As members of our staff travelled back from last weekend's grand opening of The Billy Ireland Cartoon Library & Museum, their travels took them through the middle of a war zone - or at least what seemed like a war zone - in the heart of America's farmland.
In a time of year not usually known for dramatic weather, more than 70 tornados touched down in Illinois and Indiana on Sunday, killing at least six, turning upside down the lives of thousands, and delaying our staff a bit. This is just the latest weather disaster in a year that's seen one of the strongest tornados ever on record in Moore, Oklahoma, and one of the strongest hurricanes on record in Typhoon Haiyan. Like most recent years, 2013 is also likely to go down as one of the hottest years on record.
If you haven't heard much more than a day's worth of news on any of these climate change disasters, we're not surprised. Much of the media's chattering classes have been hyperventilating on their own hype, acting like a horde of Chicken Littles falsely claiming every problem President Obama runs into is his version of President Bush's Katrina failures. Still other large portions of our American media are busily airing the umpteenth homage and/or conspiracy theory about the death of President Kennedy, fifty years ago this week, while steadily ignoring the cause of all the weather-related death and destruction.
Much of America, sadly, tends to agree with what the vapid media executives shove in front of viewers, caring more about football and conspiratorial fantasies about their Presidents (both past and current), than they do about the reason for all the wild weather - climate change.
Thankfully, not all of America is sitting on the couch, waiting for the Hooters halftime show.
In New York, they're already working on flood defenses for LaGuardia Airport when the inevitable next superstorm comes, even as they still wrestle with problems from Superstorm Sandy. In Arizona, regulators are fighting to keep solar power growing in order to reduce the use of traditional power plants. Even in coal country, the Tennessee Valley Authority is closing eight coal-fired power units due to competition from other less polluting forms of energy generation.
The Federal government is pushing forward too, as the EPA recently proposed major cuts in the amount of ethanol that American refineries must add to the fuel supply in 2014. As technology has changed, the promise of corn-based ethanol has evaporated. Thankfully, the Obama Administration is trying to follow the facts on this issue, and not simply continuing subsidies that don't work.
The private sector is getting into the act too. As Michael Specter pointed out recently in The New Yorker, and Rob Wile noted in Business Insider, the relatively new tech firm Climate Corporation is working hard to make the data surrounding climate change available to farmers to help better predict yields - a tool they've surprisingly never had before.
Thankfully, all of this changing regulation and forward thinking seems to have had some effect on climate change.
As a new study released in the journal Nature has confirmed, much to the chagrin of climate deniers like those in the Nebraska legislature, the recent "hiatus" in global warming looks to be attributed to a climate change treaty ratified during the Reagan years, the Montreal Protocol. That international law reduced the use of CFC's by 90 percent - and may have given the world a bit more time to tackle the ever-pressing problem of climate change.
That kind of information may not be as interesting as another JFK conspiracy theory, or the latest college or NFL game - but it's infinitely more important.
Monday, November 18, 2013
Friday, November 15, 2013
Be Careful What You Wish For
Sometimes we get to the end of a week, and our staff has to laugh about how everything played out that week, in positive yet unexpected ways. Of course, we're talking primarily about President Obama's "fix" to the Affordable Care Act, which he announced at a press conference on Thursday.
The way everyone in the media seems to refer to the latest tweak to Obamacare as a "fix" led us to think of an old phrase we've mentioned here previously, that many of our readers think of as Nebraska's unofficial motto. That motto is simple: "If it ain't broke, don't fix it. If it IS broke, fix it - just once."
That "fix" that President Obama announced on Thursday seems to fall into the category of things that need to be fixed once and fixed right - even though, as Jamelle Bouie noted Thursday afternoon, Obamacare wasn't really broken. Still, as the President contritely admitted Thursday afternoon, many critics of Obamacare were angry they couldn't keep their plans and both he and Congressional Democrats felt like they were about to be pummeled by the problems in the rollout of Obamacare.
Of course, as we noted yesterday, having a plan beats having no plan almost every time, even if that plan needs to be tweaked from time to time.
In short, the tweak or "fix" President Obama instituted isn't a legislative repair, but an administrative move, one that gives health insurance companies nationwide the flexibility to extend current insurance plans for one year. That extension applies especially to those insurance plans that don't currently meet the new higher minimum quality standards of the ACA.
The single "catch" to the President's fix is that insurance companies must now be the "bad guys," telling their customers - customers keeping their old, lower-quality plans - exactly what those plans are missing compared to what plans under the ACA will provide.
Obama's action also falls into the category of "administrative changes" to the rollout of the Affordable Care Act - so what the President did is fully legal, as Greg Sargent confirmed.
If you didn't know better, you might think President Obama's action to fix the Obamacare rollout would make insurers happy. After all, the insurance companies are getting exactly what they asked for - which, of course, is why they're so pissed off right now.
In fact, as Evan McMorris Santoro noted for Buzzfeed on Thursday, insurers almost immediately began ripping the White House's Obamacare fix. It turns out that, even though corporate insurance executives and insurance company executives were demanding an immediate fix, as Jonathan Cohn of The New Republic pointed out, you can't just 'restore' cancelled health insurance plans.
We are absolutely certain President Obama knew that even a seemingly minor change couldn't happen overnight. Brian Beutler of Salon seems to agree with us, noting that President Obama's fix wasn't really to settle the concerns of a minority of upset Americans. It was "a justified comeuppance" to ungrateful insurance companies that were trying to screw over their customers in a new way, yet blame President Obama and Democrats for their smarmy actions.
As President Obama proved on Thursday, when Democrats stop freaking out about Obamacare, take charge, and face down the bullies, things actually turn out much better than most of the screaming pundits usually think it will.
The way everyone in the media seems to refer to the latest tweak to Obamacare as a "fix" led us to think of an old phrase we've mentioned here previously, that many of our readers think of as Nebraska's unofficial motto. That motto is simple: "If it ain't broke, don't fix it. If it IS broke, fix it - just once."
That "fix" that President Obama announced on Thursday seems to fall into the category of things that need to be fixed once and fixed right - even though, as Jamelle Bouie noted Thursday afternoon, Obamacare wasn't really broken. Still, as the President contritely admitted Thursday afternoon, many critics of Obamacare were angry they couldn't keep their plans and both he and Congressional Democrats felt like they were about to be pummeled by the problems in the rollout of Obamacare.
Of course, as we noted yesterday, having a plan beats having no plan almost every time, even if that plan needs to be tweaked from time to time.
In short, the tweak or "fix" President Obama instituted isn't a legislative repair, but an administrative move, one that gives health insurance companies nationwide the flexibility to extend current insurance plans for one year. That extension applies especially to those insurance plans that don't currently meet the new higher minimum quality standards of the ACA.
The single "catch" to the President's fix is that insurance companies must now be the "bad guys," telling their customers - customers keeping their old, lower-quality plans - exactly what those plans are missing compared to what plans under the ACA will provide.
Obama's action also falls into the category of "administrative changes" to the rollout of the Affordable Care Act - so what the President did is fully legal, as Greg Sargent confirmed.
If you didn't know better, you might think President Obama's action to fix the Obamacare rollout would make insurers happy. After all, the insurance companies are getting exactly what they asked for - which, of course, is why they're so pissed off right now.
In fact, as Evan McMorris Santoro noted for Buzzfeed on Thursday, insurers almost immediately began ripping the White House's Obamacare fix. It turns out that, even though corporate insurance executives and insurance company executives were demanding an immediate fix, as Jonathan Cohn of The New Republic pointed out, you can't just 'restore' cancelled health insurance plans.
We are absolutely certain President Obama knew that even a seemingly minor change couldn't happen overnight. Brian Beutler of Salon seems to agree with us, noting that President Obama's fix wasn't really to settle the concerns of a minority of upset Americans. It was "a justified comeuppance" to ungrateful insurance companies that were trying to screw over their customers in a new way, yet blame President Obama and Democrats for their smarmy actions.
As President Obama proved on Thursday, when Democrats stop freaking out about Obamacare, take charge, and face down the bullies, things actually turn out much better than most of the screaming pundits usually think it will.
Thursday, November 14, 2013
Lessons About Insanity
Watching both the media and politicians when they've worked themselves into a pointless panicked tizzy is an act of frustration for us - one we've sadly experienced far too often during the last few years.
It's a situation similar to one we imagine New Jersey's Republican Governor Chris Christie has been experiencing, in his not-so-conspicuous testing for a likely 2016 Presidential bid. Christie is a real conservative, no matter how hard some media hacks wish he were otherwise. Even if he's the kind of Republican many of the tea party faithful would label as a "traitor," he's really the only major, nationally-known, non-redstate success the GOP has right now.
Still, we've got little sympathy for Christie, who's also an unapologetic bully. He's made it clear he has no intention of engaging in some of the crazy positions these days that act as an entrance interview for Republican presidential aspirants. Yet that refusal to follow the crazies makes many in the extreme tea party right hate Christie almost as much as they hate President Obama - and it'll likely keep him out of the top spot on the national Republican ticket in 2016.
The one thing Democratic leaders could learn from Christie is to have a backbone, and maybe even play the bully themselves once in a while.
That much has become blindingly obvious this week as the Affordable Care Act's first enrollment numbers were released, even as the right wing banged the drum of their fake concern parade. From former President Clinton, to Washington Post writer Ezra Klein, and many in-between, Democrats have seemed more willing than ever to make stupid comments surrounding the ACA, playing right into the hands of the GOP.
To us, that kind of insane conduct is a perfect excuse to remind Democratic politicians and pundits of some key lessons about the ACA.
First, as Greg Sargent has said more times than even he probably cares to remember, "All that will really matter is whether [Obamacare] works over the long haul." To both politicians and pundits we say 'Screw the short-term thinking.' The 2014 elections aren't until almost a year from now. Most of what you do or say now isn't going to even be something voters and readers remember next year. All they'll care about is if they have insurance, and if it's better than what they had before. Focus on the successes - and ignore those who never wanted the program to work.
Secondly, a plan beats no plan, and a law sure as hell beats speculation. Republicans can complain all they want. But the key question MUST be asked of them every time they bitch and moan: Do you have a better idea? Other than Obamacare, which was originally an idea from the right-wing Heritage Foundation, right-wing pundits and politicians haven't put forward any real alternatives for YEARS now. Even the latest "conservative alternative" to the ACA in the Wall Street Journal isn't a real alternative. After all, it's not legislation in Congress yet, is it?
Finally, check who's doing the complaining. Have the whiners done anything to actually HELP Obamacare work better? Or have the whiners been causing problems every chance they get? Everyone knows Republicans have gummed up the rollout of Obamacare on purpose - yet NOW they want to say the whole ACA should be scrapped because it doesn't work properly? When it was their efforts that were a major part of the sabotage of the health care rollout?
No one is saying Healthcare.gov is going to work perfectly 100% of the time by the end of this month. But the health care system America is moving towards now is far better than the system we used to have.
Trying to go back to our old system now would be truly insane - something that not even the tea party crazies truly want.
It's a situation similar to one we imagine New Jersey's Republican Governor Chris Christie has been experiencing, in his not-so-conspicuous testing for a likely 2016 Presidential bid. Christie is a real conservative, no matter how hard some media hacks wish he were otherwise. Even if he's the kind of Republican many of the tea party faithful would label as a "traitor," he's really the only major, nationally-known, non-redstate success the GOP has right now.
Still, we've got little sympathy for Christie, who's also an unapologetic bully. He's made it clear he has no intention of engaging in some of the crazy positions these days that act as an entrance interview for Republican presidential aspirants. Yet that refusal to follow the crazies makes many in the extreme tea party right hate Christie almost as much as they hate President Obama - and it'll likely keep him out of the top spot on the national Republican ticket in 2016.
The one thing Democratic leaders could learn from Christie is to have a backbone, and maybe even play the bully themselves once in a while.
That much has become blindingly obvious this week as the Affordable Care Act's first enrollment numbers were released, even as the right wing banged the drum of their fake concern parade. From former President Clinton, to Washington Post writer Ezra Klein, and many in-between, Democrats have seemed more willing than ever to make stupid comments surrounding the ACA, playing right into the hands of the GOP.
To us, that kind of insane conduct is a perfect excuse to remind Democratic politicians and pundits of some key lessons about the ACA.
First, as Greg Sargent has said more times than even he probably cares to remember, "All that will really matter is whether [Obamacare] works over the long haul." To both politicians and pundits we say 'Screw the short-term thinking.' The 2014 elections aren't until almost a year from now. Most of what you do or say now isn't going to even be something voters and readers remember next year. All they'll care about is if they have insurance, and if it's better than what they had before. Focus on the successes - and ignore those who never wanted the program to work.
Secondly, a plan beats no plan, and a law sure as hell beats speculation. Republicans can complain all they want. But the key question MUST be asked of them every time they bitch and moan: Do you have a better idea? Other than Obamacare, which was originally an idea from the right-wing Heritage Foundation, right-wing pundits and politicians haven't put forward any real alternatives for YEARS now. Even the latest "conservative alternative" to the ACA in the Wall Street Journal isn't a real alternative. After all, it's not legislation in Congress yet, is it?
Finally, check who's doing the complaining. Have the whiners done anything to actually HELP Obamacare work better? Or have the whiners been causing problems every chance they get? Everyone knows Republicans have gummed up the rollout of Obamacare on purpose - yet NOW they want to say the whole ACA should be scrapped because it doesn't work properly? When it was their efforts that were a major part of the sabotage of the health care rollout?
No one is saying Healthcare.gov is going to work perfectly 100% of the time by the end of this month. But the health care system America is moving towards now is far better than the system we used to have.
Trying to go back to our old system now would be truly insane - something that not even the tea party crazies truly want.
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