TX-Gov: Abbott (R) Advisor Charles Murray, "No evidence that women are significant thinkers" 9APR14

IT'S during campaigns like Texas republican / tea-bagger greg abbott's that I really miss Molly Ivins'  quick wit and wonderful sense of humor. He is a fool, advised by fools like libertarian charles murray, and is the perfect candidate for the rich and powerful and all the corporate interest financing him because he has no qualms about taking their money for doing what he's told. Texas, are you seriously considering election this immoral, corrupt ass? Really???
poopdogcomedy

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nQh0bQ8_BR4
http://www.rawstory.com/...

An adviser to Greg Abbott, the Republican candidate for Texas governor, said this week that he had found no “evidence” to prove that any woman had been a “significant original thinker in any of the world’s great philosophical traditions.” In audio obtained by the Burnt Orange Report, American Enterprise Institute scholar Charles Murray can be heard explaining to an audience at the University of Texas that his views on women had not changed since a 2005 paper, in which he asserted that one or “maybe” two women had played significant roles in the field of philosophy.
When a woman at the event on Tuesday asked Murray if he still believed what he wrote, Murray quipped, “Who do you have in mind?”
Murray argued that in “certain traditions” like literature, women had been at the “peak of accomplishment.” But he said that he could only recall one important female philosopher, “and she was not a significant thinker in the estimation of historians of philosophy.”
“So, yeah, I still stick with that,” he insisted. “Until somebody gives me evidence to the contrary, I’ll stick with that statement.” - Raw Story, 4/9/14

Murray really hasn't been good for Abbott's campaign: http://www.burntorangereport.com/...

Abbott hasn't exactly figured out how to deal with his women problems. He has so far avoided talking about the gender pay gap in his Attorney General's office and a video by the Wendy Davis Campaign suggests he abruptly canceled an April 7th press conference to avoid questions about his education plan in which Murray is cited. Abbott used Murray's work to present his plan for Texas to lead the country in education outcomes. Murray describes himself as "a libertarian, and libertarians don't do solutions. We're not good at them." Murray then proceeded to tell this room full of college students that a "mediocre" k- 12 education at "a mediocre school" was "not that bad."
Murray's AEI believes the pay gap is a "myth" and says making it a political issue will discourage the hiring of women. They also say the gap is a results of "many women prefer[ing] to stay home with their children," and that "women often choose fields of study, such as sociology, liberal arts or psychology, that pay less in the labor market." Ultimately they say that, "once education, marital status and occupations are considered, the 'gender wage gap' all but disappears."
Of course the real conversation about equal pay has always been predicated on equal work, which AEI seems to imply women must not be doing.
The main topic of discussion though was Murray's new book "Coming Apart: The State of White America 1960-2010." He said he only used white males between 30-49 as his data set to prove that class and not race was the main factor in America's cultural decline. He believes it started in the 60's of course, right about the time of the Civil Rights movement that was being celebrated just across campus at the LBJ Library.
Murray happened to be speaking on campus during the Civil Rights Summit, which is -- to say the least -- ironic. He has been identified as a "White Nationalist" by the Southern Poverty Law Center for his views on race and gender. He opened by saying that he "had a different view of equality" and that by the definition of some he was indeed a "racist and a sexist," and said probably "any other 'ist'" that is out there. - Burnt Orange Report, 4/9/14

So how has Abbott been dealing with Murray?  Running away from the press: http://www.politicususa.com/...

So the press arrived to an empty room in Dallas yesterday for a scheduled press conference with the Republican gubernatorial candidate, only to discover that Greg Abbott had suddenly canceled it, according to the Davis campaign. The Wendy Davis (D-TX) campaign caught it all on tape:

http://youtu.be/2qNtMo2IjRw

Had Mr. Abbott shown his face, he would have had to answer why he thought a guy who believes “mens brains are larger than women’s” was a good choice as inspiration for an education program.
Abbott would have had to explain why he thinks pre-K should only be for a select few. In case you missed that dog whistle, page 2 of his pre-K plan explains that destiny is predetermined by background (so American!): “Family background has the most decisive effect on student achievement, contributing to a large performance gap between children from economically disadvantaged families and those from middle-class homes.”
Yeah. Southern Poverty Law Center is not impressed, they say that Murray uses “racist pseudoscience and misleading statistics to argue that social inequality is caused by the genetic inferiority of the black and Latino communities, women and the poor.” In case it’s not clear yet where this is going, DOG WHISTLE WELFARE STATE, “Murray advocates the total elimination of the welfare state, affirmative action and the Department of Education, arguing that public policy cannot overcome the innate deficiencies that cause unequal social and educational outcomes.” - Politicus USA, 4/8/14

Yeah, good call there Abbott.  But Abbott is resorting to tying Davis to Obama but Davis isn't going to be running away from him: http://trailblazersblog.dallasnews.com/...

“ObamaCare’s Three Musketeers – President Obama, Sen. Harry Reid and Rep. Nancy Pelosi – are convening at a swanky Houston fundraiser tonight; will Sen. Davis be joining her big government allies?” said Abbott campaign spokesman Matt Hirsch. “Last month Sen. Davis said she would welcome President Obama to Texas, so we assume she wouldn’t miss it.” Reid actually isn’t coming, though his name was on the original invite for a joint DSCC/DCCC fund-raiser. Pelosi arrived in Houston with Obama a little while ago.
As for Davis, the Democratic nominee for governor, her campaign tells us she isn’t ducking Obama at all. She’ll be at his speech Thursday at the LBJ library civil rights summit in Austin. - Dallas Morning News, 4/9/14

Davis will be at former President Bill Clinton’s speech and a dinner at the LBJ summit tonight.  Lets help Davis fight back against sexists and racists like Abbott and Murray.  Click here to get involved and donate to Davis' campaign:

http://www.wendydavistexas.com/

Originally posted to pdogcomedy on Wed Apr 09, 2014 at 09:00 PM PDT.

Also republished by The Democratic Wing of the Democratic Party, TexKos-Messing with Texas with Nothing but Love for Texans, and Dallas Kossacks. 

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2014/04/10/1290863/-TX-Gov-Abbott-R-Advisor-Charles-Murray-No-evidence-that-women-are-significant-thinkers?detail=email 

Ted Cruz says expanding Medicaid will "worsen health care options for the most vulnerable" 8APR13

Sen ted cruz r tea-bagger TX is a liar. He is lying to the people of Texas about Medicaid and health care. This is quite a testimony for a person of faith, using lies and deception because the truth about his lack of compassion for those needing Medicaid and his opposition to helping these people is a complete rejection of the teachings of Jesus Christ. To give him the benefit of doubt maybe he is just stupid and really believes this.........Oh, wait, no, he isn't that stupid, he is your typical greedy, repiglican tea-bagger. Just another reminder of why I could never, ever, live in Texas....We miss you a lot Molly Ivins!!!! From PolitiFact....

The Truth-O-Meter Says:

"Expanding Medicaid will worsen health care options for the most vulnerable among us in Texas."

Ted Cruz on Monday, April 1st, 2013 in remarks in Austin, Texas

Ted Cruz says expanding Medicaid will "worsen health care options for the most vulnerable"

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Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, said in a floor speech that "Obamacare is moving more and more of the economically disadvantaged onto Medicaid, which subjects them to those worse health care outcomes." We took a closer look at the studies he cited.

Editor's note: After we published this report, the staff at Cruz's office gave us more information to consider. We considered that evidence in a separate report, but it did not change our initial findings or our ruling. Our original report remains below.

Sen. Ted Cruz, the Texas Republican who is gaining a reputation for bold statements, is backing Texas Gov. Rick Perry’s decision to reject a major expansion of Medicaid, the health insurance program for the poor.

Under the new health care law, states can get federal dollars to enroll their uninsured residents in Medicaid. Some politicians, including Cruz and Perry, argue that taking the federal money now leaves the state on the hook for long-term fiscal commitments it can’t afford.

Cruz, though, has gone beyond arguing that the expansion is too expensive. He recently said it would also leave the uninsured worse off.

"Our friends who are saying they want health care do not realize that expanding Medicaid will worsen health care options for the most vulnerable among us in Texas," Cruz saidat an event with Perry and others in the state capitol in Austin.

This struck some observers as illogical: How could moving someone who’s uninsured onto the Medicaid rolls actually worsen someone’s health care options?

When we checked with Cruz’s office, they referred us to a floor speech he gave on March 13, 2013. Here’s the relevant portion of that speech:

"The data demonstrates Medicaid beneficiaries face worse health outcomes than just about anybody else in the marketplace. In 2010, the Annals of Surgery issued a landmark study which examined the outcomes from nearly 900,000 individuals undergoing surgery from 2003 to 2007. ... Medicaid patients, when compared to people without health insurance, people who were uninsured, Medicaid patients were 13 percent more likely to die. They stayed in the hospital for 50 percent longer and cost 20 percent more.

"In 2011, Johns Hopkins did a study of patients undergoing lung transplantation. Their conclusions were very much the same. They found that Medicaid patients were 8.1 percent less likely to be alive 10 years after the transplant compared with those with private insurance and also compared to those without any insurance at all. Overall, the Johns Hopkins study found that Medicaid patients faced a 29-percent greater risk of death, and yet Obamacare is moving more and more of the economically disadvantaged onto Medicaid, which subjects them to those worse health care outcomes."

This is a line of argument that had appeared earlier in a number of conservative outlets, including a Wall Street Journal op-ed and a Manhattan Institute briefing paper. These analysesoffered some additional studies with similar findings. Even though Cruz did not specifically mention these other studies, they have been cited so frequently in the debate that we will include them in our analysis.

To start, we should note that even many critics of Cruz’s perspective acknowledge some concerns about the Medicaid expansion under the new health care law.

First, most experts we contacted agreed that studies, including the two Cruz specifically cited, show that patients on Medicaid tend not to have health outcomes as positive as patients on private insurance (though they add that Medicaid is not necessarily the cause, since it’s hard to disentangle insurance status from socioeconomic and lifestyle factors).

Second, experts acknowledge that Medicaid is not a perfect program and that various policy changes could make it more effective. And third, they say that adding millions of additional beneficiaries under the new health care law will impose additional strains on the program.

That said, our examination of the medical papers, including interviews with some authors of the studies in question, suggests that Cruz has made too big a leap by arguing that an uninsured patient actually becomes worse off when they sign up for Medicaid.

Here are a few of the reasons for caution:

• The trends are more mixed than Cruz’s claim suggests. In many of the studies, uninsured patients did end up having better outcomes than Medicaid patients did, such as fewer complications and longer survival. But this trend isn’t universal. For instance, in one study, Medicaid patients had worse outcomes for clogged arteries but better outcomes for abdominal aortic aneurysms.

• The authors of the studies do not make the argument Cruz does. Not one of the half-dozen studies we looked at articulated Cruz’s argument that someone will have a worse health outcome if they move from no insurance to Medicaid.

The studies generally did not focus on comparing Medicaid patients to uninsured patients. Rather, they focused on the performance of Medicaid and uninsured patients collectively, compared to Medicare and private insurance on the other hand. In addition, most papers inserted extensive language urging caution about the limitations of their research.

What Cruz and others have done is "the worst kind of selective reading of the studies," said Michael A. Gaglia Jr., a professor at the University of Southern California’s Keck School of Medicine and the co-author of one of the papers.

• The definition of "uninsured" in these studies is too fuzzy to be reliable. In these studies, the term "uninsured" doesn’t just refer to the popular image of someone who’s too economically strapped to afford health insurance. It can also include poor people getting free charity care from world-class hospitals, very wealthy patients who pay their own bills rather than carrying health insurance, and healthy young adults who gambled by not obtaining insurance but got sick anyway. Each of these patient groupings may have advantages in recovering more quickly, which could explain some of the the better outcomes among the uninsured.

Meanwhile, the definition of Medicaid is also fuzzy because people can sign up for Medicaid after being diagnosed with a serious ailment at a hospital. The studies didn’t distinguish between patients who have been on Medicaid for years, people who were uninsured for years but suddenly signed up for Medicaid before receiving treatment, and those who remained uninsured all the way through treatment.

• The number of both Medicaid patients and the uninsured who were studied was quite small. In many of the studies, private insurance and Medicare patients dominated the pool of those studied. (Medicare is the federal health insurance program for Americans over age 65; because it’s mandatory for seniors, it includes people of all income levels.) Typically, uninsured patients and those on Medicaid represented 3 percent to 5 percent of the individuals studied. Experts say it’s unwise to draw sweeping conclusions from small sample sizes.

• The Annals of Surgery study Cruz cited has an important quirk in the results. The study looked at 11 types of surgery and found that in all 11, the outcomes were worse for Medicaid patients than for the uninsured. However, in 10 of those cases, patients on Medicare also had worse outcomes than the uninsured did. As Boston University health economist Austin Frakthas put it, "Any theory to explain what’s going on in Medicaid had better explain Medicare, too."

• Other studies have shown a positive health benefit from joining Medicaid. A recent studyin Oregon compares Medicaid enrollees who had been chosen by a lottery to uninsured residents who were not enrolled. The study indicated that the new Medicaid enrollees reported better health than those who remained uninsured, though the findings are preliminary.

Our ruling

Cruz said that "expanding Medicaid will worsen health care options for the most vulnerable among us in Texas."

Not only does this assertion make no logical sense -- some health coverage should always be an improvement over none -- but the evidence Cruz and others have pointed to also doesn’t back up his point. None of the studies make the argument Cruz does, and the small sample sizes of uninsured patients, combined with the challenge of defining the terms "Medicaid" and "uninsured," pose serious questions about whether Cruz’s conclusion is valid. In fact, several authors of the papers we contacted disagreed with Cruz’s interpretation of their research.

This sweeping generalization does not hold up. We rate the claim False.

About this statement:

Published: Monday, April 8th, 2013 at 11:40 a.m.

Subjects: Health Care, Medicaid, Poverty

Sources:

Dallas Morning News, "Perry, Cornyn, Cruz assail Medicaid expansion as unwise," April 1, 2013

Ted Cruz, Senate floor speech, March 13, 2013

Wall Street Journal, "Medicaid Is Worse Than No Coverage at All" (op-ed), March 10, 2011

Avik Roy, "The Medicaid Mess: How Obamacare Makes It Worse" (Manhattan Institute), March 2012

HeartWire, "Outcomes after PCI worse for Medicare, Medicaid, and uninsured patients," Dec. 31, 2010

N.N. Hanna, et al., "Three-year outcomes following sirolimus- versus paclitaxel-eluting stent implantation in an unselected population with coronary artery disease (from the REWARDS Registry)" (American Journal of Cardiology). Aug. 15, 2010

J.G. Allen et al, "Insurance status is an independent predictor of long-term survival after lung transplantation in the United States" (Journal of Heart and Lung Transplantation), Jan. 30, 2011

Richard G. Roetzheim et al., "Effects of Health Insurance and Race on Early Detection of Cancer" (Journal of the National Cancer Institute), June 23, 1999

Damien J LaPar et al, "Primary Payer Status Affects Mortality For Major Surgical Operations" (Annals of Surgery)

Joseph Kwok et al, "The Impact of Health Insurance Status on the Survival of Patients With Head and Neck Cancer" (Cancer), January 2010

Jeannine K. Giacovelli, "Insurance Status Predicts Access to Care and Outcomes of Vascular Disease" (Journal of Vascular Surgery), October 2008

Amy Finkelstein et al, "The Oregon Health Insurance Experiment: Evidence from the First Year," (National Bureau of Economic Research), July 2011

Austin Frakt et al, "Our Flawed but Beneficial Medicaid Program" (New England Journal of Medicine), April 21, 2011

The Incidental Economist, "On Gottlieb’s favorite Medicaid outcomes studies" (blog post), March 11, 2011

The Incidental Economist, "Medicaid and health outcomes (again)" (blog post), March 2, 2011

The Incidental Economist, "Medicaid-IV summary" (blog post), Oct. 14, 2010

Email interview with Catherine Frazier, spokeswoman for Ted Cruz, April 5, 2013

Email interview with Joshua Archambault, director of health care policy at the Pioneer Institute, April 5, 2013

Email interview with Edwin Park, vice president for health policy at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, April 5, 2013

Email interview with Jonathan Oberlander, professor of social medicine and health policy and management at the University of North Carolina (Chapel Hill), April 5, 2013

Email interview with Austin Frakt, health economist at Boston University, April 5, 2013

Email interview with Jonathan Gruber, economist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, April 5, 2013

Email interview with Katherine Baicker, professor of health economics at the Harvard School of Public Health, April 5, 2013

Email interview with Daniel P. Normolle, associate professor of biostatistics at the University of Pittsburgh, April 5, 2013

Email interview with John Z. Ayanian, professor of medicine and health care policy at Harvard Medical School, April 5, 2013

Email interview with Michael A. Gaglia Jr., professor at the University of Southern California’s Keck School of Medicine, April 5, 2013

Written by: Louis Jacobson
Researched by: Louis Jacobson
Edited by: Angie Drobnic Holan

http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2013/apr/08/ted-cruz/ted-cruz-says-expanding-medicaid-will-worsen-healt/

Must-Reads: The Late, Great Molly Ivins on Rick Perry from MOTHER JONES 16AUG11

LORD knows we all miss Molly Ivins a lot, but I bet she is in heaven making Him laugh.....Be sure to watch the videos of her interview at a Mother Jones fundraiser in 1992, the first is in the article, the rest are at the end of this post.

Humorist and author Molly Ivins, 1944-2007. Kristina B/Flickr

As Texas Gov. Rick Perry embarks on his Obama-bashing, evangelical-courting, tea party-outdoing campaign for the presidency, we miss Molly Ivins more than ever.
The late and celebrated liberal columnist was known as a writer of sparkling political commentary infused with a trenchant wit and copious shots of zero-bullshit humor. She was the consummate Texan, a ferocious populist critic of the American right wing, and a sorely missed Mother Jones contributor. Here's the C-SPAN footage of Ivins speaking at a Mother Jones fundraising event in 1992:

Ivins also had a special place in her heart for delivering blistering, bold critiques of Perry's track record as a governor, a poor thinker, and an even worse obfuscator. She was, after all, the writer who bestowed upon Perry the nicknames "The Coiffure" and "Governor Goodhair."
Here are a few highlights of Ivins tearing apart Perry's stances on the death penalty, creationism, and taking dirty money from Enron.

• "Shrub Flubs His Dub"—The Nation, June 18, 2001

In this Nation article from the advent of the Bush years, Molly Ivins makes one of her first observations of just how damn good Rick Perry's hairdo is:

Bush was replaced by his exceedingly Lite Guv Rick Perry, who has really good hair. Governor Goodhair, or the Ken Doll (see, all Texans use nicknames—it's not that odd), is not the sharpest knife in the drawer. But the chair of a major House committee says, "Goodhair is much more engaged as governor than Bush was." As the refrain of the country song goes, "O Please, Dear God, Not Another One."

• "Molly Ivins August 6"—Creators Syndicate, 2002

During the "grand old slugfest" between incumbent Perry and the Democratic challenger, Tony Sanchez, Ivins highlighted Perry's misleading smear campaign against his opponent, as well as his eyebrow-raising deployment of the word "coincidental":

This, in turn, brings up the interesting role of coincidence in the life of Gov. Goodhair. Last summer, the Guv appointed an Enron executive to the state's Public Utilities Commission and, the next day, Perry got a check for $25,000 from Ken Lay. He explained this, to everyone's satisfaction, as being "totally coincidental."

• "The Not-So-Great Texas Gubernatorial Debate"—Creators Syndicate, 2006

When the next gubernatorial election cycle came around in Texas, Ivins had even more to say and write about Perry's inadequacies. In her crosshairs this time: the faux-swagger that characterized his debating style:

The Coiffure was in his usual form. As one opponent after another attacked his record, Gov. Rick Perry stood there proudly behind that 35 percent voter support he has so richly earned and simply disagreed. The Coiffure seemed to consider blanket denials a fully sufficient and adequate response.

•  "Molly Ivins: Molly can't say that about Rick Perry, can she?"—Sacramento Bee, August 13, 2011

Over the weekend, the Sacramento Bee published its own collection of Ivins's editorial digs at Perry first printed in the Fort Worth Star-Telegram. Here is one excerpt, from an article originally published on January 12, 2006, in which Ivins rages against the governor's attempts at sleazy political sleight of hand:

The governor of Texas is despicable. Of all the crass pandering, of all the gross political kowtowing to ignorance, we haven't seen anything this rank from Gov. Goodhair since…gee, last fall.
Then he was trying to draw attention away from his spectacular failure on public schools by convincing Texans that gay marriage was a horrible threat to us all. Now he's trying to disguise the fact that the schools are in free-fall by proposing that we teach creationism in biology classes.

Now here's a droll, scathing one from June 24, 2001, on Perry's record on executing mentally handicapped inmates:

First, we Texans would like to salute the only governor we've got, Rick "Goodhair" Perry, the Ken Doll, for vetoing the bill to outlaw executing the mentally retarded.
We are Texas Proud.
Such a brilliant decision—not only is Texas now globally recognized for barbaric cruelty, but a strong majority of Texans themselves (73 percent) would prefer not to off the retarded.
Gov. Goodhair's decision—in the face of popular opinion, the Supreme Court and George W. Bush's recent conversion on this subject—is a testament to his strength of character.
Or something.
His Perryness announced, anent the veto, that Texas does not execute the retarded. I beg your pardon, Governor. Johnny Paul Penry, now on Death Row for a heart-breaking murder and the subject of two Supreme Court decisions, has an IQ between 51 and 60, believes in Santa Claus and likes coloring books.
And that's not counting the other six we know about for sure since 1990.

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