Author: Trish

Blame Obama: Uninsured Rate Sinking Like a Stone

Trish

Since healthcare is one of the few parts of the economy not yet easily outsourced overseas, the numbers mean economic growth across the board

A new Gallup/Healthways survey shows the number of uninsured has fallen to pre-recession levels, before so many Americans lost not only their jobs but their health insurance too.

Not to put too fine a point on it, but it wasn’t this way less than a year ago, even though the economy has long been picking up steam and employment continues to increase. Rather, at the end of last summer, the uninsured rate was about 18 percent, compared to 13.4 percent today.

What I’m trying to say is: Obamacare, Obamacare, Obamacare.

[…]

Not Sold on Hillary? It Wouldn’t Be the First Time

Trish

The air of inevitability surrounding Hillary Clinton is unlike anything we’ve ever seen – since 2008, that is — when she was also considered inevitable. Then a first-term Senator from Illinois came along, and we know how that story ended.

— Gwen Ifill, anchor on the PBS Newshour, in a blog post titled, “Beware The Clickbait (Or Why There’s Always More To The Story), which is pretty self-explanatory.

Odds Are, Even if You’re a Democrat, You Agree with Former First Lady Barbara Bush on This One Thing

Trish
Jeb: The smarter one?

For all the media attention bestowed upon the younger son of Pres. George H.W. Bush, most of us agree with his mom. A new poll shows we don’t want Jeb Bush to run for president in 2016.

The WSJ/NBC poll asked Americans if they agree with a statement by former First Lady Barbara Bush…In January, Mrs. Bush told C-Span that there are “more than two or three families” that should seek high office.

It turns out that most people agree – some 69%.

The desire for new faces runs stronger among Republicans than Democrats. Some 77% of Republicans agree with Mrs. Bush, compared to 67% of Democrats. But the desire for something different cuts across virtually all income levels and demographics.

While Mama Bush’s statements apply to the Clinton family as well, former Sec. of State Hillary Clinton polls higher within her base than former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush does in his.

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Here’s How the Gun Lobby Wants Us to Live

Trish

Quality of life? Out the window.

If you were wondering what life is like under the recently passed, “All Guns, All the Time” Georgia law crafted by ALEC and the gun lobby, here’s an answer. It means that some guy, trying to make a point that only he understands, can pace back and forth at your kid’s little league game with a gun (and knife) clipped to his belt. And when you and the other parents herd your kids into the dugout and form a human shield around them as you call 911, you can be told by law enforcement that there is nothing they can do.

Quality of life? Out the window, when there are important second amendment rights to be exercised. Where are your priorities, parents?

The park is responding by considering hiring an armed guard, because the answer to too many guns is just what Gun Owners of America and the NRA want: more guns! Feel secure, knowing your second grader is playing under loaded weaponry.

It’s time to pause and remember the wise words of Dr. Ian Malcolm (Jeff Goldblum) in the movie, Jurassic Park. “Just because we can, it doesn’t mean we should.”

Supreme Court to Florida Gov. Rick Scott on Drug Testing: ‘Talk to the Hand’

Trish
Rick Scott

Florida’s public servants couldn’t be blamed for feeling that someone painted targets on their foreheads after Rick Scott (GOP/Tea) took over as governor three years ago. He eliminated many of their jobs, leaving the survivors with crippling work loads. He reduced their salaries by an amount equal to the state’s contribution to their pensions, so they have less money to spend each week and only the same amount they had before for retirement.

But treating public employees as guilty of taking illegal drugs until proven innocent is one of the most overt ways Scott’s contempt for the state’s workers has been evidenced. The new governor demanded that state employees line up and pee in a cup to prove that they’re drug-free, as if being willing to work for the government places them among the criminal class.

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You Only Have to Be 25 Years Old to Be Part of the Problem

Trish

50%

Of the carbon dioxide released into the atmosphere since the start of the industrial age was produced since 1990, according to a new report from the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. The group urges major reforms to how energy is produced and consumed globally, including not exploiting every last fossil fuel deposit left on earth.

What It Means for America to Have the Largest Prison Population in the World

Trish

This video from the Hank portion of the VlogBrothers doesn’t follow where the $75 billion a year goes, nor does it discuss prison privatization, which drives the spending, but maybe it’s better to start, as the video does, by describing the problem’s scope.

Punitive measures that continue punishment even after the convicted have paid their debt to society turn every prison term into a life sentence

What is covered is something a criminal justice system employee once told me: the vast majority of people in prison today will at some point get out, and we are not only doing almost nothing with that day in mind, such as preparing them to do something different, but we are helping ensure their failure with punitive measures that are designed to continue punishment even after the convicted have paid their debt to society. This turns every prison term into a life sentence. And that’s good for neither them nor society, i.e., us.

I hope someone will do a similar video on the facts behind the DUI privatization rip-off, but that’s a subject for another day.

Obama’s Weekly Address Isn’t So Ho-Hum

Trish

Week in and week out, the president posts his “Weekly Address,” a reiteration of the best answer to the most pressing problem of the time, which will never see daylight because of Republican opposition to anything Obama-related. It’s easy to tune out Obama’s message, just to save a little heartbreak.

This week, in the wake of the proposed budget from Republicans (which will also go nowhere, since Democrats still rule the Senate*) the president again frames the sensible solution but kind of kicks butt with a little extra womp around the 1:17 mark:

The Republican budget begins by passing out massive tax cuts to the households making more than a million dollars a year. Then, to keep from blowing a hole in the deficit, they’d have to raise taxes on middle class families with kids. Next, their budget forces deep cuts to investments that help our economy create jobs, like education and scientific research.

What’s the bottom line, my president?

Policies that benefit the fortunate few while making it harder for working Americans to succeed — that’s not what we need right now. Our economy doesn’t grow best from the top-down, it grows best from the middle-out.

Wham.

* Be sure to vote in November! It really, really matters this time.