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Saturday, April 30, 2016

"'[Ideological] zealots are famously immune to experience, scientific evidence, logic and common sense…'"

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COMMENTS: 
*  an educated well informed populace would never vote GOP, that is why republicans always try to gut education spending. keep the voters stupid and angry, that has always been their tactic.
*  Faith based governance is hard to beat when your constituency wants to believe in fairy-tales.
*  Remember the bumper sticker – "Kansas where evolution is illegal and the monkeys are in charge."
*  See today's story  Inside the right-wing lie factory:  They are spending a lot on propaganda  and asstroturf to keep the lie alive. For every roll of Angel Soft toilet paper you buy, a penny goes to dumbing down America and putting another Brownback or Walker in office.
*  So how does Brownhead explain why Kansas is steadily declining? Does he ever mention that the feds keep Kansas afloat with Social Security payments to the Kansas retirees and other federal institutions? 
*   Now all the whingers who are screaming that they won't vote for Hillary should pay attention. THIS is what you'll buy for the entire nation if you vote GOP. 
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Sam Brownback gutted Kansas: How America’s worst governor and an ultra-conservative ideology wrecked an entire state

GOP zealots, enthralled by a fictitious fantasy of tax cuts and free-market nonsense, turned Kansas upside down

By Marcel Harmon, April 30, 2016

It’s safe to say that if Kansas’s Gov. Sam Brownback or any of the state’s ultraconservative legislators had been in fictional astronaut Mark Watney’s place (“The Martian“), they would have never survived the 543 sols that Watney spent stranded on Mars before being rescued. It’s doubtful they would have even made it back to the Hab in the first place after inadvertently being left for dead in the middle of the fateful sandstorm that drove the crew to abandon their mission. Survival depended on logically assessing the situation at hand and subsequently deciding on a course of action based on empirical evidence, sound scientific, engineering and even economic principles, and best practices. These aren’t key strengths of Brownback or ultraconservative legislators.

And in this case they would have essentially been responsible for creating the sandstorm that forced the astronaut team to flee Mars to begin with. Kansas is experiencing a massive “lack of revenue” storm created by the income tax cuts of 2012 and 2013, seriously jeopardizing the state’s future and quality of life for Kansans across the state. Everything from transportation infrastructure to public education are struggling to stay upright in the gale-force winds of the income tax cuts. Some Kansans are fleeing the state as if having been given the order to abandon the mission, though most fight to survive in this increasingly hostile environment.

For Kansas, a better protagonist would be the Kansas Center for Economic Growth (KCEG), a nonpartisan organization with a much better grasp of economics and the use of empirical evidence to guide their policy recommendations. Executive director Annie McKay, senior fellow Duane Goossen and others at the KCEG are far better prepared to “science the shit out of this,” rescuing themselves and the rest of us from the desolation of the Kansas economic landscape being wrought by the “lack of revenue” storm.

In their recent report, “Kansas Public Education: The Foundation for Economic Growth,” the KCEG effectively demonstrates a) the short- and long-term benefits of a strong public education system (everything from reduced public healthcare costs to the attraction and retention of workers/businesses), b) that K-12 education is an economic driver in Kansas with a significant return on investment and c) that K-12 public education is currently underfunded (and under threat) in the state of Kansas.

To address this, KCEG makes the following two policy recommendations to provide better support for Kansas public education and subsequently provide broader economic prosperity across the state:

  • Repeal the unaffordable income tax changes to generate revenue and invest in schools.
  • Replace the inadequate block grant with an equitable school funding formula that accounts for what it actually costs to educate and prepare students for life after high school.

KCEG’s report and policy recommendations are based on solid economic and education third-party research, their own data analyses (conducted by qualified individuals in an objective manner) and conversations with business, community and school leaders from across the state. Contrast this with the ideological zealotry of the Brownback administration, their ultraconservative legislative allies and organizations like the Kansas Policy Institute (KPI), who’ve been standing firm on the tax cuts, regardless of what the short- and long-term impacts on public services and Kansans will be.

Of course if one assumes the goal is to significantly reduce the role and size of state government, and to correspondingly increase a) the burden on the individual (subscribing to the myth of the self-made “man”) as well as b) privatization, particularly for public education which composes the majority of the state’s budget, then the tax cuts are working. Unfortunately, they’ll eventually turn Kansas’s economy into a something resembling the desolate Martian landscape.

KCEG’s report partially demonstrates from one economic perspective why such a view of the world, when actualized into public policy, doesn’t work, except for those at the top of the financial food chain. KCEG rightly points out that the tax revenues devoted to state-provided services, such as transportation infrastructure, public education and healthcare, to name a few, are in actuality investments in some very “powerful economic development tools” available to Kansas (and other states).

Looking just at public education, according to KCEG’s analysis, “[e]ach dollar invested in public schools reaps a $2.62 return…” that benefits all Kansans in terms of the quality of our workforce, the earning (and spending) power of graduates, reduced healthcare costs, reduced crime control costs and reduced welfare costs. The return on investment we all receive from the taxes that generate these much-needed revenues, regardless of whether one receives a direct or indirect benefit (i.e., people without children or who were home-schooled also benefit from a well-educated citizenry) doesn’t fit the ultraconservative narrative of a free market utopia with little government involvement and individuals solely responsible for their successes and misfortunes.

And the wealthy do typically gain more than everyone else under such a system – they keep more of their wealth with reduced taxes and are able to supplement with their own resources any reduction in government services, such as sending their kids to private schools. They often benefit from the increased privatization that occurs if they are financially involved in the private entities who provide the services. Those investments relative to business growth are also focused on their own interests, and therefore the greater economic benefits are more localized and smaller relative to the benefits and services that were displaced through shrinking government. Trickle-down is an apt term – it typically is just a trickle (if that) relative to the population at large.

Research in other disciplines strongly support this as well. Continuing with the theme of wanting to “science the shit out of this,” let’s take a look at what research from the intersection of biology, behavior, economics and the social sciences have to say (see “Evolution: This View of Life” as well as the Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization Special Issue on Evolution as a General Theoretical Framework for Economics and Public Policy for a jumping-off point into this research).

Free market principals and associated economic models are built in part around the view of humans as Homo economicus, making “rational” decisions based on a narrow, relatively short-term cost/benefit analysis and pursuing their self-interests relentlessly at the near exclusion of all other factors. While it’s true such “selfish” behavior (selfish relative to other individuals or the groups one is a part of) exists and manifests under a variety of conditions, it by no means fully defines human behavior.

Our evolutionary history has also designed us to be extremely social creatures who love to congregate. In contrast to selfish behavior, “pro-social” actions benefit the larger, encompassing groups one is a part of (sometimes at the expense of the individual or smaller group). Selfish behaviors tend to be locally advantageous, particularly for the individual or smaller group conducting the behavior, and more relevant in the short term, while pro-social behaviors tend to be globally advantageous to the larger encompassing group and society, and more relevant in the long term.

Pro-social behaviors also tend to enhance cooperation among group members. And our social/cultural norms act as a kind of “glue,” binding together unrelated individuals within larger groups and providing a measure of uniformity in their behavior. From an evolutionary perspective, cooperation and a measure of uniformity are hallmarks of successful groups.

And so individual decisions often are made to conform with social/cultural norms and rules of interaction, typically benefiting the larger group as much as or more than the individual. There also is the potential for such decisions and actions to be a detriment to the individual relative to other group members. Paying taxes benefits the larger group structures themselves – the institutions of the state and subsequent services provided; it also benefits individual citizens to varying degrees relative to the “services” provided by the state. It may benefit the individual paying the taxes directly and immediately or it may be an indirect benefit in that group longevity, stability and prosperity are all contributed to by payment of taxes.

Individuals (and businesses) who avoid paying their fair share of taxes (selfish behavior relative to the larger group), either illegally or through legal loopholes, put themselves at an advantage compared to their fellow group members who pro-socially pay their fair share. And wealthier individuals (and businesses) who support drastically reducing or eliminating taxes also put themselves at a benefit relative to their fellow citizens who depend to varying degrees on state services. Such actions in effect shift the level of selection from the larger group down to the level of individuals and smaller groups (including communities and businesses), creating more intragroup competition and decreasing group uniformity and cooperation.

Our pro-social and selfish natures, and their differing manifestations relative to the dominant level of selection, developed over the course of our evolutionary history spent as hunter-gatherers living in more egalitarian groups. Social/cultural mechanisms and processes, such as transparency of behavior, public shaming, gossiping and ostracizing evolved to minimize selfish behaviors and maximize pro-social behaviors in groups that are smaller and less complex than the ones we live in today.

Those same social/cultural mechanisms and processes can be effective in modern society. However, the much greater number of individuals and subgroups, often competing and cooperating on different levels at the same time and often hierarchically nested within each other, require additional social mechanisms to help maintain the level of selection primarily at the larger group level. Formal laws, regulations and governing structures, including those requiring taxes be paid to adequately fund services provided by the state, are examples of such mechanisms. A few years ago, David Sloan Wilson, Elinor Ostrom and Michael E. Cox provided a more detailed overview of the application of these mechanisms in modern society.

This was a simplified discussion of the literature, but it summarizes some of the limitations of Homo economicus as the only important aspect of human behavior to consider in economic models as well as the fallacy of a free market utopia where individual freedoms and responsibility reign supreme. It also ends in the same place as the conclusions of KCEG’s report: public services, including a strong, equitable public education system, benefit us all and therefore require adequate and fair taxation as a source of revenue.

Despite all of the evidence against the governor and ultraconservative legislators clinging to a free market utopia, despite being put on a credit watch by Standard and Poor’s, despite many previous ultraconservative legislative allies now jumping ship as the fall elections approach, the governor is standing by the tax cuts. And he continues to receive support (and likely pressure) from the Kansas Policy Institute, the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) and other similar groups as they persist in whipping up a sandstorm of misinformation and spin.

As David Sloan Wilson, SUNY Distinguished Professor of Biology and Anthropology at Binghamton University, has previously stated, “[Ideological] zealots are famously immune to experience, scientific evidence, logic and common sense… Perverse [policies] with ruinous consequences make sense to the economic true believer. If they fail, then the solution is to practice them even more assiduously. The only solution to this problem is to break the spell by changing the story to one that is more in tune with reality.”

And that’s what I’ve tried to do here (as well as KCEG and others elsewhere), but I’ve little hope it will break the free market spell holding sway over the governor. Nor should Kansans be fooled by those ultraconservative legislators now calling for some degree of tax cut repeal. A term-limited governor who continuously threatens to veto any legislation repealing or reducing the tax cuts serves as great cover for those ultraconservative legislators with the same goals, who are also seeking re-election.

Ultimately, the real hero in this story will be Kansas voters if they recognize what it takes to “science the shit out of this” and use their voting power to change the legislative landscape this fall.
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"It would be political suicide to run as Trump's VP."

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COMMENTS: 
*  It would be political suicide to run as Trump's VP.
*  To many politicians worry about themselves. Maybe if they worried about the country as much as they do their jobs this country could be great again
*  I truly can't imagine who would say "yes". Well.....in reality I can, it'll be someone who would sell their own mother if they thought it would somehow benefit them.
*  "pathological liar Hillary"  Your Republican lies about Hillary "lies" won't save you from a crushing defeat by her in November.
*  I highly doubt "little Marco" (or Gingrich really) will want to spend the next few months trying to defend/rationalize the inevitable barrage of crass comments and lowbrow antics Trump will unleash on the public heading into this election.  I could be wrong of course, but they don't seem like the type to want to become the punchline of a joke like Palin has become.
   *  Rubio has been speaking very highly of Trump in recent weeks. I don't think he would bring much as a VP though. Too little experience, too much anxiety, and not well received in Florida.
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Many Republicans uninterested in being Trump’s VP: report
By Elliot Smilowitz, April 30, 2016

A long list of prominent Republicans have no interest in being GOP presidential front-runner Donald Trump’s running mate, according to the New York Times.

Ohio Gov. John Kasich, former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush and Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) have all seemed to rule out joining Trump’s ticket, the report said.

And Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley, New Mexico Gov. Susana Martinez and Sens. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) and Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.) have made clear their dislike for Trump at various points.

However, former Speaker Newt Gingrich, Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.) and Ben Carson told the Times they would consider a VP slot. And New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie and Oklahoma Gov. Mary Fallin are reportedly open to it as well.

Trump told the Times he wants a running mate with “a strong political background, who was well respected on the Hill, who can help me with legislation, and who could be a great president.”

He did not say he was looking at anyone in particular, but praised Kasich, Christie and Florida Gov. Rick Scott in the interview, and said he was open a woman or minority running mate.

Trump is expected to be the clear underdog in a likely general election matchup with Democrat Hillary Clinton.

Clinton leads the businessman by about seven points in head-to-head polling, according to RealClearPolitics.
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Priebus, are you going to go after Trump, too?

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COMMENTS: 
*  ...Trump calls names for weeks and weeks and Priebus says nothing?
*  What? A non active politician (J Boehner) stirred Priebus to say something about "name calling"? OMG......where have you been Reince?
*  The GOP should stop being a political party and re-register as a church.
*  No name-calling?  How on earth could conservatives communicate, then?
*  "Honor God" is a joke with Republicans, they're nothing but fakes who use religion as a guise for hate and discrimination against anyone they don't like.
*  Somebody needs to send the memo to Trump. Oh, wait. Without name-calling, Trump would have nothing to say. He would just stand up there with that stupid look on his ugly mug.
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Priebus warns against 'name calling' after Boehner attack
By Jesse Byrnes, April 29, 2016

Republican National Committee (RNC) Chairman Reince Priebus warned Friday against "name calling" in the GOP presidential primary a day after John Boehner grabbed attention for calling Ted Cruz "Lucifer in the flesh."

"I happen to believe that God gave us a voice to honor each other, honor ourselves and honor God. And so I've been saying for months that people ought to remember that before they start making comments that are out of line," Priebus said during an appearance on Fox News.

"Just watch what you say and remember we are here to honor each other and ourselves. This is about our country, it's about the place that we love, it's not about the individual or the party, it's about our future," he added.

"Listen, I don't have a problem about arguing over what a rule means ... I'm just talking about name calling and getting things in the gutter," Priebus added later when asked about other criticism from Donald Trump that the GOP nominating process is "rigged."

Boehner on Wednesday ripped into Cruz, with whom he clashed during the 2013 ObamaCare defunding battle that led to a government shutdown, calling the Texas senator "Lucifer in the flesh" and the most "miserable son of a bitch" he's ever worked with.

Cruz responded by slamming Boehner for having allowed his "inner Trump" to come out, referring to his controversial GOP presidential rival, and issuing a fundraising appeal to supporters in which he labeled the former Speaker the "godfather of the Washington Cartel."

Fox co-host Jon Scott mentioned Boehner's comment, Trump's unfavorable numbers among some demographic groups and the push for a contested convention this summer.

"How fun is your job right now?" he asked the RNC chairman.

"I am actually having fun," Priebus said with a laugh, touting RNC efforts.

"So yeah, there is drama, but there's a lot of enthusiasm," he added.
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"The obsession over gender identity and bathroom use has reached a fever pitch ..." Geez, just leave people alone!

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Texas Woman Harassed For Using The Women’s Restroom
By Lindsay Gibbs, April 30, 2016

With all of the hysteria surrounding bathroom bills, it was only a matter of time until citizens started taking the matter into their own hands.

On Thursday, Jessica Rush was at the Baylor Medical Center to get her two broken fingers examined. While she was waiting to be seen, she decided to use the restroom. As reported by the Dallas Observer, this commonplace decision turned into a dramatic encounter when a man in the waiting room followed her to bathroom, believing she was a man.

Rush, a woman who identifies as a woman, was, in fact, headed to the women’s restroom. But because she has short hair and was dressed androgynously, the man felt that he must intervene. Rush captured the incident on camera.

“When I saw you enter I thought you was…” the man says.

“A boy?” Rush offers.

“Yeah, it was kind of confusing,” he said. “You dress like a man.”



The man was not apologetic for the encounter, and later explained that he was concerned for his mother.

“The point is I was helping my mom. I was confused when I see someone entering the woman’s bathroom looking like a man,” he said. “Each one of us is man or woman so … I wanted to make sure she was going to the right place.”

Rush told the Observer that this isn’t the first time her gender identity has been publicly questioned in the women’s bathroom, and noted that it can be alarming when a man twice her size confronts her in such a hostile manner.

The obsession over gender identity and bathroom use has reached a fever pitch with the passing of HB2 in North Carolina, a law that requires transgender people to use the bathroom corresponding to the gender on their birth certificate, not their gender identity. Proponents of the bill and others like it have been spreading false propaganda about trandsgender women in particular, alleging that they are predators who want access to the women’s bathroom so they can sexually assault other women.

Of course, this is not true, but the fear mongering has been effective. In Kansas, a bill was proposed that would pay students $2,500 if they discovered they were using the bathroom with a transgender person. Last week, a video surfaced of police forcibly removing a woman from the restroom because they didn’t believe that she was a woman.
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"Christians can't just push Cruz off on Satanists ..."

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COMMENTS: 
*  Wow! Even the Satanist's can't stomach this guy!
*  Now Satanists are getting offended! What is this world coming to? (Even though most Satanists don't believe in a literal devil Cruz may prove them wrong)
*  Cruz is a insult to the real Lucifer. Lucifer's "job" is to punish evil. Cruz's job is to deceive, lie, and steal....the phony Conservative gets over $13,000 a month salary for a Senate job he hasnt shown up to do in 2 yrs. He has freeloaded over $300,000 off the taxpayers, yet condemns the "takers". He vows to repeal Obamacare, yet had his greedy hands out grabbing that $10,000 subsidy Congress gets. Cruz is the evil Deceiver. He needs to refund all that freeloaded money back to the taxpayers....same with Rubio and Paul.....all claiming to be Conservative, yet all freeloading off the govt, and condemning others.
*  ROFL pretty bad when even the Satan worshipers would disavow you.
*  Wow, Satan doesn't even want you Teddie...that really is the death sentence ain't it!!!
*  Looks like Cruz has managed to unite the nation after all - in mutual hatred of him.
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Satanists Snub Comparison of Cruz to Lucifer
By Ben Gittleson, April 30, 2016

Prominent Satanists want to be clear: Ted Cruz need not apply.

After former House Speaker John Boehner on Wednesday called the current Republican presidential candidate "Lucifer in the flesh," saying he found it difficult to work with him, staunch Satanists decried the comparison.

"Having a conservative Christian likened to Lucifer -- one who opposes equal rights for same sex couples and promotes the ability to deny services to any with different values -- we Satanists see as besmirching the positive, heroic aspects of that character as portrayed by Milton in his epic 'Paradise Lost,'" Magus Peter Howard Gilmore, the high priest of The Church of Satan, said in a statement.

Lucien Greaves, a spokesman and co-founder for the Satanic Temple, told ABC News he thinks Cruz engages in "clearly deplorable behavior" and that Boehner's comments were "thoughtless and ignorant."

"Christians can't just push Cruz off on Satanists," Greaves said. "All he's trying to say is that Ted Cruz is some type of embodiment of evil. I think that's a rather destructive, backward mindset, because when you take clearly Christian individuals, clearly Christian activities, and things go sour, you pass them off as the influence of Satan.

"It really prevents you from thinking clearly," he said.

Cruz had previously dismissed Boehner's comparison, saying he had hardly interacted with the Ohio Republican over the years.

While Gilmore, the high priest, said that Satanists have not expressed any "collective support for any specific politicians," Greaves said Satanists do not "want" Cruz and that he "is everything opposite of what we represent."
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"... this is a waste of taxpayer money and is serving 'no other purpose than to carry out politically-motivated attacks on Planned Parenthood.'"

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98 Lawmakers Ask Paul Ryan To Disband Panel Going After Planned Parenthood Over Debunked Video
By Lindsey Gibbs, April 30, 2016

On Thursday, 98 members of Congress wrote a letter to House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-WI) and the Chairman of the Select Investigative Panel on Infant Lives, Rep. Marsha Blackburn (R-TEN), asking that they disband the panel and end the investigation into Planned Parenthood’s fetal tissue research.

The investigation into Planned Parenthood’s fetal tissue practices began last summer, when a heavily edited video surfaced claiming that the organization was “selling aborted baby parts.” Conservatives, especially former Presidential candidate and current Ted Cruz “running mate” Carly Fiorina — called for a formal investigation into Planned Parenthood’s practices.

But the claims made in the video have been repeatedly debunked, and in January, after a three-month-long investigation, a Texas Grand Jury decided not to indict Planned Parenthood. Instead, the jury moved to indict the videographers who were responsible for the video in the first place.

However, the select panel has continued to operate, going after not only Planned Parenthood, but also the scientists who are researching fetal tissue as they search for cures for diseases such as Parkinson's and Multiple Sclerosis.

"Despite continued and repeated affirmation that Planned Parenthood broke no laws and did nothing wrong, the Select Investigative Panel has continued to endanger healthcare providers and patients with its extreme rhetoric claiming that Planned Parenthood is selling baby parts," the 98 members of congress wrote in the letter.

The letter also expresses concern about the invasive investigations the panel is conducting on scientists who are researching fetal tissue, including a "misuse of subpoena power" to harass researchers, graduate students, laboratory technicians, and administrative personnel involved with the research.

According to the members of Congress, this is a waste of taxpayer money and is serving "no other purpose than to carry out politically-motivated attacks on Planned Parenthood."

“It’s increasingly clear this committee is pushing to intimidate scientists and researchers,” Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-CA) said. “This is reckless. These are the very researchers dedicated to finding life-saving medical cures for crippling diseases."

“This Panel has served as nothing more than a vehicle for false attacks on Planned Parenthood," said Rep. Bill Foster (D-IL). "It’s time Republican leadership stops wasting taxpayer money on this political witch hunt."
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Friday, April 29, 2016

"Buffoon" is such an appropriate choice of word.

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"... in recent years, the leaders of the GOP have engaged in an assault on our constitutional system in ways unprecedented in American history ..." B***ards!

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COMMENTS: 
*  The Republicans swear by "Constitutionalism" only when they're losing ground. They were perfectly fine with "anti-Constitutionalism" when the Bush administration kidnapped people and held them captive without due process, tortured people and passed the (cynically titled) Patriot Act.
*  ... Even worse is when I see them bragging that they are refusing to do their job, I don’t care what their silly excuse is, they sicken me. We elected these people to do the job, not avoid it, not turn it into a hate fest, and not insist they don’t have to work with the other two branches of government or with the other people we elected to sit beside them. I believe I could make a real case that what they have been doing and continue to do is treasonous, yes; they are that big of a threat to all of us if we allow it to continue. ... It’s is time (November) for American’s to literally kill off the Republican Party. Everything has an end, the GOP has reached theirs. May they R.I.P.
*  Don't play the "both parties" card... That is worn out... The GOP has been at war with the Middle Class, and by extension, America itself since Nixon's southern strategy and war on drugs meant to destroy hippies and the black community... Hell, McCarthy famously waved a blank piece of paper in the air while proclaiming to have names of communists in the government on it... The GOP has been smoke and mirrors meant to fool the gullible for quite some time now...
*  for years i have said the republicans wrap themselves in the flag wave the constitution and spout the most inane anti american rhetoric
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The GOP and the Constitution: The Grotesque Mismatch Between Walk and Talk
By Andy Schmookler, April 29, 2016

Which party do you think of when you hear the phrase, “defender of the Constitution”? I would wager that members of both parties would immediately think of the Republican Party, because they are the ones who most loudly proclaim their deep allegiance to our founding document.

Yet in recent years, the leaders of the GOP have engaged in an assault on our constitutional system in ways unprecedented in American history:

1) In the torture memos, the George W. Bush administration set a precedent that could enable any future president to shield his or her administration from prosecution for any illegal actions. Just tell your lawyers to draw up a memo declaring a crime to be legal. Such a memo can shield those who commit the illegal action, for they can claim that they relied on the memo. Meanwhile the lawyers who wrote the memo can’t be prosecuted because they did nothing but render an opinion.

2) In pardoning Scooter Libby, the Bush administration freed the only person tried and convicted of a crime performed in an administration that deliberately flouted several major laws (including warrantless searches, which are felonies under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, and the torture of prisoners, in violation of both federal law and binding treaties). Even though Libby was prosecuted by an outstanding Republican attorney, and found by a jury to be guilty of perjury and obstruction of justice in the Valerie Plame case, the president snatched him from the grasp of the law with a pardon that was tantamount to a declaration that this Republican administration was above the law.

3) The Republicans decided even before Barack Obama was inaugurated in 2009 to do all they could to prevent him from performing his presidential role by obstructing whatever he sought to accomplish. (“If he was for it, we were supposed to be against it,” a Republican Senator from Ohio, George Voinovich, later said.) They expected the American people to blame the president for his failure and hand power back to the Republican Party. Even if this isn’t a legal violation of the Constitution, it is clearly against the spirit of the Constitution to prevent that person from doing his job whom the American people have hired to perform a function the Constitution treats as of great importance.

4) Never until President Obama’s first term had a Senate minority applied the filibuster — a Senate rule intended for special circumstances, to protect vital concerns of a Senate minority — so that every matter before that body would require 60 votes, rather than a simple majority, to move forward. (Since the Senate gives an equal number of seats to states with few people as to states with many, this meant that for the first six years of this Democratic presidency the representatives of a mere 11% of the nation’s population could thwart the desires of the other 89%.) The Constitution indicates that the Senate shall operate by the principle of “majority rule” - otherwise why have the Vice President empowered to break a tie? In the American system, the Constitution takes precedence over a mere law. But the Senate Republicans used not even a law but a mere Senate rule to override the Constitution.

5) Right now, the Republicans in the Senate are refusing to honor the Constitution’s statement that the president “shall appoint” a justice to fill a vacancy on the Supreme Court. These Senate Republicans have been obstructing presidential appointments — to the courts and otherwise — to an unprecedented degree for some time. But never has this disregard for the presidential role been so blatant as when the Republicans announced within hours of the death of Justice Scalia that they would refuse to consider any nominee this president might put forward. A succession of “justifications” for this conduct all proved hollow, based on misrepresentations of both history and the Constitution’s clear meaning.

All this from the Party that, when it in 2011 it took over the House of Representatives, began the term by reading the Constitution aloud from the House floor.

One form of brokenness in the human world is when people act the opposite of what they loudly claim they stand for, marching off under the most noble of banners to do ignoble things.
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"New survey data suggest that young people have become increasingly averse to just about every plank in today’s creaky Republican Party platform."

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COMMENTS: 
*  The solution for the GOP to address the fact that younger voters increasingly don't support it is the same as the solution for that issue with minorities: disenfranchise those demographic blocs by making it harder for them to vote.  It's been working well for years now and will continue to do so. Problem solved.
*  It hasn't only been the Bushes that have done enormous damage to the GOP. I can't think of a single Republican that I admire anymore. John McCain came close for a long while until he hired that idiot from Alaska...after that there was really no reason to support, agree with, listen to any of the hate filled spew that they come up with.
*  The Democratic party is willing to discuss things, and they don't consider the terms "negotiation" and "compromise" to be bad words. They can work out their differences.  The GOP candidates, on the other hand, are limited to trying to out-extreme the other. "I'm tough on entitlements; I'm going to cut 'em back!" "No, I'm tougher, and I'll cut them harder!" "Hey, I'm going to cut 'em so hard, there'll be nothing left!"  That's supposed to be good news for the impoverished elderly, is it?
*  But you have to skew in the "anti" vote. Once the prospect of a GOP victory with the Donald at the helm dawns on those Sanders supporters you can bet that Hillary will seem a whole lot more appealing.
*  ... Oh yes, the Republicans are full of ideas. They all amount to the same thing though: the wealthy should be wealthier and nobody else matters.
*  Sounds like these millennial Republicans would be more at home in the Democratic Party. Come on board!!!!
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The GOP’s lost generation of millennial voters
By Catherine Rampell, April 28, 2016

On Wednesday, at a “Millennial Town Hall” at Georgetown University, House Speaker Paul D. Ryan (R-Wis.) fielded a tricky question from a young Republican.

What “reasons for optimism,” the student asked, could Ryan offer to conservative millennials disgusted by the leading GOP presidential candidates?

Ryan’s response was telling. He encouraged young people to ignore the “political personality,” and instead “Look at the ideas. Look at the platform that is being advanced.”

We win ideas contests,” Ryan declared triumphantly.

With all due respect, Mr. Speaker: No, no you don’t.

At least not among millennials.

The GOP is poised to permanently lose a generation of voters, and not (only) because of its odious and uncommonly disliked presidential front-runner. New survey data suggest that young people have become increasingly averse to just about every plank in today’s creaky Republican Party platform.

By now it’s well known that young Americans are considerably more liberal than the Republican Party on most social issues, particularly gay rights. The GOP’s own 2012 election “autopsy,” which proposed ways to broaden the party’s base, emphasized that Republicans must change their “tone” on social issues that young people see “as the civil rights issues of our time.”

The latest youth poll from Harvard’s Institute of Politics, though, indicates that LGBT-related policies aren’t the only ones on which young people and Republican traditionalists part ways.

As their rabid support for Bernie Sanders might indicate, young people have also become much more supportive of big government and expanded social welfare programs.

Compared with responses from the past few years, today’s 18- to 29-year-olds are more likely to believe that “basic health insurance is a right for all people,” that “basic necessities, such as food and shelter, are a right that government should provide to those unable to afford them” and that “the government should spend more to reduce poverty.”

More broadly, other surveys have found that young people have more favorable views of socialism than of capitalism — the only age group for which this is true.

Additionally, the Harvard poll found, young people increasingly reject supply-side (a.k.a. “voodoo”) economics, the cornerstone of the Republican fiscal agenda.

Just 35 percent of young people agree that “tax cuts are an effective way to increase growth.” That is 5 percentage points lower than last year, and the lowest share since the poll first asked about this.

On the breakaway issue of the current Republican primary — immigration — young people also could not be more at odds with the GOP base.

For more than two decades, the Pew Research Center has been surveying Americans about whether they believe immigrants “strengthen our country because of their hard work and talents” or “are a burden on our country because they take our jobs, housing and health care.”

The share of millennials saying that immigrants strengthen the country has shot up to 76 percent in recent years, far higher than any other generation and more than twice as high as the share of Republicans who say this.

Young people are also far more likely than other age groups to favor finding a way for undocumented immigrants to remain in the United States legally, and to oppose building a wall on the Mexican border.

On countless other issues — such as whether stricter environmental regulations are worth the cost — young Americans are drifting further from those supposedly winning ideas held by Ryan’s party.

You might be tempted to dismiss some of these findings because young people are almost always more liberal than their elders. Even relative to earlier cohorts of young people, though, today’s youth are shifting leftward.

Some of that shift is compositional: Young people today are more likely to be nonwhite, and nonwhites are more likely to be liberal than their white peers. Demographics tell only part of the story, though. The components of the millennial bloc that are most likely to be conservative have also gotten substantially more liberal, according to a new study from Gary C. Jacobson, a political scientist at the University of California at San Diego.

Jacobson finds that young people who self-identify as Republican are to the left of older Republicans on pretty much every conceivable metric, including whether they approve of President Obama, consume conservative media or believe in man-made climate change.

Millennials are now the largest generation in history, and their voter turnout rates will probably increase with age. Research suggests that political affiliations developed early in life tend to stick. None of this bodes well for the future of the Republican Party, regardless of which candidate it offers up in November.

Unless, that is, it’s willing to change some of its ideas.
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"... the Speaker’s rhetoric at Georgetown was effectively an endorsement of insurers discriminating against the sick." Ryan, you'd better hope you never have a pre-existing condition!

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COMMENTS: 
*  Ryan could care less about those with pre-existing condition. May he have such a condition one day and then he may understand
*  That is the essence of Repuglican philosophy:  screw the have-nots to benefit those who don't need it. 
*  Paul Ryan does have a pre existing condition.... It's called abject stupidity, w/ a co-morbid case of apathy, coupled w/ an inability to see past the noses of his rich donor class masters!!  Personally I would say his case is terminal!
*  Think of how much health care could be funded by the money saved by de-funding health care for congressmen.
*  These Republicans are obstructionists period. Any alternative will be substandard to Obamacare. These Republicans have no ideas,no vision. They stop and destroy things. For 50 yrs. all they've ever come up are tax cuts and trickle down.
*   Gosh, Oh gee whiz WOW! the guy with a degree in economics finally reveals he knows NOTHING about the economics of US Health care. But, we have to take care of the insurance companies first and then the patients. Is that right?
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Paul Ryan has a message for those with pre-existing conditions
By Steve Benen, April 28, 2016

After seven years of waiting for a Republican alternative to the Affordable Care Act, House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) at least claims to be moving closer to a resolution. The GOP leader appeared on MSNBC yesterday and said his party’s plan might even be ready in time for the Republican National Convention, which begins in July.

There’s ample reason for skepticism, but who knows, maybe Ryan will manage to pull something together. But while we wait, it’s worth appreciating the fact that even if an “Obamacare” alternative emerges – it’s unlikely, let’s imagine it for the sake of conversation – Americans probably aren’t going to care for it. Consider this new Reuters report:
U.S. House of Representatives Speaker Paul Ryan called on Wednesday for an end to Obamacare’s financial protections for people with serious medical conditions, saying these consumers should be placed in state high-risk pools.

In election-year remarks that could shed light on an expected Republican healthcare alternative, Ryan said existing federal policy that prevents insurers from charging sick people higher rates for health coverage has raised costs for healthy consumers while undermining choice and competition.
“Less than 10 percent of people under 65 are what we call people with pre-existing conditions, who are really kind of uninsurable,” Ryan told a Georgetown University audience yesterday. “Let’s fund risk pools at the state level to subsidize their coverage, so that they can get affordable coverage. You dramatically lower the price for everybody else.”

Ryan doesn’t talk about health policy details often, so these comments were a welcome contribution. They were also an important hint of what’s to come.

Let’s acknowledge at the outset the Speaker’s assessment contains a kernel of truth: protecting Americans with pre-existing conditions, as the Affordable Care Act does, raises costs. If policymakers were to decide they were prepared to simply leave these Americans behind, you could, in fact, “dramatically lower the price for everybody else.”

But Obamacare is predicated on the assumption that dumping millions of Americans with pre-existing conditions – folks who couldn’t afford coverage before the ACA passed – into high-risk pools is the wrong thing to do. The Affordable Care Act guarantees protections, which ends up costing more, but which provides greater and more stable health security for more people. It’s a trade-off based on a moral calculus.

And as it turns out, polling shows these protections are among the law’s most popular provisions. Ryan assumes that Obamacare is so widely disliked that the public will rally behind a far-right alternative, but what he doesn’t fully appreciate is the fact that the GOP solution is going to make the Affordable Care Act look even better.

Not to put too fine a point on this, but the Speaker’s rhetoric at Georgetown was effectively an endorsement of insurers discriminating against the sick. Just imagine the savings!

As for the high-risk pools Ryan envisions for the millions of Americans who used to be “kind of uninsurable,” wonks sometimes refer to these pools as “health insurance ghettos” for people with pre-existing conditions. They could create a coverage option for these Americans, but they’d cost a small fortune – and congressional Republicans have said more than once that they have no interest in paying for them.

If they’re part of the foundation for Ryan’s elusive ACA alternative, health-care proponents are going to have a delightful time comparing Obamacare to its Republican rival.
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GOP, if you were doing the jobs you were elected to do instead of hiding out making calls for money, there wouldn't have been any reason for 60 Minutes to do the story.

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COMMENTS: 
*  NRCC protests too much given what was on the tape, empty offices and a tote board where names were blurred. Their response sounds like they are hiding more than was shown on 60 Minutes.
   *  Every two years we elect telemarketers! All it does is point out how incredibly stupid our election finance laws are.  We should have public financing with no individual contribution of over $2500.  No money from corporations, unions, chamber of commerce, pacs, etc, etc, etc.
  *  Watergate was an illegal break-in in the middle of the night, just so the GOP remembers exactly what it was that they engaged in. And again, the GOP only has a problem with hidden cameras when they are used on the GOP, not when the GOP is attempting to discredit Planned Parenthood.  And just to remind the GOP how that turned out: Planned Parenthood 2, the two hidden Republican activist who engaged in the action and are now indicted---0.
*  ... It isn't the fact that they are calling and asking for donations, it's the fact that they are doing it when they should be doing the job the were elected to do and it's also the fact that they are spending 20-30 hours/week doing so. The system is corrupt and so are the people who accept this as the status quo.
*  In other words, as I read the story, the RNCC is mad at CBS for filming secretly a meeting, not lying. Deny, Deny, Deny.
*   Thank you, 60 Minutes. Investigative journalism is not yet on life support after all.
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NRCC blasts '60 Minutes' story, hidden cameras
'Not since Watergate has the headquarters of a major political party committee been so violated,' the House GOP campaign arm says in a letter to CBS News.
By Jake Sherman and Hadas Gold, April 29, 2016

The National Republican Congressional Committee Friday accused "60 Minutes" of broadcasting a piece with "largely false information" and Rep. David Jolly (R-Fla.) of spreading lies on the broadcast— the latest salvo in an increasingly bitter Republican-on-Republican fight with one of the largest television networks in the middle.

At issue is a "60 Minutes" piece that aired Sunday featuring Jolly and his proposed "STOP Act," long-shot legislation that would bar members of Congress from personally soliciting campaign donations. The newsmagazine used a hidden camera to show members of Congress making phone calls to solicit contributions, which is commonplace in both Republican and Democratic campaign headquarters in D.C.

In a letter from the House Republican campaign committee to "60 Minutes" — obtained by POLITICO — NRCC Executive Director Rob Simms charged that Jolly lied in the piece when the congressman claimed he was told at a meeting that he needed to raise $18,000 every day.

"Simply put, this meeting never happened," Simms writes. "It is a work of fiction. Had the reporter or producer of the story bothered to verify this claim, they would have been told as much."

Jolly's office shot back that the meeting did, in fact, happen — and threatened to release details on who issued the fundraising quota if the NRCC wants to go there.

"In response to the NRCC’s broadside to the credibility of Rep. David Jolly, and in response to the Executive Director’s bold assertion that a meeting with party leadership directing Rep. Jolly to raise $18,000 per day did not occur, we can confirm the date was April 3, 2014, the time was 5:30 p.m., the location was the NRCC’s Political Conference Room on the Second Floor," Jolly's communications director, Preston Rudie, said in a statement to POLITICO. "Rep. Jolly has intentionally left out names of participants since the beginning of this story, but if the NRCC wishes to escalate their denial, we are happy to provide additional information regarding the meeting.

The NRCC also took aim in its letter at CBS' use of hidden cameras to film the campaign arm's office for the piece.

"Despite being explicitly denied permission to enter our private offices, a CBS producer plainly admits on camera that 60 Minutes intentionally and knowingly trespassed or encouraged another to trespass in our offices to film footage," Simms writes. "Not since Watergate has the headquarters of a major political party committee been so violated. CBS conspired with an anonymous staffer to enter our offices and obtain unauthorized footage under false pretenses. This is not journalism. This is trespassing."

The NRCC, led by Oregon Rep. Greg Walden, is conducting an internal investigation to figure out who filmed inside their headquarters. A source involved with the investigation said they believe they will figure it out in the coming weeks.

A representative at "60 Minutes" said the letter hadn't been received by the show until POLITICO provided it as it sought comment. "Our story speaks for itself," CBS News spokesperson Kevin Tedesco said later in a statement.

In an online segment accompanying the piece, reporter Norah O'Donnell defended the use of hidden camera footage.

"If lawmakers who are paid by the American taxpayers are spending the majority of their time raising money on the phone," she said, in what GOP officials called an exaggeration, "I think it’s an important part of the story to see what those offices look like and take our viewers behind the scenes, in this case with a hidden camera."
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Thursday, April 28, 2016

Hoo boy, a match made in heaven! LOL

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"... we're living through the early stages of an ideological realignment of America's two major political parties."

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How 2016 will shape the future of American politics
By Damon Linker, April 26, 2016

The 2016 primaries have been a thrilling rollercoaster ride for everyone who's been paying attention. Every round of voting has raised a new set of questions about the outcome of this year's presidential contest. Will the populist demagogue Donald Trump actually succeed in winning the Republican nomination? Is there any way for party elites to stop him? On the Democratic side, might a self-described socialist manage to beat out establishment stalwart Hillary Clinton? How will Bernie Sanders' fervent supporters respond if he fails to secure the nomination?

And yet, despite all the 2016 intrigue, the events of the past several months have been exciting at least as much for what they might portend for the future.

It's possible that all of the drama will come to nothing — that Sanders will lose, give up gracefully, encourage his millions of supporters to rally around Clinton, and succeed in convincing them to do so; and that the eventual GOP nominee will run in the general election and even govern as a standard-issue post-Reagan Republican, promising to cut taxes on the wealthy, talking tough about immigration but not building a wall or deporting 11 million people, maintaining the post-Cold War international order, and railing against (but not doing much about) liberal social-sexual trends.

If all those things happen, and no new populist candidate emerges to challenge the party establishments on either side in 2020, then this crazy primary season will go down as an aberration.

But imagine a different, more destabilizing, and (frankly) more likely scenario — which is that we're living through the early stages of an ideological realignment of America's two major political parties.

If that's the case, events would unfold along something like the following lines: Sanders would lose somewhat less than gracefully and a significant number of progressives and Democratic-leaning independents would choose to stay home in November rather than vote for Hillary Clinton, who would run a general-election campaign of unapologetic neoliberalism. She would campaign in favor of cautious incremental changes to the status quo, free trade, keeping taxes roughly where they are, unabashed social-sexual liberalism, aggressive gun restrictions, and a militarily muscular foreign policy to combat ISIS and reassert America's global leadership after the slightly more restrained approach favored by Barack Obama (especially in the years since Clinton left the State Department). Many progressive Sanders supporters would be so turned off by Clinton's agenda that they would seriously entertain voting for the Republican nominee.

And that man is Donald Trump — the real wild card in the realignment scenario.

Whether a massive realignment actually occurs will depend to a large extent on whether Trump becomes the Republican nominee — and on what version of Donald Trump ends up running in the general election this fall. Is it the Trump who sounds like a standard-issue Republican, especially on tax cuts and the unmitigated "disaster" of the Obama presidency? Or is it the Trump who scrambles the GOP's ideological categories, running to the party's left on government spending and social issues and to its right on immigration and prosecuting the war on terror? If it's the latter Trump who runs in the fall, perhaps doubling down on these off-sides issues to appeal to disgruntled Sanders voters, he'd have a decent shot of sparking a full-fledged realignment, regardless of whether he wins in November.

What would the parties look like once the dust had settled?

The GOP could very well end up as the party of populism and white ethnic nationalism. Among its core policy commitments:

  • Stringent limits on immigration, including widespread deportations.
  • Protectionist economic policies in which trade agreements are scrapped or reopened for negotiation with an eye to winning more favorable terms for American workers. The party might also work to rein in the freedom of American companies to shift their workforces overseas, and to encourage them to bring manufacturing jobs back to the U.S. This could involve the development of a comprehensive industrial policy for the nation.
  • No new tax cuts for anyone, and perhaps modest tax hikes on the wealthy to cover the costs of Social Security, Medicare, and an expanded and reformed version of ObamaCare that would move the country closer to universal health-care coverage (albeit with the benefits enjoyed only by American citizens). I wouldn't be surprised if Trump or some populist successor also came to champion a version of Sanders' proposal to make college (or at least community college) free for all Americans.
  • A strong rhetorical defense of family values and religious freedom, but no concrete moves at the level of policy to continue waging the culture war.
  • Much more aggressive moves against ISIS and other terrorist groups combined with a dramatic scaling back of America's other overseas obligations, including the closing of military bases in Europe and Asia, and a substantial decrease in financial and military support for NATO.
  • Championing of gun rights.
  • Opposition to environmental regulations (especially in the energy sector).

Where would this leave the Democrats? Pretty much where they've been since Bill Clinton was elected president in 1992 — as the party of neoliberal internationalism, though now without some of the populist energy that fueled the Sanders insurgency, and with quite a bit more of a willingness to balance progressive goals against the concerns of big business and the imperatives of using American military might to enforce order around the globe. The Democrats would now be the party of Charles Koch, Robert Kagan and the rest of the neocons, bicoastal elites (including the tech sector), libertarians, the most secular Americans, and the African American and Latino communities.

The more purely left-wing faction of the party will surely be disheartened by this prediction and dispute it, wondering why I don't think a realignment will result in a Democratic Party transformed in a more populist direction, leaving the GOP as the party of warmongers and the wealthy. The answer is that this was indeed one possible outcome of this year's tumultuous election cycle — but Bernie Sanders came up short. If he had prevailed while Trump petered out, the populist polarities might have ended up flipped, with left-wing populism provoking an exodus of even more bankers and foreign policy internationalists to the Republican Party.

But as it is, Sanders seems doomed to lose while Trump is on track to win. And that means the realignment is poised to transform the GOP into America's populist party.
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"For now, though, his plan sounds like it won’t be as good for people with pre-existing conditions as what they already have under Obamacare." Oh, great!

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COMMENTS: 
*  Just to prove to you that after birth( hence, their fight on abortions & reproductive rights)- Republicans dont care so much about you...You are basically on your own
*  As usual, Ryan prefers the ice floe approach to healthcare.
*  Always stepping backwards, the republican way.
*  Don't let lousy, tired, unworkable ideas that have proven to be failures stop you from talking, Paulie.
*  When was the last time Republicans had a fresh new solution to anything? Looks like we will still be waiting for it to happen for years to come.
*   So a student said his family had benefited from Obamacare’s protections for people with pre-existing conditions.  /And Ryan's response was "We can and should and must fix that,"?
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Paul Ryan’s Big Plan To Replace Obamacare Is An Old Idea That Doesn’t Work

It took him six years to come up with a policy invented in the 1970s.

By Jeffrey Young, April 28, 2016

If you were hoping Republicans had fresh new solutions for health care reform up their sleeves, you might find the recent hints from House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) a bit disappointing.

After six years of the GOP failing to come up with a comprehensive alternative to the Affordable Care Act, what Ryan outlined during an appearance at Georgetown University on Wednesday was essentially another stab at a decades-old idea that’s never really worked — an idea that would involve allowing health insurance companies to resume charging sick people higher rates than healthy people.

The cornerstone of Ryan’s approach is so-called high-risk pools, a form of health insurance designed for people with the most serious health conditions and highest costs, who were mostly locked out of the regular private market before the Affordable Care Act required insurers to accept all applicants.

If the concept sounds familiar, it’s because high-risk pools have existed since 1976, and are a go-to policy proposal for Republicans who don’t want to be accused of not caring about people with pre-existing conditions.

High-risk pools have been part of countless conservative reform platforms, including a recent plan from the House Republican Study Committee and a not-so-recent one from the 2008 presidential campaign of Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.).

They were even included in a 2009 House Republican bill that was supposed to be the GOP alternative to the ACA, but that the Congressional Budget Office said would only reduce the ranks of the uninsured by 3 million people over a decade (in contrast to Obamacare, which has reduced the uninsured by 20 million since 2013).

“We can and should and must fix that,” Ryan said in response to a question from a student who said his family had benefited from Obamacare’s protections for people with pre-existing conditions.

“The smarter way, in my opinion, is that we as a society make a decision at the government level that we will buck up and subsidize those people with pre-existing conditions.” Ryan said. Reuters first reported Ryan’s remarks.

The problem is, high-risk pools — which existed in 35 states before the Affordable Care Act made them virtually obsolete — always failed to achieve their goal of providing a true insurer of last resort to those who needed it.

The biggest reason is money: Covering the medical costs of the sickest people in the country is very expensive, and the government has never devoted the funds necessary to make this work.

“High-risk pools are never successful in providing affordable coverage for people who otherwise had no alternative,” said Edwin Park, vice president for health policy at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. “Conceptually, it doesn’t work. You can keep throwing money at it, but it’s a losing proposition over time.”

Ryan said the federal government would subsidize these high-risk pools at the state level. But promises of additional government spending on health seem dubious from the leader of a House Republican Conference heavily influenced by tea party lawmakers trying to shrink the government as much as possible.

And these are the same promises that led to the creation of the pre-Obamacare high-risk pools in the first place. They didn’t pan out.

“For 35 years, states tried to meet this challenge, but never could,” Karen Pollitz, a senior fellow at the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation, told The Huffington Post in an email.

In any given year, about one-fifth of Americans account for around four-fifths of health care spending, and high-risk pools are designed to attract the very sickest and most expensive customers, Pollitz said.

Faced with this reality, the government cut back on the old high-risk pools rather than spend what it would have taken to make them functional.

“They looked for other ways to limit costs of their state high risk pool programs — surcharging premiums, imposing high deductibles and low lifetime limits, and most of all, excluding people based on their pre-existing conditions,” Pollitz said. “That meant the vast majority of people who were eligible for and needed [high-risk pool] coverage couldn’t enroll.”

In other words, states found out that covering all these sick people cost a ton of money they weren’t willing to spend, so they scaled back the programs and cut off new enrollment.

These pools wound up covering only a small share of so-called uninsurable people and a tiny share of the total uninsured population, and low-income people typically couldn’t afford the premiums, according to a study published in 2005.

The Government Accountability Office found that as of 2008, fewer than 200,000 people were covered by high-risk pools, out of nearly 4 million who should have been eligible.

Ryan also indicated he wants to “open up underwriting,” which in insurance jargon means allowing insurers to charge higher rates to people based on their medical histories. Under Obamacare, insurers can’t do that. They also can’t make women pay more than men, and they can only charge middle-aged people up to three times the premiums paid by young adults.

Ryan’s proposal to “open up underwriting” would affect people not deemed sick enough to join a high-risk pool — which could mean everyone with common ailments like diabetes and asthma, or a healthy person with a history of cancer or other diseases. That’s how the insurance market worked when underwriting was permitted before the Affordable Care Act.

This was part of Ryan’s argument to the college-aged audience that letting insurance companies once again discriminate against the sick, and moving the most ailing into a separate program, would be good for them. Young people would pay lower health insurance premiums if older, sicker people were in a separate program, he said.

But that doesn’t account for the cost to taxpayers of whatever government subsidies would be provided to people in the high-risk pools. And it ignores the reality that everyone, if they live long enough, goes from being the healthy person to being the sick person, Pollitz said.

Earlier in his appearance at Georgetown, Ryan repeated his promise that Republicans would finally tell Americans how they would do health care reform differently.

“What does patient-centered health care look like? We don’t think the Affordable Care Act is working,” he said. “News flash: Republicans are against Obamacare. But we owe it to people to show what we would replace it with. We have to show what we would do differently.”

Ryan didn’t offer a lot of fine detail in his four-minute reply to the student’s question. Republicans will supposedly unveil a health care plan this summer, and maybe it will address the shortcomings apparent in what Ryan did say this week. For now, though, his plan sounds like it won’t be as good for people with pre-existing conditions as what they already have under Obamacare.
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No myth: "... data shows abortion is medically safer than getting a colonoscopy or getting your wisdom teeth removed ..."

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The biggest myth about abortion that you probably believe is true
By Liz Plank, April 28, 2016

It seems nothing will revive the debate over abortion quite like an election year.

In 2012, former Missouri Rep. Todd Akin's claims of "legitimate rape" prompted women to have to to explain how pregnancy works. This election, Carly Fiorina blasted fetus execution videos that don't exist, Chris Christie called abortion murder, and providers had to dispel rumors that they all roll up to work in Lamborghinis.

Then there was the brouhaha over the heavily edited Planned Parenthood videos created by the Center for Medical Progress (which ultimately lead to its leaders' indictments), and Donald Trump decided how he feels about abortion in the same manner most people choose a froyo flavor. The previously pro-choice Trump recently said women who get abortions should be "punished," and then expressed five different stances on abortion in three days, only to land on a position that pretty much reaffirms his initial comment as being "excellent."

There's no doubt abortion is up for debate — not only among the candidates, but also among everyday voters.

Although it's is a divisive topic, what unites people on both sides of the debate is how clueless they are about the specifics of abortion. Vox's Sarah Kliff reported earlier this year that most Americans, regardless of their gender or political leanings, believe the medical procedure is rarer and more dangerous than it really is.

Approximately 61 percent of the 1,060 people polled by Vox and PerryUndem underestimated the prevalence of abortion. And a majority said abortion is "less safe" or "about as safe" for a woman as giving birth — in reality, giving birth leads to many more complications. In fact, for every 100,000 live births in the US, nearly nine women died, according to a 2012 study published in the Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology. Per every 100,000 abortions, 0.6 women died, according to the same study.

The anti-abortion movement has capitalized on this dearth of knowledge about abortion to spread the myth that the procedure is inherently dangerous. In reality, data shows abortion is medically safer than getting a colonoscopy or getting your wisdom teeth removed — where are the activists lining up at the Supreme Court demanding we regulate the size of dentists' hallways? Researchers from Princeton University actually called continuing pregnancy "the most common adverse outcome" of abortion.

As a person who has reported on this issue, I will admit even I didn't know those facts. So why is there so much confusion?

Dr. Rachael Phelps from Planned Parenthood of Central & Western New York said she views the stigma around abortion as the root of the knowledge gap.

"There's a tremendous amount of myths out there about abortion. I think some of that is because of the vacuum of people having honest conversations about abortion," she told Vox. Phelps says this is no accident. "A lot of that is intentional because we know there are a lot of people who think abortion is wrong and don't want women to have access to them, and so they say all of things to scare women away from abortion, to deter them from making a choice that is best for them."

The abortion knowledge gap has created the perfect breeding ground for anti-choice legislation focused on "safety." In fact, Phelps noted, Texas's controversial HB2 law was supposedly written to make abortion facilities safer, but it's only led to clinics being forced to shut down since they fail to meet the law's new standards.

Regardless of whether the Supreme Court upholds HB2, restricting access is a winning strategy for the pro-life movement. Nearly 400 bills to restrict abortion access were introduced last year on the state level, and most rural counties in the US don't have an abortion clinic. More of these laws have been introduced over the last five years than over the past 15 years. As time goes on, abortion access isn't improving, it's getting worse.

But the safety concerns, like the ones instituted in Texas, seem to double-down on something abortion providers inherently do. Doctors who perform abortions, Phelps says, already put women's safety as a top priority.

"For us, the most important thing is that women are healthy," she said. "Safety is the top priority of every abortion provider." And they would rather spend their limited time on making the procedure safer — and preventing it from happening in the first place, which is what Phelps said she spends the majority of her time at work doing.

There are, after all, far more effective ways to actually improve women's health, like investing in universal health care, contraception, or prenatal care. The US has been described as one of the worst places to be a mother, with a maternal mortality rate that is simply abysmal compared to other developed nations. And shockingly, the mortality rate is getting worse, not better. Perhaps if protestors who claim to be advocating for women's health focused their efforts on demanding better services for mothers, the US could become a safer haven for all women.

Correction: The original piece cited the wrong polling organization involved in the Vox.com poll on abortion knowledge.
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