Pro Left Podcast

Don't miss the bit on Angus Deaton starting at about 54:00.

You can help out by doing a little shopping at their Amazon link

The Professional Left

Run It Like A Business

A smart guy told us back in the 90s that the 21st century would be about privacy.

I hate the notion of "prophesy fulfilled" and so I'll just ignore it because it's inconvenient, but damn, son - kinda looks like that's what's happening.

Sharon Begley at STAT

A little-noticed bill moving through Congress would allow companies to require employees to undergo genetic testing or risk paying a penalty of thousands of dollars, and would let employers see that genetic and other health information.

Giving employers such power is now prohibited by legislation including the 2008 genetic privacy and nondiscrimination law known as GINA. The new bill gets around that landmark law by stating explicitly that GINA and other protections do not apply when genetic tests are part of a “workplace wellness” program.

The bill, HR 1313, was approved by a House committee on Wednesday, with all 22 Republicans supporting it and all 17 Democrats opposed. It has been overshadowed by the debate over the House GOP proposal to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act, but the genetic testing bill is expected to be folded into a second ACA-related measure containing a grab-bag of provisions that do not affect federal spending, as the main bill does.

- and -

Rigorous studies by researchers not tied to the $8 billion wellness industry have shown that the programs improve employee health little if at all. An industry group recently concluded that they save so little on medical costs that, on average, the programs lose money. But employers continue to embrace them, partly as a way to shift more health care costs to workers, including by penalizing them financially.

So what's it actually about? It has great potential to be about shenanigans and fuckery.

But in the context of the 4th amendment, it's about none of your goddamned business.

Amendment 4:
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

Work at Home

A professor's BBC interview has been hilariously gatecrashed by children. Wait for the moment when the second child arrives... pic.twitter.com/oGiULof67X

— The Telegraph (@Telegraph) March 10, 2017

Today's GIF

Sam Bee

"You've eaten more pig than Kermit the Frog"

From Wednesdays show:

Today's Tweet

This is the best 😉 pic.twitter.com/ZrwspQiVnO

— Brasilmagic (@Brasilmagic) March 9, 2017

Quick Quote

Vanity Fair's TA Frank:

"...the latest from Republicans in Congress — a Dumpster of a health-care bill (so bad it’s not even worth setting on fire)..."

The rest of it's pretty good too - trying to talk us away from the logical extreme as we're trying to get 45* outa there before he crashes the whole system.

It's a bit Glenn Greenwald-ey, but we really do have to make sure we're following the rules.

WaPo Hangs In

It seems pretty weird, but WaPo is starting to do some real reporting all of a sudden.

In response to a question about his party’s plan to increase the cost of health insurance, Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah) suggested that people should “invest in their own health care” instead of “getting that new iPhone.” He doubled-down on the point in a later interview: “People need to make a conscious choice, and I believe in self-reliance.” Of course, Chaffetz is wrong. But he isn’t alone.

While he has been met with justifiable derision for the comparison (Christopher Ingraham walked through the math for us, pointing out that a year’s worth of health care would equal 23 iPhone 7 Pluses in price), the claim he is making is hardly new. Chaffetz was articulating a commonly held belief that poverty in the United States is, by and large, the result of laziness, immorality and irresponsibility. If only people made better choices — if they worked harder, stayed in school, got married, didn’t have children they couldn’t afford, spent what money they had more wisely and saved more — then they wouldn’t be poor, or so the reasoning goes.

This insistence that people would not be poor if only they would try harder defines the thinking behind the signature welfare restructuring law of the Clinton era, the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act. It’s the logic at the heart of efforts to impose work requirements on Medicaid recipients, to drug-test people collecting unemployment insurance or to forbid food stamp recipients to buy steak and lobster.

Since the invention of the mythic welfare queen in the 1960s, this has been the story we most reliably tell about why people are poor. Never mind that research from across the social sciences shows us, over and again, that it’s a lie. Never mind low wages or lack of jobs, the poor quality of too many schools, the dearth of marriageable males in poor black communities (thanks to a racialized criminal justice system and ongoing discrimination in the labor market), or the high cost of birth control and day care. Never mind the fact that the largest group of poor people in the United States are children. Never mind the grim reality that most American adults who are poor are not poor from lack of effort but despite it.

The reason poor people are poor has nothing to do with how they manage their money.

Poverty is not a moral deficiency.

Being poor enough to require assistance from government doesn't mean poor people like it where they are.

And and and

Stop blaming poverty on the poor.

It's Not Trumpism

45* is almost exactly the latest version of the dumbass empty vessel the GOP has been saying they want for at least 20 years now. So it's not Trumpism, and if we walk around using that term to describe what's going on, we allow the GOP to distance itself (again) from what they've created.

driftglass has been making the point forever.  Since Nixon, whenever we go along with the GOP's nutty idea du jour, it leads us into disaster, and as we pull ourselves up, suddenly there are no Repubs anywhere willing to admit they voted for the guy, or there's a concerted effort to revise history and canonize the prick, or we get "Yeah but he did some things the liberals like too".

Anyway. Washington Post put up a piece taking a look at the scam 45*'s running. It's a little hard to pat the Press Poodles on the head when they helped put this rolling clusterfuck in office, but maybe we're seeing a self-redemption thing now, so I want to acknowledge that.

WaPo:

The set of policy proposals and ideas loosely known as Trumpism goes something like this: President Trump is not an ideological fellow traveler of congressional Republicans on the economy, the safety net and immigration. Unlike Paul Ryan Republicans, he sees a robust government role in maintaining protections for the poor, sick and old; and he is much more willing than other Republicans to slam the brakes on immigration to protect blue collar whites from global forces that are making them feel culturally, economically and demographically destabilized.

But little by little, as Trump seeks to make good on his promises, Trumpism — as sold by the man himself — is being revealed as fraudulent to its core.

- and -

The split was obscured for years, because Republicans could call for repeal, secure in the knowledge that it wouldn’t happen. It is between two camps. There are conservatives (mostly in the House) who actually want repeal, because they don’t think the government should be spending and regulating to expand coverage to poor and sick people, and instead want free markets to fulfill this goal. And there are other Republicans (mostly senators and governors) who want to say they’re repealing Obamacare (since they’ve railed against it for years in the abstract) while actually minimizing just how much of the coverage expansion gets rolled back in their states. Trump is more or less in the second camp, since he doesn’t want to be the guy who kicks millions off insurance or shatter Trumpism’s aura of ideological heterodoxy.

Today's Tweet

The Republican health plan. pic.twitter.com/Ej3ZOhMou8

— avalanche engineer (@tristanreveur) March 7, 2017

A Question

It's been around, but it's worth repeating

Educated, well cared for kids
Healthcare insurance
Consumer protection
Sick leave
Equal pay
Clean water and air
Non-toxic meds & food
Safe workplace
Living wage & basic labor protections
Arts & Sciences endowments

If we can't afford any of those, what the fuck are we actually defending with that ginormous military?

Joe Biden

"If we undermine or destroy [the free press] we do it at our own peril."

Former VP Joe Biden has a powerful message about the media: pic.twitter.com/pzCckA5cpp

— Fusion (@Fusion) March 5, 2017

Podcast

There's no more haystack - only needles.

Intercepted with Jeremy Scahill



It's scary to find out that someone you don't even know exists can find out everything there is to know about you with a few clicks of his mouse.

That's a bit Sci-Fi for me right now, but the spooks are into some shit we'll prob'ly never hear about.  And that can make it more scary, but it's a good thing to remember that every new "age" has brought along it's own set of scary things, and we have to learn how adapt to them and/or otherwise deal with it so we can keep moving.

The last block with James Risen is a little less than fully convincing, but it does some good in educating me more about the balance between my right to know what my government's doing and the need for some secrets to stay secret - which will be a bone of contention for as long as we have politics.

You may have noticed I'm bouncing back and forth on most of it - that's what makes me like this kinda shit.

Anyway.

Sometimes awareness is your armor. Sometimes it's all you'll get. And sometimes it's enough.

Sweet dreams, kids. Hope you don't talk in your sleep.

One From driftglass

driftglass blog

Featured Pic

Duck Before You Drown

Charlie Pierce at Esquire:

The folks at Camp Runamuck, and their auxiliary down at the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue, have yet another present for those economically insecure folks who didn't want the lady to replace the black guy because Mexicans and ISIS and telling-it-like-it-is. And economic insecurity. You can die on the job now and not burden your boss with unnecessary paperwork. From The Washington Post:

In a narrow result that divided along party lines, the Senate voted 49 to 48 to eliminate the regulation, dubbed the Fair Pay and Safe Workplaces rule. Finalized in August and blocked by a court order in October, the rule would limit the ability of companies with recent safety problems to complete for government contracts unless they agreed to remedies. The measure to abolish it had already cleared the House. The next step after the Senate vote will be the White House, where Trump is expected to sign it. A half-dozen other worker safety regulations are in Republican crosshairs, with one headed to the Senate floor as soon as this week. Many are directed at companies with federal contracts. Such companies employ 1 in 5 American workers — meaning the effort could have wide-ranging effects.

Chipping away at the protections - the institutions that are there to help us push back.