The Texas legislature authorized, and Gov. Rick Perry appointed, the 15 person Institute of Health Care Quality and Efficiency. The board examined the state of health care in Texas and concluded that rate of uninsured Texans was unacceptable.
The board is recommending that Texas expand Medicaid under Obamacare, which would cover more than 1 million uninsured people in the state. Their report also stated, "We're trying to take the politics out of it."
Unfortunately, that's not possible. The board has no power other than to recommend. It's up to the state legislature -- and that means politics.
But at least they cannot completely gloss over the fact that their own board makes the very sensible recommendation, and they will be choosing to ignore it.
Ralph
There is this astonishing change in President Obama in the past week that has some people wondering if it's just bluster . . . and others saying "that's the man I voted for for president."
Others are wondering: where has this Obama been? Forceful, even combative, decisive, specific and focused. Might things have been different if he had adopted this posture from the beginning?
Others explain: Obama is finally free politically. Not only free from ever running for office again, but now free since Nov.4th of ever having to protect vulnerable Democratic office holders in conservative states.
That's why he delayed acting on immigration until after the election -- and they lost anyway, in part because the hispanic voter turnout was probably affected. And we gained nothing in exchange from those opposed to immigration reform.
In short, now he's got nothing to lose. The worst they can do is shut down the government. When they tried that before, it backfired on them politically. They can impeach him, but it will take 2/3 of the senate to convict him. They don't have the votes. And, as we saw with
Bill Clinton, being impeached but not convicted only boosted his ratings.
Besides, as someone suggested on msnbc last night, they may not want to establish the reputation for impeaching two Democratic presidents in a row -- and losing, especially when they have committed no impeachable crimes, other than in the minds of extreme conservative politicos.
So it seems there are two sides to the lame duck analogy. This may be fun.
Ralph
This is another rant against Mitch McConnell's hypocrisy. It's more of the same, just even more blatant and demonstrable. Here's what he essentially says: When we win, it means you have to do everything our way; when you win, you have to make concessions to us.
In his victory speech, McConnell even seemed a touch gracious, looking forward to finding areas where there could be agreement and get some things done. Ok, we'll overlook for the moment that he was one of the main reasons nothing got done.
But then as soon as President Obama starts talking about what he plans to do with his Constitutional executive powers, here's McConnell:
"I had maybe naively hoped the president would look at the
results of the election and decide to come to the political center and
do some business with us. I still hope he does at some
point, but the early signs are not good. . . . We'd like for the president to recognize the reality that he has the
government that he has, not the one that he wishes he had, and work with
us."
What he's saying here, I think, is that the people have spoken, and they put us in charge of the senate, so . . . . But the people also chose Obama to be president for four more years in 2012. So, the president should just roll over and do what the Republicans want?
Let's look at history on this. Thanks to Ian Reiswitz of Daily Kos for some facts.
McConnell is now sounding high and mighty about the will of the people. What about the will of the people in 2008?
Democrats won big majorities in both the House and Senate and a landslide electoral victory for Barack Obama. And McConnell's response then to "the will of the people?"
"We've gotta challenge them on every single bill and challenge them on every single campaign."
And that's what they did. Filibustered bills that even had bipartisan support. Blocked legislation at every opportunity, blocked appointments to the judiciary and the executive that diminished the effectiveness of government operations, worked as hard as they could to undermine the "unity government" that was the will of the people in 2008.
McConnell even announced to his people that Obama should not be allowed to succeed at anything.
So, Mitch McConnell, get over yourself. You may have won this round, but only to make you majority leader of the senate. They did not make you king.
Ralph
Undaunted by the very bad Democratic showing in last week's elections, President Obama has come out swinging on some important initiatives.
While in China with President Xi Jinping, they announced "an ambitious joint plan to curb carbon emissions as a way to spur nations around the world to make their own cuts in greenhouse bases," according to an article by Mark Landler in the New York Times.
The commitment includes new carbon emission reduction in the U.S. and a first-ever commitment by China to stop emissions from growing by 2030. The agreement had been worked out between the two nations over the past nine months
This is significant because we are the two top carbon polluters in the world, and action from us is essential to achieving a global agreement.
The second front we can expect some early action on is immigration, specifically an executive order that will slow the mandatory deportations. Republicans in congress are again opposed to anything Mr. Obama accomplishes and have vowed to pass their own legislation. In essence, the president is calling their bluff -- saying all along that congress should act on the bipartisan bill that has already passed the Senate. But they have done nothing so far to bring the House along. Obama's message to them is: put up or shut up.
It's good to see him being proactive and seizing the initiative. Let's hope it's not too late in the game.
Ralph
Thanks to Daily Kos for reprinting this open letter from a Canadian neighbor:
"Many of us Canadians are confused by the U.S. midterm elections.
Consider, right now in America, corporate profits are at record highs,
the country's adding 200,000 jobs per month, unemployment is below 6%,
U.S. gross national product growth is the best of the Organization for
Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) countries. The dollar is at
its strongest levels in years, the stock market is near record highs,
gasoline prices are falling, there's no inflation, interest rates are
the lowest in 30 years, U.S. oil imports are declining, U.S. oil
production is rapidly increasing, the deficit is rapidly declining, and
the wealthy are still making astonishing amounts of money.
"America is leading the world once again and respected internationally
— in sharp contrast to the Bush years. Obama brought soldiers home from
Iraq and killed Osama bin Laden.
"So, Americans vote for the party that got you into the mess that Obama just dug you out of? This defies reason. When you are done with Obama, could you send him our way?
"Richard Brunt
"Victoria, British Columbia"
Thanks to progressive blogger "digby" for this:
"The man with the notoriously questionable National Guard record has been
all over TV today [Nov. 11, Veterans Day] talking about his war hero Dad (and being allowed to
shamelessly pimp his family as the Romanov Dynasty of America.) He said a
lot of things that reminded me of what a nasty piece of work he is
underneath his genial goofball act. But courtesy of Wavy Mcgrady, I see I missed the best George W. Bush quote in a very long time. And it's not even illiterate --- just ridiculous:
"SCHIEFFER: When former first lady Laura Bush joined us we
turned back to the possibility of a Bush 45. So let's talk about the
Bush dynasty here. Your mom says there have been enough Bushes running
for President. What do you-- what do you two think about that?
"L'IL BUSH: Sometimes her prognostications haven't been very accurate.
And no, no, I think you have to earn your way into politics. I don't
think anything is ever given to you.
"Yes. He actually said that."
The sad thing is that Georgie W. probably does think that he earned his way into politics and that nothing was given to him. In fact, all he brought to it though was the affable front man puppet. Powerful other forces, wealthy family backers, and Jim Baker and Karl Rove above all, opened the doors for him.
The one backbone-requiring thing he did was late in his presidency, when he finally stopped taking orders from Dick Cheney and asserted his authority over Cheney's wheedlings about a pardon for Scooter Libby.
Ralph
While we were so preoccupied with the election and its aftermath last week, some significant milestones in the Ebola crisis -- at least here in the U.S. -- went almost unnoticed. The nurse, who defied two governors who tried to quarantine her despite having been shown not to have the Ebola virus, passed the 21 day observation period without herself or anyone who came in contact with her getting sick.
Both of the Texas nurses, who did contact the virus from the Liberian man in the Texas hospital, have been released from treatment hospitals as completely virus free. And no one caught it from them.
Now the only remaining active patient, Dr. Craig Spencer, who became ill after returning from his volunteer stint taking care of patients in Sierra Leone, has been released from Bellevue Hospital as well and virus free.
So: there are as of now no active Ebola patients in the United States.
Whew !! It feels like we dodged a bullet. The medical scientists were right, and the fearful politicians should have listened to them. At the same time, it's possible to understand the fear -- both fear of the disease and fear of the consequences of failing in your responsibility to protect your constituents. And the tendency when you're scared is naturally to over-react in the direction of protection.
So let's all breathe a sigh of relief and let the lessons learned become encoded in sensible policies and safety procedures.
Ralph
