Stephan: The ACA -- Obamacare -- is a Rube Goldberg structure designed to keep the illness profit system going while providing nearly universal healthcare. It is certainly better in terms of health coverage, although still fatally flawed because the real point of the game remains profit, not wellness. But the outcome data trend described in the preceding story will, eventually require that wellness be made the system goal. But for now it is not surprisingly the insurance industry which dictated much of the law wants to keep the ACA in place. This report describes this trend very neatly.
In July, shortly after President Obama announced his plans to explore options to address the country’s immigration issues via executive order, House Speaker John Boehner announced that he would be suing the president. The suit, however, was not about immigration, but about the Affordable Care Act. By allowing the delay of certain provisions, Boehner felt that the president was essentially changing the law without Congress’ approval. In August, the House voted to move forward with the lawsuit.
As promised, the president announced those executive actions last week. Less than a day later, Boehner filed their lawsuit. It was somewhat surprising considering that the suit had had several delays, two law firms dropping the case, and it having absolutely no legal basis. Nevertheless, just a week after they secured the services of George Washington University legal professor Jonathan Turley, they filed their suit.
Most observers feel it has little chance of moving forward, but it’s just the latest in a long line of trying to destroy the law that has changed lives.
Republicans have been trying to stop the ACA since it was first drafted. They have made more than 50 attempts to repeal or otherwise alter […]
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Saturday, November 29th, 2014
David Ferguson, - Alternet (U.S.)
Stephan: This article and the video that accompanies it are frankly appalling. And yet I know this woman's thinking mirrors the thinking of millions of other Americans. Tens of Millions. I think it is a real question whether a democracy can survive this level of willful ignorance.
Creationist Mom
In the video [3] embedded below, fundamentalist Christian home-school mom and conservative cultural critic Megan Fox (no relation to actress Megan Fox) visits the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago and purports to “audit” the museum for its “liberal bias.”
In the description of the 30-minute video she uploaded to YouTube to document the visit, Fox wrote, “In November 2014, Megan Fox toured the Field Museum’s ‘Evolving Earth’ exhibit to audit it for bias. She found many examples of inconsistencies and the Field Museum’s insistence that people support opinion as fact without proof. The Field Museum pushes certain theories as if they are absolute proven law when that is not how the scientific method works.”
Dangerous Minds wrote [4], “(S)he’s an idiot, she homeschools her kids and she’s a fucking dingbat with her own YouTube channel [5] so she can inflict her low IQ buffoonery [5] on everyone else.”
In the video’s opening moments, Fox is reading a display regarding the evolution of eukaryotes — which she has to ask her camera operator how to pronounce […]
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Friday, November 28th, 2014
Maggie Severns, - Politico
Stephan: This is a good assessment of what is coming. In a Congress run by cretins and morons, is it any surprise that policy developments are moronic? The great irony is that the Red Value states who voted these men and women into office are going to be personally, massively, and negatively impacted by the policies their politicians implement. America is making itself second rate by choice. It is an amazing historically important trend that few talk about.
Credit: AP Photo
The war over science is heating up on Capitol Hill.
GOP House members have had little success reining in research agencies so far, but, emboldened by their growing majorities, they’re hoping for better luck next year. They plan to push proposals to cut funding for global warming and social science research, put strict new rules on the National Science Foundation’s grant-making process and overhaul how science informs policy making at the EPA.
At the same time, however, researchers and their advocates in the Democratic caucus are taking increasingly aggressive stances of their own: Rather than answer GOP objections one by one, or brush them off, they’re making a larger issue of what they see as heavy-handed interference based on ideology rather than methodology.
Indeed, some Republicans have already accused NSF of wasting millions on useless projects — even one that could be used to censor free speech, they say. House aides have been sent to NSF’s headquarters to comb documents for signs of bad decision making. And the Ebola epidemic unleashed a wave […]
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