Blogs / The Intersection

After passing in the House 220-215, the Senate has opened debate on their version of the health care bill with a 60-39 preliminary vote. Now onto the main event…

It reads like an Onion piece or maybe something John Oliver would ‘report on’, but this story’s no joke… Lawmakers in the Lone Star State may have taken their efforts to prohibit same-sex marriages too far–for everyone.

Texas’ gay marriage ban may have banned all marriages
By Dave Montgomery
Fort Worth Star-Telegram

AUSTIN — Texans: Are you really married?

Maybe not.

Barbara Ann Radnofsky, a Houston lawyer and Democratic candidate for attorney general, says that a 22-word clause in a 2005 constitutional amendment designed to ban gay marriages erroneously endangers the legal status of all marriages in the state.

The amendment, approved by the Legislature and overwhelmingly ratified by voters, declares that “marriage in this state shall consist only of the union of one man and one woman.” But the troublemaking phrase, as Radnofsky sees it, is Subsection B, which declares:

“This state or a political subdivision of this state may not create or recognize any legal status identical or similar to marriage.”

No, we’re not likely to see the dismantling of marriages across Texas, but according to Radnofsky, the clear language of Subsection B brings up legal questions about spousal rights, insurance claims, inheritance, and more. Go read the full article here.

Today’s vote was 220 to 215. All eyes to the Senate…

The faces of addiction come in every color and gender. The disease creeps into the lives of those from a wide spectrum of socio-economic levels, backgrounds, and experiences. It crosses continents, latitudes, and longitudes. That’s the thing about addiction–it doesn’t discriminate. Neither should politicians. Particularly when it comes to funding the research to help those who need treatment most.

Jessica’s got a thoughtful post up over at Bioephemera on double standards, politics, and drug treatment research. Having spent two years as a AAAS fellow at the National Institute on Drug Abuse, she understands the gravity of the issue. Jess writes:

..research to help smokers quit is generally portrayed as necessary and important, [while] increasingly, I’m seeing politicians complain that research to help other drug addicts quit is a waste of money.

Maybe it’s because these other addicts are meth addicts, or potheads, or heroin addicts – probably not people you relate to or approve of. That makes it pretty easy for the media to take cheap shots at crack, etc. addicts, and question whether we should waste money trying to help them. But we should get angry about these cheap shots…Tobacco is still a significant public health problem, and I want to do all we can to help smokers (like my mom) quit, but crack, meth, etc. utterly destroys families and communities. We should be leveraging scientific research every way we can to help these people – not throwing them away or taking shots at them because they’re “bad,” or because we can’t relate to them. They’re real people. They have families.

Nevertheless, people routinely and cynically use drug treatment research as a political football.

Of course it’s not news that politicians bash science research to score points with the voting public: Sarah Palin notoriously mocked fruit fly studies along the campaign trail while John McCain took issue with grizzly bear research and the Adler Planetarium. And the truth is that this tactic probably continues to win votes since science remains such a partisan issue. But when it comes to people–and finding the means to treat those most in need–a political agenda is unquestionably not acceptable.

Lots of us like to imagine there are justifiable reasons we’re the most deserving of the best care when sick. The truth is that better treatment and attention should not come as a result of wealth, location, or the social acceptability of a disease. Like Jess, I agree we must let doctors and scientists continue to study drug abuse and test treatments in the real world. That’s the way research progresses and results are achieved.

I’ll leave you with this illuminating video Jess posted that demonstrates the problem:

In 2009, it is legal in eight states and D.C. for health insurance companies to reject applicants who are survivors of domestic violence. Read more at Corpus Callosum, The Jackson Free Press, The Huffington Post, and The Primate Diaries.

Get outraged. Speak out. End the silence.

From the Stimulus to the Omnibus, from the specter of climate change to the change of Specter, from the economy to confirmations, in terms of the new administration, are you satisfied?

Optimistic?

Worried?

Uncertain?

Disappointed?

Scared?

Hopeful?

Share your perspective in comments…

Even though nothing should surprise me any more, I’m still pretty amazed at some of the Republican attacks on the new Waxman-Markey climate change bill (for details, see a report here from Stacy Morford of “Solve Climate”). First of all, the bill doesn’t take effect until 2012, so to cast it as a dire attack on our sputtering economy makes no sense. Everybody expects the economy to have improved by 2012.

Moreover, there appears to be a habit of just making up numbers about how damaging the bill would be. Republicans are saying, in some cases, that it would cost the average family over $ 3000 per year in energy costs–in short, roughly the equivalent of buying a new car. Of course that’s not correct–not even remotely. The EPA estimates that average energy costs would go up between $ 98 and $ 140 per year, and that’s before any rebate gets paid back to citizens, either through a tax cut or by the direct writing of rebate checks. At this point, pretty much everybody expects the final climate legislation to pay the public back with a significant part of the revenues the government earns through the sale of emissions permits; indeed, this will be one key factor in making the bill popular.

In sum, there’s no economic hardship here–and there is vast benefit. But expect the misinformation to continue, in direct relation to how close this bill gets to passage….

The plan in the House of Representatives is, apparently, to have a vote on global warming legislation before Memorial Day. To that end, this week an intense series of hearings begins before the House Energy and Commerce Committee, featuring some 70 plus witnesses, including top administration officials (Jackson, Chu) and other stars (Al Gore, John Warner). The full events roster is here.

The House is, of course, the easy part–the Senate is where this legislation will really go to die (or thrive), and you have to figure that won’t happen before summer (nice timing). Still, it just goes to show you that we have a hell of a year coming up for climate change policy. We’ll be observing events closely here at the Intersection, and chiming in as needed….for now, I just want to maintain my tone of optimism. This law isn’t just necessary–it’s actually achievable. And passing it can, if we get there, be one of our finest hours…..