Blog For Arizona

A counter-movement to anti-choice extremism

Posted by AzBlueMeanie:

A new study shows more abortion restrictions went into effect in the last three years than in the previous decade. States pass record number of abortion laws:

State legislatures have passed more laws restricting access to abortions in the last three years than they did in the decade beforehand, according to a new study.

The Washington Post's Sarah Kliff explains:

What made 2010 such a boom year for abortion restrictions? It’s hard to pinpoint a particular reason, but a few factors do stand out. First, Republicans took control of lots of state legislatures in the 2010 midterm elections, allowing them to pass more restrictions than was politically feasible in the past. The Affordable Care Act also ignited a fight over abortion policy, particularly whether federal funds would help pay for abortions (when Americans used their tax subsidies to purchase health insurance coverage). That fight spilled over to state legislatures – the ones that Republicans had recently come to control – and many passed laws restricting insurance coverage of abortion.

Lastly, the focus on late-term abortion, with the 20-week abortion bans, likely played a role, too. As the Guttmacher Institute reports, those bans proliferated quickly, after Nebraska passed the first such law back in 2010. While the majority of Americans do support legal abortions in the first trimester of pregnancy, support for abortion rights falls significantly when you get into second and third trimester terminations. That drop-off in public support could have laid the groundwork for the success of the late-term restrictions.

Hey hysterical media villagers! It turns out that 'millions' did not lose their health insurance because of 'ObamaCare'

Posted by AzBlueMeanie:

Back in November the conservative media entertainment complex latched onto the GOPropaganda talking point that millions of Americans have had their health insurance policies "cancelled" - implying that these individuals would be left without health insurance coverage because of "ObamaCare." Their complicit partners in the "lamestream media" picked up the GOPropaganda talking point and caused a media hysteria for several weeks.

There is a big problem with using anecdotal reporting about individuals who claim to be 'victims" of "ObamaCare" to extrapolate a larger media narrative -- many of these individuals' stories were quickly debunked by serious and credible reporters who are not given to media hysteria. It turns out GOP claims that millions of Americans would lose their health insurance because of "ObamaCare" was not true (ah, but you already knew that).

A New Report Undermines Claims That Millions Will Lose Coverage Due To Obamacare:

[A]ccording to a new analysis, this ignores counterbalancing policies in the law. The report finds that less than 10,000 people will lose coverage coverage without an immediate and affordable replacement.

The paper, put together on behalf of ranking member Rep. Henry Waxman (D-CA) and other the Democrats on the House Committee on Energy and Commerce, takes as its starting point a recent Associated Press report that 4.7 million Americans will see their current coverage cancelled. Critics of Obamacare have used this and other reports to play conceptual games, allowing the technical “cancellation” of a plan to imply a consumer will lose all coverage entirely and be left out in the cold. But for the vast major that 4.7 million, the cancellation of a plan simply means a shift into a new and often better form of coverage. The report lays out three ways this happens.

Stock Markets set record closing highs

Posted by AzBlueMeanie:

If President Barack Obama is a socialist/communist/marxist (pick one) he is really terrible at it. While long-term unemployment in the wake of the Great Recession has not been substantially reduced -- the Bureau of Labor Statistic's U-6 long-term unemployment measure declined from 13.9% in November 2012 to 13.2% in November 2013, thanks largely to the GOP budget sequester and austerity economics -- the investor class, i.e., The Predator Class, has not only recovered from the Great Recession but it was a Champagne year's end for Wall St as stocks set record closing highs:

Stocks closed 2013 at record highs on Tuesday, with the S&P 500 posting its largest annual jump in 16 years and the Dow its biggest gain in 18, after positive reports on consumer confidence and housing boosted sentiment on the final trading day of the year.

"It's been a great year, if you look at it from what the prevailing sentiment was at the beginning of the year, it has surpassed even the most bullish of predictions. It's the type of year you want to savor, there's been a nice wealth effect that has warmed people's portfolios," said Matthew Kaufler, portfolio manager at Federated Investors.

"Between the rise in the markets as well as the rebound in housing prices, this year went a long way in repairing consumer balance sheets," he added.

2014: Raise the minimum wage and share the wealth of increased productivity with workers

Posted by AzBlueMeanie:

In November 2006, Arizona voters overwhelmingly approved Proposition 202, the minimum wage initiative backed by organized labor. The initiative included a cost of living adjustment (COLA) in subsequent years on each January 1st.

On January 1, 2014, Arizona's minimum wage will increase to $7.80 7.90 per hour. While this is more than the federal minimum wage of $7.25 per hour, it is still well below the earning power adjusted for inflation that the minimum wage would be if it had kept pace with inflation since its peak earning power in 1968. That would require a minimum wage of $10.74 per hour today. Raise The Minimum Wage.

President Obama called for a $9 per hour minimum wage in his State of the Union Address last year. He has since increased that amount to $10.10 per hour, and Senate Democrats have introduced competing bills to raise the minimum wage.

The New York Times reports today, Democrats See Minimum Wage as Key to 2014 Strategy:

Democratic Party leaders have found an issue they believe can lift their fortunes both locally and nationally in 2014: an increase in the minimum wage.

The effort to take advantage of growing populism among voters in both parties is being coordinated by officials from the White House, labor unions and liberal advocacy groups.

Points to ponder as we glide into the New Year

By Karl Reiner

August 2014 will mark the 100th anniversary of the beginning of World War I. The war to end all wars did not end war, it was the starting point for the turmoil that led to World War II. The year 1914 began with a sense of self-assuredness and hope in a Europe where colonialism was an accepted fact of life. Peace had reigned for 40 years, communications were improving and trade was on the increase. Advances in medicine and sanitation were having an effect, living standards were on the rise. Economic ties were thought to deter conflict, Germany and the United Kingdom were each other's largest trading partners. Some observers  saw a problem, they believed the European powers were spending too much on armaments.

The European nations were also facing surges of socialism, nationalism and labor unrest intermingled with hefty doses of communism and anarchism. Although there had been limited conflicts in the Balkans, the people of Europe believed their leaders would be able to keep things under control. Germany and England were in race to build more warships. Russia, bruised from setbacks in the Balkans and the loss of the 1904-05 war with Japan, was stoking nationalism. France remained bitter and vengeful for the drubbing it had received from the Germans in 1871. Germany, unified by Bismarck, was no longer bound by his restraint. It sought empire and world respect.

Self-Actualization, White People Problems, & the War on the Poor

by Pamela Powers Hannley

As one year comes to a close and another begins, people often look back at events to reflect and perhaps resolve to improve their lives or change their behaviors in the coming year. In 2013, the Do-Nothing-at-All Congress-- led by the nose by Teapublicans-- continued its war on the poor-- fighting for cuts to food stamps and unemployment and fighting for austerity for the 99%, while disingenuously padding the pockets of their corporate benefactors.

As Abraham Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs teaches us, people must satisfy their basic needs before they can become fully self-actualized, before they can reach their full potential. To put this simply, if you don't have food, water, and shelter, your time, energy and resources will be spent obtaining those basic needs. Until you have security and the necessities of life, you will not have the luxury to worry about trifles-- Christmas gifts, video game releases, wine selections, fancy coffee, designer-label clothes, insignificant social snubs, political differences-- in other words, "white people problems".

Since our country is governed by the  Congressional millionaire's club, it's no wonder that they can't relate to the poor (or even the struggling middle class).

A late Christmas gift from Congress to the unemployed

Posted by AzBlueMeanie:

Congress allowed the stimulus funds for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) aka food stamps to expire on November 1, resulting in a reduction of benefits, while Congress continued to argue over whether to cut food stamps by $4 billion (Senate) or $40 billion (House). The congressional "hunger games" will resume when Congress returns in January.

A late Christmas gift from Congress to the long-term unemployed is the expiration of their extended unemployment insurance benefits. A lump of coal for the unemployed:

Since the start of the recession, Congress has extended federal unemployment benefits 11 times. There will not be a 12th before the deadline – emergency aid will expire on Saturday.

The emergency unemployment benefits were instituted by President George W. Bush in 2008 as the financial crisis ramped up and the jobless rate started up toward the 10 percent peak it would hit the following year. Typically, states provide insurance payments to unemployed workers for up to six months.

But as the nation spiraled into recession, and then the recovery struggled to gain traction, the federal government offered repeated extensions, each lasting a period of several months, allowing some people to stay on for 99 weeks. The program has paid out $225 billion in benefits.

Cognitive Dissonance Part The Infinity

Posted by AzBlueMeanie:

The American people are their own worst enemy. David Safier has on occasion described this condition as battered person syndrome, where repeated cycles of violence and reconciliation can result in the following beliefs and attitudes:

• The abused thinks that the violence was his or her fault.
• The abused has an inability to place the responsibility for the violence elsewhere.
• The abused fears for their life and/or the lives of their children (if present).
• The abused has an irrational belief that the abuser is omnipresent and omniscient.

This may or may not explain why the American people keep returning for more abuse from the abusive GOP. But two incompatible headlines today at Talking Points Memo demonstrate that Americans certainly suffer from cognitive dissonance:

Poll: Majority Say This Congress Is The Worst In Recent Memory

-and-

Dems Drop 13 Points On Generic Ballot

Soooo, the takeway from this is that the "less-than-less-than-do-nothing" 113th Congress, the "Worst. Congress. Ever." due to GOP obstruction and sabotage by its anti-government insurrectionist Tea Party wing, nevertheless is being rewarded by Americans for its destructive behavior and gross incompetence? Maybe David is right. . . too many Americans appear unable to quit their abuser.

Shopping the ACA Marketplace: One Small Business' Route to 'Affordable' Healthcare

by Pamela Powers Hannley

With full implementation of the  Affordable Care Act (ACA), January 2014 marks the beginning of a new era in health insurance in the US.

For the chronically uninsured and for those with pre-existing conditions, it's been a long and financially perilous wait for all of the ACA benefits to kick in.

For anti-government, conservative ideologues, the three-year waiting period gave them time to mercilessly attack reform that will provide insurance for millions of Americans, spread layers of misinformation about "Obamacare," hold dozens of meaningless repeal votes in the Republican-controlled House of Representatives, and hold the country hostage for 16 days in a multi-million-dollar government shutdown fiasco.

Today, December 23, 2013 is the cut-off date for enrollment in ACA insurance plans which begin January 1, 2014; the final deadline for ACA enrollment is March 31, 2014. Since the beginning of December, I have been shopping the healthcare marketplace on behalf of the ultra-small business that I work for--The American Journal of Medicine. On Friday, I submitted our final paperwork to our insurance broker.

This is the story of one small business' route to "affordable" care.

Our Journey

Our journey began long before the premier of Healthcare.gov, the much-maligned ACA enrollment website, and even before the ACA was signed into law in 2010. At the Journal, we had been unhappy with our health insurance plan through Aetna for years. Like clockwork, the cost went up 10-25% each year, forcing us to rethink coverage multiple times in order to live within our budget.  We also were dissatisfied with the limited number of even more expensive alternative plans offered to us. The Journal's editorial pages have been pushing for Medicare for all for years and broke the stories about medical bankruptcy in 2009 and continued medical bankruptcy under Romneycare in Massachusetts in 2011. Consequently, we were ready for the public option back in 2009; today, we're just glad that the ACA made it through the Republican gauntlet and the Supreme Court. Unlike recent news stories about people and small businesses wanting to keep their existing healthcare plans, we were waiting with baited breath for three years to dump our plan.

The bottomline is that with Obamacare, the Journal -- and the emplopyees-- will pay less for healthcare insurance. Read about our ACA Marketplace experiences and lessons learned after the jump.

Jesus Rebranded: Capitalism is the reason for the season

Posted by AzBlueMeanie:

Mark Fiore has a new video mocking the FAUX News "War on Christmas" and conservatives' mental breakdown over Pope Francis attacking their "sacred" belief in faith based supply-side "trickle down" economics. Mark Fiore's videos - Vimeo (link to video, no embed due to privacy settings). Mark Fiore writes:

Between the "War on Christmas" and the accusations that Pope Francis is a Marxist, some people can't seem to make up their mind.  Who better to wage a war on Christmas than the people who want the Pope to be more of a capitalist!  Seems like the most holy Christmas ever was one without rampant consumerism.  (Remember, Joseph and Mary had the nerve to stay in a place for free on Christmas Eve-- sounds like a couple of moochers to me!)

Amidst the imagined attacks on Christmas, Rush Limbaugh and some Fox News characters accused Pope Francis of being Marxist after he said some critical words about our economic system.  Never mind that Pope Benedict had similar complaints.  Everything has been coming up Pope Francis lately, who was picked as Time's "Person of the Year" and was featured on the cover of the New Yorker.  Having been raised Catholic and having done plenty of cartoons about the scandals in the Catholic Church, I'm happy that we're talking again about things like helping the poor, imagine that.

* * *

As usual, you can also find more links to news stories behind this cartoon on my website.

Senate war mongers want to get their war on with Iran

Posted by AzBlueMeanie:

After all the blood and treasure this country has expended in America's longest war in Afghanistan, and the unnecessary and illegal war in Iraq, there is still a bipartisan coalition of U.S. senators who dream of the next war with Iran.

They won't fight this war of course; and neither will their children. They will send your sons and daughters to die in a war that will drag on at least as long, if not longer, than Afghanistan. And when the inevitable retaliatory terrorist attacks occur, well, that will just serve as a rallying cry for more war. Because there is big money to be made in war, damnit! These senate war mongers want to get their war on with Iran. The fact that this includes Democrats is enraging.

These senators are actively seeking to sabotage the current P5+1 negotiations currently under way with Iran. This is how the Washington Post reported it, Senators defy White House, threaten new Iran sanctions:

A bipartisan group of 26 senators introduced legislation Thursday that threatened new sanctions against Iran, dismissing warnings from the White House that such a move could scuttle efforts to peacefully resolve the dispute over Iran’s nuclear program.

The bill, called the Nuclear Weapon Free Iran Act of 2013, drew a rebuke from the Obama administration and highlighted deep divisions among Senate Democrats on whether to heap new pressures on Tehran’s government while sensitive diplomacy is underway.

Hours after the bill’s introduction, a separate group of senior Democrats revealed in a letter that U.S. intelligence agencies had cautioned lawmakers in private briefings about the consequences of new sanctions. A Dec. 10 intelligence assessment had concluded that new punitive measures would “undermine the prospects for a comprehensive nuclear agreement with Iran,” according to the letter, signed by 10 Democrats.

Sen. John McCain wants to recycle his 2008 agenda - rejected in a landslide

Posted by AzBlueMeanie:

I read that Arizona's angry old man, John McCain, still embittered by his humiliating landslide defeat to Barack Obama in 2008, has decided to introduce a bill to repeal Obamacare and replace it with his own set of reforms (well, not really his reforms but a companion bill to Rep. Tom Price's bill in the House.) McCain Introduces Obamacare Repeal And Replacement Legislation.

I was going to do a post on McCain's latest cry for attention from his media villager base, but Jed Lewison at Daily Kos has already said everything i could say. President McCain reveals his Obamacare replacement plan:

President Senator John McCain has unveiled his plan for replacing Obamacare ... and its centerpiece is the very same plan he ran on and lost with in 2008.

Aside from repealing Obamacare, the centerpieces of McCain's plan would be (a) to replace current tax deductions for employer-provided health insurance with a one-size-fits-all health care tax credit of $5,000 for families and $2,500 for individuals and (b) to allow Americans to purchase insurance from any state in the country, whether or not they live in that state. McCain would also provide subsidies to states to cover people who can't otherwise get coverage.

The Real Welfare Queen

Remember that "welfare queen" from Chicago with all the dead husbands and the fake Social Security numbers whom Ronald Reagan made famous in 70s and 80s? It turns out she wasn't a figment of his overheated imagination after all. I'm not going to give more away than that because Josh Levin's investigative report about her in Slate is so beautifully written and the story itself is so shocking.

The 'less-than-less-than-do-nothing' 113th Congress

Posted by AzBlueMeanie:

The 112th Tea-Publican controlled Congress (2011-2012) was worse than the "do nothing" Republican 80th Congress, securing the title of the "less-than-do-nothing" Congress. So what did voters do? They rewarded these do-nothing slackers by sending them back to Congress.

And what do you get when you reward do-nothing slackers? The 113th Tea-Publican controlled Congress (2013-2014) is historically the "Worst, Congress. Ever." -- it is now the "less-than-less-than-do-nothing" Congress. Why are we paying these people? Steve Benen reports, Giving new meaning to 'Do-Nothing' Congress:

[T]he grand total of bills signed into law in the 113th Congress [is] … 58. As Billy House noted this morning, that’s not an especially impressive number.

If you thought Congress hit rock-bottom in terms of how many laws they enacted last session, check out the current House and Senate.

Congress will close the year with 58 public bills (the congressional term for measures with broad impact) enacted into law, assuming that President Obama signs the budget deal as promised. They may add a few to that in the last few days of the year. But it won’t change substantially.

That’s the lowest one-year output since at least 1947, and only the tiniest fraction of the 6,366 bills introduced by lawmakers, according to House and Senate records.

The historic metrics are rather striking: 2013 was the least productive for any Congress since clerks on the Hill started keeping track, and this Congress is on track to pass fewer laws than any modern Congress.

Americans want the government to fight inequality and raise the minimum wage

Posted by AzblueMeanie:

This should make Bob Lord happy -- Greg Sargent writes, Democrats should prioritize combatting inequality. It’s popular.

Do Americans favor government intervention in the economy, and do they recoil at class based appeals?

A new poll sheds some interesting light on these questions, which are at the center of the debate over the degree to which Democrats should emphasize the need to combat inequality as a defining issue of the party and of our time.

Short version: While generic “government” still polls badly, the notion that government should act to combat inequality is popular, even among independents and moderates — and particularly among core Democratic voter groups.

The new Washington Post/ABC News poll finds that a sizable majority of Americans, 57 percent, believes that “the federal government should pursue policies that try to reduce the gap between wealthy and less well-off Americans.” Only 37 percent oppose.

Only Republicans and conservatives believe government should not act to reduce inequality, but even among them the numbers are surprising. Independents favor government action by 58-37. and moderates favor it by 62-34. Among Republicans the numbers are 40-54, and among conservatives they are 45-48.

Crucially, core Dem subgroups that make up the “Coalition of the Ascendant” overwhelmingly favor combatting inequality. Liberals: 79-17. People under 40: 66-31. Non-whites: 67-23. Women: 59-35. College educated whites: 51-46. This suggests Dem lawmakers and candidates will probably have to make fighting inequality a top priority.

The poll suggests a populist emphasis could help with downscale whites — who are less important to the Dem coalition but should not be given up upon by Dems — since they favor combatting inequality by 55-41.

There’s a nuance in the polling worth noting, one centered on question wording. Republicans hold a 48-40 advantage over Obama on who has the right balance on “government spending,” and the two parties are tied on who is right about the proper “size and role of the federal government.”

But what this really suggests is that “government” and “spending” poll badly, and when you introduce combatting inequality into the mix, suddenly opinion changes. Indeed, though it’s often said Americans reject “class warfare,” individual government policies to fight inequality — higher taxes on the rich, strengthening the safety net, funding for education, infrastructure spending to create jobs, hiking the minimum wage — are broadly popular. Also, as Paul Krugman and Alec MacGillis argue, treating inequality as a central challenge is the right thing to do.

The new Post/ABC News poll also finds that Americans overwhelmingly favor raising the minimum wage, by 66-31. Among independents: 65-34. Among moderates: 71-27 Even Republicans support it by 50-45, and conservatives by 53-34.

Observers keep pointing out that Dems are emphasizing the minimum wage hike to win over non-college whites, and as it turns out, they favor it by an overwhelming 66-32.

As Laura Clawson at Daily Kos notes, the banksters of Wall Street at the corporate Dem front group "Third Way may say that economic populism is a no-good, bad, terrible idea, but the Wall Street influence group isn't in tune with mainstream Democratic voters, or even with independents. Poll: Americans want the government to fight inequality.

No, 'ObamaCare' is not in a death spiral

Posted by AzBlueMeanie:

The Tea-Publican political strategy for the 2014 midterm elections is a single issue campaign: repeal "ObamaCare" (second verse, same as the first). Tea-Publicans have convinced themselves from their own GOPropaganda in the bubble of their conservative media entertainment complex feedback loop that "ObamaCare" is a trainwreck and is in a "death spiral."

The Tea-Publican political strategy does not allow for entertaining any fixes to "ObamaCare" to make it work more efficienty. This is what happens when you have demonized something as satanic and evil. Repeal has become a religious crusade for the GOP. One doesn't compromise with evil.

A number of commentators are sounding a warning of an "ObamaCare trap" for the GOP based upon its repeal only stance. The GOP has long since abandoned its "repeal and replace" lie. There is no consensus on a GOP alternative ("ObamaCare" IS the the GOP health care plan; it was crafted by the Heritage Foundation and implemented as RomneyCare in Massachusetts), although Rep. Tom Price's really bad bill has emerged as the point of discussion among the GOP.

Repeal leaves the GOP advocating for a return to the old broken health care system that no one was happy with. Moreover, this would mean taking away health care benefits from millions of Americans who now have access to health care, many for the first time in their lives. "No health care for you!" is not a winning political strategy.

As Income Disparity Grows, Tucsonans Protest Low Wages at Walmart & McDonalds

by Pamela Powers Hannley

Protests against the low wages paid by multinational corporate giants have been sweeping the country, since the Occupy Movement raised the consciousness of the 99%. On Black Friday, Nov. 29, at Walmart stores nationwide and again Thursday, Dec. 5 at McDonald's restaurants nationwide, workers, unionists, progressives, and other liberal activists protested unfairly low wages and barriers to unionization for millions of US workers.

With profits, CEO pay, and wage disparity at all time highs, isn't it time to raise the minimum wage to a living wage?

Here in Tucson, protesters chanted and waved signs in front of the Walmart on Valencia and the McDonald's in midtown. (For more on the Walmart protest, check out the video here.)

At McDonald's, approximately 80-100 citizens braved chilly temperatures and intermittent rain to protest low wages. In the days before the local protest, right wing radio host Jon Justice shared PDA Tucson's Facebook announcement about the event and urged his Facebook followers to come to the midtown McDonald's, show their support for the fast food chain, and eat some good food. (Excuse me, but McDonald's hasn't served "good food" in decades-- if ever.) This resulted in a flurry of comments on the PDA page and Justice's page about the "entitlement mentality", people being "paid what they're worth", and the fast food industry being "one key stroke away from 80% automation"-- justifying Arizona's $7.80/hour minimum wage and offering support to McDonald's franchisees who make millions on the backs of workers.

America's real problem: the 'haters'

Posted by AzBlueMeanie:

Gallup is out with another poll today showing approval of Congress in the single digits. Trust in Congress Gallups to single digits:

Just 8 percent of those surveyed Dec. 5 – Dec. 8 rated the ethical standards of members of Congress “very high” or “high.” This shameful low puts them one point behind car salespeople.

But here’s what’s being ignored. Congress is viewed with such contempt that its trustworthiness actually dropped from a similar Gallup survey conducted just a week later. In the poll conducted Nov. 26 – Nov. 29, the federal legislature was viewed by 10 percent of the public to have “very high/high” honesty and ethical standards. Car salespeople were the ones with the 8 percent “very high/high” rating.

So, in one week, Congress fell two points and car salespeople ticked up one point.

If opinion polls were like employee performance evaluations (which they are not), it would be fair to say that these "employees" are beyond redemption; it is time for them to be fired. Just pack up what they can carry in a box, and have security escort them out the door. Goodbye (and good riddance). This is a national scandal.

The Tea-Publican economic terrorist are already plotting the next debt ceiling hostage taking

Posted by AzBlueMeanie:

The Beltway media villagers were tripping all over themselves on Sunday to lavish praise on the GOP's alleged boy genius, Ayn Rand fanboy Paul Ryan (R-WI), for his "pragmatic" budget compromise with Democrats. You would think it was the dawn of a new bipartisan era of cooperation where long-delayed legislation like a jobs bill and a comprehensive immigration reform bill were suddenly possible.

I can't believe how stone-cold stupid the Beltway media villagers are. First of all, the Senate still has to pass the House budget this week, which is not at all a certaintly. And then comes the appropriations committee process where Democrats and Tea-Publicans will square off over farm bill subsidies, food stamps and an extension of long-term unemployment insurance benefits, just to name a few.

Secondly, there is no "dawn of a new bipartisian era" -- this is the GOP 2014 election strategy to become the "Anti-ObamaCare" single issue party. Ryan on Sunday defended his budget deal to avert a government shutdown, saying that it would allow the Republican Party to "focus" on destroying President Barack Obama's health care reform law. Paul Ryan: Averting shutdown with budget deal allows GOP to 'focus' on killing Obamacare . That sounds like the same old bunch of dead-enders to me.

(Update) Judge sends Arizona Prop. 200 voter registration case back to the EAC

Posted by AzBlueMeanie:

The Wichita Eagle reports today, Judge sends voter citizenship suit back:

A federal judge has sent back to federal elections officials a request by Kansas and Arizona to force modifications in a national voter registration form so the states can fully enforce proof-of-citizenship requirements.

U.S. District Judge Eric Melgren on Friday sent the states' lawsuit back to the U.S. Election Assistance Commission, with instructions that the commission has to have a final decision by Jan. 17.

The states want the federal form to include instructions requiring Kansas and Arizona residents to provide a birth certificate, passport or other proof of U.S. citizenship when registering to vote.

The Justice Department says such a change places an additional obstacle for eligible voters and would affect nationwide policy by setting a precedent.

Well Judge, here's the problem with your order. The EAC has no commissioners to comply with your order.

Senate Tea-Publicans have used obstruction of presidential appointments to the EAC to "nullify" the agency out of existence without ever enacting legislation to terminate the agency. This unprecedented form of "nullification" is being remedied with executive and judicial nominees now that Democrats exercised the constitutional option to eliminate the Senate filibuster rule, but the confirmation process has not yet made it down to presidential appointments to the EAC.

Greenberg Quinlan Rosner Research poll: Democrats should go on the offense on 'ObamaCare'

Posted by AzBlueMeanie:

A Greenberg Quinlan Rosner Research poll of "battleground" congressional districts for the Women's Voices, Women Vote Action Fund and Democracy Corps released on Thursday recommends that Democrats go on the offensive on "ObamaCare." Are you listening Reps. Barber and Sinema? New WVWVAF Poll: Affordable Care Act Remains Popular with Rising American Electorate:

Survey Shows Unparalleled Support for Women’s Economic Agenda

WASHINGTON, DC – December 12, 2013 – The Affordable Care Act remains incredibly popular with people of color, unmarried women and other members of the Rising American Electorate, and a plurality in Republican districts and a majority in Democratic districts still support implementing “Obamacare” over repealing it. Those are some of the key findings of a major new poll (PDF) sponsored by Women’s Voices Women Vote Action Fund and conducted by Greenberg Quinlan Rosner Research for Democracy Corps.

“Despite all the noise over the implementation of the Affordable Care Act, our polling shows that it remains popular among African Americans, Latinos, unmarried women and other members of the Rising American Electorate,” said Page Gardner, founder and President of Women’s Voices Women Vote Action Fund. “They realize that the reform law will improve their lives and ensure that they have affordable and reliable health care. These often economically-vulnerable Americans make up nearly 54 percent of the voting-eligible population, and these are the voters who decide elections.”

Budget Deal: The long-term unemployed are abandoned by Congress

Posted by AzBlueMeanie:

The GOP's alleged boy genius, Ayn Rand fanboy Paul Ryan (R-WI), or as Charles Pierce at Esquire calls him, "the zombie-eyed granny-starver from Wisconsin," is being hailed by his Beltway media villager fan base for his "pragmatic" mini-budget deal with Sen. Patty Murray (D-WA), in which the GOP's Flimflam Man pretty much got his way because, after all, Tea-Publicans do control the Congress. As the Washington Post editorialized, A flawed deal, but a done deal:

THERE’S A lot not to like in the budget deal that Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.) and Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) have struck on behalf of their respective parties and legislative houses. It does basically nothing to resolve the country’s long-term fiscal predicament. It does very little to correct the growing imbalance between discretionary spending and entitlements as a share of the federal budget. And even these modest policy achievements required the use of a budgetary gimmick or two. Yet the deal has one overriding virtue: It exists . . . In short, the agreement’s importance is not fiscal but political: It amounts to a truce in the destructive budgetary wars that have plagued Washington since the advent of a Republican-majority House in 2011.

Well that's setting the bar low. We are supposed to give the "Worst. Congress. Ever." props for doing the one job that they are required to do by the Constitution, pass a budget and appropriate the funds? (This deal is just the budget, Congress is leaving for the rest of the year at the end of this week and will not be back to tackle apropriations until after the new year). Only Beltway media villagers in their insular bubble could could find something to cheer in this deal.

Arizona Democratic Party launches the realmcsally.com website

Posted by AzBlueMeanie:

It looks as if I finally have some help in my lonely quest to expose Martha McSally as a media invention, and an ill-informed and ill-prepared candidate. The Arizona Democratic Party sent out this press release on Wednesday:

Who is the Real McSally??????

December 11, 2013

Phoenix, AZ–DJ Quinlan, executive director of the Arizona Democratic Party issued the following statement on the launching of therealmcsally.com website:

“The voters of Southern Arizona deserve to know where Martha McSally stands on crucial issues that affect the future of our country and state. Unfortunately McSally won’t come clean. In fact, her website does not even contain an issues page. That’s why we are launching therealmcsally.com website. It will serve as a resource to the voters of Congressional District 2 to help them track the multiple positions (or lack thereof) that Martha McSally has taken.

'Tenther' Sen. Kelli Ward wants to 'nullify' the NSA

Posted by AzBlueMeanie:

The Neo-Confederate Birthers-Birchers-Secessionists of the Tea Party are gearing up for the next session of the Arizona Legislature with yet another state sovereignty and nullification of federal law measure.

These Neo-Confederate dead-enders just never give up their long discredited theories of interposition, nullification and secesssion in their never-ending insurrection against the federal government.

Sen. Kelli Ward (R-Lake Havasu City), who last session sponsored model legislation for the Firearms Freedom Act and Federal Gun Laws Nullification, this session plans to introduce model legislation to nullify the capabilities of the National Security Agency (NSA) in Arizona -- you know, the spy agency that keeps Americans safe from the Hezbollah Muslim terrorists and Chicoms these same paranoid teabaggers believe are invading the U.S. across the Mexican border.

The Arizona Capital Times (subscription required) reports Senator hopes to curtail NSA activities in Arizona:

Arizona may be the first state to consider legislation designed to hinder the National Security Agency’s ability to spy within its borders.

Sen. Kelli Ward, R-Lake Havasu City, announced Monday she’ll introduce legislation next session that would “nullify” the NSA’s capabilities in Arizona by encouraging state agencies, counties, municipalities and local law enforcement to refuse to cooperate with NSA operations.

Information collected by the NSA in Arizona without a warrant would be banned from use by law enforcement and deemed inadmissible in court, Ward said.

Agencies and companies would face penalties if they aid the NSA and state funding would be cut off in the case of agencies and municipalities.  Companies that, for example, provide water or electricity to NSA facilities in Arizona would be banned from contracting with the state at any level of government.

Ward said the 4^th Amendment Protection Act, model legislation pushed by constitutional-rights organization the Tenth Amendment Center, isn’t meant to punish local governments and state agencies, but is more of a disincentive to the NSA if it wants to conduct surveillance in Arizona.

I would dispute the "constitutional-rights organization" characterization of what this "Tenther" organization is about. It promotes state sovereignty ("states' rights"), interposition and nullifcation of federal laws, theories long discredited since the end of the Civil War and the adoption of the 14th Amendment. Not to mention the Supremacy Clause of the Constitution.

The looting of public employee pensions

Posted by AzBluMeanie:

Last week, a federal judge approved the Chapter 9 municipal bankruptcy for the city of Detroit. Detroit eligible for nation's largest municipal bankruptcy filing, federal judge rules. The target of this bankruptcy are the public employee pensions.

Initial reports are that the Detroit bankruptcy proposal would leave pensioners with 16 cents on the dollar. This is despite the fact that Michigan’s state constitution, like those of many other states (including Arizona), specifically protects the pension rights of public employees.

U.S. bankruptcy judge Steven Rhodes set a crucial precedent on a municipality’s right to cut pension benefits through the Chapter 9 process. Detroit judge's pension ruling is no panacea for beleaguered cities:

“Municipal pension rights are contract rights, and…the impairment of such contract rights in a municipal bankruptcy case is a regular part of the process,” Rhodes concluded, according to a court-issued summary of his findings. “Because the State of Michigan authorized the filing of this case, municipal pension rights in Michigan can be impaired in this bankruptcy case, just like any other contract rights.” (Rhodes read his eligibility ruling from the bench; a written opinion is to follow.)

Ending the filibuster finally bears fruit

Posted by AzBlueMeanie:

Chris Hayes on his program All In has been doing a series this week called "Bizarro Congress," a Congress that actually does its job addressing the needs of the country, instead of the less than "less than do nothing" 113th Congress we actually have now -- the Worst. Congress. Ever.

Last month Senate Democrats finally exercised the constitutional option (aka the nuclear option as preferred by the media villagers) to end the Senate's super-majority cloture rule for debate, colloquially known as the filibuster. This weapon of mass destruction had been used by Tea-Publicans to paralyze the U.S. Senate and to render it entirely dysfunctional.

Today, ending the filibuster finally bears fruit by restoring some functionality to the U.S. Senate. Senate Democrats confirm judge using new rules to thwart filibusters:

Democrats successfully utilized new Senate rules Tuesday to confirm one of President Obama's picks to serve on a key federal court and to proceed with final debate on another nominee to lead a federal housing agency.

Under new rules requiring just a majority of senators to agree to proceed to final debate on most confirmation votes, senators voted 56 to 38 to confirm Patricia A. Millett to serve on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia, one of the nation's most influential federal courts. She will be the first of three picks by Obama to join what is broadly considered the second-most important federal court in the nation because it handles cases regarding federal regulations.

Sen. John McCain makes a complete ass of himself again

Posted by AzBlueMeanie:

President Barack Obama, along wth former presidents George W. Bush, Bill Clinton and Jimmy Carter, were among almost a hundred world leaders and dignitaries from around the globe who paid tribute to Nelson Mandela today in a memorial service in South Africa.

President Obama delivered a moving memorial Read the Transcript (video below the fold) which was well received by South Africans. Obama garners big applause at Mandela memorial.

The conservative media entertainment complex, which has alternatively been trashing Nelson Mandela since his death because Ronaldus Magnus and Dick Cheney once branded him a terrorist, or trashing conservative politicians who offered words of praise for Mandela following his death, or engaging in revisionist history as they are wont to do, had something else they wanted to focus on today: a reception line. Obama greets world leaders. And what, pray tell, got the clowns of conservative media all worked up in feigned outrage?

Obama shook hands with world leaders, including Cuba's President Raul Castro. Oh Noes!

Questions for Martha McSally: Jim Nintzel doesn't get an answer either - again

Posted by AzBlueMeanie:

In this new series, "Questions for Martha McSally," we pose questions to the McSally campaign about her positions on current hot topics -- I am not going to give her a free pass until after the GOP primary like our local media did in 2012.

Jim Nintzel of the Tucson Weekly and host of the Arizona Illustrated political roundtable tried to get Martha McSally to take a position on the current hot topic of gay marriage and "ObamaCare" and - suprise! - McSally is still hiding in the bunker with no ready answer to substantive questions. This is one incredibly ill-informed and ill-prepared candidate for someone who has been running for office since 2010. In Sickness and in Health:

What about gay marriage? Are you evolving on that at all?

Am I evolving on that?

A lot of people seem to be evolving on that. You said last time out that you supported a constitutional amendment to limit marriage to one man and one woman. Now we have it in all these states.

I believe it's primarily a state issue. When you're answering these surveys, sometimes it's a "yes/no" question when really it should be an essay answer that's appropriate.

The Democratic wing of the Democratic Party fights back against the corporatist Third Way

Posted by AzBlueMeanie:

Oh Noes! The Beltway corporate media villagers are clutching their pearls and reaching for their smelling salts today because the Democratic wing of the Democratic Party is fighting back against the corporatist banksters of Wall Street from the Third Way "Democratic" think tank, whom the corporate media villagers always refer to as "centrist" and presume to speak for the Democratic Party.  As if.

Jonathan Martin at the New York Times reports, Coalition of Liberals Strikes Back at Criticism From Centrist Democrats:

In a sign of the left’s new aggressiveness, a coalition of liberals is trying to marginalize a centrist Democratic policy group that was responsible for a Wall Street Journal op-ed article this week that said economic populism was “disastrous” for the party.

The coalition, the Progressive Change Campaign Committee, and three other liberal advocacy organizations have urged their members to contact a group of congressional Democrats who are honorary leaders of the centrist group, Third Way. It published the op-ed article on Monday contending that the liberalism of Mayor-elect Bill de Blasio of New York City and Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts would lead Democrats “over the populist cliff.”

The article — written by Jon Cowan, president of Third Way, and Jim Kessler, its senior vice president for policy — criticizes progressives like Ms. Warren and Mr. de Blasio for opposing measures to cut costs to Social Security and Medicare.

The liberal groups’ campaign has already gotten results, the latest indication that the liberal wing of the Democratic Party is ascendant.

Mark Bergman, a spokesman for Representative Allyson Schwartz, Democrat of Pennsylvania, said she “read the op-ed, thought it was outrageous, disagrees strongly and told Third Way that.” Ms. Schwartz, who is locked in a primary campaign for governor of Pennsylvania, is an honorary chairwoman of Third Way.

Questions for Martha McSally: Still hiding in the bunker on immigration reform

Posted by AzBlueMeanie:

A GOP candidate should understand that they are in trouble when even the GOP-friendly Arizona Capitol Times identifies you as the candidate who will not answer questions. One question dominates congressional race in southern Arizona:

So far, McSally’s campaign has mimicked her 2012 effort. The personable candidate isn’t quick to share her stance on issues beyond her own philosophical views.

* * *

McSally has remained reluctant to take solid stances on current issues, most notably dodging questions about how she would have voted on spending bills that led to the government shutdown and then a compromise bill that ended the congressional stalemate in October.

A recent Rothenberg Political Report praised McSally, who “oozes confidence about her prospects,” but also noted she “did her best to bob and weave” when asked how she’d vote on the compromise to reopen the government.

It’s not the only interview in which McSally has avoided providing a solid answer.  She told the Arizona Capitol Times it isn’t her job to Monday-morning quarterback what’s happening in Washington, D.C.

“I’m not in Congress, so I’m not running a shadow congressional staff that’s sitting there and getting all the briefings that they have the privilege of having there, and I usually don’t like to weigh in on legislation I haven’t read,” McSally said.

She said southern Arizona voters are worried about other matters.

“They’re interested in understanding my character, and my philosophy on things and how I would come to decisions that I’ll make in the future,” she said.

Political observers say the cautious campaign style may not work to McSally’s advantage, particularly in a GOP primary field where other candidates may run to the right of her.

Republican voters in Tucson want to know how McSally and others would cast votes in Congress, even if it’s a hypothetical vote.

“Otherwise, how are we going to know who to vote for?” said Carolyn Cox, chairwoman of the Pima County Republican Party. “We’ve been very disappointed in all of our candidates, especially the Democrats, for voting for a bill they’ve never even read.”

U.S. Supreme Court to decide whether the legal fiction of 'corporate personhood' gives corporations religious liberty rights

Posted by AzBlueMeanie:

The U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday agreed to hear religious challenges to the requirement that employers provide health insurance for their workers that includes birth control and related medical services.  The Court said it would decide constitutional issues, as well as claims under the Religious Freedom Restoration Act. Lyle Denniston at SCOTUSblog.com reports, Court to rule on birth-control mandate (UPDATED):

The Court granted review of a government case (Sebelius v. Hobby Lobby Stores) and a private business case (Conestoga Wood Specialties Corp. v. Sebelius).  Taking the Conestoga plea brought before the Court the claim that both religious owners of a business and the business itself have religious freedom rights, based on both the First Amendment and RFRA.  The Hobby Lobby case was keyed to rights under RFRA.

* * *

The Court did not expedite the briefing schedules for the new cases, so presumably they will be heard in March.  Moreover, the Court has already released its argument schedule for all sittings through the February session.

Under the orders the Court issued in the health care cases, the Justices are not being asked to strike down the requirement that employers provide a full range of pregnancy-related health care under their employees’ health insurance plans. In that sense, these cases are different from the Court’s first rulings on the ACA two years ago, when it upheld a penalty for an individual who refused to obtain health insurance at all and nullified a requirement that states must broadly expand their Medicare program of health care coverage for the poor.

This time, the Court will be focusing only on whether the pregnancy-related care coverage can be enforced against profit-making companies — or their individual owners, when that is a very small group — when the coverage contradicts privately held religious beliefs.

Treasury proposes new rules for 501(c)(4) tax exempt status

Posted by AzBlueMeanie:

About damn time! Treasury proposing new rules on tax-exemption:

The Treasury Department proposed new guidelines Tuesday that would affect so-called social welfare groups applying for tax-exempt status[.]

The intended rule change would establish a new term, “candidate-related political activity,” to help the IRS determine which organizations should be disqualified from 501 (c)(4) status.

The department said it will also seek recommendations for changing how much of a group’s activities could fall into that prohibited category before they would be ineligible for tax-exemption.

Many lawmakers have criticized the IRS’s current policy of allowing organizations to qualify as long as the majority of their activities do not involve political actions, a standard that is difficult to measure.

The newly proposed rules would clarify that social welfare does not count as prohibited activity. It would also define the term “candidate-related political activity” to include communications, grants and contributions and activities closely related to elections or candidates advocating for a clearly identified political candidate.

The Notice of Proposed Rule Making is Here.

The military-industrial complex and the establishment media reject diplomacy with Iran

Posted by AzBlueMeanie:

The military-industrial complex that President Dwight D. Eisienhower warned Americans against in Eisenhower's Farewell Address to the Nation, needs an enemy -- real or imagined -- to justify the trillions of dollars spent on national security and defense.

The International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS) prepares an annual series of reports on international defense spending, The Military Balance 2013 (subscriber-only). In its press release, Military Balance 2013 Press Statement | IISS, the IISS notes that while "the Pentagon was already implementing cuts of $487 billion over ten years, and as a result of sequestration will now need to make additional reductions of $600bn over ten years," . . . "It needs to be remembered, however, that the defense budget of the United States still equals that of the next 14 nations combined (Bar Chart) and the United States still intends to remain engaged globally."

Then there is the establishment media, led by the Washington Post, which is home to Neocons who believe in a Pax Americana empire through military superiority and global domination. The establishment media serves to create the narratives for crises and conflicts and enemies of the United States to maintain taxpayer funding to the military-industrial complex, as well as U.S. interventions abroad. War and the threats of war are big business, and has made a lot of people extremely wealthy.

The military-industrial complex and the establishment media have a vested financial interest in maintaining wars and the threats of wars. If peace were to break out, they could no longer justify the trillions of dollars spent on national security and defense ans marketing war.

Which brings me to the breakthrough deal brokered by Secretary of State John Kerry and our allies with Iran late Saturday. After 34 years of a "cold war" between the U.S. and Iran, this rapprochement of diplomatic relations was long overdue. Iran, six world powers reach historic deal on nuclear program.

'Kochtopus' ALEC model legislation to assault the 17th Amendment

Posted by AzBlueMeanie:

The "Kochtopus"-funded American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) is considering model legislation to assault the 17th Amendment -- the direct election of U.S. Senators -- at its December meeting. Think Progress reports, ALEC Mulls Assault On Constitution’s 17th Amendment — The Direct Election Of Senators:

In an agenda for a December meeting posted on ALEC’s website, one of the items up for review is language for a bill, called the Equal State’s Enfranchisement Act, that would allow state legislatures to add a candidate’s name to the ballot for a U.S. senate seat, along with the names of those nominated by voters.

“A nomination petition stating that the United States Senate is the office to be filled, the name and residence of the candidate and other information required by this section shall be filed with each Presiding Officer of the legislature of the state of __________,” the model legislation states. “The petition shall be filed at the same time as primary nomination papers and petitions are required to be filed.” The language also adds that at least 20 percent of the “then-sitting members of the legislature” must sign onto the nomination.

If ALEC’s members decide to further pursue this act and manage to get it passed in any state, it would be an assault to the 17th Amendment of the Constitution.

Iron Reps: A Sorry Statement on Congressional Dysfunction

Posted by Bob Lord

Let's be perfectly clear: This post is not in any way a knock on Kyrsten Sinema for having completed an Iron Man triathlon. If you read it that way, you're misreading it. I have trouble with many of the votes Kyrsten has cast, but I totally applaud her completion of the Iron Man. It's an awesome accomplishment, I milestone I wish I had achieved myslef, but never did.

How do I know it's an awesome accomplishment? Because I actually completed a half Iron Man myself, a quarter century ago. To do that, I spent months putting in three hours or so a day training. A full Iron Man doesn't require twice that much time, but it's awfully close. It requires incredible dedication.

Which, when you think about it, tells us how broken our Congress really is. If the House were working remotely as it should, the job duties of a Rep would be far too demanding to allow the time needed to train for an Iron Man on the side. Kyrsten sits on the House Financial Services Committee, the one responsible for banking legislation. It's time consuming work, both in committee and out. Unless of course you're not legislating.

The TanMan's PR stunt does not go as planned

Posted by AzBlueMeanie:

The TanMan, Weeper of The House John Boehner, decided to engage in a PR stunt on Thursday attacking problems with the federal "ObamaCare" Marketplace web site, because media messaging PR is all he can do -- he can't pass any substantive legislation or even routine budgets. The TanMan's PR stunt didn't quite go as planned.

Steve Benen reports, Boehner proves the wrong point:

House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) wrote a blog post Thursday, highlighting his own personal experience when he “sat down to try and enroll in the DC exchange.”

Like many Americans, my experience was pretty frustrating. After putting in my personal information, I received an error message. I was able to work past that, but when I went to actually sign up for coverage, I got this “internal server error” screen. […]

Despite multiple attempts, I was unable to get past that point and sign up for a health plan. We’ve got a call into the help desk. Guess I’ll just have to keep trying…

As it turns out, his willingness to “keep trying” was a good idea. Boehner, who is not yet eligible for Medicare, “called the DC Health Link help line,” and a “few hours later,” the process was complete. He’d signed up for health insurance.

Doh!

Fact Check: AFP's 'Pants on Fire' ad about 'ObamaCare'

Posted by AzBlueMeanie:

The "Kochtopus" organization Americans For Prosperity is running ads in Southern Arizona against Rep. Ron Barber that begins with some innocuous blonde speaking in a concerned voice about how Americans don't like political ads (it is a political ad!) and saying "health care isn't about politics, it's about people." Ahhh, isn't that special.

Remember, this is from the "Kochtopus" organization Americans For Prosperity -- far-right radical politics is all they do, and the "Kochtopus" doesn't give a damn about you or your health care.

In fact, AFP wants to repeal "ObamaCare" which would kick millions of Americans off of health insurance that they did not have before "ObamaCare," and millions of seniors would lose new benefits they received under Medicare. Millions more working poor would be kicked off expanded Medicaid in states like Arizona without the federal funds.

The ad makes three specific claims:

>> "Millions of people have lost their health insurance": This is objectively FALSE. The ad is conflating the recent cancellation notices for substandard insurance policies with "losing insurance," but these policy holders are being offered other plans, or can purchase a plan from the Marketplace health insurance exchange. The key provision of "ObamaCare" is that individuals cannot be denied insurance because of pre-existing conditions, or hitting an annual cap or lifetime cap on benefits.

The GOP Playbook - 'Whine Fest 2014'

Posted by AzBlueMeanie:

For the third election cycle in a row, the GOP has decided that it will run against "ObamaCare." It is now a single-issue party fixated on denying millions of needy Americans access to affordable health care. In fact, the GOP would kick millions of Americans off of health insurance who now have it as a result of "ObamaCare" and return to the status quo of the old broken health care system. The only health care alternative offered by the GOP is "perhaps you should die, and decrease the surplus population."

The modern-day Tea-Publican Party has become a sociopathic political party that lacks empathy, compassion and humanity for their fellow human beings, and rejects The Social Contract embodied in the Constitution ("to promote the general welfare") on which this country has collectively advanced for over 200 years. It has devolved into “post-policy nihilism,” in which Tea-Publicans are no longer guided by any real policy, but instead are chronically positioning themselves only in opposition to President Obama.

The New York Times reported on Thursday, G.O.P. Maps Out Waves of Attacks Over Health Law:

The memo distributed to House Republicans this week was concise and blunt, listing talking points and marching orders: “Because of Obamacare, I Lost My Insurance.” “Obamacare Increases Health Care Costs.” “The Exchanges May Not Be Secure, Putting Personal Information at Risk.” “Continue Collecting Constituent Stories.”

The document, the product of a series of closed-door strategy sessions that began in mid-October, is part of an increasingly organized Republican attack on the Affordable Care Act, President Obama’s signature legislative initiative. Republican strategists say that over the next several months, they intend to keep Democrats on their heels through a multilayered, sequenced assault.

The idea is to gather stories of people affected by the health care law — through social media, letters from constituents, or meetings during visits back home — and use them to open a line of attack, keep it going until it enters the public discourse and forces a response, then quickly pivot to the next topic.

(Update) Questions for Martha McSally: Will you ever come out from hiding in the bunker?

Posted by AzBlueMeanie:

In this new series, "Questions for Martha McSally," we pose questions to the McSally campaign about her positions on current hot topics -- I am not going to give her a free pass until after the GOP primary like our local media did in 2012.

I have never seen a candidate so controlled by handlers and so afraid of answering substantive questions from the media. I have speculated previously "it is painfully obvious that Martha McSally is a vacuous candidate who does not know enough about any subject to offer a thoughtful and detailed explanation of her positions. So she continues to hide in the bunker and refuses to offer any detailed explanations of her positions."

Today, Martha McSally actually gives an answer that confirms my suspicion. She is ill-informed, and ill-prepared -- and frankly, too intellectually incurious and lazy, and lacking in discipline -- to be a qualified candidate for Congress.

Jim Nintzel writes at the Tucson Weekly, Detail Work:

In an interview with the Weekly earlier this month, McSally explained that she generally doesn't know enough about the details of legislation to make a good decision about how she would vote on it.

"I'm not in Congress, I don't have a staff, I don't have the briefings," McSally said. "I'm not going to spend all of my time making comments on legislation I haven't studied or been briefed on or have the same sort of opportunities that a member of Congress has. I'd be spending literally day and night if I'm going to comment on every single piece of legislation that comes up, and I'm not going to just willy-nilly go, 'Yeah, I would have voted for that or I wouldn't have voted for that' if I haven't really studied it."

McSally said sharing her general principles ought to be enough for voters, and that Southern Arizonans were not interested in how she would vote on legislation this year.

"The only people who are pushing me on this are the media," McSally said. "Not constituents. Not voters. Voters want to know what my philosophies are."

This is an admission against interest that she is ill-informed, ill-prepared, too intellectually incurious and lazy, and lacking in discipline to effectively serve as a member of Congress. If I was vetting this candidate, my recommendation to the party would be that McSally should not be a candidate for public office.

Harry Reid invokes the 'constitutional option' to end the filibuster and to restore principles of constitutional democracy

Posted by AzBlueMeanie:

"The first principle of republicanism is that the lex majoris partis is the fundamental law of every society of individuals of equal rights; to consider the will of the society enounced by the majority of a single vote as sacred as if unanimous is the first of all lessons in importance, yet the last which is thoroughly learnt. This law once disregarded, no other remains but that of force, which ends necessarily in military despotism." --Thomas Jefferson to Alexander von Humboldt, 1817. 

The Founding Fathers thoroughly considered super-majority voting and rejected it in favor of a simple majority vote. So for all those so-called Constitutional conservatives who claim to believe in "originalism" out there, the Senate cloture rule, i.e. the filibuster, is not provided for in the Constitution.

The Founding Fathers identifed limited circumstances where a super-majority vote is required in the Constitution: conviction for impeachment in the Senate (Article 1, Section 3); expulsion of a member of a house of Congress (Article 1, Section 5); overriding a presidential veto (Article 1, Section 7); ratification of a treaty by the Senate (Article 2, Section 2); passing a constitutional amendment by Congress (Article 5); calling a constitutional convention by state legislatures (Article 5); ratifying a constitutional amendment by the states (Article 5).

Later amendments included restoring the ability of certain Confederate rebels to serve in the government (14th Amendment); approval of the removal of the president from his position after the vice president and cabinet approve removal and the president contests removal (25th Amendment).

The Senate cloture rule, i.e., the filibuster, was "inadvertently" created by the Senate in 1806. Political scientist Sarah Binder testified before the Senate in 2010 about the origin of the filibuster, with its Founding Father as the outgoing Vice President, Aaron Burr.

Binder said Burr told the Senate in 1805 that it should eliminate a rule that automatically cut off floor debate, called the previous question motion, because he thought it wasn’t needed.

“So when Aaron Burr said ‘get rid of the previous question motion,’ the Senate didn’t think twice. When they met in 1806, they dropped the motion from the Senate rule book,” she said.

The first Senate filibuster took place in 1837, so it took the Senate about 31 years to refine the procedure. But the name “filibuster” wasn’t used to describe the tactic until 1863 in the Senate.

The filibuster had been used sparingly over the years, until recent years when the anti-government insurrectionist Tea-Publican Party made the filibuster a "weapon of mass destruction" to destroy the federal government, requiring the 60 vote threshold for even the most routine and mundane business of the Senate. The Senate has been rendered entirely dysfunctional by paralysis from the insurrectionist Tea-Publican abuse of the Senate filibuster -- directly undermining the principles of constitutional democracy.

(Update) Hey, hysterical media villagers! 'ObamaCare' is working where the GOP is not sabotaging it

Posted by AzBlueMeanie:

In all the media hysteria over the rollout of "ObamaCare," the feckless media villagers always leave out three predicate facts: Chief Justice John Roberts created the Medicaid opt-out with his poorly considered legal opinion upholding the constitutionality of "ObamaCare," opening the door to partisan mischief; second, said partisan mischief did occur with Red State Tea-Publicans refusing to expand Medicaid and denying more than 5 million desperate Americans access to health care; and third, Red State Tea-Publicans refused to set up their own state-run Marketplace insurance exchanges, creating the need for a complex federal system not contemplated. GOP sabotage should be included in every report.

As for all the unhinged media hysteria, Paul Begala at CNN writes Chill: Obamacare snafus are fixable:

[D]espite the bed-wetting from Beltway Chicken Littles, the President's problems are eminently fixable. The Affordable Care Act isn't collapsing. The Obama presidency isn't imploding.

Similarly, Ed Kilgore at the Democratic Strategist looks at the polling that media villagers are so enamored with, and writes in Polling Panic:

What does it all mean? Probably that most people aren't breathlessly following events in Washington other than to register their heat and noise.

Democrats didn't win the 2014 elections in October and they aren't losing them in November. It's time to chill a bit.

So chill out, media villagers. The sky is not falling despite your best efforts to recklessly and irresponsibly panic the public.

A constitutional crisis: time for 'nuclear winter' in the U.S. Senate

Posted by AzBlueMeanie:

In blocking Judge Robert L. Wilkins’s nomination on Monday, Senate Tea-Publicans denied President Obama his third pick in recent weeks to fill one of the vacancies on the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals, second in importance to the U.S. Supreme Court. Another Obama Court Nominee Blocked by G.O.P.:

Senate Republicans on Monday blocked President Obama’s third consecutive nominee to the country’s most powerful and prestigious appeals court and insisted they would not back down, inflaming a bitter debate over a president’s right to shape the judiciary.

By a vote of 53 to 38, the Senate failed to break a filibuster of Robert L. Wilkins, a federal judge who was nominated to fill one of three vacancies on the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, falling seven votes short of the 60 needed. Two Republicans — Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and Susan Collins of Maine — voted with the Democrats.

The impasse over Mr. Wilkins followed Republican blockades of two other candidates for the court since Oct. 31. Unlike previous fights over judicial nominees, the dispute is not as much about the judges’ individual political leanings as it is about the overall ideological makeup of the court. Republicans have raised few objections to the three candidates’ qualifications or legal positions.

Rather, Republicans are seeking to prevent Mr. Obama from filling any of the three existing vacancies on the 11-seat court, fearing that he will alter its conservative tilt. The court has immense political importance because it often rules on questions involving White House and federal agency policy.

Democrats accused Republicans of exercising a nakedly political double standard for confirming presidential nominees.

“Appointing judges to fill vacant judicial seats is not court-packing,” Senator Harry Reid of Nevada, the Democratic majority leader, said Monday. “It’s a president’s right as well as his duty.”

Hey, hysterical media villagers! These governors say 'ObamaCare' is working

Posted by AzBlueMeanie:

Remember when the gatekeepers of the corporate media admitted their complicity in the Whitewater conservative scandal mongering of the 1990s, and promised that it wouldn't happen again? Yeah . . .

This was followed by their complicity in selling an illegal and unnecessary war in Iraq and fabricating justifications for war crimes: illegal torture, indefinite detention, and rendition of prisoners to black site prisons; and the wholesale undermining of American's constitutional right to privacy with pervasive electronic eavesdropping, "sneak peak" national security letters without a warrant, etc. War crimes are a "big f#%king deal," as Joe Biden would say. But IOKIYAR.

With the election of President Barack Obama, It's Whitewater all over again:

The “scandals” confronting President Obama are derived almost entirely from the political and media mindset that gave us Whitewater.

That is to say, they are minor instances of bureaucratic incompetence and/or executive overreach that are seized upon by hysterical right-wing media and politicians and eventually aggrandized by their craven mainstream brethren into red-alert-Chryon, full-scale Media Narratives.

The engine of belief that drives these stories is that, with enough rooting around by reporters and congressional panels and special prosecutors, the president eventually will be implicated in some kind of Major Impropriety.

This is what allows otherwise self-respecting journalists to flog stories that are, by all rational standards, partisan boondoggles.

This is the beauty of the scandal mentality: It’s inherently speculative. And it is thus nourished not by an accretion of increasingly damning facts, as in Watergate, but by a daisy chain of lurid conjecture and tangential inquisitions. To quote [bob Woodward], “You’ve got to investigate all these things.”

To put it plainly, Watergate was a foxhunt; Whitewater was a fishing trip.

The latest scandal mongering fishing trip by the corporate media has been the "ObamaCare" rollout. Echoing GOPropaganda talking points, the media villagers have been hysterically reporting any minor instances of bureaucratic incompetence as if it is the biggest disaster of all time! Just last week, the New York Times (of Judy Miller fame -- Iraq war, Plamegate) made the ridiculous comparison that the "ObamaCare" rollout is just like the failure of the Bush administration to respond to people suffering and dying as New Orleans drowned after Katrina (with helpful quotes from Bushies making this unjustified comparison). "One of these things is not like the other."

George Will and his mini-me, Robert Robb

Posted by AzBlueMeanie:

The one political pundit who pisses me off more than any other, mostly because he is treated as credible and "intelligent" by other media villagers, is the patrician prevaricator for the plutocracy, George Will. Just because Will uses the entire dictionary in his columns does not make him "intelligent." If you actually follow the substance of what he says, he is a conservative ideological extremist. Just because he is not a bomb thrower like Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity does not make him any more credible.

Arizona has its own version of the patrician prevaricator for the plutocracy, a George Will mini-me if you will, Robert Robb of the Arizona Republic. This conservative ideological extremist sets me off in the same way that George Will does.

Here is the latest example of how mini-me at the Republic lives in the shadow his role model, George Will.

The patrician prevaricator for the plutocracy was on FAUX News Sunday, and "suggested that President Barack Obama had caused a "constitutional scandal" by giving states the option of letting insurance companies continue to sell junk insurance plans for one year. George Will: Obamacare 'Fix' Lets Next GOP President Stop Taxing Rich Without Congress:

"It looks to a great many of us [GOPropagandists] to be illegal," he added, referring to the so "fix" that will give insurance regulators the leeway of allowing low-quality insurance plans to continue for additional year. "What we're told in grade school when we study civics is in that building behind you are the two legislative chambers of the federal government, the Senate and the House. It turns out, there's a third. It's called the White House press room, into which the president can, on a whim, sashay and rewrite laws."

"I do think this is a constitutional scandal," Will said. "Suppose the next Republican president -- and there will be another Republican president -- comes into the press room sometime and says, 'You know, I really think the capital gains tax does not serve the national interest so we're just, as an act of executive discretion, going to quit enforcing that for a few years. That's not the rule of law."

The 39 Squishes

Posted by AzBlueMeanie:

My apologies to Alfred Hitchcock for the wordplay on his brilliant adaption of "The 39 Steps."

No apologies are owed, however, to the 39 Democratic "squishes" in the House who voted for Rep. Fred Upton’s “Keep Your Health Plan Act.” Their defections were pointless. This Tea-Publican messaging bill will not get a hearing in the Senate, and even if it did somehow get a vote, President Obama has promised to veto it.

As Steve Benen observed, "[W]hat was the point of all of this effort? It boils down to Republican 'messaging' goals, which some party leaders consider more important than anything else."

So 39 Democratic squishes simply aided and abetted GOP messaging goals. With friends like these . . .

Andrew Rosenthal at the New York Times was unsparing in his criticism of the 39 squishes. Cutting the Heart Out of Health Reform:

It’s easy to be mad at President Obama over health care reform – the broken website, the confusing choices, his false promise that everyone could keep their current plans.

But it’s still hard to fathom why 39 Democrats voted for a bill in the House that would allow people to retain current, substandard individual policies, and renew them next year even if they don’t provide the basic coverage required by the Affordable Care Act. (You have to wonder, to start, whether they actually read the act before they voted for it, the same question I’d like to ask of Mr. Obama and his team. The changed requirements were in that law.)

Perhaps it was just a protest vote, a freebie based on the lawmakers’ certainty that the Senate will never take up or pass this ridiculous bill. But did those Democrats know what they were voting for this time around?

(Update) Raise the minimum wage!

Posted by AzBlueMeanie:

The Cronkite News Service reported this week that Arizona’s hourly minimum wage going up by 10 cents for 2014:

Under a law Arizona voters approved in 2006, Katherine Castillo and others earning minimum wage will receive a 10-cent-per-hour increase to $7.90 starting Jan. 1. For tipped workers, the state minimum wage will rise from $4.80 to $4.90 per hour.

It will mark the fourth straight year that Arizona has had a higher minimum wage than the federal hourly rate of $7.25, which has remained the same since 2009.

Unfortunately, like all reporting about the minimum wage, the reporter allowed the spokespersons for industries that exploit workers by paying extemely low wages to comment on the minimum wage, without ever challenging their boilerplate talking points:

Rick Murray, CEO of the Arizona Small Business Association, said the law hurts the state’s workforce because it goes against the ideals of a business where wages depend on the demand of a certain skill.

“I’m against the fact that the minimum wage is mandated by the government when it should be market-driven,” he said.

Steve Chucri, president and CEO of the Arizona Restaurant Association, said that raising the minimum wage forces higher operating costs on the food industry can lead to layoffs.

“A dime here and a nickel there may seem innocuous to most people,” Chucri said, “but restaurants cannot simply raise menu prices. It’s too competitive of an industry.”

Brad Flahiff, director of development at Barnett Management Co., which operates Burger King franchises in Arizona, said that constantly increasing the minimum wage hurts employees as well as employers.

“It harms the people who are doing better and those who either don’t have those skills yet or are not performing at the same level,” he said. “And yet we are forced to reward them the same way.”

This is, of course, bullshit. What else would you expect from industries that rely on the exploitation of workers?

Questions for Martha McSally: Do you support the automatic GOP Sequester budget cuts?

Posted by AzBlueMeanie:

In this new series, "Questions for Martha McSally," we pose questions to the McSally campaign about her positions on current hot topics -- I am not going to give her a free pass until after the GOP primary like our local media did in 2012.

Patrick McNamara of the Arizona Daily Star reported this week on Congressman Ron Barber signing "a letter along with 32 other members of Congress imploring Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel to preserve the A-10 program, which has a large presence at Davis-Monthan Air Force Base." Barber backs A-10 retention at D-M. "The letter was written in an effort to head off any threat from impending federal budget cuts in the coming fiscal year, which almost certainly will include defense-spending reductions."

This would be the automatic GOP Sequester budget cuts in the event a budget agreement is not reached before January.

McNamara got himself a quote from Martha McSally, who is running for Barber's seat, presumably because she used to fly the A-10 (hopefully not because he is treating McSally as the GOP "presumptive nominee;" she has two primary opponents, Ed Martin and Shelley Kais).

Naturally, McSally went for snark over substance, suggesting that it seems the congressman has only now realized the threat of impending elimination of the A-10 program. This is in reference to her own reckless and irresponsible fear mongering over Davis-Monthan AFB possibly being closed if the A-10 is phased out. Questions for Martha McSally: On what basis do you assert that Davis-Monthan AFB will close?

Let's be clear: The only immediate threat to the A-10 at Davis-Monthan AFB is the automatic GOP Sequester budget cuts. While McNamara's report in regards to Congressman Ron Barber was about the federal budget and defense cuts, oddly enough he does not report whether he asked Martha McSally about her support for the automatic GOP Sequester budget cuts to the defense department budget (if he did, he failed to report any response). Instead, he framed McSally's responses based upon her previous reckless and irresponsbile fear mongering over the A-10.

Once again, Barber and Sinema fail a gut check vote

Posted by AzBlueMeanie:

The recent media hysteria over "if you like your insurance plan, you can keep it" is all about ignoring sound public policy for "gotcha" political gamesmanship. That's all the Beltway media villagers and pundits care about. It's always a political game of meaningless polls and election speculation for these effin' idiots, they are too damned ignorant to comprehend complex public policy. The corporate media is complicit in the failure of effective government, and aids and abets those who seek to undermine government.

Let's be clear: the elimination of substandard health insurance policies that provide no real coverage and leave the insured vulnerable to medical costs in the event of a serious injury or illness that can leave them bankrupt is not a bug but a feature of the ACA. The policy was designed to eliminate these fraudulent insurance policies from predator insurers. The "grandfather" clause for these substandard policies gave these predator insurers until 2015 to sell their fraudulent product, but many of them used the ACA as a ready excuse to cancel these fraudulent policies now, blame it on "ObamaCare," and upsell their policy holders into more expensive policies without advising them that a less expensive policy may be available from that insurer, or available on the Marketplace insurance exchange. Predators do not inform their marks, or send them to their competitors.

All the media hysteria in favor of predatory insurers and the broken health care system status quo that existed prior to the ACA has created so much background noise that it encouraged Tea-Publicans to engage in further sabotage of the ACA, and made Democratic squishes go soft on sound public policy.

Remember in November: Weeper of the House John Boehner kills immigration reform

Posted by AzBlueMeanie:

The GOP has long practiced the political tactic of "decapitation" -- a strategy of taking out the other party's top leadership. Former Democratic House Speaker Tom Foley (D-WA) lost his seat in the Gingrich Revolution in the 1994 election. Former Democratic Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle lost his seat in 2004.

The Septegenarian Ninja Turtle, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, is already in jeopardy of losing his seat in 2014. But no one is more deserving of losing his seat than Weeper of the House John Boehner, the "Worst. Speaker. Ever." of the "Worst. Congress. Ever." While there are rumors that the TanMan does not intend to return to Congress, Democrats should plan to go all-out with a strong candidate to make an example out of this pathetic loser of American politics.

Despite the GOP 2012 post-election "autopsy" declaring the policy goal that the GOP has to enact immigration reform, today the Weeper of the House effectively declared that "immigration reform ain't happenin' on my watch, no way, no how -- ever." There's a solution to this problem: elect a Democratic Congress in 2014. John Boehner just put immigration reform on life support:

John Boehner, at a presser just now, just said something that pushed immigration reform closer to death than anything he has said thus far:

House Speaker John Boehner says he will not allow any House-passed immigration legislation to be blended with the Senate’s sweeping reform bill, further quashing the chances of comprehensive immigration reform legislation being signed into law anytime soon.

“We have no intention of ever going to conference on the Senate bill,” Boehner told reporters Wednesday.

David Cay Johnston on seriously flawed reporting on 'ObamaCare'

Posted by AzBlueMeanie:

[T]he headline atop the front page of The New York Times Monday morning: “Talk of Penalty is Missing in Ads for Health Care.” I damn near spit out my coffee when I saw that mosleading headline -- from a Times reporter no less.

Tax expert David Cay Johnston at the National Memo had the same reaction. Obamacare Penalized By Flawed Reporting In The New York Times:

News flash – there is no penalty for failing to get health insurance under the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, aka Obamacare.

Reporter Anemona Hartocollis built an entire piece around a faulty premise, stated clearly in her third sentence.  Times editors embraced her flawed reporting with the gusto of prominent placement, giving unwarranted credibility to what is, to be polite, a pile of misinformation.

Had Hartocollis read the law – or had any of the dozen or so Times editors who review every Page One story done so – they would not have published such nonsense anywhere in the paper.

* * *

Had anyone at the Times read the law, they would know that is bunk. Here is what the law says, with statutory numbering removed:

WAIVER OF CRIMINAL PENALTIES. – In the case of any failure by a taxpayer to timely pay any penalty imposed by the section, such taxpayer shall not be subject to any criminal prosecution or penalties with respect to such failure.

LIMITATIONS ON LIENS AND LEVIES. – The Secretary [read IRS] shall not – file notice of lien with respect to any property of a taxpayer by reason of any failure to pay the penalty imposed by this section, or levy on any such property with respect to such failure.

There is a simple way for the world’s most authoritative newspaper to stop embarrassing itself this way – require reporters to actually read the laws they write about, a policy I suggested when I was a reporter there, obviously to no avail.