Ron Paul, hero to a lot of middle school-minded Americans, said on Sunday:
If a people cannot secede from an oppressive government, they cannot truly be considered free.
Paul was commenting on “all the recent talk of secession“ going on in the reddest hearts in the reddest parts of the country.
Of course there really isn’t any serious talk of secession going on, but Ron Paul, who is mercifully retiring from Congress, doesn’t want to miss a chance to demonstrate just why libertarian Republicanism isn’t a grown-up political philosophy.
Paul asked:
Is it treasonous to want to secede from the United States?
Why, yes, it is, Ronny Reb. We have been there, done that, remember? Yep, he does remember:
Many think the question of secession was settled by our Civil War. On the contrary; the principles of self-governance and voluntary association are at the core of our founding.
In the Paulian mind, in the mind of a man with a kid’s view of politics, the Civil War didn’t mean squat. Nothing, apparently, was settled by the often-ugly death of 600,000+ Americans in our War of Northern/Southern Aggression, the name dependent on what side your ancestors were on. All states are free to dissociate themselves from the Founders’ creation at the drop of a hat, or at the drop of a black man’s hat, he says.
Paul continued:
There is nothing treasonous or unpatriotic about wanting a federal government that is more responsive to the people it represents.
Nope. That’s right. There is nothing treasonous or unpatriotic about “wanting” such a thing, but there is something treasonous and unpatriotic about actually fighting—with real guns, for God’s sake—for such a thing. And if we are not talking about real guns here, then what the bleep are we talking about? Does anyone think President Obama is going to say to the Ron Pauls of Texas: Go ahead, go your own way? Secession talk means nothing if it doesn’t mean fighting for it with guns.
But what is it that has Ron Paul’s rebellious spirit all aglow? What is it that has him writing such nugatory nonsense?
Stupidly, he seems to be, above all, upset about the Affordable Care Act:
It remains to be seen what will happen in states that are refusing to comply with the deeply unpopular mandates of Obamacare by not setting up healthcare exchanges. It appears the Federal government will not respect those decisions either.
Respect what decisions? If a state is unable or unwilling to comply with the law, the law—apparently a foreign concept to Paul—mandates that the federal government set up those exchanges. The federal government will respect any state’s decision not to set up the health insurance exchanges by setting them up itself. As John Kasich, Republican governor of Ohio, said, his state “will not run an ObamaCare health exchange, but will instead leave that to the federal government to do.”
Got that Ronny Reb? If states don’t want to do it, The Scary Negro In The White’s House will take up the slack.
Finally, Ron Paul wrote:
In a free country, governments derive their power from the consent of the governed. When the people have very clearly withdrawn their consent for a law, the discussion should be over.
The “discussion should be over” if people in a state “have very clearly withdrawn their consent for a law“? Huh? Is that all it takes to dissolve our Union? A state simply has to declare that, say, it will not abide any more meat inspectors and, voilà, a new Republic of Texas is born?
If Ron Paul had been a big shot politician in the 1960s, when landmark civil rights legislation was passed, he would surely have said that states had the right to secede over whether blacks could piss in white toilets or whether blacks could sit in the front of white buses or whether blacks could vote in white elections.
But, thankfully, this isn’t the 1960s, or, more to the point, the 1860s, and Ron Paul is in a very tiny minority, a minority that looks more childish every day, a minority that will soon be without Ron Paul as its intellectually callow leader.
Buried on page 7B of Monday’s Joplin Globe was more good news from ObamaCare:
As of Monday, Medicare will start fining hospitals that have too many patients readmitted within 30 days of discharge due to complications. The penalties are part of a broader push under President Barack Obama’s health care law to improve quality while also trying to save taxpayers money.
And about the inevitable squawking:
“It’s modest, but it’s a start,” said Dr. John Santa, director of the Consumer Reports Health Ratings Center. “Should we be surprised that industry is objecting? You would expect them to object to anything that changes the status quo.” [...]
If General Motors and Toyota issue warranties for their vehicles, hospitals should have some similar obligation when a patient gets a new knee or a stent to relieve a blocked artery, Santa contends. “People go to the hospital to get their problem solved, not to have to come back,” he said. [...]
Medicare deputy administrator Jonathan Blum said he thinks hospitals have gotten the message.
“Clearly it’s captured their attention,” said Blum. “It’s galvanized the hospital industry on ways to reduce unnecessary readmissions. It’s forced more parts of the health care system to work together to ensure that patients have much smoother transitions.” [...]
Under Obama’s health care overhaul, Medicare is pursuing efforts to try to improve quality and lower costs. They include rewarding hospitals for quality results, and encouraging hospitals, nursing homes and medical practice groups to join in “accountable care organizations.” Dozens of pilot programs are under way. The jury is still out on the results.
Well, maybe the jury’s still out. But at least, thanks to Democrats, there is a jury.
“Birth control is basic health care and is an economic issue for Missouri women and families. To make a woman pay for birth control on top of premium payments has real economic consequences.”
—Missouri State Rep. Jill Schupp, D-Creve Coeur.
aking a brief timeout from national politics, I want to call attention to what Republicans here in Missouri shamefully pulled off on Wednesday. From the AP:
Missouri lawmakers enacted new religious exemptions from insurance coverage of birth control Wednesday, overriding a gubernatorial veto and delivering a political rebuke to an Obama administration policy requiring insurers to cover contraception.
Overriding Governor Jay Nixon’s July veto wasn’t easy. In the House, Republicans had exactly the votes they needed—109—and not one vote more, thanks to seven Democrats—yes, I said Democrats—who unbelievably voted against Missouri women and reproductive freedom.
Governor Nixon said,
By their act today, the legislators who voted to override this veto are standing between women and their right to make their own personal decisions about birth control.
The deciding vote, as it turns out, belonged to Republican Chris Molendorp, of Belton. The Kansas City Star pointed out that Molendorp, an insurance agent,
was the only member of his party to oppose the birth control bill when it originally passed in May.
The only member of his party. The only one. And he caved into pressure from his fellow Republicans and, when it counted most, voted against Missouri women. The Star describes Molendorp’s behavior after the vote:
A visibly distraught Molendorp left the House floor and did not participate in a Republican press conference after the vote. He could not be reached for comment Wednesday evening.
If you want to try to reach Mr. Molendorp for comment or just to express your displeasure with his inexplicable vote, here is his Jefferson City contact info:
Fortunately, a lawsuit has been filed by a Kansas City firefighter and the Greater Kansas City Coalition of Labor Union Women, asking a judge to restore some sanity to Missouri politics and toss the law out.
For the record, here are the names, phone numbers, and email addresses of the Democrats—Democrats!—who chose religious oppression over women’s freedom:
In the House, Rep. Ed Schieffer, D-Troy, arrived in a wheelchair after suffering a staph infection from knee surgery in order to vote for the veto override.
If only he cared as much about the rights of women.
In my post on the health care law ruling yesterday I mentioned I would save for another day what I meant by this:
judging by this decision, I see only two consistent “liberals” on this court, Ginsburg and Sotomayor.
What I meant was their just refusal to join the other seven justices—including the usually sensible Steven Breyer and the ideologically suspect Obama appointee, Elena Kagan*—in ruling unconstitutional (it’s complicated, so see here) any attempt by the feds to terminate existing Medicaid money to states (almost all Republican-controlled states, of course) who might refuse to go along with the ACA’s expansion of Medicaid, an expansion that would enable millions of needy folks to get health insurance.
But, as usual, the needy just don’t have quite enough friends in powerful places.
For those who don’t know, Medicaid, created along with Medicare in 1965, is a federal-state effort designed to provide medical and health benefits to poorer folks, including children, who would otherwise go without all but emergency health care at hospitals. It is funded by both state and federal sources, the funding formula based on per capita income in the various states, with no state going without at least 50% federal funding (the average the feds pay is 57 percent).
The ability to withdraw all Medicaid funding, not just that associated with the expansion, was seen as a big stick in getting reluctant (red) states to do the right thing. And the Supreme Court—again, including two justices appointed by Democrats—held that the federal government cannot coerce states or penalize them in such a manner, even if it is to do the right thing. Paul Clement, who argued the case for the bad guys, characterized this part of the decision as “really quite significant.”
Yes, it is. Here’s how USA Today summarized it:
The court struck down a portion of the law that would have forced states to accept a major expansion of Medicaid to all Americans earning up to $30,733 for a family of four or risk losing all federal funds under the program.
Roberts called that part of the Affordable Care Act “a gun to the head” by threatening as much as 10% of states’ budgets.
By removing the “gun to the head,” the Court has made it voluntary for the states to provide expanded health insurance for its neediest citizens, to folks with incomes at 133 percent of the national poverty line.
And even though the federal government is picking up nearly all of the tab for the expansion, inevitably there will be Republican opposition, since that political party is long on hatred for Obama and short on love for the neediest among us.
JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. (AP) – Top Missouri Republicans say they have no intention of expanding Medicaid eligibility as a result of the Supreme Court’s ruling on the federal health care law.
The story relates that Missouri House Majority Leader Tim Jones will not consider the expansion, and the stripper-lovin’ Lt. Gov. Peter Kinder falsely called it a “break-the-bank provision.” Obviously, these unkind gentlemen don’t give a damn about the Missourians who would be helped, including doctors who treat patients who can’t pay, nor do they appear to give a damn about Missouri hospitals, most of whom have to absorb themselves or pass on to others the cost of uninsured patients they are required by law to treat.
Reportedly, the White House believes that all of the states will go for the expansion, since they all participate in Medicaid now with considerably less federal funding help than the new law provides. But as a student of bullheaded Tea Party extremism, I can tell you that I suspect more than a few red states will opt out of providing more health services to those folks—many of whom are ongoing victims of Republican economics—who can’t afford them otherwise.
I will take Claire McCaskill at her word that she is not skipping the Democratic National Convention because she is afraid to cavort with Mr. Obamacare himself and other Democrats who don’t enjoy overwhelming popularity here in Missouri.
I’ve never gone when I’ve had a contested race. You’ve got to say to people at home, which is more important: Going to a place with a bunch of party honchos and having cocktail parties, or being at home talking to them? So this has never been a hard call for me. Everybody is trying to make this a big deal and narrative. It’s just stupid.
All of the chatter about McCaskill’s reasons for not going to North Carolina later this summer, along with the expectation that the Supremes will rule on the Affordable Care Act tomorrow, has me wondering just why it is that here in Missouri, as elsewhere, the concept of “ObamaCare” is relatively unpopular, even while its constituent parts are not. My conclusion is that such dissonance is attributable to a failure to properly—and constantly—educate an inattentive public.
Which, of course, made me wonder, for instance, what Ms. McCaskill has said about the ACA and how she has tried to educate Missourians on the virtues of the law.
Well, she did make an effort to do so in March, sort of. Here is how TPM began a story about it:
Grilled about her support for the Affordable Care Act, Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-MO) told a home state radio interviewer that the law’s core structure is “exactly” like the House GOP Medicare privatization plan that conservatives support and liberals detest.
Hmm. That’s not exactly a good way of selling ObamaCare to liberals, now is it? She went on:
“The irony of this situation is that these are private insurance companies people will shop to buy their insurance. It’s not the government,” she told KMOX of St. Louis on Wednesday. “It’s exactly what Paul Ryan wants to do for Medicare.”
“It’s subsidized by the government — premium subsidies — which is exactly, this is the irony,” continued McCaskill, who faces a tough reelection battle this fall. “You think what Paul Ryan wants to do for seniors, you think it’s terrific. But when we want to provide private health insurance for people who don’t have insurance with subsidies from the government, you think it’s terrible.”
Her point here is, of course, unassailable. There is a lot of Republican hypocrisy associated with the debate over health care reform, particularly since almost the entire scheme that is now called ObamaCare is made up of ideas that once were dreamed up in the minds of right-wingers.
But that doesn’t let Claire off the hook, in terms of her responsibility to educate folks about the law. I looked on her campaign website and I found the following under “Healthcare“:
Claire has fought for expanded health insurance for all Missourians, from children to seniors. In her first term, Claire helped protect children with pre-existing conditions from being refused insurance and saved seniors from paying too much for prescription drugs by helping to close the Medicare Part D “donut hole.” Claire strongly believes that affordable health care is necessary in a successful economy and will continue to fight to make sure all Missourians have access to it, while also fighting to ensure those who chose not to be insured don’t pass along their medical costs to other Missourians.
This paragraph constitutes a summary of the details that follow on the page, but what we see here is essentially an explanation of the Affordable Care Act, of ObamaCare, but without the name attached. Now, while it is understandable that she would want to stay away from terms that Republicans and their moneyed funders have tainted via their propaganda campaign against “ObamaCare” and the ACA, what McCaskill is doing is essentially furthering the public’s misunderstanding of what is the health care reform law that goes by those names.
I can’t help but wonder what public opinion about the ACA might be today, if folks like McCaskill would not only consistently tout the parts of the law that people like, but aggressively defend the idea behind the one part they don’t like, the dreaded mandate.
Something like the following would be in order, coming from the moderate Missouri Democrat who voted for the ACA and who gets constantly attacked for doing so:
You’re damned right I voted for ObamaCare. And I’m proud of that vote. Hell, I wish they’d call it ClaireCare, so proud I am to have voted for it.
You know why?
Because it helps protect Missourians with pre-existing conditions from getting screwed by insurance companies;
Because it protects Missourians who get sick from getting booted off the insurance they had before they got sick;
Because it provides insurance for Missourians who can’t afford it and who would otherwise go without it and get sick and die or who would end up in an emergency room with a horrible and horribly expensive disease that we’d all end up paying for;
Because it allows about 40,000 Missouri kids to stay on their parents insurance until they are 26;
Because it has already “saved 111,815 Missouri seniors on Medicare an average of $627 per person on their prescription drugs by closing the Medicare Part D ‘donut hole‘” (quote from her website);
And because it has already “provided 431,945 Missouri women with free mammograms, bone density scans, and cervical cancer screenings with no co-pay” (quote from her website);
As I said, you’re damned right I voted for what you derisively try to call “ObamaCare,” and I couldn’t be prouder. Tell me, my critics, which one of the above “becauses” would you like to repeal? Huh?
And I’m even proud of the fact that I voted for the hated mandate because it was at least an attempt to get folks to stop gaming the system and help pay their own way. Aren’t you tired of some people trying to get something for nothing?
”We are now in a situation where conservatives have framed almost every issue.”
—George Lakoff and Elisabeth Weihling
s we wait for the Supreme Court’s ruling on the Affordable Care Act, it is troubling to think that many Americans live lives of such cultural and intellectual isolation that the following could be true, as reported by Alec MacGillis:
SEWANEE, Tenn. – As Robin Layman, a mother of two who has major health troubles but no insurance, arrived at a free clinic here, she had a big personal stake in the Supreme Court’s imminent decision on the new national health care law.
Not that she realized that. “What new law?” she said. “I’ve not heard anything about that.”
This unfortunate woman lives in southeastern Tennessee, which has economic challenges aplenty, but also has a state legislature full of conservatives who make the problems of folks who live there even worse:
…the state’s largely Republican political leadership has shunned the law. The state’s legislature has declined to pass legislation establishing the new insurance “exchange” required by the law…
Let’s be honest and admit that liberals and progressives have a problem when they attempt to do things for people like Robin Layman of rural Tennessee. As MacGillis informs us:
Layman was hardly the only patient unaware that the law aims to help people like her, by expanding health insurance beginning in 2014. And this gets to the heart of the political dilemma for Democrats: Despite spending tremendous political capital to pass the law, the party is unlikely to win many votes from the law’s future beneficiaries, most of whom live in Republican-dominated states in the South and West. In fact, many at the clinic said they don’t vote at all.
Some of the people Democrats are looking out for, when they pass laws like the Affordable Care Act, are ignorant and often don’t exercise their rights as Americans to have a say in their own destiny. How do you overcome that problem, if you are the Democratic Party?
Well, I’m not sure it can be overcome, but I would start with a robust and unapologetic attack on the Republican Party, which is now squarely standing in the way of progress—and in the way of helping the Robin Laymans among us.
MacGillis writes:
Opponents of the Affordable Care Act, such as Mitt Romney, say it should be replaced with a state-by-state approach. Romney’s home state, Massachusetts, is the pioneer – Romney signed a 2006 law that has extended coverage to nearly all residents.
But many other states have demonstrated little political will to help people obtain health coverage. In some, such as Texas and Virginia, the threshold for Medicaid eligibility is so stringent that parents earning $10,000 a year are too well-off to qualify.
Who controls these states? What party’s political philosophy makes this outrage possible? Democrats should say so, loudly and often. Our side, including especially President Obama, has to stop trying to sound reasonable and accommodating and “bipartisan.” That’s the language of governance, not campaigning; that’s the way you talk when you are working to get laws passed, not when you are trying to convince voters that you have a better vision for the country.
Framing is (or should be) about moral values, deep truths, and the policies that flow from them.
As of their kickoff speeches in Ohio, Romney and Obama have both chosen economics as their major campaign theme. And thus the question of how they frame the economy will be crucial throughout the campaign. Their two speeches could not be more different.
Where Romney talks morality (conservative style), Obama mainly talks policy. Where Romney reframes Obama, Obama does not reframe Romney. In fact, he reinforces Romney’s frames in the first part of his speech by repeating Romney’s language word for word — without spelling out his own values explicitly.
Where Romney’s framing is moral, simple and straightforward, Obama’s is policy-oriented, filled with numbers, details, and so many proposals that they challenge ordinary understanding.
Where Obama talks mainly about economic fairness, Romney reframes it as economic freedom.
And Romney, capitalizing on almost four years of Republican attacks on government, understands how best to close the deal, using tough and forceful language:
Romney attacks The Public, speaking of “the heavy hand of government” and “the invisible boot of government.” …Romney’s “invisible boot” evokes the image of a storm trooper’s boot on your neck. The government is the storm trooper, your enemy. You are weak and in an impossible position. You can’t move — a metaphor for being held back and not being able to freely engage in the economy.
Republicans these days have no problems saying what they mean, when it comes to demonizing The Public, but the Democratic message, as Lakoff and Wehling suggest, should strongly—how about getting pissed off?—counter such an attempt to nullify the value of government:
The Private depends on The Public. It is The Public that provides economic freedom. Give a vision of responsible, progressive business. Talk freedom — as well as fairness. Point out that the hoarding of wealth by the 1 percent kills opportunity, as Joseph Stieglitz has discussed at length. Speak of an “Economy for All — not just rich bankers, managers, and job killers like private equity firms.” Yes, Romney and those like him are job killers. Say it. Point out that during the economic recovery of 2010, 93 percent of the additional income went to the richest 1 percent of taxpayers.
“Yes, Romney and those like him are job killers. Say it.” Say it! All of this is based on the superior (say it!) “moral position” of Democrats and Obama, which the authors summarized nicely:
That democracy is based on empathy (citizens caring about fellow citizens), responsibility both for oneself and others, and an ethic of excellence (doing one’s best not just for oneself, but for one’s family, community, and country).
When it comes down to it, what we will find out in this election—if Democrats properly frame the issues with tough, descriptive language—is whether America at this point in time is a country where appeals involving empathy and social responsibility will still move voters, or whether the tried-and-failed philosophy of let-the-rich-have-it-all-and-hope-some-trickles-down will once again dominate our politics.
For the sake of folks like Robin Layman of rural Tennessee, who desperately need the Democratic Party but are often too ignorant to know that, Democrats must win.
Mittens and his mate say that even though poor old Seamus loved the ride, they won’t ever put another dog on top of their car, at least so long as there is a campaign to run (reminds me of Romney’s weird admission: “I’m running for office, for Pete’s sake. I can’t have illegals“).
Now, if we can only get them to be so kind to the poor, working moms, and Medicare recipients.
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Jon Walker at Firedoglake.com makes the point that states—particularly Republican-controlled states—are dragging their feet on creating insurance exchanges as part of the implementation of the Affordable Care Act:
This whole problem could have been avoided if Democrats had gone with a national exchange like in the original House bill; but instead, Democrats foolishly insisted on going with the Senate’s idiotic approach of using a state-based exchange. It is likely that several states will not be ready to implement the law in 2014 forcing the federal government to step in to try to fill the voids.
Of course if voters put Republicans back in charge next year, we won’t have to worry about all those state-size voids in 2014 or any year thereafter.
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Despite overwhelming public support for the idea, the Buffett Rule went down on Monday even though it won a majority of Senate votes. Explain that to your bright-eyed kids as you simultaneously tell them about our wonderful and “democratic” political system.
The Obama administration on Wednesday decided not to move forward with an executive order prohibiting workplace discrimination among federal contractors that is a top priority for the LGBT community.
This is a truly pathetic time for Obama to start showing some executive restraint… I hope the LGBT community and the broad progressive community appreciate the full irony of this decision. Obama officially thinks it is appropriate to use his executive power to buy a drone from a government contractor and use that drone to execute you without trial, but he won’t use his executive power to tell that same contractor they can’t fire you for being gay.
No doubt there is some juicy irony in this misguided decision, but have these good liberals taken a look at the alternative lately? Huh?
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Speaking of irony, leave it to Fox “News” host Chris Wallace to at least attempt to properly place in context the near-lie told by the Romney campaign about the job losses among women just after Obama took office in January of 2009 (Wallace’s attempt was only a half-hearted one, it turns out).
Wallace mildly challenged senior Romney adviser Ed Gillespie on the grossly incomplete claim that 92% of job losses under Obama were jobs held by women. CBS’s Bob Scheiffer and ABC’s George Stephanopoulos simply tossed the claim out there (Stephanopoulos did it twice!) like it was legitimate.
Sadly, Stephanopoulos, a former Clintonite who tries like hell to make conservatives appreciate him, has been at this stuff a long time. He asked Obama a Sean Hannity-generated question about Bill Ayers in the 2008 debate, but still the right-wing will show him no love.
I recognize that many persons believe the health mandate is very bad legislative policy. But the appropriate judicial response to such a complaint has long been clear. The Court was admirably forthright about the point in its ruling in Munn v. Illinois in 1876: “For protection against abuses by the Legislature, the people must resort to the polls, not the courts.”
We will soon find out who the true conservatives on the court are.
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Finally, the alleged cheapskate Secret Service agents involved in the scandal over hookers at the Pley Club in Cartagena, Colombia, ought to be ashamed of themselves. If you are out to have “a little fun and flesh” (as The New York Daily News put it) and all that is said about you is, “They had huge egos,” then you are a real loser.
“The vehemence they displayed was totally inappropriate. They seemed to adopt the tea party slogans.”
—Charles Fried, President Reagan’s solicitor general commenting on the tone of the Supreme Court’s conservative justices during oral arguments on the constitutionality of the Affordable Care Act
uch ado was made over President Obama’s uncharacteristically maladroit remarks* on the possibility that the Supreme Court might overturn his health care reform legislation:
And I just remind conservative commentators that for years what we have heard is that the biggest problem on the bench was judicial activism or a lack of judicial restraint; that an unelected group of people would somehow overturn a duly constituted and passed law. Well, this is a good example. And I’m pretty confident that this court will recognize that and not take that step…
Ultimately I am confident that the Supreme Court will not take what would be an unprecedented, extraordinary step of overturning a law that was passed by a strong majority of a democratically elected Congress.
The Wall Street Journal was “astonished” at the remarks and wondered if the former constitutional law teacher ever taught Marbury v. Madison. Conservative Joe Scarborough found the remarks “unbelievable” and “disturbing.” He accused the president of “attacking” the Supreme Court and essentially undermining our judicial system’s independence.
The thundering Voice of the GOP, Rush Limbaugh, called the President a “thug“—yep, he did— saying:
…he says things in these sound bites…and they’re chilling to me. “The court has to understand…” “The court must understand,” is one of his sound bites. No, the court must not — does not have to — listen to you. What is this, “The court must understand”? That is a threat! How many of you think it possible that Obama will make a trip to the Supreme Court before the vote, before the final vote? Can you see it happening? I can.
I can too. I can see Mr. Obama serving up a can of presidential whoopass to Justice Scalia. Yes, anyone can see that.
Here is a classy graphic posted as part of Rush’s transcript from Tuesday:
As I said, I can see that Obama busting the kneecaps of Antonin Scalia. I sure can.
There was also an orgy of Obama hate Tuesday night on Hannity—featuring constitutional scholar Sarah Palin! The learned Alaskan said (it is damned hard to transcribe her eruditeness),
So, how much more evidence does an American voter need to understand that this president is not only, just merely, over, in over his head [sic], as a constitutional scholar—this is the community organizer in him coming out.
How much more evidence do all of us need to understand that we cannot afford this “flexibility” that he is seeking in his next four years that he’s asking for, for his ineptitude the next four years, we cannot afford to go down this road.
Sarah Palin referencing someone’s “ineptitude” represents a special kind of chutzpah, don’t ya think? Call it arctic audacity, but whatever you call it, she is sitting on a pile of cash that such garish gall has wrought.
For all the outrage on the right about Mr. Obama’s remarks, one would think that there had been no history of right-wing attacks on the Supreme Court. Does Roe v. Wade ring a bell? Anyone remember the “Impeach Earl Warren” movement across the South?
It is obvious that the Warren-led Court intends, step-by-step, to declare the whole Constitution of the United States unconstitutional.
Is that an attack on the Court?
How about this, from William F. Buckley, the father of modern conservatism:
The Supreme Court of the United States discovers every year or so something in the Constitution not only that hasn’t been discovered before, but something which the formulators of that particular article or amendment to the Constitution specifically rejected. But it becomes law. This is called casuistry, and casuistry is one of the diseases of a decadent order in which people refuse to rely on basic cognitive skills, and have no faith in sequential argument.
Hmm. That was written in 1977. I suppose the Supreme Court has recovered from “one of the diseases of a decadent order,” since conservatives are now so eager to come to its defense.
In any case, the right-wing hysteria over Obama’s remarks is interesting, since a) they don’t worry too much about disrespecting the executive branch these days, and b) I never thought I would live long enough to hear right-wingers so enthusiastically defend the Court’s honor.
The truth is, though, that they don’t have much respect for either the executive branch or the judicial branch (or for that matter, the legislative branch) unless those institutions are peopled by conservatives.
Example: A totally unsubstantiated rumor has been floating from conservative brain to conservative brain: “Does Obama Know How the Supreme Court Voted?” The deal is that some liberal justice leaked the bad news to Big O and he was trying to intimidate the conservative justices into submission, sort of opening up a long-distance can of whoopass.
Hannity brought it up last night and Limbaugh mentioned it earlier in the day (he speculated that it might be Justice Kagan).
I ask: Is suggesting that a sitting justice (they are the only ones allowed in during the vote) of leaking the result of last Friday’s conference tally—purely for political reasons—showing proper respect for the Court?
In the case of conspiracy-minded Rush Limbaugh, any leaking of the outcome—positive or negative—would do:
It’s easier to understand that somebody leaked to him that the preliminary vote went against him and that the mandate fell by whatever the preliminary vote was and that explains his attitude yesterday. But I can see him saying what he said if the vote went in his favor as well, as a means of further intimidation, making sure they don’t change their minds or whatever.
It must be nice to live in a world where all the roads lead to your destination.
But my favorite example of the newly-found (at least since Bush v. Gore in 2000) and quite fraudulent conservative respect for the Supreme Court was from Joe Scarborough. After bashing Obama for not showing proper deference to the Court, he said this:
I think Justice Kennedy is a conservative justice with a small “c.” He’s worried about his legacy more than the law that’s in front of him—just to be really harsh about it. And I think he’s going to be afraid to do the bold thing, even if the bold thing is the right thing.
Now, that, my friends, is real respect for the integrity of the Supreme Court.
MR. SINGLETON: Mr. President, you said yesterday that it would be unprecedented for a Supreme Court to overturn laws passed by an elected Congress. But that is exactly what the Court has done during its entire existence. If the Court were to overturn individual mandate, what would you do, or propose to do, for the 30 million people who wouldn’t have health care after that ruling?
THE PRESIDENT: Well, first of all, let me be very specific. We have not seen a Court overturn a law that was passed by Congress on a economic issue, like health care, that I think most people would clearly consider commerce — a law like that has not been overturned at least since Lochner. Right? So we’re going back to the ’30s, pre New Deal.
And the point I was making is that the Supreme Court is the final say on our Constitution and our laws, and all of us have to respect it, but it’s precisely because of that extraordinary power that the Court has traditionally exercised significant restraint and deference to our duly elected legislature, our Congress. And so the burden is on those who would overturn a law like this.
Now, as I said, I expect the Supreme Court actually to recognize that and to abide by well-established precedence out there. I have enormous confidence that in looking at this law, not only is it constitutional, but that the Court is going to exercise its jurisprudence carefully because of the profound power that our Supreme Court has.
Just when Eric Cantor and John Ashcroft decided to jump on The Inflatable Mitt (TIM), the GOP’s eventual nominee, out comes The Old Mitt (TOM), courtesy of an ancient—and by ancient I mean July of 2009—USA Today opinion piece TOM wrote:
During the summer of 2009 the health care reform debate was heating up and TOM had some advice for Mr. Obama and the Congress:
There’s a better way. And the lessons we learned in Massachusetts could help Washington find it…
Thanks Mitt—I mean, TOM! Why didn’t Democrats think of that?
TOM said the president’s first act should be this:
For health care reform to succeed in Washington, the president must finally do what he promised during the campaign: Work with Republicans as well as Democrats.
We all know now that Obama tried that. He and some Senate Democrats bent and shaped the bill to appeal to so-called moderates like Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins, both of whom gave Democrats the legislative finger when it came time to vote.
TOM’s next advice:
To find common ground with skeptical Republicans and conservative Democrats, the president will have to jettison left-wing ideology for practicality and dump the public option.
He did that, too, of course. A public option was never seriously considered by the White House mainly because of Republican opposition. And guess what? No “skeptical” Republicans joined him anyway, so impenetrable was,and remains, their skepticism.
So, without a public option what did TOM propose as a way to get folks to purchase insurance, since they can otherwise just go into a hospital emergency room and get free treatment?
Our experience also demonstrates that getting every citizen insured doesn’t have to break the bank. First, we established incentives for those who were uninsured to buy insurance. Using tax penalties, as we did, or tax credits, as others have proposed, encourages “free riders” to take responsibility for themselves rather than pass their medical costs on to others. This doesn’t cost the government a single dollar.
Whoops! He can’t mean the dreaded mandate, can he? You mean TOM favored—as late as 2009—the mandate that TIM now opposes? The mandate that the Republican Party is staking its reelection chances on, now that the economy seems to be turning toward the light?
Just like other naughty novelties, The Inflatable Mitt Romney may bring some conservative Republicans a kind of perverse pleasure for the moment—they have, after all, been able to squeeze him into submission. But The Old Mitt will keep popping up now and then, making their fantasy go limp, the fantasy that Romney is their champion, the one who can beat The One.
Claire McCaskill, nobody’s liberal Democrat, will undoubtedly find her reelection effort tough going this year, even as the GOP is set to nominate one of three right-wing extremists to oppose her.
But she is getting some help from a couple of big-shot Missouri Republicans. From The Kansas City Star:
Two prominent Republicans were among three dozen civic and political supporters of Democratic Sen. Claire McCaskill who met in Kansas City last Monday to hear her plans for re-election.
Both are top officials at Kansas City Southern, where the meeting took place. One was company Chairman Michael Haverty. The other was the meeting’s host, KCS Executive Vice President Warren Erdman, who used to be chief of staff to former Republican Sen.Kit Bond.
Erdman likes the fact that McCaskill is a “pragmatist,” which coming from a Republican means she sometimes blesses Republican philosophy with her assent. “I like things that produce results,” Erdman said.
It’s not clear what Erdman would think of the unproductive efforts of Roy Blunt—our very red senator—to , well, I’ll just let Blunt’s press release tell you:
WASHINGTON D.C. – U.S. Senator Roy Blunt (Mo.) attempted to introduce a bipartisan amendment today to the federal highway reauthorization bill in order to repeal the Obama Administration’s unlawful health care mandate that violates Americans’ religious freedom.
Because highways have so much to do with contraceptives and conscience, Blunt didn’t see a problem with hijacking the federal highway bill to do a bit of
moralizing on behalf of those who hold extremist theological positions on birth control. Never let a pothole go to waste, is Blunt’s motto, I suppose.
In any case, Think Progress offered this short analysis of the potential broader implications of Blunt’s “conscience amendment,” should its implementation end up in the God-blessed hands of a Republican president:
Under the measure, an insurer or an employer would be able to claim a moral or religious objection to covering HIV/AIDS screenings, Type 2 Diabetes treatments, cancer tests or anything else they deem inappropriate or the result of an “unhealthy” or “immoral” lifestyle. Similarly, a health plan could refuse to cover mental health care on the grounds that the plan believes that psychiatric problems should be treated with prayer.
Don’t think such things aren’t possible, if Missourians send Sarah Steelman or Todd Akin or John Brunner to replace Claire McCaskill in the U.S. Senate, and if Missourians—including anti-Obama “pragmatists” like Republican Warren Erdman—send Mitt Romney (or maybe even worse, Rick Santorum) to the White’s House.
In that case, Roy Blunt’s amendment, and likely much worse, will become reality instead of mere moral theatrics.
Here is how The Kansas City Star began its story today on the Catholic Church hierarchy’s hysteria over a new rule that would only slightly move the church in the direction of the 21st century:
Lawmakers and politicians scrambled Monday to respond to a growing furor over the Obama administration’s decision to require no-cost contraceptive insurance coverage — even in policies offered by religious employers.
Over the weekend hundreds of thousands of Catholics, including many in the Kansas City area, heard church leaders denounce the plan revealed in late January by Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, the former Kansas governor.
Catholic leaders complained that the rule would force them to subsidize medical procedures to which they morally object.
Let’s get this straight from the start: the “medical procedures” to which the Catholic Church objects are actually contraceptive services and not abortions.
And if you will excuse me, it is a little off-putting for an institution that has tolerated pedophilia in the priesthood for years and years to suddenly seize the moral high ground on this or any issue.
Let us also get straight another important point, as the Star does:
The rule would exempt religious organizations if they are mainly involved in spreading religious beliefs and largely employ people of that faith. The regulation would likely exclude employees of a Catholic parish or diocese.
In other words, nothing changes as far as the religious mission of the Catholic Church goes. All the new rule does is prohibit the church from imposing its moral teaching about contraceptives on non-Catholics who happen to work in Catholic universities or hospitals or in other social-service entities operated by the church in the secular workplace.
It is also necessary to point out, as Kathleen Sebelius did in USA Today, that the new rule is not exactly ground-breaking, as 28 states already require contraception coverage and eight of them don’t even have a religious exemption.
Sebelius continued:
It’s important to note that our rule has no effect on the longstanding conscience clause protections for providers, which allow a Catholic doctor, for example, to refuse to write a prescription for contraception. Nor does it affect an individual woman’s freedom to decide not to use birth control. And the president and this administration continue to support existing conscience protections.
But that’s not enough for the bishops, who are saying all over the country:
We cannot — we will not — comply with this unjust law.
Archbishop (who will soon be a Cardinal) Timothy Dolan of New York said,
To force American citizens to choose between violating their consciences and forgoing their healthcare is literally unconscionable. It is as much an attack on access to health care as on religious freedom.
It is hard to see how one single American conscience would be violated under this rule, and the only “attack on access to health care” would be by those dioceses whose bishops decide they and their Iron Age consciences are above the law.
As for the “religious freedom” nonsense, who among us has the absolute freedom to shape the secular world according to our religious beliefs? What if the Catholic Church had a doctrinal problem with women becoming doctors? Would it be okay for Catholic hospitals to hire only men to care for the sick? That would be no more ridiculous than this present controversy.
We are not talking about going into Catholic churches and demanding they renounce their anachronistic and absurd beliefs about contraception. Any Catholic who desires to cling to superstition and irrationality can still do so, but quite ironically most Catholics, when they exit the church door, have no problem with their contraception consciences, as Reuters reported last year:
A new report from the Guttmacher Institute, the nonprofit sexual health research organization, shows that only 2 percent of Catholic women, even those who regularly attend church, rely on natural family planning.
The latest data shows practices of Catholic women are in line with women of other religious affiliations and adult American women in general.
So, while the church hierarchy still has its feet planted in the Dark Ages on this issue, the women of the church have brought their reproductive organs into the Information Age.
The politics of all this obviously works against Mr. Obama—which actually demonstrates that he has principles beyond politics—as the issue is easily exploitable by Republicans on phony religious freedom grounds. (Some Democrats are piling on too, which may lead to a further compromise on down the road.)
We must have a president who is willing to protect America’s first right, a right to worship God, according to the dictates of our own conscience. We’ll either have a government that protects religious diversity and freedom, or we’ll have a government that tells us what kind of conscience they think we ought to have.
Anyone who thinks that “to worship God” involves denying contraception services to women in the workplace is, well, suitable to become the Republican nominee for president.
I have written quite a bit about health care reform over the past few years, including my last post of 2011, which received this comment from the always thoughtful and thought-provoking Jim Wheeler:
My conclusion: the present system, including the ACA, is unaffordable and the Paul Ryan plan is even worse. Extending Medicare to all ages, sorry Duane, would have the same problem, unless that is, if the government were given pricing power in the medical market, but it seems to me that such would be equivalent to the Public Option, the only solution that makes sense to me. The bottom line is a tough one in that any viable solution will have to slash industry profits by half, which is why industry lobbyists sank the Public Option in the first place.
My response is necessarily lengthy because the issues are obviously difficult. But let the following stand as my current, if somewhat tentative, endorsement of what to do to fix what is wrong with our health care system, despite the passage of the Affordable Care Act:
Jim,
As you know, I was a proponent of the public option. But the kind of public option I would favor was found in H.R. 4789, which had 82 co-sponsors. It amended the Social Security Act “to authorize an option for any citizen or permanent resident of the United States to buy into Medicare.”
I choose Medicare-for-all not because it would be the best possible system, but because it seems to me to be the only politically possible system that would also be a considerable improvement over what we have now. I say that because most people already have a high opinion of Medicare and would, with gentle persuasion over time, be open to applying it to all people.
My own personal choice—I want to make clear—would be a complete government health care system, similar to the VA system, or even expanding the current VA system to include all people. It turns out that since the late 1990s—contrary to what most people believe—the VA system—socialized medicine—is the model of efficiency and effectiveness. (And, of course, the “moderate” Mitt Romney wants to privatize it.) It also has the power to negotiate discounts for prescription drugs, which is essential to control costs. This kind of truly socialized medicine would be my “public option.”
But I recognize the near-impossibility of such a move, given our politics and our historical national aversion to such things, even though it appears to me that conservatives would have a hard time labeling the VA system as dangerous European socialism and the military veterans who use it as scary socialists. But I digress.
Let’s talk first about the possibility of fixing or improving the current Medicare system, before extending it to all people. Without the fix, I agree that it would be a problematic option for all people.
To begin, let me get this out of the way: As a rule, I believe choice and competition are good things and serve us well as Americans. But let us keep in mind that they ought to be our servants and not our masters.
I also believe the profit-motive is indispensable for a society that seeks a general prosperity that benefits everyone, even if there are some inequities necessarily arising out of a system that values the concept of making gobs of money. (Severe inequities, though, should be addressed via a progressive tax system, but that’s for another day.)
But those who believe that increased choice and competition and profit-opportunities in the health care system overall will lead to greater efficiency and reduced costs don’t understand how the American health care system works or how it has worked in the past. (Phillip Longman does; read here and here for the details.) What this choice and competition leads to most often is inefficiency and wasted resources, often at the insistence of the health care consumer, who doesn’t mind all that much in times of dire need if, for instance, the specialist orders extra—and profitable—but unnecessary treatment.
Look at this graph, which I know you are familiar with:
The idea here, of course, is that as Americans (the top blue line) we are spending a lot of money on our private, profit-based health care system, compared with most of the rest of the industrialized world, and we are not necessarily getting our money’s worth. Many unnecessary expenses are built into the kind of system we have, including unnecessary treatment in the form of operations and other costly procedures.
And, look, I don’t necessarily chalk up everything wrong with this picture to “greedy bastards” in the health care and health insurance business. There are plenty of entrepreneurial reasons why over-treating patients makes $en$e (see, for instance, this New York Times article by Dr. Peter Bach, who criticizes fee-for-service plans because they encourage doctors to quickly move patients through their practices and to order expensive and profitable testing).
And there are plenty of profit-minded reasons, given our capitalist system and what some call “actuarial logic,” why it is that insurance companies charge older folks more for insurance or discriminate against the sick, even though such behavior causes gratuitous harm to society. They are in business to make money, not to promote the general welfare.
So, it only makes another kind of sense—common sense—to take, or begin to take, the profit-motive out of our health care system. As I said, I would be in favor of a complete government-run, VA-like system, but the second-best in my opinion would be to improve the Medicare system and extend it to all folks who want it.
Based on all that, I suggest considering the recommendations of the above-mentioned Phillip Longman, who says that to improve and make Medicare financially sustainable, we ought to set a date certain for the conversion of that system from an inefficient fee-for-service plan to one that utilizes Medicare-certified nonprofit HMOs. He addresses the historical problems with Health Maintenance Organizations (there are many) and offers valuable examples of ones that have worked well, including, but not limited to, the VA system. (Among other non-government players, he mentions the Cleveland Clinic and the Mayo Clinic.)
Longman says:
Approximately a third of all Medicare spending goes for unnecessary surgeries, redundant testing, and other forms of overtreatment, according to well-accepted estimates. The largest single reason for this extraordinary volume of wasteful and often dangerous overtreatment is Medicare’s use of the “fee-for-service” method of compensating health care providers that dominates U.S. medicine, under which doctors and hospitals are rewarded according to how many procedures and tests they perform. To fix this, the federal government should do the following: announce a day certain and near when Medicare will be out of the business of subsidizing profit-driven, fee-for-service medicine.
Republicans, famously, have voted en masse to voucherize Medicare, which would, as Longman says, “lead to seniors paying for nearly 70 percent of the cost of their health care, which is hardly insurance at all.” And certainly not ”Medicare” at all.
Democratic fixes, says Longman, are less onerous for seniors, but “don’t necessarily save money” because “profit-maximizing providers remain free to game the system.” And some of the fixes built into the Affordable Care Act, like the Independent Payment Advisory Board, are subject to political demagoguery (“death panels”) and thus reversal, and at best, even if they survive, their ability to do good is “gradual.”
Longman again:
Unless a more immediate and certain reform is applied, most of the Medicare population will continued to be treated—for years if not decades to come—by the status quo of a pattern of deeply fragmented, wasteful, and dangerous fee-for-service care, the cost of which everyone now agrees is unsustainable. If we’re going to avoid financial Armageddon, we have to do better than that.
Phillip Longman’s idea of setting a date “when the Medicare system will stop covering fee-for-service medicine” and instead give seniors a choice “among competing managed care organizations” that do not operate under the profit motive sounds like a good place to start to me, in terms of fixing the Medicare system we have today.
After that, or as part of that fix, we could, if we generated the political will, extend the program as an option to all—even though Longman does not go that far in his proposal.
And speaking of political will, over all this talk of reform hangs the politics. By adopting his proposal, Longman argues, both Democrats and Republicans can declare some kind of victory:
It allows Democrats to say that they will not cut benefits to Medicare recipients. And Democrats should also like that these nongovernmental organizations serving the Medicare population will have the freedom to do things liberals have long wanted Medicare itself to do, like bargain with drug companies for lower prices. Meanwhile, Republicans who support this proposal will be able to boast that it takes vast decision- making power out of the hands of “unelected bureaucrats in the federal government” and puts that power in the hands of private organizations that compete with each other for customers.
Longman closes with this, which will serve as my close:
America is still a rich and productive country. Compared to Europe or Japan, it has a youthful population and no real long-term debt crisis except that caused by huge volumes of wasteful and dangerous fee-for-service medicine. So once again in our long history, Americans can have their cake and eat it too. We can improve our health care while lowering its cost, and in the process eliminate our long-term deficits and resume building for future.
So why don’t we feel more optimistic? Because there is this feeling of despair, especially among policy makers and the chattering classes, that we don’t know how, politically, to bring health care costs in line. We know that all other developed countries get better health care for less money, and that it is no real mystery how they do it. But all their approaches seem—or can be spun as— socialistic, paternalistic, and fundamentally un-American, and therefore impossible to consider.
Yet we have within our reach a solution that is not imported from abroad, and that has been proved on our own shores by all-American institutions, from our best nonprofit HMOs to the VA health system. We may not currently have the political will to use these institutions as the model and means to fix the health care crisis, and hence eliminate our long-term fiscal problems. But we shouldn’t fool ourselves into thinking it can’t be done.
If you want to hear Phillip Longman discuss at length his findings about the VA health system—he started out as a skeptic—here is a video of the talk. His interest in the health care delivery system was related to the unfortunate experience of his late wife, who died of breast cancer:
The above quote was not said by some wild- or starry-eyed liberal. It was said by the Buddha of budgetary knowledge on the right, Paul Ryan, on ABC’s This Week last Sunday.
In the spirit of the New Year and New Beginnings, let us end this year with a note of agreement. I agree with Mr. Ryan that we should stop crony capitalism—the only kind there will ever be without adequate public attention—and stop corporate welfare—corporations are doing just fine, thank you—and we should means-test our entitlement programs—especially Medicare, which is, as Paul Ryan knows very well, the biggest driver of our long-term debt problem.
And Paul Ryan also knows very well that the plan he advanced earlier this year—which nearly every Republican this side of the Asteroid Belt voted for—would end the system created in 1965, even if the name would live on. (No matter what Politifact says.) Let’s all at least agree on that.
And let us agree that the current Medicare system, which took more than 50 years to bring into reality, should be preserved. After all, it was signed into law by a Texan, Lyndon Johnson, and was supported by almost half of the Republicans in Congress at the time.
So sensitive are Americans to perceived government interference, that even the sainted FDR dared not force the issue of public health insurance—which he supported—before the enactment of his social security bill was assured in 1935. And despite Missourian Harry Truman’s efforts to get the job done—President Johnson would eventually credit “the man from Independence” for those efforts and make the 81-year-old fighter the program’s first enrollee— it took another generation before folks without means could rest a little easier knowing they had at least basic health insurance they could afford, when they were on the unprofitable side of life.
And among those who could rest a little easier were my parents. My dad, who was 56 years old when Medicare was passed, worked all of his pre-heart attack life. My mom worked full-time at home and part-time at what she called the “dime store.” Were it not for Medicare, well, the alternative for them would have been and, for me, remains, unthinkable. Let’s agree that, for them and millions of people like them, access to affordable government health insurance made—and for now, still makes—America a better place in which to live.
Truman, in a special message to Congress in November of 1945—1945!—said there were “certain rights which ought to be assured to every American citizen.” One of them, he said, was “the right to adequate medical care and the opportunity to achieve and enjoy good health.” What a shame, more than 65 years later, we are fighting over The Affordable Care Act, which guarantees Americans, sick or well, rich or poor, the right to health insurance, or rather the right to purchase health insurance from profit-minded private insurers. It is, by no means, a fulfillment of the vision of liberals, old or new. But it ain’t nothing.
And yet we fight. Let’s agree to stop fighting about something so necessary.
Truman said:
In the past, the benefits of modern medical science have not been enjoyed by our citizens with any degree of equality. Nor are they today. Nor will they be in the future—unless government is bold enough to do something about it.
People with low or moderate incomes do not get the same medical attention as those with high incomes. The poor have more sickness, but they get less medical care.
He didn’t must make that statement in 1945 without evidence to back it up. And he had plenty:
The people of the United States received a shock when the medical examinations conducted by the Selective Service System revealed the widespread physical and mental incapacity among the young people of our nation…
As of April of 1945, nearly 5,000,000 male registrants between the ages of 18 and 37 had been examined and classified as unfit for military service. The number of those rejected for military service was about 30 percent of all those examined. The percentage of rejection was lower in the younger age groups, and higher in the higher age groups, reaching as high as 49 percent for registrants between the ages of 34 and 37.
Think about that. And think about the health of those back then who were in their forties and fifties and sixties and beyond. Truman, understanding that the child is father of the adult, said that it is “important to resolve now that no American child shall come to adult life with diseases or defects which can be prevented or corrected at an early age.”
Let’s agree that health care involves inter-generational agreements. Old folks, let’s make sure the young are cared for, even if their parents are not rich. Young folks, let’s make sure the old are cared for, even if they lack wealth. All of us are either young or getting old. The Affordable Care Act is simply a part of these inter-generational agreements—without which any modern and civilized society cannot continue to be modern and civilized. It ought to be without controversy, or at least without animus.
But it’s not. We have folks around the country, and folks in Congress, who are fighting for the repeal of the Affordable Care Act with a kind of religious zeal, as if to lose the battle would mean the end of a God-blessed America. There are even some radicals who would move us back to not only 1964, before Medicare, but to 1934, before Social Security. They would leave the non-rich at the mercy of charities or family and friends, of whatever means.
But if we can’t finally agree, as Paul Ryan seemed to suggest last Sunday, that entitlements—Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid—are a permanent part of our social fabric and that in order to afford them we may need to, among other things, means-test them, then I’m not sure there is anything we can agree on as a civilized nation.
As Harry Truman said so long ago, our government needs to be “bold enough” to do something about inadequate health care in our country. All he was really saying was we-the-people need to be bold enough.
HARTFORD, Conn. – In the past decade, most states have turned Medicaid over to private insurance plans, hoping they could control costs and improve care. Nearly half of the 60 million people in the government program for the poor are in managed-care plans run by insurance giants such as UnitedHealthcare and Aetna.
Connecticut, the “insurance capital of the world,” is bucking the trend.
Beginning Sunday, Connecticut will jettison its private health plans from Medicaid, the state-federal health insurance program. Instead of paying the companies a set monthly fee to cover the health costs of more than 400,000 children and parents, the state will assume financial responsibility.
Why?
Glad you asked:
State officials say the companies, including Hartford-based Aetna, did not fulfill their promise of lower costs and better care.
Take that all of you private-insurance lovers out there.
Notably, our neighbor to the West, Oklahoma, one of the reddest states in the Milky Way, doesn’t trust the private insurers either, and hasn’t for a while:
Oklahoma moved away from private plans in 2005, and officials there say they have no regrets. “While achieving very encouraging marks in both member satisfaction and quality, the cost per member has grown at a very low average annual rate of 1.2% over the last five years,” says Mike Fogarty, Oklahoma’s Medicaid director.
It appears that in Connecticut (and elsewhere, of course) too much money is being spent on things that have nothing to do with health—like, say, profits. The USA Today story cited,
a 2009 state-commissioned report showing Connecticut was overpaying insurers by nearly $50 million a year–about 6% of total expenses.
Other state reports found the plans were spending too little on health services and published networks of doctors that were misleading because many doctors refused to accept Medicaid patients when “secret shoppers” called for appointments.
And, thus, the story touches, albeit indirectly, on a major problem with the very conservative Affordable Care Act:
Many doctors are happy to see the state’s experiment with managed-care plans end. Many had been frustrated with having to follow different rules for different plans. They also complained about payment delays and problems referring patients to some specialists.
You see, because too much worry is exhausted on who gets paid, the folks in the middle—doctors and patients—tend to suffer. The ACA, while guaranteeing everyone health insurance, still keeps in place that profit-minded system. In fact, Paul Ryan’s budget plan—fully embraced by the Republican Party—would essentially do for older folks, who would have a hard time getting health care, what the ACA does for younger folks, who can’t afford or aren’t able to get health care.
Yes, it’s true.
An important but little noticed point made in the recent controversial Politifact article, “Lie of the Year 2011,” explains:
Under the current Medicare system, the government pays the health care bills for Americans over age 65. Under the Ryan plan, future beneficiaries would be given a credit and invited to shop for an approved plan on a Medicare health insurance exchange…Ryan’s plan requires private insurers to accept all applicants and to charge the same rate for people who are the same age…
“Ryan basically proposed the Affordable Care Act for future seniors,” said Jonathan Gruber, an economist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, who advised both President Obama and Republican Mitt Romney on health care. “I don’t understand how you can like it for future seniors but not like it for today’s needy uninsured. That doesn’t make any sense.”
Of course, it also doesn’t make sense how most people in the country can like Medicare for seniors and not like Medicare for everyone, but Republicans have done such a darn good job of demonizing everything that comes in contact with government that it is somewhat understandable why there is such cognitive dissonance out there.
Fortunately, some states, most recently Connecticut, are coming to their senses about how health care is delivered in this country, and it’s not through motivating private insurers with profits. And that, despite all the Republican criticism of it, is what is wrong with the Affordable Care Act. It is an improvement over the dog-eat-dog insurance system we have now, but the dogs are still out there.
The Supreme Court said Monday it will hear a challenge to the health-care overhaul act passed in 2010, with a decision on President Obama’s most controversial domestic achievement likely to come in the summer of his reelection campaign.
The court said it will decide whether the Affordable Care Act exceeded Congress’s power by requiring almost all Americans to have health insurance by 2014 or pay a penalty; whether the massive law can survive without the so-called individual mandate; and whether it is premature for the court to pass judgment on the act…
Although the court did not say when it will hold oral arguments in the case, they likely will come in March…The court granted extensive oral argument time–5 1/2 hours –to hear the complicated constitutional questions.
____________________________________
Every Republican worth his or her weight in teabags wants to kill the Affordable Care Act.
The instrument of its destruction, these folks hope, will be when the Supreme Court rules the individual mandate unconstitutional. That mandate, also known as the “minimum essential coverage provision,” requires individuals to purchase an insurance plan beginning in January of 2014. The provision seems to have a lot of folks’ skivvies in a slub, especially conservative folks’ skivvies.
An important decision—affirming the Act and its individual mandate—came down last week from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, and you may have missed its significance, what with all the fuss over vaudevillian and presidential candidate Herman Cain.
Delivering the opinion for the majority, Judge Laurence Silberman, who even National Review concedes is a “highly regarded judicial conservative,” has essentially made the case—and a conservative case at that—for ”Obamacare’s” constitutional legitimacy.
Judge Silberman, after summarizing the appellants’ objections to the individual mandate, wrote:
The mandate, it should be recognized, is indeed somewhat novel, but so too, for all its elegance, is appellants’ argument.
The issue for those opposed to the mandate is that Congress doesn’t have the authority under the Commerce Clause to force anyone to engage in commerce who doesn’t want to. Congress, they argue, only has power to “regulate” actual commerce, as the clause itself seems to say:
The Congress shall have Power . . . To regulate Commercewith foreign Nations, and among the several States, and with the Indian Tribes.
But what does “regulate” mean? In order to do the necessary work (for a conservative jurist who is also an originalist) of determining what late-18th century words meant in the late 18th century, Judge Silberman went to an old favorite of mine, Samuel Johnson, to get the contemporary definitions of the relevant words in the Commerce Clause.
From Johnson’s Dictionary of the English Language (1773 edition) the judge constructed this:
At the time the Constitution was fashioned, to “regulate” meant, as it does now, “[t]o adjust by rule or method,” as well as “[t]o direct.” To “direct,” in turn, included “[t]o prescribe certain measure[s]; to mark out a certain course,” and “[t]o order; to command.” In other words, to “regulate” can mean to require action, and nothing in the definition appears to limit that power only to those already active in relation to an interstate market. Nor was the term “commerce” limited to only existing commerce. There is therefore no textual support for appellants’ argument.
Think about that: “To ‘regulate’ can mean to require action, and nothing in the definition appears to limit that power only to those already active in relation to an interstate market.” He later noted that,
Congress… is merely imposing the mandate in reasonable anticipation of virtually inevitable future transactions in interstate commerce. [...] It suffices for this case to recognize, as noted earlier, that the health insurance market is a rather unique one, both because virtually everyone will enter or affect it, and because the uninsured inflict a disproportionate harm on the rest of the market as a result of their later consumption of health care services.
Did I mention that Judge Silberman is a conservative jurist?
The Reagan-appointed judge went on to note that Supreme Court decisions over the years have “eroded” the distinction between interstate and local commerce and that “the only recognized limitations” today are:
(1) Congress may not regulate non-economic behavior based solely on an attenuated link to interstate commerce, and (2) Congress may not regulate intrastate economic behavior if its aggregate impact on interstate commerce is negligible.
Like any good conservative who respects the separation of powers, Judge Silberman insisted:
We are obliged–and this might well be our most important consideration–to presume that acts of Congress are constitutional… Appellants have not made a clear showing to the contrary.
The coup de grâce, as far as I’m concerned, came when Judge Silberman addressed the issue of the admitted “encroachment on individual liberty,” which included this:
A single individual need not even be engaged in any economic activity–i.e. not participating in any local or interstate market–so long as the individual is engaged in some type of behavior that would undercut a broader economic regulation if left unregulated. Raich, 545 U.S. at 36 (Scalia, J., concurring).
Notice that citation at the end of the passage? It helps make this section in Judge Silberman’s decision such a powerful blow to conservative hopes of killing the mandate in the Affordable Care Act.
The reference is to a 2005 case, important to those in the legalize marijuana movement, called Gonzales v. Raich, which upheld the federal government’s right to criminalize the production and use of home-grown marijuana for medicinal purposes, even if a particular state (as 16 states and D.C. now do) makes it legal to do so.
Justice Antonin Scalia, who puts the con in conservative jurisprudence, wrote a concurring opinion in the Raich case, which Judge Silberman cited because parts of it appear to support his finding regarding the individual mandate in the ACA. In Raich, Scalia cited favorably a case (United States v. Wrightwood Dairy Company) and used some of its language to support his anti-marijuana opinion:
As the Court put it in Wrightwood Dairy, where Congress has the authority to enact a regulation of interstate commerce, “it possesses every power needed to make that regulation effective.”
Again: Congress “possesses every power needed to make that regulation effective.” Every power? Hmm. We shall see next year, when the Supreme Court finally settles the matter, whether Scalia still believes that Congress has such power. Consistency would seem to demand that he find as Judge Silberman did—and for similar reasons. But we must remember that the conservative bloc on this current Supreme Court has a flair for activism, and I’m fairly certain that Justice Scalia can cleverly bend his own originalism to trump that of Silberman’s, should Scalia’s prejudices demand it.
Finally, an important passage concluded Judge Silberman’s opinion:
The right to be free from federal regulation is not absolute, and yields to the imperative that Congress be free to forge national solutions to national problems, no matter how local–or seemingly passive–their individual origins.
If our health care system is not a national problem demanding a national solution, it is hard to see what would be. And it is comforting to know that there is at least one conservative out there who understands that.
Sam Stein reports that Buffet King and GOP presidential candidate Newt Gingrich has recently characterized the Affordable Care Act as,
“madness” and “indefensible,” pressing for it be repealed and defunded and praising the efforts of several state attorneys general who are challenging the constitutionality of the individual mandate.
Except that Stein also reports the following, which, I suppose, does prove in a weird sort of way that Newt is a man of ideas:
In a June 2007 op-ed in the Des Moines Register, Gingrich wrote, “Personal responsibility extends to the purchase of health insurance. Citizens should not be able to cheat their neighbors by not buying insurance, particularly when they can afford it, and expect others to pay for their care when they need it.” An “individual mandate,” he added, should be applied “when the larger health-care system has been fundamentally changed.”
In 2008′s “Real Change,” he wrote, “Finally, we should insist that everyone above a certain level buy coverage (or, if they are opposed to insurance, post a bond). Meanwhile, we should provide tax credits or subsidize private insurance for the poor.”
In 2005′s “Winning the Future,” he expanded on the idea in more detail: “You have the right to be part of the lowest-cost insurance pool and you have a responsibility to buy insurance. … We need some significant changes to ensure that every American is insured, but we should make it clear that a 21st Century Intelligent System requires everyone to participate in the insurance system.”
If that’s not enough for you Gingrich fans, there’s more:
It wasn’t just insurance coverage mandates that Gingrich supported. According to a July, 21 2005 Gannett News Service article, the Georgia Republican also said that he would have Congress mandate physical education five days a week for all elementary and high school pupils as a way of combating obesity and diabetes. Such a vision of health care reform seems drawn from the same philosophical threads as the plan that President Obama signed last spring — as well as from the first lady’s campaign to improve children’s health.
Good luck in the GOP primaries, Newt! And remember, when it comes time to explain this stuff, let Romney go first.
Almost exactly as I predicted, Democrats, fearful of a government shutdown, paid yet another ransom to Republicans, who have become quite good at holding the country hostage and extracting concessions from the “party of government.”
Last night, President Obama was almost giddy in making the announcement of the budget deal, which he said—no, he bragged—contained “the largest annual spending cut in our history.” He followed with this:
Like any worthwhile compromise, both sides had to make tough decisions and give ground on issues that were important to them. And I certainly did that.
Hmm. Let’s see. Since this was supposed to be a “budget” deal, let’s talk about the money involved. The Republicans wanted $61 billion in cuts. Democrats gave them $38.5 billion. That’s not exactly a 50-50 compromise. More like 63-37. Republicans won that one in a landslide.
So, let’s look at the “deal” in the budget deal. What did the Democrats manage to extract from the Republicans in exchange for meeting them 63% of the way (some calculations have it at more than 70%) on the budget cuts? Did Democrats get a tax increase on the rich? Did they get an elimination of tax breaks for oil companies?
Well, uh, no. They didn’t get any agreement on revenues. Nothing.
Oh, they did get Republicans to drop their ridiculous demands to defund Planned Parenthood, NPR, and the Affordable Care Act, and they did get them to drop the rider on stripping the EPA of regulatory authority on greenhouse gases. But that’s not a victory, unless you think that it is a victory to pay a knife-wielding kidnapper the ransom he demands, as long as frees the hostage he’s holding. If he gets away scot-free with the money, he won. Period.
But in a way, the whole hostage-ransom metaphor explains why this play works so well for Republicans. A real knife-wielding kidnapper, with his knife to the throat of the hostage, can be expected to use the knife to kill the hostage because presumably he doesn’t care about the hostage as much as he cares about the potential ransom. The negotiators who pay him the ransom are under pressure from the hostage’s family and friends to give the kidnapper what he wants because they don’t want to see their loved one harmed.
Democrats, who believe in government, are fearful that Republicans, who are holding a knife against government’s throat, will actually use it. They worry that Republicans will slash government’s gullet if they don’t get what they want. Thus, Democrats are under pressure to pay the ransom. Every time. It happened last December. It happened last night.
The sad thing about all this is that after last December’s agreement on the Bush tax cuts and after last night’s budget deal, President Obama, rather than tell the American people the truth about what happened—that he had to give in to Republican demands or they would kill the hostage—”thanked” John Boehner for his “leadership” and “dedication.” He said last night:
A few months ago, I was able to sign a tax cut for American families because both parties worked through their differences and found common ground. Now the same cooperation will make possible the biggest annual spending cut in history, and it’s my sincere hope that we can continue to come together as we face the many difficult challenges that lie ahead, from creating jobs and growing our economy to educating our children and reducing our deficit.
With this kind of attitude, as we move toward the real fight over the debt ceiling and next year’s budget, I’m not encouraged that some on our side—including President Obama–understand just how ruthless the current crop of GOP extremists are. In fact, I’m quite discouraged today. It doesn’t look good going forward.
In any case, you might remember how often Obama and the Democrats have told us that we need government spending—stimulus—first to start the recovery and then to keep it going until the economy could make it on its own. We need government spending, not budget cuts, they have said time and time again. The President has repeatedly said that now is not the time to pull back. And there are plenty of economists who concur.
But even as Republicans this morning are insisting that the latest budget cuts are only a down payment on more to come, to show how even more depressing is the current state of affairs, I want to end with a quote from one of the parties in the latest budget deal, who said last night:
…beginning to live within our means is the only way to protect those investments that will help America compete for new jobs…
That wasn’t John Boehner or Michele Bachmann or Rand Paul.
“Don’t get sick, and if you do get sick, die quickly.”
— former Rep. Alan Grayson, commenting on the “Republican health care plan,” September, 2009
Alan Grayson was roundly condemned for his highly critical remarks during the health care reform debate, which now seems like a decade ago. But thanks to Paul Ryan we can see that Grayson’s sin was not that he inaccurately pegged Republican philosophy, but that he was simply a little premature in doing so.
Make no mistake about it: Paul Ryan, and by extension Republicans in the House—remember that Ryan was given extraordinary power to speak for them on budget issues—are now on record as lobbying for the destruction of Medicare and Medicaid as we know them. And Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell has tiptoed in and called it a “credible proposal.”
Therefore, it’s now clear just what the Republican health care philosophy is, in terms of the non-wealthy elderly, the poor, and the disabled. But don’t take my or Alan Grayson’s word for it. Listen to Erskine Bowles and Alan Simpson, co-chairs of Obama’s Fiscal Responsibility Commission.
They released a letter that criticized House Budget Committee Chairman Ryan’s plan for largely exempting defense spending—imagine that!—and for its lack of tax increases, a necessity, they said, for “broad bipartisan agreement.” They continued:
As a result, the Chairman’s plan relies on much larger reductions in domestic discretionary spending than does the Commission proposal, while also calling for savings in some safety net programs — cuts which would place a disproportionately adverse effect on certain disadvantaged populations.
Those “certain disadvantaged populations” don’t put much jingle in the GOP collection plate, so why should they give a damn about them?
Even though we know that Paul Ryan’s plan will not become law—at least for the next two years—we do know the details of what Tea Party-drunk Republicans plan to implement if they ever do get the power they crave:
• Medicare, the only thing that stands between some older folks and suffering or death, would become a voucher program, one that would leave those without adequate wealth coverage without adequate health coverage.
Essentially, Ryan’s plan would require future senior citizens to navigate the private insurance market in search of a plan they could afford on the vouchers they are given. If the coverage they need exceeds the voucher amount—a certainty, thanks to the way the plan is structured—tough shit.
Of course, the wealthy need not worry. They get the voucher and, partly thanks to Ryan’s generous tax policy for the wealthy—a reduction of the top rate to 25%—they will have plenty of dough to make up the difference between the voucher and the cost of the insurance.
• Medicaid becomes a block grant program in which states would essentially get to determine how they spend the money the federal government gives them. As Newt Gingrich admitted, this would inevitably mean that some states would short-change the poor, the elderly, and the disabled on Medicaid by making it harder to obtain benefits and by reducing those benefits. There isn’t any doubt about that. Just look at what Republicans in the various states are doing now in times of economic stress, times in which benefits are needed most.
Look, I don’t completely blame Ryan and other Republicans for proposing tax cuts for the wealthy while ending health care entitlements for everyone else. That would be like blaming great white sharks for leg-munching in bloody water. It’s what they do.
About the Tea Party Republicans, Ryan told a reporter on Tuesday:
…you look at these people, these new people who just got here. None of them came here for a political career. They came here for a cause. This is not a budget, this is a cause.
“A cause.” Spoken like a bona fide devotee of Ayn Rand. Rep. Ryan requires his staffers to read Atlas Shrugged, according to New York magazine, which explains a lot about his budget proposal. Years ago, he told a group gathered to honor Rand,
The reason I got involved in public service, by and large, if I had to credit one thinker, one person, it would be Ayn Rand.
To be a real Randian, as Jonathan Chait put it, one has to believe that,
the central struggle of politics is to free the successful from having the fruits of their superiority redistributed by looters and moochers.
That’s the Tea Party Republican definition of those “certain disadvantaged populations” that Bowles and Simpson mentioned. They’re “looters and moochers.”
With the advent of the Tea Party and its hostile takeover of the Republican Party, Randian nonsense is now the dominant economic philosophy controlling the actions of GOP congressional leadership. And I suppose the final seal of approval was given to Ryan on Tuesday, when Glenn Beck said he loved Ryan.
And, by the way, Ryan loved him back.
So, while I don’t put all the blame on Republican sharks for their unseemly ravenous carnivorism, I will blame Democrats if they don’t put the rope Ryan has given them around the necks of every single Republican in the country who won’t denounce the plan to kill Medicare and Medicaid.
Alan Grayson may have put it somewhat indelicately, but he essentially got it right:
The Republican health care plan is, “Don’t get sick, and if you do get sick, die quickly.”
I finally got around to reading George Will’s column on the federal mandate and health care “muddle,” which appeared in the Globe on Monday.
I wasn’t impressed.
In fact, I detected some (faint) resignation on the part of Will that the whole mandate thingy will survive constitutional scrutiny.
Anyway, most of Will’s column explored the necessity of the mandate to the law (which, like a Tea Party placard-maker, he labels “Obamacare”) and whether it therefore could be constitutionally defended on that basis. But as far as I’m concerned, the following is the crux of the matter, in Willian prose:
Madison’s constitutional architecture for limited government will be vitiated unless the court places some limits on what constitutes commerce eligible for regulation. So the question becomes: Is the inactivity of not buying insurance a commercial activity Congress can proscribe because it has economic consequences?
It occurred to me that behind Will’s argument is an assumption that needs attention. That assumption is that commercial inactivity in general is a passive choice that does not equate to commerce as defined by the Constitution and thus can’t be regulated by Congress.
But commercial inactivity is, indeed and often, really a kind of commerce, call it negative commerce, if you will.
Think about the Montgomery Bus Boycott in 1955-56 Alabama. The idea was to execute a crippling boycott of the segregated public transit system, since black riders made up a large majority of passengers. It worked. In fact, it was overwhelmingly successful.
Now, the point is that refusing to ride the bus—commercial inactivity—was an act of commerce, even if negative commerce. The lack of participation had a definite commercial effect. In fact, it put Montgomery city officials in defensive mode. They fined black taxi drivers for supporting the boycott by charging riders only ten cents, the same as a bus ride would have cost.
The officials also pressured local insurance companies to stop issuing policies on automobiles used in carpools, which had been organized to transport bus boycotters to work. The officials also used an old ordinance to jail Martin Luther King for “hindering” a bus. Fined $500 and sentenced to serve 386 days, he served two weeks.
That was all due to the effects of commercial inactivity. And besides the desired effect of ending racial segregation on buses, I haven’t even mentioned the larger effect of leading to an end of Jim Crow in the South.
So, it’s clear that there can be a purpose in commercial inactivity and in the case of health care, those who refuse to purchase health insurance are doing so with a decidedly economic purpose in mind: don’t pay until it’s necessary and pocket the windfall. It is not merely a case of passivity, of choosing not to purchase something.
And that is where their actions differ from those bus boycotters in Alabama. In 1955 the active goal was to end segregated buses. In 2014 America, the active goal of those who refuse to purchase insurance will be to freeload on those responsible folks who do purchase it.
Thus, back to Will:
So the question becomes: Is the inactivity of not buying insurance a commercial activity Congress can proscribe because it has economic consequences?
As a difficult-to-perform public service to my readers, and while the world was focused on the confusion in Egypt, I listened to Michele Bachmann and others speak today at the gathering of Gadsden Gorillas Guerrillas, also known as CPAC.
At least one of the things Bachmann said demonstrates her intermittent connection with reality:
Obamacare is quite clearly the crown jewel of socialism.
Now, you might not like the Affordable Care Act; you might think it won’t do much to keep health care costs down; you might even think it will destroy the country. But only a colossal fool like Michele Bachmann would say “Obamacare is quite clearly the crown jewel of socialism.” Would to God it were, but given how it props up the private, employer-based health insurance system, it would be more accurate to call it the “crown jewel of capitalism.”
Bachmann, who suffers from the delusion that she could possibly be President of the United States, has used this nonsensical metaphor before, both during the so-called debate in the House on repealing the health reform law and last week at a Republican dinner in Montana, where she put it in this incomprehensibly dramatic way:
I take my first political breath every morning with one thought in mind – repeal Obamacare. That’s my motivation in life. … This bill is something else. It is the crown jewel of socialism. President Obama, and I’m willing to say it, ushered in socialism under his watch.
There are four possibilities that account for such agonizingly incorrigible ignorance:
1) She doesn’t understand “Obamacare.”
2) She doesn’t understand what the term “crown jewel” means.
3) She doesn’t understand what the term “socialism” means.
4) All of the above.
Oh, there is a fifth:
She’s nuts.
In any case, Bachman, who seems to have a strange fascination with despotic headgear, also talked today about the “Triple Crown of 2012,” which, in case you don’t know, involves Republicans maintaining control of the House, a conservative takeover of the Senate, and, of course, the crown jewel of the Triple Crown: throwing the Uppity Negro out of the white’s house.
That seemed to be the theme of the day, perhaps of the conference, since Bachmann said, “all our chips are in on 2012…this is it!” and a plump Newt Gingrich, who never misses a chance to diminish the value of his college degree, naturally changed the metaphor from crowns and poker to food:
2010 was the appetizer; 2012 is the entrée.
If Gingrich becomes president he will eat us all. And he could do it.
Rick Santorum, who has been crowned the “relentless ethicist” by George F. Will, made an appearance today and regaled the crowd with more relentless moralizing and exploitation of our social differences. Besides expressing his support for a military dictator in Egypt, Santorum used yet another bleeping political metaphor, this time the old three-legged stool of fiscal policy, national defense, and, his speciality, social issues:
When you start throwing away the third leg of a three-legged stool, it is not going to be stable very long.
I happen to subscribe to the four-legged school of political metaphors, which, I think, is much sturdier. The fourth leg is sanity.
Speaking of the missing fourth leg, Donald Trump, whose Michele Bachmann-sized ego has convinced him he has a chance to be president, made a surprising appearance today. Who knew there was a Gadsden flag flying over Trump Tower?
Anyway, besides truthfully trashing Ron Paul (“Ron Paul cannot get elected. I’m sorry folks.”) and essentially trashing the country (the “United States is the laughingstock of the world.”), Trump trumpeted his greatness and told the hopped-up Gadsden guerillas that he was a pro-lifin’ gun lovin’ tax hatin’ Republican, and that, if he ran and won, “this country has a chance of being respected again.”
What he didn’t tell his frothy admirers is that he is a billionaire whose financial savvy is so spectacular that he used bankruptcy as a way of forcing investors in his business competence to take hundreds of millions of dollars in losses. I can’t wait for President Trump to restore respectability to our declining land. We would be so fortunate if he allows us the honor of voting for him. What a guy!
And what a day! I’m looking forward to tomorrow’s festivities.
One would think that those job-jobs-jobs House Republicans would by now have come up with a magic law that would cause the unemployment rate to fall to Clinton-era respectability. One would think.
And one would think that H.R. 3—the third bill out of the House Republican moot chute—would be named something like the, “Get The Lazy Unemployed Back to Work Act.“
But nope. H.R. 3 is titled, the “No Taxpayer Funding For Abortion Act.” Get that? After two years of complaining about Obama’s economy and bemoaning the lack of job growth, newly empowered Republicans have managed to pass a futile health reform repeal bill and now are working on what Sady Doyle at Salon has called, “John Boehner’s push to redefine rape.” And Billy Long is right in the middle of it.
Yes. Our congressman, Ozark Billy, is co-sponsoring a bill that redefines rape.
The proposal is ostensibly aimed at prohibiting “taxpayer funded abortions and to provide for conscience protections, and for other purposes.” It’s those “other purposes” that should worry women everywhere.
Sady Doyle discusses the proposal and those other purposes in the context of the Hyde and Stupak amendments, major topics during the health care reform fight last year:
Get that? “Forcible.” “If a minor,” it must be “an act of incest.” The changes are intentional and they are not trivial, says Doyle:
This is a calculated move, which will make exemptions for rape and incest survivors practically unenforceable.
I know it’s hard for some people to believe, but there are anti-choice folks out there who don’t think abortion should be legal under any circumstances, rape or incest included. And whittling away at the definition of rape certainly narrows the field of potential candidates.
Doyle makes her case about what the choice of language means:
Those who were raped while drugged or unconscious, or through means of coercion, would not be covered. Survivors of statutory rape would not be covered: “if a minor,” one is only covered in case of incest. And if one is a survivor of incest, and not a minor, that’s also not covered. Studies of how rapists find and subdue victims reveal that about 70 percent of rapes wouldn’t fall under the “forcible” designation.
Doyle also points out that there is no definite legal understanding of what constitutes “forcible rape,” and then the kicker:
…every survivor who finds herself in need of abortion funding will have to submit her rape for government approval.
Government approval. Not only would the rapist victimize her, but a woman could be victimized again by a bureaucrat or judge—a rape panel?—who may determine her case doesn’t comport with the “ancient, long-outdated standard of rape law: ‘Utmost resistance’“:
There’s an example of how “utmost resistance” worked in the 1887 text Defences to Crime. In this case, a man was accused of raping a 16-year-old girl. (A minor, but not incest: Already convicted by current standards, not enough for H.R. 3.) The attacker held her hands behind her back with one of his hands. I asked my partner to test this move’s “forcefulness,” by holding my wrists the same way; I was unable to break his grip, though he’s not much larger than I am, and it hurt to struggle. The attacker then used his free hand and his leg to force open her legs, knocked her off-balance onto his crotch, and penetrated her.
His conviction was overturned. Because the girl was on top. Then, there were the witnesses: One man watched it all, and noted that “though he heard a kind of screaming at first, the girl made no outcry while the outrage was being perpetrated.” The physician who examined her testified that “there were no bruises on her person.” It was therefore determined that the encounter was consensual. In the words of Defences to Crime, “a mere half-way case will not do … this was not the conduct of a woman jealous of her chastity, shuddering at the thought of dishonor, and flying from pollution.” Stopped screaming eventually? You wanted it.
“Rape law is filled with cases like these,” Doyle says.
The good news about all this is that led by Doyle, there is something of a public outcry about the games anti-choice fanatics are playing with the language. The bad news is that even if the language is corrected, the bill will move ahead and may become federal law.
Besides Ozark Billy Long, here are other co-sponsors from Missouri:
Vicky Hartzler; Todd Akin; Jo Ann Emerson; Sam Graves; Blaine Luetkemeyer
And out of only a handful of Democratic co-sponsors, naturally the Democratic impostor from Oklahoma, Dan Boren, is on the list.
As Republicans in the U.S. House get set to repeal the health care reform law, amid phony claims that they are merely doing what the American people want them to do, and after Missouri House Republicans last week wasted legislative time and money urging Governor Nixon and his Attorney General to join the sue-Obama crowd, here is the latest polling on the issue, from AP/GfK:
Meanwhile, we eagerly await the “jobs, jobs, jobs” legislation that Republicans promised us, nevermind the Republican plan to insure more than 30 million people without costing anyone anything.
A lot of Republicans, including those quixotic House reactionaries, are talking these days about killing the Affordable Care Act. Much of the opposition to the law is centered on the provision that requires individuals to purchase health insurance. Here in Missouri, Proposition C overwhelmingly passed in August of last year, the purpose of which was to thwart the imposition on Missourians of the health insurance mandate.
The argument goes something like this: If people want to buy health insurance, it’s up to them, and in the words of Republican Senator Orrin Hatch, “they should not have it imposed upon them by government.”
Fair enough. Most of us don’t like to be forced to do things. We prefer the voluntary approach. But when you ask folks like Orrin Hatch about what to do with people who don’t want to buy insurance and inevitably show up at hospitals looking for treatment and without money to pay, the usual reply goes something like this: Well, we can garnish their wages, if they have any, and make them pay that way.
Huh?
You mean it’s okay to set up a situation in which such people won’t be forced to purchase insurance out of some high-minded principle, but when they show up at hospital emergency rooms to obtain the most expensive care possible and without money to pay, we won’t hesitate—through the force of law—to take the money anyway?
Does anyone see a not-so-slight contradiction in that argument?
“I get strength everyday just going to my Facebook site.”
—Speaker John Boehner
It’s been a fun beginning of the 112th Congress, at least on the Republican-controlled House side.
There were two congressmen who cast unconstitutional votes before they were sworn in—they played hooky during the official ceremony on Wednesday to attend a fundraiser. Now, those are two Republicans who have their priorities straight!
There was the matter of fulfilling the Pledge to America’s pledge to America to cut the budget by “at least $100 billlion in the first year alone.” Would you settle for a down payment, America? When asked by NBC’s Brian Williams about specific budget cuts, Boehner the Bawler, who has staked his career on cutting spending, said, “I don’t think I have one off the top of my head.”
There was a Jesus-invoking heckler, who during the Mystical Reading of the Constitution, interrupted the reader to congratulate President Obama on not being born in America. Praise God. And when the Weeping Speaker was given a chance to chastise birthers in the Republican conference, he declined, saying, “It’s not up to me to tell them what to think.”
Then there was the Speaker Weeper informing us that the Congressional Budget Office, a non-partisan and long-trusted source of budgetary scoring, is not to be trusted in the case of its estimate of the effects of killing the health care law. The CBO has estimated that repealing the Affordable Care Act will add $230 billion to the deficit. So, the Republicans will simply ignore the CBO and move on. They have their own budget scorer, thank you.
As for our own congressman, he tweeted about Folgers coffee, and after he was sworn in he tweeted again: “Got my official member pin number 400 … no more Congressman-Elect now you can call me Billy #112thFreshman.” No, thanks, Ozark Billy!
Finally, we learned that the Grim Weeper has put Michele Bachmann on the Intelligence Committee. Lord, have mercy! Put Ted Nugent in charge of House security. Put Rush Limbaugh in charge of the House pharmacy. But for God’s sake don’t put Michele Bachmann on a panel that oversees the CIA, the National Security Agency and all the other intelligence-gathering folks.
While promise-breaking Republicans are even now wasting taxpayer dollars and precious legislative time reading the Constitution on the floor of the House of Representatives—there are, after all, millions of Americans still out of work—I thought I would use the time to check out today’s Joplin Globe.
Just below a gigantic, four-column picture of a smiling and swearing Roy Blunt, I found this:
Now, I don’t want anything I write to come across as an attack on any of the cheerful-looking Joplin citizens above. But I would like you to pay particular attention to the words of Mary Alverson.
She wants Republicans to repeal the new health care law “because of the hidden clause that allows doctors to give you ideas about assisted suicide.”
Again, I don’t want this to come across as an assault on Mrs. Alverson, whoever she is. I’m sure she is a fine person, and probably sharp as a whip. But knowing that there are such folks living in Joplin holding such an idea is, well, it’s sad and depressing is what it is.
And it’s infuriating.
I don’t necessarily blame Mrs. Alverson for her ignorance, although she bears some responsibility for it, when there is so much information available to mitigate it. But obviously she doesn’t know what she doesn’t know.
I put the blame primarily on Sarah Palin and the entire phalanx of right-wing propagandists, with their talk of “death panels” and “pulling the plug on grandma” and other deceits. You see, not only do such people bring low our public discourse with such blasphemies against truth, but they bring low people like Mrs. Alverson, who, no doubt, wanders about Joplin thinking she knows something about “Obamacare” that no one else knows. Remember, it’s a “hidden clause.”
Not only have Palin and company lied about the health care reform law, they have caused people like Mrs. Alverson to believe the lie and in turn tell the lie to others. If there were a hell, surely there would be a special wing dedicated to people like Sarah Palin, who specialize in scaring the Mrs. Alversons of the world for personal gain. But, alas, there is no hell, only West Texas.
I suppose it needs to said that there is no provision in the health care law, hidden or otherwise, that relates to what Mrs. Alverson says. None. What language there was—which was taken out due to attacks from hell-bound Palinistas—had to do with reimbursing physicians for end-of-life discussions about what options were available. There was no coercion or even suggestion involved. Doctors would merely educate their patients as to the options available these days—something they do every day—and Medicare would cover the cost of the visit. That’s it.
From that harmless but wise provision—which was originally sponsored by a Republican—we have Mrs. Alverson and her secret assisted suicide suggestion nonsense.
Sadly, the Obama administration appears to have backed away from implementing a new rule that would have essentially done what the excised health care provision would have done. According to The New York Times:
Under the new policy, outlined in a Medicare regulation, the government will pay doctors who advise patients on options for end-of-life care, which may include advance directives to forgo aggressive life-sustaining treatment.
But then this, also from the Times:
The Obama administration, reversing course, will revise a Medicare regulation to delete references to end-of-life planning as part of the annual physical examinations covered under the new health care law, administration officials said Tuesday.
Such are the times in which we live. A dangerous and unforgivable lie broadcast day and night on right-wing media has made good people back away from what most physicians understand to be the right thing to do.
Please watch the following segment from last night’s Rachel Maddow Show. And listen to Dr. Atul Gawande, who has written much about end-of-life care. Dr. Gawande calls the whole death panel episode a “travesty” and says this:
The struggle to me as a doctor is seeing what has become this history…of outlined studies over the last couple of years that show that when patients have more time with their doctors, and actually have a discussion, especially a terminally ill patient, about their needs as they near the end of life, they get better care. They arrive at better decisions. They are less likely to die in a hospital or an ICU…
While those facts aren’t as sensational as spouting “death panel” in a crowded nursing home, they are the facts.
And people like Mrs. Alverson of Joplin needs to know them.
EPHRATAH, N.Y. -- A small airplane operating as a volunteer Angel Flight crashed into a pond in upstate New York on Friday evening, killing at least two people, authorities said.Fulton County Sheriff Thomas Lorey said the flight's two passengers were found dead and investigators are searching for the pilot, who is missing. Officials did not immediately […]
The Army has launched an investigation into possible sexual misconduct or sexual assault at the Space and Missile Defense Command at Fort Greely, Alaska, military and defense officials tell NBC News.The sources report there are allegations that an Army commander or commanders had sexual relations with female soldiers under their command.It's not clear w […]
When I was young, the majority opinion – at least among the kids at my school – was that the devil played the fiddle better than Johnny did in the song “The Devil Went Down to Georgia.” Obviously, that would have messed up the general narrative of that song, but it was a good lesson in subjectivity. It’s all a matter of opinion. There isn’t a best ever. Not […]
By Becky Bratu, Kate Snow, Tim Uehlinger and Jay Kernis, NBC NewsAs she tours the husk of Plaza Towers Elementary School in Moore, Okla. -- the little that was left behind after a powerful tornado shredded everything in its 17-mile path -- Principal Amy Simpson thinks back to Monday morning, when her biggest task was helping the sixth-graders get ready for t […]
A British zoo worker who was injured in a tiger attack at an animal park near Dalton-in-Furness has died, police said Friday.Sarah McClay, 24, from the Barrow area, was attacked by a tiger within its enclosure Friday afternoon, Cumbria police said. The woman was taken by air ambulance to Royal Preston Hospital following the attack at the South Lakes Wild Ani […]
PHOENIX -- A federal judge ruled Friday that the office of America's self-proclaimed toughest sheriff systematically singled out Latinos in its trademark immigration patrols, marking the first finding by a court that the agency racially profiles people.The 142-page decision by U.S. District Judge Murray Snow in Phoenix backs up allegations that Maricopa […]
A 15-year-old boy is in custody after authorities investigating the stabbing deaths of his younger adopted brothers found him miles away with traces of blood on him, officials said.He was arrested Thursday in the deaths of the boys, ages 4 and 10, at the family home in a Utah subdivision of new houses and tidy lawns, police said."He spoke bluntly with o […]
By Joe Rao, SPACE.com A trio of bright planets is shining together in the sunset sky, a must-see night sky sight for stargazers this Memorial Day weekend.Three planets — Jupiter, Venus and Mercury — can be now be seen in the western sky at dusk, weather permitting, in a rare and beautiful gathering that changes from night to night. Astronomers call a meeting […]
Infamnia! McDonald’s Italy rolled out a new menu item featuring the country’s most beloved culinary staple: pasta.The fast-food giant is partnering with Italian pasta brand Barilla to serve a pasta salad with tuna, tomatoes, peppers, capers and olives with a price of 4.90 euros. Roberto Masi, CEO of McDonald's Italy, said in a statement the new offering […]
Scientists -- and parents -- have long wondered why we don’t remember anything that happened before age 3. As all parents know, no matter how momentous an event is in a toddler’s life, the memory soon drifts away and within months there isn’t even a wisp of it left.Now a new study shows that “infantile amnesia” may be due to the rapid growth of nerve cells i […]
LONDON – Several leading authorities on climate change have given a guarded welcome to research suggesting the Earth may warm more slowly than scientists had expected. [More]
Many studies have confirmed the link between childhood sexual abuse and substance-related problems in adulthood. But a new investigation finds that being raped or molested at a young age also makes young girls far more likely to start drinking or doing drugs during their preteen years. [More]
Kaiba Gionfriddo was six weeks old when he suddenly stopped breathing and turned blue at a restaurant. Kaiba’s parents quickly rushed him to the hospital where they learned that his left bronchial tube had collapsed because of a previously undetected birth defect. During the next few weeks the life-threatening attacks recurred, increasing in number until the […]
MONTPELLIER, France -- South Africa, Argentina, Australia and New Zealand export their wines all over the world, a feat that was unthinkable here a few decades ago. Fatalists claim it won't be long until there will be more produced in China than in Europe. To some observers, these prognostications illustrate the wide-ranging adaptive capacity of the win […]
The changing ratios of calcium and barium in the teeth of modern humans and macaques chronicle the transition from mother’s milk to solid food -- and may provide clues about the weaning habits of Neandertals, a new study suggests. [More]
NASA’s Kepler spacecraft is not only the most prolific exoplanet detector ever; it is -- or was -- a marvel of engineering. Its 1.4-meter mirror funnels starlight to a 95-megapixel camera, capable of discerning dips in brightness as small as 10 parts per million -- clues to the mini-eclipses caused by an exoplanet crossing the star’s face. Yet on 14 May, the […]
Protection against the disease pertussis, or whooping cough , doesn’t appear to be as strong with the currently administered vaccine when compared with the older version administered up until the 1990s, according to a new study in Pediatrics . During a pertussis outbreak in 2010–11 in California teens who had received four doses of the current vaccine were a […]
Billionaire Paul Tudor Jones says he's sorry for his comments at a university symposium that motherhood causes women to lose the focus needed to be good traders.
Los Angeles is home to a large slice of the world's bluejeans trade. But as the U.S. apparel industry continues to shrink, the city's high-end bluejeans business faces a threat. The European Union has imposed a nearly 40 percent tariff, which could cripple the city's jean business.
Seven months after Hurricane Sandy slammed into the Jersey Shore, Asbury Park is still waiting for insurance and federal aid money. In the meantime, it borrowed $10 million to repair the waterfront in time for the critical Memorial Day weekend.
The Federal Trade Commission is in the early stages of opening an antitrust probe into how Google runs its online display advertising business, according to a report by Bloomberg News, citing sources who want to remain anonymous because the FTC has not announced the probe.
The plan, first announced last year, would break up the company's publishing and entertainment arms, and satisfy investors who are put off by the slow growth of its newspapers.
It's the first disclosure of prices in the nation's most populous state for individual health insurance that complies with the Affordable Care Act. The menu of affordable options surprised some consumer advocates and analysts who had been expecting premiums to be much higher.
Irish banking officials should have known there were problems with the controversial 10-euro coin commemorating James Joyce, according to Ireland's RTE News. The coin misquotes the author's Ulysses, and bears an image of Joyce that his estate did not approve.
The U.S. stock market indices are up 15 percent so far this year. Renee Montagne talks to David Wessel, economics editor of The Wall Street Journal, about the week in stocks. What's behind the broader rally this year, and why did things get rocky this week?
At the McDonald's annual shareholders meeting in Chicago Thursday, Hannah Robertson told CEO Don Thompson, "It would be nice if you stopped trying to trick kids into wanting to eat your food all the time." Hannah and her mother were part of a contingent from a watchdog group.
Amazon is piloting 14 possible shows for its streaming video service. The audience will vote on which shows it likes best. TV critic Eric Deggans says the process and the shows would like to be breaking ground for a new media — but they aren't.
A.G. Lafley will replace Bob McDonald immediately. Procter & Gamble is behind names like Crest toothpaste and Tide laundry detergent. The 175-year-old company has been struggling to grow in emerging markets.
In a key test of the federal health law's ability to draw competitive bids from health insurance companies, California has unveiled plans and prices that will be available next year to millions of residents shopping for individual coverage on its new insurance marketplace.
A Stanford MBA who used to work for Google returned to Myanmar to be an Internet entrepreneur. But it's tough to start an Internet company in a country where the power goes out every day.
Over the years, McDonald's has gotten a lot of flack for marketing to kids. At a shareholders meeting Thursday morning, Hannah Robertson, age 9, took the fast-food giant's CEO to task.
Millions of students rely on loans and grants for their studies. But with universities strapped for cash, fewer schools are able to admit students regardless of their financial need. Host Michel Martin asks the President of Iowa's Grinnell College, Dr. Raynard Kington, why his school considered putting a halt to need-blind admissions.
Although print media is often seen as past its prime in the U.S. and Europe, in many Asian countries such as China and India newspapers are thriving and expanding. One example is Myanmar, also known as Burma, where only 1 percent of the people have access to the Internet, and private daily newspapers are rushing into print after decades of being banned.
In Libya, guns are still everywhere and the elected leadership is struggling to rule as militias use guns and intimidation when they don't get their way. Most recently they surrounded two ministries and state television to force through a political isolation law that bars former members of Moammar Gaddafi's regime from government posts.
Irish banking officials should have known there were problems with the controversial 10-euro coin commemorating James Joyce, according to Ireland's RTE News. The coin misquotes the author's Ulysses, and bears an image of Joyce that his estate did not approve.
Something happened aboard the flight from Lahore, Pakistan, to Manchester, England. Royal Air Force fighters were scrambled and the plane was ordered to land at an airport in Essex.
As Lee Rigby's family struggles with grief, they're speaking about the young man's love of life. He was killed Wednesday. Witnesses heard — and recorded — the attackers saying that they were angry about the deaths of Muslims during the wars in Iran and Afghanistan.
Witnesses say the blast happened in the late afternoon. The sound of shots followed. As night fell, at least two attackers were dead. A small number of civilians had been wounded. Offices of the International Organization for Migration appear to have been targeted.
Russia and the U.S. have been trying to set up talks aimed at ending more than two years of brutal fighting in Syria. What's still unclear, however, is who would speak for the opponents of President Bashar Assad's regime.
There is some political willingness, but because China is highly decentralized politically, the Communist Party has only limited influence over provincial governments and how they regulate their dirty factories. The powerful state-owned oil companies have also resisted pressure to produce cleaner-burning fuel.
The Iranian presidential election is just weeks away, and voters are faced with a very narrow range of pro-regime candidates to choose from. All the high-profile or independent candidates have been eliminated by the Guardian Council. One man considered unfit to run has already held the post of president.
A Stanford MBA who used to work for Google returned to Myanmar to be an Internet entrepreneur. But it's tough to start an Internet company in a country where the power goes out every day.
The two men charged with killing a British soldier in south London on Wednesday were apparently on a government watch list, raising questions about why authorities were unable to prevent the attack.
Robert Siegel speaks with Sandra Laville, crime correspondent for The Guardian, about what's known about the suspect in the Woolwich attack in London on Wednesday.
Is there any reasonable objection to same sex marriage? Les Green discusses this controversial issue from a philosphical perspective with Nigel Warburton for this episode of the Philosophy Bites podcast.
Hitting someone, throwing a ball hard at someone's head, spitting at someone: these are all examples of harmful acts, called 'battery' in Tort Law, and most of us judge those who do such things without the victim's implied or actual consent as morally blameworthy. Could widespread aversion towards such acts be due to some kind of fundamen […]
Thomas Hobbes' Leviathan, published in 1651, remains one of the great works of political philosophy. Noel Malcolm has recently published a 3 volume scholarly edition of this book, based on decades of research. In this episode of the Philosophy Bites podcast he discusses how a better understanding of the context in which Hobbes was writing can lead to ne […]
Is there any connection between philosophy and running. Mark Rowlands, who began running to exercise his pet wolf thinks there is. Find out why in this episode of the Philosophy Bites podcast, which was recorded at the 2013 'Words by the Water' Literary Festival at Keswick. Philosophy Bites is made in association with theInstitute of Philosophy. […]
What are constitutions and how are we to interpret them? John Gardner addresses these questions in conversation with Nigel Warburton in this episode of the Philosophy Bites podcast. Philosophy Bites is made in assocation with the Institute of Philosophy.
What is a hallucination? How does it differ from an illusion? Fiona Macpherson of Glasgow University discusses these questions with Nigel Warburton in this episode of the Philosophy Bites podcast. Philosophy Bites is made in association with the Institute of Philosophy.
Jeff McMahan argues against the private ownership of guns in this episode of the Philosophy Bites podcast. Philosophy Bites is made in association with the Institute of Philosophy.
Descartes believed that we can have knowledge that was independent of experience. In this episode of the Philosophy Bites podcast Colin McGinn makes a case for there being some such knowledge. Philosophy Bites is made in association with the Institute of Philosophy.
What, if anything, is wrong with surveillance? Why value privacy? Tom Sorrell answers these questions in conversation with Nigel Warburton in this episode of the Philosophy Bites podcast. Philosophy Bites is made in assocation with the Institute of Philosophy.
What can philosophers learn from schizophrenia? In this episode of the Philosophy Bites podcast John Campbell discusses this intriguing question with David Edmonds. Philosophy Bites is made in association with the Institute of Philosophy.
Julie Delpy and Ethan Hawke return for the third in Richard Linklater's loosely peerless Before series, and they've never been more persuasive — nor has the storytelling. (Recommended)
In 2003, Richard Rubin set out to talk to every American veteran of World War I he could find. With help from the French, he tracked down dozens of centenarian vets and recorded their stories in a new book called The Last of the Doughboys.
Does the kind of charcoal you use really make a difference when it comes to grilling up a tasty steak or other food on the grill? Yes — but deciding which one to use depends on what you're after. Both briquettes and lump charcoal — aka "natural" hardwood charcoal — have their advantages and disadvantages.
Some people can memorize thousands of numbers, the names of dozens of strangers or the precise order of cards in a shuffled deck. Science writer and U.S. Memory Champion Joshua Foer shows how anyone can become a memory virtuoso, including him.
Forensic psychologist Scott Fraser studies how we remember crimes. He describes a deadly shooting and explains how eyewitnesses can create memories that they haven't seen. Why? Because the brain is always trying to fill in the blanks.
Nobel laureate and founder of behavioral economics Daniel Kahneman goes through a series of examples from vacations to colonoscopies. He explains how our "experiencing selves" and our "remembering selves" perceive happiness differently.
Memory is malleable, dynamic and elusive. When we tap into our memories, where's the line between fact and fiction? Can our memory play tricks on us? Can we train it to be more accurate? TED speakers discuss how a nimble memory can improve your life, and how a frail one might ruin someone else's.
Quick, what word goes before the following: man, model, market? If you guessed "super," you may be the exact kind of super-genius who will enjoy this next game, wherein our own John Chaneski challenges contestants to find the common link to create three compound words.
When your house musician has the guitar chops of Brian May and the fourteen-octave vocal range of Freddie Mercury, you can't pass up the opportunity to sneak "We Will Rock You" into the set. We've embedded clues about famous rocks (yes, rocks) in the iconic Queen song, and Jonathan Coulton takes the lead. Plus, a rendition of "We Are […]
FWIW, you've probably spent a lot of time on AOL Instant Messenger, or were forced to decipher jargon from a family member who did. This next game is for you. John Chaneski conducts this Ask Me One More final round in which contestants must decode Internet shorthand FTW, from the common (BRB) to the obscure (IANAL).
You may have a New York Times brain, but we know you've still got a Scholastic News heart. Ophira Eisenberg feeds some of your favorite childhood books through the Five-Dollar Word Machine for our contestants. Can you figure out the original titles without your thesaurus?
Celebrities like to intermingle. This next game imagines some creative combinations of the rich and famous that make "Brangelina" look tame. For example, if you merged the singer of "Candle in the Wind" with the mobster nicknamed the "Dapper Don," you'd get Elton John Gotti. Saturday night's alright for fighting, indee […]
Everyone has a go-to drink, but only the real heavy-hitters get theirs named after them. (Would Tom Collins have thirsted for his eponymous drink, had he existed?) V.I.P. and bartender Rosie Schaap knows a thing or two about a good cocktail--having clocked over 13,000 hours in bars--so we test her mixological know-how against one of her regulars.
Melissa Block speaks with political commentators E.J. Dionne of The Washington Post and Brookings Institution and David Brooks of The New York Times. They discuss highlights from the national security speech delivered by President Obama on Thursday.
You, you with your lips, throat, cheek muscles and hands, you, with no effort can drink a glass of water. But what about your cat? Your dog? They don't have the advantages you do. Nor do pigeons. And yet, through ways both brilliant and mysterious, they too can drink. Here are their secrets.
Two mothers whose sons were killed during the first Gulf War talk about how they became friends after their sons died. The past 22 years would have been tough without the friendship, because, as one tells the other, "what's in our hearts we share."
An affectionate documentary portrays the Paris Review founder as a man devoted to illuminating how talent and creativity work — both for himself, and for the rest of us.
Armando Christian Perez — better known as Pitbull or Mr. Worldwide — has sold five million albums and had No. 1 hits in more than 15 countries. He tells NPR's Michel Martin about using music as an escape and playing a well-dressed toad in the animated film Epic.
Steven Soderbergh's latest film is a showbiz story about Vegas icon Liberace and his secret lover — played, respectively, by Michael Douglas and Matt Damon, both terrific in their roles. It premieres Sunday on HBO.
It took Jesse and Celine 18 years to find themselves back where they started in the lovely third installment of the series that began with 1995's Before Sunrise.
Elysha O'Brien calls herself a "Mexican white girl." Not just because of her ethnically ambiguous appearance, she says, but also because she can't speak Spanish. Fearing their children would experience discrimination if they spoke Spanish, her parents chose not to teach them their native tongue.
In 2011, police detained Ai Weiwei for 81 days. Now, he's released a song that's turned the experience into a heavy metal protest song, along with a dystopian nightmare video. The lyrics are explicit and angry. Ai says his music is for the many political prisoners who remain jailed.
All is Gatsbyish excess on the Croisette, where the Cannes Film Festival's early tone might well have been set by Baz Luhrmann's lavish film — and by Sofia Coppola's accomplished The Bling Ring.
Confronted with the amazing advances made by science, why do so many still cling to God as a creator? Could the answer be that we need to be created in order to be special? Or are we afraid of our own unique place in the Universe? Marcelo Gleiser knows what he thinks.
"Someone asked me," Benjamin Franklin once said, "what's the use of a balloon?" They don't do much. They just float. What are they good for? And Franklin replied, "What's the use of a new-born baby?" They just sit there. They don't do much. You have to imagine possibilities. This is Franklin, in the 1780s, th […]
Los Angeles is home to a large slice of the world's bluejeans trade. But as the U.S. apparel industry continues to shrink, the city's high-end bluejeans business faces a threat. The European Union has imposed a nearly 40 percent tariff, which could cripple the city's jean business.
Seven months after Hurricane Sandy slammed into the Jersey Shore, Asbury Park is still waiting for insurance and federal aid money. In the meantime, it borrowed $10 million to repair the waterfront in time for the critical Memorial Day weekend.
Robert Siegel talks with Adam Davidson from Planet Money team about this week's cluster of positive data on the health of the U.S. housing market. Davidson says the strength of the housing sector is now irrefutable, even though a broader economic recovery is still years away.
The U.S. stock market indices are up 15 percent so far this year. Renee Montagne talks to David Wessel, economics editor of The Wall Street Journal, about the week in stocks. What's behind the broader rally this year, and why did things get rocky this week?
Millions of students rely on loans and grants for their studies. But with universities strapped for cash, fewer schools are able to admit students regardless of their financial need. Host Michel Martin asks the President of Iowa's Grinnell College, Dr. Raynard Kington, why his school considered putting a halt to need-blind admissions.
Strong new-vehicle sales lead industry analysts to revise their forecasts for North American production levels in 2013, with J.D. Power & Associates and LMC Automotive predicting 16 million units will be produced — a mark not hit since 2002.
Big bank Goldman Sachs holds its annual shareholder meeting Thursday. Five years ago, during the financial crisis, Goldman's CEO Lloyd Blankfein was a poster boy for overpaid executives. To find out how much he is making now, Renee Montagne talks Neil Weinberg, editor in chief of American Banker.
Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke told Congress Wednesday that the central bank is not ready to scale back on economic stimulus. But he suggested the Fed may start to pare back bond purchases if the economy picks up momentum. Stocks fell following Bernanke's remarks.
Over the past several years, the Federal Reserve has added trillions of dollars to its balance sheet, purchasing bonds in order to stimulate the economy. Many investors have been concerned that when the Fed starts selling off those bonds it could create turmoil in the markets. But in congressional testimony Wednesday, Fed Chief Ben Bernanke said the Fed migh […]
Host Michel Martin says America deserves a Bentley for peoples' dedication to do the right thing. She shares her thoughts on wealth and the American dream in her regular 'Can I Just Tell You' essay.
The Fed chairman cautioned Wednesday that if interest rates were to start rising now, the economy could slump. Meanwhile, the National Association of Realtors said sales of existing homes rose — and would have been even stronger if not for tight inventory.
It's a hard time to be a saver. The return on a savings account doesn't even keep up with inflation, and that has led many savers to ask: What should I do with my money? NPR's Uri Berliner takes $5,000 out of his own personal savings and explores various investment opportunities.
In Italy, the youth jobless rate is nudging 40 percent, a record high in post-war history. Demographer Stefano Rosina says the Italian welfare system has always been skewed toward the middle-aged and elderly, leaving Italian youths with no political or trade union representation.
Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio's department violated the rights of Latinos in its crackdown on illegal immigration, a federal judge says, issuing an injunction against the practice.
Forensic psychologist Scott Fraser studies how we remember crimes. He describes a deadly shooting and explains how eyewitnesses can create memories that they haven't seen. Why? Because the brain is always trying to fill in the blanks.
The jury that convicted her of first-degree murder earlier this month in the brutal killing of her ex-boyfriend were unable to decide whether to give the death penalty.
The partisan war over judicial nominees has accelerated in recent years. It took nearly a year to win Senate confirmation for Sri Srinivasan to the important federal appeals court for the District of Columbia, though he had no formal opposition.
The Supreme Court justice and noted Yankees fan showed her baseball acumen Wednesday while presiding over a re-enactment of the 1972 case that challenged the sport's antitrust exemption.
President Obama spoke at the National Defense University on Thursday about his views on the next stage in combating terrorism. Read his speech as released by the White House.
Federal prisoners can request compassionate release if they are terminally ill, but a recent investigation found that many die while their requests drift through the system. Now, prison leaders say they will simplify the approval process and start tracking requests electronically.
Activists say the case against Wisconsin dairy farmer Vernon Hershberger is about raw milk — and much more. His supporters have turned the case into a rallying cry for personal food freedom and the rights of farmers and consumers to enter into private contracts without government intervention.
The man, Ibragim Todashev, had known one of the suspects in the Boston Marathon bombings. Agents were apparently interviewing him overnight when things turned violent.
Two Oregon counties have reportedly rejected property tax increases that would have funded law enforcement and public safety services. The counties once received federal timber subsidies, but those days are over — and now they're scrambling to pay for essential services.
The use of slang in court proceedings can be tricky, especially in criminal cases where an uncommon slang term used by a witness can make a difference in a case. New York Times tech reporter Leslie Kaufman and law professor Greg Lastowka talk about how judges and lawyers have turned to sites like Urban Dictionary to help define slang terms and the legal impl […]
Arguments in a court challenge against New York's stop-and-frisk policy wrapped up earlier this week. Critics say the policy promotes racial profiling. But host Michel Martin speaks with Heidi Grossman, New York City's lead attorney in the trial, to hear the Police Department's side of the story.
When Methodist minister Reverend Thomas Ogletree officiated his son's same-sex marriage, he didn't think it would cause a stir. But now some New York United Methodist Church ministers are threatening to defrock him. He speaks with Host Michel Martin about the controversy and why he feels he's being singled out.
The 1,200-year-old European pilgrimage route known as the Way of St. James is undergoing a revival. Tens of thousands of people are walking across France to the Spanish coastal city of Santiago de Compostela, and the relics of St. James. Once a religious affair, it's now a cultural and social phenomenon as well.
Shunning the formalities of his office and focusing on poverty, Pope Francis is drawing a sharp contrast between his 2-month-old papacy and those of his predecessors.
When tightly controlled societies open up, long-suppressed sectarian tensions can flare. That's been happening in Myanmar. And the twist is that Buddhist monks, widely viewed as pacifists, are part of this rising Buddhist nationalism.
Sheikh Abdul Latif Abdul Aziz al-Sheikh said anyone using social media sites — and especially Twitter — "has lost this world and his afterlife." Many Saudis have turned to social media sites for news and to discuss issues they might otherwise not be able to bring up.
After a funeral director's two-week ordeal to find a place that would accept his body, Tamerlan Tsarnaev is buried at a Muslim cemetery in central Virginia.
Reading the Bible from cover to cover might seem like a heavy task. But what about writing it? Host Michel Martin speaks with Phillip Patterson, who is just two verses away from writing out the whole King James Bible. He talks about how he kept the faith in spite of loss and illness.
There's relief this week after three abducted women were found in Ohio. It's an ordeal that kidnap victim Elizabeth Smart knows all too well. She said that abstinence lessons she learned as a child made her feel worthless after being raped by her captor. Host Michel Martin discusses those comments with a Mormon blogger.
As orthodox Christians across the world celebrated a late Easter this year, Christian communities in Syria and neighboring Lebanon postponed all celebrations. Instead they gathered in churches only to pray for the safe return of two bishops kidnapped outside of Aleppo last month. While their whereabouts are still unknown, the Syrian opposition and the Assad […]
Once upon a time, the Oakland Athletics were cashing in for over bettors at a record setting pace. The A's started the season with a blistering 25-7 O/U record and were as close to a sure thing as you could find.
Following a relatively quiet Thursday in the major leagues, action picks up with a full slate of games Friday. There are a number of pitchers taking the hill who have been hot under picks in their most recent starts. Here is a look at three of them.
The folks over at SportsInsights have been advising readers to take underdogs with high totals for some time now. A recent article shows they have collated such numbers over the course of the past eight-plus MLB seasons and the data certainly backs u...
Pujols has been a bust since taking the money and running to Los Angeles in 2012 and is nowhere near the draw he was while winning MVP honors in St. Louis. He’s no longer a must-see at-bat each game and has also fallen in value when it comes to the M...
Chicago isn’t the only club with decisively different over/under counts at home and away. Here are three other MLB teams presenting value to total bettors depending on the scenery:
The Baltimore Orioles face their first real adversity this season, losing the last five games at home including two in the ninth inning. The Orioles look to change their fortunes when they host the first-place New York Yankees on Monday to start a th...
Odds are out for the biggest and best games of the upcoming NFL season. Covers Expert Sean Murphy gives you his insight into some of these marquee matchups and predicts where the odds could move before kickoff.
Odds are out for the biggest and best games of the upcoming NFL season. Covers Expert Sean Murphy gives you his insight into some of these marquee matchups and predicts where the odds could move before kickoff.
The LVH Superbook in Las Vegas posted their NFL Games of the Year spread for select matchups this upcoming football season. Here’s the list of the NFL games available for betting this spring:
The John Birch Society, now once again 
