Category: Legislation

Finally!

No Comments

Following a very long debate, and an empassioned argument in favor of removing the Confederate flag by (among others) a descendent of Jefferson Davis, the battle flag of the Army of Northern Virginia is leaving the statehouse grounds in South Carolina:

South Carolina’s governor signed a bill Thursday that will send the Confederate flag to the state’s “relic room.” The decision was made more than 50 years after the rebel banner began flying at the statehouse in Columbia to protest the civil rights movement.

Governor Nikki Haley praised lawmakers for realizing that the long-celebrated symbol is too painful to keep promoting.

“The Confederate flag is coming off the grounds of the South Carolina Statehouse,” Haley said. “We will bring it down with dignity, and we will make sure it is stored in its rightful place.”

State lawmakers were prompted to remove the flag by the recent killing of nine African Americans at a church Bible study in Charleston.

South Carolina’s leaders first flew the battle flag over the statehouse dome in 1961 to mark the 100th anniversary of the Civil War. It remained there to represent official opposition to the civil rights movement.

………

Rep. Jenny Horne, a white Republican who said she is a descendent of Confederate President Jefferson Davis, scolded her party members for stalling.

“I cannot believe that we do not have the heart in this body to do something meaningful such as take a symbol of hate off these grounds on Friday,” she shouted. “For the widow of Senator Pinckney and his two young daughters, that would be adding insult to injury and I will not be a part of it!”

The pity of all this is that it took a racist maniac to kill 9 people at a prayer meeting to make this happen.

Sanity Wins in California

No Comments

California, in response to a measles outbreak in California, the state legislature passed , and now Governor Jerry Brown has singed into law, what is one of the most aggressive vaccine mandates in the nation:

Adopting one of the most far-reaching vaccination laws in the nation, California on Tuesday barred religious and other personal-belief exemptions for schoolchildren, a move that could affect tens of thousands of students and sets up a potential court battle with opponents of immunization.

California’s weakened public health defenses against measles and other preventable diseases led to the adoption of the measure, signed Tuesday by Gov. Jerry Brown, intended to stem the rising number of parents who opt not to inoculate their children.

Public health officials said a proliferation of waivers, many sought because of unfounded concerns about the safety of vaccines, helped fuel a measles outbreak that started at Disneyland in December and quickly spread across the West, infecting 150 people.

………

California joins Mississippi and West Virginia as the only states to ban vaccination waivers based on religion. All 50 states require immunization of children starting school, although about 20 allow exemptions based on personal beliefs.

Beginning with the 2016 school year, the new law could affect more than 80,000 California students who annually claim personal belief exemptions.

Only medical exceptions will be allowed for those entering day care and kindergarten. Children with physician-certified allergies and immune-system deficiencies, for example, will be exempted.

I will mix my victory toast with the tears of anti-vaxxers.

These anti-science ratf%$#s have a lot of blood on their hands.

F%$# Me, I Agree with that Bigot Jeff Sessions*

1 Comment

Yesterday, the Senate voted for cloture on Fast Track authority (TPA), and today, they voted to pass the measure, which will require the House and Senate to vote on any trade agreements within 60 days, and prohibit any amendments or meaningful discussion, which would include including the noxious Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP):

Barack Obama was given the authority he has long sought to expedite negotiations for a massive trade deal with countries on the Pacific rim, propelling the US toward a landmark agreement that, both proponents and critics agree, will reshape the global economy.

The Republican-controlled Senate finally passed legislation on Wednesday that gives the president the power to “fast-track” negotiations with the 11 other countries party to the Trans-Pacific Partnership.

The vote, which passed 60-38, was a significant victory for multinational corporations which have been lobbying hard for a trade agreement expected to lower tariffs and create new regulations for sectors as diverse as agriculture, banking and the pharmaceutical industry.

Let’s note that the tariffs among the largest economies in the deal are already around 1%.

What this is really about is aiding rent seeking industries, primarily pharma and finance, by creating new “rights” and forestalling meaningful regulation, because 7 figure lobbying salaries following retirement from politics don’t grow on trees.

It is the very apotheosis of rent seeking, and I oppose this bill.

BTW, here is a list of Vichy Democrats who voted for cloture, They should not be supported in ay primary, nor should they be supported in a general election.

In the long run, and in the medium run as well, this would be a good thing, one need only remember how the 1994 electoral debacle, which was driven by NAFTA.

  1. Bennet (D-CO)
  2. Cantwell (D-WA)
  3. Carper (D-DE)
  4. Coons (D-DE)
  5. Feinstein (D-CA)
  6. Heitkamp (D-ND)
  7. Kaine (D-VA)
  8. McCaskill (D-MO)
  9. Murray (D-WA)
  10. Nelson (D-FL)
  11. Shaheen (D-NH)
  12. Warner (D-VA)
  13. Wyden (D-OR)

I would also note that those Democrats who voted for cloture who are up for reelection in 2016, Patty Murray, Michael Bennet, and Ron Wyden are dead men walking anyway, because they have given their opponents such a heavy club..

My Senator, Ben Cardin, would probably have voted for cloture if they needed another vote, but I’ll leave him for a later discussion.

As to my agreeing with Jeff Sessions on this (God Help Me), when he says, “President Obama, and allies in Congress, have won this fast-track vote. But, in exchange, they may find that they are losing something far greater: the trust of the American people, I have to honestly agree. (His full statement after break)

This is a bad deal, and a bad thing, and much like in 1994, the Republicans are going to spot weld this on the Democratic Party, which will probably lead to their keeping the Senate.

*Before his Senate career, he was a US attorney, and then he was nominated by Reagan to the Federal Judgeship, but he was rejected by the Senate because of credible allegations of bigotry.

Sessions Comments On Senate Vote To Advance Fast-Track Authority For Executive – News Releases


Senator Jeff Sessions

“President Obama, and allies in Congress, have won this fast-track vote. But, in exchange, they may find that they are losing something far greater: the trust of the American people.”  


WASHINGTON—U.S. Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-AL) issued the following statement today after the Senate voted to advance six-year fast-track executive authority:

“Americans increasingly believe that their country isn’t serving its own citizens. They need look no further than a bipartisan vote of Congress that will transfer congressional power to the Executive Branch and, in turn, to a transnational Pacific Union and the global interests who will help write its rules.

The same routine plays out over and again. We are told a massive bill must be passed, all the business lobbyists and leaders tell us how grand it will be, but that it must be rushed through before the voters spoil the plan. As with Obamacare and the Gang of Eight, the politicians meet with the consultants to craft the talking points—not based on what the bill actually does, but what they hope people will believe it does. And when ordinary Americans who never asked for the plan, who don’t want the plan, who want no part of the plan, resist, they are scorned, mocked, and heaped with condescension.

Washington broke arms and heads to get that 60th vote—not one to spare—to impose on the American people a plan which imperils their jobs, wages, and control over their own affairs. It is remarkable that so much energy has been expended on advancing the things Americans oppose, and preventing the things Americans want.

For instance: thousands of loyal Americans have been laid off and forced to train the foreign workers brought in to fill their jobs—at Disney, at Southern California Edison, across the country. Does Washington rush to their defense? No, the politicians and the lobbyists rush to move legislation that would double or triple the very program responsible for replacing them.

This ‘econometarian’ ideology holds that if a company can increase its bottom line—whether by insourcing foreign workers or outsourcing production—then it’s always a win, never a downside.

President Obama, and allies in Congress, have won this fast-track vote. But, in exchange, they may find that they are losing something far greater: the trust of the American people. Americans have a fundamental, decent, and just demand: that the people they elect defend their interests. And every issue to come before us in the coming months will have to pass this test: does it strengthen, or weaken, the position of the everyday, loyal American citizen?”

Shoot Me, I Agree with the Republicans

No Comments

Republicans in the House want to repeal the ethanol mandate for gasoline:

A new Republican bill introduced Tuesday would completely repeal the federal mandate to blend ethanol into the nation’s gasoline supply.

Sen. Bill Cassidy’s (R-La.) legislation would completely do away with the renewable fuel standard, which first took effect in 2005 and now requires increasing levels of ethanol and biodiesel to be put into traditional fossil fuels.

The mandate invites frequent criticism from Republicans, the oil industry and sectors that complain the demand it creates for corn ethanol increases agricultural prices.

“Workers, refiners, producers, farmers and ranchers across the country are affected by the renewable fuel standard,” Cassidy said in a statement. “More mandates mean less jobs. It means families are paying more for gas and groceries.”

Cassidy represents Louisiana, one of the largest states in terms of fuel refining capacity. Refiners say that buying ethanol or fuel credits increases their prices, and they must pass those costs onto consumers.

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has had trouble keeping up with the annual volume mandates amid a decrease in fuel use. The agency proposed mandate levels for 2014 through 2016 last month.

The proposal would increase ethanol levels, though not to the goals set out in the law, leading to criticisms from both supporters and opponents of the mandate.

Republicans want this for a different reason than I do, though.

They object, because they believe that any imposition on the big oil is a crime against God, while I believe that ethanol, at least corn based ethanol as generated in the United States, makes little to no savings in CO2 emissions when all inputs are considered, and serves primarily as a way for Presidential candidates to pander to Iowa farmers so as to improve their performance in the Iowa caucuses.

Biodiesel is another matter, and unlike Cassidy, other proposals to eliminate the ethanol mandate do not eliminate a biodiesel mandate, which is the path that I favor.

Even the Hawks in the US Congress Are Concerned about the Ukrainian Nazis

No Comments

The flag flown by the Azov Battalion


Actual iconography on Azov Battalion helmets

It appears that the behavior of the Ukraine’s far right militias that Congress has explicitly forbidden giving them funding:

It’s easy to see why Representative John Conyers, a Michigan Democrat, would have a problem with the military unit commanded by Ukrainian legislator Andriy Biletsky: Conyers is a founding member of the Congressional Black Caucus, Biletsky is a white supremacist.

The House of Representatives has unanimously approved an amendment to the U.S. military budget, proposed by Conyers and Florida Republican Ted Yoho, banning support and training for “the Ukrainian neo-Nazi paramilitary militia ‘Azov Battalion.'” Azov was set up in May 2014 to fight pro-Russian separatists in eastern Ukraine. Here’s how the group’s Facebook page describes the circumstances:

In the first weeks after the Putin invasion of Donbass began, the authorities and law enforcers were confused and demoralized. Nationalists had to take initiative. The Patriot of Ukraine organization and allied unofficial groups of right-wing youth rallied around Andriy Biletsky and challenged the separatists.

By now, though, the Azov Battalion has become a regiment of the Ukrainian National Guard and enjoys the enthusiastic support of Interior Minister Arsen Avakov.

Biletsky had run Patriot of Ukraine since 2005. In a 2010 interview he described the organization as nationalist “storm troops” with its biggest unit in Kharkov, Biletsky’s native city in eastern Ukraine. The group’s ideology was “social nationalism” — a term Biletsky, a historian, knew would deceive no one.

………

The war in the east gave Biletsky’s storm troopers a chance at a higher status than they could ever have hoped to achieve. They fought fiercely, and last fall, the 400-strong Azov Battalion became part of the National Guard, receiving permission to expand to 2,000 fighters and gaining access to heavy weaponry. So what if some of its members had Nazi symbols tattooed on their bodies and the unit’s banner bore the Wolfsangel, used widely by the Nazis during World War II? In an interview with Ukraine’s Focus magazine last September, Avakov, responsible for the National Guard, was protective of his heroes. He said of the Wolfsangel:

In many European cities it is part of the city emblem. Yes, most of the guys who assembled in Azov have a particular worldview. But who told you you could judge them? Don’t forget what the Azov Battalion did for the country. Remember the liberation of Mariupol, the fighting at Ilovaysk, the latest attacks near the Sea of Azov. May God allow anyone who criticizes them to do 10 percent of what they’ve done. And anyone who’s going to tell me that these guys preach Nazi views, wear the swastika and so on, are bare-faced liars and fools.


………

Now, Conyers and Yoho have almost succeeded in making Azov ineligible for any form of U.S. assistance. “These groups run counter to American values,” Conyers told Congress. “And once the fighting ends, they pose a significant threat to the Ukrainian government and the Ukrainian people. As we’ve seen many times, most notably within the Mujaheddin in Afghanistan, these groups will not lay down their arms once the conflict is over.”

As Robert Parry, who was given the Polk award for his work on Iran-Contra observed:


………

The conservative London Telegraph offered more details about the Azov battalion in an article by correspondent Tom Parfitt, who wrote: “Kiev’s use of volunteer paramilitaries to stamp out the Russian-backed Donetsk and Luhansk ‘people’s republics’… should send a shiver down Europe’s spine.

“Recently formed battalions such as Donbas, Dnipro and Azov, with several thousand men under their command, are officially under the control of the interior ministry but their financing is murky, their training inadequate and their ideology often alarming. The Azov men use the neo-Nazi Wolfsangel (Wolf’s Hook) symbol on their banner and members of the battalion are openly white supremacists, or anti-Semites.”

Based on interviews with militia members, the Telegraph reported that some of the fighters doubted the reality of the Holocaust, expressed admiration for Adolf Hitler and acknowledged that they are indeed Nazis.

Biletsky, the Azov commander, “is also head of an extremist Ukrainian group called the Social National Assembly,” according to the Telegraph article which quoted a commentary by Biletsky as declaring: “The historic mission of our nation in this critical moment is to lead the White Races of the world in a final crusade for their survival. A crusade against the Semite-led Untermenschen.”

In other words, for the first time since World War II, a government had dispatched Nazi storm troopers to attack a European population – and officials in Kiev knew what they were doing. The Telegraph questioned Ukrainian authorities in Kiev who acknowledged that they were aware of the extremist ideologies of some militias but insisted that the higher priority was having troops who were strongly motivated to fight. [See Consortiumnews.com’s “Ignoring Ukraine’s Neo-Nazi Storm Troopers.”]

But a rebel counteroffensive led by ethnic Russians last August reversed many of Kiev’s gains and drove the Azov and other government forces back to the port city of Mariupol, where Foreign Policy’s reporter Alec Luhn also encountered the Nazis. He wrote:

“Blue and yellow Ukrainian flags fly over Mariupol’s burned-out city administration building and at military checkpoints around the city, but at a sport school near a huge metallurgical plant, another symbol is just as prominent: the wolfsangel (‘wolf trap’) symbol that was widely used in the Third Reich and has been adopted by neo-Nazi groups. …

“Pro-Russian forces have said they are fighting against Ukrainian nationalists and ‘fascists’ in the conflict, and in the case of Azov and other battalions, these claims are essentially true.”

You can find Conyers’ statement on his amendments banning any aid the Azov battallion, as well as prohibiting the transfer of shoulder launched SAMs (Manpads) to anyone in the Ukraine, here.

I think that the prohibition against the missiles is particularly significant, because it not just a measure of concern about neo-Nazi elements in the Ukrainian establishment, it is a vote of no-confidence in their entire military establishment, and arguably the entire government, with regard to securing portable SAMs.

Obama Loses Trade Vote in House ……… and There Was Much Rejoicing

No Comments

It’s confusing, but basically the House of Representatives overwhelmingly rejected a key portion of the Fast Track process, and I am doing a happy dance.

Hours after President Obama made a dramatic, personal appeal for support, House Democrats on Friday thwarted his push to expand trade negotiating power — and quite likely his chance to secure a legacy-defining accord spanning the Pacific Ocean.

 In a remarkable blow to a president they have backed so resolutely, House Democrats voted to end assistance to workers displaced by global trade, a program their party created and has supported for four decades. That move effectively scuttled legislation granting the president trade promotion authority — the power to negotiate trade deals that cannot be amended or filibustered by Congress.

 “We want a better deal for America’s workers,” said Representative Nancy Pelosi of California, the House minority leader, who has guided the president’s agenda for two terms and was personally lobbied by Mr. Obama until the last minute.

 The vote that prevented the president from obtaining trade promotional authority now imperils the more sweeping Trans-Pacific Partnership, a proposed trade agreement with 11 other nations along the Pacific Ocean that affects 40 percent of the global economy on goods ranging from running shoes to computers.

 ………

 The Democratic revolt left Republican leaders trying to summon support from their own party for trade adjustment assistance, a program they have long derided as a waste of money and a concession to organized labor. Eighty-six Republicans voted for the program, more than double the 40 Democrats who supported it. But the trade adjustment assistance bill failed when 126 voted for it and 303 against.

 Republican leaders then passed, in a 219-to-211 vote, a stand-alone bill that would grant the president the trade negotiating authority he sought. But that measure cannot go to the president for his signature because the Senate version of the legislative package combined both trade adjustment and trade promotion.

 There is still a possibility that the House will pass the worker assistance bill early next week and send to Mr. Obama, but it would require dozens of Republicans or Democrats changing their votes, a prospect Republicans said was remote.

It’s kind of tough to understand what is going on here, but here is how this was supposed work:

  • In order to pass Trade Promotion Authority (aka TPA or Fast Track), Congress needs to pass displaced worker aid, which provides funds for transition and retraining, for people displaced as a result offshoring
  • Because the Republicans are insisting on offsets for this costs, this measure includes a minuscule cut to Medicare.
  • Fast Track is supposed to be passed.
  • Because Democrats are unwilling to cut Medicare, Democrats were promised a vote to reinstate the Medicare funding.  (but no guarantee that it would pass)

Here’s the kicker:  There were never more than 80 or so Republicans who were willing to support aid to displaced workers, which meant that something like ¾ of the Democratic Caucus need to vote for it, and it meant voting for a Medicare cut, which would have been used by Republicans in the 2016 campaign, just like they did in 2010 over Obamacare.

Additionally, as was observed by Gaius Publius, (the blogger, not the Roman Historian), “Supporting NAFTA Was the Kiss of Death for Democrats — Why Dems Should Think Twice About Voting for TPP.”

Much like Obamacare, Obama is shivving his own party in the hopes of his “legacy”, but this time, they get it, and unlike Obamacare, the TPP, TTIP, and TiSA actually make things worse ……… A lot worse.

They are designed to facilitate the privatization of government functions, encourage IP based rent seeking, and to promote the parasitic financialization of the involved countries.

I am tremendously happy that Obama has lost this, but I expect him to come back again to try and get fast track authority again.

Keep dialing your Congress critters.

It Is Official, Kansas Is Clinically Insane

No Comments
Sam Brownback has had a number of run-ins with the Kansas courts, and now he is threatening to completely defund Kansas courts if they continue to rule against him:

The fight between Gov. Sam Brownback of Kansas and the state’s judicial branch has escalated, with the governor last week signing into law a bill that could strip state courts of their funding.

The measure, at the end of a lengthy bill that allocated money for the judiciary this year, stipulates that if a state court strikes down a 2014 law that removed some powers from the State Supreme Court, the judiciary will lose its funding.

The 2014 law took the authority to appoint chief judges for the district courts away from the Supreme Court and gave it to the district courts themselves. It also deprived the state’s highest court of the right to set district court budgets. Critics said the law was an attempt by Mr. Brownback, a Republican, to stack the district courts with judges who may be more favorable to his policies.

………

But in passing a separate budget bill to keep the third branch of government from shutting down, Republican lawmakers took the opportunity to insert language that would shield the 2014 law.

“I’ve never seen anything like this,” said Matthew Menendez, counsel at the Brennan Center for Justice in New York, which is helping to represent a Kansas judge who is challenging the constitutionality of the 2014 law. “It seems pretty clear that these mechanisms have been an effort by the governor and the Legislature to try and get a court system that is more in line with their philosophy.”

Richard E. Levy, a constitutional law professor at the University of Kansas, likened the measure in the judiciary budget bill to Congress’s passing a law outlawing abortion and then telling the judicial branch that it will lose its funding if it finds the law unconstitutional.

“That kind of threat to the independence of the judiciary strikes me as invalid under the separation of powers principle,” Mr. Levy said in an interview on Friday.

Considering the news coming out of Turkey (more on that later), I find it kind of ironic that Sam Brownback is doing his level best to use Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s play book, which was just rejected by Turkish voters.

[on edit]

I may not have been completely clear: This bill would Completely Defund the Entire Kanasas State Court System, so basically, aside from traffic court, there would be no courts operating in the state.

So, We Had 2 Days of NSA Free Phone Calls………

No Comments

The Senate just passed “the USA Freedom Act”.

It provides some (remarkably tepid) reforms to our overweening security state, and Mitch McConnell fought like hell to prevent these and lost:

Congress just passed NSA reform. Here’s how Mitch McConnell tried—and failed—to thwart it.

The USA Freedom Act, the bill that reforms the Patriot Act and stops the US government’s bulk collection of phone records, finally passed the Senate on Tuesday after the chamber rejected three amendments from GOP Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) aimed at weakening the bill’s reforms.

McConnell originally supported leaving the Patriot Act with all of its surveillance powers intact, but he faced resistance from both Democrats and Republicans, including die-hards such as Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) who were happy to let bulk collection simply disappear without creating a replacement. So McConnell agreed to proceed with the USA Freedom Act, but proposed four amendments to address what he called the bill’s “serious flaws .” (He withdrew one of them.)

Harley Geiger, chief counsel of the Center for Democracy and Technology, called McConnell’s amendments “unnecessary for national security” and said that they would “erode both privacy and transparency.”

The Senate agreed, rejecting the three amendments that came to a vote on Tuesday afternoon. McConnell’s proposed changes would have:
Delayed the shutdown of bulk collection: The USA Freedom Act calls for bulk collection to shut down within six months of the law’s passage. One of McConnell’s amendments would have stretched that out to a full year.

Kept arguments before the FISA court a one-sided affair: The FISA court reviews—and essentially always approves—requests for surveillance from government agencies. Its business is classified, and the only arguments presented are by government lawyers. The USA Freedom Act establishes a panel of experts to argue privacy concerns before the court, a move that one of McConnell’s amendments would have tried to limit.

Offered a potential backdoor for anti-reform efforts: Under the USA Freedom Act, bulk collection will be replaced by a “query-based” system, in which intelligence agencies would have to ask phone companies for records. That will take place six months after the bill is signed into law, but McConnell wanted to make the attorney general certify one month before the end of bulk collection that the new system would not harm national security. That may have given anti-reform lawmakers a final chance to scuttle the USA Freedom Act if the attorney general’s certification didn’t happen, or even raised any concerns at all.

McConnell got a lose, but I would have preferred that nothing at all got passed, which would have been the best possible outcome.

I guess that I will have to be satisfied by McConnel’s loss.

Good Governance from ……… Nigeria?!?!?!?!?!

No Comments

I’m actually serious here.

Not only did the Nigerian parliament pass a ban on female genital mutilation, but it was done in a way in which the successor politicians get political cover to enforce the law:

Nigerian President Goodluck Jonathan signed a bill this week that criminalizes female genital mutilation or cutting, a practice that a staggering 19.9 million Nigerian women are thought to have undergone. The landmark legislation is being hailed as an important step for Africa’s most populous country but also one that experts hope will have a potential ripple effect on the 26 other African nations that have significant populations of women who undergo the practice.

Nigeria’s decision to outlaw female genital mutilation (FGM) sends “a powerful signal not only within Nigeria but across Africa,” according to J. Peter Pham, the director of the Africa Center at the Atlantic Council. “Nigeria, just because of the sheer size of its population, has one of the highest absolute number of cases of FGM in the world,” he said, adding that the bill now effectively criminalizes a significant percentage of FGM on the African continent. “One cannot overestimate the impact of any decision by Nigeria [on the continent].”

Here is the important bit:

In this regard, the timing of Nigeria’s decision to outlaw the procedure is no coincidence. While advocates have campaigned for this legislation for over a decade, it was only passed this week, in the final days of the Jonathan presidency. “There’s a price to be paid by bucking norms that are widely observed,” said Pham. “It took a lame duck president and lame duck legislators who don’t have to face voters to undertake something that goes that much against the cultural norms or practices.”

Indeed, Pham argued that Jonathan has even done a favor for his successor, President-elect Muhammadu Buhari, who will now not have to face future voter backlash by legislating the controversial issue. “It’s already signed and Buhari can say he’s simply enforcing the laws,” he said.

This last bit is remarkable, particularly for a country whose political system is a dysfunctional as Nigeria’s.

Normally, one would expect a defeated President to do whatever they could to plant policy land mines for his predecessor, much as GHW Bush did with Clinton on Somalia in 1992.

Props to the soon to be former President of Nigeria, Goodluck Jonathan, for doing the right thing in the right way in the most unlikely of places.

Thank You Rand Paul*

No Comments

It turns out that, at least for the next few hours, some significant portions of the Patriot Act have expired:

The Senate failed to pass legislation late Sunday to extend three Patriot Act surveillance measures ahead of their midnight expiration. The National Security Agency’s bulk telephone metadata collection program—first exposed by Edward Snowden in 2013—is the most high profile of the three spy tools whose legal authorization expired.

President Barack Obama was set to sign the bill, the USA Freedom Act, ahead of the midnight Sunday deadline. But Senate lawmakers who convened in a special session at 4pm ET Sunday could not reach an accord. The Senate is to resume debate Monday at noon ET.

As expected, there was much banter back and forth on the Senate floor about whether the Constitution was being gutted or whether the country would come to ruins if the Senate did not quickly adopt the already approved House legislation ahead of the June 1 expiration deadline. (The three Patriot Act provisions that failed to pass the Senate were renewed days ago in the House through 2019.)

“Are we willing to trade liberty for security?” asked Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY), perhaps the most vocal opponent of the legislation. Despite an apparent victory, Paul had no illusions that this fight for privacy would end after these specific extension talks. “The Patriot Act will expire tonight, but it will only be temporary,” he added.

………

The three Patriot Act provisions on the agenda would have been extended until 2019 if approved. The first concerns the so-called “business records” provision that enabled the NSA’s bulk telephone metadata program brought to light by the Snowden disclosures. This provision granted the government the power to seize all types of records—including those surrounding health and banking. The authorities must assert to the secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act Court (FISA Court) that they are “relevant” to a terrorism investigation before getting a warrant. The bulk metadata collection program was altered somewhat under the House and Senate legislation, however.

I expect this victory to be short lived, but even this temporary and largely symbolic setback for the overweening security state heartens me a bit.

*I f%$#ing cannot f%$#ing believe that I f%$#ing just f%$#ing said that non-ironically.

And the Veto is Overridden………

1 Comment

The Nebraska legislature just overrode the Governor’s veto, so the state has abolished the death penalty:

Nebraska on Wednesday became the seventh state since 2007 to scrap the death penalty, the latest sign of weakening support for capital punishment in statehouses across the country.

The move was driven by a bipartisan group of legislators, who argued that the death penalty had grown inefficient and ineffective. Nebraska hadn’t executed anyone since 1997, and until recently had struggled to get the drugs needed to carry out executions.

On Tuesday, Republican Gov. Pete Ricketts—who lobbied to retain capital punishment in the state—vetoed a bill that would make a life sentence the stiffest available criminal penalty in the state.

But Wednesday afternoon, the state’s legislative house voted 30-19 to override the governor’s veto.

Sixteen Republicans joined with 13 Democrats and one independent in support of the override. All 19 votes in support of Mr. Ricketts’ veto were lodged by Republicans.

I was surprised at the initial vote, and I am surprised at the override, but it’s a good kind of surprise.

Bob Menendez Shafts Barack Obama on TPP

2 Comments

He managed to get an amendment in the Senate’s TPP bill, which has the effect of toughening human trafficking requirements of member countries, which means that Malaysia’s horrific human trafficking record would make the treaty ineligible for fast track:

Remember, passing Fast Track in the Senate was supposed to be the easy part. Not only did Fast Track get rejected on its first try — “Welcome aboard the S.S. Lame Duck, Mr. President!” — now we get this. Ryan Grim explains:

The Senate approved a bill to “fast-track” trade agreements negotiated by the president. The agreement will prevent Congress from amending or filibustering Obama’s controversial Trans-Pacific Partnership agreement. The TPP deal would have a hard time surviving without fast-track authority.
But a key crackdown on human trafficking survived the legislative jujitsu. The White House considers the provision a deal-breaker, as it would force one of the nations involved in the TPP talks — Malaysia — out of the agreement.

From the US State Department:

Malaysia (Tier 3 [the worst]) is a destination and, to a lesser extent, a source and transit country for men, women, and children subjected to forced labor and women and children subjected to sex trafficking. The overwhelming majority of trafficking victims are among the estimated two million documented and two million or more undocumented foreign workers in Malaysia.
Foreign workers typically migrate willingly to Malaysia from other countries in Asia—primarily Indonesia, Bangladesh, the Philippines, Nepal, Burma, Cambodia, Vietnam, India, Thailand, and Laos—in search of greater economic opportunities.

Here I pause to note that somebody decided that it would be a good idea for the US to take in the Rohingya, the Muslim boat people who have turned to traffickers to escape a slow motion Burmese genocide, after which the Malaysians offered temporary, one-year status to such Rohingya as actually reach their shores.

………

 Complicating any efforts to “fix” the bill, however, is the possibility of an alliance between feminist factions in the Democratic party, and Christianist factions among the Republicans, both of whom take strongly principled positions on human trafficking.

 Complicating the picture even more, when you think about it, is the potential for agita in 2016. Suppose Obama, very ironically, gets the anti-slavery provisions “fixed,” i.e. removed, and the bill passes in time. The campaign ads practically write themselves. “A vote for TPP is a vote for human trafficking.” “Why does Senator X support slavery?” Cue the ominous music. Cue pictures of skeletal women and children. Cue the die-ins on the trail. I’m sure campaign shops on both sides are practically drooling with joy, because the only way TPP will pass is with bipartisan support. Getting that amendment in there was GENIUS, and we’ll get to how that happened in a moment.

So what we are seeing here is a pissing contest between Menendez and Obama.

The time line is:

  • Menendez does his level best to submarine any potential nuclear deal with Iran, including politically attaching himself to Benyamin Netanyahu.
  • Menendez is indicted for corruption. (BTW, good luck getting a conviction under recent Supreme Court rulings)
  • Menendez inserts an amendment to Fast Track which basically excludes Malaysia from the treaty.

Note also the consequences of excluding Malaysia, the most populous Muslim majority state in the world the only sizable majority Muslim state in the TPP, so its exclusion would leave the rump state of Brunei (population 415,717) as the only majority Muslim nation in the agreement.

I cannot believe that I am actually on Menendez’ side on all of this, but the TPP is clearly bad news, as the TTIP with Europe, (more on that later) so to the degree that these treaties can be stopped, the better it is for everyone but the multinational business for whom this is a big government subsidy.

As Nebraska Goes………

No Comments

The Nebraska legislature has overwhelmingly voted to abolish the death penalty:

The Nebraska Legislature on Wednesday voted, 32 to 15, to abolish the death penalty, setting up a final showdown between a bipartisan coalition that supported the bill and the Republican governor, who has promised to veto it. No conservative state has banned the death penalty since North Dakota did so in 1973.

If the bill is vetoed by Nebraska’s Republican governor, Pete Ricketts, a vote to override his veto could come as soon as Tuesday. Thirty votes are required to override.

The bill, which would replace lethal injection with life imprisonment, passed the unicameral Legislature on Wednesday after months of debate and lobbying on both sides, with conservative Republicans lining up in opposition to a group of Democrats and moderate Republicans who said they have come to oppose the death penalty for reasons that are moral, fiscal or religious.

Nebraska has not executed an inmate since 1997, leading some lawmakers to argue that the state has ended the death penalty in practice.

This is significant, because, well, it’s Nebraska.

Hopefully, this is a part of a trend.

I Finally Have Something Nice to Say about Los Angeles

No Comments

Kudos to the “City of Angels” which has raised its minimum wage to $15 an hour, including tipped workers:

The nation’s second-largest city voted Tuesday to increase its minimum wage from $9 an hour to $15 an hour by 2020, in what is perhaps the most significant victory so far for labor groups and their allies who are engaged in a national push to raise the minimum wage.

The increase, which the City Council passed in a 14-to-1 vote, comes as workers across the country are rallying for higher wages and several large companies, including Facebook and Walmart, have moved to raise their lowest wages. Several other cities, including San Francisco, Chicago, Seattle and Oakland, Calif., have already approved increases, and dozens more are considering doing the same. In 2014, a number of Republican-leaning states like Alaska and South Dakota also raised their state-level minimum wages by ballot initiative.

The effect is likely to be particularly strong in Los Angeles, where, according to some estimates, almost 50 percent of the city’s work force earns less than $15 an hour. Under the plan approved Tuesday, the minimum wage will rise over five years.

………

Even economists who support increasing the minimum wage say there is not enough historical data to predict the effect of a $15 minimum wage, an unprecedented increase. A wage increase to $12 an hour over the next few years would achieve about the same purchasing power as the minimum wage in the late 1960s, the most recent peak.

Many restaurant owners here aggressively fought the increase, saying they would be forced to cut as much as half of their staff. Unlike other states, California state law prohibits tipped employees from receiving lower than the minimum wage. The Council promised to study the potential effect of allowing restaurants to add a service charge to bills to meet the increased costs.

The restaurant owners can, to quote Bender Rodriguez, “bite my shiny metal ass.”

There is no justification to pay slave wages to your employees, and there is no reason for a wait person to have to tolerate bad behavior from a customer because they depend on tips for their livelihood.

If your business cannot make it if you have to pay your employees a fair wage, then your business should not make it, no saving throw.

This is a Good Rebuttal of Obama’s Pro TPP Arguments

No Comments

Michael Wessel, who has been deeply involved with trade deals, and who has had access to the classified draft text of the TPP, has basically called Barack Obama over his claims about the trade deal:

You need to tell me what’s wrong with this trade agreement, not one that was passed 25 years ago,” a frustrated President Barack Obama recently complained about criticisms of the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP). He’s right. The public criticisms of the TPP have been vague. That’s by design—anyone who has read the text of the agreement could be jailed for disclosing its contents. I’ve actually read the TPP text provided to the government’s own advisors, and I’ve given the president an earful about how this trade deal will damage this nation. But I can’t share my criticisms with you.

I can tell you that Elizabeth Warren is right about her criticism of the trade deal. We should be very concerned about what’s hidden in this trade deal—and particularly how the Obama administration is keeping information secret even from those of us who are supposed to provide advice.

So-called “cleared advisors” like me are prohibited from sharing publicly the criticisms we’ve lodged about specific proposals and approaches. The government has created a perfect Catch 22: The law prohibits us from talking about the specifics of what we’ve seen, allowing the president to criticize us for not being specific. Instead of simply admitting that he disagrees with me—and with many other cleared advisors—about the merits of the TPP, the president instead pretends that our specific, pointed criticisms don’t exist.

What I can tell you is that the administration is being unfair to those who are raising proper questions about the harms the TPP would do. To the administration, everyone who questions their approach is branded as a protectionist—or worse—dishonest. They broadly criticize organized labor, despite the fact that unions have been the primary force in America pushing for strong rules to promote opportunity and jobs. And they dismiss individuals like me who believe that, first and foremost, a trade agreement should promote the interests of domestic producers and their employees.

I’ve been deeply involved in trade policy for almost four decades. For 21 years, I worked for former Democratic Leader Richard Gephardt and handled all trade policy issues including “fast track,” the North American Free Trade Agreement and the World Trade Organization’s Uruguay Round, which is the largest trade agreement in history. I am also a consultant to various domestic producers and the United Steelworkers union, for whom I serve as a cleared advisor on two trade advisory committees. To top it off, I was a publicly acknowledged advisor to the Obama campaign in 2008.

………

The text of the TPP, like all trade deals, is a closely guarded secret. That fact makes a genuine public debate impossible and should make robust debate behind closed doors all the more essential. But the ability of TPP critics like me to point out the deal’s many failings is limited by the government’s surprising and unprecedented refusal to make revisions to the language in the TPP fully available to cleared advisors.

Bill Clinton didn’t operate like this. During the debate on NAFTA, as a cleared advisor for the Democratic leadership, I had a copy of the entire text in a safe next to my desk and regularly was briefed on the specifics of the negotiations, including counterproposals made by Mexico and Canada. During the TPP negotiations, the United States Trade Representative (USTR) has never shared proposals being advanced by other TPP partners. Today’s consultations are, in many ways, much more restrictive than those under past administrations.

………

Only portions of the text have been provided, to be read under the watchful eye of a USTR official. Access, up until recently, was provided on secure web sites. But the government-run website does not contain the most-up-to-date information for cleared advisors. To get that information, we have to travel to certain government facilities and sign in to read the materials. Even then, the administration determines what we can and cannot review and, often, they provide carefully edited summaries rather than the actual underlying text, which is critical to really understanding the consequences of the agreement.

………

In an effort to diminish criticism, USTR is now letting cleared advisors review summaries of what the negotiators have done. In response to a question about when the full updated text will be made available, we’ve been told, “We are working on making them available as soon as possible.” That’s not the case overseas: Our trading partners have this text, but the government’s own cleared advisors, serving on statutorily-created advisory committees, are kept in the dark.

………

Senator Warren should be commended for her courage in standing up to the President, and Secretary Clinton for raising a note of caution, and I encourage all elected officials to raise these important questions. Working Americans can’t afford more failed trade agreements and trade policies.

Congress should refuse to pass fast track trade negotiating authority until the partnership between the branches, and the trust of the American people is restored. That will require a lot of fence mending and disclosure of exactly what the TPP will do. That begins by sharing the final text of the TPP with those of us who won’t simply rubber-stamp it.

(emphasis mine)

What might be useful here is an amendment to any fast track legislation that says that the full and final text of any agreement, along with all side agreements, must be made available to the public in full for some period of time (I would suggest 6 months, which is enough time for lawyers who make their money on gaming this sort of crap to develop loose lips) before it can be taken up by the Congress.

Governor Ratf%$# Will Veto This, of Course

No Comments

A bill has passed the Maryland legislature which would grant ex-offenders the right to vote while on parole of probation.  It now goes to the desk of the newly elected Republican Governor Larry Hogan.

Gee, a restriction on voting that applies largely to communities of color that vote for Democrats.

Any guess as to what hizzonner will do?  He’s already trying to defund education in Baltimore City and Prince Georges County, so I don’t think that he is counting on getting much in the way of the Black vote the next time around.

He has until May 30 to veto the bill.

Meet the New Boss, Same as the Old Boss

No Comments

Of the more than 100 reforms proposed in the Missouri state legislature, only one passed:

The Missouri legislature ended its session Friday night having passed virtually none of the reforms activists sought in the aftermath of the shooting of Michael Brown.

Activists had been tracking more than 100 bills related to criminal justice and policing, but just one of substance had made its way out of the legislature, they say.

“This was such an opportunity for the Missouri legislature to step up and do the right thing. The people of the state called on our lawmakers to fix this broken system,” said Denise Lieberman a senior attorney for the Advancement Project, a civil rights group, and co-chair of the Don’t Shoot Coalition, a group formed to address policy reform after Brown’s shooting.

………
The scores of bills — introduced mostly by the legislature’s few Democrats — offered a menu of reforms. They would have developed standards for eyewitness identification, required body cameras, restricted police from racial profiling, required diversity and sensitivity training, and modified state rules governing the use of lethal force, something Democratic Gov. Jay Nixon threw his support behind in his State of the State address.

The legislature did pass one bill advocates had been calling for, which was aimed at limiting municipal reliance on fines for revenue, a practice highlighted in a scathing Justice Department report on Ferguson released earlier this year. The bill lowers the cap on how much revenue a municipality can generate from traffic tickets from 30 percent to 20 percent statewide and to 12.5 percent in St. Louis County, which is plagued by excessive traffic violations and is home to Ferguson. The bill also bans courts from throwing individuals in jail over minor traffic offenses.

Weak tea.

What a surprise.

I will note that without the protests, even this small bit of reform would never have happened.

Unless you make the Powers That Be profoundly uncomfortable, you will never see any reform.

Senate Dems Don Spelunking Helmets

No Comments

Senate leaders, after personal intercessions by President Obama, reached an agreement Wednesday on a path to grant the president accelerated power to complete a sweeping trade accord ringing the Pacific Ocean — just a day after fellow Democrats had blocked him.

The larger aim is to secure a 12-nation agreement known as the Trans-Pacific Partnership, spanning the Pacific from Canada and Chile to Japan and Australia and encompassing 40 percent of the world’s economic output. Mr. Obama sees the pact as a central part of his economic legacy, the largest trade deal in two decades and the realization of his foreign policy pivot toward Asia.

It also means money. Major American business interests, from Nike to Boeing and Hollywood to Silicon Valley, want the deal badly. Labor and environmental groups see it as a threat to American workers at the expense of profits.

A series of trade-related votes will begin Thursday and stretch well into next week. The trade promotion authority would give the president the ability to move more quickly on the deal, leaving Congress with the power to vote up or down on the agreement but with no ability to amend it.

I had hoped that they would have at least made it a full day,