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Dave Weigel just resigned. He provided fair and accurate coverage for the Washington Post, but because he said something obnoxious on a private email list after Drudge sent hundreds of screaming wingnuts after him and the DC Examiner printed the name and workplace of his girlfriend, he was forced out. Not because of any of his professional work, but because of a couple intemperate remarks on an allegedly private listserv.Actually, as far as I’m concerned, Weigel has grounds to sue, though I have a feeling he’ll be snapped up quickly by some legitimate news organization in the meantime…hope so anyway (and as Keith Olbermann told us tonight on “Countdown,” Tucker Carlson was involved – by the way, Huffington Post called, Tucker; it took a look at “The Daily Caller” and wants its front page back).
Bill Kristol, Jackson Diehl, Marc Thiessen, whose far more offensive comments are printed on the opinion page every week, still have jobs.
I hope they find out who leaked the emails and his/her career is equally damaged. This is a disgrace.
Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy
HouseAt least Mike Castle managed to do the right thing here – please spare me the pabulum about how the Repug Party supposedly gives a damn about small business after votes like this.
Small-business credit. Voting 241-182, the House authorized the Treasury to lend up to $30 billion to community and regional banks to leverage up to $300 billion in new credit for small businesses. As collateral, the Treasury would receive dividend-paying preferred stock redeemable within 10 years. Financial institutions with assets under $10 billion would be eligible for the program. The deficit-neutral bill (HR 5297) is now before the Senate.
A yes vote was to pass the bill.
Voting yes: John Adler (D., N.J.), Robert E. Andrews (D., N.J.), Robert A. Brady (D., Pa.), Michael N. Castle (R., Del.), Chaka Fattah (D., Pa.), Tim Holden (D., Pa.), Patrick Murphy (D., Pa.), Allyson Y. Schwartz (D., Pa.), and Joe Sestak (D., Pa.).
Voting no: Charles W. Dent (R., Pa.), Jim Gerlach (R., Pa.), Frank A. LoBiondo (R., N.J.), Joseph R. Pitts (R., Pa.), and Christopher H. Smith (R., N.J.).
Small-business investment. Voting 247-170, the House passed a deficit-neutral bill (HR 5486) that uses incentives such as nontaxation of capital gains and the waiver of certain Internal Revenue Service penalties to stimulate small-business growth. In part, the bill eliminates capital-gains taxes on the sale of certain small-business stock bought between March 15, 2010, and Jan. 1, 2012, increases deductions for start-up expenditures, and eases rules for deducting losses from investments in enterprises such as farming and energy exploration. The bill is now before the Senate.So Charlie Dent joins Castle among the "Repug enlightened," with Gerlach, Pitts and Smith particularly clueless (and I thought LoBiondo was smarter than this – more fool me, I guess).
A yes vote was to pass the bill.
Voting yes: Adler, Andrews, Brady, Castle, Dent, Fattah, Holden, Murphy, Schwartz, and Sestak.
Voting no: Gerlach, LoBiondo, Pitts, and Smith.
Health-care mandate. Voting 187-230, the House defeated a GOP bid to use HR 5486 (above) as a vehicle for repealing the new health law's requirement that individuals who can afford it obtain medical insurance either at work or in a state-run exchange. The purpose of the individual mandate is to hold down everybody's health costs by establishing the largest possible pool of insured people. Critics say the mandate is oppressive because those without coverage will face financial penalties. Robert E. Andrews (D., N.J.) said that eliminating the requirement would increase middle-class premiums because "when a person goes to the emergency room and doesn't have health insurance, they get health care. The question is who pays the bill."Tim Holden continues to be utterly awful; if he manages to go down this fall (to say nothing of other “corpocrat” Dems, it will be over votes exactly like this…an Inquirer commenter objected to the analysis from Rob Andrews on this, even though Andrews is exactly right as to why the individual mandate is important...and let's not forget, to do something about Pancake Joe, click here).
A yes vote was to repeal the individual mandate.
Voting yes: Castle, Dent, Gerlach, Holden, LoBiondo, Pitts, and Smith.
Voting no: Adler, Andrews, Brady, Fattah, Murphy, Schwartz, and Sestak.
On a hot Tuesday in a campaign that's set to sizzle, (Dem U.S. House Rep Patrick) Murphy had veterans with him at the Bristol Wharf as he ripped (Repug challenger Mike) Fitzpatrick for voting against a bill in 2005 that would have protected veterans from bankruptcy. Murphy said Fitzpatrick took the side of credit card companies and big banks "against basic protection for veterans."Here is a post with more details on the bill Fitzpatrick voted against, by the way, including the roll-call vote from April 2006. And since Fitzpatrick doesn’t provide more details on this bill be supposedly voted for to “to protect low-income and disabled veterans,” I’m not going to do his homework for him.
The legislation, Murphy said, would have exempted veterans from bankruptcy means tests while they are deployed and for two years following active duty, allowing them to transition back to civilian life.
Fitzpatrick tells a different story. He said he voted for a bill "to protect low-income and disabled veterans. That was important to me. It was achieved."
Injuries are not always physical, though. A study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association found that one in three troops returning from Iraq will seek counseling within a year, though most believe the number may actually be higher.The prior post also tells us that, under Mikey’s congressional “oversight,” our vets seeking help from the VA needed duct tape to hold their prosthetic limbs together.
Already, those with serious mental-health needs are being turned away because of underfunding. The result will prove to be the same as it was with the Vietnam veterans - many will be unable to cope with the transition back to civilian life and become drug addicts, alcoholics, homeless, or worse - suicidal.
IN THE PAST few years, there have been plenty of votes in Congress that might not completely solve the problem, but would go a long way toward giving veterans the care they need and deserve.
Both (former) Reps. Fitzpatrick and ("Crazy Curt") Weldon repeatedly voted no on helping these 21st-century patriots. They voted no on a bill to extend the military health care program to members of the National Guard and reserves, on an amendment that would have increased funding for VA services by $2.6 billion, and another that would have increased funding by $3.1 billion.
The latest evidence is a new survey from pollsters Peter Hart and Bill McInturff for the Wall Street Journal and NBC. The number of people who say the country is headed in the wrong direction is 62 percent -- the highest it has been since the final days of George W. Bush. The troubled economy, of course, is the most important issue, and 66 percent say they expect the economy to stay the same or get worse in the next year.Could Obama’s numbers be better? Sure. However, his predecessor would have killed for a 45 percent approval rating in his final days, just to remind everyone (and what does anyone expect a Republican pollster to say, by the way?).
"There is a sense across the board that things aren't working," says Republican pollster David Winston.
Obama's approval rating is at 45 percent, versus 48 percent disapproval -- the first time the president has ever been underwater in the Journal poll.
...digging deeper, beyond the national numbers, reveals at least a few glimmers of hope for Democrats — still fairly distant and faint, but bright enough to get campaign strategists scanning the horizon and weighing the odds.As the party in power during a congressional midterm election, it is practically inevitable that the Dems are going to take a hit.
That is because different parts of the country are recovering at different rates — and, in a bit of electoral good luck for the Democrats, some of the areas that are beginning to edge upward more quickly, like parts of Ohio, Pennsylvania and New York, happen to be in important battlegrounds for the House and the Senate.
“A lot of the trend lines are turning positive in many of these contested areas,” said Mark Zandi, a chief economist for Moody’s Analytics. “It really boils down to: Is there enough time for the trend lines to trump the still pretty difficult conditions in the minds of the voters?”
…
The Times has identified 114 House seats and 17 Senate seats that are expected to be the most competitive in November. The largest numbers of closely contested elections are expected to be in Pennsylvania, New York and Ohio, where The Times projects a combined 26 competitive House races.
All three states, coincidentally, are considered to be on the leading edge of the nation’s recovery. Since December, they have added jobs at a faster rate than the country as a whole and even led the country in the total number of jobs added in April. One reason is that manufacturing, a traditional backbone, has been on the rebound; another is that these states generally did not suffer as acutely as other regions from the housing boom and bust.
While much attention has been paid to the nation’s stubbornly high unemployment rate, political scientists have found little correlation between that measure and midterm elections results. Instead, they have found more broad-based indicators, particularly real personal disposable per capita income, which measures the amount of money a household has after taxes and inflation, to be better gauges.
A residents group can continue its legal fight against a proposed Aria Health hospital at Route 332 and Stony Hill Road in Lower Makefield, a Bucks County Court judge has ruled.The last I checked, the majority of the Lower Makefield supervisors opposed the relocation of Frankford from Middletown Township (near Sesame Place and the Oxford Valley Mall) to the location across from Stony Brook Farm), though Frankford (oh, excuse me…Aria Health) has thus far managed to sway a majority of the members of the LMT zoning board (a lot more info can be found on this here).
Judge Clyde Waite recently issued an order denying the motion by Aria Health, formerly Frankford Hospital, to quash an appeal filed by Residents Against Frankford's Relocation to the granting of a special exception by the township zoning hearing board for the hospital.
Waite's ruling is a preliminary one that keeps RAFR a player but doesn't decide the main issue of whether the hospital can be built, officials said.
The Boy Scouts can stay.I’m sure Christine Flowers is writing her “nyaah, nyaah, told you so” column as I type this.
After deliberating for about seven hours, a federal jury found yesterday that the city violated the local Boy Scouts' First Amendment rights by demanding that they repudiate the national organization's ban on gay membership or face eviction from their Center City headquarters.
The local chapter, called Cradle of Liberty Council, built the 1928 Beaux Arts structure on city-owned land at 22nd and Winter streets, near Logan Square, and has maintained it since. Like other nonprofits that lease property in Fairmount Park, Cradle pays $1 a year to the city.
The city contended at trial that Cradle had to abide by the city's anti-discrimination laws if it wanted to retain the lease.
Attorneys for the local chapter hailed the jury's decision.
"We expect to get an injunction from the court," said attorney Jason P. Gosselin. "We've asked for a permanent injunction from trying to evict the Scouts because of the city's opposition to the leadership policy."
That means that Cradle likely will maintain its cheap lease.
Take a good, long, hard look at what New Jersey is going through right now…And by the way, to help Fitzpatrick’s opponent in the PA-08 U.S. House contest, click here.Bucks Commissioners Urged to Abolish Policy of Taking Taxpayer-Funded Pay Raises While Increasing Taxes
Marseglia Proposal Would Demonstrate Fiscal Responsibility yet Cawley and Martin Refuse to Sign On
(Doylestown, PA) – Earlier this week, Bucks County's Democratic County Commissioner Diane Marseglia challenged her colleagues to establish a policy of prohibiting any pay raises for themselves in years when county taxes are raised by the commissioners. Her Republican colleagues failed to join her call for reform.
A quick review of the tenure of former Bucks County Commissioner Mike Fitzpatrick reveals why Commissioners Martin and Cawley might prefer that the issue simply go away.
While in office, Mike Fitzpatrick gave himself a $23,667 pay raise – an increase of over 45% - while simultaneously raising Bucks County Property Taxes nearly 60%.
In six different years, Mike Fitzpatrick squeezed Bucks County families’ budgets with higher taxes while padding his own pocket – at taxpayer expense.1997: Fitzpatrick raised taxes 6.7% yet gave himself a $2,699 pay raise. 1998: Fitzpatrick raised taxes 3.6% yet gave himself a $2,833 pay raise. 2001: Fitzpatrick raised taxes 3.5% yet gave himself a $1,930 pay raise. 2002: Fitzpatrick raised taxes 5.1% yet gave himself a $1,988 pay raise. 2003: Fitzpatrick raised taxes 4.8% yet gave himself a $2,048 pay raise. 2004: Fitzpatrick raised taxes 14.6% yet gave himself a $4,751 pay raise.
Under Marseglia’s proposal, County Commissioners would forgo salary increases during years when there is a county property tax increase.
The Bucks County Democratic Committee supports Commissioner Marseglia’s leadership and supports enacting her proposal. We call on the Republican Commissioners to end the policy that allowed Fitzpatrick to take a massive pay raise while increasing county property taxes by a staggering 60%.
At issue was a film produced by Citizens United that attacked the public record of Hillary Clinton. The McCain-Feingold law says that such communications are unlawful contributions.(“…such communications are unlawful contributions.” – WHAAA???)
Kagan was asked if, instead of making a movie, Citizens United had published a book criticizing Hillary Clinton and it hit the stands less than sixty days before an election? Could the government ban that book? Yes, she said, representing the Obama administration.
Ohio's Republican Secretary of State Kenneth Blackwell boasted of helping "deliver" Ohio for President Bush and said he was "truly pleased" to announce Bush had won Ohio even before all of the state's votes had been counted in his own fundraising letter, RAW STORY has discovered. The letter, which was received by a Butler County resident Dec. 31, is a plea to support Blackwell's campaign for governor. The resident has asked to remain anonymous.And as noted here…
In apparent disregard for his nonpartisan role as Ohio's chief election official, the Republican Secretary and chairman of Bush's Ohio reelection campaign slammed Senator Kerry as a "disaster" who would have reaped "terrible" and "horrible" results on both Ohio and the United States.
Further, Blackwell's use of the word "deliver" finds striking resonance with another controversial fundraising letter sent by the CEO of voting machine manufacturer Diebold Walden O'Dell in the summer of 2003 when he said he was "committed to helping Ohio deliver its electoral votes to the president next year."
Every significant decision that Ohio Secretary of State Ken Blackwell made regarding the 2004 presidential election benefited George W. Bush. Blackwell was honorary co-chair of Bush's 2004 Ohio campaign and served as an election expert in the Florida fiasco that ensued after the 2000 campaign, spinning the Bush campaign's case to the media.Given this, it’s oddly appropriate that Blackwell begins his Daily Caller column with a reference to theft.
The problem with “When We Go Upon the Sea” is not that it’s yet another derisive play about George W. Bush. Nor is it that the playwright Lee Blessing (“A Walk in the Woods,” “Cobb”) offers a liberal fantasy of Mr. Bush on trial for war crimes. The real trouble, dramatically speaking, is that this Bush character (played by Conan McCarty, with perfect squinting eyes) doesn’t do anything of interest. He doesn’t engage in soul-searching or in an elaborate defense of his presidency — or anything else that might cause much conflict. He just generally acts smug.(Yep, sounds like "art imitating life.")
HouseConcerning the FHA down payments vote, this may be anathema for a liberal to think or believe, but even though the down payment percentage on an FHA loan hasn’t been cited by any news outlet I consider reputable as a cause of the housing meltdown (and certainly not the Community Reinvestment Act either), I’m wondering just how bad a thing it is to raise that percentage. I know getting more people into more houses is good for the economy, but this just makes me wonder, that’s all (though finding myself out on the proverbial limb with Joe Pitts and Charlie Dent, of all people, is not a place I want to be, I’ll admit).
FHA mortgage insurance. Voting 406-4, the House sent the Senate a bill (HR 5072) nearly tripling the cap on Federal Housing Administration insurance premiums for single-family mortgages. The bill would raise the top annual premium from 0.55 percent to 1.55 percent of the loan balance, with the average borrower expected to pay nearly 0.9 percent. In return, the FHA is expected but not required to lower its one-time, up-front premium from 2.25 percent to 1 percent of the loan amount.
A yes vote was to pass the bill.
Voting yes: John Adler (D., N.J.), Robert E. Andrews (D., N.J.), Robert A. Brady (D., Pa.), Michael N. Castle (R., Del.), Charles W. Dent (R., Pa.), Chaka Fattah (D., Pa.), Jim Gerlach (R., Pa.), Tim Holden (D., Pa.), Frank A. LoBiondo (R., N.J.), Patrick Murphy (D., Pa.), Joseph R. Pitts (R., Pa.), Allyson Y. Schwartz (D., Pa.), Joe Sestak (D., Pa.), and Christopher H. Smith (R., N.J.).
FHA down payments. Voting 131-289, the House defeated an amendment to HR 5072 (above) that sought to increase the minimum down payment for FHA-insured home loans from 3.5 percent to 5 percent. Such an increase would lead to fewer defaults on FHA-backed loans while excluding many moderate- and low-income borrowers from home ownership.
A yes vote was to raise down-payment requirements.
Voting yes: Dent and Pitts.
Voting no: Adler, Andrews, Brady, Castle, Fattah, Gerlach, Holden, LoBiondo, Murphy, Schwartz, Sestak, and Smith.
U.S. debt and security. Voting 38-61, the Senate failed to table (kill) an amendment to HR 4213 concerning the effect of U.S. debt on national security. This preserved language requiring quarterly presidential reports to Congress on the extent to which foreign holdings of U.S. debt imperil U.S. security.Snarlin’ Arlen showing his true colors as the clock winds down (and to help Admiral Joe against Wingnut Pat Toomey, click here).
A yes vote was to kill the amendment.
Voting yes: Carper, Casey, Kaufman, Lautenberg, and Menendez.
Voting no: Specter.
In addition to the fishermen and hoteliers whose livelihoods have been devastated by BP’s hemorrhaging undersea oil well, another group of Gulf Coast residents is beginning to suffer: the tens of thousands of workers like Ronald Brown who run the equipment or serve in support roles on deepwater oil rigs in the Gulf of Mexico.Uh, for the record, the Times also told us the following a couple of weeks ago (here)…
Mr. Brown, known as Rusty to his friends, is a “shakerhand.” In the rugged vernacular of offshore drilling, that means he monitors the mud flowing back from the drill hole thousands of feet below.
He works aboard the Ocean Monarch, which was idled along with 32 other oil rigs when the Obama administration ordered a six-month moratorium on all deepwater drilling after the April 20 Deepwater Horizon disaster.
WASHINGTON — In the days since President Obama announced a moratorium on permits for drilling new offshore oil wells and a halt to a controversial type of environmental waiver that was given to the Deepwater Horizon rig, at least seven new permits for various types of drilling and five environmental waivers have been granted, according to records.I don’t mean to be unsympathetic to individuals such as Ronald Brown, whose lives and livelihoods have been turned upside down, but I just think we should be clear about that, that’s all.
The records also indicate that since the April 20 explosion on the rig, federal regulators have granted at least 19 environmental waivers for gulf drilling projects and at least 17 drilling permits, most of which were for types of work like that on the Deepwater Horizon shortly before it exploded, pouring a ceaseless current of oil into the Gulf of Mexico.
Asked about the permits and waivers, officials at the Department of the Interior and the Minerals Management Service, which regulates drilling, pointed to public statements by Interior Secretary Ken Salazar, reiterating that the agency had no intention of stopping all new oil and gas production in the gulf.
On May 27, 2010, in the Senate Armed Services Committee, Senator Roland Burris (D-IL) offered an amendment to the FY2011 National Defense Authorization Act to strike Section 1093(b) of Title 10. The amendment, which passed by a vote of 15-12, will permit the performance of abortions in both domestic and overseas military facilities.You know, I never cease to feel my gag reflex seize up when I read self-righteous claptrap such as this from “pro-life” zealots like Akin (of course, as noted here, “pro life” only for those with whom Akin agrees).
Under current law, the U.S. Military will not pay for an abortion and abortions may not be performed at military health care facilities – except in the case of rape, incest, or to save the life of the mother.
I firmly believe that military treatment centers -- which are dedicated to healing and caring for life -- should not facilitate the taking of the most innocent human life: a child in the womb.
Senator Roland Burris (D-IL) introduced an amendment which would repeal the current discriminatory law that bans abortion in military facilities even if a woman pays for the abortion with her own private money. Burris’s amendment passed by a vote of 16 to 10 and will now be included in the 2011 National Defense Authorization Act as it moves to the Senate floor for a vote in the coming weeks.We ask the women in our military to defend this country even if that requires sacrificing their lives. Why is it (according to Akin, anyway) too much to ask that we allow them to control their own bodies as well (especially when they're paying for the coverage themselves)?
We need this amendment for the safety and welfare of our brave servicewomen stationed overseas. Unable to access abortion services in military facilities, our servicewomen serving abroad are forced to seek health care in foreign hospitals despite language barriers and the risk of inadequate care. If abortion is illegal in the country where she is stationed or if she is serving in a warzone, a servicewoman is left in a bind, unable to exercise her constitutional right to an abortion. Without access to comprehensive reproductive health care, servicewomen are exposed to grave health risks, and some have even sought unsafe abortions or attempted to self-induce an abortion.
Out of respect for the health, safety and welfare of the brave military women who have committed their lives to our country, we hope that Congress will include Senator Burris’s Amendment in the final National Defense Authorization Act for 2011. It is about time we repeal this unjust ban and show our servicewomen the respect and justice they deserve.
This week, in federal court, the Boy Scouts are trying to prove that the city is unfairly targeting them because of their refusal to accept openly gay members or troop leaders.Isn’t it hilarious the way Flowers so easily resorts to caricature when she realizes that she’s standing on thin ice?
They argue that they're being discriminated against because of a politically unpopular "viewpoint," something that the Constitution and a bunch of Supreme Court justices specifically prohibited. And to prove it, they're providing evidence that while the city is bent on evicting the Scouts from city-owned property, it's willing to turn a blind eye to other organizations that do the same thing.
It's not necessary to list all of the groups that have sweetheart deals with the city. Suffice it to say that the only one that seems to have run afoul of City Hall is the one that provides a safe haven for boys and young men, that teaches them the meaning of both independence and interdependence, that gives them valuable skills, lifelong friendships and, in many cases, the only adult male role models they'll ever have.
In a town that's forced to close pools and libraries, the Scouts are a lifeline.
But that's not enough for some people. The reason this organization has raised the hackles of the city lawyers is that it has the audacity to presume that sexual orientation is irrelevant, and that little boys don't need to trumpet their preference (or have it shoved in their faces by other Scouts, or their leaders).
The truth is that the Boy Scouts don't force kids or troop leaders to submit to a "sexual orientation" test before they can join. They don't ask if they prefer Liza Minnelli to G.I. Joe. They don't ask - but they also don't expect anyone to tell.
(In the matter of Number 44’s recent outcry against BP) If Mr. Obama has so consistently cast himself as the populist scourge of corporate abusers, then why does so much of the popular anger seem to be directed at him instead?As Daily Kos diarist blackwaterdog shows us here, the “too cool and contemplative” president met with residents of the beleaguered Gulf Coast recently, and in the words of the “classic” rock song, “every picture tells a story, don’t it?”
In part, this is probably because Mr. Obama, while seemingly eager to read from a populist script, is really too cool and contemplative to be terribly convincing in the role. For sheer intensity of emotion, the president hardly rivals even the more patrician John F. Kennedy, who complained after a run-in with steelmakers that all businessmen were in fact “sons of bitches,” as his father had counseled him.
…a succession of liberal politicians — Jesse Jackson, Jerry Brown, John Edwards — have tried to run for president on a traditionally populist, anticorporate platform, with little success.It’s really a stretch to consider Jesse Jackson Sr. as a politician, but Bai is technically correct here. As Wikipedia tells us, in addition to being a two-time presidential candidate, Jackson was also a “shadow senator” from the District of Columbia from 1991-1997, though these individuals are never seated in the U.S. Senate (this is part of the idiotic gamesmanship that has proceeded for years in this country, all part of granting D.C. the representation it deserves, which hopefully will be achieved one day).
This new American populism (yet more “tea party” love from Bai) is why the federal deficit has emerged as a chief concern for voters…In response, I give you the following shockingly sensible editorial from The Philadelphia Inquirer last Sunday, particularly the following…
According to a new Pew Research poll, 23 percent cited the federal budget deficit as their top concern. By contrast, a substantial 41 percent put jobs at the top of the list.Yes, but it conflicts with the “conventional wisdom,” don’t you see (with the corollary to this manic preoccupation with the deficit being that those who are out of work and drowning in debt shouldn’t be tossed a life preserver, but an anvil instead).
That's no surprise, given a still-rocky recovery that has forced workers to live off unemployment checks and piece together part-time jobs. So why is Congress suddenly worried about federal spending rather than job creation? Why did Congress get fiscal religion after eight years of a profligate presidency that left the nation swimming in red ink?
Elected leaders are understandably nervous after the banking collapse of 2008 - especially since they didn't see it coming. With Europe struggling to contain a debt crisis that started in Greece and threatens to spread, no responsible U.S. politician wants to be accused of ignoring impending fiscal doom here.
But any responsible U.S. politician would read the fine print in the warnings: U.S. budget deficits will pose a critical problem for the economy about 10 years from now, as more baby boomers retire and entitlement spending soars. Should the White House work on a plan to balance the books before then? Absolutely.
One of the best ways to do that is to put taxpayers back to work. An estimated 20 percent or so of the current federal deficit, according to the Center for American Progress, was brought on by the recession; when taxpayers lose their jobs and businesses go bankrupt, they don't pay taxes. A recovery would boost the federal treasury.
HARGEISA, Somalia — As the United Nations Security Council expressed a “deep concern” on Wednesday over the continued use of child soldiers and a “readiness” to adopt sanctions against individuals who deploy them, an American lawmaker warned that the United States might have broken several laws by providing assistance to the Somali military, which uses children in conflict.We also learn the following in the Times story…
The United Nations lists the Somali government as one of the “most persistent violators” in the world of using child soldiers, and this week The New York Times documented several child soldiers, some as young as 12, toting assault rifles and working for the Somali transitional government in Mogadishu, Somalia’s capital.
The story also tells us that Dem Sen. Richard Durbin of Illinois expressed concerns to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton over this country paying the salaries of Somali soldiers and providing millions of dollars in arms. Durbin’s concern is that this assistance might violate the Child Soldier Prevention provision of the Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act of 2008; the Durbin-Coburn Child Soldiers Accountability Act; and the Durbin-Coburn Human Rights Enforcement Act.
On Wednesday, the Security Council held a long-scheduled meeting on child soldiers and issued a presidential statement expressing its “readiness to adopt targeted and graduated” sanctions against commanders who deploy under-age combatants.I wondered why on earth this country hasn’t ratified the Convention, and as you read this Wikipedia article, what you learn is that conservatives in this country don’t like the Convention because it disallows the execution of child criminals (though a Supreme Court ruling citing the Convention does the same thing), and another “straw man” argument is that the Convention “would virtually undermine parents’ rights as we know it in the United States.”
“This is the first step,” Radhika Coomaraswamy, the United Nations’ special representative for children and armed conflict, said by telephone from New York. “For the last two or three years, the Security Council has not focused on this issue. Now at least they are showing the readiness for sanctions.”
Measures are already in place in a limited number of conflicts, as in the Democratic Republic of Congo. But the agreement Wednesday would make it a blanket provision in all the conflicts the Council monitors, said Marco A. Morales, the spokesman for the mission of Mexico, which pushed through the change in its role as this month’s Council president.
Several international treaties cover the issue. While the American government has not ratified the Convention on the Rights of the Child, which presses countries not to deploy soldiers younger than 15, the American government has ratified an optional protocol to that convention eschewing the recruitment and the use of child soldiers.
In full disclosure, I think the Disclose Act is a complete joke, and it is getting funnier.And in response to the horrific Citizens United ruling (and after all, let’s not forget the origins of the group in question, as noted here), Think Progress told us the following (from last February here)…
What is the Disclose Act?
According to The Hill, the Disclose Act is “the Democratic response to a January Supreme Court ruling that overturns limits on spending by corporations and unions in political campaigns. It would tighten transparency requirements associated with corporate and union contributions, including forcing the CEOs of businesses to appear in ads funded by the company.”
Just two weeks after the Supreme Court ruled in favor of opening the floodgates of corporate donations into electoral politics, a class of Wall Street Republicans have assembled around a new GOP group that aims to capitalize on corporate America’s empowerment. According to The New York Times, the group aims to “develop and market conservative ideas…hoping to capitalize on the fundraising and electioneering possibilities opened up by a recent Supreme Court ruling.” “This administration as well as Citizens United — when you combine the two the prospects for funding these types of efforts are greatly enhanced,” said former senator Norm Coleman, one of the group’s organizers.And one of the individuals who is part of that “long history and symbiotic relationship,” as TP tells us, is Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour, who is currently involved in the American Action Network.
The Republican figures behind the American Action Network have a long history and symbiotic relationship with Wall Street.
Back in April I wrote about "the ever-lasting lure of a temperate Syria," noting the Obama Administration’s persistent attempts to get Damascus out of Iran’s orbit despite zero evidence of progress.("Innumerable, fruitless trips" including the one by this guy, by the way...)
Well, the Wall Street Journal reports today that after innumerable, fruitless trips to Damascus by our diplomatic and military officials, the Administration is trying something new: sending some of our top technology companies to Syria, "marking the latest bid by the Obama Administration to woo President Bashar al-Assad away from his strategic alliance with Iran."
A joint panel of U.S. and Vietnamese policymakers, citizens and scientists released an action plan Wednesday, urging the U.S. government and other donors to provide an estimated $30 million annually over 10 years to clean up sites still contaminated by dioxin, a toxic chemical used in the defoliant.This Wikipedia article also tells us the following…
The funding would also be used to treat Vietnamese suffering from disabilities, including those believed linked to exposure to Agent Orange, which was dumped by the U.S. military in vast quantities over former South Vietnam to destroy crops and jungle cover shielding communist guerrilla fighters.
Washington has been slow to address the issue, quibbling for years with its former foe over the need for more scientific research to show that the herbicide sprayed by U.S. aircraft during the war caused health problems and birth defects among Vietnamese.
Starting in 2005 the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) began to work with the Vietnamese government to measure the level of dioxin at the Da Nang Airbase. Also in 2005 the Joint Advisory Committee on Agent Orange made up of representatives of Vietnamese and US government agencies was established. The committee has been meeting yearly to explore areas of scientific cooperation, technical assistance and environmental remediation of dioxin.Make a note that I’m giving Number 43 some actual credit for doing something constructive here (shocking, I know - the article tells us that New Jersey was the first state to create a commission working with Rutgers University to study the effects of Agent Orange in 1980, but the commission was broken up by former governor Christine Todd Whitman in 1996…figures).
A breakthrough in the diplomatic stalemate on this issue occurred as a result of United States President George W. Bush's state visit to Vietnam in November 2006. In the joint statement, President Bush and President Triet agreed that "further joint efforts to address the environmental contamination near former dioxin storage sites would make a valuable contribution to the continued development of their bilateral relationship. [27]
In late May 2007, President Bush signed into law a supplemental spending bill for the war in Iraq and Afghanistan that included an earmark of $3 million specifically for funding for programs for the remediation of dioxin 'hotspots' on former US military bases and for public health programs for the surrounding communities.[28] The appropriation was renewed in the fiscal year 2009 and again in FY 2010.
The President's current priorities are all liable to make a now bad relationship that much worse (with big bidness). The financial regulation bill is viewed as a typically ignorant Washington overreach.So many directions I can go with this, but so little time…
When all the backroom obfuscation doesn't work, of course, there is always one last route in Congress to killing (financial) reform: the fine print. And never has an amendment been fine-printed to death as skillfully as the proposal to reform derivatives.So the only ones guilty of “overreach,” on this and so many other issues, are our corporate “betters” pulling the proverbial strings of political puppets like Dame Blanche and pushing the buttons of media automatons like Halperin.
Imagine a world where there's no New York Stock Exchange, no NASDAQ or Nikkei: no open exchanges at all, and all stocks traded in the dark. Nobody has a clue how much a share of IBM costs or how many of them are being traded. In that world, the giant broker-dealer who trades thousands of IBM shares a day, and who knows which of its big clients are selling what and when, will have a hell of a lot more information than the day-trader schmuck sitting at home in his underwear, guessing at the prices of stocks via the Internet.
That world exists. It's called the over-the-counter derivatives market. Five of the country's biggest banks, the Goldmans and JP Morgans and Morgan Stanleys, account for more than 90 percent of the market, where swaps of all shapes and sizes are traded more or less completely in the dark. If you want to know how Greece finds itself bankrupted by swaps, or some town in Alabama overpaid by $93 million for deals to fund a sewer system, this is the explanation: Nobody outside a handful of big swap dealers really has a clue about how much any of this shit costs, which means they can rip off their customers at will.
This insane outgrowth of jungle capitalism has spun completely out of control since 2000, when Congress deregulated the derivatives market. That market is now roughly 100 times bigger than the federal budget and 20 times larger than both the stock market and the GDP. Unregulated derivative deals sank AIG, Lehman Brothers and Greece, and helped blow up the global economy in 2008. Reining in derivatives is the key battle in the War for Finance Reform. Without regulation of this critical market, Wall Street could explode another mushroom cloud of nuclear leverage and risk over the planet at any time.
The basic pillar of derivatives reform is simple: From now on, instead of trading in the dark, most derivatives would have to be traded on open exchanges and "cleared" through a third party. Last fall, Wall Street lobbyists succeeded at watering down the clearing requirement by pushing through a series of exemptions for "end-users" – that is, anyone who uses derivatives to hedge a legitimate business risk, like an airline buying swaps as a hedge against fluctuations in jet-fuel prices. But the House then took it even further, expanding the exemption to include anyone who wants to hedge against balance-sheet risk. Since every company has a balance sheet, including giant insurers like AIG and hedge funds that gamble in derivatives, the giant loophole now covered pretty much everyone except a few megabanks. This was regulation with a finger crossed behind its back.
When it came time for the Senate to do its version, however, the lobbyists were in for a surprise. Sen. Blanche Lincoln of Arkansas – best known as one of the few Democrats to vote for Bush's tax cuts – suddenly got religion and closed the loophole. Facing a tough primary battle against an opponent who was vowing to crack down on Wall Street, Lincoln tweaked the language so derivatives reform would apply to any greedy financial company that makes billions trading risky swaps in the dark.
Republicans went apeshit, pulling the same tactics they tried to gut the Consumer Finance Protection Bureau. Sen. Enzi, back at the lectern after his failed attempt to claim that the CFPB was a government plot to control the orthodontics industry, barked to the Senate gallery that Lincoln's proposal would harm not millionaire swap dealers at JP Morgan and Goldman Sachs, but "a wheat-grower in Wyoming." Unmoved by such goofy rhetoric, the Senate shot down an asinine Republican amendment that would have overturned Lincoln's reform by a vote of 59-39.
Then reform advocates started reading the fine print of the Lincoln deal, and realized that all those Wall Street lobbyists had really been earning their money.
That same day the GOP amendment failed, the derivatives expert Adam White was at his home in Georgia, poring over a "redline" version of the Lincoln amendment, in which changes to the bill are tracked in bold. When he came to a key passage on page 570, he saw that it had a single line through it, meaning it had been removed. The line read, "Except as provided in paragraph (3), it shall be unlawful to enter into a swap that is required to be cleared unless such swap shall be submitted for clearing."
Translation: It was no longer illegal to trade many uncleared swaps. Wall Street would be free to go on trading these monstrosities by the gazillions, largely in the dark. "Regulators can't say any longer if you don't clear it, it's illegal," says White.
Once he noticed that giant loophole, White went back and found a host of other curlicues in the text that collectively cut the balls out of the Lincoln amendment. On page 574, a new section was added denying the Commodity Futures Trading Commission the power to force clearinghouses to accept swaps for clearing. On page 706, two lines were added making it impossible for buyers who get sold an uncleared swap to void the deal. Taken altogether, the changes amount to what White describes as a "Trojan Horse" amendment: hundreds of pages of rigid rules about clearing swaps, with a few cleverly concealed clauses that make blowing off those rules no big deal. Michael Greenberger, a former official with the Commodity Futures Trading Commission who has been fighting for derivatives reform, describes the textual trickery as a "circle of doom. Despite the pages and pages of regulations, violating them is risk-free."
The number of pro-life women running for office has increased, perhaps paradoxically, because of the social changes of the last few decades. The first generation of women to become active in politics strongly identified as feminist and considered abortion rights central to their feminism. Pro-life women were more likely to be full-time homemakers. Their invisibility on the public stage contributed to an impression that the vast majority of women were pro-choice.I must tell you that I read that last sentence and I wanted to throw up.
…
Pro-life women can also soften the message: Ms. Fiorina has said, “I myself was not able to have children of my own, and so I know what a precious gift life is.” It’s hard to imagine a male politician making that comment. These women will make it easier for pro-lifers to discuss the issue in the terms we want to discuss it: as a plea for justice for a vulnerable group.
And in case anyone needs a reminder of how quickly the “pro life” forces can work themselves into a furor when they detect the slightest whiff of accommodation from any politician they see as doing the will of those who are pro-choice, all one needs to do is take a look at how quickly the life of Dem U.S. House Rep Bart Stupak was threatened when he gave ground on health care reform when he believed he had accomplished his “pro life” goal in the legislation (I didn’t like the original Stupak-Pitts pro-sepsis coat hanger abortion amendment, but I never would have threatened Stupak’s life over it, and neither did anyone else of my political persuasion).14 states have introduced laws this year that ban or limit abortion coverage, 18 states have introduced legislation this year that requires abortion providers to offer their patients an ultrasound. 14 states have introduced legislation or ballot initiatives this year to amend the state constitution to establish that legal personhood begins at conception, which would limit access to abortion, contraception, fertility treatments, and other medical services. 9 states have introduced bills this year that would criminalize abortions done purportedly because of the sex or race of the fetus.* Only Oklahoma’s bill has thus far become law. 1 law has been enacted this year (in Utah) that define criminal homicide to include a “knowing” act by a pregnant woman that causes a miscarriage or stillbirth. This bill is so broad that it could apply to a woman who smokes cigarettes or takes prescription medication.
Looking for the federal government to come to the rescue of newspapers? Don’t hold your breath.This may sound hilarious coming from someone who opposes online fees as a source of revenue for news organizations, but I believe we should pay a modest fee to our government, if that is what it takes, to ensure the survival of designated news organizations (Which ones would be “designated”? I’m not 100 percent sure yet).
The Federal Trade Commission has set out on the somewhat quixotic journey of trying to identify ways to save journalism as we know it from possible extinction.
Through a series of public forums, the last of which will take place in Washington on Tuesday, the commission has been gathering and analyzing an array of suggestions to help make the business of gathering and reporting news profitable again. A broad range of ideas — loosening antitrust statutes to allow news organizations to start charging for online content all at once; imposing a tax on iPads and other electronic devices to subsidize the cost of reporting; creating a public fund akin to AmeriCorps to pay young journalists — have been suggested.
But the commission could easily sidestep making any recommendations to Congress or invoking its regulatory powers, and instead issue something along the lines of an analysis of its findings.
The commission is expected to produce a final study late this year.
