Tag: legislation

Mexico drafts legislation to respond to Trumpublican xenophobia

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Reuters

❝ Miriam Grunstein is an attorney and former advisor to the Mexican Senate on energy and international law. Legislation has been proposed at the Mexican Senate that bans the use of public funds on any project that is “against the country’s interest.” That’s widely taken to mean the wall.

“Just because of, you know, tantrums, we could really waste a golden opportunity of uniting,” Grunstein said.

❝ The proposed Mexican legislation would lead to a review of some of the most fundamental treaties between the two countries, among them the 1848 Treaty of Guadalupe. The treaty ceded Texas and California, as well as parts of Arizona, Colorado, New Mexico, Nevada, Utah and Wyoming to the U.S.

❝ The bill also states, “in cases where the assets of our fellow citizens or companies are affected by a foreign government, as Donald Trump has threatened, the Mexican government should proportionally expropriate assets and properties of foreigners from that country on our territory.”

Translated that means that should Trump follow through on threats to expand the wall, withdraw U.S. participation in NAFTA or stop remittances, Mexico could target U.S. assets in Mexico. Assets estimated by the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative at over $100 billion.

Trump’s blather seems to have drawn a film of ignorance over the brains of many papier-mache journalists. Favorite example? Financial analysts who wonder why housing construction “suddenly” lacks sufficient skilled and/or experienced labor to meet demand.

Reason 1: Greedy contractors who put Mexican immigrant labor to work for cheaper than trained native workers. Driving the latter from that jobs market a couple of decades ago.

Reason 2: The Great Bush Recession killed many of those jobs. Folks went back to Mexico. Harder to return, now – especially since many of those who returned to Mexico now have jobs back home. Why come here to get their chops busted all over again?

Massachusetts is on the verge of greater energy independence

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❝ In case you missed the news, the Massachusetts House and Senate…did something big that we should all celebrate. By passing major energy bills, they have set the Bay State on a path of reduced reliance on fossil fuels while propelling our state towards a clean, affordable, and reliable energy future in which up to 50 percent of our electricity will come from hydropower, onshore and offshore wind turbines, and solar arrays. These actions will also drive investment in energy storage and continued gains in energy efficiency.

❝ The two bills share some important features. Both seek to have Massachusetts tap into abundant renewable energy sources available in the region — mainly hydropower and land-based wind power — through long-term contracts that will stabilize energy costs and capture added benefits for Massachusetts. Both look to kick-start offshore wind, a potential job creator. And both address the issue of leaky natural gas pipes under the streets of our cities and towns…

❝ These requirements have many benefits, starting with saving residents money on their electric bills. In fact, a recent study by the Massachusetts Clean Electricity Partnership—a coalition of hydropower, wind, and transmission companies—showed that expanded hydro and wind power could save Massachusetts homes and businesses more than $170 million annually by lowering wholesale energy costs and reducing demand for natural gas…

❝ These bills move the state in the right direction at a faster pace by diversifying our energy supply, cutting greenhouse gas emissions, and creating jobs and careers in new industries. By combining the most ambitious parts of the Senate and House bills, Massachusetts can blaze a trail to a clean energy future that others across the country and the world will follow.

I’m not surprised that Massachusetts demonstrates leadership in reforming energy use and abuse, generation and alternatives. They did the same in healthcare. They did the same for decades in disciplines as far afield as fighting slavery and, yes, kicking-off a certain revolution against colonial masters.

The equivalent of those colonial masters now have names like the Koch Brothers instead of King George. They still consider the working people of this land to be nothing more than wage slaves to be “guided” to producing the greatest profits in return for the least return needed to sustain life.

States like Massachusetts – with sufficient courage and ingenuity – can move the whole nation forward by example. As they have done in the past.

Georgia homophobes want Christian sharia — 400 companies ready to say “Goodbye”

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❝ A coalition of more than 400 companies is openly opposing a Georgia “religious liberty” bill that is rapidly heading toward passage, with at least one major company already leaving the state over the proposal.

The proposed law would allow both individuals and organizations to refuse to conduct business with or otherwise discriminate against anyone whose marriage they find counters their religious beliefs. It also protects individuals from existing nondiscrimination laws in Atlanta and elsewhere.

❝ A similar bill was dismissed last year, but the speed at which this year’s version…is moving has raised serious concerns among state lawmakers, business owners, the faith community and activists.

The bill passed both the House and, in a different form, the Senate this month. The most recent version bars the government from taking “adverse action” against a person or faith-based organization that “believes, speaks, or acts in accordance” with the religious belief that “marriage should only be between a man and a woman”.

❝ Telecom startup 373k announced it would to relocate from Decatur, Georgia, to Nevada immediately after the Georgia senate voted in favor of the measure last week…

❝ Based on the over 500 emails he’s received from members of his district and elsewhere, House Representative Taylor Bennett agrees there’s “overwhelming opposition” to the proposed law.

Just in the last week, roughly 100 businesses have joined a coalition of what is now over 400 companies opposing the religious freedom bill. The group Georgia Prospers, of which Moore is a member, includes a range of businesses – from Fortune 500 companies like Delta, Coca-Cola, and Home Depot to smaller ones across the state – in support of “treating all Georgians and visitors fairly”.

❝ Several have cited fears that Georgia will suffer lost revenue, as in Indiana where public disdain for a similar bill, before it even became law, is said to have cost the state $60m. Atlanta’s chamber of commerce and visitors’ bureau produced separate studies citing a potential loss of $1bn to $2bn if the bill passes without civil rights protections.

The religious community is also represented among the many in opposition to the law. Nearly 300 clergy members in the state spoke out this week against the “overly broad, discriminatory” proposal.

This is part of the same range of defenses erected and attempted early days of the civil rights movement. Hard-core bigots can always rely on their officially religious peers to support any rejection of the rest of the nation moving forward. They get what they deserve when the civil portion of the United States decides to boycott backwards ideology and reactionary behavior.

I would be no more likely to support a business or social endeavor in a state with laws like this than I would have to deal with comparable bodies in apartheid South Africa BITD.

Want to go back to 19th Century bigotry – then you deserve a 19th Century income.

Western states lead effort to let pharmacists prescribe birth control

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❝Groundbreaking laws in two Western states will soon make access to birth control easier for millions of women by allowing them to obtain contraceptives from pharmacists without a doctor’s prescription.

Even as the Supreme Court prepares to consider another divisive case involving access to contraception, public health advocates hope these arrangements could spread across the country, as states grappling with persistently high rates of unintended pregnancy seek to increase access to birth control with measures that so far have been unavailable under federal law.

❝Most Western countries require a doctor’s prescription for hormonal contraceptives like pills, patches and rings, but starting sometime in the next few months, women in California and Oregon will be able to obtain these types of birth control by getting a prescription directly from the pharmacist who dispenses them, a more convenient and potentially less expensive option than going to the doctor.

❝Pharmacists will be authorized to prescribe contraceptives after a quick screening process in which women fill out a questionnaire about their health and medical histories. The contraceptives will be covered by insurance, as they are now…

❝About half of the 6.6 million pregnancies annually in the United States are unintended, a higher proportion than in Europe.

But, EU nations aren’t often controlled by fundamentalist Christian voting blocs.

❝Reproductive health groups and medical associations increasingly say the ultimate goal should be to make contraceptives available without a prescription, and some worry that the push for pharmacist-prescribed contraceptives could thwart that…

❝Cost is another possible drawback of over-the-counter sales. The Affordable Care Act does not explicitly require plans to cover over-the-counter medications, so women might wind up paying hundreds of dollars a year for over-the-counter birth control instead of obtaining it free with a prescription…

❝A New Mexico proposal that failed in 2012 is expected to be revised to reflect the Oregon and California measures, said Dale Tinker, the executive director of the New Mexico Pharmacists Association…

❝One unanswered question, however, is whether insurers will pay for the time pharmacists spend reviewing women’s questionnaires or helping evaluate options…

And then there will be the states ruled by politicians who believe the Old Testament is a better gauge of how a women’s life should be governed.

Insurance against cyber insecurity

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You’ve heard it before: The cybersecurity world has a problem, or the world has a cybersecurity problem. From the Target and Sony hacks to the Office of Personnel Management breach that compromised data on up to 25 million Americans earlier this year, attacks on both public and private networks have been on the rise in the last several years. Congress, the private sector, and the security research community are trying to find a solution, but, with all due respect, some people are just flat-out missing the proverbial rub.

Much of the debate around cybersecurity, particularly in Congress, would lead you to believe that we face technical challenges that are nearly insurmountable, and that our best bet is to institute some form of better information sharing between the government and the private sector to come up with better guidelines for software vulnerability disclosure…

A report from Verizon earlier this year illuminates the alarming fact that 99.9 percent of cyber incidents involve known, and often patchable, software vulnerabilities. If we know what the problem is, what are the cyber-baddies really exploiting?

Despite the narrative, the crux of our current cyber problem is largely not technical at all, but instead comes down to organizational behavior. Bad security practices and poor investment in OPM’s IT security are largely culpable for that hack, and Sony was compromised via basic social engineering. The humans were the weaknesses in the system that the bad guys sought to exploit…

There are several ways that a free market behavior can influence a human behavior to offset these human vulnerabilities: through legislation…regulation and, in concert with or in lieu of the others, insurance premiums. Legislation and regulation are cumbersome and, once written, slow to change, which is not ideal in an environment as dynamic as cyberspace…Lawsuits are on the rise, but are also a slow lever for change. The final option is a thriving insurance marketplace.

In practice, insurance companies act as regulatory bodies, mandating security standards and behaviors that, if left uncorrected, can void coverage. The problem at this point in time is not coming up with standards and practices, which already exist, but ensuring that they are followed. At the moment, they are not. Widespread insurance coverage could change that, but the market is immature and we’re just not there yet.

Why not?…

If you accept Morgus’ premise – then, read on. As much as I hold a boatload of contempt for the insurance industry, we’re limited by the nature of contemporary capitalism and voters who dare not look beyond what they’re told.

Morgus moves on to suggested legislation about insurance and there’s the real question. Because I don’t see anything vaguely positive being accomplished by Congress in the next decade. The next census has to be performed. Gerrymandering so artfully [and criminally] put in place by bigots and conservatives must be removed. Preferably systematically a la Canada. Hopefully, this process moves us on to more than the two old parties which tie voters into a Mobius loop of footdragging.

Ten years minimum.

Republican policy on immigration is — NO! You expected different?

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Obama’s advantage is that he has an immigration policy. Republicans don’t.

There’s one way President Obama’s executive action on immigration has been a boon to Republicans. Instead of coming up with their own immigration policy, the’ve been able to just unite against Obama’s. But fury isn’t a policy. And, as is clear, fury isn’t going to stop Obama’s policy.

But there is a simple way out of this immigration mess for Republicans: pass a bill that President Obama can sign.

Not a bill, mind you, that Obama necessarily wants to sign. It doesn’t even have to be a bill Obama does sign. It can be a bill Obama will loathe. Republicans can propose the most militarized border this side of the DMZ. They can erase the Senate bill’s path to citizenship. They can electrify the fence. They can wall unauthorized immigrants off from social services. Hell, they can even pass a bill authorizing funds to deport all 11 million unauthorized immigrants living in the US.

But one way or another, Republicans need to decide what to do with the 11 million unauthorized immigrants living in the country now. They need to take away Obama’s single strongest argument — that this is a crisis, and that congressional Republicans don’t have an answer and won’t let anyone else come up with one.

Republicans aren’t just the opposition party anymore. They are, arguably, the governing party — they will soon control the House, the Senate, the Supreme Court, most state legislatures, and more governorships. And the governing party needs to solve — or at least propose solutions — to the nation’s problems. And that means the Republican policy on immigration needs to be something more than opposing Obama’s immigration policies. It needs to be something more than vague noises about border security…

“To those Members of Congress who question my authority to make our immigration system work better, or question the wisdom of me acting where Congress has failed, I have one answer: Pass a bill,” Obama said on Thursday…

Obama has one solid advantage right now…at least he wants to solve the problem. Republicans remain stuck into their legislative mantra for the last six years – stop Obama from solving the problem. Any problem. That’s not a winning position. 2016 is six years closer and all the Republicans have achieved for these last six years is demonstrating to all Americans how little they care about problem-solving other than earning their paycheck as pimps for Big Oil, Big Coal – and saying “NO” to everything else.

California first in line to ban single-use plastic bags in the United States

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California lawmakers have approved a measure that would make the state the first to impose a statewide ban on single-use plastic bags.

SB270 cleared the Senate on a 22-15 vote Friday and sent to Gov. Jerry Brown. It was approved by the Assembly a day earlier.

Senators who had previously opposed the bill, including incoming Senate President Pro Tem Kevin de Leon, a Los Angeles Democrat, this time supported the measure after protections were added for plastic bag manufacturers.

The bill by Democratic Sen. Alex Padilla of Los Angeles would prohibit single-use plastic bags at grocery stores and large pharmacies in 2015 and at convenience stores in 2016.

It includes $2 million in loans to help manufacturers shift to producing reusable bags and lets grocers charge 10 cents each for paper and reusable bags.

Typical American copout politicians. There isn’t a single one of these companies that needs a loan to shift production. If they’re that incompetent – they shouldn’t be in business.

The bill had sparked one of the most contentious debates in the last weeks of the legislative session, with aggressive lobbying by environmentalists and bag manufacturers.

For years, a statewide plastic bag ban has been an elusive goal for lawmakers trying to reduce the buildup of plastic waste in oceans and waterways that costs millions of dollars to cleanup. About 100 local jurisdictions in California already have adopted similar bans, including Los Angeles and San Francisco.

You may as well ask your Congress-critter, now, when will they get round to passing a matching national regulation. I expect I won’t still be alive when that happens.

Thanks, Mike

Fatcat donor gets Republican State Representative to draft law cutting his child support payments

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After Michael Eisenga, a wealthy GOP donor and Wisconsin business owner, failed to convince several courts to lower his child support payments, he came up with an inventive plan B — he recruited a Republican state legislator to rewrite Wisconsin law in his favor.

A set of documents unearthed Saturday by the Wisconsin State Journal shows Eisenga and his lawyer, William Smiley, supplying detailed instructions to Republican state Rep. Joel Kleefisch on how to word legislation capping child support payments from the wealthy. Kleefisch began work on the legislation last fall, weeks after an appeals court rejected Eisenga’s attempts to lower his child support payments.

In 2010, Eisenga donated $10,000 to Kleefisch and his wife, Lt. Gov. Rebecca Kleefisch, according to the Journal Sentinel. Eisenga also donated $15,000 to Republican Gov. Scott Walker.

The drafting documents, available on the Wisconsin legislature’s website, leave little not doubt that the bill was written to Eisenga’s specifications. According to the documents, on September 5, Eisenga’s lawyer briefed him on changes he was suggesting to a draft of Kleefisch’s bill. “We focused only on the portion that would require the court to modify your child support order based solely on the passage of the bill,” Smiley wrote. Eisenga then forwarded that letter to Kleefisch and one of his aides, saying, “Please have the drafter make these SPECIFIC changes to the bill.” The next day, Kleefisch’s aide forwarded the letter to the legislative lawyer drafting the bill.

Eisenga and Smiley wouldn’t speak to the press about the revelations. The flunky, Kleefisch, said contributions don’t affect his legislative efforts.

I know, I know. Put your Wellies on. The bullshit is getting deep!

Oklahoma considers stupid law regulating stupid policies

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Feel threatened?

An Oklahoma politician apparently felt that hype about the dangers of guns in schools had gone too far and decided to do something about it.

Under the Common Sense Zero Tolerance Act introduced by Rep. Sally Kern, schoolchildren in the state would no longer face punishment if they chew their frosted or fruit-filled breakfast pastries into the shape of guns…

According to the bill, “Brandishing a pastry or other food which is partially consumed in such a way that the remnant resembles a weapon,” would be protected…

In addition to the pastry provision, Kern’s bill would also make it safe for students to possess small toy weapons or use pencils, pens, fingers or their hands to simulate a weapon.

Students also couldn’t be punished for wearing clothes that “support or advance Second Amendment rights or organizations.”

In Oklahoma you have to include that last sentence otherwise the NRA will tell everyone the bill is part of some commie, pinko plot to send the Marines to your home and take away your guns.

Then, there’s the fun of deciding which kind of stupid you need to support, which kind you need to stop. Do you pass zero tolerance regulations that lead to silliness like suspending students who chew their pastries into dangerous weapon-shapes? Do you spend time regulating how much common sense is allowed to modify zero tolerance silliness? And on and on. An endless loop keeping politicians looking busy – if not productive.

8 Congressional Democrats busted at Washington sit-in

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Eight congressional Democrats were arrested Tuesday at the U.S. Capitol while demonstrating for immigration law reform.

Those arrested included Rep. John Lewis of Georgia, a leading figure in the civil rights movement in the 1960s, Rep. Charlie Rangel of New York and Rep. Jan Schakowsky of Illinois — along with Joe Crowley of New York, Raul Grijalva of Arizona, Luis Gutierrez of Illinois, Keith Ellison of Minnesota and Al Green of Texas.

They were part of a larger group conducting a sit-in to block a street in the front of the Capitol…

The arrests came as thousands of protesters took part in the “Camino Americano: March for Immigration Reform” rally on the National Mall, even though the open-area national park is closed due to the federal government shutdown…

The bill closely matches a comprehensive bipartisan bill the Senate passed in June that includes a path to citizenship for most of the estimated 11.7 million immigrants living in the United States illegally. The House bill had no Republican sponsors…

The National Park Service, which administers the mall, agreed to let the event take place under First Amendment privileges…The First Amendment says Congress can make no law abridging free speech, peaceful assembly or an appeal to government to redress grievances.

The mall is intended to be the pre-eminent national civic space for public gatherings because it is considered the place where constitutional rights of speech and peaceful assembly find their fullest expression, a mall foundation statement says.

Bravo! Nice to see a small portion of our elected representatives willing to engage non-violent protest against injustice. Lots more photos over here.

Any Freedom Fighters from the NRA or the Tea Party take part? Oh.