US Politics Mega-thread - Page 6335

On November 30 2016 01:16 farvacola wrote:
Given your attitudes towards racism as a general concept, I doubt anyone is surprised to hear you say that. However, diversity as a goal in and of itself is ancillary to the larger point, namely that school choice without attention paid to infrastructure is a recipe for de facto school segregation.

As Greg Sargent points out, the choice of Tom Price for HHS probably means the death of Obamacare. Never mind the supposed replacement; it will be a bust. So here’s the question: how many people just shot themselves in the face?

My first pass answer is, between 3.5 and 4 million. But someone who’s better at trawling through Census data can no doubt do better.

Here’s my calculation: we start with the Census-measured decline in uninsurance among non-Hispanic whites, which was 6 million between 2013 and 2015. Essentially all of those gains will be lost if Price gets his way.

How many of those white insurance-losers voted for Trump? Whites in general gave him 57 percent of their votes. Whites without a college degree — much more likely to have been uninsured pre-Obama — gave him 66 percent. Apportioning the insurance-losers using these numbers gives us 3.42 million if we use the overall vote share, or 3.96 million if we use the non-college vote share

There are various ways this calculation could be off, in either direction. Also, maybe we should add a million Latinos who, if we believe the exit polls, also voted to lose coverage. But it’s likely to be in the ballpark. And it’s pretty awesome.

On November 30 2016 01:50 farvacola wrote:
As for TanGeng's assertion that minorities are oftentimes the one driving the school choice bus, access to resources and the article I posted suggest otherwise. Furthermore, this idea that there are "separate issues" in education ignores the omnibus nature of contemporary legislation. For better or for worse, reform now almost always comes in the form of a package deal, and given the Republican impulse to couple school choice with drastic cuts in baseline funding, it'd be a mistake to address the issues discretely.

On November 30 2016 02:05 farvacola wrote:

You're simply reiterating what I had already said, namely that a parent's desire to put their child in a good school is a poor basis for public policy because it ignores the external effects of prioritizing that desire. Additionally, this whole "just wait until you have kids" spiel ignores what comes alongside "school choice" programs, namely dramatic cuts in funding and a lack of attention paid to schools that are not on the receiving end of vouchers. Naturally, you can continue to acknowledge only those liberals that neatly fit into your "regressive left" indictment, but you should know that in doing so, you're failing to address those of us who were raised on public education and are not keen on prioritizing discrete concepts like "school choice" or diversity for diversity's sake.

Should "school choice" come alongside structural reforms aimed at improving schools not benefitted by it, I think you'll find that many liberals, even those cardboard cut out elitist DC folk you like to rail against, would support it.

On November 30 2016 02:26 ticklishmusic wrote:
Diversity is nice to have for a number of reasons, but it falls lower on the list than other things.

The resulting segregation is a symptom of other systemic disparities. That is what the concern is, and it can be viewed from a non-racial (or less racial) lens. Like, let's say that some families can't send their kids to a better school in a different district because they can't afford the transportation. And then the school in their district gets worse because it gets less funding because students (who can afford it) move to other districts. It's just more of the rich get richer and the poor get poorer. So much for education being the ladder upwards.

On November 30 2016 02:28 xDaunt wrote:

The real problem is that too many people want to use schools to fix problems that schools aren't meant to fix. Schools are at best a band aid for the problems that broken families spawn.

Some women have been worried that they will lose insurance coverage for contraception under the Trump administration, but coverage for other women's health benefits could also be at risk.

At or near the top of the list is guaranteed coverage of maternity services on the individual insurance market. Before the health law, it was unusual for plans purchased by individuals to cover prenatal care and childbirth. But the Affordable Care Act requires that maternity care be included as one of 10 essential health benefits.

In 2009, the year before the health law passed, just 13 percent of individual plans available to a 30-year-old woman living in a state capital offered maternity benefits, according to an analysis by the National Women's Law Center.

Some plans offered maternity services as an add-on through a special rider that paid a fixed amount, sometimes just a few thousand dollars, the study found. But even with a rider, a woman's financial exposure could be significant: the total payment for a vaginal birth was $18,329 in 2010, according to a study by Truven Health Analytics.

Before Obamacare, women were also generally charged higher rates for health insurance than men on the individual market. According to the law center's analysis, 60 percent of best-selling individual plans in 2009 charged a 40-year-old non-smoking woman more than a 40-year-old man who smoked, even in plans that didn't include any type of maternity coverage.

That inequity disappeared under the health law, which prohibited insurers from charging women higher rates than men for the same services.

"Our concern is going back to a world where insurance companies are writing their own rules again, and returning women to those bad old days in health care and losing all the progress we've made," says Gretchen Borchelt, vice president for reproductive rights and health at the National Women's Law Center.

And preventive health services for women could be on the line if the health law is repealed or changed. Some may be easier to get rid of than others, say women's health policy analysts.

On November 30 2016 02:31 ticklishmusic wrote:


What problems exactly? And not to jump too far ahead, how are schools only a band aid?

A massive wildfire burning in the Tennessee resort towns of Gatlinburg and Pigeon Forge has destroyed more than 100 structures, including homes and businesses, authorities said Tuesday.

Mandatory evacuations for residents and visitors were ordered and the National Guard was mobilized to Sevier County to help transport firefighters, remove debris and check on residents, as the fire spread across the Great Smoky Mountains National Park Monday night. Gatlinburg is 35 miles southeast of Knoxville and has a population of roughly 4,000 people.

“This is the worst of the wildfires we’ve had this year,” Tennessee Emergency Management Agency spokesperson Dean Flener told The Huffington Post. “This is really bad.”

Over 14,000 people were evacuated and more than 12,000 power outages were reported, Flener said. He confirmed no fatalities had been reported, though four people were transported to the hospital for burn-related injuries. The TEMA has yet to determine the cause of the fire.

The agency’s website reported the closure of State Highway 441 as the fires continue to burn in Sevier County.

“For this specific area, this is a once-in-a-lifetime event,” Jamie Sanders, executive assistant of public affairs for the Great Smoky Mountains National Park Service, told HuffPost.

Firefighters from surrounding counties have been called in to help combat the flames. Flener couldn’t say if or when the fires will be contained. He recommended that those affected avoid going outside, as the agency reported heavy smoke “beginning to settle in parts of the county.”

Sanders said she believes the fire is not actively spreading, although she noted it’s difficult to evaluate the fire’s reach because of “extremely restricted” visibility.

Weather reports indicate rain later could come later the day, though a high-wind warning was issued this morning for Sevier County, increasing the difficulty of containing the blaze.

“The winds don’t work in their favor, but hopefully the rain will,” Flener said.

The fire started Monday night at the top of Chimney Tops Trail in the Great Smoky Mountains outside of Gatlinburg and spread from there, Sanders said. She emphasized the importance of the predicted rainfall.

“We’re just going to pray for rain,” she said.

On November 30 2016 02:48 xDaunt wrote:

All of them? Poverty, drug abuse, crime -- pretty much everything that plagues inner city communities. All of these problems have a far lesser frequency where families stay together and have relatively intra-family health relationships. School simply can't replace the deadbeat dad who takes off and is uninvolved in his children's lives. School isn't meant to raise children. That's up to the parents.

On November 30 2016 03:06 ticklishmusic wrote:


Much like manufacturing, the traditional 2 parent home isn't a magical cure to social ills, it's really something that existed in the past. Both still exist, but we can't expect a return to those things and for everything to be hunky dory.

That aside, that's not the argument. The issue is that school vouchers exacerbate the disparity in the quality of education. Many public schools are chronically underfunded, and since it's more or less dollars per head in a simplified (but pretty accurate) scenario if there are two districts, all those who can move to the better one, which deprives the poorer one of needed funding. Beyond that, the ones with the means to move districts ALSO tend to be the ones who are more involved in their childrens' education. And then the better teachers want to work for the better district with better students... it's a positive feedback loop in a dozen different ways.

Anecdotally, my selective admissions high school was the best in the state and (theoretically) would be well funded, but I had teachers who would give us raggedy old handouts and make us return them so the next year of students could use them.

On November 30 2016 01:56 Doodsmack wrote:
Trump is a big defender of the Constitution. Strict constructionist, in fact.

https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/803567993036754944

Flag Protection Act of 2005 - Amends the federal criminal code to revise provisions regarding desecration of the flag to prohibit: (1) destroying or damaging a U.S. flag with the primary purpose and intent to incite or produce imminent violence or a breach of the peace; (2) intentionally threatening or intimidating any person, or group of persons, by burning a U.S. flag; or (3) stealing or knowingly converting the use of a U.S. flag belonging to the United States, or belonging to another person on U.S. lands, and intentionally destroying or damaging that flag.