The Agnostic’s Guide To The Botched Obamacare Rollout

The Article: The Agnostic’s Guide to the Botched Obamacare Rollout by Kurt Eichenwald in Vanity Fair.

The Text: There isn’t a lot of honesty when it comes to discussing Obamacare. Too many Republicans lie about the implications of the health-insurance program and dismiss out of hand the reasons a massive overhaul of the long-time system is necessary. Too many Democrats dismiss the challenges that the program faces, its potential shortcomings, and the flaws in its design. Then, on both sides, there are the absolutists: conservatives who say the uninsured are just a bunch of lazy takers, and the liberals who say that only a single-payer system can solve the problems we face.

Small wonder it’s virtually impossible to get a clear understanding of how to look at the bumpy start to the Obamacare rollout.

I’ll give it a shot. While I’ve been writing about Obamacare of late—attacking the G.O.P. lies and explaining why an overhaul of our system is necessary—folks seem to have missed that I’ve never said whether I believe the president’s signature legislative victory is any good. There’s a reason for that: I don’t know. I am an Obamacare agnostic—if it works, as I hope it will for the good of the nation, then it’s a great thing. If it doesn’t, then that is a disappointing thing and we need to try something else. Unlike too many, I don’t believe pretending to be a soothsayer—“It will destroy America!” “It will save the world!”—is anything more than ideologically driven sophistry.

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Time For A Moratorium On The Word ‘Racist’?

The Article: It’s time to put a moratorium on the word ‘racist’ by Reniqua Allen in The Guardian.

The Text: In the late nineties, conservative John Bunzel, a former member of the US Commission on Civil Rights, wrote that President Clinton’s Advisory Board on Race should call for an end of the “corrupted usage” of the word “racist” especially when used as an “accusation” or “smear word” because:

[It] breeds bitterness and polarization, not a spirit of pragmatic reasonableness in confronting our difficult problems.

While I agree with little else that he said in that article, 15 years later, the sentiment is hitting home. It’s time to put a moratorium on the word “racist”.

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Paul Krugman On The US “War On The Poor”

The Article: A War on the Poor by Paul Krugman in The New York Times.

The Text: John Kasich, the Republican governor of Ohio, has done some surprising things lately. First, he did an end run around his state’s Legislature — controlled by his own party — to proceed with the federally funded expansion of Medicaid that is an important piece of Obamacare. Then, defending his action, he let loose on his political allies, declaring, “I’m concerned about the fact there seems to be a war on the poor. That, if you’re poor, somehow you’re shiftless and lazy.”

Obviously Mr. Kasich isn’t the first to make this observation. But the fact that it’s coming from a Republican in good standing (although maybe not anymore), indeed someone who used to be known as a conservative firebrand, is telling. Republican hostility toward the poor and unfortunate has now reached such a fever pitch that the party doesn’t really stand for anything else — and only willfully blind observers can fail to see that reality.

The big question is why. But, first, let’s talk a bit more about what’s eating the right.

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The U.S. Needs A Constitutional Right To Vote

The Article: The U.S. Needs a Constitutional Right to Vote by Norm Ornstein in The Atlantic.

The Text: It is becoming increasingly obvious that the Supreme Court decision in Shelby County v. Holder, which eviscerated the Voting Rights Act, is leading to a new era of voter suppression that parallels the pre-1960s era—this time affecting not just African-Americans but also Hispanic-Americans, women, and students, among others.

The reasoning employed by Chief Justice John Roberts in Shelby County—that Section 5 of the act was such a spectacular success that it is no longer necessary—was the equivalent of taking down speed cameras and traffic lights and removing speed limits from a dangerous intersection because they had combined to reduce accidents and traffic deaths.

In North Carolina, a post-Shelby County law not only includes one of the most restrictive and punitive voter-ID laws anywhere but also restricts early voting, eliminates same-day voting registration, ends pre-registration for 16- and 17-year-olds, and bans many provisional ballots. Whatever flimsy voter-fraud excuse exists for requiring voter ID disappears when it comes to these other obstacles to voting.

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Gay Marriage Once Incredibly Common In North America

The Article: The ‘two-spirit’ people of indigenous North Americans by Walter Williams in The Guardian.

The Text: Native Americans have often held intersex, androgynous people, feminine males and masculine females in high respect. The most common term to define such persons today is to refer to them as “two-spirit” people, but in the past feminine males were sometimes referred to as “berdache” by early French explorers in North America, who adapted a Persian word “bardaj”, meaning an intimate male friend. Because these androgynous males were commonly married to a masculine man, or had sex with men, and the masculine females had feminine women as wives, the term berdache had a clear homosexual connotation. Both the Spanish settlers in Latin America and the English colonists in North America condemned them as “sodomites”.

Rather than emphasising the homosexuality of these persons, however, many Native Americans focused on their spiritual gifts. American Indian traditionalists, even today, tend to see a person’s basic character as a reflection of their spirit. Since everything that exists is thought to come from the spirit world, androgynous or transgender persons are seen as doubly blessed, having both the spirit of a man and the spirit of a woman. Thus, they are honoured for having two spirits, and are seen as more spiritually gifted than the typical masculine male or feminine female.

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