Salt City Sinner

As the learned C Bernard recently noted , Senator Orrin Hatch has of late been Plen-T Plaining of religious persecution. Hatch joins a chorus of other religious leaders clamoring against a recent executive mandate. In a Fact Sheet published on February 10, the White House announced that, [u]nder the new policy to be announced today, women will have free preventive care that includes contraceptive services no matter where she works. The policy also ensures that if a woman works for a religious employer with objections to providing contraceptive services as part of its health plan, the religious employer will not be required to provide, pay for or refer for contraception coverage, but her insurance company will be required to directly offer her contraceptive care free of charge. This issue has in the past three weeks been debated in Congress , twisted into taxpayer support for promiscuity (more on this vomit later), and spun as both the tapestry of our progressive future...

On Friday, Kristen Moulton from the Salt Lake Tribune wrote " Should kids who are legal immigrants wait for health care? " Of course, the obvious answer from both an ethical and public health perspective is "obviously not." No one  should have to wait for health care, since waiting reduces the chances of preventative care and always makes whatever incipient health problem may be present worse. While research on cost-effectiveness of preventative care indicates that it only saves money in some situations (research on that from the New England Journal of Medicine can be found   here  ), at least basic health treatment  in case of illness - let alone for children - is a basic human right, and should be considered part of any sane conception of a social safety net. From the Trib: On their tenth attempt, Vitalina and Harold Lazarus finally won the immigration lottery to come to the United States from Ukraine.  They and their three children landed in Salt Lak...

There is nothing to add to this, except a very brief introduction. The exchange at the September 12th "Tea Party" Republican primary debate in question, in case there is any question of “exaggeration” or “misrepresentation,” is here: Susan from 29 's post ***is here*** , and I recommend you read it in its entirety there. What follows is an almost full excerpt intended to encourage anyone who finds it moving, thought-provoking, or worthwhile to read the whole thing. Feel free to leave comments for Susan as well, to let you know your thoughts are with her. I cannot remember the last time that a post made me feel as intensely emotional as Susan from 29's. That Was My Brother's Death You Were Cheering, You Assholes   To all of those tea-jadist assholes at last night’s GOP debate: I don’t generally like to use profanity, but I fear that English is above your comprehension level, so in terms you might better understand, may God damn your worthl...

Ron Paul is an unusual human being. He actually has quite a bit in common with Barack Obama in my opnion (hear me out): both men tend to serve as symbolic ciphers onto which extremely loyal followers, looking for a man of ideological purity and political benevloence, project their hopes. You can see this phenomenon in Obama's continued support in some sectors of the left that should, by all rights, be taking what the President has to say with a grain of salt considering the amount of money he has taken from Wall Street and the composition of his cabinet in terms of hunchbacked, black-hooded capitalist necromancers. Paul has the same "reality problems" with libertarians. Many economic libertarians (or classical liberals, or whatever they want to be called) love Paul's hard line stances on a variety of issues. From the gold standard – I used to play a drinking game in political discussions with libertarians where I would take a shot when the term “fiat currency” w...

Today's Salt Lake Tribune has an absolutely tragic story about mental health services and their future in Salt Lake. Choice bit: The waiting list is weeks out for an appointment for new patients at Valley Mental Health’s two clinics for the uninsured. And Valley won’t schedule new patients for July at the Resource and Resiliency Clinics because its future in providing those services — outpatient medication management and therapy — is uncertain. New patients who don’t want to wait are heading to the Whole Health Clinic, but it recently closed its doors to new patients because of the increased demand by Valley patients and others. The Utah Chapter of the National Alliance on Mental Health is taking calls from patients wondering where to go — and NAMI doesn’t know where to send them. “We are really at a loss as to how to help people,” said Sherri Wittwer, NAMI’s consultant. “There’s nothing except the ER, and they don’t belong there.” They don't belong in the ER for financial rea...

So, (some semblance of) health care reform passed, and I suppose that's a good thing, generally speaking. I'm not stoked that it passed without a public option, and I think that Sadly, No! nailed it , as they so often do, when they wrote: That even this crappy version of HCR — which is better than nothing and is worth fighting for — passed at all was because of Nancy Pelosi. I’m sure this will make D.A. cry, but Hopey Changey, who has managed his own political capital with the same skill neocons managed the occupation of Iraq, deserves negative credit for its passing. When elected, he had a mandate to kick Republicans in the teeth; he wouldn’t have lost a single supporter had he immediately demonized and demagogued the shit out of insurance companies and Wall Street, two of the most hated groups in American history. But he didn’t; he sucked-up, he kissed-up, he fucked-up. And it almost ruined everything. I'll give Obama one thing: it's a start (of course, whether I shou...

h/t Andrew Sullivan :

Many criticisms of the conservative opposition to the Democratic health care reform effort start with some iteration of "Well, smarty-pants, where is the *Republican* plan, if you guys have a better idea?" In the case of the GOP's previous efforts to come up with some semblance of a plan, that was a perfectly valid complaint. Now, however, the conservative approach to health care reform seems to have coalesced around a few basic principles: allow "inter-state competition" between insurance plans and enact tort reform. Now there's plenty wrong with the second plank, but this post is regarding the first. Bruce Webb at MyDD waded through the Boehner Amendment to HR3962, and discovered this interesting tidbit: Title III introduces a ringer. Although the Title is called Expanding Choices by Allowing Americans to Buy Health Care Coverage Across State Lines what it really means is that insurers can simply pick any state they like as their 'primary state' ...

I attended the rally put together by Organizing for America last night – the big ol’ tour-bus pulled into Sugarhouse park a little late, but there was a surprisingly large and enthusiastic crowd there to support it. As an antidote to all of this media coverage of Tea Party Protests and the like, I thought I’d point out that this event was in Utah, reddest of red states, and yet the turnout was unbelievable ( estimates say 1500 , but I find that hard to swallow outright): A pretty cool crowd. All kinds of folks showed up, from hippies to bikers to grandmas: “What about the Tea Party People?” you might ask. Well, three pretty peaceable wingnuts turned up. They seemed kind of sad and lonely: Patriot poodle says: “Ruh roh, we need a public option!” Various speakers showed up, including the chair of the Utah Democratic Party, Wayne Holland , who dropped the ball by referring to health reform as an issue for “2008” (wake up, Wayne! We won! Time to focus on the now, brother!). Karen Mayne , D...

Tonight, Organizing For America (Obama's campaign/policy apparatus) will bring their tour bus to Sugar House Park for a rally for health care reform. I'll be attending, along with the family, Lydia, and a few friends - come out to hear OFA Deputy Director Jeremy Bird, along with various progressive local luminaries. You can RSVP or get directions here - it will take place on the Northwest Terrace of Sugarhouse Park. Doors open at 6:00, the action starts at 7:00. See you there!

I was briefly elated to hear that the SEIU decided that it was time to get in the game when it comes to the "Tea Party" protesters who have been attempting to disrupt August's health reform town hall meetings. Whether they are as astroturfed as it originally seemed is a matter of some dispute now, but their rage and ignorance when it comes to actually discussing what is or isn't in the health care bill (euthanasia for seniors, for example, or state-sponsored abortion) has now become obvious. What wasn't obvious, and in my mind wasn't inevitable, is the sad turn that the Tea Party movement has now taken: openly advocating violence and intimidation. Brian Beutler at TPMDC captured a screenshot of the following tweets from Scott Oskay: As Beutler reports, #iamthemob is now tearing up Twitter as a topic, and if you go there yourself you can see what the general mood of the Tea Party people is in anticipation of additional protests in St. Louis tomorrow: angry, v...

Much has already been said about the Astroturfed "popular uprisings" that are being organized by corporate fronts like FreedomWorks and Americans for Prosperity. This is nothing new, indeed Rachel Maddow puts things in context fairly well: Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News , World News , and News about the Economy So fake outrage organized by corporate interests over the internet: okay, that's nothing particularly noteworthy necessarily. But it is a recurring flap that has caught my attention lately. These tea-baggers seem to be screaming "NO GOVERNMENT HEALTH CARE!" out of one side of their mouths, while howling "DON'T TOUCH MY MEDICARE!" out of the other. What?! Indeed, no less a personage than Arthur Laffer, architect of the laughable (no pun intended) Laffer Curve , had this to say: Let's parse that again: LAFFER: "I..I mean, if you like the post office, and the Department of Motor Vehicles and you think they're run well, just wa...

Moe Lane at Red State is busy spreading the meme, which a co-worker shared with me via e-mail, that there's a flow-chart of sorts floating around that "explains" the Democratic health reform effort. You can find it here full-size, but here it is in a slightly smaller version: Now, as far as bureaucracy goes, I'm not sure what our current model would look like, and the above diagram is pretty discouraging. However, in his post, Moe strongly hints that the Democrats are trying to suppress this diagram, and that it's for internal use only. Actually, it turns out that the Democrats had nothing to do with this chart: it was cooked up by Texas Republican Kevin Brady, who posted it under the heading "Baffling Flow Chart." Well hell's bells, Congressman, you're one to complain about it being "baffling": YOU CREATED IT! In the spirit of bipartisan cooperation on the issue of health care reform, I have decided to do Brady the same favor he'...