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Lawyer Wanted for Trump Job Screenshot 2023-08-15 080245.jpg

https://prospect.org/health/2023-08-15-republican-war-on-families/

Ryan Cooper

The ‘Dobbs’ decision and conservative policies mean teenage rape victims are forced to give birth in dangerous, threadbare hospitals.
Since the Supreme Court struck down Roe v. Wade, leading to over 20 states enacting some kind of abortion ban, reporters have published story after story of women and girls nearly dying because they could not get a timely abortion, or being forced to flee to another state to get an abortion after being raped, or being forced to carry a doomed pregnancy to term.
Now we have the most harrowing account yet, courtesy of Charlotte Alter at Time magazine. She tells the story of “Ashley” (the name is a pseudonym, for privacy reasons), a 13-year-old Black girl living in Clarksdale, Mississippi. At age 12, Ashley was raped, became pregnant, and, thanks to the Court and the state’s Republican government, was forced to give birth to her rapist’s baby—just as she is getting ready to start the seventh grade.
The most immediately relevant part of the story in terms of policy is how it bears on the so-called exceptions in Republican abortion bans. Rape victims can theoretically get an abortion in Mississippi, but these stipulations are “largely theoretical,” Alter writes. “Even if a victim files a police report, there appears to be no clear process for granting an exception.” And in any case, Mississippi does not have a single abortion provider since the Dobbs ruling. Doctors told Ashley’s mother that the closest clinic she could go to would be in Chicago, a nine-hour drive. She simply could not afford the cost of travel or the time it would take up.
Yet that’s only part of what is going on. Alter wisely situates Ashley’s story in the broader context of an ongoing crisis of maternal care that afflicts the entire country but is much, much worse in impoverished Black regions like the Mississippi Delta, and is getting worse still in conservative states because of Dobbs.
First, as we covered in detail in our latest print issue at the Prospect, there is the yearslong trend of private equity rolling up regional hospital monopolies and slashing costs, and the broader penetration of a ruthless profits-over-people mentality into the medical sector, which often means a cutback in obstetrics/gynecology services and closure of labor and delivery units. The effect is worse in places like Mississippi, where chronic poverty already meant thin provider coverage. As Alter writes, “More than 24% of women in Mississippi have no birthing hospital within a 30-minute drive, compared to the national average of roughly 10% … there are just nine ob-gyns serving a region larger than the state of Delaware.”
Something Alter doesn’t mention is that Mississippi is one of ten states where Republicans are still refusing to accept Obamacare’s expansion of Medicaid, which is inflicting yet more devastating damage on its hospitals. Nonprofit hospitals are required to provide free care to the indigent, and so refusing to accept Medicaid means a far greater burden of uninsured patients. Sharon LaFraniere reports at The New York Times that free care costs Mississippi’s hospitals “about $600 million a year, the equivalent of 8 percent to 10 percent of their operating costs,” as compared to a national average of 1.4 percent. Accepting the Medicaid expansion, by contrast, would grant insurance to 100,000 Mississippians and “uncork a spigot of about $1.35 billion a year in federal funds.”
Republicans could have taken steps to ameliorate this crisis and chose to make it worse instead.
All these problems are rapidly worsening thanks to Dobbs. Alter reports (and the Prospect has reported as well) that the upcoming generation of doctors are repulsed by what’s happening in conservative states—and not just those considering careers as ob/gyns. According to one survey, “three-quarters of students across all medical specialties said that Dobbs was affecting their residency decisions.” After all, doctors or their spouses might also need abortion care themselves, or want to start a family but not to be killed by a doomed pregnancy.
Reading Alter’s piece, one gets a sense for why the Black maternal mortality rate in this country is so high—55.3 deaths per 100,000 live births, or more than 46 times higher than in the Netherlands. Thanks to poverty and a dearth of providers, mothers often get little or no pregnancy care, and so dangerous conditions like preeclampsia or maternal diabetes are missed. Others have to drive themselves for hours to get to a hospital while in labor, while others get to the hospital only after actually delivering. As she concludes: “More women are delivering more babies, in areas where there are already not enough doctors to care for them, while abortion bans are making it more difficult to recruit qualified providers to the regions that need them most.”
At numerous points, Republicans could have taken steps to ameliorate this crisis and chose to make it worse instead. Mississippi Republicans could take the Medicaid money and help rescue their rural hospital sector. They refuse to. They could have not banned abortion, or at least made the exceptions for rape and incest clear and accessible. They refused to. National Republicans could have voted for President Biden’s child allowance and cut the child poverty rate by about 41 percent. They refused to. They could get behind efforts to stop the financialization of health care. They refuse to.
I conclude that this is what Republicans want. If a middle school girl is raped, they want her to be forced to bear her rapist’s child, and then give birth in a rattletrap medical system where she will be dozens of times more likely to die than in peer nations, and then get little or no help from the government raising that child. This is what conservative policy produces, and there’s no sign of it changing.

Again, abuse of the word, “conservative.” These GOPuke clowns are FRight extremists, catering to a lot of dimwitted and/or delusional voters.

Years ago people in this country wondered how Germany’s people could allow thier country to become a fascist state and that it couldnt happen here. Well people we have a group of people that swear allegiance to Cult-45 and will do anything he demands. Yes America you currently have a living, breathing example of how fascism can take over a counrty with a minimum of its citizens that are Brainwashed by one persons ideals. Cult-45 is a bug that needs to be squashed before it ends America as we know it. Just a few short years ago it was the Dems that were called socialists,communists. Were at a turning point as a nation.

T and R x 4, and thanks, Ms. Benny!! 🙂 Geezus, 4 indictments and over 90 charges! When will this white-collared crook fall off the nearest fatal cliff?

wi65

Who knows but if it were any of us we wouldnt see the outside world except for the ride to the courthouse. Our two tiered justice systems one for the rich one for rest of us. If Cult-45 cant buy off a juror and is guilty of a RICO charge its 5 years min under GA law.

Between you and me, wi, LET’S HOPE!!🤞

Damn straight, I will LMAO if Ga. actually takes mug shots, He’ll find that degrading as the rich arent subject to that like the rest of everyday Americans.

Mug shots? I would absolutely die laughing!!!!!!! We wish.

https://www.yahoo.com/news/looters-land-speculators-move-deadly-023951920.html

From the not really suprised department.
Looters and land speculators move in after deadly Hawaii fires

Well after every natural disaster the looters come out of the woodwork some for merchandise(TVs), some for food and others arrive in 3 piece wall street siuts to exploit the local people that are at thier emotional lowest point in life and very vulnerable to what the suits are offering. The Gov. of Hawaii has said that he wants to prevent this from happening but money talks no matter what political side of the asile. The Vultures are ready to pick the carcass of Lahaina for thier craprate profits and pay the locals substandard wages.

This is what you had feared…

Just another disgusting example of a twisted aspect of human nature known as out-of-control greed. 🙁

https://www.threads.net/@mehdirhasan/post/Cv80NW4A4Tv/?igshid=NTc4MTIwNjQ2YQ==

https://thehill.com/opinion/healthcare/4144876-is-bernie-sanders-the-new-healthcare-pragmatist/amp/

Republican health care executive complements Bernie

It is hard to find someone I agree with less than Bernie Sanders, particularly in my own area of health care. But increasingly, I find myself agreeing with him on significant health care issues.
Is Bernie Sanders becoming the ultimate health care pragmatist — wanting good progress even as his deepest health care desires do not seem achievable?
Things seem to be pointing this way, especially with his recent announcement regarding the need to tackle the primary care crisis. The Kaiser Family Foundation, perhaps the most respected health care analysis foundation out there, looked at Sanders’ arguments and determined that what he was saying were mostly true.
Sanders recognizes that his hope for Medicare for All is nearly impossible for now. He told community health advocates that “We are far from a majority in the Senate. We have no Republican support…and I’m not sure that I could get half of the Democrats on that bill.”
I don’t believe Sanders’ Medicare for All would be a good thing for the country. It just wouldn’t be wise to base our health care on the dilapidated fee-for-service system. It would be terribly expensive as well. I believe affordable universal access via a private delivery system offers the best chance at reducing costs and improving quality. It would have a strong accountability regime through HHS and CMS.
But Sanders is right on a number of things that he wants to make progress on. His pivot from Medicare for All to issues of common ground bring me closer to him, also offering hope Congress could make progress on some health care issues.
Sanders is right that we clearly have an uninsured crisis. Despite the passage of the Affordable Care Act, at least 25 million Americans still do not have consistent health care coverage. And that number will increase due to the fallout from the reintroduction of Medicaid redeterminations. Already, about 4 million have lost Medicaid coverage. Based on various private and government estimates, that number is projected to hit at least 15 million.
How many will successfully move from Medicaid to employer coverage, state children’s coverage, and the exchanges is unknown. But historic trends and some preliminary evidence suggests conversions may not be good, so the ranks of the uninsured will grow by millions. Sanders understands that up-front and affordable coverage ultimately saves money and improves outcomes.
Sanders has always pushed the concept that we not only have an uninsured crisis but an underinsured one. If we already have roughly 25 million who are classified as uninsured, plus anticipated redeterminations, you can almost triple that number to come up with those who will be uninsured or underinsured. The underinsured may have coverage, but there are critical gaps, and their insurance is essentially unaffordable, dissuading people from seeking out the care they need. As with the uninsured, it leads to greater costs as disease states or conditions exacerbate.
Sanders’ latest push is to bolster access to primary care through significant programmatic spending. About $100 billion over five years would be spent to expand community health centers as well as provide training for primary care doctors, nurses, dentists, and other health care professionals.
As a Republican, I tend to look suspiciously at more and more government spending, but this would be a wise investment. Other developed countries tend to perform much better on outcomes because they emphasize prevention, wellness, and care management. Our system is not designed this way. It emphasizes expertise at the specialist and facility level and discourages primary care investments.
What’s more, we do have a physician shortage that will become worse if we do not act. It will hit almost all areas of specialty, but primary care may fare worst.
Last, areas of low income, especially areas with significant minority representation, tend to have the biggest challenges establishing a nexus between patient and primary care provider. A lot goes into that, but availability of physicians is an important part. So intervention is needed. While CMS is trying to change behavior via reimbursement in government programs, that will not be enough.
So kudos to Sanders for seeking to hone in on areas of common ground to fix our health care system. The primary care crisis is an area that is ripe for bipartisan work.

I guess this GOPuke is figuring out that Medicare is a starting point for fixing our broken JokeCare system. Hey pal, know how we can fund it? Go back to the Progressive tax rates before Raygun, and decrease the War Dept. budget for starters.

Don’t Believe Republican Bluster About Trump’s Indictment https://t.co/f5QDyNJecn pic.twitter.com/wBqEu4P8Td
— ryan cooper (@ryanlcooper) August 16, 2023

The long-awaited fourth indictment of Donald Trump finally came down on Monday night, and it is a doozy. The former president is charged with 13 counts by Georgia prosecutors over his attempt to overturn the outcome of that state’s election, including racketeering, false statements, soliciting Georgia officials to violate their oaths, and various conspiracies. Unlike Jack Smith’s federal indictment over the putsch attempt, this one also includes indictments against 18 other co-conspirators, including well-known Trump cronies like John Eastman, Sidney Powell, and Jeffrey Clark, as well as locals like Georgia Republican Party Chairman David Shafer, who served as a fake elector.
In response, conservatives have driven themselves into their usual fits of apoplexy. “Biden has weaponized government against his leading political opponent to interfere in the 2024 election,” said Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy. “They’re weaponizing the law in this country. They’re trying to take Donald Trump down,” said Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC).
Others threatened retaliation, subtly or not so subtly. “Whatever you think of the Trump indictments, one thing is for certain: the glass has now been broken,” tweeted Ben Shapiro. “Political opponents can be targeted by legal enemies. Running for office now carries the legal risk of going to jail—on all sides.” GOP presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy made the implication more obvious, tweeting that if prosecutors are “so overzealous that they commit constitutional violations, then the cases should be thrown out & they should be held accountable.” Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene made it clearer still: “The Fulton County DA Fani Willis MUST BE REMOVED!!!”
Former Trump official Stephen Miller suggested local Republican district attorneys could retaliate: “A Republican DA could indict both Biden and [DHS Secretary] Mayorkas for human trafficking.”
All this can be safely ignored—not because Republicans won’t follow through on their threats, but because they try to do so regardless of what happens to Trump. Letting him off the hook will only enable future persecutions.
Ben Shapiro, for instance, wrote an entire book back in 2014 working up a “criminal case” against President Obama, calling specifically for racketeering charges, over the supposed IRS persecution of conservative groups (which didn’t happen), illegal EPA regulations (ditto), and of course Benghazi. When he wrote his book, Shapiro was something of a fringe figure, but I have no doubt he would have attempted such a prosecution had it been up to him.
Then there is the fact that Republicans are right now trying to whip up something impeachable against President Biden, as soon as they can agree on what fake nonsense to accuse him of. Greene as usual was first out of the gate on the very day he was inaugurated with impeachment articles relating to the accusation that Biden had done corrupt things in Ukraine, despite the fact that a Republican-controlled Senate committee had already cleared him of wrongdoing. Republican House members have since filed more than a dozen other impeachment articles, most recently for supposed business crimes relating to Hunter Biden.
The point, obviously, is to seize on the most plausible-sounding excuse to impeach Biden in retaliation for the same being done to Trump.
At bottom, all this is part and parcel with Trump’s legal strategy for avoiding conviction on his dozens of felony charges—namely, drag the process out until he wins the presidential election, at which point he can use the powers of office to quash the prosecutions. The conservatives above darkly speculating about reprisals are collaborating in a tacit effort to intimidate the entire American law enforcement apparatus, from county district attorneys up to Attorney General Garland. Participate in harming Dear Leader, they are signaling, and you’ll pay.
The problem is that there is no reason whatsoever to believe that deciding against prosecuting Trump will result in any lenient treatment from him or his conservative allies. He has already been calling for his political enemies to be imprisoned for years now. During his 2016 campaign, one of his core campaign slogans against Hillary Clinton was “Lock her up.” Trump was impeached for attempting to blackmail the Ukrainian government into making up a fake corruption story about Joe Biden, and then impeached again for attempting to overthrow the American government. The man is corrupt, vindictive, and shameless to his very marrow. The only reason he didn’t manage to imprison Clinton, or even bring charges, was because the Department of Justice was not yet corrupt enough under his rule to invent fake criminal charges out of whole cloth à la Nikolai Yezhov.
Trump won’t make that mistake again if he can help it. As I have previously written, he and his cronies are already publicly boasting about their plans to conduct a political purge of federal law enforcement agencies, fill all vacancies with loyal Trump toadies, and seize dictatorial powers for himself—after which he can exact vengeance on all who harmed him, from District Attorney Fani Willis to Jack Smith to President Biden.
The implication in prudential terms is the same as it is in legal terms: Trump should be tried with all possible speed everywhere he is indicted, and if convicted, punished to the fullest extent of the law.

pic.twitter.com/Gkqji8sdz8
— Marie Newman (@newmarienewman) August 16, 2023

Or getting fired up about SSand Medicare cuts and then vote for the GQP

One year of the Inflation Reduction Act: “It’s rare that one piece of legislation can change the course of history, but this law may well be the turning point in America’s fight to save the planet.” https://t.co/shA75seYLV
— Jeff Zients (@WHCOS) August 16, 2023

Need @wi65’s BS GIF.

My Administration stands ready to support Hawai’i’s recovery for as long as it takes. pic.twitter.com/P7jf7O6Z1x
— President Biden (@POTUS) August 16, 2023

Two opposing views…

Paul ADK

Too late. We paid for this roller coaster ride, we’re strapped in, and the bar is down, and we’re about to crest the first hill. Any screaming to stop, at this point? Is just lost to the wind.

Still my favorite grafix. +270!

Here you are Benny😁😁

🙂 🙂 !!!

Payment processing companies profit from these fees while doctors and their practices bear the cost.
A smaller medical office could pay up to $100K/year in electronic payment fees — more than enough to pay a registered nurse’s salary. https://t.co/xhPBha05A4
— ProPublica (@propublica) August 16, 2023

Geezus, just finished the read. I don’t know where to begin. First of all, here’s this Albright greedball ahole with his ‘divinity’ studies. I guess he was reading up on Jesus principles for getting away with charging doctors craporate electronic fees so they could get paid. No wonder I call it the (bad) JokeCare System. So, ole Albright is working in CMS during or around Cheney-Dumbya/Obummer time. Albright then quits so he can go through the $$revolving door$$ right into craporate bribery and threats working for Zelis, which is another thievery division of UnitedHealthcare. When CMS/Medicare forbids these electronic payment fees, Albright threatens them with the help of a bunch of lawyers from a firm whose name includes Nixon. You can’t make this crap up. Albright is already quite chummy with CMS (which is a private bunch that should not be involved in Medicare to begin with) big wigs. Why? Cos he’s a former employee!! Sure is laughingly sickening but not a surprise, to me anyway. Sh1t on the whole bunch!

Not a good look.

Abhijit is part of the far right wing eco-system in India. He is known to routinely dehumanize and invalidate Muslims. Need proof? Here is what he has to say about Ro Khanna's colleague, Rep. Ilhan Omar, when she chose to skip Modi's speech in Congress earlier this summer. pic.twitter.com/IORqBZ7bbk
— Azad Essa (@azadessa) August 15, 2023

Aint Supposed to Die A Natural Death

OM effin G!!! To quote MLK, “where do we go from here? Chaos or community?” I’m through with Ro Khanna.

Anyone DUMB enough to kiss Modi’s azz is off my list. Khanna has been skating for awhile on my ice of doubt. Well, he finally slipped and fell. Good riddance!

Paul ADK

A sewer isn’t really an eco system, is it? Eco system implies interconnectivity and mutual benefit. That just looks like a random piece floating by.

Next month SCOTUS will decide whether to hear a challenge to the law that limits rent increases in nearly half of NYC apartments.
A think tank linked to Harlan Crow and Paul Singer, the court's billionaire benefactors, is urging them to take the case.https://t.co/K6r7r2gur0
— Julia Rock (@jul1arock) August 16, 2023

Snort–figures!

Whether it’s Trump being indicted under laws meant for the KKK or it’s Trump being indicted under laws meant for the mafia, the former president has a remarkable ability to connect with different constituencies
— New York Times Pitchbot (@DougJBalloon) August 15, 2023

This underscores the uniqueness of the Georgia problem for Trump. The state’s popular GOP governor, who already crushed a Trump-backed primary challenger, is calling Trump out on election lies he’s soon to have to go to trial over https://t.co/jseFdfmyIA
— Garrett Haake (@GarrettHaake) August 15, 2023

I’ll have to use my 💩 gif when that drops 🙂

Cult-45 is no fun, had my gif qued up and ready to go. On advise from his lawyers he’s not going to release anything as it may incriminate him more…

🚨NEWS: The Supreme Court could soon consider a case that could outlaw all rent control laws in America.
The case is being pushed by groups linked to billionaires who have delivered gifts to some of the conservative justices on the Supreme Court. https://t.co/yGqFZR7Akk
— David Sirota (@davidsirota) August 16, 2023