Month: March 2012

Asking for it

by digby

GOP war on women? Please, that’s just ridiculous:

Protecting women from violence and abuse has been an issue of bipartisan cooperation since President Clinton signed the landmark Violence Against Women Act (VAWA) in 1994. It was reauthorized with overwhelming bipartisan support in 2000 and again in 2005. Not this year.

On Feb. 2, the Senate Judiciary Committee approved legislation (S. 1925) reauthorizing VAWA. The bill was sponsored by Chair Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) and Sen. Mike Crapo (R-Idaho) — who is not on the committee — and cosponsored by 34 senators from both parties. Nevertheless, the legislation attracted no GOP support among committee members and passed out of committee on a party-line vote of 10-8. It was, according to Leahy’s office, the first time VAWA legislation did not receive bipartisan backing out of committee.

Why?

The Leahy-Crapo reauthorization would place an increased emphasis on reducing domestic homicides and sexual assault, strengthen housing protections for domestic violence victims and focus more on the high rates of violence amongst teens and young adults.

The objections, led by Sen. Charles Grassley (R-Iowa) and a few conservative organizations, are not over the VAWA as a whole, but over a few new provisions in the reauthorization — specifically, protections for LGBT individuals, undocumented immigrants who are victims of domestic abuse and the authority of Native American tribes to prosecute crimes.

The Leahy bill enumerates protections for LGBT victims of domestic violence, forbidding discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity by VAWA grantees.

The tribal provision is taken from the SAVE Native Women Act, which had bipartisan support and passed out of the Senate Indian Affairs Committee. Grassley doesn’t feel Native Americans should have the right to prosecute white people, apparently. (Who knows where that slippery slope might lead.)

Some modest proposals for Arizona lawmakers

by David Atkins

Now that the Arizona House of Representatives has passed (and the Arizona Senate Judiciary Committee has endorsed) a making it easier to fire employees who use birth control for dirty, dirty sex rather than other medical reasons, it seems germane to ask if the fine lawmakers in Arizona might be missing other great ideas to increase the religious liberty of their job creator class.

After all, starting with contraception is a strange choice considering that it doesn’t appear anywhere in the Bible. There are other things that do, however. The rights of employers to ensure that their employees follow religious moral codes should not be infringed in any way.

First off, far too many employers in Arizona are forced to accept the tyrannical imposition of paying employees who consume foods explicitly banned by their religion. Arizona legislators need to begin by allowing employers to test for shrimp and shellfish consumption if any employee requests coverage for food poisoning, lest they be forced to employ those in violation of Leviticus 11:9-12. If necessary, this testing could be expanded to cover eagles, vultures, ravens, owls, pelicans and bats per Leviticus 11:13-17.

Too many employers are also left wondering if their employees are clean when they come to work. Leviticus 15:16-18 reminds us that “if a man has a seminal emission, he shall bathe all his body in water and be unclean until evening. As for any garment or any leather on which there is seminal emission, it shall be washed with water and be unclean until evening. If a man lies with a woman so that there is a seminal emission, they shall both bathe in water and be unclean until evening.” If employees wish for health insurance to cover rashes, infections or sexually trasmitted diseases of any sort, employers must be allowed to install bedroom and bathroom cameras in their employees’ residences to ensure that proper bathing after sex, masturbation and noctural emissions occurs before their arrival at the workplace, and that such uncleanliness was not the cause of their need to rely on employer-funded health insurance. And, of course, no STD treatments as a result of pre-marital sex, homosexual sex or especially adultery should be covered if the employer does not wish it, per Leviticus 20:10 and elsewhere.

Moreover, it is an unconscionable imposition on religious freedom for employers to be forced to cover health insurance for pregnancy and childbirth unless the employee submit proof that the child was conceived in wedlock. Employers must be allowed to demand genetic testing of both spouse and infant, as well as documentation of marriage license and time of conception. It’s also important to note Leviticus 12:1-6 which clearly states: When a woman gives birth and bears a male child, then she shall be unclean for seven days, as in the days of her menstruation she shall be unclean. On the eighth day the flesh of his foreskin shall be circumcised. Then she shall remain in the blood of her purification for thirty-three days; she shall not touch any consecrated thing, nor enter the sanctuary until the days of her purification are completed. But if she bears a female child, then she shall be unclean for two weeks, as in her menstruation; and she shall remain in the blood of her purification for sixty-six days.” Unless employers can be assured with sworn witnesses that any female employees giving birth to female children have remained in the “blood of their purification” for over two months, they should not be obligated to cover the costs of childbirth. This is common sense.

Further, if any employee wishes their health insurance to cover any sort of facial laceration, the employer must have the right to be assured that the injury was in no way associated with shaving, as Leviticus 19:27 clearly proscribes trimming even the edges of beards. Insurance covering tattoo removal is definitely out, as Leviticus 19:28 forbids them in the first place. Any employee with a secret and unnoticed tattoo should be subject to no-fault firing the first time the employer sees it.

Obviously, no employer should be forced to cover any insurance for physical injury occurring on the Sabbath. To respect employers of the Jewish faith, employers must be allowed to fire any employee who uses health insurance to treat burn injuries on a Saturday.

Since several major religions forbid the eating of pork, employees must submit forms verified by a doctor’s signature based on tests of stomach contents, to ensure that any treatment from trichinosis or food poisoning was not the result of foul pig consumption. Failure to do so should result in no-fault firing.

These are but a few modest proposals for the Arizona legislature to consider for the purpose of protecting religious freedom.

Oh, there’s one last one, too. There absolutely must be an automatic impeachment trigger for every governor and legislator who violates the core moral precepts urged in Leviticus 19:33: ‘When a stranger resides with you in your land, you shall not do him wrong. 34 The stranger who resides with you shall be to you as the native among you, and you shall love him as yourself, for you were aliens in the land of Egypt; I am the LORD your God.”

Pass that law, and I think all of Arizona’s problems might be resolved in one glorious swoop of freedom.

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QOTD: Robert Reich

Robert Reich

There is moral rot in America but it’s not found in the private behavior of ordinary people. It’s located in the public behavior of people who control our economy and are turning our democracy into a financial slush pump.

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Wall Street Reform won’t come from within

by David Atkins

Matt Taibbi has some thoughts about Greg Smith’s already legendary, bridge-burning op-ed on leaving Goldman Sachs. Taibbi writes:

Because you can stack all the exposés on Goldman you want by degenerates like me and the McClatchy group, and you can even have a Senate subcommittee call for your executives to be tried for perjury, but that doesn’t necessarily move the Street.

But when one of the firm’s own partners is saying out loud that his company liked to “rip the eyeballs out” of “muppets” like you, then you start to wonder if maybe this firm is the best choice for managing your money. Hence we see headlines this morning like this item from Forbes.com: “Greg Smith Quits, Should Clients Fire Goldman Sachs?”

This always had to be the endgame for reforming Wall Street. It was never going to happen by having the government sweep through and impose a wave of draconian new regulations, although a more vigorous enforcement of existing laws might have helped. Nor could the Occupy protests or even a monster wave of civil lawsuits hope to really change the screw-your-clients, screw-everybody, grab-what-you-can culture of the modern financial services industry.

Real change was always going to have to come from within Wall Street itself, and the surest way for that to happen is for the managers of pension funds and union retirement funds and other institutional investors to see that the Goldmans of the world aren’t just arrogant sleazebags, they’re also not terribly good at managing your money.

If anyone should know, it should be Taibbi, who has been covering the slithering insides of Wall Street grotesquery for years now.

But the argument rings depressingly hollow to me. High level finance (the stuff that isn’t long-term investments and basic loans) has always been a nasty, cut-throat business of little value to anyone beyond making rich people richer for moving pieces of paper around, while slitting the throats of greedy wide-eyed naifs who try to play with the big boys while foolishly entrusting them with their money. But it didn’t use to be quite this bad.

The change in Wall Street culture really got off the ground when the old partnership model turned into a publicly traded model. Yes, the elimination of Glass-Steagall led to riskier investing strategies, but as Michael Lewis has noted, the culture change on Wall Street began much earlier, back in the late 1970s if not earlier.

It’s important not to glorify the old days of private ownership and back-room dealing, but it did lead to a culture of greater respect of clients. In a publicly traded enterprise, one and only one thing matters: the quarterly bottom line. So there’s increasing pressure from the shareholders to invent smoke and mirrors accounting to fatten the profit margin while screwing the clients.

“Changing the culture” isn’t really going to work here. Goldman and Citibank could go bankrupt tomorrow, and the structural factors that gave rise to their behavioral practices will simply move to the next set of greedheads who get their business. That’s because the greed isn’t a collective moral failing of all the individuals on Wall Street. It’s built into the system.

Taibbi may be right that regulation and hard-nosed reporting won’t fix the mess on Wall Street. But clients leaving the big firms won’t do it, either. The only thing that will is rethinking the entire publicly traded financial services company model.

True, that’s an impossibly heavy lift right now. But especially in a world where financial services firms can trade global commodities anywhere if they find one country’s regulations too restrictive, it’s important to realize that the only real change will come from dramatically rethinking how business itself is structured, particularly in financial services.

As long as these companies are publicly traded and accountable only to investors looking at their quarterly returns, the culture of Goldman Sachs will be with us long after the company itself is nothing but a footnote in the history books.

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Cardinal sins

by digby

When I wrote about Wild Bill Donohue’s creepy comments about the victims of the church abuse scandal and their advocates yesterday, I assumed he was typically blowing smoke about having the inside dope on the Church hierarchy’s plan to “fight” the victims “one by one.” Now, it looks like he might have known what he was talking about. Joe Sudbay reports:

Yesterday, The New York Times had two articles about Catholic Bishops and the child rape scandal, which show the continued hypocrisy of the Catholic church. NY’s Cardinal thinks people are being mean, while his fellow church leaders are trying to destroy the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests (SNAP). New York’s Cardinal was in Albany, attempting to put the scandal into the past:

Cardinal Dolan criticized a legislative proposal that would, for a year, drop the statute of limitations for filing civil claims for sexual offenses, allowing for lawsuits by people who say they were abused long ago. The cardinal said he was concerned that a flood of lawsuits over abuse by priests could drain the church of money it is using for charitable purposes.

“I think we bishops have been very contrite in admitting that the church did not handle this well at all in the past,” he said. “But we bristle sometimes in that the church doesn’t get the credit, now being in the vanguard of reform. It does bother us that the church continues to be a whipping boy.”

Hmm. Maybe the church is still “a whipping boy” because the church is still trying to screw over victims — as evidenced by the other article in the NYT…

That article is about the harassment suit against Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests (SNAP) that Donohue was going on about.

It would appear that it isn’t just the crazy man. You can’t help but wonder if that’s the smartest move for an institution that’s claiming that it’s “conscience” won’t let it’s employees have access to insurance provided birth control to go on a crusade against rape victims of Catholic priests. But hey, why not. Nobody’s even allowed to mention that the same people who covered up decades of sexual abuse in their own institution are all over the country declaring their moral righteousness. Why should they think they can’t get away with this too?

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Viva Portlandia

Here’s something you don’t see every day: a common sense taser ruling:

A federal jury today ruled unanimously that a Portland police officer used excessive force when he fired a Taser five times into the back of a man he suspected of spray-painting graffiti on a commercial building.

The jury deliberated about three hours and ruled that Portland Police Officer Benjamin J. Davidson violated Daniel Halsted’s constitutional rights, and awarded him $125,000 in punitive damages, $75,000 in non-economic damages and $6,372.70 for medical costs.

Halsted, a 36-year-old Portland resident with no criminal record, called the June 17, 2008, encounter at Northeast Wasco Street and 26th Avenue “the most traumatic experience” in his life.

His attorney Joseph Grube argued that Davidson failed to identify himself as an officer on a dark street at 1 a.m., wrongly assumed his client was involved in the vandalism and used force disproportional to the alleged crime of “petty vandalism.”

Once Tased, Halsted said he fell, had his face pushed into the ground and suffered facial fractures and abrasions to his head and hands. Police cited him for resisting arrest and criminal mischief, but prosecutors didn’t file charges.

Right. Resisting arrest. Here’s what happened:

Halsted testified that he was walking home after a night out bowling with friends and a stop for dinner and drinks at the Rose and Thistle pub. After he bid goodbye to his friends – a couple who lived on Northeast 24th Avenue – Halsted said he continued to walk home, now alone. As he turned onto Northeast Wasco Street, Halsted said he noticed a flashlight shining on him and heard a man behind him yell “Get him!”

He said he looked back, saw a dark figure and began to run east on Wasco because he was frightened. He heard “Tase him,” and then felt a shock to his back and fell. While yelling out for citizens and neighbors to call police, he was Tased four more times before other officers helped Davidson get Halsted into custody in a maximum hobble restraint. He was then taken to a local hospital.

“It’s the most traumatic experience I’ve had,” Halsted testified. “It’s changed my view of the police. It’s extremely non-sensical. I can’t believe it happened. It’s disgusting.” Halsted, then technical director at Portland’s Hollywood Theatre, is now the theatre’s head film programmer.

Davidson testified he was responding to a report that four men were seen on the roof of a building at 2506 N.E. Multnomah St., tagging it with spray paint. Dispatch alerted Davidson that a suspect was seen heading east on Wasco. When Davidson approached Northeast 26th Avenue and Wasco, he said he looked west and saw three men running toward him on Wasco. Davidson said he got out of his patrol car and shined his flashlight on the men, yelling “Police, stop!” He said two of the three men ran in between houses while the third, Halsted, darted onto the south sidewalk of Wasco Street, heading toward Davidson and skirted past him. When he refused to stop, Davidson said he fired his Taser.

Rice tried to discredit Halsted, asking him about his collection of Kung Fu movies, and suggested during his closing argument that Halsted kept resisting because he was likely intoxicated. Halsted’s attorney countered that there was no evidence of Halsted’s intoxication, and asked Halsted if he’d ever been trained in martial arts, to which the answer was no.

“It’s scary because it wasn’t just the incident but their report of what happened, which didn’t align with the facts,” Halsted said after the verdict. “I was just a guy walking home. It could’ve been anybody.”

Yes it could. And according to most of society, if it isn’t a hilarious joke on you it’s your own fault for not immediately dropping to the ground when someone yells “get him.” You certainly can’t fault the police for tasering and beating the shit out of a possible graffiti artist. They have to keep the streets safe for honest citizens like you. Or Mr Halsted.

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h/t to @loadedorygun

Freedom to slut shame

by digby

From Jezebel, the latest attempted assault on women’s rights in the great “laboratory of democracy” called Arizona:

A proposed new law in Arizona would give employers the power to request that women being prescribed birth control pills provide proof that they’re using it for non-sexual reasons. And because Arizona’s an at-will employment state, that means that bosses critical of their female employees’ sex lives could fire them as a result. If we could harness the power of the crappy ideas coming out of the state of Arizona, we could probably power a rocket ship to the moon, where there are no Mexicans or fertile wombs and everyone can be free to be as mean a cranky asshole as they want at all times! Arizona Heaven!

Yesterday, a Senate Judiciary Committee endorsed Republican Debbie Lesko’s HB2625 by a vote of 6-2, which would allow an employer to request proof that a woman using insurance to buy birth control was being prescribed the birth control for reasons other than not wanting to get pregnant. It’s all about freedom, she said, echoing everyone who thinks there’s nothing ironic about claiming that a country that’s “free” allows people’s bosses to dictate what medical care is available to them through insurance.

Ah yes, freedom. After all, the owner of the business has a right to spend his money on anything he chooses and if he only wants to pay for endometriosis and not for SluttyWhore sex then he has a right to do that. And assuming you are a privileged person who has many opportunities to make a living, you have a right to quit.(See Corey Robin on the libertarian relationship with workers, here.) That’s what they call freedom — it’s only your imagination that the people with money and power have quite a bit more of it than you do.

But let’s talk about this specific bill and what it’s saying. These people aren’t being vague about “individual conscience” or “religious liberty.” There’s no sugar coating this one. They want to allow employers to force women to prove they aren’t using birth control for sexual purposes.

Now I would guess that many doctors would give their patients a “note” saying that they needed the pill for cramps or skin problems, but imagine the conversation you’re forced to have with your boss about your health in order to get this coverage. I don’t know about any of you, but I’ve had many bosses in my life with whom I would rather not have any such personal conversation — not to mention that since I don’t consider women slaves, I don’t believe anyone should have to.

This is just a straight up slut shaming exercise, designed to make women feel embarrassed about having sex. Back in the bad old days, this was common, but I haven’t seen it so blatant since I was young. And it brings up an interesting question. I have long wondered if one of the reasons that a lot of people are as passive about abortion rights as they seem to be is because female sexuality and single motherhood have become so acceptable in society. Since the stigma of being unwed and pregnant was gone, I thought some people might have adopted the view that forced childbirth wasn’t that big a deal because any woman could go through nine months of pregnancy and give up the child for adoption if she didn’t want to raise it and no one would call her a whore. (And even cases like this famous one which is credited with shocking people into a recognition that abortion had to be legal, would be different today with different sexual mores and laws governing divorce and domestic violence.)

Obviously, I think that’s ridiculous — nine months of pregnancy isn’t some lark that doesn’t matter and it’s a very rare woman who just picks up and carries on as if nothing happened. It’s a life changer regardless of whether or not you raise the child. (And in any case, women have the right to abortion because they are autonomous human beings who should be allowed to decide whether or not to reproduce.) But I have wondered if these social changes might have had the perverse effect of making some people less sympathetic to abortion.

So what to make of the fact that the right is now pushing a full blown attack on female sexuality? It’s not new (it goes allll the way back to the Garden of Eden) but it’s been on a low burner for several decades. We knew the social conservatives were against birth control, but I don’t think anyone quite anticipated that they would so blatantly attack women for having sex. Maybe we were overconfident, thinking that their fetus obsession was going to carry over into this debate and it would be all about “abortifascients” and adorable little babies because that had worked for them in the past. But that’s not what happened. Indeed, you can’t help but have the feeling that this slut saga is an authentic, reflexive reaction, not a strategic response. This is what they’ve always felt, deep inside and for some reason they were unable to contain it this time.

Whether or not this assault on female sexuality wakes up those I suspect became complacent about abortion remains to be seen. But one thing I can say with certainty: this slut shaming will result in more abortions, not less. If a large segment of society decides that women who have sex outside of marriage are sluts and whores again, women will still have unplanned pregnancies (as they always have and always will) but some who might otherwise decide to give birth will seek abortions instead.

I know these people all want to put women back into traditional roles in which they are virgins until they get married and then have as many children as nature allows, but that’s something that’s not likely to happen any time soon. What will happen instead is that they will succeed in making some women feel guilty for having sex, subject all women to misogynist outbursts like we saw from Rush Limbaugh, more unplanned pregnancies and more abortions. And if we’re really lucky and they finally succeed in making abortion illegal and birth control difficult and expensive to obtain, we’ll end up with this. Again:

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Kabuki Trigger Lock

Thing Progress reports:

[A]ccording to Reuters, both Boehner and House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-OH) are ready to cut below the level specified in the debt ceiling deal:

Republican leaders in the U.S. House of Representatives are ready to break a hard-fought budget deal with Democrats as they try to quell a revolt by conservatives who are insisting on deeper spending cuts ahead of the November elections.

House Republican aides said on Tuesday that House Speaker John Boehner and Majority Leader Eric Cantor were pressing for a modest $19 billion reduction of discretionary spending caps in this year’s Republican budget plan.

“I’m really disappointed that they’re considering a budget – violating the budget agreement that is now the law of this country. This was designed to avoid another government shutdown or a threat of a shutdown,” said Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV). “We had a deal last August on the budget numbers, and we expect them to live with that deal,” Sen. Patty Murray (D-WA) has said. The end result of this standoff could be yet another impending government shutdown, as the government’s current spending authority expires on September 30.

I wonder what the Democrats had to promise to get the Republicans to take the heat for tanking the deal that nobody ever believed would be honored in the first place?

Those triggers are a vestige of negotiations that didn’t work out. Even when they were still negotiating John McCain was out there saying they had no obligation to follow through on the defense cuts and the feckless Dems don’t want more massive cuts in discretionary programs in an election year with a fragile recovery. It was basically a ploy for that moment that allowed everyone to get out of the corners into which they’d painted themselves. It was never going to happen and I imagine they’re be happy to run extensions through the election.

The lame duck session is going to be very dangerous, however. That’s when the bad stuff usually happens and this time won’t be any different. If the congress is left more or less status quo, this will be where all the chits come due.

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A reminder about last night’s voters

by David Atkins

After Santorum’s big victories in Mississippi and Alabama, it’s worth reminding oneself about the the nature of Mississippi Republican voters:

There’s considerable skepticism about Barack Obama’s religion with Republican voters in them. In Mississippi only 12% of voters think Obama’s a Christian to 52% who think he’s a Muslim and 36% who are not sure. In Alabama just 14% think Obama’s a Christian to 45% who think he’s a Muslim and 41% who aren’t sure…

Alabama’s pretty much on board with interracial marriage, with 67% of voters thinking it should be legal to 21% who think it should not be. There’s still some skepticism in Mississippi though — only 54% of voters think it should be legal, while 29% believe it should be illegal.

Almost a third of Mississippi Republican voters think interracial marriage should be illegal, and over half think the President is a Muslim (as if it matters.)

And yet, the rest of us are supposed to pretend these people are worthy of respect, and we mustn’t condescend to them lest we hurt their feelings. Above all, the big bad Yankee government mustn’t impose its foreign, hostile, culturally hegemonic “lack of values” on these God-fearing hard-working folk. That would be awful.

Rick Santorum and Newt Gingrich are, after all, very serious candidates for President.

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Progressives threaten to walk over the Village barricades

by digby

According to Stuart Rothenberg, the PCCC is just like the Tea Party — well except for all the millionaire PAC money, of course. But other than that, they are the same sort of crazy wacked out fringe dwelling extremists who are making it very hard for decent, God fearing centrists to run the Democratic Party:

A very liberal group, the Progressive Change Campaign Committee, sounds like a tea party group of the left, given its rhetoric, strategy and tactics. Like many in the tea party, the PCCC sees itself as a protector of its party’s dominant ideology — in this case liberalism — and a judge of who constitutes a “real” Democrat.

Oooh, a liberal group. And they are protecting liberalism, no less, under the bizarre belief that their ideology should be dominant. Imagine that? Just one question: is there any other kind of Republican besides a conservative one?

But here’s the rub. The PCCC is pursuing their dastardly agenda in Democratic primaries. What could be more destructive that that? Can you believe that liberals would believe they should have a voice in Democratic party elections? Who the hell do they think they are?

The PCCC has declared war on two Democratic primary candidates: businessman Brad Schneider in Illinois’ 10th district and former Albuquerque Mayor Marty Chávez in New Mexico’s 1st district. Instead, the group prefers two other Democratic hopefuls, Ilya Sheyman in the Illinois district and state Sen. Eric Griego in New Mexico.

In the Illinois race, the Russian-born Sheyman, who worked as national mobilization director for MoveOn.org, has the backing of former Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean and the PCCC. Katrina vanden Heuvel of the Nation magazine wrote a glowing piece about Sheyman.

The Democratic hopeful said during an interview last year that he was not running just to win the seat but to grow the power of progressives in Congress.
Sheyman, 25, and his allies have attacked primary opponent Schneider for contributing over the years to a handful of Republican candidates (including Illinois Sen. Mark Kirk and ex-Minnesota Rep. Mark Kennedy) and even for voting in one GOP primary. (A third Democrat, businessman John Tree, is not expected to be a factor in the contest.)

Well now, that’s just dirty pool. Liberal groups should never attack a candidate in a primary for having supported the opposing Party with money and votes. What could possibly be wrong with such a stirring show of bipartisan loyalty?