Food stamp controversy

Pulitzer Prize winning political cartoonist for the AJC, Mike Luckovich, hit the target square on:   Seated across from each other are the GOP elephant and Jesus, with the caption:  "Tonight's debate:  Should corporate subsidies for the rich be cut instead of food stamps for the poor?"

Opposing opinion columns in the same issue are by Rep. David Scott (D-GA) and by Benita Dodd of the Georgia Public Policy Foundation.  I read Dodd's piece first and found myself almost persuaded that she had a point and that too much was being made about the cuts.

Her main point was that this is merely a rollback of the temporary increases in food stamps that were part of President Obama's stimulus program during the worst of the recession.    Well, I thought, as the economy improves it makes sense to roll back temporary benefits that may no longer be needed.

But this illustrates so well why you have to work hard at getting the news right.   Then I read Scott's piece, and saw a very different picture:  "The terrible Republican cut of $40 million reduces the food assistance program by half."

Scott clarifies who gets this assistance, and its not just the Republican fantasy of "black urban or illegal immigrants" that they seem to find unworthy.   The facts are that 37% are white, 23% are African-American, and 10% are Hispanic.  U.S. Department of Agriculture stats show that 99% of them live below the poverty line, and 900,000 are veterans.

Further, with regard to unworthy recipients, the program's analysis shows that 97% of those receiving aid are accurately assessed as qualifying, and part of the 3% inaccuracies were actually underpayments.   That seems like a remarkably well-run program.

So what persuades Republicans that the program is not needed and that recipients are not worthy?  Dodd gives it away when she states "Nobody wants low-income families, children or the elderly to go hungry."   But, she goes on:   "The real issue [is] too many politicians willing to get and keep Americans increasingly dependent on government."

Why would anyone want to do that?   It is simply a lie that Republicans tell themselves to justify their heartlessness toward the unfortunate, while demanding that corporations and the rich be supported by government in the form of subsidies, tax breaks, and fat government contracts, often to produce unneeded war planes and ships.

So, back to Luckovich's cartoon:   Corporate subsidies for the rich or food stamps for the needy?  Let's have that debate.

Ralph

Give Obama credit for this, at least

Republicans delight in heaping condemnation on President Obama for everything that goes wrong in our government.   To some extent, the presidency is where the buck stops;  he is responsible.

But there comes a time when the country needs you to move on, and for the president to occasionally get a little praise for what goes right.

 Almost completely ignored in the news is that President Obama's caution with regard to Syria -- specifically his holding off on a military attack in favor of diplomacy and sanctions -- is paying off.

All indications are that Syria is in complete compliance so far with the agreement to reveal and destroy their chemical weapons.   Here is a dispatch from Reuter's news service:

Syria has destroyed all of its declared chemical weapons production and mixing facilities, meeting a major deadline. . .

The Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons [a watchdog group] said in the document its teams had inspected 21 out of 23 chemical weapons sites across the country. The other two were too dangerous to inspect but the chemical equipment had already been moved to other sites which experts had visited . . .

"The OPCW is satisfied it has verified, and seen destroyed, all declared critical production/mixing/filling equipment from all 23 sites," the document said. . . .

Under the disarmament timetable, Syria was due to render unusable all production and chemical weapons filling facilities by Nov. 1 - a target it has now met. By mid-2014 it must have destroyed its entire stockpile of chemical weapons.

Now, why is this not a success story for the president?   Suppose we had gone in and bombed them?   What then?   They would still have their chemical weapons, might even have used them in retaliation for the attack.  The hawks' lust for action would have, at best, overthrown a government with no group ready to take charge and run the country.   We might have armed groups affiliated with Al Qaeda.  And then what?

McCain, Graham, and their ilk just want war -- and never mind the consequences.   Isn't Iraq still fresh enough in memory?

Ralph 

PS:   The other big success story this week is that the federal budget deficit has dropped to just half what it was shortly after Obama took office.    But has there been a peep out of Republicans who have been blasting him for "increasing" the deficit?   Not yet.

"Breathtakingly cynical"

Jonathan Cohn put it this way in The New Republic:

Republicans are outraged that some Americans must give up their current insurance plans because they don't satisfy Obamacare's new regulations for benefits and pricing. . . .

It’s unconscionable, they say, that lawmakers would force people to give up their current coverage. . . . [A]n angry Representative Marsha Blackburn from Tennessee practically screamed at the witness [Sec. Sebelius]: “You’re taking away their choice!”

It’s good politics, I’m sure. It’s also breathtakingly cynical.  Republicans have repeatedly endorsed proposals that would take insurance away from many more Americans—and leave them much, much worse off.

Start with the federal budgets crafted by Paul Ryan. . . .  Those budgets called for dramatic funding cuts to Medicaid. If Republicans had swept into power and enacted such changes, according to projections . . .  between 14 and 20 million Medicaid recipients would lose their insurance.  And that doesn’t even include the people who are starting to get Medicaid coverage through Obamacare’s expansions of the program. That's another 10 to 17 million people. . . .

Nobody knows exactly how many people are giving up non-group policies because insurers are reacting to Obamacare regulations. But it's probably in the millions [And they are being offered alternative plans;  not losing insurance.]  —and still substantially less than the number of people who would lose insurance if Ryan's proposal for Medicaid became law. . . .

Under Obamacare, the number of Americans without health insurance at all will come down, eventually by 30 or 40 million. Under most of the Republican plans, the number of Americans without insurance would rise.

Honest Republicans would justify their policies by arguing that Medicaid is a wasteful, inefficient program not worth keeping . . .  But they should stop pretending that it’s possible to address the problems of American health care without disrupting at least some people’s insurance arrangements—because, after all, they want to do the very same thing.

This has become such a media circus, and the hypocrisy is so thick -- pity the poor person trying to work through this maze of misinformation, political grandstanding, and outright lies.

The Obama administration has not earned top grades for the technical rollout, but the product is still a good idea.   As someone put it:   "Obamacare is not a web site;  it's a program to benefit people who lack health insurance."  Not as good as a single payer system, but a good step in that direction.  Let's give it a chance.   Rome wasn't built in a day.   The successful, popular Massachusetts health care system didn't run smoothly at first either.

Ralph

A field day for the opposition -- but they will lose.

Let me start with a challenge to Republicans:  It's easy to be against something and beat the demagogue drums to rile up the voters.  It's difficult to introduce a comprehensive, complex program that actually benefits needy citizens.   Why don't you propose a program that you think would be better?

Why, if they think it's such a failure, don't the Republicans just get out of the way and let it fail on its own?    They're running a huge risk.    If the website problems get fixed and the program becomes popular, they are -- quite rightly -- going to be seen as obstructionists who just made things worse.    Their track record for reading the polls is abysmal (see Romney 2012).   They're too much in the bubble created by general discontent, fueled by Fox News and right wing talk radio -- and opportunistic politicians like Ted Cruz.

Now they're trying to blame Obamacare for the millions of people who are getting cancellation notices from their private insurance companies.   Well, let's put a little perspective on that.

First, Obamacare does require certain minimum levels of coverage in private insurance;   many policies do not meet those standards.   Some private companies, instead of trying to rewrite old policies to comply, have simply cancelled those policies and invited clients to choose a new policy.   That's not quite the same as "losing your health insurance."   And it's not Obamacare that's doing it;  it's private insurance companies.

But here is the clincher, thanks to Chris Hayes last night on MSNBC:   What Obamacare does is exactly what Paul Ryan's ill-fated proposal for Medicare did.   The same Republican House members who voted for that plan are now calling Obamacare a step toward socialism.

Here's the similarity.   I wish I could reproduce the graphic that Chris showed.   It had three boxes:    I'll call them A, B, and C.

A = private individual health insurance
B = government sponsored health exchanges for private insurance (Obamacare)
C = one payer, government sponsored health care (Medicare).

Chris points out that:
What the Ryan plan did was move Medicare from C to B.
What Obamacare does it move individual insurance from A to B.

They both wind up at B.   But Republicans liked Ryan's plan (which actually goes backward from my perspective) but winds up in the same place as Obamacare going forward.  I suppose they would say that Ryan moved away from socialism and Obamacare moves toward it.

Go figure.

Ralph
        

The deal on Deal #3

Here's the structural problem in Georgia's ethics watchdog situation.    There is no true ethics oversight -- and Georgia's lawmakers intended it to be just that way.

It's not even correct to call it the Ethics Commission.  They changed the name to something like Commission on Government Oversight and Campaign Finance.  And they set it up to be packed with friendly members:   the governor appoints three members, and the lieutenant governor and the Speaker of the House each appoints one.    Five members, a majority appointed by one man, the governor;  the other two by the other top elected officials.  

And right now, all of three officials are Republicans. How can that possibly be an independent group -- or perceived to be, even if it actually turned out to be so?

Even if Gov. Deal is squeeky clean in this whole sordid mess, it appears that he is controlling it behind the scenes.    Politicans have long ago learned how to do things that preserves their "plausible deniability" of having anything to do with it.     

Deal is stringently denying he had anything to do with this.   But who can believe him when (1) he benefits from it, (2) people have testified that strings were pulled on his behalf, and (3) it's the way he's been operating his whole political career?

Too bad, Nathan.   You get in bed with dogs and you're going to wake up with fleas.   Your Momma would not be proud of what you're doing.   I knew her.   Mrs. Deal was a second grade teacher in my home town school, and she did not spare the rod when boys misbehaved.

Ralph

Textbook publishers say no to Texans' creationism

Here's some good news in the battle for science over faux science:

Religious conservatives have taken over the Texas school board and mandated the inclusion of creationism in science textbooks for the public schools.   And because Texas is the largest purchaser of textbooks, what Texas wants is usually what gets published and available to other states as well.

Until now.   The Huffington Post's Rebecca Klein reported that publishers have stood strong against pressure from Texas and have continued to include evolution -- and not creationism -- in the science textbooks.

Now the Texas school board will have to decide whether they want their kids to learn 20th and 21th century science -- or stay stuck in early 19th century science.

Perhaps the tide is beginning to turn.   First, the Tea Party is losing its clout;   now those who want to impose religious their beliefs on school children have been ignored by publishers.   

I'm fed up with having ignorance, prejudice, and religious bigotry rule out country.  It's past time for knowledge, science, reason, and evidence to be respected again in our public policies.

Ralph

The deal on Deal #2

Here's what my favorite AJC  columnist Jay Booker says about the Deal ethics probe and the shenanigans involving the ethics commission:

In its effort to dispel allegations that it operates through secret backroom arrangements and deal-making, the five-member state ethics commission has apparently resorted to, well, secret backroom arrangements and deal-making. . . .

In an emergency meeting late last month, the commission had voted to request a special assistant attorney general to investigate charges that an ethics case had been 'fixed' on behalf of Gov. Nathan Deal, and that top commission staff people had been stripped of their jobs for refusing to go along.   Last week, the commission suddenly reversed that decision, without any public meeting, vote or discussion.

Suddenly, almost by magic, the promised investigation into what happened in the Deal case has become a mere audit of the commission's structure and employee performance.

Gov. Deal's office has issued a stringent denial that it had any communication of any sort with the commission concerning this reversal.   Booker continues:

[The commission] was never designed or intended to work.  It was intended to have the appearance of independence;  it was intended to look like a watchdog without having actual watchdog teeth. . . .  

Over the years, through Democratic and Republican control, the people who run this state have forced out top commission staff people who dared to show some backbone in enforcing the law . . . .

When the commission has issued rulings that displeased political leaders . . . it has been punished with the loss of funding, the loss of authority or both.

It is time to blow things up.  An ethics commission appointed by powerful state leaders is not designed to be independent.  Appoint them by judges instead.   A commission staff whose salaries and resources depend on the benevolence of state legislators is not designed to be independent.

This is not a new problem, and Gov. Deal is not the first to operate in this way.   But he is the current chief abuser of the loopholes and behind the scenes manipulation of the levers of government.   If we want good government, we must have strong watchdog functions that are truly independent and have the power to investigate and bring charges.

Ralph