The Age That Women Have Babies: How a Gap Divides America
Becoming a mother used to be seen as a unifying milestone for women in the United States. But a new analysis of four decades of births shows that the age that women become mothers varies significantly by geography and education. The result is that children are born into very different family lives, heading for diverging economic futures.
Russia appoints Steven Seagal special envoy for humanitarian work
Actor granted Russian citizenship in 2016 will ‘facilitate relations’ with US
Russia has appointed action movie star Steven Seagal as a special envoy for humanitarian ties with the United States.
The foreign ministry announced the move on Saturday on its Facebook page, saying Seagal’s portfolio in the unpaid position would be to “facilitate relations between Russia and the United States in the humanitarian field, including cooperation in culture, arts, public and youth exchanges.”
M y life in Tulsa , like many other people who grew up in flyover cities, has been an assemblage, full of extended departures. Graduate school at Oxford, work in Egypt, work in Mexico, and now Harvard, management consulting and journalism have all taken me away from Tulsa.
But each time I landed in Tulsa’s two-terminal airport after countless connecting flights, a wave of nostalgia would warp Tulsa’s annoying pain points into loveable quirks.
Walking from my gate to the airport’s only five baggage carousels, I’d think to myself “there are Chick-Fil-A restaurants as far as the eye can see”, or I’d consider the fact that few restaurants were open beyond 10pm as indications of homeliness and family-friendly fun. I’d drive, smiling until my cheeks were sore, watching drivers trade in defensive driving for polite, graciously slow driving. And upon leaving on any one of these extended departures, an odd feeling remained that I’d be back one day – one day for good.
But on my most recent trip to Tulsa in May, Terence Crutcher’s September 2016 death and the subsequent acquittal and reinstatement of the police officer who killed him still lingered in my head. All I could recall were the dozens of my classmates who had heard about Terence’s murder asking me: “Aren’t you from Oklahoma? Are there really black people in Oklahoma?”
Bloomberg reports that oil-industry leaders have supported the move behind the scenes , with companies including Marathon Petroleum, Koch Companies Public Sector LLC and the refiner Andeavor disclosing lobbying activity on the issue this year. They've argued that the Obama-era standards Trump proposes to sweep aside are outdated, established when the U.S. was over-reliant on foreign oil, and that they don't reflect huge increases in U.S. exports of crude oil and petroleum products since then.
"We come from a free-market perspective, where we believe consumers should have a choice in their vehicles, and they can weigh all the appropriate factors — be it size, horsepower, utility or fuel economy ," Derrick Morgan , senior vice president of the American Fuel and Petrochemical Manufacturers trade group, which advocated for the changes in a meeting at the White House in June, told Bloomberg . "We trust individual consumers to make the right decisions; we don't think Washington or Sacramento should be making all those determinations."
The Trump administration's proposal would freeze fuel-efficiency standards at 2020 levels — about 37 miles per gallon by 2026, down from the Obama administration's nearly 47 mpg — and weaken electric vehicle mandates. It said the freeze would boost U.S. oil consumption by around 500,000 barrels of oil a day by the 2030s, decrease vehicle-related fatalities by encourage consumers to buy new, safer cars — Autoblog scrutinizes that claim here — and lower projected regulatory costs for automakers by $319 billion through 2029.
Two auto trade groups representing GM , Ford , Toyota , Volkswagen and others have said that despite the administration's proposal, they continue to support efforts to improve fuel economy and "incentivize advanced technologies."
In an analysis of the proposed freeze , the researchers at the Rhodium Group noted that future oil prices would play a major role in determining the overall effect of the relaxed standards, since higher oil prices push consumers into smaller, more fuel-efficient cars (though of course, modern crossovers are quickly closing the fuel-economy gap on sedans). It notes that light trucks last year made up 65 percent of total U.S. vehicle sales, up from 50 percent in 2012, when oil prices peaked.
It said the freeze would equate to between $193 billion and $236 billion in additional cumulative fuel costs for consumers by 2035.
Not lost on many opponents of the freeze is the fact that nations around the world are experiencing extreme weather — triple-digit heat waves in Japan, wildfires in Sweden, Greece and California, and drought in South Africa — that scientists are directly tying to climate change , brought about in significant part by burning fossil fuels.
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Bernie Sanders talk to Sarah Smarsh about knowing what’s right from wrong
A fter the 2016 presidential election, headlines described a “divided” United States. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez – at the time a 27-year-old bartender, now a progressive political star running for US Congress after she pulled off a fantastic primary upset in New York in June – sensed an underlying problem that was deeper than politics, more personal than demographic data.
“I just really felt like our country wasn’t understanding itself,” Ocasio-Cortez told me by phone while campaigning for congressional candidate Cori Bush in Missouri. “We didn’t understand each other, and we didn’t understand ourselves as a collective nation.”
It was almost midnight, and her voice sounded strong but tired. Our scheduled interview the previous day, when she visited my home district in Kansas to support another progressive candidate, had been postponed as she navigated her first appearance outside New York. I had figured I wouldn’t get a call at such a late hour and had already changed into my pajamas – an awkward accident that suited the vulnerable questions I intended to ask her about, oh, the meaning of life.
As Ocasio-Cortez pondered her country’s sociopolitical disconnect in late 2016, she told me, she considered her part in it. Having grown up in New York City with strong family ties in Puerto Rico, Ocasio-Cortez had limited experience of the rest of the US – not so different, she said, than growing up in a small town.
That changed in late 2016 when an organizer invited her to join protest camps demonstrating against the Dakota crude oil access pipeline near the Standing Rock Sioux reservation.
Ocasio-Cortez and a friend packed an old Subaru and drove west.
President Trump is doing everything he can to ruin Obamacare... so of course health-care for all is certain to be a major topic in the coming elections. Medicare-for-all... single-payer... The Dems tried a private-insurance-based system, but now that the GOP has shown its unwillingness to cooperate, the Dems will go for more.
New York has a single-payer plan, and the numbers add up this time.
I hope you aren’t sick of single-payer projections yet. RAND has a fascinating new one , looking at a New York plan for universal coverage.
First, the specifics of the New York Health Act:
Every resident would be covered by the New York Health program.
Cost-sharing would be effectively eliminated for all residents, and almost all services would be covered — with the exception of long-term care.
The state’s single-payer program would be paid for through a combination of existing federal and state health care funding, plus new payroll taxes and a progressive tax on non-payroll income like stock dividends.
Federal funding would be about the same because of the way the program is structured, but New York state’s health care spending would increase fivefold over 10 years, versus the projected status quo.
However, overall health care spending in New York would go down slightly, about 2 percent, even as more services and more people are covered.
But RAND gets a little more granular and helps to answer some of the questions about winners and losers that will likely define the single-payer debate, should we ever have one in Washington.
A couple of charts explain as well as I can what single-payer in New York might look like in 2031.
As you can see, New York would be spending a modest amount less on health care after 10 years under single-payer than it would under the status quo, according to the RAND projections. $15 billion isn’t really that much in the grand scheme of things, as crazy as that sounds.
However, that same spending will cover more people and more services, and more of it will be spent on health care. RAND finds that New York would be spending $23 billion less on administration and $9 billion more on health care services under this single-payer plan.
Here’s another good chart:
One thing sticks out most to me: New Yorkers would be spending half as much money out of their own pockets when they go to the doctor or get a prescription under single-payer than they would under the current system: $23 billion versus $52 billion.
The other thing this chart helpfully illustrates: New tax payments would almost perfectly replace the premiums that people and their employers pay right now for private health insurance. It’s not quite an exact match, but it’s very close: $195 billion for premiums versus $210 billion in new taxes.
Then there is the question of who is paying for this new system. RAND’s conclusion is pretty simple: “We find that payments for health care would be more progressive under the NYHA [New York Health Act] than under the status quo.”
Basically everyone making under 1,000 percent or less of the federal poverty level — about $120,000 for an individual or $250,000 for a family of four in 2018 — would pay the same or less if you look at everything from their out-of-pocket spending to taxes they pay that fund health care.
A family making 139 percent of the poverty level (the Medicaid expansion cutoff) would see their spending drop from $2,700 to $1,300 under single-payer. Families who make 500 percent of the poverty level would have their spending cut from $10,000 to $6,400 on average.
Wealthier families might spend a lot more, though. The families making more than 2,000 percent of the poverty level would see their spending (a lot of this is taxes) increase from $141,700 on average in 2022 under the status quo to about $218,000 under the New York Health Act.
That is a genuine trade-off. Single-payer proponents’ support turns on the idea that health care is a human right, even for the less fortunate. So this might be a trade-off they are willing to make.
In fact, in total, if you look at the RAND research, it outlines what you could imagine as the pillars of the argument for single-payer health care:
We would spend less money overall, while spending more on actual health care and covering more people and services.
Any new taxes would be effectively replacing the premiums you and your employer already pay.
Yes, some higher-income people would pay more, but the working and middle classes would save money.
This comes with caveats, as any projection does. It assumes single-payer would be able to substantially cut payments to providers without reducing access to care. It assumes New York Health won’t cover long-term care, which is very important as our population gets older and very expensive.
But I think between the RAND and the George Mason studies this week has shown that there is at least a case to be made for single-payer. The question will be whether its supporters can artfully make it — and whether the people find it persuasive.
From The Upshot (NY Times)
The Age That Women Have Babies: How a Gap Divides America
Becoming a mother used to be seen as a unifying milestone for women in the United States. But a new analysis of four decades of births shows that the age that women become mothers varies significantly by geography and education. The result is that children are born into very different family lives, heading for diverging economic futures.
From The Guardian :
Russia appoints Steven Seagal special envoy for humanitarian work
Russia has appointed action movie star Steven Seagal as a special envoy for humanitarian ties with the United States.
The foreign ministry announced the move on Saturday on its Facebook page, saying Seagal’s portfolio in the unpaid position would be to “facilitate relations between Russia and the United States in the humanitarian field, including cooperation in culture, arts, public and youth exchanges.”
The actor, who was granted Russian citizenship in 2016 , has vocally defended Putin’s policies, including Russia’s 2014 annexation of Crimea , and has criticised the US government.
Last year, Ukraine banned Seagal from entering the country for five years, citing national security reasons.
Joining France's Gérard Depardieu, maybe?
From The Guardian :
How America's heartland loses black people
But each time I landed in Tulsa’s two-terminal airport after countless connecting flights, a wave of nostalgia would warp Tulsa’s annoying pain points into loveable quirks.
Walking from my gate to the airport’s only five baggage carousels, I’d think to myself “there are Chick-Fil-A restaurants as far as the eye can see”, or I’d consider the fact that few restaurants were open beyond 10pm as indications of homeliness and family-friendly fun. I’d drive, smiling until my cheeks were sore, watching drivers trade in defensive driving for polite, graciously slow driving. And upon leaving on any one of these extended departures, an odd feeling remained that I’d be back one day – one day for good.
But on my most recent trip to Tulsa in May, Terence Crutcher’s September 2016 death and the subsequent acquittal and reinstatement of the police officer who killed him still lingered in my head. All I could recall were the dozens of my classmates who had heard about Terence’s murder asking me: “Aren’t you from Oklahoma? Are there really black people in Oklahoma?”
...
From Autoblog :
If automakers didn't lobby for mpg freeze, who did? Who do you think?
Bloomberg reports that oil-industry leaders have supported the move behind the scenes , with companies including Marathon Petroleum, Koch Companies Public Sector LLC and the refiner Andeavor disclosing lobbying activity on the issue this year. They've argued that the Obama-era standards Trump proposes to sweep aside are outdated, established when the U.S. was over-reliant on foreign oil, and that they don't reflect huge increases in U.S. exports of crude oil and petroleum products since then.
"We come from a free-market perspective, where we believe consumers should have a choice in their vehicles, and they can weigh all the appropriate factors — be it size, horsepower, utility or fuel economy ," Derrick Morgan , senior vice president of the American Fuel and Petrochemical Manufacturers trade group, which advocated for the changes in a meeting at the White House in June, told Bloomberg . "We trust individual consumers to make the right decisions; we don't think Washington or Sacramento should be making all those determinations."
The Trump administration's proposal would freeze fuel-efficiency standards at 2020 levels — about 37 miles per gallon by 2026, down from the Obama administration's nearly 47 mpg — and weaken electric vehicle mandates. It said the freeze would boost U.S. oil consumption by around 500,000 barrels of oil a day by the 2030s, decrease vehicle-related fatalities by encourage consumers to buy new, safer cars — Autoblog scrutinizes that claim here — and lower projected regulatory costs for automakers by $319 billion through 2029.
Two auto trade groups representing GM , Ford , Toyota , Volkswagen and others have said that despite the administration's proposal, they continue to support efforts to improve fuel economy and "incentivize advanced technologies."
In an analysis of the proposed freeze , the researchers at the Rhodium Group noted that future oil prices would play a major role in determining the overall effect of the relaxed standards, since higher oil prices push consumers into smaller, more fuel-efficient cars (though of course, modern crossovers are quickly closing the fuel-economy gap on sedans). It notes that light trucks last year made up 65 percent of total U.S. vehicle sales, up from 50 percent in 2012, when oil prices peaked.
It said the freeze would equate to between $193 billion and $236 billion in additional cumulative fuel costs for consumers by 2035.
Not lost on many opponents of the freeze is the fact that nations around the world are experiencing extreme weather — triple-digit heat waves in Japan, wildfires in Sweden, Greece and California, and drought in South Africa — that scientists are directly tying to climate change , brought about in significant part by burning fossil fuels.
Gosh...
Big Oil is using the government to screw consumers!
How about that!
With a crotch-groper as their leader, the GOP isn't even trying to talk about morality any more. The Dems are moving into that vacated space.
From The Guardian :
How the American left is rediscovering morality
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Bernie Sanders talk to Sarah Smarsh about knowing what’s right from wrong
“I just really felt like our country wasn’t understanding itself,” Ocasio-Cortez told me by phone while campaigning for congressional candidate Cori Bush in Missouri. “We didn’t understand each other, and we didn’t understand ourselves as a collective nation.”
It was almost midnight, and her voice sounded strong but tired. Our scheduled interview the previous day, when she visited my home district in Kansas to support another progressive candidate, had been postponed as she navigated her first appearance outside New York. I had figured I wouldn’t get a call at such a late hour and had already changed into my pajamas – an awkward accident that suited the vulnerable questions I intended to ask her about, oh, the meaning of life.
As Ocasio-Cortez pondered her country’s sociopolitical disconnect in late 2016, she told me, she considered her part in it. Having grown up in New York City with strong family ties in Puerto Rico, Ocasio-Cortez had limited experience of the rest of the US – not so different, she said, than growing up in a small town.
That changed in late 2016 when an organizer invited her to join protest camps demonstrating against the Dakota crude oil access pipeline near the Standing Rock Sioux reservation.
Ocasio-Cortez and a friend packed an old Subaru and drove west.
...
President Trump is doing everything he can to ruin Obamacare... so of course health-care for all is certain to be a major topic in the coming elections. Medicare-for-all... single-payer... The Dems tried a private-insurance-based system, but now that the GOP has shown its unwillingness to cooperate, the Dems will go for more.
From Vox :
The case for single-payer, explained in 3 charts
New York has a single-payer plan, and the numbers add up this time.
I hope you aren’t sick of single-payer projections yet. RAND has a fascinating new one , looking at a New York plan for universal coverage.
First, the specifics of the New York Health Act:
The RAND study’s big-picture findings read like a state-level version of George Mason University’s analysis of Bernie Sanders’s Medicare for All bill :
But RAND gets a little more granular and helps to answer some of the questions about winners and losers that will likely define the single-payer debate, should we ever have one in Washington.
A couple of charts explain as well as I can what single-payer in New York might look like in 2031.
As you can see, New York would be spending a modest amount less on health care after 10 years under single-payer than it would under the status quo, according to the RAND projections. $15 billion isn’t really that much in the grand scheme of things, as crazy as that sounds.
However, that same spending will cover more people and more services, and more of it will be spent on health care. RAND finds that New York would be spending $23 billion less on administration and $9 billion more on health care services under this single-payer plan.
Here’s another good chart:
One thing sticks out most to me: New Yorkers would be spending half as much money out of their own pockets when they go to the doctor or get a prescription under single-payer than they would under the current system: $23 billion versus $52 billion.
The other thing this chart helpfully illustrates: New tax payments would almost perfectly replace the premiums that people and their employers pay right now for private health insurance. It’s not quite an exact match, but it’s very close: $195 billion for premiums versus $210 billion in new taxes.
Then there is the question of who is paying for this new system. RAND’s conclusion is pretty simple: “We find that payments for health care would be more progressive under the NYHA [New York Health Act] than under the status quo.”
Basically everyone making under 1,000 percent or less of the federal poverty level — about $120,000 for an individual or $250,000 for a family of four in 2018 — would pay the same or less if you look at everything from their out-of-pocket spending to taxes they pay that fund health care.
A family making 139 percent of the poverty level (the Medicaid expansion cutoff) would see their spending drop from $2,700 to $1,300 under single-payer. Families who make 500 percent of the poverty level would have their spending cut from $10,000 to $6,400 on average.
Wealthier families might spend a lot more, though. The families making more than 2,000 percent of the poverty level would see their spending (a lot of this is taxes) increase from $141,700 on average in 2022 under the status quo to about $218,000 under the New York Health Act.
That is a genuine trade-off. Single-payer proponents’ support turns on the idea that health care is a human right, even for the less fortunate. So this might be a trade-off they are willing to make.
In fact, in total, if you look at the RAND research, it outlines what you could imagine as the pillars of the argument for single-payer health care:
This comes with caveats, as any projection does. It assumes single-payer would be able to substantially cut payments to providers without reducing access to care. It assumes New York Health won’t cover long-term care, which is very important as our population gets older and very expensive.
But I think between the RAND and the George Mason studies this week has shown that there is at least a case to be made for single-payer. The question will be whether its supporters can artfully make it — and whether the people find it persuasive.