Tag: reactionaries

SCOTUS rightwingers change Roe vs Wade…just because they can!

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It’s not just that US Supreme Court majorities upheld Mississippi’s 15-week abortion ban and overturned Roe v. Wade. The opinion also skewed the crux of the conversation going forward — with just three words.

“Unborn human being” is the term Associate Justice Samuel Alito adopted from the Mississippi statute, thereby replacing the key phrase in the landmark 1973 Roe ruling that spelled out a constitutional right to abortion: “potential life.”…

Alito didn’t write God or Christianity or Bible anywhere in the opinion, but his justification is a veiled “religious narrative,” said Rebecca Todd Peters, a religious studies professor at Elon University. By co-opting the language in Mississippi’s law in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, the majority opinion gives credence to the notion — embraced largely by the religious right — that life begins at fertilization, she said. The ruling has already emboldened several states to ban and criminalize the medical procedure in almost all circumstances.

“That is an enormous shift,” Peters said. “It erases whole groups of people who have different religious beliefs.”

These egregious pricks stuffed into positions of legal power by the most useless fool who’s ever been president – mean not only to change the course of history; but, jurisprudence…in passing.

Obamacare upheld by SCOTUS

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Click to enlarge — Jim Lo Scalzo/EPA

Chief justice John Roberts has come to the rescue of Barack Obama’s healthcare reforms for a second time as the US supreme court struck down a Republican-led challenge to Obamacare that could have gutted the legislation and stripped millions of Americans of their health insurance.

Rescue? No. Roberts may be a conservative dork; but, his style of judgement rests on the intent of Congress and law. Passed by a Congress lightyears ahead of what we’ve had to bear since Year 3 of Obama, the intent of the ACA was clear and Roberts supported the law – as far as Congress went.

The decision in the high-stakes case of King v Burwell all but guarantees that Obamacare will survive intact until at least the 2016 election, giving its supporters hope that it will become impossible to reverse even if a Republican is elected to the White House.

The case, which turned on the meaning of four words – “established by the state” – was brought by Virginia limousine driver David King, who sued the then health secretary, Sylvia Burwell, on the grounds that insurance subsidies erroneously paid to those on low to middle incomes forced him to take out cover against his will by pushing him above an affordability threshold…

In most respects, the same as laws establishing minimum levels of automobile insurance. Opposed just as vehemently in its day by cheapskate conservatives who hate paying for anything.

But six of the nine justices, including Roberts, sided with the government in agreeing that other parts of the legislation made the broader meaning clear and allowed subsidies to be paid to exchanges run by states or the federal government.

“Given that the text is ambiguous, we must turn to the broader structure of the act to determine the meaning,” wrote Roberts in a passage that represents a huge victory for the Obama administration…

Democratic frontrunner Hillary Clinton…praised the court’s decision, tweeting: “SCOTUS affirms what we know is true in our hearts & under the law: Health insurance should be affordable & available to all.”

Fellow presidential candidate and leftwing Vermont senator Bernie Sanders praised the court for recognizing “the common-sense reading of the Affordable Care Act” but went on to call for replacing Obamacare with a “Medicare-for-all, single-payer system”.

If and when we get a Congress that not only fights for the needs of average Americans; but, has the courage to provide a bit of leadership – we’ll get round to Bernie’s proposal. Only a bit over a half-century after the rest of the industrial West did so.

Which prompts me to note why I – as someone who has nothing more than contempt for the 2-party/electoral college bordello our politics are chained to – still suggest voting for Democrats when there isn’t a progressive 3rd-Party alternative. If we leave a mediocrity to fall into the hands of truly corrupt class-worshippers, we’re really in line to be screwed. And we will be getting what we deserve for our inaction.

First gay couple married in Michigan — UPDATED

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Two women were the first gay couple to marry in Michigan on Saturday, one day after the state’s ban on gay marriage, approved by voters in a landslide in 2004, was scratched from the state constitution by a federal judge.

Glenna DeJong, 53, and Marsha Caspar, 51, both of Lansing, were married by Ingham County Clerk Barb Byrum in Mason just after her office opened at 8am Saturday. Byrum said it was an honor to marry same-sex couples who have waited too long for this day.

“I figured in my lifetime it would happen,” Caspar said. “But now, when it happens now, it’s just overwhelming. I still can’t believe it. I don’t think it’s hit me yet.”

DeJong and Caspar have been together for 27 years. DeJong called it a day of “sheer joy,” adding that Michigan should not “waste taxpayer dollars and cause more turmoil” by pursuing a stay on gay marriage as Attorney General Bill Schuette did immediately after Friday’s ruling.

Clerks who handle marriage licenses in Michigan’s 83 counties said they would start granting them to gay men and lesbians – at least three as early as Saturday. DeJong and Caspar first learned the courthouse would be open after Byrum tweeted about it early Saturday morning.

At least 50 people had lined up in the Oakland County clerk’s office in Pontiac, on the outskirts of the Detroit metropolitan area, when clerk Lisa Brown arrived to open it at 8am local time, carrying a heart-shaped balloon. Brown’s staff handed out paperwork to couples who were undeterred by the Michigan attorney general’s immediate appeal…

Not that the state’s Republican-dominated legislature cares about all love and marriage.

It isn’t known when a federal appeals court in Cincinnati will respond to Attorney General Bill Schuette’s request for a stay while an appeal is pursued…”A stay would serve the public interest by preserving the status quo … while preventing irreparable injury to the state and its citizens,” he said…

The historic decision by US District Judge Bernard Friedman, who said the ballot box is no defense to a law that tramples the rights of same-sex couples, followed a two-week trial that explored attitudes and research about homosexual marriage and households led by same-sex couples…

He praised April DeBoer and Jayne Rowse, two Detroit-area nurses who are raising three children with special needs. They filed a lawsuit in 2012 because they’re barred from jointly adopting each other’s children. Joint adoption is reserved for married heterosexual couples in Michigan.

“In attempting to define this case as a challenge to ‘the will of the people,’ state defendants lost sight of what this case is truly about: people,” the judge said…”It is the court’s fervent hope that these children will grow up ‘to understand the integrity and closeness of their own family and its concord with other families in their community and in their daily lives,'” Friedman said, quoting the Supreme Court.

Bigots have always quoted the “will of the people” when they live in a state backwards enough to endorse bigotry. If not, there is no shortage of sophistry to generate appeals against progressive change, modernizing of 14th Century morality.

UPDATE: 300 couples manage to get marriage licenses before judge responds to Republican government of Michigan and stops gay marriages. Conservative homophobes can rest easy this morning. Second-class citizenship is restored to Michigan at least temporarily.

The 1-percent’s solution

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Economic debates rarely end with a T.K.O. But the great policy debate of recent years between Keynesians, who advocate sustaining and, indeed, increasing government spending in a depression, and austerians, who demand immediate spending cuts, comes close — at least in the world of ideas. At this point, the austerian position has imploded; not only have its predictions about the real world failed completely, but the academic research invoked to support that position has turned out to be riddled with errors, omissions and dubious statistics.

Yet two big questions remain. First, how did austerity doctrine become so influential in the first place? Second, will policy change at all now that crucial austerian claims have become fodder for late-night comics?

On the first question: the dominance of austerians in influential circles should disturb anyone who likes to believe that policy is based on, or even strongly influenced by, actual evidence. After all, the two main studies providing the alleged intellectual justification for austerity — Alberto Alesina and Silvia Ardagna on “expansionary austerity” and Carmen Reinhart and Kenneth Rogoff on the dangerous debt “threshold” at 90 percent of G.D.P. — faced withering criticism almost as soon as they came out.

And the studies did not hold up under scrutiny…Yet austerity maintained and even strengthened its grip on elite opinion. Why?

Part of the answer surely lies in the widespread desire to see economics as a morality play, to make it a tale of excess and its consequences. We lived beyond our means, the story goes, and now we’re paying the inevitable price. Economists can explain ad nauseam that this is wrong…No matter; many people have a visceral sense that we sinned and must seek redemption through suffering — and neither economic argument nor the observation that the people now suffering aren’t at all the same people who sinned during the bubble years makes much of a dent.

But it’s not just a matter of emotion versus logic. You can’t understand the influence of austerity doctrine without talking about class and inequality…

Class denied by that useless standard of America’s historic horseshit. The so-called Protestant ethic.

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Washington is fixing the debt crisis – sort of

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The Financial Times is one of those newspaper websites with a paywall. Not one of those I consider worth subscribing to. Since Altman’s Op-Ed piece is brief, I’ll include the whole unedited piece below:

I asked for coffee not hemlock
I asked for coffee not hemlock!

The last-second deal to avoid America’s fiscal cliff has been criticised by budget experts, the business community and the press. In the face of deficits still exceeding a breathtaking $1tn annually, they had hoped for a “grand bargain” – namely, a long-term, multitrillion-dollar package of revenue increases and spending cuts that would truly fix the debt problem. That did not happen. Instead, the deal is seen as too small and unbalanced, as it raises only modest amounts of revenue and cuts no spending. Outside Washington, no one has a good word for it.

Critics are transfixed by the bitter negotiations, however, and are missing the big picture. It may be happening in stages, but the US is making real progress towards reducing deficits and stabilising its debt. Indeed, according to the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, a Washington-based non-profit organisation, the federal debt to gross domestic product ratio – the critical measure of financial health – will be stable at about 73 per cent for the next decade. That is because annual deficits are now on track to be halved and, therefore, the debt level will not continue to grow faster than the economy. Yes, this ratio is still too high, but stabilising it will be a crucial achievement.

But with all the weeping over deficit and debt, how is this possible? The answer is that, in two months, a course for $3tn of deficit reduction over 10 years will be set. That is about three-quarters of the amount the much-praised bipartisan Simpson-Bowles presidential commission recommended in December 2010. And, using consensus assumptions on economic growth, it is enough to stabilise America’s debt ratio. Without it, the ratio would reach nearly 100 per cent, analogous to Italy’s. Yes, after 2022, it will worsen again – reflecting the ageing population and related health costs – and more fiscal tightening will be necessary. But 10 years is enough to find those additional solutions.

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The Tea Party’s plan to [further] cripple Congress

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Tea Party Congress

Wave goodbye to members of the U.S. House of Representatives. Doing nothing has taken a lot out of them, so they have left Washington for five weeks of rest, relaxation and campaigning in the hope that voters will return them to office to do more of the same.

This is especially the case for the large Tea Party contingent among the several score first-term Republicans. They set out to change Washington but settled for simply paralyzing it.

They repealed Obama’s health-care law 33 times but didn’t change one word of its 2,700 or so pages. They stopped the Grand Bargain over the debt and deficit even at the cost of exposing Speaker John Boehner as a scaredy cat. They haven’t been able to curb the excesses of Wall Street, keep the debt ceiling from rising, or end government subsidies to NPR or Amtrak — but by God, they can bring the capital to its knees. Nearly everyone hates Congress (well, about 80 percent of Americans do) yet the Tea Party — fortified by Sarah Palin, Senator Jim DeMint and the Club for Growth — is about to do for the Senate what it did to the House.

Look at what has happened so far in the Republican primaries: Only the purest, most virginal conservatives are being chosen as the party’s standard bearers in November…

Each victor campaigned against Washington insiders who had impermissible contact with the enemy. Nominating your most conservative candidate in the primary is more satisfying than letting another weak one get in. And if these candidates do get elected, inactivity is preferable to approving legislation that even contemplates the possibility that any American could get so much as a food stamp he is not entitled to.

This is what the Grand Old Party has come to…Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell could become majority leader but actually lose power: Boehner, his weakened counterpart in the lower chamber, doesn’t lead his troops so much as try to keep from being run over by them.

The Senate, as George Washington is supposed to have told Thomas Jefferson, was designed in part to calm the tempers and passions of the House, just as a saucer is used to cool off hot tea. If the saucer itself is scalding, then the whole brew will be too hot to sip.

If the paintywaist Dems don’t muster enough of their base to reduce the harm presently being done to responsibility and governance in Congress, this is what we get to look forward to. Though, the addition of another war or two – as we wind down the last couple of Republican adventures in imperialism – is also a possibility, as well.

I don’t see any patriots in the Kool Aid Party speaking out against invading Syria, Iran, Quemoy, Matsu, China and Mexico.

Is America Healing Fast Enough?

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Mohamed El-Erian

Six internal factors suggest that the United States’ economy is slowly healing. For some observers, these factors were deemed sufficient to form the critical mass needed to propel the economy into escape velocity.

While I hoped that they might be proven right, the recent stream of weak economic data, including May’s timid net job creation of only 69,000, confirmed my doubts. With this and other elements of a disheartening employment report now suddenly raising widespread worries about the underlying health and durability of America’s recovery, it is important to understand the positive factors and why they are not enough as yet.

For starters, large US multinational companies are as healthy as I have ever seen them. Their cash balances are extremely high, interest payments on debt are low, and principal obligations have been termed out…

Company cash is not the only source of considerable spending power waiting on the sidelines. Rich households also hold significant resources that could be deployed in support of both consumption and investment.

The third and fourth positive factors relate to housing and the labor market. These two long-standing areas of persistent weakness have constituted a major drag on the type of cyclical dynamics that traditionally thrust the US out of its periodic economic slowdowns. But recent data support the view that the housing sector could be in the process of establishing a bottom…

Meanwhile, job growth, while anemic, has nonetheless been consistently positive since September 2010.

Then there is the US Federal Reserve Board. Despite legitimate questions about the effectiveness of its unconventional and ever-experimental policy stance, the Fed appears willing to be even more activist if the economy weakens…

Finally, with the November elections in sight and subsequently out of the way, some believe that politicians in Washington might finally be in a better position to agree to much-needed grand policy bargains…Greater political effectiveness would serve to remove other uncertainties that inhibit certain economic activities.

Each of these six factors suggests actual and potential economic healing. So, not surprisingly, they have provoked excitement in some circles that the US may finally be poised to leave behind the depressing trio of unusually sluggish growth, persistently high unemployment, and high and growing inequality…

The problem is that these factors, both individually and in combination, are unlikely to be a game-changer…

RTFA for these paragraphs fleshed-out. RTFA for the economic and political headwinds applying brakes to the so gradual path our nation has been trudging along. Encumbered by a Congress unwilling to provide more than half-measures, political opponents who would rather the economy fall back into the fires of more unemployment and debt – because they believe they will then be in a better position to win Congress and the White House this November.

Mohamed El-Erian is more polite and a better scholar than I. He offers a reasoned analysis and suggestions for progress.

No reforms? U.S. retirees to face dwindling funds — in 21 years!

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Yeah, I know. “Jolting news” that would cause Congressional hacks to jump into action in 20½ years!


These creeps want to shut down Social Security – after all, they don’t need it

Aging baby boomers got some jolting news on Monday when the U.S. government said the Social Security retirement program is on track to go bankrupt three years earlier than expected if reforms are not made.

Unless Washington politicians, who have been at war with each other over government spending priorities and federal budget deficits, can decide how to put Social Security on a sound footing, retirees’ pension checks would start running out in 2033, according to an annual report…

“Never since the 1983 reforms have we come as close to the point of trust-fund depletion as we are right now,” trustee Charles Blahous told reporters. “Our window for dealing with it without substantially disruptive consequences is closing very rapidly,” he said…

Craptastic!

Blahous and fellow trustee Robert Reischauer said lawmakers should be aware that it will become increasingly difficult to “avoid adverse effects” on retirees or those close to retirement if legislative changes are delayed much longer…

Members of Congress also have mulled raising the retirement age or cutting some benefits to the wealthy. But no action is expected before the November elections.

You can RTFA for all the gory details. All the pissing and moaning about coming up with solutions are hogwash. Want to see me solve the question for another hundred years or so? With one sentence?

Add this to the law. “THERE WILL BE NO CAP ON COLLECTING THE SSA TAX.”

That’s it. All that is needed is to remove the cap which stops collecting the tax once you’ve earned $104,000. That carries through well into the next century. The NY TIMES surveyed readership on that solution and got a 76% “Yes” vote. So, what’s the problem with Congress getting off their rusty dusties and following through?

Ideological slurs, slander and bigotry will not silence women

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Sandra Fluke is a third-year law student at Georgetown University Law Center
and has served as president of Georgetown Law Students for Reproductive Justice
Daylife/Getty Images used by permission

Last month, students from several Catholic universities gathered to send a message to the nation that contraception is basic health care. I was among them, and I was proud to share the stories of my friends at Georgetown Law who have suffered dire medical consequences because our student insurance does not cover contraception for the purpose of preventing pregnancy…

I…joined these students because now is a critical time to raise this issue in our public consciousness.

Thanks to the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, preventive care services, including contraception, will be covered by private insurance plans without co-pays or deductibles. If appropriately implemented, this important law will finally guarantee women access to contraception, regardless of the religious affiliation of their workplace or school.

By now, many have heard the stories I wanted to share thanks to the congressional leaders and members of the media who have supported me and millions of women in speaking out.

Because we spoke so loudly, opponents of reproductive health access demonized and smeared me and others on the public airwaves. These smears are obvious attempts to distract from meaningful policy discussions and to silence women’s voices regarding their own health care.

These attempts to silence women and the men who support them have clearly failed. I know this because I have received so many messages of support from across the country — women and men speaking out because they agree that contraception needs to be treated as a basic health care service.

They are women with polycystic ovarian syndrome, who need contraception to prevent cysts from growing on their ovaries, which if unaddressed can lead to infertility and deadly ovarian cancer. They are sexual assault victims, who need contraception to prevent unwanted pregnancy.
They are Catholic women, who see no conflict between their social justice -based faith and family planning. They are new moms, whose doctors fear that another pregnancy too soon could jeopardize the mother’s health and the potential child’s health too. They are mothers and grandmothers who remember all too well what it was like to be called names decades ago, when they were fighting for a job, for health care benefits, for equality…

Most recently, certain political commentators have started spreading misinformation about the underlying government regulation we are discussing. To be clear, through programs such as Medicaid, the government already does and should fund contraception coverage for the poorest women in our country.

But, despite the misinformation being spread, the regulation under discussion has absolutely nothing to do with government funding: It is all about the insurance policies provided by private employers and universities that are financed by individual workers, students and their families — not taxpayers.

I am talking about women who, despite paying their own premiums, cannot obtain coverage of contraception on their private insurance, even when their employer or university contributes nothing to that insurance…

Attacking me and women who use contraception by calling us prostitutes and worse cannot silence us.

I am proud to stand with the millions of women and men who recognize that our government should legislate according to the reality of our lives — not for ideology.

Bravo!

I know I speak to a larger audience, broader than the fire that burns in my heart for change, not as consumed by anger. I don’t expect everyone who wanders by these pages to come to the same radical conclusions I offer. It’s just that I’ve been at this a very long time. According to the FBI, 52 years. But, they missed some of the earliest days. 🙂

I refresh my studies as anyone dedicated to scientific methods should do and see little reason to adjust the direction of my political opinions. So, please, understand where I’m coming from, the accumulated contempt I hold for the cowards who attack women like Sandra, the craven opportunists who do their best to hold back the future of this nation. Sometimes I grow weary of attempting politeness to fools when my heart and history will not forget the mean streets I come from.

So, right on, sister Sandra! All power to the people!

Tea Party nutballs kill project worth millions to Michigan city

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Here’s the Tea Party mayor on equal rights for all Americans

Officials are already doing damage control after City Council’s vote late Monday to scrap a federally funded transit center project.

Troy Chamber of Commerce President Michele Hodges says the controversial decision is causing some fallout in the business community, which was outspoken in its support for the project. The transit center would have combined train, bus, taxi and future light rail service at a three-acre site near Maple and Coolidge…

In a private email to Hodges that went viral Tuesday, Frank W. Ervin III, the manager of government affairs for Magna International Inc., thanked the chamber president for her efforts, adding it’s disappointing that Troy’s legislators are “narrow minded when it comes to the future of Troy and the future of Southeastern Michigan.”

In the email, Ervin also informed Hodges that he plans to draft a memo to all Magna group presidents and corporate executives “strongly recommending that Magna International no longer consider the City of Troy for future site considerations, expansions or new job creation.”

He added that he’ll also recommend “that where ever and when ever possible we reduce our footprint and employment level in Troy in favor of communities who act in the best interest of both the residents and business and not simply use their public position to advance their own private agenda…”

State transportation officials have said that if Troy turned down the federal funding for the transit center, it would be reallocated to another rail project, possibly in another state…

The decision to forfeit the $8.4 million in federal funds passed by a 4-3 vote after the panel listened to about 40 residents and stakeholders share their views for and against the decade-old project…

The center was to be a regional transportation hub and would be built around Birmingham’s Amtrak line and station and provide a transfer point to SMART bus service, taxis and limousines. The facility would include a bridge, elevators, four SMART bus slips and reconfiguration of 116 parking spaces behind the Midtown Square shopping center.

Construction would have required no local or state funding. Just jobs for the folks hired to buid the project – and there would have been DOT funds to aid in hiring fulltime employees after completion in 2013.

Presumably, the citizens of Troy will have sufficient sense to kick the Kool Aid Party types off the city council before then – not that it will do much good at reviving the project months down the road.