ObamaRomneyCare

Posted: March 24, 2012 | Author: | Filed under: Health care reform | Tags: , , | 17 Comments

The boosters, of whom Krugman is a lucid example, have been talking up new health care law, generally called the Affordable Care Act (ACA). They make good points. Some people with pre-existing conditions are covered who weren’t before. Those under-26 year-olds whose parents are insured are able to retain coverage on their parents’ policies. These are good things.

They are also drops in the bucket. After two years of weeping, wailing, and gnashing teeth, the richest country on earth managed to extend a bit of expensive complicated coverage to a fraction of its population. And that’s the good news. The point at which we all become captive customers of the insurance industry is still two years down the road. That’s when we find out what the tiny expansion of coverage is going to cost us.

The indications so far are not good. For instance, in the case of honest — or strictly regulated — insurance, providing it to everyone is cheaper because healthy people are in the pool as well as sick people. That should lower the currently stratospheric US premiums. In addition, the law has a number of stipulations that would limit insurance companies’ ability to raise premiums at will once the law goes into full effect in 2014. So what do they do? Raise premiums at utterly absurd rates before that. That way they can have high rates and captive customers after 2014. Wheee!

We are also reassuringly told that everything will continue as before, except the uninsured will be covered. It’s to be expected that some employers near the financial edge will drop their current coverage and their workers will have to use the ACA pools. The Congressional Budget Office estimated how many might do that. Initially it was around 2%, later updated to be slightly higher. A year later, a poll by IPSOS asked employers what they planned to do. The numbers came back: 30%-50% of employers said they planned to drop coverage.

That number was disputed. Some commissioned their own survey from a company called Avalere. They said a more realistic number was -0.3% to 8.5%.

“Avalere offers three reasons for why employers will continue providing insurance: 1) to recruit and retain employees, 2) historically there has been no viable alternative for employees to obtain comprehensive coverage on their own, and 3) boost worker productivity. “

Yes. And the Tooth Fairy leaves you silver dollars these days. I’ll take the points in turn.

  • 1) Attracting or retaining workers is not a factor I’ve ever noticed except in high-paying private-sector jobs. Restaurant workers, academic temps (well over half the faculty at most institutions), baggage handlers, truck drivers, don’t have the problem of choosing between job offers with enticing benefit packages.
  • 2) The whole point of ACA is that now there will be an alternative. Officially. “Affordable” really needs quotes around it, but, officially, there’s an alternative. So I’m not sure what kind of sense it makes to say employers won’t dump workers into alternative insurance plans because there aren’t any when you’re talking about an alternative insurance plan.
  • 3) Boost worker productivity. Indeed, good health benefits are proven to boost productivity, as are shorter work weeks, on-site day care, and flexible leave policies. Have you noticed all the employers vying to provide them? Give me a minute to stop laughing uncontrollably.

http://www.iconarchive.com/show/emoticons-icons-by-artdesigner.html

Okay. I’m back.

Then, just today, I saw yet another scam in the making which I’d never imagined. “[H]ealth insurers offering new type of self-insurance for firms with as few as 25 workers are gaming the system and may undermine a key goal of the federal Affordable Care Act.” More quotes from the LATimes article:

Self-insurance is attractive for many reasons, particularly the prospect of lower costs. It’s exempt from state insurance regulations such as mandated benefits….

Self-insured plans have an immediate cost advantage since there’s no state tax on insurance premiums being passed along by an insurer. Starting in 2014, they will also avoid additional fees levied on health insurers to help pay for the federal healthcare law.

Small businesses switching to self-insurance do gain more insight into why their medical costs might be rising so fast because they have access to detailed claims data. … [C]ompanies like the ability to see whether their employees’ use of healthcare is above average and to make changes in the benefit package to bring those costs in line.

What could possibly go wrong?

None of this even gets into the whole individual mandate rat’s nest, which the Supremes will start to address on Monday. I’m a liberal with a head so pointy you could hurt yourself on it. I believe the government must regulate and support lots of things. I have no problem with paying taxes that go to Medicare or Medicaid. But even I have a problem being told to fork over money to private companies over whom I have zero control. Not even the miniscule control of not buying their product, after ACA goes into effect. And that for the same industry imposing 60% price increases when it thinks it can get away with them.

That health law mess was the “realistic,” “politically feasible,” “doable” path. Not like Medicare for All. That would simply cover everybody at half the price. That’s just Not Done.

Introducing…Caturday Reads

Posted: March 24, 2012 | Author: | Filed under: just because | 44 Comments

Did someone say "Ikea" and "assemble"? Look at how fast my delivery cats are out the door ( "...those cats were fast as lightning...") Photo: L+R, yesterday.

Morning, news junkies!

A tentative solution to my blogger tardiness:

  • Saturday link dump interspersed with Lily+Rue kitty photos
  • Photo bomb at the end of “Caturday” post as time allows
  • Hillary Sundaes at least once or twice a month!

I hope this works out better. I miss y’all bigtime! And, hope to be back to participating in the comments more.

Linkage is super short today! But, I hope adequate to get the morning conversation ball rolling…

  • I so would have rather had a Governor Kay Bailey than a Guv. Goodhair: “Breaking ranks with her party, U.S. Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison on Thursday urged Gov. Rick Perry — her erstwhile gubernatorial rival — to work with the Obama administration to keep federal money flowing to the Women’s Health Program, which has been caught in a crossfire between the state and the feds over state support for Planned Parenthood.” [Source: Texas Tribune]
  • Mysterious Chinese Fossils May Be New Human Species [Live Science]
  • Orphaned Owlets Raised by a Friendly Park Keeper [6 Pictures] [Terribly Cute]

    L+R, Tuesday. "Naptime is so over"

  • I love the Dogs Against Mitt Romney / #IRideInside movement, and I love this video! Be sure to click on that if you need a pick-me-up.
  • Don’t think I’ll have time for the Hillary post this Sunday, so I’ll end with Hill… and Kirsten Gillibrand! Kirsten says Hillary should run in 2016 [Buzzfeed]…I say IF Hillary runs, then we all know who I am voting, campaigning, and volunteering my ass off for. However, barring a sudden conversion from Hillary on the question of her future in electoral politics, I personally say… Gillibrand 2016!

Ok, that’s all I got for now! Maybe I’ll throw in some more links and kitty pics in the comments if I get time later in the morning/day. YOUR TURN, Sky Dancers! What’s on your read+rant+recommend list this lovely Caturday?

Late Night Rant: Keep your State’s Laws off Women

Posted: March 23, 2012 | Author: | Filed under: open thread, Women's Rights | 10 Comments

and another one:

This week the Georgia State Legislature debated a bill in the House that would make it necessary for some women to carry stillborn or dying fetuses until they ‘naturally’ go into labor. In arguing for this bill Representative Terry England described his empathy for pregnant cows and pigs in the same situation.

I have a question for Terry England, Sam Brownback, Rick Santorum, Rick Perry and too many others: I have three daughters, two of them twins. If one of my twins had been stillborn would you have made me carry her to term, thereby endangering both the other twin and me? Or, would you have insisted that the state order a mandatory fetal extraction of the living twin fetus from my womb so that I could continue to carry the stillborn one to term and possibly die myself? My family is curious and since you believe my uterus is your public property, I am, too.

Mr. England, unlike the calves and pigs for which you expressed so much empathy, I am not a beast of burden. I am a woman and I have these human rights:

The right to life.
The right to privacy.
The right to freedom.
The right to bodily integrity.
The right to decide when and how I reproduce.

Mr. England, you and your friends do not get to trade these rights, while “dog and hog hunting,” in return for a young man’s chickens.

My human rights outweigh any you or the state corruptly and cynically seek to assign to a mass of dividing cells that will eventually turn into a ‘natural’ person. Personhood-for-zygote based bills and related legislation, like Georgia’s and hundreds of others, bills and laws that criminalize pregnancy and abortion and penalize women for being women, violate my human rights.

Just because you cannot get pregnant does not mean I cannot think clearly, ethically, morally, rationally about my body, human life or the consequences of my actions. Just because you cannot get pregnant does not mean that I do not have rights when I am pregnant. I have responsibility but am powerless. You have power but are irresponsible with my rights.

By not trusting me, you force me to trust you. And YOU are not trustworthy.

I gestate humans, you do not. I know how it feels to be pregnant. You do not. I know what happens to a fetus in a womb. You do not. I have carried three fetuses to term. You have not. What I experience when I am pregnant is not empathy. It is permeability. The fetus is me. And the state is you, apparently. But, no matter what you say or do I have fundamental human rights. What makes you think that you, who cannot have this fully human experience, can tell me anything about gestation or how I experience it? Especially when you compare my existence and experience to that of brutish animals.

The rest of the civilized world thinks this country has lost its mind. It’s no wonder. Look at this list of frenzied misogyny:

1. Making women carry still-born fetuses to full term because cows and pigs do. This week, Mr England, you supported a bill, the net effect of which, taken tandem with other restrictions, will result in doctors and women being unable to make private, medically-based, critical care decisions and some women being effectively forced to carry their dead or dying fetuses. Women are different from farm animals, Mr. England, and this bill, requiring a woman to carry a dead or dying fetus is inhumane and unethical. By forcing a woman to do this, you are violating her right not to be subjected to inhuman treatment and tortured. And, yes, involuntarily carrying a dead fetus to term, although not torture to you or to a pig, is torture for a woman. It is also a violation of her bodily integrity and a threat to her life and as such violates her right to life.

2. Consigning women to death to save a fetus. Abortions save women’s lives. “Let women die” bills are happening all over the country. There is no simple or pretty way to put this. Every day, all over the world, women die because they do not have access to safe abortions. Yet, here we are, returning to the dark ages of maternal sacrifice. Do really have to type this sentence: this is a violation of women’s fundamental right to life.

3. Criminalizing pregnancy and miscarriages and arresting, imprisoning and charging women who miscarry with murder, like Rennie Gibbs in Mississippi or at least 40 other similar cases in Alabama or like Bei Bei Shuai, a woman who is now imprisoned, is charged with murder after trying to commit suicide while pregnant. Pregnant women are becoming a special class subject to “special” laws that infringe on their fundamental rights.

4. Forcing women to undergo involuntary vaginal penetration (otherwise called rape) with a condom-covered, six- to eight-inch ultrasound probe. Pennsylvania is currently considering that option along with 11 other states. Trans-vaginal ultrasounds undertaken without a woman’s consent are rape according to the legal definition of the word. This violates a woman’s bodily integrity and also constitutes torture when used, as states are suggesting, as a form of control and oppression. Women have the right not to be raped by the state.

5. Disabling women or sacrificing their lives by either withholding medical treatment or forcing women to undergo involuntary medical procedures. We impose an unequal obligation on women to sacrifice their bodily integrity for another. For example, as in Tysiac v. Poland, in which a mother of two, became blind after her doctor refused to perform an abortion that she wanted that would have halted the course of a degenerative eye disease. If my newborn baby is in need of a kidney and you have a spare matching one, can I enact legislation that says the state can take yours and give it to her? No. We do not force people to donate their organs to benefit others, even those who have already been born. One of the most fundamental of all human rights is that humans be treated equally before the law. Denying a woman this right is a violation of her equal right to this protection.

6. Giving zygotes “personhood” rights while systematically stripping women of their fundamental rights. There is too much to say about the danger of personhood ideas creeping into health policy to do it here. But, consider what happens to a woman whose womb is not considered the “best” environment for a gestating fetus in a world of personhood-for-zygote legislation: who decides the best environment — the state, her insurance company, her employer, her rapist who decides he really, really wants to be a father? Anyone but a woman.

7. Inhibiting, humiliating and punishing women for their choices to have an abortion for any reason by levying taxes specifically on abortion, including abortions sought by rape victims to end their involuntary insemination, imposing restrictive requirements like 24 hour wait periods and empowering doctors to lie to female patients about their fetuses in order to avoid prosecution. In Arizona, Kansas, Texas, Virginia, Colorado, Arkansas and other states around the country bills that make women “pay” for their choices are abounding.

8. Allowing employers to delve into women’s private lives and only pay for insurance when they agree, for religious reasons, with how she choses to use birth control. In Arizona, which introduced such a bill this week, this means covering payment for birth control as a benefit only when a woman has proven that she will not use it to control her own reproduction (ie. as birth control). As much as I am worried about women and families in Arizona though, I am more worried about those in Alabama. You see, as recently revealed in a public policy poll in Alabama, conservative, evangelicals who support “personhood” related “pro-life” legislation and are fighting for their “religious liberty” — 21 percent think interracial marriage should be illegal. So, what if they decide that an employee involved in an interracial marriage should not, by divine mandate, reproduce? Do they switch and provide birth control for this employee? Do they make contraception a necessary term of employment for people in interracial marriages? This violates a woman’s right to privacy. My womb is one million times more private than your bedrooms, gentlemen.

9. Sacrificing women’s overall health and the well-being of their families in order to stop them from exercising their fundamental human right to control their own bodies and reproduction. Texas just did that when it turned down $35million dollars in federal funds thereby ensuring that 300,000 low-income and uninsured Texas women will have no or greatly-reduced access to basic preventive and reproductive health care.

10. Depriving women of their ability to earn a living and support themselves and their families. Bills, like this one in Arizona, allow employers to fire women for using contraception. Women like these are being fired for not.

We are not property and breeders. It’s time to stand up for what’s right.

This is an open thread.

Mississippi Youths Plead Guilty to 2011 Hate Crimes

Posted: March 23, 2012 | Author: | Filed under: Crime, racism | Tags: , , , , , , , | 17 Comments

James Craig Anderson

Last summer I wrote about a “shocking hate crime” committed by 18-year-old Deryl Dedmon and some friends in Jackson, Mississippi in the early hours of June 26, 2011. At the time, I likened the crime to the murder of Medgar Evers, who had been shot and killed by a white man in Jackson, Mississippi on June 23, 1963. At the time I wrote the post, Deryl Dedmon and one other boy, John A. Rice, had been arrested, but the charges against Rice had been reduced to simple assault and he had been released.

The teenagers, who were from Brandon, Mississippi, had been partying all night; and at the instigation of Dedmon, they drove to Jackson, Mississippi in search of a black man to harrass.

In a parking lot on the western side of town they found their victim.

James Craig Anderson, a 49-year-old auto plant worker, was standing in a parking lot, near his car. The teens allegedly beat Anderson repeatedly, yelled racial epithets, including “White Power!” according to witnesses.

Hinds County District Attorney Robert Shuler Smith says a group of the teens then climbed into their large Ford F250 green pickup truck, floored the gas, and drove the truck right over Anderson, killing him instantly.

A video camera captured the attack and subsequent murder, making the arrests possible.

Last October, CNN published an in-depth report on the case based on interviews with Brandon residents who knew the boys.

Parents and students who knew Dedmon tell CNN it was widely known that he expressed a hatred for blacks, white people who had black friends, and anyone he thought was gay. And they say he had a history of harassing teens at his high school.

CNN has learned that Department of Justice investigators have uncovered two other possible incidents where groups of white Rankin County teens, including Dedmon, have sought out and attacked a black person.

Dedmon and his friends bullied another local boy because he had black friends.

Jordan Richardson, 17, says he was bullied, beaten and harassed by Dedmon and his friends two years ago, partly because he had black friends.

“He had a look of no conscience,” Jordan said about Dedmon. “When we would get into our altercations … there was never any show of emotion or anything — anything. Deryl always, I think, just carried around this backpack of hatred.”

After numerous run-ins at school, Jordan’s father called police after a particularly violent confrontation, and the police separated the boys.

“It was very tough on my son,” said Brian Richardson, a pastor in Brandon. “Because he knew – and I had told Jordan for a year and a half, that Deryl Dedmon will kill you.”

Brian Richardson said that Dedmon and the gang of boys he hung out with constantly used the “n” word and were known to be violent. A friend of his son Jordan had also been harrassed by Dedmon.

Nevertheless, police and school officials claimed that had seen “no warning signs” and that Anderson’s murder was “an isolated incident.”

CNN learned that

Shortly after he allegedly drove the truck over Anderson, Dedmon boasted and laughed about the killing, according to testimony given by some of the teens to detectives.

“I ran that nigger over,” Dedmon allegedly said in a phone conversation to the teens in the other car. He repeated the racial language in subsequent conversations, according to the law enforcement officials.

“He was not remorseful, he was laughing, laughing about the killing,” said [District Attorney Robert Shuler] Smith.

Deryl Dedmon

Yesterday, Dedmon and two other young men, Dylan Butler, and John A. Rice pleaded guilty to in the murder of James Anderson.

In a series of court hearings orchestrated by state and federal prosecutors, Deryl Dedmon, 19, and his friends John A. Rice, 18, and Dylan Butler, 20, were charged in the morning in United States District Court in Jackson with one count each of conspiracy and one of violating Mr. Anderson’s civil rights. They pleaded guilty in the afternoon.

They face up to five years for the conspiracy charge and up to life for the hate-crime violations….On Wednesday, Mr. Dedmon admitted in state court that he drove his truck over Mr. Anderson, 47, in a motel parking lot just before dawn last June 26. He was sentenced to two life sentences without a chance for parole.

The murder, whose race-based implications were slow to surface, shot to national prominence when surveillance video surfaced. In it, Mr. Anderson could be seen stumbling and then being struck by a Ford F-250 with Mr. Dedmon at the wheel.

The newly revealed state-federal case against the young men showed that Dedmon and several of his friends had been regularly targeting vulnerable black people in Jackson for months.

U.S. District Judge Carlton Reeves set sentencing for June 8 and ordered all three to be held in custody. The three are from the town of Brandon, a Jackson suburb, and were accused of going to the majority-black capital city on numerous occasions to harass or assault black people.

Prosecutor Sheldon Beer read the allegations against the three, saying they harassed or assaulted black people who they thought were homeless or intoxicated. Victims were chosen because they thought they would not tell police, authorities said….

Thomas E. Perez, the assistant attorney general for the U.S. Justice Department’s civil rights division, said: “This is really a case about a group of racist thugs who made a sport of targeting vulnerable African Americans in Jackson and attacking them without provocation simply because of the color of their skin.”

“On a number of occasions they drove around Jackson looking for African Americans to assault,” Perez said during a news conference after the hearing. “Jackson is a wonderful community, however, for these defendants they referred to Jackson as `Jafrica.’ African Americans in Jackson were subhuman to them.”

On June 26, before the murder,

Rice and Butler and others stalled Anderson until Dedmon arrived, according to allegations read in court. When Dedmon arrived, Rice punched Anderson and knocked him down. Dedmon straddled the man and beat him.

Four other people were present at the attack on Anderson. The FBI is still investigating the case, but won’t say if there will be more charged filed in the future.

At a hearing on Wednesday, Dedmon had pleaded guilty to state capital murder charges and received two life sentences. He is eligible for the death penalty, but Anderson’s family are against capital punishment, and they asked that Dedmon’s life be spared.

“We ask that you not seek the death penalty for anyone involved in James’ murder,” the letter states; the letter is signed by Barbara Anderson Young, James Craig Anderson’s sister who is in charge of, and speaks for, his estate….

“Our opposition to the death penalty is deeply rooted in our religious faith, a faith that was central in James’ life as well,” the letter states. But the family goes on to explain that there is another reason for their opposition, one that is tied to Mississippi’s racial past.

“We also oppose the death penalty because it historically has been used in Mississippi and the South primarily against people of color for killing whites,” the letter states. “Executing James’ killers will not help to balance the scales. But sparing them may help to spark a dialogue that one day will lead to the elimination of capital punishment.” [….]

“Those responsible for James’ death not only ended the life of a talented and wonderful man. They also caused our family unspeakable pain and grief. But our loss will not be lessened by the state taking the life of another,” it says.

Huffington Post reports some of what was said in court by the victim’s sister, the young murderer, and Hinds County Circuit Judge Jeff Weill Sr.

Barbara Anderson:

“My brother Craig would give you the shirt off of his back. Because of my brother, James Craig Anderson, our lives were richer, with love, respect and a love of God,” she said. “We, the Anderson family, are praying for racial reconciliation not just in Mississippi but all over this land and country. We are praying for the defendant, Dedmon, and his family that they find peace.”

Daryl Dedmon:

“I am sincerely sorry. I do take full responsibility for my actions on that night. I pray for y’all’s family every day … and that God will soften your hearts to forgive me,” Dedmon said….

“I was young. I was dumb. I was ignorant … I was not raised the way that I acted that night. I was raised in a godly house. As I stand before you today, I am a changed man. I am a godly man. God has showed me to see no colors. God showed me that we are all made in the image of God so we are all based on the same thing … I do not ask y’all to forget, but I do ask y’all to forgive.”

Judge Weill:

“Your prejudice has brought shame upon you and placed a great stain on the state of Mississippi. Whatever excuse you may offer for what you have done, forget that. There’s no excuse that you can offer for the family of Mr. Anderson or to your fellow Mississippians who have to try to reconcile the horrible damage you have caused,” Weill said.

Weill recalled the 1964 killings of three civil rights workers who were murdered and buried in an earthen dam in a rural area in what became known as “Mississippi Burning.”

“All the hard work we have done to move our state forward from that earthen dam in Neshoba County to here has been stained by you. A stain that will take years to fade,” the judge said.

I find it hard to believe that Dedmon didn’t learn some of that racial hatred at home, but of course I can’t know for sure. I only hope that other potential Deryl Dedmon’s as well as potential vigilantes like George Zimmerman are paying attention to this tragic case.

President Obama Comments on Trayvon Martin Case

Posted: March 23, 2012 | Author: | Filed under: Crime, racism | Tags: , , , , | 36 Comments

Towards the end of a news availability in which he announced his pick of Jim Yong Kim, President of Dartmouth College, as president of the World Bank, President Obama responded to a question about the killing of Trayvon Martin in Sanford, Florida more than three weeks ago.

“My main message is to the parents of Trayvon Martin: If I had a son, he’d look like Trayvon,” Obama said. “I think they are right to expect that all of us as Americans are going to take this with the seriousness it deserves, and we’re going to get to the bottom of what happened.” [….]

“Obviously, this is a tragedy. I can only imagine what these parents are going through. And when I think about this boy, I think about my own kids.” [….]

“I think every parent in America should be able to understand why it is absolutely imperative that we investigate every aspect of this and that everybody pulls together – federal, state, and local – to figure out exactly how this tragedy happened.”

According to CBS News Obama also said:

“All of us have to do some soul-searching to figure out how does something like this happen,” he continued, “and that means that we examine the laws and the context for what happened as well as the specifics of the incident.”

From the NYT Caucus Blog:

The president often appears perturbed when he gets off-topic questions at ceremonial events, but on Friday, he seemed eager to address the case, which has quickly developed into an urgent cause in the African-American community. He cautioned that his comments would be limited because the Justice Department was investigating. But he talked at length about his personal feelings about the case….

Mr. Obama sidestepped some of the most sensitive and politically-charged specifics about the case — whether Mr. Zimmerman should be arrested; whether the “Stand your Ground” law goes too far in protecting people who shoot others; whether the police chief in the Florida town should be fired.

“I’m the head of the executive branch, and the attorney general reports to me,” Mr. Obama said. “So I’ve got to be careful about my statements to make sure that we’re not impairing any investigation that’s taking place right now.”

I’m very glad that Obama chose to weigh in on the controversy, and I hope this means he will encourage Attorney General Holder to press forward with a serious investigation, as well as the arrest and further questioning of George Zimmerman.

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