Month: April 2016

Amateur hour in the sunshine state

by digby

Corey Lewandowski needs a vacation:

Appearing on Fox News Sunday in a segment titled “Can the Trump campaign move past distractions?” Lewandowski was asked about a prosecutor’s decision last week to not bring the Trump aide to court on a battery charge stemming from a run-in with a reporter in the state. But in response, Lewandowski pivoted to criticize the state’s Republican party and its process for selecting convention delegates.

He accused Republican Party of Florida Chairman Blaise Ingoglia of being overtly biased against Trump, prompting an angry call from Ingoglia to the campaign, sources tell POLITICO.

“The chairman of the party of Florida, who is an avid and outward supporter of Marco Rubio, gets to appoint 30 of those delegates,” Lewandowski said. “Now, I understand those are the rules but Donald Trump won. … And now, you’ve got a person who is supporting Marco Rubio who gets to appoint 30 of the 99 delegates.”

Lewandowski’s comments were wrong on three counts: Ingoglia remained neutral before and after the state’s March 15 GOP primary; the chairman doesn’t “appoint” any delegates; and the chairman is in charge of recommending 15 — not “30 of the 99” — delegates to the state executive committee. 

Lewandowski also incorrectly said Trump won Florida’s March 15 winner-take-all primary “by 23 points over all of his competitors.” Trump’s margin over second-place Rubio was 19 percentage points.

He’s the campaign manager.

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by digby

He just can’t help being a jerk:

“It is important to for everybody to understand that the convention rules will require you to get 1,237 delegate votes, and until one gets to 1,237, they will not be the nominee,” McConnell said. “So there are some candidates suggesting it’s somehow tricky to simply follow the rules of the convention. We are going to follow the rules of the convention.” 

McConnell went on to explain that if a candidate does not have 1,237 delegate votes on the first ballot, about two-thirds of pledged delegates would be freed to vote for someone else on a second ballot. 

“I am increasingly optimistic that there actually may be a second ballot,” McConnell said.[…] 

“I want somebody who can win in November, and the whole process is about trying to beat Hillary Clinton in November. And I think our delegates, if they end up actually having the latitude to make the decision which would occur on the second or third ballot, are going to be interested in who can win.”

Yeah, well, good luck with that Mitch.  Your deep bench turned out to be a bunch of duds and now you’re stuck with these circus clowns. Sorry.

He’s a party leader. He shouldn’t put his thumbs on the scale for a contested convention. They’re supposed to say that the process will play out and they’re sure that the party will unify.  He’s acting like he wants a free-for-all. Which he does.  But it’s irresponsible for someone in his position to be stoking it.

These guys end up making Cruz look like a statesman.

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Speaking the wrong language

by digby

Why is this ok?

A college student who came to the United States as an Iraqi refugee was removed from a Southwest Airlines flight in California earlier this month after another passenger became alarmed when she heard him speaking Arabic.

The student, Khairuldeen Makhzoomi, a senior at the University of California, Berkeley, was taken off a flight from Los Angeles International Airport to Oakland on April 6 after he called an uncle in Baghdad to tell him about an event he attended that included a speech by United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon.

“I was very excited about the event so I called my uncle to tell him about it,” he said.

He told his uncle about the chicken dinner they were served and the moment when he got to stand up and ask the secretary general a question about the Islamic State, he said. But the conversation seemed troubling to a nearby passenger, who told the crew she overheard him making “potentially threatening comments,” the airline said in a statement.

Mr. Makhzoomi, 26, knew something was wrong as soon as he finished his phone call and saw that a woman sitting in front of him had turned around in her seat to stare at him, he said. She headed for the airplane door soon after he told his uncle that he would call again when he landed, and qualified it with a common phrase in Arabic, “inshallah,” meaning “god willing.”

“That is when I thought, ‘Oh, I hope she is not reporting me,’ because it was so weird,” Mr. Makhzoomi said.

That is exactly what happened. An Arabic-speaking Southwest Airlines employee of Middle Eastern or South Asian descent came to his seat and escorted him off the plane a few minutes after his call ended, he said. The man introduced himself in Arabic and then switched to English to ask, “Why were you speaking Arabic in the plane?”
[…]
Law enforcement officials arrived shortly after Mr. Makhzoomi accused the airline employee of anti-Muslim bias, he said. He was brought into the terminal and searched in front of a crowd of onlookers while half a dozen police officers, including one with a dog, stood watch.

Three agents from the Federal Bureau of Investigation arrived and brought him into a private room where they questioned him, he said. They asked about his mother, who lives with him and his younger brother in Oakland. They also asked about his father, Khalid Makhzoomi, a former Iraqi diplomat who was jailed in Abu Ghraib prison by Saddam Hussein and later killed by the dictator’s regime, according to Mr. Makhzoomi. His family came to the United States in 2010.

Mr. Makhzoomi said an F.B.I. agent told him the Southwest Airlines employee who was upset by the allegation of anti-Muslim bias said a passenger reported hearing him talk about martyrdom in Arabic, using a phrase often associated with jihadists. He denied the charge and was allowed to return to the terminal, he said, where the same Arabic-speaking employee refunded his ticket.

A spokeswoman for the F.B.I. in Los Angeles, Ari Dekofsky, confirmed that agents responded to the airport that day but had found there to be no threat. “We determined that no further action was necessary,” she said on Saturday.

Is there a rule posted anywhere that says speaking Arabic on airplanes is verboten? Apparently it is if some bozo who watches way too much Fox News thinks it is.

You have to assume that the man was screened due to his name before he got on the plane. TSA knew he was a middle eastern person. So the fact that he speaks Arabic is not relevant once they’ve screened him. This is indulging bigotry, nothing less.

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A Ted Cruz loss would be good for the country


by digby

The establishment GOP is pulling every trick they have to block Trump from getting the required 1237 delegates to win the nomination before the summer convention and if they succeed, anything can happen. 

If Trump does hold on and become the de facto 2016 presidential nominee, conservatives will eventually rally around a Trump nomination to win the Oval office, but will always have their get-out-of-jail card right in their back pockets. They’ve already expressed in no certain terms that Donald Trump is not a conservative, so when he is resoundingly beaten in the general election they can wash their hands of him and say once again, conservatism doesn’t fail, only the candidate does. 

However, if Cruz gets the nomination then that card in their back pocket is null and void. When he loses they will have nothing to complain about except maybe to blame the mainstream media for the loss.

He’s right about that. I have also been writing about the awful choice these Republicans have to make deciding whether they’d rather get thumped with Trump or lose with Cruz.  It’s assumed that people like Jeb Bush or Lindsay Graham are just so antagonistic toward Trump that they’re hold their noses for Cruz (or unrealistically hope for some gambit at the the convention that will spare them either.) But there’s likely another motive: maybe they’ll be able to finally purge some of the Tea Party poison if they do manage to nominate a true blue, 100% pure conservative like Cruz and he loses big. The movement will obviously find some good rational as to why he too failed to be conservative enough. But it’s not going to hold water.

I could easily see the party poohbahs, including Paul Ryan, all thinking this might not be the worst thing that could happen out of all this. They know their party is losing its ability to win national elections with this extreme faction in power. It would be better for the country and for both parties for this radical movement to lose its momentum.

But there’s always a risk, isn’t there? What if he wins?

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This is not a conspiracy by the one percent

by digby

This Republican delegate from Indiana has been receiving death threats from Trump supporters ever since he declared he wouldn’t vote for Trump on the second ballot at the convention. And he does something important in this piece — he explains how the rules were promulgated for his state:

Many Trump supporters have taken the bait and swallowed the stump speech swill that the Republican “establishment” is trying to steal the nomination. Trump and his pundits would have you believe that every delegate who supports Kasich or Cruz is a fat-cat millionaire lobbyist or businessperson who’ll personally prosper only by maintaining the status quo.

What many of these supporters don’t realize is that the delegate selection process for the 2016 presidential election began four years ago in a very democratic way.

For me, the process started when the registered Republicans in my county elected precinct committeemen and vice-committeemen in May 2012. Those elected party officials then conducted an election for county officers in March 2013. At that time, I was elected county chairman. One week later, the county chairs and vice chairs in the 16 counties that make up Indiana’s 4th Congressional District elected me as district chairman.

Earlier this year, we solicited interest for positions as delegates to the Republican National Convention. Candidates were required to submit a notarized application to me by March 15. The district officers then prepared a slate of candidates for a straight up or down vote to be presented at a district meeting in April.

In my district, only two people applied by the deadline. Since we need three delegates, they automatically became our representatives for the convention. I will go as well.

[How should Republicans denounce Trump? Past GOP presidents have already told us.]

As this shows, the Republican establishment is not top-down. It’s an amazing grass-roots organization that begins and ends with the great loyal Republicans who stuff envelopes, walk neighborhoods, work phone banks, attend Lincoln/Reagan Dinners, vote consistently, and contribute to the election of council people, commissioners, auditors, sheriffs and legislators. They receive no compensation for their efforts on behalf of the Republican Party. They are the true strength of our party and a vital element in the process of selecting national convention delegates.

It’s lots of fun to join up when it’s an exciting presidential contest. It’s like becoming a fan when your team makes the play-offs. But you don’t get to change the rules in the middle of it because you didn’t bother to show up earlier. This guy shows up.

I think there should be the same rules for all elections, uniform across the country. I don’t think caucuses should exist, they’re fundamentally disenfranchising. We should have rotating regional primaries (or something like that) to take away the power of early, unrepresentative states like Iowa and New Hampshire. There should be no electoral college or, frankly, a Senate. It’s all undemocratic. Unfortunately, the United States persists in clinging to its quaint notion of federalism so we allow state and localities to have control over all kinds of things that makes this nation a hodge-podge of different rules and regulations, elections being one of them. I’m not for it!

However, as long as that is true, local and state functionaries are going to be in charge of the party elections machinery in this country. I guess you can call that “the establishment.” But if so, it’s damned easy to infiltrate if that’s your concern. Anyone can join up.

Trump is whining about the system being “rigged.” But if it is, it’s rigged by a bunch of local Republicans going to boring meetings and making decisions about all this while everyone else is doing something more interesting. It’s not a conspiracy by the One Percent.

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Trump’s very bad week-end

by digby

Sad! I wrote about it for Salon this morning:

Over the week-end, Donald Trump finally got to do his favorite thing: quote his great poll numbers on the stump. There’s nothing he loves more than bragging about how great he is and nothing makes him happier than waving polls around on the stump and hearing his fanboys cheer his dominance. Everyone expected him to be doing well in New York, but according to a new CBS poll he is also doing very well in California. If he can get his act together out west (a big if) he might just limp into Cleveland with enough votes to make it on the first ballot.

Warren, Sanders sponsor bill going after TurboTax & complexity of tax filing

by Gaius Publius

Just in time for this year’s tax filing deadline…

In the FDR-liberal world, the function of government is to provide services to citizens and protection from predators in the private sector. In the neo-liberal world, the function of government is to manage government services so the private sector is given the most profit opportunities possible. This is why the ACA, the brainchild of our neo-liberal president and his party, is written the way it is. It provides a public service — guaranteed (mostly) health care coverage — in a way that supports and insures the profits of the predatory health insurance industry. These cooperative agreements and policies, in which government serves up its citizens to private-sector profiteers, are often called “public-private partnerships.”

In the FDR-liberal world, the function of government is called “promoting the general welfare.” In the neo-liberal world, the function of government is called “wealth creation.”

Another way to say it is this: In the neo-liberal world, citizens are the product whose money is delivered to corporations in exchange for government services. It’s quite a lucrative scam.

Public-Private Partnerships & the Cost of Tax Filing

The following is another instance of the difference between neo-liberal governance and FDR-liberal governance. At present, tax filing — filling out and sending in a prepared multi-page tax return — is complicated and in most cases requires third-party software to complete. The government could do this for you, by filling in your forms with the information they have already, making those forms available online at a secure government web site and letting you add the rest of the data yourself.

But under our current neo-liberal government, the IRS doesn’t do that. Instead, the IRS has agreements with vendors in the software industry, including the TurboTax giant Intuit, not to cut into their profit by “competing” with them in “providing free, on-line tax return preparation and filing services to taxpayers.” Even though, as you’ll see below, the IRS is compelled by law to do just that.

Consider that point for a moment, as you (perhaps) scramble to complete your own return for this year. What if you could go to a U.S. government website (instead of a third-party corporate website) and complete your tax filing online without filling out a complicated paper or PDF “return”? Would you prefer that? Would you mind not buying tax-filing software each year, year after year?

At present, you don’t have that choice. Even though, since 2002, the government has been legally required to develop and offer such a service, it won’t. Capture of government by industry, including in this case the tax-preparation industry, has delayed that implementation.

Warren, Sanders and Others Introduce Law Mandating “Free, Online Tax Preparation and Filing”

Elizabeth Warren, plus a number of senators including Bernie Sanders, has introduced legislation to change that. From Warren’s eye-opening press release (my emphasis below).

As Tax Day Nears, Extensive Report Examines Industry Capture of the Filing Process, Efforts to Block IRS Reforms

Apr 13, 2016

Bill Text, Fact Sheet
Tax Report

Washington, DC – United States Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) today introduced the Tax Filing Simplification Act of 2016 to simplify and decrease the costs of the tax filing process for millions of American taxpayers. This year, taxpayers will spend an average of 13 hours preparing and filing their returns, and will pay $200 for tax preparation services – a cost equal to almost 10 percent of the average federal tax refund.

The legislation introduced today would direct the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) to develop a free, online tax preparation and filing service that taxpayers can use to prepare and file their taxes directly with the federal government, if they choose to do so, and would prohibit the IRS from entering into agreements that restrict its ability to provide free online tax preparation or filing services. The Act would give all taxpayers the right to download third-party-reported tax information that the IRS already has, and would provide those with simple tax situations with a return-free option.

In conjunction with the introduction of the Tax Filing Simplification Act, Senator Warren released a staff report that describes how – for decades – the tax preparation industry has blocked the IRS from implementing laws that would make tax preparation and filing easier for taxpayers. Corporate capture of the filing process means that taxpayers have to absorb billions of dollars in costs and share their personal information with third parties just to file their taxes.

The legislation has been endorsed by dozens of law professors and economists including Austan Goolsbee of the University of Chicago, Emmanuel Saez of the University of California – Berkeley, and Joe Bankman of Stanford University. The Act was introduced with original cosponsors Senators Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.), Tom Udall (D-N.M.), Jeanne Shaheen (D-N.H.), Al Franken (D-Minn.), Tammy Baldwin (D-Wis.), and Edward J. Markey (D-Mass.)

“Congress should be making it easier for Americans to file their taxes each year, not bowing to the interests of the tax prep industry,” said Senator Warren. “The Tax Filing Simplification Act is a commonsense bill that would help taxpayers all across this country file their taxes with less stress and fewer costs, and it would push the IRS to use the authority it already has to simplify Tax Day for all Americans.”

“Tax Day has become an opportunity for corporations to profit off of confusion over our complicated tax code. That is wrong. The Tax Filing Simplification Act would end the absurdity of Americans having to pay private companies hundreds of dollars to pay their taxes. We must make tax filing as easy as possible, not direct profits to private companies at the expense of working families,” Senator Sanders said.
“Families with simple returns should be able to prepare and file their taxes online without paying fees to private companies,” said Whitehouse. “This bill will save those families money and time and protect their private information.”

“I regularly hear from New Mexico taxpayers – especially those who are self-employed – who say that the overly complicated tax filing process costs them valuable time and hard-earned money,” said Senator Udall. “The commonsense changes in this bill would make Tax Day easier on millions of dutiful, taxpaying Americans, cut down on fraud and save families money by enabling them to file taxes for free. I urge Congress to act quickly on this long-overdue reform.”

“Every year, Americans spend far too much time and money filing their taxes,” said Senator Franken. “This bill will save Americans money by simplifying an unnecessarily complex process. The IRS should be working to make this process as easy for taxpayers as possible.”

“American taxpayers are forced spend too much time and money filing taxes when it doesn’t have to be that way,” said Senator Baldwin. “If Congress would simply act on commonsense reforms at the IRS, we can simplify tax filing and make it less expensive for taxpayers.”

Simplifying the tax code and preventing companies like Intuit from soaking tax filers year after year in contravention of U.S. law would seem to be a bipartisan winner. I do expect some Republicans to balk at it. It will be interesting to see which Democrats balk as well.

Reread the start of this piece about the goal of neo-liberal government as opposed to FDR-liberal government. Pro-tax industry neo-liberals will identify themselves immediately by their response to this bill. 

From Warren’s Report…

I want to offer a few paragraphs from the Executive Summary of Warren’s report (pdf), to give some detail on what the IRS and the industry are doing to you. Warren’s bottom line is at the end of the section I quote below. I’m putting it here as well so you don’t miss it:

…this report finds that vehement and longstanding opposition by the tax preparation industry and anti-tax groups has prevented the IRS from meeting its statutory requirement to develop procedures for return-free filing and has denied American taxpayers the many benefits of this system. [emphasis mine]

That sentence appears in the following, from the report (bolding below is in the original):

In 1998, a Republican Congress passed — and Democratic President Bill Clinton signed — the IRS Restructuring and Reform Act, which required the Treasury Department to develop, by 2008, procedures for the implementation of a “return-free” filing system that would compute an individual’s tax liability by using information already reported to the IRS each year. Such a system would save taxpayers time and money, and would result in more accurate tax returns.3 For many taxpayers, it would take minutes instead of hours to complete their taxes.

But almost a decade after the law’s required 2008 implementation date, the Treasury Department has failed to fulfill its legal obligation to establish procedures for return-free filing. Sen. Warren requested that her staff determine why. This report finds that:

• Despite its legal obligations, the IRS has surrendered to industry pressure and other efforts to block access to free and accurate return-free tax filing. Instead of implementing the return-free filing requirements in the 1998 IRS Restructuring and Reform Act, the IRS has time and again acquiesced to industry demands that it avoid developing return-free filing options. The agency has repeatedly yielded to industry demands to administer the “Free File” Program — a public-private partnership between the IRS and the tax preparation industry that offers low-income taxpayers free, industry-prepared electronic tax preparation services. The tax preparation industry exerts powerful influence over the design and administration of this program; year after year, the IRS has signed Free File agreements with these tax preparation companies, in which the IRS pledges to “not compete…in providing free, online tax return preparation and filing services to taxpayers” despite the fact that current law requires the Treasury to develop programs to do exactly that.4 The tax preparation industry-run Free File program has failed. It is currently used by only 3% of eligible filers and is described as a “maze of offerings” that can trick taxpayers into purchasing unnecessary products.5 Furthermore, the IRS has failed to implement commonsense tax simplification programs, like the Real Time Tax Initiative, instead bowing to industry complaints that such efforts would be precursors to return-free filing, which the industry opposes.

• The tax preparation industry has vehemently opposed return-free filing. Rather than sift through a complex tax code on their own, the majority of Americans hire tax professionals, or use tax preparation software, to prepare their returns. The tax-filing burden is an essential part of the tax preparation industry’s business model, and the industry sees return-free filing as a fundamental threat to its operations. As a result, the industry has devised numerous ways to oppose a return-free filing system, spending millions of dollars lobbying Congress against return-free filing and mounting fake “grassroots” campaigns against return-free filing.

• While some simplification approaches would be consistent with their goals, anti-tax groups have nevertheless also opposed return-free filing. Anti-tax groups frequently raise concerns about the complexity of the tax code and the substantial burdens imposed by the current tax filing process: the mission of Americans for Tax Reform, for example, includes creating “a system in which taxes are simpler,” while the National Taxpayers Union rails against the “over 6 billion hours each year for individuals and businesses to comply with the Code.”6 A voluntary return-free filing program would address these concerns, simplifying filing, strengthening taxpayers’ right to know the information the IRS had received on them from third parties, and substantially enhancing taxpayer freedom to choose how to file their taxes. But the same anti-tax groups that champion a simpler tax system have worked closely with the tax preparation industry to oppose free filing.

Return-free filing offers the chance to make tax filing for Americans significantly cheaper, faster and more accurate. But this report finds that vehement and longstanding opposition by the tax preparation industry and anti-tax groups has prevented the IRS from meeting its statutory requirement to develop procedures for return-free filing and has denied American taxpayers the many benefits of this system.

By the way, with the closure of IRS offices across the country, some tax forms, like 1099 and 1096, are now most easily available at … places like Office Depot, for a price. Another public-private partnership at work.

(Blue America has endorsed Bernie Sanders for president. If you’d like to help out, go here. If you’d like to “phone-bank for Bernie,” go here. You can volunteer in other ways by going here. And thanks! A version of this piece appeared at Down With Tyranny. GP article archive here.)

GP
 

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Lies, damned lies, and revisionist history
by Tom Sullivan

David Neiwert is “celebrating” Confederate Heritage Month at Orcinus with posts on aspects of the War of Northern Aggression southern heritage buffs would prefer to forget (contra the lyrics to “Dixie”). His latest installment looks at “carpetbaggers” and “scalawags,” both Reconstruction-era pejoratives. The first for newcomers from outside the old Confederacy (many of those northern teachers offering literacy programs to freed slaves), and the second for southern whites who collaborated with the freed slaves in post-war governance. Being branded with either term was no mild smear. It essentially put a target on your back, according to Neiwert. (Scroll to the bottom of his page for links to earlier installments.)

At Buzzfeed, Adam Serwer debunks the history of an infamous tintype (above) now in the Library of Congress of two Confederate soldiers, one white man named Andrew Chandler and his black slave, Silas:

… an astonishing tintype of the two men, armed to the teeth in Confederate uniforms, taken in 1861. The image has helped bolster the claims of the community of amateur historians, hucksters, and Confederate sympathizers committed to defending the Confederacy from the charge of racism, who insist that thousands of black men fought and died for the rebel cause. “Ever since the SCV posthumously honored Silas,” Levin wrote in 2012, “accounts of black Confederate troops have surged in popularity.”

It is a community that has grown more vocal and irate as black and white activists have successfully sought to strip Confederate emblems from places of honor around the country. After the massacre of nine black parishioners in South Carolina by a white supremacist, the South Carolina SCV defended the Confederate flag then flying on the state capitol grounds by invoking “Black Confederate soldiers” who “fought in the trenches beside their White brothers.”

Right. And until Maurice Bessinger passed on in 2014, in the Confederacy corners of his South Carolina barbecue joints I assume you could still buy his pamphlets and tapes on the virtues of slavery (tales of how it really was in the Old South) while an enormous Confederate flag flew from a tall pole outside. If some white, southern Christians seem to have chips on their shoulders, short fuses, and inferiority complexes, some of that traces to 1865. In pockets, old times there are still not forgotten and some of the history has been rewritten.

Sick propaganda

by digby

If you still think these anti-choice zealots aren’t already trying to punish women for having abortions, this should change your mind:

When Ohio Attorney General Mike DeWine discovered that Planned Parenthood was, in fact, not responsible for selling fetal tissue in the state — the smear at the heart of a right-wing campaign seeking to discredit the national women’s health organization — he was the last to admit it.

Downplaying the finding that cleared Planned Parenthood of wrongdoing, DeWine instead quickly blamed local clinics for something entirely unrelated, hoping to distract Ohioans with an emotional appeal about the horror of abortion.

“In the course of our investigation, we learned that aborted fetuses are ultimately disposed of in landfill sites — apparently intermingled with other common residential and commercial trash,” DeWine wrote in a December letter to state Department of Health Director Richard Hodges.
Burial and cremation laws are only intended to shame women for their decision.

“We found that these fetuses were steam cooked,” he said at a following press conference, referring to a common process used to kill bacteria before disposing biological remains.
His demand for a disposing fetal remains in a more “humane manner” — which has yet to be defined — ultimately inspired a pair of recently introduced Ohio bills demanding that women, after having an abortion, must inform the clinic if they want the aborted remains to be cremated or buried. The abortion clinic is financially responsible for completing the task.

But Dewine’s tactical pivot isn’t his brainchild. It’s been carefully crafted by the country’s most powerful anti-abortion organization, Americans United for Life (AUL), which writes draft bills for GOP lawmakers. And it’s quickly become the latest trend in anti-abortion legislation.
Related Post

Inside The Highly Sophisticated Group That’s Quietly Making It Much Harder To Get An Abortion

“Fetal burial” bills like Ohio’s have begun to make a significant appearance in the legislative sessions of conservative-led states — states that have already passed nearly every restriction possible to restrict a woman’s access to an abortion. Kellie Copeland, director of NARAL Pro-Choice Ohio, said this is a technique to keep the anti-abortion debate front and center, regardless of the need for this particular policy.
“The purpose is really just to keep the anti-abortion narrative going at state capitols, and talk about how abortion providers are not doing the right things in some people’s eyes,” Copeland said. “And let’s be clear. Burial and cremation laws are only intended to shame women for their decision.”

Gary Daniels, chief lobbyist for ACLU Ohio, agrees. “It’s just a way to keep abortion issues afloat and in the public eye,” he said.

Many states are using eerily similar language to drive fetal burials bill through their legislatures. The identical legislation is no coincidence: The text is copied and pasted directly from AUL’s website. AUL functions as a legislation mill for anti-abortion lawmakers, enabling them to “easily introduce bills without needing to research and write the bills themselves,” according to the organization’s website.

You would be able to easily request a list of who’s getting an abortion in the state
Idaho, Mississippi, Alabama, and South Carolina all have bills in their current session with language pulled directly from AUL’s model legislation, which is evocatively titled the “Unborn Infants Dignity Act.”

States like Ohio and Indiana — which approved a controversial anti-abortion law last month that includes a fetal burial provision — are slightly less overt in their duplication of AUL’s draft bill, but are clearly inspired by its model.

AUL’s bill is meant to applied to “every instance of fetal death, irrespective of the duration of pregnancy.” In some cases, this would mean a woman who took an abortion pill a couple months into a pregnancy would be asked if she wanted a quarter-sized blood clot to be formally buried. She would then get a death certificate.

I don’t know how many of these horrible shaming propagandists there are out there but it seems to be quite an industry. All over the country they are making women women go through hoops and endure ritualized shaming. They’re softening up the public for the inevitable criminal sanctions.

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Three amigos


by digby

The latest polling on the Republican race: 

Donald Trump heads into his home-state primary of New York with a large edge over Ted Cruz and John Kasich, 54 percent to 21 percent and 19 percent respectively. The lead, if it holds Tuesday night, would net him the bulk of the state’s delegates and put him back on a path — albeit a narrow one — to the 1,237 needed for nomination.

Underpinning Trump’s lead in New York, as in Pennsylvania and California, is that Republicans believe he would be “effective,” “authentic” and that he understands people like them. He leads Cruz and Kasich on these measures, as well as on electability, as Republicans see him as most likely of the three to win in November.

But Trump has been critical of the party’s nomination process even as he leads it, and Republican voters in New York agree with him: Fifty-two percent decry the Republicans’ system as unfair. Trump’s own voters are especially apt to believe this. This comes as Cruz, who trails in the overall race, has reportedly seen his supporters prevail in many of the local and state-level selections to fill delegate slots in recent weeks, which could set up a potential edge for Cruz at the convention this summer if it is contested. Ted Cruz’s voters see the system as fair.

The feeling of unfairness could be galvanizing Trump’s supporters in these critical upcoming states, as those who see it as unfair are among the most strongly backing him.

Whether that convention is wide open or not likely comes down to California, the last, largest remaining state to vote, on June 7. There, Trump leads Cruz and Kasich as the CBS News Battleground Tracker begins looking at the contest, 49 percent to 31 percent for Cruz and 16 percent for Kasich. At the race’s current pace, Trump would need a sizable win there — as well as strong performances in between — to clinch the nomination outright.

I’m sure Cruz would really love for Kasich to drop out. But there’s no assurance that all of his voters would go to Cruz. It’s not like old Ted is all that popular either.

And keep in mind that the California delegate process is very byzantine. Trump may not be able to capitalize on his higher numbers as much as he thinks he should.

But he’ll be whining all the way to the convention anyway. But don’t worry, he “hopes” there won’t be any violence so that’s good.

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