Ideas, Opinions, Genealogy, and Book Reviews
In the second presidential debate, Donald Trump threatened to put Hillary Clinton in jail if he was elected. This type of thing may happen in a Banana Republic but certainly not in the United States. Is Donald Trump now a Banana Republican?
Is this the future of our country if Trump is elected? Will Banana Republicans dominate what was once considered the party of Lincoln?
The House Republicans want to prevent the Defense Department from dealing with a national security threat (http://www.politico.com/agenda/story/2016/06/republicans-trying-to-stop-pentagon-climate-plan-000149).
The Defense Department sees that climate change is a threat and wants to prepare for it (http://www.defense.gov/Portals/1/Documents/pubs/471521p.pdf). But many Republicans seem to think it a hoax and those in Congress are so sure of themselves that they think they should stop the military from preparing for this threat.
Continue reading “Republicans vs military”
David and Donald, a fine pair, are part of the new GOP.
David Duke, former Ku Klux Klan (KKK) leader, has thrown his hat in the ring for the GOP nomination for Louisiana US Senator because Americans are “embracing the core issues I have fought for my entire life.”
I suppose in this belief he is thinking about the drift of the national Republican party since there is widespread support with the victories and now nomination of Donald Trump.
Is this the new GOP?
There seems to be a war on science. I am a scientist so my bias is to believe something is probable when most reputable scientists in the relevant field say it is true.
Sure, science gets is wrong once every now and then but not very often. Science is a self-correcting process and mistakes are normally discovered pretty quickly. I suppose a betting man would lose a lot of money by betting against something that most scientists agree with. Continue reading “War on Science”
I’ve spent a good amount of time the past few weeks reading this book, thinking, re-reading, and re-thinking my ideas about politics. Although far from being a believer in the right-wing of American politics, I thought this was a very good book.
The Conservatarian Manifesto: Libertarians, Conservatives, and the Fight for the Right’s Future by Charles C.W. Cooke presents his beliefs that neither conservatives nor libertarians have a coherent solution to good governing. Continue reading “The Conservatarian Manifesto reviewed”
I’ve been a fan of Governor Huntsman for years. I liked him in the 2012 Republican Presidential primaries. I couldn’t vote for him in the primary since I live in Pennsylvania and am not registered as a Republican (or as a member any party). He is definitely more conservative than me but sounds like a very smart and reasonable man.
But my reason for writing today is to point to his opinion piece on climate change and the GOP in the NY Times today. See the link below.
Did they think it through? About half the states, mostly those with Republican governors and legislatures, rejected the medicaid expansion. They not only rejected a benefit for the low-income folks in their state but it seems they have also hurt many of the hospitals.
Now they might have to bail out these hospitals or watch them close. So the state’s choice is to let them close and hurt the people of the state or bail them out and pay twice. Why do I say pay twice? Continue reading “Rejecting medicaid expansion and thinking it through”
It seems that ever since the Affordable Care Act (aka ACA or Obamacare) was passed and then passed muster in court, nearly all Republicans have wanted it repealed. The latest efforts involve shutting down the government as we enter a new fiscal year and refusing to raise the debt ceiling so the government defaults on its debts.
Both efforts seem foolish and I have discussed them recently.
I live in Pennsylvania and get emails from Senator Toomey. He discussed his desire to compromise on the government shut-down stand-off by adding 3 amendments to the Senate bill. These amendments did not make it into the Senate bill. I do not think the debate on Obamacare should be part of the government shut-down or debt ceiling debates but these are good discussion points on the law.
The first would repeal the medical device tax that is costing Pennsylvania jobs; the second would provide relief from the infringement on religious liberty in Obamacare; the third would delay the individual mandate for one year.
I probably would back the repeal of the medical device tax. It seems to me the best way to do this would be a a separate bill but now seems a bit rushed. I don’t see much benefit to this tax since I would assume the tax would just be passed along as part of the cost of health care. So there is really no benefit since the users of heath care pay the tax and there well could be a job loss associated with this. But on the other hand with more people insured and using health care there may not be a job loss. I’d like to see more discussion on this point.
Regarding the second suggestion (infringement on religious liberty), I think this is inevitable as long as we insist on standards in health insurance. I think the employer mandate is problematic. The religious objection of an employer may or may not seem reasonable to others. One person may object to contraception and another may object to this or that aspect of health care. A public option would be much simpler here but I don’t think that is what the Senator had in mind.
As to the third point (a 1 year delay), there may be a problem. I assume the insurance companies took the widened risk-pool provided by the mandate into account when setting the rates for 2014. If this is not the case and we do not have additional delays such as a 1 year delay every year, it might be worth discussing this.
The ACA is a complex law with many parts. There are things I like and things I don’t. There seem to be things we could fix now and problems that would not be apparent until parts of the law are implemented. And we certainly could use a reasonable discussion of the pros and cons of parts of this law.
Rather than have a series of political stand-offs to attempt to repeal the law, maybe Congress could work to improve the law.
A few days ago, I remarked on the apparent public disapproval Affordable Care Act (aka ACA or Obamacare) although there are many clear benefits some of which seem quite popular.
I like some provisions and dislike others. I like the idea of universal coverage. The ACA doesn’t get us to universal health care but sure gets us closer. There are certainly things I don’t know and perhaps are unknowable until we try.
So my vote is for fixing the parts of the law that don’t work or cause problems. I think a repeal is foolish. And it is certainly foolish to shut down the government to try to force a repeal.
And even more foolish to fail to increase the debt ceiling and have the United States default on its obligations in an attempt to force the will of some Republicans on the entire county.
The House Republicans have shown the ability to manufacture a crisis when there is no need. It is a shame they can’t direct their efforts at solving the problems of the country.
“I don’t consider criminal background checks to be gun control, I consider them to be common sense.”
These are the words of Senator Pat Tommey before the Senate decided not to require background checks at gun shows.
It has been almost month now since most Republican Senators and some Democrats opposed this commonsense measure despite overwhelming public support and I’m glad to see that Mayors Against Illegal Guns is running ads to remind voters about this.
I read today that the House of Representatives is going to try to repeal ObamaCare for the 37th time.
I’m kind of on the edge of my seat here. Will it pass this time? Did it pass all 36 times before?
How long will it take House Republicans to realize that the Affordable Care Act or ObamaCare has been law for a few years and there is no chance of repeal unless the Republicans take over in the Senate and maybe the White House. Wouldn’t their time be better spend in trying to fix parts of the law they find especially objectionable? Or trying to be constructive?
What if repealing ObamaCare actually will increase the deficit as the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) predicted. Will the Republicans agree to raise taxes to make their plan deficit neutral? Or will they cut elsewhere?
Once upon a time, the Republicans seemed to be the more fiscally responsible party or at least that is what they told is and it seemed reasonable. Now they seem to make a lot of noise about being fiscally responsible but clearly they are not.
The latest outrage is their behavior in the government response to SuperStorm Sandy. Because parts of the United States can be badly flooded, we have a National Flood Insurance Program. Property owners can pay a premium and if the property is flooded, they can file a claim, and collect insurance money to repair damages.
The problem is the National Flood Insurance Program is a federal program and there wasn’t enough money in it to pay all the claims. So it was a case of pay your premium and hope the claim is processed before the National Flood Insurance Program runs our of money. And it did run out of money quickly.
So several weeks back, the Senate passed a bill which adds this money plus more more. Because the bill has provisions that do not directly address Sandy relief, the House refuses to vote on it and the bill dies in the last Congress.
But House members probably don’t want to seem like total jerks so they introduce a bill in the new Congress which will authorize more funds to pay flood insurance claims. The good news is that is was passed by an overwhelming majority. Even more good news is that it will probably quickly pass the Senate and be signed into law by the President.
The bad news is that is does not address any problems other that adding money to the National Flood Insurance Program. The other bad news is that 67 Republicans from the House of Representatives voted against this bill. You may see the previous link for the full list of names.
A good number of us have homeowner insurance , renter insurance, car insurance, or life insurance and we know how this idea works. These Republicans apparently believe it is OK to take premiums for an insurance program without paying the promised benefits when they are needed.
Fiscally irresponsible, untrustworthy, or both?
There seems to be a battle within the Republican Party as to whether they are the Party of Ignorance or the Party of Stupid.
But the saying is:
“Stupid is forever, ignorance can be fixed.”
Education can fix the ignorance problem but the Republicans do not seem interested in learning. They are willfully ignorant of basic knowledge and this should be unacceptable.
In “1984” George Orwell’s dystopian and satirical novel the Party that stayed in control of the government used the slogan Ignorance Is Strength. Perhaps the Republicans are on to something.
There has been much complaint about the Obama job recovery and many think we should trust our economy to Governor Romney because President Obama is doing such a bad job. His stimulus failed they say.
In my view President Obama is doing a good job considering where we came from 4 years ago and the lack of cooperation from Republicans in Congress who have blocked many of his attempts in the past 2 years to fix the jobs situation.
There is absolutely no credible evidence that Republican ideas would help the job market. Well, there are theories and “Atlas Shrugged” but no real evidence. After all, Republican ideas were put into effect in the years before the economic melt-down and we saw the result. Why are these ideas and this party going to fix things now?
So I thought it would be a good idea to revisit an old post from over a year ago and update it with new job figures.
The graph below shows the month to month change in private employment during the months from January 2008 to October 2012. The numbers on the right indicate thousands of jobs gained or lost each month. All numbers and the graph are from the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) of the U.S. Department of Labor.
The graph clearly shows accelerating job loss in 2008 hitting over 800,0000 jobs lost in January 2009, staying in that area for several months, followed by a decreasing job loss, and emerging into positive job growth in early 2010. The job growth is too small bring down our stubbornly high unemployment rate but it is moving in the right direction. We need to create more jobs to keep up with the constantly growing labor force. Total job figures are a bit lower as we have the number of jobs in the public sector decreasing in many months.
There are quite a few things that could influence the economy in this time. The slow-down in job decline in early 2009 seems to suggest that stimulus plan seems to have worked but is now slowing down. The TARP program passed in late 2008 may have helped this recovery. And one could argue that things would be better or worse if we had followed a different plan.
So President Obama seems to be doing as well as could be expected and it seems the most sensible course would be to re-elect him and re-elect fewer Republicans to Congress.
Our U.S. House of Representatives has “The Committee on Science, Space, and Technology” to help our lawmakers sort through some of the difficult scientific issues. As a scientist, I know some of these issues can be extremely complex.
One member of that committee [Rep. Paul C. Broun (R., Ga.)] has stated:
“God’s word is true. I’ve come to understand that. All that stuff I was taught about evolution and embryology and the big bang theory, all that is lies straight from the pit of Hell. And it’s lies to try to keep me and all the folks who were taught that from understanding that they need a savior. You see, there are a lot of scientific data that I’ve found out as a scientist that actually show that this is really a young Earth. I don’t believe that the earth’s but about 9,000 years old. I believe it was created in six days as we know them. That’s what the Bible says.
“And what I’ve come to learn is that it’s the manufacturer’s handbook, is what I call it. It teaches us how to run our lives individually, how to run our families, how to run our churches. But it teaches us how to run all of public policy and everything in society. And that’s the reason as your congressman I hold the Holy Bible as being the major directions to me of how I vote in Washington, D.C., and I’ll continue to do that.”
The quote is taken from http://www.dailykos.com/story/2012/10/06/1140947/-Rep-Broun-R-Evolution-is-from-Pit-of-Hell which has not only the quote but a link to the YouTube video of these remarks.
I don’t have a problem with someone holding these views. I believe they are wrong but if someone wants to believe them we do have that freedom as Americans. I would not elect someone like that but apparently the voters in his district are OK with those beliefs. Broun is apparently not clarifying or commenting on his remarks.
But I do not understand how the House leadership can appoint someone with those beliefs to The Committee on Science, Space, and Technology. This is not the only odd appointment to that committee. Todd Akin (R-MO) is also on that committee.
Todd Akin has taken back the “legitimate rape” comment he made back in August but still maintains many of his beliefs and is still in the Senate race with GOP backing.
But there are differences between Broun and Akin. Akin seems to think the world is about 6000 years old while Broun favors a number around 9,000. One the other hand, most who follow science suggest the numbers is billions.
Those with an interest in these two might enjoy the writings of a science teacher on Todd Akin and Paul Broun.
So how powerful is a committee in its area? According to the House of Representatives website :
“Laws begin as ideas. First, a representative sponsors a bill. The bill is then assigned to a committee for study. If released by the committee, the bill is put on a calendar to be voted on, debated or amended.”
So if a bill is assigned to The Committee on Science, Space, and Technology, it seems it is only considered by the whole House if and when it is released by that committee. So these committee members are more than an advisory board, they are gatekeepers of sorts and nothing gets to the House without going through them. So it is frightening that the Republican leadership would appoint people who don’t seem to understand science to this job.
But who needs science? We have the Bible and Republicans.