The Long March
by digby
The forced pregnancy forces have been painstakingly working at persuading the public and changing the laws over a long period of time. And it’s working.
Women are screwed if liberals don’t wake up to this and formulate a plan for combating it. Giving birth isn’t just another “responsibility” like paying your taxes or buying car insurance. To just let these people have their way without a real fight is criminal.
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The Last Crisis
by digby
Rick Perlstein sent in this Public Service Announcement and reminded me that neaqrly 200,000 people died in Haiti just six months ago. God, what a year:
The world’s attention has turned elsewhere as Haiti struggles to recover from the historic January earthquake. No country has suffered such a massive disaster in a century; 3% of the 9 million population died, a like number suffered injury and illness and 20% are now homeless. The situation in Port au Prince is still threatened by the chaotic situation existing there. Haiti, the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere has little infrastructure, making every task more difficult.
TOMMY STINSON is committed to aiding the fundraising and awareness building efforts in Haiti by working with the Timkatec Centers, three schools located in Petion-Ville, a suburb of Port Au Prince.
Tommy, currently in Guns N’ Roses and Soul Asylum and formerly of The Replacements, Bash & Pop and Perfect, will hold an online fund-raiser by selling personal and donated items on his website, www.tommystinson.com, in late July. Items will include a signed GNR bass guitar, two retired custom-made plaid suits from his GNR tours, a week-long vacation in the Bahamas, and more. Everyone who makes a donation of any amount to Timkatec as part of the fund-raiser will receive a free download of “Don’t Deserve You,” the first single off of Tommy’s upcoming solo release, which is currently in production (release date TBA).
The three Timkatec schools support 500 children and desperately need financial support. Timkatec 1, a residential Primary school founded in 1994, brings some relief and normalcy to 500 kids in the post earthquake chaos by providing food, shelter, education and structure to homeless and abandoned children, some just 5 years old. Timkatec 2, built in 2005, is a trade school for destitute teenage boys, training as plumbers, electricians, tailors, shoe makers and construction workers; Timkatec 3, founded in 2009, trains teenage girls as cooks, hairdressers, seamstresses and child care workers. The results are improvements in health, literacy and self-esteem and above all, the ability to support one’s self. Currently, funding for Timkatec comes from “The Friends of Timkatec in America”, founded by the O’Shea family and friends in 2004 to build Timkatec 2 and fund its operations.
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Angling For Number One Wingnut
by digby
It looks as though the least of Sharon Angle’s odd religious leanings is Scientology:
Justin Elliott reports at TPM that Sharron Angle, Republican nominee for U.S. Senate from Nevada was, in the 1990s, a member of the Independent American Party, the Nevada affiliate of the Constitution Party.
The Constitution Party is not merely a political party that supports the Constitution, but rather a party that promotes a very specific interpretation of the Constitution: based on founder Howard Phillips’ Christian Reconstruction. No conspiracy theory here; Phillips has explicitly embraced R.J. Rushdoony as a mentor and publicly noted the influence of the “Father” of the movement on his own views and the views of his son Doug Phillips, the founder of Vision Forum, an organization which claims “a zeal for the restoration of Biblical patriarchy.” In her book, Quiverfull, RD contributor Kathryn Joyce reported that the younger Phillips pressured members of the church in which he is an elder to support the Constitution Party. A significant division resulted when a female member of the congregation questioned him and was disciplined by the church leaders. The elder Phillips was one of the founders of the new Christian Right in the 1980s and is still chairman of the Conservative Caucus. In 1992 he founded the U.S. Taxpayer’s Party which in 1999 changed its name to the Constitution Party. Phillips ran three times as the party’s candidate for President (with the endorsement of Ron Paul). The Constitution Party’s platform advocates “returning” American law to its “foundations” in “Biblical Law.” The notion that the First Amendment’s religion clauses provide for a separation of church and state is rejected, based on the argument that the founders envisioned an institutional separation of church and state at the federal level in order to protect religion from an overreaching federal government. They contend that the founders always understood the U.S. to be a Christian nation founded on biblical law. The Constitution Party opposes abortion in all instances (including some forms of contraception). It calls for the repeal of all federal gun laws. It supports state’s rights and localism including the elimination of any activities on the part of the federal government not explicitly delineated in the Constitution. It advocates reform of Congress including the elimination of pensions, return to the election of senators by state legislators, and repeal of the electoral college. It supports repeal of the Voting Rights Act, Social Security, and the Patriot Act. It calls for the elimination of any control or support by government over education (as that is the God-given responsibility of families), for the right of “state and local governments to proscribe offensive sexual behavior,” and to limit marriage to heterosexual couples. It advocates a hard money currency, repeal of the Federal Reserve and elimination of fractional reserve banking. As I reported here, the Constitution Party and Christian Reconstructionism have deeply influenced both Kentucky Senate candidate Rand Paul and his father. It sees itself in opposition not only to Democrats, but to Republicans; leaders have criticized Sarah Palin for calling on tea partiers to choose one of the major parties. The party is officially on the ballot in at least 17 states including Florida, where Bernie DeCastro, an ex-con turned prison minister, its candidate running for U.S. Senate, thinks tea party favorite Marco Rubio is too liberal.
Christian Reconstructionism runs all the way through the rights wing fever swamps and not just in Christian Right circles as you can see. And where they aren’t openly acknowledged, their philosophy finds its way into the thinking of most of the Republican party to one degree or another. They’re very creepy and very strange and the fact that they’ve managed to make such inroads in one of the two major parties in America is a testament to just how unstable things really are. The Big Money Boyz have been able to contain these people up to now. Will that continue? And at this point, do we think they’re any better?
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Dream Vs Nightmare
by digby
This story from DKos yesterday just makes my heart hurt:
Our nation’s immigration system is so dysfunctional that a Harvard biology major, a stellar student who dreams of curing cancer, is being threatened with deportation by the Department of Homeland Security.
Eric Balderas was detained earlier this month while trying to board a flight back to Harvard. He had gone home to visit his mother in San Antonio, who fled Mexico to escape domestic abuse when he was only four years old. In the United States since then, and valedictorian of his San Antonio high school, Balderas has no memory of his Mexican birthplace. Eric’s first language is English, and he does not speak Spanish well.
The story of Eric Balderas illustrates the perversity of our current failed immigration policy. Currently, Eric is considered a criminal by the government of the United States. Harvard University considers Eric a promising sophomore.
Eric’s story underscores the need for Congress to pass the DREAM Act immediately – it makes you wonder what objections any Member of Congress could possibly have to embracing Eric and thousands of other young people who are Americans in all but paperwork. The Balderas story, as well as hundreds of other of similar examples, is a perfect example of why Congress should pass the DREAM Act without further delay.
Come on. This is just stupid. And heartless. Imagine how any of us would feel if we were forced to live in a foreign country against our will because of a technicality that was violated by our parents when we were babies. That’s essentially what’s happening to this kid and to many thousands of kids who had no say in where they were born and have lived in America their whole lives.
Sadly, the nativists have already moved the goalposts and are persuading a large number of people that we should deny even those kids who were born here legal citizenship, so I don’t have a whole lot of hope that this is going anywhere. Too bad for the human wreckage, but apparently we have to appease a bunch of cowards who would rather blame little children for their problems than the real culprits. It’s an old and depressing story.
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Punitive Damage
by digby
Chris Hayes has an insightful piece up at The Nation about America’s strange predeliction to show compassion for corporations and throw the book at individuals:
For a long time, conservatives and big corporations have hated punitive damages. The amounts are decided by juries, who have a tendency, when faced with stories of corporate malfeasance, to stick it to the bastards. In the 1980s conservatives began a legal assault on punitive damages, in “an effort coordinated very closely with the Chamber of Commerce,” says Stanford law professor Jeff Fisher. “The first few fits and starts didn’t work, but they kept hammering away.”
In the 1990s enemies of punitive damages found the perfect case when an Alabama doctor sued BMW for having sold him a repainted new car without disclosing the repainting to him; a jury awarded him $4,000 in compensatory damages and $4 million in punitive damages. The Supreme Court found that the punitive damages violated the due process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment; but it didn’t specify guidelines for the level of punitive damages that would run afoul of the Constitution.
Which brings us to the last catastrophic American oil spill: the 1989 Exxon Valdez disaster. Five years after the spill, an Alaska jury found Exxon guilty of reckless disregard for allowing a drunken sailor to steer its ship. Exxon paid $507 million in compensatory damages, and the jury assessed it $5 billion in punitive damages.
After several rounds of appeals, the courts cut that award in half. In 2008 the Supreme Court invalidated the award, stating that in the Exxon case, no more than a 1:1 ratio between compensatory damages and punitive damages was allowable. As Senator Patrick Leahy pointed out at a recent Judiciary Committee hearing on liability caps, the decision profoundly altered the incentives faced by firms like BP: “It reduced the consequences of their misconduct to a discounted cost of doing business. That’s almost like saying, ‘We’re giving you a green light to do whatever you want to do.’ I can’t imagine why anyone would be surprised that…oil companies cut corners and compromised safety.” (Leahy’s colleague Sheldon Whitehouse has introduced a bill that would overturn the 1:1 cap for maritime law.)
Aside from the practical consequences of altering the incentive structure, the Exxon case and other statutory caps on liability present a deeper threat to the American moral fabric. Set against the increasingly punitive posture of the state toward its citizens over the past several decades, the arbitrary limits on punishment available to a party like Exxon make a mockery of equal justice under the law. Our criminal justice system is the most punitive of any industrialized democracy. We have 2.3 million people incarcerated, half of them for nonviolent property and drug offenses. At least two dozen states have three-strikes laws, and in some cases citizens can face life imprisonment for minor nonviolent offenses. In 2003 the Supreme Court upheld a fifty-year sentence for a California man caught stealing videotapes.
And things are even harsher for Americans unlucky enough to need succor from the state to survive, a k a poor people. Just one drug-related felony conviction can get you booted from welfare, or from public housing (though if you own a house, the IRS will still allow you your mortgage-interest deduction). Under federal law, a drug bust disqualifies a college student from all federal student aid. As a result, between 2001 and 2006 almost 200,000 students lost access to aid. The greatest Congressional champion of this unforgiving policy was Mark Souder, the Indiana Republican who resigned after revelations of his affair with a staff member. In his farewell speech, he took solace in the possibility of forgiveness.
A punitive society is not the best kind of society: there’s a real virtue in forgiveness, in second chances. But for years we’ve been applying Rand Paul’s “accidents happen” principle to those at the top while heaping blame, scorn and draconian punishment on those at the bottom. Punitive damages are capped for corporations, while punitive policies proliferate for citizens. This tears the social contract apart, and the only way to repair it is to apply the same principles of accountability up and down the social hierarchy. We should start with BP.
Indeed. But I have to believe that the actual human beings will be protected by their class from any serious consequences beyond irrelevant (and transient) social disapprobation from the polloi. After all, they were just doing the job they were paid to do, which was to protect and raise shareholder value. In our economic system, corporations and the people who staff them are not expected to have consciences or morals. The best we could ever hope was that they had a primitive sense of self-preservation toward the system in which they exist, but even that’s been proven wrong. Capitalism is not, contra Ayn Rand, a moral system. It’s more like a primitive organism.
Hayes has framed this in a way I hadn’t thought of and it makes this recent criminalization of poor humans (h/t Allison Kilkenny) all the more appalling. As a society we have been hoodwinked into seeing corporations as equal to human and allowed them more rights and required less responsibility than your average working person who’s just trying to get by. And now, this same punitive attitude toward the poor is encroaching on the middle class which has been hit hard by a recession thy didn’t cause. It’s an incredible upending of the value system we all grew up with. And I can’t help but think it signals something very dangerous.
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More Of This And Less Of That
by digby
It was a fairly empty speech to me but I’m sort of immune to these things so I’m not a good gauge. I figured he’d bring up the space program, but also talking about the planes and tanks in WWII was a nice touch. (Maybe he should have talked about how that helped end Roosevelt’s error in cutting spending during the depression.)
But I would, as usual, really like to see a Democratic president do much more of this:
One place we have already begun to take action is at the agency in charge of regulating drilling and issuing permits, known as the Minerals Management Service. Over the last decade, this agency has become emblematic of a failed philosophy that views all regulation with hostility – a philosophy that says corporations should be allowed to play by their own rules and police themselves. At this agency, industry insiders were put in charge of industry oversight. Oil companies showered regulators with gifts and favors, and were essentially allowed to conduct their own safety inspections and write their own regulations.
When Ken Salazar became my Secretary of the Interior, one of his very first acts was to clean up the worst of the corruption at this agency. But it’s now clear that the problems there ran much deeper, and the pace of reform was just too slow. And so Secretary Salazar and I are bringing in new leadership at the agency – Michael Bromwich, who was a tough federal prosecutor and Inspector General. His charge over the next few months is to build an organization that acts as the oil industry’s watchdog – not its partner.
Other than that, I didn’t find this speech particularly informative or inspirational. But like I said, I’m not a good gauge of these things.
No talk of climate change, of course. But that’s because the wingnuts have managed to convince their neanderthals that it’s the Devil’s work so that’s off the table now.
Meanwhhile Matalin, the reborn environmentalist, is screaming about lifting the moratorium because of the jobs. This is the same woman who didn’t want to save the auto industry in the middle of the worst recession since the Great Depression. Of course, that was “socialism” which is a far worse threat than killing the oceans, so you can understand why she sees it differently.
John King says that “some people” will find it inappropriate that Obama opened up a political debate at the time when he is calling for unity. Right. Those people are called Republicans and Democratic Oil lackeys and they have no standing to say anything about this. They caused this just as much as BP —- more because they actually took oaths to people other than shareholders. They need to shut their mouths and go down and clean up some birds and let everyone else clean up their mess and do what’s necessary to prevent anything like this happening again.
Especially Sarah Palin who babbled something incoherent about Obama needing to “stop stopping the gusher.” Remember, she’s their “energy expert.”
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Building The New Permanent Underclass Talking Point By Talking Point
by digby
The demonization of the unemployed continues apace:
Welfare and unemployment beneficiaries would have to pass a drug test to qualify for programs under an amendment offered Tuesday by Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah).
Hatch introduced an amendment to the tax extenders bill that would require those who are applying for some of the benefits in that bill, including unemployment and welfare benefits, to pass a drug test in exchange for the benefits.
“Drugs are a scourge on our society — hurting children, families and communities alike,” Hatch said in a statement. “This amendment is a way to help people get off of drugs to become productive and healthy members of society, while ensuring that valuable taxpayer dollars aren’t wasted.”
See the only reason that someone doesn’t have a job in this thriving economy is because they are drug addicts. Hatch is just trying to help.
What with David Walker’s wistful call for a return to debtor’s prison and this hideous attack on the unemployed it’s evident that the fatuous elites in this country are so out of touch that they really have no idea how obscene their aristocratic braying sounds to average Americans. or perhaps they do, and just don’t care. If your point is to pretend that 10% official unemployment is simply a reflection of the bad character of the unemployed so you can protect the wealth of the ruling class, then turning every unemployed person into a suspected criminal and potential drug user makes sense.
I don’t know that I’ve ever seen anything quite like this. Historically, of course, it has some precedents. The most famous example didn’t turn out so well for anyone, unfortunately. But you can certainly understand how the people got to the point of bloodlust, can’t you?
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Planning Ahead
by digby
I recall being scolded by some very smart people for saying that the health care bill was not like other “entitlements” because it was going to be subject to repeal in ways that could throw the whole rube goldberg contraption out of sync and result in health care costs going through the roof and bringing it down of its own weight. The long lag time before implementation and the possibility of pulling out specific items either for court review or outright repeal always spelled trouble to me. I was informed that there was no chance the Republicans would ever be able to do it because … it just never happens.
I continue to wonder if they will be able to accomplish this but the idea that Republicans don’t have the will to do it is foolish. Indeed, they are getting started already. This is from John Boehner’s web site:
House Republicans plan to force a vote as soon as today on a measure that would repeal the job-killing, unconstitutional ‘individual mandate’ at the heart of ObamaCare. This proposal, to be offered by House Ways & Means Committee Ranking Member Dave Camp (R-MI), will be offered as the Republican motion-to-recommit on H.R. 5486, the so-called Small Business Jobs Tax Relief Act of 2010.
Rep. Camp’s idea has been posted here on the America Speaking Out website, and Americans are urged to visit, read about the proposal, and share their ideas. House Republican Leader John Boehner (R-OH) voiced strong support for this effort to strike at the heart of ObamaCare:
“House Republicans will force a vote to end the job-killing ‘individual mandate’ at the heart of ObamaCare during the debate on the small business deficit spending bill. We’ll highlight our effort using the ‘America Speaking Out’ website to call attention to what will be, literally, the biggest vote on the new health care law since it passed. This is a first step in Republicans’ efforts to repeal ObamaCare and replace it with commonsense, step-by-step reforms to lower costs.”
This move comes one day after the new health care law experienced its latest setback, this time in the form of new job-killing mandates that flatly contradict President Obama’s now-infamous ‘if you like it, you can keep it’ pledge. The coverage controversy is the latest in a growing list of broken promises that have solidified the American people’s opposition to this job-killing health care law:
“If You Like Your Health Care Plan” … Too Bad. In stark contrast to President Obama’s oft-stated pledge that, “If you like your health care plan, you can keep your health care plan,” his administration yesterday issued new job-killing mandates that will force a majority of the nation’s employers – including as many as four out of every five small businesses – to change or drop their coverage as the government sees fit. Even the Administration acknowledged its reversal, allowing “that some people, especially those who work at smaller businesses, might face significant changes in the terms of their coverage.”
ObamaCare Will Increase Costs, Not Lower Them As Promised. Despite President Obama’s claim that his health care plan would “slow the growth of health care costs for our families, our businesses, and our government,” analyses by both the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office and the Obama Administration’s Medicare actuary have confirmed that the new health care law will actually raise health care costs by $311 billion over 10 years.
ObamaCare Forces Millions of Seniors Off Medicare Coverage. Last week, President Obama re-launched his health care plan by promoting Medicare rebate checks that more than nine in 10 Medicare beneficiaries will never receive. An analysis conducted by the President’s own Medicare actuary indicates that the new health care law includes roughly $575 billion in Medicare cuts, which will be used to fund the creation of a massive new entitlement program. As a result of these cuts, enrollment in the popular Medicare Advantage program will be slashed in half.
ObamaCare Is Anti-Small Business. In April, Obama sought to reassure “jittery” small business owners by touting a health care tax credit in the ObamaCare bill that he claimed was “pro-jobs” and “pro-business.” But according to the National Federation of Independent Businesses (NFIB) – which joined 20 states in a lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of ObamaCare – the tax credit the Administration cites “will do little to nothing to make purchasing insurance more affordable for small firms.” According to the NFIB, only 12 percent of small businesses would benefit in any way, and the credit goes away after a short period of time.
President Obama has tried to deflect attention away from these broken promises with another tireless taxpayer-funded PR campaign, but the American people have spoken – again. Republicans are listening, and advancing this effort to repeal ObamaCare and replace it with commonsense, step-by-step reforms to lower costs and protect American jobs.
I’m sure Boehner has no delusions that this will pass and obviously even if it did, the president wouldn’t sign it. (Update: It didn’t.) But that’s not the point. They are building support and trying out the rhetoric they hope to use if they get lucky enough to take over the congress and the presidency by 2012. Indeed, it could even work in 2016 if the implementation of the health care reforms goes badly in a continued bad economy. Anything could happen.
My personal feeling is that the mandate will be challenged in court and that the Roberts court is highly likely to find a way to deem it unconstitutional (something which the presence of a public option in the mix might have mitigated.) The Right understands the full effect of political action and they build conventional wisdom and public pressure to affect congress, the press — and the Supreme Court.This move is designed to help that effort as much as lead to outright repeal.
I don’t know if the Democrats are similarly planning for adjustments to the health care reforms as a contingency or if they’ve just checked that off the agenda and are moving on to the next item but the Republicans certainly haven’t.
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Digging For Relief
by digby
There have been a lot of “you’ve GOT to be kidding me” moments with this oil spill, but for me I think the biggest has been that Canada and Norway, which both have offshore drilling, required relief wells be dug and the US didn’t. (And BP has been lobbying Canada hard to get rid of their regulations requiring it.) It was yet another shocking admission of the irresponsible magical thinking of our greedhead, scumbag elites over the past couple of decades. I guess the assumption was that because the US is so damned “exceptional” Mr Wizard would always step in if something happens and fix it. It’s not ever a good plan.
Today Frank Lautenberg proposed that we change that and require all offshore rigs to have relief wells.
“My bill takes a common-sense step to contain damages that come with the inherently dangerous drilling business. If relief wells had been in place before the BP rig explosion, the gushing oil could have been stopped in weeks instead of months,” Lautenberg said in a statement sent to the Huffington Post. “Clean energy that will reduce our dependence on oil is the long-term solution – but while offshore drilling continues in the Gulf and Alaska, this bill provides a proven way to contain oil spill drilling disasters. I will also continue to oppose any energy proposal in the Senate that does not protect New Jersey from oil drilling in the Atlantic.”
Titled the “Emergency Relief Well Act,” the philosophical concept behind the legislation actually has some interest among key administration officials. Adm. Thad Allen — the point man for the administration’s response to the spill — offered support for the suggestion during a briefing last week, calling it a “legitimate point.” Both he and White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs, however, said that it would be something for the Oil Commission to consider, as they craft their post-crisis recommendations.
Congress, of course, can supercede a presidential-appointed commission. And Lautenberg seems to be trying to set the guidelines for the legislative conversation well before the findings of that body are released. In a statement from his office, it is noted that “relief wells were also used successfully to stop two of the world’s largest spills, the Ixtoc Spill in Mexico in 1979 and the Montara Spill in Australia in 2009. In both cases, the relief wells took several months to complete.”
This seems like a no-brainer to me. But might I suggest that instead of providing this for new wells, they ban new offshore drilling and insist that relief wells be dug for all the wells that already exist? That would put the unemployed oil workers back to work temporarily, start ramping down the offshore business in the gulf and provide some security for the planet so that if this happens again we won’t be bumbling around like blind salmon trying to fix something we don’t know how to fix. (And if they won’t go for that, how about dealing with the oil workers’ job crisis by at least requiring the relief wells be dug for the existing wells immediately and extending the moratorium on new wells until this well is fixed and the oil is cleaned up?)
Sadly I’m guessing even Lautenberg’s plan isn’t going to get past the congress. They are going in the opposite direction. The Republicans are proposing to lift the moratorium on offshore drilling immediately and get back to drill, baby, drill while the oil is still slurping up on beaches. And if the past is prologue they’ll probably win.
But who knows? Maybe this will be in the President’s speech tonight, along with a bunch of new proposals and a determination to deal with energy and climate change once and for all. I live in hope and change. For the moment.
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Headline Of The Day
by digby
It’s not what you think, at least not entirely.
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