#this WAS originally going to be day 29 but then I scrapped it in favor of a continuation set with past present future

[candycryptids]

Is this our fate? To be discarded by humanity when we’re no longer deemed useful?

Who am I even more like, anymore? A sentient being with the body of a machine- what even am I, now? Did they grieve for you, or was it quiet and lonely? Did it hurt, can you even feel pain? I’m here now. I’ll remember you too.

[sensitiveuser]

The assassination attempt of May 31, 1905, against Alphonse XIII and Emile Loubet, and the "Trial of the Four" (Charles Malato, Pedro Vallina, Bernard Harvey, Etienne Caussanel)

On the night of May 31, 1905, at the corner of Rivoli and Rohan streets (Paris), Alexandre Farras alias Avino (who was never arrested) threw two bombs at President Emile Loubet and King Alfonso XIII. The king and the president were unharmed.

It turns out that the police were already aware of the preparation of a plot against Alfonso XIII and Emile Loubet. On May 25, Pedro Vallina and Bernard Harvey were arrested. According to the police, Charles Malato, Pedro Vallina, Bernard Harvey, Francisco Ferrer, Siegfried Nacht, José Prat, Cardenal, belonged to an international group founded in May 1904 during a meeting held in the Faubourg Saint-Antoine (at the home of José Prat), and at the origin of the anarchist newspaper L’Espagne inquisitoriale.

Charles Malato (1857-1938) :

Please excuse me, but in this post I do not intend to retrace Malato's entire journey (too much to say, I won't hide it from you). I will only talk to you about his situation from May to November 1905... According to a police report, in May 1905, Charles Malato received packages containing bombs, which in appearance resembled the bombs that were to be used in the attack. Malato claimed that he had never ordered bombs from his correspondents, but that it was in fact a set-up by the Spanish police to compromise him.

After his arrest, while he was in pre-trial detention awaiting his trial (which was to take place in November), Malato published his book The Great Strike.

The "trial of the four" was held from November 27 to 30, 1905. Many personalities testified in favor of Malato: Sébastien Faure, Armand Matha (editor of Le Libertaire), Fortuné Henry (brother of Emile Henry), Lucien Descaves; Francis de Pressensé (president of the League of Human Rights), Jean Jaurès, and even Aristide Briand; Alejandro Lerroux, Estebanes (former Spanish minister), Tarrida del Marmol (Spanish anarchist journalist). Charles Malato declared in court: "I do not defend myself, I attack, I accuse, and I prove!"

I found an article from L'Humanité (November 29, 1905) concerning the case of the "Malato affair":

"PROCUREUR SCAPIN,

What is happening in this Malato affair, so troubled, so obscure by the role that the French police played in it, should outrage all French consciences that have any concern for justice. First, Mr. Bulot's attitude is scandalous. Some of his apostrophes to the accused are abominable. His ironies have something odious about them. We know some ferocious attorneys general. They are less revolting than jokey prosecutors.

The day before yesterday, police officers were caught red-handed lying. The attorney general reproached the accused for triumphing too easily over an "error". What is the error of a prosecution witness in a capital trial like this one, and what does this grievance against the accused mean, who triumph too brilliantly over the lies in which they corner the prevention ?

Yesterday this was even worse, and Mr. Bulot went beyond the limits of the improbable. It had just been established by the employee of the shipping house of the Rosendo Soler firm, in Barcelona, ​​sender of the two packages received by Caussanel, that, according to the firm's book, the first had been sent as a machine, the second as machine parts. On the shipping letters, the packages were marked Scrap metal.

-Why these changes of indication ? asked Malato.

-Go and ask the shipping house in Barcelona, ​​replied Mr. Bulot. In truth, where did Mr. Bulot get these ways of taunting the accused? Since when have people been making fun of defendants under a capital charge in this way? These are procedures from another time and another country. Will the Minister of Justice allow these judicial indecencies to continue and aggravate the situation in which the prosecution has found itself by resorting to false testimony from agents, with pranks of the kind I have just reported ? A case like that of Malato and his co-accused does not involve the low ironies that Mr. Bulot-Scapin allows himself. The Assize Court is a severe place where behavior is required. It is up to the Minister of Justice to remind his attorney general that a criminal trial is not a farce and to forbid him from making up for the lack of evidence with cruel jokes aimed at the accused." (Gustave Rouanet, L’Humanité, November 29, 1905).

The case proved undeniably obscure, because it was clearly burdened with police manipulation. Malato, Valina, Harvey, Caussanel, ended up being acquitted at the end of the trial.

Pedro Vallina (Guadalcanal 1879 - Mexico 1970) :

In 1898, this young medical student (who had been active in the Republican Circle of Guadalcanal) went to Cadiz, where he met Fermin Salvochea ("father" of anarchism in Andalusia). In Madrid, Pedro Vallina was active in anarchist circles, in the face of the policies of Francisco Silvela, Palmero, and Praxedes Mateo Sagasta y Escolar. In October 1901, still in Madrid, Pedro Vallina participated in the congress of the Federation of Workers' Societies of the Spanish Regions. He was allegedly involved in the "Trama de la Coronacion" affair, a planned assassination attempt that was to take place on the day of the coronation of Alfonso XIII (1902). The courts sentenced him to eight years of forced labor. Fortunately, in 1902, to escape the worst, he fled Spain and went into exile in France. In Paris, he met Louise Michel, Charles Malato, and Siegfried Nacht.

In 1904, he led a vast campaign in support of strikes and against repression in Spain (the events of Alcala del Valle). Thanks to him, a large demonstration took place in Paris. In June 1904, he participated in the Amsterdam Congress, the founding congress of the International Antimilitarist Association.

In 1915, he was one of the signatories of the manifesto "The Anarchist International and War", calling on workers to stop killing each other and to turn their weapons against the capitalists. He then returned to Spain, and in 1917 published the magazine Paginas Libres, calling for a general strike. In 1918, he participated in the National Anarchist Congress in Barcelona. As a doctor, he founded the Castillana workers' sanatorium, run by the Confederacion Nacional del Trabajo. During the dictatorship of Primo de Rivera, he was imprisoned, then he took refuge in Tangier and then in Casablanca.

In 1936, he practiced his profession as a doctor in Castile and took part in the revolution. After participating, in July 1936, in the organization of a column of 500 miners that liberated the village of Santa Eufemia, he was named president of the Revolutionary Committee of Almaden, and participated in the collectivization of the mines. On August 15, he was put in charge of health services in Madrid, and he became the head of the CNT Hospital of the Del Rosal column in Canete. A refugee in France, he was imprisoned in the Argelès camp with his wife. In the 1940s, he went to live in Mexico. He founded a hospital (named "Ricardo Flores Magon"), and he devoted himself to the health of the Indians of Oaxaca.

Bernard Harvey :

Initially a theology student, Harvey reoriented himself towards philosophical studies. In 1901, he settled in the Latin Quarter. He made a living by giving English lessons. He met Pedro Vallina and Charles Malato. During the "Trial of the Four", Bernard Harvey declared that he was not an anarchist, and that he studied explosives and pyrotechnics only from a scientific point of view.

Etienne Caussanel :

I won't hide my frustration at the lack of sources that prevents me from writing a biography of Caussanel. All I can tell you is that before the failed attack, he had received a package containing explosives from Barcelona (to put it simply: the same accusation as Malato). On the other hand, I found three articles from L'Humanité about him...

"And in the afternoon, around two o'clock, he took the statements of Caussanel and his wife who was busy doing housework at Malato's. Caussanel stated that he had received correspondence intended for Malato and coming from Spain. But, he added, I could not have been otherwise surprised because I knew that Malato was in contact with the Spanish.

- But parcels coming from Barcelona ?

- I first received a first parcel that I took to Malato's and that does not surprise me since I received letters coming from Spain. When I had given this parcel to Malato, he told me that he wanted to have this package transported to Vallina's, rue Toullier. I accepted and since Vallina was absent, I left the parcel in the hands of the concierge. -But, asked the judge, are you sure that this package that you were instructed to deliver to Vallina was indeed the one that you had received and taken to Malato ?

-I don't know, but in any case, the package that I left on rue Toullier was identical in size to the one I had received. On May 13, I received a second package, larger than the previous one; I went to deliver it to Malato, who did not give me any instructions at the time.

At the end of his questioning, Caussanel told the judge that he had never received a journalist or confided anything. Mr. Leydet then heard Caussanel's wife. He asked her for information about the people who visited Malato.

-I don't know any of these people at all, she replied, and I had no reason to inquire about them. As for Malato, I can only have feelings of deep gratitude for him because he was very good to us, especially during the illness of our son, who was being treated at the Villejuif hospice. Malato was always very generous and very kind to all of us The interrogation of Mrs. Caussanel ended with these statements in praise of the writer. " (L’Humanité, June 5, 1905).

"Then Mr. Leydet wanted to make Malato say that Caussanel had anarchist tendencies. Malato replied that Caussanel, the son of a victim of December 2, was an enthusiastic republican but that it was ridiculous to suppose that he had ever conceived the slightest anarchist idea. " (L’Humanité, July 14, 1905).

[giantladywithtitsicles]

Introducing my Lavellan brothers;

Fenrir Maliel - Assassin Blades Rogue (the oldest & a shameless self insert) - 27-31

Lin Maliel - Two Handed Reaver Warrior (the middle child, and the Official Inquisitor) - 25-29

Sandu Thevael - Necromancer Mage (the youngest, the “black sheep” that isn’t actually the black sheep: the red herring if you will) - 18-24

Fenrir and Lin were originally of Clan Maliel, which was massacred in an event the elder brothers refer to exclusively as “The Trample”. Clan Maliel was caught in the crossfire between two human settlements, both of which decided to take a shortcut through Clan Maliel’s campsite. The brothers, as young as 4-7 years of age, hid during the duration of the battle. They emerged after the ground was razed, and the fires were long cold.

They were fortunate to have survived the month long journey they took to find safety, picking up scraps as they went. After that period of time, they encountered a trail Clan Lavellan left: freshly put out bonfires, Halla tracks, indents from footsteps and wagon wheels. Tired and hungry, they stumbled into the open, and were caught by one of the healers.

Fenrir is blind in his right eye, Lin has an unnamed heart condition and the tip of one ear is cut off, they both manage. They gain inspiration from the other elves in Clan Lavellan, who have lost much more than an eye or an ear.

They were adopted into the clan as full blooded members, and nobody questioned why neither of them looked or acted quite like the other elves. They trained with the masters, and became an integral part of their community.

Five years later, they go out as a junior party to scout the Emerald Graves, where they encounter another site of a wrecked elven clan. They determine a demon outbreak to be the cause. Sifting through the rubble they find records of this clan: formerly known as Clan Thevael, sister clan of Clan Maliel. They pack as many intact journals and scrolls as possible, and as they were about to leave, encountered a young Sandu. It was clear to them they were taking this child in. The Clan Lavellan healers determined that Sandu was left alone for some time, and that there was no easy way to tell his age due to malnourishment.

Sandu turned out to be a proficient mage, but he was one too many in the clan. Fenrir and Lin begged Keeper Istimaethoriel to keep Sandu around, and somehow convinced her. Sandu is timid, and does not take up more space than he feels he absolutely needs. Keeper Istimaethoriel, though careful around him, tries to make him feel welcome. It’s a work in progress.

Around the time Lin was pulled into the Inquisition, Fenrir investigated the files they found in Clan Thevael’s ruins. He read letters exchanged between his mother and a friend of hers, talking about their origins, how their clan was shunned by others. A few years after Lin’s emergence as Inquisitor, Fenrir arranged a meeting between his two brothers to discuss exactly who they were.

This meeting between the brothers enlightens Lin on many things, and when the time comes to confront Fen’Harel, he is able to put the pieces together as to his original clan’s history. Fenrir discovers why his peers hesitate when saying his name. Sandu has the closest relation to Fen’Harel, but his clan buried these records deep within their stories to protect themselves from scorn, and his exact ancestry is unrecoverable.

They do know that Sandu is more precisely Fenrir and Lin’s nephew, but they treat him as a brother anyway. Fenrir is three years older than Lin. They don’t know exactly how much younger Sandu is, but they estimate the difference to be as little as two years to as much as eleven years to Lin. Sandu’s stunted growth made it a difficult task.

If Fenrir were the Inquisitor, he would have married Cassandra (Vivienne as Divine), and travelled between his estate in Kirkwall and where the new generation of Seekers train. He abandoned the elven gods and adopted Andrastian faith, and became somewhat of a religious zealot. While running errands in Kirkwall, a masked assassin targeted him, and Fenrir was afflicted with a deadly poison. He died within days, and though Varric sent for Cassandra as soon as he could, she was barely too late to make it before Fenrir passed. They had a single child, who Cassandra named “Maliel”, after his lost clan, even though their child was not elven.

Otherwise, Fenrir remained within Clan Lavellan. He became an elder, who was tasked with training their non-mages. He was well-loved and respected, but clan members were always wary of him, as he had an edge to him that unnerved them at times. He recognized that his past experiences would always have made him cynical. Fenrir connected with one of the mages, a woman named Ghili, and they had twin daughters: Juna and Fenwe.

Lin became partners with Iron Bull, and vied to rebuild everything he could. He did not want for anyone to be unreasonably vulnerable, and so he remained meticulous in how he influenced Thedas. He gained favor from Fen’Harel because of the care he put into his actions, though he was always spiteful of the betrayal. After the conclusion of the events in Trespasser, Lin joined the Chargers, and became quite a hit. His arm, amputated from the elbow down, was a roadblock for him. He switched from two handed weapons to a sword and a shield. The shield, specifically tailored to him, acted as a prosthetic arm. Iron Bull jokes that it’s more of a boon than anything else, as its massive size is akin to an impenetrable wall. Lin encounters a small child during a job, and nearly dies protecting it. They are a human toddler, simply nicknamed “Finn”.

As the years go by, Lin’s health declines, and eventually he retires from fighting for good. Iron Bull and Lin retreat to the Storm Coast, bringing Finn along with them. The mantle of leader of the Chargers passes to Krem. Finn learns to fight the Reaver style, and alters Lin’s shield to be useful to them. Finn joins the Chargers, and makes a name for themself as the Lightning Bolt of the Chargers, “Finn the Bolt”, for short. They all find it to be a funny title.

If Lin is not the Inquisitor, he joins Fenrir in the search for their heritage, and becomes an elder as well. Lin teaches healing and non-violence, diplomacy, and culture. He becomes a father through surrogacy, and has a child who they call “Denmirr”.

Or he stays with Clan Lavellan and searches for elven orphans, adopting a bit of a clan of his own. Because of how many children he adopts, Clan Lavellan sends him away with extra members to revive Clan Maliel. Most of the children are not related by blood, but it becomes somewhat of a family of its own.

He himself develops a flirtatious relationship with one of the male warriors, Naris. Fenrir teases him often, but means well.

Sandu, as the Inquisitor, had to learn how to insert himself as the dominant party. He observed Vivienne and found her to be his greatest confidant. Not only did she teach him much about magic, she taught him confidence and that his image didn’t need to reflect who he is completely. She didn’t approve of his choice to establish Leliana as the Divine, but she respected his decision and his reasoning. Sandu felt foolish when he faced Solas for the last time: wondered how he could have missed the signs. After he disbanded the Inquisition, he returned to Clan Lavellan. He remained accessible for Cassandra to summon him when needed, but became Keeper after some time passed, and his connection to the clan became strong again. He never assumed the name Lavellan, but was referred to as that, similarly to a title.

He otherwise would become a tradesman for the clan. He sent to towns and cities to be a spokesman, and learned to deal with ruffians after being abused into a bad situation on a few occasions. In one far trip to the Anderfels, he met a surface Dwarf named Jekard (ym/yr [yim•yer]), and formed a brother-like bond with ym. They exchanged insight and advantages with each other, and both Clan Lavellan and Jekard’s guild benefitted. He met Krem once, and looks up to him like an idol. Sandu never fell in love, and really had no interest to, but took a group of apprentices who aspired to learn from their Keeper. Imposter’s Syndrome hit him hard for a very long time, before he realized he was right where he belonged.

If none of the brothers became Inquisitor, all three stayed together, and functioned as a single mind. They dedicated their lives to Clan Lavellan out of gratitude, and the clan evolved into one of the strongest outposts in all of southern Ferelden and Orlais. They all had different roles, but the future generations of the clan benefitted greatly from their presence.

If all three brothers became influential members of the Inquisition, their power would likely have gone uncontested. Their strengths would allow them to spread farther than if only one of them were Inquisitor. The Inquisition would be an empire, and almost definitely considered a threat to even Par Vollen. Fenrir and Lin would take it different directions, and the possibility of a schism turned great. Sandu would side with Lin for the sole reason that he found Fenrir’s ideologies to be extreme. The Inquisition would be built up by the brothers, and torn down by the brothers.

In that scenario, a civil war would erupt between Fenrir’s loyalists (the Fenedhis), and Lin’s loyalists (the Athim). Fenrir would slay Lin, but Sandu would defeat Fenrir. Sandu would dismiss all soldiers and scatter the army, and soon after would disappear without a trace. He wasn’t dead though- his presence was tangible even though he could not be seen.

While this doesn’t encompass all that these characters are, I thought it was a nice overview of these brothers I’ve had in my mind for a while. The inspiration came from my realization that most of my DA:I characters are elves and Qunari. I might do more in-depth timelines for each brother later. This is completely separate from Dragon Age canon, clearly, and is just a fun little thing I put together. I may revise it if there are details I want to alter.

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Pluralistic: 19 Mar 2020 (Marie Newman ousts Dan Lipinski, Radicalized radio documentary, African Whatsapp modders, Imagineering in a Box, Data is the New Toxic Waste, a fair covid bailout, Fox News is a death cult, food supply chains are healthy, magic for coronavirus)

Today's links

The worst Democrat in Congress just lost his job: Dan Lipinski primaried by the amazing Marie Newman.

Canada Reads documentary on Radicalized: The Great Canadian Book debate is indefinitely postponed, but here's an hour on my book!

Africa's Facebook modders are world leaders: Technological self-determination through adversarial interoperability.

Imagineering in a Box: Interdisciplinary theme park design lessons from Khan Academy and Disney.

Data is the New Toxic Waste: It was never "the new oil."

How to structure a fair covid bailout: Stimulus, not private jets.

Fox News is a suicide cult: Telling your elderly viewers to perform tribal loyalty by engaging in high-risk behaviors is a career-limiting move.

Grocery supply chains are resilient: One less thing to worry about.

Magic in the time of coronavirus: Never let a good crisis go to waste, card-trick edition.

This day in history: 2010, 2019

Colophon: Recent publications, current writing projects, upcoming appearances, current reading

The worst Democrat in Congress just lost his job (permalink)

Congress's worst Democrat is Dan Lipinski, a corrupt, anti-abortion, corporatist, gunhumping asshole in a safe seat that he inherited from his father in 2004, who handed it to him after nominations had closed, bypassing the semblance of democracy.

https://theintercept.com/2018/01/29/dan-lipinski-illinois-3rd-district-marie-newman/

He's a homophobic bigot who opposed the $15 minimum wage and allowed the rail-barons who fund his campaign to dismantle safety regulations.

He was primaried by Marie Newman (I'm a donor!) whose campaign was vicious sabotaged by the DNC.

https://theintercept.com/2019/04/26/dccc-blacklist-marie-newman-dan-lipinski/

Despite this, Marie Newman successfully primaried this piece of shit.

Like AOC's seat, Newman's is a very safe one, meaning she's all but guaranteed to go to Congress in November.

Canada Reads documentary on Radicalized (permalink)

The Canada Reads national book prize is indefinitely postponed, thanks to covid. In lieu of the televised debates originally scheduled for this week, the CBC is airing one-hour specials on each book, including mine, Radicalized.

https://www.cbc.ca/listen/live-radio/1-6-canada-reads/clip/15766247-canada-reads-2020-special-episode-radicalized-by-cory-doctorow

If you're jonesing for The Great Canadian Book Debate, you can fill the gap with the whole series:

https://www.cbc.ca/listen/live-radio/1-6-canada-reads

Africa's Facebook modders are world leaders (permalink)

In most of Africa, the most popular app by far is WhatsApp, and unofficial WhatsApp mods – including one that started life as a Syrian alternative at the height of its civil war – are offering local tools for local contexts.

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2020/03/african-whatsapp-modders-are-masters-worldwide-adversarial-interoperability

"Nothing about us without us" has been a rallying cry for many movements, most recently the disability rights movement. Coders working for a Silicon Valley Big Tech firm shouldn't have the last work on how apps work for people half a world away.

The big WhatsApp mods accommodate lots of local needs: larger groups and filesizes, better privacy protection, multiple accounts on a single device.

But it's also hard to find reliable mods, because FB used legal threats to shut down the largest, most popular one.

Ironically, this has driven peer-to-peer app sharing, where people you trust will directly send the app from their phone to yours, assuring you that they haven't detected any spyware. That's just great.

What would be even better is if local coders could dismantle FB's digital colonialism and market their improved apps directly, come out of the shadows without fear of retaliation by distant juggernauts who want to capture "the next billion users" and own their digital lives.

The history of Adversarial Interoperability is full of users modifying their tools to improve them. Before John Deere was a monopolistic copyright troll, it used to send engineers out to farms to collect and integrate farmers' mods into its products.

https://securityledger.com/2019/03/opinion-my-grandfathers-john-deere-would-support-our-right-to-repair/

Every human being should have the right of technological self-determination: the right to decide which tools they use, and to change how those tools work to suit their own needs.

Imagineering in a Box (permalink)

Imagineering in a Box is a joint project from Khan Academy, Pixar and Disney Imagineering. It's a series of interactive lessons and lectures on designing themed spaces, rides to go in those spaces, and animatronics to go in those rides.

https://www.khanacademy.org/humanities/hass-storytelling/imagineering-in-a-box

It's interdisciplinary: land design is meant to be undertaken with physical materials, ride design uses art and math, and animatronic design is robotics – mechanical engineering and software development.

Data is the New Toxic Waste (permalink)

In a new article for Kaspersky, I argue that data was never "the new oil" – instead, it was always the new toxic waste: "pluripotent, immortal – and impossible to contain."

https://www.kaspersky.com/blog/secure-futures-magazine/data-new-toxic-waste/34184/

Data breaches are inevitable (any data you collect will probably leak; any data you retain will definitely leak) and cumulative (your company's data breach can be combined with each subsequent attack to revictimize your customers). Identity thieves benefit enormously from cheap storage, and they collect, store and recombine every scrap of leaked data. Merging multiple data sets allows for reidentification of "anonymized" data, and it's impossible to predict which sets will leak in the future.

These nondeterministic harms have so far protected data-collectors from liability, but that can't last. Toxic waste also has nondeterministic harms (we never know which bit of effluent will kill which person), but we still punish firms that leak it.

Waiting until the laws change to purge your data is a bad bet – by then, it may be too late. All the data your company collects and retains represents an unquantifiable, potentially unlimited source of downstream liability.

What's more, you probably aren't doing anything useful with it. The companies that make the most grandiose claims about data analytics are either selling analytics or data (or both). These claims are sales literature, not peer-reviewed citations to empirical research.

Data is cheap to collect and store – if you don't have to pay for the chaos it sows when it leaks. And some day, we will make data-hoarders pay.

How to structure a fair covid bailout (permalink)

It's a foregone conclusions that there will be a bailout. My first worry is that it will be inflationary, because production has ground to a halt. More dollars chasing fewer goods — not good.

https://pluralistic.net/2020/03/18/diy-tp/#covid-stimulus

But there's another risk, which is that it will just go to the finance sector, who will use it to buy private jets and political influence, repeating the 2008 pattern.

https://mattstoller.substack.com/p/how-to-structure-the-coronavirus

Financialization is how the economy got so fragile in the first place. Leveraged buyouts, debt-loading, payoffs for layoffs, looting corporate cash reserves, selling assets and spiking executive competition made companies brittle. As Matt Stoller writes, financialization's goal "is to eliminate production in favor of scalable profitable things like brands, patents, and tax loopholes, because producers – engineers, artists, workers – are cost centers."

Bush/Obama had huge leverage over corporations during their bailout, but they squandered it by making companies subservient to finance, instead of public priorities, workers' rights, or a fair deal for customers.

We must not repeat that blunder. Any company that gets a covid bailout should:

be permanently banned from buybacks, and banned from dividends for 5 years. Companies need to restore their financial cushions.

have their share price zeroed. Shareholders aren't getting a bailout. They "took the risk and upside, they should get the downside too."

have limits on executive comp. Tax dollars shouldn't make execs who presided over failure into millionaires.

a ban on lobbying, limits on PR – you can't spend public handouts to lobby for more public handouts

no M&A activity for 5 years. We're bailing you out so you can run a productive business, not become an acquisition target.

This crisis is different than 2008. It's worse. Let's not make the response worse, as well.

(Image: Bernie Durfee, CC BY-SA)

Fox News is a suicide cult (permalink)

Throughout the crisis, Fox News has been dutifully fulfilling its role as a state new organ for the Trump admin. When Trump's narrative was "no big deal," the network engaged in denial and urged its viewers to engage in high-risk conduct to perform their tribal loyalty.

TV news viewers are much older than the median American. Fox viewers are much older than the median TV new viewer. Old people are at the highest risk of covid complications. Linear increases in patient age yield exponential increases in mortality.

Fox has since changed its orthodoxy to match the president's new narrative. But it's too late. Many viewers will cling to their original denial in order to protect themselves from feeling like dupes.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/media/on-fox-news-suddenly-a-very-different-tune-about-the-coronavirus/2020/03/16/7a7637cc-678f-11ea-9923-57073adce27c_story.html

Others are already incubating – and passing on the virus.

Fox News just murdered a substantial portion of its viewership.

https://ritholtz.com/2020/03/foxnews-clearpresentdanger/

But don't get smug. The Fox viewers' risky conduct will have spread the virus further, infecting people far beyond the circle of denialists.

And their cases and the cases of those they infected will contribute to the overwhelming of the health-care system.

People who have car-wrecks or burst appendices or complex births or other emergency hospitalizations will die as a result.

Fox didn't cause the pandemic, and its viewers aren't solely responsible for its spread. But their ideology and conduct made it much, much worse.

Grocery supply chains are resilient (permalink)

If you – like me – have been worried about empty US grocery shelves, it appears that you can rest easy (or easier).

US food distributors' warehouses are at 200-500% nominal, comparable to pre-Thanksgiving.

https://www.npr.org/2020/03/18/817920400/empty-grocery-shelves-are-alarming-but-theyre-not-permanent

They saw this coming and stocked up.

Food production is also still very healthy.

The shortages appear temporary, driven by logistics bottlenecks that will ease with time, assuming the labor force for grocers/warehousers/shippers remains healthy and available.

(Image: Lyza, CC BY-SA)

Magic in the time of coronavirus (permalink)

I really dote on the "social magic" of Andy at The Jerx, a one-on-one style of conjuring and mentalism that often plays out over weeks and months. He's been doing a series of performing tricks during coronavirus, and the latest instalment is great.

http://www.thejerx.com/blog/2020/3/19/magic-in-the-time-of-coronavirus-part-3

"I have this trick I'm working on but I've run out of people to perform it on in person. Can you hop on Skype for a few minutes?"

This implies that you could do the trick in person, and you can use it to do something you couldn't do in person.

"The window of the Skype frame makes switching and ditching and that sort of thing incredibly easy. You don't need a pocket index, you can have stuff just sitting on your computer desk off frame."

This day in history (permalink)

#10yrsago Peter Watts found guilty www.rifters.com/crawl/?p=1186

#10yrsago Icelandic Pirates soar: citizenship for Snowden? https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2015/03/icelandic-pirate-partys-rapid-rise-may-result-in-citizenship-for-snowden/

#1yrago Uber used spyware to surveil and poach drivers from Australian rival service Gocatch https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-03-18/uber-used-secret-spyware-to-try-and-crush-australian-start-up/10901120

#1yrago Kickstarter employees want to unionize under OPEIU and have formed Kickstarter United to make that happen https://www.theverge.com/2019/3/19/18254995/kickstarter-unionizing-union-representation-inclusivity-transparency-tech-us-crowdfunding

#1yrago The European Copyright Directive: What Is It, and Why Has It Drawn More Controversy Than Any Other Directive In EU History? https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2019/03/european-copyright-directive-what-it-and-why-has-it-drawn-more-controversy-any

#1yrago Matt Taibbi finally makes sense of the Pentagon's trillions in off-books "budgetary irregularities" https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-features/pentagon-budget-mystery-807276/

#1yrago New Zealand's domestic spies, obsessed with illegally surveilling environmental activists, missed a heavily armed right-wing terrorist https://consortiumnews.com/2019/03/15/misguided-spying-and-the-new-zealand-massacre/

Colophon (permalink)

Today's top sources: Disney Parks Blog (https://disneyparks.disney.go.com), Naked Capitalism (https://nakedcapitalism.com/).

Currently writing: I've just finished rewrites on a short story, "The Canadian Miracle," for MIT Tech Review. It's a story set in the world of my next novel, "The Lost Cause," a post-GND novel about truth and reconciliation. I've also just completed "Baby Twitter," a piece of design fiction also set in The Lost Cause's prehistory, for a British think-tank. I'm getting geared up to start work on the novel next.

Currently reading: Just started Lauren Beukes's forthcoming Afterland: it's Y the Last Man plus plus, and two chapters in, it's amazeballs. Last month, I finished Andrea Bernstein's "American Oligarchs"; it's a magnificent history of the Kushner and Trump families, showing how they cheated, stole and lied their way into power. I'm getting really into Anna Weiner's memoir about tech, "Uncanny Valley." I just loaded Matt Stoller's "Goliath" onto my underwater MP3 player and I'm listening to it as I swim laps.

Latest podcast: The Masque of the Red Death and Punch Brothers Punch https://craphound.com/podcast/2020/03/16/the-masque-of-the-red-death-and-punch-brothers-punch/

Upcoming books: "Poesy the Monster Slayer" (Jul 2020), a picture book about monsters, bedtime, gender, and kicking ass. Pre-order here: https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781626723627?utm_source=socialmedia&utm_medium=socialpost&utm_term=na-poesycorypreorder&utm_content=na-preorder-buynow&utm_campaign=9781626723627

(we're having a launch for it in Burbank on July 11 at Dark Delicacies and you can get me AND Poesy to sign it and Dark Del will ship it to the monster kids in your life in time for the release date).

"Attack Surface": The third Little Brother book, Oct 20, 2020. https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250757531

"Little Brother/Homeland": A reissue omnibus edition with a new introduction by Edward Snowden: https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250774583

[thesportssoundoff]

“Look there’s Holloway vs Edgar and you’re watching this so don’t even give me any of your shit” UFC 240 Preview

Joey

July 22nd, 2019

Every once in a while, about once a year or so, the UFC has a PPV that's utterly pointless. It's just a show on the schedule designed to make up for a cancelled show or just a PPV "make some money" cash grab. This card is a little bit column A, little bit column B and so there's really not much to say in the lead in. The UFC lost a show in January when they had a bunch of main events fall through and they needed to move Cejudo and Dillashaw to ESPN+. In response to that happening, the UFC wound up needing to fill a schedule slot and SO we get two July PPVs (we were originally going to get two October ones but they reconfigured the sched). To further complicate matters, they loaded up July (two title fights plus a crazy undercard) and loaded up August (DC/Stipe, Romero/Costa, Nate/Pettis, Heinisch/Brunson plus all sorts of goodies) so this PPV sandwiched in the middle got a whole bunch of nada. This is basically a three fight card and if we're being honest, it just might be a one fight card if you consider Neal/Price and Cyborg/Spencer pointless.  The next three cards after this are all going to be pretty special in their own ways (DC/Stipe, Khabib/Dustin and Israel/Whittaker) so we're just here to kill some time at an unfair price point.  This card is a collection of spent shell casings on the Old West that is MMA. The summer is basically the UFC's seasonal fuck up session; more people are willing to spend money in the summer but fighters don't like fighting and the schedule is so packed that you run the risk of just burning all your bullets. Barring something unforseen, this will be the worst PPV of the year but ya got Holloway/Edgar so I'll be there. OH and it's a Canadian card! Cursed!

Fights: 12

Debuts: Giacomo Lemos, Tanner Boser, Yoshinori Horie

Fight Changes/Injury Cancellations: 1 (Lauren Murphy vs Mara Romero CANCELLED)

Headliners (fighters who have either main evented or co-main evented shows in the UFC): 4 (Frankie Edgar, Max Holloway, Cyborg, Alexis Davis)

Fighters On Losing Streaks in the UFC: 2 (Alexis Davis,Erik Koch)

Fighters On Winning Streaks in the UFC: 3 (Geoff Neal, Hakeem Dawodu, Alejandre Pantoja)

Main Card Record Since Jan 1st 2017 (in the UFC): 22-12

Frankie Edgar- 2-1 Max Holloway- 3-1 Cyborg- 3-1 Felicia Spencer- 1-0 Geoff Neal- 3-0 Niko Price- 4-2 Olivier Aubin-Mercier- 2-2 Arman Tsarukyan- 0-1 Marc Andre Berriault- 0-1 Kryztsof Jokto- 1-3

Fights By Weight Class (yearly number here):

Featherweight-  3 (37) Welterweight- 2 (41) Women’s Flyweight- 2 (21) Middleweight- 1 (24) Flyweight- 1 (9) Women’s Featherweight- 1 (7) Heavyweight- 1 (22) Lightweight- 1 (45)

Bantamweight- (39) Light Heavyweight-  (29) Women’s Bantamweight- (13) Women’s Strawweight- (19)

2019 Number Tracker

Debuting Fighters (20-43)- Tanner Bosse, Yoshinori Horie, Giacomo Lemos

Short Notice Fighters (20-27)-

Second Fight (40-16)- Kyle Stewart, Sarah Frota,  Sueng Woo Choi, Viviane Araújo,  Marc-André Barriault, Arman Tsaryukan

Cage Corrosion (Fighters who have not fought within a year of the date of the fight) (14-27)- Gavin Tucker, Frankie Edgar

Undefeated Fighters (25-29)- Giacomo Lemos

Fighters with at least four fights in the UFC with 0 wins over competition still in the organization (9-8)-

Weight Class Jumpers (Fighters competing outside of the weight class of their last fight even if they’re returning BACK to their “normal weight class”) (20-17)-  Erik Koch, Sarah Frota, Max Holloway

Twelve Precarious Ponderings

1-  In no small part, I think it's fair to acknowledge that moving PPVs to ESPN+ has, at least for me, dampened the enthusiasm fans have for PPV. Maybe that'll ultimately be a good thing but on principle alone, these cards seem a tick below the old school "gather round and party" UFC PPV events. Beyond that though, are we not giving Edgar vs Holloway its just due as a title fight? Max Holloway is still in my opinion the greatest featherweight of all time and this fight would be yet another step towards solidifying a potential hall of fame resume. It's not wrong to suggest that a stoppage over Edgar would be yet another step towards solidifying Holloway's spot among the GOAT. On the other hand, we just saw him get beaten up by Dustin Poirier up a weight class. Going up and taking a risk didn't impact BJ Penn and Conor McGregor but those two had a different sort of legacy and a more dedicated fanbase to make sure those things didn't matter. Frankie Edgar earned a title shot with wins over Jeremy Stephens and Yair Rodriguez before risking it all in the pursuit of being the ultimate company man. A short notice loss to Brian Ortega seemed to put him further to the back of the line but Edgar returned a little over a month later to decision Cub Swanson and has laid low since. In many ways, Edgar getting put back into the title picture is a rare example of the UFC doing something nice and fair. Edgar should've gone to the back of the line but instead the UFC rewarded him for doing them a favor in taking the Ortega fight.

2- Is the UFC being overly presumptious/optimistic in believing that the winner of this fight can make a quick enough turnaround to fight Volkanovski in early October? As champion, I think the quickest turnaround Frankie Edgar ever made was early October to late February but he was also 7 years younger then. For Holloway, December to March WAS supposed to be his quickest turnaround but he got hurt and the fight got scrapped.

3- Does Holloway have to finish Frankie Edgar to get his buzz back or would a win suffice for most fans?

4- Has any other fighter lost five straight title fights in the UFC? If Edgar loses to Holloway, I think he'll officially break his own record (that he holds with Urijah Faber who lost to Cruz and Barao twice).

5- I wonder IF the UFC could do it over, would they still go through with trying a female featherweight division. It got them a few Cyborg fights (which at the very least gave them a salvaged PPV or two) but overall, you have to wonder if this is what they expected when they (lazily) fell into the division. Although Felicia Spencer is probably a far more reputable opponent for Cyborg than when Cyborg was trying to get the UFC to sign Pam Sorenson.

6- The entire UFC/Cyborg situation could be done over the course of a few days but allow me the opportunity to try and paint the numbers here briefly:

Cyborg was signed because the UFC still had designs of Ronda (now vanquished by Holly Holm) making the comeback, rising up and facing Cyborg once before she'd go on to do other things. It didn't QUITE work out that way and so the UFC had a fighter they had no interest in taking up space on their cards. At this point Brazilian MMA was on a serious slump and Cyborg represented someone who could headline a card or two there, give the UFC some depth on PPVs. Then the UFC wound up deciding to go full bore with a 145 lb division----without Cyborg in the opening fight. It seemed like they were trying to set up Cyborg for the winner but GDR/Holm was a PPV bust and GDR didn't want the fight so they scrapped THAT and tried again with Cyborg as the lead dog. From there, Cyborg turned into a pretty decent PPV draw even though it always felt like this was an arraigned marriage more or less. Her two headliners did well enough (210K-ish vs Yanit, 375K-ish with Holly Holm) but the UFC never seemed to like her much and the feeling was mutual seemingly. Cyborg supported Leslie Smith's Project Spearhead on multiple occasions and would accuse the UFC of bias against her on a number of occasions. The UFC would in turn tell her to stop worrying about things that don't matter and for her to stop trying to act as her own matchmaker. There was a borderline embarrassing moment where Cyborg had a member of the media during a press conference ask Dana White to unblock her on Instagram. Both sides were in a convenient set up where they needed to at least tolerate one another and they could barely pull that off.

Things came to a head when the UFC finally sacked up (at the demands of Amanda Nunes seemingly) and gave us the champ vs champ fight. If Nina Ansaroff deserves a ton of credit for being a liason between the UFC and Amanda Nunes, Cyborg deserves an equal amount of credit for giving them a reason to get over Nunes wiping Meisha Tate and Ronda Rousey while also being a pest about doing media. Nunes wiped Cyborg out and the entire narrative on her changed in an instant. With the changing narrative though emerged the challenge; Nunes wanted a rematch, Cyborg wanted a rematch while the UFC had no interest in Cyborg vs Nunes II with one fight remaining on her deal. Cyborg flirted openly with leaving the UFC, said pretty much as such recently and just when the UFC felt like they were out of the Cyborg business, Amanda Nunes stirred it back up by wanting to REMATCH Cyborg still although I'd suppose the UFC doing a Cyborg fight by and large was bound to make it an issue regardless. Now the only buzz to the co-main is whether Cyborg can win to set up a potential rematch that 90% of the people watching probably have no belief in actually happening.

I think if everybody was on truth serum, you'd probably get a breakdown where everybody agrees that this has no chance of panning out in a positive sense. The UFC on a truth serum would probably be fine with Cyborg not fighting for them after this unless it was on some sort of team friendly deal so to speak (although all MMA contracts are team friendly given the nature of the biz). Cyborg would probably be just fine with fighting in Bellator and being some kind of a novelty act for her remaining fans unless the UFC paid her greatly and made some concessions on their protocol for fighter relations. Amanda Nunes is fine with whatever happens but she probably knows a Cyborg rematch as a co-main trumps trying to convince fans that a GDR rematch or a fight with Macy Chiasson or a fight with Yanit Kunitskaya is must see programming. Cyborg makes the most money in the UFC in theory, the UFC makes the most money with Nunes-Cyborg 2 and Nunes' career resume becomes GOAT regardless of gender if she finishes Cyborg again. It just requires too many ifs, buts or unless' to feel like it has any probability of happening.

7- Which does the UFC want more; a Cyborg win so they can quietly do away with 145 lbs or a Felicia Spencer win where they can stick to Cyborg one last time and maybe give Amanda Nunes something to do?

8- Even if it's probably an ESPN PPV prelim headliner on a more complete card, I'm really excited about Niko Price vs Geoff Neal. Of all the DWTCS guys signed, it could be argued that Geoff Neal is the best so far. He's an insanely good striker with stout takedown defense and some of the best in the pocket combinations you'll see at 170 lbs. He's developing more and more into someone who should be remembered as 170 lbs continues to amass depth in the middle rankings. I have some concerns about his ability to rally in a tough fight and I do think he'll struggle with the bigger welterweights but so far so good. Conversely Niko Price has gone from ultra exciting prospect to a solid proven action fighter who looks set to make the mantle of violent finisher at 170 lbs from the likes of Tim Means and Matt Brown. He'll be a great test for Neal and at the very least, this should be an exciting fight.

9- Is the bloom off of the Hakeem Dawodu rose or are we still holding on? He's 2-1 in the UFC but none of those performances were really of the standout variety. The fact that he's facing a debuting guy and not a proven 145 lber after beating Kyle Bochniak suggests the UFC is looking to slow it down, reassess and see if they can rebuild him again.

10- Can a fighter who is 16-5-1 be a prospect? I suppose that'll have to be the case with 27 year old HW Tanner Boser. Canada needs SOMEBODY to emerge from the mess and Boser, who has been fighting out in Russia, is probably one of their better chances unless you're sold on Gavin Tucker or Hakeem Dawodu. He kicks off the show vs Giacomo Lemos on ESPN+.

11- Erik Koch has fought in the UFC since 2011. He was one of MMA's weirdest resumes with elite names like Dustin Poirier, Rafael Asssuncao, Clay Guida, Ricardo Lamas and Bobby Green on it. He was a former title contender for Jose Aldo's featherweight title. He's got 21 pro fights, fought in three different UFC weight classes and is just NOW 30. You want to ask "Why are they bothering?" but clearly there's something they like there. Maybe Koch just finally needed to get healthy or maybe the UFC just feels some sort of compulsion towards having a guy who WAS going to be a #1 contender get on the right track. Just feels weird at this point. Koch faces Kyle Stewart who made a short notice debut in January as the first ever fight on the first ever ESPN card.

12- Three fighters on their second fights to keep an eye on; 1) Arman Tsarukyan on short-ish notice gave Islam Makhachev some serious problems as a quick scrambler who had some power in his hands. He was outwrestled but kept going at a pretty hot clip and made a good enough account of himself that he's on the MAIN CARD here against Olivier Aubin-Mercier. 2) Viviane Araujo looked fantastic against Talita Bernardo in a short notice fight up two weight classes. After beating Bernardo up for two rounds, she finished her with a flying knee in the third round to pick up the upset short notice win. She gets one of those "Let's see what they can't do!" step ups against the insanely slow but insanely strong veteran Alexis Davis. That one has potential to be messy. Lastly Sarah Frota looked pretty impressive in her UFC debut which was hampered by her completely blowing the 115 lb weight limit at 123 lbs. She's got some Thiago Silva-esque vibes in terms of being a powerful slow stalker who wings power shots at will and bets on her chin being better than yours when things get tough. She'll be facing Gillian Robertson who will offer nothing on the feet but is a tremendously adept grappler who can snag subs at will. Remember Livia Souza almost subbed Frota with an armbar.

[epacer]

Plan Goes Up In Smoke

San Diego Unified scraps plan for mental health holiday

A proposed mental health day caused a stir in the San Diego Unified School District. It would have given students next Friday off, turning the Veterans Day holiday into a four-day weekend.

Updated: November 5, 2021 at 8:16 PM PDT

Superintendent Dr. Lamont Jackson sent parents an email on Friday night stating the following:

After careful consideration, we have decided to keep our classrooms open next Friday.

All students will be welcome at school on November 12.

We will continue to offer students the chance to use that day to rest and recharge. Families that choose to keep their students out of school for a mental health day on November 12 will have their absence marked as “excused.”

Original Story:

San Diego Unified School District sent an email to parents on Wednesday informing them about a proposed “mental health day” on Nov. 12, 2021, the day after Veterans Day.

Because the Veterans Day holiday falls on Thursday, this would give children a four-day weekend.

The email said the district wanted to give families recovery time because they heard from parents and students that their “mental health has suffered” because of the pandemic. They also urged parents to take that day to get their children vaccinated against COVID-19. The district's deadline for a first dose is Nov. 29.

While some parents were happy to get an extended holiday, others like Elizabeth McCann said this last-minute change throws a wrench into already stressful schedules, and this leaves parents who don’t get Veterans Day off trying to find child care for two days instead of one.

"Our work schedules and the school schedules are very intertwined and very much rely on each other," McCann said. "You need more notice. You can’t spring something like this on us.”

She added she is very in favor of mental health days.

"I think few people deserve it right now more than teachers," McCann said. "I just think the way this was rolled out was tone-deaf to what parents and families are also going through right now."

While the email also stated child care options and reduced meal services were also being recommended, McCann said she doesn’t know if these would be for parents who already are enrolled in extended after-school care, or if it would be available to all parents who need support.

McCann is also concerned about a post circulating on social media, reportedly from a district staff member. It claims the real reason for the day off was because of a teacher shortage.

KPBS has not been able to confirm if that post was legitimate. McCann said if that was the case, the district should be honest.

“It is now sounding like this wasn’t really a mental health day, it was really due to a staff shortage, so it was dishonest," she said. "And after a year and a half of dealing with the ups and downs of school closures and everything, I think most parents ... we really wish people would just level with us and be honest right now."

Interim Superintendent Lamont Jackson said this proposed day off has nothing to do with staffing shortages. He said this is merely a proposed mental health day they decided to add because of a lot of feedback from parents and students about the struggles they’ve been having with mental health.

“There’s been a great deal of expression of wellness. We felt like, I felt like it was a good idea to consider over a weekend, long weekend, allowing folks to take the time, spend time with family,” said Jackson, adding that he’s grateful for all feedback from families.

Jackson said this is merely a proposal that still needs approval from the school board, and if issues like childcare and meals can’t be worked out they will scrap the proposal altogether.

The proposal was expected to go onto the agenda for Tuesday's board meeting, but as of publication time, that agenda has not been posted. *Reposted article with updates from KPBS by Kitty Alvarado, Tania Thorne and M.G. Perez, November 5, 2021

[patriotsnet]

Why Do Republicans Want To Repeal The Affordable Care Act

New Post has been published on https://www.patriotsnet.com/why-do-republicans-want-to-repeal-the-affordable-care-act/

Why Do Republicans Want To Repeal The Affordable Care Act

Why Republicans Cant And Wont Repeal Obamacare

Editor’s Note:

This article was originally posted on Real Clear Health on January 16, 2017.

Now that the Republicans control both the presidency and both houses of Congress, they must put up or shut up on their promise to repeal and replace Obamacare. Here is a flat-footed prediction: the effort will fail for three reasons. First, the Affordable Care Act has largely succeeded not failed, as president-elect Trump and other Republicans falsely allege. Second, it is impossible for the stated goals of repeal to be achieved. Finally, the political fallout from the consequences of partial or total repeal would be devastating. When it comes to casting votes, enough Republicans will conclude that repeal is a bad idea and will join Democrats to sustain the basic structure of the health reform law.

Second, the stated objectives of repealing Obamacare are mutually inconsistent. Three provisions comprise the core of Obamacare. First, rules barring insurance companies from refusing to sell insurance to people because of preexisting conditions or varying premiums based on those conditions. Second, a requirement that everyone carry health insurance who can afford it. And third, subsidies for those with moderate incomes to help make such insurance affordable. The law contains many other provisions as well, but these three are core.

Slashing Ads And Budgets

Funding for the “navigator” programme, under which trained individuals or organisations help people sign up for insurance through Obamacare, has dropped from $62.5m to $10m under President Trump.

His administration has also cut Obamacare advertising spending to $10m – a 90% reduction.

According to a November 2018 Kaiser Health poll, 61% of Americans aged 18 to 64 said they did not know about any enrolment deadlines.

Republicans Want To Get Rid Of Obamacare But Then What

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President Trump has vowed to repeal the Affordable Care Act, but Sarah Kliff of Vox.com says it’s “an overreach” to say that Republicans have a plan for what comes next.

DAVE DAVIES, HOST:

This is FRESH AIR. I’m Dave Davies, in for Terry Gross. While President Trump clashed with some Republicans over a variety of issues in last year’s campaign, one thing they all seemed to agree on was the need to repeal the Affordable Care Act, known as Obamacare. Now that congressional Republicans have a willing president and the votes to scrap the health care law, they’re finding the task a little more complicated than it seemed. Republican lawmakers have a wide range of ideas about what they might replace Obamacare with. But a secret recording of a Republican policy meeting in Philadelphia revealed many are worried about the political cost of removing coverage from those who’ve come to count on it.

For some perspective on what’s happening in Washington and how it might affect our health care, we turn to Sarah Kliff, a senior policy correspondent at vox.com. Before joining Vox, Kliff covered health policy for The Washington Post and for POLITICO and Newsweek. She co-hosts a policy-oriented podcast for Vox called “The Weeds.” Kliff and co-host Ezra Klein recently interviewed President Obama about the debate over health care and the possible repeal of the Affordable Care Act. I spoke with Sarah Kliff Tuesday.

DAVIES: And where have we seen those pools before?

Board Of Governors Professor School Of Public Affairs & Administration

The Trump administrations efforts to sabotage the ACA and their consequences receive detailed attention in a recently released Brookings book, Trump, the Administrative Presidency, and Federalism. For present purposes, I highlight six major sabotage initiatives which emerged in the wake of congressional failure to repeal and replace the ACA.

1. Reduce outreach and opportunities for enrollment in the ACAs insurance exchanges. Established to offer health insurance to individuals and small business, the exchanges have provided coverage to some 10 million people annually. The Obama administration had vigorously promoted the ACA in part to attract healthy, younger people to the exchanges to help keep premiums down. The Trump administration sharply reduced support for advertising and exchange navigators while reducing the annual enrollment period to about half the number of days.

2. Cut ACA subsidies to insurance companies offering coverage on the exchanges. ACA proponents saw insurance company participation on the exchanges as central to fostering enrollee choice and to fueling competition that would lower premiums. The law therefore provided various subsidies to insurance companies to reduce their risks of losing money if they participated on the exchanges. The Trump administration joined congressional Republicans in reneging on these financial commitments.

Repealing Obamacare Is A Huge Tax Cut For The Rich

This did not play a major overt public role in the 2009-’10 debate about the law, but the Affordable Care Act’s financing rests on a remarkably progressive base. That means that, as the Tax Policy Center has shown, repealing it would shower moneyon a remarkably small number of remarkably wealthy Americans.

The two big relevant taxes, according to the TPC’s Howard Gleckman, are “a 0.9 percent payroll surtax on earnings and a 3.8 percent taxon net investment income for individuals with incomes exceeding $200,000.” That payroll tax hike hits a reasonably broad swath of affluent individuals, but in a relatively minor way. The 3.8 percent tax on net investment income , by contrast, is a pretty hefty tax, but one that falls overwhelmingly on the small number of people who have hundreds of thousands of dollars a year in investment income.

For the bottom 60 percent of the population that is, households earning less than about $67,000 a year repeal of the ACA would end up meaning an increase in taxes due to the loss of ACA tax credits.

But people in the top 1 percent of the income distribution those with incomes of over about $430,000 would see their taxes fall by an average of $25,000 a year.

The Acas Protections Changed Public Opinion In Its Favor Republicans Are Keeping Up

For more than a decade, the Affordable Care Act has been the Republican Partys nemesis. As it was first debated in Congress in 2009, when it was enacted in 2010 and through the next six years of implementation, Republican leaders rallied supporters by vociferously opposing it and calling for repeal. The Trump administration and states controlled by Republicans remain hostile to the ACA.

But the coronavirus pandemics fast-moving destruction has pushed Republicans to rely on Barack Obamas signature law to respond to the crisis, even taking action to strengthen it. The law, as written, requires that Americans who have recently lost jobs and insurance coverage to be permitted to enroll in its insurance marketplace, and they are doing so in swelling numbers. Meanwhile, Republicans recently backed that increased federal funding for a critical part of the ACA: Medicaid for lower-income people. And Trump administration regulators have used their authority to insist that insurance plans pay for coronavirus tests as an essential health benefit under the ACA a Republican target in the past.

Our research shows that this about-face cannot be explained by the pandemic alone. The partys rank-and-file and many other Americans have shifted to supporting the ACA and expanded government payments for health care. The pandemic is giving Republicans cover to follow changing public opinion.

Republicans have spent 10 years trying to kill the Affordable Care Act

Younger Americans Could Get Cheaper Plans

Obamacare was designed so that younger policyholders would help subsidize older ones. That would change under the Republican bill because it would allow insurers to charge older folks more.

This means that younger Americans would likely see their annual premiums go down. Enrollees ages 20 to 29 would save about $700 to $4,000 a year, on average,according to a study by the Milliman actuarial firm on behalf of the AARP Public Policy Institute.

Those under age 30 would also get a refundable tax credit of up to $2,000 to offset the cost of their premiums, as long as their income doesn’t exceed $215,000 for an individual.

Related: What’s inside the Republican health care bill?

The GOP tax credits would also likely be more generous than Obamacare’s subsidies for these folks. For example, a 27-year-old making $40,000 a year would receive $2,000 under the GOP plan, but only gets a $103 subsidy from Obamacare, on average, a Kaiser analysis found.

Also, the bill keeps the Obamacare provision that lets young adults up to age 26 stay on their parents’ insurance plan.

This Is Why Republicans Couldnt Make A Better Replacement

Republicans have made a lot of political hay out of pointing out that the plans available under the Affordable Care Act are, in many ways, disappointing. Unsubsidized premiums are higher than people would like. Deductibles and copayments are higher than people would like. The networks of available doctors are narrower than people would like.

These problems are all very real, and they all could be fixed.

They are not, however, problems that the American Health Care Act actually fixes. While Republicans have made several changes to the AHCA to cobble together a majority of House votes, the core of the bill remains the same: it offers stingier insurance to a narrower group of people.

This is because the AHCA does what Republicans want: it rolls back the ACA taxes. But under those circumstances, its simply not possible for the GOP to offer people the superior insurance coverage that it is promising.

The bill the House is voting on Thursday doesnt get rid of the ACAs tax credits to make it easier to buy health coverage, but it bases them on age, with younger people getting bigger credits, rather than income which means poorer Americans. especially elderly ones, will have a bigger tax burden and more difficulty affording the insurance they need.

Dont Like Obamacare It Was The Republicans Idea Says Liberal Democrat

Susan Jones

Robert Reich served as Labor Secretary for President Bill Clinton.

While Republicans plot new ways to sabotage the Affordable Care Act, its easy to forget that for years theyve been arguing that any comprehensive health insurance system be designed exactly like the one that officially began October 1st, glitches and all, said Robert Reich, who served as President Bill Clintons Labor Secretary.

Reich says Democrats should have insisted on a single-payer system because it would have been cheaper, simpler, and more popular.

In a blog at The Huffington Post website, Reich that Republicans have long argued for a health care system based on private insurance and paid for with subsidies and a requirement that the young and healthy people sign up. Democrats, he says, wanted to model health care reform on Social Security and Medicare, and fund it through the payroll tax.

Reich says President Richard Nixon in 1974, proposed, in essence, todays Affordable Care Act. Thirty years later, then-Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, another Republican, made Nixons plan the law in Massachusetts.

Reich adds: When todays Republicans rage against the individual mandate in the Affordable Care Act, its useful to recall this was their idea as well, as proposed in 1989 by Stuart M. Butler of the Heritage Foundation.

Reichs blog is entitled, The Democrats Version of Health Insurance Would Have Been Cheaper, Simpler, and More Popular

Background On The Health Care Repeal Lawsuit

From the beginning, the Trump administration and allied leaders in Congress and state governments have been committed to dismantling the ACA and the consumer protections it confers by any means possible. The Trump administration has repeatedly key provisions of the landmark law by executive actions and other more covert tactics, including removing essential consumer information from federal websites and defunding outreach and enrollment programs intended to expand coverage. After several failed attempts by President Donald Trumps legislative allies to repeal and replace the ACA, Congress passed a tax bill in late 2017 that zeroed out the individual mandate penalty.

After the tax bill became law, Texas and other states filed a federal lawsuit, claiming that because the mandate had no financial penalty, it made the rest of the law unconstitutional. U.S. District Court Judge Reed OConnor accepted this reasoning and held that the entire law must be struck down in what one legal expert called a partisan, activist ruling. On appeal, a 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals panel also in December that, following the tax bills change to the law, the individual mandate is unconstitutional. The panel then remanded the case back to Judge OConnor to determine which parts of the ACA, if any, can remain given their decision. Since that ruling, the Supreme Court has to hear the case during its upcoming term, and, for now, the ACA remains the law of the land.

Obamacare: Has Trump Managed To Kill Off Affordable Care Act

The Trump administration has ramped up its attack on the Affordable Care Act by backing a federal judge’s decision to declare the entire law unconstitutional.

For now, Obamacare is still standing. Around 4.1 million Americans have signed up for new plans so far this year, according to government reports, down 12% from last year.

At a rally this week, Mr Trump again promised his supporters: “We are going to get rid of Obamacare.” But how much has he delivered on that pledge so far?

Efforts To Repeal The Affordable Care Act

This article needs to be . The reason given is: Missing the May 2018 efforts. Please help update this article to reflect recent events or newly available information.

The following is a list of efforts to repeal the Affordable Care Act , which had been enactedby the 111th United States Congress on March 23, 2010.

This Is Also Why Republicans Might Drop Repeal

While mania for tax cuts is an important driver of the GOP push to repeal the Affordable Care Act, it might also ultimately be what leads them to abandon it. The healthcare debate has already taken more time than either Congress or the White House wanted and the bill hasnt even gotten to the Senate yet.

Meanwhile, many Republicans are itching to move on to their next priority: tax reform.

Republicans have a bunch of different tax plans floating around, but they all feature enormous tax cuts for wealthy households. Democrats will object, but they wont be able to stop the GOP from enacting a big tax cut. The only issue will be how large of an increase in the budget deficit do Republicans consider economically viable. Once thats decided, however, the tight linkage between the ACA and tax policy will be broken, since the entire rate structure will have already been rewritten in a way that makes the ACAs specific financing mechanism irrelevant.

No matter how the budget crunch gets resolved,however, the tax issue is the $500 billion elephant in the room. Its a key reason GOP leaders want repeal, a key reason theyve had trouble coming up with a popular replacement, and potentially a key reason theyll ultimately decide to move on to other matters. Talking about health care politics without talking about the revenue side misses an enormous part of the story.

Republican Views On Obamacare

The Republican Partys view on the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Actcommonly known as Obamacareis that its implementation was less about providing healthcare to millions, and more a result of power as the government sought to expand its reach over one sixth of the economy. The party claims that Obamacare has resulted in an attack on the Constitution of the United States because it requires U.S. citizens to purchase health insurance, and its impact on the health of the nation overall has been detrimental. The party is in agreement with the four Supreme Court justices who dissented in the ACA ruling. The justices stated, In our view, the entire Act before us is invalid in its entirety. As of 2012, the partys stance was that Obamacare was the result of outdated liberalism, and the latest in a series of attempts to impose upon the people of America a euro-style bureaucracy to micromanage all aspects of their lives. One of the partys biggest issues with Obamacare is its unpopularity among the peoplewhen polled on the subject, pluralities and even majorities often state they do not like the law.

Older Americans Could Have To Pay More

Enrollees in their 50s and early 60s benefited from Obamacare because insurers could only charge them three times more than younger policyholders. The bill would widen that band to five-to-one.

That would mean that adults ages 60 to 64 would see their annual premiums soar 22% to nearly $18,000, according to the Milliman study for the AARP. Those in their 50s would be hit with a 13% increase and pay an annual premium of $12,800.

Also, the GOP bill doesn’t provide them with as generous tax credits as Obamacare. A 60-year-old making $40,000 would get only $4,000 from the Republican plan, instead of an average subsidy of $6,750 from the Affordable Care Act, according the Kaiser study.

States could also receive waivers to allow insurers to charge older Americans even more than five times the premiums of the young.

Whats Dividing Republicans And Democrats On Healthcare Reform

Since the Affordable Care Act became law in 2010, Republicans have been determined to destroy it while Democrats insist its the countrys best chance at reforming healthcare to make it affordable and accessible. Both parties want reform, but the approach has been fundamentally different and for good reason. There are basic, core reasons why conservatives and liberals cant get on the same page when it comes to healthcare reform. Lets take a moment to dig into the details and figure out what is exactly keeping Republicans and Democrats from being able to find a middle ground on healthcare reform, so far.

Democrats want the federal government to legislate and administer healthcare while Republicans want private industry to helm the healthcare system with as minimal input from the federal government as possible.

Of course, there are always exceptions within each party because people arent one-dimensional. Moderates on both sides, for instance, would seek compromise wherever possible. But in general, these core ideological differences make healthcare reform particularly challenging, especially when one party holds more power. In 2010, Democrats passed the ACA without a single rightwing vote.

Repeal Of Obamacares Taxes Would Be A Huge Tax Cut For The Rich

This did not play a major overt public role in the 2009-10 debate about the law, but the Affordable Care Acts financing rests on a remarkably progressive base. That means that, as the Tax Policy Center has shown, repealing it would shower moneyon a remarkably small number of remarkably wealthy Americans.

The two big relevant taxes, according to the TPCs Howard Gleckman, are a 0.9 percent payroll surtax on earnings and a 3.8 percent tax on net investment income for individuals with incomes exceeding $200,000 . That payroll tax hike hits a reasonably broad swath of affluent individuals, but in a relatively minor way. The 3.8 percent tax on net investment income , by contrast, is a pretty hefty tax, but one that falls overwhelmingly on the small number of people who have hundreds of thousands of dollars a year in investment income.

Tax Policy Center

For the bottom 60 percent of the population that is, households earning less than about $67,000 a year full repeal of the ACA would end up meaning an increase in taxes due to the loss of ACA tax credits.

But people in the top 1 percent of the income distribution those with incomes of over about $430,000 would see their taxes fall by an average of $25,000 a year.

Under the actual AHCA, Jared Kushner would actually pay even less in taxes. As a young person, Kushner would get a larger tax to buy insurance under the AHCA than he does now.

New Threats & Potential Affordable Care Act Changes For 2019

To date, the ACA has been challenged in front of the Supreme Court twice. Judges upheld the constitutionality of the ACA both times. But now, a new effort to strike down the act is making its way through our legal system. Two Republican Governors and 18 Republican state attorneys general, led by Texas, initiated the lawsuit.

The lawsuit, Texas v. Azar, alleges the individual mandate of the Affordable Care Act is unconstitutional now that TCJA set the penalty tax to $0. In December 2018, a Texas district court judge agreed with the plaintiffs. The judge also concluded that the intent of lawmakers was that the individual mandate was essential to the ACA, and as such couldnt be severed from the larger text. Therefore, the entire ACA was unconstitutional and repealing it was appropriate.

But the ruling hasnt gone into effect yet. The judge is allowing the status quo to remain until all the appeals have been heard. In efforts to combat the ruling, and since the current administration is refusing to defend the law in court, 21 Democratic state attorneys general and the U.S. House of Representatives filed an appeal to challenge the ruling. In July, the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans heard arguments in favor of overturning the original ruling. The court hasnt yet reached a decision, and most believe this lawsuit will eventually make its way to the Supreme Court.

Republicans Are Still Trying To Repeal Obamacare Heres Why They Are Not Likely To Succeed

Conservatives are still trying to repeal the Affordable Care Act even after the Republican-majority Congress failed to overturn the law in 2017. A coalition of conservative groups intends to release a new plan this summer. The groups will reportedly propose ending the laws expansion of Medicaid and convert Medicaid funding into block grants to the states. And just last week the Trump administrations Justice Department argued in a legal filing that key provisions of the law its protections for persons with preexisting conditions are .

Why are Republicans still trying to undo the ACA? We argue in a forthcoming that the laws political vulnerabilities and Republican electoral dynamics drive conservative efforts to uproot it.

In the past, conservatives have thrown in the towel

As politicians and political scientists both know, the can never be taken for granted. Even so, the duration and intensity of conservative resistance to the ACA is historically unusual. The ACA is a moderate law, modeled on that Republicans once supported, such as insurance purchasing pools. Whats more, many red states refuse to accept the ACAs funding to expand Medicaid to more of their citizens such as , which has a large number of uninsured residents even though you would think they would want those federal benefits.

So why is the ACA still politically vulnerable?

The answer lies partly in the way the program was designed.

Is repeal likely?

The Health Care Repeal Lawsuit Could Strip Coverage From 23 Million Americans

Nicole RapfogelEmily Gee

Tomorrow, the Trump administration and 18 Republican governors and attorneys general will file their opening briefs with the Supreme Court in California v. Texasthe health care repeal lawsuit. The lawsuit, criticized across the political spectrum as a badly flawed case, threatens to upend the Affordable Care Act and strip 23.3 million Americans of their health coverage, according to new CAP analysisabout 3 million more than was forecast before the coronavirus pandemic. The anti-ACA agitators who initiated the health care repeal lawsuit, backed by the Trump administration, continue their attempts to dismantle the ACA, including its coverage expansions and consumer protections, amid the pandemic, during which comprehensive health coverage has never been more important. Millions of Americans who have lost their jobs and job-based insurance due to the current economic crisis are relying on the insurance options made possible by the ACA to keep themselves and their families covered.

[statetalks]

Why Do Republicans Want To Repeal The Affordable Care Act

Why Republicans Cant And Wont Repeal Obamacare

Editor’s Note:

This article was originally posted on Real Clear Health on January 16, 2017.

Now that the Republicans control both the presidency and both houses of Congress, they must put up or shut up on their promise to repeal and replace Obamacare. Here is a flat-footed prediction: the effort will fail for three reasons. First, the Affordable Care Act has largely succeeded not failed, as president-elect Trump and other Republicans falsely allege. Second, it is impossible for the stated goals of repeal to be achieved. Finally, the political fallout from the consequences of partial or total repeal would be devastating. When it comes to casting votes, enough Republicans will conclude that repeal is a bad idea and will join Democrats to sustain the basic structure of the health reform law.

Second, the stated objectives of repealing Obamacare are mutually inconsistent. Three provisions comprise the core of Obamacare. First, rules barring insurance companies from refusing to sell insurance to people because of preexisting conditions or varying premiums based on those conditions. Second, a requirement that everyone carry health insurance who can afford it. And third, subsidies for those with moderate incomes to help make such insurance affordable. The law contains many other provisions as well, but these three are core.

Slashing Ads And Budgets

Funding for the “navigator” programme, under which trained individuals or organisations help people sign up for insurance through Obamacare, has dropped from $62.5m to $10m under President Trump.

His administration has also cut Obamacare advertising spending to $10m – a 90% reduction.

According to a November 2018 Kaiser Health poll, 61% of Americans aged 18 to 64 said they did not know about any enrolment deadlines.

Republicans Want To Get Rid Of Obamacare But Then What

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President Trump has vowed to repeal the Affordable Care Act, but Sarah Kliff of Vox.com says it’s “an overreach” to say that Republicans have a plan for what comes next.

DAVE DAVIES, HOST:

This is FRESH AIR. I’m Dave Davies, in for Terry Gross. While President Trump clashed with some Republicans over a variety of issues in last year’s campaign, one thing they all seemed to agree on was the need to repeal the Affordable Care Act, known as Obamacare. Now that congressional Republicans have a willing president and the votes to scrap the health care law, they’re finding the task a little more complicated than it seemed. Republican lawmakers have a wide range of ideas about what they might replace Obamacare with. But a secret recording of a Republican policy meeting in Philadelphia revealed many are worried about the political cost of removing coverage from those who’ve come to count on it.

For some perspective on what’s happening in Washington and how it might affect our health care, we turn to Sarah Kliff, a senior policy correspondent at vox.com. Before joining Vox, Kliff covered health policy for The Washington Post and for POLITICO and Newsweek. She co-hosts a policy-oriented podcast for Vox called “The Weeds.” Kliff and co-host Ezra Klein recently interviewed President Obama about the debate over health care and the possible repeal of the Affordable Care Act. I spoke with Sarah Kliff Tuesday.

DAVIES: And where have we seen those pools before?

Board Of Governors Professor School Of Public Affairs & Administration

The Trump administrations efforts to sabotage the ACA and their consequences receive detailed attention in a recently released Brookings book, Trump, the Administrative Presidency, and Federalism. For present purposes, I highlight six major sabotage initiatives which emerged in the wake of congressional failure to repeal and replace the ACA.

1. Reduce outreach and opportunities for enrollment in the ACAs insurance exchanges. Established to offer health insurance to individuals and small business, the exchanges have provided coverage to some 10 million people annually. The Obama administration had vigorously promoted the ACA in part to attract healthy, younger people to the exchanges to help keep premiums down. The Trump administration sharply reduced support for advertising and exchange navigators while reducing the annual enrollment period to about half the number of days.

2. Cut ACA subsidies to insurance companies offering coverage on the exchanges. ACA proponents saw insurance company participation on the exchanges as central to fostering enrollee choice and to fueling competition that would lower premiums. The law therefore provided various subsidies to insurance companies to reduce their risks of losing money if they participated on the exchanges. The Trump administration joined congressional Republicans in reneging on these financial commitments.

Repealing Obamacare Is A Huge Tax Cut For The Rich

This did not play a major overt public role in the 2009-’10 debate about the law, but the Affordable Care Act’s financing rests on a remarkably progressive base. That means that, as the Tax Policy Center has shown, repealing it would shower moneyon a remarkably small number of remarkably wealthy Americans.

The two big relevant taxes, according to the TPC’s Howard Gleckman, are “a 0.9 percent payroll surtax on earnings and a 3.8 percent taxon net investment income for individuals with incomes exceeding $200,000.” That payroll tax hike hits a reasonably broad swath of affluent individuals, but in a relatively minor way. The 3.8 percent tax on net investment income , by contrast, is a pretty hefty tax, but one that falls overwhelmingly on the small number of people who have hundreds of thousands of dollars a year in investment income.

For the bottom 60 percent of the population that is, households earning less than about $67,000 a year repeal of the ACA would end up meaning an increase in taxes due to the loss of ACA tax credits.

But people in the top 1 percent of the income distribution those with incomes of over about $430,000 would see their taxes fall by an average of $25,000 a year.

The Acas Protections Changed Public Opinion In Its Favor Republicans Are Keeping Up

For more than a decade, the Affordable Care Act has been the Republican Partys nemesis. As it was first debated in Congress in 2009, when it was enacted in 2010 and through the next six years of implementation, Republican leaders rallied supporters by vociferously opposing it and calling for repeal. The Trump administration and states controlled by Republicans remain hostile to the ACA.

But the coronavirus pandemics fast-moving destruction has pushed Republicans to rely on Barack Obamas signature law to respond to the crisis, even taking action to strengthen it. The law, as written, requires that Americans who have recently lost jobs and insurance coverage to be permitted to enroll in its insurance marketplace, and they are doing so in swelling numbers. Meanwhile, Republicans recently backed that increased federal funding for a critical part of the ACA: Medicaid for lower-income people. And Trump administration regulators have used their authority to insist that insurance plans pay for coronavirus tests as an essential health benefit under the ACA a Republican target in the past.

Our research shows that this about-face cannot be explained by the pandemic alone. The partys rank-and-file and many other Americans have shifted to supporting the ACA and expanded government payments for health care. The pandemic is giving Republicans cover to follow changing public opinion.

Republicans have spent 10 years trying to kill the Affordable Care Act

Younger Americans Could Get Cheaper Plans

Obamacare was designed so that younger policyholders would help subsidize older ones. That would change under the Republican bill because it would allow insurers to charge older folks more.

This means that younger Americans would likely see their annual premiums go down. Enrollees ages 20 to 29 would save about $700 to $4,000 a year, on average,according to a study by the Milliman actuarial firm on behalf of the AARP Public Policy Institute.

Those under age 30 would also get a refundable tax credit of up to $2,000 to offset the cost of their premiums, as long as their income doesn’t exceed $215,000 for an individual.

Related: What’s inside the Republican health care bill?

The GOP tax credits would also likely be more generous than Obamacare’s subsidies for these folks. For example, a 27-year-old making $40,000 a year would receive $2,000 under the GOP plan, but only gets a $103 subsidy from Obamacare, on average, a Kaiser analysis found.

Also, the bill keeps the Obamacare provision that lets young adults up to age 26 stay on their parents’ insurance plan.

This Is Why Republicans Couldnt Make A Better Replacement

Republicans have made a lot of political hay out of pointing out that the plans available under the Affordable Care Act are, in many ways, disappointing. Unsubsidized premiums are higher than people would like. Deductibles and copayments are higher than people would like. The networks of available doctors are narrower than people would like.

These problems are all very real, and they all could be fixed.

They are not, however, problems that the American Health Care Act actually fixes. While Republicans have made several changes to the AHCA to cobble together a majority of House votes, the core of the bill remains the same: it offers stingier insurance to a narrower group of people.

This is because the AHCA does what Republicans want: it rolls back the ACA taxes. But under those circumstances, its simply not possible for the GOP to offer people the superior insurance coverage that it is promising.

The bill the House is voting on Thursday doesnt get rid of the ACAs tax credits to make it easier to buy health coverage, but it bases them on age, with younger people getting bigger credits, rather than income which means poorer Americans. especially elderly ones, will have a bigger tax burden and more difficulty affording the insurance they need.

Dont Like Obamacare It Was The Republicans Idea Says Liberal Democrat

Susan Jones

Robert Reich served as Labor Secretary for President Bill Clinton.

While Republicans plot new ways to sabotage the Affordable Care Act, its easy to forget that for years theyve been arguing that any comprehensive health insurance system be designed exactly like the one that officially began October 1st, glitches and all, said Robert Reich, who served as President Bill Clintons Labor Secretary.

Reich says Democrats should have insisted on a single-payer system because it would have been cheaper, simpler, and more popular.

In a blog at The Huffington Post website, Reich that Republicans have long argued for a health care system based on private insurance and paid for with subsidies and a requirement that the young and healthy people sign up. Democrats, he says, wanted to model health care reform on Social Security and Medicare, and fund it through the payroll tax.

Reich says President Richard Nixon in 1974, proposed, in essence, todays Affordable Care Act. Thirty years later, then-Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, another Republican, made Nixons plan the law in Massachusetts.

Reich adds: When todays Republicans rage against the individual mandate in the Affordable Care Act, its useful to recall this was their idea as well, as proposed in 1989 by Stuart M. Butler of the Heritage Foundation.

Reichs blog is entitled, The Democrats Version of Health Insurance Would Have Been Cheaper, Simpler, and More Popular

Background On The Health Care Repeal Lawsuit

From the beginning, the Trump administration and allied leaders in Congress and state governments have been committed to dismantling the ACA and the consumer protections it confers by any means possible. The Trump administration has repeatedly key provisions of the landmark law by executive actions and other more covert tactics, including removing essential consumer information from federal websites and defunding outreach and enrollment programs intended to expand coverage. After several failed attempts by President Donald Trumps legislative allies to repeal and replace the ACA, Congress passed a tax bill in late 2017 that zeroed out the individual mandate penalty.

After the tax bill became law, Texas and other states filed a federal lawsuit, claiming that because the mandate had no financial penalty, it made the rest of the law unconstitutional. U.S. District Court Judge Reed OConnor accepted this reasoning and held that the entire law must be struck down in what one legal expert called a partisan, activist ruling. On appeal, a 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals panel also in December that, following the tax bills change to the law, the individual mandate is unconstitutional. The panel then remanded the case back to Judge OConnor to determine which parts of the ACA, if any, can remain given their decision. Since that ruling, the Supreme Court has to hear the case during its upcoming term, and, for now, the ACA remains the law of the land.

Obamacare: Has Trump Managed To Kill Off Affordable Care Act

The Trump administration has ramped up its attack on the Affordable Care Act by backing a federal judge’s decision to declare the entire law unconstitutional.

For now, Obamacare is still standing. Around 4.1 million Americans have signed up for new plans so far this year, according to government reports, down 12% from last year.

At a rally this week, Mr Trump again promised his supporters: “We are going to get rid of Obamacare.” But how much has he delivered on that pledge so far?

Efforts To Repeal The Affordable Care Act

This article needs to be . The reason given is: Missing the May 2018 efforts. Please help update this article to reflect recent events or newly available information.

The following is a list of efforts to repeal the Affordable Care Act , which had been enactedby the 111th United States Congress on March 23, 2010.

This Is Also Why Republicans Might Drop Repeal

While mania for tax cuts is an important driver of the GOP push to repeal the Affordable Care Act, it might also ultimately be what leads them to abandon it. The healthcare debate has already taken more time than either Congress or the White House wanted and the bill hasnt even gotten to the Senate yet.

Meanwhile, many Republicans are itching to move on to their next priority: tax reform.

Republicans have a bunch of different tax plans floating around, but they all feature enormous tax cuts for wealthy households. Democrats will object, but they wont be able to stop the GOP from enacting a big tax cut. The only issue will be how large of an increase in the budget deficit do Republicans consider economically viable. Once thats decided, however, the tight linkage between the ACA and tax policy will be broken, since the entire rate structure will have already been rewritten in a way that makes the ACAs specific financing mechanism irrelevant.

No matter how the budget crunch gets resolved,however, the tax issue is the $500 billion elephant in the room. Its a key reason GOP leaders want repeal, a key reason theyve had trouble coming up with a popular replacement, and potentially a key reason theyll ultimately decide to move on to other matters. Talking about health care politics without talking about the revenue side misses an enormous part of the story.

Republican Views On Obamacare

The Republican Partys view on the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Actcommonly known as Obamacareis that its implementation was less about providing healthcare to millions, and more a result of power as the government sought to expand its reach over one sixth of the economy. The party claims that Obamacare has resulted in an attack on the Constitution of the United States because it requires U.S. citizens to purchase health insurance, and its impact on the health of the nation overall has been detrimental. The party is in agreement with the four Supreme Court justices who dissented in the ACA ruling. The justices stated, In our view, the entire Act before us is invalid in its entirety. As of 2012, the partys stance was that Obamacare was the result of outdated liberalism, and the latest in a series of attempts to impose upon the people of America a euro-style bureaucracy to micromanage all aspects of their lives. One of the partys biggest issues with Obamacare is its unpopularity among the peoplewhen polled on the subject, pluralities and even majorities often state they do not like the law.

Older Americans Could Have To Pay More

Enrollees in their 50s and early 60s benefited from Obamacare because insurers could only charge them three times more than younger policyholders. The bill would widen that band to five-to-one.

That would mean that adults ages 60 to 64 would see their annual premiums soar 22% to nearly $18,000, according to the Milliman study for the AARP. Those in their 50s would be hit with a 13% increase and pay an annual premium of $12,800.

Also, the GOP bill doesn’t provide them with as generous tax credits as Obamacare. A 60-year-old making $40,000 would get only $4,000 from the Republican plan, instead of an average subsidy of $6,750 from the Affordable Care Act, according the Kaiser study.

States could also receive waivers to allow insurers to charge older Americans even more than five times the premiums of the young.

Whats Dividing Republicans And Democrats On Healthcare Reform

Since the Affordable Care Act became law in 2010, Republicans have been determined to destroy it while Democrats insist its the countrys best chance at reforming healthcare to make it affordable and accessible. Both parties want reform, but the approach has been fundamentally different and for good reason. There are basic, core reasons why conservatives and liberals cant get on the same page when it comes to healthcare reform. Lets take a moment to dig into the details and figure out what is exactly keeping Republicans and Democrats from being able to find a middle ground on healthcare reform, so far.

Democrats want the federal government to legislate and administer healthcare while Republicans want private industry to helm the healthcare system with as minimal input from the federal government as possible.

Of course, there are always exceptions within each party because people arent one-dimensional. Moderates on both sides, for instance, would seek compromise wherever possible. But in general, these core ideological differences make healthcare reform particularly challenging, especially when one party holds more power. In 2010, Democrats passed the ACA without a single rightwing vote.

Repeal Of Obamacares Taxes Would Be A Huge Tax Cut For The Rich

This did not play a major overt public role in the 2009-10 debate about the law, but the Affordable Care Acts financing rests on a remarkably progressive base. That means that, as the Tax Policy Center has shown, repealing it would shower moneyon a remarkably small number of remarkably wealthy Americans.

The two big relevant taxes, according to the TPCs Howard Gleckman, are a 0.9 percent payroll surtax on earnings and a 3.8 percent tax on net investment income for individuals with incomes exceeding $200,000 . That payroll tax hike hits a reasonably broad swath of affluent individuals, but in a relatively minor way. The 3.8 percent tax on net investment income , by contrast, is a pretty hefty tax, but one that falls overwhelmingly on the small number of people who have hundreds of thousands of dollars a year in investment income.

Tax Policy Center

For the bottom 60 percent of the population that is, households earning less than about $67,000 a year full repeal of the ACA would end up meaning an increase in taxes due to the loss of ACA tax credits.

But people in the top 1 percent of the income distribution those with incomes of over about $430,000 would see their taxes fall by an average of $25,000 a year.

Under the actual AHCA, Jared Kushner would actually pay even less in taxes. As a young person, Kushner would get a larger tax to buy insurance under the AHCA than he does now.

New Threats & Potential Affordable Care Act Changes For 2019

To date, the ACA has been challenged in front of the Supreme Court twice. Judges upheld the constitutionality of the ACA both times. But now, a new effort to strike down the act is making its way through our legal system. Two Republican Governors and 18 Republican state attorneys general, led by Texas, initiated the lawsuit.

The lawsuit, Texas v. Azar, alleges the individual mandate of the Affordable Care Act is unconstitutional now that TCJA set the penalty tax to $0. In December 2018, a Texas district court judge agreed with the plaintiffs. The judge also concluded that the intent of lawmakers was that the individual mandate was essential to the ACA, and as such couldnt be severed from the larger text. Therefore, the entire ACA was unconstitutional and repealing it was appropriate.

But the ruling hasnt gone into effect yet. The judge is allowing the status quo to remain until all the appeals have been heard. In efforts to combat the ruling, and since the current administration is refusing to defend the law in court, 21 Democratic state attorneys general and the U.S. House of Representatives filed an appeal to challenge the ruling. In July, the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans heard arguments in favor of overturning the original ruling. The court hasnt yet reached a decision, and most believe this lawsuit will eventually make its way to the Supreme Court.

Republicans Are Still Trying To Repeal Obamacare Heres Why They Are Not Likely To Succeed

Conservatives are still trying to repeal the Affordable Care Act even after the Republican-majority Congress failed to overturn the law in 2017. A coalition of conservative groups intends to release a new plan this summer. The groups will reportedly propose ending the laws expansion of Medicaid and convert Medicaid funding into block grants to the states. And just last week the Trump administrations Justice Department argued in a legal filing that key provisions of the law its protections for persons with preexisting conditions are .

Why are Republicans still trying to undo the ACA? We argue in a forthcoming that the laws political vulnerabilities and Republican electoral dynamics drive conservative efforts to uproot it.

In the past, conservatives have thrown in the towel

As politicians and political scientists both know, the can never be taken for granted. Even so, the duration and intensity of conservative resistance to the ACA is historically unusual. The ACA is a moderate law, modeled on that Republicans once supported, such as insurance purchasing pools. Whats more, many red states refuse to accept the ACAs funding to expand Medicaid to more of their citizens such as , which has a large number of uninsured residents even though you would think they would want those federal benefits.

So why is the ACA still politically vulnerable?

The answer lies partly in the way the program was designed.

Is repeal likely?

The Health Care Repeal Lawsuit Could Strip Coverage From 23 Million Americans

Nicole RapfogelEmily Gee

Tomorrow, the Trump administration and 18 Republican governors and attorneys general will file their opening briefs with the Supreme Court in California v. Texasthe health care repeal lawsuit. The lawsuit, criticized across the political spectrum as a badly flawed case, threatens to upend the Affordable Care Act and strip 23.3 million Americans of their health coverage, according to new CAP analysisabout 3 million more than was forecast before the coronavirus pandemic. The anti-ACA agitators who initiated the health care repeal lawsuit, backed by the Trump administration, continue their attempts to dismantle the ACA, including its coverage expansions and consumer protections, amid the pandemic, during which comprehensive health coverage has never been more important. Millions of Americans who have lost their jobs and job-based insurance due to the current economic crisis are relying on the insurance options made possible by the ACA to keep themselves and their families covered.

source https://www.patriotsnet.com/why-do-republicans-want-to-repeal-the-affordable-care-act/

[dfroza]

A story is how our Creator often related to the real lives of people.

to teach. to illuminate spiritual and eternal truth.

Today’s reading of the Scriptures from the New Testament is the 16th chapter of the book of Luke:

Jesus taught his disciples using this story:

“Once a very rich man hired a manager to run his business and oversee all his wealth. But soon a rumor spread that the manager was wasting his master’s money. So the master called him in and said, ‘Is it true that you are mismanaging my estate? You need to provide me with a complete audit of everything you oversee for me. I’ve decided to dismiss you.’

“The manager thought, ‘Now what am I going to do? I’m finished here. I can’t hide what I’ve done, and I’m too proud to beg. I have an idea that will secure my future. It will win me favor and secure friends who can take care of me and help me when I get fired!’

“So the dishonest manager hatched his scheme. He went to everyone who owed his master money, one by one, and asked them, ‘How much do you owe my master?’ One debtor owed twenty thousand dollars, so he said to him, ‘Let me see your bill. Pay me now and we’ll settle for twenty percent less.’ The clever manager scratched out the original amount owed and reduced it by twenty percent. And to another who owed two hundred thousand dollars, he said, ‘Pay me now and we’ll reduce your bill by fifty percent.’ And the clever manager scratched out the original amount owed and reduced it by half.

“Even though his master was defrauded, when he found out about the shrewd way this manager had feathered his own nest, he congratulated the clever scoundrel for what he’d done to provide for his future.”

Jesus continued, “Remember this: The sons of darkness interact more wisely than the sons of light. Use the wealth of this world to demonstrate your friendship with God by winning friends and blessing others. Then, when it runs out, your generosity will provide you with an eternal reward.

“The one who faithfully manages the little he has been given will be promoted and trusted with greater responsibilities. But those who cheat with the little they have been given will not be considered trustworthy to receive more. If you have not handled the riches of this world with integrity, why should you be trusted with the eternal treasures of the spiritual world? And if you’ve not proven yourself faithful with what belongs to another, why should you be given wealth of your own? It is impossible for a person to serve two masters at the same time. You will be forced to love one and reject the other. One master will be despised and the other will have your loyal devotion. Your choice between God and the wealth of this world is no different. You must enthusiastically love one and definitively reject the other.”

Now, the Jewish religious leaders listening to Jesus were lovers of money. They laughed at what he said and mocked his teachings, so Jesus addressed them directly. “You always want to look spiritual in the eyes of others, but you have forgotten the eyes of God, which see what is inside you. The very things that you approve of and applaud are the things God despises. The law of Moses and the revelation of the prophets have prepared you for the arrival of the kingdom announced by John. Since that time, the wonderful news of God’s kingdom is being preached, and people’s hearts burn with extreme passion to receive it. Heaven and earth will disintegrate before even the smallest detail of the Law will fail or lose its power.

“It is wrong for you to divorce your wife so that you can marry another—that is adultery. And when you take that one you lusted after as your wife, and contribute to the breakup of her marriage, you commit adultery again.”

Jesus continued. “There once was a very rich man who had the finest things imaginable, living every day enjoying his life of opulent luxury. Outside the gate of his mansion was a poor beggar named Lazarus. He lay there every day, covered with boils, and all the neighborhood dogs would come and lick his open sores. The only food he had to eat was the garbage that the rich man threw away.

“One day poor Lazarus died, and the angels of God came and escorted his spirit into paradise.

“The day came that the rich man also died. In hell he looked up from his torment and saw Abraham in the distance, and Lazarus was standing beside him in the glory. The rich man shouted, ‘Father Abraham! Father Abraham! Have mercy on me. Send Lazarus to dip his finger in water and come to cool my tongue, for I am in agony in these flames of fire!’

“But Abraham responded, ‘My friend, don’t you remember? While you were alive, you had all you desired. You surrounded yourself in luxury, while Lazarus had nothing. Now Lazarus dwells in the comforts of paradise and you are in agony. Besides, between us is a huge chasm that cannot be bridged, nor can anyone cross from one realm to the other, even if he wanted.’

“The rich man continued, ‘Then let me ask you, Father Abraham, please send Lazarus to my relatives. Tell him to witness to my five brothers and warn them not to end up where I am in this place of torment.’

“Abraham replied, ‘They’ve already had plenty of warning. They have the teachings of Moses and the revelation of the prophets; let them hear them.’

“ ‘What if they’re not listening?’ the rich man added. ‘If someone from the dead were to go and warn them, they would surely repent.’

“Abraham said to him, ‘If they wouldn’t listen to Moses and the prophets, neither would they be convinced if someone were raised from the dead!’ ”

The Book of Luke, Chapter 16 (The Passion Translation)

Today’s paired chapter of the Testaments is the 24th chapter of the book of Job that rightly coincides with the above:

[An Illusion of Security]

“But if Judgment Day isn’t hidden from the Almighty,

why are we kept in the dark?

There are people out there getting by with murder—

stealing and lying and cheating.

They rip off the poor

and exploit the unfortunate,

Push the helpless into the ditch,

bully the weak so that they fear for their lives.

The poor, like stray dogs and cats,

scavenge for food in back alleys.

They sort through the garbage of the rich,

eke out survival on handouts.

Homeless, they shiver through cold nights on the street;

they’ve no place to lay their heads.

Exposed to the weather, wet and frozen,

they huddle in makeshift shelters.

Nursing mothers have their babies snatched from them;

the infants of the poor are kidnapped and sold.

They go about patched and threadbare;

even the hard workers go hungry.

No matter how backbreaking their labor,

they can never make ends meet.

People are dying right and left, groaning in torment.

The wretched cry out for help

and God does nothing, acts like nothing’s wrong!

“Then there are those who avoid light at all costs,

who scorn the light-filled path.

When the sun goes down, the murderer gets up—

kills the poor and robs the defenseless.

Sexual predators can’t wait for nightfall,

thinking, ‘No one can see us now.’

Burglars do their work at night,

but keep well out of sight through the day.

They want nothing to do with light.

Deep darkness is morning for that bunch;

they make the terrors of darkness their companions in crime.

“They are scraps of wood floating on the water—

useless, cursed junk, good for nothing.

As surely as snow melts under the hot, summer sun,

sinners disappear in the grave.

The womb has forgotten them, worms have relished them—

nothing that is evil lasts.

Unscrupulous,

they prey on those less fortunate.

However much they strut and flex their muscles,

there’s nothing to them. They’re hollow.

They may have an illusion of security,

but God has his eye on them.

They may get their brief successes,

but then it’s over, nothing to show for it.

Like yesterday’s newspaper,

they’re used to wrap up the garbage.

You’re free to try to prove me a liar,

but you won’t be able to do it.”

The Book of Job, Chapter 24 (The Message)

my personal reading of the Scriptures for Saturday, may 1 of 2021 with a paired chapter from each Testament of the Bible along with Today’s Proverbs and Psalms

A post by John Parsons about knowing God from a new True nature:

What is the goal of your relationship with God? Is it the hope of paradise where pleasures abound and all your desires are fulfilled? Yeshua taught that the purpose of a relationship with God was to discover divine life by knowing the truth of God revealed in him. He said to his disciples: "This is eternal life (חַיֵּי עוֹלָם) that they may know you the only true God, and Yeshua the Messiah whom you have sent" (John 17:3). Knowing God in this way means understanding his heart and character, and learning to become "mature" (i.e., τέλειον, “complete, whole, finished”) through your union with the Messiah (Col. 1:28; Eph. 4:13). Practically speaking we "put on" a new spiritual nature (our "new self") which is created after the likeness of God (כִּדְמוּת אֱלהִים) in true righteousness and holiness (Eph. 4:24). We know and believe who we are as God's beloved children (Rom. 8:29). This is a matter of faith, indeed, but it is also a matter of the will. We must line up our attitudes and emotions in light of the truth of reality...

Immature emotions are out of alignment with what is real, evidencing disordered affections based on illusions. "Putting away childish things" (1 Cor. 13:11) means surrendering or letting die (καταργέω) self-centered emotions and desires, letting go of self-pity or bitterness, and refusing to blame others. Spiritual maturity implies humility, denying yourself, a word that means to stop thinking about yourself (from α-, "not," +ῥέω, "to speak"), and living the truth by sharing God's redemptive vision and mission for others. We must be careful, however, not to drift away, since it is possible to "forget" the truth that once guided our way; and it is possible to become dull of hearing, shortsighted, and to stop growing in relationship with God (Heb. 2:1). Spiritual truth is not merely intellectual but existential: we must earnestly pursue (διώκω) our heavenly calling (Phil 3:14) and this requires the daily and ongoing decision to live before the LORD our God (Psalm 16:8). The invitation to "choose this day whom you will serve" (Josh. 24:15) implies that is your choice - and your responsibility - to draw near to God (James 4:8). We can do this by studying and memorizing Scripture, meditating, praying, and sharing our hope with others. Above all we must ask God for the gift of the Holy Spirit to "bear us up into maturity" (i.e., ἐπὶ τὴν τελειότητα φερώμεθα, Heb 6:1) so that we may learn from our Master who calls us to be joined to his yoke and learn from him (Matt. 11:29). [Hebrew for Christians]

4.30.21 • Facebook

Today’s message from the Institute for Creation Research

May 1, 2021

Bruising the Devil

“And the God of peace shall bruise Satan under your feet shortly. The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you. Amen.” (Romans 16:20)

This is an intriguing promise, suggesting that believers can somehow inflict bruises on the devil, who is perpetually seeking to “devour” them (1 Peter 5:8). This promise is a clear allusion to the primeval assurance of Genesis 3:15, when God promised that the unique “seed” of “the woman” would eventually “bruise” (actually “crush”) the head of the old serpent, the devil. This prophecy will finally be fulfilled in Christ’s ultimate victory, when Satan first will be bound for a thousand years in the bottomless pit and then confined forever in the lake of fire (Revelation 20:2, 10).

In the meantime believers, who also in a sense are the woman’s spiritual “seed” (Revelation 12:17), can repeatedly achieve local and temporary victories over Satan and his wiles by resisting him “stedfast in the faith” (1 Peter 5:9). If we resist him as Jesus did with relevant Scripture, then God promises that he will “flee from you” (James 4:7). Such local victories can be obtained over these dangerous teachers whom Satan is using (note Romans 16:17-19, just preceding today’s text) “shortly” in this manner, but we need to be continually alert against his recurrent attacks. The ultimate victory over Satan, of course, will be won only by the Lord Jesus when He returns, and we must “be sober, be vigilant” (1 Peter 5:8) until that time.

Whether we are aware of it or not, we must perpetually “wrestle...against the rulers of the darkness of this world” (Ephesians 6:12), who will be casting “fiery darts” (v. 16) against each believer. Finally, with the sword of the Spirit that is the Word of God (v. 17), we can even by God’s grace inflict spiritual wounds on Satan himself! HMM

[tokupedia]

Japanese Hero Show Case: Tetsujin-28

The year is 1956, Japan was still recovering from World War II and Tokyo is getting a new landmark with the Tokyo Tower under construction and nearing completion. Akira Kurosawa and Godzilla made their marks on the world 2 years prior.

Amidst all this change, the shadow of the Second World War hung heavily over the nation after its defeat. Some became bitter, others mourned the immense loss of life of families and friends, some proclaimed their unending hatred of the US for being so cruel as to use them as a live testing target of a new weapon. Others who witnessed the horrors of the atomic bomb and the war or heard about it growing up developed an anti-war mentality, wanting to never again experience such tragedy and show the world why war was a bad thing. 

We know some of their names because of this thematic narrative: Ishiro Honda and Tomoyuki Tanaka with Godzilla, Yoshiyuki Tomino with Gundam, Shotaro Ishinomori with his Cyborg 009 manga and Go Nagai with Devilman who mused humanity will inevitably destroy itself if it succumbed to violence. Among those many names was Mitsuteru Yokoyama. 

Mr. Yokoyama is considered the template builder of many of the anime, tokusatsu and manga genres we now take for granted: Ninjas, Jidaigeki, supernatural and sci-fi, Magical girls and of course, humanoid robots that fight evil controlled by a human. 

While Go Nagai is credited as the father of the Super Robot Genre which expanded this to involve them being piloted from the inside by humans, Mitsuteru Yokoyama is the one of the origin points of our modern association of the island nation and robots with the other being the legendary Osamu Tezuka and his creation; Astro Boy.

In an interview with a Japanese magazine, the manga artist said the inspiration of his most beloved creation was one from the terror of war as a child. He said: 

"When I was a fifth-grader, the war ended and I returned home from Tottori Prefecture, where I had been evacuated. The city of Kobe had been totally flattened, reduced to ashes. People said it was because of the B-29 bombers...as a child, I was astonished by their terrifying, destructive power." 

Adding to this was his fascination of experimental vehicle superweapons the Nazis tested. Despite most of them being impractical or outlandish, their size and seemingly threatening appearance made the creative spark in his mind along with that childhood traumatic horror. A final inspiration was reading Mary Shelly’s Frankenstein, with Yokoyama feeling sympathetic to the Monster as he was not good or evil, just misunderstood and driven to evil by the cruelty of the world. This lead to the idea for a robot who was a superweapon made by the Japanese Imperial Military meant to destroy the Allies, but became a force for good for all mankind in the hands of the succeeding generation.

BIRU no machi ni GAOO  Yoru no HAIUEE ni GAOO DADADADA DAAN to tama ga kuru BABABABA BAAN to haretsu suru BYUUN to tondeku Tetsujin Nijuuhachi-gou!

Original Story: In the 1950s, Dr. Kaneda revealed to his son Shotaro that he had worked on an top-secret experiment during the last phases of the war that would have turned the tide in Japan’s favor had the atomic bombs not dropped and Japan surrendered. A series of powerful giant robots that would have crushed the Allied forces. 

Deciding that a device that was intended for war would be able to be used for peaceful purposes, Dr. Kaneda entrusted the 28th model and its remote to his son. Shotaro used it to stop crimes, disasters, kaiju and other robots that had been stolen, created for evil or fallen into the wrong hands. Shotaro is a famous genius private detective and despite this breaking all known reason, he can legally drive his 1953 Austin-Healey (or a Volante depending on the incarnation) around Tokyo despite being 10 years old. Shotaro also has to keep the remote on hand or others could use the powerful Tetsujin-28 for evil.

This story has been adapted several times. Aside from the manga, there was a 1960 tokusatsu TV show. The series is an interesting time capsule... if a bit primitive. See, while things like Godzilla could pull off the scale of giant things on the big silver screen, Japanese TV hadn’t perfected that trick just yet. It would take until Ultra Q and Ultraman to get it just right and the live action adaptation of Giant Robo (another Yokoyama creation) to give TV one of its first baby footsteps into live action giant robots. Thus this incarnation of Tetsujin-28 is giant...by only a foot or two. In other words, he was human sized, which I’m sure disappointed some fans.  Then there was the 1960s anime which was brought over to the US as Gigantor and rebroadcast years later on Cartoon Network. (Oldtaku love this show and have fond memories of it. Remember, without this series as one of the gateways, we wouldn’t have anime here!)

Its next retellings was in 2004 with a reboot anime that followed its own story and a 2005 live action movie that transplanted the events into the 2000s. 

An animated reboot film by Imagi Studios was planned, but ultimately terminated as the studio went bankrupt. Interestingly, the trailer showed it borrowed an element from Giant Robo by having Shotaro control Tetsujin-28 with a voice control radio wristwatch. 

The 1980 Reboot:

The Reboot moved the story into the 1980s and several things changed. First was Dr. Kaneda built Tetsujin-28 to fight aliens (WWII was a sensitive subject to some TV viewers) who wanted to destroy Earth and conquer the universe. Another change was Shotaro was a junior agent of Interpol. But the most radical change was the star of the show, slimmed down to a sleeker design and stronger than ever. Theme song is pretty good too, because its pure 80s rock/pop.

The TMS made sequel series- Tetsujin 28 FX:

It is the year 2002 and robotics technology has advanced rapidly since the time of Tetsujin-28 back in the ‘50s. Shotaro Kaneda is now a middle aged man who still uses his robot every now and then and mentors young kids to succeed him in his detective agency business and his wife is part of a tech company. Sakaki Electronics wants the children of the world to live by Shotaro’s example and protect the future with new robots. Unfortunately, said robot tech attracts the attention of evil aliens called the Neo Black Group who wish to use them for war. While old Tetsujin puts up a good fight, the tech he runs on is too old to be a match for the evil space menace on his own. Fortunately, a new and improved Tetsujin called the Iron Man Future X Project or Tetsujin-28 FX has been built and is controlled by Shotaro’s son Masato via a remote gun. Together along with thier friends and family, they fight the Neo Black Group to save the Earth! 

The original Tetsujin still puts up a good scrap and helps his successor when the situation calls for it, nice of TMS to not render the classic character useless.

(Like father like son!)

The series was planned by Yokoyama himself and is sort of a sequel to the 1960s anime. There is a G Gundam vibe as some of the mechs are very stereotypical, like Iron Eagle, the official robot of the United States of America controlled by Michael Justice! (No, I swear I am not making that name up.)

Look at him, red white and blue with gunmetal gray, covered in bullet bandoliers, has a fighter pilot helmet head and wields a shotgun weapon. All that is missing is a cheeseburger and a cowboy hat! 

There was another Tetsujin series recently..Tetsujin-28 go Gao!

But it is more comedy based and has slice of life scenarios. Outside of that, the famed robot did a live action ad for NTT’s wi-fi internet service in 2009.

Powers: Tetsujin-28 is made of a super steel alloy that makes him difficult, and in some cases near impossible, to damage. It has super strength from complex hydraulics that allows it to lift buildings or smash a robot with his bare hands! Tetsujin-28 can also fly using the rocket boosters on his back to carry Shotaro to wherever he needs to go at super speed.

As to be expected from the granddaddy of Japanese Robots, he is awesome based on the fact he doesn’t need any fancy weapons. Simple brute force gets the job done!

Weaknesses: Tetsujin can be controlled by someone else if the remote is stolen or its remote frequency is jammed and manipulated.  It also didn’t work well in the old days when a thunderstorm was going on as the lightning interfered with the signal and made it liable to get zapped. Since its body is made of super steel, intense heat can melt its armor. Lastly, Shotaro is both vulnerable to attack and needs to stay close to Tetsujin-28 in order for it to keep moving.

Tetsujin-28 is a classic character that has transcended its WWII origins and endured for over 60 years. Its influence is everywhere, from Akira to Pacific Rim. Here’s hoping we see more of the lovable potbellied robot in the future!

*flexes arms like Tetsujin-28*

[majingojira]

120 Years, 120 Monsters, Days 27, 28, and 29

This one is going to be a doozy! 

101) The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers (2002) - Orcs/Uruk-Hai

One of J.R.R. Tolkien's original creations for his Mythopoeia were the Orcs, and their spawn the Uruk-Hai.  They’re the template example of the ‘evil minion’ that can be slaughtered in droves yet still poses a danger if only from their numbers.  

Crude, vile, filthy, disgusting, rough, and cannibalistic, the Orcs were made to be as repulsive as possible, and that made them memorable.

102) The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (2003) - Nazgul/Ringwraiths

Eh, might as well complete the trilogy.  With only one monster left to claim as its own, but still so many to choose from, it was a hard choice to make.  I decided to go with the one that has their own memorable musical motif.  

The Nazgul are an inspiration for every kind of “Undead” in gaming fiction.  Men who were granted immortality thanks to their magic rings, but their bodies did not last with them.  So now they are wraiths that animate armor and clothes in order to affect the world of the living.  Capable of dark sorcery, a shriek that drives men to madness, weapons capable of making more like themselves, and being unkillable save a few specific methods.  Drawing from old folklore and myth, it became a standard for generations to come.

And with their horses gone, they upgrade their mounts to Fell Beasts for the movie -- winged horrors that allow them to take down armies almost by themselves.  Since they are the inspiration for so many RPG horrors, I think the best way to describe how terrifyingly powerful and dangerous the Ringwraiths are is with an RPG term.

“HAX!  I CALL HAX!”

103) Freddy vs. Jason (2003)     - Jason Voorhees

Jason had to be on the list, but let’s be honest with ourselves: they were pretty crap for the most part. Often incoherent, relying more on spectacle than story, they’re good schlock at best, but some are also quite painful.  And he didn’t become a true monster until later in the series.  Before that, he was a human killer, and before that the killer was his mom and the best scare of the movie came from a damn dream sequence.  

Which is probably why, in the end, I went with the one where he fights the incarnation of nightmares for the film to include him in.  This was a labor of love, and that love shows through the film.  As you might have guessed, I’m not a fan of the Friday the 13th movie series. The love this movie shows that series makes me want to give them another chance (or a chance in some cases).  

As to Jason himself, he is in pretty good form. Archetypal “Slasher” or “Relentless Undead”. Driven to kill in part for revenge, in part mad obsession against perceived impropriety, and in part because his mommy told him.  It makes him more . . . sympathetic.  He’s still a remorseless killer, and nearly unstoppable juggernaut, but he’s the lesser of two evils here.

But that bar is REALLY low.

104) Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (2004) - Dementors

Harry Potter had a lot of creatures in it, some from folklore, others were unique.  But only one really, truly resonated.  Those were the Dementors.  According to the writer, they were her expression of depression.  What it did to her is what the dementors do to others.  It’s quite succinct, but that’s what they are.  It’s a YA series, they can be deep, but sometimes the meaning is spelled out clearly.  

Their design, faceless, shadowy wraiths, works well to support them as incarnations of depression.  Plus the mouth the movie’s give them is just damn creepy.

105) Call of Cthulhu (2005) - Cthulhu

H.P. Lovecraft’s works have had a long and powerful influence on monsters, but his work has rarely been translated to film, and even rarer has it been done well.  One of those exceptions goes to a group of dedicated fans of Lovecraft: The H.P. Lovecraft Historical Society who made an adaptation of one of his most famous works . . . as a silent film.  They made it as though it were adapted around the time it was printed.  

This choice allows for low budget and simple effects to carry the day.  It turns R’lyeh into full expressionist germanic horror. Including some practical effects taking advantage of visual illusions (creating a concave structure that looks convex, etc).  

Lovecraft’s stories are generally about the buildup, and the film works well in that regard.  It convinces the audience of the insignificance of man in the setting, and the reach and power of the sleeping god-monster.  Once Cthulhu shows up, there’s no real dialogue for that sequence. The actions are all primal and universal, with R’lyeh as much a danger as Cthulhu himself at times.  

There is one change: Cthulhu doesn’t ignore the poor humans.  It considers them.  Little more than pests, but it still considers them.  

And he’s a GREAT stop-motion effect, and even once shown, he is kept in shadow and shown only in part, adding to the menace he emanates.

106) The Host (2006) - Gwoemul

The Host is an odd film.  One part comedy, one part tragedy, one part absurdity, one part social commentary.  In the end, it works, but it’s an odd journey to get there.  

The creature itself is a mutation, and one of the best looking mutations I’ve seen.  It’s so mutated that it’s hard to identify exactly what it is, or what it was to start with.  Most mutants in fiction are just organism A + Extra stuff.  This thing is . . . well, aside from being horrendously ugly and amphibious it’s hard to say what it is, exactly.  And that works well in its favor.

The creature also moves around and acts as though it were in constant pain, which is another nice touch.  It is still a villainous beast at the end of the day, but the constant pain it feels and its need to feed make its actions understandable.  

107) The Mist (2007) - The Leviathan

The Mist has a great, simple premise.  “A fog rolls into town and a person with blood on their shirt comes running out, screaming ‘There’s something in the mist!’”

It’s so simple, it’s brilliant.  What is in the mist?  An entire alien ecosystem, foreign enough to be hard to kill, but close enough to eat us without suffering.  Of these, one monster stands above all the others (literally).  A creature as massive as a whale that has other horrors following in its wake.  After all the monsters and killer creatures (and madness driven humans), it shows up and easily demonstrates how insignificant humans are in this strange world order that peaked into our world.  It doesn’t interact with the survivors, it just passes by as the things which they thought were the deadliest things in the mist fly around it to pick up its scraps.  No more than oxpeckers to the horror.

It says so much with so little screentime.

Also, the ending of this movie messed me up in all the best ways.  

108) Cloverfield (2008) - Clover

This was America’s giant monster answer to 9-11 as Godzilla was to Japan after Hiroshima.  It didn’t quite work out as well, but it was still a good monster and good film.

I think part of the reason why Godzilla worked, and Clover did not has to do with symbolic resonance.  He manages to capture the fear, confusion, and similar fears brought up by the incident, but doesn’t go to the same lengths and depths of understanding of the situation (because, frankly, almost no one understood them yet at the time, at least not fully, as it was the result of almost 100 years of turmoil that can date itself back to the FIRST World War).  

The creature is just as confused as everyone else in the movie, which is a stark contrast to all that possible allegorical connection.  Still, it set one thing up: Large American monsters would have a bent-legged stance from here on out.  

109) Trollhunter (2010) - Trolls

A variety of perspectives and stories is always helpful.  It’s as true in life, as it is in film.  This is partly why I tried to include a few of the foreign film monsters that I have seen (that are worth it, I’ve seen some that were derivative as hell without adding much worthwhile).  So I was quite pleased to include Trollhunter on this list.

It walks a fine line between horror and comedy, which I always appreciate. It also treats the Trolls as sources of horror as well as treating them as big, dumb, dangerous animals.  All the strangeness of them is explained decently (they’re so dumb because of what they eat for the most part -- a mix of meat and rock, they turn to “Stone” because of a runaway chain reaction of calcium buildup due to an inability to process vitamin E or some such technobabble), save one detail from the folklore.

They can still smell the blood of a Christian man.  

The Found Footage style makes sense here and works well with it, and leads to some interesting humor beyond the usual “Camera Damage’.  We get humor ranging from surprise reveals to the mundanity of what really should be an awesome sounding job (To meme: Paperwork? For my troll hunter? It’s more likely than you might expect!).  The FX are convincing but what really sells it is the title character and his interactions with the creatures.  They’re just animals, big and dumb, and he has to clean up after them.  And his job is as terrible as you might expect.  It’s one part character study, one part journey into a hidden world.  And I’m a sucker for that sort of mix.  

110) How to Train your Dragon (2010) - Dragons

The Dragon in folklore, myth, and religion is one of the most diverse creatures within those fields.  Beyond even the vampire, which at times usually means “Usually nocturnal thing that attacks people in a debilitating/draining way rather than outright killing them”.  Very few movies go into the sheer variety the dragon can encompass.  They usually focus on one individual dragon or one species of dragon.  Before this series of books was turned into a movie and TV franchise of epic proportions, the only thing that even came close to doing that was the Rankin-Bass animated feature Flight of Dragons.  Which showed two main varieties of Dragon (Eastern and Western).  

The advent of cheaper CG allowed for a whole slew of dragon shapes and sizes to be used and while they didn’t go as nuts as some of the folklore went, they made a really good effort.  And one that I think should be rewarded.  

While the ones in the film have a similar general behavior (in the way that big cats have similar behavior), the visual variety made them a treat to all see on the screen at once.

[nigeiadigitalmarketingcompany]

Britain After Brexit: Welcome to the Vulture Restaurant

Digital Elixir Britain After Brexit: Welcome to the Vulture Restaurant

Yves here. We pointed out some time ago that the idea that the UK would get a favorable trade deal with the UK post-Brexit, and particularly post a crash-out, was bonkers, so it’s good to have official confirmation, even if it comes from the likes of Larry Summers. The US typically dictates terms in bi-lateral trade deals, allowing at most only a bit of face-saving terms-tweaking at the margin. The power imbalance will be even more pronounced in trade negotiation in the wake of Brexit because the UK will be desperate to cinch a deal quickly, and the urgency will give the US even more leverage.

More quotes from the Summers interview on BBC Radio 4, courtesy Al Jazeera:

“I’m not sure what Britain wants from the United States that it can plausibly imagine the United States will give.”

“If Britain thinks that the American financial regulators – who have great difficulty coming together on anything – are going to come together to give greater permissions and less regulation of UK firms, I would call that belief close to delusional.”

Nevertheless, the Wall Street Journal found a whimsical Brexit angle today, although it could just as easily have been spun as gallows humor: Tired of Waiting for Brexit, Britons Munch Through Nutella Stockpiles (any Northern Ireland readers may take umbrage at “Britons”):

Britain’s Brexit preppers have been stockpiling for months. Now their revolution is eating itself.

Fed up with waiting for the U.K. to leave the European Union and mindful of product expiration dates, stockpilers are using up foodstuffs they had squirreled away in case of a blunt exit leaves them cut off from imported treats, or spikes the price of necessities, like toilet paper and tea.

The chance of a no-deal divorce hasn’t diminished and may only have been postponed until Oct. 31, but some preppers can’t resist breaking into their stashes.

Elizabeth Priest, 29, found it easy to eat into her stockpile because she had socked away delectable items such as Nutella and mozzarella from Italy, lactose-free milk from Denmark and an awful lot of tea—not, say, Spam.

“Because we bought nice things, we weren’t facing down this nasty stockpile of tinned ham,” says the writer from Hastings on Britain’s southern coast. She brewed the last of her 200 stockpiled tea bags on June 29, three months to the day after Britain was meant to leave the EU.

Returning to the theme of this post, it’s not clear what could be strip mined from the UK. Unlike Russia post the collapse of the USSR, there aren’t natural resources that to be bought on the cheap and sold in world markets. North Sea oil is largely played out. UK manufacturing capacity will become much less valuable due to post-Brexit non-tariff trade barriers. Sadly, the big wealth opportunities may lie in moves like acquiring real estate and squeeing already not-well-housed working people with higher rents, and dismantling the NHS.

By Adam Ramsay, the co-editor of openDemocracyUK and also works with Bright Green. Before, he was a full-time campaigner with People & Planet. You can follow him at @adamramsay. Originally published at openDemocracy

“Britain has no leverage, Britain is desperate … it needs an agreement very soon. When you have a desperate partner, that’s when you strike the hardest bargain.” So warned former US Treasury secretary Larry Summers on Radio 4 ‘Today’ programme this morning, as new foreign secretary Dominic Raab jets off on a tour of North America to investigate potential trade deals.

“Britain has much less to give than Europe as a whole did, therefore less reason for the United States to make concessions,” said Summers, a senior figure in both the Clinton and Obama administrations. “You make more concessions dealing with a wealthy man than you do dealing with a poor man.”

Summers is of course right. But he makes a key mistake. He assumes that Raab, Johnson and the new cabinet care about defending the interests and autonomy of most people in the UK. He seems to be under the impression that Brexit was about taking back control.

In reality, the brand of Brexit promoted by Tory hardliners has long been about pulling Britain under the shadow of American capital. Not as a 51st state, with votes and constitutional rights, but as an outhouse for US business, a sort of colder, paler version of Puerto Rico.

We will be forced to accept US-style deregulation, with its poor standards for workers and consumers. We will have our assets stripped clean off the bone. Even before Brexit, we are fast becoming a pawn in the Pentagon’s global games.

We won’t become Americans, though. We’ll have no say in the standards that will govern our new Atlantic common market. Nor will we be permitted to help decide who stands in the planet’s biggest pulpit. Nor will we have much significant say in our own foreign policy. The UK has chosen to shift from participating in one power block to sitting on the outer edges of another.

Victory of the Lobbyists

If that wasn’t clear before (though it was), the events surrounding the arrival of Boris Johnson in Downing Street have confirmed it.

During the leadership election there was, of course, the failure to defend Kim Darroch, the British ambassador to the US. Then there is the ongoing confrontation with Iran, in which Britain’s post-empire is being enlisted in the schemes of US neoconservatives. There is the revelation that a new US pro-Brexit campaign group has launched, and Steve Bannon’s insistence on ‘Today’ that Boris Johnson should deliver a “no deal, hard out”.

Over the past three years, we’ve seen Britain’s lobbying industry and think-tanks auction their access to our politicians off to US corporations and oligarchs – from the firm which ran Johnson’s leadership campaign bragging in Washington about its ability to shape Brexit for US business, to the Institute for Economic Affairs offering to broker meetings between senior ministers and US companies wishing to get their piece of the Brexit pie.

We’ve seen one former Washington lobbyist – Shanker Singham – move to London and secure unprecedented access to our politicians, even writing the so-called Malthouse compromise, while lobbyists also drove the team that ensured their preferred candidate was elected prime minister.

And now that they’ve got their Johnson in place lobbyists have taken over the cabinet.

We’ve seen Trump confirm that “everything” – including the NHS – “will be on the table” in a US trade deal, before his spin-doctors reminded him that he’s not supposed to say that out loud.

“Britain Trump”

We see it in the ascent of Johnson himself – a rise which has coincided with the arrival in the UK of the sorts of institutions and culture we’re more used to watching from a safe distance across the Atlantic. On openDemocracy, we’ve revealed how Definers Public Affairs, the smear machine which destroyed Hillary Clinton, has set up shop in the UK, how a US-style super PAC is being rolled out across Europe and how Brexit is the biggest outsourcing of public policy in British history.

Johnson, who has surfed this wave, has been anointed “Britain Trump” by his US admirer. It’s a fair nickname, not because they have the same character, but because they both epitomise the elitist myths embedded in their respective national characters. Trump is the millionaire’s son who pretends to be rich because of merit, the brash bully-boy billionaire in a culture whose dream equates wealth and cruelty with merit and success.

Johnson, on the other hand, comes from the school on whose playing fields the battle of Waterloo was mythologically won. He epitomises an Anglo-British exceptionalism built on a mystical link between nation, royalty and aristocracy: a link forged in the failed revolution of the civil war and bought with imperial plunder, and which reminds the British bourgeois of an era when you didn’t need to do your homework to attain power – you got it by dint of your nation, gender, class and skin colour.

Likewise, their identikit ideologies are the same: oligarch enrichment woven round national mythologies.

Johnson pretends to be a free trader in the way that earlier British politicians claimed to support free trade whilst using their military might to force China to buy opium, commit genocide in Tasmania and smash up cotton looms in India. Trump claims to be a protectionist just as earlier US presidents used a pretence of isolationism to pretend they weren’t building an empire, at the same time preaching that the US was manifestly and justifiably destined to conquer the whole North American continent, committing genocide against Native American peoples as they did so.

Both Trump and Johnson have been contorted by the distorting lenses of their respective nationalisms, confusing many into thinking that they ooze truth or charm or talent. Strip off those red white and blue tinted goggles and you quickly see them for what they are: rich racists willing to trample anyone to secure the world for their kind.

Ultimately, they both represent the same interwoven set of interests: oligarchs, mafiosi, disaster capitalists, Gulf oil millionaires, hedge fund speculators and any other corner of the elite which has spotted that the neoliberal era is coming to an end, they have few places left to invest and their best option is to hide away as much money as they can behind the biggest walls they can build.

This is what Johnson meant when he said “fuck business” – that he and his friends no longer have anything invested in traditional industries, so are happy to see them disappear. It is why Trump is perfectly happy to fuck America’s car industry as he slashes tax for the hyper-rich.

Useful Scraps of Empire

At openDemocracy, we’ve revealed how millions of pounds were pumped into the Leave campaigns in the first place. That money came through the same British Overseas Territory and Crown Dependency secrecy areas that the billionaires of the world use to stash the cash they can no longer figure out how to get a return from – the same post-empire that the Pentagon is so keen to get a closer grip on.

For while the UK’s network of semi-colonies is useful as a money-laundry for the world’s oligarchs, we’ve seen in recent weeks how it plays a different strategic role, too – why America might see it as a valuable asset to begin to enclose under its wings.

When the British territory of Gibraltar captured an Iranian tanker, supposedly to enforce an EU embargo against oil to Syria, it did so despite the fact that Iran isn’t in the EU, and the EU doesn’t force non-members to comply with its embargoes. The Spanish have, according to The Guardian, claimed that the UK is acting under the influence of the US, and the former Swedish prime minister and senior EU figure Carl Bilt has hinted as much. It looks very much like this wasn’t so much an act of British foreign policy as one of submission to the US Department of Defense.

Britain captured Gibraltar in 1704 because of its strategically important location. To this day, one-third of the world’s oil and gas passes through its straits. Likewise, another strategically vital waterway will define this conflict: the Gulf of Oman, which connects the Strait of Hormuz to the Arabian sea. Oman isn’t formally a British territory, but it has been a de facto UK colony since the nineteenth century, with London helping to prop up the slave-owning ruling family over two centuries. As Ian Cobain has outlined, its current sultan was put in place by an MI6 coup in 1970.

The relationship remains strong. Shell owns 30% of the national oil company and Britain’s military presence is significant. According to Duncan Campbell, the journalist who originally revealed the existence of GCHQ, the Snowden leaks revealed Oman hosts a vital British intelligence base, tapping the vast number of communications cables that run under the Gulf. Last year, the UK opened a permanent naval base in the country, and in February this year, the British government announced it had signed an historic defence agreement with the sultanate, “bringing us even closer to one of our most important partners”.

For those with long memories, this might start sounding familiar: the 45-minute claim intended to frighten the British into accepting the 2003 Iraq war was based on the claim that Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction could be ready to deploy not against London, but against the British Overseas Territories in Cyprus.

If the Pentagon is to keep a firm grip on the world, Britain’s post-imperial web of semi-colonies will be vital fingerholds, and Brexit offers the US a unique opportunity to expand its control over the UK and its overseas assets.

The Great British Asset Striptease

This wasn’t inevitable. In theory, Brexit could genuinely have been about ‘taking back control’ for the British people. It would be possible to turn the UK into a new Cuba, for instance, substituting home-grown products for international imports. Not a suggestion that would please the millions of Leave voters who opted to quit the EU essentially because they wanted to become another Japan instead: wealthier than the UK, industrialised, with less income inequality, richly forested and deeply racist.

But these are not the options before us.

Instead, Brexit means plonking the corpse of post-imperial Britain in a vulture restaurant for US asset strippers, and pretending not to notice that China perches nearby, ready to pluck at whatever it fancies too.

The Great British Asset Striptease isn’t new, of course. For decades, the country has mostly stayed afloat in the world by auctioning off the plunder we accumulated through centuries of empire. As Joe Guinan and Thomas Hanna point out, the Treasury has calculated that Britain sold off 40 per cent of all assets privatised across the OECD between 1980 and 1996.

But as the new foreign secretary heads off on his ‘everything must go’ tour of North America, the people of the UK are going to have to fight hard to stop him selling the whole country to Trump and his friends. Just as thousands mobilised against the EU-US trade deal known as TTIP, we’re going to have to stand together and fight against any UK/US trade deal. We’re going to have to fight to protect our public services and our workers’ rights and our ecosystems from the new plunderers of the planet. Because Britain doesn’t have any power in its negotiations with Trump. And we have a government that will be delighted to turn the country into an offshore theme park for American, Saudi and Chinese billionaires.

Britain After Brexit: Welcome to the Vulture Restaurant

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[gwynnew]

Frank Oz restores 'Little Shop of Horrors' dark original ending for the Trump era

The monstrous Audrey II wants to make a meal of Audrey in Little Shop of Horrors. (Credit: Warner Bros.)

The first time Warner Bros. screened Frank Oz’s 1986 film musical Little Shop of Horrors, test audiences ate it up like a bloodthirsty plant devouring a sadistic dentist. They rooted hard for Seymour (Rick Moranis), the nerdy 1960s shop assistant who makes a devil’s bargain with a man-eating plant to win the love of his co-worker Audrey (Ellen Greene). Every scene was met with laughter and applause — until the plant devoured Seymour and Audrey, and the audience went silent. After two previews and many livid comment cards, Oz and screenwriter Howard Ashman decided to scrap the original, 23-minute ending — in which the plant eats everyone and takes over the world — in favor of giving Seymour and Audrey their happily-ever-after. Oz has no regrets. “My job is to entertain,” he tells Yahoo Entertainment, and the new ending was “more satisfying to the audience.” However, film fans have long mourned the disappearance of the original ending, which included a heartbreaking reprise of Audrey’s ballad “Somewhere That’s Green” and a fantastic montage of the plant, named Audrey II, rampaging, Godzilla-style, across New York City.

This month, Little Shop of Horrors will be screened for the first time nationwide with its original, darker ending restored. Oz wonders if the film will have a new resonance in the Trump era, when America’s real-life monsters thrive on blood, greed, and the misguided good intentions of countless Seymours. “It will be very interesting to see if, in this new political and cultural climate, if there will be any association with that, with the plant. Let’s just say that,” says Oz. The original ending, he acknowledges, “may still be too dark for people and I accept that. It may not be as satisfying emotionally, and I accept that. But on the other hand, the reason Howard and I wanted it, was that it is the Faustian legend. Seymour does have consequences for his actions. We needed to omit those consequences to keep the audience happy, which I agreed with, by the way. I think we had to do it. But now it will be very interesting to see.”

The plants rampage through the city in Little Shop‘s original ending. (Credit: Warner Bros.)

Little Shop of Horrors is adapted from the 1982 off-Broadway rock musical by Ashman and Alan Menken, itself based on a 1960 Roger Corman B-movie. The show ran for four years in “a crummy little theater on Second Avenue,” as Oz remembers it, and he wanted to bring that claustrophobic downtown atmosphere to the film. “I didn’t want to turn it into a Hello, Dolly! musical. It had to reflect that grunge spirit,” he explains. At the same time, he felt that if he shot a truly realistic, on-location version of the city, the audience wouldn’t go along with the characters bursting into song — which is how Oz felt about a certain other iconic New York film musical.

“As much as I love West Side Story, it’s really bogus, because they’re not going to be dancing on the streets on a rumble in New York,” he says. “As brilliant as the film was, that world didn’t support that action, in my opinion.”

Audrey and Seymour didn’t have a happy ending as initially conceived in the script. (Credit: Warner Bros.)

“Every film is artifice, right?” he continues. “Scorsese is artifice. It’s not real. People aren’t actually getting really killed in Goodfellas. But one has to create, in my opinion, an artifice in which the world the characters inhabit can be believed. And so any actions within that world are believed, because of the tacit arrangement one makes with the audience, which is, ‘OK, I’m creating something, I’m asking you to believe in it, I will be honest to that world if you will continue to believe in that world.’”

To create a “quasi-theatrical world” for his singing characters (including Steve Martin as Audrey’s abusive dentist boyfriend), musical narrators (a Motown-style trio played by Michelle Weeks, Tichina Arnold, and Tisha Campbell-Martin), and talking plant puppet (voiced by Levi Stubbs of the Four Tops), Oz had the entirety of Skid Row constructed on an indoor soundstage (specifically Pinewood Studios’ “007 Stage,” built large to house the James Bond films). His preferred set-design process is unorthodox. “What people usually do is say, ‘Ok, build me a set and I’ll work around it.’ And I do the reverse,” Oz explains. A year before shooting began, Oz brought production designer Roy Walker to the empty soundstage, where they played songs from the Little Shop cast album and mapped out the set on the floor with tape.

Steve Martin as Little Shop‘s deranged dentist (Credit: Warner Bros.)

“I’d play the ‘Dentist!’ music from the off-Broadway show, and I’d say to Roy, ‘OK, here’s where the motorcycle stops, and Steve gets out,’ and then with that music, I would count how many steps it would take for Steve to get from the sidewalk to the front door,” Oz explains. “And so he would tape that. And then I would go with the music and guesstimate how many steps it would take to get inside his office, and then Roy would create the wall there…  And then when he created the set I knew musically how much time and how many beats it would take to get from one to the other.”

Once filming actually began, Oz says, “Every freaking day was a challenge.” That’s largely because one of his lead characters was a 13-foot-high puppet. Though Oz came on board with unimpeachable puppet credentials — he created many of Jim Henson’s iconic Muppet characters, and directed both The Dark Crystal (with Henson) and The Muppets Take Manhattan —  the plant Audrey II presented a daunting task for a director. At minimum, according to designer Lyle Conway, four puppeteers were needed to perform the character; for the climactic number “Mean Green Mother From Outer Space,” 51 puppeteers were required.  “If I wanted to move that plant from one part of the store to another,” says Oz, “it took two days.”

That Mean, Green Mother From Outer Space (Credit: Warner Bros.)

While Oz is proud of the film’s creative camerawork — the jaw-dropping growth of the plant, the verse in “Dentist!” shot from inside the patient’s mouth, the swooping crane shot at the end of “Somewhere That’s Green” that he’s quick to credit to Ashman — his favorite moment in the film is one of the simplest and most touching. “It’s not about shots for me as much as emotion. And I think my favorite song really is ‘Suddenly Seymour,‘ because the song is so stunningly full and beautiful that Howard wrote,” says Oz. “These two damaged, sad souls, connecting at that moment, that’s what’s most memorable to me.”

Little Shop of Horrors remains popular enough that the possibility of a remake has floated around for years. “There are a couple movies of mine that have already been remade, which is weird because they usually let the director die first,” Oz quips. “There’s been talk about Little Shop for a long time. I know nothing about it. But I think it’s wonderful. I mean, put it this way: I think it’s wonderful if it’s good.”

Audrey II’s pods provide backup singing… and chomping. (Credit: Warner Bros.)

As for Oz — whose post-Little Shop films include Dirty Rotten Scoundrels, What About Bob?, In and Out, and Death at a Funeral, among others — he hasn’t directed a feature film in a decade. “It’s not that I’m off, it’s just that things have changed,” he explains. “Sometimes I have worked on scripts that I liked and they couldn’t get the money for them. And the scripts that I am given are often scripts that I just don’t want to do. And I’d rather not work than do something I don’t believe in.” (He did recently direct an independent documentary about the creation of The Muppet Show called Muppet Guys Talking, which will receive a digital release in March.)

If there’s a thread that runs through all of Oz’s films, and Little Shop of Horrors in particular, it’s humor untarnished by cynicism. “I just do what I do and the human being I am comes out through it. I don’t think optimism is really something I identify with as much as purity and innocence,” says Oz. “I believe in my heart, without being a goody two shoes, that there are people in the world who are really good, and unfortunately it’s the people in power who are often not. And the people who are not in power, are the ones I’m making it for.”

‘Little Shop of Horrors: The Director’s Cut’ will play in theaters nationwide on Oct 29 and 31. For tickets, visit Fathom Events.

Watch the trailer for Little Shop of Horror: The Director’s Cut:

Read more from Yahoo Entertainment:

‘Beauty and the Beast’ Lyricist Howard Ashman’s Loved Ones Recall How He Brought Story to Life — and Changed Disney Films Forever

‘Labyrinth’ Turns 30: Brian Henson Shares Memories of David Bowie, Jim Henson, and the Grouchy Goblin Hoggle

The ‘Little Shop of Horrors’ Puppet Master Who Brought the Blood-Thirsty Plant to Life

[patriotsnet]

Why Do Republicans Want To Repeal The Affordable Care Act

New Post has been published on https://www.patriotsnet.com/why-do-republicans-want-to-repeal-the-affordable-care-act/

Why Do Republicans Want To Repeal The Affordable Care Act

Why Republicans Cant And Wont Repeal Obamacare

Editor’s Note:

This article was originally posted on Real Clear Health on January 16, 2017.

Now that the Republicans control both the presidency and both houses of Congress, they must put up or shut up on their promise to repeal and replace Obamacare. Here is a flat-footed prediction: the effort will fail for three reasons. First, the Affordable Care Act has largely succeeded not failed, as president-elect Trump and other Republicans falsely allege. Second, it is impossible for the stated goals of repeal to be achieved. Finally, the political fallout from the consequences of partial or total repeal would be devastating. When it comes to casting votes, enough Republicans will conclude that repeal is a bad idea and will join Democrats to sustain the basic structure of the health reform law.

Second, the stated objectives of repealing Obamacare are mutually inconsistent. Three provisions comprise the core of Obamacare. First, rules barring insurance companies from refusing to sell insurance to people because of preexisting conditions or varying premiums based on those conditions. Second, a requirement that everyone carry health insurance who can afford it. And third, subsidies for those with moderate incomes to help make such insurance affordable. The law contains many other provisions as well, but these three are core.

Slashing Ads And Budgets

Funding for the “navigator” programme, under which trained individuals or organisations help people sign up for insurance through Obamacare, has dropped from $62.5m to $10m under President Trump.

His administration has also cut Obamacare advertising spending to $10m – a 90% reduction.

According to a November 2018 Kaiser Health poll, 61% of Americans aged 18 to 64 said they did not know about any enrolment deadlines.

Republicans Want To Get Rid Of Obamacare But Then What

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President Trump has vowed to repeal the Affordable Care Act, but Sarah Kliff of Vox.com says it’s “an overreach” to say that Republicans have a plan for what comes next.

DAVE DAVIES, HOST:

This is FRESH AIR. I’m Dave Davies, in for Terry Gross. While President Trump clashed with some Republicans over a variety of issues in last year’s campaign, one thing they all seemed to agree on was the need to repeal the Affordable Care Act, known as Obamacare. Now that congressional Republicans have a willing president and the votes to scrap the health care law, they’re finding the task a little more complicated than it seemed. Republican lawmakers have a wide range of ideas about what they might replace Obamacare with. But a secret recording of a Republican policy meeting in Philadelphia revealed many are worried about the political cost of removing coverage from those who’ve come to count on it.

For some perspective on what’s happening in Washington and how it might affect our health care, we turn to Sarah Kliff, a senior policy correspondent at vox.com. Before joining Vox, Kliff covered health policy for The Washington Post and for POLITICO and Newsweek. She co-hosts a policy-oriented podcast for Vox called “The Weeds.” Kliff and co-host Ezra Klein recently interviewed President Obama about the debate over health care and the possible repeal of the Affordable Care Act. I spoke with Sarah Kliff Tuesday.

DAVIES: And where have we seen those pools before?

Board Of Governors Professor School Of Public Affairs & Administration

The Trump administrations efforts to sabotage the ACA and their consequences receive detailed attention in a recently released Brookings book, Trump, the Administrative Presidency, and Federalism. For present purposes, I highlight six major sabotage initiatives which emerged in the wake of congressional failure to repeal and replace the ACA.

1. Reduce outreach and opportunities for enrollment in the ACAs insurance exchanges. Established to offer health insurance to individuals and small business, the exchanges have provided coverage to some 10 million people annually. The Obama administration had vigorously promoted the ACA in part to attract healthy, younger people to the exchanges to help keep premiums down. The Trump administration sharply reduced support for advertising and exchange navigators while reducing the annual enrollment period to about half the number of days.

2. Cut ACA subsidies to insurance companies offering coverage on the exchanges. ACA proponents saw insurance company participation on the exchanges as central to fostering enrollee choice and to fueling competition that would lower premiums. The law therefore provided various subsidies to insurance companies to reduce their risks of losing money if they participated on the exchanges. The Trump administration joined congressional Republicans in reneging on these financial commitments.

Repealing Obamacare Is A Huge Tax Cut For The Rich

This did not play a major overt public role in the 2009-’10 debate about the law, but the Affordable Care Act’s financing rests on a remarkably progressive base. That means that, as the Tax Policy Center has shown, repealing it would shower moneyon a remarkably small number of remarkably wealthy Americans.

The two big relevant taxes, according to the TPC’s Howard Gleckman, are “a 0.9 percent payroll surtax on earnings and a 3.8 percent taxon net investment income for individuals with incomes exceeding $200,000.” That payroll tax hike hits a reasonably broad swath of affluent individuals, but in a relatively minor way. The 3.8 percent tax on net investment income , by contrast, is a pretty hefty tax, but one that falls overwhelmingly on the small number of people who have hundreds of thousands of dollars a year in investment income.

For the bottom 60 percent of the population that is, households earning less than about $67,000 a year repeal of the ACA would end up meaning an increase in taxes due to the loss of ACA tax credits.

But people in the top 1 percent of the income distribution those with incomes of over about $430,000 would see their taxes fall by an average of $25,000 a year.

The Acas Protections Changed Public Opinion In Its Favor Republicans Are Keeping Up

For more than a decade, the Affordable Care Act has been the Republican Partys nemesis. As it was first debated in Congress in 2009, when it was enacted in 2010 and through the next six years of implementation, Republican leaders rallied supporters by vociferously opposing it and calling for repeal. The Trump administration and states controlled by Republicans remain hostile to the ACA.

But the coronavirus pandemics fast-moving destruction has pushed Republicans to rely on Barack Obamas signature law to respond to the crisis, even taking action to strengthen it. The law, as written, requires that Americans who have recently lost jobs and insurance coverage to be permitted to enroll in its insurance marketplace, and they are doing so in swelling numbers. Meanwhile, Republicans recently backed that increased federal funding for a critical part of the ACA: Medicaid for lower-income people. And Trump administration regulators have used their authority to insist that insurance plans pay for coronavirus tests as an essential health benefit under the ACA a Republican target in the past.

Our research shows that this about-face cannot be explained by the pandemic alone. The partys rank-and-file and many other Americans have shifted to supporting the ACA and expanded government payments for health care. The pandemic is giving Republicans cover to follow changing public opinion.

Republicans have spent 10 years trying to kill the Affordable Care Act

Younger Americans Could Get Cheaper Plans

Obamacare was designed so that younger policyholders would help subsidize older ones. That would change under the Republican bill because it would allow insurers to charge older folks more.

This means that younger Americans would likely see their annual premiums go down. Enrollees ages 20 to 29 would save about $700 to $4,000 a year, on average,according to a study by the Milliman actuarial firm on behalf of the AARP Public Policy Institute.

Those under age 30 would also get a refundable tax credit of up to $2,000 to offset the cost of their premiums, as long as their income doesn’t exceed $215,000 for an individual.

Related: What’s inside the Republican health care bill?

The GOP tax credits would also likely be more generous than Obamacare’s subsidies for these folks. For example, a 27-year-old making $40,000 a year would receive $2,000 under the GOP plan, but only gets a $103 subsidy from Obamacare, on average, a Kaiser analysis found.

Also, the bill keeps the Obamacare provision that lets young adults up to age 26 stay on their parents’ insurance plan.

This Is Why Republicans Couldnt Make A Better Replacement

Republicans have made a lot of political hay out of pointing out that the plans available under the Affordable Care Act are, in many ways, disappointing. Unsubsidized premiums are higher than people would like. Deductibles and copayments are higher than people would like. The networks of available doctors are narrower than people would like.

These problems are all very real, and they all could be fixed.

They are not, however, problems that the American Health Care Act actually fixes. While Republicans have made several changes to the AHCA to cobble together a majority of House votes, the core of the bill remains the same: it offers stingier insurance to a narrower group of people.

This is because the AHCA does what Republicans want: it rolls back the ACA taxes. But under those circumstances, its simply not possible for the GOP to offer people the superior insurance coverage that it is promising.

The bill the House is voting on Thursday doesnt get rid of the ACAs tax credits to make it easier to buy health coverage, but it bases them on age, with younger people getting bigger credits, rather than income which means poorer Americans. especially elderly ones, will have a bigger tax burden and more difficulty affording the insurance they need.

Dont Like Obamacare It Was The Republicans Idea Says Liberal Democrat

Susan Jones

Robert Reich served as Labor Secretary for President Bill Clinton.

While Republicans plot new ways to sabotage the Affordable Care Act, its easy to forget that for years theyve been arguing that any comprehensive health insurance system be designed exactly like the one that officially began October 1st, glitches and all, said Robert Reich, who served as President Bill Clintons Labor Secretary.

Reich says Democrats should have insisted on a single-payer system because it would have been cheaper, simpler, and more popular.

In a blog at The Huffington Post website, Reich that Republicans have long argued for a health care system based on private insurance and paid for with subsidies and a requirement that the young and healthy people sign up. Democrats, he says, wanted to model health care reform on Social Security and Medicare, and fund it through the payroll tax.

Reich says President Richard Nixon in 1974, proposed, in essence, todays Affordable Care Act. Thirty years later, then-Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, another Republican, made Nixons plan the law in Massachusetts.

Reich adds: When todays Republicans rage against the individual mandate in the Affordable Care Act, its useful to recall this was their idea as well, as proposed in 1989 by Stuart M. Butler of the Heritage Foundation.

Reichs blog is entitled, The Democrats Version of Health Insurance Would Have Been Cheaper, Simpler, and More Popular

Background On The Health Care Repeal Lawsuit

From the beginning, the Trump administration and allied leaders in Congress and state governments have been committed to dismantling the ACA and the consumer protections it confers by any means possible. The Trump administration has repeatedly key provisions of the landmark law by executive actions and other more covert tactics, including removing essential consumer information from federal websites and defunding outreach and enrollment programs intended to expand coverage. After several failed attempts by President Donald Trumps legislative allies to repeal and replace the ACA, Congress passed a tax bill in late 2017 that zeroed out the individual mandate penalty.

After the tax bill became law, Texas and other states filed a federal lawsuit, claiming that because the mandate had no financial penalty, it made the rest of the law unconstitutional. U.S. District Court Judge Reed OConnor accepted this reasoning and held that the entire law must be struck down in what one legal expert called a partisan, activist ruling. On appeal, a 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals panel also in December that, following the tax bills change to the law, the individual mandate is unconstitutional. The panel then remanded the case back to Judge OConnor to determine which parts of the ACA, if any, can remain given their decision. Since that ruling, the Supreme Court has to hear the case during its upcoming term, and, for now, the ACA remains the law of the land.

Obamacare: Has Trump Managed To Kill Off Affordable Care Act

The Trump administration has ramped up its attack on the Affordable Care Act by backing a federal judge’s decision to declare the entire law unconstitutional.

For now, Obamacare is still standing. Around 4.1 million Americans have signed up for new plans so far this year, according to government reports, down 12% from last year.

At a rally this week, Mr Trump again promised his supporters: “We are going to get rid of Obamacare.” But how much has he delivered on that pledge so far?

Efforts To Repeal The Affordable Care Act

This article needs to be . The reason given is: Missing the May 2018 efforts. Please help update this article to reflect recent events or newly available information.

The following is a list of efforts to repeal the Affordable Care Act , which had been enactedby the 111th United States Congress on March 23, 2010.

This Is Also Why Republicans Might Drop Repeal

While mania for tax cuts is an important driver of the GOP push to repeal the Affordable Care Act, it might also ultimately be what leads them to abandon it. The healthcare debate has already taken more time than either Congress or the White House wanted and the bill hasnt even gotten to the Senate yet.

Meanwhile, many Republicans are itching to move on to their next priority: tax reform.

Republicans have a bunch of different tax plans floating around, but they all feature enormous tax cuts for wealthy households. Democrats will object, but they wont be able to stop the GOP from enacting a big tax cut. The only issue will be how large of an increase in the budget deficit do Republicans consider economically viable. Once thats decided, however, the tight linkage between the ACA and tax policy will be broken, since the entire rate structure will have already been rewritten in a way that makes the ACAs specific financing mechanism irrelevant.

No matter how the budget crunch gets resolved,however, the tax issue is the $500 billion elephant in the room. Its a key reason GOP leaders want repeal, a key reason theyve had trouble coming up with a popular replacement, and potentially a key reason theyll ultimately decide to move on to other matters. Talking about health care politics without talking about the revenue side misses an enormous part of the story.

Republican Views On Obamacare

The Republican Partys view on the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Actcommonly known as Obamacareis that its implementation was less about providing healthcare to millions, and more a result of power as the government sought to expand its reach over one sixth of the economy. The party claims that Obamacare has resulted in an attack on the Constitution of the United States because it requires U.S. citizens to purchase health insurance, and its impact on the health of the nation overall has been detrimental. The party is in agreement with the four Supreme Court justices who dissented in the ACA ruling. The justices stated, In our view, the entire Act before us is invalid in its entirety. As of 2012, the partys stance was that Obamacare was the result of outdated liberalism, and the latest in a series of attempts to impose upon the people of America a euro-style bureaucracy to micromanage all aspects of their lives. One of the partys biggest issues with Obamacare is its unpopularity among the peoplewhen polled on the subject, pluralities and even majorities often state they do not like the law.

Older Americans Could Have To Pay More

Enrollees in their 50s and early 60s benefited from Obamacare because insurers could only charge them three times more than younger policyholders. The bill would widen that band to five-to-one.

That would mean that adults ages 60 to 64 would see their annual premiums soar 22% to nearly $18,000, according to the Milliman study for the AARP. Those in their 50s would be hit with a 13% increase and pay an annual premium of $12,800.

Also, the GOP bill doesn’t provide them with as generous tax credits as Obamacare. A 60-year-old making $40,000 would get only $4,000 from the Republican plan, instead of an average subsidy of $6,750 from the Affordable Care Act, according the Kaiser study.

States could also receive waivers to allow insurers to charge older Americans even more than five times the premiums of the young.

Whats Dividing Republicans And Democrats On Healthcare Reform

Since the Affordable Care Act became law in 2010, Republicans have been determined to destroy it while Democrats insist its the countrys best chance at reforming healthcare to make it affordable and accessible. Both parties want reform, but the approach has been fundamentally different and for good reason. There are basic, core reasons why conservatives and liberals cant get on the same page when it comes to healthcare reform. Lets take a moment to dig into the details and figure out what is exactly keeping Republicans and Democrats from being able to find a middle ground on healthcare reform, so far.

Democrats want the federal government to legislate and administer healthcare while Republicans want private industry to helm the healthcare system with as minimal input from the federal government as possible.

Of course, there are always exceptions within each party because people arent one-dimensional. Moderates on both sides, for instance, would seek compromise wherever possible. But in general, these core ideological differences make healthcare reform particularly challenging, especially when one party holds more power. In 2010, Democrats passed the ACA without a single rightwing vote.

Repeal Of Obamacares Taxes Would Be A Huge Tax Cut For The Rich

This did not play a major overt public role in the 2009-10 debate about the law, but the Affordable Care Acts financing rests on a remarkably progressive base. That means that, as the Tax Policy Center has shown, repealing it would shower moneyon a remarkably small number of remarkably wealthy Americans.

The two big relevant taxes, according to the TPCs Howard Gleckman, are a 0.9 percent payroll surtax on earnings and a 3.8 percent tax on net investment income for individuals with incomes exceeding $200,000 . That payroll tax hike hits a reasonably broad swath of affluent individuals, but in a relatively minor way. The 3.8 percent tax on net investment income , by contrast, is a pretty hefty tax, but one that falls overwhelmingly on the small number of people who have hundreds of thousands of dollars a year in investment income.

Tax Policy Center

For the bottom 60 percent of the population that is, households earning less than about $67,000 a year full repeal of the ACA would end up meaning an increase in taxes due to the loss of ACA tax credits.

But people in the top 1 percent of the income distribution those with incomes of over about $430,000 would see their taxes fall by an average of $25,000 a year.

Under the actual AHCA, Jared Kushner would actually pay even less in taxes. As a young person, Kushner would get a larger tax to buy insurance under the AHCA than he does now.

New Threats & Potential Affordable Care Act Changes For 2019

To date, the ACA has been challenged in front of the Supreme Court twice. Judges upheld the constitutionality of the ACA both times. But now, a new effort to strike down the act is making its way through our legal system. Two Republican Governors and 18 Republican state attorneys general, led by Texas, initiated the lawsuit.

The lawsuit, Texas v. Azar, alleges the individual mandate of the Affordable Care Act is unconstitutional now that TCJA set the penalty tax to $0. In December 2018, a Texas district court judge agreed with the plaintiffs. The judge also concluded that the intent of lawmakers was that the individual mandate was essential to the ACA, and as such couldnt be severed from the larger text. Therefore, the entire ACA was unconstitutional and repealing it was appropriate.

But the ruling hasnt gone into effect yet. The judge is allowing the status quo to remain until all the appeals have been heard. In efforts to combat the ruling, and since the current administration is refusing to defend the law in court, 21 Democratic state attorneys general and the U.S. House of Representatives filed an appeal to challenge the ruling. In July, the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans heard arguments in favor of overturning the original ruling. The court hasnt yet reached a decision, and most believe this lawsuit will eventually make its way to the Supreme Court.

Republicans Are Still Trying To Repeal Obamacare Heres Why They Are Not Likely To Succeed

Conservatives are still trying to repeal the Affordable Care Act even after the Republican-majority Congress failed to overturn the law in 2017. A coalition of conservative groups intends to release a new plan this summer. The groups will reportedly propose ending the laws expansion of Medicaid and convert Medicaid funding into block grants to the states. And just last week the Trump administrations Justice Department argued in a legal filing that key provisions of the law its protections for persons with preexisting conditions are .

Why are Republicans still trying to undo the ACA? We argue in a forthcoming that the laws political vulnerabilities and Republican electoral dynamics drive conservative efforts to uproot it.

In the past, conservatives have thrown in the towel

As politicians and political scientists both know, the can never be taken for granted. Even so, the duration and intensity of conservative resistance to the ACA is historically unusual. The ACA is a moderate law, modeled on that Republicans once supported, such as insurance purchasing pools. Whats more, many red states refuse to accept the ACAs funding to expand Medicaid to more of their citizens such as , which has a large number of uninsured residents even though you would think they would want those federal benefits.

So why is the ACA still politically vulnerable?

The answer lies partly in the way the program was designed.

Is repeal likely?

The Health Care Repeal Lawsuit Could Strip Coverage From 23 Million Americans

Nicole RapfogelEmily Gee

Tomorrow, the Trump administration and 18 Republican governors and attorneys general will file their opening briefs with the Supreme Court in California v. Texasthe health care repeal lawsuit. The lawsuit, criticized across the political spectrum as a badly flawed case, threatens to upend the Affordable Care Act and strip 23.3 million Americans of their health coverage, according to new CAP analysisabout 3 million more than was forecast before the coronavirus pandemic. The anti-ACA agitators who initiated the health care repeal lawsuit, backed by the Trump administration, continue their attempts to dismantle the ACA, including its coverage expansions and consumer protections, amid the pandemic, during which comprehensive health coverage has never been more important. Millions of Americans who have lost their jobs and job-based insurance due to the current economic crisis are relying on the insurance options made possible by the ACA to keep themselves and their families covered.