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The American Health Care Act falls far short of repealing and replacing the Affordable Care Act, but there are some big potential changes. (Daron Taylor/The Washington Post)

If part of the Republican strategy for replacing the Affordable Care Act (or, as your friends call it, Obamacare) was to develop and pass a bill quickly, before vocal opposition could be organized, that strategy has failed. It has failed for a number of reasons, including that the proposal has already faced significant, vocal opposition. It has also failed because the net effect of the proposal has been to solidify support for the policy it hoped to replace while earning less support than the Affordable Care Act had shortly before its own passage in 2010.

A new national poll from Fox News lays out the grim math for Republican leadership on Capitol Hill. Only about a third of Americans overall support the American Health Care Act (as the Republican bill is known) strongly or somewhat. While many Americans havent yet formed an opinion, more than half oppose the legislation including 40 percent of the country that strongly opposes it.

As with President Trumps approval ratings, opinions of the legislation are dragged down by particularly strong opposition from Democrats. But even among independents, fewer than a third support the bill.

Compare that to favorability numbers on Obamacare from the same poll. Half the country views the existing legislation positively, including more than 4 in 10 independents.

Support for Obamacare among Democrats is far higher than support for the Republican replacement bill is among Republicans.

There are a lot of asterisks that apply here, including that the Republican bill is still evolving and not yet well known. But its worth comparing where it stands to how people viewed Obamacare shortly before its passage. In Gallup polling taken in March 2010, more people wanted their members of Congress to vote against the bill than for it but narrowly, by a 45 to 48 percent margin. In that case, too, opposition from the opposing party outweighed support from the party hoping to pass the legislation. Independents, though, were split.

On Wednesday night, Trump seemed to express some frustration with the fact that health care was still working its way through Congress (though its been moving at a much faster clip than Obamacare, which took about a year to pass). Weve got to get the health care done, he said at a rally in Nashville. He added, Then we get on to tax reduction.

According to the Fox News poll, Americans are more interested in the latter than the former. Asked to prioritize what Trump works on, replacing Obamacare was ranked fifth overall in terms of the issue people thought was most pressing. Even among Republicans, it was tied for fourth on the priority list with cutting taxes.

The bill is viewed poorly, is viewed less favorably than Obamacare and is not viewed as a priority by the American public. One question that looms over the process now is whether significant changes to the bill will make it more palatable to the public, or whether attitudes about any replacement for Obamacare will fall along similar lines. If so, the Republicans have an even steeper uphill fight than they may have expected.

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Obamacare is much more popular than the Republican bill to replace it - Washington Post

House Intelligence Committee Chair Devin Nunes (R-Calif.) and Ranking Democrat Adam Schiff (Calif.) expressed doubt, March 15, about President Trump's claim of a 2016 wire tap at Trump Tower. (Reuters)

On Wednesday, President Trump lost one of his most ardent apologists, Rep. Devin Nunes (R-Calif.), chairman of the Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence. The Post reported:

Nunes had beena member of his own transition team, after all, and he seemed to go out of his way to defend Trump in a way few others did,frankly.

That may no longer be the case.

Nunes delivered a reasonably strong rebuke of Trump on Wednesday for his tweet that President Barack Obama had wiretapped Trump Tower, saying that if the tweet were to be taken literally, clearly the president was wrong (meaning Trump).

Perhaps Nunes saw some of Trumps rotten polling numbers. Maybe he realized his own credibility was too precious to fritter away defending Trumps nonsense. Perhaps he knew FBI Director James B. Comey would say the same thing next week and wanted to get out his statement first. Whatever the reason, this is as close as any Republican has come to calling Trump out for making stuff up.

Now imagine if all the Republicans started doing that.

House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah) could say, Actually, Mr. President, you arent exempt from conflicts of interest. There is a rule right there in the Constitution, the emoluments clause.

Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Charles E. Grassley (R-Iowa) might say, Mr. President, you are wrong about sanctuary cities. They actually dont have more crime. And immigrants, even those here illegally, are less likely to be criminals than native-born Americans.

House Speaker Paul D. Ryan could point out: Mr. President, you really did say youd cover everyone.

You get the point. Trump is so used to making things up and Republicans are so used to defending him that when one Republican finally tells the truth, which is readily apparent to everyone else, it becomes, literally, front-page news.

You do wonder what all these Republicans are so afraid of. Is Trump going to campaign against or threaten the guy in charge of intelligence investigations in the House? That would be very foolish. And if he did vow to start campaigning against incumbent Republicans, its not clear they would mind all that much. Trumps approval is at historic lows for a president at this stage in his first term.

Moreover, once a few Republicans started speaking up, Trump might actually stop saying patently untrue things. Until now, its the Republicans indifference to his lies or even rationalizations for them that allows him to gaslight the rest of the country.

Once Republicans inside the Beltway start telling Trump he is talking nonsense, truth-telling might spread like wildfire! Florida Gov. Rick Scott (R) might fess up that the Medicaid cuts would be devastating to Floridas budget. GOP mayors could tell Trump his notions about sanctuary cities are all wrong. Border-state governors would tell him flat out that the wall is going to cost a fortune and wont work.

If we have learned anything from Trumps my-travel-ban-can-never-be-invalidated attitude, and my-health-care-will-cover-everyone posturing, it is that when the truth comes out, it makes all Republicans look foolish and prevents them from achieving desired political ends. His lies become attached to their policies and become a political weight around their own necks.

Nunes is right. The president was wrong in this case. Hes wrong about most things, and Republicans should start saying so.

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What if every Republican started telling Trump that he is wrong? - Washington Post (blog)

Seventeen conservative Republican members of Congress10 of them in their first or second termsare bucking long-time party positions and the new occupant of the White House. They announced on Wednesday that theyre supporting a clear statement about the risks associated with climate change, as well as principles for howbest to fight it.

Called the Republican Climate Resolution by supporters, the statement by House members takes about 450 words to mention conservative thought on environmentalism, support for climate science, feared impacts, and a call for economically viable policy. They pledge in general terms to support study and mitigation measures, using our tradition of American ingenuity, innovation, and exceptionalism.

Read more:To Protect Climate Money, Obama Stashed It Where Its Hard to Find

Its essentially the same thingthat was introduced in September 2015 by then-Representative Chris Gibsonof New York. Whats changed since then is that almost 200 nations agreed to work to bring climate change under control, America elected a Republican presidentDonald Trump, who seems determined not toand the challengeitself growscontinuously worse.

With 17 co-sponsors, the resolution is oceans away from the number of votes it needs to pass the Republican-controlled House of Representatives. Fortunately, its likelihood of passage is not what makes it interesting.

These bills are interestingin the waythat solar energy is, even though solar makes up 1 percent of U.S. power generation. Like solar power, Republican climate billsare noteworthynot because one is likely to pass anytime soon, but because massive external forcesmarkets, other governments, and climate change itselfmay eventually force it into the foreground.

The resolution is spearheaded by three Republican members of Congress: Elise Stefanik of New York, CarlosCurbelo of Florida, and Ryan Costello of Pennsylvania.

The bills co-sponsors hail from parts of the country on the front lines of climate change; three represent southern Florida. Otherscomes from northern Nevada and central Utah, where mountain snowpack has declined in recent decades. And the district of Representative Mark Sanford, in eastern South Carolina, is seeing the rising sea level rise slowly eat away at its coastline.

Our founding fathers set up a political system that was to be reason-based, Sanford said on Tuesday. They didnt believe in alternative facts.

Curbelo represents Monroe County, which includes the Florida Keys, and part of Miami-Dade County. A leader in shapingthe new resolution, hes also co-founder of the House Climate Solutions Caucus, a bipartisan group. The caucus, which has new members admitted in pairs, one Republican and one Democrat, was set up to explore climate policy. Eleven of its13 Republican members are co-sponsors of the new resolution (six representatives are co-sponsors but do not belong to the caucus, according to a roster maintained by the nonprofit Citizens Climate Lobby).

Curbelo said in a conference call that the most critical participants in climate discussionsincluding major oil companiesare all moving in the right direction.

Congress, specifically the House Republican Conference, has to catch up to all of them, Curbelo said. Thats what were trying to do here.

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The bill is this month's contribution to Washingtons constant climate background hum. It follows February's splashy carbon tax-and-rebate announcement, developed by a groupcalledClimate Leadership Council and endorsedby three former Republican U.S. Treasury secretaries. That initiative, like todays, is premised on the idea that, as CLC founder Ted Halstead, put it, There is no issue in America today where there is a bigger gap between the GOP base and the GOP leadership.

Sanford, who served asSouth Carolinas governor from2003 to 2011, suggested that the future of climate resolutions or policies is up to voters. Theres been a level of energy that Ive never seen before in my time in politics, he said.

If that energy broadensbeyond the dismantling of the Affordable Care Act, issues such as climate change might rise to greater prominence. In the meantime, Sanford said theres enough science and enough resonant anecdotal evidence. I think its dangerous, he said.

See the original post here:
Republicans Break Ranks With Pledge to Fight Climate Change - Bloomberg

Posted March 17, 2017 15:44:37

Many people think that democracy is the right system in terms of being fairer and delivering the best outcomes for people, but does it actually make us happier?

Dr Matthew Beard, an ethicist and moral philosopher from the Ethics Centre, has looked closely at the issue by correlating three indexes on happiness, wellbeing and democracy.

Dr Beard used the Economists Intelligence Unit's Democracy Index report, published in 2016, which ranked different nations based on how democratic they were.

The index scored each country based on their electoral process, how well the government functioned, the level of political participation, political culture, and people's civil liberties.

Dr Beard said that nine of the countries in the Economists report which scored in the top 10 on level of democratic values, also scored well on levels of wellbeing (as defined by the OECD) and levels of happiness (as defined by the World Happiness report).

"So you've got these nine countries sitting really, really high up across three fairly influential studies," he said.

And yes, Australia was one of those nine countries.

"But we bounce up and down depending on which one," Dr Beard said.

Australia came in tenth in terms of democracy, second in quality of life, ninth in terms of happiness.

"So overall if you were comparing places where you could have been born, Australia would be right up there," he said.

Dr Beard said while more research was needed, it seemed that society played a large role in a person's ability to achieve happiness in life.

And he said there was an aggregation of particular nations who scored high in all of the different measures, which suggested that a person's ability to live a happy life was beyond their own control, and was largely influenced by where they were born.

"And that's something a lot of people have been calling attention to for a while, but just looking at the numbers here suggests that it's something that we can't put to the back of our minds."

Dr Beard said while on an individual level he would lean towards the saying "money makes it easier to be happy", when applied more widely it did not quite match up.

"When I looked at the relationship between wellbeing, happiness and democracy, I thought, well, the obvious thing to look at here is, it actually any of these things or is it just that all these nations are really wealthy?"

Dr Beard examined the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) of the top-scoring countries, in terms of both raw GDP and GDP per capita.

"Some of the countries feature. So Canada features in democracy, happiness, quality of life and is in the top 10 for GDP," he said.

"Norway, Denmark and Iceland are all quite high in GDP per capita. But a lot of the other countries don't feature."

Australia appears in the top 10 list of democracy, happiness and quality of life is Australia but it is nowhere to be seen in the top 10 GDP list.

And then there is China, which scores high in terms of GDP, but does not feature in the top 10 of democracy, happiness or quality of life.

"So there is less correlation between wellbeing and GDP, between happiness and GDP, between democracy and GDP," Dr Beard said.

"So it might not be the case that money makes us happy."

Dr Beard said last year, for the first time, the Economist demoted the United States from a full democracy to what it called a "flawed democracy".

That meant it fell from 8.05 in 2015 to 7.98 in 2016, not a huge drop but enough to slip just below the 8.00 threshold ascribed to a "full democracy".

He said this was due to the Economist finding enough evidence to question the way the election transpired.

"Not just in terms of Trump or Trump voters or Clinton or Clinton voters but also in terms of some of the allegations about foreign governments involved in that election," Dr Beard said.

"That meant that they weren't as confident to the extent the US were holding on to some of those democratic ideals."

He said in terms of the rise of populism as seen in Europe and the United States the world could not look to any political system as the "silver bullet", and assume that as long as a country was democratic everything would be better.

"Historically we've seen a lot of times when we've tried to introduce democracy into a nation and think that that will fix the problem, and it hasn't," he said.

"Because political societies are complicated and the way you structure them is really important, but it's never going to be a single-factor solution to some of these problems around happiness, ethics and wellbeing."

Topics: happiness, emotions, community-and-society, government-and-politics, globalisation---economy, business-economics-and-finance, australia

Read more here:
Democracy: How important is it to our happiness? - ABC Online

You think the 2016 election season was rough? In the ancient city of Tlaxcallan, located in what is now modern day Mexico, archaeologists have discovered signs of an early democracy where potential rulers first had to serve as warriors, and then were subjected to a trial of punches and kicks (while naked) in a public city square. But that wasn't all, Science writes:

After this trial ended, the candidate would enter the temple on the edge of the plaza and stay for up to two years, while priests drilled him in Tlaxcallan's moral and legal code. He would be starved, beaten with spiked whips when he fell asleep, and required to cut himself in bloodletting rituals. But when he walked out of the temple, he would be more than a warrior: He would be a member of Tlaxcallan's senate, one of the 100 or so men who made the city's most important military and economic decisions. [Science]

For many years, archaeologists believed ancient democratic societies were exclusive to Europe, but Tlaxcallan, built around A.D. 1250, shows signs that it was a collective civilization where rulers were made, not born. The city's governors lived in modest homes rather than palaces and distinguishing the wealthy from the poor based on goods alone is difficult due to relative income equality among the residents. "This is like Superman's Bizarro World," said archaeologist Lane Fargher. "Everything is the inverse of what you expect for Mesoamerica."

While most other ancient cities in the region had great kings and massive pyramids, palaces, and plazas, Tlaxcallan was assembled without a clear hierarchy or central meeting place. Plazas, for example, were scattered throughout the city, and Fargher believes the rulers would meet in a grand building less than a mile outside of town, indicating a dispersal of power.

"Democracy isn't a one-shot deal that happened one time," Purdue University archaeologist Richard Blanton explained. "It comes and goes, and it's very difficult to sustain." Read more about how archaeologists are learning to recognize the signs of early democracies and the possibility that there were other collective societies in ancient Mesoamerica at Science. Jeva Lange

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Archaeologists discover an ancient democracy in the Americas - The Week Magazine