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Deadline Looming, Senate Rescues Puerto Rico From Default

by DesmondBosisto Posted on June 29, 2016

Mother Jones

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Two days before Puerto Rico was set to default on $2 billion in debt payments, the Senate staved off calamity by advancing a measure Wednesday that will allow the island to restructure its debts.

The Puerto Rico Oversight, Management, and Economic Stability Act, known as PROMESA, now heads to President Barack Obama for his signature. It will create an independent financial oversight board that will oversee the island’s budgets and allow the Puerto Rican government to restructure its nearly $70 billion in debts with 18 different creditors. A key provision would halt all pending litigation related to the debt—there are currently 14 different lawsuits—and allow for continued funding of essential public health and safety services for the island’s 3.5 million residents.

The measure was tacked on to a bill in the Senate that will reauthorize the National Sea Grant Program through fiscal year 2021.

“Obviously, the bill isn’t perfect,” Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) said after its passage, according to the Washington Post. “But here’s why we should support it: It won’t cost taxpayers a dime; it prevents a bailout; and it offers Puerto Rico the best chance to return to financial stability and economic growth over the long term so we can help prevent another financial crisis like this in the future.”

On Monday, Treasury Secretary Jack Lew sent a letter to McConnell arguing that failure to pass the bill by July 1 could lead to Puerto Rico defaulting on a $2 billion debt and interest payment and a possible court order forcing the island’s government to pay creditors before providing essential services for its people. The result could have been that Puerto Rico would have stopped paying police officers and firefighters, shut down public transit, and even closed medical facilities.

The next day, Puerto Rico Gov. Alejandro Garcia Padilla wrote an op-ed for CNBC and argued that there was no choice but to pass this bill. He noted that the island’s government has already cut millions in spending, eliminated thousands of public jobs, raised taxes, and withheld tax returns, and is currently $2 billion behind in payments to suppliers (in addition to the $2 billion debt payment due July 1).

“The emergency measures we have taken are unsustainable, harm our economy, reduce revenues and diminish our capacity to repay our debts,” he wrote. “Puerto Rico cannot endure any more austerity.”

The governor’s op-ed echoed many Democrats, Puerto Ricans, and observers and said the independent financial review board—which has broad powers over the island’s budget decisions and is not accountable to any local elected leaders—”unnecessarily undercuts the democratic institution of the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico.” Democracy Now’s Juan González noted Wednesday that a majority of Puerto Ricans oppose the bill and even the concept of an independent review board.

On Tuesday, as the Senate debated the bill, Democratic presidential contender Sen. Bernie Sanders railed against the bill, urging his colleagues not to support it, according to the Washington Post. Sanders has opposed the bill since it was proposed in the House.

“Is this legislation smacking of the worst form of colonialism, in the sense that it takes away all of the important democratic rights of the American citizens of Puerto Rico?” he asked Sen. Bob Menendez (D-N.J.), who was speaking against the bill at the time. “That basically, four Republicans who likely believe in strong austerity programs will essentially be running that island for the indefinite future?”

Here’s how the financial review board works: The president will appoint the seven-member board by September 1, choosing the members from a list of names submitted by congressional leadership. â&#128;&#139;A nominee must have a background in finance, municipal bond markets, management, law, or government operations and cannot have a primary residence or business interest on the island. House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wisc.) will nominate three members; McConnell, Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.), House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), and Obama will each nominate one. The governor of Puerto Rico, or his designee, will have a non-voting spot on the board.

The cash-strapped Puerto Rican government is responsible for coming up with the initial $2 million to establish the board—which will operate without any local oversight— and then will also be responsible figuring out its budget and permanently funding it to cover salaries for an executive director, other staff members, and overhead. The board will continue to be in charge of Puerto Rico’s financial existence until the island’s government has “adequate” access to short-term and long-term credit markets at reasonable interest rates and develops and maintains four consecutive years of on-target, board-determined budgets.

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Deadline Looming, Senate Rescues Puerto Rico From Default

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Congress fails to pass Zika bill, and that’s an ominous sign of things to come

by Kristian03T Posted on June 28, 2016

This bites

Congress fails to pass Zika bill, and that’s an ominous sign of things to come

By on Jun 28, 2016Share

The Zika virus epidemic in Latin America and the Caribbean threatens to spread throughout much of the United States, causing birth defects and potentially deadly or paralyzing complications, but it looks like Congress isn’t going to do anything about it. With climate change increasing the prevalence of mosquito-borne illnesses such as Zika, this is a chilling reminder of how political dysfunction may prevent timely responses to climate-related disasters.

The House passed a $1.1 billion bill to fight Zika last week, and on Tuesday, the Senate voted 52 to 48 in favor of the same measure. But it now takes 60 votes to pass anything in the Senate, thanks to rampant filibuster abuse, so 52 votes is not enough.

Strangely, Senate Democrats were the ones who voted the bill down. They had valid reasons. House and Senate Republicans stuffed the bill with a conservative wish list unconnected to Zika. “The package loosens Environmental Protection Agency restrictions on pesticides and strikes a measure that would have banned display of the Confederate Battle Flag at cemeteries run by the Department of Veterans affairs,” The Washington Post reports. The bill also excludes Planned Parenthood from its funding, even though the Zika crisis directly involves women’s reproductive health. And it pulls funding away from the Affordable Care Act.

So Democrats felt compelled to vote against the Zika funding bill rather than expose Americans to more dangerous chemicals, snub Planned Parenthood, and endorse racist, treasonous symbolism.

The end result is that we likely won’t have a federal response to Zika this year, though one is clearly needed. “At least four women on the U.S. mainland have given birth to infants with birth defects related to Zika, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is monitoring 265 women on the U.S. mainland and an additional 189 with Zika in Puerto Rico,” the Post reports. The CDC estimates that 25 percent of Puerto Ricans could be infected within a year, and 1.1 percent of blood donations on the island currently have the virus present. Puerto Rico is ill-equipped to handle a public health emergency right now as it is struggling with an economic and fiscal crisis.

Democrats have been trying for months to pass an emergency-funding bill that would provide for a robust response to Zika. In February, the Obama administration requested nearly $1.9 billion to bolster prevention measures such as mosquito control in states and territories facing Zika outbreaks and to invest in federal research and detection. For three months, Congress did nothing. In May, the Senate passed a $1.1 billion bill and House Republicans countered with a bill that would cover less than half of Obama’s request. Both included spending cuts to other public health programs. Unable to reconcile the House and Senate bills, Congress adjourned for a Memorial Day recess.

Now they have finally made a deal, but it’s one that Senate Democrats can’t accept. This is typical of congressional Republicans, who suffer from a pathological need to politicize everything. From Hurricane Katrina to Superstorm Sandy, Republicans have tried to capitalize on nearly every crisis by making funding contingent on passing unrelated measures to advance their preexisting agenda: stripping away labor protections, eliminating environmental regulations, undermining Obamacare, or just cutting domestic spending. They also have fetishized the idea of paying for emergency-spending bills with cuts to unrelated spending, though they never feel the need to pay for tax cuts with spending cuts. They seem to think fighting deadly disease is less important than showering money on the rich.

This congressional deadlock is an ominous sign for a future that will feature more outbreaks like Zika and other disasters like floods, heat waves, and wildfires.

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Congress fails to pass Zika bill, and that’s an ominous sign of things to come

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These Americans Have Never Seen a White President Before

by RoxieKwc42100 Posted on June 28, 2016

Mother Jones

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In 2009, Barack Obama was sworn into office as the 44th president of the United States, the first black man to run the White House. While the upcoming presidential election could be the first time the US sees a woman in that job, that wouldn’t be the only historic aspect of a Hillary Clinton victory for a certain swath of Americans. The above video, produced by BET, surveys some special young citizens about their opinions on the Obamas, Donald Trump, and their prospects for witnessing the “first white president.” Enjoy.

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These Americans Have Never Seen a White President Before

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Is This Donald Trump’s Most Outlandish Fundraising Email Yet?

by MLKHalley8 Posted on June 28, 2016

Mother Jones

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The subject heading on the email is eye-popping: “Have you heard about the Hillary indictment?”

But when you click on the email, which on Tuesday afternoon hit the inboxes of people on conservative lists (hours after House Republicans released their Benghazi report), the news is not that the feds have dropped the hammer on the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee. Instead, it’s Donald Trump, the apparent GOP nominee, begging for campaign cash.

In this email, he calls on voters to indict Clinton:

On November 8th, the American people will finally have the chance to do what the authorities have been too afraid to do over these last 2 decades: INDICT HILLARY CLINTON AND FIND HER GUILTY OF ALL CHARGES.

Trump goes on to ask the recipient to donate five bucks—or 10, or 20, or 50, or more—to “indict.”

For what? He doesn’t specify. But he suggests there are many options:

As I highlighted in my speech last week, during the Clinton Presidency, there were many, many scandals. TravelGate, Whitewater. The personal destruction of Monica Lewinsky. The Rose Law Firm scandal. And, of course, anything involving Sydney Blumenthal.

Actually, that’s Sidney-with-an-i Blumenthal, a longtime aide and associate of Clinton. And it’s quite a move for a candidate to insinuate that someone associated with a political foe has engaged in illegal conduct, without offering any details.

But, wait, there’s more, Trump says:

Benghazi…Her illegal email server…The donations from terrorist nations to the Clinton Foundation. The list goes on and on.

Perhaps he missed this headline: “House Benghazi Report Finds No New Evidence of Wrongdoing by Hillary Clinton.”

In the past few decades of American politics, there has often been fierce rhetoric exchanged between presidential campaigns and their advocates, but the candidates have usually stayed within certain respectful boundaries. The dirty work has generally been done by surrogates and side groups. (Think of the Swift Boat outfit that went after John Kerry in 2004.) Trump has cast aside all notions of civil debate. He resorts to name-calling and schoolyard taunting. And now he’s raising money with a misleadingly titled email aimed at conservatives that suggests Clinton has been indicted. That’s sure to get them to click.

In the email, Trump repeatedly asks for a contribution. But he also claims that Clinton is lying when she says she is “crushing” Trump in fundraising. He adds, “This claim is laughable. i can write my campaign a check at any time.”

Perhaps. But then why is he resorting to such an unconventional measure to raise money?

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Is This Donald Trump’s Most Outlandish Fundraising Email Yet?

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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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Hillary Clinton Continues to Not Be a Shady Character

by JoFMNzorbmdirn Posted on June 27, 2016

Mother Jones

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Reporters sure are desperate to demonstrate some kind of shadiness on Hillary Clinton’s part. Here’s a headline in the LA Times today:

House Democrats mistakenly release transcript confirming big payout to Clinton friend Sidney Blumenthal

Sounds shady! I clicked immediately, wanting to know who gave Blumenthal a big payout. The answer, it turns out, is Media Matters, for which he works. This is in no way shady and in no way connected to Hillary Clinton anyway. And here’s an AP headline from this weekend:

Clinton’s State Dept. calendar missing scores of entries

This also sound shady! But no. It turns out that on Hillary Clinton’s official State Department schedule, she sometimes had private meetings and didn’t list the participants. “No known federal laws were violated,” the article says.

Sheesh. Is this the best they can do? I know that we’re all desperate for balance given the tsunami of lies and sleaze coming from the Trump campaign, but surely there’s something a little more concrete we can lay at Hillary’s feet? This is lame.

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Hillary Clinton Continues to Not Be a Shady Character

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Don’t Worry Super-Rich, Paul Ryan’s Tax Plan Still Has Your Back

by GrazynaMcWilliam Posted on June 24, 2016

Mother Jones

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House Republicans rolled out a roadmap for tax reform Friday that drastically cuts corporate taxes and benefits high-income taxpayers—but not nearly as much as the plan proffered by the party’s presumptive presidential nominee, Donald Trump.

House Speaker Paul Ryan unveiled the GOP proposal—the sixth and final policy blueprint that the House GOP has issued this month under Ryan’s direction—at a news conference in Washington. The plan would slash corporate rates from the current 35 percent to 20 percent and lower the top individual rate from 39.6 to 33 percent. (Trump has proposed cuts to 15 and 25 percent, respectively.) The blueprint also eliminates the estate tax, long a target of Republicans in Congress, and lowers the tax rate on income from investments.

“The way I’d sum it up is: We want a tax code that works for the taxpayers—not the tax collectors,” Ryan said. “We want to make it simpler, flatter, fairer…Make it so simple that the average American can do their taxes on a postcard.”

Since taking the House in 2011, Republicans have repeatedly promised to overhaul the tax system, which hasn’t seen a major update since 1986. But they have stumbled over a political roadblock: Every major deduction or tax credit has a devoted constituency who would be enraged were it to be eliminated. The last comprehensive Republican proposal was submitted in 2014 by retired Rep. Dave Camp (R-Mich.), former chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee. His scheme varied significantly from the new blueprint. It lowered the corporate rate to 25 percent rather than 20 percent and cut the top individual rate just to 35 percent, while at the same time sacrificing popular deductions on charitable giving and mortgage interest. It failed to attract much support within the party and never received a vote.

The new blueprint is more circumspect, maintaining the mortgage and charitable deductions, as well as the Earned Income Tax Credit, a key poverty-fighting tool, and a deduction for spending on higher education. It leaves it to the Ways and Means Committee to reform these programs. Otherwise, the plan makes an effort to simplify the system, replacing itemized deductions with a higher standard deduction and eliminating most business tax breaks. It also reduces the number of income tax brackets from seven to three.

It is not yet clear whether the plan would add to the deficit. But as Howard Gleckman of the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center writes, “It is hard to imagine how these tax cuts could pay for themselves.” The House GOP’s scheme is bound to cost less than Trump’s tax cuts. Experts estimate that the presumptive nominee’s plan would shrink revenues by $9.2 trillion over 10 years, forcing draconian cuts in government spending.

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Don’t Worry Super-Rich, Paul Ryan’s Tax Plan Still Has Your Back

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Republicans in Congress passed a law giving EPA more power

by LadonnaCuriel Posted on June 22, 2016

The Chemical Bothers

Republicans in Congress passed a law giving EPA more power

By on Jun 22, 2016 11:27 amShare

Congress has done something that’s practically unheard of. It handed the Environmental Protection Agency broad new powers. On Wednesday, President Barack Obama is signing the legislation into law.

In early June, the Senate passed a sweeping bill that revamps how federal regulators handle chemical safety, after Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) lifted a last-minute hold on a vote. Because the House already passed the same reconciled version, the bill is headed to President Obama’s desk, where he is expected sign it into law.

Which means a Republican-controlled Congress managed to do something that no Congress since 1976 had been able to do: Overhaul the Toxic Substances Control Act, a flawed, unenforceable law that gave the EPA just 90 days to study whether a new chemical was dangerous. It didn’t even allow the EPA to regulate asbestos-containing products, the U.S. Court of Appeals ruled in 1989.

The new bill means the EPA can finally evaluate cancer-linked substances like BPA and styrene used in plastics and formaldehyde found in fabrics and cars. It establishes uniform standards for evaluating about 20 chemicals at a time, and means more funding can be directed toward studying high-priority problem chemicals, especially those used near drinking water.

In extreme cases, the law might lead to a ban on certain chemicals. In others, it might mean more warning labels or limited use.

For a little perspective on just how great a task the EPA now has ahead, there are some 64,000 unregulated chemicals on the market.

No law, much less one coming from a conservative Congress, is perfect. And the industry won at least one key fight: States won’t be able to restrict or ban chemicals if they’re under review by the EPA. That’s why the Environmental Working Group opposed the bill, and why New York’s attorney general said he was disappointed in it. But most health and green groups accepted the compromise bill as an overall win.

This was a rare instance in which the manufacturers and chemical industries were on the same side as environmental and public health advocates: Everyone knew the current system was broken and needed to be fixed, and still it took many years to reach a compromise. Even the Senate’s resident science denier James Inhofe (R-Okla.) endorsed the bill.

But don’t expect to see this kind of cooperation on other public health issues, from lead-poisoned water to any of the threats posed by climate change. For that, we’ll need a very different Congress — and we can’t afford to wait another 40 years to get it.

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Republicans in Congress passed a law giving EPA more power

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Marco Rubio Can’t Quit the Senate

by AprilNagle Posted on June 22, 2016

Mother Jones

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Marco Rubio spent the last year promising that he would not run for re-election to his Senate seat in Florida, and spent the better part of his doomed White House bid bashing the Senate. But on Wednesday, the Washington Post reports, Rubio will announce that he is reversing his pledge and in fact wants to spend another six years in a job he thinks doesn’t achieve anything.

As recently as a month ago, Rubio was unequivocal about his future plans.

In the past month, Republicans have put pressure on Rubio to reconsider. His name recognition could help the GOP hold his seat, and with it control of the Senate. Rubio, who is expected to run for president again, even as early as 2020, apparently has decided he wants to stay in the Senate, even though he really doesn’t like it there. Over the past year, Rubio has made a lot of comments disparaging the “dysfunctional” Senate. When he took flack during his presidential campaign for missing votes, he contended that the votes really didn’t matter anyway. “We’re not going to fix America with senators and congressmen,” he said in January. Perhaps he’s changed his mind.

At least one former foe of Rubio will be cheering his decision:

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Marco Rubio Can’t Quit the Senate

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Watch: Attacks on American Abortion Providers Over the Years

by FeliciaFoutch Posted on June 3, 2016

Mother Jones

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A new video from the Thomson Reuters Foundation shows a chilling timeline of violence against abortion providers over the past two decades, from the 1993 murder of Dr. David Gunn in Pensacola, Florida, up through the recent shooting at a Planned Parenthood clinic in Colorado Springs, Colorado.

But perhaps the most heart-stopping detail is that abortion providers are in increasingly short supply—Reuters reports that in 1982, there were 2,908 providers in the United States. In 2011, that number had dropped to 1,720.

Democrats in the House are calling for Rep. Marsha Blackburn to end the “witch hunt” of the Select Investigative Panel on Infant Lives, which was formed by John Boehner last fall to explore allegations that abortion clinics are selling fetal tissue for profit. (There has been no evidence thus far to prove this.) Democratic members have expressed concern that the aggressive allegations put forth by Blackburn and the Republicans on the panel endanger researchers and abortion providers.

You can watch the video below:

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Watch: Attacks on American Abortion Providers Over the Years

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