Be INFORMED

Saturday, January 04, 2014

President Obama: 'Time to Pass Bipartisan Legislation to Extend Emergency Unemployment Insurance'

Barbara Morrill    Sat Jan 04, 2014

Saying that it is a time to "look ahead to all the possibilities and opportunities of the year," President Obama uses this week's address to call on Republicans to extend emergency unemployment insurance:

Just a few days after Christmas, more than one million of our fellow Americans lost a vital economic lifeline – the temporary insurance that helps folks make ends meet while they look for a job. Republicans in Congress went home for the holidays and let that lifeline expire. And for many of their constituents who are unemployed through no fault of their own, that decision will leave them with no income at all. [...]

So when Congress comes back to work this week, their first order of business should be making this right. Right now, a bipartisan group in Congress is working on a three-month extension of unemployment insurance – and if they pass it, I will sign it. For decades, Republicans and Democrats put partisanship and ideology aside to offer some security for job-seekers, even when the unemployment rate was lower than it is today. Instead of punishing families who can least afford it, Republicans should make it their New Year’s resolution to do the right thing, and restore this vital economic security for their constituents right now.

Email your member of Congress now and demand that they restore benefits to the Emergency Unemployment Compensation program.

Complete transcript below the fold.

Hi, everybody, and Happy New Year.

This is a time when we look ahead to all the possibilities and opportunities of the year to come – when we resolve to better ourselves, and to better our relationships with one another. And today, I want to talk about one place that Washington should start – a place where we can make a real and powerful difference in the lives of many of our fellow Americans right now.

Just a few days after Christmas, more than one million of our fellow Americans lost a vital economic lifeline – the temporary insurance that helps folks make ends meet while they look for a job. Republicans in Congress went home for the holidays and let that lifeline expire. And for many of their constituents who are unemployed through no fault of their own, that decision will leave them with no income at all.

We make this promise to one another because it makes a difference to a mother who needs help feeding her kids while she’s looking for work; to a father who needs help paying the rent while learning the skills to get a new and better job. And denying families that security is just plain cruel. We’re a better country than that. We don’t abandon our fellow Americans when times get tough – we keep the faith with them until they start that new job.

What’s more, it actually slows down the economy for all of us. If folks can’t pay their bills or buy the basics, like food and clothes, local businesses take a hit and hire fewer workers. That’s why the independent Congressional Budget Office says that unless Congress restores this insurance, we’ll feel a drag on our economic growth this year. And after our businesses created more than two million new jobs last year, that’s a self-inflicted wound we don’t need.

So when Congress comes back to work this week, their first order of business should be making this right. Right now, a bipartisan group in Congress is working on a three-month extension of unemployment insurance – and if they pass it, I will sign it. For decades, Republicans and Democrats put partisanship and ideology aside to offer some security for job-seekers, even when the unemployment rate was lower than it is today. Instead of punishing families who can least afford it, Republicans should make it their New Year’s resolution to do the right thing, and restore this vital economic security for their constituents right now.

After all, our focus as a country this year shouldn’t be shrinking our economy, but growing it; not narrowing opportunity, but expanding it; not fewer jobs, but doing everything we can to help our businesses create more of the good jobs that a growing middle class requires.

That’s my New Year’s resolution – to do everything I can, every single day, to help make 2014 a year in which more of our citizens can earn their own piece of the American Dream.

After five years of working and sacrificing to recover and rebuild from crisis, we have it within our power, right now, to move this country forward. It’s entirely up to us. And I’m optimistic for the year that lies ahead.

Thank you, and have a great weekend.

Originally posted to Daily Kos

Friday, January 03, 2014

Do we care that Republicans stop accepting evolution?

  By ericf on Wed Jan 01, 2014   Daily Kos

How did evolution, in the biological sense, come to be a partisan issue? Let's start with a recent poll by Pew Research showing that such is happening. h/t TPM. 60% of Americans accept it, at least in some form, including the maybe-God-is-directing-it sort of acceptance, 33% deny it, which are about the same proportions as the same poll in 2009. The partisan difference is interesting though. 67% of Democrats accept evolution, but only 43% of Republicans. The Democrats have ticked up from 64% since 2009, while Republicans have dropped from 54% ---  statistical evidence Republicans have made themselves more delusional.

Do we care if they think the world's biologists are making it all up? I used to say no. Do we decide to build highways or railroads based on whether life on Earth has always been exactly like it is now? Do we predicate tax rates on opinions about the age of the universe? Based on the rule "your right to swing your fist ends where my nose begins", I looked at my unbloodied nose, and formerly didn't care if anyone wouldn't distinguish Darwin and the devil.

The key word is "formerly", as in something dawned on me eventually. It wasn't being wrong on one scientific question that mattered. It was how they got there and where it leads them. The problem is the attitude that science is just another opinion, and I, with an opinion based on my gut or preferred belief or evidence-optional whatever, have least as good an opinion. So if evolution and the big bang, with the mountains of evidence supporting them, can be readily dismissed, what about questions that are less clear but clearly involve public policy? Where getting the answer wrong might proverbially bloody my nose? OK, now I care. If your opinion based on what feels right is equal to someone else's reams of data, this is bad, though it does explain why some issues are so controversial. If you can reject overwhelming evidence as just another opinion just because of anything, how much worse when such evidence runs into not only religious belief, but into someone's investment, someone's fears of job loss, someone's whatever emotional context they bring to it.

So yes, it absolutely is worth getting out of other people's heads that one opinion is as good as another regardless of evidence, and disturbing that Republicans have grown less willing to accept science. It's not surprising, at least to anyone who has followed debates on environmental issues, but still disturbing. Maybe new data came out that put evolution in doubt, and only Republicans were informed. Seems a bit unlikely. Dare we hope the drop in accepting evolution is just a matter of reality-based people being less willing to identify as Republicans?  Even at that, 40% believe evolution is false or don't know. Ouch. Not a new ouch, an old-news sort of ouch, but ouch nonetheless.

So what to do? Worry about how people got there rather than where they ended up. Start with ourselves. "Feels right" isn't an argument. Certainty has no relation to correctness. Hopefully even the most epistemologically closed mind will accept those starting propositions. And Democrats, come on: we're supposed to be the reality-based community, right? Yet one-third of us either don't accept evolution or think it's as likely one way as the other. If Republicans are turning creationist because that's a requirement for membership, here's hoping the slight uptick in Democrats who accept it isn't just a matter of membership, because that's the right conclusion for the wrong reason. Or dare we hope that reality-based people are identifying as Democrats?

That feels right, so I'll believe that one.

Originally posted to ericf on Wed Jan 01, 2014