voting

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The USA’s Third World

The Impact of Obamacare, in Four Maps By MARGOT SANGER-KATZ and QUOCTRUNG BUI OCT. 31, 2016

Just had a look at the progress of “Obamacare” according to a study by the New York Times.

Apparently this insurance program is fated to be linked to President Obama in perpetuity, but you could have a worse legacy– for example the War in Iraq.

The bad news is that four states have barely budged in reducing the number of uninsured from 2013-16, leaving their citizens as poorly insured for medical care as they were four years ago. The prize-winners are Texas, Oklahoma, Louisiana and Mississippi. As the Times pointed out, neighboring states Kentucky and Arkansas have left them in the dust.

The states have some control of these developments, depending on whether they opted into the Medicaid provisions of Obamacare. There are plenty of citizens on Medicaid in those four states, but their leaders spurned the incentives for adopting the Medicaid provisions of Obamacare, because of their repugnance for federal help in general and Obamacare in particular. They are beginning to look like Third World countries, with their outstanding neglect of the social and biological needs of their citizens. It is hard to imagine such callous disregard for the needy within the boundaries of the U.S.

It is likewise hard to imagine how these needy could fail to vote and vote against the Republican leadership prevailing in these states. Still, you have to walk a mile in their shoes to appreciate their hopelessness and paralysis in the depths of a political climate that blames the poor for their circumstances.

If the tired, poor and huddled masses of the Deep South could only amass the political will to turn on their oppressors. I am no Marxist, but witnessing this wanton neglect in this poverty zone of America brings revulsion and revolution to my heart.  How can we deliver these citizens from a life unworthy of our standards of compassion?

For all its flaws, Obamacare offers a safety net to citizens who are in free fall. May these falling ones grab a corner of this net and vote against the harsh rule that has pulled it out from under them. A flawed program is better than no program at all, if it rescues the citizens of the Deep South, the USA’s Third World territory.

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Who’s Afraid of the Voting Student?

If you are a college student who works and borrows for your education, July 1 is a portentous date. Unless Congress acts, your loan rates will double.

If Congress doesn’t act by July 1, more than 7 million undergraduates taking out federally subsidized loans to cover next year’s tuition will have to dig deeper in their pockets to pay them off. The average cost to students would be $1,000 in increased student loan debt, according to the White House. (CNN News)

Now if we were talking about reducing Social Security benefits or rolling back the middle class tax cuts, there would be frantic scrambling in both branches of the legislature to prevent an election-year disaster. Instead each party is squabbling about how to pay to keep the loan rates stable by cutting their opponent’s favorite program, and the deadline looms closer each day. It’s very likely the axe will fall and student loan rates will skyrocket.

Why? Because most legislators expect college students to remain on the sidelines come election day. They don’t see the college vote as consequential to their election. And yet seven million students affected by this? Isn’t that a likely margin for a Presidential victory in November?

Students, your legislators assume you are:

1) Cynical: You are willing to rationalize your lack of voting by saying your voice doesn’t matter.

2) Lazy: You aren’t going to the trouble to get an absentee ballot this summer, so you can vote from your campus in the fall.

3) Aloof: You don’t feel responsible, because your job is to get an education and let older adults run the country in the meantime.

4)  Ignorant and Complacent: You don’t know how to register to vote and neither do your friends.

Really? Is this what fifteen years of schooling has taught you? That your voice doesn’t matter and voting is not your business? That you are protected from the mismanagement of your elders? Well, these cop-outs are what your representatives are counting on.

We know there is a potent voting block of SEVEN MILLION of you who will be seriously affected by what doesn’t happen by July 1. Mark the date on your calendar.  Then on the next day, make another note: REGISTER FOR AN ABSENTEE BALLOT. Then when the ballot comes in the mail, VOTE. Or, if you can vote locally on campus or at home, GET OUT TO THE POLLS.

Sorry for the shouting. Sometimes it’s hard to get your attention. You’re not cynical or lazy or aloof or complacent or ignorant, but you’re distracted. So, LISTEN UP!

Imagine this headline on November 7.

Seven Million College Students Shake Up Incumbents!

Sweet revenge! They’ll never take you for granted again. When the bills for college loans and scholarships and internships and job training come up, Congress will rush to the floor and say: We have to get this done! College students vote!

Pay attention, now! This will not be on the test, but it could cost you a lot of money. Voting pays! Make your elected representatives pay as well.

 

 

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Dear Student Voters of Wisconsin:

The recall election in Wisconsin Tuesday is a test of an under-funded majority to resist the super-funded minority, trying to maintain its base of power in the seat of the governor, Scott Walker. Your vote is the swing vote in a closely contested election that could determine the funding of public education, the funding of student loans, the rights of workers, and  the access to voter registration.  These issues reflect a national movement, some call it the Tea Party, that wields most of its clout through the financing of billionaires, who pretend to represent the middle class.

By any poll of national opinion the Tea Party is a splinter group, controlling the national dialogue about government reform, claiming to liberate citizens from laws that protect them. More to the point, the legislators who speak for the Tea Party are hacking at the student loan and public education system that has been the path to mobility for most first-generation college students.

How many of you would not be in college at all without the availability of student loans and the modest cost of publicly-funded universities? Yes, the tuition costs at state universities have been rising alarmingly in the last decade, but you should recognize that both the state and federal sources of these funds have been depleted by the so-called budget reformers, who claim we cannot afford your education.

Instead Tea Party reformers urge you to attend for-profit universities with higher tuition and without benefit of student loans.  This is one of many ways they refuse to support the mobility of the middle class. While their rhetoric trumpets reducing the deficit, their votes are blowing up the bridges to employment and financial stability for middle class students.

Governor Scott Walker proudly identifies with the Tea Party and has implemented their agenda consistently during his tenure. He is not a friend to students dependent on public education or to the struggling middle class.  How is it possible that he has undermined so many people, while maintaining his popularity and place in the polls?

It only depends on who votes on Tuesday. If the voter-eligible students in Wisconsin turned out in strength at the polls, the reign of Governor Walker would end, and Wisconsin could rightly claim to be governed by the majority of its citizens. The power of the Koch brothers and their Tea Party allies could be defused by the most conventional means: the ballot box.

Wisconsin has become a national symbol of the backlash against the Tea Party and the monied interests that have no stake in your future.  It has risen heroically against a politician and his regressive agenda. It is an inspiration to students across the nation.

If the eligible student voters of Wisconsin vote in strength on Tuesday, the state will be a national symbol of student power at the polls.  No one should stay home, claiming that they have no influence on the political tide in their state. You have decisive influence, not only for Wisconsin, but for the entire nation. Our hearts are in your hands. Seize the ballot and vote for the recall of Governor Scott Walker.