Senator Kamala Harris to co-sponsor Bernie Sanders' 'Medicare-for-all' bill - Independent

Senator Kamala Harris to co-sponsor Bernie Sanders' 'Medicare-for-all' bill

'It’s just the right thing to do,' Ms Harris said

Alexandra Wilts Washington DC

Senator Bernie Sanders, a former presidential candidate, has gained a co-sponsor for his bill that would create a “Medicare-for-all” healthcare system in the US.

Democratic Senator Kamala Harris of California announced she will co-sponsor Mr Sanders’ single-payer legislation, because “health care is a right”, she tweeted.

While defending the current healthcare law, the Affordable Care Act, Mr Sanders declared earlier this year that the way forward in the long-term was a “Medicare-for-all” single-payer system – a federally administered programme that would abolish the role of private insurers in basic healthcare coverage.

Bernie Sanders to push for government-funded healthcare

Republicans unsuccessfully tried to dismantle the ACA, otherwise known as Obamacare, in July.

A major plank of Mr Sanders’ 2016 presidential campaign, single-payer healthcare is a system in which the government, generally through taxes, covers basic healthcare costs for all residents regardless of income, occupation or health status.

“I intend to co-sponsor the 'Medicare for All' bill because it’s just the right thing to do,” Ms Harris announced at a town hall in Oakland, California, according to CNN.

Kamala Harris ✔ @KamalaHarris

I'm co-sponsoring @BernieSanders' Medicare for All bill because health care is a right. Add your name if you agree:

“This is about understanding, again, that healthcare should be a right, not a privilege. And it's also about being smart,” Ms Harris added. “It is so much better that people have meaningful access to affordable health care at every stage of life, from birth on. Because the alternative is that we as taxpayers otherwise are paying huge amounts of money for them to get their health care in an emergency room.

“So it's not only about what is morally and ethically right, it also makes sense from a fiscal standpoint, or if you want to talk about it as a return on investment for taxpayers.”

Mr Sanders expressed his appreciation for Ms Harris’ endorsement on Twitter: “Thank you Kamala Harris for your support. Let's make health care a right, not a privilege,” he wrote.

Ms Harris and Mr Sanders, an Independent who caucuses with the Democrats, are expected to introduce their legislation next month. But the move could further divide Democrats on a key issue as the party seeks to regain its footing at the state and national levels.

Even though more Democrats appear willing to embrace a shift away from the private health insurance market and toward a government-run programme, other members of the party have conveyed concerns about the costs and details associated with establishing a single-payer system in the US.

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During the presidential campaign, Hillary Clinton, who Mr Sanders challenged for the Democratic nomination, called the proposal “a theoretical debate about some better idea that will never, ever come to pass.”

An Urban Institute study of Mr Sanders’ single-payer proposal during the campaign said implementing the plan would increase federal expenditures by $32 trillion over 10 years.

According to a blueprint of the plan on Mr Sanders’ website, creating a single-payer system is estimated to cost $1.38 trillion per year. The plan will be paid for by a combination of income tax rates, a 6.2 per cent income-based premium paid by employers and a 2.2 per cent income-based premium paid by households, the website reads.

Trump, DeVos, and the Creation of an American Oligarchy - Intelligencer

August 31, 2017

10:10 am

Trump, DeVos, and the Creation of an American Oligarchy

By

Jonathan Chait

The version of Donald Trump who appeared yesterday in Missouri was a familiar figure from the campaign trail: a populist outsider, enemy of the Establishment, and traitor to his class. He pledged to get “rid of the loopholes and complexity that primarily benefit the wealthiest Americans and special interests” and to protect “ordinary Americans who don’t have an army of accountants.” At one point, he claimed in an aside, “I’m speaking against myself when I do this, I have to tell you.” The message, in other words, was almost the perfect inverse of the actual policy Trump was selling: a large regressive tax cut that has thrilled the party Establishment, the economic elite, and Washington lobbyists.

Trump has done many shocking things in office, but most of them follow directly, even explicitly, from the persona he put on full display during the campaign. Trump promised the country he would unleash law enforcement without restraint. He made clear his warm feelings toward Vladimir Putin – justifying his authoritarianism and even going so far as to literally ask him in public to hack his opponent’s email. He may not be building the wall and imposing tariffs, but he is at least trying. Even Trump’s, shall we say, free-form managerial style was well known.

His utter subservience to the party’s donor class breaks from the pattern. It is a complete reversal of his promise to “drain the swamp.” Decades ago, academics formulated a term that roughly corresponds to “the swamp.” It’s “regulatory capture,” which describes a process by which staffers in government make rules designed to benefit incumbent industries rather than the general public. Much of the work of government under Trump has consisted of turning over public policy directly to the Washington business lobby. Trump may like war heroes who weren’t captured, but he likes regulators who were.

Environmental Protection Agency director Scott Pruitt has secretly worked in concert with oil and gas lobbyists in the past, and in Washington has essentially bypassed the bureaucracy to turn the work of regulation directly over to fossil-fuel lobbyists. The landing team at the Department of Energy was headed by a lobbyist for Koch Industries.

Tom Price, head of the Department of Health and Human Services, is a doctor closely tied to the medical lobby. Price has received the most attention for his role as advocate of Obamacare repeal. Where he has achieved more influence is in a series of low-profile rulings with the consistent effect of ratcheting up Medicare payments for doctors. This week, he is advancing another rule to increase payment rates for medical equipment firms. Making the federal government spend more money enriching the medical industry is not a conservative principle at all. It is, however, a cause Trump’s administration has advanced rapidly. His Federal Communications Commission has handed a series of victories to cable and telecom firms, encouraging consolidation and discouraging competition.

Despite promising to break up the big banks during the campaign, Trump has abandoned his pledge and placed a Wall Street lawyer in charge of the Securities and Exchange Commission. He has given his two most important economic policy positions to Wall Streeters (Steve Mnuchin and Gary Cohn), and has made stock prices his favorite metric of economic success. The so-called “tax-reform” plan Republicans are formulating has been deeply shaped by the business lobby, which has formed a phalanx of support.

Some of the most astonishing regulatory capture is under way at the Department of Education. The appointment of Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos provoked frenzied opposition, on the basis of her lack of experience and ideological fascination with vouchers. But the focus on DeVos’s beliefs about primary education was always misplaced, for the simple reason that primary education is financed overwhelmingly at the state and local level, so DeVos could not ruin public schools even if she tried.

Where DeVos has had a massive impact is in higher education. The federal government has much higher leverage over post-secondary education due to its involvement with student loans. These loans have often subsidized for-profit colleges, which lure customers using federally backed student loans, and furnish them with substandard or useless education. The Obama administration began cracking down on the for-profit industry in a variety of ways: imposing standards and conditions for its loans, rather than spraying them out indiscriminately to whichever college could vacuum them up. DeVos has turned her department over to the for-profit college industry, which has used its power to protect its own rackets.

One ruling allowing lenders to recover more money from indebted students was issued by Taylor Hansen, a DeVos aide and former lobbyist for the for-profit industry. DeVos’s special assistant is Robert Eitel, the chief compliance officer at a for-profit institution facing multiple investigations for deceptive practices. She has selected A. Wayne Johnson, the CEO of a student-loan company, to run the department’s student loan program. The Department’s General Counsel, Carlos Muñiz, is a consultant who has worked for a for-profit institution that is also facing multiple state investigations for misconduct.

This week, she appointed Julian Schmoke, Jr. to run the Student Aid Enforcement Unit, which the Obama administration created to expose and halt fraud by colleges and universities. Schmoke comes directly from DeVry University, which last year had to pay $100 million over its misleading practices.

The spectacular and telegenic failures of the Trump administration are obscuring the highly effective policies under way. Trump has transformed the government into an apparatus for protecting and enriching incumbent wealth. His chaos and incompetence are tolerable to his party because Trump is fashioning an American oligarchy.

US military bombers, fighters fly over Korean Peninsula in show of force - Associated Press

US military bombers, fighters fly over Korean Peninsula in show of force

Perry Chiaramonte

By Perry Chiaramonte Published August 31, 2017 Fox New.

People don't understand how desperate North Korea is

The U.S. military flew two B-1B supersonic bombers and two F-35 fighter jets over South Korea on Thursday in a show of force following North Korea's latest ballistic missile launch, a South Korean defense official said.

The U.S. aircraft were participating in training with South Korean F-15 fighter jets, the South Korean official said. He didn't want to be named, citing office rules.

Such flyovers are common when animosity rises on the Korean Peninsula, which is technically in a state of war because the 1950-53 Korean War ended with an armistice, not a peace treaty.

North Korea on Tuesday flew a potentially nuclear-capable intermediate-range ballistic missile over northern Japan and later called it a "meaningful prelude" to containing the U.S. territory of Guam.

A day later, The U.S. Defense Agency announced it had shot down a medium-range ballistic missile off the coast of Hawaii in a new test of its missile defense system at sea.

The test came after North Korea fired the missile from its capital Pyongyang that flew over Japan before plunging into the northern Pacific Ocean, an aggressive test-flight over the territory of a close U.S. ally that sent a clear message of defiance as Washington and Seoul conduct war games nearby.

Thursday's U.S. show of force followed a tweet from President Trump, suggesting he was growing impatient with North Korea after earlier expressions of hope for a dialogue with the communist country.

Donald J. Trump ✔ @realDonaldTrump

The U.S. has been talking to North Korea, and paying them extortion money, for 25 years. Talking is not the answer!

10:47 PM - Aug 30, 2017

On Tuesday, Washington and its allies called for an emergency U.N. Security Council meeting, but seemed to fall short on new ideas for stopping North Korea's nuclear and missile advances, which are increasingly putting the U.S. mainland within range.

"Threatening and destabilizing actions only increase the North Korean regime's isolation in the region and among all nations of the world," Trump said after the North's missile soared almost 1,700 miles (2,700 kilometers) into the Pacific Ocean, triggering alert warnings in northern Japan and shudders throughout Northeast Asia. "All options are on the table."

The Associated Press contributed to this story.

Perry Chiaramonte is a reporter for FoxNews.com. Follow him on Twitter at @perrych

The world today is remembering Princess Diana, the humanitarian known as “the People’s Princess,” on the 20th anniversary of her death. - ABC News

The world today is remembering Princess Diana, the humanitarian known as “the People’s Princess,” on the 20th anniversary of her death.

Diana was just 36 when she died in a car crash while traveling in Paris with Dodi Fayed, with whom Diana was romantically involved and who also died in the crash.

Prince William 'sad' Princess Diana never met his family: 'They will never know her'

Diana: The life of a princess

Diana left behind two sons, Prince William and Prince Harry, her children with Prince Charles, who were just 15 and 12, respectively, when their mother died.

The princes are expected to mark the anniversary of their mother's death privately today.

Diana, Princess of Wales, Prince William and Prince Harry visit Thorpe Park Amusement Park, April 13, 1993.

On Wednesday, William, now 35 and a father of two, and Harry, 32, made a special visit to the Kensington Palace memorial sunken garden that has been transformed with their mother's favorite white blooms to pay tribute to Diana.

The brothers were accompanied by William's wife, Princess Kate, and a small group of representatives from a few of the charities Diana supported in the final days of her life, including the Great Ormond Street Hospital, the English National Ballet, the Leprosy Mission, Centrepoint, the Royal Marsden Hospital and the National Aids Trust.

Britain's Prince William, Kate, Duchess of Cambridge and Prince Harry arrive for an event at the memorial garden in Kensington Palace, London, Aug. 30, 2017. more +

William and Harry also made an impromptu visit to speak with well-wishers and view the tributes and cards left at the gates of Kensington Palace, where Princess Diana lived from 1981 until her death.

"The Duke and Prince Harry are grateful for the many flowers, letters, and messages they have received about their mother," Kensington Palace said Wednesday. "They wanted to say thank you to those who made the journey to Kensington Palace."

William and Harry opened up this year publicly for the first time about their mother and her sudden death.

“There's not a day that William and I don't wish that she was ... we don't wish that she was still around, and we wonder what kind of a mother she would be now,” Harry said in a documentary about Diana that aired in July. “And what kind of a public role she would have, and what a difference she would be making.”

William described himself as “sad” that Diana would never meet his wife, Princess Kate, and their children, 4-year-old Prince George and 2-year-old Princess Charlotte

"I would like to have had her advice. I would love her to have met Catherine and to have seen the children grow up,” he told GQ magazine in May. “It makes me sad that she won’t, that they will never know her."

During Diana's funeral at Westminster Abbey in September 1997, Elton John, a close friend of Diana's, sang the lyrics, "Your candle's burned out long before your legend ever will."

Today, 20 years after her death, Diana's style, glamour, mischievous smile and humanitarian work still capture the public's attention.

Diana's humanitarian efforts around the globe are seen by many as her most enduring legacy. She was the patron of more than 100 charities over her lifetime, according to The Diana Princess of Wales Memorial Fund.

Diana was a champion for people with HIV/AIDS and leprosy, who were invisible to society during her lifetime, and spread the spotlight shone on her to their causes. She is credited with changing the perception of people with HIV/AIDS, for example, by picking up and hugging a 7-year-old boy with AIDS being treated at a hospital in Harlem.

When, just months before her death, Diana walked through an Angolan minefield wearing a helmet and flak jacket, her presence drew global attention to the injuries caused by landmines. Diana's home nation of Britain, along with 120 countries, would later sign the Ottawa Treaty that aimed to eliminate landmines targeting humans.

"One of the things our mother taught William and I was the value of doing good when no one is watching," Harry said at an awards ceremony in May. "She visited hospitals late at night to comfort patients. She spent hours writing letters to privately support the work of others. She achieved a lot by shining a spotlight, but she worked just as hard when the cameras were gone."

Diana's beloved "boys," as she called them, shared some of their mother's most personal possessions to recreate Diana's study at Kensington Palace in the music room at Buckingham Palace. The centerpiece of the public exhibit is the desk where Diana organized much of her charitable work and conducted her correspondence.

William and Harry also announced earlier this year they have commissioned a statue to honor Diana on the grounds of Kensington Palace, where Diana lived until her death and where William and Harry now live.

"Now all I want to do is try and fill the holes that my mother has left, and that's what it's about for us, is trying to make a difference and in making a difference, making her proud," Harry said in a BBC documentary that aired this month. "She was the Princess of Wales, and she stood for so many things, but deep down inside for us, she was a mother. And we will miss our mother, and I wonder every single day what it would be like having her around."

Kensington Palace has hosted a number of events to commemorate Diana's life this year, including the memorial garden that features a floral tribute of white roses, white Diana tulips, white hyacinth, forget-me-nots and other favorites of Diana’s.

An exhibition chronicling Diana's evolving style during her life opened at Kensington Palace in February. The exhibition, titled "Diana: Her Fashion Story," offers a unique look at Diana's style and features some of her most stunning outfits.

Diana, Princess of Wales wears the "Elvis dress" during a visit to the Culture Center in Hong Kong, Nov. 8, 1989.

A number of documentaries have aired in the months leading up to the anniversary of Diana's death, exploring her final days and the impact of her nearly two decades in the glaring public spotlight.

"One of the reasons I want to talk now is because I think that after 20 years someone shifts from becoming a contemporary person, to one of history," Diana's brother, Lord Charles Spencer, said in a four-hour documentary that aired on ABC this month. "And Diana deserves a place in history."

Added Spencer, who gave a memorable eulogy at Diana's funeral, "This was a special person, and not just a beautiful one."

Ken Wharfe, who served as Diana's protection officer from 1986 to 1993, said Diana was everything the public imagined her to be.

"What I liked about her was that there was always there was only the one side. What you saw in public was actually how she behaved in private," Wharfe told ABC News this month. "And I think you know what the public got was the real Diana. This wasn't, you know, a person that dressed up for the occasion and spoke for that occasion."

One of William and Harry's biggest challenges now is keeping Diana's memory alive for William's children, George and Charlotte.

On July 3, what would have been Diana's 56th birthday, William and Harry held a service of re-dedication at Diana's grave on the island in Round Lake at Althorp, the Spencer family home. George and Charlotte attended the service with William, Kate and Harry.

An aerial view of the burial site of Diana, Princess of Wales in this Sept. 9, 2006 file photo. The Round Oval lake is located in the Althorp Estate, home to Spencer family.more +

William also spoke in an ITV documentary about how he keeps Diana's memory alive in their home, saying, "I think constantly talking about Granny Diana, so we've got more photos up around the house now of her and we talk about her a bit and stuff. And it's hard because obviously Catherine didn't know her, so she cannot really provide that, that level of detail."

"So I do regularly, putting George or Charlotte to bed, talk about her and just try and remind them that there are two grandmothers, there were two grandmothers in in their lives," he continued. "So it's important that they know who she was and that she existed."

Hurricane Harvey Has Damaged at Least $23 Billion of Property in Just Two Texas Counties - Reuters

Hurricane Harvey Has Damaged at Least $23 Billion of Property in Just Two Texas Counties

Reuters

9:48 PM ET

At least $23 billion worth of property has been affected by flooding from Hurricane Harvey just in parts of Texas' Harris and Galveston counties, a Reuters analysis of satellite imagery and property data shows.

The number represents market value, not storm damage, and is but a small fraction of the storm's reach, as satellite images of the flooding are incomplete. Satellite imagery compiled by researchers at the University of Colorado shows flooding across 234 square miles (600 sq km)of Harris County and 51 square miles (132 sq km) of Galveston County, about one-eighth of each county's land area.

It is impossible to discern damage amounts from the data, as the satellite imagery does not reveal the depth of the floodwaters; nor does it reveal the impact of wind. But even this partial tally signals that the storm will rank among the most damaging in U.S. history.

Reuters overlaid the flood imagery on property parcel maps and found floodwaters had encroached on at least 30,000 properties in the two counties, with a total market value of $23.4 billion.

Of that, 26% is land value; the rest is buildings and other improvements. In Harris County, where Reuters was able to determine the property’s use, about 18% of the affected property is residential.

The tally omits much of Houston’s dense urban center because a satellite specializing in urban imagery has not yet taken enough images there. Floodwaters have inundated the area, like surrounding regions, and thousands of homes are damaged. Many roads, including vital highways and parkways, were submerged and businesses flooded and shuttered.

Hurricane Harvey’s Knockout of Cell Service Revives Calls for Backup Power

Ultimately, storm damage totals will come from estimates of insured and uninsured losses and disaster assistance payments, not from tallying property assessment values. And real estate is only part of the equation in the rapidly rising toll as Harvey moves from Texas to Louisiana. Federal damage estimates will also include the vast cost of business interruptions, ruined vehicles and other personal possessions, repairs to roadways and other public infrastructure, and disaster aid like the money used to feed and house tens of thousands of displaced people.

Adam Smith, a lead scientist for the federal agency that compiles storm damage costs, said it is "very possible" Harvey's costs may surpass the record $160 billion from Hurricane Katrina. “But it will take some time to understand the magnitude of Harvey's devastation, which is still unfolding,” Smith said in an email Wednesday to Reuters. “It is very unclear if Harvey's costs will ultimately surpass Katrina. However, since this is an unprecedented extreme precipitation event over a major city, in addition to the damage to other cities (and) regions from wind, storm surge and flooding, it's very possible.”

For more on Hurricane Harvey, watch Fortune's video:

People Are Rescuing Pets From Hurricane Harvey

Rescuers are working together to shuttle stranded animals hit by the storm.

Hurricane Katrina in 2005 caused about $160 billion in damage, Hurricane Sandy in 2012 caused $70 billion, and Hurricane Ike in 2008 caused $34 billion, according to research by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. The damage figures are adjusted for inflation to 2017 dollars. Harvey, a category 4 storm with 130 mph winds, came ashore Friday in Rockport, Texas. It churned slowly over the next five days, dropping about 50 inches of rain on Harris County, more than any tropical storm recorded in the continental U.S. since 1950.

Rob Moore, a senior policy analyst for water issues at the nonprofit Natural Resources Defense Council, said it's "anybody's guess" how much damage Harvey has wreaked. "Because of the extent of flooding, a lot of insurance companies are expecting to see very high numbers of complete losses of residential properties," said Moore, who monitors government and insurance industry reports. "And large proportions of those properties are going to be uninsured. A lot of people have dropped flood insurance policies the last few years."

Homeowners who live outside the 100-year-flood hazard zone or don’t have mortgages are not required to buy flood insurance. Because there hasn’t been major flooding in Houston in 16 years, many homeowners have dropped coverage to save money. Asked what would happen to them, Moore said, "They're left in a situation nobody wants to be in. They're not going to have very many options for repairing their homes. And a lot of forms of federal disaster assistance aren't available if you don't have flood insurance."

Many of the neighbors who returned Wednesday to Oak Knoll Lane in Northeast Houston find themselves in that predicament. One of them, Valerie Stephens, 32, abandoned her house on Saturday, when about nine inches of water rushed into the house over half an hour. She has no flood insurance, and she said her house, valued at $79,000 on Zillow just before the storm, is worth "much less than that" now.

Up and down the street, water had topped mailboxes and left behind puddles of dirty water, a festering stink and a faint line of grime inside each house where the water had stagnated, usually a couple of feet off the floor. That's much less water than some areas have reported, but it was enough that residents began piling furniture on the curb and ripping open walls and floors to stop mold from creeping in and making the situation even worse.Many did the same thing in 2001 after Tropical Storm Allison swamped the street. "We've already pulled out the doors, the door frames. Then we'll start with the sheetrock and the floors," Stephens said. She expects to live with concrete floors and bare sheetrock while she finds the money to pay for all the damage.

Manafort Probe Heats Up: Mueller Joins Forces With New York Attorney General Natasha Bach - Fortune

Manafort Probe Heats Up: Mueller Joins Forces With New York Attorney General

Natasha Bach

4:53 AM ET

Special counsel Robert Mueller is working with New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman on its investigation into former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort.

Citing unnamed sources, Politico reported that Mueller’s team has shared evidence and discussed a potential case with Schneiderman, indicating that the federal probe is “intensifying.” Both teams have reportedly collected evidence on financial crimes committed by Manafort, including potential money laundering.

Mueller is investigating possible collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia, to which Trump has reportedly replied that he has “complete power to pardon” anyone from relatives and aides to himself. As Trump does not have the power to pardon state crimes, however, the collaboration between the federal and state bodies is particularly significant, as it could provide “additional leverage” to get Manafort to cooperate with the wider investigation.

While no decision reportedly has been made as to whether to file charges, pressure is ramping up on Manafort. FBI agents served a search warrant at one of Manafort’s homes last month. Mueller’s team has been investigating his “lobbying works and financial transactions, including real estate deals in New York” according to the Politico report. And Schneiderman’s office has reportedly been looking into Trump’s business transactions, which it may share with Mueller’s team.Manafort has not been accused of any wrongdoing and reportedly cooperated with the FBI raid. Both Trump and the Kremlin have denied collusion during the 2016 election.