Monday Reading

As always, please go the the links for the full articles/ op eds.

Ever heard of Misha Tseytlin?  Matthew Yglesias explains how he was hired by unlamented Koch brothers employee Scott Walker in Wisconsin to do a particularly nasty deed at the core of rotted- out Republican "values":

A bright, funny young man named Misha Tseytlin was hired to do the job. 

When I met him earlier this year during a week-long visit to the University of Wisconsin, Tseytlin explained to me that he had no particular connection to Wisconsin when he took the position in 2015. He’d just been working as an attorney in the West Virginia Attorney General’s office (another state to which he had no personal connection) in the general field of suing the Obama administration and thought the Wisconsin gig would be a fun opportunity to expand his horizons in this regard. He cooked up this lawsuit, persuaded his bosses in state government to sign on, and eventually got twenty state governments to pursue his argument. [snip] 

But what strikes me about the case is how utterly mainstream Tseytlin’s theory became in GOP circles very quickly, and how brazenly undemocratic Republicans have been in pursuit of their goal of depriving people of their health insurance. (our emphasis)

"Oh what fun it is to take healthcare away to-night."

Jonathan Adler and Abbe Gluck on the "unmoored" Obamacare ruling by a wingnut judge in Texas:

A ruling this consequential had better be based on rock-solid legal argument. Instead, the opinion by Judge Reed O’Connor is an exercise of raw judicial power, unmoored from the relevant doctrines concerning when judges may strike down a whole law because of a single alleged legal infirmity buried within. 

We were on opposing sides of the 2012 and 2015 Supreme Court challenges to the Affordable Care Act, and we have different views of the merits of the act itself. But as experts in the field of statutory law, we agree that this decision makes a mockery of the rule of law and basic principles of democracy — especially Congress’s constitutional power to amend its own statutes and do so in accord with its own internal rules.

Democrats in 2010 assumed that, once people had access to affordable health care, it would be nearly impossible to take it away.  They didn't foresee a frothing, single- minded Republican party willing to do it anyway, damn the consequences.  (Here's a prime example.) Tuck that lesson away, and let there be consequences!

E.J. Dionne, Jr., has a hopeful projection about one of the most evil foundations of the Republican party:

Sometimes, dramatic shifts in American politics go unnoticed. They are buried under other news or dismissed because they represent such a sharp break from long-standing assumptions and expectations. 

So please open your mind to this: Taken together, the events of 2016 and the results of the 2018 election will be remembered as the beginning of the end of the gun lobby’s power.

The demise of this death lobby would help free us to engage in meaningful gun control actions at every level of government.  Ironically, we might have Russia partially to thank for that.

Speaking of Russia, a draft Senate Intelligence Committee report says Russia's disinformation efforts in the run- up to the 2016 presidential campaign were larger and deeper than commonly known, and also asserts that our Tech Overlords were, at best, useful idiots and, at worst, complicit in their efforts:

The report also offered some of the first detailed analyses of the role played by YouTube, a subsidiary of Google, and Instagram, owned by Facebook, in the Russian campaign, as well as anecdotes about how Russians used other social media platforms — Google+, Tumblr and Pinterest — that have received relatively little scrutiny. The Russian effort also used email accounts from Yahoo, Microsoft’s Hotmail service and Google’s Gmail. 

The authors, while reliant on data provided by technology companies, also highlighted the companies' “belated and uncoordinated response” to the disinformation campaign and, once it was discovered, their failure to share more with investigators. The authors urged that in the future they provide data in “meaningful and constructive” ways. (our emphasis)

Now that the House will be under new management, we look forward to these craven asswipes being hauled in to testify as to their grudging response to investigations with critical national security implications.

For an OPEC country relatively flush oil revenue, you'd think Nigeria could move faster to electrify its rural areas. And you'd be wrong:

In 2017, Nigeria was ranked second out of 137 countries on The Spectator Index of countries with the worst electricity supply. The daily average supply in Africa's most populous country averages around 3,850 megawatts. 

Despite the progress local government officials claim and a reported increase in energy output from 4,000 megawatts to 7,000 megawatts, Unguwar Dogo is among at least 8,000 villages in Africa's most populous country that are still being left to fend for themselves in the dark.

There's much more to be found at Infidel 753's link round- up, where we found the story above. Check this site out!

"Health Care Chickenhawks"

Opposite rulings today from the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals and the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals on health insurance exchanges and subsidies under Obamacare.  The D.C. court ruled 2-to-1 (two Republican skunks judges pretzeling their opinion to suit their politics) that Congress had not authorized the Federal Government to set up health insurance exchanges in those States that had not set up one of their own, relying on a drafting error in the Affordable Care Act on which to hitch their reactionary wagon.  The 4th Circuit ruled unanimously in the opposite, i.e., that it was the clear intent of the Congress that those non-State-run exchanges (and subsidies that flow from them) were authorized by the plain intent of the law.  It's expected that the full D.C. court, ruling en banc, will overturn the decision of the two Republican skunks judges.

We always have to wonder what motivates people on the right to fight the implementation of this law - which benefits so many - so doggedly.  (For that matter, they're still fighting rear guard actions on Social Security and Medicare/Medicaid 80 years and 50 years later, respectively.)  Why they seem to delight in causing harm to the most vulnerable among us.  Here's Charles P. Pierce talking about the rulings and the "health care chickenhawks:"

Simply put, there is almost an entire half of our political system that believes that a great number of Americans simply do not matter enough to make it economically feasible to help them stay healthy. They do not count. It does not matter how many of them die preventable deaths. It is better for the country, this half of the political system believes, that they grow sick and bankrupt themselves. In his famous outburst on the House floor, Alan Grayson was low-balling it. This half of the system includes prospective presidents, members of Congress, think-tank geniuses, pundits, and a lot of other people who generally have one thing in common -- most of them have wonderful health care coverage either because they have really good jobs, or they're wealthy enough to afford it, or both. These are the health care chickenhawks. And we held them to a split decision today, and maybe that's enough for the moment.

It's also worth contemplating how we as a nation came to this level of selfishness and lack of concern for the humanity of others (think also of the virulent hostility to the immigrant children who've crossed the southern border).  We have to remind ourselves, when we're repelled by the casual brutality of others in the world, that we have our own shame right here on our shores.