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Tuesday, May 28, 2013

Texas to Deny Poor Residents Medicaid Coverage, While Paying for It Anyway





News & Politics  
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Texas lawmakers have passed a bill that would deny over a million low-income residents Medicaid coverage.
 
 
State lawmakers in Texas have passed a bill that would deny over a million low-income residents Medicaid coverage they would have received as a result of President Obama’s healthcare plan. 

The bill states that health officials can only provide medical assistance to those who would have been “otherwise eligible” under the criteria in effect December 31, 2013. The Affordable Care Act mandates that Medicaid be expanded starting in 2014. But the Supreme Court ruling on the act said that the federal government could not require states to expand the low-income health program.
Governor Rick Perry had stated his strident opposition to expanding Medicaid last summer.

If the bill becomes law, Texas will be contributing taxes that pays for the Medicaid expansion in other states while residents won’t be able to access the same program.

The Texas bill was passed despite the fact that “the federal government fully funds Medicaid expansion until 2016 and gradually reduces its contribution to 90 percent in 2020 and subsequent years,” as Think Progress’ Igor Volsky notes. Texas, which has the highest percentage of uninsured people, would not have to pay more than 7 percent of the cost of the Medicaid expansion.

The legislation was passed as state officials across the country continue to take varied steps on the issue of Medicaid expansion. In Arizona, Republican governor Jan Brewer has said she will continue to veto bills passed by the Republican legislature until they expand Medicaid. Other Republican governors have taken steps similar to Perry’s.
 
Alex Kane is AlterNet's New York-based World editor, and an assistant editor for Mondoweiss. Follow him on Twitter @alexbkane.

Friday, May 24, 2013

Only in America it is a Crime if you are Hungry when Homeless and Poor







 

By outlawing dumpster diving, Houston is making life impossible for the most vulnerable.

 
 
 
Photo Credit: Larry Powell/ Shutterstock.com
 
 
Whenever one of our cities gets a star turn as host of some super-sparkly event, such as a national political gathering or the Super Bowl, its first move is to tidy up — by having the police sweep homeless people into jail, out of town, or under some rug.

But Houston’s tidy-uppers aren’t waiting for a world-class event to rationalize going after homeless down-and-outers. They’ve preemptively outlawed the “crime” of dumpster diving in the Texan city.

“I was just basically looking for something to eat,” he told the  Houston Chronicle. But, unbeknownst to both this indigent tourist and the great majority of Houston’s generally generous citizens, an ordinance dating way back to 1942 says that “molesting garbage containers” is illegal. In March, James Kelly, a 44-year-old Navy veteran, was passing through Houston on his way to connect with family in California. Homeless, destitute, and hungry, he chose to check out the dining delicacies in a trash bin near City Hall. Spotted by police, Kelly was promptly charged with “disturbing the contents of a garbage can in the [central] business district.” Seriously.

Also, in 2012, city officials made it a crime for any group to hand out food to the needy in the downtown area without first getting a permit. It’s a cold use of legal authority to chase the homeless away to…well, anywhere else.

Such laws are part of an effort throughout the country to criminalize what some call “homeless behavior.” And, sure enough, when hungry, the behavioral tendency of a homeless human is to seek a bite of nourishment, often in such dining spots as dumpsters. The homeless behavior that Houston has outlawed, then, is eating.

The good news is that when Houstonians learned of Kelly’s situation, many reached out to help him get through his hard times. Now they need to reach out to local politicos and get the city to stop cracking down on this abuse of homeless people.


Jim Hightower is a national radio commentator, writer, public speaker, and author of the new book, "Swim Against the Current: Even a Dead Fish Can Go With the Flow." (Wiley, March 2008) He publishes the monthly "Hightower Lowdown," co-edited by Phillip Frazer.

Tuesday, May 21, 2013

Oklahoma senator: Tornado aid “totally different” from Sandy aid


SALON




Oklahoma senator: Tornado aid “totally different” from Sandy aid

Sen. James Inhofe, a Republican, voted against federal funding for Hurricane Sandy victims VIDEO



Oklahoma senator: Tornado aid Sen. James Inhofe, R-Okla. (Credit: AP/Susan Walsh)
Sen. James Inhofe, a Republican from Oklahoma, argued that there is no comparison between Hurricane Sandy relief, which he voted against last fall, and aid for his state in the wake of Monday’s devastating tornado because the two are “totally different.”

Inhofe contended on Tuesday that the Hurricane Sandy relief bill was different because it was filled with pork. “They were getting things, for instance, that was supposed to be in New Jersey,” he said on MSNBC. “They had things in the Virgin Islands. They were fixing roads there, they were putting roofs on houses in Washington, D.C. Everybody was getting in and exploiting the tragedy that took place. That won’t happen in Oklahoma.”

In the past, Inhofe has also voted against additional funding for FEMA, though in 2008 he praised relief from the Department of Housing and Urban Development to Oklahoma counties affected by “severe weather.”

Inhofe’s senate colleague, Sen. Tom Coburn of Oklahoma, also a Republican, said he would push for federal aid to Oklahoma to be offset by cuts elsewhere. Coburn also voted against the relief package for Hurricane Sandy.


Watch:


Jillian Rayfield is an Assistant News Editor for Salon, focusing on politics. Follow her on Twitter at @jillrayfield or email her at jrayfield@salon.com.

Anyone regret slashing National Weather Service budget now?


SALON



Anyone regret slashing National Weather Service budget now?

 

With GOP-backed cuts to forecasting agency, experts warn future storms will go undetected and more lives lost




Anyone regret slashing National Weather Service budget now? 
A child is pulled from the rubble of the Plaza Towers Elementary School in Moore, Okla., May 20, 2013. (Credit: AP/Sue Ogrocki)
 
 
 
Was the severe weather system culminating in yesterday’s Oklahoma City tornado intensified — or even created — by climate change? That question will almost certainly be batted back and forth in the media over the next few days. After all, there is plenty of scientific evidence that climate change intensifies weather in general, but there remain legitimate questions about how — and even if — it intensifies tornadoes in specific.

One thing, however, that shouldn’t be up for debate is whether or not we should be as prepared as possible for inevitable weather events like tornadoes. We obviously should be — but there’s an increasing chance that we will not be, thanks to the manufactured crisis known as sequestration.

As the Federal Times recently reported, sequestration includes an 8.2 percent cut to the National Weather Service. According to the organization representing weather service employees, that means there is “no way for the agency to maintain around-the-clock operations at its 122 forecasting offices” and also means “people are going to be overworked, they’re going to be tired, they’re going to miss warnings.”

Summarizing the problem, the American Institute of Physics put it bluntly: “The government runs the risk of significantly increasing forecast error, and the government’s ability to warn Americans across the country about high impact weather events, such as hurricanes and tornadoes, will be compromised.”

The good news is that the National Weather Service station in Norman, Okla., had a warning in effect for 16 minutes before the most recent Oklahoma City tornado hit. That’s better than the 13 minute average so, thankfully, more people probably had more time than usual to evacuate or find safe shelter.
But what about the next time around? Will we be as ready as we can and should be? The answer is maybe not.

Though the past few years saw a record number of billion-dollar weather cataclysms, the weather service remains a perennial target for budget cuts and already has nearly a 10 percent employment vacancy rate — and those realities may be damaging its long-term ability to warn the public about severe weather events. As the Washington Post reports:
The cash-strapped National Weather Service is facing increasing scrutiny over its inferior computer modeling power compared to international peers and is anticipating a likely gap in weather satellite coverage. Last week, the Government Accountability Office ranked the pending satellite gap among the top 30 threats facing the Federal government.
The Department of Commerce warned that not only will the loss of satellite data and imagery diminish the quality of forecasts, but so will other important weather data surrendered by spending cuts.
Before you dismiss that as esoteric, nerdy, overly technical and therefore just abstract, check out what the president of the American Meteorological Society says it means in practice:
The public may take for granted a tornado warning or satellite loop of an approaching hurricane. Likewise, the public probably just assumes that they will have 5- to 9-day warning of storms like Sandy; 15 to 60 minutes lead time for tornadic storms approaching their home; an airline with appropriate data for safe air travel; or a military with reliable information to avoid hazardous weather on a mission protecting our freedom. However, these capabilities “can” and “will” worsen/degrade if we cut weather balloon launches, cut investments in the latest computing technology for our models, reduce Doppler radar maintenance, delay satellite launches, or shatter employee morale … I am honestly concerned that we will regress in capability and this will jeopardize lives, property, and our security.
Following in the footsteps of former Republican Sen. Rick Santorum, conservatives faced with these self-evident facts have taken to Fox News to cite the problems previous flat budgets have already created to call for a wholesale elimination of the National Weather Service. It’s a classic self-fulfilling sophistry of the right: Ignore the positive work an agency does, keep the agency’s budget flat so that its capabilities do not keep up with the times, then cite the agency’s reduced capabilities as justification to keep cutting it.

Perhaps, though, the devastation in Oklahoma City will serve as a reminder of why that’s the wrong path. After all, the wreckage is an explicit commentary on how bad things can be even when our weather forecasting system works — and, thus, an implicit reminder of how much worse things could be if it doesn’t. It is also a reminder that we shouldn’t think of weather forecasting as the insignificant television arena of dim-witted Brick Tamlands, but instead as an integral part of homeland security infrastructure.

When the ideology of austerity and Congress’s manufactured crises like the sequestration collectively jeopardize that infrastructure, we are needlessly inviting unnecessary and tragic consequences.
David Sirota David Sirota is a nationally syndicated newspaper columnist, magazine journalist and the best-selling author of the books "Hostile Takeover," "The Uprising" and "Back to Our Future." E-mail him at ds@davidsirota.com, follow him on Twitter @davidsirota or visit his website at www.davidsirota.com.

Sunday, May 19, 2013

Is There A Global Depopulation Agenda Being Played Out?

Collective-Evolution


Is There A Global Depopulation Agenda Being Played Out?