Old Fucking Punk @lwriemen@librem.one

Australia’s Devastating Fires Make an Urgent Case for Public Takeover—And Shutdown—of Fossil Fuels

At least 33 people dead. More than a billion animals lost. An estimated 3,000 homes and over 16 million acres of land damaged or destroyed. 

This is the toll, likely underestimated, of Australia’s ongoing megafires. These numbers, together with the horrifying images of thousands of carcasses of beloved Australian animals like koalas and kangaroos, tourists using masks in a smoggy Sydney Opera House, and NASA satellite images of smoke reaching as far as Chile, paint a clear image of how devastating the climate crisis can be even for privileged nations. 

It’s also pushing Australians to face the need to part ways with what they have been told is an essential fuel for their economic growth: coal. The continent’s best—and perhaps only—option for doing so may also be its most radical: Nationalize the coal industry to shut it down.

Australia’s wildfires, already more than six times greater than California’s 2018 fires, have been directly linked to record levels of hotter and drier weather—conditions that are expected to be the new normal as we continue to burn coal in an already carbon-constrained atmosphere. Yet, Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison has been reluctant to recognize the connections between the country’s ravenous coal production and consumption—coal supplies 60 percent of Australia’s electricity and generates 3.5 percent of Australia’s GDP just in exports—and the destruction his nation is facing. Instead, Mr. Morrison keeps putting forward a focus on job security and economic stability that fronts for a pro-coal agenda.

Yet the record-smashing bushfire season is showing that climate inaction is, in fact, the greatest threat to Australia’s decades-long economic boom. The megafire and the drought that preceded it are harming the country’s tourism and agriculture, two major sectors of Australia’s economy. The fires have also started rippling through the insurance industry, with initial claims surpassing a half-billion Australian dollars, a number expected to increase as events continue to unfold. Even Australia’s strong coal industry is, ironically, at risk. BHP, the world’s largest mining company and 19th biggest greenhouse gas contributor, recently reported that smoke and dust from this season’s fires have slowed the coal production of its New South Wales’s power plant and mine by 11 percent.

Financial experts are increasingly worrying that the fires might as well be the event that will push Australia’s economy, which performed relatively strongly during the 2008 financial meltdown, toward the unknown territory of a 21st century economic depression. The mother of all central banks, the Bank of International Settlements (BIS), warned in a new report that the climate emergency is putting worldwide economies’ stabilities at risk and might well be the driver of the “next systemic financial crisis.” The report argues that once that happens, central banks might have no other choice than to act as “climate rescuers of last resort.” Just as during the 2008 financial crisis, when central banks used their monetary power to clean the troublesome balance sheets of systemically critical corporations by injecting money and removing bad assets, these banks might need to intervene once again to get financial toxins—this time in the shape of fossil-fuel assets—out of the economic system. That would mean, in Australia’s case, the country’s climate-change-driving coal mines and generation facilities.

The idea of a 2008-like financial intervention as a way to deal with fossil-fuel stranded assets—assets that won’t be exploitable to provide investors the expected returns—is not a foreign concept. Yet, it still fails to tackle the climate crisis head on. More than saving Australia’s financial system from toxic coal assets through a rerun of 2008 U.S. bailouts, the Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) should make sure that any rescue is married to the actual wind down of companies’ coal production. This is necessary not only to secure the country’s financial stability, but to address a rapidly expanding demand among Australians for the government to lead on climate action—which must include putting to rest any ambition to expand BHP, Adani, and companies alike dirty coal fleet and retire at least one coal unit per day.

What is happening in Australia should be seen as a cautionary tale for the United States. Both countries share more in common than pro-fossil fuel personnel heading their Administrations, while simultaneously being hit by new realities of destructive storms and wildfires. Over the past four decades Americans experienced 258 weather and climate events that surpassed the billion dollars benchmark, costing Americans over $1.75 trillion. Wildfires in California and Alaska in 2019 accounted for $4.5 billion of those losses. The two countries also share the shameful records of being among the world’s top fossil fuel exporters; Australia as the second leading coal exporter, and the United States on track to compete for the top one oil exporter position within the next five years.

This masterful continued expansion of fossil fuels paired with increasing climate damages make these countries stand as front runners for facing the next financial crisis—this time driven by fossil fuel bad assets. In 2013, London-based organization Carbon Tracker issued a report exposing that Australia could face a 44 percent decrease in its coal revenues under a 2° Celsius scenario; a decline that, according to my assessment, must be even sharper in order to achieve the 1.5° Celsius target. In that same year, Carbon Tracker also pointed to the fact that the United States is in a particularly precarious position, with the New York Stock Exchange ranking as the stock market with the highest concentration of fossil fuels in their exchanges. As the climate emergency becomes more pressing, any event can be the tipping point in exposing the real value of fossil fuel assets and start a shockwave throughout the countries’ markets. 

The chaos Australia is now facing exposes the need for stronger government interventions to avoid the many threats fossil fuel toxic assets now impose on society—in particular the need for the nationalization of the coal industry to rapidly decline its production. Just like the RBA is heading to a point when it will be “the only game in town,” soon will the Federal Reserve be the one as well. Instead of waiting for a catastrophic event and further destruction to act on climate, the U.S. government should take the lead and look at the events unfolding below the Equator line as lessons to why the nationalization of the nation’s oil, gas, and coal industry should be done now; not after companies like ExxonMobil and Chevron have poured another $260 billion in new oil and gas fields. If not for the well-being of its own people, then for the sake of the American and Australian economies.

You Shall Know a System by its Enemies

Establishment politicians and media journalists are increasingly concerned and hysterical about the possibility that the increase of Bernie Sanders’ performance in the Democratic primaries means that he could end up being elected president. Why are they so worried?

U.K. police will soon be able to collect data from the U.S. without a warrant—or any prior judicial approval. It’s a bad deal. But Congress can stop it. https://act.eff.org/action/tell-congress-oppose-the-u-s-u-k-cloud-act-deal

[Full-time] Thunderbird Engineers: Multiple positions in development, infrastructure and support at Mozilla Thunderbird https://www.fossjobs.net/job/10178/thunderbird-engineers-multiple-positions-in-development-infrastructure-and-support-at-mozilla-thunderbird/ #jobs

These Blue-Collar Trump Supporters Think the Economy Is Great. Your Move, Democrats.

MILWAUKEE—The mood inside Panther Arena at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee was euphoric January 14 as Tina Turner’s “Simply the Best” blasted and a crowd of more than 10,000 did the wave—a jubilant sea of red hats, big smiles and arms in the air.

The scene was, at first, reminiscent of the hope, joy and empowerment that swept the country 12 years ago as Barack Obama began his presidential campaign. But as the evening wore on, it became clear that the sentiments permeating the atmosphere were very different from Obama fever: bitterness, resentment and scorn. The crowd’s demographics were likely different as well: predominantly white in one of the most segregated cities in the country, home to a large Black and Latinx population.

This was a rally for President Donald Trump, in the city that will host the 2020 Democratic National Convention in July, in a state that will likely be crucial to the election’s outcome.

Wisconsin’s despair over the loss of good manufacturing jobs, the hardship facing farmers and general malaise helped propel Trump to his unexpected 2016 victory. And if the Milwaukee rally is any indication, Trump is still popular here: Attendees described their growing retirement accounts, their thriving small businesses and greater job security.

In 2016, Trump received fewer than a third of the votes in Milwaukee County but won the surrounding counties. Statewide, Trump garnered 47.2% of the vote to Democrat Hillary Clinton’s 46.5%—a difference of just 22,748 votes.

Democrats now face the challenge of proving to Wisconsinites that Trump’s policies and trade wars are actually hurting working people and that recent market gains mostly benefit the already wealthy—while promoting the idea that true prosperity lies in a social safety net, protective regulations and any number of other measures that Trump derides.

One rallygoer, retired sheet metal worker George Zulas, 73, says his retirement investments are thriving because of Trump and described Democrats as the party of corruption. He pointed to the state of Illinois as an example: Governors often do “two terms [in Illinois]—a term in office and then a term in prison.”

“Union members are supposed to vote Democratic, but [Democrats] haven’t done anything for us,” Zulas says. He thinks many union members will vote for Trump in 2020, but quietly—in fear of retribution in their hiring halls should they openly support Trump.

As In These Times reported, “43% of [2016] voters in union households cast their ballots for Trump.” Compared with past election results, however, it appears the outcome was more from a lack of Clinton enthusiasm than from Trump excitement.

Union or not, many blue-collar workers have clearly been attracted to Trump’s America-first rhetoric and believe Trump is negotiating good international “deals” for American workers.

One former toolmaker from Milwaukee, Roger, 67, lost his iron company job about a decade ago when it moved much of its sourcing overseas. (Roger asked not to use his last name out of fear of harassment.)

“These companies buy from Mexico, Portugal, China—there aren’t tool shops here anymore,” Roger says.

Heart attacks and other health problems have made it impossible for Roger to find work, so he spends time in his sprawling garden, growing pole beans and broccoli. But his confidence in Trump has made him feel like walking into one of the remaining tool shops and asking for work.

“Trump knows how to play the game—he got it from the streets of New York,” Roger says. “He’s the country’s best salesman. He gets up from his four-hour sleep and says, ‘What problem will I solve today?’”

While many of Trump’s claims can be easily debunked, fact-checking the economic landscape is more difficult: The economy is strong by certain metrics. In Milwaukee, Trump expounded upon his supposed economic miracle, telling the crowd that the United States now boasts “the greatest economy in our history.”

Unemployment in Wisconsin is at 3.3%, compared with 4.3% in January 2016. The stock market is hitting highs. Many in southeastern Wisconsin are hoping for a job boom from the massive, in-the-works Foxconn LCD panel plant. In Milwaukee, Trump also crowed that the military-style vehicle manufacturer Humvee is now making parts in Oshkosh, Wis.

But much of this economic recovery started during the Obama years. Humvee, for example, made its announcement about Wisconsin manufacturing in 2015.

A closer look at Wisconsin under Trump reveals a less rosy picture. The total number of jobs in Wisconsin has fallen over the past two years. The total number of Wisconsin manufacturing jobs declined in 2019. Wisconsin employers have been hurt by Trump’s trade wars—the all-American brand Harley-Davidson, for example, shifted its motorcycle production overseas and laid people off because of retaliatory tariffs in the EU, sparked by Trump. Trump’s tariffs on Chinese-made goods are arguably hurting Wisconsin companies.

And the big Foxconn deal (Trump lofted a golden shovel at the plant’s 2018 groundbreaking) is projected to create only 1,500 of the 13,000 promised jobs (but the company will still receive massive tax breaks from the state).

Robert Kraig, executive director of Citizen Action Wisconsin, says the Foxconn “debacle” typifies Trump’s approach.

“It was a predictable disaster … [Trump] makes a big announcement and then doesn’t stick around to make it happen,” Kraig says. In general, “Trump is super-charging the economy, we’re on a sugar high with the tax breaks and pressuring the Fed not to raise interest rates even though they should. He’s extremely selective in the data points to measure what a strong economy is. The stock market doesn’t represent actual prosperity, and unemployment numbers miss all the people who are locked out of the economy and who have given up.”

Nationwide, according to census data released fall 2019, income inequality has ballooned under Trump, reaching its worst point since the Census Bureau started measuring five decades ago. Even with low unemployment numbers, the Economic Policy Institute reports that wage growth has been sluggish.

Regardless, Trump’s Milwaukee rallygoers feel flush about a bright future ahead. Trump’s frequent attacks on socialism will only make it harder for Democratic candidates to convince voters that more fairly sharing the country’s wealth will expand the prosperity they think they already have.

Writing for The New Yorker in June 2019, journalist Peter Slevin explored the complicated attitudes toward socialism in Milwaukee, a city that elected three socialist mayors in the 20th century. Slevin quotes historian John Gurda, noting that Wisconsin’s successful socialist leaders “were as creative as any capitalist, and as aggressive as any capitalist, in trying to create a system that worked for the common man and woman.” It seems Democrats would be wise to emphasize this approach as they campaign in a state known for valuing individuality, a bootstraps mentality and hard work.

But if Democrats are to change the minds of the attendees at Trump’s January rally, they have a long road ahead. “This is a blue-collar boom,” Trump said in Milwaukee, gaining more cheers as he railed against low-flow dishwashers and undocumented immigrant sex offenders while touting the economy.

Democrats will need to convince voters in Wisconsin and beyond that a true blue-collar movement recognizes how regulations protect workers and help fight pollution and climate change, how immigrants contribute to the economy, how wage growth fights income inequality, and the upside of many other things that Trump delights in opposing. Kraig, for one, says this moment is perfect for something like the Green New Deal, with long-term and centralized planning.

“You plan out what would make real shared prosperity, and move the needle on our immense income inequality,” he says. “The modern neoliberal market just won’t do that.”

The EARN IT Act is a serious threat to free speech and security online. https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2020/01/congress-must-stop-graham-blumenthal-anti-security-bill

To make amino acids, just add electricity

By finding the right combination of abundantly available starting materials and catalyst, researchers were able to synthesize amino acids with high efficiency through a reaction driven by electricity. Simpler and less resource intensive than current production methods, processes like this may one day be used in resource-restricted conditions to produce the amino acids necessary for living -- even in space or on other planets.

A Win Against Voter Suppression

RALEIGH, N.C.—“Being an old Baptist preacher, you know how we are,” Floyd Johnson drawls with apologetic humor to the North Carolina State Board of Elections (BOE) in late December 2019, at the end of its final meeting of the year. Johnson, who chairs the Cumberland County BOE, traveled to the capital with a simple request: include Smith Recreation Center in Fayetteville, steps from the historically Black Fayetteville State University (FSU), as an early voting site for the 2020 primary.

Smith Rec not only serves FSU but sits in “one of the heaviest poverty-struck areas of Cumberland County … centered in the heart of the Afro-American community,” Johnson says. Indeed, the site serves a predominantly Black, working-class neighborhood, where the median annual income is below the poverty level for a family of four. For students and residents alike, having an early voting site nearby can mean the difference between voting and sitting out.

Of the county BOE’s five members, the two Republicans opposed the idea, requiring state BOE approval to move forward. Linda Devore, one of the Republican members, cited low voter turnout (disputed by advocates) among her reasons to oppose the inclusion of Smith Rec, but the state BOE sided with Johnson and the 500 signatures he delivered from Fayetteville residents and students. In February, they will be able to vote, early, where they live, work and study.

“This is a victory for the community around Smith Rec,” says Manuel Mejia Diaz, 25, who lives nearby. Mejia Diaz is the southeastern regional managing organizer for Democracy NC, an advocacy organization. When Common Cause NC, another advocacy group, began the petition effort, Mejia Diaz joined in.

Without early voting, “people would have to wait for the bus, they would have to go all the way to downtown, wait, and maybe a problem would arise and they’d have to handle that, then they have to wait for another bus, come back,” Mejia Diaz says, running out of breath. “It creates a lot of hassle” for working people.

Voter suppression continues to be a problem across the South. In December 2019, Republican lawmakers in Georgia purged more than 300,000 voters from its rolls, many of them low-income and people of color.

After North Carolina expanded early voting in the early 2000s, the Washington Post reported Black voter participation “skyrocketed from 41.9% in 2000 to 68.5% in 2012.” In 2008, the Charlotte Observer reported Black voters accounted for “36% of those casting ballots on the first day of early voting,” despite making up 22% of registered voters.

In 2013, after the U.S. Supreme Court overturned key provisions of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, Republican lawmakers overhauled North Carolina’s election procedures, repressing Black voter turnout. In the name of fighting voter fraud (which reportedly amounts to less than a rounding error), the state adopted strict voter ID requirements and curtailed early voting, among other measures—all of which a federal judge struck down in 2014, saying it targeted “African Americans with almost surgical precision.” Subsequently, the state passed another voter ID law, which a different federal judge struck down on Dec. 31, 2019, citing the state’s “sordid history of racial discrimination and voter suppression.”

The Smith Rec voting site had survived the 2013 cuts and was open for early voting in 2014 and 2016, but the county BOE opted not to open it for the 2018 midterms and its fate remained uncertain ahead of 2020.

When Mejia Diaz learned in November 2019 that Smith Rec was again likely to be left out, he hit the pavement with FSU senior Kristian Carlyle, 21, a fellow with Common Cause NC. In a single week, organizers collected around 500 signatures and encouraged residents to voice their support at an upcoming county BOE meeting. Residents flooded the board’s offices in downtown Fayetteville. “The room was packed,” Mejia Diaz says.

Carlyle has fought for students’ voting rights since arriving at FSU. “It shouldn’t be difficult to exercise what is—what should be—a simple right,” she says.

Mejia Diaz says door-to-door organizing “may not be fancy, but it’s a good way to get people engaged.” And it works: In addition to winning Smith Rec, residents pushed county BOEs to open early voting sites at Winston-Salem State University and North Carolina A&T State University, also historically Black colleges and universities (HBCU), largely thanks to grassroots organizing.

For students at FSU, the stakes of voting in this election are high. HBCU students graduate with significantly more debt than their peers and have a harder time paying it off. In April 2019, presidential candidate Elizabeth Warren proposed investing $50 billion in HBCUs, and in November 2019, Bernie Sanders released a multi-billion dollar plan to make HBCUs tuition-free and erase loan debt.

“HBCUs got Obama elected,” Carlyle says. Their students, as well as the communities they serve, could very well shape the outcome of this election. 

How Medicare for All Could Improve—and Save—the Lives of Transgender People

Arya Serenity started using GoFundMe in 2018, just before being released from prison. With the help of people on the outside, she ran two campaigns to raise a few thousand dollars to defray the cost of housing, re-entry, and buying women’s clothing and cosmetics for the first time. A year later, she returned to the platform again to pay for facial hair removal.

Arya is a transgender woman, someone who was assigned male at birth and identifies as a woman. She’s also part of a growing cohort of gender diverse individuals who are turning to online platforms like GoFundMe to ask their communities for direct assistance in covering the costs of their transitions. A quick search for “top surgery” on the website will turn up over 27,000 results, and “bottom surgery” yields some 16,000 more. There are also thousands more campaigns from people asking for aid to cover the cost of hormones, gender confirmation surgeries, laser hair removal, and other expenses related to medical transition.

These services can quickly add up to tens of thousands of dollars. Arya scoffs at the thought of being able to afford the full scope of gender affirming care that she would like: “Hell no. I can barely pay my rent.”

But with Medicare for All maintaining broad popular support and its chief political proponent—Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.)—surging to the lead in the Democratic primary, that calculation may soon change. 

The proposed policy would be a major intervention in a system where over 1.3 million Americans who identify as transgender or gender diverse are systematically shut out of health care coverage. Currently, only 19 states and the District of Columbia require government insurance to cover gender affirming care, and nine states explicitly exclude it. The gender diverse community is uninsured at more than double the percentage of the general population. And in a system where health insurance is tied to employment, gender diverse people are three times more likely to be unemployed than cisgender people, whose gender matches the sex they were assigned at birth. According to the National Center for Trangender Equality, “More than one in four transgender people have lost a job due to bias, and more than three-fourths have experienced workplace discrimination.” This reality is even worse for transgender people of color, with nearly half of Black transgender Americans reporting harassment at work.

With Medicare for All, these coverage disparities could instantly disappear. 

Sen.  Sanders, who introduced the Medicare for All bill in Congress in 2019 Congress, describes the program as a “single-payer, national health insurance program to provide everyone in America with comprehensive health care coverage, free at the point of service.” The Sanders campaign told In These Times over email that Medicare for All “would not only confront the massive health disparities faced by the LGBTQ+ community, it would also cover gender affirming surgeries, increase access to PrEP, remove barriers to mental health care and bolster suicide prevention efforts. Sanders’ plan clearly states that LGBTQ+ people cannot be discriminated against by providers or denied health benefits.”

For her part, Elizabeth Warren, the only other presidential hopeful to make Medicare for All part of their official platform, has also promised to expand health care access for sexual and gender minorities. Her website states that a Warren administration would ensure coverage for “all medically necessary care for LGBTQ+ patients under Medicare for All, and [allow] providers discretion to deem gender-affirming procedures as medically necessary based on an individualized assessment.” Some, however, have questioned whether she actually plans to make Medicare for All a legislative priority, given that her timeline for achieving it stretches deep into the second half of her hypothetical term.

Daniel Merrill is a transgender woman and co-chair of the Cincinnati and Northern Kentucky chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America. She says that a strong Medicare for All program would be life-saving, noting that access to gender-affirming care “significantly lowers the suicide rate among transgender people and significantly reduces the rate at which they are violently accosted by people in public.” With life expectancy for transgender women of color currently as low as 35 due to high rates of racist and transphobic violence, Merrill’s comments reveal another layer of health disparities faced by transgender and gender nonconforming populations, one that Medicare for All could help alleviate.

Under the current system, privately insured Americans seeking gender affirming care can easily fall through the cracks. Coverage varies widely between policies, and in some cases, insurance carriers will simply deny coverage for procedures that are ostensibly covered in their policies. Arya Serenity says she discovered this when she tried to get facial feminization surgery (FFS) last year. After leaving prison, she says she found work at a support center for transgender people. Through that position, Serenity says she has been covered with Blue Cross Blue Shield’s Platinum PPO plan, which she says she specifically chose because it covers FFS. Despite this, Serenity’s insurance has repeatedly denied her FFS requests, she says. (The company did not immediately reply to a request for comment.)

“They consider it cosmetic,” she says. “For them to be able to determine that for someone else is beyond me.” She added, “It’s so angering.” 

She says she once tried to get authorization from a specialist, but he told her not to bother, because insurance wouldn’t cover it. Besides, the specialist said, she looked feminine enough already. The whole visit lasted less than 15 minutes and left Serenity thinking to herself, “Wow, this is what I signed up for?”

With current iterations of Medicaid, gender diverse people also can struggle to access care. This was the case for Theo Strachan, a transgender man who is insured through Medicaid in Maryland. Strachan says he was forced to pay out of pocket for a visit to the OB/GYN because Medicaid flagged the request for gynecological care for a man as fraudulent. Strachan says that when he called the Maryland Department of Health to clear things up, “it got very invasive very quickly.” According to Strachan, the department official with whom he spoke asked  about his anatomy and began talking to him about god. He says the entire experience was “humiliating.” (The Maryland Department of Health did not immediately return a request for comment.)

It could get even worse. Last summer, the Trump administration proposed a dramatic revision of Section 1557 of the Affordable Care Act that would eliminate nondiscrimination protections based on gender identity, sex, and association in programs that receive federal funding. While it is not entirely clear what such changes would entail, many are concerned that, if implemented, the rollback could lead to an increase in discrimination against transgender and gender divrese people.

For Dr. Alex Keuroghlian, who is the principal investigator of the federally funded National LGBT Health Education Center and the director of the Massachusetts General Hospital’s Psychiatry Gender Identity Program, anecdotes of denial of care are a big concern. “We have national data indicating that adverse experiences within the health care system—being misgendered or invalidated or denied treatments related to your gender identity—is a reason many transgender and gender diverse people cite for not engaging in needed urgent or preventative medical care.” Keuroghlian says this dynamic leads directly to health inequities down the line. 

As for insurance difficulties, Keuroghlian says, “We hear it all the time. It ends up being a lot of extra work for health centers or care teams for clinicians to do that kind of work—processing appeals and advocacy—and a lot of extra work and emotional labor for the patients.” 

Under Sanders’ Medicare for All proposal, such discrimination would be explicitly banned, and courts would be able to award damages if this ban was violated. Warren says she will "immediately work to repeal the Trump Administration’s terrible proposed rule permitting discrimination against LGBTQ+ people in health care."

According to Jessica Halem, LGBTQ outreach and engagement director at Harvard Medical School, Medicare for All creates another important opportunity to improve access to gender affirming care: It would release providers from having to fight with insurance companies over patient care and reduce time spent on administrative work by streamlining paperwork and electronic records. As Halem puts it, “Medicare for All is an opportunity to free up doctors to do what they do best.”

Furthermore, says Halem, having a federal policy that validates best practices for gender affirming care would create a “trickle down effect” that would lead to greater acceptance for gender diversity throughout society. “Because you’ve got this beloved expert in our culture,” says Halem. “We put [doctors] on this pedestal.” Halem says that when doctors affirm gender diversity, “then everyone else falls in line.”

Keuroghlian says that training is key to ensuring access to gender affirming care. “The thing is clinicians aren’t trained to provide this care,” he says. “We need to reform medical education, nursing education, social work education. You can have the coverage, but if you don’t have enough care teams who know how to deliver this care, it’s not going to get delivered.” 

Some argue that the medical system requires deep cultural intervention, as well as structural change. Danny Waxwing, attorney and director of the Trans in Prison Justice Project at Disability Rights Washington, says “a lot of issues come about because we’re still using the framework of medical necessity in a conversation that is fundamentally about self-determination.” As Arya Serenity experienced when she was denied FFS on the grounds that it was cosmetic, what constitutes “medical necessity” is not ultimately up to the transgender or gender diverse person who is seeking care. To meet the needs of gender diverse people, advocates say a Medicare for All system would have to ensure that individuals have agency and voice in determining the care they need. 

Daniel Merrill, a supporter of Medicare for All, says of the proposed program, “I'd like to see more protections for adolescents in gaining access to puberty blocking treatments, particularly autonomy in making choices regarding their gender identity from their parents.” Neither Warren nor Sanders directly addresses this point in their plans, despite the fact that more than a dozen states across the country are advancing bills that target transgender youth, either by banning certain kinds of gender-related medical care or barring them from playing on school sports teams associated with their gender identities. On January 30, South Dakota’s House of Representatives approved a bill that would make it a misdemeanor for doctors to provide gender affirming care like puberty blockers to patients under the age of 16 years old. While only a minority of gender diverse youth currently receive this treatment, a recent study found that the therapy can have significant benefits for the mental health of those who do. 

Of course, if one cannot afford to go to the doctor to seek care in the first place, none of this matters. Theo Strachan, pointing to Medicare for All’s ability to make health care accessible for transgender people of color who are living in poverty, says, “I’m for it.”

Arya Serenity says she’s cynical that Medicare for All would deliver, asking, “Who’s going to pay for that?” She’s determined to move forward with her transition, and to do her best to get the care she needs. When she walks down the street, she says, she wants people to think “Damn, she’s cute. Or damn, she’s ugly, but at least it’s a ‘she.’” That, she says, would “change everything.”

Merrill, on the other hand, emphasizes that the relief that Medicare for All would bring cannot be overstated. She says there’s a person she wants to be, but for a long time she assumed she would never be able to afford it. With Medicare for All on the table, she underscores, “It’s the first time I’ve believed that it’s possible.”

How to Game the Popularity Voter Whores

In the same way that Google Maps suggests a short cut around a traffic jam and thus causes more traffic on the alternate route, voters who chase the most popular candidate end up having unforeseen effects on political races.,

github is literally archiving shit without notifying users

once again they prove themselves to be a dumpster fire

so uh, if you're concerned about archivists being garbage and doing this without your explicit consent, please make your gits private and or consider moving elsewhere (like a private gitea, i believe some people on the fedi have some you can sign up for; you can also self-host a gitea)

Do Ring Cameras Violate Wiretapping Laws? New Hampshire Is About to Find Out
https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/3a8k79/do-ring-cameras-violate-wiretapping-laws-new-hampshire-is-about-to-find-out

Wow. Even medical software can't escape #adware corruption. Opiod maker paid a million dollars so software would show pop-ups recommending opiods to doctors.

https://www.latimes.com/business/story/2020-01-30/health-records-company-pushed-opioids-to-doctors-in-secret-deal

Update: Avast has shut down the subsidiary company that was capturing and selling customer data due to all the backlash. One down, a few thousand to go. #privacy

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2020/01/avast-kills-off-jumpshot-the-subsidiary-that-sold-all-your-web-data/

The alcoholic beverage from Mexico showed a surge in Google searches in the past week, along with the term “corona beer virus” and “beer virus.”

😂😂😂

https://eu.usatoday.com/story/money/business/2020/01/29/coronavirus-corona-beer-surges-on-google-trends-as-virus-spreads/4606997002/