MORNING MESSAGE
Shareholders Showdown: Will Disney Break From The Beast?
Walt
Disney Company CEO Bob Iger ... has said serving on the economic advisory
council is a “great opportunity for me to have a direct pipeline to the
president.” But many of Disney’s customers, workers and shareholders disagree,
and that disagreement will be on prominent display Wednesday at Disney’s annual
shareholder meeting in Denver. Members of People’s Action and our local member
organization, Colorado People’s Alliance, will be making the case on
International Women’s Day that Disney should stand with women, children and
families, not an administration that’s bent on attacking them at every
turn.
Women Strike
Day
Without a Woman launches. AP: “‘A Day Without a Woman’ is the first national
action by organizers since the nationwide marches held the day after President
Donald Trump’s inauguration … School districts including Alexandria City Public
Schools in Virginia and Chapel Hill-Carrboro Schools in North Carolina, have
canceled classes in anticipation of employee participation. Some businesses have
said they will either close or give female employees the day off.”
Organizers
hope to bring back the general strike. Bloomberg: “A general work stoppage
suggests that, at least in theory, the strikers could grind the economy to a
halt by refusing to participate in it, or at least make enough noise to get
attention. But the March 8 strike has a more modest and potentially subversive
goal: ‘We want to reintroduce the notion of strike in the political lexicon of
this country,’ said Lamis Deek, a human-rights attorney and one of the
organizers of the Day Without Women.”
ACA Repeal In Big Trouble
Speaker
Ryan guarantees House passage, while conservatives offer competing bill. The
Hill: “‘We’ll have 218 when this thing comes to the floor. I can guarantee
you that,’ Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) said … Freedom Caucus members said
leadership doesn’t have enough support … The conservatives vowed to reintroduce
the same ObamaCare legislation that passed Congress in 2015 but was vetoed by
then-President Obama. That bill would repeal all of ObamaCare’s taxes and
mandates and eliminate its Medicaid expansion.”
Senate
outlook no brighter. The Hill: “…at least eight Republican senators have
voiced concerns with aspects of the legislation … Three conservatives, Sens.
Mike Lee(R-Utah), Ted Cruz (R-Texas) and Rand Paul (R-Ky.), are unhappy … two
influential Republican senators, Susan Collins (Maine) and Lisa Murkowski
(Alaska), have objected to including language in the bill defunding Planned
Parenthood … Three other Republican senators — Rob Portman (Ohio), Shelley Moore
Capito (W.Va.) and Cory Gardner (Colo.) — along with Murkowski sent a letter to
McConnell Monday warning him that a draft House healthcare plan that leaked last
month failed to ensure stability for [the] newly enrolled in Medicaid…”
Everybody
hates the GOP health bill. The Nation’s David Dayen: “…the subsidies for
insurance coverage are stingier, the coverage itself is worse, and the penalty
for non-coverage is actually higher … the average American will be more likely
to be uninsured, or insured with higher co-pays and deductibles, or ‘covered’
with a plan worth as much as the plastic insurance card it’s issued on.”
Is
the bill DOA? TNR’s Alex Shephard: “The AHCA is most notable for being
mealymouthed. It dismantles aspects of Obamacare, but halfheartedly and in such
a way that is clumsy and hurts poor, old people. Even the repeal of the dreaded
individual mandate—the most demonized aspect of Obamacare—is undermined by a
proposed fine for those who don’t have continuous health care coverage. The AHCA
will punish you when you’re sick and need health care, not when you’re healthy
and free-riding the system.”
GOP
bill would ration care, notes Ezekiel J. Emanuel in NYT oped: “This would be
even worse than going back to the days before the Affordable Care Act. It would
force states to ration care and deny some Americans lifesaving treatments or
nursing home care. Cruel only begins to describe the Republican plan.”
Republicans
attack CBO. Politico: “Anticipating that their plan will leave fewer
Americans insured than Obamacare and potentially cost the federal government
more, Republican leaders on Tuesday launched a preemptory strike against
forthcoming predictions from Congress’s independent scorekeeper … The Office of
Management and Budget, part of the Trump White House, is expected to issue its
own estimates of the plan…”
Climate Science Deniers Take Charge
Climate
science deniers infiltrate EPA. NYT: “[EPA Administration Scott] Pruitt has
drawn heavily from the staff … Senator James Inhofe, long known as Congress’s
most prominent skeptic … A former Inhofe chief of staff, Ryan Jackson, will be
Mr. Pruitt’s chief of staff. Another former Inhofe staff member, Byron Brown,
will serve as Mr. Jackson’s deputy … Another transition official under
consideration by Mr. Pruitt for a permanent position is David Kreutzer, a senior
research fellow in energy economics and climate change at the conservative
Heritage Foundation who has publicly praised the benefits of increasing carbon
dioxide in the atmosphere.”
“Eight
Fossil Fuel Majors Seen Polluting as Much as the U.S.” reports Bloomberg:
“Saudi Aramco, Exxon Mobil Corp., OAO Gazprom, the National Iranian Oil Co., BP
Plc and Royal Dutch Shell Plc were among the eight companies whose fuel was
responsible for a third of emissions from oil and gas, according to the
non-profit group CDP. The companies released a fifth of all greenhouse gases
outside of farming and forestry since 1988…”
Republicans
killed a bipartisan plan to boost coal country. Politico: “As part of the
2016 budget, the Obama White House created something called the POWER Plus plan
specifically to help Appalachian communities that were getting left behind
because of the rapidly changing energy market … it proposed converting $1
billion from the Abandoned Mine Lands fund … into economic development grants to
the states with the most abandoned mines … [Rep. Hal] Rogers [R-Ky.] saw a good
idea in the Obama administration’s POWER Plus plan. He introduced it as the
RECLAIM Act … Who could be against such bipartisan legislating? Wyoming,
apparently.”
Breakfast Sides
City
Councilor Helen Gym details how Philadelphia rebuffed Betsy DeVos’ agenda, in
The Nation: “…in 2013, thanks to a GOP-led state austerity budget that cut
almost a billion dollars from public education, Philadelphia’s state-controlled
school system closed down 24 public schools … then expanded thousands of new
charter spots at nearly the same cost. In response, Philadelphians took to the
streets and organized…”
New
GOP attack on federal unions. W. Post: “Official time, which allows labor
leaders a limited range of activities while being paid by the government, has
been a favorite target. Rather than trying to outlaw it directly, the House
Oversight and Government Reform Committee on Wednesday will consider a new
tactic — legislation that would provide a strong deterrent by hitting the
retirement benefits of many who use official time.”
Progressive
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