WHAT’S IN THE POLITICAL WATER?
Flavored with ACA
There’s something in the water at the Tennessee state Capitol. That’s the only reasonable explanation for the actions of some of our state officials.
Take, for instance, Tennessee’s continuing part in a pending lawsuit in Texas that challenges the constitutionality of the Affordable Care Act, better known as Obamacare, which ensures that about two-thirds of Tennesseans can’t be dropped from their insurance plans because of pre-existing conditions.
But our officials aren’t concerned with the health care part of the ACA, merely the “Obama” part of it. Tennessee Attorney General Herbert Slattery joined the litigation in February, and he traveled to Texas as the suit’s opening arguments and testimony began before last week in Fort Worth.
Tennesseans covered by the ACA and activists unsuccessfully urged Slattery to bail out of the suit.
But Tennessee’s GOP is stubborn — even though insurers in our state indicate the plans are working and 2019 will bring lower or neutral ACA premium prices.
State officials clearly now can’t cite costs — not that they ever could. Tennessee gave up federal money years ago when it bucked joining the ACA.
Our state leaders also can’t cite public opinion. A new tracking poll by the Kaiser Family Foundation says 75 percent of Americans, including most Republicans, want protections preserved for people with pre-existing conditions. Also, 72 percent don’t want the companies to charge sick people more.
At least one of Tennessee’s U.S. senators, Lamar Alexander, chairman of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, indicated joining the Texas case was “as far-fetched as any I’ve ever heard. Congress specifically repealed the individual mandate penalty, but I didn’t hear a single senator say that they also thought they were repealing protections for people with pre-existing conditions.”
Add a dash of Nike
State Sen. Bo Watson also seems to have been drinking from that strange GOP watering trough at the Capitol.
So much so that he seems to have lost track of the more important things he needs to do, like protect the health care coverage of all Tennesseans rather than worry about tearing up Nike sports equipment contracts.
Watson, R-Hixson, and the state’s Senate Finance Committee chairman, in a Friday tweet said he asked the Office of Legislative Budget Analysis to “review what TN state-financed colleges & universities have Nike contracts and report findings.” It’s just another example of GOP pandering and abuse of power. Watson on Saturday told Times Free Press reporter Andy Sher that his request was prompted by “constituents” upset about the Nike ad unveiled last week featuring Colin Kaepernick, the former San Francisco 49ers quarterback who was the first athlete to kneel during the national anthem to bring attention to police shootings involving blacks.
The ad, part of Nike’s 30th anniversary of the “Just do it” slogan, shows Kaepernick’s face and says “Believe in something, even if it means sacrificing everything.”
Of course, President Donald Trump has fixated on Kaepernick and other kneeling NFL players, saying they disrespect the anthem and veterans, even though the kneeling has nothing at all to do with veterans, and everything to do with human respect and racial justice. Trump tweets have suggested the company was “getting absolutely killed with anger and boycotts.”
Watson didn’t name any campus in his bullying, but the University of Tennessee began an eight-year Nike contract in 2015 worth a total of $34.9 million.
Nike, however, doesn’t appear to be suffering much blowback where it counts. The company’s online sales jumped 31 percent after Nike unveiled the Kaepernick campaign, according to a Monday story on MarketWatch. Likewise, Nike’s stock has held up after its initial slump. The stock rallied 2.2 percent Monday and has regained 93 percent of the decline to a three-week low it suffered on Sept. 4, immediately after the campaign was revealed.
Come on. Let’s buy some Nikes. Just do it.
Who wouldn’t write the op-ed?
In recent days, Trump has been distracted from NFL anthem kneeling. He has bigger free-speech fish to fry — like the witch hunt to find the unnamed senior administration official who wrote a New York Times opinion essay about the “steady state” trying to keep the country safe from our president’s “worst inclinations.”
On Friday, Trump told reporters he wants Attorney General Jeff Sessions to uncover the author.
But Tennessee’s Republican Sen. Bob Corker, in downplaying the president’s pique, demonstrated he has not fallen ill because of bad Tennessee water.
“Again, I didn’t look at it as new news,” our senator said on CNN. “Anyone who’s had any dealing over there knows this is the reality we’re living in. … I think the biggest issue they’re going to have is to figure out who wouldn’t have written a letter like that.”