Friday Reads

Good Morning!

I don’t have a lot of time to distill these articles for you. I’ve got more of a link dump than anything.  Let’s just say elections have consequences and the consequences of the 2016 election are looking increasingly dystopian.  I have three superheros doing what I’d like to do.  Go Wonder Woman!  Go El Peso Hero!  Go Captain America!!!  Notice both Marvel and DC have made a villain of Orangeholio!  We need to take this goon down!!!!

I’m headed to get what could be my last mammogram for awhile and blood draw and whatever else I need.  The Republicans just voted to take away my health care.  The repeal of the ACA puts millions of American’s Health–including mine–at risk.  It’s waiting now for the signature of our Comic Book Villain whose installation by the Russians has me in mind of a bad James Bond movie.
 The ReThuglicans are also talking about drastically changing Medicare which is the only thing that looms on the horizon for those of us that will likely be uninsurable in the private market. I am a cancer survivor. Things are coming unraveled quickly for many who were given hope during President Obama’s tenure. I owe both my home and health to his policies which were placed in jeopardy by the slash and burn policies of former Governor Bobby Jindal.

Now, Republican congressional leaders say they will repeal the ACA early this year, with a promise to replace it in subsequent legislation — which, if patterned after House Speaker Paul Ryan’s ideas, would be partly paid for by capping Medicare and Medicaid spending. They have yet to introduce that “replacement bill,” hold a hearing on it, or produce a cost analysis — let alone engage in the more than a year of public debate that preceded passage of the ACA. Instead, they say that such a debate will occur after the ACA is repealed. They claim that a 2- or 3-year delay will be sufficient to develop, pass, and implement a replacement bill.

This approach of “repeal first and replace later” is, simply put, irresponsible — and could slowly bleed the health care system that all of us depend on. (And, though not my focus here, executive actions could have similar consequential negative effects on our health system.) If a repeal with a delay is enacted, the health care system will be standing on the edge of a cliff, resulting in uncertainty and, in some cases, harm beginning immediately. Insurance companies may not want to participate in the Health Insurance Marketplace in 2018 or may significantly increase prices to prepare for changes in the next year or two, partly to try to avoid the blame for any change that is unpopular. Physician practices may stop investing in new approaches to care coordination if Medicare’s Innovation Center is eliminated. Hospitals may have to cut back services and jobs in the short run in anticipation of the surge in uncompensated care that will result from rolling back the Medicaid expansion. Employers may have to reduce raises or delay hiring to plan for faster growth in health care costs without the current law’s cost-saving incentives. And people with preexisting conditions may fear losing lifesaving health care that may no longer be affordable or accessible.

Furthermore, there is no guarantee of getting a second vote to avoid such a cliff, especially on something as difficult as comprehensive health care reform. Put aside the scope of health care reform — the federal health care budget is 50% bigger than that of the Department of Defense.3 Put aside how it personally touches every single American — practically every week, I get letters from people passionately sharing how the ACA is working for them and about how we can make it better. “Repeal and replace” is a deceptively catchy phrase — the truth is that health care reform is complex, with many interlocking pieces, so that undoing some of it may undo all of it.

Take, for example, preexisting conditions. For the first time, because of the ACA, people with preexisting conditions cannot be denied coverage, denied benefits, or charged exorbitant rates. I take my successor at his word: he wants to maintain protections for the 133 million Americans with preexisting conditions. Yet Republicans in Congress want to repeal the individual-responsibility portion of the law. I was initially against this Republican idea, but we learned from Massachusetts that individual responsibility, alongside financial assistance, is the only proven way to provide affordable, private, individual insurance to every American. Maintaining protections for people with preexisting conditions without requiring individual responsibility would cost millions of Americans their coverage and cause dramatic premium increases for millions more.4 This is just one of the many complex trade-offs in health care reform.

Given that Republicans have yet to craft a replacement plan, and that unforeseen events might overtake their planned agenda, there might never be a second vote on a plan to replace the ACA if it is repealed. And if a second vote does not happen, tens of millions of Americans will be harmed. A recent Urban Institute analysis estimated that a likely repeal bill would not only reverse recent gains in insurance coverage, but leave us with more uninsured and uncompensated care than when we started.5

Put simply, all our gains are at stake if Congress takes up repealing the health law without an alternative that covers more Americans, improves quality, and makes health care more affordable. That move takes away the opportunity to build on what works and fix what does not. It adds uncertainty to lives of patients, the work of their doctors, and the hospitals and health systems that care for them. And it jeopardizes the improvements in health care that millions of Americans now enjoy.

With this deed done and awaiting our Russian Puppet President’s signature, they are moving on to defunding Planned Parenthood. This is truly turning into a nightmare for which I have no adequate descriptions. People are going to die. Lots of people are going to die.

During a news conference on Thursday, House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) said the process to dismantle Obamacare will include stripping all federal funding for Planned Parenthood, but he did not provide much further detail.

His remarks come two days after a Republican-led House investigative panel released a report that recommended the health care provider be defunded. The investigative panel—created to examine allegations that Planned Parenthood was selling fetal tissue for profit—was then disbanded, because it was not reauthorized for a new Congress. Planned Parenthood was never found guilty of any wrongdoing at the state or federal level, despite multiple GOP-led investigations.

Democrats immediately denounced the move. “I just would like to speak individually to women across America: This is about respect for you, for your judgment about your personal decisions in terms of your reproductive needs, the size and timing of your family or the rest, not to be determined by the insurance company or by the Republican ideological right-wing caucus in the House of Representatives,” said House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.). “So this is a very important occasion where we’re pointing out very specifically what repeal of the [Affordable Care Act] will mean to women.”

The measure to cut funding will appear in a special fast-track bill expected to pass Congress in February, during a session that allows legislation to bypass filibuster. The bill would need only a simple majority of senators to pass, rather than a 60-vote supermajority. Should the measure pass, according to the Washington Post, the largest women’s health care organization in the country would lose 40 percent of its funding. Planned Parenthood received $528 million in federal funding in 2014, and the government is its largest single source of funding.

A federal law known as the Hyde Amendment forbids the use of any federal funds for abortions. The money Planned Parenthood receives is for preventative screenings, birth control, and general women’s health care for their 2.5 million patients.

Jessica Valenti calls for us to not put up with demagoguery.  We are literally now in a fight for our lives and for the American Way of life with White Nationalists and Right wing extremists.

As Americans continue to grapple with Donald Trump’s presidential win, it’s a lesson we need to remember more than ever: there’s nothing wrong with shaming people who have done shameful things. And there are few things more shameful than supporting a fascistic bigot.

Yet since the election, we’ve heard again and again that calling Trump enablers out for their bigotry is fruitless and wrong-headed. This line of argument, which comes mostlyfromwhite men who have the privilege of seeing racism and sexism as a thought experiment rather than a destructive reality, says that “identity politics” hurt Democrats and that the election is proof that feminism “lost”.

Trumpites and misguided liberals are eager to “move on,” insisting against allevidence that Trump’s campaign had nothing to do with sexism or racism. By doing so, they are encouraging Americans to be polite in the face of demagoguery.

But we cannot retreat from this clear line in the sand. Not only because shaming is deserved, but because it is effective, too.

I understand that Mitch McConnell intends to railroad through all the cabinet appointees too.  He also has totally changed his tone on blocking SCOTUS appointments.  He now suggests that no one do to him what he’s been doing for 8 long years; obstructing everything in his path.

Rolling back regulations for out of control Wall Street is on the agenda too.  Don’t even get me started on what they intend to do on denying climate change.  Nuclear options will be exercised. Be prepared to see arcane congressional procedures used to tear down everything achieved in the 20th and 21st century.

GOP lawmakers indeed look forward to exploiting this rare alignment. Folks on the Hill estimate that CRA will be used to nix somewhere between 8 and 12 rules. (Which ones should get the axe, and in what order, remains a subject of energetic internal debate. Those mentioned to me include the Fair Pay and Safe Workplaces executive order, greenhouse-gas emissions standards for heavy-duty trucks, and the Stream Protection Rule.) Not that there aren’t plenty of others they consider worthy of takedown. It’s largely a question of floor time, they tell me. The incoming president has his own priorities, not to mention a raft of appointees to be confirmed. Even with fast-tracking, lawmakers can invest only so much time tackling individual rules.

There is, in fact, a push in the House to supercharge the CRA. Currently, only one rule can be tackled per resolution. The Midnight Rules Relief Act would change that, allowing Congress to bundle and dispatch multiple rules with a single resolution, making the process even easy-peasier. The House passed the bill (for the second time since Election Day) on Wednesday, its second day back from break. Obama has vowed to veto it, but that only matters for another couple of weeks.

Safe to say, Democrats will find themselves less than delighted by CRA’s impact on the “new day coming” later this month. Fiddling with the legislative process invariably has unforeseen consequences. And now congressional Dems have little recourse but to try and gum up the works as much as possible, using whatever obscure, complex mind-numbingly arcane tools they can dig up. It won’t be pretty—but, then again, so little of what Congress does ever is.

Read the article on exactly what the CRA is and how it will be used.

To this end, one obscure legislative tool is suddenly getting scads of attention: a rarely used oversight measure called the Congressional Review Act, or CRA. Passed in 1996 as part of Newt Gingrich and the Revolution’s “Contract with America,” the CRA allows Congress to overturn rules freshly issued by federal agencies without going through all the rigamarole required to pass regular bills. Most notably, CRA resolutions cannot be filibustered, meaning Republicans need only a simple majority in both chambers to get the rollback party started. Those last-minute “midnight regulations” Obama has been so defiantly issuing on everything from fuel efficiency standards to the funding of Planned Parenthood? Any—or all––could easily be rendered Dead On Arrival under the CRA.

That’s the bottom line.  Everything is under attack.  EVERYTHING.

Actually, let’s talk a bit about global warning before the NASA is torn apart by the witch hunt and we no longer hear abou the science.

In September, Arctic sea ice shrank to the second-lowest level since records began in 1979. The lowest sea ice extent was recorded on September 17, 2012, when it fell to just 1.31 million square miles (3.39 million square kilometers).

The polar sea ice has a direct influence on ocean circulation, weather and regional climate across the globe. Vanishing sea ice is an easy indicator that climate change is taking place.

According to NASA, many global climate models predict that the Arctic will be ice-free for at least part of the year before the end of the 21st century. Some models predict an ice-free Arctic by midcentury.

Here’s an NPR story about the coastline in Louisiana disappearing that’s a direct result of this.  Land and History are washing away.

Louisiana is losing its coast at a rapid rate because of rising sea levels, development and sinking marshland. Officials are trying to rebuild those marshes and the wetlands, but much of the coast can’t be saved. This makes Louisiana’s history an unwitting victim. As land disappears and the water creeps inland, ancient archaeology sites are washing away, too.

Richie Blink was born and raised in Plaquemines Parish, La. — way down south of New Orleans along the Mississippi River. Now he works for the National Wildlife Federation.

When he was a kid, his dad showed him a special place in Adams Bay, where they’d go fishing.

“We would come out of the floodgates and my dad would say ‘Head for the Lemon Trees!'” Blink says.

What’s locally known as the “Lemon Trees” is a stand of weathered old trees on a grassy tuft of land. It’s a well-known landmark for fishermen, but Blink says they would rarely stop there to hunt or fish because it’s a sacred Native American site.

“The legend goes that you were always to bring some kind of sacrifice, so somebody left some lemons for the ancestors,” Blink says.

And those grew into big trees with grapefruit-sized lemons. But as land was lost to the Gulf of Mexico, saltwater made its way into the freshwater marsh, killing off the trees and other plants.

The trees stand like skeletons on the edge of this scrappy, wind-beaten island. Waves beat against the dirt, washing it away, exposing shards of ancient pottery.

 I feel like I wake up to a new horror every day.  If Trump plans to build a boom economy on a fossil fuel bubble, it will fail badly and likely take the future of the planet with it.

Each of these bubbles just might expand for a while in the short run — which so-called balanced and objective journalists will report as signs that Trump’s policies are “working.” But they’ll have to join with Trump in denying reality in order to do so. Let’s examine each of these bubbles to see why.

The most troubling aspect is Trump’s commitment to the “carbon bubble,” a commitment to expanding the production of fossil fuels, despite the fact that 80 percent of existing reserves are unrecoverable or unusable —worth absolutely nothing — if we’re to survive as a civilization. Treating those reserves as if they will actually be used vastly overvalues them, creating a carbon asset bubble, just as multiple factors overvalued housing in the Bush years, in turn creating strong incentives for a wide range of foolish, destructive and even criminal acts.

The carbon bubble does exactly the same thing. It’s not just fossil fuel reserves that are overvalued by the bubble, but everything associated with the sector — pipelines, power plants, refineries, etc. — as well as assets at risk from climate change, such as waterfront property (see Miami Beach, still in deep denial).

The carbon bubble risk is only made worse by the fact that renewable energy costs have dropped dramatically in recent years, and become increasingly competitive. Thus, even if those reserves were not unburnable because of their potential impact on climate change, they will become so for economic reasons in the next few decades. For example, the World Economic Forum’s recently released “Renewable Infrastructure Investment Handbook: A Guide for Institutional Investors” reported:

[T]he unsubsidized, levellized cost of electricity (LCOE) for utility scale solar photovoltaic, which was highly uncompetitive only five years ago, has declined at a 20% compounded annual rate, making it not only viable but also more attractive than coal in a wide range of countries. By 2020, solar photovoltaic is projected to have a lower LCOE than coal or natural gas-fired generation throughout the world.

Add to this the fact that renewable energy — particularly solar and wind — is a new technology sector, in which large efficiency gains are to be expected. That’s quite unlike the fossil fuel industry, whose costs are increasing because the cheap, easy-to-get fuel has already been burned. By 2030, renewables could well leave fossil fuels in the dust. Which is why Trump’s embrace of the carbon bubble is particularly foolish.

So, I leave you with a lot to read and be depressed about for which I am sorry but we cannot afford to be ignorant in a day and age where ignorance is valued and so on display.

What’s on your reading and blogging list today?