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Thanks To Obamacare, New Yorkers’ Health Insurance Premiums Will Plunge 50 Percent
By Igor Volsky
Health care premiums on the individual market will tumble by at least 50 percent as a result of the Affordable Care Act, the New York Times reported on Wednesday. The state joins Oregon, Montana, California, and Louisiana in reporting lower than expected rates in the law’s new health care marketplaces.
Economists expected the law to significantly decrease premiums in the Empire State, which in 1993 prohibited insurers from denying coverage to individuals with pre-existing conditions, required carriers to charge “all consumers the exact same rate,” but did not compel young and healthy people to enroll in coverage. As a result, insurers dramatically increased prices and enrollment in the individual market “steadily diminished.” Today, just 17,000 New Yorkers “buy insurance on their own.”
The health law’s requirement to purchase insurance and the managed competition structure in the new exchanges will now increase enrollment, state officials predict, as New Yorkers will see lower premiums and will be able to choose from 17 different insurance plans when enrolling in coverage in October:
Beginning in October, individuals in New York City who now pay $1,000 a month or more for coverage will be able to shop for health insurance for as little as $308 monthly. With federal subsidies, the cost will be even lower. […]
State officials estimate as many as 615,000 individuals will buy health insurance on their own in the first few years the health law is in effect. In addition to lower premiums, about three-quarters of those people will be eligible for the subsidies available to lower-income individuals. […]
The plans to be offered on the exchanges all meet certain basic requirements, as laid out in the law, but are in four categories from most generous to least: platinum, gold, silver and bronze. An individual with annual income of $17,000 will pay about $55 a month for a silver plan, state regulators said. A person with a $20,000 income will pay about $85 a month for a silver plan, while someone earning $25,000 will pay about $145 a month for a silver plan.
Read More Thanks To Obamacare, New Yorkers’ Health Insurance Premiums Will Plunge 50 Percent | ThinkProgress.
We’re Still Trying to Be at Home
By Jack White
No one is more American than I am. Our country’s history is inscribed on my genes.
Some of my ancestors came here on slave ships. One arrived on The Mayflower. Others fought in the Revolution and the great Civil War.
But because I am 67 — old enough to have personally experienced legally segregated public schools, water fountains and restrooms and white-only public accommodations; old enough to have been shocked into terrified silence by photos of Emmett Till’s brutalized body after it was dragged from a muddy river in Mississippi; old enough to have written more stories than I can remember about black men and women who seemed to have lost their lives for no reason other than being black — I have deeply ambivalent feelings about this nation.
W.E.B. Du Bois called those warring emotions “twoness” and “double consciousness.” I call them not feeling at home.
There was a time, in the heady wake of Barack Obama’s first successful run for the presidency, when I let myself hope that America would finally let that happen. I thought America might finally stop asking the question it has posed to black people since the days of the slave-hunting “paddy rollers”: What are you doing here? I thought it might finally say we belong.
I was so wrong. What are you doing here? is still the question America asks black people like me, all these years after the emancipation, all these years after Brown v. Board, all these years after the passage of civil rights laws, whenever one of us shows up in a place that some white person regards as inappropriate. It’s the question that underlies so much of the opposition to Obama’s presidency — not merely his policies, but the man himself — and the vile comments about his wife and their children.
Read More Blacks in America: We’re Still Trying to Be at Home.
How Can I Protect My Son From Becoming Another Trayvon Martin?
By Melanie Coffee
Trayvon Martin. A name forever etched in the annals of America’s complex relationship with race.
We all know the story. A 17-year-old armed with only a bag of Skittles, a hoodie and mocha skin is followed by a neighborhood watch man. At this moment, neither are breaking the law. Then there’s a confrontation. A few minutes later, Trayvon Martin is dead and George Zimmerman is accused in his death.
Fast forward to Saturday, when Zimmerman is acquitted of all charges. Many people are thunderstruck and it reignites much-needed discussions surrounding race. The verdict unites some communities and divides others. The main thought that I can’t really shake loose is: How can I protect my son from being another Trayvon Martin?
I know it’s a question many African Americans have been asking themselves since the teenager was killed on Feb. 26, 2012. I see it on Facebook, where one dad insisted his sons call him to check in on Saturday. That day the usual text message would not suffice. I see the concern in my Twitterstream, parents trying to raise first-class citizens in a world where some see them as “less than.” And I see it in the sad shake of a grandma’s head, as if to say “We sure thought this country would be past this by now.”
But we’re not. Today it’s how can I protect my son from being another Trayvon Martin. In 2006, it was How can I protect my son from being another Sean Bell? In 1999, it was Amadou Diallo. In 1998, it was James Byrd, Jr. In 1997, it was Abner Louima, 1989 was Yusef Hawkins, 1986 was Michael Griffith, 1981 was Michael Donald, 1964 was James Chaney, 1957 was Willie Edwards and in 1955, it was Emmett Till. (Did you know he was only 14 years old?) The list goes on and the further we go back, the more names are lost, tucked away in dark corners where America is scared to look.
Read More How Can I Protect My Son From Becoming Another Trayvon Martin? | Melanie Coffee.
Justifiable Homicides: Black Defendants Rarely Get Self-Defense Ruling
By Danielle C. Belton
Gun Range: Target (Photo credit: wallyg)
It doesn’t hurt to have a little white privilege on your side.
If you can get it.
And George Zimmerman got the most out of what privilege he had after being found not guilty in the murder of Florida teen Trayvon Martin. After the verdict, Zimmerman’s attorneys held a press conference, and attorney Mark O’Mara, while answering a reporter’s question, remarked that if Zimmerman had been black, “He never would’ve been charged with a crime.”
O’Mara couldn’t be more wrong.
I don’t know which justice system O’Mara’s been operating in, but black people are more likely to get a conviction no matter who they kill — black or white — even if they claim self-defense. Especially since most of them can’t afford O’Mara to represent them in the first place.
There is no privilege in claiming self-defense while black — even when killing another black person. When the verdict came down not guilty, Zimmerman had not just the jury but also statistics on his side.
A 2012 study by PBS’s Frontline is getting a second look post-Zimmerman’s exoneration, and it reveals that if you’re going to kill in self-defense in America, you’d better be white. By analyzing data from a study by John Roman, senior analyst at the Urban Institute’s Justice Policy Center, Frontline found that in “Stand your ground” states, white people who kill black people are 354 percent more likely to be found justified in their killings. And it doesn’t get much better in non-“Stand your ground” states, where that number goes down only to 250 percent.
But even when it comes to black-on-black crime or black-on-white crime, a black defendant is unlikely to get a self-defense ruling in his or her favor, whether or not the state has “Stand your ground” laws on the books, as shown in this graph.
Read More Justifiable Homicides: Black Defendants Rarely Get Self-Defense Ruling.
Goodbye to my American dream
By Tiffanie Drayton
On the day of college graduation, I told my friends and family the news: I was leaving the country I had lived in since childhood.
“I just need a change,” I told them, but they knew there was more. Was it some romance gone awry, they wondered? Some impulsive response to a broken heart? And I was running from heartbreak. My relationship with the United States of America is the most tumultuous relationship I have ever had, and it ended with the heart-rending realization that a country I loved and believed in did not love me back.
Back in the ’90s, my mother brought me from our home in the Caribbean islands to the U.S., along with my brother and sister. I was 4 years old. She worked as a live-in nanny for two years, playing mommy for white kids whose parents had better things to do. She took trips to the Hamptons and even flew on a private jet to California as “the help.” My mom didn’t believe that nanny meant maid, but she did whatever was asked of her, because she was thirsty. She had a thirst that could only be quenched by the American dream. One day, she thought, her children would be educated. One day, they might have nannies of their own.
DHS warns employees not to read leaked NSA information
English: Seal of the United States Department of Homeland Security. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
By Josh Hicks
The Department of Homeland Security has warned its employees that the government may penalize them for opening a Washington Post article containing a classified slide that shows how the National Security Agency eavesdrops on international communications.
An internal memo from DHS headquarters told workers on Friday that viewing the document from an “unclassified government workstation” could lead to administrative or legal action. “You may be violating your non-disclosure agreement in which you sign that you will protect classified national security information,” the communication said.
The memo said workers who view the article through an unclassified workstation should report the incident as a “classified data spillage.”
The NSA is a Defense Department agency, meaning it does not fall under the jurisdiction of Homeland Security. It was not immediately clear whether all federal agencies released similar warnings to their employees.
McJobs Are the Future: Why You Should Care What Fast Food Workers Earn
By Jordan Weissmann
As I wrote earlier today, the corporate brass at McDonald’s seem to believe that in order to survive on what they pay their restaurant workers, you need a second job. And hey, credit where it’s due: they’re probably right. Fast food wages are terrible. If you’re relying on a minimum- or near-minimum-wage check each month, it means you’re living life on the financial precipice. Since this out, however, I’ve gotten a few pointed responses from readers, the gist of which was captured pretty well in this tweet by Vincent from Chicago (I assure you, I’m the one getting yelled at):
Vincent is hinting at a fairly sophisticated set of arguments you tend to hear from people who don’t worry too much about minimum-wage workers, in particular. In brief: There aren’t that many them; the jobs are mostly occupied by “suburban teenagers, not single parents,” as the Heritage Foundation puts it; and people don’t earn minimum wage for very long.
Or again, nobody makes a career as a cashier at McDonalds.
And there’s something to all that. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, there were about 1.68 million workers earning the federal minimum wage in 2011, accounting for about 2.3 percent of the workforce. About half were below the age of 24, and as the Heritage Foundation notes, the vast majority of those minimum wagers were enrolled in school. Moreover, one study by the Employment Policies Institute estimated that, between 1977 and 1998, more than 65 percent of minimum wage workers managed to land a raise within a year of starting their job.
So with all of that in mind, here’s my quick case for why you should still be worried about what companies like McDonald’s pay their employees.
Has the 1 Percent Committed Treason?
Robert Reich (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
By Robert Reich
Permit me an impertinent question (or three).
Suppose a small group of extremely wealthy people sought to systematically destroy the U.S. government by (1) finding and bankrolling new candidates pledged to shrinking and dismembering it; (2) intimidating or bribing many current senators and representatives to block all proposed legislation, prevent the appointment of presidential nominees, eliminate funds to implement and enforce laws, and threaten to default on the nation’s debt; (3) taking over state governments in order to redistrict, gerrymander, require voter IDs, purge voter rolls, and otherwise suppress the votes of the majority in federal elections; (4) running a vast PR campaign designed to convince the American public of certain big lies, such as climate change is a hoax, and (5) buying up the media so the public cannot know the truth.
Would you call this treason?
If not, what would you call it?
And what would you do about it?
soulbrotherspeaks.com 
Congratulations Black America We’ve Made The KKK Very Proud!!!
By Garvey Ashhurst
CRIME + BLACK + MALES = FUCKED (Photo credit: Tricia Wang)
In early 2011, the Ku Klux Klan released a letter applauding young black males for their efforts, and thanking them for their contribution to African American communities.
Here’s the letter:
“The KU KLUX KLAN would like to take this time to salute and congratulate all gang bangers for the slaughter of over 4,000 Black people since 1975. You are doing a marvelous job. Keep killing each other for nothing. The streets are still not yours nigger…it is ours. You are killing each other for our property. You are killing what could be future black doctors, lawyers, and businessmen that we wont have to compete with. And the good thing about it is that you are killing the youth. So we won’t have to worry about niggers in generations to come. We would further like to thank all the judges who have over sentenced those niggers to prison. We are winning. Pretty soon, we will be able to go back to raping your women because all the men will be gone. So you gang bangers…Keep up the good work. We love to read about drive-by shootings. We love to hear how many niggers get killed over the weekends. We can tolerate the nigger’s jungle fever (for now)… because that further breaks down the race. To all gang bangers across the world: we don’t love you niggers, but we can appreciate you gang bangers. You are doing a wonderful job in eliminating the black race. Without the men…your women cannot reproduce…unless of course, we do it for them. Then we will have successfully eliminated a race thanks to your help and commitment to killing each other. If most of you nigger gang bangers cannot read this letter, it is ok. Go pull a trigger and kill a nigger.”
As shameful as this is to say, they are absolutely right.
In Chicago alone; 49 were shot over St. Patrick’s Day weekend, 53 were shot over Memorial Day weekend, and this past weekend, 43 were shot. That’s three times in the past SIX weeks that at least 40 plus people were shot over a weekend in Chicago alone.
We are destroying ourselves with guns more effectively then they ever could with a rope. Over the past 86 years, the Ku Klux Klan has murdered approximately 3,440 blacks. Blacks are killing about the same amount of blacks every six months.
The saddest part about those lives that have been lost is that every time someone is murdered, two lives are ended. The victim who lost the most precious gift that can be bestowed to anyone, and the shooter, who will likely spend the majority if not the rest of his/her life inside of a prison cell. They both had the potential to be the next Barack Obama, Malcolm X, Martin Luther King Jr, or Russell Simmons.
Read More Congratulations Black America We’ve Made The KKK Very Proud!!! (BLOG) | Global Grind.