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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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China Adopts an Unusual Approach to Fighting a Stock Market Crash

by JerilynFremont Posted on July 2, 2015

Mother Jones

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Hum de hum hum. Greece is in trouble. Puerto Rico too. And don’t forget China:

Chinese shares plunged Thursday, even as Beijing grasps for solutions to stem the selling, including relaxing rules on the use of borrowed funds to invest in stocks….The Shanghai Composite closed down 3.5% while the smaller Shenzhen market was down 5.6%. The ChiNext board, composed of small-cap stocks, sank 4%. Even after losing nearly a quarter of its value from a mid-June high, China’s main stock market has almost doubled in value over the past year.

….In a rare move late Wednesday, Chinese regulators set in motion draft proposals to ease restrictions on margin lending earlier than scheduled….Regulators’ sudden shift in attitude about margin trading comes after vocal warnings about its risks in recent months. In April, regulators took various steps to rein in the practice, which had allowed investors to borrow several times their investment money.

Inscrutable, those Chinese. Their stock market is crashing so they’re promoting an increase in margin trading. That’s sort of like lighting a tree on fire when it gets dark outside and all your flashlights are dead. It’ll work. For a while. But it’s really not considered best practice.

Then again, maybe there’s something I don’t understand here. All I know is that panicky measures to halt a panic don’t usually work. And the Chinese stock market still has a long way to fall. I sure hope they figure something out.

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China Adopts an Unusual Approach to Fighting a Stock Market Crash

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Visitors to Federal Websites Are Into Taxes, Weather, and…Recalling Puerto Rico’s Governor

by BurtonWarkentin Posted on March 19, 2015

Mother Jones

Today the federal government officially launched analytics.usa.gov, a website that shows online traffic to nearly 300 official sites (out of 1,350 executive branch domains). Think of it as Google Analytics or Chartbeat for civics nerds.

Given that Tax Day is right around the corner, the Internal Revenue Service’s “Where’s My Refund?” page predictably lands at the top of the list of sites with the most current visitors. Next is the National Weather Service’s forecast by region page.

But one entry on the top 10 list doesn’t fit in with Americans’ interest in taxes and weather: A petition calling for the removal of Puerto Rico Gov. Alejandro García Padilla that’s posted on the White House’s We the People site. Its appearance on the list is a testament both to its popularity and just how few people hang out on federal websites.

petitions.whitehouse.gov

As of midday Thursday, the petition had about 95,000 signatures, short of the 100,000 mark that would compel the White House to formally respond. Most of the rancor toward García Padilla stems from the island’s current economic crisis and the governor’s recent proposal to implement a 16 percent value-added tax to help pay down billions of the commonwealth’s debt.

Whether the Obama Administration could actually remove García Padilla is a complicated question. As a commonwealth, the island and its 4 million residents (most of whom are US citizens) has its own constitution, which includes a provision for impeachment. But the federal government could also theoretically remove the governor under a provision in the US Constitution that says that Congress has the power to “dispose of” laws in US territories.

It’s not clear what percentage of the visitors to the anti-García Padilla petition page live in Puerto Rico.

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Visitors to Federal Websites Are Into Taxes, Weather, and…Recalling Puerto Rico’s Governor

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Report: Justice Department to Condemn Racially Biased Policing in Ferguson

by DeniseLoymlz Posted on March 2, 2015

Mother Jones

The US Department of Justice may have passed on filing federal charges against former Ferguson police officer Darren Wilson after he shot and killed Michael Brown in the St. Louis suburb last summer, but the department isn’t letting the city’s police force totally off the hook. According to the New York Times, the DOJ is about to release a report that accuses the Ferguson Police Department—and the city itself—of systemically mistreating the community’s African American population with discriminatory traffic stops; disproportionate ticketing, arrests, and court fines; and physical abuse at the hands of police officers.

According to the Times‘ Matt Apuzzo, the DOJ will recommend a series of changes at the department. If the city doesn’t agree, the DOJ could sue to force reforms. The DOJ has court-backed agreements with nearly two dozen police departments around the country (including the island-wide force in Puerto Rico), and is fighting four other departments in court over proposed changes.

If the Times is right, the report will bolster and likely add to information that has been documented in the past by activists, advocates, and at least one state-level agency in Missouri. As Mother Jones reported in September 2014, fines and court fees are Ferguson’s second-larges revenue source, and warrants were issued in 2013 at a rate of three per household (25,000 in a city of 21,000 people).

Another Mother Jones report—based off findings from the Missouri Attorney General’s office—noted that in 2013 in Ferguson, 86 percent of traffic stops and 92 percent of searches of individuals involved African American. That’s in a city that’s around 60% black (and one that had, at the time of Brown’s death, just three black police officers). Despite the cops’ focus on Ferguson’s black residents, just one in five black people police searched were found to be carrying contraband. For white people, that number was one in three.

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Report: Justice Department to Condemn Racially Biased Policing in Ferguson

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Let’s name all of the ocean water that will someday flood us after Reagan

by kowalski099 Posted on February 7, 2013

Let’s name all of the ocean water that will someday flood us after Reagan

By Philip Bump

Once again, Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) has proposed naming the United States’ offshore “exclusive economic zone” after Ronald Reagan. (He tried this last year, too.) The EEZ, as it’s known, is the expanse of ocean between three and 200 miles off U.S. coastlines in areas we control. It’s our ocean, which we can do with what we want. Maybe we want to build statues to former presidents there. We can; it’s our water.

So why does Issa want to name it after the Gipper? Two reasons. First, because he can’t suggest we go big and name a state after Reagan since there aren’t any more states. Except maybe someday Puerto Rico, and I suspect Issa wouldn’t consider that an appropriate tribute. And, second, because naming things after Reagan is how Republicans tithe.

From The Hill:

Issa on Wednesday reintroduced his bill to rename the country’s Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ), which generally extends from three miles to 200 miles offshore, as the Ronald Wilson Reagan Exclusive Economic Zone.

The late Reagan, a Californian like Issa, established the EEZ with a 1983 presidential proclamation that declared the nation’s sovereign rights for exploring, exploiting and conserving offshore resources, including energy. …

Under the proposal, references to the EEZ in U.S. laws, regulations, maps and other documents would carry Reagan’s name.

Reagan Reagan Reagan Reagan! Reagan Reagan, Reagan Reagan Reagan Reagan Reagan Reagan Reagan!

NOAA

The new map of Exclusive Economic Zones. Click to embiggen and/or print out to use as a poster in your home

There’s another reason this is a good idea for conservatives, though it’s probably not one Issa has thought of. In 100 years, all of that Reagany ocean water will have risen so high that it floods thousands of acres of the snooty, liberal East and West Coasts. We’ll be swimming in Reagan, gang, paying the price for our sins of not loving Reagan enough. And maybe, just maybe, we’ll think of little old Darrell Issa when that happens.

Especially if we live in the new state of Issa, formerly known as Puerto Rico.

Philip Bump writes about the news for Gristmill. He also uses Twitter a whole lot.

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Let’s name all of the ocean water that will someday flood us after Reagan

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