“PPACA, The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, Tarbaby”

January 9, 2017, John Hanno

“PPACA, The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, Tarbaby”

You would think, after more than a year of congressional hearings, deliberations, debating, speechifying and amendments leading up to the passage of the PPACA, (signed by President Obama on March 23, 2010) and after more than 60 attempts, over more than six years, by Congressional Republicans to overturn the PPACA, and after every single Republican politician grandstanded and ran on repealing and replacing the law during the last 4 national elections, that at least one member of this “ult” right group might have put forth a better, cheaper or creditable alternative. Having described the ACA as the biggest threat to American Democracy in our history, you would think any number of conservative patriots could have devised a plan to save the country from the ominous threat of providing almost 25 million poor folks with affordable, high quality, lifesaving health insurance.

But you would be wrong. Now that these saviors are in charge of the White House and both houses of congress, their plan is simply, to quickly and definitively repeal the Act, but then only think about replacing it two or four years down the road; preferably after the next midterm or presidential election. It’s clear that the entire Republican party has grabbed hold of a particularly sticky Tarbaby. They’ve demonized the PPACA by negatively attaching the Presidents name, to an overwhelmingly Democratic attempt, to Protect Healthcare Patients from abuse by the insurance industry and to slow down the double-digit increases in premiums for policies that were steadily diminishing in quality and scope.

The Act reduced by half the 45 million uninsured Americans, from 16% in 2010 to 8.9 % in June of 2016. That number has been further reduced by the 5 million or more folks who signed up during the recent enrollment period and since the election of Trump, in anticipation of the Republican’s promise to repeal. Of the 23 to 25 million covered by the Act, 12 to 15 million are covered by the exchanges and more than 11 million are covered by the expansion in Medicaid. 75% of those on the exchanges purchased insurance for $75 a month after federal subsidies, a bargain by anyone’s standards. My Medicare premiums are $104 and my hard earned employer supplemental is $146 a month, for a total of $250 a month.

When the Democrats had control of the White House, the Senate and the House in 2009, President Obama and the Democrats in Congress made the tough decision to spend their 2008 presidential election capital and mandate on doing something that Presidents since Teddy Roosevelt have been trying to accomplish for the last 100 years, finally providing affordable health care to the 45 million uninsured Americans. Almost 25 million of those have taken advantage of that decision.

Now that the Republicans have control of the White House and both houses of Congress, they want to repeal that hard won health care and build a wall between neighbors. This is just more clear examples of the difference of the two parties philosophies. Democrats try to use government to solve problems for America’s middle class workers and the Republi-cons can’t wait to undo those efforts, undermine any government intervention unless it benefits them, and compound problems for the working poor.

To all those poor and middle-class folks in the red states, and for that matter those in the blue states that vote without fail, year after year, election after election for Republi-cons; what in God’s name have these politicians ever done for you instead of to you. We know what the Democrats have done to pull folks out of poverty and desperation and to help families stake their claim in America’s middle class neighborhoods. You can check their voting records over the last 75 years. FDR’s New Deal, LBJ’s Great society, etc, etc, etc.

Yes, our healthcare system has problems. Depending on whose figures you use, we spend about $3.5 trillion, almost 20% of our GDP, $10,345 per person, or two to two and one half times what other developed countries spend on health care. America’s healthcare costs have escalated in relationship to it’s waistlines. More than half of American’s are overfed and under active. Stroke, emphysema, diabetes and heart disease in that order, much of which is preventable, are the four most expensive diseases to treat. Diabetes now afflicts 10% of Americans. The price for insulin has skyrocketed; has at least doubled in the last few years. Drugs costs of all types have escalated far more than the cost of living because most Republi-con’s and PHARMA state Democrats in congress refused to force drug companies to negotiate fairly with Medicare, Medicaid and other health care providers, just like the Veterans Administration has already done.

The $10,345 average per person spending is wildly different throughout the population. I know 70 year-old folks who have never filed a health insurance claim and some in their 50’s who’ve reached their $250,000 to $500,000 lifetime limits long before Obamacare ended those caps. The reality is that just 5% of the population, the oldest and sickest, account for almost half of that spending. 10% of families account for almost 50% of the spending. American’s 55 years and older account for almost 50% of spending. Half the population has very meager health care expenses, accounting for only about 3% of the total. People 35 and under represent 47% of the population but account for only 25% of the health care spending.

America’s healthcare is complicated. We have a lot of questions to sort out. Are we going to take care of the folks who, through no fault of their own, sometimes contract very expensive childhood or premature diseases? Are we going to care for folks who don’t do everything they can to keep themselves healthy; who smoke, take drugs, eat unhealthy foods, refuse to stay fit or engage in risky and dangerous behavior? Are we going to take care of old folks who end up spending astronomical costs trying to eke out a few more years at the end of life or are we going to send them off to the “Soylent Green” factory? Obamacare attempted to address many of these questions, including emphasizing common sense preventative care.

White folks 55 and over and especially 65 and over spend more money on health care than black folks and statistically, significantly more than Hispanic and especially Asian Americans. Do we give a break on premiums to Asian and Hispanic policyholders for spending less? Are we going to honor the long held idea that insurance spreads the liabilities over a wide group of consumers? A lot of folks, especially healthy young people, who work hard at staying that way, don’t want to pay for those who don’t. Of the $3.5 trillion dollars we spend on health care, 32% goes to hospitals, 20% goes to doctors and clinics and about 15% goes for prescription drugs.

Where do we make the cuts? Before Obamacare was passed, I read a story that claimed 85% of hospitals, especially those in the rural red states that voted for Trump and the Republi-con’s in Congress who can’t wait to stamp out the ACA once and for all, were under severe financial duress. Because of generous campaign contributions, we know that most Republi-cons and pharma state Democrats will again refuse to force drug companies to negotiate fairly and ethically. And it’s already hard to find primary physicians willing to treat Medicare and Medicaid patients because of low reimbursement rates.

Healthcare is complicated; that’s why it took decades and more than 2,100 pages for the ACT and I think 10,000 additional pages of rules and regulations to finally get the ACA passed by the skin of it’s chiny-chin-chin. Most of those 2,100 pages are based on erstwhile Conservative Republican ideas, just like those that compose Massachusetts successful Romney-care. Many of those ideas were first proposed during the Eisenhower, Nixon and Regan administrations. But because the Republi-cons attached President Obama’s name to them, they all of a sudden became toxic solutions. Republican members of congress and Governors wanted to make Obama a one term President and did everything they could think of to make that happen, including opposing the expansion of Medicaid at every turn, even if it hurt poor folks in their own states.

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/10/us/politics/marco-rubio-obamacare-affordable-care-act.html?_r=0

In this Robert Pear December 9, 2015 New York Times Article, “Sen. Marco Rubio Quietly Undermines the Affordable Care Act,” he describes how Rubio, along with other Republican Senators “got a little-noticed health care provision slipped into a giant spending law last year (2015) that tangled up the Obama administration, sent tremors through health insurance markets and rattled confidence in the durability of President Obama’s signature health law.”

This legislation drastically cut the reimbursements for insurance companies in the first three years of the ACA.

The article revealed “Mr. Rubio’s efforts against the so-called risk corridor provision of the health law have hardly risen to the forefront of the race for the Republican presidential nomination, but his plan limiting how much the government can spend to protect insurance companies against financial losses has shown the effectiveness of quiet legislative sabotage.”

“The risk corridors were intended to help some insurance companies if they ended up with too many new sick people on their rolls and too little cash from premiums to cover their medical bills in the first three years under the health law. But because of Mr. Rubio’s efforts, the administration says it will pay only 13 percent of what insurance companies were expecting to receive this year. The payments were supposed to help insurers cope with the risks they assumed when they decided to participate in the law’s new insurance marketplaces.”

Republi-cons harangue about the escalating costs of Obamacare, but they are as much to blame because of their relentless obstruction and refusal to join with President Obama and the Democrats to improve the Act. Still, in spite of this opposition, the Kaiser Family Foundation reports that: “costs of premiums for employer covered health plans continued to moderate after the ACA was passed. Those plans rose by almost 70% from 2000 to 2005 but only 27% from 2010 to 2015 and slowed to 3% increases from 2015 to 2016.”

And their recent Kaiser Foundation Obamacare poll also found that: “majorities of Republicans, Democrats and independents alike say they favor:

Allowing young adults to stay on their parents’ insurance plans until age 26 (85% of the public, including 82% of Republicans);
Eliminating out-of-pocket costs for many preventive services (83% of the public, including 77% of Republicans);
Providing financial help to low- and moderate-income Americans who don’t get insurance through their jobs to help them purchase coverage (80% of the public, including 67% of Republicans);
Giving states the option of expanding their existing Medicaid programs to cover more uninsured low-income adults (80% of the public, including 67% of Republicans); and
Prohibiting insurance companies from denying coverage because of a person’s medical history (69% of the public, including 63% of Republicans).

“In contrast, a third (35%) of the public says they favor the law’s provision requiring that nearly all Americans have health coverage or pay a fine (63% have an unfavorable view). A majority of Democrats (57%) favor this provision but far fewer independents (30%) and Republicans (21%) do.”

“Support for the law’s requirement that employers with at least 50 workers offer health insurance or pay a fine is more mixed, with a majority of the public (60%) supporting it, including majorities of Democrats and independents. In contrast, just 45 percent of Republicans favor this provision.

Overall attitudes towards the Affordable Care Act are largely unchanged following the election: 45 percent of the public has an unfavorable view and 43 percent has a favorable view. In addition, the poll finds health care played a limited role in voters’ 2016 election decisions, with 8 percent of voters saying health care was the biggest factor in their vote.

As many say repeal would worsen their family’s health care costs as say it would improve

Americans are divided on how repeal would affect health care costs for them and their family, with nearly equal shares saying repealing the law would make costs worse (30%) as saying it would make costs better (27%). Another four in 10 say their health care costs would be about the same. Most also say that, under repeal, they would expect their quality of care and access to health insurance to remain about the same.

Importantly, Trump voters are much more likely to say repeal would help them personally. Half (52%) of those who supported Trump say the cost of health care for them and their family will get better under repeal, and many say the quality of their health care (39%) and their ability to get and keep health insurance (35%) would get better.

The poll also probes the public’s views of whether President-elect Trump’s health care policies would be bad or good for different groups of Americans. The public is more likely to predict “bad” results for the uninsured (43%), lower-income Americans (43%) and women (36%), and more likely to predict “good” results for wealthy Americans (39%).

Designed and analyzed by public opinion researchers at the Kaiser Family Foundation, the poll was conducted from November 15-21 among a nationally representative random digit dial telephone sample of 1,202 adults. Interviews were conducted in English and Spanish by landline (422) and cell phone (780). The margin of sampling error is plus or minus 3 percentage points for the full sample. For results based on subgroups, the margin of sampling error may be higher.”

Mr. Trump and the Republic-cons in Congress have painted themselves into a tight, bright corner. After January 20th, all eyes are on them to walk the walk instead of just talking the talk. They promised over and over and over that the ACA will destroy America as we know it and cause the loss of millions of jobs. Well, we’re still here and 25 million or more Americans are making appointments with their health care providers instead of showing up at emergency rooms with desperate health calamities. And instead of losing 800,000 jobs a month when Barack Obama took over, America has created more than 16 million jobs, more than all the G7 countries combined.

I know this is a lot of facts and figures to comprehend, but the most important ones for me are these numbers: After 9-11, we turned the whole world up-side down because of that terrorist attack. We invaded 2 countries, lost more than 6,000 young Americans, will have spent about $5 trillion dollars when the final bill comes due and we finally take care of all the 35,000 military folks injured in those campaigns. A couple of hundred thousand Iraq and Afghanistan people perished in those wars and we destabilized the entire Middle East, attempting to get revenge and justice for those 3,000 Americans killed on 9-11.

But before the ACA was passed, we lost between 22,000 and 25,000 Americans every single year just because they didn’t have health insurance. Just in the few years since President Obama signed that law and since almost 25 million American took advantage of the life saving legislation, 55,000 American lives have been saved. The Republi-cons who are jumping up and down waiting to dismantle Obamacare can’t in good conscience, ignore these numbers.

Before Obamacare, 45 million American had too much in common with poor folks in 3rd world countries and 65% of those filing bankruptcy, did so because of unaffordable medical expenses.

Any elected official who analyzes our health care system based on whats best for all Americans and not just for the special interests who contribute to their campaigns, must come to the conclusion that America, like the rest of the developed world, must transition to a single payer system before we bankrupt the treasury. Our government already pays more than 50% of the $3.5 trillion we spend on health care.

Even Mr. Trump realizes it’s the only viable alternative to this basically conservative Republican compromise called Obamacare. He came to that conclusion more than 15 years ago, probably based on the fact that when he signed the checks for his employees healthcare, he asked himself why he was sending almost 30% of those costs to the insurance companies. I’m sure he tried to figure out some way to pay the providers directly.

President Obama and the Democrats believed a public option was the best chance for the ACA to succeed. But the Republicans and some insurance company state Democrats in congress (probable based on a study that found a public option would have to be fazed in over a period of time), would not support that option. Many members of congress believed that pulling the rug out from under those who invested in the insurance industry and the large number of insurance company employees, some in their own states, could not be done overnight. But five or ten years from now, we will no doubt, have a single payer health care system.

Billionaire Trump and all the millionaires and billionaires he’s chosen for his cabinet have enough money to afford the best health care in the world. And every Republican Senator and Republican member of the House have the best taxpayer paid health care insurance America offers. I just can’t understand how these people can look at themselves in the mirror if they repeal life saving health insurance for 25 million poor folks? When all is said and done, does anyone believe that these Republi-cons in congress will try to provide or emphasize “Patient Protection” as their main legislative objective? If they eventually come up with a plan, I think an appropriate name might be the (IDCPUCA) Insurance and Drug Company Protection and Unaffordable Care Act, or Drumpfcare for short. This sticky Tarbaby will be hard to shake off.

For folks who wish to learn more about the complexities of the PPACA, please check out a book written in 2008 by the architect of Obamacare, Ezekiel Emmanuel, “Reinventing American Health Care: How the Affordable Care Act will Improve our Terribly Complex, Blatantly Unjust, Outrageously Expensive, Grossly Inefficient, Error Prone System.”

John Hanno, www.tarbabys.com

LA Times

Repealing Obamacare could be a matter of life or death for many Americans. Here are their voices

Michael Hiltzik Column January 9, 2017

For Julie Ross, the looming repeal of the Affordable Care Act isn’t an abstract political issue. It’s a life-or-death matter for her 4 1/2-year-old daughter, who was born with Down syndrome and a congenital heart condition and spent her first month in the neonatal intensive care unit.

In the pre-Affordable Care Act era, when insurers could impose lifetime limits on benefits, hers was $500,000. “She would have reached that in her first two weeks,” Ross says.

For Colleen Mondor, whose 15-year-old son was diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes at age 3 and controls it today with four visits a year to a pediatric endocrinologist, repeal would mean shutting down the aircraft leasing company that she and her husband started and finding a job with employer-paid insurance. “So instead of building our own company, we’ll be taking jobs away from people who need them.”

Senators say, without health insurance you can just go to the ER for care. For my daughter, that would be too late. She’ll die without these protections. — Julie Ross of Dallas

Pre-Obamacare, every insurer she applied to for coverage asked about her family’s medical histories. When she told them about her son’s diabetes, as she tweeted earlier this month: “That was the end of the conversation, every. single. time.”

Steve Waxman, 59, an independent filmmaker in Miami, had a heart attack before Obamacare was enacted, but he had insurance. If the Affordable Care Act is repealed and protections for those with preexisting conditions are eroded, he’d be red-tagged as a potentially costly repeat patient. “Life is a preexisting medical condition,” he observes. “Only in America can you go bankrupt because of it.”

On Obamacare repeal, GOP ideology is colliding with reality

David Zasloff, 55, of North Hollywood is still recovering from a stroke he suffered in 2015. Without the Affordable Care Act, treatment “would have cost everything I had, including my niece’s college fund,” he says. Now he has a Blue Shield silver plan via Covered California, the state’s Obamacare exchange, and pays $144 a month to cover most of his treatment and medication.

Ross, Mondor, Waxman and Zasloff, and countless more like them, live in abject fear that Republicans will follow through on their determination to repeal the Affordable Care Act, without passing a replacement that will maintain the crucial protections the law has given them. Obamacare’s critics have painted a picture of the law that is wholly negative: that it’s a “disaster,” that it’s in a “death spiral,” that it’s caused a “struggle” for families that use it. To people not directly affected by the Affordable Care Act — the 85% of Americans who get their coverage from their employers or public programs such as Medicare— these assertions seem plausible enough, especially since they’ve been repeated incessantly for more than six years. Repeat a big lie often and loudly enough, and you don’t need evidence.

House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) often repeats a mantra that “Obamacare has failed the American people.” But a Ways and Means Committee fact sheet he cites as evidence doesn’t include a single quote from an Obamacare enrollee. Not one.

The people who know the truth — those whose medical histories would make them uninsurable in a non-Obamacare marketplace, who would face bankruptcy if they faced a major medical need, whose condition would go unmanaged, or who would be forced to give up their dream of creating their own business and working for themselves — their voices are seldom heard. So we’re going to present a few.

Some are insurance customers who struggled with coverage — not from Obamacare, but in a pre-Affordable Care Act market in which carriers looked for any reason to reject applicants, limit their benefits or impose costly surcharges. They struggled with high deductibles, with high-risk pools such as those that Ryan says could easily accommodate Americans with chronic conditions. They know he’s wrong. Some took advantage of the freedom the Affordable Care Act brought them to start their own businesses, because now they could give up their employer-paid insurance without fear of going without coverage. And they know the frustration that comes from going unheard on Capitol Hill.

Julie Ross, 41, runs a home business in the Dallas area with her husband Mark, a commercial artist. She home-schools her daughters, 4 1/2-year-old Niko and her 7-year-old sister. Julie suffers from asthma, a condition that relegated her to a high-risk pool before the Affordable Care Act. Before Niko was born, she told me, she and her husband kept separate health plans, so that her own condition wouldn’t affect the cost of his coverage.

Niko’s conditions require constant pro-active management. “I hear senators say, without health insurance you can just go to the ER and get care,” she says. “For my daughter, that would be too late. She’ll die without these protections.”

Ross has reached out to Texas Sens. Ted Cruz and John Cornyn, both Republicans, and her congressman, Rep. Pete Sessions (R-Dallas). The offices of Sessions and Cruz won’t return her calls. Cornyn’s staff met with her, but parroted his idea of giving families such as hers a tax credit to buy insurance, but it wouldn’t be enough.

“When I talk to Republicans, I tell them we’re everything you want us to be,” she says. “We’re self-employed, we’re pro-life.” But if she lost the access to coverage she gets from the Affordable Care Act, to replace it for her daughter, “I would have to get a divorce from my husband and move into Section 8 housing and go onto Medicaid and welfare. We are living in total fear.”

Colleen Mondor, a pilot and writer, is 48 and runs an aircraft leasing firm in Alaska and the Pacific Northwest with her husband, Ward Rosadiuk, 53. The family’s healthcare nightmare started 12 years ago when their toddler came down with a cold and didn’t get better. He was diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes.

“That changed everything,” Mondor recalls. The family got shunted into a high-risk pool, where the deductible was $10,000 per person and the coverage was sharply constrained. “The high-risk pool is a party no one wants to attend,” she says. “It was absolute misery. We had no control over which doctors we could see, and the deductible was ridiculous.”

Frustrated about a debate about Obamacare that seemed utterly irrelevant to her situation, a few days after New Year’s, Mondor posted a tweet about the difficulties facing small business owners post-repeal. What followed was a torrent of retweets and replies. “I thought I was alone, but I discovered it was not just me,” she says.

Mondor’s teenage son has received first-rate care for his incurable disease thanks to the family’s Affordable Care Act-protected health plan. But pondering the GOP proposals to repeal the law has become a dominating distraction. “I’m not thinking about how to grow my business or get new clients,” she told me, “but about what [Vice President-elect] Mike Pence or Paul Ryan are up to.”

Affordable Care Act plans aren’t perfect. They’re often more expensive and less generous than the health plans offered by big employers. But for people without access to such plans, they’re a lifeline. People such as Donald Goudie of Irvine, 68, who was forced into retirement ahead of schedule when his department at IBM was downsized in 2014. IBM gave him six more months of company insurance, but after that, his wife, Sandra, needed coverage for her chronic rheumatoid arthritis.

The Goudies knew from having tested the pre-Obamacare individual market a few years ago that Sandra, now 63, would be uninsurable without the law’s protection for preexisting conditions. So would Donald, who has a cardiac condition. Because of the combination of a premium increase and a reduction of their eligibility for Affordable Care Act subsides, Sandra’s premium will rise to more than $500 a month this year from about $150 last year. “That’s a big jump, but still affordable,” he says. But that’s only if Congressional Republicans don’t tamper with Social Security and Medicare, on which the couple depends and which also are in the GOP’s crosshairs.

“We’ve gone from our retirement with enough money saved and supplemented with Social Security,” he says, “to wondering if we have enough money to pay for the basics.”

Do the Republicans who talk so blithely about how Obamacare has “failed the American people” and how they will provide “relief” — despite not having any “relief” plan in place despite six years of promising one — have any idea what their plans mean to millions of Americans facing the challenge of health coverage in their daily lives? The evidence is that they don’t, because they don’t talk to the targets of their plans.

Those whose lives hang in the balance of the debate over the Affordable Care Act are beginning to speak up. They’re independent business owners. Parents with desperately ill children. Adults with chronic diseases. Workers who have been laid off. Families for whom an uninsured injury or diagnosis would mean bankruptcy. The Affordable Care Act helps them, and could help even more if Republicans in Congress cared enough about them to make it better.

But to know that, they’d have to listen. Michael Hiltzik

Yahoo Health January 7, 2016

75% of Americans don’t want Obamacare repealed without an alternative

Melody Hahm

President Barack Obama challenged Republicans on Friday to present a feasible alternative to Obamacare instead of blindly adopting the “repeal and delay” strategy.

And it turns out the vast majority of Americans may agree with Obama.

Only one in five Americans supports flat-out repealing Obama’s 2010 Affordable Care Act, according to a new survey conducted by the nonpartisan Kaiser Family Foundation. Of the 1,204 US adults surveyed, 75% either oppose the repeal entirely or want to keep the law until the details of a replacement plan emerge.

Americans, however unhappy they may be with Obamacare, would rather know their alternatives before tossing their coverage — however costly — completely out the window.

This isn’t the only poll to suggest Americans aren’t on board with killing Obamacare now. Republican Congresswoman — and a passionate Obamacare foe — Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.) took to Twitter (TWTR) on Wednesday to conduct her own poll on Obamacare, asking whether people supported the repeal of Obamacare, likely anticipating that many would vote to repeal the legislation. Nearly 8,000 people voted and the overwhelming majority — 84% — voted no.

President Obama considers the ACA one of his administration’s hallmark achievements, and has been spending his last days in office urging fellow Democrats not to “rescue” Republicans by helping them pass replacement measures.

Though there have been vocal and vehement opponents to the ACA, including Sen. Mike Enzi (R-Wyo.), House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.), President-elect Donald Trump and Vice President-elect Mike Pence, the law’s opponents have yet to come up with a replacement.

Apart from its impact on consumers, the act of repealing the ACA without a replacement would also have dire business consequences. The nonpartisan Committee for a Responsible Budget published a report this week warning the full repeal of the ACA would cost up to $350 billion over the next decade and leave 23 million people uninsured.

The report suggests “any changes to the ACA should reduce, not increase, the unsustainable growth in the federal debt. Savings from repealing parts of the ACA must be large enough to not only finance repeal of any of ACA’s offsets, but also to pay for whatever ‘replace’ legislation is put forward.”

Meanwhile, 50 states would suffer job losses and sharp reductions in business output without Obamacare, predicted a separate study conducted by the nonpartisan Commonwealth Fund and GWU’s Milken Institute School of Public Health. In total, scrapping Obamacare could cost 3 million people jobs and trigger economic disruption, according to that study.

The report’s lead author, Leighton Ku, explained to NPR why the ACA is so tied up with the larger economy: “The payments you make to health care then become income for workers and income for other businesses. And this spreads out. Health care is almost a fifth of the US economy, so as you begin to change health care, there are repercussions that go across all sectors.”

Even medical professionals, insurers and hospital groups have been coalescing to argue they need to see a replacement for ACA before it’s repealed. The American Medical Association (AMA) wrote a letter to congressional leaders pointing out that though the health care system has ample room for improvement, “policymakers should lay out for the American people, in reasonable detail, what will replace current policies” so that patients can make informed decisions.

We’ll find out soon enough whether senators are listening to their constituents when the vote hits the floor next week.

Melody Hahm is a writer at Yahoo Finance, covering entrepreneurship, technology and real estate. Read more from Melody here & follow her on Twitter @melodyhahm.

Yahoo Health, January 7, 2017

Obamacare repeal costs: 3 million jobs gone, $1.5 trillion in lost gross state product

Dan Mangan

Spending less by getting rid of Obamacare could end up costing a whole lot more.

Up to 3 million jobs in the health sector and other areas would be lost if certain key provisions of the Affordable Care Act are repealed by Congress, a new report said Thursday.

At the same time, ending those provisions could lead to a whopping $1.5 trillion reduction in gross state product from 2019 through 2023, according to the study.

“Repealing key parts of the ACA could trigger massive job losses and a slump in consumer and business spending that would affect all sectors of state economies,” said Leighton Ku, director of the Center for Health Policy Research and professor at the Milken Institute School of Public Health at George Washington University.

Ku is the lead author of the report, which was issued by the Milken Institute and the Commonwealth Fund.

The report comes as President-elect Donald Trump and the new Congress are moving toward repealing parts of the ACA through the budget reconciliation process.

“The immediate and most visible effect of ACA repeal would be the loss of coverage and access to care for millions of people who have gained insurance because of the law,” said Sara Collins, vice president for health-care coverage and access at the Commonwealth Fund.

“This study points to even larger potential economic effects that would be detrimental to the health and well-being of millions more,” Collins said.

The estimate of job and state product losses are based on a scenario in which Congress defunds federal subsidies that most Obamacare customers receive to help lower their monthly insurance premium costs, and also gets rid of funding to cover adults who became newly eligible for Medicaid under the ACA.

Repealing both provisions would save the federal government $140 billion in health-care spending, the report found. And as that funding spigot dried up, it would lead to job losses and a drop in gross state product, the report said.

The study notes that most of the federal funding for Obamacare flows to hospitals, health clinics, pharmacies and other medical providers, who in turn hire and pay staff and purchase goods and services.

The biggest job losses would occur in California, with 334,000 lost jobs, Florida, with 181,000 lost jobs, Texas, with 175,000 lost positions, and Pennysylvania, New York and Ohio, each of which would lose more than 125,000 jobs, the report estimates.

One-third of the job losses would be in the health-care sector, according to the report. The remaining two-thirds of job losses are expected to come from construction, real estate, retail, finance and insurance.

As with other reports estimating the effects of Obamacare repeal, the economic downsides could be mitigated, or completely offset by a replacement plan for the ACA.

But so far, Trump and the Republican-led Congress have not committed to such a plan. So researchers have been unable to estimate the ultimate effects of a replacement plan. Dan Mangan

The Daily Kos

Dear Congressional GOP: Don’t Say You Weren’t Warned. (including your own experts)

By Brainwrap, Tuesday January 3, 2017

A definitely-NOT-comprehensive selection of opinions regarding the Republican Party’s imminent “Repeal & Delay” strategy for the Affordable Care Act:

What outside experts are saying about repeal and delay:

American Academy of Actuaries: “Repealing major provisions of the ACA would raise immediate concerns that individual market enrollment would decline, causing the risk pools to deteriorate and premiums to become less affordable. Even if the effective date of a repeal is delayed, the threat of a deterioration of the risk pool could lead additional insurers to reconsider their participation in the individual market.” (Letter to Congress 12/7/16)

Nick Gerhart (Iowa Republican Insurance Commissioner): “If you’re going to repeal this, I hope that there’s a replacement stapled to that bill.” (NPR, 11/21/16)

Governor Jay Inslee and Mike Kreidler (Washington Democratic Governor and Insurance Commissioner): “Decisions to cut funding before developing a replacement puts the health of Washingtonians at great risk through undermining and destabilizing their health care.” (Letter to Congress)

Sabrina Corlette (Georgetown University): “The idea that you can repeal the Affordable Care Act with a two- or three-year transition period and not create market chaos is a total fantasy.” (New York Times, 12/3/16)

Michael Cannon (Cato Institute): “What they are planning to do is absolutely insane.” (TPM, 12/18/16)

(Note: Michael Cannon, one of the architects of the infamous King v. Burwell case, by his own admission, hates the ACA more than anyone else on the planet)

Larry Levitt (Kaiser Family Foundation):

“The individual insurance market could collapse in between a repeal vote and a replacement vote” (TPM, 11/29/16).
“Any significant delay between repeal of the ACA and clarity over what will replace it would likely lead insurers to exit the marketplaces in droves” (Huffington Post, 12/1/16).
“Republicans are in a bit of box here, because the individual mandate is an anathema to them, but repealing the individual mandate immediately while keeping the protections for people with pre-existing conditions would likely lead to immediate chaos in the insurance market” (TPM, 11/29/16).

Stuart Butler (formerly Heritage Foundation), Alice Rivlin (former CBO and OMB Director), Loren Adler (Brookings Institution): “If replacing the ACA is truly the goal, though, repealing it first without a replacement in hand is almost certainly a disastrous way to start. First, a reconciliation bill would likely destabilize the individual market and very possibly cause it to collapse in some regions of the country during the interim period before any replacement is designed…If no replacement plan materializes, the hollowed-out individual market – for people without access to employer-provided or public coverage – could be left in shambles.” (Brookings, 12/13/16).

Topher Spiro (Center for American Progress): “Their strategy of repealing now and replacing later was designed to provide false assurance that everything would be okay. Now there’s a growing awareness that in fact this strategy would cause a lot of chaos and perhaps even collapse the market before a replacement plan can be put into place.” (TPM, 11/29/16).

Robert Laszewski (Health Care Consultant and ACA Critic): “Republicans are being awfully naive. They seem to be ignoring the risks in the transition period.” (Vox, 12/1/16).

Former Senator Tom Daschle: “It sends all the wrong messages to the private sector…You gotta have the replacement before you have the repeal.” Politico Pulsecheck Podcast, 12/1/16).

Joshua Blackman (Professor and former Cato Institute Scholar): “Passing it by itself is politically expedient, but would create a series of headaches very quickly for the Republicans.” (TPM, 12/18/16).

Linda Blumberg, Matthew Buettgens, John Holahan (Urban Institute): “If Congress partially repeals the ACA with a reconciliation bill like that vetoed in January 2016…Significant market disruption would occur…Many, if not most, insurers are unlikely to participate in Marketplaces in 2018.” (Urban, 12/7/16).

Judith Solomon (Center for Budget and Policy Priorities): “Many people likely would lose coverage before any Republican health plan was fully implemented.” (CPBB, 12/5/16).

America’s Military: One of The Largest Socialist Organizations in The World

Daily Kos

Message to my Trump Supporting Facebook Friends

By Mommadoc December 27, 2016

OK Facebook friends, time to block my news-feed. Or unfriend me.

If you’ve ever posted anything remotely racist or misogynistic or promoted gun violence or made fun of political correctness or promulgated lies about President Obama or former Secretary of State Clinton, then I blocked your news feed long ago.

I am one of those “elite liberals” that you got back at when you voted for Donald Trump.

Yes, I think that a person who is running for President should be able to clearly explain his or her policies. And should actually have some policies. And know how the government works. And care how the government works.

And have a working knowledge of world geography and foreign policy.

I think that the person who runs the most powerful country on the planet should take that job very fucking seriously.

I think that “supporting our military” should mean that we do not send our brave young men and women to needless and endless wars. Do you realize that we’ve been in Afghanistan for 16 years now? And for what?

I think that our country has an imperialistic foreign policy and that often times we reap what we sow. I think that the architects of the Iraq War (Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Rice) committed war crimes and have the blood of all of our slain and maimed soldiers and innocent civilians on their hands.

I think that Guantanamo Bay is a bloody stain on our national character.

That “People kill people, guns don’t kill people” line is most back-ass-ward bullshit that I’ve ever heard. People with guns kill people. And not everyone should have a gun. And certainly not an arsenal. And no I am not naïve enough to think that restrictions on gun access will prevent all violent gun deaths. But for fuck’s sake, can we start somewhere?

I think that words matter. Perhaps you were happier in a world where kids were called “retards” and some boys were called “faggots,” but I would rather live in a civilized and polite world.

Maybe you will blast “Merry Christmas” as loud as you can, but I will keep saying “Happy Holidays,” because that is more inclusive. As in not purposefully leaving anyone out. As in being kind. As in just fucking acknowledging that your reality is not everyone’s reality. And that by acknowledging someone else’s reality, that yours is not in jeopardy. What are you all afraid of anyway? Is a mass of Muslim immigrants going to take your Christmas away?

I’m more afraid of the mass of Christians that are trying to teach kids in Texas that creationism is real.

I think that those of you who put “Blue Lives Matter” signs on your lawn ought to be ashamed of yourselves for thinking for one minute that there is no racism in this country and that young black men being gunned down in the street by police is not a problem.

And for those of you who were worried that life as we knew it was coming to an end when Bernie Sanders suggested universal health care and free college education, look to yourselves first. Guess what? Those state universities that you send your kids to? They are subsidized by taxpayers. Why do you think they are so much cheaper that private colleges? That is SOCIALISM!

Are your parents on Medicare? SOCIALISM!

Do your parents collect Social Security? SOCIALISM!

Do your police officers, firefighters, prison guards have benefits and a pension? SOCIALISM!

Why is it that when it benefits you, it’s not socialism?

I think that everyone, from birth to death, should have access to basic health care.That means I believe in a single payer system. I think that the wealthiest country in the history of the world can afford this.

The Affordable Care Act, the compromise between leaving 20 million people with no care and a single payer plan, is flawed, but it is morally bereft to overturn it. Those members of the House who voted to repeal it so many times should have been spending that time coming up with a better system.

And do any of you understand corporate welfare? Here’s an example: You shop at Wal-Mart because it’s cheap. Wal-Mart is the biggest employer in the country. It does not pay its employees enough for them to live on. So some of them go on welfare. And many of them have to use the Affordable Care Act to get health insurance. Who funds welfare? Taxpayers. Who funds the ACA? Taxpayers.

So Wal-Mart makes a huge profit but doesn’t pay its employees a living wage so taxpayers pay to support them. Still want to buy your goods at Wal-Mart?

And yes, there should be a minimum wage that is livable. How could you be against that?

So yes, I’m an elite liberal. I buy organic foods when I can because I know that pesticides are harmful to the earth and I care about preserving the planet for the next generation. I think that clean water and clean air is worth preserving and that there have to be strong laws to protect them. I recycle. I reuse plastic bags because the thought of all of the plastic trash I’ve personally created in my 55 years on earth makes me sick. I try to use polite and inclusive language because I care about others. I don’t believe in war. I believe we should do everything we can to prevent violence. I believe that health care is a basic human right. And that women’s rights are human rights.

I even listen to NPR.

I thought George Bush was a really horrible president.

But, you really got me this time.

You elected Trump. Look up the DSM-IV criteria for Narcissistic Personality Disorder and you will find that he meets all the criteria. Look up the criteria for ADD as well and you have your man. He does not read about issues because he lacks the attention span. He speaks at a third grade level.

He brags about his crimes against women. He founded the fake Trump University. He has innumerable conflicts of interest. He is so overwhelmed he has to have his kids help him.

His education secretary nominee doesn’t believe in public education. The EPA nominee has sued the EPA before. His VP believes that gays should have conversion therapy. The Labor Secretary nominee is anti-labor. The nominee for Ambassador to Israel has views which are guaranteed to inflame the situation in the Middle East. And who knows who he’ll nominate to the Supreme Court. He is the President Elect of the FUCKING UNITED STATES OF AMERICA but he is watching Saturday Night Live and tweeting about it.

HE DOESN’T KNOW ANYTHING.

In what way could the pussy-grabbing President elect with untreated ADD and a personality disorder who tells more lies than any politician in modern history possibly make this country better? Yes, hatred and stupidity reign, thanks to you.

Good job. You showed me this time.

America’s Military: One of The Largest Socialist Organizations in The World

December 27, 2016, John Hanno, www.tarbabys.com

Couldn’t have said it any better Mommadoc. The only small thing I would add, is that our military, yes that same military that Trump repeatedly trashed during the campaign and also refused to support by not paying federal taxes for decades, is one of the largest and most respected socialist organizations in the world. I spent 3 years in the Army serving my country. After we got up in the morning and attended reveille, we went to the mess hall to eat a free home cooked breakfast. You then assembled for work, unless you were sick or had a toothache, and instead went to a fully paid sick call clinic or dentist. You ate as much home cooked food as you wanted for lunch at the same mess hall. After work you ate another home cooked meal for dinner and took some back to the barracks for a snack. If you needed something at the PX, you paid subsidized prices for everything. If you needed your clothes laundered or cleaned, you put them in your laundry bag, and someone from the quartermaster service battery picked them up. A few days later you picked them up all cleaned, washed, starched and pressed. If you wanted entertainment, you went to the EM or NCO club and listened to free live musical groups and drank subsidized alcoholic beverages or went to the subsidized movie theater. You then went to sleep in a nice clean bed paid for by the generous American taxpayers. You then started all over the next day. If you were an NCO like myself and you had a automobile, you enjoyed subsidized auto insurance. You also had paid life insurance and 30 days of paid vacation a year. You could go to school during service, if you had time, or you could wait until you got out to enjoy fully paid college education at a state university. Some military personal also get a stipend while they’re attending school. You don’t make a lot of money compared to civilian life but that’s the contract you make to serve your country. And you’re on call 24/7 if necessary. But you also have paid medical care for life if your income is low enough. You serve your country and your country serves you in return. Our Federal government contracts with medical providers, drug companies and other companies for reduced costs for military personal, their families and the Veterans Administration. Socialism at it’s best. Something these Republi-cons just can’t understand; the American government and it’s citizens working together for a common goal. John Hanno, www.tarbabys.com

“Dear Mr. Trump: It’s Not Too Late to Do The Right Thing”

December 16, 2016, John Hanno

“Dear Mr. Trump: It’s Not Too Late to Do the Right Thing”

If you were to join in and demand a thorough investigation of the Russian hacking and interference in this incredibly rancorous election and in particular, how it may have benefited you and hurt Hillary and other congressional candidates in battleground states Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin and Florida, there’s still a chance you wouldn’t have to be inaugurated on January 20th.

In spite of overwhelming evidence by our intelligence agencies, now including even FBI director Comey, you still will not admit the Russians, led by President Putin, have attacked an underpinning of U.S. Democracy. It was a 21st Century act of war. If you hope to be the legitimate leader and defender of the our great Democracy, you have to acknowledge that this was not a free and fair election. Stand up for America and not just for your own personal business interests and your party.

You were clearly the benefactor of this interference this time. But who knows who or what will be his next target. Putin, who many think is the richest person in the world and clearly vindictive enough to put in jeopardy, the interests and reputation of the Russian people just to settle a personal vendetta against Hillary Clinton, must be taken seriously. If you or your party were not complicit in this cyber attack, then you must join in the investigation and postpone the electoral college and also the inauguration. If you remain silent, your entire stay in the White House will be diminished by this cloud (pun intended).

You could say that because, as you’ve said before, the electoral college no longer represents what the founding fathers had in mind 240 years ago, and because Hillary has more than 2.7 million (2%) more popular votes than you did, that she should really be the next president.

You can use the excuse that because operatives in the Republican party have systematically disenfranchised democratic voters, minorities, women, students and senior citizens, in every state controlled by Republican Governors and legislatures, by requiring onerous voter IDs, by closing polling places in minority neighborhoods, by restricting early and weekend voting, by kicking democratic leaning voters off the voter roll with the cross-checking scheme, by the elimination of felon’s voting rights, even after they’ve served their time and by possibly even manipulating the voting counts of electronic voting machines, the only fair thing to do would be to allow Hillary her rightful place as our President.

And coupled with gerrymandering, hacking by the Russians, FBI Director Comey’s shenanigans and the latest anti-democratic peril, far right and Russian propagandists spreading fake news stories, the most patriotic thing you can do to “Make America Great Again” is to concede the election to Hillary, someone who has probably aimed for the presidency since she was a little girl.

And by crowning the first woman president in American History, just think how that would rehabilitate your reputation with women. Since you and a great majority of Americans and even your own party didn’t expect you to win, you could just go back to building the Trump brand, something you have worked and strove for since you were also very young, and something I’m sure you plan on passing on to your children and grandchildren.

Lets face it, you place a lot of importance on your image and appearance, but after four years in the hardest, most stressful job in the world, at seventy four, you will probably look like a doddering old man by 2020. Just look at President Obama. When he started in 2009, he was a young man with dark hair, now he looks like Uncle Remus.

But I believe that’s not your worst dilemma. You claim that you will turn your businesses over to your children. Most experts believe that’s just not feasible or legal. The potential conflict of interests, with a President of the United States owning prominent properties in a dozen or more countries around the world, countries that you must deal with as leader of America, and not CEO of Trump Brands, is too implausible to comprehend. All your hotels, residential properties and golf courses will have to be sold.

As President of the most powerful country, which is often the world’s policeman, arbiter and protector, you will be the face of American hegemony, aggression, transgression, imperialism, invasion and any other word anti American forces use to describe our incursion into other countries businesses. Every instance where you must make the tough decisions to send in the special forces or bomb something will have implications for everything belonging to you, your family and to anyone affiliated with the Trump Brand. And those decisions simply can’t be subject to potential ramifications to your business interests.

All those properties with the 100 ft tall stainless steel Trump signs will be the new American embassies, the new potential Benghazi’s. There will be a big glaring target on all of those properties. If some evildoer has a beef with America or with some decision you end up making, they may just find your properties an easy target for retaliation.

The dozens of Trump branded properties don’t have round the clock security forces like the White House, the Pentagon or even American embassies. They’ll be sitting ducks for every terrorist and crackpot. And even if you decide to divest and sell all your properties, the new owners will certainly have to remove any semblance of the Trump Brand. On January 20th, if you’re sworn in as the 45th President of the United States, the Trump Brand will surely cease to exist.

Can you even imagine what would have happened if past presidents had their names plastered on as many properties as you do. What would have happened if there were prominent “BUSH” or “OBAMA” logos displayed on buildings when they were prosecuting the wars and military actions in the Middle East?

And on top of that, you’ve raised the stakes for terrorists when you declared during the election that, “Donald J. Trump is calling for a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the country.” And many far right and Republican zealots have tried to portray the war on terrorism as a religious Christian war against Islam or portray radical terrorism, as Islam’s war on Christianity. Because so many on the right repeatedly demonized President Obama and Hillary for refusing to label those evildoers as “Radical Islamic Terrorists,” they left no room for moderation. Your own words during the election only amplified that demagoguery.

Who in their right mind would go anywhere near one of your properties, especially hotels, resorts or residences, when you take over America’s war on terrorism from President Obama? All of us can remember when the President stood before the world and announced that they had captured and killed Osama bin laden. What would have happened if he had vulnerable properties all around the world? What will happen if one day you have to announce that you’ve killed a top leader of ISIS or Al Qaeda? Will you have to send troops to lock down all of your properties, to protect your Mar a Lago Mansion, your Trump Towers in Manhattan, the Trump Tower in my hometown Chicago or the new Trump International Hotel near the White House? You may need your own military force. Will the American taxpayer have to pay for this military security force? And how would the residents and neighbors like being under siege?

And that’s not the only Presidential decision that could have unintended consequences. How about when you sign the bill into law, which Speaker Ryan and the Republican zealots in congress are concocting, to end or privatize Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. You promised senior citizens that you wouldn’t attack those popular programs. They may be angry enough to take a dump in the lobby of one of your prized hotels.

What happens when you pull the rug out from under the 20 million folks who finally have insurance thanks to Obama-care? And when you side with all your fossil fuel buddies against the farmers who depend on bio-fuel subsidies, you might just see a viral video of some farmer using his tractor to dump a load of manure on the front lawn, or using a manure spreader to spray the front door of, one of your exclusive properties.

And you couldn’t even imagine what someone might do to one of your golf courses when the “deplorables” find out you were feeding them a line of bull, after failing to deliver on all the insane promises you made during the election. Your golf courses might look like the Bushwood Golf course in Caddyshack after Bill Murray’s Carl Spackler and the gopher got done blowing it up.

And as an employer and union adversary of thousands of workers and an investor in the fossil fuel industry, there’s potentially hundreds of conflicts of interests concerning virtually every one of your cabinet level departments and nominations, especially those nominees with ties to Putin. Your families business dealings will be under constant and intense scrutiny as long as you’re in the White House.

I guess you have to decide how bad you really want to be president or how badly you want to preserve the Trump Brand and legacy. You canceled the press conference you scheduled with your children on December 15th, to explain how you will deal with your businesses. I think you now realize that separating your business interests and the responsibilities of being President is complicated and consequential. For America’s sake, I hope you make the correct decision.

Article from The Hill, by Ross Rosenfeld, Contributor, 11-22-16

“No, Trump did not win ‘fair and square'”

The problem with many liberals is that they simply don’t know when they should be outraged.

Since the disgusting and destructive presidential election, many pundits, conservative and liberal alike, have remarked that Donald Trump won the election “fair and square.”

They state it with tremendous authority, as if it’s some unquestionable tenet of any election discussion: “Well, we can’t argue that he won it fair and square.” Even Bill Maher and David Axelrod agreed on this point on Maher’s most recent show.

There’s just one problem with this argument: It’s nonsense.

Trump only won the election fair and square if you have no idea what either “fair” or “square” means.

This is not simply liberal sour grapes, though I’m sure many Trump supporters and self-defining “open-minded” liberals will characterize it as such.

First off, once all of the votes are tabulated, it appears that Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton will beat Trump in the popular vote — the only vote that should count —by about 2 million votes.

Sadly, none of these votes truly matter due to our ridiculous Electoral College system, which we’re the only country on Earth to employ.

Of course, many Trump supporters will cry out against this by claiming that Trump would’ve campaigned differently had it been the popular vote that counted.

Maybe, but, obviously, Clinton would’ve done so as well, and probably could’ve racked up even more votes in cities, especially those in states that she didn’t bother to campaign in because the Electoral College gives such an inordinate advantage to rural areas.

Generally, voter turnout tends to be considerably lower in solidly Democratic or Republican-leaning bastions, such as New York and California, where approximately 52.4 percent and 53.8 percent of eligible voters turned out, respectively, or Texas (51.1 percent) and Oklahoma (52.1 percent) (statistics from The Election Project).

More competitive states like Florida (65.1 percent), Ohio (64.5 percent) and New Hampshire (70.3 percent) tend to have much higher participation rates — a definite argument against the Electoral College. (In fact, the U.S. recently ranked 31 out of 35 Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development nations when it came to voter participation.)

So while Trump would’ve stood to garner more votes in conservative states if the Electoral College didn’t exist, given that Clinton’s lead in big blue states was often bigger than Trump’s in big red states, the overall likelihood is that a straight popular vote would’ve increased Clinton’s popular vote lead.

Even Trump himself has acknowledged that the Electoral College makes no sense. In 2012, he called it a “disaster for a democracy.”

More recently, he told “60 Minutes” that he’d rather see a straight vote.

(Of course, in typical Trump fashion, he followed that two days later with praise for the very same institution, tweeting out, “The Electoral College is actually genius in that it brings all states, including the smaller ones, into play. Campaigning is much different!”)

No one can seriously argue that the Electoral College is not a severely antidemocratic hindrance and that it should be abolished. But that is just the tip of the iceberg.

There’s little doubt that Clinton’s popular vote tally would’ve been millions more had it not been for several other factors: the Supreme Court’s ruling in Shelby v. Holder, which allowed 868 polling stations to close throughout the South; voter ID laws that are especially cumbersome to the poor; the purging of voter rolls based on cross-checking and the elimination of convicts’ voting rights, even after they’ve served their time; Wiki Leaks dumps; excessive voting lines intended to suppress votes (in 2012, for instance, the average wait time across Florida was 45 minutes); and the shenanigans of one James B. Comey, FBI director. (Does anyone doubt that this last one alone was enough to swing the election?)

Many liberals — in typical “blame ourselves” fashion — have consistently repeated the notion that Clinton lost because she didn’t inspire enough people to come out and vote. And there are indeed legitimate complaints to be logged in that regard. After all, she’s likely to finish with about 2 million or so less votes than Obama did in 2012.

But how many votes would Obama have received if he had been forced to contend with the FBI, Wiki Leaks, Russian hackers and a media set on promoting a nonsensical false equivalency for the purpose of improving ratings?

The truth is that our so-called democracy is more of pseudo-democracy, with ridiculously gerrymandered districts, large-scale voter suppression tactics, unequal representation, an Electoral College system that disregards the popular will of the people, and fake news sources that play to echo chambers and voter ignorance.

And although Trump succeeded without it, the ability of rich donors and corporations to pour money into elections should not be discounted either; nor should the corruption caused by the close association of Congress and K Street — both of which Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and others have rightfully decried.

Yes, for all the things you can say about this election and our system in general, the one thing you can’t say is that it operates in a manner which is “fair and square.” Unless by “square” you mean that it squares with the wishes of the Republican leadership.

The question then remains: What can be done?

I’ve heard many liberals argue that nothing can be done — that the peaceful transfer of power and the continuity of government are the most important aspects of our democracy. But they’re wrong. The most important aspect of our democracy is the democracy part: the voting. And if we don’t protect that — if we don’t fight for it — the rest isn’t worth much.

It now appears that change will not come through the Supreme Court. And the prospect of passing a constitutional amendment to fix the Electoral College and the other voting issues I’ve enumerated is extremely unlikely without a wide-scale national movement. The same is true for the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact.

We need that type of movement. We need protests. We need criticism. We need emails and phone calls to members of Congress. We need a news media that is responsible and that addresses these issues on a daily basis. We need to show our dismay in a very public way.

Ordinarily — in the past — I would’ve always had the greatest respect for the office of the president. Even presidents I did not agree with, I would’ve treated with respect. I would’ve never, if in their presence, have considered turning my back on them or not addressing them as “Mr. President.”

But that’s exactly what I think we should now do. Any American who objects not only to the things that Trump represents, but to the fact that our democratic institutions have largely been undermined, should refuse to show this president — and any president who does not win the popular vote, for that matter — any respect. Because, while we must accept the reality that he is in fact our president now, there is no rule that says we must revere him.

That is how you make your voice heard.

This does not mean that you should not pay your taxes (which support our military) or that you should disobey the rule of law.

But it does mean that you should turn your back on the president; that you should refuse to stand when he enters a room; and that you should refuse to call him “Mr. President.”

It means that Democrats in leadership should do everything they can to stop him from infringing on the rights of our citizens, and that, in the Senate, they should refuse to approve any Supreme Court justices and stop Republicans from getting any of their projects passed — through protests, filibusters and other procedural measures until election reform occurs.

It means that members of the House should emulate their efforts of this past June and engage in sit-ins and other demonstrations to bring Republicans to the table.

Of course, such tactics would bear consequences. The Democrats would be accused of undermining the very republic that they seek to defend.

But it must be kept in mind that these types of things have already been occurring. Our Congress is remarkably inefficient, and Republicans have set plenty of precedent when it comes to obstruction, making it a general policy to strike down or delay practically every reasonable attempt at legislation and every appointment attempted by President Obama, including refusing to take a vote in the Senate on Supreme Court nominee Merrick Garland, whom many Republicans had previously praised.

Despite Republicans’ insistence that Trump should be given a chance, they never gave Obama much of one, did they? Whatever he achieved, he achieved despite them, not because of any real willingness to cooperate.

Still, in order for such an effort to succeed, it would have to be supported by the public — if not a majority, at least a vocal minority. Organize under hashtags like #Inauguration Protest, but keep in mind that hashtags and Facebook posts alone won’t do it. You need to show up.

We need not only a massive protest on Inauguration Day, but regularly scheduled protests outside of the White House and the Capitol. We need a movement, not just the dressings of one. It was large-scale movements that gave us women’s suffrage, the Civil Rights Law and gay marriage.

We need to make our representatives hear the clarion call in no uncertain terms.

Maybe then they’ll get the message that every vote should count and every person should count.

Rosenfeld is an educator and historian who has done work for Scribner, Macmillan and Newsweek and contributes frequently to The Hill.

This piece was corrected on Thursday, Nov. 24 at 11:28 a.m. to accurately note that James Comey is director of the FBI.

Article From The Huffington Post, Contributor Dr. GS Potter, Founder of the Strategic Institute of Intersectional Policy (SIIP). 11-29-16

“Trump is Right. The Election was Rigged. Here’s What We Know.”

In part of an on-going Twitter breakdown upon hearing the news that Hillary Clinton would participate in the recount of votes from Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and Michigan, he tweeted: There is NO QUESTION THAT #voter fraud did take place.

Trump has said time after time that the election was rigged. And he is absolutely right. The election was rigged. But it wasn’t voter fraud that it was rigged to achieve. It was voter suppression. And Donald Trump is very aware of this.

Perhaps the Candidate doth protest too much.

Donald Trump knows that the election was rigged, because his team of strategists and handlers are responsible for making it happen.

Donald Trump and the members of his team knowingly and strategically engaged in voter suppression tactics in an attempt to alter the results of the 2016 Presidential Election. These tactics include working to gut the Voting Rights Act, working to pass voter ID laws, shutting down polling places, cutting early registration, eliminating absentee ballots refusing to even consider the protections provided in the Americans with Disabilities Act, purging millions of voters from the system and engaging in voter intimidation tactics.

Yes, the system is rigged. And it took the white supremacist network that is behind Trump’s rise to power just over a decade to rig it well enough to take the White House.

The strategic efforts to suppress the votes necessary to secure an alt-right, white supremacist takeover of the White House can be traced back to the efforts of five people: Bert Rein, Richard Wiley, the Koch Brothers, and Robert Mercer.

Bert Rein and Richard Wiley have been key political players since the Nixon Administration. Rein was a member of the Key Issues Committee during the 1968 Nixon campaign and served as the Assistant Deputy Secretary of State under his administration. Wiley also held a position in the Nixon campaign and would go on to become the administration’s Chairman of the FCC. In the 1980’s, Wiley and Rein teamed up with another former colleague from the Nixon Era, Fred Fielding. Fielding was the Associate Counsel to Nixon and was the deputy to John Dean, who served time for his part in the Watergate Scandal. Dean was convicted and served time for his part in Watergate. Together they formed the firm Wiley, Rein and Fielding. After parting from Wiley and Rein, Fielding would go on to represent Blackwater Worldwide. Wiley Rein remains an important part of the conservative landscape.

Wiley and Rein also became prominent figures in the Reagan Administration. Rein worked as part of Reagan’s presidential transition team, while Wiley and Rein both work with conservative billionaire Robert Mercer through collaborations between organizations such as the American Enterprise Institute and the Heritage Foundation- a conservative think-tank “whose mission is to formulate and promote conservative public policies based on the principles of free enterprise, limited government, individual freedom, traditional American values, and a strong national defense.”

In addition to these strategists, two organizations associated with the Trump also emerge to assert their positions as far right political powerhouses. As described, the Heritage Foundation (associated with Robert Mercer, Ed Meese and Wiley Rein) functioned to influence policy from within the political system. Robert Mercer, Charles Koch and David Koch would also combine forces to form a grassroots education and advocacy group that could apply political pressure from the outside called Citizens United. Citizens United would also produce another strategist for the Trump Campaign – David Bossie.

The Heritage Foundation, the American Enterprise Institute and Citizen’s United all continued to gather influence in the political field. Charles and David Koch’s organization Citizens for a Sound Economy split into two groups in 2004. One group, the Americans for Prosperity, would become the protest and media arm of the alt-right’s political movement. The other arm, Freedomworks, would serve as the ground team for state and local elections and a political lifeline for the Tea Party.

The Koch Brothers teamed up again with Bert Rein and American Enterprise Institute’s Ed Blum to push their alt-right agenda in the courts through the Project on Fair Representation (founded in 2005). The mission of this organization is to “is to facilitate pro bono legal representation to political subdivisions and individuals that wish to challenge government distinctions and preferences made on the basis of race and ethnicity.” Their primary target was the Voting Rights Act of 1965. In 2011, the Charles and David Koch founded Freedom Partners largely to funnel grant money into activist organizations and ground level political actions. In 2013, the alt-right network was successful in their efforts to gut the Voting Rights Act when they won the case of Shelby County vs. Holden (2013)

In related practical efforts, Citizens United and Americans for Prosperity were taken to court for accusations of voter suppression efforts in states such as Florida, Virginia, Wisconsin, North Carolina, and Michigan. Using their characteristically aggressive tactics, the alt-right network was able to suppress enough votes in the 2010 and 2014 elections that they were able to take control of Congress.

By 2016, all that was left for the alt-right to gain control of the Presidency.

With full funding, a strategic team that had perfected manipulation of the government since the times of Watergate, a fully functioning alt-right media network, the social and tactical support of the Tea Party and the reluctant backing of the GOP, the alt-right engaged in a full-scale attack for control of the White House. This attack included timely interference from the FBI director James Comey and Wikileaks, potential interference from Russian intelligence organizations, and widespread efforts to suppress the votes of target minorities in key locations.

Without the suppression efforts that were reported in pivotal swing states, it is unlikely that Trump would have been able to secure the votes needed to win Wisconsin, North Carolina, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Florida and Arizona. In fact, it would have arguably been impossible.

Without massive voter suppression, Trump could not have won the 2016 presidential election.

Wisconsin’s 10 electoral votes would not have been secured by the Republican Party without the suppression of hundreds of thousands of minority voters. According to the Center for American Progress, “300,000 registered voters in the state lacked the strict forms of voter ID required. Wisconsin’s voter turnout was at its lowest level in two decades.” Approximately 27,000 votes separated Trump and Clinton.

While the race is still too close to call, Michigan’s 20 electoral votes would not have been even put into question without the voter suppression tactics applied by the alt-right, its leaders and the organizations they operate under. While less than 20,000 votes still separate the two candidates, over half a million voters were prevented from voting through failures to comply with Americans With Disabilities Act requirements, record purging, a lack of early voting, and voter ID requirements.

Pennsylvania’s 20 electoral votes would also not have been secured by the Alt-right without the suppression and intimidation tactics applied by white supremacists. Trump himself called more than once for his supporters to monitor the voting behavior of Democrats. Politico reports that in an August rally in Altoona, PA Trump said, “I hope you people can … not just vote on the 8th, [but] go around and look and watch other polling places and make sure that it’s 100-percent fine. We’re going to watch Pennsylvania—go down to certain areas and watch and study….”

Donald Trump was also quoted as saying, “You’ve got to get everybody to go out and watch, and go out and vote. And when [I] say ‘watch,’ you know what I’m talking about, right?” at a speech in Ohio 10 days later. These efforts were successful and Pennsylvania reported more incidences of voter intimidation than any other state. In addition to these applied voter intimidation tactics, the majority of polling places were inaccessible to voters with disabilities, no early voting or absentee ballots were allowed and there was misinformation being dispelled about voter ID requirements. The difference between candidates in Pennsylvania is approximately 62,000 votes.

The states being audited in the recount are not the only states that deserve another look. In light of the overwhelming success of voter suppression tactics, additional states prove themselves worthy of review and federal relief. Florida, North Carolina and Arizona serve as strong examples.

The difference in Florida was just under 120,000 votes. This may seem like an insurmountable number – until the fact that long lines and failures to meet ADA standards required to ensure voters with disabilities can vote alone accounts for over 200,000 suppressed votes is accounted for. Cuts to early voting, funding for early registration drives, additional requirements for voter with prior felony convictions, eliminating polling places, and failing to make voting accessible to voters with disabilities all contributed to the deprivation of voting rights of hundreds of thousands of minority and disabled voters in Florida alone. Trump could not have secured the state’s 29 electoral college votes if the minority and disable votes had not been so successfully suppressed.

In North Carolina a collaboration of GOP lawmakers and organizations were successful in eliminating same-day registration and pre-registration for teen voters, shortening the early voting period, and passed voter id requirements. The Court of Appeals struck down the ID requirement in 2016, citing that the rule was passed with the intent to discriminate on the basis of race; however, North Carolina has also been accused of purging thousands of black voters from the system and failing to comply with ADA standards. While the difference between Clinton and Trump is around 180,000 votes, the Democratic candidate was potentially illegally stripped of hundreds of thousands of votes from black and disabled constituents alone.

And in Arizona, the alt-right\white nationalist Republican candidate would not have been able to secure the state’s 11 electoral votes without the suppression of hundreds of thousands of Latino and disabled voters. In efforts to suppress minority votes, and by refusing to comply with ADA requirements, a Republican coalition successfully passed legislation that limits mail in ballot collection and continues to require proof of citizenship to vote. The United States Supreme Court has already ruled against this practice, but Arizona continues to defy both the will of the court and the will of the people. Adding to the success of these suppression tactics, over 270,000 voters were allegedly purged from Arizona’s voting system. The difference between candidates in this state is approximately 85,000.

Just as there is no question that the alt-right is a white nationalist network – there is also no question as to whether or not this network has engaged in strategic efforts to disenfranchise minority voters in efforts to take control of the White House.

Voter suppression is how the election was stolen. Voter suppression is how white power Trumped minority voters in the election. And contesting voter suppression is going to be the only way to prove Trump right – because the election was rigged. If we don’t fight to prove him right, he and his white supremacist network just may take the White House.

The Strategic Institute of Intersectional Policy (SIIP) is calling for a Suppression Extension to ensure that voters with disabilities and voters of color that were unable to vote because of suppression to cast their votes. For more information, visit: http://strategycampsite.org/strategy-to-stop-trump.html

Note: This article contains text that was paraphrased from two prior articles, New Report Prompts Call for Democrats to Halt Transfer of Power to Trump Before Dec. 13 Deadline and Failure to Defend Minority Voters from Voter Suppression Threatens to Cost Democrats More than the Election. You can find links to these articles in the text above or by going to the following links:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/new-report-prompts-call-for-democrats-to-halt-transfer_us_5833faa1e4b0d28e552154be

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/democratic-party-in-crisis-failure-to-defend-minority_us_583bc541e4b0a79f7433b842

(Native) America’s Last Stand?

John Hanno, tarbabys.com – September 5, 2016

(Native) America’s Last Stand?

Twenty years from now, the oil industry will be the new coal companies, failing and bankrupt. Eco investors are bailing on fossil fuel. University endowments, pension and green funds are divesting from fossil fuel and moving into sustainable energy. Communities are requiring utilities to produce a percentage of alternative energy. Investment in the dirtiest Alberta tar sands, has been cut by two thirds. Wind and solar are growing exponentially and costing less. There’s more investment in renewable energy than fossil fuels; and new employment surpasses oil, gas and coal combined.

Renewable energy potential is irrefutable. “Sunlight Striking Earth’s Surface in Just One Hour Delivers Enough Energy to Power the World Economy for an Entire Year.” or “In 14 and a half seconds, the sun provides as much energy to Earth as humanity uses in a day.” or There’s enough wind energy potential from Texas up through Illinois to power the entire nation, if only the power grid were in place. Oil rich Texas (number one) and Iowa (number two), produce more wind energy than they can deliver to cities in need. Our Energy Department has invested 20 million dollars in tidal research but we haven’t scratched the surface of that energy.

In spite of a glut of oil and gas, the fossil fuel industry is frantically installing the massive infrastructure needed to extract and export every ounce of oil and gas before America wakes up; or before alternatives make them obsolete. Dakota Access will cost at least $3 billion. Pipelines already in progress or planned will cost at least that much or more because they must cross ecologically sensitive areas in Minnesota, Wisconsin, Michigan and Illinois.

If only this enormous investment by oil and gas companies drilling and fracking the earth apart, (hello shaky Oklahoma) and by companies like Enbridge blanketing America with risky pipelines, was instead directed toward renewable energy? Little Costa Rica’s electric grid has been powered entirely by its mix of hydro power, wind, solar, geothermal and biomass for 150 days so far this year. Since June 16th, they’ve gone 88 consecutive days in which all electricity has come from renewable resources. In 2015, they were powered by 99% renewable. America can and must do better!

Fossil fuel pandering politicians, cherish campaign contributions but could care less about American’s, their soil, their precious drinking water, and their children’s and grandchildren’s future. This election is an important turning point in the fight to preserve humanity. If your candidates deny climate change or say they aren’t scientists and don’t know enough to make rational decisions about our climate and comprehensive energy reform, kick them to the curb. They’re too ignorant or corrupt to deserve your vote.

Canada, North and South Dakota, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Michigan, Illinois, Iowa, Missouri, Oklahoma, Texas and other states are under siege from Canadian Company Enbridge’s Pipeline Network Expansion. More than 100,000 protestors inspired President Obama to decide against approving Keystone XL. American’s can stop Keystone clone Dakota Access and shut down Line 3 and it’s replacement if we stand up in unprecedented numbers. It’s our responsibility as thinking human beings, to oppose and delay the damage being done by fossil fuel interests, until sustainable energy can prevail.

Enbridge wanted to run pipeline 78 across our organic farm. Pipeline 78 and Flanagan South joins Dakota Access at Patoka, IL. The easement they wanted granted the ability to “abandon in place” when they’re finished with the pipeline. Landowners and the American taxpayer will be stuck digging up the more than 250,000 mile of rusting pipelines, leaking into our precious water. When we refused to sign the easement, they filed eminent domain. We lost in state court; but appealed the case because these illegal eminent domain actions by a private foreign company, violate the 5th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. It also violates Native American Treaties and Sovereignty. You can read our story at gofundme.com/2xpggwfw.

The Sacred Stone Camp defense has struck a nerve with America’s environmental and progressive communities. Native Americans have a sacred and spiritual connection to their land and water. They and many farm families cherish the blessings Americans have been given with fertile land and pure water. The only hope of stopping this pipeline insanity lies with President Obama and an executive order. Common Sense American’s must stand up in such numbers that the President can’t ignore his duty to protect our environment.

Stand up any way you can. Call your elected officials and especially the White House. Support Bold Nebraska, IL Climate Activists, 350 Kiswaukee, MN350, The Sierra Club, Action Network.org, Bold Iowa, the Sacred Stone Camp gofundme campaign and anyone who believes in environmental common sense. I believe our Native American brothers and sisters can actually stop the Dakota Access pipeline. John Hanno

Jeanette Well written….to the point…if you could sing and dance….get it down to 2 paragraphs…we have a chance…to move their bodies and charge their souls….create understanding in the needed goal…get up on stage and share you have hopes….believing is the key to rockin this boat. Sorry, couldn’t help myself. Very well written piece and I do wish people would take the time to really understand what is at stake….

John Jeanette Thank you. Sorry, a lot to cover.

The Origins of The Tarbaby

John Hanno March 30, 2017

“Origins of The Tarbaby”

For thousands of years, storytellers of mythologies and folklore around the globe and from every culture have used animals to tell their stories. Rabbits (the cunning tricksters) and Foxes (often portrayed disparagingly) have played prominent roles.

Some of America’s most popular stories draw from Aesop, a slave and storyteller believed to have lived in Greece between 620 and 564 BC. First published in English in 1484, he created stories using various intelligent animals to illustrate an important morality, “the moral of the story”. One of Aesop’s Fables, “The Fox and the Grapes” told of the fox in a vineyard trying to get at the grapes hanging from the vines. Hard as he tried, he couldn’t reach the grapes. He took solace in the fact that they were probably sour anyway. The moral of that story is: people sometimes belittle things they can’t have. This fable brought about the popular expression, “sour grapes”.

These oral stories, eventually transcribed long after Aesop’s death, have been passed down for millennia. The fables were originally written for adults and encompassed social, religious and political themes, but were eventually used for the education and enlightenment of children. Some first appeared in the bible (A Wolf in Sheep’s Clothing). These stories, parables or fables, having been passed down orally, transcribed, and eventually translated into dozens of languages, are colored and reinterpreted by cultures and religions throughout the world. No doubt 10’s of millions of stories, fables and interpretations did not emanate solely from Aesop but were created and nurtured independently from the hearts and minds of folklorists trying to establish a moral compass and to cope with a world rife with danger, bondage, war and chaos.

It’s believed that interpretations of these fables were brought to the new world by slaves. Some also originated from European and Native American traditions. Joel Chandler Harris (December 9, 1845 – July 3, 1908) was an American journalist, fiction writer and folklorist best known for his Uncle Remus stories. Harris was born in Eatonton Georgia. He worked as an apprentice on a plantation as a teen and recorded these slave tales. He spent most of his adult life working as an associate editor at the Atlantic Constitution. He worked and supported racial reconciliation during and after Reconstruction. He recorded many Brer Rabbit stories from the African-American oral traditions and thereby revolutionized children’s stories.

One of his most popular stories, from his collection of American African Fables, The Uncle Remus stories was “Brer Rabbit and the Tarbaby.” Harris published the stories in the dialect used by African slaves. There are no doubt dozens or more versions of the Tarbaby story, but one later interpretation printed in English, is a version we were told as children. Like the statement orally repeated down a long line of people, where that statement often changes markedly by the time it gets to the end, this is my own version. Feel free to pass on your own versions. And if you’re really ambitious, you can relate the stories in Harris’s original slave dialect.

One day Brer (Brother) Fox, Brer Wolf, Brer Bear and Brer Possum and all the other animals, except Brer Rabbit, decided to dig a well. Brer Rabbit refused to help and only wanted to play. After the animals dug the well, they decided to plough the field and plant corn. But again Brer Rabbit refused to help and only wanted to play. When the animals asked what Brer Rabbit would do when he needed water and corn, he said he would just go and take it.

After the well was dug and the corn was planted and cut, Brer Rabbit just came along and helped himself to it. Brer Fox, Brer Wolf, Brer Bear, Brer Possum and all the other animals decided to catch Brer Rabbit so he couldn’t steal their water and corn any more. But Brer Rabbit was very clever, and nobody could catch him. Brer Wolf took some straw and made it into a baby with a head, arms, legs, a body, and he covered it with sticky black tar until the tar baby looked just like a real baby. Then he sat Tar Baby right next to the well and went away.

Brer Rabbit came along, saw Tar Baby and stopped. He thought it was a real person sitting there. But he needed the water, so he said politely: ‘Good evening, sir. Fine weather we’re having, sir!’ But the Tar Baby made no reply. Brer Rabbit came closer and asked politely, ‘How is your mother, sir? And your grandmother? And your children? And all the rest of your family?’ But still the Tar Baby made no reply. Brer Rabbit came closer and still Tar Baby did nothing and said nothing. Then Brer Rabbit said, ‘You there! Get out of my way!’ But still Tar Baby said nothing. ‘You there!’ said Brer rabbit again. ‘If you don’t move out of my way, I’ll hit you with this paw!’ And he held up his right paw. Tar Baby still said nothing. So Brer Rabbit hit him on the head, and Brer Rabbit’s paw got stuck in the tar and he couldn’t pull it loose! Then Brer Rabbit began to shout, ‘Let me go, let me go!’ But Tar Baby wouldn’t let him go. So Brer Rabbit hit him with his left paw, and with his right foot, and with his left foot – and they all got stuck in the tar! Now Brer Rabbit was very angry, and butted Tar Baby with his head – and his head got stuck in the tar! Brer Rabbit pulled and pulled, but couldn’t get loose, and there he had to stay till the morning, when Brer Wolf came by to see what he had caught. ‘Good morning, Brer Rabbit,’ said Brer Wolf. ‘How are you this morning? You seem to be a little stuck today!’ And Brer Wolf laughed until his stomach hurt. Brer Rabbit said nothing. Brer Wolf picked up Brer Rabbit and said, ‘It seems you wanted water. So let me throw you into the well.’ ‘Yes Brer Wolf, throw me into the well, but please don’t throw me into that briar patch!’ cried Brer Rabbit. Brer Wolf looked surprised. Brer Rabbit wanted to be thrown into the well? ‘Well then, I will light a fire and roast you and eat you,’ said Brer Wolf. ‘Yes Brer Wolf. Light a fire and roast me and eat me, but please don’t throw me into the briar patch!’ Brer Wolf thought for a minute. ‘Brer Rabbit doesn’t mind the well, he doesn’t mind the fire. But he minds the briar patch!’ And Brer Wolf pulled Brer Rabbit loose from Tar Baby and threw him straight into the briar patch. ‘There now! The briars will poke him and jab him and hurt him!’ he said. Brer Wolf waited and listened for Brer Rabbit’s howls, but instead he heard Brer Rabbit laughing. ‘Thank you Brer Wolf, thank you for sending me back home,’ cried Brer Rabbit. ‘I and my family grew up in this briar patch!’ And off ran Brer Rabbit through the brambles.

When our father told us, in his own words, stories of Aesop and from the Joel Chandler Harris Uncle Remus books of children’s stories, he tried to impress on us the lessons to be learned; the principles of empathy, sharing, generosity, hard work, humility, cooperation and of taking responsibility.

In books and films and songs, the fables and parables of Aesop, Uncle Remus and others have taught many generations of American children and even adults these important principles. Many of these fables have ensconced themselves and their morality firmly into American literature, culture and our everyday vocabulary: Most are attributed to Aesop. Some of those principles are:

(Generosity and Greed) “The Goose That Laid the Golden Egg” or “The Dog and the Bone (Reflection)”

(Never trust someone who deserts you in need), “The Bear and the Travelers”

(Telling the Truth) “The Boy Who Cried Wolf”

(renown is accompanied by risks of which the humble are free)”The Bramble and the Fir”

(A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush) “The Fisherman and the Little Fish”

(The perils of flattery) “The Fox and the Crow”

(Honesty is the best policy) “The Honest Woodcutter”

(Carry your share of the load) “The Horse and the Donkey”

(Notoriety is often mistaken for fame) “The Mischievous Dog”

(Being charitable with your fortune) “The Miser and His Gold”

(Warning against the promises of politicians “Great cry and Little Wool”) “The Mountain in Labour”

(The grass is always greener on the other side of the fence) “The Ass and His Masters”

(Clothes may disguise a fool but his words will give him away) “The Ass in the Lions Skin”

(“In my opinion, Golden Rule, Better be lonely than be with a fool”) “The Bear and the Gardener”

(group of mice who debate plans to nullify the threat of a marauding cat) “Belling the Cat” or “The Mice in Counsel”

(When we are avoiding present dangers, we should not fall into even worse peril) “Jumping from the frying pan into the fire”

(One’s basic nature eventually betrays itself) “Wolf in Sheep’s Clothing” From the Bible.

I will attempt through this blog, to use the lessons we were taught or should have learned from our parents growing up, to make sense of a world often obsessed with fortune, fame and winning at all costs. I’ll explore how they help to effect our nature, our ambitions, one’s humility, intelligence, temperament, compassion and how they nurture our souls. The modern day definition of a tarbaby is “a situation, problem, or the like, that is almost impossible to solve or to break away from.” In a legal sense, its a case that just won’t end or be resolved.

A Tarbaby, like Brer Rabbit’s dilemma, embodies something that appears worthy or profitable but turns out to be a grandiose illusion; It could be a person, a place or an object, or anything we lust after but may then regret getting. There are tarbabys in every aspect of modern society. We’ll explore them together. I ask that anyone who contributes, to please respect the process; and to refrain from restating talking points repeated time and again. Please be creative, original and entertaining. And please respect the fact that younger folks and children might be contributing. Thank you, John Hanno

Un “Till’….The Trayvon Martin Case

John Hanno, tarbabys.com – July 17, 2013

Un ‘Till’

Following the decision in the George Zimmerman trial, John Lewis, Congressman from Georgia since 1987, said: “I am deeply disappointed by the verdict in the Trayvon Martin case. It seems to justify the stalking and killing of innocent black boys and deny them any avenue of self-defense. … I hope this verdict will serve to open some kind of meaningful dialogue on the issues of race and justice in America.”

Of course Congressman Lewis is correct, but under Florida’s dangerous stand your ground laws, its not just unarmed young black males that are in jeopardy of being blown to kingdom come; its everyone who might end up in the gun sites of these wacko vigilantes. All teenagers, white, black or Latino, 90% of who wear hoodies, should not venture out at night. And, based on the outcome of the Zimmerman trial, anyone is now free to arm themselves, approach and pick a fight with someone or provoke someone they have a beef with or don’t approve of; and as soon as that prey offers some resistance, you’re able to put a bullet through their heart. I see similar stories like this on WE-TV, in reruns of “Gunsmoke” and “The Rifleman”. Who said the Wild West is dead?

As we know, Congressman Lewis was one of the leaders in the civil rights movement and helped lead the March 7, 1965 Bloody Sunday march for voting rights, from Selma, Alabama to Montgomery. He was one of the marchers who were confronted and then clubbed, whipped and tear-gassed by more than 150 State Troopers, Sheriff’s police and posse men (vigilantes) on the Edmund Pettis Bridge and then had his skull fractured. I think Mr. Lewis can recognize a vigilante when he sees one.

Mr. Lewis also stated he believes the shooting of Trayvon Martin resembled the Emmett Till case of August 1955, where a 14 year old South Side Chicago boy visiting his cousins for the summer, was dragged from his great uncles home at gun point in the middle of the night for talking to a white women 3 days earlier in Money, Mississippi. Emmett was found 4 days later in the Tallahatchie River, beaten, shot in the head and lashed to a large metal fan with barbed wire. He was so unrecognizable, the only way he was identified was by his fathers initials L.T. on the signet ring given to Emmett by his mother before he left Chicago. Till’s alleged killers, Roy Bryant and J.W. Milam, were arrested and charged with his murder. Despite the overwhelming evidence and even though Till’s great uncle Moses courageously put his life in jeopardy by testifying and identifying the two as Till’s kidnappers and killers. both were acquitted of all charges by an all white, all male jury.

The deliberations lasted only 67 minutes. A few months later, the defendants then sold the story of how they kidnapped and murdered Till to Look Magazine for $4,000. Emmett’s body was shipped back to Chicago. His mother, Mamie Till, decided to display his body at Roberts Temple Church of God in an open casket. Although she said it was very painful seeing her dead son’s body on display, she said: “let the world see what has happened, because there is no way I could describe this. And I needed somebody to help me tell what it was like.” I remember seeing pictures of thousands of mourners parading by his casket and the graphic pictures of Till in his casket in Jet magazine. It didn’t look like a human body. He’s buried in a nearby South Chicago suburb. He was only about 6 years older than me so we grew up on the South Side of Chicago at the same time. We were both born in July, 2 days apart.

Emmett Till’s death and his mothers efforts to publicize his tragedy, for all the world to see, served as an impetus for the Civil Rights movement. Three months after his death, Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat and go to the back of the bus. Her actions sparked the yearlong Montgomery, Alabama bus boycott. Mamie Till believed her son’s death, and stories, pictures and films of other beatings and lynchings in the south, including those of nonviolent protestors being attacked by police and State troopers with dogs and fire hoses, helped America come to grips with racial inequality and injustice. She said that before her sons murder: “people really didn’t know that things this horrible could take place. And the fact that it happened to a child, that makes all the difference in the world.”

The case that the Zimmerman prosecution team presented leaves a lot of room for criticism. Legal media experts across the country have picked apart their ineffective case. I too, was shouting at my TV during much of the trial, imploring the prosecutors to either ask this question or why in the world would they have asked that question or why not follow up with that question. The biggest mistakes allowed the inclusion of Zimmerman’s many self-serving statements and video’s, without somehow assuring he would have to testify under oath and be subject to cross examination in order to counter the prosecution’s presumed fact based theory of events.

I believe the prosecutors gave the jury too much credit for being able to analyze the evidence and fill in the blanks. Instead of laying out a clear scenario they wholeheartedly believed flowed from the known facts and from Zimmerman’s proven lies and false statements, they somehow believed the jury would base their decision simply on the fact that Zimmerman lied about what really occurred and then refused to testify and face rebuttal.

I would be willing to bet these jurors were not analytical people. They are probably intuitive people of faith and not reason, and consequently swayed more by their biases than by facts and reasoned argument. Defense attorney Don West unfortunately had it right with his knock, knock joke about picking a jury reliably void of knowledge about the case. Unfortunately those usually chosen as jurors are often void of any knowledge or analytical talent concerning anything. The prosecution proffered a timeline without filling in the blanks. The prosecution then helped Zimmerman prove his own case by fully accepting Zimmerman and his defense’s claims that assumed, and consequently established for the jury that Trayvon was clearly the aggressor. I screamed at my TV, all my teachers taught me that: when you assume something, “you make an ass out of u and me.” They allowed the defense to put Trayvon on trial. And he was reliably found guilty.

We don’t know exactly what happened in the dark that night because (1) Trayvon is dead, (2) Zimmerman refused to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth, (3) it was too dark for neighbors to see what really transpired, or video what happened (4) no one had the courage to venture out to help someone crying out for help. (5) The police department failed to initially charge or take serious the allegations against Zimmerman.

If young black Trayvon had been the one pulling the trigger, he would have been in a maximum security prison before they served him his first baloney sandwich, and (6) lets face it, Sanford P.D. did not have “The Closer’s” Deputy Chief Brenda Johnson to interrogate Mr. Zimmerman. If they had, she would have wrapped up the case within the hour; and Zimmerman would have confessed to killing Trayvon, been placed in cuffs and headed to prison for 30 to life.

But I would be willing to bet my check on a few plausible certainties. Trayvon was simply on his way back home to his 12 year old step brother with skittles and a bottle of ice tea, to play video games and to watch the NBA All-star game on TV. He was unarmed. He was not on drugs or acting suspicious as Zimmerman claimed. We saw him on video inside the Convenience Store and he looked like any other merely confused teenager trying to make a decision about what he wanted to buy and how much he had to spend. The store clerk, as he testified to at trial, was obviously not suspicious or threatened.

I’m pretty sure Trayvon was not sticking his hands in his waistband as Zimmerman claimed. He was talking to a friend on his phone with one hand and holding his bag of goodies with the other. Trayvon really believed he was being followed by some crazy ass cracker. And was probably scared shitless. Zimmerman was clearly profiling Trayvon as a suspicious f—ing asshole, a punk that was probably on drugs and some thug about to get away with something.

Zimmerman refused to stay in his vehicle, as he was told to do, until the police arrived a few minutes later. And I firmly believe Zimmerman, who his MMA type trainer testified at trial as soft and a wuss, was not afraid to take off after a suspicious hooded young black man because he probably drew his gun from the holster as soon as he left his vehicle. And finally, Trayvon was intercepted from going home by a vigilante aiming a gun at him.

This is where its gets complicated. Did uncoordinated Zimmerman trip and fall while he was running after Trayvon; did Zimmerman slip and fall in the damp grass or onto the hard sidewalk and hurt himself; did Zimmerman trip or slip and fall, and did the gun then accidentally fire a bullet through Trayvon’s heart; did Zimmerman just get excited and stick a gun into Trayvon’s chest and accidentally or on purpose shoot Trayvon through the heart?

After possibly accidentally shooting Trayvon, did Zimmerman then injure himself on purpose and concoct an unbelievable story so that it would appear that he had to defend himself against an unarmed skinny boy armed with a cell phone and a bag of skittles? We don’t know if there even was a struggle or fight and if there was, who started it. Was Trayvon desperately trying to defend himself against someone (not a police officer) aiming a gun at him? The prosecution proposed none of these possibilities to the jury.

Because I spent my entire life building and repairing things, I necessarily had to be analytical and logical and could not assume anything. So after shaving with a razor for more than 60 years, I realize that all blood vessels in the head and face are numerous and very close to the surface. I know that any little mishap while shaving makes you bleed like a stuck pig, extracts about a half pint of blood from ones facial capillaries and causes you to stick a half roll of toilet paper on the cuts.

I once blew my nose during a cold while I was in the Army, ruptured a blood vessel, lost about a quart of blood, which I spit into a butt can and had to have an Army specialist cauterize the vessel while I passed out. The supposed injuries to Zimmerman were at best, extremely minimal. He could have scratched his own head with a fingernail, a car key or with one of his flashlights; and it would have extracted more blood than was displayed in the photos of his injuries.

If Trayvon had violently slammed Zimmerman’s head onto the sidewalk as Zimmerman’s attorney did to the dummy during trial over and over, Zimmerman would have been knocked out and then rushed to the hospital with a severe concussion and a severe brain injury that would have swelled his brain and forced a neurosurgeon to cut open his scull so that his brain could swell without causing irreparable brain damage.

But most important, if Zimmerman had just waited as directed for 2 or 3 minutes, the police would have shown up, walked up to Trayvon, as uniformed police officers, (something I’m sure Trayvon or any other young black man has experienced multiple times), and simply asked Trayvon what he was doing. Trayvon would have shown the cops his bag of goodies and his receipt from the store. The officers would have patted Trayvon on top of his hoodied head and either sent him or driven him home to his waiting brother. As they dropped him off, they would have told him to be careful because there are some dangerous armed people driving through his neighborhood.

And if heaven forbid, in the extremely unlikely case a cop would have shot an unarmed boy, that officer would have his badge and firearm taken away immediately and would have been subjected to not only an automatic internal investigation, but probably a state or federal use of force investigation. I just can’t believe there is any conceivable way, Trayvon would not be alive today, if only the police had confronted him instead of Zimmerman.

Interesting and informative was Sean Hannity’s interview of Zimmerman. Hannity asked him why he thought Trayvon was on drugs. Zimmerman said because it was raining, Trayvon was walking between houses, cutting through houses and walking very leisurely. That sounded like nonsense, as did much of Zimmerman’s answers during the whole interview. When I was a teen walking through my South Side Chicago neighborhood, we often flipped fences and cut through backyards and alleys. It simply appeared Zimmerman was attempting to keep from tripping himself up on previous lies.

But I think most interesting part of the interview, besides the fact that he claimed he didn’t know anything about or ever heard about Stand Your Ground Laws (Obviously pure bullcrap), was when Hannity asked Zimmerman if he regretted anything that night, regretted getting out of the car to follow Trayvon that night. Zimmerman said no sir. Hannity then said do you regret that you had a gun that night. Zimmerman said no sir. Hannity then asked Zimmerman if he felt that he would not be there tonight if he didn’t have the gun. Zimmerman said no sir. Hannity asked him if he would do anything differently in retrospect, time having passed a bit. Zimmerman said he felt it was all Gods plan and for him to second guess it or judge it…umm and then shakes his head no. Hannity then asks, is there anything you would do differently in retrospect, now that a little bit of time has passed. Zimmerman again said no sir. I think even Hannity was clearly incredulous, but Zimmerman failed to relent.

If I was the prosecutor in the case, I would have played that part of the Hannity interview and then while looking directly at Trayvon’s parents and then at the 6 women jurors, I would say, I believe Trayvon’s parents and family surely believe in God but I know they also don’t believe it was “Gods Will” that some reckless individual should shoot and kill their unarmed boy.

The prosecutors in this case could have presented all these arguments in a more coherent way. If they did, I believe Zimmerman may have had to testify in order to not be convicted of 2nd degree murder and at worse, may have been convicted of manslaughter. Yet if the prosecutors had put on a much more competent case and done everything right, would it have made a difference to this 6 person non representative jury; maybe not?

I’ve seen enough jury trials to believe the idea of a jury of ones peers may have outlived its benefits. Most civilized countries, if not all, don’t rely on that system. I think its time we have jurors trained and paid as professionals. They can still be chosen as representative to a particular case. But Trayvon was in actuality tried, convicted and found guilty, yet he did not have a jury of his peers. How about a 12 person jury, six of which were people of color and who may have been profiled at one time or another. It would also be interesting to hear what Judge Debra Nelson felt about the jury’s decision. We will probably never know. What I do know for sure is that:

If I had felt it necessary to inject myself into community policing, like Zimmerman did and which I definitely wouldn’t, and;

If I had felt it necessary to stick my nose into someone else’s (Trayvon’s) business, like Zimmerman did and which I would never do, and;

If I had owned a gun designed primarily for killing fellow human beings, like Zimmerman did and which I have refused to do for more than 6 decades while living on the South Side of Chicago and South Suburbs, and;

If I had routinely carried a concealed weapon, like Zimmerman does (he told Hannity that he carries his gun everywhere except work) and which I don’t and which I believe is antithetical to a civilized society and unbelievably reckless, and;

If I had routinely targeted young black males in my community, like Zimmerman did time and time again when calling police (he always reported only black males) and which I have never done in more than 60 years, and;

If I routinely profiled young black men by referring to them as “those F—ing assholes” and “punks that always get away”, like Zimmerman did and which I think is obscene, and proves Zimmerman harbored ill will and malice of forethought, and;

If I decided to get out of my vehicle and follow Trayvon, even thought the police dispatcher told him not to and to stay in his vehicle, like Zimmerman did and which I would never even consider doing, and;

If I decided to un-holster my loaded gun and chase after a young boy who did nothing to me or anyone else, as Zimmerman probably did, and which I would never, ever even consider doing, and;

If for some inconceivable reason, I engaged in such outrageous conduct, like Zimmerman did in this case, I guess I wouldn’t have the guts to testify before a jury of my peers either.

But I just can’t believe a jury would not find a person guilty of manslaughter after refusing to explain or justify the reasons he found it necessary to shoot and kill an unarmed boy. How can juror B37 “reasonably” believe “Zimmerman’s heart was in the right place.”

And how can Juror B29 “reasonably” vote to acquit Zimmerman. She initially voted to convict Zimmerman of second-degree murder. After the trial, she told Robin Roberts, during an interview on “Good Morning America” that she believed Zimmerman “got away with murder.” She said “George Zimmerman got away with murder, but you can’t get away from God. And at the end of the day, he’s going to have a lot of questions and answers he has to deal with,” “[But] the law couldn’t prove it.” “You can’t put the man in jail even though in our hearts we felt he was guilty,” “But we had to grab our hearts and put it aside and look at the evidence.” “I was the juror that was going to give them the hung jury. I fought to the end.” She also stated she thought the case was a “publicity stunt” and should not have been brought to trial. “The truth is that there was nothing that we could do about it.” “I feel the verdict was already told.”

She blamed the lack of evidence and Florida’s laws to somehow justify acquitting Zimmerman. She now second guesses her decision to acquit; but of course its too late. She said she owes Trayvon’s parents an apology and believes “like I let them down.” I think she let Trayvon Martin and our jury system down.

I guess it’s too much to ask one 6 person jury to put a dent in America’s race relations problems but I was hoping for just a little common sense. I guess I was waiting for Adrian Monk (Tony Shalhoub) or “Elementary’s” Jonny Lee Miller and Lucy Liu (Sherlock Holmes and Watson) to step in and figure out ‘who done it.’

Conservative media and Bloggers view Zimmerman as a hero. He is not a hero. He’s a “wantabe” cop who was repeatedly determined unfit for police work. He profiled a young person innocently walking through his neighborhood. He refused to stay in his vehicle when told to by the police dispatcher. He refused to wait for just a couple of minutes more for the dispatched trained police officers to arrive. He shot Trayvon, as he told Hannity, 15 or 30 seconds before the police arrived.

He is at best a reckless buffoon who was probably chasing after Trayvon with his finger on the trigger of a loaded high powered weapon that didn’t have a safety (“never run while carrying a scissors”). He either stumbled or otherwise accidentally, or on purpose, shot Trayvon through his heart. He then concocted a story only a mother could believe. I believe Zimmerman then told us a lot about his intensions and state of mind by not trying to save Trayvon’s life by initiating any efforts to help him or perform CPR.

George Zimmerman got away with murder because of (1) a tardy and mediocre investigation of his conduct and the facts of the case by the Sanford P.D.; (2) because of ineffective prosecution; (3) because of Florida’s nonsensical and dangerous Stand Your Ground Laws, and the consequential confusing jury instructions; and (4) because of a 6 person jury that was not representative of both the defendant and the victim, and a jury that was probably not capable of using their common sense to render a just decision.

Un “Till” young black men, especially those wearing hoodies, are not automatically viewed by half of American’s as troublemakers and thugs;

Un “Till” America stops incarcerating young black men at ever increasing rates;

Un “Till” more young black men refuse to join gangs when looking for some semblance of family;

Un “Till” America is able to offer young men of all colors, including and especially Veterans, living wage jobs, instead of a life of fending for themselves on the streets;

Un “Till” more young black men end up graduating from college, than from being released from prison;

Un “Till” we reach a point where the innocent young black victim of a hate crime can’t be proven guilty of his own murder;

Un “Till” all those, including jurors, who say they are not prejudiced, but harbor many subtle and toxic biases, can see themselves for what they are;

Un “Till” Police departments throughout America, view all young men the same regardless of how they walk or talk or what they wear or the hue of their skin;

Un “Till” Legislatures everywhere, including the United States Congress, find some balls, and stand up to the NRA, ALEC and these extreme wacko 2nd Amendment zealots;

Un “Till” America “Stand’s It’s Ground”, and refuses to turn its back on responsible gun laws;

Un “Till” this all happens, we will continue to see, especially on the streets of our South Chicago neighborhoods, innocent children placed in caskets and carried to the cemeteries.

If there are any positives in this case and reason for hope, its that:

A recent Poll said that 62% of American’s believe George Zimmerman unnecessarily killed Trayvon Martin.

At least 450,000 people, and probably much more now, and including myself, signed a petition asking the Department of Justice to go forward with their suspended civil rights investigation of Zimmerman’s conduct.

Peaceful demonstrators across the country were not just African Americans but from every group. Black, white, Latino and Asian; men, women and children, old and young. I would say the demonstrators I saw were an overwhelming white majority.

And, a large majority of Florida’s prosecutors are now asking the legislators to change and correct the flaws in Florida’s current Stand Your Ground Laws.

And, most experts believe a Civil Trial against George Zimmerman probably will be undertaken; a trial where Zimmerman will be forced to testify. At least he may not be able to profit from Trayvon’s murder.

Lonnie Bunch, director of the Smithsonian’s new National Museum of African American History and Culture, said he would like Trayvon’s hoodie for its permanent collection. “It became the symbolic way to talk about the Trayvon Martin case.” “It’s rare that you get one artifact that really becomes the symbol.”

Maybe the pictures of Trayvon Martin lying on a slab in the morgue will, like the pictures of Emmett Till lying in his coffin did in 1955 for civil rights, spark change; and in this case, some sensible modification of these egregious and dangerous Stand Your Ground Laws, in at least some of those 24 states. Our own Illinois concealed weapons ban was recently struck down by the U.S. Supreme Court. Illinois was the last of the States to have a reasonable ban on concealed weapons. Our legislature is still wrestling with a revision of those laws that would conform with the Constitutions 2nd Amendment. Gentlemen and women, please pay attention.

And as Congressman Lewis implored: “I hope this verdict will serve to open some kind of meaningful dialogue on the issues of race and justice in America.” John Hanno