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To the editor: Grover Norquist and Patrick M. Gleason seem to suffer from the delusion that taxes are evil both in form and function. (Angry taxpayers, leave Mitch McConnell alone and turn your attention to California's Republicans, Opinion, Aug. 17.)

They decry the fact that we have a rational government here in California (unlike in Kansas and Oklahoma), which understands that some revenue raising is needed to keep us a first-class state. Thus, raising the gas tax a few cents per gallon to maintain roads, bridges and related infrastructure is, to these people, an unacceptably onerous burden.

As the adage goes, when looking for the motivation, follow the money. I sense a whiff of the extraction businesses behind these men and their sycophants.

Jan Rainbird, Irvine

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To the editor: Norquist and Gleason attack our state GOP legislators who courageously supported extending Californias cap-and-trade program. I am proud of Assembly Republican leader Chad Mayes, who understands that climate change is real and must be addressed.

By raising the cost of fossil fuels, cap-and-trade and the gas tax encourage the transition to clean energy. To reduce our fossil fuel use and to slow global warming, we need to pass a carbon fee and dividend nationally, which would return all revenue to American families; until that happens, California must lead the way.

Norquist calls cap and trade an economically disastrous policy, but Californias economy has surged under its system. The effects of ignoring global warming will make the costs of cap and trade seem like chump change, as coastal regions and major cities will have to fight rising seas and extreme weather.

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If you want to talk about economically disastrous policies, President Trumps denial of global warming and withdrawal from the Paris accord are excellent examples.

Anita Rivero, Downey

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To the editor: There appears to be a growing disconnect between the ideological principles of conservatives and liberals, and how the two political parties address these values.

On the conservative side, Norquist and Gleason depict all taxation as bad. However, a fiscal conservative might respond that taxation can be worthwhile, depending on the purpose, and that Californias cap-and-trade program provides useful economic incentives to reduce pollution.

On the liberal side, identity groups are becoming increasingly assertive in advance of overall cultural acceptance. However, a social liberal might question where the trend leads; for instance, might people one day be forced to accept anyones behavior in public?

Political behavior by the two parties is increasingly responsive to the passionate fringes, which results in divisiveness at the expense of our common goals: freedom, justice, peace, prosperity and a clean world.

Ed Salisbury, Santa Monica

Follow the Opinion section on Twitter @latimesopinion and Facebook

See the article here:
California Republicans face reality on climate change and the ire of their party - Los Angeles Times

Speaker Paul Ryan continued building a campaign war chest for House Republicans ahead a possibly treacherous midterm election, transferring another $1.5 million to the National Republican Congressional Committee in July.

The transfer brought the total the Wisconsin Republican has raised for the NRCC to more than $27 million through July 31, and represented an increase of nearly $500,000 over what he gave to the House GOP campaign arm in July of last year.

Of the $60 million the NRCC raised through June 30, Ryan was responsible for more than half $33 million (the committee ended the first six months of the year with $33.7 million in the bank). NRCC figures weren't available for July.

"Paul Ryan is driven by a commitment to help House Republicans succeed on both the policy and political fronts," said Zack Roday, a spokesman for the speaker's political operation.

The speaker's political team provided the Washington Examiner with his most up-to-date fundraising totals late last week, as Ryan prepared for Monday's prime time town hall meeting, to be cablecast live by CNN from his Southeastern Wisconsin House district.

Ryan could face tough questions.

Democrats are sure to take issue with his legislative agenda and embrace of President Trump. Republican voters could come at Ryan from the opposition direction, complaining about the slow pace of legislative action and his occasional arguments with the president.

Ryan, the GOP's 2012 vice presidential nominee, has been a fundraising powerhouse for his members. They might need the money. President Trump's job approval ratings are sitting just below 40 percent and the Republicans, who hold a 24-seat majority, are defending 23 seats he lost to Democrat Hillary Clinton in 2016.

Ryan has made $23.3 million in direct transfers to the NRCC, with another $3.9 million flowing in from mail and email fundraising appeals he has signed.

The speaker also written checks worth more than $1.5 million from his leadership PAC, Prosperity Action PAC, to the campaign accounts of 166 House Republicans, and headlined fundraising events for 32 members that raised a combined $3.9 million.

Ryan also has been careful to tend to the home front.

The speaker was elected in 1998 to represent a First Congressional District that has evolved into Republican territory but started as a battleground, voting Democratic for president as recently as 2008.

That competitiveness trained Ryan to stay close to his constituents, even as he cultivated a national profile and rose through the leadership ranks. That hasn't changed since Ryan became speaker, and could explain why he easily defeated a primary challenger in 2016 despite the anti-establishment fervor gripping the GOP.

He won re-election in November with 65 percent of the vote.

Ryan is a fixture at local party gatherings, ribbon-cuttings, and ground-breakings. He tours local businesses, walks in parades, and is active around the community with his family most weekends, which he still spends in Janesville, Wis.

Ryan's personal congressional campaign account reported more than $10.4 million in cash on hand to the Federal Election Commission to close the second quarter, a sum that's likely to grow ahead of 2018.

Some of it could end up at the Wisconsin Republican Party the speaker donated more than $1 million to the state GOP in 2016, money that helped entire party ticket. Ryan's congressional campaign and leadership PAC have already donated to members of the Wisconsin GOP House delegation.

"In Wisconsin, Speaker Ryan is known simply as Paul a family guy who cares about his community and works hard to solve big problems," Roday said.

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Paul Ryan gives huge fundraising boost to House Republicans - Washington Examiner

The supposed implosion of the Affordable Care Acts private insurance markets looks more and more like a manageable, geographically limited problem one that policymakers could fix pretty easily, if only some of them werent trying so hard to undermine the program.

The latest development comes out of Nevada, where until last week 14 counties had no options lined up for the states insurance exchange in 2018. Centene, which already offers policies in parts of Nevada, announced on Tuesday that it would expand next year to offer policies statewide which means roughly 8,000 exchange customers in those 14 counties will have a way to buy the Affordable Care Acts regulated, subsidized policies.

Those thousands of people would have been stuck looking for some other source of insurance had their counties remained bare, with no carriers on the exchange.And because people buying policies through the exchanges dont typically have access to employer-sponsored plans or qualify for government programs, most of those people would have ended up with no coverage at all.

The problem of bare counties has gotten a lot of attention in the last few months. Many insurers have scaled back their presence in the new Obamacare markets, citing their inability to make a profit because they cant attract a stable mix of healthy and sick customers. Republicans have repeatedly said this exodus is a sign of the programs collapse, and a reason to repeal the health care law.

House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) once called repeal an act of mercy because, he said, the programs new markets would fall apart without intervention.

But even as most of the big, commercial carriers like Aetna and Cigna have beat a hasty retreat from Obamacare, carriers like Centene have filled in the gaps. At this point, only two countiesnationwide have no carriers lined up for next year. One is in Ohio, the other in Wisconsin. Together they account for roughly 400 customers, and its not too late for those counties to get insurers,too.

That doesnt mean everything is hunky-dory. Centenesbusiness model relies on narrow physician networks to keep premiums down, which isnt what all consumers would prefer. And although the number of truly bare counties has now shrunk to nearly zero, there are still many that only have one insurer. Roughly 40 percent of all counties will have just one exchange insurer in 2018, according to the latest figures from the Department of Health and Human Services.

But even that number is a little misleading, because those counties are disproportionately rural.In other words, not that many people live in them.

This isnt surprising. Rural counties are inherently difficult for insurers to manage, because the low numbers of customers make it difficult to get that ideal mix of healthy and sick enrollees and because the relative paucity of doctors, hospitals and clinics makes it impossible for insurers to play providers off of one another to get lower prices. This was true before the Affordable Care Act was passed.

To put all of this in perspective to show just how many people will really feel the effects of dwindling insurance options, and which parts of the country they call home Harold Pollack, a social scientist at the University of Chicago, and Todd Schuble, a computational scientist there, drew up two maps. They originally posted them at healthinsurance.org and have since adapted them for HuffPost.

One map shows counties with standard geographic borders. The area covered by counties with just one insurer is substantial.

Harold Pollack and Todd Schuble

The second map adjusts county size for population. In it, the portion of the country with just one exchange carrier is smaller, because those rural counties shrink quite a bit.

Harold Pollack and Todd Schuble

One pattern evident in both the original and the population-adjusted maps is where these counties with just one insurer tend to be: in the South and some parts of the interior West.

Partly thats a function of population distribution. Those are the parts of the country with the most rural territory. But partly thats a function of politics.Those are also the parts of the country where conservative Republicans, the ones most opposed to the Affordable Care Act, hold the greatest political sway.

And that almost certainly makes a big difference. The law has tended to work best in places like California and Michigan states where officials have promoted the program and acted swiftly to address problems as they have come up.

ACA marketplaces work well in densely populated liberal areas, Pollack said in his healthinsurance.org article. The marketplaces require more care and feeding to really succeed in Wyoming, Iowa, or Oklahoma. Competition among insurers and providers is pretty thin in these locales.

Nevada is a prime example of this. The exchange has worked well in the metro areas, including Las Vegas. The 14 counties that were at risk of going bare are predominantly rural. One reason they have coverage now is that state officials including Gov.Brian Sandoval, who is a Republican but has also said hes committed to protecting peoples insurance made it their business to attract new carriers

If more state or federal officials were committed to making the law work, they could make inroads as well if not by courting insurers, then by passing new regulations and laws to shore up the laws weak spots.

Theres no shortage of ideas on the table. One possibility would be to create new reinsurance programs, which subsidize the consumers with the most serious medical problems. (Alaska and Minnesota have already done that.) Another possibility would be expansions ofMedicaid,Medicareor thefederal employee health plan, any of which could add insurance options in places that have too few.

Some of these ideas would do more that merely stabilize markets. They would make health care more affordable for the millions who still cant pay for it easily, a problem that even most Obamacare defenders concede the law did not fully solve.

To be successful,policymakers would have to commit to fixing the laws problems. But some key Republicans, including President Donald Trump, seem determined to do the opposite to repeal the law or to undermine it throughsabotage, perhaps bringing about the very kind of crisis they claim is taking place already.

The rest is here:
2 Maps Show The Big Obamacare Crisis Republicans Keep Citing Isn't Actually That Big - HuffPost

Republicans have courted racists for years. Why are they cringing now? Wichita Eagle Yes, last week's violent demonstration by white supremacists in Charlottesville, Virginia, culminating in the death of 32-year-old Heather Heyer, made for a carnival of obscenity as sickening as it was riveting. But the thing is, it did not spring from ... and more »

Excerpt from:
Republicans have courted racists for years. Why are they cringing now? - Wichita Eagle

If Democrats want to assure Donald Trump is a one-term president theres a simple solution register Republican, as appalling as they might sound to lifelong progressives.

Theres no telling if Trump will even make it to the 2020 election. Tony Schwartz the ghostwriter of Trumps Art of the Deal predicts the president will resign by the end of this year. And theres always the possibility of impeachment depending on the outcome of Robert Muellers investigation.

But assuming that Trump is still in office and continuing his assault on American decency, he could be stopped even before the 2020 general election.

No sitting president has received a serious challenge by his own party since Jimmy Carter held off Ted Kennedy in 1980. Four years earlier, incumbent Gerald Ford nearly lost to Ronald Reagan in the primaries.

While Ford and Carter survived inter-party war, they entered the general elections weakened. Both lost re-election and since then the prevailing notion is you dont challenge a sitting president in a primary.

But if Trump runs again he will almost certainly receive Republican challengers. John Kasich, a leading contender, said on Sunday that Republicans are all rooting for Trump to get it together. But Kasich is no fool. He knows that will not happen. Trump is his own worst enemy and hes only going to continue damaging the American psyche. Expect several mainstream Republicans to enter the race. The primaries might seem like a lifetime away but debates will begin two years from now.

Perhaps Republican voters will come to their senses and choose a candidate who at least seems mentally capable of leading the country. Democrats could ensure that happens if enough of them vote in the Republican primary. In closed or semi-closed primary states like Iowa, New Hampshire, Florida and Pennsylvania that means changing their party registration from Democrat to Republican after the 2018 midterm elections.

If enough Democrats made the one-time switch for the primary and they were unified behind the least offensive Republican candidate they could pack enough punch to knock Trump out before the general election. While an inspiring Democrat would be a strong favorite against Trump anyway, Democrats shouldnt assume that Trump is unelectable if he makes it to the general election.

There are a few caveats to this plan. A slew of Democrats from various wings of the party will likely run in their own primaries. So voters who switch to Republican will have no say in the Democratic nominee. Thats a personal decision many Democrats would have to make: is the likelihood of ending Trumps campaign before he even hits the general election worth letting others choose the Democratic nominee? The Democratic Party would fight this strategy, fearful that some wouldnt bother registering back to Democrat after the election.

Theres also the strong possibility that Trump would still run as an independent if he loses the Republican nomination. But that scenario could benefit Democrats. Trump would syphon more votes away from the GOP nominee almost assuring that the Democratic nominee wins the popular vote. But if none of the three candidates were to receive at least 270 electoral votes, the House of Representatives would choose the president. That would still knock Trump out of the running. In that scenario, the next president would come down to which party controls the House after the 2018 midterms. Either way, it wouldnt be Trump.

The third caveat Democrats will have to ponder is whether their strategy could ultimately end with a non-Trump Republican president and if thats the case is it better or worse for the country?

In terms of policy, the Republicans are accomplishing nothing with Trump at the helm. They cant get on the same page and hes been an utter disaster. Its possible that from a policy perspective a Republican party man could do more damage than Trump. The flip side to that is Trump is crushing the countrys moral fiber. Hes pandering to white supremacists. For the good of the country, anything is better than Trump.

Its a lot to digest but at the end of the day Democrats can realistically control Trumps future.

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Why Democrats Could Consider Registering Republican To Stop Trump - HuffPost