Month: July 2013
Trayvon’s Mom Asks the Big Question
The conversation now becomes, “What do we tell our kids?” Do we tell them to walk fast, do we tell them to walk slow, do we tell them to take a friend with them, or do we tell them just to stay in the house? We have no clue what to tell our kids to prevent them from going to the store and not ever coming home.
— Sybrina Fulton, mother of Trayvon Martin.
Obamacare: It’s Working
Will good news about health care reform trigger yet another vote in the House repealing the Affordable Care Act (ACA), aka Obamacare? Bet on it.
A new analysis by the Obama administration found that in 11 states where data is available, the lowest cost “silver” plan – which covers 70 percent of medical costs – will cost, on average, 18 percent less than the CBO [Congressional Budget Office] estimated.
And an ACA provision that allows states to review any double-digit premium increases appears to have had a chilling effect on the practice. In 2010, 75 percent of insurers proposed double-digit rate increases, but that number has fallen to 14 percent in early 2013, according to senior administration officials.
In Oregon, several proposed rate hikes in the individual market were cut by amounts ranging from a few percentage points to 30 percent. Similar results were reported in Washington, D.C., Rhode Island and Vermont.
Earlier this week officials in New York announced that final rates in the individual market would be at least 50 percent lower on average than current rates.
I blame Obama for this.
Poll: North Carolinians Unhappy with Teabilly Takeover of State Government
With the election of tea party Republican Pat McCrory as governor last year, the GOP completed its first takeover of the North Carolina government in nearly 150 years. Since then, the Republican governor and state House and Senate have generated one embarrassing headline after another.
And what about jobs, jobs, jobs? Nada. At 8.8 percent in May, North Carolina has the fifth highest unemployment rate in the country.
A few of these include the governor’s installation as budget czar Art Pope, a Koch brothers’ Mini-me; draconian cuts in benefits for the unemployed and Medicaid patients; raising taxes on the poor and middle class while cutting taxes for for Czar Pope and his fatcat cohorts; a short-lived proposal to jettison the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution and institute an official state religion in North Carolina; a bill to make it a felony for women (but not men) to expose their nipples in public; and the stealthy passage of anti-abortion bill, first on the back of anti-Sharia law legislation and then as a rider on a motorcycle safety bill, during the July 4th holiday, a week when North Carolinians vacation at the beach.
And what about jobs, jobs, jobs? Nada. At 8.8 percent in May, North Carolina has the fifth highest unemployment rate in the country.
Results of a new poll from Raleigh-based Public Policy Polling show that North Carolina voters are beginning to return to their traditional progressive moderation on political issues:
California Supreme Court Rules That Same-Sex Marriages Can Continue – For Now
The hate groups behind Proposition 8, the anti-gay marriage amendment in the California constitution, lost their appeal for an immediate to halt same-sex marriages in the state this week, but the Republican-controlled state Supreme Court has scheduled a hearing on their petition in August and could decide to reinstate a permanent ban then:
Where’s Wayne LaPierre on Trayvon’s Death?
Funny how I don’t remember anyone from the NRA ever saying, “if only Trayvon Martin had been carrying a gun … .” I guess only a good guy with a gun can stop a black teenager with a bag of Skittles.
— David Herada-Stone, blogging at The Big Slice
It’s Not Just the Zimmerman Jury That’s Messed Up; It’s Also the Stand Your Ground Law
For the people out there wondering what the Zimmerman jury was smoking, I have a partial explanation, thanks to former Florida state Rep. Dan Gelber.
As Gelber explained on his blog, before the Stand Your Ground (SYG) law was passed, convicting Zimmerman would have been a slam-dunk.
Under Stand Your Ground, the George Zimmermans of the world can get themselves into all kinds of ridiculous messes and shoot their way out under no penalty of law
In 2005 the Florida Legislature fundamentally changed the analysis used by juries to assign blame in these cases. When the legislature passed the Stand Your Ground law it changed the rules of engagement. It eliminated the duty to avoid the danger and it eliminated any duty to retreat…
Here is the actual jury instruction read to Florida juries prior to the legislature’s enactment of Stand Your Ground.
“The defendant cannot justify the use of force likely to cause death or great bodily harm unless he used every reasonable means within his power and consistent with his own safety to avoid the danger before resorting to that force.
“The fact that the defendant was wrongfully attacked cannot justify his use of force likely to cause death or great bodily harm if by retreating he could have avoided the need to use that force.”
Flashback 2007: Black Homeowner Convicted of Second Degree Manslaughter after Shooting Trespassing White Teenager
If the confessed killer of a white teenager had been a black man, would it have taken 45 days — or 45 minutes — to charge him with a crime? Would it have sparked serious outrage if this African-American self-confessed killer had asserted on, say, MSNBC that he had no regrets about murdering his young white victim?
And now, in the wake of the jury verdict Saturday night, there is a new question. Would Zimmerman have been acquitted by a predominantly white jury in Sanford, Fla, if he had been black and his teenaged victim had been white?
We can only speculate about how the race reversal might have played out in Florida, but there is an analog to it from 2007 in a white enclave of suburban Long Island that suggests that the Zimmerman trial would have had a different outcome if the races had been reversed:
Haters Got to Keep on Hating: Prop 8 Defenders Try to Kill Marriage Equality in California One More Time
Despite having been slapped down by the Republican-controlled U.S. Supreme Court, the hate groups and Republican activists behind Proposition 8, the state constitutional amendment that outlawed same-sex in California, have not given up. They announced last week that they will waste more of the taxpayers’ money with an appeal to the California Supreme Court to once again halt gay weddings in the state:
Brady Campaign Against Gun Violence: ‘Trayvon is Dead Because a Man with a Violent History Was Allowed to Carry a Gun’
The Brady Campaign Against Gun Violence issued a statement following the verdict which exonerated George Zimmerman for killing Trayvon Martin. The statement reminds us that Trayvon would be alive today if people like George Zimmerman, who has never even had the decency to say he’s sorry for the mistakes he made the night he harassed and then shot an unarmed 17-year-old, were not trusted to carry a concealed handgun.
Even Rick Perry once said, “Oops.”
Dan Gross, President of the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence today called the verdict, “part of a tragic event that could have easily been prevented.”
Gross said, “There is sharp disagreement over the verdict, but there can be no disagreement over the reason why Trayvon Martin is dead. George Zimmerman had a gun that night, and the state of Florida allowed him to carry it virtually anywhere despite a violent history. […]
