Rain and More Rain

A terrific and scary weather front moved thru central Alabama last night.  It rained  HARD.  We have a drip in our living room.  The rain has stopped and we'll have somebody out to repair.  I've never seen such flooding around Pelham.  What a mess!

The Week in Review

Arianna Huffington




Sunday RoundupThis week reminded us once again of the costs of accepting lowered expectations as the new normal. On Wednesday, a 5-4 Supreme Court decision struck down overall limits on campaign donations, further ceding our political system to the highest bidder in the guise of "free speech." On the same day, Ft. Hood, Texas suffered its second mass shooting in five years, as a married father of four, in a fit of anger, killed four people, including himself, and wounded 16 others. Senator Harry Reid introduced a background checks bill the next day, but it will likely suffer the same fate as the one that failed last year even with the support of 90 percent of Americans. The week ended with yet another middling jobs report, with just 192,000 added in March. All three of these things should spark urgent calls for reform and change, because accepting them as the new normal only guarantees more of the same.

Social Media

I don't care for social media. It's for the young and I don't understand it. I'll stick to Facebook and Twitter.

Doo-Rail

April 2


.Our cat Doo-Rail just had a complete $288 physical. We spend more on this cat medically than we do ourselves. For a 16yr. old diabetic he is a medical marvel. To know him is to love him.



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Marian Quinn, Monya Havekost, Vicki Holt Adams and 15 others like this..View 1 more comment..Moyna O'Riley Hudson @Diane ~ Yes, Doo-Rail gets 2 insulin shots/day - one in the morning & one in the evening. Plus he has special food to eat....April 2 at 5:58pm · Edited · Like

..Diane Bystrom That all sounds very familiar. It's amazing how well they can do when you get the correct insulin dosage going.April 2 at 6:13pm · Like · 1

..Alice Mintz Hill Looking good, Doo-Rail!April 2 at 7:34pm · Like

..Gwen Kirk It's only money Fred...and you know he is worth every penny!April 2 at 9:43pm · Like

The Truth About the Ryan Budget Proposal

Morning Plum: In GOP, 47 percenter-ism is alive and well

By Greg Sargent April 4 at 9:18 am
A new report to be released in coming days by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities finds that an astonishing 69 percent of the budget cuts in Paul Ryan’s new fiscal blueprint would hit programs designed to ”serve people of limited means.”



CBPP calculates that Ryan’s new budget would level $3.3 trillion in cuts to such programs over 10 years — even as Republicans have been working to recast the party as concerned about poverty.



Ryan’s plan, which purports to balance the budget in 10 years, has no chance of going anywhere. But it matters as a statement of continuing GOP priorities, as a blueprint for the GOP’s vision for the economy and of government’s role — or lack of one — in combatting poverty and inequality and boosting economic mobility. It will, and should, figure in the midterm elections as a point of contrast with the Democratic agenda — raising the minimum wage, pay equity, early childhood education, infrastructure spending to create jobs, unemployment insurance, and of course the continued implementation of Obamacare, including the Medicaid expansion wherever it is moving forward.



The CBPP, which is liberal-leaning, previewed the new report in a blog post. The report itself will spell out the methodology. But the short version is that CBPP assumes that cuts the Ryan plan makes to particular budget categories — but that aren’t distributed among specific programs — would be imposed equally across all programs in any given category, including those not designed to help low-income Americans.



Using this method, CBPP calculates that the Ryan budget would cut $2.7 trillion from Medicaid and subsidies to help people buy private insurance, leaving 40 million people uninsured by 2024. It would cut food stamps by $137 billion over 10 years; Pell Grants by up to $125 billion; $385 billion from mandatory programs helping poor and moderate income Americans such as SSI; and so on.



The overall 69 percent figure is comparable to CBPP’s calculation that Ryan’s 2013 budget would get 66 percent of its cuts from programs for people with low or moderate incomes, and its calculation that Ryan’s 2012 budget would get 62 percent of its cuts for such programs. And so deep and harmful cuts to the safety net remain every bit as central to the GOP’s chief economic blueprint, despite the rising volume of GOP rhetoric about crafting a poverty agenda. No problem there, however: Ryan explicitly sells this budget as a means to expand opportunity, and claims its deep cuts to the safety net would “empower” those benefiting from it.



********************************************************



Update: I’m told that it’s not accurate to characterize the percentage of cuts as rising from previous budgets, because of differing baselines, though they are comparable, so I’ve edited the above to correct. The broader point — that 47 percenter-ism has as much of a hold over the GOP as ever, despite promises of a poverty agenda — obviously stands.




A new report to be released in coming days by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities finds that an astonishing 69 percent of the budget cuts in Paul Ryan’s new fiscal blueprint would hit programs designed to ”serve people of limited means.”



CBPP calculates that Ryan’s new budget would level $3.3 trillion in cuts to such programs over 10 years — even as Republicans have been working to recast the party as concerned about poverty.



Ryan’s plan, which purports to balance the budget in 10 years, has no chance of going anywhere. But it matters as a statement of continuing GOP priorities, as a blueprint for the GOP’s vision for the economy and of government’s role — or lack of one — in combatting poverty and inequality and boosting economic mobility. It will, and should, figure in the midterm elections as a point of contrast with the Democratic agenda — raising the minimum wage, pay equity, early childhood education, infrastructure spending to create jobs, unemployment insurance, and of course the continued implementation of Obamacare, including the Medicaid expansion wherever it is moving forward.



The CBPP, which is liberal-leaning, previewed the new report in a blog post. The report itself will spell out the methodology. But the short version is that CBPP assumes that cuts the Ryan plan makes to particular budget categories — but that aren’t distributed among specific programs — would be imposed equally across all programs in any given category, including those not designed to help low-income Americans.



Using this method, CBPP calculates that the Ryan budget would cut $2.7 trillion from Medicaid and subsidies to help people buy private insurance, leaving 40 million people uninsured by 2024. It would cut food stamps by $137 billion over 10 years; Pell Grants by up to $125 billion; $385 billion from mandatory programs helping poor and moderate income Americans such as SSI; and so on.



The overall 69 percent figure is comparable to CBPP’s calculation that Ryan’s 2013 budget would get 66 percent of its cuts from programs for people with low or moderate incomes, and its calculation that Ryan’s 2012 budget would get 62 percent of its cuts for such programs. And so deep and harmful cuts to the safety net remain every bit as central to the GOP’s chief economic blueprint, despite the rising volume of GOP rhetoric about crafting a poverty agenda. No problem there, however: Ryan explicitly sells this budget as a means to expand opportunity, and claims its deep cuts to the safety net would “empower” those benefiting from it.



********************************************************



Update: I’m told that it’s not accurate to characterize the percentage of cuts as rising from previous budgets, because of differing baselines, though they are comparable, so I’ve edited the above to correct. The broader point — that 47 percenter-ism has as much of a hold over the GOP as ever, despite promises of a poverty agenda — obviously stands.

Obamacare's Victory

Friday, Apr 4, 2014 09:20 AM CDT

Paul Krugman: It’s time to “celebrate” Obamacare and “ridicule right-wingers”
After years of waiting and a hellacious autumn of website glitches and system failure, Paul Krugman writes in his latest column for the New York Times that it’s time for Obamacare supporters to celebrate — and time for reform’s opponents to admit defeat.



“The Affordable Care Act, a k a Obamacare, has made a stunning comeback from its shambolic start,” Krugman writes. “As the March 31 deadline for 2014 coverage approached, there was a surge in applications at the ‘exchanges’ — the special insurance marketplaces the law set up. And the original target of seven million signups, widely dismissed as unattainable, has been surpassed.”



“This is a very big deal indeed,” he adds.



Krugman’s argument is pretty straightforward: Obamacare was always going to be overly complicated and a bit messy, largely due to the fact that it was a complex political solution to what, in policy terms, is a rather simple problem.



“Remember, giving everyone health insurance doesn’t have to be hard; you can just do it with a government-run program,” Krugman writes. “But it wasn’t politically possible, for a couple reasons,” mainly the power of the health insurance industry as well as the fact that most people like their employer-provided insurance.



Because of Obamacare’s “Rube Goldberg” nature (as Krugman puts it), it was always possible that its technical hiccups would be seized upon by its opponents as proof of its fundamental unworkability. “And last fall,” Krugman writes, “that nightmare seemed to be coming true.”



Yet now Obamacare’s surpassed its 7 million sign-up goal and, as far as Krugman sees it, happy days are more or less here — finally. “[T]he nightmare is over,” Krugman declares, “This thing is going to work.”



So what’s next? Krugman advises Obamacare fans enjoy this long-elusive moment vindication — and needle a few Obamacare-doubting conservatives while they’re at it, too:


And, yes, it’s also a big political victory for Democrats. They can point to a system that is already providing vital aid to millions of Americans, and Republicans — who were planning to run against a debacle — have nothing to offer in response. And I mean nothing. So far, not one of the supposed Obamacare horror stories featured in attack ads has stood up to scrutiny.



So my advice to reform supporters is, go ahead and celebrate. Oh, and feel free to ridicule right-wingers who confidently predicted doom.



Clearly, there’s a lot of work ahead, and we can count on the news media to play up every hitch and glitch as if it were an existential disaster. But Rube Goldberg has survived; health reform has won.

The Justice Speaks of His Reading Habits

Sunday Book Review


John Paul Stevens: By the Book

APRIL 3, 2014

The former Supreme Court justice and author of “Five Chiefs: A Supreme Court Memoir” and, most recently, “Six Amendments: How and Why We Should Change the Constitution,” feels indebted to Norman Maclean, who taught him poetry at the University of Chicago.

What books are currently on your night stand?

“The Bully Pulpit: Theodore Roosevelt, William Howard Taft, and the Golden Age of Journalism,” by Doris Kearns Goodwin.

Who is your favorite novelist of all time? And your favorite novelist writing today?

Leo Tolstoy for all time; Edward Rutherfurd or Ruth Rendell for living authors.

What books on the law would you most recommend to the general reader? And to a student of law?

Ken Manaster’s “The American Legal System and Civic Engagement” to the general reader; Leon Green’s “Judge and Jury” for law students.

Who are the best people writing about law today?

Probably Stephen Breyer and Richard Posner.

What are your literary guilty pleasures? Do you have a favorite genre?

MAY 3, 2012 Writings about the authorship of the plays attributed to William Shakespeare.

Which books might we be surprised to find on your bookshelves?

The King James edition of the Bible, and mysteries by Georges Simenon.

What was the last book to make you laugh?

Dave Barry’s report on last year’s news events.

The last book that made you cry?

I don’t remember.

The last book that made you furious?

“Devil in the Grove: Thurgood Marshall, the Groveland Boys, and the Dawn of a New America,” by Gilbert King.

What kind of reader were you as a child? And what were your favorite books?

Both of my parents loved books and encouraged my brothers and me to read a great deal. Among my favorites were: “Winnie-the-Pooh”; Louisa May Alcott’s “Little Men” and “Little Women”; Stevenson’s “Treasure Island”; Count Felix von Luckner’s account of his raids on Allied shipping during the First World War; and dozens of books about Tom Swift.

What were the most influential books you read as a student?

Aristotle’s “Poetics.”

Whom do you consider your literary heroes?

The author of the plays attributed to William Shakespeare; I am also a great fan of A. Conan Doyle.

Which novels have had the most impact on you as a writer? Is there a particular book that made you want to write?

I don’t know what novels may have motivated any of my writing, but the teacher to whom I am most indebted was Norman Maclean, who taught the course in poetry at the University of Chicago.

If you could require the president to read one book, what would it be?

“Six Amendments.”

You’re hosting a literary dinner party. Which three writers are invited?

Samuel Clemens, Charles Dickens and the author of the Shakespeare canon. If they decline, I would invite Victor Hugo, Guy de Maupassant and Alphonse Daudet.

What kinds of books do you like to read before you go to bed?

History.

And what kinds of books do you read when you travel?

Supreme Court opinions.

What’s the worst book you’ve ever read?

I didn’t finish it and don’t remember it.

What books are you embarrassed not to have read yet?

“Remembrance of Things Past,” by Marcel Proust.

What do you plan to read next?

Reviews of “Six Amendments.”