EFTA00711710.pdf

From: Gregory Brown To: undisclosed-recipients:; Bcc: jeevacation@gmail.com Subject: Greg Brown's Weekend Reading and Other Things.. 03/19/2017 Date: Sun, 19 Mar 2017 07:50:00 +0000 Attachments: Coldplay_bio.docx; Chris_Martin_bio.docx; C.B.O._Analysis,_Republican_Health_Plan_Will_Save_Money_but_Drive_Up_the_Number of_Uninsured_NYT_03.13.17.docx; eBO_estimates_24_million_lose_coverage_under_GOP_plan_Sarah_Kliff_VOX_03.13.17. docx Inline-Images: image.png; image(I).png; image(2).png; image(3).png; image(4).png; image(5).png; image(6).png; image(7).png; image(8).png; image(9).png; image(10).png; image(11).png; image(12).png; image(I3).png; image(I4).png; image(I5).png; image(16).png; image(17).png; image(I8).png; image(19).png; image(20).png; image(21).png; image(22).png; image(23).png; image(24).png; image(25).png; image(26).png; image(27).png; image(28).png; image(29).png; image(30).png DEAR FRIEND Playing the Game Like an Medici How Big Money Corrupts the Economy Inline image 1 EFTA00711710 If President Trump is really serious about draining the swamps in Washington the first place he should start is doing whatever he can to get unfettered money out of politics. Because the one thing that but Republicans, Democrats, Conservatives and Progressives agree on is that big money in politics is corrupting our democracy as well as the economic interests of the Middle Class. As Jacob Hacker and Nathan Loewentheil wrote in 2013 After all, why do corporations and the super-rich pour money into campaigns and lobbying? Sometimes political convictions are at play. But far more so than small-scale donors, the biggest spenders are investing in favorable policy outcomes. Money doesn't just give big spenders the chance to express a view or support a candidate; it gives them leverage to reshape the American economy in their favor. And as the richest have pulled away from the rest of America, the policies they want — extremely low tax rates on the wealthy at a time of record deficits, rampant underinvestment in our future, special treatment for corporations that are imposing major environmental costs and financial risks on our society — are increasingly at odds with the policies the country desperately needs. Of course, money has always been part of American politics. William McKinley's political fixer, Mark Hanna, famously said, "There are two things that are important in politics. The first is money, and I can't remember what the second one is." But Hanna spoke at the end of an era, the Gilded Age of staggering inequality and government corruption. In the decades that followed, reformers acted on the calls of Theodore Roosevelt ("the supreme political task of our day... is to drive the special interests out of our public life") and Franklin Roosevelt ("we now know that government by organized money is as dangerous as government by organized mob") to reinvigorate a realm of civic life distinct from the disparities and imbalances of the market. The goal was not just greater political equality. It was also to prevent the capture of government by powerful economic interests and to create space for economic policies that would further the interests of broad majorities of citizens . New rules for Wall Street prevented the destabilizing financial crises that were endemic under the hands-off regime demanded by the financial industry. Providing for workplace safety and economic security meant workers were better protected and more productive. Raising taxes on the wealthy funded investments in education and infrastructure, providing long-term benefits to society and the economy alike. Today, however, the floodwalls between the market and democracy are washing away, and both sides of the barrier are being reshaped by the new currents of influence. It's not just the sheer volume of dollars that's driving the change. At least as important is the growing gulf between those at the commanding heights of our economy and the rest of Americans. The share of pretax national income going to the richest 0.1 percent has roughly quadrupled since the 197os. At the same time, as our economy has grown more globalized and finance has increased in importance, many of the richest companies have increasingly separated themselves from the fate of ordinary U.S. workers. The interests of today's corporate titans are not as well aligned with the interests of the American middle class as they were a generation ago. The consequences of these growing divides are visible all around us: a tepid response to the housing and jobs crisis even as Wall Street received a generous rescue; a recovery that's been much better for EFTA00711711 the richest 1 percent (who received 93 percent of pre-tax income gains in 2010) than for the rest of Americans; and rates of joblessness and underemployment that remain tragically high. Over the last generation, the middle class has faced rising health and education costs, weakened job and retirement security, and stagnating opportunities for advancement. Yet government too often has failed to respond, or has responded in ways that actually made the problems worse. A major reason is the weakening political clout of the middle class in a more money-centered political world. Winners Write The Rules Two players in the market for political power have gained the most ground: the super-rich, and corporate and financial lobbies. To be sure, these are overlapping groups. Six in ten of the richest 0.1 percent of Americans are corporate or financial executives. The Koch brothers, for example, are both huge individual donors and leaders of an industry juggernaut. Nonetheless, it's useful to consider the groups separately. According to a recent survey of the super-wealthy by a team of enterprising political scientists, the rich are primarily concerned with taxes and deficits. Corporations care about these things too, but their primary focus is industry-specific regulations and subsidies. And while the super-rich focus heavily on contributions to campaigns (while also funding advocacy), corporations put most of their money into lobbying (while also funding campaigns). The most important thing to bear in mind about the super-rich is that they are more conservative than average. In fact, much more so: While most voters rank creating jobs a much higher priority than reducing the deficit, the rich express exactly the opposite preference — which may explain why jobs don't seem to be such a high priority in Washington. And in contrast with voters of more modest means, the rich appear to support cutting even highly popular economic-security programs rather than raising taxes to close the budget gap. As the authors of the survey conclude, "If wealthy Americans have an extra measure of influence over policy making and public discourse, then their focus on deficit reduction and budget cutting may help explain why elite pundits and Washington politicians are currently contemplating deep cuts in the very social welfare programs that are most popular among ordinary Americans." For those at the very top, the personal stakes are potentially huge: A study of the top 400 taxpaying households showed that just the reduction of effective individual income tax rates between 1995 and 2007 (from averages of 3o percent to 16.6 percent) was worth a mean of $46 million per year for each of these fortunate 400. The flip side of the aggressive pursuit of lower taxes by the rich has been chronic deficits and insufficient funds for public goods like infrastructure, education, and job training — areas where we are rapidly falling behind global competitors. Rich conservative voters make for well-funded Republican campaigns. Right-wing super PACs have flourished not just because conservatives were the first to embrace them, but also because the super- rich are mostly Republicans. In the early part of the last election cycle, Karl Rove's Crossroads GPS disclosed that nearly 90 percent of its funds came from less than a couple dozen donors, with two donors giving $in million each. According to a joint report by Demos and the U.S. Public Interest Research Group, more than half of the $230 million raised by super PACs from individuals in the first two quarters of 2012 came from EFTA00711712 just 47 people giving at least $1 million. This is one of the reasons why the GOP has moved so far to the right over the past generation: The rising sway of lobbying and big donors has generally reinforced their policy leanings. For Democrats, the consequences have been less happy. Caught between traditional commitments and the ever more intense scramble for money, they have faced pressures to moderate their stances on economic issues, as well as seek out supportive pools of money—whether in trial law or entertainment or finance—with policy interests that may not benefit the middle class. For corporations and Wall Street, campaign finance is only one weapon. The other is direct spending to influence policy. Indeed, for most organized interests, spending on elections is just the training season; the real games begin once elected officials start governing. David Koch put it bluntly: "Our main interest is not participating in campaigns.... Our main interest is in policy." This from a man who, combined with his brother and the political network he leads, spent more in the 2012 election cycle than the entire campaign of John McCain did in 2008. One wonders what IM be spending if campaigns were his main interest. Activist financiers like the Kochs frame their efforts in terms of ideology. But one should not miss the heavy element of self-interest involved. Koch Industries, which is involved in industries ranging from manufacturing to energy production, benefits enormously from subsidies for big energy, as well as from the malign neglect of climate change — a status quo the Kochs have worked aggressively to preserve. And for most corporate lobbies, there's not even a screen of ideology. Their overriding goal is to protect or expand their market advantage. The financial industry lobbied to wipe out the New Deal- era rules that reduced systemic risks — but also industry profits. The pharmaceutical and hospital lobbies have repeatedly killed off threats to high medical prices, padding their pockets and driving up public and private spending. The oil and gas industries use their heft in Washington not only to oppose climate change policies, but to protect valuable land leases through which they are able to exploit public resources for pennies on the dollar. Companies lobby not just for weak regulations and direct subsidies, but also to keep other pesky challenges to profits at bay. Workers' demands for unions can be headed off with new laws as well as anti-union drives within firms. Corporate taxes can be brought down with lobbying as well as clever tax planning: Of the eight companies that lobbied the most aggressively between 2007 and 2009, seven saw their tax rates fall from 2007 to 2010, and six saw declines of seven percentage points or more, even as the median company among 200 firms saw its tax rate fall by just 0.2 percent. The savings were worth an estimated $n billion — which, if entirely due to lobbying, would indicate a return on investment of over 2,000 percent. Competitors can be beaten in the political arena as well as the market. The consolidation of the financial industry — in 2010, the five biggest banks held more than half of total bank assets, up from 3o percent in 2001- reflects not just economies of scale but also the implicit federal backstop that large banks enjoy because of their size and lobbying clout. Lower taxes or no taxes, favorable regulations or no regulations—each group comes with its own agenda, and invests where the return is highest. In recent years, those investments have often taken the form of hiring members of Congress or executive branch officials and their staff for lobbying or other positions. A forthcoming study in the American Economic Review suggests that staffers' biggest attraction to lobbying shops is their connections: Revolving-door lobbyists experience a massive, immediate drop in lobbying revenue when a former boss leaves office. Hiring former public officials is a win-win deal: You win when your newly hired guns use their expertise to shape public policy, and you win when all public servants start thinking about their next, highly lucrative job. EFTA00711713 Establishing the effect of any one lobbying foray or big campaign check is difficult. But the net effect is easy to see: an economy in which market winners write the rules, adding to their advantages and trampling over other priorities. All of this undermines public trust in government, breeds public cynicism, and makes the economy work less well for those without the clout to invest in politics. The danger is that the cycle will become self-reinforcing — which is why taking steps to break it is so important. Starting Reform Right Now Wealthy individuals and large corporations make financial investments in politics with the hope of improving their economic position. Politicians demand money because it helps win elections and secures their power. Any effort to curb the influence of concentrated economic interests has to address both the supply of and demand for political money. Most reforms have focused on the former. Yet current First Amendment jurisprudence poses huge hurdles to spending regulations. Voluntary public financing will always be fragile in a system where some candidates can benefit from unlimited spending. Forging the legal basis for more significant regulation of campaign finance will require laying new intellectual foundations while gradually shifting the composition of the Supreme Court — the work of many years. But while supply is a long-term problem, we can start reducing demand right now. Take lobbying: Members of Congress and agency officials depend on lobbyists in part because lobbyists provide genuine policy expertise and political information. The average member of the House has around eight staff members working on all policy issues, from trade to financial regulation to education policy, most of them twenty-somethings fresh out of college. The number and technical know-how of congressional staff should be increased, and sources of unbiased analytic information — like the Office of Technology Assessment, which Congress killed in 1995 — created and expanded. Likewise, improving the quality, resources, pay, and staffing levels of personnel in key regulatory agencies like the Securities and Exchange Commission would help reduce the sway and influence of special interests — not only by increasing the capacity of the regulators, but also by making agency work more attractive as a long-term career. The demand for political donations is a comparable problem. Why do politicians need so much money? Because it wins elections. If money didn't matter, politicians wouldn't want it. Money is needed for campaign staff, direct mail, get-out-the-vote operations, and, most costly of all, television advertising. If we can reduce the importance of advertising, the demand for money would be substantially reduced. Free airtime for candidates might be a good step, especially if combined with voter outreach and education. Above all, we can make money matter less if we make more equally distributed political resources matter more. Encouraging voting through various means — from same-day registration to a national voting holiday — is one approach. Even more important, however, is building political organizations that can supplement the traditional but waning role of labor and other large-scale membership groups. EFTA00711714 Whatever the strategy, the starting point is having the right conversation. Today, reformers stress the injustice of unequal political resources — and surely that injustice is real. But, as we argue in our recent report, "Prosperity Economics," the arguments that sound most loudly in current debate concern not broad values but hard economics. Middle-class Americans are losing their jobs and their economic security, and they believe government isn't looking out for them. Asked in mid-2010 whom government had helped "a great dear during the downturn, 53 percent of Americans said banks and financial institutions. Forty-four percent pointed to large corporations. Just 2 percent thought federal policies had helped the middle class a great deal. Reformers need to explain how campaign donations and lobbying are undermining not only a healthy democracy that distributes political influence broadly, but also a healthy economy that distributes economic rewards broadly. "Money to get power, power to protect money"was the motto of the Medici family. It seems sadly relevant to American politics today. Those powerful elites ruled Florence for centuries. We can't wait that long. So True g' Inline image 1 EFTA00711715  This Can Happen Elsewhere Oklahoma's earthquake threat now equals California's because of man-made temblors, USGS says Inline image 1 According to a new U.S. Geological Survey forecast released on March 1, 2017 the earthquake risk for Oklahoma and southern Kansas is expected to remain significant in 2017, threatening 3 million people with seismic events that can produce damaging shaking. The seismic risk is forecast to be so high that the chance of damage in Oklahoma and southern Kansas is expected to be similar to that of earthquakes in California, USGS scientists writing in the journal Seismological Research Letters. Invented in 1947, hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, is a technique that improves the production of oil and gas from wells by increasing the number of fractures in the formation through which oil and gas can flow, and extending the reach of fluid pathways, i.e., fractures, between the formation and the well. Injecting water, plus some specific chemicals, at high pressure into low-permeability, or tight, rocks, fractures the rocks or stimulates slip across pre-existing faults and fractures, allowing for more oil and gas to be accessed by the well. A propping agent, usually sand particles, is also injected to keep the new fractures open. Fracking takes a few hours to a few days, followed by a period where the fracking fluid is allowed to flow back to the surface where it is collected for disposal, treatment, or reuse. It is the disposal of this fluid, along with other waste and produced waters, by injection into deep wells that causes the earthquakes. The dramatic increase in fracking for oil and gas in America since 2006 has caused some regions to experience frequent earthquakes, regions that have not had many in the past. In fact, some areas in north-central Oklahoma and southern Kansas now have hazards from fracking-related induced earthquakes that are similar to parts of California where earthquakes are caused by natural tectonic forces like plate collisions and volcanism. EFTA00711716 In 2016 alone, Oklahoma experienced several damaging earthquakes, including a magnitude 5.0 temblor in November near the central oil town of Cushing — which proclaims itself the "Pipeline Crossroads of the World" - that dislodged unreinforced bricks in chimneys and storefronts, sending them tumbling onto the sidewalks. Oklahoma also saw the largest quake ever recorded in the state in 2016, when a magnitude 5.8 earthquake struck near Pawnee. The earthquakes are thought to be the result of the disposal of wastewater deep underground that are a byproduct of oil extraction. Injecting the wastewater underground is not thought to trigger earthquakes everywhere it is practiced — in North Dakota, for example — but is widely believed by scientists to be a problem in Oklahoma. According to scientists, there were only about two earthquakes a year of magnitude 2.7 or greater in Oklahoma from 1980 to 2000. But that number jumped to 2,500 in 2014 and soared to 4,000 a year later. Inline image 2 Thank God that there has recently been a decrease in wastewater being injected deep underground, either because of regulatory actions or because oil and gas extraction has declined due to falling petroleum prices. That might be a reason for the decrease in the number of Oklahoma earthquakes last year, to 2,500. In a statement, Mark Petersen of the USGS said the amount of injected wastewater in some areas has been reduced by up to 40% in 2016. But the USGS report says the forecast earthquake hazard in 2017 "is still significantly elevated" compared to the seismic risk before 2009. The Oklahoma Geological Survey's director, Jeremy Boak, said in a statement that he expects that state directives to curtail wastewater injection rates and low oil prices "should result in further declines in the seismicity rate and limit future widespread seismic activity." A spokeswoman with a research and education program of the Independent Petroleum Assn. of America, Katie Brown, said in an email the reduced number of earthquakes "is a clear sign that the collaborative efforts between industry, scientists, and regulators are working." EFTA00711717 Accompanying the rise in Oklahoma's earthquakes has been a significant jump in wastewater injected underground in increasingly deeper wells as oil companies have sought to extract untapped oil fields far underneath the state. Workers inject water at high pressure to break up the earth to tap into these deep oil wells, a process known as hydraulic fracturing, or fracking. The petroleum harvest from these wells are a mix of not only oil and gas but salt water — all part of the stew of ingredients that come from the decomposed biological components of ancient oceans, said USGS research geophysicist Justin Rubinstein, deputy chief of the agency's induced seismicity project. Recent harvests have had a high percentage of salt water in them — requiring oil companies to deal with a significantly larger amount of wastewater than they've had to before. But as more wastewater has been injected deeper into the earth, underneath the ground water table, the number of earthquakes have risen in Oklahoma. Increased fluid deep underground can change the pressures on earthquake faults in a way that essentially lubricates them, making them more likely to move and resulting in an earthquake, Rubinstein said. Inline image 1 USGS map displaying 21 areas impacted by induced earthquakes as well as the location of the fluid injection wells that have and have not been associated with earthquakes. Although the risk of dying from an earthquake is miniscule — as Americans have a much higher chance of dying by being hit by lightning but people are afraid of earthquakes because they make us feel out of control. Put another way, the lifetime risk of dying in an earthquake is no higher than 1 in 20,000. The lifetime risk of being murdered? 1 in 1,000. And the lifetime risk of dying in a traffic accident. 1 in too. Therefore you are far more likely to be murdered than die in an earthquake. Yet, it's understandable why people can be frightened — we fear randomness, it's the fact that you can't predict it, that you don't know when it's going to be coming. With this said, major earthquakes have resulted in the deaths of thousands and loss of billions of dollars in infrastructure as witnessed in California, Mexico, Chile and most recently Italy. As important -- death and destruction of infrastructure aside, we should be extremely cognizant about how the injection of fracking wastewater and other waste and production water not affect the water EFTA00711718 table, might be disastrous for generation to come — especially when one the primary goals of the Trump Administration is to emasculate the EPA whose current Director sued when he was Attorney General of Oklahoma on behalf of the fracking industry in the state. Freedom of Speech is Neither Right or Left Van Jones has the right to disagree with his base, even when it includes you or me. Inline image 1 My fellow Progressives/Liberals have to stop trying to silence speakers who they disagree with, whether they be from the Alt-Right or members of their own ersuasion. In my piece on February 12th - The Left Got It Wrong Here, I echoed Matthew article that week in The Guardian - There must befree speech, evenfor Milo Yiannopoulos — in a democratic society. While, no civilized society supports absolute freedom of speech: as the great American jurist Oliver Wendell Holmes argued in 1919: "The most stringent protection ... would not protect a man in falsely shouting fire in a theatre, and causing a panic." Instead there is a fluid, rancorous, necessarily insoluble argument in every democratic system about where the border should lie. Libel, slander, false advertising, incitement to violence, pornography, the leaking of official secrets: these and other forms of expression are subject to varying degrees of restriction at different times. The free speech/press guarantee, extends to all viewpoints, good or evil. There is no exception, for instance, for Communism, Nazism, Islamic radicalism, sexist speech, or "hate speech," whatever that rather vague term may mean. The Framers of the American Constitution designed our Constitution to endure. They sought not only to address the specific challenges facing the nation during their lifetimes, EFTA00711719 but to establish the foundational principles that would sustain and guide the new nation into an uncertain future. The text of the Constitution reflects this vision. It defines our most fundamental freedoms in general terms: "freedom of speech," "due process of law," "free exercise" of religion, "equal protection of the laws," "cruel and unusual punishment." The Constitution sets forth governmental powers in similarly general terms: Congress may regulate "commerce... among the several states," the president will "take care that the laws be faithfully executed," the courts are authorized to decide "cases" and "controversies." Founding father Thomas Jefferson once said, "Our liberty depends on thefreedom of the press." In the U.S., freedom of the press is provided by the First Amendment of the Bill of Rights, a part of the Constitution. It states, "Congress shall make no law...abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press..." Freedom of the press was included in the Bill of Rights because the founding fathers understood that if governments could block opinions or stories they disliked, then the public would be less informed. The press serves as a government watchdog and has used its First Amendment rights to hold public officials accountable. This has caused many to call the media the "Fourth Estate" or "fourth branch of government," fitting into the system of checks and balances among our Executive, Legislative and Judicial branches. Freedom of speech is the concept of being able to speak freely without censorship. It is often regarded as an integral concept in modern liberal democracies. "Freedom of speech is a principal pillar of a free government: When this support is taken away, the constitution of a free society is dissolved," wrote Founding Father Benjamin Franklin in The Pennsylvania Gazette. But back to Van Jones. As someone else wrote, strong journalists are a key part of maintaining the good parts of this country in the troublesome road ahead. The old and the new together, and some of the best of the new are this cohort of brave progressive journalists whose articles are making some real change. Their piece on forming the resistance has gone viral in progressive circles, and deservedly so. When asked by the Huffmgton Post's Matt Wilstein, "Do you regret saying that at all?" JONES: No, I don't regret it, because it was honestly how I felt in that moment. My dad's in the military and that moment where everybody in Congress stood up and applauded that widow that really moved me. And it moved a lot of people. I said, if he keeps doing stuff like this, he's going to be there for eight years. Now, the reality is, he went from the best he's ever done to the worst he's ever done. I don't know how you do worse, but he's doing worse! So, any of us who saw the potential for a pivot, good or bad, have been proven wrong, for better or for worse. But you've gotta call 'em like you see 'em. You've got to be emotionally honest, even if later on it turns out that he's going to do something in a different direction. You've got to be emotionally honest or there's no point in being on TV. And you've got to take your lumps. WILSTEIN, "Why do you think your fellow progressives came down so hard on you after that?" EFTA00711720 JONES: Because they're terrified of Donald Trump, and for good reason. Listen, millions of people see Donald Trump as the scariest villain they could ever imagine. They don't want to hear Luke Skywalker talk about, "Well, he made a good point in his speech, though!" That's not welcome for a lot of people. But, my show isn't called the "Screw Donald Trump Show." It's called The Messy Truth.. trying to stay human. I don't want to normalize Trump, but I also don't want to become Trump. We have two dangers. We have the danger of normalizing his lying and his divisiveness and his pitting of people against each other. And we also have the danger of becoming like him in ways that we don't quite see, where we're so fear-based or feel so polarized that we're actually feeding what we're fighting. I think Trump is a double threat. His policy agenda is a threat, but his emotional agenda of driving everybody into this fear-based paralysis is also a threat.. trying to deal with both. Some days better than others. Unfortunately, some Progressives/Liberals are a bit hypocritical. As long as Van Jones, the man who spent the night of November 8th decrying Donald Trump's victory as a "whitelash against a changing country," espoused their beliefs, they supported him. But when Van Jones declared on CNN that Trump "became president of the United States in that moment, period" when he led a two minute standing ovation for the widow of the Navy SEAL who died last month in an operation in Yemen the president approved," many felt betrayed and became angry. I disagreed with Jones 'that reading a teleprompter of a speech by professional speech writers without flubbing the moment', because it sets a low-bar for being Presidential. But as Trevor Noah who agrees with Jones cited, "You know what I realized in that moment?" He talked about how, during the debates, he would see Trump "connect" with people in the same way a stand-up comedian does. "He knows how to broach a topic in a way no one normally can," he continued. "And during that moment with Ryan's wife, Trump even told a joke and people laughed, people connected," he said, referring to the moment when Trump seemed to brag about the length of the standing ovation for the fallen Navy SEAL. "And I was like, that is scary, man. That's good. First of all, let's not follow Republicans who refuse to acknowledge that our 44th President had a successful Presidency and that his signature legislative accomplishment, the Affordable Healthcare Act has been successful in giving more than 20 million Americans access to affordable healthcare. And let's not follow the Progressives/Liberals who called Bill Clinton "the First Black President" and then criticized Barrack for not being "Black Enough." Because if we truly believe in the tenets of Free Speech within a democracy, we should respect Van Jones' analysis and his strength to go against what is popular, even when we disagree. ****** The Screwing of Americans by the House GOP No Wonder the Republicans Hid the Health Bill EFTA00711721  Inline image 2 Tom Price, Secretary of Health and Human Services, discussing the Republican bill to replace the Affordable Care Act. Republican House leaders have spent months dodging questions about how they would replace the Affordable Care Act with a better law, and went so far as to hide the draft of their plan from other lawmakers. No wonder. The bill they released on Monday would kick millions of people off the coverage they currently have. So much for President Trump's big campaign promise: "We're going to have insurance for everybody" — with coverage that would be "much less expensive and much better." More than 20 million Americans gained health care coverage under the A.C.A./Obamacare. Health experts say most would lose that coverage under the proposal. Let's start with Medicaid. Obamacare expanded the program to cover 11 million more poor Americans in 31 states and the District of Columbia. The Republican bill would end the expansion in 2020. Although people who sign up before 2020 under the expanded Medicaid program, which covers people with incomes up to 1,38 percent of the federal poverty level (about $33,900 for a family of four), would be allowed to stay on, many would be kicked off over time. The working poor tend to drop in and out of Medicaid because their incomes fluctuate, and the Republican plan would bar people who left the expanded program from going back in. The bill would also, for the first time ever, apply a per-person limit on how much the federal government spends on Medicaid. This change could shift about $370 billion in health care costs over lo years to state governments, according to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. Many state governments, faced with limited budgets, would be forced to cut benefits or cover fewer people. For people who buy insurance on federal or state-run health exchanges, the plan would greatly reduce the A.C.A.'s subsidies, which come in the form of tax credits. For example, a 4o-year-old living in Raleigh, •., who earns $30,000 a year would receive $3,000 from the government to buy insurance, 32 percent less than under current law, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation. The bill would provide older people more generous subsidies — those over 6o get a subsidy of $4,000, or twice as much as 2o-somethings — but insurers would be allowed to charge older people five times as much as younger people. EFTA00711722 The plan would do away with the current mandate that requires nearly everybody to obtain insurance or pay a penalty. (Instead, insurers would be allowed to charge people who don't maintain their insurance continuously 3o percent more for coverage.) But because the legislation would still require insurers to cover pre-existing conditions, people would have a strong financial incentive to buy insurance only when they got sick — a sure way to destroy the insurance market. House Speaker Paul Ryan and Tom Price, the secretary of health and human services, have railed against high premiums and deductibles for plans sold on the health exchanges, but that problem would only worsen under their proposal because insurers would almost certainly raise their prices as the pool of the insured shrank. Republican lawmakers seem to think that people who can't afford insurance are simply irresponsible. Representative Jason Chaffetz of Utah, for instance, told CNN that people should invest in their health care, "rather than getting that new iPhone." Word to Mr. Chaffetz: Health insurance costs more than $18,000 a year for an average family; an iPhone costs a few hundred dollars. While working people lose health care, the rich would come out winners. The bill would eliminate the taxes on businesses and individuals (people making more than $200,000 a year) who fund Obamacare. The tax cuts would total about $600 billion over to years, according to the Joint Committee on Taxation. House committees will start considering the bill on Wednesday. Even if it passes the House, some Republican senators object to the Medicaid cuts and the Tea Party wing hates the idea of retaining any subsidies. Republicans have been vowing to repeal the Affordable Care Act even before it became law in 2010. But they still haven't come up with a workable replacement. Instead, the .'s various factions are now haggling over just how many millions of Americans they are willing to harm. THE EDITORIAL BOARD - NEW YORK TIMES- MARCH 7.2017 As Michael Hiltzik wrote last week in the Los Angeles Times - The GOP's Obamacare repeal plan is out--and it's even worse than anyone expected After weeks of expectations — actually, nearly seven years of expectations — House Republicans on Monday released their proposal to repeal the Affordable Care Act. Elements of the proposal, which was kept under lock and key last week — have been dribbling out for a few days. The text of the bill encompassing the GOP plan validates much of that reporting. On the whole, however, it's a nastier, more consumer-unfriendly proposal than even close followers could have expected. EFTA00711723  House Republicans' Affordable Care Act replacement. The American healthcare rack would immediately in the requirement that all Americans have insurance reduce federal authority over healthcare system and provide a huge tax cut to the upper- income families. Republicans have not released a cost estimate for the proposal. But the Congressional Budget Office reportedly warned the Republicans that their proposals would lead to lost coverage for millions and higher cost for millions more. AGAIN — The American Health Care Act: — Defunds Planned Parenthood, banning federal funding that "provides for abortions" — Shuts Down private insurance coverage for abortions, for bidding spending federal tax subsidies on health plans that include coverage of abortion — Eliminates individual and employer mandates — Repeals benefits rules that required qualified plans to provide hospitalization, maternity care, mental health services and other benefits at the federal level. — Replaces income-based premium subsidies with age-based subsidies — Kills Medicaid expansion — Repeals ACA/Obamacare Some conservatives say the plan does not go far enough, calling it "Obama lite!" While Congressional Democrats say the GOP Bill would strip away vital protections for Americans. Chuck Schumer: "Trumpcare doesn't replace the affordable care act - it forces millions of Americans to pay more for less care." Schumer again: 'The House GOP plan would cut and Medicaid, defund PPFA and force Americans to pay more so insurance companies compare their bottom line." The House GOP, in a written statement, cloaked this plan with a bodyguard of outright deceit. "What we're proposing will deliver the control and choice individuals and families need to access healthcare that's right for them," the statement said. House Speaker Paul D. Ryan (R-Wisc.) said the measure would "drive down costs, encourage competition and give every American access to quality, affordable health insurance." Curiously, the GOP statement says the plan embodies "President Trump's proposed healthcare reforms," although the president has never advanced a coherent set of proposals. The truth is that the GOP measure would destroy the ability of millions of Americans to access any healthcare worth the name. The Congressional Budget Office reportedly warned the Republicans that their proposals would lead to lost coverage for millions and higher costs for millions more, but the GOP is pushing ahead anyway. EFTA00711724  As Dylan Matthews wrote in VOX - The GOP health bill is a $600 billion tax cut — almost entirelyfor the wealthy Most analysis of the American Health Care Act, the new House Republican plan for repealing and replacing Obamacare, has focused on the fact that it will take away health insurance from millions of Americans, including, eventually, millions of poor, elderly, and disabled Americans currently on Medicaid. It's reasonable in light of that to ask what there is to like about the proposal. The main answer, for Republicans is Congress, is that it also contains $600 billion in tax cuts — tax cuts that would save the wealthiest 0.1 percent of Americans nearly $200,000 each in a single year, according to a batch of analyses released by the Joint Committee on Taxation on Tuesday. The Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget helpfully combined them into a single table: Inline image 1 The single biggest tax cut included in the bill is the repeal of the 3.8 percent tax the Affordable Care Act applied to capital gains, dividend, and interest income for families with $250,000 or more in income ($125,000 for singles). Repealing that tax is a change that, by definition, only helps the rich, or at least the affluent. If you're part of a married couple and, like the vast majority of Americans, make less than $250,000 a year, or earn more than that but have little investment income, it doesn't affect you at all. The Tax Policy Center finds that repealing the tax would amount to an average tax cut of $o for households in the bottom 90 percent — those making $208,500 or below. A handful of people in the 8oth to 95th percentiles would see cuts, but the vast majority wouldn't. By contrast, members of the top 0.1 percent, who each on average make more than $3.75 million annually, would get an average tax cut of $165,090. The second-biggest cut is the elimination of a fee on health insurance companies. Which Americans are affected by this fee right now is less clear; insurers have said they're passing on the cost to consumers in the form of higher premiums, but exactly which premiums are raised and whether insurers actually eat some of it isn't totally clear. EFTA00711725 Then there's the o.9 percent Medicare surtax, a hike on wage income in excess of $250,000 a year ($200,000 for unmarried people). The Republican bill would repeal this surtax and, in so doing, give everyone in the bottom 90 percent an average tax cut of $o, per the Tax Policy Center. The richest of the rich, the top 0.1 percent, would get an average cut of $30,520. We don't have a full distributional analysis of the Republican bill yet. But the Medicare surtax and the investment tax alone combine to a tax cut of $195,610 for the top 0.1 percent, not far off from the $197,340 average cut estimated for full repeal of Obamacare. It's hard to overstate what a massive windfall this is for the richest Americans. You don't have to be a total cynic about the wealthy's influence on American politics to see this as a major factor motivating Republicans' determination to rapidly pass a replacement plan that eliminates most of Obamacare's taxes. Even the American Medical Association (largest organization representing physicians in the nation) announced that it "cannot support" the Republican bill to repeal the Affordable Care Act. It announced its opposition in a letter last Wednesday, one day after a slew of patient advocacy and health industry groups including the American Hospital Association announced they were against the House GOP bill — "While we agree that there are problems with the ACA that must be addressed, we cannot support the AHCA as drafted because of the expected decline in health insurance coverage and the potential harm it would cause to vulnerable patient populations," AMA chief executive James Madara said in the letter. In the detailed letter, Madara raises objections to the key pillars of the Republican plan, including a rollback of the Affordable Care Act's Medicaid expansion. "Medicaid expansion has proven highly successful in providing coverage for lower income individuals," he said, malting a point that a variety of public health researchers have. Madara also pointed out that the Republican bill would reorient federal financial assistance for people who buy private coverage on their own. Under the Affordable Care Act, the federal government provides more money to people whose incomes are low or insurance costs are high — in order to establish a guarantee of coverage. Republicans would instead introduce a system of flat tax credits, varying only by age that would reduce subsidies — sometimes dramatically — for poor people and those with high insurance costs. Republicans have suggested that their plan would improve access to health care, in part by stripping away regulations on insurance and thereby reducing premiums. But preliminary analyses of the GOP plan have suggested that it would cause millions to lose coverage and that the trade-off for lower premiums would be higher out-of-pocket costs — in short, what Madara was saying in his letter. As NBC pointed out — The bill, experts said, falls far short of the goals President Donald Trump laid out: Affordable coverage for everyone; lower deductibles and health care costs; better care; and zero cuts to Medicaid. Instead, the bill is almost certain to reduce overall coverage, result in deductibles increasing, and will phase out Obamacare's Medicaid expansion. It goes on to describe the GOP's trick of conflating "health-care access" with coverage and robotically describing the plan as "good health EFTA00711726 care," in hopes that salesmanship can envelop the specifics in impenetrable fog as fraudulence.... And as I call it the Screwing ofAmericans by the House GOP which is my rant of the week.... WEEK's READINGS The Science of Flow Says Extreme Inequality Causes Economic Collapse Circulation represents the lifeblood of all flow-systems, be they economies, ecosystems, or living organisms. Inline image 1 I recently saw a photo of Bill Gates on the Internet with the caption `thefirst trillion dollar man,' as if this is something that we should ascribe to, instead of seeing it as something wrong with the system. Now I am not a hater of Mr. Gates or wealth but doing the math I quickly realized that simply dividing a trillion dollars equally would result in 1,000,000 millionaires or 10,000,000 families receiving $ioo,000. With this said, I have to believe that those given $ioo,000 at least half would buy cars, televisions and other appliances, and the million people who would become instant millionaires would result in housing boom like we have never seen. Whereas how many new cars and homes will Bill Gates buy for his family and friends, maybe a dozen? Please see the article below by Sally Go EFTA00711727 According to a recent study by Oxfam International, in 2010 the top 388 richest people owned as much wealth as the poorest half of the world's population — a whopping 3.6 billion people. By 2014, this number was down to 85 people. Oxfam claims that, if this trend continues, by the end of 2016 the top 1% owned more wealth than everyone else in the world combined. At the same time, according to Oxfam, the extremely wealthy are also extremely efficient in dodging taxes, now hiding an estimated $7.6 trillion in offshore tax-havens. Why s