Not Backing Down on Medicare for All

Robert Borosage reports on Elizabeth Warren's focus on Medicare for All:

When Elizabeth Warren was criticized for not detailing how she would pay for Medicare for All, most pundits assumed she would duck and cover. M4A is Bernie Sanders’s signature legislation, but the establishment dismisses him as a movement candidate. Warren, on the other hand, is seen as a “serious, in the weeds” policy wonk who wants to win. Warren has since issued a detailed plan on what Medicare for All would cover, and how she would pay for it without raising taxes on working people. She summarized the compelling human benefits of making health care a right, not a privilege rationed by cost. She outlined the massive savings that would result from eliminating the insurance company profits and exorbitant administrative fees of the current system.  Workers could pocket the savings on co-pays and premiums, in what would effectively amount, she noted, to the largest middle-class tax cut in history. The political establishment was aghast. The Washington Post unleashed a blizzard of articles decrying Warren’s audacity, picking apart her assumptions, her math, and her political judgement. Despite the carping, one thing is clear: Warren has joined Sanders in forceful support of Medicare for All. As with the Green New Deal, two of the three leading candidates in the Democratic presidential primaries will argue the case. The others will have to put up, or shut up — Warren’s gauntlet will force discussion of the spiraling costs, and human toll of the current system. The debate over Medicare for All illustrates the fundamental choice that Democrats will make in the coming primaries. Are they satisfied with a candidate who promises restoration, or do they want a champion of fundamental change?

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Using Twitter to Promote Your Blog

Twitter is a great tool for promoting writing -- but, how do you use it effectively? This post offers some great suggestions:

Twitter can be especially challenging. News is always breaking on Twitter, and people love to discover new ideas there. But it can feel fast-paced, clipped, highly technical, a little like shouting into the vacuum — unless you know a few tips to make your tweets interesting.

Twitter is actually perfect for promoting blog posts because blog posts are samples of your writing that are short, digestible, and available with the click of a link. Here are a few suggestions on how to use Twitter to promote writing on your blog in a compelling way.

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The War on Science

This article originally appeared at OtherWords.org

The Trump EPA wants to introduce a new rule: Its scientists can only use studies that make all of their data public.

The new proposal is crafted to sound like a win for transparency, which is supposed to be a good thing. In reality, the rule will significantly harm public health — and loosen the reins on polluters. 

And that, of course, is the idea.

Let me explain. I am a graduate student in sociology, a social science. I study people, which means I collect some kind of data about them. For any scientist who studies people, transparency is important — but so is confidentiality.

Any basic research ethics class includes famous cases of unethical research on people that occurred in the not too distant past. So now, our institutions carefully review each study on people to ensure they are ethical.

Ethical research requires providing participants with enough information that they can give informed consent to participate. It means not taking advantage of vulnerable populations (like prison inmates or mental health patients), minimizing any risk of harm that might come to the people you are studying as much as possible, and disclosing any risk before they agree to participate.

In my case, that means that in any study I’ve done, I’ve promised my participants confidentiality. 

With their permission, I might quote them in a publication using a fake name, but only if I can do so in a way that won’t allow anyone to identify them. I don’t want anything they tell me to be used to harm them back in their communities.

In the case of the new EPA rules, the information collected in public health studies can be even more intimate. When scientists study the effects of pollution on people’s health, they may confidentially review people’s private medical records. Obviously, these records should not be made public.

When a researcher cannot promise confidentiality, the quality of their research suffers. Fewer people may be willing to participate, which might harm the reliability of the results. Those who do will be less open. 

How can we trust studies in which all of the data is not made public? Often, some of the data is made public, or at least made available to others in certain circumstances (such as by request). 

Additionally, science is not an individual endeavor. Communities of scientists in each field work together to advance the knowledge within that field. Any new study will be picked apart by everyone who reads it, because that’s what we do to each other. Others will try to replicate your findings — and if they can’t, your conclusions will be called into question.

It’s rough on the ego, but it’s good for science. 

Dismissing any study that does not make its data public, on the other hand — particularly when that data has a good reason to remain confidential, like medical data — serves to harm science, not help it. 

And when you can’t do good science, you can’t base your public health regulations — your pesticide bans, your pollution controls, your clean water rules, and whatever else — on good science.

Given the track record of the Trump administration on the environment so far, it’s far more plausible that this proposal is intended to eliminate necessary public health regulations, not to promote transparency.

OtherWords columnist Jill Richardson is pursuing a PhD in sociology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Distributed by OtherWords.org.

Veterans and Consumers Fair Credit Act

A press release from the National Consumer Law Center (NCLC) details the importance of the Veterans and Consumers Fair Credit Act:

Advocates at the National Consumer Law Center (NCLC) applauded today’s introduction in Congress of a bill to cap interest rates nationwide at 36%, including fees, which NCLC is supporting on behalf of its low-income clients.

“It is fitting that as we celebrate Veterans’ Day that we honor our veterans by extending to them and all Americans the same protection that our servicemembers receive: protection against usurious loans that exceed 36% APR,” said Lauren Saunders, associate director of the National Consumer Law Center. “Most Americans would be shocked to learn that today predatory lenders can legally charge 100%, 200%, or even higher interest rates in many states. While a 36% rate cap sounds high to most people, and it will not hurt legitimate businesses, it will stop the most egregious forms of loan sharking. The 36% interest rate cap goes back more than a century and is widely supported by the American public on a bipartisan basis. Reasonable interest rate caps are the simplest most effective protection against predatory lending.”

The Veterans and Consumers Fair Credit Act.(Act) would stop high-cost predatory loans, and also prevent banks from getting back into the payday loan business, by setting a maximum national rate of 36% APR including fees on consumer loans.  A few years ago, banks were making “deposit advance” loans, aka bank payday loans, at rates over 200%, and with a change of leadership at the bank regulators, some banks are thinking of returning to those loans. Currently there is no generally-applicable national interest rate cap, though many states limit interest rates. In 2018, Colorado joined a growing number of states, including South Dakota (2016) and Montana (2010), whose voters have resoundingly passed initiatives on a bipartisan basis to cap interest rates at 36% or less.

The Act is sponsored in the Senate by Senators Merkley (D-OR), Brown (D-OH), Reed (D-RI), and Van Hollen (D-MD); and in the U.S. House of Representatives by Reps. Grothman (R- WI) and Chuy Garcia (D-IL).

The legislation is modeled after the federal Military Lending Act, which caps loans to servicemembers and their dependents at 36%. But the MLA does not cover veterans or other consumers.

“Importantly, the Veterans and Consumers Fair Credit Act would allow states to set a lower rate, which is especially important for larger loans. While 36% is a reasonable rate for small loans, many states limit a $10,000 loan to 25% APR or lower,” Saunders added.

For more information:

·         Issue Brief: After Payday Loans: How do Consumers Fare When States Restrict High-Cost Loans? Oct. 2018

·         Report: Why 36%? The History, Use, and Purpose of the 36% Interest Rate Cap, April 2013

·         Fact Sheet: State Annual Percentage Rate (APR) Caps for $500, $2,000, and $10,000 Installment Loans, March 2019

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Since 1969, the nonprofit National Consumer Law Center® (NCLC®) has worked for consumer justice and economic security for low-income and other disadvantaged people in the U.S. through its expertise in policy analysis and advocacy, publications, litigation, expert witness services, and training. www.nclc.org

Are bloggers writers?

Is this even a question?

If so, here's an attempt at an answer:

It’s a stance wholly familiar to me. Being a blogger somehow inevitably cancels out my being a writer, a professional.

Everyone is entitled to their opinion, of course, and I imagine people who vehemently contend bloggers aren’t writers are trying to disguise and deflect their own insecurities. However, the whole debate just sincerely gives me pause, and makes me wonder why anyone would consider it worth their time to police who does (and doesn’t) get to call themselves a writer.

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DACA and SCOTUS

From NBC:

“The Supreme Court is hearing arguments Tuesday on a Trump administration challenge to lower court rulings that blocked the administration from ending the program, which President Donald Trump announced he would do in 2017. Administration officials argue the program interferes with its immigration enforcement efforts and sanctions the violation of federal law, but they have been challenged in court by civil rights, legal and immigration groups. A number of national groups will rally outside the Supreme Court as Democratic lawmakers, including the Congressional Hispanic Caucus will be holding a press conference and a prayer breakfast with national leaders in support of the program as the oral arguments begin inside the Supreme Court.”

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Evaluating DACA

Vox on the Supreme Court taking up DACA:

“The Supreme Court will hear arguments Tuesday on a trio of cases asking whether the Trump administration acted properly when it decided to wind down the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program — an Obama-era program that allows unauthorized immigrants who were brought to the the US as children to live and work in the United States. A question looms over tomorrow’s hearing, however: Why did the Supreme Court agree to hear these cases in the first place? Certainly the human stakes in these cases — Trump v. NAACP, McAleenan v. Vidal, and Department of Homeland Security v. Regents of the University of California — are enormous. Almost 670,000 immigrants are protected by DACA. Ending the program opens them up to deportation. Families could be ripped apart; communities will be devastated. There really is a significant human toll here. But the Supreme Court typically only hears cases that involve a significant legal question. Indeed, the Court’s own rules state that it will only agree to hear a case ‘for compelling reasons,’ and they emphasize that the Court typically only hears ‘important’ questions of federal law. In this instance, the legal issue at the heart of the case is tiny.”

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EPA Chief of Staff Under Investigation

Politico reports:

“The Environmental Protection Agency’s inspector general is investigating whether chief of staff Ryan Jackson was involved in destroying internal documents that should have been retained, according to two people familiar with the matter. The IG’s office is asking witnesses whether Jackson has routinely destroyed politically sensitive documents, including schedules and letters from people like lobbyist Richard Smotkin, who helped arrange a trip for then-EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt to Morocco when he was in office, according to one of the sources, a former administration official who told investigators he has seen Jackson do that firsthand. The previously unreported allegations add to the controversy around Jackson, a former aide to Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-Okla.) who has been at EPA since the early days of the Trump administration. EPA’s internal watchdog accused Jackson earlier this week of refusing to cooperate with other ongoing investigations. Jackson was put on notice that the document destruction was improper, something the former official said he discussed earlier this year with an official from the IG’s office.”

Bernie Sanders on ICE

From The Intercept:

“Sen. Bernie Sanders dropped his long-anticipated immigration platform. Arguably the most ambitious of any Democratic presidential candidate’s so far, the plan goes beyond a general call for a path to legal status for immigrants and takes full aim at President Donald Trump’s racist policies at the southern border. Unlike any other Democrat, Sanders calls for the break up of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and U.S. Customs and Border Protection, and to improve working conditions and labor protections for industries that rely on an immigrant workforce. One piece of this is Domestic Workers Bill of Rights, which would ‘provide domestic workers with at least a $15 minimum wage, strong protections for collective bargaining, workers’ rights, workplace safety, and fair scheduling,’ regardless of immigration status. The release of Sanders’s plan comes after months of scrutiny from leftists and liberals over his immigration policy — long considered to be one of his primary weaknesses. And his plan follows the common left positions on immigration, including ones to reinstate and expand the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA, program, end for-profit detention, and overturn the Muslim ban. Notably, he also goes further than even his fellow progressive hopeful, Sen. Elizabeth Warren, in calling for a full demilitarization of the border. Notably, he also goes further than even his fellow progressive hopeful, Sen. Elizabeth Warren, in calling for a full demilitarization of the border. To break up ICE and CBP, under Sanders’s platform, their functions would be redistributed to other federal agencies. Under a Sanders administration, ‘deportation, enforcement, border and investigatory authority would return to the Department of Justice,’ naturalization and citizenship authority would go to the State Department, and customs authority would return to the Treasury Department.”

Decaying Public Services

A note from Sam Pizzigati:


Fires are raging everywhere in California these days, and firefighters are having enormous trouble keeping up. Chronically understaffed local fire departments simply don’t have the resources to handle act one of what climate change has in store for us. California’s wealthy aren’t particularly worrying about that lack of resources — because they have more than enough of their own. They can afford to shell out up to $25,000 per day for one of the private firefighting services that are popping up in California wherever the rich call home. In a deeply unequal America, none of this should surprise us. Public services almost always take it on the chin in societies where wealth starts furiously concentrating. Why should inequality have this impact? A little incendiary parable — on tennis — might help us understand. The commons in our imaginary county — the public space with access and services for all — has, in effect, been downsized. Where wealth concentrates, our commons will always downsize. At some point, in every community becoming more unequal, affluent people will come to feel they’ll be better off going life alone, on their own nickel — better off installing their own private courts, better off sending their kids to private schools, better off living in a privately guarded gated development. And the greater the numbers of affluent who forsake the commons, the greater the danger the commons will face.

Building Up the Post Office

This article originally appeared on OtherWords.org

If you’re looking for a way to honor veterans, here’s one: protect the U.S. Postal Service.

I’m a veteran from a family of veterans. After serving in the Marine Corps, I got a good-paying postal job that put me on a solid path to financial security. Now I lead the Detroit Area Local for the American Postal Workers Union. Our 1,500 members include many veterans, some of whom I served with myself.

Across the country, nearly 113,000 veterans now serve as postal workers. With former military members accounting for over 18 percent of our workforce, the Postal Service employs vets at three times their share of the national workforce.

Why? For one thing, military values like hard work, showing up on time, and taking pride in your work set you up perfectly for postal jobs.

For another, USPS gives veterans like myself preferential hiring treatment. Disabled vets, like many I work with in Detroit, get special consideration too. And once they get here, they get generous medical leave and benefits, including wounded warriors leave, among other hard-earned benefits won by our union.

Unfortunately, these secure jobs for veterans are now under attack.

A White House report has called for selling off the public mail service to private, for-profit corporations. And a Trump administration task force has called for slashing postal jobs and services for customers.

In particular, they want to eliminate our collective bargaining rights, which would jeopardize all those benefits we’ve won for veterans and other employees. They also want to cut delivery days, close local post offices, and raise prices, which would hurt customers.

This cost-cutting could also threaten another valuable benefit for service members: deeply discounted shipping rates on packages they get overseas. Currently, shipping to U.S. military bases in other countries costs the same as a domestic shipment, and USPS offers cost-free packing supplies to the folks who send these care packages.

Instead of slashing and burning the USPS, we need to be expanding and strengthening it.

One idea is to let post offices expand into low-cost financial services. Veterans are four times more likely than the national average to use payday lenders for short-term loans, which typically charge exorbitant interest rates.

But if post offices could offer affordable and reliable check cashing, ATM, bill payment, and money transfer services, we could generate all kinds of new revenue — while protecting vets and their communities from predatory lenders.

From discounting care packages to employing disabled veterans, our Postal Service plays an important part in the lives of our service members. USPS does good by Americans who’ve dedicated a portion of their lives to armed service, and by the millions of Americans who rely on them.

I hope you’ll join me in applauding these veterans — and the postal service. Let’s build the USPS up, not tear it down.

Keith Combs is a 30-year postal worker and president of the Detroit District Area Local of the American Postal Workers Union. This op-ed was distributed by OtherWords.org.