Do People Really Want Healthcare Repeal?

*Author's Note: Due to the shooting in Arizona this post was postponed like the upcoming repeal vote. We think this information is important and this issue needs to be addressed. Our hopes and prayers are with people are recovering from the shooting and the families that lost love ones on Saturday.

It has been the goal of the Republican Party to repeal the Health care bill as soon as they arrived into power. The second bill that the Republican House brought up H.R.2 ,Repealing the Job-Killing Health Care Law Act, to repeal the current Health care law. Today is the day that the House will vote on this bill.  It will be interesting to see how many Republicans will defect from their parties vote.

According to Mother Jones looking at the January 16, 2011 Washington Post/ABC Poll show at a glance 45% in favor of the bill and 50% not in favor of the bill. The kicker with this is that 13% of the 50% did not think the bill went far enough. In reality that means 58% were in favor while only 37% were not in favor of the bill. Granted the 13% are not happy with the bill, but they are glad that it is there. To show the support of the bill  only 1 in 4 people favor repeal of the bill according to AP-GFK Poll. Overall, the Health care law should not be repealed.The benefits of the law are favorable enough that even polls show people favor this law after they know what is in it.

From a budget perspective repeal is horrible. If repeal passes it will cost us 320 billion dollars over ten years, unlike if the bill still stays in effect which would save us 149 billion dollars over 10 years. That is roughly a half of a trillion dollars in difference between repeal and keeping the law. That is a huge difference. We are talking about 1/26th of all U.S. debt difference.  Money alone shows that this law should be kept.

Overall, we believe that the Health care law should be kept instead of repealed. The benefits law are far better than its imperfections or the process of creating the law. It is in our best interest to improve this law and move forward instead of backwards.

*Updated  The House of Representatives have passed H.R. 2 by the vote of  245 to 189. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid has made a statement that H.R. 2 will not be considered in the Senate. Without the Senate voting on the bill it is practically dead.  The only way the House Republicans can stop the Health care bill is by defunding it. That battle will come later on. For more information go to CSPAN website

Is the work of the Civil Rights Movement Deteriorating?

Today is Martin Luther King Day a day of remembrance of the struggles that people endured to provide civil rights to a majority of Americans. Martin Luther King Day was created in 1983 by an act of  Congress and signed by Ronald Regan on November 2, 1983. It officially became a Federal Holiday on January 20, 1986. After it became a federal holiday, it took 14 years before every state in the Union officially made it a holiday.  Most states in the transition had a holiday of remembrance on this day, but did not officially call it Martin Luther King Day.

The Civil Rights Movement was a successful in eliminating discrimination starting in schools and then moving to human rights and then voting rights promised in the 14th and 15th amendment. These were great strides in American civic culture. Now it is under attack. Many Tea Parties have tried to turn back time. Granted they have not repealed the 14th and 15th amendment, but they are taking small steps to change these rights given to all by the Civil Rights Movement.

One  example of this is happening in Wake School District in Raleigh, North Carolina. According to an article in the Washington Post , Wake School District is doing some dramatic engineering to its school selection process. The new Tea Party backed Republican School Board has decided to throw out the diversity standards to the district. What is surprising about this, is that Wake School District is a district that is known their success in integration. Wake School District had the policy of integration to  make sure that all students had an equal opportunity. This policy was enacted in 1970 for racial integration and then in 2000 they changed it from racial integration to economic integration.

Now with the change in the school board and some parents concerns, the school board is decided to remove the diversity policy.  School Board Chairman Ron Margiotta stated about the changes, "if the result is a handful of high-poverty schools, he said, perhaps that will better serve the most challenged students." The new boards idea is that students should be able to go to the schools closest to their place of residence. What happens is that students will not be integrated. Pockets of public schools in the district will be better off than others. This plan will set up separations of economic status.

Separation of economic status is violates Brown v. Education 1954. A quote from Chief Justice Warren's Majority Opinion  that  can apply to this situation:

Segregation of white and colored children in public schools has a detrimental effect upon the colored children. The impact is greater when it has the sanction of the law, for the policy of separating the races is usually interpreted as denoting the inferiority of the negro group. A sense of inferiority affects the motivation of a child to learn. Segregation with the sanction of law, therefore, has a tendency to [retard] the educational and mental development of negro children and to deprive them of some of the benefits they would receive in a racial[ly] integrated school system.

Now white is replaced with rich and colored is replaced with poor this statement would still be true. Many studies have have shown that when students in poverty are consolidated in a school the outcome is not benefitical for the students that attend the school. It is important for intergration for the success of all students.

The importnace of  Martin Luther King Day is to remember where we came from and not to repeat it. Moves like this done by the new Wake School Board move us backwards instead of forward. The new civil right movement is not of race, but of economic status. For all of us to be the most productive in society we need to intergrate our schools for the common civic good.  On Martin Luther King Day please look at yourself and society work together to make a better country.




P.S.: So everyone remembers what King said on the Mall on Washington here is the I Have a Dream Speech.

Martin Luther King - I Have A Dream @ Yahoo! Video

Representative Gohmert Wants to Take Congress Back to the 1850s

Yesterday, Representative Louie Gohmert from Texas is introducing a bill that would allow Congressmen to carry firearms on the Senate and House floor. Gohmert argument for this bill is that members of Congress do not feel safe. Gohmert told Politico that,"[He knew] friends that walk home from the Capitol. There’s no security for us.” His solution to this problem is to allow members to be armed.  This does not seem like a good idea, because of the history of firearms on the floors of Congress.

Firearms and Congress historically do not mix well. The best period of history to look at this mixture is between 1830 and 1850s. According to Joanne Freeman in her New York Times article When Congress Was Armed And Dangerous that violence was normal on the floors of Congress at this time. It was found that if Representatives wanted to gain the upper hand in a debate a weapon was a valuable tool.  For example Freeman gives is stories about Representatives threatening each other if angered by a fellow Representatives statement. This attitude slowly came to a stop when telegraph was invented and when Civil War started. Violence was toned down and their were a few fist fights during the Civil Rights Era. After that Congress was more behaved.

Now according to Think Progress the reasoning for Gomhert's bill is that he fears that Congress' civility will deteriorate and duels will come back. This seems like flawed logic. Looking at Freeman's article we see that weapons did not deter violence, but increased it. Congressmen  used weapons to intimidate fellow Congressmen. Weapons should not be on the floor of Congress. If we allow this to happen we are reverting back to the 1850s. With the violent rhetoric used by some members of Congress, giving them the ability to have a weapon of any kind on the floor is dangerous and not needed.

We as a nation need to be civil towards each other. When we form a society, we trust each other to act in accordance to the ideas of law created by that society. When these laws are broken, we break the trust of society. As a society we make these laws to protect society against acts of violence. We should not as a society revert back to violence or threatening themes to get what we want. By allowing Representatives of Congress to have firearms, we will revert back to a Congress of the 1850s. We suggest opposition to any law or rule that will decrease the civility of any society.

Updated: Media Matters has an interview of Representative Gohmert with Fox and Friends. Gohmert argued that, "guns are the great equalizer." Here is the interview below.

Six Dead and Eighteen Shot at Arizona Democratic Congresswomen's Cracker Barrel

Today at about 10 a.m. Mountain Time in a North Tucson Safeway during Representative Gifford's Cracker barrel a gunman, Jared Loughner of Tucson, open fire on the Giffords and the crowd. In Loughner's shooting spree he killed 6 people including Federal Judge John Roll, and 18 people were wounded including Representative Giffords.  Most of the wounded are in critical condition, but hopefully they will all recover.

Now many areas of the web both sides are trying to pin the shooting on different political identities. The more Liberal blogs like Talking Points Memo have pointed out to the web and rhetoric of the shooter matches some of the rhetoric of the Tea Party. While some Conservative blogs like Red State argue that their rhetoric had nothing to do with this and that we will find out that the shooter was a leftist radical.  Both sides are trying to use this as a smear on the other side, but also giving their condolences. It is sad in America today that each side uses a tragic incident like this as political leverage against the other side.

Outlets like Fox News and Tea Party pundits like Sara Palin, Michelle Bachmann, and Glenn Beck are the easiest to blame in this situation because their rhetoric is often includes violent language that excites people. They are not to blame for this shooting. All current signs show that they did not influence the young man that committed this crime. The problem though it has been the aim of Conservative pundits to use violent language in exciting their base. If you go to a Tea Party or watch Fox News you will see throughout the day a reference of revolutionary violence either against the 111th Congress or the Presidential administration. Television leaders like Sara Palin, Michelle Bachmann, and Glenn Beck help stoke the conspiracy theories by playing them out or creating new ones.  When people believe in conspiracy theories, they start to morph fiction into reality.

Now Liberals are not out of the woods on this one yet. The shooters was not a Tea Party member and had a broad reading list. The overall theme of the list was anti-government not anti-Democrat or anti-President Obama. Talking Points Memo interviewed the Tucson Tea Party and their spokesperson Allyson Miller, said,"she knows the members of her tea party, who she called "reasonable individuals" closer to her age of 55 than the suspected shooter's 22." Yes the Tea Party's average age according to a February 2010 CNN Poll is closer to 55 than 22, but that does not mean the rhetoric only stays with people around the age of 55.  That is the problem today.

The rhetoric used by Politicians, Pundits, and Everyday people is to the extreme. We as Americans now do not hash our differences out now at a coffee table or at a cafe, but with loud speakers and weird signs. Both sides have started an arms race in who can go to the furthest extreme and have the most followers. This is madness. John Stewart was correct in having his Rally to Restore Sanity. By doing that he showed that their are sane people, and they want a voice in government. For us to survive as a country we need to stop the insane rhetoric and to talk to each other as human beings. We need not to call names, but buy each other coffee. If we do that we can bring back civil discourse back to the United States and accomplish something.  If we do not, we could see more of these tragic events. My suggestion to all of you is to by your political opposite a cup of coffee and find some common ground.

House Republican Promises can be Tracked

Now that the Republicans have control of the House of Representative, it should be our job to know their agenda and how they are going to implement it. Now instead of reading the Pledge to America, we have found all fifty promises on on PolitiFact.com from the St. Petersburg Times. I hope you all look at this link and then call your congressional representative if you agree or disagree with the Republicans plan. It should be an interesting two years. Enjoy!

Death of Bees:An Obvious Sign of Global Warming and the Over Use of Pesticides?

Yesterday The Guardian reported that a study from the University of Illinois that found out that the bee population in the United States dropped 96%. This is not shocking back in 2006 scientists started finding out about colony-collapse disorder. Colony-collapse disorder happens when the bees contract a virus and then die suddenly. This shocked many scientists, but what colony-collapse disorder would hurt the most is the U.S. farming industry which uses bees for pollination 90% of all crops. The economic impact of these crops not being produced would cause a loss of 15 billion dollars in the U.S. farm industry. 

According to the University of Illinois study they argue that two reasons why bees are dying off lack of genetic diversity and pesticides. The lack of genetic diversity comes from the inability of bees to move from hive to hive, or not being able to start new hives. As most high school biology classes teach their students, lack of diversity hurts a species population. When species diversity is non-existent, genetic mutations happens and usually these mutations have negative consequences to that species.

In addition to lack of genetic diversity the increased use of pesticides by agricultural industries and the public sector exploit this problem and cause an even faster decline in the bee population. Since bees are unable to adapt to the new climate reality and their range is limited, pesticides are affecting bees more. This is not good because most agricultural seeds are developed to resist most herbicides and pesticides, but the bees have not adapted and have became victims.

What we can do to help the bees are very obvious. If we cut our CO2 output, we can help the bees. By cutting our CO2 output slows the climate change and will give the bees a fighting chance. Another item that can be done is not use pesticides on your yards. There are natural pesticide alternatives that can be used that would have the same effect as the chemicals pesticides, but they would better for the environment. Another way to help the bees is to have more bee habitat. By making a bee habitat will allow the bees to move around, will allow them to intermingle with the other bee populations in the area. It is important that we will make sure this insect survives.

Overall, climate change and pesticides affect bees. The increase of CO2 in the climate with the warming temperatures have caused the decrease of the bee population. With the heavy use of pesticides in the United States, has not helped the bees survive.  We could be seeing the effects mentioned in Rachel Carlson's Silent Spring. We need to work together to make sure that the bees will not become extinct.

New Year New Technology for the Blog!

For some of our regular readers will see changes in the Common Civic Good. We have added another writer to the blog, we are now have a facebook page Common Civic Good, and we have opened up a Twitter account to be more mobile and to highlight some of our new stories. The goal of this is to allow our articles to reach the most people we possibly can. By using this technology we hope that we can move information faster and create connections with our audience to make the blog better.

If you have any ideas that you would like to see the blog do or any story ideas please tell us. We would love comments and we hope next year we will have more social interaction.

Thank you for reading and have a Happy New Year from the Common Civic Good.