Poll: Pelosi most well-known but least popular of top four Congressional leaders

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) is the most well-known but least-favored of the four Congressional leaders, according to a new poll.

The Gallup poll released Wednesday found that only 11 percent of those surveyed said they had never heard of Pelosi, making her the best known of the four top Democrats and Republicans in the House and Senate. But Pelosi also topped the list in unpopularity. Forty-eight percent of those surveyed said they have an unfavorable opinion of her while 31 percent have a favorable opinion. 

By comparison, 14 percent said they had not heard of Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio). The poll found that 41 percent have an unfavorable opinion of Boehner while 31 percent have a favorable view. 

Twenty-two percent say they have never heard of Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.). Twenty-six percent said they have a favorable view of McConnell, with 34 percent holding an unfavorable view. 

The numbers are similar for McConnell's counterpart, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.). The poll found that 21 percent said they had never heard of Reid and 27 percent had a favorable opinion of the top Senate Democrat while 38 percent said they had an unfavorable opinion. 

Broken down by party affiliation, Pelosi is the most popular among Democrats but least popular among Republicans. Sixty-two percent of Democrats said they have a favorable opinion of Pelosi while 15 percent said they had an unfavorable opinion. Just 6 percent of Republicans said they have a favorable opinion of the top House Democrat while 83 percent said they have an unfavorable opinion. 

With Reid, 47 percent of Democrats have a favorable opinion while 15 percent have an unfavorable opinion. Among Republicans, just 9 percent said they have a favorable opinion of Reid while 62 percent said they have an unfavorable opinion. 

The numbers are slightly better for Boehner among those surveyed from the opposing party. Twenty-one percent of Democrats said they have a favorable view of Boehner while 52 percent said they have an unfavorable opinion. Among Republicans, Boehner holds a 50-26 favorable split. 

Forty-six percent of Republicans said they have a favorable view of McConnell while 18 percent have an unfavorable opinion of him. Among Democrats, McConnell has a 13-44 unfavorable split. 

The poll was conducted among 1,012 adults from April 11 to 14 and has a 4-point margin of error.

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Michael Bloomberg Pushes To Make New York City Cigarettes Cost At Least $10.50 Per Pack

During his tenure as New York City mayor, Michael Bloomberg (I) has had no qualms about cracking down on products that pose a public health risk, tackling everything from sugary sodas, to salt in snack foods, to illegal guns. Now, the three-term executive has his sights set on the tobacco industry, pushing legislation that would raise cigarette pack prices in the city to at least $10.50 and end tobacco companies’ ability to offer coupons or special discounts on their products.

The recently-announced initiative comes at the heels of another Bloomberg-endorsed plan to limit cigarette makers’ ability to publicly advertise their products in city store fronts. Combined, the two proposals would constitute something of a public health coup for Bloomberg, targeting smokers’ bad habit where it hurts the most: their wallets. And as the New York Times reports, the effort is targeted at teens and low-income Americans:

“This is kind of a landmark set of proposals here,” said Kurt Ribisl, a professor of public health at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, whose research on tobacco control influenced Mr. Bloomberg’s proposal. “For someone like me, who’s spent 18 years studying point-of-sale issues, this is kind of big.”

Dr. Ribisl studies what happens at the retail counter, where a customer at a typical convenience store sees a colorful array of signs, packaging and “shelf talkers” — the small tags that flutter from shelves — promoting two-for-one, dollar-off and other types of deals. According to a Federal Trade Commission report issued last year, the tobacco industry spent $6.5 billion on discounts in 2010, and Dr. Ribisl said they are one of the major ways cigarette makers encourage price-conscious customers like teenagers and low-income smokers to buy.

New York’s price-regulation bill would, in effect, close off the remaining means of access to cheap cigarettes and little cigars, which make it easier for teenagers to experiment with smoking, and progress to smoking regularly, said Brett Loomis, a researcher at RTI International, a nonprofit institute that offers research and technical services to governments and businesses.

Poor Americans are more likely to smoke, but less likely to be able to afford the habit and its associated health care costs. In fact, one study showed that low-income New York City smokers spend as much as a quarter of their income purchasing cigarettes — Bloomberg’s initiatives have the potential to price them out of the deadly habit altogether. While encouraging poor people to stop smoking is undoubtedly good from a public health standpoint, doing so through a commodity-based financial regulation has the potential to further drain their disposable incomes.

And Bloomberg’s legislative push won’t address all aspects of the problem. As cigarette prices rise nationwide and smoking rates plummet in the aggregate, studies have shown that low-income Americans — particularly, low-income women — are still smoking at higher rates than average, and turning to less costly alternatives such as loose leaf tobacco to get their fix on the cheap. Raising cigarette prices even further could propagate even more of that kind of behavior.

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In Shift, NY Times Embraces 'Moral Dimension' Provided by Bishops -- at Least for Expanding Obama-Care

Friday's lead New York Times story celebrated "G.O.P. Governors Providing a Lift For Health Law." The most notable convert: Florida Gov. Rick Scott, who reversed his position this week and announced his support for expanding Medicaid.

The Times' Abby Goodnough and Robert Pear credited Scott for the embrace of Obama-care (via "proponents" who "say that doing so will not only save lives, but also create jobs and stimulate the economy") and also found a convenient "moral dimension" in the call by Catholic bishops to expand the Medicaid program, a dimension the paper never found when the Church was opposing the Obama-care requirement that religion institutions provide contraception coverage.

Under pressure from the health care industry and consumer advocates, seven Republican governors are cautiously moving to expand Medicaid, giving an unexpected boost to President Obama’s plan to insure some 30 million more Americans.

The Supreme Court ruled last year that expanding Medicaid to include many more low-income people was an option under the new federal health care law, not a requirement, tossing the decision to the states and touching off battles in many capitols.

The federal government will pay the entire cost of covering newly eligible beneficiaries from 2014 to 2016, and 90 percent or more later. But many Republican governors and lawmakers immediately questioned whether that commitment would last, and whether increased spending on Medicaid makes sense, given the size of the federal budget deficit. Some flatly declared they would not consider it.

In Florida, where Gov. Rick Scott reversed his position and on Wednesday announced his support for expanding Medicaid, proponents say that doing so will not only save lives, but also create jobs and stimulate the economy. Similar arguments have swayed the Republican governors of Arizona, Michigan, Nevada, New Mexico, North Dakota and Ohio, who in recent months have announced their intention to expand Medicaid.

A left-wing supporter of Obama-care was merely titled a "consumer group."

The shift has delighted supporters of the law.

“I think this means the dominoes are falling,” said Ronald F. Pollack, the executive director of Families USA, a consumer group. “The message is, ‘Even though I may not have supported and even strongly opposed the Affordable Care Act, it would be harmful to the citizens of my state if I didn’t opt into taking these very substantial federal dollars to help people who truly need it.’ ”

And the Times conveniently discovered how the Roman Catholic bishops "have added a moral dimension to the campaign" in support of Medicaid expansion.

Religious leaders have added a moral dimension to the campaign in some states. The Roman Catholic bishops of Salt Lake City and Little Rock, Ark., for example, have urged state officials to expand Medicaid.

Oddly, the paper only finds that "moral dimension" when the bishops come out in favor of liberal causes, not when the "moral dimension" involves rejecting the administration's requirement that religion institutions provide contraception coverage.

The last use of the term in a story on Catholic bishops used it in the context of the bishops pushing left-wing issues like "economic inequality" -- "Bishops Open 'Religious Liberty' Drive" on November 15, 2011 (Note the suspicion-arousing quote marks.) Religion reporter Laurie Goodstein even took care to differentiate the "moral dimension" of left-wing causes from the Church's apparently less-admirable traditional opposition to abortion and homosexuality.

The bishops are struggling to reclaim the role they played in the 1980s and into the ’90s as a nationally recognized voice on the moral dimension of public policy issues like economic inequality, workers’ rights, immigration and nuclear weapons proliferation. Since then, however, they have reordered their priorities, with abortion and homosexuality eclipsing poverty and economic injustice.

Clay Waters is the director of Times Watch, an MRC project tracking the New York Times. Click here to follow Clay Waters on Twitter.

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At Least 5 People Were Accidentally Shot In A Single Day This Week

Travin Varise, who was accidentally shot and killed last month

While gun accidents make up a comparatively small portion of American firearm deaths (the vast majority are intentional homicides or suicides), accidental firearm injury and death is still shockingly common, underlining the scale of America’s gun problem. Every day, local media report several cases where someone accidentally shoots himself or a friend or family member, sometimes fatally. We counted at least five gun accidents on Wednesday:

1. A 4-year-old girl was shot in the leg by a family member who was putting his gun away.

2. A 3-year-old boy found a handgun under the mattress in his parents’ bendroom and shot a family friend in the head.

3. A member of the Air Force pulled the trigger on his gun, reportedly thinking it was unloaded, and sent a bullet that hit a 14-month-old baby in the hand in a nearby apartment.

4. A woman reportedly spun her handgun around and pointed it at her head. She died of a gunshot wound to the head.

5. A 3-year-old was fatally shot in what police said appeared to be a tragic accident.

Children are especially vulnerable to gun violence, either intentional or accidental. According to the Centers for Disease Control, 129 children between age 1-19 died in gun accidents in 2010 (even more take their own lives using a gun belonging to a parent). A Harvard study linked prevalence of guns to unintentional gun-related deaths, finding that the four states with the highest gun ownership rates had mortality rates seven times higher than the four states with the lowest ownership rates.

There’s no real evidence suggesting that family homes with guns are less likely to be victims of crime than ones without deadly weapons.

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