Both houses of the Washington State legislature have passed gay marriage legislation, and the Governor will sign it.
Category: Legislation
Obama F%$#s Unions Again
First it was not following up on card check, and now, he’s selling unions down the river in the latest FAA authorization, which served to gut decades of labor law.
The labor movement seriously needs to start going totally “Club for Growth” on the Democrats in the primaries.
Facepalm
Just when you thought that New Jersey could not get any more pathetic, New Jersey Governor Chris Christie said that civil rights leaders in the 1950s and 1960s would have been cool with a referendum to give civil rights without regard to race:
The verbal feud over gay marriage in New Jersey got more personal Monday with Gov. Chris Christie firing a slang term [numb nuts] at a lawmaker, and a hero of the Civil Rights movement chastising the governor for a separate remark.
………The issue also brought U.S. Rep. John Lewis of Georgia to Trenton on Monday to take Christie to task for comments linking gay marriage to the civil rights struggle of the 1960s.Christie last week vowed to veto any gay marriage bill that reaches his desk. He instead called for the question to be put to voters in November.“I think people would have been happy to have a referendum on civil rights, rather than fighting and dying in the streets in the South,” Christie said after an event in Central Jersey.Black leaders pounced. Newark Mayor Cory Booker said baseball great Jackie Robinson would not have had the opportunity to break the sport’s color barrier had the matter been put to a vote, and the mayor himself would not have had the opportunity, years later, to be elected to lead New Jersey’s largest city. Assembly Speaker Sheila Oliver said many felt the sting of Christie’s comment.Gusciora, who is white, said Christie would have found allies in late Alabama Gov. George Wallace and late Georgia Gov. Lester Maddox, both segregationists.
This is what qualifies as a deep thought by the ‘Phants.
God, what a repulsive person.
Yes, These Are Members of the Polish Parliament
And they are protesting Poland’s signing onto the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA):
Poland on Thursday signed an international copyright agreement, sparking more demonstrations by Internet users who have protested for days over fear it will lead to online censorship.
After the signing, protesters rallied in the Polish cities of Poznan and Lublin to express their anger over the treaty. Lawmakers for the left-wing Palikot’s Movement wore masks in parliament to show their dissatisfaction, while the largest opposition party — the right-wing Law and Justice party — called for a referendum on the matter.
Controversy in Poland has been deepening over the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement, or ACTA. Though many other industrialized countries have signed it, popular outrage appears to be greater in Poland than anywhere else.
This is actually significant.
It’s been growing slowly, but the almost universal consensus about the ability of IP holders to rent seek is now showing cracks, as more and more people start to see it as a drain upon society, rather than a benefit.
We are seeing this in the media, where we are seeing increasing coverage of patent trolls like Nathan Myhrvold. (Here’s hoping that his f%$#ing cookbook is followed by people protesting his ass)
With a little bit of luck, we may eventually see the worm turn on all of this, and see the protections on IP seen through the lens of public benefit, and not the interest of the rentiers.
Sarko Gets One Right
The French have passed a law making it illegal to deny the existence of the Armenian Genocide.
I don’t approve laws forbidding speech, but I DO approve of pushing back on the Turkish aggressive policy of denial and disinformation regarding historical fact.
The cynic in me thinks that Nicolas Sarkosy was motivated by the political calculus that bashing Turks would sell with the Neanderthal set in the upcoming election though.
One final note: Serdar Argic, eat my shorts.
It’s Been the SOPA/PIPA Protest Day Today
Click for full size
Wikipedia Went Dark
Well, it looks like the rent seekers who normally win this stuff (the “Mickey Mouse” Sonny Bono Copyright Act anyone?) are getting at least a temporary brush-back over their attempt to turn the internet into a gated community:
When the powerful world of Old Media mobilized to win passage of an online antipiracy bill, it marshaled the reliable giants of K Street — the United States Chamber of Commerce, the Recording Industry Association of America, and of course, the motion picture lobby, with its new chairman, former Senator Christopher J. Dodd, the Connecticut Democrat and an insider’s insider.
Yet on Wednesday this formidable Old Guard was forced to make way for the new as Web powerhouses backed by Internet activists rallied opposition to the legislation through Internet blackouts and cascading criticism, sending an unmistakable message to lawmakers grappling with new media issues: Don’t mess with the Internet.
As a result, the legislative battle over two once-obscure bills to combat the looting of American movies, music, books and writing on the World Wide Web may prove to be a turning point for the way business is done in Washington. It represented a moment when the new economy rose up against the old.
“I think it is an important moment in the Capitol,” said Representative Zoe Lofgren, Democrat of California and an important opponent of the antipiracy legislation. “Too often, legislation is about competing business interests. This is way beyond that. This is individual citizens rising up.”
Legislation that just weeks ago had overwhelming bipartisan support and had provoked little scrutiny generated a grass-roots coalition on the left and the right. Wikipedia made its English-language content unavailable, replaced with a warning: “Right now, the U.S. Congress is considering legislation that could fatally damage the free and open Internet.” Visitors to Reddit found the site offline in protest. Google’s home page was scarred by a menacing black swatch that blotted out the search engine’s label.
Phone calls and e-mails poured in to Congressional offices against the Stop Online Piracy Act in the House and the Protect I.P. Act in the Senate. One by one, prominent backers of the bills dropped off.
It should be noted that the Republicans are walking away from this faster than the Democrats.
Even Orrin Hatch, the MPAA and RIAA’s bitch,* has withdrawn his support of the bill.
BTW, this debacle is largely the fault of the entertainment industry, because until now they have refused to meet with the tech companies to work out differences, though they are begging for that now.
Here’s a suggestion to the tech companies: keep your boot on the MPAA’s.
You’ll be doing them a favor. You might remember then MPAA chair Jack Valenti claiming that the VCR would destroy the studios, when the video rental revenues actually saved their bacon.
Here’s a thought to the unproductive leeches who are entertainment executives, whose business, after all is to rip off the artists who actually produce this stuff: Do less cocaine, fire your worthless brothers-in-law, and invest in treating the actual creative people, and in producing better content.
*For which he has been richly paid through record contracts from the labels.
You Know It’s an Election Year, Because ………
The Obama administration has come out against the most draconian measures in the rent seeking anti-piracy bills in the House and Senate:
The Obama administration won’t back legislation to combat online piracy if it encourages censorship, undermines cybersecurity or disrupts the structure of the Internet, three White House technology officials said.
Their statement, posted yesterday on the White House website, was a response to online petitions on legislative proposals to combat online piracy. The movie and music industries support such measures as a means of cracking down on theft.
“While we believe that online piracy by foreign websites is a serious problem that requires a serious legislative response, we will not support legislation that reduces freedom of expression, increases cybersecurity risk or undermines the dynamic, innovative global Internet,” Aneesh Chopra, Victoria Espinel and Howard Schmidt wrote in a blog post.
The statement marks the administration’s most significant foray into a fight between content creators and Internet companies that has been playing out in Congress. The Senate is scheduled to hold a procedural vote Jan. 24 on starting debate on an anti-piracy bill.
The first thing to note is that this is a very tepid condemnation.
They didn’t make a Friday night release of this blog post, it was around noon on a Saturday when it was competing with the NFL playoffs, and Obama himself has not made a comment here.
That being said, I think that this is the first time that the Obama administration has come out against rent seekers as versus the general public.
I think that the Obama administration has made a tactical decision that they will get plenty of money for the campaign, and so they it isn’t necessary at this time to sh%$ on a motivated and tech savvy part of the electorate.
Well, Knock Me Over With a Mackerel!
Congress has ended both the subsidy on corn ethanol and the tariff on imported Brazilian sugar based ethanol:
Tom Buis, CEO of Growth Energy, an ethanol trade group, clearly wasn’t thrilled with the decision, but in an interview earlier this month he claimed the ethanol industry would survive without government handouts stating, “The blenders’ tax credit initially helped the ethanol industry develop. But today, we don’t have a production problem, we have a market access problem. Without the tax credit, the ethanol industry will survive; it will continue to reduce our dependence on foreign oil, create jobs and strengthen our economy.”
By some estimates the total gifts to corn ethanol business totalled $45B USD since 1980.
The subsidy cut — approved by a 73-27 Senate vote in June — also is accompanied by the end of a tariff on the importation of Brazilian ethanol. Brazil has an excess of sugarcane ethanol, but the U.S. government had previously penalized this fuel stream as a means of allowing U.S. ethanol producers to escape competing on the free market.
The ethanol debate has divided both political parties and even set federal representatives within certain corn-producing states against each other.
I wonder if this says something about the increasing irrelevance of Iowa caucuses this year.
I’m pleasantly surprised by this development.
Works for Me
Marcy Wheeler looks at the defense authorization bill, and its provisions for indefinite detention without trial, and observes that it could be used to lock up JP Morgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon forever.
You see, his firm has attempted to thwart sanctions against Iran, allowed their bank to be used to to funnel money to terrorist assassins, and a whole bunch of other people who have, “supported al-Qaeda, the Taliban, or associated forces.”
If Obama was willing to do this, I might actually vote for him.
Then again, considering the fact that he’s signing the Defense Authorization act which tramples on the very notion of civil rights, which, ironically enough, is what gives him the power to lock up Jamie Dimon forever on nothing more than his say so.
I just have to figure out who I’m going to write in for the primary and the general.
Deja Vu
Congress is looking at declaring pizza a vegetable:
The Obama administration’s push to limit the starchy vegetables and tomato paste served to millions of children at school each day was derailed by lawmakers this week, in effect enabling school cafeterias to continue offering pizza and french fries.
………
The proposal also would have nixed the favorable treatment granted to tomato paste. Currently, an eighth of a cup of tomato paste is credited with as much nutritional value as half a cup of vegetables and thus counts as one vegetable serving. That enables food makers to better market their pizzas to schools.
………
Ordinarily, these type of issues would be hashed out as the USDA gathers comments from the public while finalizing the proposal. But several lawmakers made an end run around the process. They added amendments to block the two changes, on starchy vegetables and tomato paste, to agriculture spending bills moving through the Senate and House.
Late Monday, Senate and House negotiators reconciled the differences between their two spending bills and unveiled the final version, which included language to halt the potato and tomato paste changes.
Just like Ronald Reagan declaring ketchup, but the tomato(e)* is a fruit.
I’m expecting to see a Mr. Fusion powered DeLorean back on the big screen.
*It’s an homage to J. Danforth Quayle, who has more brains and common sense than any of the current ‘Phant hopefuls.
This is Literally the Worst Idea I Have Ever Heard
The Department of Justice is seeking to expand anti-hacking laws to make it a criminal offense to violate the terms of a click-through license on a web site:
A commonly invoked anti-hacking law is so overbroad that it criminalizes conduct as innocuous as using a fake user name on Facebook or fibbing about your weight in a Match.com profile, one of the nation’s most respected legal authorities has said.
This came to prominence when the DoJ decided to prosecute the infamous (and unsuccessful) Lori Drew Myspace cyberbulling prosecution.
And the Response of the USDepartment of Justice?
In fact, quite the opposite: Downing and the Justice Department want to expand the law’s scope and impose harsher sentences on cybercriminals.
As CNET reported, the Justice Department is after an expansion of its powers under CFAA because of what happened when the agency attempted to prosecute Lori Drew, a Missouri mother who created a phony MySpace account to harass her 13-year-old neighbor, who later committed suicide. Drew was in 2008 convicted under CFAA of felony conspiracy and three counts of intentionally accessing a protected computer without authorization.
What you have to understand here is that the goal of the DoJ is to have another “arrow in their quiver”.
They want to have a world where everyone can be criminally prosecuted for something, because that way, they can go after anyone that they find inconvenient.
The fact that the Obama DoJ is in full throated support of this is why I refer to him as the “The Worst Constitutional Law Professor Ever”.
When you give the state security apparatus the power to manufacture criminality, which is the desire of most agents of the state security apparatus, you create a blueprint for tyranny.
Italy’s Cancer of the Body Politic Offers to Step Down
Silvio Berlusconi has offered to resign:
The European debt crisis appeared to claim its most prominent victim on Tuesday when Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi of Italy, cornered by world markets and humiliated by a parliamentary setback, pledged to resign after Italy’s Parliament passes austerity measures demanded by the European Union.
Although Mr. Berlusconi’s exit was not immediate — weeks of political wrangling over the austerity measures probably lie ahead — political commentators said they could see no escape this time for the prime minister, whose Houdini-like ability to wriggle free from scandals is legendary.
“A season is over,” said Mario Calabresi, the editor in chief of the Turin daily newspaper La Stampa, who said Mr. Berlusconi told him that he was not only stepping down, but also would not run for office again.
In the end, it was not the sex scandals, the corruption trials against him or even a loss of popular consensus that appeared to end Mr. Berlusconi’s 17 years as a dominant figure in Italian political life. It was, instead, the pressure of the markets — which drove Italy’s borrowing costs to record highs this week — and the European Union, which could not risk his dragging down the euro and with it the world economy.
It’s good that he’s going, but the bigger picture is that Berlusconi’s continued political success has been almost entirely due to his near complete dominance of Italian television.
Self-serving clowns like Silvio are the inevitable result of media consolidation, whether it’s the Italian monopoly on commercial TV (and effective control of state TV), or the media oligopoly in the United States.
The problem is that while one can have free and fair elections, but without an independent and heterogeneous media, you stand a real risk of not having a free and fair campaign.
Why Protesters With Military Training Get Better Results
Admittedly they’ve been at it for a few months longer than Occupy Wall Street, but the fact that if cops just wanted to bust heads, they are deterred by the fact that almost all Israelis have served in the military, and have at least some training in hand to hand combat as a result serves as a deterrent.
Thus we have the Israeli cabinet voting to raise taxes on the wealthy and corporations:
Israel’s summertime protest movement, which was occupying “Wall Street” before it was cool, can now celebrate their first major tangible success.
At a Sunday cabinet meeting the government approved the restructuring of Israel’s tax system, shifting a few degrees of the social burden onto corporations and the very rich.
On Monday, during the opening day of the winter session of parliament after a three-month summer break, legislators received the new tax plan for approval, alongside a lengthy list of demands for financial reform and social justice that were nonexistent when the Knesset, Israel’s parliament, was last in session and which have been catapulted to the forefront of a pre-electoral year.
As lawmakers gathered it became clear that Likud, the party of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, hoped the government’s imprimatur of approval on significant changes in taxation would shift credit from the young protest leaders to the party itself.
This reminds me of a story from the 1960s, when there was a protest against German Chancellor Adenour at a university, and the police went in with batons swinging, and were physically ejected from campus by the protesters.
Obviously, part of this is that Netanyahu, and Likud, are scrambling to avoid an electoral debacle in the next election.
They are widely loathed at this point, and deservedly so, because they have aggressively promoting and implementing Thatchernomics, cutting taxes on the wealthy and raising indirect taxes (particularly indirect ones like sales taxes, fees, etc.) on everyone else.
There are real economic issues driving these changes, but if a few dozen cops been able to rout the demonstrators at the beginning of their protests, the discontent would have remained buried for a while longer.
Dems Try for Seppuku Once Again
So the Democrats on the “Super Committee” are trying to gut Medicare once again, while showing how serious they are by exceeding their mandate for deficit reductions:
Democrats are proposing to slash huge budget deficits by up to $3 trillion, aiming high to repair the country’s fiscal mess even as Republicans show early signs of resisting the proposals.
The broad package of measures calls for long-term spending cuts, including to the government-run Medicare health program for the elderly that threatens to explode the national debt. The other half of the package would come from tax increases, four congressional aides told Reuters on Wednesday.
Republicans rejected the Democratic initiative.
“Asking for a $1.5 trillion tax hike in the middle of a jobs crisis is not a serious proposal,” said a House of Representatives Republican leadership aide.
There is a deep ideological divide between the two parties over taxes — likely a key issue in the congressional and presidential elections in November 2012.
The Democratic plan was presented on Tuesday behind closed doors to a special congressional panel tasked with finding ways of cutting the budget deficit by at least $1.2 trillion over 10 years, the sources said.
It was a rare leak from the so-called “super committee,” whose secretive deliberations have sparked intense speculation about how much progress the 12 Republican and Democratic members have made since they first began meeting on September 8. They face a November 23 deadline to report to Congress.
The aides spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the negotiations.
The Democratic plan proposes cutting the deficit by $2.5 trillion to $3 trillion and calls for between $200 billion and $300 billion in new stimulus spending to boost an ailing U.S. economy. It would be paid for with lower interest payments from reducing deficits.
It also seeks around $400 billion in Medicare savings, with half coming in benefit cuts and the other half in cuts to healthcare providers. Details of that proposal were scant but tackling the popular Medicare program is always politically risky for politicians in Washington, especially Democrats.
The Democratic proposal also identifies $100 billion in cuts to the Medicaid healthcare program for the poor, according to a lobbyist in contact with the committee.
Seriously, it’s both bad policy and bad politics, and it echos Obama’s strategy of attempting to show that they are even more crazy serious about the deficit, which the rest of the country really does not give a crap about.
Read Matt Taibbi
Seriously, just read his advice to the Wall Street protesters.
What the Shrill One Said
Yes, Paul Krugman is correct in noting that the US dollar is overvalued, and that the
Chinese Yuan is undervalued.
He only has 800 words, so what should also be noted is that the dollar is not just overvalued versus the Yuan, but versus the whole world, though he does note that the Chinese are deliberately pushing the value of the Yuan in addition.
Since the undervalued Yuan is, at its core, a tariff on Chinese imports, and a subsidy of their exports, it is clear that the sanctions bill in the Senate is justified.
That being said, there are also structural issues that overvalue the US dollar, to the advantage of Wall Street and the disadvantage of Main Street (Hence Robert Rubin’s* full throated support of a “strong dollar policy when he was SecTreas), and these need to be addressed as well.
*Why is this corrupt ratf%$# not under criminal investigation?
Worst Speaker Ever
I mean, of course John Boehner.
It’s not because he’s an evil ratf%$#, I think that Newt has him beat on that particular qualification, but rather because he is completely unable to manage his caucus:
House Republicans tried a fresh strategy Wednesday night: Go it alone on a spending bill.
The result was an embarrassing setback.
Wednesday night’s rank-and-file rebuke of GOP leadership — with 48 Republicans bolting on a temporary spending bill — underscored the fact that the House Republican majority is still struggling to find unity on major spending bills. It also showed they still need Democratic votes to help them govern.
The pressure from an angry Speaker John Boehner didn’t work — he even threatened to strip committee assignments. Four dozen Republicans —mostly conservatives — wanted more cuts, and they just said no, creating an uncomfortable scene on the House floor as the funding bill failed on a 195-230 vote. Democrats showed a rare moment of unity in overwhelmingly opposing the continuing resolution, which would keep the government funded through Nov. 18.
Now, to prevent a government shutdown, Republicans will have to rewrite the bill and figure out how to get the votes.
Which means that he’s going to have to drop the offsetting cuts for the disaster relief, and come up with a bill to appeal to the Democrats, at least about 25 or so of them anyway.
The inmates are running the asylum, when Boehner should be the adult in charge.
Have you ever though how f%$#ing terrifying it is to think of a situation where a chain smoking tanaholic sot with the brains of a turnip like him has to be the adult in the room?
And he is 3rd in line to be the President.
DoJ Files Against Texas Congressional Districts
They are saying that the new districts violate the Voting Rights Act:
The Justice Department said Monday that Texas’ state House and congressional redistricting plans didn’t comply with Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act (VRA), indicating they thought the maps approved by Gov. Rick Perry (R) gave too little voting power to the growing Latino population in the state.
Officials with DOJ’s Civil Rights Division said the proposed redistricting plan for the State Board of Education (SBOE) and the state Senate complied with the Voting Rights Act, but indicated they had concerns with the state House plan and the plan for congressional redistricting.
The federal government “[denied] that the proposed Congressional plan, as compared with the benchmark, maintains or increases the ability of minority voters to elect their candidate of choice in each district protected by Section 5,” DOJ lawyers write in a filing. “Defendants deny that the proposed Congressional plan complies with Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act.”
For all I complain about Obama, the fact that the professional staff in the DoJ’s civil rights division are allowed to do their jobs is an improvement over Bush and His Evil Minions™.
Well Knock Me Over With a Sledge Hammer!
Barack Obama revealed his deficit plan, and for once, I’m pleasantly surprised:
President Obama will unveil a plan on Monday that uses entitlement cuts, tax increases and war savings to reduce the federal deficit by more than $3 trillion over the next 10 years, administration officials said.
The plan, which Mr. Obama will lay out Monday morning at the White House, is the administration’s opening move in sweeping negotiations on deficit reduction to be taken up by a joint House-Senate committee over the next two months. If a deal is not enacted by Dec. 23, cuts could take effect automatically across government agencies.
Mr. Obama will call for $1.5 trillion in tax increases, primarily on the wealthy, through a combination of letting the Bush-era tax cuts expire, closing loopholes and limiting the amount that high earners can deduct. The proposal also includes $580 billion in adjustments to health and entitlement programs, including $248 billion to Medicare and $72 billion to Medicaid. Administration officials said that the Medicare cuts would not come from an increase in the Medicare eligibility age.
Senior administration officials who briefed reporters on some of the details of Mr. Obama’s proposal said that the plan also counts a savings of $1.1 trillion from the ending of the American combat mission in Iraq and the withdrawal of American troops from Afghanistan.
In laying out his proposal, aides said, Mr. Obama will expressly promise to veto any legislation that seeks to cut the deficit through spending cuts alone and does not include revenue increases in the form of tax increases on the wealthy.
I’m stunned.
His plan doesn’t suck (much), and it doesn’t cede major points to the Republicans as a starting point.
I’m still waiting for the other shoe to drop (with all of his caving, I’m still going long on spelunking gear) .
Someone must have made it clear to him that while “the left” would vote for him in 2012, regardless of how much he flamed them, they made the point that if they do so reluctantly, then the low information independent voters won’t feel the enthusiasm, and they’ll not take the time to pull the lever for him.
And the Republicans War on Organized Labor Continues
The House just passed a bill which would castrate the National Labor Relations Board:
The House voted on Thursday to approve a Republican-backed bill that would prohibit the National Labor Relations Board from trying to block Boeing from operating a new $750 million aircraft assembly line in South Carolina. The largely party-line vote was 238 to 186.
Republicans denounced the labor board’s case against Boeing, asserting that the board was overreaching its authority and should not be dictating where companies can locate their operations. But many Democrats and union leaders condemned the legislation, arguing that it undercut an independent federal agency and favored Boeing, a potent lobbying force and prominent political donor.
Under the bill, an unusual effort to curb a federal agency’s actions in a pending case, the labor board would be barred from seeking to have an employer shut, transfer or relocate employment or operations “under any circumstances.”
The bill, called the “Protecting Jobs from Government Interference Act,” is expected to face a battle in the Democratic-controlled Senate. In the House vote, the partisan divide was clear: only eight Democrats voted for the bill and only seven Republicans voted against.
Republicans have repeatedly criticized the board’s acting general counsel for filing a complaint against Boeing last April, accusing the company of building an assembly plant in North Charleston, S.C., as a form of retaliation against unionized employees in Washington State who have engaged in five strikes since 1977, including a 58-day-walkout in 2008.
The National Labor Relations Act prohibits companies from taking any actions, whether firing employees or relocating a factory, against workers for exercising federally protected rights that include forming a union or going on strike.
“F%$# the law, we’re for rich pigs,” so say the Republicans.
The management at Boeing Publicly Stated that they were establishing a factory in South Carolina in retaliation for earlier (legal) strikes. If there is no sanction allowed for blatant and admitted law breaking, it will get worse.
Then again, the Republicans don’t think that rich people should be prosecuted for breaking the law.