Category Archives: Current Events

Holiday Spirit According To Walmart And McDonald’s.

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Last week, several large retailers made headlines by announcing that they would be open on Thanksgiving Day. Not content with the usual mad rush to sell holiday gifts on Black Friday, the retailers are hoping to increase sales by dragging their employees away from their families and the dinner table.

Chief among the holiday scrooges is Walmart.

When Walmart first made its announcement, its public relations team assured the press that its “associates” (Walmarts euphemism for underpaid employees) would be treated to increased pay and a special dinner. They said the associates would have “fun.” What they didn’t say is that they would cut the hours for these associates before and after the holiday in order to prevent the associates from making extra money!

Such double talk is nothing new for anyone who follows Walmart. Last year, the corporation made $15.7 billion for its owners, the Walton family. Unfortunately, that money hasn’t trickled down to the employees. Indeed, in recognition of the low wages paid to associates, some Walmart stores have been holding Thanksgiving charity food drives for their own employees!

But Walmart is far from the only corporate scrooge.

McDonald’s also refuses to pay employees a living wage. It seems the company even recognizes that fact. But, instead of raising wages, the company has created a website to help its employees better budget their incomes. The site not only recommends that its employees get a second job in order to make ends meet, it shows a recommended budget that fails to include FOOD! (One can only assume that the company expects employees to rely on food stamps to feed their families.) And recognizing the financial stress of the holidays, the company suggests that its employees might save a little extra money by SELLING THEIR HOLIDAY GIFTS!

Yet these very same companies are fighting any potential increase to the minimum wage. That is an incredible show of hubris given that the executives of both companies pay themselves millions.

Blessed Be The Peacemakers.

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In one of the most encouraging deals in decades, the US and other western powers reached a deal with Iran President Hassan Rouhani to limit Iran’s enrichment of uranium in exchange for a relaxation of economic sanctions on Iran.  Although merely the first step in a long process, it could make the Middle East and the world a safer place. Not only will it prevent Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons, it demonstrates that peaceful negotiations are better and more productive than threats and bluster.

Improved relationships between Iran and the US have been a long time coming. There are serious grievances on both sides. But we have much in common with the Iranian people…too much to consider each other enemies.

Of course, not everyone is happy with these promising developments. The GOP warmongers in Congress, like John McCain and his pal Lindsay Graham, would love to have an excuse to “bomb, bomb, bomb, bomb, bomb Iran.” Some have even derided the agreement as an attempt by the Obama administration to distract us from the problems of the roll-out of “Obamacare.” Iran likely has its own hardliners who are dissatisfied by the agreement. The Saudis, who belong to the Sunni sect of Islam, are unhappy that we are on the verge of making peace with a nation dominated by the Shiite sect of Islam. And the greatest warmonger of all, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, has called the agreement “a historic mistake.”

With friends like these, who needs enemies? These are people whose livelihoods depend on conflict. They thrive on it. And they most certainly profit from it.

We should ignore them all. Instead of embracing their paranoia, we should reject it. We have had far too much war, anger and mistrust. We have tried the path of George W. Bush and Richard “The Dick” Cheney. And what has it gotten us? It has brought the world nothing but death, destruction, rising debts and displaced populations seeking vengeance. In this nuclear-armed world, it’s time to try another approach; one in which we talk with our enemies instead of threatening them. It worked for JFK and Khrushchev in 1962. It could work again.

Both President Obama and President Rouhani seem to understand this. Is it possible that, for once, we have the right people in the right positions at the right time?

JFK RIP.

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Today is the 50th anniversary of the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, yet after all of these years, there are still many questions about his death. Did Oswald act alone? How could one man fire three bullets from the bolt-action rifle in such a short time when no other marksman has been able to duplicate that feat? How could the so-called “magic” bullet do so much damage and not be fragmented or even misshapen? Why did so many observers turn to the grassy knoll following the shots? Why did those in front of the rail yard hit the ground, convinced that shots were fired from behind them? Who were the people behind the fence in the rail yard? How could a portion of Kennedy’s skull fly backwards from a shot that entered the back of his skull? How was a visitor to the Dallas Police station allowed to shoot and kill Oswald?

The Warren Commission that investigated the assassination did not have answers to many of the questions, and many of the answers it did have stretched credulity. Is it any wonder that so many people still question the Commission’s conclusions so many years later?

As a senior in high school, I was sitting in math class when Kennedy was shot. When the teacher announced the news, I reacted badly because I thought he was joking. After learning that he wasn’t, I followed the unfolding story as closely as I could. I read most of the reports and books that were spawned by the assassination, including the report by Warren Commission. The most interesting of them was Rush To Judgment by Mark Lane. Lane detailed much of the key testimony from the Warren Commission. He pointed out the flaws in the Commission’s conclusions. More interestingly, he detailed testimony of witnesses who were not interviewed. And he chronicled the overwhelming number of suspicious deaths of witnesses and others involved in the months following the assassinations.

Some of the information in the book may have been flawed, but it convinced me that there is far more to the story than we were told.

In the ensuing years, there have been many attempts to debunk any and every conspiracy theory. Forensic scientists have tried to explain the “magic” bullet. They have tried to explain the contradiction that is the Zapruder film and the questions surrounding Kennedy’s autopsy. Government authorities have dismissed Oswald’s and Ruby’s mafia ties. They have dismissed Oswald’s apparent ties to the CIA. They have dismissed Oswald’s denial of guilt. They never fully explained Ruby’s motives.

There have been numerous official investigations into the assassination over the years. A number of those involved, such as former Senator and presidential candidate, Gary Hart, were unconvinced that Oswald acted alone. Indeed, Hart who served as a member of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence Agencies said that the Warren Commission failed to follow numerous leads; that the Warren Commission failed to fully investigate the CIA-Mafia connection.The Warren Commission’s failure to do so is nothing less than astounding.

To understand why, you have to realize that, just a few years before Kennedy’s election, Fidel Castro led a revolution to overthrow the Cuban dictator and to rid the island of the mafia which had long controlled Cuba’s casino business and other criminal enterprises. The mafia was determined to get their island back. At the same time, the CIA was threatened by a communist government so close to our shores. There was a belief that communism was like a spreading plague that would infect every capitalistic government…the so-called “Domino” theory.

Moreover, the CIA, under Allen Dulles, had a long history of orchestrating coups to remove world leaders it considered a threat. The CIA had conducted several attempts on Castro’s life that involved the mafia. Yet the Warren investigation essentially ignored the connections between Oswald and the CIA, the connections between Ruby and Oswald, and the connections between Ruby, Oswald and the mafia. The failure to do so left a lot of gaps in the Warren Report…especially since JFK’s policies had made powerful enemies within the CIA, the mafia, even the military.

Following the Cuban missile crisis, Kennedy had developed a relationship with Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev. This made him unpopular with both the CIA and US military leaders. Kennedy had also extended an olive branch to Castro. (At the time of his assassination, an envoy from Kennedy was meeting with Castro.) Further, the mafia felt betrayed when JFK and his brother, Robert, embarked on an initiative to destroy organized crime. As a result, Carlos Marcello, the Louisiana mafia boss who controlled much of the crime in the Southeast, made several threats against JFK. He later took credit for having Kennedy killed while serving time in prison.

Add to this Gary Hart’s revelations that, while his Senate committee was investigating the assassination, two of the key witnesses from the mafia were murdered and there is even more reason to suspect a conspiracy. Indeed, Hart told the Huffington Post, “You don’t have to be a genius to believe that they knew something about the coincidence of events — Cuba, Mafia, CIA and Kennedy — that somebody didn’t want that out in the public 12 years later.”

We likely will never know the whole story of the Kennedy assassination. And, unfortunately, we’ll never know what the world would be like had JFK and RFK been allowed to finish their service to our country and to live out their lives. I, for one, believe that the world would be a much better place. In his short time as president, JFK inspired many young people to service. He inspired us to literally reach for the moon. And he reassured our faith in government by leading us through the Cuban missile, working to end the Cold War and beginning the process to end racial discrimination.

Ironically, the failures of the Warren Commission and the government agencies investigating his death, have caused many who were alive at that time to distrust the government. That’s one legacy that Kennedy and his family would abhor.

Abortion Foes Obscure Complexity Of The Issue.

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For 40 years, religious conservatives have fought against a woman’s constitutional right to end a pregnancy. They have pushed laws that would deny government funding for medical clinics performing abortions. They have demanded waiting periods. They have demanded that women be forced to view pictures of fetuses.

They have subjected abortion providers to increased scrutiny. They have demonstrated outside clinics. They have bombed clinics. They have hurled abuse at patients, nurses and doctors. They have published hit lists with the names of providers, along with their addresses, phone numbers and auto license numbers. They have even murdered doctors.

More recently, conservative politicians have placed limits on the time period with which women could seek abortions. They have required abortion providers to be accepted by local hospitals (many of which deny providers access on religious grounds). And they have voted to subject women to invasive and unnecessary medical procedures before they can have an abortion.

In their narrow minds, God willed the pregnancy, so the woman just needs to deal with it.

They refuse to accept a woman’s desire to abort the offspring of rape or incest. They refuse to accept a family’s desire to save a woman’s life when a pregnancy endangers her, even when other family members depend on her. They refuse to accept the financial and emotional difficulties of bearing a child so disabled that it will never be able to survive on its own. They refuse to accept the financial and emotional burden of giving birth to a child that will need constant attention…not only from the family, but from medical specialists.

Ironically, the very same people try to limit sex education and contraception. And they fight Obamacare because they fear that the government will come between them and their own medical decisions. Yet they’re willing to force the government between a woman and her doctor.

It’s long past time to acknowledge the complexity of the issue and work to minimize the issues that lead women to seek abortions…issues such as rape, incest, poverty, prenatal diseases, lack of education and the woman’s physical ability to carry the fetus to full term. It’s time to recognize that each pregnancy is different; that each woman has a right to her own religious and moral beliefs; that each woman should be free to make medical decisions in consultation with her partner, her family and her doctor.

Simple-minded religious and ideological-driven laws will not stop abortion. They will merely drive it underground, and into the back alleys. Such laws will only ruin lives…the lives of already living, breathing, thinking  people.

From Obstruction To Subversion.

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By now, we all know the incredible lengths to which Teapublicans have gone in order to repeal, defund and obstruct “Obamacare.” But now, it seems, Teapublicans have taken a step over the cliff to outright subversion.

It appears one of the reasons for the difficulties of the HealthCare.gov website is a cyber attack tool named “Destroy Obama Care!”

The acting assistant secretary of the Department of Homeland Security’s Office of Cybersecurity and Communications testified that there have been at least 16 confirmed cyber attacks on the website. The most serious of these is a Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attack designed to make the website unavailable to intended users by bombarding the site with more traffic than it’s designed to handle.

According to a story by Examiner.com, right wingers have been distributing the DDoS through social networking. You know, one “patriot” to another.

Does anyone not see the problem with such tactics? In order to get their way, a minority of political extremists intentionally and willfully disrupt a legitimate function of our federal government thereby denying the majority an opportunity to take advantage of a legal, constitutionally-approved law. This is not typical political campaigning. It’s not merely a conflict of ideals and ideas. It’s not the equivalent of civil disobedience. Such an act is not only illegal, it’s immoral. It is nothing less than cyber terrorism.

If another government committed such an act, it might be construed as an act of war.

Where does the opposition to the Affordable Care Act stop? When is enough enough? Do the extremists need a list of those who are suffering from the lack of access to affordable health insurance? Do they need a list of those who die from their obstruction to understand the injustice of their actions? Do they need a body count?

Such extremists do not deserve their self-proclaimed title of patriots. They do not deserve to be called Americans. Indeed, they do not deserve to be called human.

Extremists And Cowards.

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Bullies and weaklings; a**holes and chickensh*ts; Teapublicans and Democrats.  Whatever you want to call them, many of the people who now take up seats in Congress generally fall into one of these two categories. Never has the distinction been more obvious than following the latest vote on “Obamacare.” 39 cowards chose to join the right wing extremists by voting for a bill to “fix” the Affordable Care Act (ACA) by requiring insurance companies to continue to sell junk insurance policies.

The cowards are Democrats who have revealed themselves to be far more concerned about being re-elected and doing what’s best for themselves than doing what’s right for their constituents and their country. Indeed, they are Democrats who have sold out their constituents, their campaign contributors, their congressional caucus and the president. Instead of standing up for health care reform, they stood up for the status quo. They stood up for insurance company profits. They stood up for lobbyists. They stood up with their hands out looking for large campaign contributions from the insurance industry and Big Pharma.

Certainly, many of these weaklings have been targeted by the Republican National Committee and its billionaire sponsors. I have a certain amount of sympathy for these people since right wing Super PACs have already spent millions to attack them more than a year before the mid-term elections. But, if you’re a progressive voter, what’s the point of supporting a representative who refuses to support you on something as important as the ACA? These cowards are forcing their supporters to hold their noses and choose the lesser of the two evils.

For the record, I don’t believe in so-called litmus tests for politicians. I believe in compromise and bipartisanship, but not at the expense of betraying those they are elected to represent. Voting to undermine the ACA by eliminating insurance standards is just such a betrayal.

From the beginning, the ACA has been a difficult undertaking. Everyone knew that its implementation would not be smooth, even in the best of circumstances. (We all know that the roll-out of Social Security, Medicare and Part D did not go smoothly.) In order to get the bill passed, the administration was forced to drop the public option that was intended to keep insurance companies honest by providing more competition. Congressmen and senators spent months and months adding amendments that would weaken the bill. Then many of those same people voted against it anyway.

The ACA faced unparalleled opposition from both inside and outside the beltway; from lobbyists; from the insurance industry; from the pharmaceutical industry; from the medical supply industry and more. Hundreds of millions of dollars have been spent in very public attempts to block it. Teapublicans have spent years bad-mouthing it and predicting that it would be a “train wreck.” They mischaracterized it as a “government takeover” of medicine. They said it would result in “government death panels.” The right wing media has called it “an end to liberty,” “socialism,” “fascism” and worse. The mainstream media has thrived on the controversy, reporting it as though it was some sporting event, trumpeting every setback and glitch. Now they are scoring the ACA by the numbers of people who have registered and purchased insurance policies.

Teapublicans made their opposition to the ACA the centerpiece of two election cycles. They have attempted to repeal the ACA or defund it more than 40 times. They even shut down the government in an attempt to defund the ACA.

Many Teapublican-controlled states refused to expand Medicaid leaving millions of their citizens without health insurance. Many of those same states refused to create insurance exchanges, forcing the federal government to pick up the slack and directing millions more Americans to the healthcare.gov website. At the same time, they cut funding for the website. They funded cyber attacks to disrupt the website. Then they held congressional “investigations” in order to call attention to the glitches.

And now, NOW, 39 so-called Democrats add to the headwinds by voting for a bill that would undermine the ACA? I can think of only two words to describe such a vote…cowardice and treachery! I spent the last election cycle supporting some of these people. I donated to their campaign funds. I can hardly wait until I receive another email from them asking for my support.

They won’t like the answer any more than I like their vote.

How Small Of A Government Is Small Enough?

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For years, Republicans have demanded a smaller government with limited powers. Indeed, Grover Norquist has said, “I want to shrink it down to the size where we can drown it in the bathtub.’

Okay, I get it. Republicans really hate government. But given the fact that our federal government is already the smallest in 47 years, and given that the size of our federal government ranks just 120th in the world as a percentage of GDP, when will Republicans consider it small enough to drown in the proverbial bathtub?

Exactly how small is small enough?

Roughly a third of all US federal employees are dedicated to national defense. Another 10 percent are in the Department of Homeland Security created by the Bush administration following 9/11. Yet another 10 percent are in law enforcement and prisons. According to Republicans, all of these people are necessary. In fact, Republicans constantly call for increasing the size of our military and border security!

That leaves roughly half of all federal employees to manage all of the remaining functions of government. Of those, nearly half work for the quasi-governmental US Postal Service. Do we no longer need mail service? If not, who is going to deliver your bills, your payments, your magazines, your checks? (Not everyone has access to the Internet, and it has not yet proven to be secure.)

The remaining 600,000-plus federal employees manage all other aspects of government. So what goes? Do we get rid of the IRS which collects the revenue to run our government? If so, how does the government get the money it needs to operate? Do we actually expect it to run on private donations?

Do we eliminate Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid and food stamps? Then what happens to the elderly and the poor? Do we eliminate unemployment insurance? Then what happens to those who can’t find work?

Do we eliminate our federal court system? Do we eliminate our foreign embassies?

Do we eliminate government regulators? Then who becomes responsible for food safety, drug safety and transportation safety? Who keeps banks from taking all of our money and causing a complete collapse of our economy? Who keeps corporations from defrauding our citizens, pillaging our land, dumping industrial waste into our waters and poisoning our air? Who builds our highways? Who keeps hunters, fishermen and commercial interests from “harvesting” species into extinction? Who keeps corporations from clear-cutting our forests? Who subsidizes research and our universities?

It’s one thing to say that government is too big and out of control. It’s quite another to face the reality of living in a plutocracy with corporations and the greedy allowed to completely run amok.

A Sad Episode Of “60 Minutes.”

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When I was in journalism school a long time ago, CBS was rightfully used as an example of great journalism. Such industry giants as Edward R. Murrow, Walter Cronkite, Robert Trout, Harry Reasoner, Eric Sevareid, Roger Mudd, Charles Kuralt, Mike Wallace, Robert Pierpoint, Howard K. Smith, Douglas Edwards, Ed Bradley, and Daniel Schorr were part of the world’s premier news organization. They were idolized for their impartiality and determination to get at the truth.

Since those halcyon days, CBS News has sunk to such lows that journalism schools may now use its 60 Minutes report on Benghazi as an example of what not to do.

Lara Logan’s story was fraught with holes, inconsistencies and outright lies. Apparently Logan and the 60 Minutes crew were determined to break a sensational story that would expose some sort of cover-up by the Obama administration. Certainly, the story was sensational. It was also false.

In filing the report, CBS News broke some of the most basic rules that are taught to would-be reporters in Journalism 101. There were so many red flags, it’s astounding that an editor, any editor, would agree to air the report, let alone make it the lead story on the telecast. First, the “source” (independent contractor Dylan Davies) asked to be given an asumed name (Morgan Jones) for protection, yet he agreed to appear on camera making it easy to identify him. Second, Davies admitted to the reporter(s) that he had lied to his employers when asked if he had reached the US consulate during the attack. Third, it was known that Davies had also shopped a manuscript of his tale to a book publisher.

To most experienced reporters any one of these issues would place the source’s credibility in question.

Finally, and more important, Davies’ testimony was in direct contradiction with what was already known about the events in Benghazi. It not only contradicted accounts by the State Department, the Department of Defense and the Obama administration. It contradicted reports from independent groups empaneled to investigate the matter. This should have caused CBS News to seek further corraboration. At very least, it should have caused the network to do much more investigation before running with the story. But it seems, CBS News and 60 Minutes were more intent on exposing or, more accurately, creating a scandal.

The only scandal they created centered on their failure to accurately present the news.

Yet the most astonishing aspect of this sorry mess is that CBS News chairman, Jeff Fager, stood by the story after serious questions were raised. Indeed, he used the fact that Davies had previously lied (not once, but twice) as evidence of his credibility!

Not until CBS News became aware that Davies had told a different story during his testimony to the FBI, did Fager and CBS News start to question Davies’ credibility. Seriously, CBS? No one in your news organization thought to check out your source? No one thought to read the volumes of testimony on the events at Benghazi? No one thought to ask the administration, the State Department or others for a rebuttal? The editor of my college newspaper would have fired me for less.

Of course, CBS News did pull the story from its website several days after it aired. And it apparently arranged for Lara Logan to apologize for the story during her appearance on CBS This Morning. It also has stated that it will correct the story on an upcoming 60 Minutes. That may undo some of the political damage from the story. But it won’t undo the damage done to the proud reputation of CBS News.

All of this is painfully ironic when you consider the network’s actions following Dan Rather’s report on the favoritism shown to George W. Bush during his service in the Air National Guard. If you remember, Rather presented documents showing that Bush had gone AWOL and never served the remainder of his enlistment. When the veracity of those documents was questioned, CBS News hung Rather out to dry. Three producers were fired and Rather left the network shortly afterward with his career in tatters. Yet, since that time, it has been determined that the documents could have been authentic, and that Bush likely was AWOL.

Maybe this time, instead of punishing the reporter(s), the network should fire Fager and the editor(s) who failed to question the Benghazi story. Maybe it should commit to raising its news standards. Maybe it should ask itself, “What would Edward R. Murrow do?”

UPDATE: Lara Logan gave a “correction” at the end of a “60 Minutes” telecast in which she admitted to errors. Given the fact, that her apology was at the very end of the program and lasted only 90 seconds, there’s only one word that adequately characterizes the “correction”: LAME!

Logan did not explain why the network chose to give so much credibility and air time to an admitted liar who was looking to cash in by selling his story to a book publisher. She failed to explain why CBS did so little investigation. And she did not explain why CBS chose to give the “correction” so little time and attention.

Hallelujah! Pass The Hate And Ammunition!

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While perusing my local newspaper, I ran across a curious item. There was an ad for a gun show at a local community church. That’s right, a gun show in a church! Doesn’t everyone know that Jesus Christ and AR-15s go together like wine and crackers; blood and flesh? After all, guns and ammo will help tens of thousands of Americans meet their maker sooner than later.

More seriously, this represents a disturbing trend. More and more religions have aligned themselves with the military. Churches praise those who died in battle. One church I visited even placed a monument to fallen soldiers in the courtyard leading to the sanctuary so the congregation would be reminded of the glory of war every time they go to church.

I long ago rejected organized religion, but I still remember my childhood church praying for peace. The congregation would never have considered allowing its facilities to be used to sell weapons. There were no monuments to violence. My, how things have changed!

Even more disturbing is the tie between some religions and racism, and the tie between racism and guns. The Ku Klux Klan was born out of white “Christian” churches. Today, many Aryan supremacy groups still use the Bible to justify their hatred for others. Further, a new study published in the science journal Plos One has linked racism to gun ownership. A research team led by Dr. Kerry O’Brien measured levels of symbolic racism in relationship to gun ownership. The team reported, “For each 1 point increase in symbolic racism, there was a 50% greater odds of having a gun in the home, and there was a 28% increase in the odds of supporting permits to carry concealed handguns.”

According to the team, the results were “consistent with other US data showing that white males display the most opposition to gun control, and greater support for liberalisation of gun laws.” The team also found that “higher education levels were associated with lower odds of having a gun in the home.”

Maybe someone will conduct a similar study exploring the links between guns and religion, or hatred and religion. I suspect the findings would be both depressing and frightening.

The Real Problem With HealthCare.gov.

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The glitches and failures of HealthCare.gov have provided GOP congressmen with much needed ammo to attack “Obamacare.” They have held numerous congressional hearings that have allowed them to grandstand to their heart’s content. They have elicited an apology from the Secretary of Health and Human Services, Kathleen Sebelius. The glitches have even forced President Obama to address them during press conferences.

But instead of looking for publicity and cheap political gains, perhaps Congress should be looking at the real problem – the federal procurement process.

A study of the federal procurement process by the Standish Group found that 94 percent of all federal IT projects costing $10 million or more fail!  According to an article in Computerworld by Patrick Thibodeau, the Standish Group reviewed 3,555 projects from 2003 to 2012 costing at least $10 million. 52 percent were over budget, behind schedule or didn’t meet expectations. 41.4 percent were outright failures.

Likely, that’s because the procurement system is designed to select the cheapest bidder; not necessarily the best bidder for the project. And, if procurement for IT projects is handled like the procurement of defense weaponry, there are likely conditions written into the process designed to favor certain contractors…contractors located in a certain congressmen’s district or contractors that have “earned” certain favors through gifts and junkets to exotic places.

As evidence that HealthCare.gov is no exception, the Computerworld article cited other government projects that have experienced problems, stating “Large state and federal government IT projects are notorious for blowing up.” The article cited a US Air Force project costing $1 billion before it was scrapped and a $170 million FBI project. Of course, there have also been notable failures in the private sector, including Microsoft’s release of Windows 8.1. And there was the very public crash of Windows 98 during Bill Gates’ introductory presentation on live TV.

Despite all of this, HealthCare.gov can and will be fixed.  It just needs time, money and talent. Indeed, those are the variables for any large project, and, unfortunately, the government procurement process tends to ignore two of them.

Moreover, the Affordable Care Act should not be judged by its website problems. The ACA has already accomplished much. It has ended the insurance industry practice of denying coverage for pre-existing conditions. It has eliminated lifetime caps on coverage. It has made it possible for parents to maintain coverage for their children up to age 26. It has already made it possible for tens of thousands to purchase insurance plans they previously couldn’t afford.

And it has done all of this despite more than 40 attempts to repeal or defund the law and a heavily-financed and highly-orchestrated GOP campaign of obstruction.