Tag Archives: conservatives

Congress Once Again Fails to Fund the Fight Against Zika

by TAXCyrildxylli Posted on June 28, 2016

Mother Jones

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The fight against the Zika virus stalled in Congress on Tuesday when Senate Democrats blocked a Republican bill they said was stuffed with unpalatable measures, including a provision that barred Planned Parenthood from the emergency funding. With the $1.1 billion funding bill now dead in the water, lawmakers could fail to reach a compromise before they leave for a seven-week recess next month.

It has already been more than four months since President Barack Obama first submitted a request for $1.9 billion in emergency funds to combat the mosquito-borne virus, which has been linked to devastating birth defects.

Congress’ failure to respond to the crisis drew criticism Tuesday from the American Public Health Association. “We know Zika could cause hundreds of US infants to be born with preventable birth defects—if we don’t intervene,” the organization’s executive director, Georges Benjamin, said in a press release. He added that the latest bill was “both late and inadequate.” Obama criticized Congress for its lack of progress last month, saying, “They should not be going off on recess before this is done.”

The GOP bill passed the House last Thursday under unusual circumstances: The vote took place over the shouts of Democrats holding an all-night sit-in in an attempt to force a vote on gun control. Democrats sharply criticized the Zika bill for preventing emergency funding from going to the women’s health organization Planned Parenthood, a favorite target of conservatives, even though the Zika crisis affects pregnant women. They also objected to a provision weakening regulations on pesticides.

Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) on Monday described the bill as “nothing more than a goodie bag for the fringes of the Republican Party.” Republicans, meanwhile, blamed Democrats for the holdup. “It’s really puzzling to hear Democrats claim to be advocates for women’s health measures when they are the ones trying to block the Zika legislation,” said Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.). Tuesday’s vote was 52 to 48, short of the 60 votes needed to break a filibuster.

As the partisan squabble stretches on, the Zika crisis is only growing. The disease has spread quickly in Puerto Rico, where the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention warned this month it could result in “dozens to hundreds of infants born with microcephaly in the coming year.” Nearly 2,000 cases have been reported in US territories, the vast majority of them contracted locally, according to the CDC. A total of 820 cases have been reported in US states. One of those was contracted in a lab; all the rest resulted from travel.

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Congress Once Again Fails to Fund the Fight Against Zika

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Younger Brits just had their future decided for them

by zB7bB4yB6a Posted on June 24, 2016

Brexed out

Younger Brits just had their future decided for them

By on Jun 24, 2016Share

Hours into a post-Brexit universe, it’s impossible to know the full scale of repercussions from Britain’s referendum vote to leave the European Union.  Some of the “leave” voters have already said they regret their choice, while global markets are panicking. Maybe younger adults should be panicking even more.

Britons voted to exit 52–48 percent, but according to a YouGov poll conducted just before the vote, a majority of voters under age 50 preferred to remain in the EU. Voters who grew up in a globalized world had the least interest in withdrawing from it.

Yet younger voters were outmatched by their elders, who usually turn out in higher numbers. In the U.K. general election in 2015, the youngest Britons, 18 to 24, were half as likely to vote as the oldest age group.

The Brexit vote leaves a younger generation to grapple with the future an older generation picked for them — and if you believe many environmentalists and climate leaders, that future could be a lot dimmer. Outgoing U.N. climate chief Christiana Figueres, among others, warned that Brexit would not be good news in the long run for climate action and the new global Paris agreement. And the potential leaders of a post-EU Britain might not take climate change seriously given that many of the conservatives who most actively campaigned for Brexit tend to deny science and have a loose relationship with facts.

Just as there’s a generational divide on Brexit, there’s one on climate change, too. Younger people would like the world to act to cut emissions, while older voters are generally less supportive of action, if they even believe climate change is occurring at all. (Unfortunately, I couldn’t find recent data breaking down U.K. climate views by age, but that’s the trend for the United States).

The Brexit vote will change the shape of European and global politics for years to come. It’s kind of like how the path we choose today on climate change — business-as-usual or steep emissions cuts — will bake in what kind of world we live in for centuries.

Plenty of British millennials certainly feel the weight of the decision, pointing out on Twitter that they’ve been “screwed.”

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Younger Brits just had their future decided for them

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Conservatives try out bizarre energy attack ad

by TemekaLittler Posted on June 17, 2016

Conservatives try out bizarre energy attack ad

By on Jun 17, 2016 4:43 pmShare

Welcome to 2016, where “run, Jimmy, run!” is an actual line from an real-life, non-satirical campaign ad.

This week, the political arm of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce launched a new offensive against Pennsylvania Senate hopeful Kathleen McGinty, who is the Democratic nominee. The group, which is backing Republican incumbent Pat Toomey in the Senate race, blasted McGinty’s climate record in the inventive ad.

It features two mothers worrying McGinty will show up to zap their kids’ energetic playtime. “I can’t believe how much energy they have,” says one mom of the children. “Shhh … don’t say that,” says the other, adding, “Have you seen how Katie McGinty tries to tax energy?”

A child is seen running away by the end of the ad, leaving viewers baffled.

All this plays on old-school fears of cap and trade and a carbon tax in a state that has a pretty significant coal and gas industry. McGinty, former Secretary of the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection, is endorsed by the League of Conservation Voters and will go head-to-head against Toomey this November.

If this really is a preview of the new conservative attack line on climate, then we suggest running far, far away.

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Trump’s Political Advisers Wanted to Vet Him. He Said No.

by VGEWanda13153970 Posted on May 19, 2016

Mother Jones

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For most major presidential campaigns, it is a routine act: you conduct opposition research on your own candidate. The reason is obvious; campaign officials and candidates want to know what they might have to contend with once the you-know-what starts flying. But not Donald Trump. At least not at the start of the campaign that would lead to him becoming the presumptive GOP nominee. According to a source with direct knowledge, when Trump was considering entering the presidential race early last year, his political advisers, including Corey Lewandowski, who would become his campaign manager, suggested that Trump hire a professional to investigate his past. But the celebrity mogul said no and refused to pay for it.

Marital infidelity, connections to mob-related persons, bankruptcies, the hiring of undocumented workers, policy flip-flops, deals gone bad, legal troubles—Trump’s life is an opposition researcher’s dream. That was no secret to his political lieutenants, who prior to his announcement discussed the need to conduct a deep dive into the tycoon’s background. The point was to go beyond Googling and perusing the many books written on Trump—and mount a full forensic examination of everything Donald. Especially before anyone else did. (Trump’s aides had heard a rumor that wealthy conservative donors, perhaps including the Koch Brothers, were underwriting a private opposition research effort aimed at the former reality TV star.)

“Everyone does this,” says a former Mitt Romney aide. “I don’t know a campaign that didn’t. It’s a standard procedure.” Political research firms specialize in this sort of work. “It’s an off-the-shelf service they provide,” this aide notes. “For X dollars, you get a different level of digging. I’ve never known a campaign that didn’t do this. After all, you’re expected to know your own record. Any responsible campaign would do that.”

The Trump campaign did not respond to a request for comment.

One subject on the mind of Trump’s advisers was Jeffrey Epstein, the finance mogul who was arrested in 2006 and subsequently pled guilty to having solicited paid sex with a minor. He ultimately served 13 months in prison and had to register as a sex offender. (Several years ago, alleged Epstein victims filed a lawsuit against the US government claiming Epstein received too sweet a plea bargain.) Trump’s advisers didn’t know of anything in particular to worry about. But they knew that Trump had been linked to his fellow Palm Beach resident. In 2002, Trump had said of Epstein, “I’ve known Jeff for fifteen years. Terrific guy. He’s a lot of fun to be with. It is even said that he likes beautiful women as much as I do, and many of them are on the younger side. No doubt about it—Jeffrey enjoys his social life.” Epstein had occasionally visited Mar-a-Lago, Trump’s estate and club down the road from Epstein’s mansion. Trump also had flown on Epstein’s plane and had dined at his house. And Virginia Roberts, an alleged Epstein victim who tried to join the civil lawsuit, maintaining that Epstein kept her as a sex slave for several years when she was a teenager, was working at Mar-a-Lago as a changing room assistant when she was recruited, at age 15, to be a masseuse for Epstein. (A judge recently denied Roberts’ bid to become a plaintiff in the case.)

Trump has downplayed his association with Epstein. But these connections would be enough to cause any senior campaign staffer to want a full examination. “This vetting process was not for the purpose of looking at Epstein specifically,” a Trump insider says. “It was to be an audit to see what could be found on anything.” (Conservatives have pointed to Bill Clinton’s friendship with Epstein—he often was a passenger on Epstein’s private plane—as possible ammunition to be used in the 2016 campaign against Hillary Clinton.)

Though Trump would not authorize an extensive research effort to identify what oppo might be most harmful to his candidacy, his campaign did prepare responses to obvious lines of attack against the billionaire. Mother Jones reviewed one campaign memo outlining possible replies to expected assaults, but most of these topics were policy and political matters already in the public realm. What about Trump’s 1999 proposal to raise taxes on the well-to-do? Trump merely had proposed a one-time fix designed to erase the national debt, a move that showed that Trump possessed the foresight to see that deficits would become a major problem. What about his past donations to Democrats? Trump was supporting incumbents of both parties as an act of civic participation, and since 2011 he has only contributed to Republicans. What about Trump manufacturing his clothing line in China? He had played no role in the decision to out-source, and China was picked because US regulation and red tape made it too expensive to manufacture goods in the United States. What about his failure to serve in the military? Trump had received student deferments, and as a graduate of a military academy he has been a strong proponent of the US military and veterans.

This memo covered numerous issues. What about the bankruptcies filed by his companies? Trump has never filed for personal bankruptcy. What about Trump’s previous support for universal healthcare? Trump has always called for a market-based system and has been an ardent opponent of Obamacare. What about Trump saying he has a plan to defeat ISIS but refusing to provide details? Trump does not want to tell ISIS in advance how he will defeat it; that would put US soldiers at risk. What about Trump’s support for the TARP bailout of the big banks? Trump believed TARP was necessary to stabilize the global financial system but came to conclude the program was poorly administered. What about Trump’s previous support for Jeb Bush, whom he once called the kind of political leader the United States needs? The Bush presidencies have been failures, Jeb Bush governed Florida as a typical politician who bowed to lobbyists and special interests, and it’s time to make America great again.

These were talking points designed to deal with the existing public record—not responses crafted to address new revelations. At the beginning of his presidential crusade, Trump would not allow his aides to prepare for that. The candidate, who now refuses to release his income taxes, did not want his own campaign scrutinizing his past. He was not willing to be transparent—not even for his own team.

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Trump’s Political Advisers Wanted to Vet Him. He Said No.

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BinC Watch: It’s Sunday Morning, So Today It’s "Meet the Press"

by MackBlank40688 Posted on May 8, 2016

Mother Jones

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The Washington Post’s fact checker, Glenn Kessler, is upset with the way the press treats Donald Trump:

Most politicians will drop a talking point if it gets labeled with Four Pinocchios by The Fact Checker or “Pants on Fire” by PolitiFact….But the news media now faces the challenge of Donald Trump, the presumptive Republican nominee for president. Trump makes Four-Pinocchio statements over and over again, even though fact checkers have demonstrated them to be false. He appears to care little about the facts; his staff does not even bother to respond to fact-checking inquiries.

But, astonishingly, television hosts rarely challenge Trump when he makes a claim that already has been found to be false.

This has been a problem during the primaries, but I’m pretty sure it’s set to change. Now that Trump is the presumptive nominee for a major party, with a real shot at becoming president, he just can’t get away with being the bullshitter-in-chief. The press is going to treat him a lot—

Hmm? What’s that? I should check out Meet the Press this morning? Sigh. What fresh hell awaits?

Trump has been retailing this particular tidbit of bullshit for months, and it’s not just untrue, but obviously untrue. Conservatives know it perfectly well, because they’re constantly talking about the high tax rates in Sweden and Germany and France and so forth, and trying to demonstrate that these high tax rates have strangled their economies. There’s really no disagreement about this.

But there’s good news! Since Trump has said this before, I already have the relevant chart at hand. No need to waste my time looking up the numbers and tossing them into Excel. So here it is. Not only are we not the highest, we’re the third lowest among rich economies:

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BinC Watch: It’s Sunday Morning, So Today It’s "Meet the Press"

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Republicans Have a Tough Six Months Ahead of Them

by HarlanBaltzell4 Posted on May 5, 2016

Mother Jones

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Every living Republican president has decided not to endorse Donald Trump:

Bush 41, who enthusiastically endorsed every Republican nominee for the last five election cycles, will stay out of the campaign process this time. He does not have plans to endorse presumptive GOP nominee Donald Trump, spokesman Jim McGrath told The Texas Tribune.

….Bush 43, meanwhile, “does not plan to participate in or comment on the presidential campaign,” according to his personal aide, Freddy Ford.

I agree that Republicans partly brought Trump on themselves. But only partly. They were hoping for an ideological extremist, and before this year it wasn’t obvious either to them or to liberal critics that they might instead get a demagogic populist extremist. All of us assumed that eventually Republicans would nominate a hardcore conservative, and we were all taken by surprise when Trump stepped in instead.

So the truth is that I feel sorry for them. A lot of conservatives have an agonizing choice to make now: either support Trump or, effectively, support Hillary Clinton, a candidate they loathe. If I had a similar choice—say, between supporting a liberal Trump or supporting Ted Cruz—what would I do? I’d like to think I’d bite the bullet and support Cruz. But honestly? I don’t know. Serious Republicans have a helluva rough six months ahead of them.

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Republicans Have a Tough Six Months Ahead of Them

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Harriet Tubman Was a Republican!

by t07c6o Posted on April 21, 2016

Mother Jones

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Conservatives have finally found something to like about the Obama administration:

Perhaps some of the voices calling for Tubman on the $20 just wanted any prominent African-American woman to replace one of the white males on our currency. If it was political correctness that drove this decision, who cares? The Obama administration has inadvertently given Tubman fans of all political stripes an opportunity to tell the story of a deeply-religious, gun-toting Republican who fought for freedom in defiance of the laws of a government that refused to recognize her rights.

Yeah. That’s the ticket. All those folks in the Obama administration had no idea who Harriet Tubman really was. They were all like, check this out, Jack: black, female, helped slaves, done. Boxes checked. Identity politics satisfied. Put her on the twenty.

The poor fools. She was religious! She carried a gun while helping slaves escape! She was a Republican! She fought for freedom against a tyrannical government! If you think about it, she’s basically the poster child of the modern-day Tea Party. And none of those idiots in the White House had a clue.

Seriously. That seems to be what they think. Next they’re going to remind us that Abraham Lincoln was a Republican too.

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Harriet Tubman Was a Republican!

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Reality Is Bearing Down on Paul Ryan

by DeannaColleano Posted on March 31, 2016

Mother Jones

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Lisa Mascaro reports that the honeymoon may be over for Paul Ryan. He only lasted five months:

As Congress is careening toward another budget crisis and the Republican Party is ripping itself apart over Donald Trump’s rise, the man best known as the architect of the GOP’s austere spending blueprint is likely to miss an April 15 deadline to approve a new funding plan for 2017.

He’s been unable to overcome the same resistance from the conservative House Freedom Caucus that doomed his predecessor, and is so far similarly unwilling to use the power of the speaker’s office to force stragglers to fall into line.

….To some, Ryan’s repeated calls for Republicans to “raise our gaze” and his frequent attempts to position himself as the GOP’s deep thinker are starting to give off an air of ivory tower insignificance. Conservatives wonder if he’s still a “young gun” trying to shake up the party. At a Trump rally in Ryan’s Wisconsin hometown of Janesville last week, the crowd booed the mention of his name.

….In many ways, the speaker’s problems are of his own making, the result of a leadership strategy he helped forge to recruit the most conservative candidates to run for office and then, after Republicans won the House majority in the 2010 midterm election, reject almost all of Obama’s initiatives.

Well, it’s still early days. Maybe Ryan is just working slowly and steadily to gain some kind of consensus. More likely, though, the tea partiers aren’t any more willing to compromise under Ryan than they were under Boehner—and that leaves Ryan high and dry. If he can’t convince them to be flexible even during an election year, he obviously doesn’t have much conservative credibility left. Hard to believe.

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Reality Is Bearing Down on Paul Ryan

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Obamacare Enrollment Up About 15 Percent This Year

by Dorcas8538 Posted on February 5, 2016

Mother Jones

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Open enrollment for Obamacare is over, and HHS announced yesterday that 12.7 million people signed up via the exchanges plus another 400,000 via New York’s Basic Health Program. So that gives us 13.1 million—up from 11.4 million last year. And since HHS is getting better at purging nonpayers, this number should hold up better throughout the year than it did in 2015. Charles Gaba has more details here.

Add to that about 15 million people enrolled in Medicaid thanks to the Obamacare expansion, and the total number of people covered this year comes to 28 million or so. This means Obamacare has reduced the ranks of the uninsured from 19 percent to about 10 percent. Not bad.

Obamacare’s raw enrollment numbers remain lower than CBO projected a few years ago, but that’s partly because employer health care has held up better than expected—which is a good thing. The fewer the people eligible for Obamacare the better. More on that here. Generally speaking, despite the best efforts of conservatives to insist that Obamacare is a disastrous failure, the truth is that it’s doing pretty well. More people are getting covered; costs are in line with projections; and there’s been essentially no effect on employment or hours worked. The only real problem with Obamacare is that it’s too stingy: deductibles are too high and out-of-pocket expenses are still substantial. Needless to say, though, that can be easily fixed anytime Republicans decide to stop rooting for failure and agree to make Obamacare an even better program. But I guess we shouldn’t hold our collective breath for that.

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Obamacare Enrollment Up About 15 Percent This Year

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If Money Is Speech, the First Amendment Is a Billionaire’s Dream

by CarolBiddlecomb Posted on January 11, 2016

Mother Jones

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The argument for a union shop is pretty straightforward: even if you hate your union, they perform collective bargaining for everyone, including you. Since you benefit from that bargaining, you should be required to pay union dues. After all, if dues are optional, why would anyone pay? Why not just let all the other suckers pay while you reap the benefits free of charge?

There’s another version of this argument that’s even more straightforward: if union shops are illegal—as they are in so-called “right to work” states—it’s all but impossible to set up a union. This is why the Chamber of Commerce and pretty much all Republicans are great fans of the open shop. It basically destroys the ability of unions to operate.

But what about public employee unions? What if you object to your union’s political views and don’t want to sponsor them? The answer, in many states, is that you can partially opt out of union dues, paying only an “agency fee” specifically designated for collective bargaining activities.

Problem solved? Not quite. What if you think that even collective bargaining is inherently a political stance when you’re bargaining with the government? Should you be allowed to opt out of union dues entirely? Today the Supreme Court heard arguments on this, and it didn’t go well for union supporters:

The justices appeared divided along familiar lines during an extended argument over whether government workers who choose not to join unions may nonetheless be required to help pay for collective bargaining. The court’s conservative majority appeared ready to say that such compelled financial support violates the First Amendment.

Collective bargaining, Justice Anthony M. Kennedy said, is inherently political when the government is the employer, and issues like merit pay, promotions and classroom size are subject to negotiation.

The best hope for a victory for the unions had rested with Justice Antonin Scalia, who has written and said things sympathetic to their position. But he was consistently hostileon Monday. “The problem is that everything that is bargained for with the government is within the political sphere,” he said.

In one sense, there’s nothing new to say about this. The liberal-conservative split on the Supreme Court has hardened over the past couple of decades, and we simply don’t see very much principled opposition to party lines anymore. Conservatives hate unions, so conservative Supreme Court justices are going to rule against unions whenever and wherever possible. They’ll make up the reasons afterward.

But there’s another sense in which this is interesting: it’s yet another step in the evolution of the conservative Supreme Court’s insistence that money is speech. In Citizens United and subsequent cases, they’ve all but wiped out any possible regulation of campaign finance on the grounds that campaign donations fund campaign speech. So if you can’t regulate political speech, you can’t regulate political money either.

Now they seem set to do the same for unions. If collective bargaining is inherently political speech, then you can’t force people to fund it. That’s a prima facie violation of the First Amendment.

I wonder how far this can go? After all, you can make a case that spending money is nearly always implicit speech: my purchase of a Snickers bar is a public declaration that Snickers bars are delicious, and my company’s dodgy advertising claims are a declaration of deeply held corporate emotions. So much for regulation of sugary snacks or false advertising.

Money is speech. Speech can’t be regulated. Therefore, money can’t be regulated. It’s a pretty simple syllogism. And, possibly, a pretty handy one.

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If Money Is Speech, the First Amendment Is a Billionaire’s Dream

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