicians were saying that if the union came in and began kneecapping VW, such a package would have less of a chance of being passed.

In addition to that, people I spoke with also questioned why they needed such big gun protection “against” VW in the first place. Working conditions at the plant were described as very safe, the pay there was some of the best in the area and the benefits plan offered by the automaker is generous. Why start poking a stick in their eye?

Chattanooga has undergone a serious rebirth over the past couple of decades. Once a declining area with crumbling infrastructure, a lot of work and smart investment has turned the city into a tourist destination while simultaneously seeing several major employers – including Amazon, in addition to VW – opening up shop and bringing jobs to the low tax, high worker availability area. With the rejection of the UAW, residents seem hopeful that this trend will continue.

All of this may come as a surprise to President Obama, who was sure he was on the right side of history on this one.

President Barack Obama on Friday waded into a high-stakes union vote at Volkswagen AG’s plant in Tennessee, accusing Republican politicians who oppose unionization of being more concerned about German shareholders than U.S. workers…

Obama said everyone was in favor of the UAW representing Volkswagen except for local politicians who “are more concerned about German shareholders than American workers,” according to a Democratic aide who attended the meeting with Democratic lawmakers in the House of Representatives.

How wrong can you be? The reason that position turned out to be such a bust for the President is an important one. After fierce debate, the workers were allowed to cast secret ballots in this vote, eliminating the union intimidation tactics which many feared. When they were left free to make their choice without worrying about repercussions, the workers chose to represent themselves locally and not invite the UAW to come in and begin killing the goose which has thus far been laying golden eggs.

Tags: Tennessee, unions, United Auto Workers, Volkswagon

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Video:Thatwhole“keepingyourdoctor”thingnot

Video: That whole “keeping your doctor” thing not quite working out for Tennesseans so far

posted at 1:21 pm on January 28, 2014 by Erika Johnsen

That the Obama administration and their fellow Democrats thought that they were doing themselves a political service with their glib and incessant iterations of “if you like you doctor, you can keep your doctor” really is quite the quandary; I suppose it was worth repeating whatever attractive falsehoods they had to in order to pass their crowning legislative achievement, but oh, how heavily that crown lies now that the always very obvious eventuality of insurance companies behaving as rational actors in a wildly manipulated healthcare market is coming due.

The market’s mandated changes mean that insurers are trying to hold down costs by creating smaller, more streamlined networks than those typically available in commercial insurance, and those restrictions are going to translate into fewer options for patients — which is going to come as something of a surprise to the Americans that were assiduously assured that they would be able to keep their doctors.

As millions of new ACA health plans begin 2014 coverage on Wednesday, consumers in some parts of the country, including California, will find that the plans offered under Obamacare give them access to fewer providers than their previous plans or those offered to Americans with job-based health insurance. Narrowing networks — promising select providers higher patient volume in exchange for lower reimbursement rates — is nothing new, but as insurers compete on price in Obamacare’s new exchanges, avoiding expensive hospitals and doctors has new appeal, especially since insurers can no longer exclude sick people or charge them more. …

A recent study suggests limited provider networks could become more common in the years ahead as the ACA takes hold. A Dec. 13 McKinsey study of 20 U.S. metropolitan areas found that two-thirds of ACA plans analyzed had “narrow” or “ultra narrow” networks, with at least 30 percent of top 20 hospitals excluded for coverage. The medium premium for plans with narrower networks, according to the study, was 26 percent lower than comparable benefit packages with broad networks.

And in less populated regions, the effects of these smaller networks is likely to be even more acute — as several Tennesseans have been discovering over this past month, via the Free Beacon:

WSMV’s Nancy Amons reported two cases of Obamacare enrollees who have been notified that they will no longer be able to see doctors they were able to visit when they were on their previous plan.

Shawnna Simpson’s fifteen year old daughter was hurt last week in a cheerleading accident. Simpson called her family doctor and learned that they do not accept her current health insurance plan, BlueCross Network E.

“We have health insurance at this point that is worthless,” Simpson said of the plan that she pays $600 a month for. … We can’t use it in the county that we live” she said.

BlueCross Network E is a micro network – a very small network with limited doctors and hospitals. Neither Vanderbilt nor TriStar are in the network.

Tags: doctors, exchanges, health insurance, ObamaCare, Tennessee

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TennesseeValleyAuthorityclosing8coalfiredpower

Tennessee Valley Authority closing 8 coal fired power plants

posted at 9:31 am on November 17, 2013 by Jazz Shaw

It’s tempting to immediately file this one in the “We Hate it When We’re Right” folder, but there are a few wrinkles to the story. The Tennessee Valley Authority, a federal corporation which operates energy facilities and other land management operations across multiple states, has announced that they will be closing eight coal fired power plants. They will seek to reduce coal sourced energy to 20% of their total capacity and the plants in question will be closed in Alabama and Kentucky. (The latter plants faced some headwinds as Mitch McConnell fought to stop them from closing, but the TVA overruled him.) So what caused this?

The decision was prompted by a combination of environmental requirements, the age of the plants, competition from natural gas and declining electricity consumption in the TVA’s service area…

The pressures on the TVA are the same as those throughout the utility industry. The recent surge in shale gas production has pushed down the price of natural gas, and many utilities around the country are switching to natural gas. Electricity use nationwide has hit a plateau, according to Energy Information Administration figures.

While there were multiple factors leading to this decision, the one at the top of the list was the raft of new environmental regulations. It’s true that most of these plants would have eventually either closed or undergone conversion to natural gas anyway, but only at the end of their projected service life. But they are currently under the gun to install new pollution control scrubbers or shut down. The TVA spokesman cited looming concerns from two other forthcoming environmental rules regarding coal ash and a carbon standard among their concerns. The cost was determined too prohibitive in light of demand, so the plants will close and the jobs will largely be lost.

But to be fair, it is still worth noting that these plants were also the victims of other factors. Natural gas is cheap – and getting cheaper – with no worries about the available domestic supply of the resource for the coming generation. It’s a cleaner source of energy as measured in federal standards, so there’s less pressure from Uncle Sam to operate them. Conversion – or simply demolishing coal plants and building new natural gas plants – is frequently viewed as the best option.

The more curious part of this formula is that demand has dropped in the TVA service area. In specific, they cited a company which enriched uranium for commercial nuclear power plants – consuming huge amounts of electricity in the process – shutting down. But even beyond that one large consumer, the TVA cited a “plateau” in electricity demand over the last four or five years with no projections for an increase in the immediate future. I’d be curious to find out what factors led to that.

Tags: coal, energy, Tennessee, war on coal

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Source from: hotair