J.C. Moore Online

Current Events from a Science Perspective

George Will started out his article, “The Supreme Court Votes for Clarity from Congress “ by citing a court case where the Supreme Court overruled the EPA – by muddying the water. He was referring to the case, Sacketts vs. the EPA. The Sacketts sued the EPA because it denied them a permit to, as George Will put it,” add a little sand and gravel to the land”.  The little sand and gravel he refers to would have filled in the wetlands adjacent to Priest Lake which is considered navigable water by the state of Utah.  The EPA cited their right to regulate navigable waters under the Clean Water Act. The Army Corps of Engineers analyzed the property and found that the EPA had jurisdiction.

The EPA successfully argued that, while the wetlands feed a non-navigable creek, that creek drains into navigable Priest Lake, and won a federal court battle in the 9th Circuit to continue blocking construction. The case was based on the Clean Water Act (CWA), which prohibits dumping pollution into “navigable waters . . . including wetlands adjacent thereto”, making it clear that the Clean Water Act includes adjacent wetlands. The Court ruled 5-4 in favor of the Sackett’s, but to do so they had to change the definition of adjacent.

Writing the majority opinion, Justice Samuel Alito said that to be protected, there must be a “continuous surface connection” between the wetlands and navigable water. “The Court’s ‘continuous surface connection’ test disregards the ordinary meaning of ‘adjacent,’” wrote the dissenting justices. Alito and the conservative justices divorced the law from the legislators’ intent, essentially rewriting it in a way that fits the outcome they sought and contradicting the plain text of the law. The Clean Water Act was passed in the 1970s to restore and protect our Nation’s waters. The court overturned a 50-year precedent for the way the Clean Water Act has been interpreted. And, in doing so, they’ve exposed many of our wetlands and waterways to the threat of exactly the kind of pollution we had in the past that the Clean Water Act was meant to prevent. It is now estimated that the Clean Water Act keeps 700 billion pounds of pollutants out of US waterways every year .

The Supreme Court ruling also the means that as much as 90 million acres of wetlands in the U.S. are no longer protected by the Clean Water Act, embracing the decades-long demands of mining companies, the fossil fuel industry, reckless developers, and other big polluters. The court’s decision in Sackett v. EPA puts our communities, public health, and local ecosystems in danger. Wetlands are essential. They store water to prevent and mitigate floods, filter pollutants before they reach other bodies of water, support forestry, food and seafood production, and recreation, and more. “It doesn’t reflect reality, or the scientific understanding of how watersheds and the river networks within them function,” said Ellen Wohl, a river researcher and professor in the Geosciences Department at Colorado State University. 

She pointed out that wetlands eventually flow into navigable bodies of water, aquifers, and subterranean waterways. Allowing the pollution of those would also allow pollution of many streams, lakes, and wells we rely on for clean sources of water. It will do serious harm to the bodies of water most Americans obviously want to protect, as the Clean Water Act was designed to do. Justice Samuel Alito’s majority opinion in Sackett v. EPA is likely to hobble the law’s ability to protect several major waterways, including the Mississippi River and the Chesapeake Bay. He obviously did not allow for the fact that water runs downhill and that almost everyone lives downstream from someone.

To prevent an ecological disaster, Congress should rewrite the law to make it even clearer, although it is clear enough in its present form. And, states should beef up their own enforcement to ensure they protect their water and land. For now, that would be the best path forward, but it is not likely to happen soon, given the political makeup of Congress and many state legislatures.

As to George Will, he lacks clarity in the meaning of “conservative”. He applauded the decision by the conservative members of the Supreme Court which overturned 50 years of precedents and opened up over half of the United States’ wetlands to pollution and development. He distorted scientific work in the 1970s to discount the role of carbon dioxide in warming the earth, by claiming scientists then were predicting a New Ice Age. He seems to care little about conserving the earth and its ecosystems, and he rails about government regulations, even those meant to protect other human beings. Apparently, he doesn’t think claiming to be conservative means you support conserving the most important thing we have, the Earth.

Note: More detailed information about the value of wetlands, and this ruling are given in the High Country News: “Waterways are made up of more than what’s visible on the surface. Take Lapwai Creek, near Lewiston, Idaho: At a casual glance, it’s a ribbon of cool water, shaded by cottonwood trees and alive with steelhead and sculpin, mayfly and stonefly larvae. An adult could wade across it in a few strides without getting their knees wet. But that’s just the part people can see. Beneath the surface channel, coursing through the rounded cobbles below, is what scientists call the hyporheic zone: water flowing along underground, which can be a few inches deep, or 10 yards or more, mixing with both surface water and groundwater. Microbes that purify water live down there, and aquatic insects—food for fish and other animals—can use it as a sort of underground highway, traveling more than a mile away from a river.

A creek, in other words, is more than just the water in its channel; it’s also the water underground, and it’s connected to everything else in its watershed, including wetlands and channels upstream that might dry up during some years, or perhaps go years between getting wet. Whatever happens there—pollution or protection—happens to the entire creek. In the case of Lapwai Creek, which flows into the Clearwater River and then the Snake River, it’s a small but fundamental part of the complex ecosystem that salmon, humans and countless other creatures in the Pacific Northwest rely on.

But those ecological realities are strikingly absent from last week’s US Supreme Court decision in Sackett v. EPA. The ruling strips federal protections from all ephemeral streams and, as reported by E&E News, more than half of the previously protected wetlands in the US. It limits Clean Water Act protections to “relatively permanent, standing or continuously flowing bodies of water.” That includes some wetlands—those that are “indistinguishable” from protected oceans, lakes, rivers and streams “due to a continuous surface connection.”

“It doesn’t reflect reality, or the scientific understanding of how watersheds and the river networks within them function,” said Ellen Wohl, a river researcher and professor in the Geosciences Department at Colorado State University. Wohl helped review the scientific evidence used to develop an earlier, and much more expansive, Obama-era definition of which bodies of water fall under the jurisdiction of the Clean Water Act.

Justice Brett Kavanaugh: “The Court’s ‘continuous surface connection’ test disregards the ordinary meaning of ‘adjacent.’ … As a result, the Court excludes wetlands that the text of the Clean Water Act covers—and that the Act since 1977 has always been interpreted to cover.”

Weaker protections mean that more wetlands and temporary streams will be destroyed, filled in with dirt for houses or other development. Ecosystems and people alike will lose the benefits they provide: biodiversity and abundance of species; space to absorb extra water during storms, preventing deadly floods; natural storage of that same water, so it’s available later, during dry times; the natural purification that occurs when water is filtered through the ground.

Take, for example, a desert playa in the Great Basin, which might be dry for years at a time. When rainwater falls on it or snowmelt flows into it, it acts like “a big sponge,” Wohl said. A sponge that can store water for later, and clean it, too. But if you turn it into a parking lot by filling or building on it, as the Supreme Court ruling makes it easier to do, water will pour off it, rather than soak in. And what was once a playa—part of an intricate system changing across space and time—will become simply an asphalt wasteland.”

 The goals of healthcare reform were to see that every citizen had adequate healthcare, ensure that healthcare was affordable, and protect citizens from insurance company abuses. Although many of the criticisms of the law were baseless, the law’s effect on the deficit and its constitutionality were serious questions. An analysis by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office predicted the Affordable Care Act would decrease the projected deficit by $138 billion over the first 10 years and by approximately $1.2 trillion over the next 10 years.  The Supreme Court , in National Federation of Independent Business v. Sebelius,  upheld the constitutionality of the Affordable Care Act. Below is a summary of the provisions the law that may affect you :

• students and unemployed young adults may stay on their parents insurance until age 26
• insurance companies may not limit the amount of care a person receives in their lifetime
• insurance companies may not cancel coverage because a person is sick  
• lowers the cost of care for Medicare recipients and closes the “doughnut hole” in prescription drugs, saving seniors $3.1 billion in prescription costs since 2010
• insurance companies must cover preventive services like yearly checkups, mammograms, cancer screening, and inoculations
• increases the penalties for Medicare fraud
• insurance companies may not deny coverage to children with pre-existing conditions
• insurance companies must provide justification for raising rates
• insurance companies must spend 80% of their premiums on health care or refund the difference. Americans are scheduled to receive $1.4 billion and Oklahomans $21 million in refunds this August.
• provides tax credits for small business owners so they can afford quality insurance for their employees
• provides for the creation of hundreds of community health centers and incentives for new doctors to staff them

Beginning in 2014:

• provides working Americans tax credits to help them afford quality insurance
• ends discrimination against adults with pre-existing conditions
• prevents insurance companies from charging women more than men or overcharging those in need of care
• provides funds to create state based insurance exchanges where people can compare prices of insurance
• provide states with funds to increase their Medicaid programs

       Source: healthcare.gov

 There are also hidden benefits: 

• It would improve the competitiveness of American companies. Most working Americans obtain health insurance through their employers; however, this putsU.S.businesses at a disadvantage with foreign competitors. Small companies have the added disadvantage that they cannot negotiate rates as low as larger companies.
•  It would cut down on the number of the uninsured using emergency services. Emergency room care is expensive and unpaid bills must be passed on to paying customers.
• It would reduce bankruptcies. A Harvard study found that about 50% of all bankruptcies in theUnited Statesare caused by illness and medical bills. Health providers, banks, businesses, and credit card companies who lose money in bankruptcies pass the cost on to the rest of us.
• It would improve everyone’s health. You and your family come into contact with many people each year. People without health insurance are less likely to receive immunizations and are much more likely to have untreated communicable diseases.

Research Credit: Barbara Moore

(C) 2012 J.C. Moore

 “Your family’s health and prosperity depends on that of everyone.”

The United States has just been through a recession that has left many Americans without jobs, financial security, and adequate healthcare. What could be a better time to see that every American has adequate healthcare? President Obama promised during his campaign to reform healthcare. His goals were to protect citizens from insurance company abuses, see that every citizen had adequate healthcare, and ensure that healthcare was affordable. It was up to Congress to write the details of the law.

For those who claim making law is like making sausages, the Affordable Care Act is more than an apt example. In the 1990’s, Hillary Clinton tried to reform healthcare – but attempts at reform stalled when Republicans came up with an alternate bill and the opportunity passed with no decision being made. In 2010, Congress used many of the ideas of the Republican bill to create the Affordable Care Act. Many of those ideas formed the basis of the Massachusetts health care bill that Governor Romney signed into law in 2006. The Affordable Care Act is certainly not ideal, but it came about as a series of compromises necessary to get it through Congress and avoid a filibuster in the Senate.

Controversies: Much of the controversy over the Affordable Care Act was about things that didn’t really exist in the law. It did not create death panels, provide public funds for abortions, provide payments to undocumented immigrants, take away fundamental rights, or threaten to bankrupt the country. Although there were many claims that the affordable care act will greatly increase the deficit, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office predicted the affordable care act would decrease the projected deficit by $138 billion over the first 10 years and by approximately $1.2 trillion over the next 10 years. However, the laws constitutionality was a serious question – and several states filed suit claiming that the federal government could not require citizens to purchase health insurance. The lawsuits reached the Supreme Court and in  National Federation of Independent Business v. Sebelius, 6/28/2012, the Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of the Affordable Care Act. It ruled that the penalty for not purchasing insurance was a tax, and that Congress had a right to impose taxes.

Benefits: Now that the Affordable Care Act has been declared constitutional and will become law , below is a checklist from Whitehouse.gov  that summarizes what the affordable care act might mean for you:

  

 

The Future: There is still concern that the Affordable Care Act does not do enough to control the insurance costs or reduce the cost of care. The healthcare exchanges should provide more competition, and the 80/20 rule means that at least 80% of the premiums must be paid out in healthcare services.  There are also some intangible benefits to health care reform that may materialize in the future: 

• It would cut the unpaid bills for emergency services. Currently, emergency rooms are required by law to treat everyone, and those without medical insurance often use them for medical care when they cannot pay. Emergency room care is expensive and those costs must be passed on to paying customers.
• It would improve the competitiveness of American companies. Most working Americans obtain health insurance through their employers; however, this puts U.S.businesses at a disadvantage with foreign competitors who do not provide health insurance for their workers. Small companies have the added disadvantage that they cannot negotiate as low rates as larger companies.
• It would reduce bankruptcies. A Harvard study found that about 50% of all bankruptcies in the United States are caused by illness and unpaid medical bills. Bankruptcies affect everyone because the health providers, banks, businesses, and credit card companies who lose money in the bankruptcy pass the cost on to the rest of us.
• It would improve everyone’s health. Your family’s health depends on the health of everyone. You and your family will likely come into contact with thousands of people during this next year. People without health insurance are less likely to receive immunizations and are much more likely to have untreated communicable diseases.

 More information:  Here is some additional information from Whitehouse.gov with links to the topic: ”

• Insurance companies no longer have unchecked power to cancel your policy, deny you coverage, or charge women more than men. 
• Soon, no American will ever again be denied care or charged more due to a pre-existing condition, like cancer or even asthma.
• Preventive care will still be covered free of charge by insurance companies–including mammograms for women and wellness visits for seniors. 
• By August, millions of Americans will receive a rebate because their insurance company spent too much of their premium on administrative costs or CEO bonuses. 
• 5.3 million seniors will continue to save $600 a year on their prescription drugs. 
• Efforts to strengthen and protect Medicare by cracking down on waste, fraud, and abuse will remain in place.
• 6.6 million young adults will still be able to stay on their family’s plan until they’re 26.

A major impact of the Court’s decision is the 129 million people with pre-existing conditions and millions of middle class families who will have the security of affordable health coverage. 

We should also remember that under today’s ruling, having health insurance is and will continue to be a choice. If you can’t afford insurance or you’re a small business that wants to provide affordable insurance to your employees, you’ll get tax credits that make coverage affordable. But if you can afford insurance and you choose not to purchase it, the taxpayers will no longer subsidize your care for free.” 

 

Research Credit: Barbara Moore

(C) 2012 J.C. Moore

 

Integrity in Politics: It is the purpose of this site to apply observation and reason to current events. Good government depends upon our Legislators and our voters having up-to-date and accurate information. Senator Tom Coburn is considered to be the best informed of the Oklahoma Legislators. However, some things he presented at his town hall meeting, though they play well with his base, are not supported by research. We feel that Senator Coburn should thoroughly research the topics upon which he votes and speaks and that he should provide his constituency with accurate information.

Supreme Court: When asked about the recent court appointments, Senator Coburn disparaged the latest Supreme Court Justice, Sonia Sotomayor, by claiming she had lied, a very serious accusation to make against a Supreme Court Justice – especially when wrong. Coburn said that Sotomayor had reneged on a promise made during her confirmation hearing not to use foreign law to interpret the Constitution of the United State. He used as evidence the ruling of the Supreme Court on the case of Graham v Florida, in which a juvenile offender had been sentenced to life in prison for nonhomicidal crimes.

After reading the Supreme Court response which was actually presented by Justice J. Kennedy, not Justice S. Sotomayor, it appears that Senator Coburn was actually not being honest in his presentation of the information. As shown in the section of the Supreme Court brief below, the only reference to foreign anything is that the practice has been rejected the world over. This does not refer to any foreign laws but merely reflects on our standing in how humanly we treat juvenile offenders compared to the global community to which we belong and by whom we are scrutinized and in no way reflected that any foreign law was used to interpret the United States Constitution.

This misleading charge by  Senator Coburn raises a concern about any information he uses to support his views and whether he is just another typical politician trying to manipulate his constituents with “smoke and mirrors”.  Additional support for the Court’s conclusion lies in the fact that the sentencing practice at issue has been rejected the world over: The United States is the only Nation that imposes this type of sentence. While the judgments of other nations and the international community are not dispositive as to the meaning of the Eighth Amendment , the Court has looked abroad to support its independent conclusion that a particular punishment is cruel and unusual. (See, e.g., Roper, supra , at 575–578. Pp. 29–31, 982 So. 2d 43, reversed and remanded. )

Elena Kagan: Senator Coburn also said he could not support the appointment of Elena Kagan to the court because she considers the Constitution to be a living document. Senator Coburn believes that the Constitution should be interpreted as the Founding Fathers meant it. That, however,  has been as an excuse used by some politicians and judges to interpret the Constitution as they wish and claim it is what the Founding Fathers actually meant. The Founding Fathers were wise enough to give us a mechanism for amending the Constitution and there are now 27 Amendments. The Constitution is alive and better for it.

Recess Appointments: When asked about President Obama’s recess appointment of Dr. Berwick to head the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), Coburn emphatically declared that it was wrong and  illegal. Yikes! Coburn should polish up on his history of the much-used recess appointment. By this same point in his Presidential career, George W. Bush had used this technique to make 15 appointments and he used it 179 times during his career. Where were those Republicans then? The last group of appointments will bring Obama’s total to 18. It has been noted that Bush was not facing the same level of obstruction.Currently, Obama has 189 nominations pending before congress and 28 have been on the floor for more than three months. Bush only had six nominees that had been waiting that long. It might also be an interesting FYI to note that even George Washington used the practice to appoint the then controversial judge John Rutledge to the Supreme Court after he had failed to be confirmed by the Senate.

Reccess Appointments are a legal practice granted to the President of the United States by the Constitution of the United States in Article II, section 2.

“	“The President shall have Power to fill up all Vacancies that may happen during the Recess of the Senate, by granting Commissions which shall expire at the End of their next Session.”

Some have indicated that they feel this power should only be used when the position becomes vacant during a recess but this has been adjudicated by The Eleventh Circuit, in an en banc decision in Evans v. Stephens which held that the Constitution permitted both intrasession recess appointments and recess appointments to fill vacancies that existed prior to the congressional recess.( Evans v. Stephens, 387 F.3d 1220 (11th Cir. 2004). ) Since the position filled by Dr. Berwick has been vacant since 2006 it fulfills the courts requirements and is clearly legal.

Health Care: Senator Coburn said he  objected to the appointment of Dr. Don Berwick to head the CMS as Dr. Berwick  promotes medical rationing. Coburn’s basis for this premise uses “cherry-picking“, a technique which picks out a quotation and presents it out of context. A statement that Dr. Berwick made in 2008 in an interview with the respected publication, Biotechology Healthcare has been “cherry-picked” and this partial quote has been publicized many times by zealous Republican in order to create the specter of medical rationing. Here is the partial quote Senator Coburn refers to: “The decision is not whether or not we will ration care. The decision is whether we ration care with our eyes open.”  But, here is the actual quote in context, “We make these decisions all of the time. The decision is not whether or not we will ration care. The decision is whether we ration care with our eyes open. And right now, we are doing it blindly.”

Despite what Senator Coburn might claim, that statement isn’t particularly radical. Rationing currently occurs in our health-care system as resources are limited, and medicine and medical procedures are approved or disapproved by insurance companies regardless of whether that system is privately or publicly funded. “Blindly” as used by Dr. Berwick indicates we are currently doing it badly and not with an eye to the best practices to be used for the good of the patient; and not with an eye to which practices are unnecessary and therefore unnecessarily costly; and not with an eye to what medicines, tests and equipment are provided unnecessarily and sometimes even to the detriment of the patient.

“Ezra Klein, a blogger for the Washington Post, notes that Berwick’s statement is no different than a statement from Republican Rep. Paul Ryan of Wisconsin (seen as an up-and-coming leader within the GOP), who said with respect to health care, “Rationing happens today! The question is who will do it?” www.cbsnews.com/8301-504763_162-20009880-10391704.html.
Here is another more honest Republican’s statement on Berwick’s appointment. Tom Scully, who ran the CMS under President George W. Bush, noted, “You could nominate Gandhi to be head of CMS and that would be controversial right now.” http://www.newsweek.com/blogs/the-gaggle/2010/07/07/don-berwick-appointed-to-drive-health-care-changes-sidestepping-congress.html

With the use of the “cherry-picking” technique, some Republicans appear to be using medical rationing as a scare tactic to gain support in the up-coming elections without regard for what is actually good for the patient, I mean constituents. And to make matters even worse, Senator Coburn is a doctor. He also  said that other countries have national health care at lower cost because they ration health care. He says you and your family are responsible for paying for your own health care. Isn’t that just rationing health care by using money. If you, or your family can’t pay, would he just let you die?

By Guest Author: Barbara Moore