Kenneth C. Davis/NY Times:
Of all the bedtime-story versions of American history we teach, the tidy Thanksgiving pageant may be the one stuffed with the heaviest serving of myth. This iconic tale is the main course in our nation’s foundation legend, complete with cardboard cutouts of bow-carrying Native American cherubs and pint-size Pilgrims in black hats with buckles. And legend it largely is.
In fact, what had been a New England seasonal holiday became more of a “national” celebration only during the Civil War, with Lincoln’s proclamation calling for “a day of thanksgiving” in 1863.
WaPo:
U.S. officials trying to set up a network of hospitals in this country to care for Ebola patients are running into reluctance from facilities worried about steep costs, unwanted attention and the possibility of scaring away other patients.
“They’re saying, ‘Look, we might be willing to do this, but we don’t want to be called an Ebola hospital. We don’t want people to be cancelling appointments left and right,’ ” said Michael Bell, director of laboratory safety at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
This is what jerks like Govs. Cuomo, Christie and LePage get for their Ebola histrionics. Instead of teaching the public how not to panic, they teach how to panic. There are more indicted sitting Congressmen then there are Ebola patients in the United States.
More politics and policy below the fold.
Coral Davenport/NY Times:
President Obama could leave office with the most aggressive, far-reaching environmental legacy of any occupant of the White House. Yet it is very possible that not a single major environmental law will have passed during his two terms in Washington.
Instead, Mr. Obama has turned to the vast reach of the Clean Air Act of 1970, which some legal experts call the most powerful environmental law in the world. Faced with a Congress that has shut down his attempts to push through an environmental agenda, Mr. Obama is using the authority of the act passed at the birth of the environmental movement to issue a series of landmark regulations on air pollution, from soot to smog, to mercury and planet-warming carbon dioxide.
Xpostfactoid:
Why was Connecticut so successful in steering buyers away from bronze? (While bronze plans may be appropriate for some healthy and relatively wealthy buyers, low bronze takeup in a wealthy state suggests that most CSR-eligibles found their way to silver.) One reason might be its markedly successful state exchange, and a successful outreach effort. Awareness of ACA offerings in Connecticut was high, according to a user survey conducted by the state this fall, and advertising outreach was effective. Access Health Connecticut functioned well throughout the ACA's first open season. Private plan signups were nearly double the state's share of the CBO's national projection, according to Charles Gaba's metric.
Perhaps the key factor lies in the design of the Connecticut exchange.
You remember Charles Gaba. Don't miss his latest
here.
USA Today:
Some Walmart shoppers looking for door-buster deals on Back Friday were met by protesters speaking out against the retailer's treatment of workers.
In what is being touted as the biggest organized protest of Walmart in the company's history, more than 1,600 demonstrations were organized by the Organization United for Respect at Walmart (OUR Walmart).
Supporters on Friday called on Walmart and its owners to raise the pay to a minimum of $15 an hour while providing more consistent full-time work.
Michael P. Jeffries:
“Black lives matter” has replaced “Hands up, don’t shoot!” as the mantra of those protesting for justice in Ferguson and throughout the country. The simplicity of the phrase is a national shame. Among protesters’ implicit demands are freedom, respect, and dignity for black Americans, but those ideas seem light years away in a country where black people are killed and those responsible give interviews on national television with “a clear conscience.”
Institutionalized racism and white supremacy are toxic for all people of color. But the “black” in “black lives matter” calls our attention to a related, but distinct, force that produces more deaths like Trayvon Martin’s and Michael Brown’s: Anti-blackness.
Racism is a combination of prejudice, discrimination, violence, and institutions that reproduce racial inequality and injustice, regardless of intent. Our schools, neighborhoods, and criminal-punishment system actively privilege whites at the expense of people of color, even when the rules governing these systems are racially “neutral.” Anti-blackness entails all this and more. It is not simply about hating or penalizing black people. It is about the debasement of black humanity, utter indifference to black suffering, and the denial of black people’s right to exist.
Ta-Nehisi Coates:
Barack Obama is an earnest moderate. His instincts seem to lead him to the middle ground. For instance, he genuinely believes that there is more overlap between liberals and conservatives than generally admitted. On Monday he nodded toward the "deep distrust" that divides black and brown people from the police, and then pointed out that this was tragic because these are the communities most in need of "good policing." Whatever one makes of this pat framing, it is not a cynical centrism—he believes in the old wisdom of traditional America. This is his strength. This is his weakness. But Obama's moderation is as sincere and real as his blackness, and the latter almost certainly has granted him more knowledge of his country than he generally chooses to share.