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14 Things That Cheered Me Up This Week: Saturday's GNR [1]
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Date: 2024-04-27
the Biden-Harris administration has announced a wide range of new rules to protect ordinary Americans
Vice President Kamala Harris announced that the administration has finalized two new rules affecting patients in nursing homes and receiving home care, as well as the workers who care for them. The first sets minimum staffing requirements for facilities funded by Medicare and Medicaid, and the second concerns how home healthcare companies account for Medicaid funding. In a speech at the Hmong Cultural and Community Agency in La Crosse, Wisconsin, Harris noted the extraordinary value of healthcare workers. She also explained that about 1.2 million Americans live in federally funded nursing homes, which make up about four fifths of the nursing homes in the country. But the majority of those homes—about 75% of them—are understaffed. This is dangerous and isolating for patients and demoralizing for workers, who have high rates of burnout and turnover. Now, nursing homes that receive federal funding will have to provide at least 3.48 hours of nursing care per resident every day, less than the 4.1 hours the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services advocate but enough to require the hiring of about 12,000 registered nurses and 77,000 aides, at an annual cost of almost $7 billion. Consumer organizations and labor unions pushed for the new rule, but nursing home operators strongly oppose the new mandate, saying it will force facilities to close because of a shortage of nurses. In response, Health and Human Services secretary Xavier Becerra told Tami Luhby of CNN that no one should live in facilities that are unsafe or should receive inferior care. Luhby noted that the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services in September launched a $75 million campaign to increase the number of nurses in nursing homes. The second rule the vice president announced had to do with home health aides. Medicaid currently pays about $125 billion a year to home healthcare companies, which employ hundreds of thousands of workers providing services for elderly and disabled Americans. These companies have never been required to report how that money was being spent. Now they will be required to spend 80% of the federal dollars they receive on workers’ salaries rather than administrative overhead. Also yesterday, the Office for Civil Rights at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services announced a final rule that strengthens the HIPAA medical privacy rule for people from states that ban abortions who seek reproductive health care in states that permit them. In response to threats by Republican state officials to charge women who cross state lines to obtain abortion, contraception, or fertility treatments, the new rule prohibits health care providers, health plans, and other entities from disclosing patients’ reproductive health care records to state officials when they are being sought to investigate or charge patients, doctors, or others. Today, the Labor Department announced a new rule that would guarantee that salaried workers who make less than $59,000 a year are compensated fairly for overtime work. The Trump administration set the salary threshold for those who did not have overtime protections at $35,568. As of July 1, 2024, the threshold will be $43,888, and on January 1, 2025, it will rise to $58,656. Senator Patty Murray (D-WA), former chair of the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions, said the change could affect 4 million workers.
On Earth Day, Biden launched a new site to apply for Climate Corps jobs
President Biden marked Earth Day on Monday by launching a website for applications for his Climate Corps jobs and training program, a plan that has attracted a lot of interest from young Americans. Biden launched the climate service program last fall, and within weeks the White House received more than 42,000 expressions of interest from Americans, most of them between the ages of 18 and 35. "You'll get paid to fight climate change, learning how to install those solar panels, fight wildfires, rebuild wetlands, weatherize homes, and so much more," Biden said. Eventually, the corps will employ more than 20,000 young people, according to the White House. Biden said young Americans who take part in the program can also get linked up with training to help land apprenticeship positions through a partnership with the North America's Building Trades Unions. There's also a plan to help people use their new Climate Corps experience to apply for federal government positions. On Monday, Biden also announced $7 billion in grants for solar panel projects for lower-income communities. The funding comes from the Inflation Reduction Act.
11. Biden OWNED the Republican House of Reps
The winner of this Congress? Joe Biden
House Republicans came into the 118th Congress with big plans. They were going to cut taxes and spending, impeach President Joe Biden and members of his Cabinet and use their leverage to force Democrats to accept stringent new border security and immigration policies. In short, they were going to shake up Washington, with Biden as their main focus. That didn’t happen. Instead, Biden has gotten pretty much everything he’s asked for from this Congress without having to concede much in return. True, it’s taken a while as the dysfunctional House slowly churned its way through the past 15-plus months. Yet in the end, Biden has emerged as the big winner. On government funding, on FISA, and now on Ukraine and Israel, Biden got what he wanted. The president hasn’t gone unscathed. Hunter and James Biden have been deposed as part of the House GOP impeachment inquiry into the Biden family’s finances. The Afghanistan investigation showed a dangerous disconnect between the State and Defense departments. Republicans have crushed the administration over the problems at the U.S.-Mexico border, forcing a shift in White House policy. But House Republicans paid a much higher price due to their internal discord and dissension. GOP lawmakers have ousted one speaker while another may be forced to turn to Democrats to remain in power. And it gets worse from there: → In May 2023, Biden cut a debt-limit and spending deal with then-Speaker Kevin McCarthy. Biden gave a bit, agreeing to essentially a spending cap that progressives dislike, in return for a two-year increase in the debt limit. But the agreement cost McCarthy his job. → Speaker Mike Johnson kept those spending levels in place. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and the White House held firm against poison-pill amendments in the 2024 spending bills that could’ve caused a shutdown. → Biden will get the $60 billion-plus in Ukraine aid he’s sought, although it’s coming months late and with battlefield consequences. The White House didn’t have to accept new restrictions on Ukraine funding, aside from some of it being deemed a “loan.” → Republicans impeached Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas only to see it quickly dismissed by the Democratic-run Senate. → The Biden impeachment inquiry is fizzling out. → Johnson and former President Donald Trump killed a bipartisan Senate border security and immigration deal, despite the ongoing crisis at the U.S.-Mexico border. This has given some political space for Biden and Democrats on this issue. → And when they return to Capitol Hill next week, House Republicans will be down to a one-vote margin of control for a while as the GOP conference seethes.
A rotten week for MAGA Republicans’ feeble stunts
MAGA House Republicans would rather do anything but their jobs. They would rather indulge right-wing media consumers with baseless impeachments, motions to vacate the speaker’s chair (again!), fruitless hearings and parroting Russian propaganda. None of these activities serves the interests of the voters; none improves U.S. national security. For these minions of Donald Trump, chaos and paralysis appear to be the goal. Fortunately for the country, Democrats have figured out how to short-circuit the antics and humiliate Republicans. Problems started in the House. The Republicans’ star legal witness and an even smattering of House and Senate Republicans conceded that there was no constitutional basis for impeaching Mayorkas. Jonathan Turley, a frequent Trump legal defender, readily acknowledged, “I don’t think they have established any of those bases for impeachment. ... The fact is, impeachment is not for being a bad Cabinet member or even a bad person. It is a very narrow standard.” Republicans never remotely reached the constitutional standard of “high crimes and misdemeanors.” Democratic partisans often find fault with their politicians for being “too nice” or “lacking a killer instinct.” Whatever the merits of their past complaints (e.g., leaving the filibuster in place), they should acknowledge that Democratic lawmakers — especially those in the minority of a chaotic, feckless House — have learned a thing or two over the past couple of years. Democrats have learned to give Republicans the respect they deserve — which, often, is none.
12. A giant victory for unions!
UAW gets first Southern win as Tenn. plant overwhelmingly backs union
Volkswagen workers in Chattanooga, Tenn., passed a historic vote to join the United Auto Workers on Friday, making the auto factory the first in the South to vote to unionize since the 1940s. Nearly three-quarters of 3,613 workers voted yes in a three-day election that drew high turnout, giving the union an impressive first win in its campaign to organize the factories of a dozen automakers in the South. The vote marks the biggest organizing victory in years for the UAW and for the broader labor movement, which has long faced difficulty in Southern states. The UAW had twice previously failed to unionize the VW plant, in 2014 and 2019. VW Chattanooga will join a handful of other unionized auto factories in the South, where local laws and customs have made it hard for unions to make inroads. The organizing effort caps off a strong year for the U.S. labor movement, which has won record wage increases in several industries through strikes and tough bargaining. The Teamsters scored big wins for UPS employees, while Hollywood actors and writers, and Kaiser nurses secured better wages and working conditions by staging walkouts. The UAW has had a particularly strong year under its new president Shawn Fain, winning large raises and other perks through an acrimonious strike against Detroit automakers in the fall.
13. Rare good climate news
We might be closer to changing course on climate change than we realized
14. These &^%$ers got indicted!
It was such a busy news week, that many people didn’t notice some justice happening...
Meadows, Giuliani and other Trump allies charged in Arizona 2020 election probe
An Arizona grand jury on Wednesday indicted seven attorneys or aides affiliated with Donald Trump’s 2020 presidential campaign as well as 11 Arizona Republicans on felony charges related to their alleged efforts to subvert Joe Biden’s 2020 victory in the state, according to an announcement by the state attorney general. Those indicted include former Trump White House chief of staff Mark Meadows, attorneys Rudy Giuliani, Jenna Ellis, John Eastman and Christina Bobb, top campaign adviser Boris Epshteyn and former campaign aide Mike Roman. They are accused of allegedly aiding an unsuccessful strategy to award the state’s electoral votes to Trump instead of Biden after the 2020 election. Also charged are the Republicans who signed paperwork on Dec. 14, 2020, that falsely purported Trump was the rightful winner, including former state party chair Kelli Ward, two state senators and Tyler Bowyer, a GOP national committeeman and chief operating officer of Turning Point Action, the campaign arm of the pro-Trump conservative group Turning Point USA. Trump was not charged, but he is described in the indictment as an unindicted co-conspirator.
On The Lighter Side
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