The Obama Diary

First Lady Michelle Obama watches a performance backstage with iCarly cast members Jennette McCurdy, left, and Miranda Cosgrove and members of her staff prior to an iCarly screening at Hayfield Secondary School in Alexandria, Va., Jan. 13, 2012. Mrs. Obama joined the cast of Nickelodeon’s iCarly at a special screening of “iMeet The First Lady,” a new episode featuring Mrs. Obama that honors America’s military children. (Official White House Photo by Chuck Kennedy)

First Lady Michelle Obama greets students along the rope line at a special military family screening of Nickelodeon’s iCarly: iMeet The First Lady at Hayfield Secondary School in Alexandria, Virginia

First lady Michelle Obama joins the cast members of Nickelodeon’s iCarly in performing the ‘random dance’ at a special screening of “iMeet The First Lady

(L to R) Noah Munck, Jeanette McCordy, Jerry Trainor, First Lady Michelle Obama, Miranda Cosgrve and Nathan Kress

… with iCarly’s Jennette McCurdy

…. with iCarly’s Jerry Trainor

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ThinkProgress: A new study from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation finds that efforts to repeal the individual health insurance mandate — and remove the incentive for healthier people to obtain health care coverage — could increase premiums by 25 percent and raise government spending on uncompensated care. “Without the mandate, 40 to 42 million would be left uninsured,” but “the government would only spend 3 to 8 percent less on acute care for the nonelderly” partly because it would be paying more for subsidies per-enrollee and uncompensated care, which is unlikely to decrease without an individual requirement.

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Jared Bernstein: Everyone’s Got a Right to Their Own Opinions…but not to their own facts.

When Mitt Romney asserted that federal low-income programs are administered so inefficiently that “very little of the money that’s actually needed by those that really need help, those that can’t care for themselves, actually reaches them,” my colleagues at the CBPP got to work on this graph:

It shows that “federal administrative costs range from less than 1 percent to 8 percent of total federal program spending. Combined federal and state administrative costs range from 1 percent to 10 percent of total federal- and state-funded program spending.”

….. let’s see if he keeps repeating this falsehood…. I know these are dark times for substantive debate, but there are people out there to whom facts still matter and they need to know when someone asking for their vote is trying to mislead them.

Full post here

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