Obama's second term: A productive six months.

[ProSense]

Obama blasts Republicans for obstruction to ACA implementation in weekly address
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2013/08/17/1231753/-Obama-blasts-Republicans-for-obstruction-to-ACA-implementation-in-weekly-address

Bottom line: Obamacare really is for the 99%
http://www.democraticunderground.com/10023441345

Marriage equality is coming to the military

by Laura Clawson

How far we've come since the military was clinging to Don't Ask Don't Tell just a few short years ago, and the Defense of Marriage Act was making marriage unequal even for same-sex couples married legally in states that honored their relationships:

The Pentagon plans to extend to legally married same-sex couples the same privileges and programs that are provided to legally married heterosexual couples, including benefits tied to health care and housing, the official said.

In addition, the official said that service members who are stationed in one of the 37 states where same-sex marriage is illegal will be offered up to 10 days of leave so they can travel to one of the 13 states, plus the District of Columbia, that grant same-sex marriage licenses.

Kudos to the Pentagon for giving the leave needed to make marriage a possibility for people stationed in bastions of inequality—let's hope it's not needed for long, but for now it puts access to marriage in reach for more service members.

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2013/08/14/1231158/-Marriage-equality-is-coming-to-the-military

Pentagon To Announce Equal Benefits For Married Gay Couples

The Pentagon is expected to announce Wednesday that married gay military service members and their spouses will be offered the same benefits as straight married couples as early as September, NBC News reported.

Also included in the announcement will reportedly be a "marraige leave" program for gay couples. Service members stationed in one of the 37 states where gay marriage is illegal will be allowed to take up to 10 days of leave to travel to one of the 13 states or Washington, D.C. where gay marriage is legal.

http://livewire.talkingpointsmemo.com/entry/pentagon-to-announce-equal-benefits-for-married-gay

http://www.democraticunderground.com/10023463135

Smarter Sentencing

By THE EDITORIAL BOARD

You know a transformational moment has arrived when the attorney general of the United States makes a highly anticipated speech on a politically combustible topic and there is virtually no opposition to be heard.

That describes the general reaction to Eric Holder Jr.’s announcement on Monday that he was ordering “a fundamentally new approach” in the federal prosecution of many lower-level drug offenders. What once would have elicited cries of “soft on crime” now drew mostly nods of agreement. As Mr. Holder said, it’s “well past time” to take concrete steps to end the nation’s four-decade incarceration binge — the result of harsh sentencing laws enacted in response to increased violent crime in the late 1960s and 1970s.

The statistics have been repeated so often as to be numbing: 1.57 million Americans in state and federal prisons, an increase of more than 500 percent since the late 1970s, at a cost of $80 billion annually. In 2010, more than 7 in 100 black men ages 30 to 34 years old were behind bars. The federal system alone holds 219,000 inmates, 40 percent above its capacity, thanks to strict sentencing guidelines and mandatory minimum sentences. Of these inmates, nearly half are in prison for drug-related crimes.

In Mr. Holder’s words, “too many Americans go to too many prisons for far too long, and for no truly good law enforcement reason.” Many criminal-justice experts have long felt the same way. What made Mr. Holder’s speech timely and important was that it reflected a fundamental shift in thinking about crime and punishment at the highest levels of government.

- more -

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/14/opinion/smarter-sentencing.html

ACLU: How to Process Eric Holder’s Major Criminal Law Reform Speech
http://www.democraticunderground.com/10023451453

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau gets busy
http://www.democraticunderground.com/10023372682

Elizabeth Warren op-ed slams attempt to roll back CFPB mortgage rules.
http://www.democraticunderground.com/10023470932

President Obama Installs Solar Panels On White House
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2013/08/15/1231460/-President-Obama-Installs-Solar-Panels-On-White-House

[Motown_Johnny]

1. The perfect summary

In America, Health Care isn't a privilege, it's your right.



NOW!!!


Thanks to Pres. Obama and the Democrats!




Whoever wrote that deserves a raise.

[LWolf]

4. Good God.

Health care SHOULD be a right.

We don't have that. We have mandated for-profit health INSURANCE, which is not affordable, and which does not always provide actual health CARE.

Thanks to Obama and the Democrats.

Let's try to stay somewhere close to reality.

[ProSense]

5. What a

"We don't have that. We have mandated for-profit health INSURANCE, which is not affordable, and which does not always provide actual health CARE. "

...way to be dismissive of a real change to the health care system.

Powerful unions like National Nurses United and other progressive organizations are going to beat the drum--loudly, and remind Americans that those politicians who seek to defund Obamacare are the people who give themselves the best healthcare.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/10023441345

Single Payer movement in the era of Obamacare
http://www.democraticunderground.com/10023372091

[LWolf]

7. Real change? Yes.

Change that will make care more affordable and accessible? For some. Not for many.

Change that will lead to what we really need? No. Why? Because the ACA takes us in the wrong direction.

Dismissive? You bet. My insurance costs are not going down. They are no more affordable than they've been in the last decade. And I'm getting less care, because of the whopping $1500 deductible and 20% copays that I can't afford after paying the premium. I pay for insurance I can't afford to use.

Change to the for-profit insurance system is not necessarily change to the care system.

This is not the change I, and many others, need.

[ProSense]

10. "Real change? Yes."

"Dismissive? You bet."

This is the point you dismissed, which was the other poster's comment:

In America, Health Care isn't a privilege, it's your right.


NOW!!!


Thanks to Pres. Obama and the Democrats!

You objected to pointing out that health care is a right.

"Change that will make care more affordable and accessible? For some. Not for many. "

More than 17 million medicaid participants and millions more will likely disagree with the claim "not for many."

The Spite Club

By PAUL KRUGMAN

House Republicans have voted 37 times to repeal ObamaRomneyCare — the Affordable Care Act, which creates a national health insurance system similar to the one Massachusetts has had since 2006. Nonetheless, almost all of the act will go fully into effect at the beginning of next year.

There is, however, one form of obstruction still available to the G.O.P. Last year’s Supreme Court decision upholding the law’s constitutionality also gave states the right to opt out of one piece of the plan, a federally financed expansion of Medicaid. Sure enough, a number of Republican-dominated states seem set to reject Medicaid expansion, at least at first.

And why would they do this? They won’t save money. On the contrary, they will hurt their own budgets and damage their own economies. Nor will Medicaid rejectionism serve any clear political purpose. As I’ll explain later, it will probably hurt Republicans for years to come.

<...>

And as I said, it doesn’t even make sense as cynical politics. If Obamacare works (which it will), millions of middle-income voters — the kind of people who might support either party in future elections — will see major benefits, even in rejectionist states. So rejectionism won’t discredit health reform. What it might do, however, is drive home to lower-income voters — many of them nonwhite — just how little the G.O.P. cares about their well-being, and reinforce the already strong Democratic advantage among Latinos, in particular.

- more -

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/07/opinion/krugman-the-spite-club.html

[LWolf]

19. To repeat the parts you dismissed:

1. Health care as a right is not the same as health insurance by mandate.

2. Insurance and care are not the same thing. Insurance doesn't guarantee care, if there is no money for the care you still have to pay for after paying the for-profit insurance company their premium.

3. I, and many others, may have a "right" to health care, but we aren't getting it.

4. When I do get health care, it's not because Obama gave me the right, which wasn't really his to give. It's not because the ACA has made it affordable, which it is not. It's because I go into debt to take care of urgent immediate necessity so that I don't miss any more work than I have to. Case in point: I'm still paying for the urgent care I got for an emergency condition last spring. It came to about $1200, which is $300 below the deductible. My new "year" starts October 1st, at which point my deductible goes back to being $1500, before I ever got done paying LAST year's deductible. That's not a right to care; that's a right to continuously pile up debt for conditions that can't be ignored or put off.

For some. Not for many. I'm one of many who will not benefit at all.

[ProSense]

21. They weren't "dismissed." I didn't address them.

4. When I do get health care, it's not because Obama gave me the right, which wasn't really his to give. It's not because the ACA has made it affordable, which it is not. It's because I go into debt to take care of urgent immediate necessity so that I don't miss any more work than I have to. Case in point: I'm still paying for the urgent care I got for an emergency condition last spring. It came to about $1200, which is $300 below the deductible. My new "year" starts October 1st, at which point my deductible goes back to being $1500, before I ever got done paying LAST year's deductible. That's not a right to care; that's a right to continuously pile up debt for conditions that can't be ignored or put off.

What? Who said anything about it was Obama's "right" to give?

He's saying health care is a right, and it takes legislation and action to make it so. It took legislation and action to establish Obamacare.

It took legislation and action create Medicare.

It will take legislation and action to make establish a single-payer system.

[LWolf]

22. So you don't "dismiss" things.

You just "don't address" them.

Although I do agree with the things you've said, to a point. Obama says health care is a right. It takes legislation and action to make it so. It took legislation and action to establish Obamacare. All true.

Of course, Obamacare does not establish health care as a right. It establishes the mandate to buy insurance. We already have the right to pay for health care when and if we can afford to do so. That's not health care as a right; that's health care as a commodity.

It will take legislation and action to establish a single-payer system, it's true. That's why it's a fucking travesty that it was kept off the table so that mandatory for-profit health insurance could be fobbed off on us instead.

We might have gotten a bit closer if it had at least been allowed at the table. Anyone who believes that "health care is a right" wouldn't exclude options that actually result in authentic "affordable care."

[ProSense]

23. It does,

"Of course, Obamacare does not establish health care as a right."

...for those with a pre-existing condition.

[LWolf]

30. Replacing the pre-existing condition obstacles

are the new conditions proliferating for the best rates, all having to do with your current health.

[Motown_Johnny]

26. Prosense got you on that one

People with pre-existing conditions were refused coverage. They now have the right to coverage.

Yes, you need to be able to afford it. You also have the right to unrestricted travel within the country but you need to be able to afford a car, or bus ticket, or whatever. Women have the right to choose to end a pregnancy but that does not mean the procedure is free. People who want to own guns have that right too, but guns are not free.


You confuse a right with something being without cost. Health care still costs but that does not mean you don't have a right to it, even if you already have a medical condition.

[LWolf]

31. I'm not sure why

you feel like you need to jump in to defend prosense, lol.

It's not personal. In addition to the response I already gave, I'll just say this:

It really doesn't matter if I can have insurance with a pre-existing condition, if I can't afford to use it. The result is the same: no care.

What has me is the slowly, steadily eroding conditions that I can't afford to see a doctor for, even with insurance.

[Laura PourMeADrink]

36. I agree totally that what we have now is severely broken. Companies are nickel and diming you

every chance they get - rising up-front co-pays and then the bill later of what wasn't covered. When they split it, it's small enough to grimace over but not big enough to not pay. But in the end, it's enough for you to say - "It would have been cheaper to go to a doc in the box."

My husband got run over by a six year old on a bike at the lake (long story)...but he required an ER visit and 37 stitches over his eye and ear. Although he has full coverage paid by his employer - all said and done - $1500 out of pocket was needed.

It is so incredibly simple - middle-men make a profit. Until they go away - they will always find ways to trick whatever laws the government comes up with.

All that said, you are right....our side is not pushing the "Everyone has the right to health care". This is incredibly bad PR (always our Dem weakness). It is the huge elephant in the room - that their side doesn't believe it. While they spit out the words like poison in their mouths "Repeal Obamcare" we should be saying, "Don't you care about people who can not see a doctor?"

Here in lies the dilemma - how do you get 1/2 the people to care again?

And when are the insurance companies going to come out with rates for pool coverage? Doesn't it start in October??

[Motown_Johnny]

25. Oh Come On Now...

Just because something is not perfect does not mean it isn't good. I wish we had a public option, or preferably a single payer system, but we don't... yet. Vermont is working toward it and once they get the ball rolling it is reasonable to assume other states will follow.


Coverage has been expanded. Health care is considered a right even though some people are still denied that right.


As for your skepticism about Pres. Obama (I noticed you forgot the title, but I will add it for you) and the Democrats:



http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patient_Protection_and_Affordable_Care_Act

^snip^


On December 23, the Senate voted 60–39 to end debate on the bill (a cloture vote to end the filibuster by opponents). The bill then passed by a vote of 60–39 on December 24, 2009, with all Democrats and two independents voting for, and all Republicans voting against except one (Jim Bunning (R-KY), not voting).[219]



The remaining obstacle was a pivotal group of pro-life Democrats, initially reluctant to support the bill, led by Congressman Bart Stupak. The group found the possibility of federal funding for abortion would be substantive enough to warrant opposition. The Senate bill had not included language that satisfied their abortion concerns, but they could not include additional such language in the reconciliation bill, as it would be outside the scope of the process with its budgetary limits. Instead, President Obama issued Executive Order 13535, reaffirming the principles in the Hyde Amendment.[233] This concession won the support of Stupak and members of his group and assured passage of the bill.[230][234] The House passed the Senate bill with a vote of 219 to 212 on March 21, 2010, with 34 Democrats and all 178 Republicans voting against it.[235] (The following day, Republicans introduced legislation to repeal the bill).[236] Obama signed the ACA (the Senate bill) into law on March 23, 2010.[237] The amendment bill (the Health Care and Education Reconciliation Act) was also passed by the House on March 21, then by the Senate via reconciliation on March 25, and finally signed by President Obama on March 30.






Let's try to stay somewhere close to reality.

[LWolf]

29. Good would be

being able to afford to see a doctor to address a few health conditions.

That's not perfect, but it's reasonable.

[earthside]

2. Marriage Equality and Solar Panels

That's what you got.

Let's hope that September brings forward a reinvigorated Obama administration.

The NSA spying controversy is being sorely underestimated ... the corrosive effects on Pres. Obama's image and legacy are deep and significant. He needs to get on the right side of this soon.

[Pretzel_Warrior]

3. In 50 years he will be known as the guy who finally got health care reformed and on the right track

You are seriously over exaggerating the impact of NSA thing. Go look at polling.

[ProSense]

6. It reminds me

of the mentions of Truman integrating the military.

President Obama's actions on health care and the other issues mentioned in the OP will have lasting implications.

[BumRushDaShow]

9. AND...

the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.

First time in history that average consumers had such an entity for oversight of the financial industry.

[ProSense]

12. Yes!

Elizabeth Warren: Cordray Vote ‘A Historic Day For Working Families’

Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) took to Twitter on Tuesday in praise of the Senate's vote to advance Richard Cordray's nomination to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, calling it a "historic day for working families."

Elizabeth Warren ✔ @elizabethforma

I couldn't be more pleased that Rich Cordray will finally get the vote that he deserves. This is a historic day for working families!
1:11 PM - 16 Jul 2013

47 Retweets 26 favorites

http://livewire.talkingpointsmemo.com/entry/elizabeth-warren-cordray-vote-historic-day-for-working

Remarks by Senator Elizabeth Warren on the Re-Nomination of Rich Cordray to be Director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau
http://www.warren.senate.gov/?p=press_release&id=180

[freshwest]

14. Changing lives for the better.

Now I have to go looking for that link he mentions in the video.

[ProSense]

24. Nice! n/t

[AnotherMcIntosh]

16. Don't hold your breath.

50 years seems like a long time.

[BumRushDaShow]

8. BENGHAZI !!!!11!!!!

[freshwest]

28. More deadly capital letters: NSA! TSA! DEA! EPA! SSA! FDA! TVA! ACA!

Save us from the alphabet soup!!!111!!

[arely staircase]

11. He is turning out to be one of our truly great presidents. nt

[uponit7771]

13. Can't have any facts right now those things ruin Paulian stoking

[polichick]

15. Yes, he manages to "evolve" once the risk has passed.

[ProSense]

17. He overcame the "kill the bill" efforts on health care reform.

Also, up until the day DADT was repealed, some were accusing him of not having the courage to do it.

Most people give the President credit where it's due.

Thanks, Obama >> updated, Edith Windsor reacts
http://election.democraticunderground.com/10023101179

[Rex]

18. I wish there was a rule in Congress

that after failing to repeal a law 40 times...you must get 40 swats in front of everyone with your pants pulled down to your ankles and sucking your thumb. Oh and you have to wear a spinning propeller hat and face the speaker. IF they want to behave like bad teenagers, then we should be treating them as such.

[Whisp]

20. K&R, The President is working hard for everyone

even the ones that keep stabbing him in the back, for years.

[Cha]

27. First I've heard of this: President Obama Installs Solar Panels On White House

"Some old enough to remember Jimmy Carter will remember that he added solar panels to the White House in his adminstration, but that Ronald Reagan took them off when he became president. President Obama ordered in 2010 that new solar panels be put back on, and now they are doing so, and they are American made panels.

A White House official confirmed to the Washington Post Thursday that installation had begun on fitting the President’s residence with solar panels, an effort the official said was “part of an energy retrofit that will improve the overall energy efficiency of the building.” The panels will be American-made, though the official did not confirm which company they would be purchased from."

Fucking reagun.

Thanks PS!

[ProSense]

32. Yup, good stuff. n/t

[cali]

33. The last six months have not been very good for the President

trust you to play Baghdad Bob.

[uponit7771]

34. To consummate bashers, Obama has NEVER had a good minute not less month. These people...

...do complain to much (or whoever that shit is said)

[ProSense]

38. Well, who cares about social issues that will impact people's lives when

the wind screams NSA?

[ProSense]

37. LOL! n/t

[B Calm]

35. Healthcare.gov Thanks