“Obamacare Is Here To Stay”: Kentucky Is Emblematic Of The States That Have Received Substantial Assists From Obamacare
You’ve heard of Obamacare, right?
It’s that disastrous, costly and intrusive policy that President Obama and his fellow Democrats rammed down the throats of Congress back in 2010 — a failed plan that conservative Republicans have pledged to “repeal and replace.” According to its critics, it is un-American; it destroys the health care system; it burdens businesses; it hollows out Medicare. Right?
Ah, wrong. Despite what you may have heard and despite the caprice of electoral campaigns, the changes wrought by the Affordable Care Act are here to stay. That’s because it accomplishes much of what it set out to do — and its beneficiaries mostly like it.
Don’t expect Republicans to try to turn back the clock. Oh, some of them will continue to bash Obamacare and to blame it for any negative effects on the country’s dysfunctional health care “system” — including rising costs. And some will even go so far as to continue to insist that it ought to be repealed.
Take Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, who expects to lead the upper chamber if Republicans claim a majority. In a debate last month with his Democratic rival, Alison Grimes, McConnell suggested that he would repeal the Affordable Care Act but leave in place Kentucky’s popular state exchange program.
“… The best interest of the country would be achieved by pulling out Obamacare, root and branch,” he said. “Now, with regard to Kynect, it’s a state exchange. They can continue it if they’d like to.”
McConnell’s pronouncement was a tour de force of dissembling, a virtuoso performance of fabrications and disinformation. The Washington Post’s fact checker awarded him three Pinocchios.
That’s because the state’s health care exchange, Kynect, is a part of Obamacare, made possible by the 2010 law. If Obamacare is ripped out “root and branch,” the state exchanges could not continue to exist. (The GOP has continually pledged to find a mechanism to replace Obamacare, but its warring factions have failed to agree on any plan that would leave state exchanges in place.)
Here’s the rub: Kynect is very popular with Kentucky’s residents, many of whom are enjoying health insurance for the first time in their lives. They have been primed by Republican politicians to hate the president and any policy he endorses — including his signature health care plan — but they don’t want to give up Obamacare’s benefits.
Kentucky is emblematic of the states that have received substantial assists from Obamacare. It is largely rural and is among the poorest states. It has also long ranked near the bottom in several health indicators, including obesity and smoking rates and cancer deaths. Obamacare has been a boon for its residents, cutting the rate of uninsured in half.
According to The New York Times, people who live in rural areas are among the biggest winners from the Affordable Care Act. Other groups who have reaped substantial benefits are blacks, Latinos, women and younger Americans between 18 and 34.
Here’s another reason that Obamacare is here to stay: Its expansion of Medicaid is a boon to the states that have taken advantage of it. After the Supreme Court ruled that Medicaid expansion was optional, most Republican governors vowed to resist it — even though the federal government will pay 100 percent of the cost for the first three years and 90 percent thereafter.
But some of those GOP governors are now having second thoughts as rural hospitals are forced to close down for lack of funds and poor people are sidelined by preventable illnesses. Several GOP governors have already expanded Medicaid — which provides health insurance for the poor — and others are considering doing so.
Last month, Ohio’s Republican governor, John Kasich, advised his GOP colleagues to stop fighting the Medicaid expansion. The opposition, he said, “was really either political or ideological. I don’t think that holds water against real flesh and blood, and real improvements in people’s lives.”
Some Republicans have trouble admitting that on the campaign trail, but they all know it’s true.
By: Cynthia Tucker, The National Memo, November 1, 2014
“Electing Judges Is Insane”: Justice Judith French, ‘Forget All Those Other Votes If You Don’t Keep The Ohio Supreme Court Conservative’
With a couple of minor exceptions, like a few local judgeships in Switzerland, the United States is the only country where judges are elected. Indeed, to the rest of the world, the idea of judges running for office—begging for money, airing attack ads against their opponents, thinking always about their next election even after they take the bench—is positively insane. And they’re right.
We’ve had elected judgeships for our entire history, but until the last few years, those elections were nothing like races for Congress or governorships. But those days are past—now not only are judges acting like politicians, outside groups (yes, including the Koch brothers) are pouring money into judicial races to produce courts more to their liking. And when you make judicial elections more partisan, you get more partisan judges, like one Judith French, a member of the Ohio Supreme Court who is running to retain her seat:
At a Saturday event at which she introduced Republican Gov. John Kasich, French said, “I am a Republican and you should vote for me. You’re going to hear from your elected officials, and I see a lot of them in the crowd.
“Let me tell you something: The Ohio Supreme Court is the backstop for all those other votes you are going to cast.
“Whatever the governor does, whatever your state representative, your state senator does, whatever they do, we are the ones that will decide whether it is constitutional; we decide whether it’s lawful. We decide what it means, and we decide how to implement it in a given case.
“So, forget all those other votes if you don’t keep the Ohio Supreme Court conservative,” French said.
Well, at least she’s being forthright, not bothering with “I’ll rule according to the Constitution” and “It’s not my job to make the laws” and “I just call balls and strikes” and all the other baloney that Republican judges offer up when asked about their judicial philosophy. “I am a Republican and you should vote for me.” That pretty much sums it up. What a terrific system.
By: Paul Waldman, Contributing Editor, The American Prospect, October 31, 2014
“Suppressing Votes Just Another Day At The Office”: Republicans Are Treating The Right To Vote As Discretionary
When I said yesterday that the right to vote was increasingly being treated as a partisan political game, I had no way to know that a very prominent Republican politician would supply an instant illustration, per a report from the Bergen Record:
Governor Christie pushed further into the contentious debate over voting rights than ever before, saying Tuesday that Republicans need to win gubernatorial races this year so that they’re the ones controlling “voting mechanisms” going into the next presidential election….
“Would you rather have Rick Scott in Florida overseeing the voting mechanism, or Charlie Crist? Would you rather have Scott Walker in Wisconsin overseeing the voting mechanism, or would you rather have Mary Burke? Who would you rather have in Ohio, John Kasich or Ed FitzGerald?” he asked.
Brother Benen commented archly:
I’m not sure which is worse: the prospect of Christie making these remarks without thinking them through or Christie making these remarks because he’s already thought this through.
In theory, in a functioning democracy, control over “voting mechanisms” shouldn’t dictate election outcomes. Citizens consider the candidates, they cast their ballots, the ballots are counted, and the winner takes office. It’s supposed to be non-partisan – indeed, the oversight of the elections process must be professional and detached from politics in order to maintain the integrity of the system itself.
So what exactly is Chris Christie suggesting here?….
[P]olitical scientist Norm Ornstein paraphrased Christie’s comments this way: “How can we cheat on vote counts if we don’t control the governorships?”
Yep, Republicans are treating the right to vote as discretionary, depending on their party’s needs, which makes voter suppression just another day at the office.
By: Ed Kilgore, Contributing Writer, Political Animal, The Washington Monthly, October 22, 2014
“The Real Crises On Their Doorsteps”: Will The Green Goop In Toledo’s Water Be The End Of GOP Anti-Environmentalism?
It’s easy to doubt the effects of climate change – especially if you’re a Republican or a dedicated Fox News watcher. It’s an abstract concept easily “disproven” by the first cold day, and Republican-driven policies (or the lack thereof) to address it reflect just that. But it’s more difficult to deny the causes of smelly green goop washing up on a lakeshore or sticking to your toes.
But the toxic algae bloom in Lake Erie that caused 400,000 Toledo residents to avoid municipal water for two days provides an opportunity for conservatives to illustrate the ease with which they could co-opt the environment movement to push for local control, market solutions and individual choice – and start dealing with the very real crises on their doorsteps.
To that end, Ohio’s Republican governor – and pro-fracking enemy to the state’s environmentalists – John Kasich already signed legislation to address the algal blooms producing the toxins in Lake Erie earlier this year. That was too late, of course, and it might also be too little: it’s a voluntary program to certify farmers who use the phosphorous fertilizers that cause the blooms, and it won’t take effect untl 2017.
But even signing the legislation puts Kasich on the “Al Gore” side of the environmentalist spectrum to others in the GOP. In Washington state, Republican state house members argued that there was no science “that proves fertilizers have any impact on water quality”. In Wisconsin, Governor Scott Walker “eased” the deadlines for polluters in the state to meet the previous administration’s numerical standards for the amount of phosphorous allowed in public waters (he tried to replace the numeric standards with a “narrative description” of reduction efforts, but wasn’t successful). In Tea Partying Florida, the Republican state legislature sought to overturn locally-enacted bans on phosphorus fertilizer – an effort pushed by a Scotts Miracle-Gro lobbyist who texted a representative, “I am begging for your help here.”
Meanwhile, dozens of communities and 12 states have banned phosphorous fertilizers – and some even ban phosphorous in detergent, too. These laws don’t just spring up in Birkenstock Nation capitals such as Vermont or Ann Arbor, Michigan: Virginia banned phosphorous fertilizers in 2011 under the watchful eye of Republican governor Bob McDonnell, and New Jersey governor Chris Christie enacted the nation’s strictest regulations on the use of the chemical with trademark defiance and sentimentality in 2012. Christie explained:
We understand that the beauty of the body of water that we have here in New Jersey is much more important to our psychic health and our economic health than any of the arguments being made by the other side.
Research from 2009 shows that the results of fertilizer bans are clear: one of the oldest bans in the country – in Michigan – was linked to 28% reduction in phosphorus in downstream waters.
We shouldn’t be too surprised by some GOP flexibility on this aspect of environmental regulation: it’s mayors and governors who wind up having to deal with environmental crises on the ground and in real time – and who ultimately cannot afford ideological purity at the cost of their communities (though it may cost them higher office).
For them, GOP disdain for executive power stops at the Beltway’s edge; they cannot afford the luxury of speeches and stunts when their constituents go thirsty or can’t take baths.
Environmental crises are usually trotted out as case studies in the limits of conservative governance: they are systemic problems, requiring broad, coordinated action and strict penalties in place to dramatize the cost of continued malfeasance (since the real costs are all too broad to force individuals to take action). Coal seems like “cheap” energy … until you calculate the associated health and environmental costs after its use; avoiding chemical fertilizers seems expensive until you compare it with the cost of cleaning up after them.
The situation in Ohio has brought home how short the timeline of deferred costs can become, and it should: phosphorus fertilizers aren’t like oil wells or fracking fields, because consumers can make a direct choice in using them or not. Specific sites such as waste management plants (so-called point sources) aren’t even the primary sources for phosphorous pollutants in public waters like Lake Erie; rather, much of the pollution in the water is the result of run-off from developed land (non-point sources).
And algal blooms aren’t like climate change – though, importantly, they’re exacerbated by it: they are near-term and ugly, comparatively immediate consequences of definable actions that everyday citizens can see without a microscope or binoculars. They are inarguable.
In Ohio, the urgency to take action on the algal blooms can only be enhanced by the recognition that doing so makes economic sense – and will keep harsher regulations at bay. Phosphorus bans even make a certain economic sense: The EPA estimates that “nutrient pollution” costs the US $1bn a year in lost revenue from outdoor tourism and waterway recreation.
The problem with getting consensus on environmental policy is not, primarily, that Democrats want to continue expanding the leviathan of big government and Republicans are seeking local solutions – it’s that many conservatives refuse beyond all reason to acknowledge that there is a problem to be solved at all.
Maybe a glass of goop can change that.
By: Ana Marie Cox, The Guardian, August 5, 2014
“The Line To Kiss Sheldon Adelson’s Boots”: Why Talk Directly To Voters When You Can Get A Billionaire To Help Manipulate Them
It’s hard to imagine a political spectacle more loathsome than the parade of Republican presidential candidates who spent the last few days bowing and scraping before the mighty bank account of the casino magnate Sheldon Adelson. One by one, they stood at a microphone in Mr. Adelson’s Venetian hotel in Las Vegas and spoke to the Republican Jewish Coalition (also a wholly owned subsidiary of Mr. Adelson), hoping to sound sufficiently pro-Israel and pro-interventionist and philo-Semitic to win a portion of Mr. Adelson’s billions for their campaigns.
Gov. John Kasich of Ohio made an unusually bold venture into foreign policy by calling for greater sanctions on Iran and Russia, and by announcing that the United States should not pressure Israel into a peace process. (Wild applause.) “Hey, listen, Sheldon, thanks for inviting me,” he said. “God bless you for what you do.”
Gov. Scott Walker of Wisconsin brought up his father’s trip to Israel, and said he puts “a menorah candle” next to his Christmas tree. The name of his son, Matthew, actually comes from Hebrew, he pointed out.
Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey also described his trip to Israel, but then did something unthinkable. He referred to the West Bank as the “occupied territories.” A shocked whisper went through the crowd. How dare Mr. Christie implicitly acknowledge that Israel’s presence in the West Bank might be anything less than welcome to the Palestinians? Even before Mr. Christie left the stage, leaders of the group told him he had stumbled, badly.
And sure enough, a few hours later, Mr. Christie apologized directly to Mr. Adelson for his brief attack of truthfulness.
It would be one thing if these attempts at pandering were the usual ethnic bromides of candidates looking for votes in New York or Florida, a familiar ritual. But the people gathered in Las Vegas were not there as voters — they were there as donors, led by one of the biggest of them all, Mr. Adelson, who dispensed nearly $100 million to his favored candidates in 2012. He singlehandedly kept Newt Gingrich’s candidacy alive with $20 million in checks, and this year he is looking for a more mainstream candidate he can send to the White House on a tide of cash.
“He doesn’t want a crazy extremist to be the nominee,” Victor Chaltiel, a friend and colleague of Mr. Adelson, told the Washington Post. Well, that’s a relief.
But not much of one. The ability of one man and his money to engender so much bootlicking among serious candidates, which ought to be frightening, has now become commonplace. Why talk directly to voters when you can get a billionaire to help you manipulate them with a barrage of false television ads, as the Koch brothers are doing with Republican Senate candidates around the country.
It’s a cynical calculation that is turning people away from political involvement. Mr. Adelson thinks that’s not only terrific, but hilarious. Politico reported that at a party on Saturday night for the Republican Jewish Coalition, Mr. Adelson said he couldn’t give the group the $50 million it requested because its director didn’t have change for $1 billion.
The event was closed to the press, but it’s not hard to hear the fawning laughter and applause from here.
By: David Firestone, The Opinion Pages, The New York Times, March 31, 2014
Share This Blog
Unknown Feed- An error has occurred; the feed is probably down. Try again later.
mykeystrokes.com 