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February 04, 2014 06:28 AM UTC

Tuesday Open Thread

  • 55 Comments
  • by: Colorado Pols

"Anyone who isn't confused really doesn't understand the situation."

–Edward R. Murrow 

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55 thoughts on “Tuesday Open Thread”

  1. American Exceptionalism: Only 30% of H.S. students have access to high speed internet.

    This is perfectly acceptable to R's, who have delayed and defunded infrastructure projects across the nation. They do this to relieve tax pressure on the wealthiest Americans who, despite earning great wealth in a modern society, don't want to pay for further investments in that society with their taxes. 

    Our junior senator, who is also beholden to the 1%, is also guilty.

    Obama taking some action on this, but for those who always claim "We're No. 1", it'd be nice if we were number 1 in something  besides the world's greediest billionaires (and their flunkies in congress).

            1. I really think you guys are over the line. I haven't agreed with AG on anything he's posted, but threatening to rape him is way, way out of line.

              Call me a prude, but seriously, that's offensive.

                1. Who the hell cares about imaginary Obamaphones? The posts are offensive. If you were talking about shoving something up ….. a female, you'd find it offensive, even if she were as delusional a Republican as AC. Why is it suddenly OK to talk about doing that to a man?

                    1. I stand by my criticism of the comments. I'm not an idiot, and do not have literal expectations of any anonymous commenter or comment on this forum.

                      However, I personally expect  a minimum level of civil discourse, which includes not cheering specifics about sexual violence to be (virtually, of course) visited upon other posters on the board.

                      If these comments were made on a right wing board, or against females, you'd find it offensive, too.

  2. I read this morning that the CBO estimates that this year the deficit will drop to 3% of GDP, down from 10% in 2009.  Fucking reckless spending Obama !

          1. The Papa John's shitbag paradox.  If you force me to provide health insurance to my employees then 1) i'll pay them less in salary, and 2) i'll raise the cost of my products or services.

            Good corporate citizenry right there.  Its all Obama's fault for attempting to get employers to do the right thing. 

              1. Oh, the horror . . . 

                "With the expansion of insurance coverage, more workers will choose not to work and others will choose to work fewer hours than they might have otherwise, it said. The decline in hours worked will translate into a loss of the equivalent of 2.5 million full-time positions by 2024, the budget office said.

                The budget office analysis found that much of the law’s effect comes from reducing the need for people to take a full-time job just to get insurance coverage, and from the premium subsidies effectively bolstering household."

                http://www.nytimes.com/2014/02/05/us/politics/budget-office-revises-estimates-of-health-care-enrollment.html?partner=rss&emc=rss

                 

                . . . just imagine people not having to work a shitty full-time greeter job at Walmart just to have the minimal  coverage offered for their spouse or child who has some kind of pre-existing condition???*  That's gotta' be a 1%er's worst nightmare — those poor fuckers might actually have to scrub one of their own toilets, occasionally?!?

                (* and, yeah, I understand the irony of a full-time greeter job — at WalMart — with any kind of health insurance benefits.)

                 

                 

                1. Good catch, Dio. I'd heard about all this  but couldn't have given a source.  Big difference between the implication that it will cause employers to choose to cut jobs and the reality that, for instance, some who were working pretty much only so they could have affordable insurance might choose to stay home with their kids or switch to part time and some who are between 62 and 65 and working only to keep their insurance until they qualify for medicare might choose to retire early.  So not so much a matter of people losing jobs as choosing to work fewer hours or retiring at a younger age.

                  I can think of several people I know who, over the years, have held on to jobs they didn't much like and that hardly paid enough to make up for all the childcare, transportation and other costs but kept them because they had a self employed spouse and needed the insurance. Now the challenge will be for Dems, instead of running scared, to put as much effort into making that clear as Fox world will put into presenting their distortions.

                  1. I am in agreement with you, BC.  Years and years ago, when mediciaid first became available to welfare receipients, husbands/fathers left their families or became invisible, so that their wives and children could receive medical care.  I would hope that ACA finally will work and we will begin to see a more healthy population, physically as well as emotionally, as the incredible gyrations that so many for so many years have gone through will cease.

                  2. What the CBO report doesn't say, because that isn't their job or their focus here, but what economists are now beginning to look at because if this report is the high likelihood that the job-hour reductions by the mostly older insurance-enslaved will not disappear from the economy, but provide openings for the employment of the youth demographic that has suffered the most employment difficulties since the collapse. There is going to be a turnover in the current workforce demographic, and it's needed, and good, and way past about time!

                    1. The CBO report does say it, though not directly. The report says straight up that employer demand for hours will not go down as a result of the ACA. If workers voluntarily leave or reduce their hours in the workforce while employer demand for those hours remains the same, then it's a given that some other workers benefit.

            2. From the report:

              The reduction in CBO’s projections of hours worked represents a decline in the number of full-time-equivalent workers of about 2.0 million in 2017, rising to about 2.5 million in 2024. Although CBO projects that total employment (and compensation) will increase over the coming decade, that increase will be smaller than it would have been in the absence of the ACA.

              Back in 2011, CBO guessed the law would only kill 800,000 jobs. Oops! But what’s a couple million jobs between friends, right?

              1. The details, as reported by the CBO: the 2.0 million fewer full-time workers are almost all those who will be able to purchase insurance under the ACA and therefore choose not to work full time. Those workers will be deducted from the FTE increase over the decade – but they'll also be removed from the unemployment numbers, because they have the financial and now health security they need to remain unemployed or employed only part-time.

                It's a story, to be sure – just not the one Republicans want to be honest about.

              1. The CBO estimates that the demand by business for workers will not be decreased by the ACA. They also find no substantiating evidence to suggest that businesses are cutting back on employment or hours for employees.

                Too bad for Republicans that this only provides a soundbite and not an actual story.

                1. PR  The proffered justification for the ACA was that it would improve healthcare by providing insurance for the uninsured.  Those folks would undoubtedly be grateful for the work by the Senator Udalls of the world.  Here is how that is working out:

                  Ouch.

                  2. People have a lot of mistaken opinions, thanks in no small part to the garbage spewed by people like you. But reality tends to trump in the end which is why similarly resisted programs like social security and medicare quickly became wildly popular despite initial public skepticism. The reason your side fights those things so desperately is because you know the window of discontent from which you can profit is small in the grand scheme of things. You're always fighting rear guard actions because that's basically what conservatism is. A long and ultimately futile rear guard action.

                    You still have your little resurgences but they are temporary glitches in the inexorable trend of progress towards a more liberal society in terms of racial, equality, gender equality, gay rights, the right to a decent existence served by public programs like social security, medicare, medicaid, SNAP, now ACA which will one day be replaced by 21st century universal healthcare.  Once these social changes become established they're here to stay. Your kind will fade away before they do. And you won't be missed.

                    1. This is the end of health care related "job lock". Hundreds of thousands of people who are working at a particular job only because it affords them health care are now free to pursue their own entrepeneurial dreams or seek a job they actually want.

                      In turn, this should free up thousands of jobs for the long term unemployed by making those jobs available. Sounds like a win-win to me.

                    2. And that job lock is a drag on entrepreneurship, something righties claim to be all for.

                      Besides, if we have high unemployment because we don't have enough full time jobs available for all those who need and want them then if people who don't need or want full time jobs can cut back or drop out without worrying about health insurance, doesn't that open up more full time work for those who do need and want it?  How is that not a good thing?  Why should Obama and Dems have any trouble presenting it as a good thing?

  3. Let me just add about Senator Michael Bennet:

    1. I'll never forgive Ritter for appointing him to this seat which was most likely coordinated with the Obama admin.
    2. One of his first major acts was to make it clear he'd do nothing for workers and unions.
    3. He went against President Obama on infrastructure spending.
    4. He took the job as Democratic Senate Campaign Committee chair only after asking Republicans for permission.

    Having done very little for Colorado's middle class, he is now poised to lose the wins garnered by his predecessor Patty Murray, and there is talk of Democrats possibly losing the senate to Republicans, an outcome I'm not sure would bother Bennet at all.

     

      1. Got it. You hate both center right Dem Senators like Bennet, center left Dem Senators and the one or two liberal Dem Senators. In other words, you hate Dem Senators. Who would have guessed?

    2. Why are you all so scared of a strong, moderate woman (who's actually done something in her political career, and can speak in complete sentences)?

  5. Study Finds Increasing Trend in Home Birth Neonatal Mortality Rates

     

    The number of homebirths in the United States has grown over the last decade. In the largest study of its kind, using Centers for Disease Control data on nearly 14 million linked infant birth and neonatal death data, term singleton U.S. births, researchers at New York-Presbyterian/Weill Cornell Medical Center found the absolute risk of neonatal mortality was 3.2/10,000 births in midwife hospital births, and 12.6/10,000 births in midwife home births, and it further increased in first-time mothers to 21.9/10,000 births in midwife home deliveries. Neonatal mortality was defined as neonatal deaths up to 28 days after delivery.

    "This risk further increased to about seven-fold if this was the mother's first pregnancy, and to about ten-fold in pregnancies beyond 41 weeks," said Amos Grunebaum, M.D.

    Home delivery: Good for pizzas, bad for babies.

    1. My cousin was the perfect candidate after a complication free easy first birth. Luckily she chickened out of her home delivery plans before it was too late because she would have bled out before the ambulance would have arrived. Hospital delivery saved her life.

      1. Over the years, hundreds of adjustments in care were made, resulting in what’s sometimes called “the obstetrics package.” And that package has produced dramatic results. In the United States today, a full-term baby dies in just one out of five hundred childbirths, and a mother dies in one in ten thousand. If the statistics of 1940 had persisted, fifteen thousand mothers would have died last year (instead of fewer than five hundred)—and a hundred and twenty thousand newborns (instead of one-sixth that number).

        http://www.newyorker.com/archive/2006/10/09/061009fa_fact?currentPage=all

        If you want a 19th century experience, you should be prepared for a 19th century outcome.

        1. I had my kids at home with well-trained midwives who used acupuncture. No problems, no complications, no drastic interventions, slicing the baby's heels with a razor, putting in eyedrops that burn, etc.

          It's not for everyone, but with the right support, it can work. I'm also dubious about the statistics you cited, but don't feel like researching it right now.

          1. The plural of anecdote is not data.

             No wonder Colorado homebirth midwives hid their 2010 statistics

            As you can see, the perinatal death rate for planned homebirth with a licensed Colorado midwife rose from 11.3/1000 in 2009 to an astounding 16.4/1000 in 2010! Compare that to the overall perinatal mortality rate for the entire state of Colorado (all races, all gestational ages, all pregnancy complications, all pre-existing medical conditions) of 6.3/1000.

            Colorado homebirth midwives cared for fewer than 1000 patients and managed to lose 15 babies. It is difficult to convey just how appallingly large a number that is. Colorado licensed midwives have a perinatal mortality rate nearly triple that of the state as a whole. That actually dramatically understates the danger of homebirth in Colorado since the correct comparison (if it were available) would be to the mortality rate of low risk white women at term with normal sized babies.

            1. I had three lovely high tech deliveries of babies fat enough to get stuck, in the hosital, with no complications and for me it is the only way to go.  My daughter weighed 10 lbs 4 ounces and it was a near thing that an emergency C section might be needed.  Try that one at home.

              Luckily, I come from a long line of women with, er, well, large derrieres and she was delivered the usual way.

            3. I had time today (snow day) to check the data – it's sound for the years it covers. Colorado midwives did have a high mortality rate, and they did cover up the data.  Sleazy.

              My own experience with home births was good, although much earlier than the years covered by the CDC database. I don't see any data for the 80s and 90s on home vs. hospital births.

              It's not my crusade, though. My own daughter in law and daughter will almost certainly opt for high tech hospitalized births, should they ever get around to reproducing. My own efforts in women's reproductive health will continue to go to ensuring maximum safe choices in childbirth, abortion, contraception, and every other "women's health" issue.

              Carry on.

              1. The thing is, it's a matter of risk. Sure, plenty of people will have good experiences like yours but when bad stuff happens it happens really fast. The stats show that the risk is much higher and that's something everyone ought to take into consideration, not what happened specifically to you or to my cousin. Most of the time when you leave your keys in your unlocked car nobody steals it but it only takes one time to really screw up your day.

                1. I will promise you and Daftpunk, that, should any female relatives of mine consider home birth, after they forgive me for discussing their childbirth choices even anonymously, I will show them the CDC data on the risks.

                  I think we're all on the same page in that women deserve to have good information to make good choices.

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