A sopping wet Memorial Day Weekend to you! It’s time to Get More Smarter with Colorado Pols. If you think we missed something important, please include the link in the comments below (here’s a good example).
► Sen. Cory Gardner’s “pay twice” proposal for birth control women can currently receive copay-free under Obamacare is going over like a lead Zeppelin. The Denver Post’s Lynn Bartels has an updated story with more reaction from pro-choice advocates–quoting Karen Middleton of NARAL Pro-Choice Colorado:
As we saw throughout his career and campaign — when he denied a ‘personhood’ bill he cosponsored even existed — Cory Gardner can’t be trusted when it comes to Colorado women and their health care.
With this legislation, he’s trying to limit women’s access to contraception by undermining the Affordable Care Act and double-billing them, first for insurance then for full retail cost of their birth control. This adds up to hundreds, even thousands, of dollars many women don’t have in their budget — and if birth control isn’t affordable, it isn’t accessible.
And Dr. Mark S. DeFrancesco, president of the American Congress of Obstetricians and Gynecologists:
The Affordable Care Act removed many barriers to preventive care that keeps women healthy. By making contraceptives available to women without a co-pay, it has truly increased access to contraception, thereby decreasing unintended pregnancies, and allowing women to better plan their futures. Unfortunately, instead of improving access, this bill would actually make more women have to pay for their birth control, and for some women, the cost would be prohibitive.
Ouch. So much for that, Sen. Promise Keeper.
► The GOP-controlled House passed a Band-Aid to forestall negative press over the Aurora VA hospital disaster for a couple of weeks. Rep. Mike Coffman, who has chaired the Oversight Subcommittee supervising this project for years, hopes to use that time to thread the precarious needle between solving the problem and being part of it.
► Republicans are itching for Hillary Clinton to testify about the Benghazi attacks–and so are Democrats, confident that she’ll make mincemeat out of Republicans obsessed with a story that has already been beat to death without uncovering anything scandalous whatsoever.
Get even more smarter after the jump…
► The feds say Gov. John Hickenlooper’s sage grouse protection plan needs to be tougher–and not on the sage grouse.
► Those dreaded high-stakes standardized tests for our kids next year will at least be a little shorter.
► The state has agreed to kick in $1 million to help keep the Southwest Chief Amtrak passenger train rolling through southern Colorado on its way from Chicago to Los Angeles.
► Speaking of transportation, you’ll like the less-congested “Lexus Lanes” on the Boulder Turnpike, assuming you can afford them.
► After a damning report highlighting serious breakdowns of discipline and widespread abuse of detainees by the Denver Sheriff Department, Mayor Michael Hancock and other Denver official promise better.
► Yes, all this rain is moving the needle for Colorado’s water situation–and downstream states–in a positive direction.
► Hickenlooper makes Jefferson County Schools superintendent and political staff look silly, giving us another chance to post another gratuitous photo of Katy Perry.
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Wasn't it The Who who told Jimmy Page his new band would go over like a Led Zeppelin? Nice reference.
Gardner wants women to pay for what they get free now. How is that a good deal?
Moddy would call it a market-based solution to reproductive rights.
Forget the contraceptive issue for a moment.
"Their bill also would repeal the Affordable Care Act’s restriction on the use of health, medical and flexible savings accounts to purchase over-the-counter drugs without a prescription."
This is a sop to the rich. If you're struggling to pay for your meds because you're working a minimum wage job, taking pre-tax dollars out of your paycheck to buy your pills with does you no good: You're not paying any federal income tax anyway. For rich folks, though, it's a 30% discount on their Benadryl and Motrin.
Bernie Sanders makes the all too reasonable case that we should tax high volume bank/stock trade transactions and use those funds to lower the cost of college for America's youth.
With banks ever more powerful and profitable, and student debt still causing problems both for its holders and the many students who will struggle to pay those loans for years, this would seem to be a logical and conservative investment in The USA. Bernie:
It makes so much sense to me I dare say his bill should get bipartisan support in the U.S. Senate. Of course, Democratic senators are deathly afraid of any mention of raising taxes, because they'll get beaten over the head by their Republican counterparts and they are mostly incapable of making the common sense case for fairer taxation and smart investments in our society (that's the one everyone says is the greatest in the history of the planet.) Or maybe they think things are just great the way they are.
When Bernie tried to explain this quite simple concept to CNN's Wolf Blitzer, Blitzer sounded blitzed:
Is it possible to raise taxes on the wealthiest Americans and the largest banks in a way that doesn't harm them financially?
Should we make a common sense investment in our children (they are the future, right R's?) and give a world class education to as many of them as possible?
Wouldn't those same banks, and those same billionaires, also benefit from the fruits and labors of a highly educated and modern work force of, what they keep telling us, is the Greatest Nation on Earth?
Hey, maybe someone like a Michael Bennet could co-sponsor such legisltation, get some credit for pretending to be tough on banks (like he pretends to be tough on trade), and differentiate himself from his Republican opponent who we know will say "Hell, no!" to anything proposed by Bernie Sanders.
Or maybe Bennet could just sit on his hands a while longer.
Just don't call it the Robin Hood Tax and I'm all for it.