Environment and Health
One Way to Weather Extreme Climate
If There’s a War on Coal, Coal Already Lost
"The war on coal is over," according to Scott Pruitt, head of the Environmental Protection Agency. Pruitt spoke these words in a speech to coal miners in Hazard, Kentucky, where he announced the formal repeal of Obama’s Clean Power Plan. What he failed to mention is...
Leading Democrats Are Way Behind the Public on Health Care
Good news, people — at last, congressional Democrats have gotten a clue, grown some spine, and are beginning to act like… well, like progressives. In particular, a majority of Dems in the U.S. House are responding to the rising public demand that decent health care be...
Pruitt Stinks
Grabbing ‘Em
Your Boss Shouldn’t Get to Have ‘Religious’ Objections to Your Health Care
When Obamacare — aka, the Affordable Care Act — became law in 2010, it mandated coverage of birth control without co-payments. Some employers didn't like the rule, and Hobby Lobby hated it so much that the company filed a lawsuit to stop it. Company owners said they...
Don’t Mess With the Disability Community
The GOP twice failed to pass health care legislation this year. The bills fell short for many reasons, but I see an important one: By including drastic cuts to Medicaid benefits in their bills, Republican leaders picked a fight with the disability community. Hell hath...
We Get Sick, They Get Rich
Our current health care system in the United States works just fine — for the corporate executives who run it. Take, for instance, Michael Mussallem, the CEO at Edwards Lifesciences — a California-based company that makes heart valves and assorted other medical...
Finding a Common Language on Climate
If you don't already agree with me on something, odds are I can't convince you I'm right. There's plenty of science showing that the global climate crisis is already affecting us, that vaccines don't cause autism, and that humans evolved from a common ancestor with...
AT&T and Verizon Need to Hang Up On Fossil Fuels
Smartphones are a huge part of our lives. We use them constantly for texts, social media, calls, directions, and finding information online. Even when we’re sleeping, they're still active, receiving data all night. But those little notifications we get on our phones...
