Sunday Roundup - April 13

“I believe the only way to live and to be truly successful is by collective effort, with everyone working for each other, everyone helping each other, and everyone having a share of the rewards at the end of the day.”

- Bill Shankly, Liverpool FC Manager from 1959-74

This is the weekly selection of news and opinion from outside the US mainstream media.  Today we look at Russia-US relations, Syria, and the World Cup.

Russia-US Relations
The overthrow of Russia-leaning Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych, the Crimean referendum to rejoin Russia, and Russia's subsequent annexation of Crimea have placed US-Russia relations in about as bad a place as they have been since the end of the Cold War.  Congressional Republicans have ratcheted up their rhetoric and seem to have lost their senses on the issue of nuclear safety.  As The Nation's editor Katrina vanden Heuvel writes on April 10: Representatives Michael Turner (R-OH) and Chairman of the House Armed Services Committee Buck McKeon (R-CA) introduced a bill that, among other things, prohibits "the contact, cooperation or transfer of technology between the National Nuclear Security Administration [NNSA] and the Russian Federation until the Secretary of Energy certifies the Russian military is no longer illegally occupying Crimea, no longer violating the INF treaty, and in compliance with the CFE treaty." Engendering nuclear instability by using safety as a stick is an incredibly reckless way to approach global security.  The bill has little chance of prevailing and, even if it does, it will be vetoed by President Obama.

NASA/AFP/Getty Images (appears in Al Jazeera article)

Thankfully, the crisis in the Ukraine has not affected operations at the International Space Station.  Al Jazeera reported on April 9: While relations between American and Russian space officials have frayed because of the crisis in Ukraine, work together on the station remains the same, officials say....The Russian cargo shuttle launched Wednesday morning from Baikonur, Kazakhstan, and after about four spins around the Earth it docked with the ISS, delivering food, fuel and cosmic knickknacks to one Japanese astronaut, two American astronauts and three Russian cosmonauts on board.

The Japan Times offers this take on the deterioration of relations between the two superpowers: Underlying the ferociously strong sense of grievance that prevails among the Russian people against the West is one simple, overpowering emotion: “We’re mad as hell and we’re not going to take it anymore” (to use the classic line from Howard Beale, the Mad Prophet of the Airwaves from the classic 1976 movie “Network”).  Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, Russia has not just seen its historic standing and interests in its ancient zone of influence, going back hundreds of years, shrink; worse, Russia’s reach has been systematically dismantled by the United States. One solemn promise after another, made to the Russians, has been forgotten, ignored or scrapped.  It is one thing to talk about other nations’ freedom and independence (and rejoice when they receive it). It is quite another matter if those powers then move deliberately to put those freed countries fully into their orbit.

Syria
In a bleak account of the possibilities for peace in Syria, Yezid Sayigh, writing for the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, writes in an April 8 article: The grim truth is that for those determined to extract a diplomatic exit from the crisis under present conditions, Iran’s latest four-point peace plan is the only potentially feasible bid on the table. It calls for a general ceasefire, a national unity government composed of the regime and Syria’s “internal” opposition, the successive transfer of a wide but unspecified range of presidential powers to the government over several years, and general and presidential elections.

World Cup

Bill Shankly turned Second Division Liverpool into an English Premier League "bastion of invincibility"
Photo by Bob Thomas appears in The Far Post article

Roads and Kingdoms continues its excellent "The Far Post" series on the global soccer culture in the run-up to the 2014 World Cup.  One of the most interesting and thought-provoking in the series is philosopher Simon Critchley's March 11 piece, "Working Class Ballet", on the "spectacle, poetry and importance of professional football."  It's a personal telling of his life-long love of the sport.  Along the way, he speaks of the great Liverpool coach Bill Shankly, his memories of previous World Cups, of his relationship through the sport to his father and to his son, and the film Zidane: A Portrait of the 21st Century.  Here are a few quotes from the article, reflecting on the World Cup:
The World Cup is a spectacle in the strictly Situationist sense. It is a shiny display of teams, tribes and nations in symbolic, indeed rather atavistic, national combat adorned with multiple layers of commodification, sponsorship and the seemingly infinite commercialization...

The World Cup is an image of our age at its worst and most gaudy. But it is also something more, something bound up with difficult and recalcitrant questions of conflict, memory, history, place, social class, masculinity, violence, national identity, tribe and group....

The World Cup, then, is about ever-shifting floors of memory and the complexity of personal and national identity. But at its best it is about grace...an unforced bodily containment and elegance of movement, a kind of discipline where long periods of inactivity can suddenly accelerate and time takes on a different dimension in bursts of controlled power. 

Sunday Roundup - March 23, 2014

This is the weekly selection of news and opinion from outside the US mainstream media.  Today we look at Ukraine and Crimea, the new Cosmos series, the Israeli-Palestinian peace process, and the  collapse of industrial civilization.

Ukraine
The US and Russia traded sanctions on Thursday and the EU is mulling additional sanctions against Russia. The new sanctions have been prompted by the Crimean vote to leave Ukraine and Russia's subsequent annexation of it.   Le Monde Diplomatique gives some background on the protests that led to the ouster of the Moscow-leaning President Viktor Yanukovych and discusses the aftermath.  "Who were the protesters and what were their goals?...The protest movement emerged in November last year, after Yanukovych suspended negotiations on a free trade agreement with the European Union."  The pro-Western protesters were soon joined by "several nationalist groups... and... ultra-radical, non-democratic movements without European sympathies...Dormant during the Soviet era, the nationalist movement reappeared after independence in 1991, when the Social-National Party of Ukraine (SNPU) was formed. Until the early 2000s, the SNPU was a marginal, xenophobic and ultra-nationalist organization."  Then the SNPU changed significantly. "It shed its fascist trappings ...in 2004, renaming itself Svoboda (freedom) and abandoning its neo-Nazi badge, the Wolfsangel (wolf hook), in favour of a more neutral symbol."  Svoboda's nationalist and anti-system stance won it 10% of the vote in 2012.  Svoboda wants to end Russian influence in the Ukraine.  Its strong nationalist stance translates into a foreign policy that wishes "to see Ukraine join NATO, rearm with nuclear weapons and leave all post-Soviet cooperative organisations."  Another opposition group gaining in popularity after the street clashes is Pravy Sektor, which supports "none of the opposition parties, especially not Svoboda, disappointed by its 'appeals for calm and negotiation with the authorities.' ... Svoboda’s success over the past few years and the presence of neo-fascist groups such as Pravy Sektor in Independence Square are signs of a crisis in Ukrainian society...Though Independence Square will go down in history as an extraordinary example of collective and popular action, the political outcome is as yet unclear. Ukraine is in need of a new force that truly serves the people and transcends its many social and political divides."

Map of Ukraine with Crimean Peninsula highlighted (adapted from ESL-in-Canada's website)

Crimea
Crimea has a Russian-ethnic population and they voted overwhelmingly to join Russia in a referendum last Sunday.  Western nations have declared the referendum and annexation illegal.  Juan Cole at Informed Comment agrees but notes that "Crimea had been Russian territory since the late 18th century and was only attached to Ukraine by Khrushchev in the 1950s, at a time when Russia and Ukraine were part of the same country. Whatever the status of Sunday’s referendum, it seems likely that if Crimeans could vote fairly and freely, a majority would probably accede to Russia."  Cole notes that "Russia’s annexation of Crimea is among the few significant territorial acquisitions since the end of World War II by one country from another, more or less by force. The only clear parallel... is the Israeli annexation of the Palestinian territories in 1967."  Cole concludes that Israel's steps in occupying the Palestinian territories "are more egregious than Russia’s incorporation of Crimea. No local populations in any of those areas would vote to accede to Israel....Unlike with Mr. Putin, the US has not imposed sanctions on Israel for its territorial aggrandizement, and instead has de facto supported it."

Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey
If you enjoy good science, you need to watch the new Cosmos series on Fox and National Geographic TV. Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey is an updated re-imagining of Carl Sagan's 1980 series, Cosmos: A Personal Voyage.  Hard to believe that the original Cosmos aired more than 30 years ago.  Neil deGrasse Tyson hosts the new series, which began Sunday, March 9. "According to National Geographic, it was the largest global rollout of a TV series ever, appearing on 220 channels in 181 countries and 45 languages."  Mother Jones discusses Tyson's Inquiring Minds podcast and notes the contrast between him and Carl Sagan in debating the anti-science (or bad science) forces.  "Carl Sagan himself often took strong stands on science-based political issues of the day. He clashed with the Reagan administration over arms control and the 'Star Wars' program, and the debate over his ideas about 'nuclear winter' served as a kind of preview of the current battle over global warming. 'Carl Sagan would debate people on all manner of issues,' said Tyson.'And I don't have the time or the energy or the interest in doing so. As an educator, I'd rather just get people thinking straight in the first place, so I don't have to then debate them later on.'...In other words, Tyson's view appears to be that in an age rife with science denial, Cosmos rises above that fray by instilling in us wonder about the nature of the cosmos and our quest to understand it. And given the breathtaking quality and stunningly wide distribution of the show, there's much to say for that approach. " 

Image is from NatGeoTV.com

Israeli-Palestinian Peace Talks
"Right wing Israeli officials ....expressed rage [last weekend] at US Secretary of State John Kerry for saying that Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu should “drop” his demand that the Palestinians recognize Israel as a Jewish state."  Both the Arab League and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas have "rejected Netanyahu’s diction. It is a red line for them. Insisting on it will mean no agreement."  To agree to Netanyahu's statement would jeopardize the Palestinian right of return.  In a March 12 speech, Abbas explained that "his commitment to the negotiations was time-bound, for a nine-month period, while Kerry tried to hammer out an agreement, especially on security and borders."  Abbas laid out the Palestinian position in the negotiations - East Jerusalem as the capital of Palestine, complete Israeli withdrawal from "the West Bank or from territories equivalent to the extent of the West Bank as it existed in 1967", and compensation and a right of return for Palestinians displaced in 1948 and 1967.  "This speech may help explain why President Obama told PM Netanyahu that the US can’t protect Israel if there is no agreement. Mahmoud Abbas has not put going to the International Criminal Court off the agenda, he just postponed it for nine months. The nine months is expiring. If the Kerry negotiations crash and burn, pressure will build on Abbas and other Palestine officials to go to the ICC." [Informed Comment, March 16]

Industrial Civilization's Collapse?
The Guardian's Earth Insight blog on March 14 had this ominous lead: "A new study sponsored by Nasa's Goddard Space Flight Center has highlighted the prospect that global industrial civilisation could collapse in coming decades due to unsustainable resource exploitation and increasingly unequal wealth distribution."  Examining the collapse of civilizations through history, the project identified "the most salient interrelated factors which explain civilisational decline, and which may help determine the risk of collapse today: namely, Population, Climate, Water, Agriculture, and Energy." These factors can result in civilizational collapse when they result in the aforementioned resource exploitation and wealth maldistribution.  "Modelling a range of different scenarios, [lead researcher Safa] Motesharri and his colleagues conclude that under conditions 'closely reflecting the reality of the world today... we find that collapse is difficult to avoid.'... However, the scientists point out that the worst-case scenarios are by no means inevitable, and suggest that appropriate policy and structural changes could avoid collapse, if not pave the way toward a more stable civilisation."  They write: "Collapse can be avoided and population can reach equilibrium if the per capita rate of depletion of nature is reduced to a sustainable level, and if resources are distributed in a reasonably equitable fashion."




Links
You can watch full episodes of Cosmos here.

Let's Repeal the Second Amendment

One of the many pieces of legislation bottled up by the do-nothing-Republican-controlled-and-Republican-filibustered Congress is gun control regulation.  Even after Sandy Hook, Republicans managed to prevent meaningful Federal gun legislation from being enacted - not even the requirement for universal background checks or a ban on assault rifles.  Recourse to the courts for a common sense interpretation of the Second Amendment for the common good is useless.  The Republican majority on the Supreme Court refuses to recognize "A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free State" as the clearly dependent introductory clause that it is.

While some states have advanced tougher gun laws, others are moving into the deep end of the bizarre.  Georgia's State House of Representatives has drafted what's been called the "most extreme gun bill in America" by Americans for Responsible Solutions.  "Georgia lawmakers could soon make broad changes to the state’s gun laws to allow firearms in bars, churches, airports, and certain government buildings." [MSNBC/March 14]  What in hell could these fools be thinking?  In Georgia, no permit is needed to purchase a handgun and the state has the 9th highest firearm homicide rate in the country. 

NRA money continues to flow into Colorado to upend the stronger gun laws passed there last year.  The NRA has been able to defeat two state senators instrumental to the passage of the gun legislation in recall elections.  But so far they have had little success in overturning the laws as Democrats are holding on to a majority in the state legislature.  Seven of the eight bills introduced by the pro-gun industry  have been defeated - Concealed Handgun Carry without a Permit, Ammunition Magazine Prohibition. Concealed-Carry in Public Schools, Governor Cannot Restrict Firearms During Emergencies, No Background Check for Step-Relations, Concerning Background Checks and Fees for Gun Transfers, Repeal Large-Capacity Ammunition Magazine Ban.  One (Repeal Regulations on Firearms Purchases in Contiguous States) passed the State Senate and is pending in the House. This last bill, according to John Morse of Americans for Principled Leadership. "actually addresses an outmoded 1969 state statute that has subsequently been eclipsed by the Brady Bill and other federal legislation passed more recently....No harm is being done with this clean up measure."

According Slate.com's gun death tally, more than 12,000 people were killed by guns in the US between the time of the Sandy Hook shooting and Dec. 31, 2013.  Add to this the 20,000 suicides per year and the need for common sense regulation of guns becomes clear.  Mental illness, socio-economic factors, gang violence, guns in the hands of felons - these all contribute to the totals. But taking guns out of the hands of those prone to use them against others or themselves and taking assault rifles out of everybody's hands would make the totals significantly lower.

Every study and every statistic point to the connection between the availability of guns and gun-related deaths.  The gun homicide rate in the US with its relatively lax gun laws is vastly higher than that in other developed countries - 10 times that of Italy and 90 times that of the United Kingdom, for example.  [Wikipedia]  The largest study of gun violence in the United States, released in September 2013, "confirms a point that should be obvious: widespread American gun ownership is fueling America’s gun violence epidemic...[The authors found] “for each 1 percentage point increase in proportion of household gun ownership,...firearm homicide rate increased by 0.9 percent." [Think Progress website]  A Harvard study found that states with the strongest/most gun laws had a firearms death rate 42% lower than the states with fewest controls on guns.  The authors take pains to note that "You can’t necessarily say one absolutely led to the other … but you can say those things are related.”   I found one of the reasons for their hesitation absolutely incredible.  “One of the major challenges that has existed over the past 15 years is that basically all avenues of federal funding – either the CDC or the NIH – have been cut off from studying firearm fatalities,” [the author Dr. Eric] Fleegler said. ”I’m a pediatric emergency medicine doctor. If there are ten children who die from a toy or some sort of injury, there is an incredible human cry that we make sure that we stop those types of deaths. Here on the other side you have 31,000 people who die every single year from firearms. That is a number of deaths on virtually an unprecedented level, and nothing is being done to understand this or reduce it.” [Here & Now webpage, Boston Public Radio website]

I cannot get the objection of those who oppose universal background checks.  If you personally have nothing to hide, why are you reluctant?  I cannot get the point of those who would make possession of high capacity magazines and assault rifles the right of every mentally unstable American.  Under what circumstances other than mass murder or civil insurrection would you ever need these?  Please don't say hunting.  And I really can't get why Federal funding has been cutoff from studies of gun violence. What are they afraid we'll find out?

Maybe it's time to repeal the outmoded second amendment or at least interpret it in a manner consistent with the amendment authors' intent.  It was written at a time when muskets had to be powdered and reloaded after every shot, when America was a rural nation, when some were worried that the country would be reclaimed by Great Britain and, probably most importantly, when the militia were the only means of defense.  As Dan Heaton writes at Yahoo Voices: "After the Revolutionary War, the standing army of the new country essentially ceased to exist and the various state militias were again the primary means of national defense." .In other words, the militia granted the right to bear arms was the equivalent to today's armed forces.  No other Western democracy has anything like this enduring anachronism from the eighteenth century and they are surviving just fine, thank you.

In Brief - Updates on Issues We've Been Following
U.S. Accidental Shootings mid-February to early March

Oregon and Montana became the fourth and fifth states to restore Congressional food stamp cuts. They joined New York, Connecticut, and Pennsylvania.  Of the 14 states and the District of Columbia affected by the cuts, at least seven states (Connecticut, Montana, New York, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island and Vermont) plus D.C. are moving or have already moved to block them, according to a Stateline survey. The remaining "heat and eat" states  — California, Maine, Massachusetts, Michigan, New Jersey, Vermont, Washington and Wisconsin — are considering doing the same.

Senate negotiators struck a bipartisan deal on March 13 that would renew federal unemployment benefits for the long-term jobless.  The bill could come up for a vote in the Senate by the end of March but its fate in the Republican-controlled House is up in the air.

President Obama rolled out his plan to "force American businesses to pay more overtime to millions of workers, the latest move by his administration to confront corporations that have had soaring profits even as wages have stagnated."

The people of Crimea voted overwhelmingly to rejoin Russia on Sunday.  On Monday the US and EU announced announced personal sanctions against Russian and Crimean officials.

Louisiana's lawsuit against MoveOn's billboards advocating Medicaid expansion

Sunday Roundup - March 16, 2014

This is the weekly selection of news and opinion from sources outside the US mainstream media.  Today we look at Pope Francis, Ukraine, six ways America lags the rest of the developed world, Syria, Venzuelan food shortages, and the new Jimi Hendrix stamp. 


Quote of the Day

"I wonder...how...foreign policies...would look if we wiped out the national boundaries of the world, at least in our minds, and thought of all children everywhere as our own. Then we could never...wage war anywhere, because wars, especially in our time, are always wars against children, indeed our children."

- Howard Zinn, A People's History of the Untied States

Pope Francis' First Anniversary
"A group of young people from around the world have launched a campaign called Grazie Francesco – Thank You Francis – to send the Pope messages marking the first year of his pontificate March 13...Thousands of messages from around the world in eight different languages can be read on the campaign's website, which was created by the Argentinian group Lindo Lio...Lindo Lio said its name comes from the Holy Father's call to young people at World Youth Day Rio 2013 to “stir things up in your dioceses. I want to the Church to go out onto the streets!” [Catholic News Agency, March 11]


Ukraine
The Guardian reported Friday that "11th-hour talks in London between the US secretary of state, John Kerry, and his Russian counterpart, Sergei Lavrov, broke up without resolving the standoff."  Russia has refused to postpone the Crimean referendum Sunday.  Should the referendum to rejoin Russia pass (and it looks like it will), Western nations will impose sanctions on Russia starting Monday.  Kerry challenged Lavrov over "sudden Russian troop movements along the Ukrainian border over the past few days....Lavrov, at a press conference at the talks, insisted the referendum would go ahead as planned. The Russian president, Vladimir Putin, 'will respect the will of the Crimean people', Lavrov said. Lavrov expressed concern over violence in Donetsk in eastern Ukraine overnight on Thursday. Casualties mounted from clashes between pro- and anti-Russian protesters there" with one reported death and 26 to 28 injured.

"Six Ways America Is Like A Third World Country"
Rolling Stone magazine's March 5 post by Shawn McElwee notes that although "the U.S. is one of the richest societies in history, it still lags behind other developed nations in many important indicators of human development."  McElwee discusses  "six of the most egregious examples that show how far we still have to go" to catch up with the rest of the developed world:
Criminal justice - "The only country that incarcerates a higher percentage of its population than we do is North Korea. The U.S. is also the only developed country that executes prisoners...[and] 42 percent of those on death row are black, compared to less than 15 percent of the overall population."
Gun violence -"The U.S. leads the developed world in firearm-related murders, and the difference isn't a slight gap – more like a chasm. According to United Nations data, the U.S. has 20 times more murders than the developed world average."
Healthcare - "A study last year found that in many American counties, especially in the deep South, life expectancy is lower than in Algeria, Nicaragua or Bangladesh. The U.S. is the only developed country that does not guarantee health care to its citizens"
Education - "America has one of the highest achievement gaps between high income and low income students, as measured by the OECD [Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development]....Students in the average OECD country can expect about 70 percent of their college tuition to be publicly funded..."; in the United States, it's about 40 percent,
Income inequality - "By almost every measure, the U.S. tops out OECD countries in terms of income inequality, largely because America has the stingiest welfare state of any developed country....[In] many parts of the United States...children born in the poorest quintile have a less than 3 percent chance of reaching the top quintile"
Infrastructure - "The United States infrastructure is slowly crumbling apart and is in desperate need for repair. One study estimates that our infrastructure system needs a $3.6 trillion investment over the next six years."

Syria

Location Map of Syria is from www.mapsnworld.com

With no end in sight to the violence and no prospects on the horizon for negotiations, the bad news just keeps coming for the Syrian people. Al Jazeera reported on March 10 on a new report by the charity Save the Children.  "Syria's civil conflict has left the country's health system so severely crippled that some patients are 'opting to be knocked out with metal bars for lack of anaesthesia,' a new report by the Save the Children charity says.  The report, A Devastating Toll, looks at the impact of three years of war on the health of the country's children.  'We received a little girl with critical injuries; we could do nothing but wait for her to die because we didn't have the equipment or the medicines. Till now I can't remove her face from my mind,' said one health worker...The charity said more than 10,000 young lives had been lost as a direct result of the violence....'The extent of the decline in Syria’s health system is demonstrated in many horrific ways, including children having limbs amputated because the clinics they present to don't have necessary equipment to treat them,'the report said."

As I see it, the only way out of this devastating civil war is for an arms embargo on all sides in the conflict and an immediate and unconditional cease fire.  Once the fighting is stopped, humanitarian aid can flow freely to the people of Syria.  Then a power-sharing agreement between the government and the rebel forces should be secured.  As one of Syria's allies, Iran must be given a role in bringing the Assad government to the negotiating table. 

In Brief Links
Link to the Grazie Francesco website

Are hoarding and bootlegging causing Venezuela's food shortages?

Jimi Hendrix is now on a US postage stamp

Food Stamps, Obamacare, The Ukraine

The Ukraine
Russia is wrong to send troops into the Ukraine.  Not anywhere on the scale of US wrong in invading Iraq, for example, but wrong nonetheless.  The Ukraine and Russia share more than 1400 miles of border and you can see how Russia may have concerns about stability on its door step.

(Map is adapted from ESL-in-Canada's website)

The situation in the Ukraine is complex but here's a brief summary.

• The elected president of the Ukraine, Viktor Yanukovich, was ousted after demonstrations protesting his cancellation of talks on a European Union trade agreement.  Russia had offered $15 billion in aid to keep the Ukraine in their sphere of influence.  Yanukovich's  sympathies and inclinations lie more with Russia than Europe.  
• Yanukovich's assets and those of 17 others were frozen this morning by the EU, alleging embezzlement of government funds.  
• The Crimean Parliament has voted to leave the Ukraine and join Russia with a referendum set for March 16.  Crimea has a large Russian population and was part of the Soviet Union until 1954, when Nikita Khruschev gave it to the Ukraine. 

The turmoil in the Ukraine is being identified as a restart of the Cold War.  This is utter nonsense.  An editorial in The Nation calls for "the international community [to push] for compromise to prevent this fragile and bitterly divided country from breaking apart."  The Nation notes "We are reaping the bitter fruit of a deeply flawed post–Cold War settlement that looks more like Versailles than Bretton Woods, a settlement inflamed by the shortsighted American decision to expand NATO eastward and pursue other policies aimed at isolating Russia and ignoring Russian interests."

Food Stamps
Democratic governors in New York and Connecticut and the Republican governor of Pennsylvania have taken measures to thwart the Congressional cuts to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program.  As explained at philly.com : "The cuts to SNAP delineated in the federal Farm Bill passed last month were being borne by 15 states that operate the "Heat and Eat" program, which coordinates energy assistance with SNAP...Under the program, some of the families that received as little as $1 in federal heating assistance saw increased SNAP benefits...Last month, Congress changed the rules, stipulating in the Farm Bill that a family would have to have at least $20 in heating assistance before receiving increased SNAP benefits."  And that's exactly what these governors have done.  Kudos and let's get the governors of the rest of the states affected by these cuts (see below) to act in a similar manner.

Comedy Central's Jon Stewart has a hilarious take down of Fox News' whining about food stamp recipients.  You can watch it here.

Obamacare
As the well-funded Republican right continues to pour millions into negative ad's against swing state Democratic Senators supportive of the Affordable Care Act and as the do-nothing House of Representatives vote yet again to defund or subvert the program, "Obamacare" enrollments are quietly growing.  As of February 1, enrollments in the Obamacare market place were nearly 3.3 million.  Also, according to ThinkProgress, in what it calls the woodwork effect,: "A new analysis by Avalere Health finds that the Affordable Care Act’s open enrollment season is boosting Medicaid signups even in the states that have refused the health law’s optional Medicaid expansion...All told, between 2.4 million and 3.5 million of the poorest Americans started receiving Medicaid coverage for the first time during the first four months of Obamacare’s enrollment season."  So as of end January, there were an additional 6 million people with health insurance.

ACA proponents are not done yet.  MoveOn.org has mounted a campaign to get non-Medicaid-expansion states to change their decisions.  The advantages to the states seem to be coming more and more clear: "Faced with the prospect of tens of millions, if not hundreds of millions, in federal funding, states are racing to find politically palatable ways to expand Medicaid. [Washington Post, March 4].  Even the brilliant op-ed writers for self-proclaimed "capitalist tool" Forbes are changing their tune.  Take a look at these two headlines:
Nov. 11 - "Obamacare Will Be Repealed Well In Advance Of The 2014 Elections"
Feb. 12 - "New Signup Numbers Show Why Obamacare May Be Impossible To Repeal"

But don't expect the right-wing to throw in the towel.  They will continue to spend tens of millions in negative ads even though as Kevin Drum wonders "whether there's a single genuine Obamacare horror story out there, given that virtually every yarn promoted by Republicans or conservatives about people hurt by the Affordable Care Act has deflated like a pricked balloon on the merest examination." [LA Times, Feb 20]


In the final set of rules published Wednesday, the Obama administration will "let people with health insurance plans that don't comply with Affordable Care Act standards keep them through October 2017 if their states allow it."  [CNBC, March 5]

The enrollment deadline - after which an individual without health care insurance may be subject to a fine - is March 31.  If you haven't got insurance yet, here's a link to healthcare.gov to help you get started. The site works.

Other info
"Those “heat and eat” states are: California, Connecticut, Delaware, Maine, Massachusetts, Michigan, Montana, New Jersey, New York, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Vermont, Washington, Wisconsin. Some lists compiled by non-profits lists add or subtract a state or two from that lineup." [Washington Post, Feb 5]

Finally, a couple of links from the Daily Kos website:

Minimum wage increase would cut food stamp costs beyond Republican's wildest dreams 
(based on a report by the Center for American Progress)

Obamacare boosting household income and  spending (based on an article that first appeared in the Wall Street Journal)

The cuts to SNAP delineated in the federal Farm Bill passed last month were being borne by 15 states that operate the "Heat and Eat" program, which coordinates energy assistance with SNAP. Both Pennsylvania and New Jersey are Heat and Eat states.
Under the program, some of the families that received as little as $1 in federal heating assistance saw increased SNAP benefits.
Last month, Congress changed the rules, stipulating in the Farm Bill that a family would have to have at least $20 in heating assistance before receiving increased SNAP benefits.

Read more at http://www.philly.com/philly/news/politics/20140306_In_surprising_move__Corbett_forestalls_deep_cuts_in_food_stamps.html#A2ZZrfpZ6fFPkBkp.99

The cuts to SNAP delineated in the federal Farm Bill passed last month were being borne by 15 states that operate the "Heat and Eat" program, which coordinates energy assistance with SNAP. Both Pennsylvania and New Jersey are Heat and Eat states.
Under the program, some of the families that received as little as $1 in federal heating assistance saw increased SNAP benefits.
Last month, Congress changed the rules, stipulating in the Farm Bill that a family would have to have at least $20 in heating assistance before receiving increased SNAP benefits.

Read more at http://www.philly.com/philly/news/politics/20140306_In_surprising_move__Corbett_forestalls_deep_cuts_in_food_stamps.html#A2ZZrfpZ6fFPkBkp.99

The cuts to SNAP delineated in the federal Farm Bill passed last month were being borne by 15 states that operate the "Heat and Eat" program, which coordinates energy assistance with SNAP. Both Pennsylvania and New Jersey are Heat and Eat states.
Under the program, some of the families that received as little as $1 in federal heating assistance saw increased SNAP benefits.
Last month, Congress changed the rules, stipulating in the Farm Bill that a family would have to have at least $20 in heating assistance before receiving increased SNAP benefits.

Read more at http://www.philly.com/philly/news/politics/20140306_In_surprising_move__Corbett_forestalls_deep_cuts_in_food_stamps.html#A2ZZrfpZ6fFPkBkp.99