ACA Under Attack Yet Again: Bring in the 14th Amendment

So now the 14th Amendment to the Constitution means nothing in RED America.

A Federal Appeals Court in Washington, whose ruling will be appealed, recently ruled that subsidies for insurance cannot be paid to individuals in states that have not set up their own exchanges.

Now remember, the FEDERAL government will pay the subsidies to those low income AMERICANS according to a FEDERAL LAW.   There is not burden to a state save setting up an exchange and the ACA provides assistance for that!  

California for example set up exchanges as the law encourages it to do.  Its citizens gain the advantage of equal protection of the law by getting tax credit subsidies when they purchase policies through the exchange.  Tennessee for political reasons elected to not set up a state exchange, so citizens there still could use the federal one (remember the one that was plagued by software issues that works fine now).

These are ALL private insurance company policies by the way; both in the federal and the state exchanges.  The amount of subsidy is EXACTLY the same; determined by income level  

The idea is to insure all Americans providing equal protection of the law and equal access to affordable health insurance.

Those too poor to qualify for subsidies are covered by Medicaid, that was expanded with huge federal subsidies.  The Supreme Court, in its usual wrongheadedness, ruled that unconstitutional allowing Red States to deny their poor health care coverage.  As a result, if you have the misfortune to live in a Red State, you are screwed if you are poor.  The Supreme Court, riddled with politics, decided 5-4 that states could essentially discriminate relative to who gets health care.  And Republicans cheer!

That in itself is an abomination.

Now, a court made of of two Republicans "regrettably" ruled that subsidies to individual policy owners could be different depending if you live in a a Red state or a Blue state.  This ruling has the effect of driving up insurance policy prices, again for poor Red State citizens, preventing them as well as their poor brethren, from gaining access to health care!

The Federal Exchanges were set up to be used if a state chose not to set one up.  Most Red states did not set up exchanges in their blind opposition to a law that just seeks to bring America into the twenty first century relative to health care.

 The Federal Exchange exists to provide equal protection under the federal law for those citizens who are unlucky enough to live in a Red State!

That is it, there is no other difference.

So, the Appeals Court is rewarding unequal protection of the law.  The Appeals Court is rewarding unfairness and pure partisanship.

I suggest massive lawsuits by the ACLU and others challenging this incredible unfairness and frankly unconstitutional  application of Federal Law.

I am reminded of the old Jim Crowe Laws, that allowed a different application of Civil Rights Law depending on what state you occupied.

This is wrong.  Republican jurists are voting politically against a law they have been drilled into hating because it simply tries to improve the nation's health.

I am ashamed of these people, just like I was ashamed of the southern states who for years blocked civil rights' protections for millions of people.

Enforce the 14th Amendment!!!!!!!  The state you live in should not be a determiner of your basic right to decent health care, just as it could not determine what level of civil rights you enjoy.

The American Dream

I just finished reading an article about Anquan  Bolden, a San Francisco 49er receiver.  It seems that Mr. Bolden is an example of the American Dream.

Like many poor people of color, Anquan is one a very few who was able to escape, partially, his poor sharecropper roots through football.

I can remember when I worked in the then Grant High School District and speaking to the quarterback of the Varsity.  He asked me sadly if there was any way OUT of Del Paso Heights.  He asked me how I had done it, escaping Redding California for Stanford.  He told me, "If I stay here I will be dead before I am 21".

Those words haunt me to this day.

I told he to study hard, don't count on football to get you anywhere, that only a fraction of a percent ever get college football scholarships, and way less get a chance in the NFL.  I told him the way out was through education and hard work.

But, if you talk to parents of kids anywhere, who are playing football, you will hear invariably, "He may get a shot at the NFL".

Anquan Bolden knows better.  He comes from a high school that has won a couple Florida state championships and a few NFL players have come from his area.  But he is working right now with the community on educational opportunity and economic opportunity; not how to get a shot at the NFL.

I have said before in this Blog that I am an example of the American Dream, even though for a long time I did not realize it.

My mother's family were poor dirt farmers; my father's were part Indian and poor.  Both went hungry during the Great Depression.

As a child of that union, I really had no chance of attending Stanford University or becoming a professional educator.  The odds were huge against that happening.

But I got lucky.  I  possessed exceptional speed and could carry a football better than many.  I also loved to read, and took advantage of what the New Deal had given Americans; a good public school system, a way for even the poor to buy a home and enter the middle class.

We were middle class.  We were not rich or upper middle class, but we were the post WWII middle class, whose children got a better opportunity than their depression era parents.

And I took advantage of it, just as millions of other "baby boomers" did.

The opportunities were everywhere.  Tuition at state colleges and universities was low or non-existent.

So an entire generation did much better economically than our parents.  And, except for people of color, we shared the American Dream.

Then in 1976, the year of American bi-centennial, America began to blink.

It started with the Prop 13 movement in California of all places.  A progressive and liberal state began saying no to taxes.  From that same state, a national leader emerged, Ronald Reagan who basically said the American Dream cost too much. He, and his Hollywood millionaires, were enraged by the income tax marginal tax rate that taxed them at a huge rate.  Of course they still were fabulously rich.  But he was able to convince the middle class that taxes were essentially the work of the devil.

And, the middle class baby boomer, who had burned his draft card in the 60s and dodged military service, switched from his New Deal roots and adopted the conservative anti-tax rant.

And the American Dream dimmed for millions, including the poor African American kids in Del Paso Heights.

No longer do we have tuition free schools. No longer do we have state Mental Health hospitals.  We now have student loans that are for a lifetime.  We now have homeless legions of young people, who literally have no chance.

And Mr. Bolden knows this.  And I know this.  My daughter is a college grad, her husband is a small businessman and they are barely making it.  My home town is one of the poorest in the state, with a huge homeless population, belabored by poverty and crime.

I have called this Potterville, a fictitious town from "Its A Wonderful Life" that is in the image of a rich selfish banker, who seeks to run everything at the expense of everyone save himself.  And we are seeing more Pottervilles all the time, middle class people carrying water for the rich few, in the fallacious belief that cutting the future for their grandchildren will somehow create a just society.

These people are fools, nothing more, nothing less!

The American Dream of opportunity for all; now is only for the well off, the affluent, the rich.  The middle class has shrunk the past ten years as much as it grew in the post WWII boom.

And still they vote Republican.  Still middle class people rant about immigrants and "those people" and close their minds to common sense.

The American Dream is why we are still here.  Young GIs in WWII fought fascism to a standstill and destroyed it, only to see their grandchildren adopt the same fascist mindset that they destroyed.  And, strangely, those who still are alive, sometimes through fear support  a conservative cause that for all intents and purposes is fascist.

I am typing this because the American Dream worked for me.  I worked with kids all of my adult life, trying to get them through education to get a shot at the American Dream.  Yes, I was one of the few, who got my chance through football.  But very early on, I realized there would be no NFL for me.

So I gave back.  I was forced to join the National Guard toward the end of the Vietnam War or get drafted.  But I did not run, I joined.

I am glad I did.  I learned the military was not evil, only the political leadership that abused its trust and loyalties  was.

I learned the value of national service both through my Guard experiences and through a lifetime of educating youngsters.

Today less that 1% of all Americans of working age have done ANY public service of any kind.  That is why the American Dream is dying.

And that is why our democracy is dying.

We all should remember where we came from; and how we got where we are, and the American Dream is the answer.

So, pay your damn taxes, pay more.  Demand good government and get involved.  Vote!    Do not listen to the fascists who tell you less is more.  Stop feeding the beast of ignorance and nihilism.

Your grand children's lives depend on it.  

The Little Children

Sometimes they are so infuriating I almost want to resort to violence.

The modern Republican Party, the Party of NO, the Tea Party "Patriots" have so dishonored themselves lately, it makes me sick.

There is a huge need for immigration reform in this country.  The latest manifestation of it is in the thousands of Central American children who are being warehoused in border care facilities.

The Republicans have, predictably pounced on this issue as the President's Fault.

You know, like the health care crisis is the President's Fault.  The weather is the...President's Fault...the deficit (rang up by President Bush who unlike any President in history tried to fight two wars while handing out a tax cut)...is....The President's Fault.

The Fault Lines go deep and are never ending to the current Republican Party.

Of course, there is not an ounce of truth to any of it.

Truth long ago left the Republican lexicon.  Richard Nixon took care of that with his "promise to the end war with honor" and once in office, INCREASED the bombing of North Vietnam and sent more soldiers into harm's way.  Oh sure, he delivered on his promise all right he lied to us.  Gee, a Republican who lies....

And whose fault was it...why Jimmie Carter's of course?  Huh?

And whose fault is the "loss of Iraq"...why it can't be the blundering, stumbling mess Bush made of it, it has to be.....The President's fault.

The Republican Party has, for the past forty some years, denied responsibility for one public policy disaster after another and takes credit for every success: even if they opposed the policy in the first place.

The works with the "base", those beyond middle aged seniors who wake up with Fox News, go to bed with Limbaugh and fill in the rest with "'Free Fire Radio"; a local right wing fascist radio station right here in good old Redding.  Republicans over 65 are mostly hateful bitter old people who hate from the minute they wake up until the minute they go to sleep.   They are an embarrassment to basic humanity. 

And what about the Little Children, some less than five years old, who are really refugees of a Central America whose political systems have been overwhelmed by the foreign policy of the United States and the "War on Drugs" (another Reagan disaster)?  What has really happened is the idiotic policies of Republican administrations has created a gangster infested culture that parents are willing to send their youngest children away from.

Can you imagine sending your five year old to America, in desperation to try to save them from gangsters who will kill them or rape them otherwise?  Imagine giving up your child to save them?

That is what is going on with "The Little Children".  They are not immigrants, they are REFUGEES!

And what do the Republicans do?  Why they scream to "close the border"; build a fence; send in the National Guard. 

I am reminded of the movie "The Day After Tomorrow" which depicts a North America ravaged by the effects of global warming, who in desperation advises United States citizens to go south, into Mexico to save their lives.  And the Mexicans, after years of being humiliated when THEY were refugees do what?   They open their borders and let the Americans (who previously denied them access) into their country.  The Mexicans act like human beings SHOULD act. 

Why?  Because most countries are not dominated by a bunch of right wing zealots, who ALWAYS are wrong; who ALWAYS blame the African-American President....and always get away with it.

Had enough yet?  The next time a right wing groups tries to block a bus full of refugee children from gaining access to sanctuary, I advise the federal authorities to arrest every one of them, and assign them to duty helping the children. 

That is the only thing that can break this cycle of stupidity and hate...care for the little children.

I doubt it Republicans have the heart or the guts to do so...