Monte Frank:
We ride for Maria, a mom who buried her son way too early, like so many other moms and dads in Chicago and across America, and for my cousin and the countless survivors of gun violence.
We also ride for James Brady, to make sure his goal of universal background checks is achieved. According to Quinnipiac University polls, approximately 91 percent of Americans, including households that own guns, want a background check to be conducted for every gun sale, and yet Congress has failed to act.
We ride to press Congress to put politics aside and finish the job started by James Brady, a Republican and White House press secretary under Ronald Reagan, by passing the Thompson-King bill (H.R. 1217) introduced earlier this month on a bipartisan basis by four Republicans and four Democrats, including our Congresswoman Elizabeth Esty who refuses to stop pedaling for a safer America.
We ride for Lori Jackson of Oxford, Connecticut, a 32-year-old mother of 18-month-old twins, who was shot to death in her parents' home by her estranged husband. Fearful of violence, she had a temporary restraining order against him, but her husband could legally keep any guns he had, or buy new ones, until the temporary restraining order became permanent. That would likely have happened in court the very next day.
The ride is Sat Mar 28-Tues Mar 31, and the
scheduled stops are here. If you're anywhere near where the team is riding, come show your support.
Monte discusses the ride on yesterday's Kagro in the Morning here.
More politics and policy below the fold.
Matthew Dowd:
At an imaginary breakfast gathering of key Republican and Democratic operatives at one of the awesome Coney Island-style restaurants in the Detroit area (still a lovely place despite what ex-pat Madonna says), instead of coffee and orange juice being served, truth serum was consumed by all the participants. And some fascinating insights were gleaned when the players involved were forced to leave spin and subjectivity behind. I managed to "record" a few of the key points between bites of eggs, bacon and toast.
And here they are as best I can recall:
1. Although she holds a commanding lead for the Democratic nomination and is ahead of every GOP potential candidate, Hillary Clinton is incredibly vulnerable in the general election. Why? Because the political landscape at present will make it very hard for Democrats to win a third consecutive presidential election. In years past, the only way that has happened is when the incumbent president retains a high job approval number above 55 percent. President Obama's approval rating is in the 40s. Further, two-thirds of voters believe the country is off on the wrong track and want a different direction from President Obama's policies. This makes it tough terrain for the former senator secretary of state.
2. Though major aspects of the landscape favor the GOP in 2016 and they have achieved success around the country in 2014, the electoral college and likely demographics of the electorate in 2016 make it difficult to win a general election. With the rising Latino vote, increasing progressive rise on social issues, rising groups of voters who don't identify as regular churchgoers, and a geography that leans Democratic, it makes a win problematic for the GOP. It is possible, but the right candidate has to emerge from the GOP nomination process who can thread this difficult demographic needle.
USA Today:
Predictions that doctors would be overwhelmed by new patients as a result of the Affordable Care Act have not come true a year after the law's coverage expansions took effect.
That's according to a study to be released Wednesday from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and health care technology company Athenahealth. By gathering data from 15,700 of Athenahealth's clients, mainly physicians, the study measured how the Affordable Care Act has affected doctors.
"In the run-up to the coverage expansion aspects of the Affordable Care Act, there was a concern a lot of these patients might have unmet medical needs and their demand for services might overwhelm the capacity of primary care doctors. We just haven't seen that," says Josh Gray, vice president of Athenahealth's research division. "That rush has just not materialized across our network."
John Doyle:
Sometimes watching TV can be a very upsetting experience.
One evening last month on The Nightly Show with Larry Wilmore, there was a panel discussion about the issue of vaccination and the “anti-vaxxers,” those who oppose the vaccination of children.
The spark for the discussion was a much-read, much-covered news story about the rapid spread of measles among people who had recently visited Disneyland in California. Local health officials suspected the outbreak was linked to pockets of people who refuse vaccinations. Later, a closer study provided evidence to back up that theory.
The panel discussion was revelatory, and horrifying. The level of ignorance among the talking heads – all showbiz and media types – was stunning.
The Canadian Michaela Pereira, a McGill graduate who hosts a morning show on CNN, declared that condemning parents who refuse to vaccinate children is “judgy.” That is, who are we to judge them if they believe they have real concerns? It was enraging. And it reminded me of a cogent but bleak joke made by Jimmy Kimmel during the same period: “Parents here are more afraid of gluten than they are of smallpox.”
Go figure. Exactly how this situation – a war about vaccinations – came into being is beyond belief. While we are, as a culture, horrified by fundamentalism that wants to take the world backward, back beyond the Age of Enlightenment, we have tended to tolerate those in our culture who reject modern medicine and, essentially, plan to take public health back by decades.
Monkey Cage Blog:
Where does America’s low voter turnout matter the most? In local elections
School board!!
Byron York explores conservative thinking on Jeb Bush:
"A big vulnerability for the governor, when the debates start, is to remind us again, where were you during the battle over Obamacare?" noted that activist, Gary Bauer, of the conservative group American Values. "I don't recall much [from him] during those years. I don't think not being a veteran of those wars is a plus for Gov. Bush."
Bauer is basically right. In 2009 and early 2010, as Obamacare made its troubled way through Congress, Bush — a respected former two-term Republican governor of Florida with solid conservative credentials — remained mostly silent about the biggest public policy fight in a generation.