Tag Archives: transgender

When Republicans Start Their Race to the Bottom, It Can Only Mean Primary Season Is Approaching

by RodrigoReinhard Posted on May 14, 2014

Mother Jones

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN” “http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd”>

Marco Rubio has announced that he thinks climate change is nonsense. Rand Paul has hastily backed off his heresy over voter ID laws. Bobby Jindal gave the commencement address at Liberty University this weekend. Rick Santorum is flogging a new book, Blue Collar Conservatives. Chris Christie is agonizing over whether to piss off gun owners by signing a bill that would ban magazines holding more than ten rounds. Mike Huckabee has ditched his amiable persona and is demanding impeachment of a judge who struck down a gay marriage ban in Arkansas.

I guess primary season must be approaching. The fight for the fever swamp vote is now in full swing.

Original source: 

When Republicans Start Their Race to the Bottom, It Can Only Mean Primary Season Is Approaching

Posted in alo, FF, GE, LG, ONA, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on When Republicans Start Their Race to the Bottom, It Can Only Mean Primary Season Is Approaching

There’s No Good Reason for Keeping OLC Opinions Confidential

by JuliaBuley Posted on May 14, 2014

Mother Jones

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN” “http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd”>

President Obama’s nomination of David Barron to the First Circuit Court of Appeals has reopened a fight over whether the White House should release Barron’s memo (written when he worked at the Office of Legal Counsel) justifying drone strikes against Anwar al-Awlaki. Time reports:

Under pressure from liberals and libertarians that threatens to sink a judicial nomination, the Obama Administration is moving closer to releasing a classified legal justification for the use of drone strikes against Americans fighting for al-Qaeda, Administration officials tell TIME.

….The U.S. intelligence community and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence want the Administration not to release the memo. Also against release is the Office of Legal Counsel, which serves as the in-house legal expert on executive branch powers and which vigorously guards its opinions.

Greg Sargent comments:

The case for more transparency was spelled out recently by the New York Times, which argued: “the government has the right to secrets about its operations, but not secrets about its legal reasoning.”

If there is a convincing rebuttal to that argument, I haven’t heard it. Indeed, one person who may agree with it is President Obama, given that in his big national security speech last May, he said he’d tasked his administration to “extend oversight of lethal actions outside of war zones that go beyond our reporting to Congress.” What is the rationale for keeping the legal justification secret?

I’d go further. I’ve never really understood the rationale for any OLC opinions to stay confidential. In some sense, yes, there’s a case to be made for executive privilege: this is advice from one of the president’s aides to the president himself, and courts have ruled that presidents have a legitimate interest in keeping internal advice confidential in order to ensure that they get candid judgments. But that’s a helluva stretch in this case because OLC opinions go beyond mere advice. For all practical purposes, they have the force of law, since presidents use OLC opinions as the basis for determining what they can and can’t do.

Should the United States have secret laws? As it happens, the United States does have secret laws. That is, actual congressional statutes that you and I aren’t allowed to read. So this isn’t quite as unprecedented as it seems. Still, that’s a rare occurrence, while OLC opinions are routinely kept secret. Why? If specific bits and pieces need to be redacted, fine. But in a democracy, the legal reasoning justifying the enforcement of our laws should be a matter of public record. We should all know what the laws of the land are and how the executive branch is allowed to act on them. There’s really no compelling argument on the other side.

View original article:  

There’s No Good Reason for Keeping OLC Opinions Confidential

Posted in alo, FF, GE, LG, ONA, PUR, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on There’s No Good Reason for Keeping OLC Opinions Confidential

Republican Tax Increases: A Centrist Fantasy That Refuses to Die

by Lila3153jc Posted on May 13, 2014

Mother Jones

Dave Weigel points me to Ron Fournier’s latest column:

As late as a year ago, just a few months after Obama shoved a reelection tax hike down their throats, the GOP leadership was still open to compromise. A budget deal would be hard, but not impossible, to strike. The situation required an able, nimble partner in the White House, a president who could help the GOP leadership reach and sell a deal to their conservative base. In March 2013, I wrote of the GOP: “Don’t mistake a negotiating position for reality. House Republicans tell me they are open to exchanging entitlement reform for new taxes—$250 billion to $300 billion, or approximately the amount that Republican Sen. Pat Toomey of Pennsylvania proposed raising over 10 years under the guise of tax reform.”

The numbers were specific because the possibility of a deal was real. But the White House, quite literally, laughed at it. The president had already bowed to his base, given up on compromise, and damaged his legacy.

I just don’t get this. Are there a few House Republicans who are open to a tax increase? Sure. Probably. Is there even the slightest chance of getting a majority of the GOP caucus to support a tax increase? Of course not. The evidence on this score is overwhelming. John Boehner was never able to get agreement even for the smoke-and-mirrors version of a tax increase, the kind that relies on dynamic scoring and rosy growth estimates. Nor were Republicans willing to accept Toomey’s proposal, even though it was effectively a tax cut, not a tax increase. There’s just plainly never been any chance at all of getting agreement for a proposal that would genuinely, concretely raise revenue.

I’m just flummoxed by this stuff. Whatever else you think of Fournier, he’s an experienced reporter who understands the political landscape. How can he possibly believe this stuff?

Source article: 

Republican Tax Increases: A Centrist Fantasy That Refuses to Die

Posted in FF, GE, LAI, LG, ONA, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Republican Tax Increases: A Centrist Fantasy That Refuses to Die

Is Obamacare Boosting the Economy? Color Me Skeptical.

by CharlieE87 Posted on May 13, 2014

Mother Jones

This is interesting:

Alec Phillips, economic researcher at Goldman Sachs, said in a note issued late last week to clients that subsidies from the Affordable Care Act boosted gross domestic product during the first quarter and are likely to do the same during the second quarter.

….Spending in the health-care industry was up 9.9% in the first quarter….But the health-care industry won’t be the only one to benefit, Phillips says, as subsidies will free up income for those who had no coverage before, as well as those who had insurance but were paying for it themselves.

“Overall, around 40% of the subsidies should find their way to non-health consumption this year,” he wrote.

I don’t have access to the full Goldman Sachs report, but I’m dubious about this for two reasons. First, Obamacare is roughly revenue neutral, which means federal subsidies are all paid for via tax revenue. Obamacare really shouldn’t have any first-order net stimulative effect on personal income or GDP. Second, although subsidies will reduce health insurance bills for people who were previously covered—thus freeing up income for other purposes—the individual mandate will force previously uncovered people to buy insurance they didn’t have before. This will reduce the income they have for other purposes. I don’t know how this nets out, but I’d be surprised if it was favorable to sectors other than health care.

Maybe Phillips has carefully run the numbers on all these things, and the effects are bigger than I think. There may be second-order distributional impacts, for example. For now, though, I’d be pretty cautious about assuming that Obamacare is having any substantial effect on the economy one way or the other.

Excerpt from – 

Is Obamacare Boosting the Economy? Color Me Skeptical.

Posted in FF, GE, LG, ONA, PUR, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Is Obamacare Boosting the Economy? Color Me Skeptical.

European Court Orders Google to Remove Links That Annoyed a Lawyer

by FriedaConstant Posted on May 13, 2014

Mother Jones

The European Court of Justice has ruled that Google can be required to delete links to public records even when the records themselves are allowed to remain active:

The case began in 2009 when Mario Costeja, a lawyer, objected that entering his name in Google’s search engine led to legal notices dating back to 1998 in an online version of a Spanish newspaper that detailed his accumulated debts and the forced sale of his property.

Mr. Costeja said that the debt issues had been resolved many years earlier and were no longer relevant. When the newspaper that had published the information, La Vanguardia, refused to remove the notices, and when Google refused to expunge the links, Mr. Costeja complained to the Spanish Data Protection Agency that his rights to the protection of his personal data were being violated.

The Spanish authority ordered Google to remove the links in July 2010, but it did not impose any order on La Vanguardia.

Generally speaking, I’m in favor of greater privacy rights, and I mostly support the EU’s more aggressive approach to privacy than what we have in America. But this ruling is troubling. Not because Google has to delete some links—I can imagine circumstances where that might be justified—but because they’re being treated differently than the newspaper that published the information in the first place. It’s as if the court recognizes that La Vanguardia enjoys freedom of the press, but not Google. I’m not sure how you justify that, aside from a vague notion that La Vanguardia is a “real” press outlet and Google isn’t. But whatever notions you have of press freedoms, they shouldn’t rely on distinctions between old and new media. If La Vanguardia is allowed to publish it, Google should be allowed to link to it.

We’ll see how this plays out. To me, though, it doesn’t even seem like a close call. These are legal records; they were published legitimately; they’re potentially relevant regardless of whether the debts were cleared up; and they aren’t even that old. I certainly understand Costeja’s annoyance, but that’s not a good reason to abridge press freedoms so broadly.

Excerpt from: 

European Court Orders Google to Remove Links That Annoyed a Lawyer

Posted in FF, GE, LAI, LG, ONA, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on European Court Orders Google to Remove Links That Annoyed a Lawyer

Who Deserves Credit for Reducing the Federal Deficit?

by FinlayBales Posted on May 12, 2014

Mother Jones

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN” “http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd”>

Hey, looky here! Steve Benen highlights the chart on the right, which shows that President Obama is making steady progress reducing the massive federal deficit that was rung up in FY2009 by George Bush and the Republican Party. Nice work, Obama!

But wait. Does this seem a wee bit unfair? Fine. You’re right. Bush wasn’t responsible for the deficit. The Great Recession was responsible for the deficit. Nor is Obama (or Boehner or McConnell or anyone else) responsible for the reduction in the deficit. That happened because the economy started to recover. That’s it. That’s the whole story. Deficits always go up during recessions and they always go down after recessions end. Tax and spending policy makes a difference, but not much of one. Taxes and spending almost always go down during recessions, and they almost always go back up during recoveries.

However, with the deficit now around 3 percent of GDP, we’re back in fairly normal territory, which means that tax and spending policy does make a difference. (Until the next recession, anyway.) However, there’s an iron law that everyone should remember but nobody ever does. Here it is:

If we drive the deficit down to zero, then private savings have to equal our trade balance.

In other words, if we run a trade deficit, then we’ll have negative private savings. If we want positive private savings (and we do), then we either have to run a trade surplus or else we have to offset private savings with a big budget deficit. There is no way around this. It’s an accounting identity. So whenever you hear someone yakking away about the horrors of the federal deficit, ask them what they want in its place. There’s no hedging on this. You either want a trade surplus (no more living beyond our means!) or negative private savings (bad for growth). It’s one or the other, whether you like it or not.

Original source – 

Who Deserves Credit for Reducing the Federal Deficit?

Posted in FF, G & F, GE, LG, ONA, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Who Deserves Credit for Reducing the Federal Deficit?

Quote of the Day: FCC Chair Pretends to Change Course on Net Neutrality

by TerranceTimperl Posted on May 12, 2014

Mother Jones

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN” “http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd”>

From an anonymous FCC official:

There is a wide feeling on the eighth floor that this is a debacle and I think people would like to see a change of course. We may not agree on the course, but we agree the road we’re on is to disaster.

The debacle in question is the proposal by FCC chair Tom Wheeler that would gut net neutrality by allowing big companies to pay ISPs for faster internet service. Wheeler’s proposal has provoked a massive backlash, and he’s now promising revisions:

The new language by FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler to be circulated as early as Monday is an attempt to address criticism of his proposal….In the new draft, Mr. Wheeler is sticking to the same basic approach but will include language that would make clear that the FCC will scrutinize the deals to make sure that the broadband providers don’t unfairly put nonpaying companies’ content at a disadvantage, according to an agency official.

….An agency official said the draft would also seek comment on whether such agreements, called “paid prioritization,” should be banned outright, and look to prohibit the big broadband companies, such as Comcast Corp. and AT&T Inc., from doing deals with some content companies on terms that they aren’t offering to others.

Mr. Wheeler’s language will also invite comments on whether broadband Internet service should be considered a public utility, which would subject it to greater regulation. The FCC has so far not reclassified broadband as a utility, and providers have fiercely opposed such a move, saying it would cause innovation and investment to collapse.

Color me unimpressed. A promise that the FCC will “scrutinize” deals is basically worthless, and inviting comments on reclassifying broadband internet service will lead nowhere if Wheeler himself doesn’t support it—which he doesn’t. This looks mostly like smoke and mirrors to me.

Visit site:  

Quote of the Day: FCC Chair Pretends to Change Course on Net Neutrality

Posted in FF, GE, LG, ONA, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Quote of the Day: FCC Chair Pretends to Change Course on Net Neutrality

Liberals Fight Back Against Obama Court Nominees

by JoyBarnhill Posted on May 12, 2014

Mother Jones

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN” “http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd”>

Democrats may have done away with the filibuster for judicial nominees, but the infamous blue-slip procedure remains alive and well. This means that Republican senators can still block nominees unless President Obama cuts some kind of deal with them. That’s exactly what Georgia’s Saxby Chambliss and Johnny Isakson have done for the past several years, so in 2013 the White House negotiated a compromise with them. They agreed to approve several of Obama’s judicial nominees in return for getting their way on one of them. Now liberals are pissed:

Liberals are incensed that the administration is pushing hard for Michael Boggs, a judge on Georgia’s state Court of Appeals, to join the federal bench in Georgia. Boggs, a conservative Democrat, voted while in the state Legislature to reinstate a version of the Confederate flag as the state flag, opposed same-sex marriage and took positions on abortion that critics say would have limited women’s rights.

….As that fight plays out, prominent senators from both parties, backed by the American Civil Liberties Union, are trying to block, or at least delay, a planned vote on Harvard law professor David Barron, whom Obama has nominated to be a judge on the 1st Circuit Court of Appeals, which hears cases from New England. As a Justice Department lawyer, Barron wrote at least one memo that provided the legal justification for the targeted killing of Anwar Awlaki, a U.S. citizen who was slain by a drone strike in Yemen in 2011.

In one sense, it’s hard to know what liberals expect here. Boggs is obviously not a good nominee, but it’s not as if Obama is in love with the guy. He just agreed to swallow hard and nominate him in return for getting support for four others. Since there’s nothing Obama can do about the blue-slip rule, he didn’t have much choice about it. As for Barron, it’s hard to be too shocked over his nomination. Obama himself approved the killing of Awlaki and has vigorously defended it. Of course he supports Barron.

But in another sense, it’s good to see liberals fighting back. Maybe it won’t do any immediate good, just as it doesn’t always do any good for tea partiers to harass mainstream Republicans. But if the fight is rough enough, it sets boundaries for future nominations. That’s probably the main benefit of opposition in this case: Both of these nominees might be approved anyway, but at least the White House will know they’ve been in a scrap. Maybe next time they’ll think twice.

Original link: 

Liberals Fight Back Against Obama Court Nominees

Posted in Citizen, FF, GE, LAI, LG, ONA, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Liberals Fight Back Against Obama Court Nominees

Obamacare Saves Lives, But That’s Not Really Its Big Benefit

by TGEGreggjbxsfx Posted on May 12, 2014

Mother Jones

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN” “http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd”>

Ed Kilgore points me to a recent piece by Harold Pollack that takes a look at the recent study of Romneycare in Massachusetts and tries to extrapolate what it means about Obamacare:

The Massachusetts estimates imply that the ACA will prevent something in the neighborhood of 24,096 deaths every year (simply: 20 million divided by 830). That’s more than twice the number of Americans killed in gun homicides. It’s considerably more than the number of Americans who die from HIV/AIDS.

The Cato Institute’s Michael Cannon rightly notes that these mortality reductions won’t come cheap. My own faux-precise back-of-the-envelope calculation suggests that the cost per averted death is about $3.3 million. That seems like a lot of money—and it is. Yet it actually compares favorably in cost-effectiveness with other widely accepted medical, public health, product safety and workplace interventions….And of course this $3.3 million only captures the impact of health reform on reducing mortality rates. It doesn’t count so many other important health, financial and personal benefits of health coverage, from regular preventative care to peace of mind.

I’d very strongly emphasize that last sentence. The effect of Obamacare on mortality is always going to be contentious. The Massachusetts study might be wrong. Medicaid might be less effective than private insurance. And there’s no telling how long these medical interventions delay death. Six months? Six years? More?

But nobody should hang too much on these results. Obviously, preventing death is important, but it’s by no means the primary value of health insurance, especially in the non-elderly population. The primary value is (a) financial and (b) the ability to get routine health care that improves your life even if it doesn’t prolong it. Knee surgery. Hip replacements. Antidepressant prescriptions. Pain management. Diabetes control. And on and on. The vast majority of the non-elderly rarely receive life-saving health care. But so what? Even if health insurance had zero impact on mortality, we’d still want it. It provides us with medical care that makes life more livable and it prevents us from living with the constant fear that we’re one expensive treatment away from bankruptcy. That’s the real benefit of Obamacare. Obsessing about mortality misses the point.

Continue reading: 

Obamacare Saves Lives, But That’s Not Really Its Big Benefit

Posted in FF, GE, LG, ONA, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Obamacare Saves Lives, But That’s Not Really Its Big Benefit

Quote of the Day: Billionaires Insist that Billionaire-Friendly Policies Don’t Actually Benefit Billionaires

by KimParishg Posted on May 9, 2014

Mother Jones

Americans for Prosperity, the Koch-fueled super-PAC, is doubling down this year after its failure to move the needle much in 2012. Politico’s Kenneth Vogel got hold of an internal strategy memo that outlines what they think went wrong in the last election:

To remedy the messaging disadvantage, AFP developed “a sophisticated new media message-testing strategy to target specific demographics in specific locations we need to move on our issues,” according to the memo….“If the presidential election told us anything, it’s that Americans place a great importance on taking care of those in need and avoiding harm to the weak,” reads the AFP memo….“We consistently see that Americans in general are concerned that free-market policy — and its advocates — benefit the rich and powerful more than the most vulnerable of society….We must correct this misconception.”

And what better way to correct this misconception than to collect hundreds of millions of dollars from America’s crankiest right-wing billionaires in order to fund the election of people dedicated to slashing every possible program that protects the weak and takes care of those in need? It’s hard to understand why America’s poor and working class are so obstinately misguided about what America’s moneyed class really wants.

See original:  

Quote of the Day: Billionaires Insist that Billionaire-Friendly Policies Don’t Actually Benefit Billionaires

Posted in FF, GE, LG, ONA, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Quote of the Day: Billionaires Insist that Billionaire-Friendly Policies Don’t Actually Benefit Billionaires