“Generation Opportunity” urges young people not to buy health insurance

By Dan Brooks in Politics versus Government 2 Comments

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R7cRsfW0Jv8

The commercial above was produced by Generation Opportunity, a Koch brothers-funded political activism group that encourages young people to “opt out” of Obamacare by not buying health insurance. First of all, it’s good to see the leprechaun from Leprechaun working again. Second, the “opt out” campaign is designed to sabotage the Affordable Care Act by disrupting state insurance exchanges. For insurers to offer lower premiums, they need to enroll large numbers of relatively healthy young people, who dilute the risk pool for everyone else. If large numbers of young Americans refuse to buy health insurance, the exchanges will falter, [ill-defined step two] and, finally, Obamacare will disappear. Unintended consequences after the jump.

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Friday links! Giving up edition

By Dan Brooks in Friday Links 1 Comment

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Human beings are caught in a constant struggle between being true to themselves and being true to others. That’s why giving up is so popular. Why devote your life to the real and the good, sacrificing your own interests for compassion and/or enduring the slander of strangers to live with integrity, when there are so many streaming video services out there? Today is Friday, and nothing feels better than rolling over and letting go. Won’t you forget how it felt to care with me?

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Close Readings: Randolph County bans Invisible Man

By Dan Brooks in Close Reading 5 Comments
The Randolph County, NC Board of Education: who knows, but on some lower frequency, I speak for like five white people?

The Randolph County, NC Board of Education meets in front of some Successories posters.

In response to a parent’s complaint, the Board of Education for Randolph County, North Carolina has voted to remove copies of Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man from school libraries. The complaining parent is one Kimiyutta Parson, mother of an 11th grader at Randleman High, which is presumably named after Kevin Randleman. Committees at Randleman and at the school district level recommended that Invisible Man be kept on the curriculum, but members of the BOE—who were given copies of the book to read last month—disagreed. Board Chair Tommy McDonald called it “a hard read.” “I didn’t find any literary value,” said member Gary Mason. Excerpt from Parson’s complaint after the jump.

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64% of Americans under 45 call Snowden a “whistleblower”

By Dan Brooks in Existential Dilemmas 1 Comment
Former NSA contractor Edward Snowden, who helped the government read your email and then betrayed us all by telling you

Former NSA contractor Edward Snowden, who helped the government read your email and then betrayed us all by telling you about it

Here’s a fun quote from former UN ambassador John Bolton about why Edward Snowden is a traitor:

[Snowden] thinks he’s smarter and has a higher morality than the rest of us…that he can see clearer than the other 299,999,999 of us, and therefore he can do what he wants. I say that is the worst form of treason.

Guided by individual conscience? Singing the song of yourself? That’s not what America is about. America is about playing on the team. You’ll have plenty of time to worry about whether you participated in an immoral conspiracy in the moments before death. On an unrelated note, 64% of Americans under age 45 regard Snowden as a whistleblower, compared to only 50% aged 45 to 64 and 40% of those aged 65+. Totalizing theories after the jump.

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Meghan McCain triumphantly returns to television

By Dan Brooks in Class Warfare 6 Comments

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gNCiktGvKVI

Meghan McCain has overcome setbacks in her life—her father not being President, her increasing resemblance to the animatronic mask Arnold Schwarzenegger wears in Total Recall—but those setbacks have only made her stronger. Now, her political acumen and magnetic personality nepotism has earned her a talk/reality show on Pivot, the network for millennials. Somehow, she has named it Raising McCain, a title that encourages even viewers her own age to think of her as someone’s kid. But maybe that’s the point. Besides setting up Paul Begala, Me-Mac has contributed exactly zero ideas to American discourse. From a certain uncharitable perspective, she embodies the confidence of a generation. As Daniel D’Addario complains in Salon, her insistence that she is a pundit “is the hauteur that only a millennial could possibly possess.”

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