Read About The Tarbaby Story under the Category: About the Tarbaby Blog
War On Our Future June, 2018
The oil industry discovered the links between fossil fuels and climate change back in the 1960’s. Here’s what they did when they found out… #YEARSproject #BigOilKnew
Big Oil Knew: Denial and Distraction
The oil industry discovered the links between fossil fuels and climate change back in the 1960s. Here's what they did when they found out… #YEARSproject #BigOilKnew
Posted by War On Our Future on Wednesday, June 13, 2018
June 28, 2018. Being a full-time teacher shouldn’t mean working multiple jobs and still turning to food pantries just to feed your family. But in Oklahoma, it does.
Through Our Eyes: Teachers Living on the Brink of Bankruptcy
Through Our Eyes: Teachers Living on the Brink of Bankruptcy
Being a full-time teacher shouldn't mean working multiple jobs and still turning to food pantries just to feed your family. But in Oklahoma, it does.
Posted by NowThis Reports on Tuesday, June 12, 2018
July 8, 2018. There are people who think dinosaurs never existed. How Dinosaurs Prove The Theory of Evolution
How Dinosaurs Prove The Theory of Evolution
There are dinosaurs all around us *right* now. 🦖 🦅 🦕
Posted by Today I Watched on Wednesday, May 23, 2018
July 8, 2018
Can these plastic roads solve two environmental problems? Every ton of this asphalt contains approximately 70,000 single-use plastic bags — and could potentially improve the quality of the roads we drive on: https://cnn.it/2u1SE4L
Can plastic roads curb the waste epidemic?
Can these plastic roads solve two environmental problems? Every ton of this asphalt contains approximately 70,000 single-use plastic bags — and could potentially improve the quality of the roads we drive on: https://cnn.it/2u1SE4L
Posted by CNN on Saturday, July 7, 2018
Michael Collins, USA Today July 7, 2018
Photo: Lawrence Jackson, AP
Washington,– Former Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist is urging his fellow Republicans to put country before party and protect special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election.
“Special counsel Robert S. Mueller III is under assault, and that is wrong,” Frist wrote in an op-ed published Friday night in The Washington Post. “No matter who is in the White House, we Republicans must stand up for the sanctity of our democracy and the rule of law.”
Frist, who served as the Senate majority leader for four years before leaving Congress in 2007, said he doesn’t believe that President Donald Trump colluded with Russian President Vladimir Putin to win the 2016 election. But he said he believes Putin purposely tried to undermine the democratic process.
Trump’s assault on Mueller’s investigation doesn’t help the president or his party, Frist said.
“When Trump talks about firing the special counsel or his power to pardon himself, he makes it seem as though he has something to hide,” wrote Frist, a heart and lung transplant surgeon who lives in Nashville. “The president must remember that only Mueller’s exoneration can lift the cloud hanging over the White House.”
The special counsel’s investigation is not about Trump – it’s about national security, Frist said.
“Every American should be rooting for Mueller’s success in determining precisely how Russia interfered in our fundamental democratic process,” he wrote.
“As a party, we can’t let the president or his allies erode the independence of the Justice Department or public trust in the vital work of law enforcement,” he said. “That would be true even if the stakes were much lower, but it is overwhelmingly so when it comes to investigating foreign interference in our elections. Congress must ensure that Mueller is able to do his job without interference or intimidation.”
“Congress must never abandon its role as an equal branch of government,” Frist concluded. “In this moment, that means protecting Mueller’s investigation. We’re at our best as senators and Republicans when we defend our institutions. But more than that, it’s our best face as Americans.”
Amanda Michelle Gomez July 7, 2018
Washington, D.C. – July 25, President Trump holds a joint news conference with Lebanese Prime Minister Saad Hariri in the rose garden at the White House July 25, 2017. Trump began the news conference by announcing that senate Republicans had passed a procedural vote on repealing Obamacare. Photo: by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images.
The Trump administration is freezing a critical Affordable Care Act (ACA) insurance payment program that discourages insurers from cherry picking healthier enrollees by compensating them for sicker ones.
The move could rattle insurance companies at the very moment when they’re deciding whether to continue selling ACA plans and setting premiums for 2019. It’s not immediately clear what this means for ACA enrollees, if anything.
The news comes after the Wall Street Journal reported they might suspend the program:
“The suspension of some payouts under the program, known as risk adjustment, could come in the wake of a recent decision by a federal judge in New Mexico, who ruled that part of its implementation was flawed and hadn’t been adequately justified by federal regulators, people familiar with the plans said.”
“We were disappointed by the court’s recent ruling. As a result of this litigation, billions of dollars in risk adjustment payments and collections are now on hold,” said the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) Administrator Seema Verma in a statement released on Saturday. “CMS has asked the court to reconsider its ruling, and hopes for a prompt resolution that allows CMS to prevent more adverse impacts on Americans who receive their insurance in the individual and small group markets.”
CMS argues the ruling prevents it from making further collections or payments in the risk adjustment program, including amounts for the 2017 benefit year which amount to $10.4 billion, until the litigation is resolved. However, outside experts are skeptical of the claim.
To make it easier for people with pre-existing conditions to buy coverage and ensure market stability in the process, the risk adjustment program moves money from insurers who cover healthier populations than the statewide average to insurers who cover sicker populations.
The government uses a complicated formula to determine which insurers pay in and this formula was the point of contention, prompting two nonprofit insurers to file two different lawsuits.
CREDIT: KAISER FAMILY FOUNDATION
A New Mexico-based federal judge called the risk adjustment formula “arbitrary” and “capricious” in ruling that the CMS formula was flawed. However, a Massachusetts based-federal judge upheld the risk adjustment formula, which means the Trump administration doesn’t need to end the payments altogether.
“Although the ongoing litigation raises the question of whether there will be a delay in risk adjustment transfers for 2017 and 2018, the payments themselves should not be at risk,” said Health Affairs’ Katie Keith.
Former CMS administrator Andy Slavitt added on Twitter that there’s “[n]ot a reason to stop all the payments unless politically motivated.”
Replying to ASlavitt: This has a lot of similarities to Trump and DOJ taking a court case to stop protections against pre-ex conditions.
In this case, there is a court case in New Mexico with a simple remedy for the Administration.
ASlavitt: Even Trump’s HHS stated in the case in question that what is happening would be “disruptive for insurers, policyholders and state insurance markets.”
That apparently is exactly what those in (what I assume we will learn to be) the White House wanted.
For 2016, risk-adjustment payments were valued at 11% of total premium dollars, so insurers could lose a good amount of money. But this doesn’t affect all insurers who participate on the marketplaces, as ACA policy expert David Anderson points out. For example, insurers who are the only carriers in the state for 2017 and 2018 should remain unaffected. Nor does it mean big loses for all insurers participating in the program, as ending risk adjustment could mean windfalls for others, as Kaiser Family Foundation’s Larry Levitt said on Twitter.
So far, ACA marketplaces have proven to be resilient, defying expectations that Trump sabotage would destroy the exchanges. Roughly 12 million people signed up for the ACA marketplace in 2018 and insurance options are growing for 2019. That’s because companies have learned how to turn a profit, and are now joining the ACA marketplaces. That said, insurers are still submitting pricey premium ratesfor 2019, citing uncertainty and repeal of the individual mandate. For this reason, the market will be even less affordable for people who don’t qualify for federal subsidies.
Ending the risk adjustment program or temporarily freezing payments could unnerve insurers who thought they were in for a relatively calm ACA season. CMS added in its statement that it will issue guidance shortly on how insurers should treat the news, in terms of financial losses.
Georgetown health policy expert Edwin Park said should the risk adjustment program end, insurers over the long run “would be forced to sharply raise premiums or reconsider participation.”
This story has been updated to reflect the official CMS statement ending the program that was released on Saturday.
July 4, 2018
Like your 8-hour work day and weekends off? Thank unions
Dolores Huerta on Why Unions Matter
Like your 8-hour work day and weekends off? Thank unions
Posted by NowThis Politics on Wednesday, July 4, 2018
CNN
This is the world’s largest floating solar farm that transformed flooded coal mines into a big investment into clean energy http://cnn.it/2uFqAq9
July 6, 2018
This solar farm is the size of 160 football fields … and it floats!
See the world's largest floating solar farm
This is the world's largest floating solar farm that transformed flooded coal mines into a big investment into clean energy http://cnn.it/2uFqAq9
Posted by CNN on Tuesday, July 18, 2017
By Jack Holmes July 6, 2018
Getty Images
It’s time once again to check in on Donald Trump, American president. Our fearless leader took to the podium at a rally in Montana Thursday night shortly after his kleptocrat EPA administrator resigned amid an avalanche of scandal, and shortly before it would emerge that we have blundered into a full-scale trade war with China. Luckily, those are good and easy to win.
As usual, Trump embraced the political moment with grace and class and a delicate touch.
MSNBC: President Trump appears to mock Sen. Elizabeth Warren during a rally in Montana, promising to ask her to complete a test for the results of her heritage.“But we have to do it gently because we’re in the MeToo generation.”
If you’re keeping score at home, the President of the United States just managed to combine disrespect for Native Americans with disrespect for women to form a crude sort of anti-joke story, which was of course met by customary sneers and jeers from the Real Americans in the audience. This, by the way, was Trump’s vision of a 2020 presidential debate against a sitting senator. Civility!
For the people in the back, reducing the concept of Native American heritage—even if you question someone’s claims to it—to a Disney character does not fall under the category of Showing Respect For That Heritage. That’s particularly true considering that the originators of the “Pocahontas” barb for Elizabeth Warren—her one-time opponent in a Massachusetts Senate race, Scott Brown, and his staff—would drive home the idea by doing Native American war whoops and tomahawk chops at events. But what do you expect from a president who once trotted this same “joke” out at an Oval Office event meant to honor Native American code talkers—who, you might remember, served our country with distinction in the Second World War.
“It’s extraordinary that the president could hire someone like this,” a senior Fox executive told BuzzFeed. “This is someone who is highly knowledgeable of women being cycled through for horrible and degrading behavior by someone who was an absolute monster.”
But he is friends with Sean Hannity, so it all kind of balances out for the president. Oh, and let’s not forget that Donald Trump has been accused of sexual misconduct by 19 women. He has denied all the claims, and as we know, his word is bond. It’s just a coincidence that there was no real joke in his #MeToo riff Thursday night. To the president, the movement is a joke in itself.
Washington Examiner
✔@dcexaminer
Trump: “You know President Putin is KGB… Putin is fine. He’s fine. We are all fine, we’re all people”
By Charles P. Pierce
Getty Images
I have to admit, while watching the preposterous nomination of Scott Pruitt to be the head of the Environmental Protection Agency, I knew he was being put in the job not to do the job. That’s been Republican practice going back to Ronald Reagan, who put Anne Gorsuch in charge of the EPA for roughly the same reasons and with roughly the same results. (Her son, of course, will now afflict us from the Supreme Court for decades.) I expected the environmental calamity, the wholesale sell-off of our public lands, and the rolling back of the regulations that protected the air and the water. Even the climate denial came as no surprise. That was what he was getting paid to do.
What I didn’t anticipate was that Pruitt also would turn out to be so enthusiastic about gobbling at the public trough. (Borrowing your aides’ credit cards to book rooms and then not paying them back? That’s some first class deadbeatery right there.) It appears now that there’s only room for one first-class deadbeat and grifter in this administration*. From The New York Times:
Mr. Pruitt, a former Oklahoma attorney general who built his career on lawsuits against the agency he would eventually lead, remained a favorite of Mr. Trump’s for the majority of his tenure at the E.P.A. He began the largest regulatory rollback in the agency’s history, undoing, delaying or blocking several Obama-era environmental rules. Among them was a suite of historic regulations aimed at mitigating global warming pollution from the United States’ vehicles and power plants. Mr. Pruitt also played a lead role in urging Mr. Trump to follow through on his campaign pledge to withdraw the United States from the 2015 Paris climate agreement, despite warnings from some of the president’s other senior advisers that the move could damage the United States’ credibility in foreign policy. Under the landmark accord, nearly every country had committed to reducing emissions of planet-warming fossil fuel pollution.
That was his real job and he did it well enough to ride through an incredible array of scandals, most of them the kind of penny-ante greed that would embarrass Scott Walker, who is the master of that form. Pruitt did most of what he was hired to do and now he’s going to be replaced by Andrew Wheeler, who used to be a coal lobbyist. The lasting damage will continue to be done. Anyway, I hope they locked up the office supply closet before they canned Scott Pruitt, or at least made him empty his pockets on the way out the door.
P.S.—Here is Pruitt’s letter of resignation. If we had a functioning EPA, it would be a SuperFund site:
