Category: Legislation

2 January 2013, 7:47 PM

My Heart So Doesn’t Break For John Boehner

I understand where he is coming from on Hurricane Sandy.

The Teabagger part of his caucus sees New York as nothing but n***ers, k*kes, and f***ots, and he did not want to try to pass a bill sending New York any money before he is reelected , because he has a whole sh%$-mess of folks who think that aid to a storm ravaged New York is aid to the enemy.

So, he decided not to bring up any sort of aid for the damage Sandy this session.

Bad move, dude.

He ignited a bipartisan sh%$-storm.

Republican stalwart, and supporter of lightly complected terrorists Peter King went on TV and suggested that people from the area should stop making political contributions to Republicans.

And then New Jersey Governor Chris “Does Not Play Well With Others” Christie said that Boehner had lied to him about the bill being on the agenda and that he refused to take his calls, and that Boehner’s chief rival, Eric Cantor, had tried to help on this.

So Boehner caved, and there will be a vote on Sandy relief on Friday for $9 billion in relief, and a vote for an additional $51 billion on January 15.

Sucks to be him.

Heh.

22 December 2012, 9:07 PM

Worst………Speaker………Ever

You cannot negotiate with him, because, when push comes to shove, he is completely incapable of delivering the votes, even on a meaningless vote that was intended to call out a President that his caucus hates:

I just finished laughing from this spectacle on the House floor today. The House leadership tried desperately to pass “Plan B,” the main part of which was an extension of the Bush tax cuts on the first $1 million of income. In truth, all of the other giveaways in it would actually result in lower taxes for many wealthy earners, but tax rates have this weird power, especially within the Republican caucus. And you could just feel today that conservatives weren’t willing to pass the bill, even at that ridiculously high level. John Boehner and the leadership added a sweetener in the form of a package that eliminated the sequester on defense spending and applied it to more discretionary spending cuts, and even that barely passed, tainted by the association to Plan B.

We waited for a vote. And waited. Then the House Republicans held a closed caucus. And then Boehner had to come out and call the whole thing off.

The House did not take up the tax measure today because it did not have sufficient support from our members to pass. Now it is up to the president to work with Senator Reid on legislation to avert the fiscal cliff. The House has already passed legislation to stop all of the January 1 tax rate increases and replace the sequester with responsible spending cuts that will begin to address our nation’s crippling debt. The Senate must now act.

This is astonishing. Boehner spent three days talking up Plan B, which you just don’t do without the votes in hand. But conservative groups rule the House, and they turned against a bill that gives tax breaks to everyone making up to $1 million, along with enough reductions in other taxes to soften the blow for those poor millionaires. But House Republicans just aren’t going to do it, on this or any tax increase.

Seriously, negotiating with John Boehner is over the budget like negotiating with the Tatyana Egorova, coach of FC Rossiyanka, the leading Russian women’s soccer team over nuclear arms reductions.

Even if you assume good faith negotiations, they simply cannot deliver on their promises.

20 December 2012, 8:51 PM

If You Spend the Better Part of a Decade Sh%$ting on a Profession………

It appears to me that if you are going to do your level best to be horrible to teachers, and to make their lives a living hell, it’s Probably not a good idea to let them bring firearms to work and to give them military training:

Tennessee has emerged this week as a center of the “the answer is more guns in schools” sentiment following the Newtown, Conn. elementary school shooting.

A member of the Republican-controlled legislature plans during its upcoming session to introduce a bill that would allow the state to pay for secretly armed teachers in classrooms so, the sponsor told TPM, potential shooters don’t know who has a gun and who doesn’t.

Tennessee Gov. Bill Haslam (R) has said the idea will be part of his discussions about how to prevent a shooting like the one in Newtown from happening in the Volunteer State.

This is not quite as stupid as McArdle’s suggestion that we brainwash 6 year old children into gang tackling gun toting maniacs, but it’s pretty f%$#ing close.

I am waiting for The Onion to announce mass layoffs, because they can no longer compete with reality.

20 December 2012, 8:37 PM

Obama has lost………Markos Moulitsas Zúniga?!?!?!?

As in “Kos” of Daily Kos, who is thoroughly unimpressed with Obama appearing to cede ground on core Democratic Party values:

If President Barack Obama has a flaw, it’s his obviously overwhelming desire to appear reasonable and conciliatory and “work together” to find “compromise” and “get things done”. Bipartisanly. With a sane, reasonable, conciliatory opposition, that approach would make sense. But after four years of getting slammed by Republicans eager to destroy his presidency, Obama still hasn’t learned the lesson. He still thinks he’s going to get rewarded for being the “adult in the room.” Yeah, everything I’ve put inside scare quotes is a joke. A bad, painful joke.

So there’s nothing better than headlines like this one, in the Washington Post, to deliver the lesson to the White House to, well, just quit being the Capitulator In Chief:

A rough 24 hours for the White House

You see, Obama had drawn a line in the sand, and then—to no one’s surprise—ended up capitulating on everything he said he’d never capitulate on.

While I think that Kos is entitled, and in fact justified in his disappointment, but I think that he is being naive about what is going on.

Barack Obama is not negotiating with himself, and he is not incompetent, he is getting exactly what he wants.

He is a conservative “Blue Dog in everything but name” Democrat; he is a Reagan revolution “Democrat” who thinks that our social safety net is too generous, and that taxes on the rich will destroy the economy.

Occam’s razor suggests that the simplest solution is usually the best.

You have two alternate theories.

The 1^st theory is that Obama is unable to learn and he is a poor negotiator, but he went to Harvard Law, which is arguably one of the best training grounds for negotiation in the country, and was elected editor of the Harvard Law Review, which means that he had to out do the greatest legal minds of his generation.

The 2^nd theory is that this is pretty much what Obama wants.

So, which theory seems simpler to you?

14 December 2012, 10:20 PM

Why Do Americans Want Our Children to be Shot?

I don’t just mean the NRA. I just don’t mean the sociopathic Talibaptists who say that it’s because we do not pray to the right God. I mean all of us.

After every shooting we, and I mean all of us, are told by the Gun Nuts With Small Penises^™ that it’s not the time to talk about it, and so some dead kids, mall shoppers, etc. are consigned to the memory hole.

Now it’s 28 people, including 20 children at Newtown Elementary School in Connecticut.

BTW, there is a special place in hell for White House Press Secretary Jay Carney, who jumbed with both feet on the “we must not talk about it” meme.

BTW, there was a school attack in China today, 22 people attacked, WITH A KNIFE.

There were no deaths.

I understand that the NRA is a bunch of scary people to your average politician. We need to be even scarier.

12 December 2012, 8:44 PM

Jon Stewart on the Race to the Bottom

Jon Stewart, Aasif Mandvi and Jason Jones do a riff on the race to the bottom, in the context of their adoption of right-to-work legislation by Michigan and Indiana.

It ends with Mandvi proposing a bill where workers remuneration is thrown into a pit where they fight each other using the bones of the dead.

4 December 2012, 9:43 PM

They’ve Lost the F%$#ing Heritage Foundation

Yesterday, I mentioned that the Republican budget proposals were fact free, well, it appears that people at the right wing Heritage Foundation agree with me:

The House Republican leadership has offered a substantive counteroffer to President Obama’s frivolous fiscal cliff proposal of last week. At first blush, it appears little more than categorical, pre-emptive capitulation.

To be fair, the details of the Republican proposal are extraordinarily vague. Nor is much clarity or comfort gained from the three-page accompanying letter sent to the President and signed by Speaker John Boehner (R-OH), Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-VA), House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan (R-WI), and three other senior members of the House Republican leadership.

Much can and likely will come out in the days ahead clarifying what a few figures and labels on a single sheet of paper mean. One can only hope the additional clarity substantially improves the picture. However, it is very difficult to be hopeful.

That’s gonna leave a mark.

Normally, I think that the Heritage foundation is full of crap.

Even amongst the right wing think tanks, it’s hacktacular.

Full disclosure, a friend of mine was fired by the Heritage Foundation because she got cancer, so I am not favorably inclined toward these guys.

H/t Talking Points Memo.

3 December 2012, 9:46 PM

Obama Has Apparently Switched to a High Fiber Cereal

I’m shocked, shocked to find that gambling is going on here!

Because he has stopped negotiating with himself, and he is simply putting forward his favored solution to Republicans, and demanding proposals from them:

Amid demands from Republicans that President Obama propose detailed new spending cuts to avert the year-end fiscal crisis, his answer boils down to this: you first.

Mr. Obama, scarred by failed negotiations in his first term and emboldened by a clear if close election to a second, has emerged as a different kind of negotiator in the past week or two, sticking to the liberal line and frustrating Republicans on the other side of the bargaining table.

Disciplined and unyielding, he argues for raising taxes on the wealthy while offering nothing new to rein in spending and overhaul entitlement programs beyond what was on the table last year. Until Republicans offer their own new plan, Mr. Obama will not alter his. In effect, he is trying to leverage what he claims as an election mandate to force Republicans to take ownership of the difficult choices ahead.

His approach is born of painful experience. In his first four years in office, Mr. Obama has repeatedly offered what he considered compromises on stimulus spending, health care and deficit reduction to Republicans, who either rejected them as inadequate or pocketed them and insisted on more. Republicans argued that Mr. Obama never made serious efforts at compromise and instead lectured them about what they ought to want rather than listening to what they did want.

So the Republicans have been shocked, that ~~gambling is going on~~ he’s decided to stop conceding at the start of talks.

BTW, the Republicans have now to been forced to make a ~~real~~ in response, only it’s completely number and specifics free. Yes, the propose raising medicare age to 67, which won’t save any money, because the 65-67 year old’s will need insurance subsidies, unspecified loophole closing (gee, they don’t want to be the first ones to propose cutting the mortgage deduction?):

The offer makes no mention of how to handle a looming battle over the federal debt limit, which will soon need to raised above $16.4 trillion. Nor does the offer provide any suggestions for how to carry out the debt-reduction framework and avoid the fiscal cliff. GOP aides said those details are open to negotiation.

“There are multiple ways to get this done,” said one senior GOP aide who briefed reporters on the condition of anonymity. “The details need to be filled in later.”

(emphasis mine)

The Republicans want to make the Democrats propose specific cuts, and then bludgeon them them with that in 2014.

Do not expect the GOP to bargain in good faith, they are hostage takers, and will be for the foreseeable future.

1 December 2012, 8:04 PM

This Will Never Make it to Obama’s Desk

While I am heartened that the senate has passed an amendment to the Defense Authorization bill to ban indefinite detention without trial of US citizens and green card holders:

The Senate voted late on Thursday to prohibit the government from imprisoning American citizens and green card holders apprehended in the United States in indefinite detention without trial.

While the move appeared to bolster protections for domestic civil liberties, it was opposed by an array of rights groups who claimed it implied that other types of people inside the United States could be placed in military detention, opening the door to using the military to perform police functions.

The measure was an amendment to this year’s National Defense Authorization Act, which is now pending on the Senate floor, and was sponsored by Senators Dianne Feinstein, Democrat of California, and Mike Lee, Republican of Utah. The Senate approved adding it to the bill by a vote of 67 to 29.

“What if something happens and you are of the wrong race in the wrong place at the wrong time and you are picked up and held without trial or charge in detention ad infinitum?” Ms. Feinstein said during the floor debate. “We want to clarify that that isn’t the case — that the law does not permit an American or a legal resident to be picked up and held without end, without charge or trial.”

The power of the government to imprison, without trial, Americans accused of ties to terrorism has been in dispute for a decade.

Even if Boehner were to support this, and my guess is that he won’t, I would expect the White House to fight this, on the theory that this is an executive branch prerogative.

27 November 2012, 8:08 PM

Your Morment of Eric Arthur Blair*

Barack Obama, who has prosecuted more whistle blowers under the espionage act than all the Presidents combined, just signed the whistleblower protection act:

The Government Accountability Project (GAP) is praising President Obama’s signing of S. 743, the Whistleblower Protection Enhancement Act (WPEA), into law earlier today. The legislation provides millions of federal workers with the rights they need to report government corruption and wrongdoing safely. The bill reflects an unequivocal bipartisan consensus, having received the vote of every member in the 112th Congress, passing both the Senate and House of Representatives by unanimous consent over the past couple of months. The text of the bill can be read here.

It’s like something out of The Onion.

^*You know, George Orwell.

20 November 2012, 7:39 PM

Journalists Who Should Be Working as Pastry Chefs

Declan Mccullagh, everyone’s favorite “Draw by crayon Libertarian,”^* has a scoop. That Senator Pat Leahy had an amendment to the privacy bill in his committee that would allow warrantless access to your electronic communications by a big honking number of federal agencies.

One small problem though, he got his hands on an out of date draft that had never been seriously considered, and was not put forward by Leahy:

This would be particularly disturbing in the wake of the scandal surrounding Generals Petraeus and Allen, whose emails were exposed during a wide-ranging and questionable FBI investigation and have brought the discussion of limits on the surveillance state to the fore. But when reached by phone, Patrick Leahy’s spokesperson David Carle bluntly said the article was “wrong.”

The version of the bill that Declan McCullagh excerpts in his report appears to be one of many that have been drafted and passed around, but is not a version that would be considered seriously at a hearing to review the bill next week.

“Senator Leahy does not support broad carve outs for warrantless searches of email content,” says a Senate Judiciary aide. “He remains committed to upholding privacy laws and updating the outdated Electronic Privacy Communications Act.”

A person who has been privy to conversations about the impending bill intended to update privacy protections around digital communications for the modern age said that this was a “snapshot of a discussion point” and that it’s inaccurate to say it’s the version being pushed forward. This particular draft of the bill incorporates amendments suggested by Senator Chuck Grassley who has expressed concern that too much privacy protection for our email could negatively impact safety tasks.

OK, That’s a bit of an oops.

So, he accused Pat Leahy of trying to take away our privacy rights on the basis of a draft from Charles Grassley. ……… Oops.

What is Mccullagh’s response to all of this? He claims that his story forced Leahy to change his bill:

Sen. Patrick Leahy has abandoned his controversial proposal that would grant government agencies more surveillance power — including warrantless access to Americans’ e-mail accounts — than they possess under current law.

The Vermont Democrat said today on Twitter that he would “not support such an exception” for warrantless access. The remarks came a few hours after a CNET article was published this morning that disclosed the existence of the measure.

Not even a mention of reports that it was never a real amendment, and that Chuck Grassley was the author of the draft.

So, he took a draft from a Republican, one that is consistent with that Senator’s history, and ascribed it to a Democrat, because, you know, Democrats are evil!

Not surprising.

Declan McCullagh was one of the chief promoters of the “Al Gore invented the Internet meme.”

His editors need to smack him upside the head with a clue-by-four, and tell him to get the facts straight.

^*Not my bon mot. It’s from the always entertaining Andrew Orlowski of The Register.

7 November 2012, 7:53 PM

More Election Updates

Allen West, crazy man and war criminal (literally), gone.

Democrat Jon Tester, reelected from Montana, (!) in a victory for retro hair styles.

More interesting were the initiative elections.

Let’s start with Maryland, where gambling expansion and gay marriage passed.

On the gay marriage front, Maine and Washington also passed gay marriage, and in Minnesota, voters defeated an anti gay marriage constitutional amendment.

In California, things actually turned out better than I expected, with Democrats getting a super-majority in both houses of the legislature, meaning that they can raise taxes, and on initiatives, Jerry Brown’s tax increase passed, as did a moderation of their three strikes law, closing corporate tax loopholes, enhanced penalties for human trafficking, and non-partisan redistricting.

It’s kind of remarkable for California, nothing really stupid passed, though I am bumming a bit over the fact that death penalty repeal failed (by only 5%), and the ratf%$#s at Monsanto managed to kill the genetically modified foods labeling law.

Most importantly, California decisively defeated the labor union muzzling initiative(aka “paycheck prediction”).

Not a bad evening.

24 October 2012, 9:10 PM

I Think that I’ll Vacation in Uraguay

It looks like Uruguay will legalize marijuana and sell it through state stores:

The president of Uruguay, José Mujica, has announced plans to legalise the production and sale of marijuana under a state monopoly, triggering a lively controversy in Montevideo. The relevant bill will soon be tabled in parliament, where the governing centre-left coalition led by the Broad Front (FA) enjoys a majority but is divided on this issue.

Possessing and consuming marijuana was decriminalised in 2000. “There is no question of Uruguay producing and distributing drugs, but the state will control and regulate the market,” said interior minister Eduardo Bonomi.

“We have a progressive tradition,” said Bonomi who, with Mujica, belonged to the Tupamaros urban guerrillas in the 1970s. “At the beginning of the 20th century our country ended the prohibition of alcohol, prostitution and gambling.” Abortion is currently in the process ofbeing legalised. “Our approach to marijuana is equally pragmatic,” Bonomi said. “The negative effects of consuming marijuana are far less harmful than the outbreak of violence associated with the black market.”

Do they have ice cream sammiches in Uruguay?

11 September 2012, 8:33 PM

Yet Another Person Disenfranchised by the ‘Phants

CNBC’s Jim Cramer’s dad:

Jim Cramer, host of CNBC’s “Mad Money,” revealed Tuesday that the Republican Party’s voter suppression efforts will prevent his own father, a veteran, from casting a ballot this fall in Pennsylvania.

“I have a problem,” Cramer said on Twitter Tuesday morning. “My dad, a vet, won’t be allowed to vote in Pa. because he does not drive, he is elderly, and can’t prove his citizenship.”

That would mean Cramer’s father is one of nearly 760,000 voters, or about 9 percent of Pennsylvanians who regularly participate in elections, who the state said does not carry a state-issued photo identification. Despite that alarming statistic, a Republican Pennsylvania judge approved the law last month, saying that voters still have time to obtain their ID cards.

So now Republicans are pissing off hysterical white dudes.

Isn’t that their base?

8 August 2012, 8:33 PM

It Won’t Pass

The Maryland Health Security Act of 2012, a single payer health care proposal, has been submitted to the legislature.

A quick Google reveals that it’s been submitted since at least 2008, so I don’t expect anything to come of it though.

2 August 2012, 8:04 PM

Latest Big Brother Bill Fails

Yes, Joe Lieberman’s attempt at a combined police state wet dream/vanity legacy project, the Cybersecurity Act of 2012, failed failed to break a filibuster, and so it’s dead for this session.

I’m happy, but Barack Obama is bumming, because, well, the worlds worst constitutional law professor wants to be able to spy on people without any independent review.

28 July 2012, 8:44 PM

What a Surprise

When another vote comes up on a bill to audit the Federal Reserve, the Democratic Leadership in the House whips against it:

Yesterday, on the House floor, there was a furious debate over the prospect for HR 541, Ron Paul’s bill to audit the Federal Reserve. The Republicans are by and large supportive of this bill, seeking to hamstring the ability of the Federal Reserve to act in secret. Democratic members, were they left to their own devices, would be split. But on votes on bills like this, party leaders can choose to endorse a position, or not endorse a position. Some votes are what’s called “whipped”, and some aren’t. There’s an intricate system of whips and assistant whips and staff networks who encourage members to vote a certain way, so when the party takes a position on an issue, it has a big impact on the final vote count. This is a whipped vote, which means that this is one of those times where the Democratic leadership – Steny Hoyer, Barney Frank and Nancy Pelosi – are putting their stamp on an issue. They have come out firmly for Fed secrecy.

Here’s the whip notice from Democratic leadership on the House side encouraging members to vote against transparency at the Fed.

………

UPDATE: The bill passed, 327-97. A bunch of Democrats flipped against an audit. Just glancing at the roll call, Louise Slaughter, Lynn Woolsey, Marcy Kaptur, Heath Shuler, and Donna Edwards (among others) cosponsored the bill either last Congress and/or this Congress, and then voted against it on the floor. Go Team Blue!

UPDATE, AGAIN: The Democratic leaders, despite whipping, barely got a majority of the caucus to vote no. This is a massive failure on their part, and shows how weak they are.

It won’t ever make it to the floor of the Senate, and if it passed there, Obama would veto it.

I am not a Ron Paul gold nut, but I do think that the Fed, with regard to its non-monetary activity in particular, should be more accountable, and I think that opposition to that idea is because they (they being the usual suspects) want to make sure that the Fed is free to bail them (them being the usual suspects) the next time that they (they being the usual suspects) drive themselves (they being the usual …… you get the point) off a cliff and need rescuing.

15 July 2012, 5:37 AM

Dutch Parliament Deals Blow to JSF

The Dutch Parliament has voted to ask the PM and cabinet to cancel the jet order:

The Netherlands should scrap plans to buy F-35 Joint Strike Fighter jets because it cannot afford the project’s ballooning costs as the country attempts to cut spending, a majority of parliament said on Thursday.

One leading party, Labour, will submit a proposal to the 150-seat legislature on the last session before Sept. 12 elections calling for an end to Dutch participation in the Lockheed Martin Corp warplanes project.

Whether the Netherlands, which has already ordered two F-35 test planes, will quit the project depends on the outcome of the elections, and the new government that takes office afterwards.

The Dutch government collapsed over painful austerity measures in April, but the state has to cut costs by billions of euros to meet EU guidelines. About 4.5 billion euros has been set aside for the F-35 jets.

During a debate with Dutch Defence Minister Hans Hillen, lawmakers complained about the project’s escalating costs and said there were no guarantees over Dutch jobs or future costs.

I’m beginning to think that this will end up a lot like the F-111.

The only people who bought that plane were us and the Australians. (The British canceled after escalating costs)