Four things Republicans used to believe Rex Nutting - MarketWatch

Interesting article. Republicans used to be more open to taxation, a strong presidency, environmental regulation, and universal healthcare. 

Too bad the party has veered towards big business.

“Media Matters analyzed television news guests who discussed the Environmental Protection Agency’s role in regulating greenhouse gas emissions from December 2009 through April 2011. Driven largely by Fox News Channel and Fox Business Network, results show that in 76 percent of those appearances, the guest was opposed to EPA regulations while 18 percent were in favor. Of the appearances by elected officials, 86 percent were Republican. Only one guest in 17 months of coverage across nine news outlets was a climate scientist — industry-funded Patrick Michaels.” This isn’t fair or balanced, but what’s more surprising is the way in which Fox dominates environmental discussion as other news channels are rather silent. via Opponents Of EPA Climate Action Dominate TV News Airwaves | Media Matters via @algore
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“Media Matters analyzed television news guests who discussed the Environmental Protection Agency’s role in regulating greenhouse gas emissions from December 2009 through April 2011. Driven largely by Fox News Channel and Fox Business Network, results show that in 76 percent of those appearances, the guest was opposed to EPA regulations while 18 percent were in favor. Of the appearances by elected officials, 86 percent were Republican. Only one guest in 17 months of coverage across nine news outlets was a climate scientist — industry-funded Patrick Michaels.”

This isn’t fair or balanced, but what’s more surprising is the way in which Fox dominates environmental discussion as other news channels are rather silent.

via Opponents Of EPA Climate Action Dominate TV News Airwaves | Media Matters via @algore

The average 56-year-old couple pays about $140,000 into the Medicare system over a lifetime and receives about $430,000 in benefits back. The program is also completely unaffordable. Medicare has unfinanced liabilities of more than $30 trillion.

Where Wisdom Lives - NYTimes.com

This is such a great article….more nuggets:

Some Democrats simply want to do nothing as Medicare careens toward bankruptcy. Last Sunday on “Face the Nation,” for example, Nancy Pelosi said, “I could never support any arrangement that reduced benefits for Medicare.”

 Democrats generally seek to concentrate decision-making and cost-control power in the hands of centralized experts.

Republicans at their best are skeptical about top-down decision-making. They are skeptical that centralized experts can accurately predict costs. In 1967, the House Ways and Means Committee projected that Medicare would cost $12 billion by 1990. It actually cost $110 billion. 

It’s sad that medicare is such a massive problem and yet politicians are not forthright about the size and scope of the problem.

when you have over 90 percent of the world’s scientists who have studied this stating that climate change is occurring and that humans play a contributing role, it’s time to defer to the experts

Chris Christie, a lauded Republican governor.

So if a respected republican can say this….it’s really time we do more about climate change….

As Physicians’ Jobs Change, So Do Their Politics

Doctors were once overwhelmingly male and usually owned their own practices. They generally favored lower taxes and regularly fought lawyers to restrict patient lawsuits. Ronald Reagan came to national political prominence in part by railing against “socialized medicine” on doctors’ behalf. But doctors are changing. They are abandoning their own practices and taking salaried jobs in hospitals,

 the American Medical Association supported President Obama’s legislation last year because the new law would provide health insurance to the vast majority of the nation’s uninsured, improve competition and choice in insurance, and promote prevention and wellness, the group said.

Because so many doctors are no longer in business for themselves, many of the issues that were once priorities for doctors’ groups, like insurance reimbursement, have been displaced by public health and safety concerns, including mandatory seat belt use and chemicals in baby products.

Even the issue of liability, while still important to the A.M.A. and many of its state affiliates, is losing some of its unifying power because malpractice insurance is generally provided when doctors join hospital staffs.

Great article :) Now that doctors worry less about business, they focus more on the patient experience.

Open Primaries Could Stem GOP Slide

So this is an interesting thesis. In California, Republican primaries forced Republicans to move right, alienating them from the rest of voters. With an “open primary” republican and democratic candidates compete against each other and the best candidates advance regardless of party. Cool :)

 To win their respective Republican primaries, gubernatorial candidate Meg Whitman and Senate candidate Carly Fiorina tacked to the right on abortion, health care, taxes and immigration. …  Having moved to the right to win over conservatives, Whitman and Fiorina found they couldn’t get back to the white stripe in the middle of the road. 

If the open primary idea spreads, it could help put a brake on the GOP’s rightward lurch outside California as well. Many Congressional Republicans fear that if they vote to raise the debt limit, they will earn themselves a primary challenge from the right.

Republican Budget - misguided on science spending - ‘like saying I want to save money on your car, we’re not going to change the oil’

Gingrich said that Ryan’s intention to reduce science funding was “essentially like saying I want to save money on your car, we’re not going to change the oil. And for about a year I can get away with it. And then the engine will freeze up and we’ll have to replace your engine. But if I have a CBO that scores oil but doesn’t score engines, I can annually replace the engine for free, because it won’t count as a budget cost.”

Gingrich cited estimates that federal spending alone to treat Alzheimer’s would be $20 trillion between now and 2050, or one and a half times the current federal debt. “Now you would think that a serious country with serious leaders would look at a $20 trillion cost center, which by the way implies an enormous amount of human pain,” Gingrich said, “and yet, there is no serious conversation.”

To support his position of increased investment in science, Gingrich cited the approximate $10 billion expense of AIDS research saving $1.4 trillion in government expense.

The argument above is persuasive and concise. If we’re going to spend 20 trillion treating Alzheimers we might as well spend 10 or 20 billion funding research that leads to a cure - and perhaps a lot more than that.

This makes me happy. One thing I really love about Obama is that he’s pro-science. Unfortunately Obama rarely has the guts to stand up for science like this. Obama, you can do better. As for Gingrich I often disagree with him, but I’m happy that two prominent politicians who often oppose each other see the light on this. It’s kind of important.