Trumpcare: Much Scarier Than Terrorism

From that notoriously liberal purveyor of fake news, Business Insider:

According to a September 2016 study by Alex Nowrasteh at the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank, some 3,024 Americans died from 1975 through 2015 due to foreign-born terrorism. That number includes the 9/11 terrorist attacks (2,983 people) and averages nearly 74 Americans per year.

Since 9/11, however, foreign-born terrorists have killed roughly one American per year. Six Americans have died per year at the hands, guns, and bombs of Islamic terrorists (foreign and domestic).

The article goes on to point out that, among other things, Americans are 407,000 times more likely to die in a 'motor vehicle incident' than from a terrorist attack.  But this is a bit disingenuous, since the motor vehicles aren't actively plotting to kill you, and terrorists are.  One can rarely foresee a car accident, which is why they're called accidents.

There's another threat to the life and health of Americans, though, and fortunately we CAN foresee this one.  It's called the Better Care Reconciliation Act of 2017, more commonly referred to as Trumpcare.  And according to researchers at Harvard, it would result in roughly 20,000 preventable deaths per year, due to the fact that it would deprive roughly 22 million people of health care.

Compared to the number of deaths from terrorism between 1975 and 2015, Trumpcare will do 270 times as much damage to Americans as terrorism.  Compared to the number of deaths from terrorism since 9/11, Trumpcare is a 20,000 times larger threat.  And mind you, this only estimates the deaths due to Trumpcare --- it doesn't even take into account the pain and suffering of the remaining 22 million people without access to health care.

There's only so much we can do to fight terrorism.  Fortunately, it's very easy to fight Trumpcare.  Just contact your Senator (especially if your Senator happens to be a Republican) and tell him or her that you oppose the Senate healthcare bill (BCRA), and you oppose any bill which makes cuts to Medicare.

The phone number for the main Senate switchboard is (202) 224-3121.

Please Note: Reversing Obama's Policies is not the Same as Making America Great

Barack Obama accomplished many things in his 8 years as president, which is pretty surprising when you consider that Republicans controlled one or both houses of Congress for 6 of those 8 years.  And because Republican obstruction of Obama's agenda was unprecedented, Obama had to resort to extensive use of executive orders to get things done for those last 6 years.

This is rather convenient for The Stain, because it appears that he and the Republican Congress are literally unable to pass ANYTHING into law through the normal legislative process.  Indeed, their one 'victory' in 4 months --- a health-care reform bill which would deprive 23 million Americans of health insurance and rob $880 billion from Medicaid to fund yet another tax cut for the wealthy --- is unlikely to see the light of day in the Senate.

So, both because Obama issued so many executive orders, and because Republicans are too incompetent to do anything else, The Stain has mostly been making 'progress' by simply undoing Obama's executive orders.  The Washington Post details a laundry list:

• Companies applying for federal contracts are NOT required to disclose labor law violations.
• Coal mining companies do NOT need to reduce the amount of debris they dump into streams.
• Telecommunications companies do NOT need to take "reasonable measures" to protect their customers' personal information.
• Those receiving Social Security payments due to mental illness ARE still able to buy guns.
• States do NOT have limits placed on them regarding drug testing of those receiving unemployment benefits.
• Certain hunting practices which would have been prohibited in Alaskan wildlife refuges ARE still permitted.
• Several Obama-era regulations to reduce pollution and address climate change have been REVERSED.
• Oil and gas drilling is now PERMITTED in the Atlantic and Arctic oceans, and possibly in two reserves in Alaska as well.
• Multiple OSHA regulations for worker safety have been rolled back.
• "Multiple agencies have jettisoned or played down policies aimed at fostering LGBT rights."
• Additionally, The Stain's budget proposes deep cuts (between 14% - 33%) to the State Department, EPA, Agriculture, Labor, Health and Human Services, Commerce and Education.

Now, I understand that Republicans love drilling for oil more than almost anything, and that they hate LGBT folk.  But who favors coddling law-breakers?  Who is pro-pollution?  Who objects to worker safety?  And I know Republicans worship their guns as much as they worship The Stain (possibly more), but do they really think it's good policy to make sure that those suffering from mental illness have unfettered access to guns?

I know I'm just a clueless liberal, but which of these policies are making America great again?

The Last Word on Hillary Clinton the Candidate

Oh please, let these be the last words about Clinton the candidate.

To be clear, I have moved on from November's fiasco.  But there still seem to be many people, on both the right AND the left, who are intent on stomping on her metaphorical corpse.  To those on the right, I say: Get a grip.  You have a dumpster fire in your own house which is far more serious than anything you imagine Hillary did.

For those on the left, I have the following two articles.  Read them and then, whether you agree or not, let it all go.  There is far too much work to be done in the next 18 months to waste time focusing on a candidate who will never run again.

First this from Rebecca Traister.  The short version is: "A competent woman losing a job to an incompetent man is not an anomalous Election Day surprise; it is Tuesday in America."

Follwed by this from David Faris:

Her boiling anger at the press and at various out-of-nowhere campaign developments doesn't make her worse than Gore, Kerry, Romney, and McCain — it makes her one of them.

And that really only leaves one thing that is just so very different about Hillary Clinton. Let's see if you can guess what it is.

I found both of these articles by way of Lawyers, Guns and Money, and if you aren't reading it on a daily basis, you really should be.

A Typical Friday in the Party for Personal Responsibility

Last Friday, May 26, Michigan congressman Tim Walberg (R - as if you couldn't guess) had this to say about climate change:

“Do I think that man has some impact? Yeah, of course,” he continued. “Can man change the entire universe? No. Why do I believe that? As a Christian, I believe that there is a creator, God, who’s much bigger than us. And I’m confident that, if there’s a real problem, he can take care of it.”

It's almost impossible to overstate how irresponsible this is.  For one thing, the United States obviously is not a theocracy.  We don't (or at any rate, most of us don't) vote to send someone to Congress so that they can make policy decisions based on their religious beliefs.

But even setting that aside, this is a cop-out of epic proportions.  How many people would find any of these similarly ridiculous statements acceptable?

• "Why yes, I DID hear a noise that sounded like my car running over something, and I saw a person lying on the street in agony in my rear view mirror.  I'm confident that if that pedestrian really needs medical attention, God will take care of it."
• "Sure my neighbor asked me to keep an eye on his house while he was out of town, and sure I heard breaking glass at 3:00 AM this morning.  It was sure tough to get back to sleep, too, what with his security alarm going off for the next 6 hours.  But that's what I did because after all, if there were a real problem, God would take care of it."
• "I did think it was strange that those guys wanted to learn how to take off and fly a plane, but had no interest in learning how to land one.  And it really surprised me when I found out what they did on September 11.  I really thought that if they posed any kind of threat, that God would take care of it."

If your position on any important issue is that "God will take care of it," then why did you bother running for Congress at all?  Surely we don't need Congress, or a government, right?  For that matter, we don't need jobs of any kind, or money, or food.  We can just sit around all day watching 'Duck Dynasty', because God will take care of meeting our needs and keeping us secure, right?

Walberg seems to be overlooking the obvious here.  Perhaps God really is taking care of the climate change problem, and the way God is handling it is by providing humanity with brains to think and institutions to act, and that God put Tim Walberg in a position of influence precisely so he could impartially review the climate change science and champion effective policies to keep America safe.  In other words, perhaps God gave Tim Walberg the opportunity to DO HIS JOB, and Walberg dropped the ball.

Working-Class Whites Watch: Day 105

Anyone who is tuned in to the state of American politics knows that the most important demographic supporting The Stain are so-called 'working-class whites'.  And if you know that, then you probably also know that this demographic is suffering a great deal from 'deaths of despair', caused in part by opioid addiction:

“Much of the relationship between mortality and Trump’s performance is explained by economic factors; counties with higher economic distress and larger working-class presence also have higher mortality rates and came out strongly for Trump,” Monnat wrote. “In many of the counties where Trump did the best, economic precarity has been building and social and family networks have been breaking down for several decades.”

The Bloomberg article quoted above cites a study by Princeton University's Anne Case and Angus Deaton, which among other things states that "Controlling opioids is an obvious priority" in addressing the problem.

So you will probably be unsurprised to learn that The Stain is doing the exact opposite, proposing a 95 percent reduction in funding for the office leading the fight against opioid addiction:

 It's the latest item in the Trump agenda that addiction advocates fear would erode the government's ability to fight an epidemic killing more than 47,000 Americans per year. Since taking office, the Trump administration has fought to pass an Obamacare repeal bill that would result in millions more without coverage; fired a surgeon general who led an unprecedented study of the opioid crisis; proposed billions of dollars of cuts to public health funding; and signaled a return to the tough-on-drugs approach to fighting addiction.

This move seems to be motivated by The Stain's fundamental belief that it Obama did something, it must be reversed.  And if that's really the driving force behind his presidency, it's going to be a long 4 years --- not least for the working-class whites who helped put him there in the first place.

They Get It

I live in Minnesota's 2nd Congressional district.  Most of the handful of people reading this don't, so I'm going to start this post by showing you the results of the 2016 congressional election in our district:

Now, you probably don't know much about the policy views of Angie Craig or Paula Overby.  I don't, either.  But what little I do know about those two candidates leads me to believe that they are further to the left than your average Democrat.

I will also point out that in the five elections preceding this one, the Democrat had never come within 8 points of winning.  I personally invested a ton of volunteer hours for a candidate who lost by 17 points in 2006.  So Democrats can be excused for feeling at least a little bit of frustration over the 28,869 votes collected by independent candidate Paula Overby.  An argument could be made (and has been) that Overby cost the Democrats their best chance at winning this seat in over a decade.

The reason I'm talking about this is that it just so happens that I was in the same room tonight with both Paula Overby and Angie Craig, and politics was discussed.  In fact, politics and plans to defeat Jason Lewis were the whole point of the meeting.  So one might expect that there would be some tension between these two women.

But there wasn't.  To my knowledge, neither has announced a decision to run again --- or not --- in 2018.  But when Angie Craig made what sounded an awful lot like a campaign speech, I saw Paula Overby applaud.  And for her part, Angie made a special point of being friendly with Paula.

This is how it's supposed to work.  Paula and Angie (and I) all share a common goal: making sure that Jason Lewis is a one-term congressman, and making sure that Donald Trump is a one-term president.  It's clear that neither one of them has the time or the inclination to hurl insults at the other, or re-litigate the election outcome.

There are supporters of both Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders who would do well to learn from Angie and Paula's example.

Write You Congress Critter: Oppose the AHCA

This is the letter I sent to my congressman, Jason Lewis, this evening.  All are encouraged to use it as a template for letters of their own.

Imagine my surprise when I read this evening that Paul Ryan is planning to move forward with a vote on the Republican replacement for the ACA tomorrow, May 4.  This, despite the fact that the current version of the bill has not been released to the public nor scored by the CBO.

I wonder what Jason Lewis, the radio personality, would have said if Democrats had passed the ACA under similar circumstances.  As you are no doubt aware, President Obama made a concerted effort to get Republican input into the ACA, allowing working groups in the House and Senate to debate for four months --- before it finally became clear that Republicans were negotiating in bad faith to delay the bill's passage.  And despite that, Republicans insist on spreading the falsehood that the ACA was somehow 'rammed through' Congress.

What would talk show host Jason Lewis have said if Democrats had voted on the bill WITHOUT releasing it to the public and WITHOUT waiting for the CBO to score it.  I imagine he would have spent considerable time attacking the Democrats for lacking transparency and for trying to ram a bad bill into law --- and he would have been right to do so.

So I wonder why it is that congressman Jason Lewis is planning to vote for this bill?

Setting aside legislative hijinks, what IS known about the bill is that it is a very bad bill.  Unless something has changed significantly --- and there's no reason to believe that it has --- it will still deprive 26 million Americans of health care, just like the bill which failed in March.  It will still slash $370 billion from Medicaid.  It will still lead to an estimated 17,000 deaths per year.

And now as a bonus, we've learned that in order to draw more support from Tea Party Republicans, it will also allow states to apply for a waiver of the 'pre-existing conditions' regulations of the ACA, a provision which has the support of 52% of Democrats and 48% of Republicans.  This despite the fact that President Trump promised just 3 days ago that those with pre-existing conditions would continue to be protected under the new law.

Of course, it's no fun kicking away grandma's cane if you can't top it off with a large helping of hypocrisy, served in the form of a provision that members of Congress will continue to enjoy all of the ACA's benefits.

Come on, congressman.  If you have any concern whatsoever about the well-being of your constituents, you cannot support this bill.  And if you do vote 'Yea' on it, please don't come back to our district and try to tell us with a straight face that you did it in the best interest of your constituents.  There is no reason for anyone to support this bill, unless they want to demonstrate their fealty to a president with a 42% approval rating --- or shovel obscene tax cuts up to the wealthiest Americans at the expense of the most vulnerable.


In fact, if you do vote 'Yea' on this bill, don't bother coming back to the district at all.  I know I plan to do everything I can that you don't have your job for long.