Thursday, February 23rd, 2017
Walter Einenkel , - Daily Kos
Stephan: In this report we can see what the Trump administration is really about. The high speed rail project in California was thought by many, including me, to be one of the most important new infrastructure projects in the country. A successful high speed train in California would soon extend from the Canadian border to the Mexican border, in the process transforming the economies and culture of the American West Coast. Among other things it would have an enormous impact on reducing the consumption of petroleum. The Trump administration has now done what it could stop this project from going forward.
The orange-Republican administration has said all kinds of things that it will do to make the United States “great again.” Anyone with half of a brain cell knows that this administration has very little interest in actually coming through on any of his campaign promises. It’s almost like he is pathologically compelled to do the opposite. For example, rebuilding our infrastructure.
In the first big hit to the Bay Area from the Trump administration, newly minted Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao has put the brakes on $647 million for Caltrain to go electric — and in the process pretty much killed hopes for high-speed rail coming to San Francisco anytime soon.
“It puts the (electrification) project in serious jeopardy,” Caltrain spokesman Seamus Murphy said Friday.
The hope in California was to begin creating jobs through much needed infrastructure work and upgrades. Our country’s infrastructure, as many already know, is not only an issue of needing basic maintenance, we need to modernize virtually everything.
Caltrain has already spent $150 million on planning to go electric, but without the federal and matching funds, the overall […]
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Thursday, February 23rd, 2017
Stephan: The thing about Republicans is that because they have a world view based on ideology instead of facts, they make the same mistakes over and over, never learning from past failures. Here is a glaring example of what I mean.
Unless there is massive citizen push back such as is now gathering, applied consistently and always growing, this could well be our future. It is not something you want to have come to pass.
We need universal healthcare just like every other developed nation in the world. We need to reduce the share of GDP that we spend as a people on health care to around 7-8% instead of our present 17.6%. If we could just rise to Norway's level, 11th, and their expenditure 7.6%, we would save one trillion dollars a year. A trillion dollars annually would be available and it would pay for college, prenatal care, early childhood care, and elder support. No taxes required.
Craig Britton once paid $18,000 a year in premiums for health insurance he bought through Minnesota’s “high risk pool.” He calls the argument that these pools can bring down the cost of monthly premiums “a lot of baloney.”
Credit: Mark Zdehchlik / MPR News
Some Republicans looking to scrap the Affordable Care Act say monthly health insurance premiums need to be lower for the individuals who have to buy insurance on their own. One way to do that, GOP leaders say, would be to return to the use of what are called high-risk insurance pools.
But critics say even some of the most successful high-risk pools that operated before the advent of Obamacare were very expensive for patients enrolled in the plans, and for the people who subsidized them — which included state taxpayers and people with employer-based health insurance.
The argument in favor of high-risk pools goes like this: Separate the healthy people, who don’t cost very much to insure, from people who have pre-existing medical conditions, such as […]
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Thursday, February 23rd, 2017
William Parkin, Brent Klein, Jeff Gruenewald, Joshua D. Freilich and Steven Chermak, - Salon/The Conversation
Stephan: Regular readers know that I consider White Christian terrorism a greater threat than Islamic terrorism. Here is further evidence in support of that view.
Credit: AP Photo/Bill Waugh
On a Tuesday morning in September 2001, the American experience with terrorism was fundamentally altered. Two thousand, nine hundred and ninety-six people were murdered in New York, Virginia and Pennsylvania. Thousands more, including many first responders, lost their lives to health complications from working at or being near Ground Zero.The 9/11 attacks were perpetrated by Islamist extremists, resulting in nearly 18 times more deaths than America’s second most devastating terrorist attack – the Oklahoma City bombing. More than any other terrorist event in U.S. history, 9/11 drives Americans’ perspectives on who and what ideologies are associated with violent extremism.
But focusing solely on Islamist extremism when investigating, researching and developing counterterrorism policies goes against what the numbers tell us. Far-right extremism also poses a significant threat to the lives and well-being of Americans. This risk is often ignored or underestimated because of the devastating impact of the 9/11 terrorist attacks.
We have spent more than 10 years collecting and analyzing empirical data that show us how these ideologies […]
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Thursday, February 23rd, 2017
John Hanna, - The Denver Post
Stephan: Here is the latest on Kansas, as state that has been explicitly conducting a fascinating multi-year experiment in Republican theories of governance. SR has been covering it from the beginning. The experiment has been a complete failure, to the point where now even the Republican state legislators are bailing, as this story describes. For Governor Sam Brownback it really seems humiliating.
State Senate Minority Leader Anthony Hensley, D-Topeka, right, alongside Sen. Tom Holland, D-Baldwin City, proposes an amendment to Senate Bill 188 while on the floor of the Kansas Senate on Thursday, Feb. 16, 2017 in Topeka, Kansas. The amendment, which failed to pass, was part of a tax-hike, spending-cut bill that Republican leaders had put forward last week but was dropped from the calendar.
Credit: Chris Neal/The Topeka Capital-Journal via AP
TOPEKA, Kan. — Kansas’ Republican-led Legislature voted Friday to roll back a deep tax cut championed by Republican Gov. Sam Brownback, conceding it helped put the state in dire financial straits and setting up a possible showdown with him.
Brownback has vowed not to sign the bill, which would impose income tax increases that would raise more than $1 billion over two years. The state Senate voted 22-18 for it Friday, a day after the state House approved it on a 76-48 vote.
Republican leaders were split on the measure, and neither the House speaker nor the Senate president voted on it.
“The […]
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Wednesday, February 22nd, 2017
Zlata Rodionova , Reporter - The Independent (U.K.)
Stephan: Amid all the other madness that is going on in the world, particularly the implosion of the United States as a democracy, few think much about the global arms trade. The American media hardly covers the topic any more and almost no one outside of the trade has any idea that is has been growing at a rate unequaled since the cold war. Nor do most in the U.S. realize that we are the world's leading merchants of death. Here's some data, and it is nothing to be proud of. Do I need to say this is just another bloody project based on greed? Probably not. One can only wonder how much better the world would be if these hundreds of billions of dollars had been spent on creating wellbeing.
The global trade of weapons has risen over the past five years to its highest level since the end of the Cold War. (emphasis added)
According to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), worldwide sales of arms increased by 8.4 per cent in the period between 2012 and 2016 compared with the previous five years, driven by increasing demand from countries in the Middle East and Asia.
Arms imports by countries in the Middle East increased by 86 per cent during the period, with Saudi Arabia’s up by 212 per cent and Qatar’s up by 245 per cent.
“Over the past five years, most states in the Middle East have turned primarily to the USA and Europe in their accelerated pursuit of advanced military capabilities,” said Pieter Wezeman, senior researcher with the SIPRI Arms and Military Expenditure Programme.
“Despite low oil prices, countries in the region continued to order more weapons in 2016, perceiving them as crucial tools for dealing with conflicts and regional tensions.”
The USA was the top arms exporter during the period, accounting for a third of all exports.
Its arms exports increased by 21 per cent compared to the 2007 to 2011 period. Almost […]
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