Rep. Alan Grayson (D-Fla.) joins “Viewpoint” host John Fugelsang to discuss
an amendment he will soon introduce in the House of Representatives called the
Mind Your Own Business Act.
Grayson hopes this amendment will end NSA spying on Americans. He says, “That
kind of spying does not make us safer and it is beneath our dignity as
Americans.”
Grayson adds, “Virtually everybody that I know immediately recognizes how
silly and pointless it is to spy on every person’s conversation.”
Civil rights groups suffered major setbacks on Tuesday after the heart of the
landmark civil-rights law that protects minority voters was effectively gutted
by the Supreme Court.
In a 5-4 decision, the Supreme Court struck down Section 4 of the Voting
Rights Act , which required many Southern states to obtain pre-clearance before
making any changes to voting laws.
Although the ruling does state that
pre-clearance still stands, it functionally halts that part of the law until
Congress can draw up a new set of guidelines to determine which areas are
subject to federal oversight.
“This is a devastating blow to Americans, particularly African-Americans, who
are now at the mercy of state governments,” Rev. Al Sharpton,
PoliticsNation host and civil rights activist said in a statement
released through the National Action Network. “Given last year’s attempts by
states to change voting rules, it is absurd to say that we do not need these
protections.”
Sharpton also vowed to continue the fight, noting the efforts that brought
about the civil rights achievements of the 1960′s were set in motion by
activism. “It was a people’s movement from the bottom up,” he said on MSNBC
Tuesday. “And that’s what’s going to have to happen now.”
“James Crow Jr. Esquire is doing Jim Crow work today,” he added.
Rev. Jesse Jackson, founder and president of the Rainbow PUSH Coalition,
echoed that sentiment.
“The Supreme Court has stabbed the Voting Rights Act in the heart. The White
House and Congress must speak out as they are direct beneficiaries of the act
and must assume leadership,” he said in a statement released on his Facebook
page. “Democracy is just 48 years old. It began in Selma 1965. This decision
is designed to unravel 48 years of progress.”
Many legally-focused civil rights organizations also spoke out against the
ruling, including the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, which defended
the Voting Rights Act before the Supreme Court, and called today’s ruling “an
act of extraordinary judicial overreach.”
“The Supreme Court ruling takes the most powerful tool our nation has to
defend minority voting rights out of commission.” Sherrilyn
Ifill, President of the NAACP LDF, said in a statement. “By
second-guessing Congress’ judgment about which places should be covered by
Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act, the Court has left millions of minority
voters without the mechanism that has allowed them to stop voting discrimination
before it occurs.
“This is like letting you keep your car, but taking away the keys,” she
added. “To say that I am disappointed is an understatement. Congress must step
in.”
The Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights, which represented one of the
defendant-interveners in the case, criticized the decision as well.
“The Supreme Court has effectively gutted one of the nation’s most important
and effective civil rights laws. Minority voters in places with a record of
discrimination are now at greater risk of being disenfranchised than they have
been in decades,” Jon Greenbaum, Chief Counsel for the Lawyers’ Committee for
Civil Rights said in a statement. “Today’s decision is a blow to democracy.
Jurisdictions will be able to enact policies which prevent minorities from
voting, and the only recourse these citizens will have will be expensive and
time-consuming litigation.”
“This decision disregards the documented history of ongoing voting
discrimination in the covered states and paralyzes Section 5, which has blocked
thousands of racially discriminatory voting practices and procedures before they
could ever take effect,” Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights President and
Executive Director Barbara Arnwine added in a statement. “Civil rights and civic
organizations must now unite with the American people – fighting new
discriminatory voting laws lawsuit by lawsuit and state by state—until Congress
acts decisively to replace what has been one of the most effective civil rights
laws ever passed.”
For Rev. Sharpton, Tuesday’s decision has helped define the focus of the
commemorative march honoring the 50th Anniversary of the March on Washington,
which he says ”will now be centered around the protection and restoring of voter
protection.”
“This ruling has in effect revoked one of Dr. King’s greatest achievements,
the teeth of the Voting Rights Acts,” he added.
Cenk Uygur talks to TYT panelists Ana Kasparian, “TYT University” host John
Iadarola, and comedian Jimmy Dore about the government’s “Internal
Threat” program, which aims to discourage leaks by equating
whistleblowing with treason.
The program also encourages government
employees to rat out co-workers who may be potential whistleblowers
based on risk indicators, such as martial or financial distress.
”In
East Germany, once they found the paperwork after the wall came down, it
turned out that one out of every ten people…was a government
collaborator,” Cenk says. “We’re on the road to East Germany.”
A general view of damaged shops in Qusair, Syria.
AP/SANA
WASHINGTON—In Syria, the Obama administration seems to be
stumbling back to the future: An old-fashioned proxy war, complete with
the usual shadowy CIA arms-running operation, the traditional plan to
prop up ostensible “moderates” whose prospects are doubtful and, of
course, the customary shaky grasp of what the fighting is really about.
This will not end well.
It is tragic that more than 90,000 people have been killed in the
bloody Syrian conflict, with more than a million displaced. But I have
heard no claim that President Obama’s decision to arm the rebels will
halt or even slow the carnage. To the contrary, sending more weapons
into the fray will likely result in greater death and destruction, at
least in the short term.
So this is not promising as a humanitarian intervention. And if the
aim is to punish dictator Bashar al-Assad for his apparent use of
chemical weapons, surely there are measures—a missile strike on the
regime’s military airfields, for example—that would make the point
without also making an open-ended commitment.
Why decide now to announce stepped-up direct support for Gen. Salim
Idriss and his rebel forces? It is surely not a coincidence that the
Syrian military—with the help of Hezbollah, the Lebanese militia backed
by Iran—has been pulverizing the rebels in recent weeks and now
threatens to recapture Aleppo, the country’s commercial hub.
Hence, a complicated proxy war: The United States supports Idriss. Qatar
and Saudi Arabia, which are U.S. allies, send money and arms to
competing rebel factions that dream of turning Syria into an Islamic
republic. Russia, Iran and Hezbollah are supporting Assad with weapons,
money and—in the case of Hezbollah—well-trained troops. The rebel side
is mostly Sunni; the government side largely Shiite.
As I said, this will not end well.
President Obama’s reluctance to get dragged into this morass has been
commendable, but now his ambivalence and caution become liabilities.
Iran’s most important ally in the Arab world is Syria. Russia’s only
military base outside of the former Soviet Union is in Syria. Does Obama
care as much as those nations’ leaders do about who wins the war? If
not, what’s the point?
It could be argued that providing Idriss with light arms and
ammunition is a way to equip moderate, secular forces for their
inevitable fight against Islamists in a fractured post-Assad Syria. But
this is moot if Assad crushes the rebellion and holds on. Accordingly,
U.S. aid reportedly may include some heavier weapons for use against
tanks and aircraft. The CIA will take the lead in transferring the arms
and training the rebels to use them, according to The Washington Post.
Perhaps bolstering Idriss can at least buy time for negotiations to
produce a political settlement, which is what Obama has said he prefers.
For a long time, Russia balked at joining the call for an international
peace conference. Now that momentum on the battlefield has shifted and
the Assad regime is in a stronger position, Russia is more willing to
summon everyone to the table—but the Obama administration is no longer
in such a big hurry.
Not every slope is slippery, but this one looks like a bobsled run.
It was August 2011 when Obama issued a statement declaring that “the
time has come for President Assad to step aside.” Now that the president
has put muscle behind those words, it will be difficult for the United
States to accept any other outcome.
There will be pressure to impose a no-fly zone to neutralize Assad’s
devastating air power. There will be pressure to contain the war so it
does not spill beyond Syria’s borders and destabilize our allies in
Turkey and Jordan, or our sort-of, kind-of allies in Iraq. There will be
pressure to alleviate the immense suffering of the Syrian people.
Perhaps all of this can be accomplished without putting American lives
at risk. I doubt it.
Above all, there will be pressure to win a proxy war that Obama never
wanted to fight. This is how quagmires begin, with one reluctant step
after another toward the yawning abyss. (See: Vietnam.)
We do sometimes win proxy wars—in Afghanistan, for example, where the
CIA helped the warlords defeat the mighty Soviet army. In the process,
however, we created the chaotic power vacuum that allowed al-Qaeda to
set up shop—and ultimately launch the 9/11 attacks.
I hope I’m wrong, but fear I’m right: This will not end well.
Eugene Robinson’s e-mail address is eugenerobinson(at)washpost.com
You know, when you think about it, The Witcher video game series shares some similarities with the hit HBO TV show Game of Thrones.
Both are based on works by popular fantasy authors. Both tell tales of
characters that are neither completely good nor completely evil. Both
are set in harsh fictional medieval worlds populated with mythical
creatures, scheming nobles, and the occasional brother-sister incest.
And they both look damn good.
Due for PC, PlayStation 4, and Xbox One sometime in
2014, The Witcher 3 is the final entry in CD Projekt RED’s critically
acclaimed action-role-playing game franchise. It’s also the first title
in the series to feature a truly open game world and free-roaming
exploration, and it’s gorgeously detailed.
CD Projekt claims it’s 35
times bigger than The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings (a large game in
itself) and takes 40 minutes to travel on horseback end to end.
“Basically, the new philosophy of exploring the world in
The Witcher 3 is that you can get to every place you see on the screen,”
the developer told the media during a live gameplay demo at this week’s
Electronic Entertainment Expo in Los Angeles. “This is a massive
improvement in comparison to Witcher 2, which had some artificial
barriers.”
Of course, a world that big and beautiful is pointless
unless it’s filled with interesting things to do.
The Witcher 3′s
standalone, nonlinear story once again focuses on mutant monster hunter
Geralt of Rivia. CD Projekt promises a more personal story for Geralt
this time around. Now freed from the political machinations of kings and
elves, he’s able to search for his loved ones and pursue the Wild Hunt,
a spectral force straight out of folklore that brings death and terror
to all it passes. The beginning of the demo shows these skeletal riders
attacking a village, and Geralt seeks the lone survivor of the massacre
to get some answers.
The ability to track down and slay epic beasts is nothing new — Capcom built an entire franchise
around it. But it’s an important part of The Witcher lore, and CD
Projekt is putting greater emphasis on it this time around. “We decided
we would no longer have this world of enemies who are very weak and who
you’re just slashing them and killing them,” said The Witcher 3 game
director Konrad Tomaszkiewicz. “We decided to create this Monster
Hunting system and the Witcher Sense system and create monsters in a way
that would be unique. They got their own special abilities, and the
hunt for every one of these monsters will be different. You will feel
that you’re a monster hunter actually in the game.”
There’s
about 80 different monsters in The Witcher 3, the developer says, and
each has its own habitat, strengths, and weaknesses. During the demo,
the developer showed a side quest involving a formerly peaceful woodland
spirit that is now terrorizing the village that used to worship it.
Geralt agrees to slay the beast (for a price), but first he has to find
it. A simple press of a button activates Geralt’s new Witcher Sense
(think Detective Vision in Batman: Arkham Asylum), and it’s not long
before he spots the creature’s trail. He discovers that it’s a Leshen — a
tall, antlered being that can control the forest and disappear in a
cloud of ravens.
Geralt has deep knowledge of his world’s more deadlier
creatures, and all of that information is in the game’s Monster Journal.
This Wikipedia-like bestiary is incredibly detailed; by reading it, the
player learns that the Leshen is very territorial and uses totems to
steal power from the forest. It also likes to bind itself to a nearby
human and use that person’s vital energy to resurrect itself if it’s
slain. Once again, Geralt’s heightened senses allow him to find the
marked person, an innocent woman named Hilde. Once she’s dealt with
(presumably killed), Geralt is free to hunt down and destroy the totems
and finally the spirit itself.
The battle with the Leshen is a spooky, tense affair.
Wolves spring out of the shadows at Geralt, and massive tree roots rise
up to strike and hinder him. The Leshen itself is a cagey opponent that
randomly teleports about the forest, but eventually Geralt is successful
and returns to the village to collect his reward.
There he learns that not all of the world’s monsters have
antlers or walk on four legs. While he was off dealing with the Leshen,
the man who hired him decided to stage a coup, slaying the village
elders in cold blood. Geralt calls the man a murderer but ultimately
collects his fee and moves on. What else can he do? The world of The
Witcher is dark and morally ambiguous, and sometimes picking the lesser
of two evils is the best choice available.
After playing a series of embarassing clips from Michele Bachmann, Phyllis
Schlafly, Allen West, Sarah Palin, John
Ratzenberger and others, the same bunch of assorted lunatics who show up at
all these conservative conferences over and over again, this time at the Faith & Freedom Coalition conference now
on in DC, Martin Bashir asked former RNC Chairman Michael Steele this rather
pointed question...
MARTIN BASHIR: What does the GOP hope to accomplish by repeatedly appealing
to the far right of the party while at the same time possibly alienating more
mainstream republicans?
MICHAEL STEELE: [Deep breath and a sigh] Well, I think they need
to....
Several days ago, I posted a
video showing the stark differences between the positions on massive
surveillance programs by candidate Barack Obama in 2007 and
President Barack Obama in 2013.
And now, since we're nothing if not "fair and balanced", here is a short
video of Sean Hannity of Fox "News" repeatedly lauding massive NSA surveillance
programs during the George W. Bush Administration...and then decrying the very
same programs as "tyranny" and a blatant violation of the U.S. Constitution now
that Obama is doing it.
With all due respect to Hannity - and I have none - his over the
top hypocrisy then versus now trumps even Obama's, hands down. Not to mention
the small detail that the programs, as carried out under Bush were, at the time,
illegal, while under Obama they have been made "legal". (Or so we are told.
There is so much secrecy around them, of course, it is virtually impossible for
the public to know either way.) Enjoy!...
Today’s
Republicans seem to think rigging currency markets and robbing
customers and tax payers blind is a perfectly acceptable way for banks
to operate. Image from www.bellybillboard.com.
What do you do when you have more money than God? Cheat so you can make even more money! Bloomberg
reports that foreign exchange traders at “some of the world’s biggest
banks” got caught rigging currency markets to generate higher profits.
Even more disturbing, it turns out they’ve been doing it for an entire
decade. Basically, WM/Reuters sets foreign exchange rates and currency
values each morning based on trades and quotes from the previous day.
But traders can — and apparently often do — place massive buy and sell
orders late in the day to weight values in their favor. This practice —
the global financier’s version of the proverbial butcher surreptitiously
placing a thumb on the scale — is controversial, but not explicitly
illegal:
Employees have been front-running client orders and rigging WM/Reuters rates
by pushing through trades before and during the 60-second windows when
the benchmarks are set, said the current and former traders, who
requested anonymity because the practice is controversial. Dealers
colluded with counterparts to boost chances of moving the rates, said
two of the people, who worked in the industry for a total of more than
20 years. [...]
Furthermore, the foreign exchange market is considered to be “like
the Wild West” even by the low standards of these anti-regulation,
libertarian finance industry types:
The $4.7 trillion-a-day currency market, the biggest in the
financial system, is one of the least regulated. The inherent conflict
banks face between executing client orders and profiting from their own
trades is exacerbated because most currency trading takes place away
from exchanges.
Meanwhile, Peter Schroeder from The Hill
reports that Senator Carl Levin (D-MI) issued a statement demanding
that the Treasury Department revisit its recent decision to exempt
foreign exchange from the stronger regulations mandated by the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act:
“The Treasury Department should reconsider its
ill-advised exemption of foreign exchange derivatives from the full
protections of the Dodd-Frank Act. Our financial regulators should
protect American businesses and families from price rigging abuses by
fully regulating these derivatives trades and by finalizing the long
overdue Merkley-Levin provisions on proprietary trading and conflicts of
interest.”
Considering how recently Barclays and other international banks got in hot water
for fixing the London Interbank Offered Rate (LIBOR), you’d think folks
in Washington would listen to the senator from Michigan. But … oh wait,
I forgot … The House is run by a bunch of crazy Republicans who think
unscrupulous traders from big banks should be able to do whatever the
heck they want.
Despite the fact that the too-big-to-fail whales
big banks have repeatedly proven they cannot be trusted, the GOP STILL
doesn’t want us to regulate them. They have repeatedly tried to sabotage the Dodd-Frank act,
so bankers and traders can lie, cheat, and rob people blind with
impunity while destroying our economy, America’s middle class, and our
faith in our financial system.
AI’s Justin Rosario reported earlier this week that
Representative Jeb Hensarling (R-TX) vociferously objected when the
Financial Stability Oversight Council identified “at least three”
financial institutions as too-big-to-fail, and requiring higher levels
of oversight and regulation to “keep them from dragging the entire
financial sector under in a replay of the 2007-2008 collapse.”
Apparently, Hensarling protested that taxpayers would be placed “greater
risk of being forced to fund yet another Wall Street bailout,” and
added, “Designating any company as ‘too big to fail’ is bad policy and
even worse economics.”
For today’s Republicans, apparently, free markets are not supposed to
be transparent, and companies should not be held accountable for their
actions and lack of ethical behavior. Go figure.
If you’re curious about how the currency markets and foreign
exchanges work, and have a half hour to kill, watch the British
Broadcasting Corporation’s documentary, “Billion Dollar Day.”
The 1986 film follows three traders in New York, London, and Hong Kong,
as they wheel and deal and exchange over a billion dollars in various
currencies over the course of 24 hours. These days, an average of $4.7 trillion is traded each day on the foreign exchanges. Here’s the video:
If you’re short on time, here’s the short version — an ancient, humorous commercial from a leading foreign exchange broker, Forex. Just substitute the Euro for the Great Britain Pound (GBP) and the Chinese Yuan for the Japanese Yen. Here’s the video:
Elisabeth Parker is a writer, Web designer, mom, political junkie, and dilettante. Come visit her at ElisabethParker.Com, "like" her on facebook, "friend" her on facebook, follow her on Twitter, or check out her Pinterest boards. For more Addicting Info articles by Elisabeth, click here.
How troubled should Americans be by the NSA’s spying?
None of us want another terrorist attack in the United States. Equally,
most of us have nothing to hide from the federal government, which
already has so many ways of knowing about us. And we know that the
just-revealed National Security Agency program does not actually listen
to our calls; it uses the phone numbers, frequency, length and times of
the calls for data-mining.
So, why is it that many Americans, including me, are so upset with the Obama administration gathering up telephone records?
My concerns are twofold. First, the law under which President George W.
Bush and now President Obama have acted was not intended to give the
government records of all telephone calls. If that had been the intent,
the law would have said that. It didn’t. Rather, the law envisioned the
administration coming to a special court on a case-by-case basis to
explain why it needed to have specific records.
I am troubled by the precedent of stretching a law on domestic
surveillance almost to the breaking point. On issues so fundamental to
our civil liberties, elected leaders should not be so needlessly
secretive.
The argument that this sweeping search must be kept secret from the
terrorists is laughable. Terrorists already assume this sort of thing is
being done. Only law-abiding American citizens were blissfully ignorant
of what their government was doing.
Secondly, we should worry about this program because government
agencies, particularly the Federal Bureau of Investigation, have a
well-established track record of overreaching, exceeding their authority
and abusing the law. The FBI has used provisions of the Patriot Act,
intended to combat terrorism, for purposes that greatly exceed
congressional intent.
Even if you trust Obama, should we have programs and interpretations of
law that others could abuse now without his knowing it or later in
another administration? Obama thought we needed to set up rules about
drones because of what the next President might do. Why does he not see
the threat from this telephone program?
The answer is that he inherited this vacuum cleaner approach to
telephone records from Bush. When Obama was briefed on it, there was no
forceful and persuasive advocate for changing it. His chief adviser on
these things at the time was John Brennan, a life-long CIA officer.
Obama must have been told that the government needed everyone’s phone
logs in the NSA’s computers for several reasons.
The bureaucrats surely argued that it was easier to run the big data
search and correlation program on one database. They said there was no
law that could compel the telephone companies to store the records on
their own servers.
If the telephone companies did so, government and company lawyers then
certainly said, they would become legally “an agent” of the government
and could be sued by customers for violating the terms of their service
agreements.
Finally, Obama was certainly told, if the NSA and the FBI had to query
telephone company servers, then the phone companies would know whom the
government was watching, a violation of need-to-know secrecy traditions.
If there had been a vocal and well-informed civil liberties advocate at
the table, Obama might have been told that all those objections were
either specious or easily addressed. Law already requires Internet
service providers to store emails for years so that the government can
look at them. An amendment to existing law could have extended that
provision to telephone logs and given the companies a “safe harbor”
provision so they would not be open to suits. The telephone companies
could have been paid to maintain the records.
If the government wanted a particular set of records, it could tell the
Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court why — and then be granted
permission to access those records directly from specially maintained
company servers. The telephone companies would not have to know what
data were being accessed. There are no technical disadvantages to doing
it that way, although it might be more expensive.
Would we, as a nation, be willing to pay a little more for a program
designed this way, to avoid a situation in which the government keeps on
its own computers a record of every time anyone picks up a telephone?
That is a question that should have been openly asked and answered in
Congress.
The vocal advocate of civil liberties was absent because neither Bush
nor Obama had appointed one, despite the recommendation of the 9/11
Commission and a law passed by Congress. Only five years into his
administration is our supposedly civil liberties-loving President
getting around to activating a long-dormant Privacy and Civil Liberties
Oversight Board. It will have a lot of work to do. Clarke is a former counter-terrorism adviser to Presidents George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton and George W. Bush.
When the Supreme Court decided the big health-care case
last June, its ruling was seen as a huge win for President Obama. His
administration had fended off a challenge that would have dismantled the
entire reform effort; it lost on only a small issue to which few people
had paid much heed. But a year later, it's increasingly clear that the
minor loss is punching a major hole in the law's primary ambition -
expanding health insurance coverage to most of the 49 million Americans
who lack it.
Medicaid, the federal-state health insurance for the poor and
disabled, was a cornerstone of the law's strategy. An expansion of the
program that would open eligibility to every American earning an income
near or below the poverty line was designed to enroll some 17 million
people - about half of the law's coverage gains. But the Court ruled
that Washington couldn't force the states to expand their programs, and
politicians in most states, disdainful of Medicaid's rules and opposed
to all things "Obamacare," have simply said no.
That means some 25
states, and some 7 million people, will lose out on access to coverage,
leaving low-income residents with no opportunity to obtain affordable
insurance in the new regime. "It's bad," says Caroline Pearson of the
consultancy Avalere Health. As recently as February, she had predicted
as few as five state holdouts by year's end; her current forecast is
much more pessimistic.
Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius is putting on a
brave face. "Given the climate around this law, given the number of
states that were actually in litigation, and the election, the number of
Republican governors who stepped up and said, 'We really want to do
this,' I find to be very encouraging," she tells National Journal. Nevertheless, it's a long way from the administration's original plan.
Twenty-six states brought the case asserting their right not to
expand Medicaid. Although they won that right, administration officials,
health industry leaders, and journalists concluded after the Supreme
Court decision that they'd eventually go along. The feds promise to pay
100 percent of expansion costs for three years, and then an amount that
would never go below 90 percent; this was seen as too good a deal to
turn down. Governors had grandstanded against the 2009 economic-stimulus
money too, but nearly all had signed on. What state leader would want
to turn down a huge infusion of federal cash?
Republican governors soon began querying HHS. Would the department
let them use federal funding to expand Medicaid only partway? HHS held
off answering them for months, and then, after the presidential
election, told them the decision was all or nothing. The administration
was sending a message: The law cannot be bargained over or repealed, so
the choice is in or out.
As predicted, Republican governors started flipping. First Gov. Brian
Sandoval of Nevada endorsed a full expansion. Then came the governors
of New Mexico, Arizona, Ohio, Michigan. Even Rick Scott, the Florida
governor elected on an anti-Obamacare platform, said expanding Medicaid
was the right thing to do. Chris Christie followed suit in New Jersey,
as did others. But endorsements haven't always led to expansions. The
Florida Legislature did not share the governor's conversion, and Scott
quickly backed down. At press time, both Ohio and Arizona's Legislatures
continue to debate expansion.
Other governors who were considered obvious gets - such as
Pennsylvania's Tom Corbett and Tennessee's Bill Haslam - declined
expansion. Some of the poorest states with the most to gain have left
piles of federal cash on the table. Medicaid was such a toxic issue in
Mississippi that the Legislature adjourned without even reauthorizing
the state's current program. While governors know they'll be
judged on the health of the state economy, many legislators care more
about ideological purity, and few Republican lawmakers are interested in
the political risk associated with voting for anything branded with the
president's name. Brian Haille, a former health aide to Haslam, says he
doesn't expect any Medicaid enthusiasm in Tennessee until after the
Republican primary filing deadline next year. "You've got lawmakers who
are ducking and covering and do not want to vote on anything related to
Obamacare before then," he said.
There may still be some stragglers. Kentucky Democratic Gov. Steve
Beshear announced in May his state would move forward (he doesn't need
legislative approval). Republican Gov. Terry Branstad in Iowa, an early
skeptic about Medicaid, just reached an agreement with his Legislature
to expand. But to do so, he needed to rebrand the program as something
else. The plan, which still needs federal approval, will move some poor
residents into private insurance markets and other into a state-run
program that covers different benefits and pays doctors differently from
the state's existing Medicaid program. "It isn't Medicaid expansion,"
insists Michael Bousselot, a policy adviser to Branstad, although he
notes that it will use the federal funds. Utah Gov. Gary Herbert tells NJ he won't be making a Medicaid decision until at least September.
But given the logistical and administrative hurdles associated with
expansion, even if politicians change their minds and convene special
legislative sessions, few additional states will be able to expand by
January. That means many low-income Americans will be left uninsured
next year, despite the promise of health care reform. While
middle-income people will have access to subsidized private insurance,
the poorest adults in those states that don't expand will get nothing.
The Supreme Court dealt Obamacare a major blow after all.
At least 36 people have been hospitalized. Based on known
information, roughly 66 percent of cases are female, with the age of
those infected ranging from 2 to 84.
Townsend Farms recalled
all potentially contaminated products on June 4, including a berry mix
sold at Harris Teeter stores. No illnesses have been associated with the
Harris Teeter mix.
The Costco product was sold in a 3 lb. bag labeled “Townsend Farms Organic Antioxidant Blend, with UPC code 0 78414 404448.
Early tests have identified the virus as genotype 1B, a type rarely
found in North America but more common in the Middle East and Northern
Africa. Those investigating the outbreak say the contamination came from
the mix’s pomegranate seeds, which were grown in Turkey.
Symptoms of hepatitis A infection include fatigue, aching muscles,
nausea, fever and abdominal pain.
Those who ate the berries but have not
experienced symptoms may be able to prevent infection by receiving a
hepatitis A vaccine within two weeks. Those who have received a vaccine
in the past do not need another one and should not fall ill.
.jpeg)