Republicans want to stop putting money into the one fund meant to help the neediest Americans.
Thursday, May 7, 2015
Sam Brownback Gets a Side of Comeuppance for Lunch
Being a waitress is not easy. Between the low pay and rude customers
it’s a moment-by-moment test of patience. The opportunities to speak
your mind (and keep your job) are few and far between. But one such
opportunity presented itself Sunday when Kansas Governor Sam Brownback
walked into Boss Hawg’s Barbeque in Topeka (not making that up).
Chloe Hough happened to be working her last shift at BHBBQ and responded in true carpe diem fashion once she realized she was waiting on her state’s chief executive.
Now Hough could have aired a number of grievances. Brownback has darn near governed the Sunflower State into the ground. Between his attacks on the poor and the LGBT community, it’s little wonder he’s drawn the attention of Jon Stewart on more than occasion.
So Hough had her moment and…she showed the governor a thing or two about empathy. She handed Brownback his receipt and on it she wrote “tip the schools” in the tip line.
According to KSNT News, Hough said, “I just knew I had to say something or I would regret it.”
Well done, Chloe.
Chloe Hough happened to be working her last shift at BHBBQ and responded in true carpe diem fashion once she realized she was waiting on her state’s chief executive.
Now Hough could have aired a number of grievances. Brownback has darn near governed the Sunflower State into the ground. Between his attacks on the poor and the LGBT community, it’s little wonder he’s drawn the attention of Jon Stewart on more than occasion.
So Hough had her moment and…she showed the governor a thing or two about empathy. She handed Brownback his receipt and on it she wrote “tip the schools” in the tip line.
According to KSNT News, Hough said, “I just knew I had to say something or I would regret it.”
Well done, Chloe.
Oops: Carly Fiorina Forgot To Register Her Domain Name
Her candidacy for president has already run across a snag as
carlyfiorina.org is now showing off how she nearly destroyed Hewlett
Packard.Republicans Admit Hobby Lobby Ruling Is Religious Tyranny Meant to Control Women
Before, during, and after the Vatican-5 ruled that
religious employers had the scriptural right to deny their female
employees access to contraception, Republicans and their evangelical
base lied and claimed their only goal was religious freedom to withhold
health plans that included contraception coverage. That assertion was
always a filthy lie and many pundits warned that was the case. On
Thursday last late in the day, religious Republicans finally admitted
that the Hobby Lobby ruling gave evangelical employers what they wanted
all along; power to control women. Specifically, power to control
whether they use contraception, participate in family planning, or have
an abortion under any circumstances.
Republicans claim their abominable legislation
overturning a Washington D.C. anti-discrimination statute that
prohibited religious employers from punishing women who use birth
control, family planning services, or abortion services was to protect
employers’ religious liberty according to the Hobby Lobby ruling.
However, they revealed the legislation is about using religious tyranny
to control women because the D.C. council included a provision in the
law, according to Hobby Lobby, reiterating that religious organizations
do not have to provide health insurance coverage for contraception or
abortions. Religious Republicans said that is not nearly enough and
struck down the D.C. law “prohibiting employers from discriminating
or retaliating against workers, their spouses, or their dependents for
obtaining contraception, family planning, or having abortions.”
According to the sponsor of the religious tyranny legislation,
Representative Diane Black (R-TN), the anti-discrimination law “is contrary to the federal statute.”
The High Court’s Hobby Lobby ruling simply gave religious employers
biblical cover to withhold contraception coverage in health insurance
prescription plans; not the right to violate an employee’s privacy or
discriminate and punish them for using contraception or family planning.
As the president of the Planned Parenthood Federation of America, Cecile Richards, said, “This
bill makes it open season for bosses to dig into their employees’
reproductive health practices and fire women for taking birth control or
having an abortion.” Democrats also understand the implications to
workers as well as the Republican motivation behind the religious
tyranny legislation. Democrats warned that Washington D.C. “workers would be fired and face retribution for their personal healthcare choices”
that, again, is the only purpose of the legislation as an extension of
the Hobby Lobby decision. As many political pundits warned when the
Hobby Lobby decision was announced, religious freedom had nothing to do
with it, contraception had nothing to do with it, and employers
providing contraception coverage in health plans had nothing to do with
it. It was always about religious tyranny and like the groups behind the
push for the Hobby Lobby lawsuit, it was only about controlling women.
It is also about invading women’s privacy to gain ultimate control over
every aspect of their personal lives.
This legislation is also a gross violation of federal HIPPA Privacy Rules put in place specifically to protect an individual’s medical records and “other personal health information;”
including their personal health plans and who their health care
providers are. HIPPA laws were enacted to give patients sole rights
over their personal health information, including the right to examine
their health records, but it does not include their employers. The
Republican legislation allows employers to invade the privacy of their
employees by demanding information about their, their spouses, and
dependents personal health choices or face retribution for
non-compliance; something the religious right lusted for long before
Hobby Lobby.
That the religious right intended to gain ultimate
control over women in Hobby Lobby was never in question, and Republicans
dutifully served the interests of the Family Research Council, National
Organization for Marriage, and the National Right To Life Committee
demanding the religious legislation. Two powerful conservative groups,
the Republican Study Committee and the Freedom Caucus, also pushed the
Republican House leadership to pass the legislation. The groups asserted
that if Republicans did not act, employers would be forced to hire, or
keep in place, an employee who held beliefs that did not comply with
their beliefs and therefore be uncontrollable.
House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi put the legislation’s intent in the proper perspective. She said, “Allowing
employers to fire employees for using birth control, in vitro
fertilization, or any other reproductive health care service is an
unconscionable intrusion into workers’ personal lives. House Republicans
would even allow employers to fire employees for the reproductive
health decisions that their employees’ spouses and dependents make.”
Pelosi did not include that the legislation was an unconscionable
religious intrusion, but she was right; Republicans want employers to
exert control over far more than their employees and it is a sign of
what it is store for American women regardless if their employers are
religious tyrants or not.
According to Republicans, not allowing religious employers to tyrannize and control their employees is part of the “continued attack on religion and a person’s 1st Amendment right of freedom of belief;”
belief in religious control over women. It is noteworthy that despite
the Hobby Lobby lawsuit and ruling allegedly being about religious
freedom to withhold contraception in employer-provided healthcare
prescription plans, Republicans now say it is really about controlling a
woman’s access to any reproductive services and the right to invade
their privacy to impose “religious freedoms” on a larger
segment of the population. It is also, as several ‘license to
discriminate’ laws in two dozen Republican states reveal, about imposing
religious tyranny on the gay community.
What
is stunning, and frankly disappointing, is that men are not taking to
the streets and storming the halls of Congress to demand an end to this
unending Republican religious assault on their wives, mothers, sisters,
and daughters under the guise of some tyrannical evangelical’s religious
freedom. It is what the Hobby Lobby lawsuit and ruling by the Supreme
Court’s Vatican-5 was about from the very beginning and Republicans
made that very clear in passing religious tyranny legislation they said
fulfilled ‘federal statute’ according to Hobby Lobby.
Meet The Lunatic Fringe Wingnut Extremist Behind The Texas 'Draw Muhammad' Event
If there's no reason to talk about Pamela Geller, she'll create one.
The Christian Religio-Wingnuts And Radical Islam Have More In Common With Each Other Than With Us
The real war in America is not between christians and muslims, but wingnuts and progressives.
Police officers are going to trial in Freddie Gray's death. That doesn't mean they're going to prison.
by Amanda Taub
On May 1st,
Baltimore City state's attorney Marilyn Mosby announced that six
Baltimore police officers will face criminal charges - including
second-degree murder and manslaughter - in the death of Freddie Gray in
police custody on April 19.This is incredibly rare; many police misconduct cases never turn into criminal prosecutions. But even when police officers do get tried for misconduct, the outcomes look very different than they do when civilians are prosecuted.
The National Police Misconduct Reporting Project analyzed 3,238 criminal cases against police officers from April 2009 through December 2010. They found that only 33 percent were convicted. Furthermore, only 36 percent of officers who were convicted ended up serving prison sentences. Both of those are about half the rate at which members of the public are convicted or incarcerated.
Even when they did serve prison sentences, police officers generally got shorter sentences than the public did:
This isn't a fluke, it's the result of systemic biases in favor of police officers. As David Rudovsky, a civil rights lawyer who co-authored the book Prosecuting Misconduct: Law and Litigation, explained in an interview, juries have "a tendency to believe a police officer over a civilian, in terms of credibility."
That means that "when an officer is on trial, reasonable doubt has a lot of bite." The prosecutor's case needs to be very strong to convince a jury that an officer's behavior was egregious enough to be worthy of criminal punishment. Ordinary defendants, by contrast, enjoy no such advantage.
The charts above show the dramatic cumulative effect of that bias. Only a third of police officers who are charged with a crime ever get convicted. And of those, nearly two thirds are never incarcerated. That's very, very different from the outcomes for civilian defendants, who face strong odds of conviction and incarceration.
Video shows four parole officers detained by gun-wielding police for Driving While Black
Fox News Is Forced To Apologize After Completely False Baltimore Shooting Report
Fox News’s Shepard Smith was forced to apologize to
viewers after a Fox News report that a Baltimore protester had been shot
by police was proven to be completely false.
Fox News correspondent Mike Tobin claimed that he saw Baltimore Police shoot and kill a protester as he was running away.
The Baltimore Police tweeted:
Shep Smith, who seems to be Fox News’s dedicated apology guy, said:
Sounds like what happened is we screwed up. Mike Tobin thought he saw somebody get shot. And there was a gun and a patient on a stretcher and there is would a woman who said she saw the cop gun him down and there’s going to be violence and all the rest of that. And what we have is nothing. And the truth is, according to police, there is no gunshot victim.….I’m now in correction mode and we apparently were wrong,” Smith went on to say. “Unless there’s new information that comes forward, all the information now points to there was a guy running down the street, gun fell in the street, gun went off, guy was taken into custody. He complained that he was injured or something. They put him in an ambulance and, out of an abundance of caution, the police are now telling us, they took him to the hospital. Nobody has been shot. No police officer has pulled the trigger. And on behalf of Mike Tobin and the rest of our crew there and he rest of us at Fox News, I am very sorry for the error and glad we were able to correct it quickly.
The fact that the completely false Fox News report
could have set off another riot should not be lost on anyone. Cable news
rushes to stories and gets things wrong all of the time. The fact that
Fox’s correspondent didn’t bother to verify what he thought he saw
before he put it on live television is a real problem.
Fox
News has demonstrated why they can’t and shouldn’t ever be trusted.
Beyond their obvious bias, the fact is that Fox News has a history of
getting things wrong. Fox doesn’t get any credit for quickly correcting
their mistake because it was a mistake that never should have been made.
Wednesday, May 6, 2015
The Daily Drift
The Truth Be Told is read in 203 countries around the world.
Today is the day to remember the world free of Republicans ... !
Today is - No Republicans Day
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Wingnut Media Publishes Sexist Story Ogling Baltimore Prosecutor Marilyn Mosby
Wingnut media is using Baltimore Prosecutor Marilyn Mosby's gender against her by publishing demeaning and sexist stories.…
Tucker Carlson’s The Daily Caller news site ran a story on Friday written
by their Sports Editor, Christian Datoc, that consisted of almost
nothing but sexist tripe about how “smoking hot” the author thinks
Baltimore State’s Attorney Marilyn Mosby is. The piece, titled “Let’s Be Honest: The Baltimore State’s Attorney Is Kind Of A Smokeshow”, begins with two paragraphs of news, and then quickly dissolves into the author ogling Prosecutor Mosby.
Datoc fantasizes throughout his narrative, describing Mosby as “incredibly sexy” and flashing “crazy girl” eyes. He concludes his piece with the perverse line “I wouldn’t mind being unrestrained in the back of Ms. Mosby’s paddy wagon”.
With that perverse finishing touch, he not
only emphasizes his sexism one final time, but he also draws a wildly
inappropriate reference to Freddie Gray’s ultimately fatal last ride.
Instead of reflecting upon Freddie Gray’s death, Datoc wants the reader
to indulge in his erotic fantasy, dismissing Gray’s homicide as a mere
afterthought. Datoc is more interested in imagining his own “joy ride”
with the Baltimore prosecutor than he is in reporting the details
surrounding Gray’s death.
Sexism seems to run rampant at The Daily Caller. In
March, Tucker’s brother, Buckley Carlson, got into trouble when he
inadvertently sent a “reply to all” e-mail to a Bill De Blasio
spokeswoman where he called her a “self-righteous bitch”. His brother later defended Buckley by saying, ”I just talked to my brother about his response, and he assures me he meant it in the nicest way.”
The Daily Caller is a wingnut website.
For that reason, nobody should expect them to champion liberal causes
like reproductive choice or equal pay for equal work. However, even
political wingnuts should, at the very least, demand that the page
refrain from overtly sexist stories like Datoc’s article. His demeaning
essay treats Marilyn Mosby as nothing more than a piece of eye candy for
his leering eyes.
If The Daily Caller’s columnists
are unable to respect women as professionals, they have no business
writing news. While I am sure Tucker Carlson will defend Christian
Datoc’s piece by saying “he meant it in the nicest way,” there is
nothing nice about objectifying women. Hopefully some day, Tucker
Carlson and his colleagues will understand that.
Boehner Ignores Reality and Blames Liberals For The Baltimore Riots
Boehner tried to argue
that liberals are to blame for the Baltimore riots and the poor people
in the inner cities would benefit economically if the Koch brothers and
other billionaires got a big tax cut.
Boehner said, “When you look at these schools in the
inner cities, these families are trapped in bad schools that don’t
provide a real education, and look what you get. Chuck, what we have
here is fifty years of liberal policies that have not worked to help the
very people that we want to help. It’s time to look at all of these
programs to determine what’s working and what isn’t because until we
start to find programs that actually work and provide opportunities,
more opportunities, and a better education, we’re going to have more of
the same.”
Chuck Todd pointed out that improving the schools in
Baltimore takes government money. Boehner had no answer except to send
poor kids to Boys and Girls Clubs. Boehner did use all of the
buzzwords for cutting funding to public schools and giving parents
vouchers for private schools. Boehner also argued that tax cuts for the
wealthy would create economic opportunity in the inner cities.
The blaming of liberals for Baltimore riots is a
blatant attempt by Republicans to push their failed economic agenda as a
cure for a problem that was caused by their failed policies. During the
recession, the Republican refusal to keep stimulus funding going harmed
city and state government across the country. The Republicans triggered
massive cuts in education budgets, and the ripple effect from the
decisions in Boehner’s House are still being felt today.
It is beyond laughable that Boehner would blame
liberals for the Baltimore riots or any other civil unrest. The current
Republican budget would make life even worse for poor people in inner
cities. Speaker Boehner also ignored the basic point that too many
police officers around the country have targeted minorities. The Speaker
is ignoring the real social and economic issues in order to argue that a
tax cut for the Koch brothers would calm all domestic unrest.
John
Boehner’s answer to the situation in Baltimore and around the country
is to blame liberals while pushing policies that more away from the
people who already have less. The only failed policies that were visible
during this interview were the failed policies of Boehner and his
Republican Party.
Republican Pretender Hopefuls Put Their Buffoonery on Display in South Carolina
Jeb Bush, Rick Santorum, Rick Perry, Lindsey Graham, and Ted Cruz,
got together and agreed to collectively sound like Elisabeth Hasselbeck…
Were I them, I’d cringe reading about the things they said at the 2015 South Carolina Republican Party State Convention on Saturday. Shouldn’t you save the really stupid stuff for where nobody can hear you?
Apparently not, as the Fabulous Five, Jeb Bush, Rick
Santorum, Rick Perry, Lindsey Graham, and Ted Cruz, got together and
agreed to collectively sound like Elisabeth Hasselbeck.
To show you the kind of brain power we are talking about here, CNN reveals
that Rick Perry “got perhaps the biggest applause of the day when he
said ‘the best defense against crime is an armed citizen.'”
This is demonstrably untrue, but then the entire
Republican agenda is based on things that are demonstrably untrue, but
which they wish were true, so this is hardly surprising.
The audience loved it, of course. You would expect them to. “The dumber the better” seems to be the cry for 2016.
And Ted Cruz proved it. The guy who can’t be
bothered to show up for his job, who has introduced only one piece of
legislation and failed to vote on most others, said loftily:
2016 isn’t going to be an election about whoever’s got the loftiest rhetoric. Folks are going to look past at what people are saying and look at what you’ve done.
He better hope not, cause he’s done nothing except talk.
But it is Lindsey Graham who may have won the
Hasselbeck Prize when he said that, “I see a Republican Party” – this is
the same Republican Party whose policies are in large part responsible
for the Baltimore riots – “giving people in Baltimore and nearly every
other big city hope like they haven’t seen in past eight years.”
Rick Perry told the be-dumbed, “The great
issue of our time is a battle between western values of freedom and this
totalitarian world view of Islamic fanatics.” And Lindsey Graham said,
“They want to purify their religion and they want to destroy ours.”
Wow, I could almost forget the Republican Party’s
own purity drive. And wasn’t it Rick Santorum who said mainline
protestants are actually serving Satan these days, and aren’t even
really Christians?
Graham went after Islam. No doubt tired of hiding
under his bed from ISL, he complained, “I’ve never seen so many threats
to our homeland as I see today.”
There are more terrorist organizations with more safe havens, more capability, more weapons, more men, than hit us on any time before 9/11.
Ted Cruz, not to be outdone, said,
We need a president who’s not an apologist for radical Islamist terrorism, suggesting that it’s just like the Crusades and the Inquisition. We need a president who says ISIS is the face of evil and we will stop it.
But as Bloomberg pointed out, it was Santorum who “led the Republican charge in South Carolina on radical Islam.”
Santorum agreed to forget all about his own past in particular and the GOP’s obsession with the past in general:
You can’t defeat ISIS unless you define the enemy for who it is. This is an enemy that wants to bring back a version of Islam that was popular in the 7th Century, a radical idea about beheading and crucifixions.
Ready for the punchline?
“This is not a modern Islam. It’s a 7th century Islam. So I have a suggestion: Let’s bomb them back to the 7th century.”
Like whatever bastardized abortion of a religion
they’re promoting is somehow a modern-day Christianity. These guys sound
like the Christian monks who murdered female mathematician and
philosopher Hypatia in fifth century Alexandria, Egypt, for standing up
for actually thinking, rather than believing.
Her murder effectively replaced the questing spirit
of Hellenistic philosophy and science with the “Do not ask questions,
just believe,” paradigm, which last until the Renaissance.
If any group does not have the right to call another religion backward-looking, it is the Religious Right.
One resolution which came up at the convention was
“Cold War Victory Day” which would replace “May Day” on May 1, because
May Day is, you know, so Communist, even though it’s been a festival
since before Christianity.
They had a whole bunch of resolutions
to consider, like teaching the Constitution and the Declaration of
Independence in public schools (presumably until they auction the public
schools off to the highest bidder), and then violating the Constitution
by letting the Senate have a say in the president’s negotiations with
Iran (you immediately see the need to teach the Constitution), and of
course, pledging loyalty to Israel.
Kinda wish they’d pledge loyalty to the United States of America, but I suppose that would be too much to ask.
Bernie Sanders Unloads On The Kochs While Refusing To Play The Media’s Smear Hillary Game
STEPHANOPOULOS: And let me ask you also, you
sold — you told my colleague, Jon Karl, this week you have some concerns
about the money raised by The Clinton Foundation.
What are those concerns exactly?
SANDERS: Well, it’s not just The Clinton Foundation.
Here are my concerns, George, and it should be the concern of every
American.
And this is, in a sense, what my campaign is about —
can somebody who is not a billionaire who stands for working families
actually win an election in which billionaires are pouring hundreds of
millions of dollars into the election?
It’s not just Hillary. It is the Koch Brothers. It is Sheldon Adelson.
(CROSSTALK)
STEPHANOPOULOS: — with them.
SANDERS: What I am saying is that I get very
frightened about the future of American democracy when this become a
battle between billionaires.
I believe in one person, one vote; I believe we need
a constitutional amendment to overturn Citizens United. And let me say
this: on our first day, first day that we were out, we asked people to
get involved in our campaign, 100,000 people signed up; 35,000 people
made donations to berniesanders.com and we raised on that first day $1.5
million — and you know what the average contribution was?
STEPHANOPOULOS: What was it?
SANDERS: $43.
George Stephanopoulos asked the obvious question to
Sen. Sanders about The Clinton Foundation and the senator from Vermont
turned it around and focused on the bigger issue of the attempt by
billionaires to rig the electoral process in order to buy the
government. Any media types who intend to use Bernie Sanders to attack
Hillary Clinton are going to be very disappointed.
Sanders has made it clear that he is not going to
run negative ads against Clinton, and he despises personal attack
politics. In his first 24 hours as a candidate, Bernie Sanders raised more money than Ted Cruz, Marco Rubio, and Rand Paul.
Unlike the Republicans, Sen. Sanders doesn’t have a billionaire sugar
daddy writing big checks for a shadowy super PAC. Bernie Sanders is
being powered by the people.
Instead of being the tip of the political spear
against former Sec. of State Clinton, Sanders is the voice of the
people’s movement against the Koch organized and funded attempt to buy
the United States government.
The
movement is growing against the Citizens United enabled Koch brothers.
The American people will not yield to a hostile billionaire takeover.
Republican’s Bright Idea: Let’s Pass A Bunch Of Terrible Bills So Obama Looks Bad For Vetoing Them
Good: Republican finally admits impeaching Obama isn’t going to happen.Bad: So he wants Congress to spend the next two years destroying Obama’s legacy, instead.
Wingnuts Remarkably Quiet About Freddie Gray’s 2nd Amendment Rights Being Violated
You’d think “right to bear arms” wingnuts would be outraged over the arrest of Freddie Gray… but they’re not. — Why?
The Republican Cabal’s Racist, Privileged Image Proves Problematic For Cleveland Ahead Of Convention
Cleveland is playing host to the 2016 Republican National
convention, and their strategy for it is, “Don’t be Baltimore.” Or
Ferguson....Silicon Valley rejects Carly Fiorina prestender run
“She put herself ahead of the interests of
the company and I fear she would do the same as president,” said Jason
Burnett, a grandson of the late HP co-founder David Packard and a member
of the Packard Foundation board of trustees. “I don’t want her to do
harm to this country.”
O'Malley Rips Boehner For Refusing To Address Structural Problems In Our Economy
Former
Maryland governor and Baltimore mayor Martin O'Malley let John Boehner
have it for trying to blame the economic woes in our cities on "liberal
economic" policies.
Gohmert: 'It's A Real Shame' That People Want To End Mass Incarceration Of Non-Violent Offenders
Louie Gohmert (R-TX) over the weekend
lashed out at Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton for
calling to end mass incarceration in the United States.
Big Dangers for the Next Election
by Elizabeth Drew
While people are wasting their time speculating about who will
win the presidency more than a year from now—Can Hillary beat Jeb? Can
anybody beat Hillary? Is the GOP nominee going to be
Jeb or Walker?—growing dangers to a democratic election, ones that could
decide the outcome, are being essentially overlooked. The three dangers
are voting restrictions, redistricting, and loose rules on large
amounts of money being spent to influence voters. In recent years, we’ve
been moving further and further away from a truly democratic election
system.Republican Senators Voted To Sell Off Your National Forests
This is just downright wrong. As Ronald Reagan once said, “The preservation of parks, wilderness, and wildlife has also aided liberty by keeping alive the 19th century sense of adventure and awe with which our forefathers greeted the American West. Many laws protecting environmental quality have promoted liberty by securing property against the destrutctive trespass of pollution. In our own time, the nearly universal appreciation of these preserved landscapes, restored waters, and cleaner air through outdoor recreation is a modern expression of our freedom and leisure to enjoy the wonderful life that generations past have built for us.”
More on this budgetary amendment from indefinitelywild
“SA 838
is a budgetary amendment which backs support for and funding of state
efforts to take over federal land. It was part of a larger debate over
the 2016 fiscal year federal budget.Introducing the amendment, Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R, AK) stated, “When we have an opportunity to consider this amendment, a vote for it is really a vote in support of — as a priority of this Congress — comprehensive approaches to land policies to facilitate economic development, empower States and improve our conservation systems.”
The back story is that there’s ongoing, and potentially unconstitutional efforts taking place in Utah, Arizona, Wyoming, New Mexico, Colorado, Nevada, Alaska and Idaho to see those states take possession of public land from the federal government, then allow the exploitation of their resources by private industry.
AmericanProgress.org calls it “…a losing battle that amounts to little more than political grandstanding to rally their extreme conservative base and feed an antigovernment narrative. Such bills contradict the majority of public opinion in these states, as well as economic realities and constitutional precedent dating back to the mid-19th century.”
The senate’s budgetary amendment to support this privatization carries no legal weight — it’s not a law — but does signify a troubling level of support for the privatization of public land. And make no mistake, this is about privatization and resource exploitation.
Efforts to “reclaim” public land are financially support by special interest groups like ALEC and Americans For Prosperity. ALEC is primarily funded by ExxonMobil while Americans For Prosperity was founded by David and Charles Koch.
SA 838 passed 51-49. Democrats unanimously opposed it, while all but three Republicans voted for it. The holdouts were Corey Gardner of Colorado, Kelly Ayotte of New Hampshire, and Lamar Alexander of Tennessee.
If it’s not a law (yet!), then why worry about it? “If you let a bad idea fester long enough, it sounds less and less like a bad idea,” states Steve Kline, of the Theodore Roosevelt Conservation Partnership. The fear is that this success in the senate could encourage future efforts to pass similar language as actual legislation.” – indefinitelywild
Here is what you can do
If you prefer not to see our public lands sold to private industry sign this petition from The Wilderness Society.You could also write or call your local senator in opposition to the amendment.
10 Really Good Reasons To Not Vote Republican In 2016
The obvious reasons are of course policy related.
Republicans are opposed to anything sensible that would help the
working poor, the middle class, those in need of help, the environment
or anything else that doesn’t increase the bottom lines of their
campaign donors.These ten reasons are far more specific.
No. Just no. No more Bushes. No more. None. Be gone, we’re done with you.
This list certainly doesn’t cover all of the ineptitude the Republican Party has to offer. With jerks like Mike Huckabee, Ben Carson, Carly Fiorina and…gulp…Sarah Palin still out there making fools of themselves this list could go on virtually forever.
The only positive thing about the Republican primary will be watching these fools tear each other to shreds, forcing them to flip-flop their positions as the political wind blows, as usual.
10.) Marco Rubio
“The Hispanic community understands the American dream and have not forgotten what they were promised”
The Senator loves to champion the cause of Latinos. Unfortunately he may be the most out of touch Hispanic man of all time.
9.) Bobby Jindal
“It’s
time to update traditional public schools, charter schools, home
schools, online schools and parochial schools. Let the dollars follow
the child instead of forcing the child to follow the dollars, so that
every child has the opportunity to attain an education.”
The quote is of course all about privatization. Jindal wants to hand
money to private schools run by campaign donors while at the same time
slashing higher education funds to give tax breaks to the wealthy.
8.) Chris Christie
“I don’t compromise my principles for politics”
Christie has proven time and time again that he has no principles to
compromise. Electing this man to anything ever again would make the
Republican Party the laughing-stock of the world.
7.) Rick Santorum
“I
love it when the left and when the president say, ‘Don’t try to impose
your values on us, you folks who hold your Bibles in your hand and cling
to your guns.’ They have values too. Our values are based on religion,
based on life. Their values are based on a religion of self.”
Santorum’s values are based on cash. His “Christian values” have
nothing to do with Christianity. Holding your bible in one hand and
your gun in the other, as he puts it, proves that beyond the shadow of a
doubt.
6.) Donald Trump
“Love
him or hate him, Trump is a man who is certain about what he wants and
sets out to get it, no holds barred. Women find his power almost as much
of a turn-on as his money.”
Let’s go with “hate him.” First off, speaking of yourself in the
third-person shows just what a narcissist you are, and secondly, your
idiotic and extremely sexist comment about women makes any realistic run
at the highest office in the land nothing but a really bad joke.
5.) Rick Perry
“The
air we breathe, the water we drink, and the land we inhabit are not
only critical elements in the quality of life we enjoy – they are a
reflection of the majesty of our Creator.”
In Perry’s tenure as Governor of Texas he allowed fracking and oil
production to consume the landscape, saw unmitigated destruction of
public park lands and had zero to say on environmental issues other than
to tout the modest improvement in Texas air quality, which was caused
by federal mandates, not his. Sit back down, Rick. We like our planet.
4.) Scott Walker
“What
makes America amazing is that there have always been men and women of
courage who were willing to think more about the future of their
children and grandchildren than they did about their own political
careers.”
That’s why Walker slashed education to give
tax breaks to the wealthy and destroyed the unions in Wisconsin to make
his campaign donors happy, leading to the utter destruction of his
state’s economy. It was all for the children.
3.) Rand Paul
“Just because a couple people on the Supreme Court declare something to be ‘constitutional’ does not make it so.”
This kind of idiotic thinking is exactly why we can’t afford someone
like Rand Paul. Article III section II of the constitution grants
judicial authority to the Supreme Court in “all cases in law and equity”
under the document. Your statement may be the dumbest thing anyone who
claims to be a “constitutional conservative” has ever said.
2.) Ted Cruz
“Is
it true that the American people are war-weary? Absolutely. We are
tired of sending our sons and daughters to distant lands year after year
after year, to give their lives trying to transform foreign nations.”
Cruz signed the letter to Iran letting them know he in no way wants
peace with them or any agreements that may end in our NOT bombing them.
He is a warmonger who supports putting boots on the ground wherever and
whenever possible, because war is good for business.
1.) Jeb Bush
“It’s been painful to see the people that you love be attacked when you know it’s not fair or true.”
Not fair or true? Your brother came perilously close to destroying
our economy permanently. His actions and lies sent thousands of
Americans to their death in a war based on deceit. Had President Obama
lost in 2008 and John McCain continued his policies, which is a
certainty, we would right now be renaming the Great Depression “not so
bad if you compare it to this.”No. Just no. No more Bushes. No more. None. Be gone, we’re done with you.
This list certainly doesn’t cover all of the ineptitude the Republican Party has to offer. With jerks like Mike Huckabee, Ben Carson, Carly Fiorina and…gulp…Sarah Palin still out there making fools of themselves this list could go on virtually forever.
The only positive thing about the Republican primary will be watching these fools tear each other to shreds, forcing them to flip-flop their positions as the political wind blows, as usual.
Here’s How The Nation’s Two Largest States Plan To Crack Down On Predatory Lending
Predatory lenders thrive in Texas, where regulations are scarce on stores that offer payday advance loans and allow borrowers to put their cars up as collateral for high-cost, short-term credit. But a trio of bills being considered in the legislature would update state law to make it harder for desperate borrowers to wind up trapped in endless loan-renewal cycles when they turn to payday and auto title loans.
The bills would put a length limit on what lenders can offer, prohibiting unpaid loans from being rolled over more than three times. The industry’s profits depend upon borrowers who get stuck in much longer chains of loan renewals that drive the overall interest rate on the borrowing up over 400 percent APR, according to federal data.
Along with the duration cap on re-lending, companies would have to ensure that a customer pays down the principal amount by at least 25 percent each time they refinance a loan. The two provisions together would help tie loan terms to a borrower’s real income and timely ability to repay.
Such rules are unenforceable without having comprehensive data on who is borrowing what from whom. One of the Texas bills would create a state database to track lending. Payday lenders have fought hard against databases in other states like Alabama, lobbying lawmakers and filing suit to enlist judges in their efforts.
The bills have the backing of the local chapter of the AARP. A fifth of all customers at Texas payday and auto title lending shops are over the age of 50, according to the group, which has also published polls showing that three-quarters of Texans older than 45 say they strongly support tighter rules for the loans.
If the Texas laws pass, the two largest states in the country would likely be building payday loan databases at the same time. California regulators are introducing a new slate of rules for policing high-cost lending, including a database provision that would help the state to better enforce the rules that are already on the books.
“California limits you to one payday loan at a time, but there’s no way to enforce that because there isn’t a database,” Pew Charitable Trusts small-dollar lending expert Alex Horowitz told ThinkProgress, stressing that even a loan that complies with California law is still more expensive than should be allowed. “Databases have acted as a backstop in some states. But they’re not sufficient as regulation. Even with a database and with this proposal, most borrowers cannot afford to repay $300 in two weeks. For an average payday borrower, that’s a quarter of their gross income.”
While Texas’ proposed database is part of a crackdown on brick-and-mortar loan shops, the new California consumer protections are tailored to the digital age. The state wants to prohibit payday lenders from gaining access to borrowers’ bank accounts – a move that could drive internet-only lenders out of business, and decrease the price that low-income borrowers pay for desperation loans – and force them to rely on traditional paper checks as collateral. The regulators are also partnering with Google and Microsoft to make it harder for unscrupulous internet lenders to promote their products to California web users.
Pushing online lenders out of business should make for a less-abusive overall market for resource-starved families who need quick cash. “Interest rates online are generally higher than they are at storefront lenders,” Horowitz said.
Compared to the dozen-plus states that have made payday lending impossible in their borders, California’s current approach is moderate. Storefront lenders that register with the state have “loan sizes capped at $255, and fees capped at $45,” Horowitz said. Interest rates on such loans are still quite high, but far lower than the roughly 400 percent annual interest that lenders charge on average in less-regulated states.
Reform proposals for storefront lending in Texas and online lending in California illustrate the diversity of regulatory approaches that states pursue in the absence of national rules for lending that targets the poor. As the industry siphons billions of dollars per year out of low-income communities, federal neglect has turned efforts to protect consumers into a game of whack-a-mole in which lenders successfully lobby against most regulations. But all that will soon change, as the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) is preparing the first-ever national regulations to link lenders’ offerings to borrowers’ actual ability to repay the loans.
With its new regulations, the agency seeks to balance genuine consumer demand for emergency loans with the public interest in preventing the most predatory and abusive features of the traditional business model. While states like Connecticut and New York have sought to prohibit payday lenders from operating in any form, most Americans live in states like California and Texas that allow the businesses to exist while trying to legislate against their most abusive habits.
The forthcoming federal rules will attempt to replicate the most successful elements of those hybrid regulatory approaches, and impose new underwriting standards on lenders to prevent them from knowingly signing someone up for a loan they can’t afford to repay on time. The final rules are years away, but they will likely be modeled on the approach that states like Colorado take: limit the cost of these loans, prohibit the most egregious fine-print tricks lenders use, but make sure this lending remains economically viable so that desperate low-income people have somewhere to turn.
Republican Steve King Is 'Campaigning' for Hillary Clinton
Hillary Clinton, please take a moment to thank Rep.
Steve King for his tremendously effective effort to assure your election
in 2016. When it comes to rapidly ascendant American Latino and
Asian-American voters, Steve King and his radical ideas are the
equivalent of several, well-funded SuperPacs dumping money in Hillary
Clinton's favor.The truth about trailer parks ...
Jesse Ventura: I question the sanity of anyone who watches Fox News
Former Gov. Jesse Ventura has a few words for Fox News
and their views, and he's not being kind. The governor just doesn't
appear to have patience anymore for the top rated cable news station in
the United States.
Is he a deserter or a hero? Maybe it's something in between? These questions have surrounded Sgt Bowe Bergdahl, who was released earlier this year after spending five years in captivity of the Taliban. President Obama made the call to arrange a swap of five Taliban prisoners who were being held at the Guantanamo Bay prison in Cuba, in exchange for the POW Bergdahl who was finally released on May 31, 2014. Reports have stated that when Bergdahl went missing, he had actually abandoned his post, putting fellow soldiers in jeopardy in the process. After this information leaked, the situation quickly became political. Republicans jumped on President Obama, accusing him of negotiating with terrorists and and giving up too much for an alleged "traitor" and "deserter." The Obama administration quickly defended their actions, stating that the United States leaves no solider behind.
The number one anti-Bergdahl voice was the right-wing safe haven, Fox News. Known for their constant attacks on the Obama administration, Fox News framed the story as one of a weak commander in chief in another attempt to slander President Obama. On his podcast "We the People with Jesse Ventura," released each Thursday, host Jesse Ventura came clean with his thoughts on Fox News and the people who rely on them for a "fair and balanced" approach to the news.
Is he a deserter or a hero? Maybe it's something in between? These questions have surrounded Sgt Bowe Bergdahl, who was released earlier this year after spending five years in captivity of the Taliban. President Obama made the call to arrange a swap of five Taliban prisoners who were being held at the Guantanamo Bay prison in Cuba, in exchange for the POW Bergdahl who was finally released on May 31, 2014. Reports have stated that when Bergdahl went missing, he had actually abandoned his post, putting fellow soldiers in jeopardy in the process. After this information leaked, the situation quickly became political. Republicans jumped on President Obama, accusing him of negotiating with terrorists and and giving up too much for an alleged "traitor" and "deserter." The Obama administration quickly defended their actions, stating that the United States leaves no solider behind.
The number one anti-Bergdahl voice was the right-wing safe haven, Fox News. Known for their constant attacks on the Obama administration, Fox News framed the story as one of a weak commander in chief in another attempt to slander President Obama. On his podcast "We the People with Jesse Ventura," released each Thursday, host Jesse Ventura came clean with his thoughts on Fox News and the people who rely on them for a "fair and balanced" approach to the news.
"Anyone that gives Fox News any shred of credibility is ridiculous. When I'm out in the world and I hear people tell me that they watch Fox News, right away I question that person's sanity to myself. That person can't be of solid mind because no one of solid mind will watch Fox News and take it seriously."Fox News promotes their brand as one that delivers "fair and balanced" news coverage, but time and time again, show themselves to be a major branch of the right wing media. Jesse Ventura has had his run ins with Fox News over the years, from heated debates with Sean Hannity, to making Brian Kilmeade leave the Fox and Friends news set after questioning the 9/11 terrorist attacks.
Fox “News”: Amend Constitution So Democrats Can’t Lie During Election
Oh, the Hypocrisy - It Burns
As
we all know, the august broadcasting institution known as Fox “News” is
a bastion of “Fair and Balanced” reporting. They would never dream of
cherry-picking out-of-context, twisted or simply invented “facts.” They
would never aggressively peddle opinion as fact with slick packaging and
arrogant bloviation to pursue a partisan agenda at the height of an
election. Oh, no.As enormous election year 2016 begins to take off, Fox wants to force everyone else to be just as honest as they are. So, it was a great public service that Fox “News” published a recent op-ed entitled, “Harry Reid is the poster child for why our Constitution must be changed.” Said op-ed argued that we need to remove the text from Article I of the Constitution which provides immunity from defamation lawsuits to members of Congress. At first blush, it might sound like a decent idea to force our elected officials to give it to us straight. Our politicians do lie a lot. But if you think our government is dysfunctional now, imagine how fun it will be when anyone in the world can sue anyone in Congress for lying. The article, by Fox shrieking head Gregg Jarret, is featured prominently on Fox’s opinions page as an “editor’s pick.”
The reason for Jarrett’s gripe is that, in 2012, when Mitt Romney was just about to glide into the White House, according to Jarrett, Harry Reid was mean to him, and then he lost. Sad face.
At the height of the heated campaign for President in August of 2012, then Majority Leader Harry Reid stood on the floor of the U.S. Senate and smeared Mitt Romney as a millionaire tax dodger. Reid claimed the Republican nominee paid no taxes for ten years.Harry Reid used a “brazen ploy” to help his own party win an election! How dare he? Jarrett continues that the Founding Fathers could not have imagined that someone in Congress would abuse the legal immunity given to protect debate in order to slander a private citizen running for the White House mere weeks from the election “and subvert the democratic process.” The problem is compounded, Jarrett writes, because Harry Reid is still not sorry about it.
It was an audacious and deceitful claim because Reid possessed no evidence. He presented not a scrap of proof…because none existed. He appeared to invent the accusation out of thin air in a brazen ploy to turn votes away from Romney in favor of Obama.
It’s nice to hear a Fox shrieking head concerned about the “democratic process.” That’s refreshing. If we go along with Jarrett’s assertion that Reid went too far, Reid’s comment is pretty mild compared to the slander that the right has slung in Presidential elections in recent history. From Willie Horton to Swiftboating and the birth certificate, conservative politicians and media like Fox spin complex yarns of terrifying fiction every election cycle, in an attempt to see it stick to Democrats. It’s kind of a well-established tradition. The most recent example of this was in 2014, at the height of the midterms, when wingnuts peddled the idea that a devastating Ebola pandemic was imminent, despite experts explaining it was pretty much impossible to contract in a country with decent public health infrastructure. But based on the assumption that we were one sneeze away from The Stand, they argued that Obama was allowing America to be infected for his nefarious purposes. Funny enough, Gregg Jarrett was an eager participant in incubating this idea and infecting his readers with it. Is he sorry about that?
The Ebola story was quite a whopper. Wondering how Romney got rich? Meh. It’s worth remembering that in 2012, the whole country, including many nervous Republicans, were asking, “WHY?!” Romney was the only major Presidential nominee in modern history to refuse to show the nation his tax returns. It is a fact that he was hiding something. We may never know what he was hiding, but whatever it was, he calculated that it was worse than the weeks of speculation about the mystery that dogged him. He sold himself to the American people as the right man for the Presidency because he was a successful businessman, but then told the voters they didn’t need to know how he made all his money. That proved to be an untenable contradiction. Harry Reid did not sink Mitt Romney, Mitt Romney sank Mitt Romney, and President Obama’s high popularity after four years, relative to Presidents in recent history, bought him a second term.
Jarrett compares Reid’s comments about Mitt Romney to Joseph McCarthy’s anti-communist witch hunts. In the world of political attacks, this is a bit like comparing the bite marks of a mosquito to those of a Tyrannosaurus. Romney wanted to be President Ritchie Rich without answering any questions, and Reid grabbed him by his Achilles heel. McCarthy destroyed the careers and reputations of thousands of innocent people. His hearings have more in common with the actual Salem witch trials than an opportunistic political attack on a powerful figure trying to pull a fast one. McCarthy’s judgment may have been compromised by the fact that he was a major alcoholic. This is something that Gregg Jarrett ought to keep in mind as he returns to reporting for Fox “News,” after his arrest for being belligerently drunk in an airport last year.
Changing the Constitution is a complex, serious matter, and should not be taken lightly. Jarrett’s desire to amend something as fundamental to our republic as Article I, section 6’s “Speech or Debate Clause,” highlights the fact that today’s conservatives aren’t conserving anything, but are often radical in their quest to subvert the will of the people and the legitimate authority of the government to corporate privatization and imperialism. If we’re going to consider changing the Constitution, there are a number of potential amendments that would be well worth the effort, including the Equal Rights Amendment, and an Amendment to overturn Citizens United.
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