We began with the largest national demonstration in this country's history, five million by some counts. This has been followed by many, many more street demonstrations and marches, most recently by scientists, not ordinarily known for such actions. Our first hundred days has seen thousands of political novices put their names forward for public office in local elections across the nation. Our first hundred days has seen District Judges putting on hold abominable presidential decrees. This hundred days has given us the creation of a new form of protest, the citizen Town Hall, in which previously oblivious member of the House of Representatives cower and cringe and abruptly flee in the face of voter outrage. This hundred days has seen an outpouring of grassroots political donations previously unheard of during non-election seasons. This hundred days has seen the ignominious defeat of cruel, heartless health care legislation promised unceasingly for seven years by a party that now controls all the branches of government.
It has not been a bad hundred days for us. May the next hundred, and the next hundred, and the next hundred after that be as good.
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7 comments:
Hear, hear! A marvelously Tigger-ish post. Thank you, Professor.
"the next hundred and the next ...."
Ugh
Chris,
Why the "ugh"?
Thinking of more of trumps reign
Trump's reign is the cloud, but there is a silver lining. A Sanders-endorsed candidate is challenging Pelosi for the 2018 nomination, and a Florida Republican from a district Clinton carried wants to spend more time with her family. I think this kind of good news is going be on-going. And if Trump doesn't blow the world up before then, the Republicans may well loose the House in 2018. If so, we'll begin to see some real oversight investigations.
This website lists those congresspeople who are on the fence about the evolving Trumpcare:
https://www.trumpcaretoolkit.org/
The recent Trump promise of support for people with pre-exisiting conditions is a sad comment on politics today. The latest version of the bill I saw had a clear provision saying the bill could not be construed as denying people with pre-existing conditions (sec 137 b.; so you could casually assert that provision is in the bill) but amendments currently on the table change section 136 (sec 136 (b)(1)(C)(ii) to allow pre-existing conditions ("health status" in the language) be a factor in setting insurance prices (and this is called adding "fairness"). It seems that Orwell had a point.
And to make a bigger point about the ACA and Medicaid. Almost all of the benefit of Obamacare was the expansion of Medicaid (the amount of expanded private insurance was small and the premiums often punishing). Much of the Republican efforts now is on dramatically cutting Medicaid. It seems an easy political target because it is insurance for the poor and disabled. Medicaid is also the long term care insurance for a wide spectrum of the U.S. as there is no real market for private LTC insurance. Also, Medicaid essentially is the "high-risk" pool for all private insurance. That is, if anyone gets sick enough or has an expensive enough health care need those needs are picked up by Medicaid (people can classify as disabled then and nearly all states get Medicaid coverage). This essentially underwrites all private insurance and makes them all less expensive--the point being that ALL people benefit from Medicaid including financially.
The toolkit listed above more importantly makes it easy to call, write, tweet or facebook the congressperson.
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