Thursday, April 02, 2015
Public Opposes Indiana-Style "Religious Freedom" Laws
Indiana recently passed a law that would allow people and businesses to discriminate against the LGBT community (and possibly even others) by claiming that serving them would violate their "sincerely-held" religious views. It was presented as a law to protect religious freedom, but most people understood that was not true. They knew it was a thinly-veiled attempt to legalize discrimination.
That's why there has been a huge backlash against the odious law throughout the country. And as this Rasmussen Poll (done on March 30th and 31st of 1,000 adults nationwide, with a 3 point margin of error) shows, that backlash is because a majority of Americans (53%) oppose such a law -- and that same majority believes the law would be used to discriminate against American citizens.
Only about a third of the public wants to see this kind of law. Only Republicans like this discriminatory law, with 59% supporting it. Meanwhile only 13% of Democrats and 37% of Independents support it.
Most Americans don't like discrimination -- even when it comes holding a bible.
Obama Unpopular? - Remember His Predecessor?
Congressional Republicans love to talk about how "unpopular" President Obama is these days (even though his job approval is at least 30 points higher than their own). But you won't hear them talk about the last Republican who inhabited the White House, because his job approval was significantly lower than that of President Obama.
The chart above was made from Gallup Polls in 2007 and 2015. They show the job approval of both Bush and Obama at the same point in their presidency. Note that Obama's approval is significantly higher than Bush's.
The Republicans know that. That's why they are trying to distance themselves from the Bush presidency. But they are only trying to distance themselves from the man, not his policies. They don't seem to realize that it was his policies that made him so unpopular -- policies that trashed the economy. They still follow those same policies today.
Wednesday, April 01, 2015
The Obamacare Insured Are Happy With Their Coverage
Obamacare has proven time after time that the lies told by Republicans about it are ridiculous. Now this Gallup Poll (done in October and November of last year) supports that. It seems that those newly insured through Obamacare are just as happy with their health insurance coverage as all insured Americans -- and they are slightly happier with the health care costs after getting insurance.
The costs did not radically rise as the GOP predicted. It rose by a smaller amount than ever (since the hospitals have to give less free care). And the coverage under Obamacare is just as good, if not better than any other insurance.
Obamacare is not perfect (and I would still like to see all Americans covered by a single-payer system, like Medicare for all), but it is a huge improvement over what we had before.
New Hampshire Republican Presidential Preferences
These charts show the results of the Franklin Pierce University / Boston Herald Poll that was done between March 22nd and 25th of 429 likely GOP primary voters, and has a margin of error of 4.7 points.
As you can see, the race is still a mess and is without any real leader. No candidate scored higher than 15% support, and only five scored 9% or better. This race for the GOP nomination is still wide open.
The survey also asked a rather interesting question -- who do you think will win the nomination. Bush led with 27% (see chart below), but that is far from convincing.
Green Party Says U.S. Is Worst Of Established Democracies
Are we losing our democracy in the United States? Is it already gone? How does our democracy rate compared to others. Here is a thought-provoking post by Green Party Shadow Cabinet member Bob Fitrakis:
Over fourteen hundred international election experts gathered data last year and pronounced the United States last in election integrity among long-standing democracies. On a 100-point scale, the U.S. received an integrity rating of 69.3 percent -- one notch ahead of the narco-drug state Colombia at 69.1 percent and just behind the nearly-narco-drug state of Mexico at 69.8 percent, neither country with a long-standing democracy.
"The November 2014 Congressional elections got poor grades because experts were concerned about the electoral laws, voter registration, the process of drawing district boundaries, as well as regulation of campaign finances," according to the Electoral Integrity Project report.
The experts particularly found U.S. voting registration problematic. So let me summarize that for you. We have 50 different state election laws -- some quite fair, others authoritarian in nature. With the elimination of the Voter's Rights Act of 1965, Republicans have declared open season on Black, Latino, elderly and young voters. Over 90 percent of the U.S. House districts are rigged to be non-competitive. Corporations can secretly launder money into political campaigns.
And our Supreme Court has declared corporations are people and spending money is free speech.
Of course the report worded this in a bit more scholarly manner: "America also suffers from exceptionally partisan and decentralized arrangements for electoral administration." To put it bluntly, there is no Constitutional right to vote, as there is in the European Union Constitution.
The report correctly recognizes the history of election corruption in the U.S. as: "…increasingly polarized and litigious…ever since the 2000 'Florida debacle' generating growing controversy in state-houses and the courts." This is the rise of Karl Rove and Rovian politics -- laws are routinely broken, private computer companies "accidentally switch votes," election officials co-chair partisan political campaigns, and voters are mysteriously purged from the voting rolls.
This leads to the following conclusion in the report: "Elections in the United States as relatively poorly ranked by experts compared with other established democracies, deserving further scrutiny."
Luckily for the Unites States, the Electoral Integrity Project sponsored by the University of Sydney in Australia does not measure the method by which people vote. The U.S. is the only democracy on Earth that allows private, for-profit partisan corporations to secretly program the computer voting software. Had this ludicrous non-transparent practice surrounding e-voting machines been calculated, the U.S. would be listed as the worst democracy on the planet.
The reality of non-transparent computer voting means that the U.S. should not be considered a democracy at this point in history. Jimmy Carter made this very point in 2013 when he told Der Spiegel the U.S. "has no functioning democracy." In post-Constitutional America, we need to acknowledge the fact that we hold perhaps the worst elections on the Earth. Once we accept this fact, we can come up with solutions to restore a real democracy.
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