The Wonk Room at Think Progress is all over this.
Senator John Kyle: I don’t need maternity care, and so requiring that to be in my insurance policy is something that I don’t need and will make the policy more expensive.
Senator Debbie Stabenow: think your mom probably did.
Video pwn463* below:
*Ownage
The Massachusetts Republican Party just filed for an injunction against Paul Kirk’s appointment to the US Senate.
The issue is that under the state constitution, laws do not take effect for 90 days unless they are declared “emergency laws,” as Governor Patrick has.
No clue as to the finer constitutional points here.
[update]
The judge has not granted an ex parte restraining order, which would immedieatly stay the restraining order, which implies the court expects arguments and motions to be done well before the formal Friday appointment and/or that the Republicans have little or no case.
Well, it looks like Republican Jihad against Acorn may have uninended consequences.
You see, in order to avoid an unconstitutional bill of attainder in their quest to punish Acorn for registering black people to vote being taken in by a right Gonzo videographer, the bill was drafted broadly.
“How broadly,” you ask?
The congressional legislation intended to defund ACORN, passed with broad bipartisan support, is written so broadly that it applies to “any organization” that has been charged with breaking federal or state election laws, lobbying disclosure laws, campaign finance laws or filing fraudulent paperwork with any federal or state agency. It also applies to any of the employees, contractors or other folks affiliated with a group charged with any of those things.
In other words, the bill could plausibly defund the entire military-industrial complex. Whoops.
Rep. Alan Grayson (D-Fla.) picked up on the legislative overreach and asked the Project on Government Oversight (POGO) to sift through its database to find which contractors might be caught in the ACORN net.
Lockheed Martin and Northrop Gumman both popped up quickly, with 20 fraud cases between them, and the longer list is a Who’s Who of weapons manufacturers and defense contractors.
Needless to say, I don’t expect anyone to enforce it against anyone but Acorn, but this does sound a bit unfortunate.
Former Kennedy aide and DNC chairman Paul Kirk was appointed to serve as Senator by Governor Deval Patrick.
He has announced that he will not run in the special election.
So, the Dems have cloture, so long as Senator Byrd keeps breathing.
Generally, I like the guy, but this is crap.
In addition to excising the requirement that banks offer “plain vanilla” mortgages and credit cards, you know, products which the consumer can actually understand enough to comparison shop for, the bill removes, “securities, commodities, investment and general insurance products; accountants and tax preparers; real estate brokers and agents; lawyers; auto dealers; communications providers; and providers of retirement and pension plans,” from the scope of the proposed consumer protection agency.
Great googly moogly! When you look at industries that confuse and abuse consumers as their primary means of profit, you have most of them in between the quotation marks.
And if you want a couple more, how about,”retailers who have credit or layaway plans and auto dealers who offer loans to buy vehicles,” because used car dealers and “Rent-A-Center” have done so well in doing right by the consumer.
Unsurprisingly, the poster child for regulatory capture, Timothy “Eddie Haskell” Geithner, expressed support for weakening the bill.
Yes, I know sausage making, but it’s damn depressing.
The House Labor Committee is looking at a bill which would add sexual orientation and gender identity to protected classes under the civil rights laws.
About damn time. It passed in the house in 2007, but wilted under a Bush veto threat.
The cynic in me wonders how Obama’s people are going to try to knife it this time around, because they have gone out of their way to knife the LGBT community on almost every other level, because they found morality inconvenient in their quest for bipartisanship.
I am referring to Representative Mike Ross, Democrat (hah!) of Arkansas’s 4th Congressional district.
We have always known that Mike Ross is a bit blue dog, and in the pocket of the health insurers the pharmaceutical industry, and now, thanks to ProPublica, we know why.
It turns out that he and his wife sold their pharmacy and related property to pharmacy chain USA Drug in 2007, and paid between $1 million and $1.67 million for the it, which is kind of surprising, when the county tax assessment listed it at $263,000, and an independent assessor retained by ProPublica valued it at $198,000.
This means that he was overpaid for his property, and for “the pharmacy’s assets”, and for a “non-compete” agreement from his wife, Holly Ross, something on the order of $1 million.
What’s more the owner of the pharmacy chain, Stephen L. LaFrance Sr., who has been quoted as saying that, “Universal health care will ruin our health care in America,” maxed out on his campaign contributions to Ross in 2007, the year of the sale.
It’s depressing. Mike Ross is bought and paid for by the medical industry, his biggest donor, and he routinely gets more than 70% in the general, and there is no one challenging him in the primary.
Please, someone run. I’ll through in a few bucks, and list the person on my Act blue page.
[On edit]
Ross issued a non denial denial.
So, it’s on to Governor Patrick, who has said that he will sign it.
So the 60th Dem hits will the Senate as Byrd hits the hospital. (prior post)
He is 91
FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski has now explicitly called for net neutrality, known as the so-called “5th principle” of the Internet, and added a 6th principle, “that providers of broadband Internet access must be transparent about their network management practices,”* and so will be putting a notice of proposed
An interesting comment here is that the American Cable Association is saying that this should be extended to content. They specifically cite ESPN360’s policy of tying the service to ISPs, rather than individual subscribers, and using the rest of channels (ESPN, ESPN 2, etc) on cable (and fiber) to extract a per broadband subscriber fee.
I think that this is a perfectly valid point, and requiring the explicit unbundling of the Internet from the cable channels is, “at the expense of consumers on the one hand and other Web-based services and applications that might seek to compete against them.”
Not surprisingly, AT&T says that net neutrality and 4 (6, sir) 6 principles† should not be applied to wireless providers, but their argument is far weaker than for the cable/fiber optic providers, because the FCC already has extensive rights to regulate radio broadcasts and what are appropriate use of the public spectrum.
The Republicans are against net neutrality too, because they want to continue the policies that left the US in 20th place in broadband penetration, behind South Korea, Singapore, Netherlands, Denmark, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Israel, Switzerland, Canada, Norway, Australia, Finland, France, United Kingdom, United Arab Emirates, Japan, Sweden, Estonia, and Belgium, and that’s by the bastardized standard of broadband that the FCC and the incumbents want to use to define “success.”
It appears that the ‘Phants are afraid that this could prevent them from getting campaign donations from the Telecommunications industry, “These new regulatory mandates and restrictions could stifle investment incentives.”
In any case, Nancy Pelosi appears to be 4 square in favor of the change, which means that nothing is going to happen in Congress to stop this, and even the possibility that the FCC’s rule making might actually become law.
*The 4 internet freedoms are, the ability to access content, run any non-network harming application applications, to attach devices to the network, and the freedom to allow competition through reacquiring that vendors provide complete service plan information.
†And Saint Attila raised the hand grenade up on high, saying, “O Lord, bless this Thy hand grenade that with it Thou mayest blow Thine enemies to tiny bits, in Thy mercy.” And the Lord did grin and the people did feast upon the lambs and sloths and carp and anchovies and orangutans and breakfast cereals, and fruit bats and large chu… [At this point, the friar is urged by Brother Maynard to “skip a bit, brother”]… And the Lord spake, saying, “First shalt thou take out the Holy Pin, then shalt thou count to three, no more, no less. Three shall be the number thou shalt count, and the number of the counting shall be three. Four shalt thou not count, neither count thou two, excepting that thou then proceedest on to three. Five is right out. Once the number three, being the third number, be reached, then lobbest thou thy Holy Hand Grenade of Antioch towards thy foe, who being naughty in my sight, shall snuff it.” Amen.‡
‡Yeah, like I’m going to ignore such a classic opportunity to invoke Monty Python.
Something you have to understand. When Pelosi warns of eliminationist and extremist rhetoric, and the normally stern lady almost tears up, and her staff clarifies that she is referring to what happened to Harvey Milk, she is being serious. This is not a pose.
There are no politicians who came of age in that cauldron who ever invoke him, because they find it truly alarming event in their life, and Pelosi is a San Francisco politician, even if she is Baltimore born and bred.
She is truly worried that the nut jobs are talking to even bigger nut jobs in their audience, and that this crap has to end, and she is right in those concerns.
All that evil has to do to succeed is to ensure that good does nothing.
Really, I’m serious about this, because Roland Burris knows that he will not get another term, and he knows that his value as a Washington lobbyist is nil, he does not have to kowtow to the insurance lobby, so he has announced that he will not vote for a healthcare bill without a public option.
In creating the lamest of lame ducks, Burris won’t be able to work in DC at all once he is out of office, Blago has created a man who can do the right thing, because he has nothing to lose.
It passed on a 253-171 vote.
The bill ends the subsidies that the federal government provides to for profit institutions to make student loans, and has that same federal government make the loans.
It would simplify the federally guaranteed loan system, save an estimated $87 billion over 10 years and use that money to increase aid to low-income students, improve community colleges and raise standards for early childhood education.
Let us stop here and recall how the current loan system works:
- Federal government provides private banks with capital.
- Federal government pays private banks a subsidy to lend that capital to students.
- Federal government guarantees said loans so the banks don’t have any risk.
And now, the proposed reform:
- The federal government makes the loans.
Wow. You really do wonder why nobody came up with this idea before.
If you need to know what is wrong with the Republicans, you need go no further than the idea that the Federal government should use taxpayer money to prop up big executive paychecks.
H/t Steve Benen.
The latest spin on the attendance at the “912” demonstration from the wingnuts, which implies that they thought that the attendance was anemic, was that the Washington DC Metro was simply unprepared for accommodating “massive” influx of passengers.
You know, less than 80,000 riders on a system that accommodates over 900,000 riders a day is not a big surge.
More telling, however, is that one of the loudest voices complaining about the quality of service is Representative Kevin Brady (R-TX-8), who voted against additional funding to the DC Metro earlier this year.
Votes against funding the Metro, then complains that it lacks adequate resources.
[on edit]
Yes, the Republicans are literally demanding that Barack Obama make the trains run on time.
If you haven’t followed Ezra Klein, he got hired as a blogger by the Washington Post, and since then, he’s done his level best to show that he’s one of the Beltway Kule Kidz, repeatedly posting about how it’s only those DFH’s* who care about the public option.†
Well, after all this time, Mr. Klein finally looks at the product of his best bud Max Baucus, and even he sees that it is completely inadequate:
What’s more, for all of his show of bipartisanship, he has failed to secure the support of a single Republican.
Can we run a primary against him, please?
*Dirty F%$#ing Hippies
†FWIW, they aren’t DFH’s, I am. I don’t just want a public option, or single payer, I want a National Health Service (NHS), because I think that the system is too broken to allow for any potential point of entry for the health insurers.
7 Republicans crossed lines to vote for it, 12 Dems crossed party lines to vote against it, and 5 Dems abstained.
I am of two minds about the vote.
What he did was clearly a violation of the rules of courtesy for the House of Representatives, and I understand why they felt the need to make sure that there were consequences.
That being said, I think that Congressional courtesy is overrated, and going with British style heckling, and a couple of good fist fights on the floor, might shake up that staid institution.
Between the Bloomberg court case demanding FOIA Releases and Congressman Ron Paul’s increasingly popular legislative proposal to audit Federal Reserve programs, it is pretty clear that the Federal Reserve is in full panic mode.
Here are what I think are the likely motivations, in order of increasing plausibility:
Henry Blodget suggests that the Fed, and the banks are concerned that the release of this data will lead to a bank run, as it did with Reconstruction Finance Corporation (RFC) in early 1933.
They are not suggesting that any new problems will be revealed, but that the mere fact that banks have used Fed lending facilities will trigger a panic.
I find this unlikely, simply because there is deposit insurance now, and as such small depositors will no longer freak, as a result now, and the large players already know who is in bad shape, and everyone knows that everyone has availed themselves of these facilities.
It is clear that this is what the banks suggested in their filing on the Bloomberg case, that added transparency will lead to excessive rumors, which is, of course laughable. It is lack of transparency that fosters rumors, so find this argument unpersuasive.
Karl Denninger suggests a scenario, that I consider to be more likely, that the banks and the Federal Reserve have been lying through their teeth, and that the real state of affairs is truly awful, and upon discovery of a program of systemic lies and accounting tricks with the Federal Reserve at its core will cause institutions to implode, much as the discovery that Bear Stearns and Lehman Brothers were lying caused them to implode:
The problem The Fed has is that as the supposed “risk regulator” for the American Banking System it has absolutely refused to do its job of prudential regulation and still is. Instead of demanding that its member banks hold capital against all unsecured lending it has “blessed” models rather than markets. But at the same time it has declared “haircuts” against collateral that make clear that so-called “face value”, or “par”, is a farce.
The Fed is supporting institutionalized lying – that is, the intentional mis-marking of assets. If The Fed was an honest regulator and monitor of market risk it would insist that no bank carry an asset at a value materially higher than its “haircut” off par at the window. After all, the penalty rate for discount window use already discourages banks from coming there; the “haircuts” must (and I argue do) reflect what The Fed actually believes about the quality of these alleged “baskets” of asset classifications.
If The Fed believes that these asset classes have this sort of haircut from face value in the market how does it justify allowing any bank under its jurisdiction holding such “assets” at a higher value on their balance sheet?
(emphasis original))
Mr. Denninger calls this “Racketeering,” and an , “attempt to cover up outrageous and repeated failures to comply with US Securities laws,” I think that he is not far from the truth.
Another possibility that no one has mentioned, is that likelihood that in revealing this information, the Federal Reserve will be revealed to have lied to Congress, and possibly to the US Treasury, in some cases under oath, and that Bernanke does not want to be the target of a grand jury investigation.
Finally, Occam’s razor says that the most likely explanation is usually the simplest, and the fact is that transparency does not serve either the banks or the Federal Reserve.
For the banks, this money would be cast as more bailout, and there would be more pressure on restricting executive pay.
For the Fed, knowledge is power, and by becoming more transparent, the Fed will inevitably become less powerful, and any bureaucracy will fight this tooth and nail.
FWIW, my guess is that the last 3 likely all figure into this, that is the discovery of massive concealed losses, the worry about perjury charges, and simple bureaucratic imperative.
Just in case you want to get the lay of the land of SC’s 2nd Congressional district, I checked out recent electoral history for the district.
Truth be told, it’s a tough row to hoe:
| Year | Democrat | Votes | Pct | Republican | Votes | Pct | |||||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2000 | Jane Frederick | 110,672 | 41% | Floyd Spence | 154,338 | 57% | |||||||||||||
| 2001 | Brent Weaver | 14,034 | 25% | Joe Wilson | 40,355 | 73% | <Special Election | ||||||||||||
| 2002 | (no candidate) | Joe Wilson | 144,149 | 84% | |||||||||||||||
| 2004 | Michael Ellisor | 93,249 | 33% | Joe Wilson | 181,862 | 65% | |||||||||||||
| 2006 | Michael Ellisor | 76,090 | 37% | Joe Wilson | 127,811 | 63% | |||||||||||||
| 2008 | Rob Miller | 158,627 | 46% | Joe Wilson | 184,583 | 54% |
Though the best performance against Wilson to date was Rob Miller’s loss by 8%, so it is entirely reasonable to consider this race to be competitive, particularly since Miller has raised about $¾ million, $733,608.00 on Act Blue alone at the time of this post (below break), and Mr. Miller has name recognition from his last run, and he has generated a lot of buzz in the past 36 hours or so.
And it is about bloody time.
Barney Frank has announced plans to reintroduce a bill to give bankrputcy judges the ability to modify mortgages, it appears that the banks got cocky, and promptly forgot promises of voluntary mortgage mods, as the picture (from here) shows.
It appears that members of Congress are shocked that banks are not willing to do mortgage mods, when they:
Campaign contributions and lobbyists are a much better investment than helping people.
I have added Rob Miller to Matthew Saroff’s Act Blue Page.
You may not know who he is, but he is running for Congress in SC-02 against incombent Joe Wilson (R). Joe Wilson is the guy who shouted, “You Lie” during Obama’s speech.
The ironic part is that if he had said that in response one of the most objectively true assertions during the whole speech.
Miller appears to have raised something like $100K in the past 12 almost 300K in the past 16 hours over $300K in the past 18 hours.
Aw hell…Is there a way to dynamically embed this data?
Ahhh, here we go:
Had to use the depreciated “iframe” tag to make it work in IE.
Any hints on how to make the “embed” tag, aka proper HTML, work in MicroFlaccid’s browser?