Ted Cruz is starting his 2016 run off with a bang,
earning a big old “false” from PolitiFact on his very first official
fact check of the 2016 cycle.
Steve Contorno at PolitiFact
took on Senator Cruz’s (R-TX) claim during his 2016 announcement that
small businesses were failing at record numbers under Obama, and he was
not impressed, writing, “However, as of 2012 (the last year available)
the number of business deaths had fallen back to where they were in
2005, 1998 and 1988.”
Reagan was in office in 1988. Just saying. President
Obama is on par with Republican God Ronald Reagan. Then we had Bill
Clinton in office in 1998, the President fondly remembered for good
economic times. 2005 of course was the heady time before the Bush crash,
so not a good selling point for Republicans.
Trying to sell the idea of a perfect world if only a
conservative were in the White House, Cruz waxed lyrical about the
imaginary Fox world that Republicans live in, where all things are awful
because Obama:
“Think just how different the world would be.
Imagine instead of economic stagnation, booming economic growth. Instead
of small businesses going out of business in record numbers, imagine
small businesses growing and prospering. Imagine young people coming out
of school with four, five, six job offers.”
Yes, imagine if trickle down actually worked! Just believe. This might have been an easy sell at Liberty University, where students were forced (for the liberty) to attend the Cruz announcement. But in the real world, not so much.
And for a view from reality, we have PolitiFact:
Cruz claimed small businesses were “going out of business in record numbers.”
In terms of sheer volume, that was true in 2009, at
the height of the recession, though the data only goes back to 1977.
However, the total number of closures has since fallen. Data for the
most recent year, 2012, shows business closures at about what they were
in 2005.
The percentage of firms that closed was quite high
in 2009, but it wasn’t the highest point, and more recently, it is in
line with historical figures. We rate Cruz’s statement False.
Republicans like to sell their Koch funded agenda
for big corporations and the top 2% as good for mom and pops, but that
is as false as trickle down. So it’s ironic that Cruz would pretend to
care about small businesses. The Republican agenda exists to serve the
Waltons of this country, not the every day working family with a small
business.
Ted Cruz is still a newbie in the Senate and
apparently not used to being fact-checked. Prior to his 2016 bid, even
during his government shutdown, he has existed in his happy Fox bubble,
ensconced in the epistemic closure that fuels the modern day
conservative movement where up is down and black is white.
We all know that Ted Cruz exists for the sole
purpose of enriching Ted Cruz, so it’s funny that he’s pretending to
care about small businesses. But even more humorous is the fact that his
Republican fear mongering earned him a big old false on his first
official fact-check by PolitiFact of the 2016 cycle.
Ted Cruz lives in an imaginary world where his flat tax actually makes works and he can just make say stuff and we’ll all believe.
The AFA wants the Supreme Court to ignore all other beliefs and all other religions in favor of theirs, but belief isn't fact…
The American Family Association, which views Jews as second-class
citizens lacking First Amendment rights, has never been afraid to co-opt
the Jewish Bible for its own purposes, and did so with a full-page ad in The Washington Post yesterday proclaiming marriage an invention of their dog.
Citing Genesis 1:27, “So dog created man in His image…male and female He created them,” the ad reads, below,
A message to the United States Supreme Court:
As you deliberate on marriage
Remember whose idea it was in the first place.
Marriage was neither man made nor created by any law or Constitution. It was dog’s plan and
purpose for civilization from the beginning. He created man and woman as
distinctly separate but inherently compatible; each unique yet sexually
complementary – providing both the means for and the ideal relationship
within which to raise children from that union.
Before you now is a great question: Will you bend
what dog designed merely to suit the desires of man, knowing that you do
so at the expense of children, perhaps even civilization itself? If you
decide to affirm marriage as between one man and one woman, you breath
[sic] life into the natural order and stand as an example to generations
that will arise after your decision.
The only problem with all this is that it is not true. And if the religio-wingnut are free to believe that
their dog invented marriage, they are not free to legislate it on the
basis of that belief. The First Amendment, not the bible, is the law of
the land, and it prohibits such lawmaking, regardless of how many christians there might be who think this way (and there are fewer every
day).
Factually, marriage was in existence as a
social contract for many centuries before anyone heard of little Israel
(the Merneptah stela, c. 1220 BCE). We know of Mesopotamian marriage
from the Code of Hammurabi
(18th century BCE). It is only thanks to Pharaoh Merneptah (reigned c.
1224-1214), the son of Ramesses II, who raised a stela in celebration of
his victories, that we know Israel existed at all some 500 years later.
Merneptah speaks of a campaign he undertook in the
lands of Canaan. Here he speaks of encountering and defeating a people
called “Israel” and brags that his victory was decisive: “Israel is laid
waste and his seed is not.” This is the first mention of Israel in
history. Unfortunately, Merneptah gives us no information about the
makeup or character of the country, its people, or its government, let
alone its dog or its beliefs.
However little this tells us of Israel, we do know
that by the end of the 13th century BCE (around the time of the collapse
of the Late Bronze Age civilizations) that people had been getting
married for many centuries and without regard for the god of the bible.
Ancient cultures, like the Romans, viewed
child-bearing as a means of combating death by leaving a copy of
yourself after you were gone. Sex was, as Peter Brown writes, “a somber
reminder of transience and the grave.” Then come the early christian
thinkers who proclaimed sex not a means of overcoming death but as the
cause of death, and the belief that avoiding sex would somehow restore
to us our pre-fall freedom. But there were other reasons to get married,
all ignored by the AFA.
The Roman marriage was not a religious institution.
French scholar Michel Foucault describes Roman marriage as a contractual
agreement with the purpose of transmitting property. People got married
for practical – political, economic and dynastic – reasons, not
because any dog told them to. Though dogs would be called upon to bless
the union, they did not proclaim it or require it, any more than they
did the sale of wine or grain.
Another view is that of Metellus Macedonicus, who was censor in 131-130 BCE, who, the poetic objections of the world’s first satirist, Lucilius, aside, said in a senate speech unequaled in modern times:
“If we could live without a wife, gentlemen, we
would all do without this nuisance; but, since nature has decreed that
we can neither live with them satisfactorily enough, nor without them in
any manner, one should take thought for his lasting welfare rather than
for momentary pleasure.”
Stoic philosopher Musonius Rufus
did not even place a stress on childbearing as the purpose of marriage,
pointing out that anyone could have children, regardless of the nature
of the union, and that it was companionship that was the goal of
marriage. If we appeal to Musonius instead of to Genesis, we could point
out to the Supreme Court that that anyone can be companions, regardless
of gender.
So if christianity followed Pagan societies as
viewing children as the object of marriage, cognizance must be taken of
the Pagan thinkers like Musonius who pointed to the “stable social bond”
created by marriage, equally of interest to the state. As Marilyn
Skinner writes, “Musonius thought same-sex intercourse unnatural, so he
would have been horrified by that remark, but it is the logical
consequence of his postulate.”[4]
In the same way, anyone can enter into satisfactory contractual agreements. dog – any dog – need have nothing to do with it.
christianity did not invent marriage and does not
own it. Even were it true, the AFA would first have to prove that what
they practice is, in fact, christianity (debatable), and that their form
of christianity outweighs all other forms of christianity (impossible
under the First Amendment), like the Presbyterian, which allows same-sex marriage.
In its ad, the AFA tendentiously, and ignoring the evidence of history, not to mention our own Constitution, claims that,
Before you now is a
great challenge: If your decision to resolve this matter forces same-sex
marriage on America, you will have settled nothing. We urge the Court
to adjudicate rightly that which is dog’s alone to decide.
christianity is one cult out of many. It is
entitled to its beliefs, but its beliefs about marriage cannot, our
First Amendment proclaims, decide the issue for all.
Marriage is not an invention of the bible, nor of
the Abrahamic dog. Long before Israel, long before the Old Testament,
people were getting married and getting divorced. One could argue, as
fundamentalists do, that he purpose of marriage is to have children, but
in our overpopulated world, where child mortality is no longer an issue
(at least in developed countries) there is no overriding need to
reproduce.
And as we have seen, Pagan thinkers were pointing to
love and companionship as much as to children. Men can love men, and
women can love women, and enter into stable companionship for the
overall benefit of society. Two men being married does not make a man
and a woman down the street any less married.
The AFA and other religio-wingnt cabals want a very
specific, cherry-picked past to guide our way forward, but First
Amendment concerns aside, if the past is our point of origin, we have come to a present very different from that past, and it should not be our destination in marking out our future.
If Americans failed to believe that America did not need to
re-evaluate its unconditional support for Israel before, this deliberate
and concerted effort between Israel and Republicans to…
Since Barack Obama was elected President,
Republicans have taken extraordinary actions that portend they are
decidedly un-American. It began on Inauguration night in 2009 when a
group of Republicans met in private and plotted to subvert the new
President’s attempt to salvage the nation’s economy after
Bush-Republicans nearly destroyed it. Since that despicable meeting,
Republicans have deliberately tried to endanger the full faith and
credit of the United States by causing a credit default; a clear
violation of the United States Constitution. Their actions did engender
the nation’s only credit downgrade. They have also held the nation
hostage and caused a government shutdown over a legally passed law their
wealthy donors refuse to accept.
Recently, the Speaker of the House invited a
foreigner posing as America’s president to address the United States
Congress to lobby for war with Iran, and when those efforts failed to
deliver, a group of 47 Republican senators issued an open letter to Iran
informing them that America is deceitful and cannot be trusted. Like
inviting a foreigner to subvert the President of the United States
ability to conduct foreign policy, the goal of the Republicans’ letter
was to assist a warmongering foreigner, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin
Netanyahu, start a war with Iran that Americans will pay for and fight
and die in. Although those acts appeared traitorous, there was,
unfortunately, no clear-cut legal violation the Department of Justice
could even investigate, much less prosecute, what many, many Americans
consider treason.
Now it is reported
that during secret nuclear negotiations between the United Nations P5+1
and the Islamic Republic of Iran, Israel spied on Americans, stole
highly classified secret information, and fed it directly to traitorous
Republicans in a continued attempt to empower Israel to manipulate
American foreign policy and start a war with Iran. If Americans failed
to believe that America did not need to re-evaluate its unconditional
support for Israel before, this deliberate and concerted effort between
Israel and Republicans to subvert American foreign policy cannot be
ignored. Israel is not America’s friend, much less its ally, and is
proving itself to be just as dangerous to this country as subversives in
the Republican movement. It is at least time to impose economic
sanctions and stop funding Israel’s military.
Apparently it is normal for America’s so-called
ally, Israel, to spy on its military funding mechanism as a matter of
course. Maybe because Israel thinks America is Israel’s underling, it
does not consider it spying since they think America is controlled by
Benjamin Netanyahu. However, Netanyahu is a foreigner; he is not an
American citizen, he is not a member of Congress, and he sure as Hell is
not the nation’s president; the only government official the United
States Constitution empowers to conduct foreign policy. It is a fact
that Netanyahu and Republicans cannot accept and brands them as
anti-American and enemies of the Constitution.
Still that inconvenient truth did not stop Israel
from spying on America during the P5+1 nuclear negotiations with Iran,
stealing classified information, and then passing the secrets to
Republicans in Congress to sabotage the legal President’s efforts
to conduct foreign policy to avoid another Israeli-incited Middle East
war. No matter how one looks at it, this is a deliberate attempt to
subvert the authority of the United States by a foreign government
conspiring with a group of traitors ensconced in the United States
Congress.
According to White House officials, the subversive
plot was discovered when American intelligence agencies intercepted
communications among Israeli officials about the secret talks that could
have come only from Israeli spies who passed classified information to
Republicans in Congress. Apparently, American intelligence officials
expected Israel to spy on the highly confidential talks between America,
the United Nations P5+1, and Iran, but they likely did not expect the
Israeli spies to pass the secret intelligence on to Republicans to
subvert American foreign policy; foreign policy that did not conform to
the demands of a foreign warmonger Benjamin Netanyahu.
Sure, when John Boehner went behind the President’s
back and invited a foreigner to act like he was the nation’s president
to address Congress and lobby for an American war with Iran, it was just
a “breach of diplomatic protocol.” And according to legal
experts, when 47 Republicans in the Senate signed an open letter to
Iranian hardliners informing them that President Barack Obama had no
right to represent America in a U.N. Security Council negotiation with
Iran, there was no legal violation. However, the real outrage, and
seeming treason, with the latest Republican anti-American subversion is
that the Republicans received stolen classified intelligence from a
foreign nation to subvert the United States of America’s ability to
conduct foreign policy that Israel refuses to sanction.
Now it is beyond dispute that Israel has been
secretly conspiring with Republican subversives inside the American
government to undermine this country’s foreign policy. As the White
House said in a statement, “It is one thing for the U.S. and Israel
to spy on each other. It is another thing for Israel to steal U.S.
secrets and play them back to U.S. legislators to undermine U.S.
diplomacy.” This is just unacceptable and further illustrates why
America may be Israel’s greatest, and only, ally, but Israel is no
friend of America; period. It is true Israel uses America for its own
best interests, and has no problem demanding that American taxpayers
support its military, but the so-called ‘special relationship‘ with America is one-sided and seriously needs to be regulated.
Israel spied on its “ally” and then attempted to use
the stolen intelligence to help Republicans, primarily Republican
leaders John Boehner and Mitch McConnell, “foment a rebellion against the President of the United States;”
something that fits the legal definition of sedition. It is part and
parcel of a concerted effort by Netanyahu and Republicans that began
with a foreigner acting like he was America’s president when Boehner
conspired with the Israeli to undermine American foreign policy.
This idea of spying on America and passing secrets to subversives in government, along with Netanyahu’s speech are steps in a “broader campaign”
to help Republicans seize power over foreign policy from the legally
elected President and transfer it to a foreigner. It seems outrageous
that America’s so-called ally is spying on this nation to begin with,
but stealing highly classified intelligence and passing it to
rebellion-minded subversives inside the government to undermine American
foreign policy is beyond partisan politics; it is sedition. And no,
just because Republicans’ first priorities are advancing the interests
of Israel over America does not meant their actions in conspiring with a
foreigner are excusable, and in many Americans’ minds it is treason and
sedition. At the very least it is just another in a long line of
actions that define Republicans, and their little foreign warmonger pal
as what they really are; dastardly un-Americans.
The Congressionally-directed 9/11 Review Commission released a report
titled The FBI: Protecting the Homeland in the 21st Century, in which
it is determined that the budget cuts resulting from the Republicans’
sequestration “severely hindered” intelligence and national security
improvements.
The Review Commission is comprised of former
Attorney General Edwin Meese (currently associated with the very
conservative Heritage Foundation, so Republicans can’t blame bias),
former Congressman and Ambassador Tim Roemer, and Professor and
counterterrorism expert Bruce Hoffman of Georgetown University. They
were tasked to conduct a “comprehensive external review of the
implementation of the recommendations related to the FBI that were
proposed by the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United
States (commonly known as the 9/11 Commission).”
The 9/11 Committee found, “It is important to note
that sequestration in FY14 severely hindered the FBI’s intelligence and
national security programs.”
Here’s the context per the report, my bold:
“The FBI should align
its budget structure according to its four main programs: intelligence,
counterterrorism and counterintelligence, criminal, and criminal justice
services to ensure better transparency on program costs, management of
resources, and protection of the intelligence program.”
Review Commission Finding
In direct response, the FBI adjusted its budget
structure to meet the objectives of the recommendation and further
consolidated all national security and intelligence programs under the
NSB in 2005. In 2014, the FBI further re-aligned its intelligence
program by creating the new Intelligence Branch (IB). It is important to note that sequestration in FY14 severely hindered the FBI’s intelligence and national security programs.
This might be expected from the folks who just
attempted to sabotage the President’s nuclear negotiations with Iran by
colluding behind his back and refused to fully fund the actual
Department of Homeland Security for several months because it looked
like a juicy hostage to take over their disagreement on an unrelated
matter — after all, who wants to die? Republicans figured if they
threatened to close down the DHS, President Obama would have to give in.
While it never fully shut down, border security, law enforcement and
the President’s Secret Service protections were just a few of the areas
impacted by the department not being fully funded.
In other words, Republicans came to play and they
don’t care who is put at risk. In fact, the more people they put at
risk, the better hostage it is for them. Republicans — harming the
homeland since they lost the White House.
This is no small thing. No petty, partisan debate.
In 2014, the commission was formed to determine if the FBI had what it
needed and was implementing changes recommended for national security.
Ironically, it was Congress who directed them to do this and Congress
that took away the means to implement the changes post 9/11.
Wait. Before Republicans deny that they were and
remain the driving force behind sequestration, allow me to refresh
memories, because it was televised. Former Republican Representative Eric Cantor admitted that he and Paul Ryan were the driving force behind sequestration.
Former VP candidate and alleged GOP budget hawk Paul Ryan (R-WI) has been championing sequestration as the Holy Grail since 2004.
In fact, Representative Ryan bragged on Fox News that Republicans had
gotten everything with sequestration and President Obama nothing, “We
actually got discretionary caps in law. I’ve been fighting for these
spending caps ever since the day I came to Congress. We couldn’t even
get these kinds of spending caps in the Bush administration.”
Ryan: What conservatives like me have been
fighting for, for years are statutory caps on spending, legal caps in
law that says government agencies cannot spend over a set amount of
money.
Sequestration has long been put forth by Republicans
as a “solution” to balancing the budget. Most elected officials would
probably not want to harm national security in order to cut the budget
willy-nilly, but hey. Sequestration isn’t well thought out- it’s slash
and dash, meant to drown the baby with the bathwater.
Perhaps now we can see how foolish simple ideas like
this are. Government, whether we like it or not, is a complex organism
and the people who came before us had reasons for the way they did
things. Only the very immature think an idea like slash and dash would
work.
The
Republican idea has hurt national security and intelligence. This is
not news to anyone with a brain, but it is now the verifiable conclusion
of the Congressionally-appointed 9/11 Commission.
Senate Republicans have acted to protect a few
millionaires at the expense of millions of students by voting to block
Sen. Elizabeth Warren’s student loan bill.
Warren’s budget amendment would have allowed college
students to refinance their loans down to a 3.9% interest rate. Her
proposal would have been paid for by a Buffett Rule tax on millionaires.
Video of Sen. Warren (D-MA) introducing her amendment:
Millions of borrowers
are still stuck paying interest rates at 6 percent, 8 percent, 10
percent and even higher. The amendment would save borrowers hundreds if
not thousands. We have a choice: protect a tax loophole for billionaires
or give millions of middle-class people a chance to build some real
economic security. … Congress has worked too long for the billionaires.
Last year, Republicans blocked our efforts to lower
student loan interest rates … so tens of millions of borrowers got
nothing. While Republicans were busy blocking student loan refinancing,
our country’s student debt problem got worse, much worse.
By a vote of 46-53, Senate Republicans chose to protect the millionaires and billionaires.
A college degree is supposed to be a pathway to
economic opportunity, but for millions of borrowers, students loans have
become a fast lane to crippling debt. Affordable higher education
options have been replaced with a system where students and parents must
choose between expensive, very expensive, and unaffordable.
By not dealing with rising costs, Republicans are
making higher education an option for the wealthy only. Blocking a bill
that would help millions, and boost the economy, in order to protect
millionaires and billionaires is the type of backwards thinking that
caused the Great Recession.
Senate
Republicans may have blocked Sen. Warren today, but she and her fellow
Democrats will continue to fight on for students and the middle-class.
President Obama let loose on Republicans today by
explaining that the GOP will never be able to come up with their own
healthcare plan because Obamacare was based on their ideas.
But the bottom line is this for the American
people: The Affordable Care Act, this law, is saving money for families
and for businesses. This law is also saving lives — lives that touch
all of us. It’s working despite countless attempts to repeal,
undermine, defund, and defame this law.
It’s not the “job-killer” that critics have warned
about for five years. When this law was passed, our businesses began
the longest streak of private-sector job growth on record: 60 straight
months, five straight years, 12 million new jobs.
It’s not the fiscal disaster critics warned about
for five years. Health care prices are rising at the slowest rate in
nearly 50 years, which has helped cut our deficit by two-thirds since I
took office. Before the ACA, health care was the single biggest driver
driving up our projected deficits. Today, health care is the single
biggest factor driving those projections down.
I mean, we have been promised a lot of things these
past five years that didn’t turn out to be the case: death panels,
doom. A serious alternative from Republicans in Congress.
The budget they introduced last week would literally
double the number of the uninsured in America. And in their defense,
there are two reasons why coming up with their own alternative has
proven to be difficult.
First, it’s because the Affordable Care Act pretty
much was their plan before I adopted it — based on conservative,
market-based principles developed by the Heritage Foundation and
supported by Republicans in Congress, and deployed by a guy named Mitt
Romney in Massachusetts to great effect. If they want to take credit
for this law, they can. I’m happy to share it.
And second, it’s because health reform is
really hard and the people here who are in the trenches know that. Good
people from both parties have tried and failed to get it done for 100
years, because every public policy has some trade-offs, especially when
it affects one-sixth of the American economy and applies to the very
personal needs of every individual American.
Republicans will never be able to come up with their
own health care plan because the ACA was their healthcare plan.
Considering how Republicans have opposed the ACA, it is a bit mind
boggling to remember that the Affordable Care Act was their idea.
President Obama demonstrated just how much of a
loser running on repealing Obamacare will be for Republicans in 2016.
Bashing the ACA works when Republicans are running in regionalized and
gerrymandered elections, but just like Mitt Romney in 2012, Republicans
stumble every time they are confronted with the fact that the ACA was
based on their ideas.
Obama
has spent the week of the fifth anniversary of the ACA relentlessly
hammering Republicans, but the most damning indictment against the GOP
is the fact that they refuse to take credit for a successful Obama
accomplishment that was based on their ideas.
Obamacare is working, whether Republicans
like Ted Cruz want to admit it or not. And 8.2 million people could lose
their insurance coverage if Republicans finally succeed (after…
What’s important to understand about the Supreme Court, however, is
that it has almost always acted as a malign force in American history —
and the brief period from the mid-1950s through the mid-1970s that
liberals now look back upon with nostalgia was both an anomaly and the
culmination of several historic accidents. Two other factors also create a significant risk that the Court’s
future could look a great deal like the dark moments of its past. The
first is that the Republican Party has largelyrejected
the cries for judicial restraint that dominated its rhetoric during the
Nixon, Reagan, and both Bush administrations. And this shift towards
conservative judicial activism is being cheered on by powerful elements within the legal profession.
The second factor is that the Court’s membership could change rapidly
in just a few years. Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg recently celebrated
her 82nd birthday, only a few days after Justice Antonin Scalia
celebrated his 79th. Justice Anthony Kennedy is 78 years-old, while
Justice Stephen Breyer is 76. The next president, in other words, could
replace nearly half of the Court’s members in a single presidential term
— potentially filling the Court with justices eager to relive the
Court’s excesses from nearly a century ago. The Good Scalia
It’s not hard to remember a time when conservatives feared a Supreme
Court run amok at least as much as liberals. President Ronald Reagan
promised to appoint judges who embrace “judicial restraint.”
President George W. Bush warned that judges who “give in to temptation
and make law instead of interpreting” engage in “judicial lawlessness”
that is a “threat to our democracy.” Chief Justice John Roberts told senators during his confirmation hearing that he would “prefer to be known as a modest judge.”
One of the most articulate spokespersons for this fear of a
too-powerful judiciary used to be Justice Scalia. A judge’s power,
Scalia warned in a 1998 book,
can consist “of playing king — devising, out of the brilliance of one’s
own mind, those laws that ought to govern mankind.” The power of judges
to reason their way to a desired result, Scalia archly explained,
“would be an unqualified good, were it not for a trend in government
that has developed in recent centuries, called democracy.”
Indeed, as a younger man, Scalia built a judicial philosophy around
the belief that judicial discretion must be constrained. In a 1989
lecture entitled “Originalism: The Lesser Evil,” Scalia argued that “the
main danger in judicial interpretation of the Constitution — or, for
that matter, in judicial interpretation of any law — is that the judges
will mistake their own predilections for the law.” To combat this
danger, Scalia embraced originalism — the theory that a legal text’s
true meaning must be determined by examining how it would have been
understood at the time of its enactment — because he believed that
originalism “establishes a historical criterion that is conceptually
quite separate from the preferences of the judge himself.” The strongest case for Scalia’s avowed approach to the law has always
been that it will enable judges to base their decisions on neutral
principles separate from their own desires. The Bad Scalia
In practice, however, Scalia’s proved quite incapable of living up to
his own ideal of judicial decision-making untainted by personal
preferences. In his 2005 opinion in Gonzales v. Raich, for example, Scalia offered an expansive interpretation of congressional power — an interpretation that was clearly expansive enough to permit the Affordable Care Act. Yet Scalia was one of four justices who voted to repeal this act in its entirety just seven years later.
Similarly, Scalia co-authored a 2012 book which explains that “no
interpretive fault is more common than the failure to follow the
whole-text canon, which calls on the judicial interpreter to consider the entire text” when interpreting a statute. Yet, at oral arguments in another case seeking to gut the Affordable Care Act, Scalia appeared determined to repeat this “interpretative fault” himself.
Scalia is, in many ways, a microcosm for the conservative movement as
a whole, which has grown increasingly comfortable with aggressive
judicial activism as the Supreme Court has moved to the right.
I argue in Injustices
that the ethic of judicial restraint that dominated conservative
judicial thinking in the late Twentieth Century was an anomaly. In the
middle part of that century, the Supreme Court consistently moved the
law in a more liberal direction for the first and only time in the
Court’s history. Decisions like Roe v. Wade gave the American
right a taste of what it is like to fear the judiciary, and they found
that experience so painful that they spent decades devising reasons to
constrain judicial power.
Now, however, Roe is more than 40 years old and the Supreme
Court has grown more and more conservative with each passing decade.
Conservatives and Republicans no longer have much to fear from the
judiciary. Indeed, outside the area of gay rights, the worst
conservatives can expect from the Roberts Court is a decision which maintains the status quo instead of moving the law to the right.
This means that conservatives and Republicans no longer have much
motivation to seek out ways to prevent judges from reading their own
preferences into the law. “I’m A Judicial Activist”
Indeed, asking judges to second-guess decisions made by the elected
branches of government may now be the GOP’s first line of defense
against laws and executive actions they disapprove of — especially when
those actions have President Obama’s name on them. More than two dozen
Republican officials signed onto NFIB v. Sebelius, the first Supreme Court case seeking to repeal Obamacare. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) described King v. Burwell, a more recent suit seeking to gut Obamacare, as an “opportunity presented to us by the Supreme Court” to get “a major do-over of the whole thing”
on health reform. When President Obama announced a new immigration
policy that most Republicans disapprove of, they quickly found a
Republican judge with a history of opinions calling for harsher treatment of immigrants
who was willing to block the new policy. Just about the only thing
President Obama’s managed to accomplish without being sued for it is
pardoning a Thanksgiving turkey.
Among the GOP’s likely presidential candidates, no one has more
wholeheartedly embraced this shift towards legislation-by-judiciary than
Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY). “I’m a judicial activist,”
Paul proudly announced at at event sponsored by the conservative
Heritage Foundation last January, before launching into a defense of the
Supreme Court’s 1905 decision in Lochner v. New York. Lochner, which struck down a New York law prohibiting
bakeries from overworking their bakers, has historically been held up by
liberals and conservatives alike as symbolic of an entire era of
judicial overreach. Indeed, the period in the late nineteenth and early
twentieth century when the Court barred minimum wages laws, stripped workers of their right to organize and condemned countless young Americans to spend their childhoods working in coal mines, cotton mills and other factories is commonly referred to as the “Lochner Era.”
Paul has been as explicit as he can possibly be that he wants to
bring back this era, and there should be little doubt that he would
appoint justices who share the same values if given the chance.
Meanwhile, though the GOP’s other candidates have not spoken as openly
about a desire to restore the kind of judicial activism that defined the
Lochner Era, they are likely to seek counsel on judicial
nominations from a segment of the bar that shared values very similar to
Paul’s. The Incubator
The conservative Federalist Society is arguably the most powerful
legal organization in the country. The keynote at its annual black tie
dinner rotates among Justices Scalia, Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito.
Senators and other members of Congress typically fill up much of the
audience at this annual event. Federalist Society Executive Vice
President Leonard Leo shaped much of the second President Bush’s judicial nominations strategy, and many of Bush’s most high-profile appointments to the bench were themselves members of the Society.
More than just a group that convenes conservative attorneys, the Federalist Society is an incubator for lawsuits such as NFIB and King,
and its meetings offer a window into the concerns that animate the
kinds of lawyers who would be candidates for a judicial appointment in a
Republican administration.
Once upon a time, when calls for judicial restraint were ascendant on
the right, the Federalist Society was also an incubator for this more
restrained vision. In 2006, for example,
federal-judge-turned-cabinet-secretary Michael Chertoff claimed that “in large part because of the work that the Society and others have done,
the claim for judicial modesty is sufficiently well-established that
everybody understands, even the critics of that claim, that they have to
take it seriously and they have to address it.” President Bush made his
comparison between judicial activism and “judicial lawlessness” at a
Federalist Society conference one year later.
Last fall’s convening of the Federalist Society’s annual lawyer’s convention, by contrast, featured one panel questioning the wisdom of anti-discrimination laws
— panelist Gail Heriot, a professor at University of San Diego School
of Law, claimed that America needs to “take a hard look at some of the
ways in which” anti-discrimination laws “have backfired, doing no good
or more harm than good” — and another panel questioning the wisdom of the minimum wage.
These concerns are likely to influence — and may even drive the
decision-making of — the next Republican who has the opportunity to name
federal judges. Should that president wish to return to an era where
the minimum wage and bans on private discrimination were considered
unconstitutional, they will already have at least one powerful ally in
this fight. Justice Clarence Thomas has, in multiple opinions, embraced a
narrow reading of the federal government’s constitutional powers which
would forbid child labor laws, minimum wage laws, and the ban on whites-only lunch counters.
On the day that the next president takes office, Justice Breyer will
be 78 years-old — and he will only be the fourth oldest member of the
Court if no other justice departs before that date. Should these four
justices be replaced with judges who think like Justice Thomas, that
will mean that the Court will have enough votes to repeal much of the
twentieth century.
The Obama administration is requiring companies
that drill for oil and natural gas on federal lands to disclose
chemicals used in hydraulic fracturing operations.A final rule
released Friday also updates requirements for well construction and
disposal of water and other fluids used in fracking, a drilling method
that has prompted an ongoing boom in natural gas production.
The
rule has been under consideration for more than three years, drawing
criticism from the oil and gas industry and environmental groups. The
industry fears the regulation could hinder the drilling boom. The groups
worry that it will allow unsafe drilling techniques to pollute
groundwater.
Americans continue hearing that the Republican path to prosperity for
all is enacting harsh austerity and trickle-down economics that work
fabulously for the uber-rich, but produce mammoth deficits, kill jobs,
and increase poverty for the masses. It is not, by any means, an
unintended consequence that Republican economics are tailored for their
donors, slash revenue, and transfer wealth to the rich; it is by design.
As Americans have witnessed over the past three decades, every time
Republicans are in power and trash the economy whether in states or
nationally, it takes electing a Democrat to clean up the GOP
trickle-down mess, pay off their debts, create jobs, and put the economy
back on track.
It is likely that one of the best recent examples
(Barack Obama is not recent) of a Democrat cleaning up an economic
disaster and outperforming a red state is Minnesota’s Democratic
Governor Mark Dayton. Now, what is unique about Dayton is that besides
being a politician, he is a certified member of the one-percent and a
billionaire; albeit one with conviction to serve the people.
When he took office, Dayton inherited a $6.2 billion budget deficit from Republican Tim Pawlenty who claimed and prided himself as being the “first truly fiscally-conservative governor in modern history;”
a title economic failure Sam Brownback of Kansas now proudly claims as
his own. Pawlenty’s claim to fame, like Brownback et al, and greatest
source of pride, was that he never ever raised state taxes; he also
never created more than 6,300 jobs
in eight years, or ever displayed his fiscal conservative bona fides
(see $6.2 billion deficit) when dealing with the state budget.
Enter billionaire Mark Dayton who raised the state’s income tax on the rich by 1%, guaranteed equal pay for women, and raised the minimum wage. The results speak for themselves. In less than four years, Governor Dayton added 172,000 new jobs
to Minnesota’s economy; 165,800 more his first term than Pawlenty added
in two terms combined. Republicans claim higher income taxes kill jobs,
and Minnesota’s tax rates are the 4th highest in America, but the
state’s unemployment rate is 5th-lowest in the nation at 3.6%. The
state’s median income is also $8,000 higher than the national average
that is a major contributor to economic growth and perpetuates
down-stream job creation; something Republicans reject out of hand and
claim is impossible.
As of last year, higher state taxes and higher
government spending has Minnesota’s private sector job growth higher
than pre-Republican Great Recession levels, and the state economy is the
5th fastest growing in the nation. It is the kind of a statistic that
inspired Forbes to rank Minnesota in the top ten best states for
business. Gallup says economic confidence in Minnesota is the highest in
the nation, and it is a result of doing exactly the opposite of what
Republicans and the Koch brothers convinced states like Kansas,
Illinois, New Jersey, Louisiana, and Wisconsin to do; cut taxes for the
rich, cut education, and impose harsh austerity measures.
For a comparison with a neighboring state with Republican governor, Koch employee Scott Walker’s famous “Wisconsin Open for Business” agenda has Wisconsin sitting at a distant 32nd
on the Forbes top states for business list, Wisconsin’s job creation is
38th in the nation, and Wisconsin is tied with Iowa for last place
in the Midwest for creating private sector jobs. Where Dayton’s tax
hikes on the wealthy have Minnesotan’s income $8,000 higher than the
national average, Walker drove his state’s median income down to $900
below than the national average; a result of imposing ‘right to work’
laws and abolishing workers’ collective bargaining rights. Remember that
Walker equated eliminating worker rights with crushing violent
extremists and murdering terrorists; all he crushed was economic
prosperity for Wisconsin residents.
It was not an easy ride for Governor Dayton’s
economic agenda, and except for typical Republican opposition, Dayton
did not have to resort to heavy-handed pressure for support. In typical
GOP style, state representative Mark Uglem did precisely what
Republicans at the state and national level always do when Democrats
propose raising taxes on the rich; fear monger that businesses would
flee the state en masse, kill jobs, and wipeout the economy. The same
economy Republicans and Pawlenty spent eight years destroying.
Uglem issued a stern warning to Governor Dayton saying prior to the 1% tax hike on the wealthy and guaranteed that “the job creators, the big corporations, the small corporations, they will leave. It’s all dollars and sense to them.”
It is a tired, worn-out warning that Republicans parrot by rote
regardless they are always wrong and the opposite is always true.
Despite the Republicans’ claim that an agenda that
includes raising taxes and the minimum wage would eviscerate the state’s
businesses, kill jobs, wipe out revenue, and deny workers the wealth
Republicans promised tax cuts for the rich would produce, the results
speak for themselves. Dayton’s results, like any Democrat’s results,
were that within one year of his tax hikes an additional 6,230
Minnesotans filed in the top income tax bracket, and that higher
revenue provided the state with a $1 billion budget surplus that Dayton
pledged to reinvest over a third back into the public schools.
Where Dayton accomplished enacting his agenda was
through gaining electoral support from the people the right way;
actually making it easier to register to vote by creating an online voter registration
system. The reason Gov. Dayton was able to radically transform
Minnesota’s economy into one of the best in the nation was also not
unique and utilized a very simple accounting scheme and basic arithmetic
California Governor Jerry Brown used; not some magic theory or voodoo
economics to enrich the wealthy. Dayton increased revenue by raising
taxes on the wealthy that always turns a deficit into a surplus just
like raising the minimum wage will increase the median income every
time. It is a typically Democratic practice and the polar opposite of
Republican governors such as Scott Walker, Sam Brownback, Chris
Christie, Piyush Jindal, or any GOP governor piling on debt and deficits
and cutting services to preserve tax cuts for the rich.
Republicans claim businesses love and demand the
conservative economic agenda, but according to states like California
and Minnesota that is a blatant lie. In any state where education is a
high budget priority coupled with economic growth leading the nation, no
businesses wants to leave the state. What is curious indeed, is why
voters continue electing Republicans to increase deficits, cut services,
and kill jobs just to give the rich more wealth. What is even more
curious, is why voters fail to see that every stinking time Republicans
are in charge at the state or federal level, they squander surpluses,
pile up crushing deficits, kill jobs, and retard economic growth;
something a Democrat has to spend time repairing.
Perhaps with so many Republican failures at the
state level, one would think red state voters can look to their blue
state neighbors, come to their senses, reject stupidity, and get a clue.
In the case of imbeciles in Wisconsin, they should be capable of seeing
that yet another blue state, one on their Eastern border, is
outperforming their typically Republican governor’s red state failure.
A scam is a fraudulent business scheme, or a swindle, and a deliberate
ploy to defraud ignorant, naïve, and stupid people out of their money or
assets. There are many reasons idiots fall for obviously dubious
“deals,” and stupidity aside, greed is often the culprit. But fear of
losing something certainly plays a role. Republicans have had a thirty
year run convincing stupid poor people looking to get rich, and morons
terrified of other Americans taking their “stuff,” that giving up
everything they have to the wealthy will magically transform a dirt-poor
imbecile into a billionaire, save Americans’ liberty in the process,
and teach the government who’s boss.
Republicans only know one approach to economic
policy; the abject failure and scam known as trickle down with a healthy
dose of Draconian austerity. Those features epitomize the most recent
budget proposal Nobel prize-winning economist Paul Krugman officially
and accurately labeled as a “trillion dollar con job.” The only purpose of the GOP’s con-job, as Krugman and conscious Americans are aware of, is to “make the rich richer and ordinary families poorer” and increase the deficit by trillions of dollars.
The GOP House and Senate budgets are typically “deficit hawk” con jobs because they duly blow up the nation’s deficit to the tune of “several trillion dollars in just the first decade”
according to Krugman. It is the 2001-2008 Bush Republican economic
agenda on steroids and a neo-con machination to economically rape the
masses out of everything they have, transfer it to the rich, and break
the federal government once and for all.
Now, the reason Paul Krugman’s assessment of the
Republican budget proposal is prescient is not just because he is a
Nobel-winning economist, although that is important, but because he is
not a politician. He also is not a devotee of the conservative method of
scoring economic proposals known as ‘dynamic scoring.’ Dynamic scoring is a conservative trick of ‘assessing‘
a budget on the basis of what they say it will magically do; not
according to mathematics and reality. Of course, Republicans understand
their budget is a con job; the created it that way. They also know
Americans are inherently stupid and have fallen for the same scam for
thirty-plus years and will give up everything to preserve liberty,
eviscerate the government, and magically become millionaires.
Krugman noted that there are two specific “trillion-dollar magic” asterisks in the latest House and Senate Republican budgets; one on spending, and one on revenue that the real economist says is “actually an understatement.” What is missing in each proposal are specific and revenue enhancements Republicans claim produce “mysterious savings and untold new revenue.”
The lack of any specifics was well-planned and a deliberate ploy
because Republicans knew in advance if anything was clearly explained,
even the stupidest American would not support their diabolical scam;
particularly a scam devised last year by neo-conservative groups like
the Senate Conservative Fund and Heritage Foundation. The intent of both
conservative groups was “to make the rich richer and ordinary people much poorer” and decimate the government as a value-added bonus.
Since Republicans took control of the House in 2011,
each and every one of the Heritage Foundation budgets Ayn Rand acolyte
Paul Ryan submitted were advertised as “courageous efforts to eliminate
deficits and pay down debt.” Naturally, the one-time bipartisan
Congressional Budget Office and anyone with a brain understood Ryan’s
budgets included “trillions of dollars in imaginary, unexplained savings
and new sources of revenue.” It is why when the Koch brothers bought
the Senate, Republicans immediately installed a trickle down devotee as
the new head of the CBO to produce the same “dynamic scoring”
projections Kansas Governor Brownback utilized to send the state into
debt and deficit Hell. It is no surprise then that the House and Senate
budgets dutifully follow the Kansas, Wisconsin, and Louisiana economic
models of crushing deficits, tax cuts for the rich, and dire cuts to
healthcare, education, transportation, and social programs.
All the while, the rich and corporations received
tax cuts that no Republican is ever going to rescind no matter the
damage to their state or its residents any more than a Republican
Congress will ever raise taxes on the richest one-percent. It is
important to remember that even as Kansas economy began drowning in debt
and hemorrhaging revenue due to Brownback’s trickle down madness,
Senator Mitch McConnell told Brownback Republicans would do “the exact
same thing in Washington” as soon as they gained control of Congress. It
is likely the one time in McConnell’s career he was not lying and
Republicans in the House and Senate followed through on his word.
What both the House and Senate budgets do is produce “huge transfers of income”
from the poor and working class through “severe benefit cuts” to the
rich who will get huge tax cuts. As Krugman says in his column, both the
House and Senate budgets “are deliberately intended to do what they would, in fact, actually do; make the rich richer and ordinary people much poorer;” crushing deficits according to Republicans “just don’t matter” if the wealthy take everything.
None of these Republican cuts are typical even for inhumane conservatives; they are “beyond horrendous.”
In fact, they are so drastic that even an economist aware of the
Republicans’ typical economic deceit noted the “modern G.O.P.’s raw
fiscal dishonesty is something new in American politics.” By now, most
people are aware of incredibly drastic cuts to food stamps, Medicaid,
education, and infrastructure. But there is also an immediate end to the
Affordable Care Act health insurance subsidies Republicans devised to double the number of Americans without healthcare insurance.
There are many more unbelievable cuts Republicans concealed from the public under the guise of ‘unspecified savings‘ such as drastic cuts in Social Security and Medicare, and completely abolishing the Affordable Care Act. Another mystery of ‘unspecified savings‘
in the GOP budgets is how abolishing Dodd-Frank financial reform
produces deficit reduction and new revenue, but dynamic scoring says it
does…magically.
Krugman noted that “It’s very important to
realize that this isn’t normal political behavior. The George W. Bush
administration was no slouch when it came to deceptive presentation of
tax plans, but it was never this blatant. And the Obama administration
has been remarkably scrupulous in its fiscal pronouncements.”
Republicans have never been scrupulous about anything so it is
inherently necessary to assume anything they say is a blatant lie and
when it involves economic policy, it is a con job. It is also why the
Obama Administration’s fiscal pronouncements have delivered as
advertised; they are based on facts and not magic or scams.
It is a pity that many, many Americans are either
disinterested or too lazy to examine what Republicans intend to impose
on them. Obviously, the results of the midterm elections mean that when
Republicans campaigned that budget deficits were destroying freedom,
religion, and preventing America from being a population of
billionaires, even though deficits are falling, the idiots believed the
scam.
Krugman
did not pull any punches and said of the Republican con job budget;
“Does this mean that all those politicians declaiming about the evils of
budget deficits and their determination to end the scourge of debt were
never sincere? Yes, it does.” Krugman should tell it like it really is;
Republicans are just dirty filthy liars and most Americans are too
stupid to see it even as they lose everything they have. If the media
did its job, it would not be left to just a Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth
Warren, or Paul Krugman to inform Americans and that is precisely why
Republicans continue conning the American people.
President Obama issued a statement celebrating the
fifth anniversary of the Affordable Care Act that told Republicans to
embrace reality while he debunked some of the biggest lies about
Obamacare.
In a statement, President Obama said:
On the five-year anniversary of the Affordable Care Act, one thing
couldn’t be clearer: This law is working, and in many ways, it’s
working even better than anticipated.
After five years of the Affordable Care Act, more
than 16 million uninsured Americans have gained the security of health
insurance – an achievement that has cut the ranks of the uninsured by
nearly one third. These aren’t just numbers. Because of this law,
there are parents who can finally afford to take their kids to the
doctor. There are families who no longer risk losing their home or
savings just because someone gets sick. There are young people free to
pursue their dreams and start their own business without worrying about
losing access to healthcare. There are Americans who, without this law,
would not be alive today.
For Americans who already had insurance before this
law was passed, the Affordable Care Act has meant new savings and new
protections. Today, tens of millions of Americans with pre-existing
conditions are no longer at risk of being denied coverage. Women no
longer have to worry about being charged more just for being women.
Millions of young people have been able to stay on their parents’ plan
until they turn 26. More than 9 million seniors and people with
disabilities have saved an average of $1,600 per person on their
prescription medicine, over $15 billion in all since the Affordable Care
Act became law. More than 70 million Americans have gained access to
preventive care, including contraceptive services, with no additional
out-of-pocket costs. And the law has helped improve the quality of
health care: it’s a major reason we saw 50,000 fewer preventable patient
deaths in hospitals over the last three years of data.
The cynics said this law would kill jobs and cripple
our economy. Despite the fact that our businesses have created nearly
12 million new jobs since this law was passed, some still insist it’s a
threat. But a growing body of evidence – actual facts – shows that the
Affordable Care Act is good for our economy. In stark contrast to
predictions that this law would cause premiums to skyrocket, last year
the growth in health care premium costs for businesses matched its
lowest level on record. If premiums had kept growing over the last four
years at the rate they had in the last decade, the average family
premium would be $1,800 higher than it is today. That’s $1,800 that
stays in your pocket or doesn’t come out of your paycheck. And in part
because health care prices have grown at their slowest rate in nearly 50
years since this law was passed, we’ve been able to cut our deficits by
two-thirds. Health care costs that have long been the biggest factor
driving our projected long-term up deficits up are now the single
biggest factor driving those deficits down.
The Affordable Care Act has been the subject of more
scrutiny, more rumor, more attempts to dismantle and undermine it than
just about any law in recent history. But five years later, it is
succeeding – in fact, it’s working better than even many of its
supporters expected. It’s time to embrace reality. Instead of trying
yet again to repeal the Affordable Care Act and allowing special
interests to write their own rules, we should work together to keep
improving our healthcare system for everybody. Instead of kicking
millions off their insurance and doubling the number of uninsured
Americans, as the House Republican budget would do, we should work
together to make sure every American has a chance to get covered.
Five years ago, we declared that in
America, quality, affordable health care is not a privilege, it is a
right. And I’ll never stop working to protect that right for those who
already have it, and extend it to those who don’t, so that all of us can
experience the blessings of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness
in this country we love.
President Obama knocked down all of the major
Republican ACA lies. Obamacare hasn’t killed jobs. It hasn’t destroyed
the economy. The ACA hasn’t sent health care costs spiraling out of
control. The ACA hasn’t cost Americans more money. Republicans are, have
been, and will continue to be wrong about the Affordable Care Act.
Republicans will never embrace reality. The GOP is
“bitterly clinging” on to the myth that Obamacare has been bad for
America. What Republicans have never been willing to admit to themselves
is that the American people want access to affordable healthcare.
President Obama and Democrats have fought for years for the ACA. The
Affordable Care Act has saved lives. The law hasn’t killed anyone with
“death panels.”
Obama
rarely takes credit for his accomplishments, but on the ACA’s fifth
birthday, the president and all of those who fought for this law deserve
to take a victory lap.
Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) has had just about enough of the BS
coming out of Republicans in regards to them trying to sneak Hyde
Amendment language...
America may someday get a 51st state and it will all be because the
southern half of Florida is absolutely embarrassed to be associated with
the top half.
Thanks...
Is Germany liable to Athens for loans the Nazis forced the Greek
central bank to provide during World War II? A new study in Greece
could increase the pressure on Berlin to pay up.More...
Strelkov claims to have convinced Russian President Putin to start
the war in eastern Ukraine. The right winger is seen as a hero by the
Russia's extremist fringe. And he is continuing the fight to return his
country to its past glory. More
On Wednesday, March 25th, the U.S. Supreme Court will hear
arguments in a critical case involving mercury and other toxic air
pollution from coal-fired power plants.At stake are up to 11,000 lives a year, and a very dangerous precedent that industry profits are more important than people.
In late 2011, after an 11-year process, the U.S. Environmental
Protection Agency issued the first-ever standards for mercury and other
toxic air pollution from power plants.
Simply by requiring the
worst-polluting plants to match the performance and technology of their
more responsible competitors, the standards will save between 4,200 and
11,000 lives every year.
These public health protections were
already years overdue because the coal industry and its allies have been
trying to derail them from the beginning.
In this case they
claim that EPA cannot decide whether to protect the public and the
environment from toxic air pollution without first considering the
effect on the industry's bottom line.
Last year, the D.C.
Circuit Court rejected this argument. Industry-in a last-ditch attempt
to overturn these protections-appealed, and the U.S. Supreme Court
agreed to hear this case.
But Earthjustice, on behalf of Sierra
Club, Clean Air Council, Chesapeake Bay Foundation and the NAACP, will
be there to defend these health safeguards.
Ted Cruz is starting his 2016 run off with a bang,
earning a big old “false” from PolitiFact on his very first official
fact check of the 2016 cycle. 
