Thanks orl

https://www.commondreams.org/news/house-gop-big-oil-lies

On the same day that the largest oil company in the United States reported record profits for 2022, Republicans used the first House Energy and Commerce Committee hearing of the new year to promote the further expansion of climate-wrecking fossil fuel production and attack efforts to build out renewable energy infrastructure.

The energy panel is chaired by Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-Wash.), the top recipient of oil and gas PAC money in the last election cycle and a longtime advocate of opening U.S. public lands and waters to fossil fuel drilling.

In keeping with her record, Rodgers kicked off Tuesday’s hearing by touting the House’s passage of legislation that would require the federal government to lease a certain percentage of public lands and waters for fossil fuel extraction for every non-emergency drawdown of the U.S. Strategic Petroleum Reserve.

Rodgers touted last week’s vote as “bipartisan,” but just one House Democrat—Rep. Jared Golden of Maine—joined Republicans in passing the bill, which is unlikely to become law. Climate advocates have warned that, if enacted, the measure “could lock in at least a century of oil drilling.”

“We need to be doing more to secure and unleash American energy,” Rodgers said Tuesday, attacking so-called “rush-to-green” policies and falsely blaming Europe’s energy crisis on renewables.

Rep. Jeff Duncan (R-S.C.), chair of the panel’s subcommittee on energy, climate, and grid security, toed a similar line during his opening remarks at Tuesday’s hearing, decrying “the Democrats’ ‘rush-to-green policies'” and condemning science-backed calls to phase out fossil fuels.

Duncan also praised surging oil exports, which experts say have driven up costs for U.S. consumers while padding the profits of fossil fuel giants and contributing to the rise of global carbon emissions.

Jordan Schreiber, the director of energy and environment with the progressive watchdog group Accountable.US, said in a statement Tuesday that “if today was a sign of what’s to come, future House Energy and Commerce Committee hearings will be reduced to GOP members regurgitating Big Oil’s false talking points while openly advocating for energy policies that favor wealthy executives and shareholders over their own constituents.”

The hearing began hours after ExxonMobil reported a record-shattering $56 billion in profits for the full year of 2022.

The corporation, whose scientists accurately predicted global warming decades ago as the company publicly lied about climate change, said it distributed nearly $30 billion to shareholders last year as U.S. households struggled to pay their energy bills.

Days before Exxon’s earnings release, Chevron—the second-largest oil company in the U.S. by market cap—reported $35.5 billion in 2022 profits, an all-time high for the company.

“Even on a day when three of the country’s largest oil companies posted a whopping $82.5 billion in profits for 2022, thanks to the unrelenting price gouging of American consumers, the MAGA majority can not stop themselves from doing the industry’s bidding,” said Schreiber, referring to the combined profits of Exxon, Marathon Petroleum, and Phillips 66.

During Tuesday’s hearing, Democrats on the House Energy and Commerce Committee slammed their Republican colleagues for prioritizing the interests of the ultra-profitable fossil fuel industry over U.S. consumers and the environment.

“We’ve all heard the slogans: ‘Drill baby, drill,’ ‘energy dominance,’ and now ‘energy expansion,'” said Rep. Diana DeGette (D-Colo.). “But don’t be fooled. These policies will not expand our potential for new renewable energy sources such as wind and solar, and will only increase our dependence on oil and gas.”

“They’re nothing more than a giveaway to the oil industry,” DeGette said of the House GOP’s fossil fuel-centered energy agenda.

Rep. Frank Pallone (D-N.J.), the top Democrat on the committee, pushed back on the GOP narrative that energy prices are high because the Biden administration is hindering the oil and gas industry’s ability to drill—something that climate groups have pressured the administration to do, with little success.

“Republicans have pushed this idea that somehow Big Oil wanted to pump more but couldn’t,” said Pallone. “In reality, they wanted to keep the price artificially high.”

https://arstechnica.com/science/2023/01/us-still-has-the-worst-most-expensive-health-care-of-any-high-income-country/

Americans spend an exorbitant amount of money on health care and have for years. As a country, the US spends more on health care than any other high-income country in the world—on the basis of both per-person costs and a share of gross domestic product. Yet, you wouldn’t know it from looking at major health metrics in years past; the US has relatively abysmal health. And, if anything, the COVID-19 pandemic only exacerbated the US health care system’s failures relative to its peers, according to a new analysis by the Commonwealth Fund.

Compared with other high-income peers, the US has the shortest life expectancy at birth, the highest rate of avoidable deaths, the highest rate of newborn deaths, the highest rate of maternal deaths, the highest rate of adults with multiple chronic conditions, and the highest rate of obesity, the new analysis found.

Americans are living shorter, less healthy lives because our health system is not working as well as it could be,” Munira Gunja, lead author of the analysis and a senior researcher for The Commonwealth Fund’s International Program in Health Policy and Practice Innovation, said in a press statement. “To catch up with other high-income countries, the administration and Congress would have to expand access to health care, act aggressively to control costs, and invest in health equity and social services we know can lead to a healthier population.”

Dying young

Overall, the analysis paints a grim picture of how much catching up the US has to do. In terms of life expectancy, the US has trailed its peers for years but took a nosedive during the pandemic, while other countries fared better. In 2020, the average life expectancy at birth in the US was 77 years, three years lower than the average for high-income countries. The next lowest life expectancy among high-income countries was from the UK, which had a 2020 life expectancy at birth of 80.4 years.

Provisional data for 2021 suggests US life expectancy fell nearly a full year further, from 77.0 years to 76.1 years. Relatedly, the US had the highest rate of deaths from COVID-19 in 2020 compared with its high-income peers and was among the lowest of its peers in rates of COVID-19 vaccination.

In a particularly shameful set of statistics, the US continues to have the highest infant and maternal mortality rates of any other high-income country. In 2020, there were 5.4 infant deaths per 1,000 live births in the US, while the average among high-income countries was 4.1 infant deaths. In Norway, there were 1.6 deaths per 1,000 live births. The health care system is also failing mothers. In 2020, there were 24 maternal deaths per 100,000 live births, about 2.5 times higher than the average for high-income countries. The country with the next highest maternal mortality rate was New Zealand with 13.6 per 100,000 live births.

With many US states now rapidly turning back the clock on reproductive rights and maternity care, the US’s appallingly high rates of infant and maternal deaths are expected to worsen.

Beyond pregnancy, Americans are dying from other conditions that are treatable or preventable at a rate far higher than those seen in all other high-income countries. In 2020, 336 US deaths per 100,000 people were avoidable, while the average among high-income countries was just 225 deaths per 100,000. The rate of avoidable deaths has been rising in the US since 2015, the analysis notes.

Sicker

That tracks with the finding that Americans are more likely than their high-income-country peers to have multiple chronic conditions. In 2020, 30.4 percent of US adults said that they had previously been diagnosed with two or more chronic conditions in their life. Among other high-income countries, no more than a quarter of adults reported having two or more chronic conditions. America’s high obesity rate may play into that discrepancy. The US has a higher obesity rate than any other high-income country. In fact, it’s nearly two times higher than the average of its peers.

While Americans are dying young from avoidable conditions, they’re also spending an exorbitant amount on health care. The US spent 17.8 percent of its GDP on health care in 2020, nearly twice as much as the average of 9.6 percent among high-income countries. On a per-person basis, it outspent its peers, paying nearly $12,000 per person via government insurance programs, private insurance coverage, and out-of-pocket costs. The country that came the closest to US spending was Germany, with a little over $7,000 per-person spending.

The data hints that these high prices are discouraging Americans from getting the care they need, potentially feeding into the country’s high rates of chronic conditions and avoidable deaths. In the analysis, the US had among the lowest rate of doctor visits, with just four per year. The average was 5.7. The US also has one of the lowest rates of practicing physicians per 1,000 people—2.6 per 1,000, while the average is 3.7.

The US was the only high-income country in the analysis that does not guarantee health coverage. People in most other high-income countries have guaranteed health coverage with the option of buying supplemental private coverage.

https://www.politico.com/omar-now-a-dem-unifier-faces-down-her-gop-critics

Ilhan Omar, at times a lightning rod for House Democrats, is now a unifying force in her party’s quest to frustrate the GOP at every turn.

The member of the so-called progressive “squad” knew even before starting her third term in Congress that she’d face Republicans’ long-promised threat to remove her from the Foreign Affairs Committee. And the Minnesota lawmaker is seemingly daring them to try.

On Tuesday, in a subtle stiff-arm of a GOP eviction attempt that her party has blamed on politically motivated revenge, her office announced the formation of a “U.S.-Africa Policy Working Group” aimed at fostering dialogue on Africa-related policy. The move carried a fatalistic air, given that the Somali immigrant would become the top Democrat on the Foreign Affairs subpanel overseeing Africa — if the GOP let her stay.

With what she sees as some of her most important work on the Hill under threat, Omar’s fellow Democrats are rallying around her and looking past the previous controversies, including members who once criticized her for remarks on Israel and U.S. foreign policy. No longer a fresh-faced new member, she’s formed alliances with powerful players and groups who are ready to jump to her defense. Asked about her Democratic support in a Tuesday interview with POLITICO, Omar responded with the advice she said her father used to give: “It’s hard to hate up close.”

It’s clear that Omar sees the Foreign Affairs panel as more than just a committee position. The assignment is personal, given her background as a Black Muslim woman whose family had fled the Somali Civil War. After bearing firsthand witness to the impact of the Cold War on U.S. policy in Africa, she said, she even campaigned on wanting to be on the panel — making her one of the few lawmakers to do so besides a former chair, Eliot Engel.

After coming to the U.S. admiring the country’s ideals, Omar said, her goal was to “make sure those values and ideals are actually being lived out in the policies that we put forth and the ways in which we carry out those policies, and that they don’t just remain a myth.”

And the fight to keep her spot has become personal, too. Controversy over her past comments has aimed a deluge of invectives, abuse and even death threats at the high-profile progressive. Just before the interview Tuesday, her office received a phone call unpleasant enough that a staffer politely ended the call within seconds of picking up.

“This isn’t about reprimand. This isn’t about accountability, because I’ve held myself accountable,” she said.

Fellow “squad” member Rep. Cori Bush (D-Mo.) attributed the rush to boot Omar to fellow lawmakers making snap judgments based on sound bites or tweets before getting to know her personally, describing an unwillingness to “get the context to understand the person, meet the person and know the person.”

“But I think that since she’s been here, people have been able to see who she is, and to understand her position better,” Bush said.

If Republicans do prevail in Wednesday’s vote to remove Omar from her Foreign Affairs perch, she said she worries about it further dividing the panel — injecting more partisan politics into an area that typically requires more cross-party unity on both policy and bipartisan trips abroad.

Her Republican counterpart on the Africa subpanel, Rep. Chris Smith (R-N.J.) has been publicly noncommittal on how he’ll vote on the removal resolution, and she observed that when Democrats eventually retake the House, “I will have the gavel, and they will end up being my ranking, and that changes the dynamic and the relationship.”

Meanwhile, Democrats have been trying to lobby their Republican colleagues to support Omar. New York Rep. Gregory Meeks (D-N.Y.), the party’s top member on the Foreign Affairs panel, said some Republicans had privately indicated to him they wished the whole issue would just “go away” because they didn’t actually want to vote to remove her, though the New Yorker declined to identify whom.

Omar too said she had been talking with “a few” Republicans about her panel assignment, but she also declined to name the members.

And she’s not alone in her fight, drawing from strong wells of support both within the Congressional Black Caucus and among previously critical Democrats. She’s been spotted having intense, one-on-one conversations during votes this week with some of Democrats’ strongest Israel proponents, like Rep. Josh Gottheimer (D-N.J.), and had a long hallway conversation with Rep. Steny Hoyer (D-Md.), who’s long helped lead an annual tour to Israel.

“I think we’re rallying around her like we would any member,” said Rep. Joyce Beatty (D-Ohio), who as Black Caucus chair last Congress made a point of building bridges with the group’s more liberal members like Omar.

Then there’s Rep. Brad Schneider (D-Ill.), who’d condemned Omar’s rhetoric in previous rounds of controversy in what he said “now seems like forever ago.” But in this case, he added, “to politicize the committee assignments is something I think either side shouldn’t be doing. It should be based on current actions and current deeds.”

Republicans, on the other hand, are projecting confidence they’ll be able to round up the votes in the end. And there are some positive signs for GOP leaders — Rep. Victoria Spartz (R-Ind.), who’d previously opposed removing Omar from Foreign Affairs, signaled on Tuesday she was open to changing her mind. The House Rules Committee took up a resolution to remove Omar from the panel Tuesday evening, with a vote expected on Wednesday.

The GOP is citing Omar’s previous comments that appeared to lean into antisemitic tropes as the reason it’s moving to force her off the Foreign Affairs Committee. Certain tweets not long after she came to Congress had even enraged some of her fellow Democrats, though she deleted the posts and has apologized.

She also drew a conservative backlash for comments in 2019 about the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, which she said Republican critics have taken out of context. She also quickly clarified and apologized two years later for comments on war crimes that appeared to compare the U.S. and Israel to Hamas and the Taliban.

And she’s plainly frustrated that Republicans have forcibly compared her with Reps. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) and Paul Gosar (R-Ariz.), two conservatives whom Democrats removed from committees last Congress with some GOP support in response to incendiary rhetoric aimed at fellow lawmakers. She’s aggressively made the case that her situation is entirely different.

“I would love for this to be an actual debate. But it’s a smear, it is an attack, and to me in many ways it feels like it’s McCarthyism that’s being carried out by the new McCarthy,” she said.

This should permanently and forever discredit the Advanced Placement course program https://t.co/o20O7y8p2P

— Erik Loomis (@ErikLoomis) February 1, 2023

Under Trump, Republicans gave tax breaks to the very rich and large corporations. Now they’re saying they’re worried about the national debt and want to cut Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid. Absurd. pic.twitter.com/0H4ULS4rde

— Bernie Sanders (@SenSanders) February 1, 2023

remember when Republicans blew a gasket over lies about Dr. Seuss supposedly being banned from schools? yeah https://t.co/aJ4FvfQMrvhttps://t.co/ZwurLV2TZe

— ryan cooper (@ryanlcooper) February 1, 2023

Corrupt illegitimate Court

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/01/31/us/john-roberts-jane-sullivan-roberts.html

After Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. joined the Supreme Court, his wife, Jane Sullivan Roberts, gave up her career as a law firm partner to become a high-end legal recruiter in an effort to alleviate potential conflicts of interest. Mrs. Roberts later recalled in an interview that her husband’s job made it “awkward to be practicing law in the firm.”

Now, a former colleague of Mrs. Roberts has raised concerns that her recruiting work poses potential ethics issues for the chief justice. Seeking an inquiry, the ex-colleague has provided records to the Justice Department and Congress indicating Mrs. Roberts has been paid millions of dollars in commissions for placing lawyers at firms — some of which have business before the Supreme Court, according to a letter obtained by The New York Times.

In his letter last month, Kendal Price, a 66-year-old Boston lawyer, argued that the justices should be required to disclose more information about their spouses’ work. He did not cite specific Supreme Court decisions, but said he was worried that a financial relationship with law firms arguing before the court could affect justices’ impartiality or at least give the appearance of doing so.

“I do believe that litigants in U.S. courts, and especially the Supreme Court, deserve to know if their judges’ households are receiving six-figure payments from the law firms,” Mr. Price wrote.

As usual, Durbin is useless.

Senator Richard J. Durbin, Democrat of Illinois and chairman of the Judiciary Committee, did not address how the committee would respond to Mr. Price, but said in a statement that his letter raised “troubling issues that once again demonstrate the need” for ethics reforms to “begin the process of restoring faith in the Supreme Court.”

How to continue using the filibuster to obstruct legislation or how to deny Arizona regular citizens who never get a townhall or a meeting with their current senator.

https://t.co/ZPF8N2qsTd pic.twitter.com/RSz6RH3sEb

— Jake Sherman (@JakeSherman) February 1, 2023

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/jan/31/anthony-lowe-police-killing-amputee-huntington-park

A southern California police department is facing national backlash after footage revealed that officers fatally shot a double amputee and wheelchair user who appeared to be hobbling away on the ground before he was killed.

Anthony Lowe, 36, was killed by officers in Huntington Park, a city in southern Los Angeles county, last Thursday. Cellphone footage captured part of the incident, showing Lowe on a sidewalk next to his wheelchair appearing to try to flee as two officers approach him with weapons drawn. More police cars arrived as the officers followed Lowe, who seemed to be limping away, but the video did not capture the shooting.

Now, Lowe’s family is calling for officers to be terminated and face murder charges.

“I’m heartbroken, and filled with anger and rage,” Tatiana Jackson, his younger sister, told the Guardian on Tuesday. “I just can’t understand why they would do that to someone in a wheelchair. I want somebody to explain to me what was the reason that you had to gun down a guy who has no legs.”

Lowe was a father of two and one of eight siblings in a tight-knit family, and he had been struggling recently after he had to have both legs amputated, his family said.

The circumstances preceding the killing are unclear, and officials have faced scrutiny as their narrative has appeared to shift. The Huntington Park police department said in a statement that officers were responding to reports of a stabbing allegedly committed by someone in a wheelchair at around 3.40pm on Thursday, and that they encountered Lowe, who was in a wheelchair and who they believed was the suspect.

The department claimed that officers attempted to detain him, alleging he ignored commands and “threatened to advance or throw the knife at the officers”, although the limited witness footage did not capture this. The department further said that officers “deployed two separate Tasers in an attempt to subdue the suspect”, but when “the Tasers were ineffective”, they shot him. He was pronounced dead at the scene.

The LA sheriff’s department, which is investigating the killing, said in an initial statement that Lowe attempted to “throw the knife at the officers”, but a spokesperson later told the LA Times that Lowe “did not throw the knife ultimately, but he made the motion multiple times over his head like he was going to throw the knife”. The spokesperson also said that two officers had fired roughly 10 rounds at Lowe, who was hit in the torso. The Huntington Park department does not use body cameras.

The case comes amid national protests over police violence in the US following the fatal beating of Tyre Nichols, 29, in Memphis. In Los Angeles, there have also been demonstrations this month over a string of killings by the LA police department, including the Tasing of Keenan Anderson, the cousin of a Black Lives Matter co-founder.

Advocates and Lowe’s family said the Huntington Park case illustrated how quickly police escalate situations and resort to lethal force. The video does not show any civilians near Lowe as he tries to hobble away, and he also appears to be at a distance from the officers.

Police have said that they found a stabbing victim who was taken to the hospital, but Lowe’s family said they were skeptical of law enforcement’s story.

“He was running away from them as if he was scared for his life,” said Ebonique Simon, the mother of Anthony’s son, who said that he may have had a knife on him for protection. “This could have been handled in any other way. But they chose gunfire as the resolution to the problem. That is insane … The police are supposed to be upholding the law, and we’re supposed to trust them with our lives, but how can we, if they do something like this?”

She said it seemed as if police were trying to present him as a violent and dangerous person so there would be less outrage: “They thought this man had no family and that they could sweep this story under the rug. But I’m not going to let it go until there is justice for my son.” Their son, who is 15, has been devastated by the footage, Simon said: “How is a child going to feel about police now that you’ve gunned their father down?”

Sylvester Ani, an LA activist who has helped families of people killed by police, said the case was a reminder that officers can create danger instead of protecting people: “The way they are trained to do the job is to kill people. That is not about safety. This man was a double amputee, but they felt the need to shoot him. They didn’t do that because they had to, they did that because they didn’t care about his life. Anthony should still be alive.”

The spokesperson for the LA sheriff’s agency, which has its own track record of police violence and misconduct scandals, told the LA Times that the officers who fired at Lowe were on leave “for a few days”, would undergo a psychological evaluation and would be assigned to administrative duties until they were approved to return to fieldwork.

Cliff Smith, an organizer supporting Lowe’s family, said that statement suggested the sheriff’s agency had already exonerated the officers: “There can be no confidence in the sheriff’s department investigating any other police agency, because their own house is a mess.”

The sheriff’s department declined to comment, referring questions to the Huntington department, which did not respond to an inquiry on Tuesday.

Jackson, Lowe’s sister, who is 34, said that even though they were two years apart, they often felt like twins: “You could be having the worst day ever, but as soon as you come across him, he’d brighten your day. He was a family man who cared for all of his family and treated his friends like family.”

Jackson said her four-year-old daughter adored Lowe and didn’t understand that he was gone. Her daughter had noticed that her mother was in pain and had suggested she talk to Uncle Anthony to feel better: “She doesn’t understand why I’m crying. Anytime we’re going through something, my brother and I would call each other. And my daughter keeps saying, ‘Call Uncle Anthony.’ But he can’t fix this.”

The killing would have a ripple effect in the community, she added: “If we’re in danger, do you think these kids will call 911? They’re not going to, because they’re afraid.”

Lowe’s family said he had been living in Texas when his legs were amputated, but they did not know the specific circumstances. He had come back to California in recent months.

Simon said Lowe had been proud of their son’s success in football and had helped him stay motivated, and that she was struggling to process that he wouldn’t be there for graduation. She said Lowe had also loved to dance, and she believed he had been facing mental health challenges and depression due to the amputations. But she had hoped his life would soon start to improve.

He had recently been approved for prosthetics, she said, and had an appointment scheduled for February.

This sucks.

One more reason to support Porter (or Lee).

PELOSI endorses Schiff for Senate *if* Feinstein retires pic.twitter.com/yYB9YrdcG3

— Kyle Cheney (@kyledcheney) February 2, 2023

On a recorded call, a @UHC nurse and an insurance broker laugh while discussing a patient whose claim had just been rejected.

They agree that any appeal would be a waste of the family’s time and money:

“We’re still gonna say no.”https://t.co/fuM3lUdqlc

— ProPublica (@propublica) February 2, 2023

Rob Rogers, https://t.co/5W2bjfGrof (2022) @Rob_Rogers #GroundhogDay pic.twitter.com/Qm08sGpbvn

— Editorial & Political Cartoons (@EandPCartoons) February 2, 2023

Drugs had finally gotten a student’s severe colitis under control

But they were expensive

So United decided… they weren’t medically necessary

& then they had a long laugh

Listen to the call. Read the article by @DavidArmstrongX & @PatrickMRuckerhttps://t.co/NzM6hxZLSF pic.twitter.com/Lcx8NxUZwg

— Jesse Eisinger (@eisingerj) February 2, 2023

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/02/02/us/politics/ilhan-omar-house-committee-republicans.html

A bitterly divided House on Thursday ousted Representative Ilhan Omar, Democrat of Minnesota, from the Foreign Affairs Committee over past comments about Israel that were widely condemned as antisemitic, as Republicans moved to cater to the demands of right-wing members and mete out reprisals to their political adversaries.

The 218 to 211 vote, with one member voting “present,” settled a partisan score that has been festering since 2021, when the House, then controlled by Democrats, stripped Representatives Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia and Paul Gosar of Arizona of their committee assignments for social media posts in which they endorsed violence against Democrats.

The removal of Ms. Omar delivered on a threat that Speaker Kevin McCarthy of California made at the time to retaliate if his party took the House majority by removing Democrats whom Republicans regarded as unfit to serve on committees. Last week, he unilaterally removed Representatives Adam Schiff and Eric Swalwell, both of California, from the Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, where membership is appointed and thus not subject to a vote.

Mr. McCarthy’s decision to force the removal of Ms. Omar, a step that some of his rank-and-file resisted, in the earliest days of his new majority demonstrated his determination to ingratiate himself with the hard-right Republican base, which has made the Somali-born Ms. Omar a target for some of its most vicious attacks. It was also a bid to curry favor with pro-Israel groups and evangelical voters and to drive a wedge among Democrats, many of whom had condemned her comments.

Yet during an unusually raw debate on the House floor on Thursday, prominent Democrats including many Jewish members stood alongside Ms. Omar’s closest friends in Congress to defend her in passionate, and at times emotional speeches, accusing Republicans of hypocrisy, xenophobia and racism for targeting her while saying nothing about antisemitic remarks by members of their own party, some of whom have associated with Holocaust deniers.

“A blatant double standard is being applied here. Something just doesn’t add up. And what is the difference between Rep. Omar and these members? Could it be the way that she looks? Could it be her religious practices?” said Representative Gregory Meeks of New York, the ranking member on the Foreign Affairs Committee.

Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York was more direct: “This is about targeting women of color in the United States of America,” she said during brief but heated remarks.