Sunday, March 24, 2013 5:54:53 PM
Daniel's Letter To Chief Justice Roberts
So our kids know that Prop 8 is coming to the Supreme Court soon and that could be a very big deal for our family. When they found out that one of the Justices hearing the case had two adopted children, they said, "Hey! They're just like us!"...and so, in a moment that made his dads very proud, Daniel decided to write a letter to Justice Roberts in the hopes that he will see that our families are not so different.
http://gayfamilyvalues.blogspot.com/2013/03/no-second-best.html
DANIEL:
Dear Justice Roberts,
My name is Daniel Martinez-Leffew. I'm 12 years old and I live in northern California. I have a younger sister named Salina, and we were adopted by two dads. We were adopted when I was five and my sister was about twelve months old.
When I was in foster care I was told that I was considered unadoptable because of my Goldenhar syndrome. That is a genetic disorder that affects the whole left side of my body.
I lost my little brother Emilio because some people wanted to adopt him, but they weren't willing to adopt me because of my medical conditions. Lucky for me, that's when my two dads came along.
I recently found out that you yourself adopted two kids, a boy and a girl, kind of like me and my sister.
Family means a lot of different things to a lot of different people, but some people believe that you have to have the same blood to be a family. You and I both know that family goes deeper than blood.
I was lucky to be adopted by two guys I can both call dad. They give me and my sister so much love. My dad Jay works in San Francisco as a deputy sheriff, and my dad Bryan stays at home and takes care of me and my sister.
My dads really encourage me to excel in life. Since I want to be a cook when I grow up, they're letting me take cooking classes. My parents want me to improve, whether it's schoolwork, or my social life.
I know you have a tough decision to make with the gay marriage issue, but my family is just as valuable and worthwhile as any other.
It's especially tough for you because I know you don't necessarily believe in gay marriage religiously. Lucky for us, though, you also don't believe in taking away a right, even from people like us.
My family and I have spent the last four years making YouTube videos to show people who don't understand that our family is like any other. If Prop 8 is allowed to stand, imagine the pain we would feel knowing that we are not considered equal to everyone else.
I guess to end this, it is important that all families are protected and valued. In our country we may not all be the same, but we are all Americans and deserve an equal chance at bettering our lives.
I hope you make the right decision in the end.
Sincerely,
Daniel
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W_bAiTwJAnc
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Catholic Justice
Will Roberts keep the faith?
Quit tiptoeing around John Roberts' faith.
By Christopher Hitchens
Posted Monday, Aug. 1, 2005, at 4:27 PM
Everybody seems to have agreed to tiptoe around the report that Judge John G. Roberts said he would recuse himself in a case where the law required a ruling that the Catholic Church might consider immoral. According to Jonathan Turley, a professor of law at George Washington University, the judge gave this answer in a private meeting with Sen. Richard J. Durbin, D-Ill., who is the Senate minority whip. Durbin told Turley that when asked the question, Roberts looked taken aback and paused for a long time before giving his reply.
Attempts have been made to challenge Turley's version, and Sen. Durbin (who was himself unfairly misquoted recently as having made a direct comparison between Guantanamo, Hitler, and Stalin when he had only mentioned them in the same breath) probably doesn't need any more grief. But how probable is it that the story is wrong? A clever conservative friend writes to me that obviously Roberts, who is famed for his unflappability, cannot have committed such a bêtise. For one thing, he was being faced with a question that he must have known he would be asked. Yes, but that's exactly what gives the report its ring of truth. If Roberts had simply said that the law and the Constitution would control in all cases (the only possible answer), then there would have been no smoke. If he had said that the Vatican would decide, there would have been a great deal of smoke. But who could have invented the long pause and the evasive answer? I think there is a gleam of fire here. At the very least, Roberts should be asked the same question again, under oath, at his confirmation.
It is already being insinuated, by those who want this thorny question de-thorned, that there is an element of discrimination involved. Why should this question be asked only of Catholics? Well, that's easy. The Roman Catholic Church claims the right to legislate on morals for all its members and to excommunicate them if they don't conform. The church is also a foreign state, which has diplomatic relations with Washington. In the very recent past, this church and this state gave asylum to Cardinal Bernard Law, who should have been indicted for his role in the systematic rape and torture of thousands of American children. (Not that child abuse is condemned in the Ten Commandments, any more than slavery or genocide or rape.) More recently still, the newly installed Pope Benedict XVI (who will always be Ratzinger to me) has ruled that Catholic politicians who endorse the right to abortion should be denied the sacraments: no light matter for believers of the sincerity that Judge Roberts and his wife are said to exhibit. And just last month, one of Ratzinger's closest allies, Cardinal Schonborn of Vienna, wrote an essay in which he announced that evolution was "ideology, not science."
Thus, quite apart from the scandalous obstruction of American justice in which the church took part in the matter of Cardinal Law, we have increasingly firm papal dogmas on two issues that are bound to come before the court: abortion and the teaching of Darwin in schools. So, please do not accuse me of suggesting a "dual loyalty" among American Catholics. It is their own church, and its conduct and its teachings, that raise this question.
If Roberts is confirmed there will be quite a bloc of Catholics on the court. Scalia, Kennedy, and Thomas are strong in the faith. Is it kosher to mention these things? The Constitution rightly forbids any religious test for public office, but what happens when a religious affiliation conflicts with a judge's oath to uphold the Constitution? Some religious organizations are also explicitly political and vice versa—the Ku Klux Klan was founded partly to defend Protestantism—and if it is true that Scalia is a member of Opus Dei then even many Catholics would consider him to have made a political rather than a theological choice. Are we ready for a Scientologist on the court rather than having him or her subjected to the equivalent of a religious test? I merely ask.
Another smart conservative friend invites me to take comfort from Justice Scalia's statement that a believer who finds his conscience in conflict with the law should forthwith resign from the bench. I wish I found this more comforting than it actually is. In the first place, Scalia's remarks had to do with a possible reluctance, on the part of a Catholic, to impose the death penalty. The church's teaching on this is not absolute and is not enforced by the threat of excommunication, though it's nice to know that Scalia regards weakness about executions as a "litmus." In the second place, it is not at all clear that Scalia admits the supremacy of the U.S. Constitution in the first place. In oral argument in March this year, on cases dealing with religious displays on public property (Van Orden v. Perry and McCreary County v. ACLU of Kentucky), he described the display of the Ten Commandments as "a symbol of the fact that government comes—derives its authority from God. And that is, it seems to me, an appropriate symbol to be on State grounds." At another point, he opined that "the moral order is ordained by God. … And to say that that's the basis for the Declaration of Independence and our institutions is entirely realistic." Display of the Ten Commandments, he went on to write, affirms that "the principle of laws being ordained by God is the foundation of the laws of this state and the foundation of our legal system."
To the extent that this gibberish can be decoded at all, it is in flat contradiction to the Declaration of Independence, which is unique precisely because it locates the just powers of government in the consent of the governed, and with the Constitution, which deliberately does not mention God at any point. The Constitution was carefully drafted and designed to guard against majoritarianism, another consideration ignored by Scalia when he opines that "the minority has to be tolerant of the majority's ability to express its belief that government comes from God." (Sandra Day O'Connor, in her last written opinion, phrased it much better when she said, "We do not count heads when deciding to uphold the First Amendment.") Speaking to the Knights of Columbus in Baton Rouge, La., in January, Scalia implored them to "have the courage to have your wisdom regarded as stupidity. Be fools for Christ. And have the courage to suffer the contempt of the sophisticated world." Whether for "Christ" or not, Scalia is certainly a fool. He should have fewer allies and emulators on the court, not more. And perhaps secular America could one day have just one representative on that august body. Or would that be heresy?
© 2005 The Slate Group, LLC
http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/fighting_words/2005/08/catholic_justice.html
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Pope Francis was often quiet on Argentine sex abuse cases as archbishop
Argentine priest Julio Cesar Grassi remains free on a conditional release after being convicted of molesting a boy in his care.
Rolando Andrade Stracuzzi/AP
The unkempt grounds of Felices los Niños in Hurlingham, Argentina, founded by Father Julio Cesar Grassi.
Jahi Chikwendiu/The Washington Post
By Nick Miroff
March 18, 2013
HURLINGHAM, Argentina — Father Julio Cesar Grassi was a celebrity in the Archdiocese of Buenos Aires. The young, dynamic, ¬media-savvy priest networked with wealthy Argentines to fund an array of schools, orphanages and job training programs for poor and abandoned youths, winning praise from Argentine politicians and his superior, Archbishop Jorge Mario Bergoglio [ http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/cardinal-jorge-mario-bergoglio-of-argentina-is-named-new-pope/2013/03/13/ef0cb96c-8c0e-11e2-b63f-f53fb9f2fcb4_gallery.html ].
Grassi called his foundation Felices los Niños, “Happy Children.”
Today, Grassi is a convicted sex offender who remains free on a conditional release after being sentenced to 15 years in prison in 2009 for molesting a prepubescent boy in his care.
Yet in the years after Grassi’s conviction, Bergoglio — now Pope Francis [ http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/pope-franciss-first-day/2013/03/14/5d997c54-8cea-11e2-b63f-f53fb9f2fcb4_gallery.html ] — has declined to meet with the victim of the priest’s crimes or the victims of other predations by clergy under his leadership. He did not offer personal apologies or financial restitution, even in cases in which the crimes were denounced by other members of the church and the offending priests were sent to jail.
Since he was elected to the papacy Wednesday, media attention has focused primarily on Bergoglio’s actions during the “Dirty War” [ http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/europe/popes-role-in-dirty-war-under-scrutiny/2013/03/15/53d6e3e6-8da3-11e2-b63f-f53fb9f2fcb4_story.html ] years of Argentina’s military dictatorship. But at a time when the Vatican [ http://www.washingtonpost.com/thenextpope ] is facing a costly legal and moral crisis on several continents over sex crimes committed by its priests, Bergoglio’s handling of pedophilic clergy under his authority offers insight into how he might approach the scandals.
There is no evidence that Bergoglio played a role in covering up abuse cases. Several prominent rights groups in Argentina say the archbishop went out of his way in recent years to stand with secular organizations against crimes such as sex trafficking and child prostitution. They say that Bergoglio’s resolve strengthened as new cases of molestation emerged in the archdiocese and that he eventually instructed bishops to immediately report all abuse allegations to police.
In September, after an Argentine priest from a rural area was convicted of abusing dozens of boys between 1984 and 1992, the archbishop’s office released a statement saying the case had “reaffirmed our profound shame and the immense pain that result from the grave mistakes committed by someone who should be setting the moral example.”
But during most of the 14 years that Bergoglio served as archbishop of Buenos Aires, rights advocates say, he did not take decisive action to protect children or act swiftly when molestation charges surfaced; nor did he extend apologies to the victims of abusive priests after their misconduct came to light.
“He has been totally silent,” said Ernesto Moreau, a member of Argentina’s U.N.-affiliated Permanent Assembly for Human Rights and a lawyer who has represented victims in a clergy sexual-abuse case. Victims asked to meet with Bergoglio but were turned down, Moreau said. “In that regard, Bergoglio was no different from most of the other bishops in Argentina, or the Vatican itself.”
The Catholic Church has paid out at least $2 billion [ http://ncronline.org/blogs/ncr-today/vatican-abuse-summit-22-billion-and-100000-victims-us-alone ] in the United States alone to settle abuse claims, according to monitoring groups. In many Latin American countries, though, the scope of crimes has only begun to surface, and in Argentina, no victims have received restitution in public settlements, rights groups and lawyers said.
The case of Father Grassi has been particularly troublesome to children’s advocates here because Bergoglio was widely viewed as close to the young priest, who told reporters before his conviction that he spoke with Bergoglio often and that the archbishop “never let go of my hand.”
Grassi was not expelled from the priesthood after the guilty verdict. Instead, church officials led by Bergoglio commissioned a lengthy private report arguing that Grassi was innocent.
The report was submitted as part of the priest’s legal appeal, which is pending, and prosecutors say the document has helped Grassi avoid jail time so far. A court has granted him a provisional release [ http://www.buenosairesherald.com/article/102404/court-annuls-priest-grassis-house-arrest- ] that allows him to continue residing across the street from the classroom and dormitories of Happy Children.
The sprawling, gated complex in a working-class neighborhood on the outskirts of Buenos Aires once had more than 600 students and resident orphans. It became the economic and religious hub of the community as Grassi channeled private donations into its schools, vocational workshops, bakeries and playgrounds.
Today its classrooms are mostly shuttered. The foundation’s grounds are choked with weeds and uncut grass, its swings are rusting, and its statuary is dimmed by creeping mold.
“He gave with one hand, but he took away with the other,” said neighbor Sabina Vilagra, whose husband worked as a janitor at the foundation and was called to testify in the trial.
“He had his favorites — always boys,” said her daughter, Florencia Vilagra, who also worked at Happy Children at the time.
“He would give them bicycles or toys and would designate one as his special ‘secretary,’?” she said.
There were three accusers in the trial — given the names “Ezequiel,” “Gabriel” and “Luis” to protect their identities — who ranged from ages 9 to 13 at the time of the abuse, according to prosecutor Juan Pablo Gallego.
One of Argentina’s best-known advocates for child-abuse victims, Sister Martha Pelloni, said she was called in several times to consult with psychologists who treated Grassi’s alleged victims. She said the meetings left her with no doubt that the priest was guilty, despite the church-commissioned report attempting to exonerate him. He was eventually convicted on the charges made by one of the boys. “A lot of Catholics have wanted to protect and defend him,” she said. “But the abuses were real.”
Still, Pelloni praised Bergoglio for evolving over the years and taking an increasingly firm stance against predatory clergy. Argentine law makes it a crime to fail to report allegations of abuse against children. “Now if you go to a bishop with a claim, they’ll say, ‘Report to the police,’?” she said. “Bergoglio must have ordered that.”
Yet past victims of sexual abuse might have been spared if their cases, too, had received such decisive action, Bergoglio’s critics contend.
In one of Argentina’s most egregious abuse cases, another priest in the Archdiocese of Buenos Aires was assigned to work with children even when church leaders knew of allegations against him.
After local parishioners accused Father Mario Napoleon Sasso of molesting children in a poor, rural province of eastern Argentina in the early 1990s, he was sent to a private rehabilitation center for wayward clergy, La Domus Mariae (the House of Mary), north of Buenos Aires. He lived for two years at the center and was then reassigned to work in a soup kitchen for poor children in a town outside the capital. There, he went on to sexually abuse girls as young as 3.
“His bedroom was adjacent to the cafeteria, and it had the only bathroom in the chapel,” said Moreau, the attorney for the victims’ families.
Moreau said that in 2003 he accompanied two nuns and a priest who had denounced Sasso, along with the victims’ families, to a meeting with the Vatican emissary in Buenos Aires. He said the families were told to be “patient” and were offered gifts of rosaries “blessed by the pope.”
“They just wanted to cover it up,” Moreau said.
Three years later, as the evidence against Sasso mounted, the families asked to see Bergoglio, Moreau said, but they never received a response. Sasso was convicted in 2007 and sentenced to 17 years in prison. He has since been released on parole.
Religious-affairs scholar Fortunato Mallimaci, a sociologist at the University of Buenos Aires, said that as Pope Francis [ http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/europe/on-day-2-of-papal-conclave-alliances-should-take-shape/2013/03/13/5d88b616-8bba-11e2-9838-d62f083ba93f_story.html ], Bergoglio will face an entirely different set of expectations for how to handle abuse claims. “In the United States and Europe, there is a clear separation of church and state,” he said. “Not in Latin America.” There, he said, civil society is often too weak to take on the power of the clergy, and suspicion falls first “on the accuser, not the accused.”
But, Mallimaci added, “as a bishop from Latin America, he is going to be very sensitive to what is going on in society around him and the politics of the era. If he wants to reestablish the church’s credibility, he’ll be the first to say that no abuse will be tolerated, whether in Washington or Rome or Buenos Aires.”
© 2013 The Washington Post
http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/the_americas/pope-francis-was-often-quiet-on-argentine-sex-abuse-cases-as-archbishop/2013/03/18/26e7eca4-8ff6-11e2-9cfd-36d6c9b5d7ad_story.html [with comments]
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The Secret Gingrich-Santorum 'Unity Ticket' That Nearly Toppled Romney
March 22, 2013
It’s one of the great untold stories of the 2012 presidential campaign, a tale of ego and intrigue that nearly upended the Republican primary contest and might even have produced a different nominee: As Mitt Romney struggled in the weeks leading up to the Michigan primary, Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum nearly agreed to form a joint “Unity Ticket” to consolidate conservative support and topple Romney. “We were close,” former Representative Bob Walker, a Gingrich ally, says. “Everybody thought there was an opportunity.” “It would have sent shock waves through the establishment and the Romney campaign,” says John Brabender, Santorum’s chief strategist.
But the negotiations collapsed in acrimony because Gingrich and Santorum could not agree on who would get to be president. “In the end,” Gingrich says, “it was just too hard to negotiate.”
[...]
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Related
The Best #GingrichSantorum2012 Campaign Slogans
http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2013-03-22/the-best-no-gingrichsantorum2012-campaign-slogans
In Foreign Press, Cheers for an Obama Win and 'Olympic Levels of Schadenfreude' for Romney
http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2012-11-07/an-obama-win-and-olympic-levels-of-schadenfraude-for-foreign-press
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http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2013-03-22/the-secret-gingrich-santorum-unity-ticket-that-nearly-toppled-romney [with comments]
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Emotional arguments for and against legalizing gay marriage in R.I.
Providence Journal video by Kris Craig [ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LsUN6RbN0Ms ]
By RANDAL EDGAR and KATHERINE GREGG
JOURNAL STATE HOUSE BUREAU
March 22, 2013 11:08 am
PROVIDENCE, R.I. -- A hearing on two gay marriage bills that began at 4:47 Thursday afternoon didn't end until 4:57 Friday morning, lasting an unprecedented 12 hours.
They gathered together in the State House rotunda, holding opposing signs with messages such as "marriage is a holy institution" and "vote for love."
Already passed by the House with a vote of 51to19, the same-sex marriage issue sat squarely before the Senate Judiciary Committee Thursday, putting the outcome in the hands of 10 lawmakers who have the power to send it over another hurdle or stop it from going any further.
Same-sex marriage supporters, feeling momentum based on the recent House vote, as well as recent polls and votes in other states, argued it is time for Rhode Island to join the rest of New England and make marriage available to all loving couples.
"I have been characterized as an abomination, a sinner, an unnatural parent, blasphemous, cursed, dangerous, Satanic and immoral and that's just this evening," said Wendy Becker of Providence. "But of course these characterizations are not true. What is true: I am the mother of two amazing adopted kids, a college professor, a partner of 25 years, the house in the neighborhood where all the kids hang out, the organizer of the block party, the classroom parent-volunteer.
"My partner and I cheer loudly at our son's hockey games, sit mesmerized at our daughter's singing recitals, help with homework," she said. "Our lives are consumed by the needs of our kids and our love for each other."
Opponents, citing God's law and natural law as well as recent research, argued that approving same-sex marriage will hurt society and, especially, hurt children.
"It's true some people claim that it doesn't make a difference whether a child is raised by a mother and father or whether she's raised by adults engaged in homosexual lifestyles. We've heard that case made personally tonight through anecdotes and very moving stories," said Susan Yoshihara, director of research at the Catholic Family and Human Rights Institute, in Washington, D.C. "Some go even further and say that two lesbians might make better parents than a mother and a father, and there was a study that came out a few years ago that pointed to that effect as well. But any scholarly basis for those claims has been shattered by the latest and best social science research [absolute bullshit, an absolute lie - as has been exhaustively documented in the (linked in the) previous posts in this string, most recently with the "Goal of UT parenting study was to influence SCOTUS decisions on gay marriage, docs show" linked about half-way into the post to which this is a reply]."
More than 650 people signed up to speak at the hearing and with dozens of others on hand to watch, many were sent to overflow rooms on the first, second and third floors of the State House. Televisions were set up so they could watch as the committee, which took no action, heard testimony on two competing bills.
Senate Bill 38, sponsored by Sen. Donna M. Nesselbush, D-Pawtucket, and nearly identical to the bill that passed in the House, would define marriage as "the legally recognized union" of two people, removing gender-specific language from state law.
Senate Bill 708, sponsored by Sen. Frank A. Ciccone III, D-Providence, would put a referendum before voters, asking if they want to legalize same-sex marriage by adding language to the state Constitution that defines marriage as "the legally-recognized union of two people."
Ciccone's bill would also establish legal protections for people of faith -- including "small business" owners -- who choose not to officiate or provide goods, services or accommodations for a marriage ceremony that violates their "religious beliefs."
Same-sex marriage supporters -- Governor Chafee and state General Treasurer Gina M. Raimondo among them -- championed the Nesselbush bill, and some of them blasted the Ciccone bill for taking "a human rights" issue out of the hands of lawmakers and putting it before voters.
"The time has come for you to cast a vote on marriage equality in Rhode Island," said former state Rep. Anthony DeLuca, of North Kingstown, who argued that the referendum bill would "undermine the importance of your office to which you have been elected, often to make tough decisions and cast difficult votes."
Same-sex marriage opponents were split on Ciccone's bill, with some saying the matter should go before voters and others urging the committee to uphold the traditional view of marriage as between one man and one woman.
"Historically our marriage laws have been based on the Judeo-Christian view of marriage with its roots in the He-brew and Christian scriptures," said the Rev. Philip H. Curtis, of Exeter Chapel. "If this goes forward, I ask you: by what authority will you redefine marriage?" And "by what standard shall our marriage laws be defined now and in the future ... Where and by what logic will we draw the line?"
The same-sex marriage debate began early in the 2013 legislative session, with openly gay House Speaker Gordon D. Fox stating from the outset that his goal was to pass a bill out of the House by the end of January.
The House bill, sponsored by Rep. Arthur Handy, D-Cranston, became only the second same-sex marriage bill in 16 years to receive a committee vote, and it became the first to pass out of committee. The vote was unanimous.
Two days later, on Jan. 24, the full House voted, putting the issue in the hands of a divided Senate.
Senate President M. Teresa Paiva Weed, who opposes same-sex marriage, said at the outset of the 2013 session that she would not use her position to influence the outcome, and in appointing 10 people to the Senate Judiciary Committee -- six of them returning and four of them new -- she appeared to leave the committee divided on the issue. Just this week, however, one member -- Sen. Leonidas P. Raptakis, D-Coventry -- withdrew his support for Ciccone's bill and softened his stance on Nesselbush's bill, leaving open the possibility that he might provide the sixth voted need to send it to the Senate floor.
Thirty-seven states define marriage as the union of one man and one woman, but there are now nine that recognize same-sex marriage, including all the other New England states, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures.
Rhode Island allows same-sex couples to enter civil unions -- an option that some same-sex marriage opponents say is a fair compromise. But same-sex marriage supporters say the law contains discriminatory religious protections and perpetuates a system where some couples can marry and some cannot.
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More on R.I's gay marriage debate
http://news.providencejournal.com/breaking-news/gay-marriage.html
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© 2013, Published by The Providence Journal Co.
http://news.providencejournal.com/breaking-news/2013/03/emotional-arguments-for-and-against-legalizing-gay-marriage-in-ri.html [with comments]
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Study of Men’s Falling Income Cites Single Parents
The line outside a job fair in Chicago last year. The economic struggles of male workers are both a cause and an effect of the breakdown of traditional households, a survey suggests.
Scott Olson/Getty Images
Graphic
Diverging Fortunes for Men and Women
http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2013/03/20/business/diverging-fortunes-for-men-and-women.html
By BINYAMIN APPELBAUM
Published: March 20, 2013
WASHINGTON — The decline of two-parent households may be a significant reason for the divergent fortunes of male workers, whose earnings generally declined in recent decades, and female workers, whose earnings generally increased, a prominent labor economist argues in a new survey of existing research.
David H. Autor [ http://economics.mit.edu/faculty/dautor ], a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology [ http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/organizations/m/massachusetts_institute_of_technology/index.html ], says that the difference between men and women, at least in part, may have roots in childhood. Only 63 percent of children lived in a household with two parents in 2010, down from 82 percent in 1970. The single parents raising the rest of those children are predominantly female. And there is growing evidence that sons raised by single mothers “appear to fare particularly poorly,” Professor Autor wrote in an analysis [ http://www.thirdway.org/publications/662 ] for Third Way, a center-left policy research organization.
In this telling, the economic struggles of male workers are both a cause and an effect of the breakdown of traditional households. Men who are less successful are less attractive as partners, so some women are choosing to raise children by themselves, in turn often producing sons who are less successful and attractive as partners.
“A vicious cycle may ensue,” wrote Professor Autor and his co-author, Melanie Wasserman, a graduate student, “with the poor economic prospects of less educated males creating differentially large disadvantages for their sons, thus potentially reinforcing the development of the gender gap in the next generation.”
The fall of men in the workplace is widely regarded by economists as one of the nation’s most important and puzzling trends. While men, on average, still earn more than women, the gap between them has narrowed considerably, particularly among more recent entrants to the labor force.
For all Americans, it has become much harder to make a living without a college degree, for intertwined reasons including foreign competition, advancements in technology and the decline of unions. Over the same period, the earnings of college graduates have increased. Women have responded exactly as economists would have predicted, by going to college in record numbers. Men, mysteriously, have not.
Among people who were 35 years old in 2010, for example, women were 17 percent more likely to have attended college, and 23 percent more likely to hold an undergraduate degree.
“I think the greatest, most astonishing fact that I am aware of in social science right now is that women have been able to hear the labor market screaming out ‘You need more education’ and have been able to respond to that, and men have not,” said Michael Greenstone, an M.I.T. economics professor who was not involved in Professor Autor’s work. “And it’s very, very scary for economists because people should be responding to price signals. And men are not. It’s a fact in need of an explanation.”
Most economists agree that men have suffered disproportionately from economic changes like the decline of manufacturing. But careful analyses have found that such changes explain only a small part of the shrinking wage gap.
One set of supplemental explanations holds that women are easier to educate or, as the journalist Hanna Rosin wrote in “The End of Men [ http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/02/magazine/who-wears-the-pants-in-this-economy.html?pagewanted=all ],” because women are more adaptable. Professor Autor writes that such explanations are plausible and “intriguing,” but as yet unproven.
He disagrees entirely with the view of the conservative analyst Charles Murray, in “Coming Apart [ http://www.aei.org/book/society-and-culture/coming-apart-the-state-of-white-america-1960-2010/ (and see {linked in} http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=72004206 and preceding and following, http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=72076256 and preceding and following, and http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=73504847 and preceding and following)],” that men have become “less industrious.”
“We’re pretty much in agreement on most of the facts,” Professor Autor said of Mr. Murray. “But he looks at the same facts and says this is all due to the failure of government programs, eroding the commitment to working. And we’re saying, what seems much more plausible here is that the working world just has less and less use for these folks.”
Professor Autor’s own explanation builds on existing research showing that income inequality [ http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/subjects/i/income/income_inequality/index.html ] has soared, stretching the gap between rich and poor, and that a smaller share of Americans are making the climb. The children of lower-income parents are ever more likely to become, in turn, the parents of lower-income children.
Moreover, a growing share of lower-income children are raised by their mother but not their father, and research shows that those children are at a particular disadvantage.
Professor Autor said in an interview that he was intrigued by evidence suggesting the consequences were larger for boys than girls, including one study finding that single mothers spent an hour less per week with their sons than with their daughters. Another study of households where the father had less education, or was absent entirely, found the female children were 10 to 14 percent more likely to complete college. A third study of single-parent homes found boys were less likely than girls to enroll in college.
“It’s very clear that kids from single-parent households fare worse in terms of years of education,” he said. “The gender difference, the idea that boys do even worse again, is less clear cut. We’re pointing this out as an important hypothesis that needs further exploration. But there’s intriguing evidence in that direction.”
Conservatives have long argued that society should encourage stable parental relationships. A recent report [ http://twentysomethingmarriage.org/ ] by the National Marriage Project at the University of Virginia concluded that promoting marriage is the best way “to make family life more stable for children whose parents don’t enjoy the benefit of a college education.”
Liberals have tended to argue that the government should focus instead on improving economic opportunities. Jonathan Cowan, the president of Third Way, said the paper underscored that addressing social problems was a means to improve economic opportunities.
“If Democrats have as their goal being the party of the middle class, they have to come to the realization that they’re not going to be able to get there solely through their standard explanations,” said Mr. Cowan, a veteran of the Clinton administration. “We need to ask, ‘How can we get these fathers back involved in their children’s lives?’ ”
But some experts cautioned that Professor Autor’s theory did not necessarily imply that such children would benefit from the presence of their fathers.
“Single-parent families tend to emerge in places where the men already are a mess,” said Christopher Jencks, a professor of social policy at Harvard University. “You have to ask yourself, ‘Suppose the available men were getting married to the available women? Would that be an improvement?’ ”
Instead of making marriage more attractive, he said, it might be better for society to help make men more attractive.
© 2013 The New York Times Company
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/21/business/economy/as-men-lose-economic-ground-clues-in-the-family.html [ http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/21/business/economy/as-men-lose-economic-ground-clues-in-the-family.html?pagewanted=all ] [with comments]
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’90s Alt Folk Rocker, Now Christian, Michelle Shocked Stuns San Francisco Club With Homophobic Rant
Rick Diamond / Getty Images
March 18, 2013 1:55 PM
Singer-songwriter Michelle Shocked lived up to her stage name over the weekend when she stunned a San Francisco audience by going on a homophobic rant during a concert that included the statement, “God hates fags.”
The show-stopping moment happened during Shocked’s second set of the night at SF club Yoshi’s this past Sunday night (March 17), and was live-tweeted by Matt Penfield [ https://twitter.com/TheGuapo ].
“Music was good. Hate speech was excruciating. 2nd set became a hostage situation–luckily we could all leave,” Penfield tweeted about the incident, adding that it was “super anti-gay and hateful.”
Shocked, who has identified herself as a born-again Christian in recent years (she joined the Pentecostal West Angeles Church of God in Christ in 2008), originally came to prominence in the late ’80s with the release of The Texas Campfire Tapes [ https://itunes.apple.com/us/album/the-texas-campfire-tapes/id183348194 ], a bootleg recording that was eventually reissued on Mercury Records.
This is not the first time Shocked has lashed out publicly at homosexuality. According to Religion Dispatches Magazine [ http://www.religiondispatches.org/archive/sexandgender/4888/wild_goose_festival%E2%80%99s_%28mostly%29_welcoming_spirit_for_lgbt_christians_/ ], when she was asked about her “position on homosexuality” during a 2008 Christian music-focused Wild Goose Festival, a visibly upset Shocked railed, “Who drafted me as a gay icon? You are looking at the world’s greatest homophobe. Ask God what He thinks.”
“There is always someone who wants to catch me,” she added to a festival staffer after shutting off her microphone.
The self-described “radical skateboard punk-rock anarchist” was something of a lesbian icon during her ’90s heyday, something she now disavows completely. The alleged about-face comes as a complete surprise to Shocked’s long-time fans.
“Ask any lesbian who was a fan of hers in the ’80s and 90s and they will tell you that they have NO doubt she is a lesbian,” commented one such reader on Queerty.com [ http://www.queerty.com/alt-folk-singer-michelle-shocked-goes-on-homophobic-rant-tells-audience-god-hates-fags-20130318/ ]. “Just another sick sad, twisted closet case whose sanity is ruined by buying in to the bigoted religion she is a member of. Pathetic.”
According to her Twitter feed, Shocked was adamant that her message get out.
Michelle Shocked
@MShocked
Everybody in the audience at this Yoshi's show, make sure you take a second and tweet Michelle a note! She's crushing it.
2:55 AM - 18 Mar 13
After the onstage rant which allegedly cleared the club, Shocked has only posted one tweet.
Michelle Shocked
@MShocked
Truth is leading to painful confrontation #shortsharpshocked [ https://twitter.com/search?q=%23shortsharpshocked&src=hash ]
3:28 AM - 18 Mar 13
The fallout from the shocking tirade has been immediate, with the news site Gambit linking to two different venues in Bolder, Co, and Novato, CA, that have canceled previously scheduled Michelle Shocked shows in light of the incident.
Gambit
@The_Gambit
Venues in Boulder, CO & Novato, CA cancel @mshocked tour shows after anti-gay comments: on.fb.me/ZNNTD2 [ http://t.co/jPdCo3iI7o ] http://bit.ly/ZNNW1I [ http://t.co/ihHnIZN45t ]
7:33 PM - 18 Mar 13
©2013 CBS Local Media, a division of CBS Radio Inc.
http://kroq.cbslocal.com/2013/03/18/90s-alt-folk-rocker-now-christian-michele-shocked-stuns-san-francisco-gay-club-with-homophobic-rant/ [with comment]
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Saxby Chambliss: 'I'm Not Gay. So I'm Not Going To Marry One.'
03/21/2013
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/03/21/saxby-chambliss-gay-marriage_n_2923091.html [with embedded video report, and comments]
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Ohio Governor Flip Flops On Civil Unions Support In 10 Hours
By Aviva Shen on Mar 21, 2013 at 5:51 pm
Ohio Governor John Kasich (R) briefly wavered on his staunch opposition to all forms of same-sex unions in an interview [ http://www.kypost.com/dpps/news/state/ohio-gov-john-kasich-supports-rob-portman-and-civil-unions-but-wont-support-same-sex-marriage_8339734 ] on Thursday morning. When pressed about fellow Ohio Republican Sen. Rob Portman’s recent embrace of gay marriage [ http://thinkprogress.org/lgbt/2013/03/15/1724841/gop-senator-embraces-gay-marriage-after-his-son-comes-out/ ], Kasich claimed he supported civil unions but not marriage for gay couples:
Kasich was asked if he could imagine a situation that might cause him to change his position.
“I really can’t see one, I mean, I talked to Rob and encouraged him,” Kasich said. “If people want to have civil unions and have some way to transfer their resources, I’m for that. I don’t support gay marriage.”
“I’ve got friends that are gay and I’ve told them ‘Look, (same sex marriage) is just not something I agree with’ and I’m not doing it out of a sense of anger or judgment, it’s just my opinion on this issue.”
“I just think marriage is between a man and a woman, but if you want to have a civil union that’s fine with me,” Kasich said.
Despite this fairly strong endorsement for civil unions, his office quickly walked back the governor’s statement, stressing that Kasich maintains his opposition to all forms of same-sex unions. Spokesperson Rob Nichols told Buzzfeed [ http://www.buzzfeed.com/evanmcsan/ohios-republican-governor-endorses-civil-unions-then-takes-i ], “He’s opposed to discrimination against any Ohioan and, while he may have used the term ‘civil union’ loosely in this instance, he recognizes the existing rights of Ohioans to enter into private contracts to manage their personal property and health care issues.”
Kasich holds a long anti-gay record [ http://votesmart.org/candidate/key-votes/27017/john-kasich/76/sexual-orientation-and-gender-identity ], beginning into his time in Congress, where he voted to ban adoptions by gay parents, as well as for the Defense of Marriage Act and the military’s defunct “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy. As governor, Kasich broke his pledge [ http://thinkprogress.org/lgbt/2011/01/24/177230/kasich-eo/ ] to extend anti-discrimination protections for LGBT individuals, allowing state and contracted employers to fire anyone based on sexual orientation.
Kasich may have felt pressure on the spot to be flexible in his views, as his hardline stance on gay marriage and civil unions is now far outside the norm. Support for gay marriage is at an all-time high [ http://thinkprogress.org/lgbt/2013/03/20/1751381/polls-reuters-and-cnn-confirm-momentum-for-marriage-equality/ ]. Civil unions are currently banned in Ohio, but a ballot initiative [ http://www.buzzfeed.com/evanmcsan/ohios-republican-governor-endorses-civil-unions-then-takes-i ] this fall could change that.
© 2013 Center for American Progress Action Fund (emphasis in original)
http://thinkprogress.org/lgbt/2013/03/21/1758801/ohio-governor-flip-flops-on-support-for-civil-unions-in-10-hours/ [with comments]
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Will Portman, Senator's Gay Son, Criticized By Conservatives After Dad's Gay Marriage Reversal
03/20/2013
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/03/20/will-portman-criticized-conservatives-senator-gay-marriage_n_2910103.html [with embedded video report, and comments]
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Steven Simpson, Gay British Teen, Dies After Being Set On Fire At Birthday Party
03/23/2013
A young British man has been convicted of manslaughter after killing a gay teen by setting him on fire.
The BBC reports that 20-year-old Jordan Sheard has been sentenced to three and a half years in jail for the death of Steven Simpson [ http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-south-yorkshire-21887535 ] after pleading guilty to manslaughter charges. Simpson, 18, died one day after sustaining "significant burns" in June 2012, according to the report.
Simpson had Asperger's syndrome, a speech impairment and epilepsy, the Yorkshire Post noted [ http://www.yorkshirepost.co.uk/news/at-a-glance/general-news/teen-dies-at-his-birthday-party-after-friend-covers-him-with-tanning-oil-and-sets-him-alight-1-5519548 ]. The teen had reportedly been dared to strip down to his underpants before being doused in tanning oil, after which Sheard set him aflame at the party. Other reports said that anti-gay messages [ http://news.ninemsn.com.au/world/2013/03/22/10/32/teen-set-alight-at-birthday-party ], including "gay boy" and "I love d*ck," had been found scrawled across Simpson's body.
[...]
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/03/23/steven-simpson-gay-teen-burned-birthday-_n_2939092.html [with comments]
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SOUTHGATE: Authorities seek motive behind teen’s suicide at school
March 23, 2013
http://www.thenewsherald.com/articles/2013/03/23/news/doc514b5816dd64d435577977.txt [ http://www.thenewsherald.com/articles/2013/03/23/news/doc514b5816dd64d435577977.txt?viewmode=fullstory ] [with comments] [see also http://www.detroitnews.com/article/20130321/SCHOOLS/303210418/1409/METRO/Student-who-killed-self-took-gun-from-relative-police-say (with comments)]
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North Dakota Republican Pols To Protest Anti-Abortion Laws: 'We Have Stepped Over The Line'
Rep. Kathy Hawken, R-Fargo, poses at the state Capitol in Bismarck, N.D., Tuesday, March 19, 2013. Hawken and a group of bipartisan lawmakers are urging Gov. Jack Dalrymple to veto measures that would make North Dakota home to the nation's most restrictive abortion laws.
(AP Photo/James MacPherson)
By Laura Bassett
Posted: 03/21/2013 5:44 pm EDT | Updated: 03/22/2013 12:56 pm EDT
A group of GOP state lawmakers in North Dakota will protest new abortion restrictions on Monday at a Stand Up for Women rally [ https://www.facebook.com/StandUpforWomenND ] in Bismarck, N.D., because they believe their fellow Republicans have gone too far.
"It's to say, hey, this isn't okay. We have stepped over the line," said state Rep. Kathy Hawken (R-Fargo) in a phone interview with The Huffington Post. "One of the key tenets of the Republican Party is personal responsibility. I'm personally pro-life, but I vote pro-choice, because you can't make that decision for anyone else. You just can't."
North Dakota recently passed the most restrictive abortion ban in the nation [ http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/03/15/north-dakota-abortion_n_2885452.html ], which prohibits abortions after six weeks of pregnancy, and a bill preventing pregnant women from choosing abortion based on a fetal anomaly or genetic disorder. The state also has a "trigger ban," which would prohibit abortion entirely if Roe v. Wade were to be overturned.
Lawmakers are currently considering two "fetal personhood" measures [ http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/03/18/north-dakota-abortion-ban_n_2903599.html ] that would effectively ban abortion in the state and complicate the legality of birth control, stem cell research and in vitro fertilization. Hawken said the personhood bills are so extreme that she and approximately 10 of her Republican colleagues in the state legislature -- both men and women -- were inspired to speak out in defense of women's rights.
"North Dakota hasn't even passed a primary seatbelt law, but we have the most invasive attack on womens health anywhere," she said. "I got a letter yesterday from a pharmacist who said, 'We don't want to be in jail because we prescribed something!' We're spending an inordinate amount of time on social or personal issues, however you want to put it, but we haven't done anything on property tax relief, higher education funding, fixing the roads. There are all kinds of other things we need to be doing besides this."
Voters have rejected fetal personhood bills in every other state where they've been proposed, including Mississippi, but the bill stands a strong chance of becoming law in North Dakota. The state Senate passed two personhood measures in February, and the House is expected to vote on them Friday.
Hawken said that as a strong fiscal conservative, she is worried that the state will spend millions of dollars that could be put to better use defending these laws in court. "They could fund my childcare bill with what we're going to spend on lawsuits," she said. "Can't we let Arkansas be the poster child for this? Why does it have to be us?"
Hawken said she has introduced bills during her 17 years in office that she considers to be "pro-life," such as a prenatal care for minors bill [ http://votesmart.org/bill/4018/12494/11479/prenatal-care-for-minors ] and a bill ensuring quality childcare for single moms, but those were rejected by her colleagues. "It seems like we want to get [babies] here," she said, "but we don't care if they're healthy once they get here. That's just bad policy."
Copyright © 2013 TheHuffingtonPost.com, Inc.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/03/21/north-dakota-abortion-_n_2926858.html [with embedded video reports, embedded slideshow, and comments]
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North Dakota Personhood Measure Passes State House
North Dakota state Sen. Margaret Sitte (R-Bismarck) speaks in favor of an anti-abortion bill during the chamber floor debate at the state Capitol, Friday, March 15, 2013.
(AP Photo/The Bismarck Tribune, Mike McCleary)
By Laura Bassett
Posted: 03/22/2013 3:20 pm EDT | Updated: 03/22/2013 4:02 pm EDT
North Dakota became the first state on Friday to pass a fetal personhood amendment, which grants legal personhood rights to embryos from the moment of fertilization. The state House of Representatives voted 57 to 35 to pass the amendment, after the Senate passed the same measure last month.
The measure will now appear on the November 2014 ballot, and voters will be able to accept or reject it. If it passes, it will amend North Dakota's constitution to state that “the inalienable right to life of every human being at any stage of development must be recognized and protected.” The amendment would ban abortion in the state, without exceptions for rape, incest or life of the mother, and it could affect the legality of some forms of birth control, stem cell research and in vitro fertilization.
“The North Dakota legislature has taken historic strides to protect every human being in the state, paving the way for human rights nationwide,” Keith Mason, president of the anti-abortion advocacy group Personhood USA, said in a statement on Friday. “This amendment strikes the balance of accomplishing more for the unborn than any other amendment the nation has ever seen, while protecting pregnant women and their right to true medical care. We applaud the North Dakota House and Senate for their willingness to protect all of the people in their state.”
Similar fetal personhood initiatives have been rejected by voters in several other states, including Mississippi, one of the most socially conservative states in the country.
North Dakota state Rep. Kathy Hawken (R-Fargo) told HuffPost on Thursday [ http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/03/21/north-dakota-abortion-_n_2926858.html?utm_hp_ref=politics (just above)] that she and several of her Republican colleagues strongly oppose the bill and are planning to protest it at a women's health rally on Monday. "I have so many friends with grandchildren from in vitro fertilization, and to take that away from these people who desperately want children is not okay," she said. "I believe if men had babies we would not be having this discussion."
Copyright © 2013 TheHuffingtonPost.com, Inc.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/03/22/north-dakota-personhood_n_2934503.html [with embedded video report, and (over 12,000) comments]
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Darin Evans Sex Assault: Ex-Youth Pastor Accused Of Assaulting Teen From Church For Nearly 7 Years
Darin Evans, an ex-pastor of a suburban Elmhurst church, is accused of sexually assaulting a teen congregant starting in 2004.
(DuPage County Sheriff's Office)
Posted: 03/19/2013 5:44 pm EDT | Updated: 03/19/2013 11:14 pm EDT
The former youth pastor of a suburban Chicago church has been accused of sexually assaulting a teen girl from his own congregation, starting when he was the girl's counselor, according to the DuPage County State’s Attorney’s office.
Darin Evans, 41, the former associate pastor and youth minister at West Suburban Community Church in Elmhurst, Ill., had bond set at $300,000 Tuesday [ http://www.nbcchicago.com/news/local/associate-pastor-darin-evans-sexual-assault-199025661.html ], according to NBC Chicago.
Authorities say Evans had sexual contact with the girl "in his vehicle, in parks, cemeteries and men's restrooms, and during a religious retreat in Wisconsin [ http://www.dailyherald.com/article/20130319/news/703199855/ ]," according to the Daily Herald.
The victim was just 16 when the alleged sexual relationship started in 2004, when the girl was seeing Evans as a counselor [ http://abclocal.go.com/wls/story?section=news/local&id=9033271 ], ABC Chicago reports. The girl ended the relationship in 2011 and recently went to police.
There are no other reports Evans abused other children.
DuPage State’s Attorney Robert Berlin described Evans’ alleged predatory acts as “just despicable [ http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/suburbs/elmhurst/chi-elmhurst-youth-minister-accused-of-sex-with-teen-20130319,0,3692802.story ],” according to the Tribune, while the pastor of the church describes the congregation as "heartbroken and devastated" by the news.
"Unfortunately, he had this secret side none of us knew about," Rev. Jim Lennon of West Suburban Community Church told the Herald.
Prosecutors said the married father of three from Ohio "groomed" the girl to trust him, and allegedly said he would kill himself if their relationship became public.
According to the DuPage County Sheriff's office, Evans is charged with 11 counts of criminal sexual assault and two counts of aggravated criminal sexual assault [ http://inmatesearch.dupagesheriff.org/new_inmate_details.asp?txtInmateNum=230450&txtInmateID=0MJV418000DUP3EU (that record now evidently out-of-date/superceded)] and faces up to 47 years in prison if convicted.
Evans is due back in court April 2.
Copyright © 2013 TheHuffingtonPost.com, Inc.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/03/19/darin-evans-sex-assault-e_n_2909889.html [with comments]
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Reproductive Health Care Provider Uses Stork Costume To Prank Anti-Contraception Protesters
03/22/2013
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/03/22/anti-contraception-stork-protesters_n_2934735.html [with comments]
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O’Reilly Sounds The Alarm About The Left’s War Against The Easter Bunny
By Adam Peck on Mar 22, 2013 at 11:54 am
Culture warrior and Fox News host Bill O’Reilly sounded the alarms on his show yesterday over the looming threat being posed by secularists towards…the Easter bunny.
O’Reilly, perhaps best known for his annual winter jeremiads on the imminent destruction of Christmas, explained to his audience that “secular progressives” are seeking to destroy such holy biblical figures as grown men in bunny costumes so they can legalize marijuana and allow abortions on demand:
O’REILLY: Secular progressives are running wild with President Obama in the White House. They feel unchained, liberated, and they’re trying to diminish any form of religion. The goal is to marginalize religious opposition to secular programs. For example, in Canada and China a woman can have an abortion for any reason at any time. Secular progressives want that here. But traditional forces in America are in opposition. Therefore in this country, you can’t terminate a baby about to be born without a damn good reason. And if you do abort a late term baby, you could be charged with murder. SPs hate that. In Scandanavia, there are laws that say you cannot criticize minorities and if you do, you could be arrested. Secular progressives want laws like that here. Also the legalization of drugs, well under way in many places, and that is a secular cause. So, if the far left can marginalize Santa and the Easter bunny, of they can tell the children those symbols are obsolete and unnecessary, they then set the stage for a totally secular society in the future.
Forgetting for a minute that religiously-affiliated lawmakers are actually imposing tougher [ http://thinkprogress.org/health/2013/03/15/1724911/north-dakota-six-week-heartbeat-ban/ ] abortion [ http://thinkprogress.org/health/2013/02/07/1552611/alabama-trap-laws/ ] laws [ http://thinkprogress.org/health/2012/03/19/446875/tennessee-bill-may-expose-identities-of-women-seeking-abortions/ ] around the country [ http://thinkprogress.org/health/2012/03/07/439383/interactive-map-abortion/ ], that nobody is pushing for a law to criminalize free speech, and that legalizing drugs is far from [ http://thinkprogress.org/justice/2012/03/08/441050/pat-robertson-endorses-marijuana-legalization/ ] a secular progressive cause, there is simply no “war on Easter.” O’Reilly points to a handful [ http://nation.foxnews.com/war-easter/2013/03/20/war-easter-schools-cities-planning-another-round-spring-egg-hunts ] of small community centers and elementary schools that are hosting “spring egg hunts,” sometimes with a “spring bunny” emceeing the festivities. Nowhere to be found is the word “Easter,” laments O’Reilly, fearful that the nation’s six year olds will one day forget the religious symbolism of crawling around a grassy schoolyard on all fours searching for chocolate-filled plastic eggs. Each of the schools highlighted by O’Reilly has off the day following Easter Sunday, an opportunity for parents to teach their children about the significance of the holiday and a luxury rarely afforded to the practitioners of any other religion in the country.
Conservative radio host Laura Ingraham joined O’Reilly to discuss this latest atrocity, and both agreed that the fault belongs to the nation’s “traditional forces,” who aren’t doing enough, in their estimation, to fight back against the rise of secularism and the persecution of religious Christians. It’s a bold statement coming from two people who have a history [ http://thinkprogress.org/media/2010/10/14/124290/goldberg-behar-oreilly/ ] of being chief persecutors [ http://mediamatters.org/blog/2011/07/23/fox-juxtaposes-norwegian-terrorist-attack-nyc-i/183060 ] towards people of other faiths.
HT: Mediaite [ http://www.mediaite.com/tv/bill-oreilly-kicks-off-crusade-against-the-war-on-easter-laura-ingraham-warns-of-new-era-of-persecution/ ]
© 2013 Center for American Progress Action Fund (emphasis in original)
http://thinkprogress.org/media/2013/03/22/1760681/oreilly-easter-bunny/ [with comments]
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Climate science-denying GOPer to head climate subcommittee
(Credit: Facebook/ChrisStewartforCongress)
Another day, another anti-science move by the House Science Committee
By Jillian Rayfield
Wednesday, Mar 20, 2013 04:06 PM CDT
A House subcommittee on climate change announced that its new Chair will be Rep. Chris Stewart, a Republican from Utah who does not believe in man-made climate change, and who has written several end-times novels that were endorsed [ http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2012/09/chris-stewart-utah-republican ] by none other than Glenn Beck.
“I’m not as convinced as a lot of people are that man-made climate change is the threat they think it is,” Stewart told the Salt Lake Tribune [ http://www.sltrib.com/sltrib/politics/56029666-90/climate-stewart-utah-committee.html.csp ]. “I think it is probably not as immediate as some people do.”
As Tim Murphy from Mother Jones [ http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2013/03/chair-climate-change-subcommittee-jury-still-out-climate-change ] reports, Stewart is no big fan of the EPA or Endangered Species Act either:
But if Stewart isn’t sure how he feels about climate change, he’s dead-set in his view of the EPA: He wants the agency dissolved. In August, following a campaign event in the southwest corner of the state, Stewart told the St. George News [ http://www.stgeorgeutah.com/news/archive/2012/08/25/republican-congressional-candidate-visits-st-george-tells-crowd-to-keep-faith-in-america/ ] that the Environmental Protection Agency should be eliminated because, as he put it, “The EPA thwarts energy development.”
During his congressional campaign, Stewart highlighted the Endangered Species Act as the mark of a regulatory state gone wrong. “There is no better example of the overreach of government than in environmental law,” he said in an interview [ http://freemencapitalist.com/interviews/chris-stewart ; http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gT_LtZV0Xsg (below)] last April with the Freemen Capitalist [ http://freemencapitalist.com/ ], a conservative website.
Copyright © 2013 Salon Media Group, Inc.
http://www.salon.com/2013/03/20/climate_science_denying_goper_to_head_climate_subcommittee/ [with comments]
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Calvin Beisner, Evangelical Christian, Claims Environmentalism Great Threat To Civilization
Calvin Beisner of the Cornwall Alliance recently explained why environmentalism is the 'greatest threat to Western Civilization.' Here, Beisner delivers a speech at Biola University in 2009.
By Meredith Bennett-Smith
Posted: 03/21/2013 11:33 am EDT
A representative for an evangelical group that doesn't believe in man-made climate change has suggested that the modern environmental movement is harming civilization.
Speaking on the Janet Mefferd Show on March 18, Dr. Calvin Beisner of the Cornwall Alliance laid out four reasons why environmentalism is "the greatest threat to Western civilization [ http://janetmefferdpremium.com/2013/03/18/janet-mefferd-radio-show-20130318-hr-3/ ]."
Environmentalism is insidious, Beisnser explained, and it dangerously "speaks to the inherent spiritual yearnings of human souls and it provides plausible answers to dogged questions." It also incorporates the similarly dangerous threats of utopian Marxism, the secular humanism and the "religious fanaticism of jihad."
Lastly, "environmentalism encompasses all the vague spiritualities that have frankly overwhelmed secular humanism in the West and now threaten the Christian faith."
The Cornwall Alliance [ http://www.cornwallalliance.org/ ] is made up of activists that are "committed to bringing a balanced Biblical view of stewardship to the critical issues of environment and development." According to the group's website, members believe "Recent global warming is one of many natural cycles of warming and cooling in geologic history."
While the majority of climate researchers believe climate change is caused by human activity [ http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2010/06/04/1003187107.abstract ], a 2011 poll found that Tea Party members and white evangelicals, such as Beisner, were statistically less likely to believe in evolution and climate change [ http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/09/22/evangelicals-evolution-climate-change-poll_n_975699.html ] than most Americans.
Beisner is a popular guest on conservative evangelical shows that promote an anti-climate change agenda.
In November, he told the hosts of the American Family Association "Today's Issues" program that humans could not possibly be causing the "catastrophic consequences for the climate [ http://www.rightwingwatch.org/content/beisner-belief-climate-change-insult-god ; http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r6Q6vkxs3XQ (next below)]"
"That doesn't fit well with the biblical teaching that the earth is the result of the omniscient design, the omnipotent creation and the faithful sustaining of the God of the Bible. So it really is an insult to God," Beisner said.
The professor, who has a doctorate in Scottish history [ http://ecalvinbeisner.com/bio.pdf ], was also featured in Bill Moyers' 2006 documentary [ http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/11/arts/television/11gate.html ] "Is God Green?"
During interviews for the special, Beisner said that Genesis dictates [ http://www.pbs.org/moyers/moyersonamerica/print/beisner_print.html ] humans should "Be fruitful and multiply, fill the earth and subdue it." This disproves the opinion of the "anti-population growth" activists, according to Beisner, who adds that pollution is a natural byproduct of reality.
It should be noted that not all evangelical Christians oppose global warming reforms. Groups like the Young Evangelicals for Climate Action [ http://www.yecaction.org/ ] take the stance that it is a Christian's duty to protect the planet [ http://www.christianpost.com/news/is-climate-change-a-christian-responsibility-evangelicals-call-obama-and-romney-to-action-83613/ ].
(h/t Right Wing Watch [ http://www.rightwingwatch.org/content/beisner-explains-why-environmentalism-represents-greatest-threat-western-civilization ])
View the video below to hear Calvin Beisner speak at Biola University in 2009 [ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xhATyCzELuc (next below, as embedded)]:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/03/21/calvin-beisner-environmentalism-greatest-threat-civilization_n_2919756.html [with additional embedded video, embedded slideshow, and comments]
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Steve Stockman, GOP Congressman, Says Best Thing About Earth Is Oil
Rep. Steve Stockman recently sent out a tweet saying the best thing about Earth is the oil that comes out of it.
By Meredith Bennett-Smith
Posted: 03/22/2013 4:21 pm EDT | Updated: 03/22/2013 4:37 pm EDT
A Republican politician known for making controversial statements may have just raised the bar with a Tweet about global oil and gas consumption.
On Thursday, Rep. Steve Stockman [ http://stockman.house.gov/about/full-biography ] (R-Texas) sent out a tweet stating the best thing about Earth is its oil [ http://www.politico.com/blogs/on-congress/2013/03/stockman-the-best-thing-about-the-earth-is-if-you-159944.html ].
Rep. Steve Stockman
@SteveStockmanTX
The best thing about the Earth is if you poke holes in it oil and gas come out.
5:33 PM - 21 Mar 13
The politician continued to focus much of his online energy [ http://news.yahoo.com/twitter-destroys-pro-oil-senator-best-thing-earth-191453282.html ] targeting environmentalists and liberals, who he claims hate oil, gas and science.
Rep. Steve Stockman
@SteveStockmanTX
Energy-rich oil propelled civilization into the 21st Century. But liberals want to turn back the clock to inefficient Bronze Age wind power.
6:16 PM - 21 Mar 13
Rep. Steve Stockman
@SteveStockmanTX
There is reportedly $1 trillion in oil off the coast of California. But liberal hatred of science and human progress keeps them bankrupt
6:14 PM - 21 Mar 13
Rep. Steve Stockman
@SteveStockmanTX
What saved whales from extinction? Oil drilling. The oil industry has literally done more to save species than Greenpeace.
2:57 AM - 22 Mar 13
While Stockman's "Best thing about the Earth" tweet was quickly parodied online [ http://www.theatlanticwire.com/politics/2013/03/steve-stockman-best-thing-about-earth/63399/ ], MSNBC notes that this is far from the most outrageous thing the Texan [ http://tv.msnbc.com/2013/03/21/offended-by-steve-stockmans-poke-holes-in-it-remark-dont-be-hes-said-much-worse/ ], who serves on the Science, Space and Technology Committee, has said.
In the past, the congressman has claimed that the “Violence Against Women Act” was a bad bill [ http://thinkprogress.org/lgbt/2013/03/18/1736201/gop-lawmaker-mocks-lgbt-protections-in-vawa-change-gender-how-is-that-a-woman/ ] that helps “men dressed up as women.” He has also claimed that former President Bill Clinton staged the bloody Waco raid [ http://www.sfgate.com/news/article/Texas-Lawmaker-Says-Waco-Was-a-Setup-GOP-3033544.php ] in order to gain support for an assault weapons ban.
And in 2009, Stockman called global warming [ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1rXEIeyUjRw (next below)]
In an opinion piece on the Austin Statesman, the editorial board once quipped that the politician "rarely met a fact he’s willing to support [ http://www.statesman.com/news/news/opinion/house-science-panel-sees-no-climate-change/nTrM2/ ]."
Stockman "seems to relish the role of provocateur [ http://www.salon.com/2013/03/21/steve_stockman_the_new_michele_bachmann/ ]," Salon's Alex Seitz-Wald notes, and he may even be positioning himself to become "a new Michele Bachmann — someone equally loved on the far right and loathed on the left."
Copyright © 2013 TheHuffingtonPost.com, Inc.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/03/22/steve-stockman-earth-oil-tweets-gop-congressman_n_2933964.html [with embedded video report "Steve Stockman Compares Obama To Saddam Hussein", and comments]
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Tom Coburn Amendment Limiting National Science Foundation Research Funding Passes Senate
By Mollie Reilly
Posted: 03/21/2013 1:06 am EDT | Updated: 03/21/2013 1:34 pm EDT
A measure limiting National Science Foundation funding for political science research projects passed the U.S. Senate on Wednesday, quietly dealing a blow to the government agency.
Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.) submitted a series of amendments to the Continuing Appropriations Act of 2013 [ http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/03/20/senate-passes-six-month-s_n_2917853.html ], the Senate bill to keep the government running past March 27. One of those amendments [ http://www.coburn.senate.gov/public//index.cfm?a=Files.Serve&File_id=eee8f9bb-6313-4c0b-a766-4b57cd7fa27b ] would prohibit the NSF from funding political science research unless a project is certified as "promoting national security or the economic interests of the United States."
"Studies of presidential executive power and Americans' attitudes toward the Senate filibuster hold little promise to save an American's life from a threatening condition or to advance America's competitiveness in the world," Coburn wrote in a letter [ http://www.coburn.senate.gov/public//index.cfm?a=Files.Serve&File_id=60c99a67-2f0d-4c83-9b3d-1d65225d6abb ] to NSF director Subra Suresh last week explaining his proposal.
Coburn's NSF amendment was approved by the Senate during a voice vote [ http://democrats.senate.gov/2013/03/20/amendments-to-h-r-933-the-continuing-appropriations-bill/ ] on Wednesday afternoon.
"I’m pleased the Senate accepted an amendment that restricts funding to low-priority political science grants," Coburn said in a statement following the vote. "There is no reason to spend $251,000 studying Americans' attitudes toward the U.S. Senate when citizens can figure that out for free."
NSF funding for such research has long been a target of Coburn's. The Republican offered a similar amendment [ http://www.coburn.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?a=Files.Serve&File_id=82180b1f-a03e-4600-a2e5-846640c2c880 ] in 2009, and in 2011 released an oversight report [ http://www.coburn.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/pressreleases?ContentRecord_id=8a114193-dcf7-4ae8-ae8b-146797e5c162 ] on the NSF's "mismanagement and misplaced priorities."
The passage of Coburn's amendment was met with backlash from members of the academic community, including the American Political Science Association.
"Adoption of this amendment is a gross intrusion into the widely-respected, independent scholarly agenda setting process at NSF that has supported our world-class national science enterprise for over sixty years," the association said [ http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/senate-delivers-a-devastating-blow-to-the-integrity-of-the-scientific-process-at-the-national-science-foundation-199221111.html ] in a statement. "The amendment creates an exceptionally dangerous slippery slope. While political science research is most immediately affected, at risk is any and all research in any and all disciplines funded by the NSF. The amendment makes all scientific research vulnerable to the whims of political pressure."
Copyright © 2013 TheHuffingtonPost.com, Inc.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/03/21/tom-coburn-national-science-foundation_n_2921081.html [with embedded video reports, and comments]
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Wayne State, University of Michigan Funding Could Be Cut By GOP After Right To Work Clash
03/20/2013
After two Michigan universities circumvented new anti-union laws [sic - acted before the new "right-to-work" law { http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/12/11/rick-snyder-right-to-work_n_2280050.html } goes into effect] to lock in new labor contracts, Republican legislators in the state House are striking back with a new move to slash state funding to both schools.
[...]
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/03/19/wayne-state-funding-michigan-right-to-work_n_2909185.html [with comments]
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Michigan Employee Unions Race to Beat Right-to-Work
Wayne State University in Detroit has negotiated an 8-year agreement with its faculty union. The move may cost the university $27.5 million in state funding.
March 21, 2013
http://www.pewstates.org/projects/stateline/headlines/michigan-employee-unions-race-to-beat-right-to-work-85899461823 [also at http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/03/21/michigan-right-to-work_n_2926951.html (with comments)]
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Tough Laws, Reduced Ranks Have Effect On Unions
Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder
(AP Photo/The Detroit News, Robin Buckson)
By SHARON COHEN
03/23/13 11:20 AM ET EDT
From a sprawling United Auto Workers hall outside Detroit, John Zimmick has seen factories close and grown men cry when their jobs disappear. Through all the economic uncertainties of life in auto country, there has been one constant: the union.
In its nearly 80-year history, Zimmick's UAW Local 174 has been tested by bitter strikes, foreign competition and tenacious opponents. Now comes a new reason for anxiety.
On Thursday, Michigan's right-to-work law takes effect, a stunning shift in this symbolic capital of organized labor. The historic change is just the latest sign of turmoil in the union movement that has seen its nationwide membership shrink to its lowest levels since at least the 1930s – a paltry 6.6 percent in the private sector.
With 14.4 million members, unions still can be a potent political force at the ballot box. But protests in recent years over the passage of right-to-work laws in Michigan and Indiana, clashes over collective bargaining in Wisconsin and Ohio and a sharp drop in union elections across the US have raised larger questions: Where do unions go from here? How they do mend their battered image? Can they recruit new members? And is organized labor even a movement any longer?
Zimmick looks for answers in a union hall steeped in history. It's filled with photos, meeting minutes and other memorabilia belonging to Local 174's first president, Walter Reuther – even a phone used by the legendary leader who transformed the UAW into an economic and political powerhouse. Modern-day realities are far different: With layoffs and some 30 plants closing in the last five years, the local's ranks have dropped by more than a third, to about 5,000.
There could be even more losses with right-to-work, signed into law last December by Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder. Though employees won't have to make mandatory payments to unions that represent them in collective bargaining agreements, Zimmick isn't expecting the measure to have a major impact. "It's going to weaken us," he says, "but it's not going to kill us."
Still, Zimmick worries not just about his local – but the fate of all unions.
"It weighs on me every single night before I go to bed," he says. "Unions don't have the leverage and power that we used to. It doesn't mean we won't regain it. The unions, in my opinion, will come roaring back. ... But the image is terrible right now. The media spins us as hurting business and the non-union workers – there's animosity and jealousy toward us."
Unions still have influence in blue-state strongholds, but the days are long gone when labor leaders were household names and generous contracts were virtually assured. Even in friendly terrain, there are both die-hard supporters and workers who've abandoned the movement.
John Consentino paid his first union dues at 18, following his father on the Ford assembly line in Ohio; now 39 years later, he credits the UAW with lifelong security. When friends who don't belong to unions tell him they're doing OK, he says he warns them: "Wait until the hiccup, when things aren't going fine. You're going to wish you had a union."
Don McGough lost his job as a union steelworker. He found a new position and a decade later, he voted no when the machinists' union tried to organize workers at his company, JWF Industries, in Pennsylvania. "There are so many companies that just closed their doors because the union wouldn't budge," he says.
So, are unions to blame for their dwindling numbers? Yes and no, according to Gary Chaison, an industrial relations professor at Clark University in Massachusetts. He says unions haven't been nimble dealing with globalization and an increasingly mobile workforce.
"I think there still is a labor movement," he says, "but it's having a very difficult time finding its relevancy. It's not sure what to do or how best to serve its members. ... They're sort of wallowing around without direction. They still have a power in their presence. They don't have a power in their mission."
But unions, he says, have been buffeted by forces beyond their control: Improved productivity and technology have reduced the number of workers needed. Non-union employers have expanded in right-to-work-states. Companies have waged aggressive, successful campaigns to keep unions out. Plant closings make it almost impossible to replenish the number of union members lost.
Also, potential recruits are wary. "For most workers, joining a union is a risky deal and it has very little payback," Chaison says. "Most unions have not put their hearts and treasuries into organizing. It's so difficult and the payoff is minimal."
Zimmick knows firsthand. His local tried to organize workers at an auto supplier two years ago. The company, he says, responded by giving employees raises. "They said, `Don't talk to those union guys. We're going to take care of you.'" The campaign didn't get to the vote stage.
The number of elections to certify unions has dropped dramatically. In fiscal year 2012, there were about 1,200 with more than 83,000 eligible voters, according to the National Labor Relations Board. In 1971, there were more than 7,500 with nearly 550,000 eligible voters.
The silver lining for union organizers: Approval rates have been near or above 60 percent since 2006. In contrast, they were just half in 1990. In the heyday of unions in 1950, though, three of four workers voting wanted to sign on.
Union membership declined to 11.3 percent of the workforce last year from 11.8 percent in 2011, according to federal statistics. Especially notable was a loss in the private sector, even as the economy created 1.8 million jobs.
"I chuckle every time I hear the words Big Labor_ 6.6 percent is not big," says Jefferson Cowie, a Cornell University labor historian, referring to the share of private-sector workers in unions.
And yet, unions still have considerable muscle, capable of raising tens of millions of dollars for political campaigns – largely for Democrats – and getting out the vote. Last fall, the AFL-CIO announced it had registered more than 450,000 new voters from union households in the previous 18 months.
The union vote was considered critical to President Barack Obama's victory in states such as Ohio.
While unions representing U.S. manufacturing might – auto and steel – have become smaller, the emphasis in recruiting new members has shifted to the service sector.
The Service Employees International Union, which represents nurses and lower-wage service employees including janitors, security, hospital, home health and child care workers, has doubled in size since 1996, to 2.1 million workers. It says it has added 50,000 workers annually in the last decade.
The union recently organized about 3,000 security officers in Philadelphia commercial office buildings, hospitals and universities, winning a three-year contract that provides salary increases, health care for full-time workers and sick days.
Kevin Upshaw, a 46-year-old Army veteran and security officer at the University of Pennsylvania, says the contract will eventually boost his hourly wage from about $13 to about $15. Just an importantly, he says it'll also reduce medical expenses for his asthmatic wife, which have cost them about $11,000 over the past three years. "That's taking a big load off our shoulders," he says.
"The union gives us a lot more stability," Upshaw says. "It's making this job a career and it's taking us out of poverty."
Upshaw says he had some doubts at first about unions, but the more he heard, the more he liked. "Some people think they're only out to take our money," he says. "But like anything in life, you've got to pay for any service that's provided."
Gabe Morgan, president of the SEIU Pennsylvania State Council, says the yearlong campaign succeeded because it wasn't directed at a single company and workers had a common purpose.
"You have folks who live in the same neighborhoods, who may or may not know each other, doing the same job at different places," he says. "That kind of gives each other the strength to persevere. ... Ironically, it also made the employers more comfortable. It was easier for them to agree to something when they know their competitor was doing the same thing. No one was individually at risk."
Morgan also says the union label still is appealing in working-class communities where organized labor already has a foothold.
"If you're a low-wage worker living on the north side of Philadelphia or the West Side of Chicago, the only person who owns a house or has a lawn mower ... the only person making a decent living is someone with a union job," he says.
Though some unions have been forced to make concessions to save jobs in recent years, wages still can be very attractive.
Michael Bronson, who's starting an apprenticeship next month at Ironworkers Local 55 in northwest Ohio, expects to someday nearly triple the salary he's earned as an auto mechanic.
"For 10 years, I thought it was as good as it was going to get," says the 28-year-old Bronson. "I was just settling for whatever was offered. I was making $11 an hour and I had no health benefits. That was my future. ... You're expendable. They can pick up another guy at $8.50 and fire you."
Bronson began looking for a union job after noticing his in-laws – including a pipefitter – didn't share his financial pressures. "I knew they didn't live like I did, paycheck to paycheck, wondering what's going to happen next month," he says. "That's what persuaded me."
When he completes a four-year apprenticeship, Bronson expects an hourly wage of about $30. "Middle class to me is heaven," he says. "I've been $10,000 below poverty the last 10 years."
Six months ago, Bronson knew nothing about unions. Now he's a convert.
"It's kind of like a religion," he says. "Once you realize what a good union can do for you, you'll live it the rest of your life and you'll push it on everybody."
That attitude isn't universally shared. Approval of unions hovered around 60 percent through 2008, but it's now 52 percent, according to a 2012 Gallup poll. There's great political disparity: The favorability rate among Democrats is 74 percent; among Republicans, it's 31 percent.
Gallup also found slightly more than half those surveyed predict unions will become weaker, with only about one in five thinking they'll be stronger in the future.
Nowadays, fewer people have family roots in organized labor, and that colors the perception of unions. "The image goes back and forth between non-existent and the boogeyman," says Cowie, the Cornell historian.
The image in recent years has been shaped by skirmishes in the public arena, where union membership is nearly 36 percent. Massive protests in two industrial Midwest states in 2011 ended with opposite results.
In Ohio, voters overwhelmingly rejected a sweeping law that placed restrictions on public employee unions – a huge victory for labor. But in Wisconsin, the GOP-controlled Legislature approved Gov. Scott Walker's proposal that effectively ended collective bargaining for most public workers – a move that sparked an unsuccessful gubernatorial recall.
The Wisconsin law may have long-term ramifications. The number of unionized public workers there fell by about 48,000 in 2012 – about a quarter of the total, according to an analysis by Barry Hirsch, a labor economist at Georgia State University.
That suggests the incentive for being in one of those unions is now much weaker, Hirsch says, but it's too early to tell if that will be a trend.
Meanwhile, organized labor is fighting to extend its reach in the private sector, including in the South, generally hostile turf for unions.
The UAW has lost two bids to organize workers at the Nissan Motor Co. auto plant in Smyrna, Tenn. The union is now trying to get the Japanese automaker to allow it in the plant to make its case to workers in Canton, Miss.
Black ministers, college students, the NAACP and political leaders, with an assist from actor Danny Glover, have formed an alliance, staging press conferences, holding rallies and making TV appearances, casting the campaign as a civil rights battle.
Everlyn Cage, a Nissan worker, wants UAW representation. "A union," she says, "would help us have a voice at the plant. It would help us sit down and negotiate our safety."
Cage says Nissan has used "fear tactics," including roundtables with company officials suggesting the plant will close if workers unionize. Similar complaints have come from some Smyrna workers. Many colleagues, she says, tell her they'd support a union "but they don't want to come out publicly. They say, `We have families and children and we need our jobs.'"
Nissan says accusations of intimidation are "simply false." It also notes the company didn't lay off any U.S. workers during the recession when demand dropped and workers shifted to non-production jobs without getting pay cuts.
Kimberly Ragsdale, a Nissan worker in Canton, says her job helped finance two of her kids' college educations – something that would have been impossible in her previous $10-an-hour position driving a forklift.
She thinks unions are pointless. "Why," she asks, "would you pay somebody to talk for you when you have the freedom to voice your own opinion?"
Her message for union supporters: "If they're not satisfied with Nissan, they should leave and leave us alone. If it was that bad here, why have you been here all these years?"
It's no surprise the UAW faces an uphill battle in red-state Mississippi, where unions represent a small fraction of workers.
But last fall in Pennsylvania, workers at JWF Industries, a metal manufacturer for the defense, oil and gas industries in Johnstown, voted 194-38 against joining the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers.
Bill Polacek, company CEO and son of a union steelworker, appealed to his workers, saying he could point in every direction to unionized companies that were vacant or torn down. "If the union can promise you job security, why are all these companies not here anymore?" he says he told them. "A union can't promise you anything. All they can do is promise you union dues."
Still, he insists he's not anti-union.
"I think they have a purpose," he says. "There are companies that don't treat their employees right." But in his case, he adds:, "If the union had come in, it would have been a failure on my part. I wouldn't have been doing the right thing."
Don McGough, an 11-year veteran at JWF, rejected the machinists' bid. A former member of the steelworkers union, he lost his job at a machine shop when staff was cut after a 15-week strike.
That experience, he says, taught him a lesson about union leaders and negotiators. "They're worried about themselves," he says. "They're not worried about us. ... You're really putting your future in the hands of people you don't really know, compared to here. I know the owner really well and trust him."
In Michigan, Zimmick, the UAW man, says if unions don't like their leaders, they can vote them out. He says he knows his members and they aren't happy when he has to deliver painful messages about concessions or higher health care costs, but are pretty accepting.
Now the union faces new pressures with right-to-work, but he says it's a temporary setback. He expects the law will be a major issue in the state's 2014 elections – and his side will rebound.
"Unions will come back," he says. "I don't know when, but they will. They're here for a reason."
Copyright 2013 The Associated Press
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/03/23/union-laws_n_2940184.html [with comments]
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Jeff Sessions: Americans 'Die Sooner' But Have Best Health Care In World
By Michael McAuliff
Posted: 03/21/2013 11:38 am EDT | Updated: 03/21/2013 12:31 pm EDT
Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.) charged Thursday that Obamacare is destroying the "greatest health care system the world has ever known" and that it was "horrible" for anyone to suggest Americans receive anything less than the best care, even though they die younger on average than people in many other countries.
"This is just one example of what happens in this country when people in Washington take on the arrogant view that they know how to fix the health care system -- one of the most massive, complex, marvelous systems the world has ever known," Sessions said on the Senate floor.
Then the senator took issue with the suggestion that the medical system should share the blame for the fact that Americans are not exactly the healthiest people in the world.
"That is one of the most horrible things I've ever heard, really, around here," Sessions said. "So we've got people that die sooner than some other countries. Well, we have a lot of things. We have more obesity, more smoking, less people taking care of themselves sometimes," he continued, going on to cite high murder rates, car crash deaths and generally unhealthy lifestyles.
"That doesn't mean our health care is not the best in the world. All of us have seen that," he said.
Sessions did not mention the provisions of the Affordable Care Act that seek to improve preventive care and encourage healthier lifestyles. Republicans have repeatedly tried to cut those measures [ http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/04/27/student-loan-bill-passes-house_n_1459347.html ], as have some Democrats.
Copyright © 2013 TheHuffingtonPost.com, Inc.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/03/21/jeff-sessions-health-care_n_2924202.html [with embedded video, embedded slideshow "Lies And Distortions Of The Health Care Reform Debate", and comments]
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Uninsured Americans 2012: More Than 45 Million Lacked Health Insurance Last Year, CDC Reports
An uninsured family awaits a free clinic in Bristol, Tenn., in April 2012. During the first nine months of last year, more than 45 million U.S. residents lacked health insurance, according to the Centers For Disease Control and Prevention.
(Mario Tama/Getty Images)
By Jeffrey Young
Posted: 03/21/2013 12:01 am EDT | Updated: 03/21/2013 9:05 am EDT
More than 45 million U.S. residents didn't have health insurance during the first nine months of last year, according to survey findings released Thursday by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention [ http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/pressroom/INS_Jan-Sept_13.pdf ]. Even more people, 57.5 million, were uninsured for at least part of the 12 months before being polled.
Source: Centers for Disease Control and Prevention [ http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/pressroom/INS_Jan-Sept_13.pdf ]
The overall uninsured rate declined slightly from 2011, according to the CDC, which polled 80,618 people between January and September of last year. Just 6.6 percent of children lacked health insurance at the time of the survey, compared to 20.8 percent of adults aged 18 to 64. Virtually everyone 65 and older is covered by Medicare.
Source: Centers for Disease Control and Prevention [ http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/pressroom/INS_Jan-Sept_13.pdf ]
In addition to determining whether a person was uninsured at the time they were interviewed or at any point during the prior 12 months, the CDC also found that 33.8 million people had been uninsured for more than a year.
Source: Centers for Disease Control and Prevention [ http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/pressroom/INS_Jan-Sept_13.pdf ]
Not surprisingly, people with lower incomes were more likely to be uninsured. Forty-one percent of people with incomes below the poverty level -- which was $11,170 for a single person last year -- and 39 percent of those earning between the poverty level and twice that amount had no health insurance at the time they were interviewed, compared to 11.4 percent of people with higher incomes.
Source: Centers for Disease Control and Prevention [ http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/pressroom/INS_Jan-Sept_13.pdf ]
President Barack Obama's health care reform law aims to extend health insurance coverage to a large portion of the uninsured. According to the Congressional Budget Office, health care reform will reduce the number of uninsured people by 27 million [ http://cbo.gov/publication/43900 ] between next year and 2023.
Obamacare targets its assistance to the poor and near-poor who are least likely to have health care coverage. The law will provide Medicaid coverage [ http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jeffrey-young/medicaid-eligibility-stay_b_2529434.html ] to those with incomes up to 133 percent of the poverty level ($15,282 for a single person this year) -- unless they live in a state that opts out of the Medicaid expansion [ http://www.advisory.com/medicaidmap ]. People who earn between the poverty level and four times that amount will be eligible for tax credits for private health insurance [ http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/11/15/health-insurance-exchanges_n_2138576.html ].
Copyright © 2013 TheHuffingtonPost.com, Inc.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/03/21/uninsured-americans-2012_n_2918705.html [with comments]
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Burgers, Fries and Lies
By TIMOTHY EGAN
March 21, 2013, 9:00 pm
The old adage — what will not kill you makes you only stronger — certainly doesn’t apply to a bacon cheeseburger from Five Guys Burgers and Fries. This tasty gut bomb delivers two days’ worth of saturated fat and nearly 1,000 calories, a la carte. I hacked my way through one of these heart-stoppers the other day, and though I still have a pulse, it stayed with me in ways that would not please any doctor.
Immersion journalism was called for after a Five Guys franchise owner, Mike Ruffer, complained last week about the new law requiring him to offer his employees health care next year. At first, he thought Obamacare’s mandate wouldn’t apply to him.
“I was fat, dumb and happy,” said Ruffer, who employs 147 people at his eight burger outlets in the Raleigh-Durham, N.C., area. “I’m not happy anymore.” I will take him at his word on the dumb part.
As for the rest, here’s a guy selling something that is a leading contributor to the major health breakdowns in America, a product that may ultimately hasten an early death. He won’t offer insurance to the poorly paid workers who make said time bombs. But now that he’s forced to, and plans to raise prices to cover the care, he thinks this is an awful thing.
And Five Guys is not exactly struggling. It is the fastest growing restaurant chain in our fast food nation, with revenue projected to pass $1 billion this year.
In the burger master’s view, the government is forcing him to “pass on the costs to customers,” he said. But he already passes on considerable costs to customers who may never sniff a Five Guys fry. Because he doesn’t give his employees health care, they show up as charity cases at the hospital emergency room when something goes wrong. Last year, the uninsured cost the system $39.3 billion. Guess whom the expenses are passed on to?
A cheeseburger from a Five Guys restaurant.
Yuri Gripas/Reuters
This argument — trying to shame those who don’t pay for health insurance and who force those who do to pick up their costs — was originally made by the conservative Heritage Foundation. The mandate was the basis of Mitt Romney’s successful health care overhaul in Massachusetts and is the basis for President Obama’s Affordable Care Act.
But now that the Heritage Foundation has turned against its policy progeny, it needs to flip the debate. So, Mike Ruffer was brought in as the star witness at a Heritage forum designed to show just how egregious it is that businesses will have to provide health care for their employees, or pay a fine. Right wing media — Drudge, Breitbart, Fox — played their part, sounding alarms over a cheeseburger that may cost an additional quarter.
But what the Heritage histrionics unintentionally showed was everything that is absurd, wrong and darkly humorous about the American approach to diet and health care economics.
Consider the business. Five Guys is a great success story. Started in the Washington, D.C., metro area by the family of Jerry Murrell in 1986, it has since expanded to more than 1,000 locations. The family stake in the company is worth about $375 million, according to Forbes. Even President Obama has made a pit stop at the Zagat-rated burger shack. Without doubt, the burgers and fries are addictive.
But they are not necessarily good for you. The Center for Science in the Public Interest placed Five Guys’ bacon cheeseburger on its 2010 list of the most unhealthy meals in America. With fries and soda, that single meal runs to about 2,500 calories.
Heart disease kills more than 600,000 Americans every year and is the leading cause of death. Excess weight, and diets heavy high in saturated fat, have long been identified as high risk factors for heart disease.
And sure, not everyone who consumes double cheeseburgers on a regular basis is going to have life-threatening health troubles. But there’s plenty of evidence to suggest that they will. (Last month, John Alleman, a man who scoffed at the warnings about his favorite restaurant, the Heart Attack Grill in Las Vegas, died of a heart attack. He was 52.)
“There’s a part of me that would love to offer health care to my employees,” said Ruffer, who is just one franchise owner and doesn’t speak for the entire chain. What he will have to give up to comply with the new law, he said, is about $60,000 a year in profits. But if you weigh that figure against the price of coronary heart disease, which costs the United States $109 billion a year in care, medication and lost productivity, it’s a pittance.
And in fact, after Ruffer went public with his whining, other Five Guys franchisees said they would work with the new law and offer insurance while still expanding their businesses. They shrugged off the fuss.
But the stage managers at the Heritage Foundation, and their acolytes in Congress, would have us believe that asking a business like Five Guys Burgers and Fries to pay for a small part of the problem that they helped to create makes them a victim. Gulp.
© 2013 The New York Times Company
http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/03/21/burgers-fries-and-lies/ [with comments]
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Jan Brewer Medicaid Expansion Draws 'Judas' Comparison From Republican
By Mollie Reilly
Posted: 03/21/2013 9:35 am EDT | Updated: 03/21/2013 2:13 pm EDT
A hearing on Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer's (R) plan to expand Medicaid grew heated on Wednesday when a GOP county chairman lashed out at the governor and accused her of betraying the Republican Party.
The Arizona Republic [ http://www.azcentral.com/news/politics/articles/20130320arizona-medicaid-expansion-hearing.html ] reports that Maricopa County GOP Chairman A.J. LaFaro took a harsh jab at Brewer during his testimony at an informational Arizona House Appropriations Committee hearing on the health care proposal.
"Jesus had Judas. Republicans have Governor Brewer," LaFaro said before leaving the podium.
LaFaro immediately drew criticism from Brewer's camp.
"Obviously, his statement was irrational and unhinged," spokesman Matthew Benson told the Republic. "But if that's who opponents of the governor's plan want to have as their spokesperson, I say, 'Fantastic.'"
Benson told the Arizona Daily Star [ http://azstarnet.com/news/science/health-med-fit/brewer-called-a-judas-on-health/article_be2494c5-6fbe-5f2c-875b-98761fffee44.html ] that Brewer herself would not respond to LaFaro's remarks.
"There's nothing I could say that could diminish his credibility any more than he already has," Benson said.
In January, Brewer announced [ http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/01/14/arizona-medicaid-expansion_n_2474726.html ] her plan to participate in the Medicaid expansion, a key component of President Barack Obama's health care reform law.
"Try as we might, the law was upheld by the United States Supreme Court," Brewer said of her decision. "The Affordable Care Act is not going anywhere, at least not for the time being."
Brewer was the third Republican governor to agree to accept the Medicaid funds, and several others have followed suit in recent weeks. However, her decision has drawn immense criticism [ http://www.azcentral.com/news/politics/articles/20130308brewer-medicaid-push-widens-arizona-gop-rift.html ] from Arizona conservatives. LaFaro, a Tea Party [ http://www.maricopagop.org/lafaro-announces-gop-county-chairman-candidacy/ ] member elected as chairman earlier this year, has been one of Brewer's most outspoken critics.
“If you’re a Republican, then act like a Republican," LaFaro said [ ] earlier this month. "I have serious concerns about individuals who will side with the Democrats.”
Wednesday's committee hearing, a four-hour [ http://www.azcentral.com/news/politics/articles/20130320arizona-medicaid-expansion-hearing.html ] affair, marked the first public consideration of Brewer's proposal. No vote [ http://azstarnet.com/news/science/health-med-fit/brewer-called-a-judas-on-health/article_be2494c5-6fbe-5f2c-875b-98761fffee44.html ] was taken, but the measure is expected to face significant challenges in the state legislature.
Copyright © 2013 TheHuffingtonPost.com, Inc.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/03/21/jan-brewer-medicaid_n_2923348.html [with embedded video reports, and comments]
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The Man Who Could Turn Texas Blue: Rick Perry
Digging a hole? Rick Perry
(AP Photo/Eric Gay, File)
By opposing Medicaid expansion, the governor could hurt the GOP in a must-win state.
By Ronald Brownstein
March 21, 2013 | 5:55 p.m.
Updated: March 21, 2013 | 5:58 p.m.
AUSTIN, Texas—Big in all things, Texas leads the nation in failing to provide health insurance. About one in four Texans are uninsured, the highest percentage in any state. That’s some 6 million people, the total population of Missouri.
Yet Gov. Rick Perry, back from his stumbles in the 2012 GOP presidential race, has insisted that Texas will not accept the federal money provided by President Obama’s health care law to expand Medicaid coverage. As Republican governors from Arizona to New Jersey have joined the program, Perry has amplified his opposition. In a bristling speech to conservatives last week, he said governors who accepted the money had “folded in the face of federal bribery.”
In no state does the decision to expand present such profound political and policy issues as in Texas. Whatever Perry decides, many Texans will benefit from the subsidies in the 2010 law that help the uninsured in lower-to-middle-income families purchase private insurance on health care exchanges. Perry has also refused to establish such an exchange, but the law allows Washington to step in, and Texans who qualify will receive those dollars. Rice University demographers Steve Murdock and Michael Cline recently projected those exchanges will cover up to 1.7 million of the state’s uninsured.
The law’s other mechanism for increasing coverage is to broaden Medicaid eligibility for adults near poverty, but Washington can’t mandate this expansion if states refuse it. Murdock and Cline project that another 1.5 million to 2 million Texans would receive coverage if the state participated. Because the law commits Washington to initially paying the expansion’s entire cost, and an elevated share thereafter, local analysts estimate that if Texas expands, it will receive $100 billion in federal dollars over the next decade, while committing only about $15 billion of its own.
The state medical establishment, reluctant to cross the governor too publicly, has been restrained in pressing for expansion. But Republican state Rep. John Zerwas, a health care leader who represents a district outside Houston, says legislators are getting an earful at home from providers and local officials worried about the state rejecting the money.
Against that backdrop, Zerwas and some GOP state House colleagues are searching for ways to steer Texas into the expansion. They assume the state will not move more people into the existing Medicaid program. But they consider it misguided to simply reject the federal money and deny insurance coverage to so many people who could obtain it. “We are not going to make this better … without doing something that substantially reforms how we deliver Medicaid,” Zerwas says. However, “we have to have a solution for this group of people.”
Last week, Zerwas introduced legislation that would authorize state health officials to negotiate with the Obama administration to expand while delivering coverage for the newly eligible through new means. He likes the deal the administration is discussing with Arkansas, which could allow the state to use Medicaid expansion dollars to instead buy private insurance for its eligible adults, and he believes that approach could be “sellable to the governor.”
Key state Senate Republicans, though, are striking a harder line. Senate Finance Committee Chairman Tommy Williams says he will support enlarging Medicaid only if Obama allows Texas to transform the way it delivers Medicaid, not only to the expansion population but also to the current recipients. “The existing program is not sustainable,” Williams says.
That’s a hardball position, but not necessarily disqualifying: The administration has reached an agreement in principle with Florida, for instance, to move more Medicaid recipients into private managed care. Many here, though, wonder if Perry would take any deal. The widespread belief is that he intends to seek the GOP presidential nomination again in 2016, and accepting more Medicaid money would smudge his image of Alamo-like resistance to Obama.
Rejecting the federal money might not pose an immediate political threat to Texas Republicans, whose coalition revolves around white voters responsive to small-government arguments. But renouncing the money represents an enormous gamble for Republicans with the growing Hispanic community, which is expected to approach one-third of the state’s eligible voters in 2016. Hispanics would benefit most from expansion because they constitute 60 percent of the state’s uninsured. A jaw-dropping 3.6 million Texas Hispanics lack insurance.
Texas Democrats are too weak to much affect the Medicaid debate. But if state Republicans reject federal money that could insure 1 million or more Hispanics, they could provide Democrats with an unprecedented opportunity to energize those voters—the key to the party’s long-term revival. With rejection, says Democratic state Rep. Rafael Anchia of Dallas, Republicans “would dig themselves into an even deeper hole with the Hispanic community.”
In 1994, California Republican Gov. Pete Wilson mobilized his base by promoting Proposition 187, a ballot initiative to deny services to illegal immigrants. He won reelection that year—and then lost the war as Hispanics stampeded from the GOP and helped turn the state lastingly Democratic. Texas Republicans wouldn’t be threatened as quickly, but they may someday judge their impending decision on expanding Medicaid as a similar turning point.
Copyright © 2013 by National Journal Group Inc.
http://www.nationaljournal.com/columns/political-connections/the-man-who-could-turn-texas-blue-rick-perry-20130321 [with comments]
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Unfair Punishments
March 16, 2013
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/17/opinion/sunday/unfair-punishments-of-ex-offenders.html
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Why Tea Partiers Are Boycotting Fox News
First it was the ‘left’ turn after the election, then Benghazi coverup accusations. Activists have a list of demands for the conservative network, which some say is ‘not as fair and balanced as I thought.’
Mar 23, 2013
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2013/03/23/why-tea-partiers-are-boycotting-fox-news.html [with comments]
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Peter King Blabs Jordan Secret In Capture Of Bin Laden Son-In-Law
03/22/2013
WASHINGTON -- Rep. Peter King's (R-N.Y.) public thanks to Jordan this month for helping capture Osama bin Laden's son-in-law has upset a delicate U.S. government agreement to keep Jordan's role in the operation secret, U.S. officials told The Huffington Post.
[...]
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/03/22/peter-king-jordan-bin-laden-son-in-law_n_2927305.html [with embedded video report, and comments]
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Lessons in how to hate from experts: Nazis, Klan speak at schools
Ohio high school students taking the “U.S. Political Thought and Radicalism” class have had members of the Westboro Baptist Church [ http://www.washingtontimes.com/topics/baptist/ ], an ardently anti-gay church known for its protests, as guest speakers.
March 18, 2013
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2013/mar/18/lessons-in-how-to-hate-from-experts/ [ http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2013/mar/18/lessons-in-how-to-hate-from-experts/?page=all ] [with comments]
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Tom Tancredo Bashes Rand Paul For Immigration Stance, Sticks To 'Self-Deport' Strategy
Former Rep. Tom Tancredo (R-Colo.) says Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) is supporting "amnesty."
(AP Photo/Ed Andrieski, File)
By Elise Foley
Posted: 03/22/2013 5:45 pm EDT | Updated: 03/22/2013 6:09 pm EDT
Former Rep. Tom Tancredo (R-Colo.), who has devoted much of his career to advocating for stricter immigration enforcement, disavowed Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) on Friday for supporting reform -- and for speaking Spanish when he did so.
"Rand Paul began his speech in Spanish and it went downhill from there," he wrote in an op-ed titled "Why I No Longer Stand with Rand Paul" for The Christian Post [ http://www.christianpost.com/news/why-i-no-longer-stand-with-rand-paul-92423/ ]. "His speech was filled with virtually every single discredited pro-amnesty cliché you could imagine."
Paul gave a speech [ http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/03/19/rand-paul-pathway-to-citizenship_n_2906587.html ] to the U.S. Hispanic Chamber of Commerce on Tuesday outlining his plan for immigration reform, which would include allowing undocumented immigrants to remain in the United States, work legally, and eventually become citizens. He also called for increased border enforcement and has rejected the claims [ http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/03/19/rand-paul-pathway-to-citizenship_n_2909800.html ] that his proposal should be considered "amnesty" or even a "pathway to citizenship."
Tancredo, though, was quick to apply that label and said he no longer supports Paul, despite previously endorsing him. He argued that Paul was wrong to imply that the two options are either legalization or deporting the entire undocumented population.
"The problem is that not one congressman or major commentator has called for deporting all 12 million illegal immigrants," he wrote. "Rather, we argue that strict enforcement of employer sanctions and allowing local police to cooperate in immigration enforcement will encourage most illegals to, in Mitt Romney's words, 'self-deport.'"
Of course, the "self-deport" strategy [ http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/01/24/mitt-romney-florida-gop-debate-self-deportation_n_1227129.html ] didn't work well for Romney, the failed 2012 GOP presidential nominee whose rhetoric on immigration is considered part of the reason for his dismal showing [ http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/11/07/latino-voters-election-2012_n_2085922.html ] among Latino voters. Most Republicans, including the Republican National Committee [ http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/03/18/gop-immigration-reform_n_2899736.html ] as a whole, have rejected the "self-deport" language and other statements that they believe alienated Latinos.
Tancredo said it could be people like Paul who are alienating Latinos.
"Rand Paul said that the only reason why the GOP is losing the Hispanic vote is because we have turned them off with 'harsh rhetoric over immigration,'" Tancredo wrote. "Paul doesn't give a single example of what that 'harsh rhetoric' was. Presumably it could have included his pre-flip flop position on immigration."
Latinos are likely to be supportive of the senator's shift: Polling consistently shows that most Latino voters support comprehensive immigration reform [ http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/03/18/latino-voters-poll_n_2901863.html ] that includes a path to citizenship for undocumented immigrants.
Tancredo left Congress in 2009, after failing in his efforts to establish English as the official national language and to put a moratorium on almost all legal immigration until the undocumented population significantly decreased. He made a failed bid for the Republican presidential nomination in 2008, when he focused largely on the issue of immigration and ran an ad in Iowa [ http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,311279,00.html ] graphically depicting a terrorist attack that he said could happen because of the country's immigration policies.
Since then, he has continued to be a harsh critic of immigration enforcement efforts -- including Arizona's contested SB 1070 law [ http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/04/26/tom-tancredo-arizona-immi_n_552441.html ] -- and has vowed this year to do what he can to advocate against comprehensive reform packages being shaped in Congress.
Tancredo has been similarly disappointed with an immigration reform framework put forward by the so-called "gang of eight" in the Senate. The group proposes that undocumented immigrants be legalized, then allowed to obtain green cards and eventual citizenship once certain border security requirements are met.
"[W]hat they offered represents the worst from both parties," he wrote of the group in a January Townhall op-ed [ http://townhall.com/columnists/tomtancredo/2013/01/29/the-gang-of-8-proposal-is-akin-to-amnesty-n1500280/page/full/ ]. "The comprehensive immigration reform they offer reflects the tired scheme of amnesty and massive increases to legal immigration in exchange for vague promises of enforcement."
Copyright © 2013 TheHuffingtonPost.com, Inc.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/03/22/tom-tancredo-rand-paul-immigration_n_2935485.html [with comments]
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Ted Cruz Responds To Birther Concerns Floated By Sean Hannity
By Nick Abrams
Posted: 03/19/2013 6:04 pm EDT | Updated: 03/20/2013 1:11 am EDT
Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) wants to be clear: Although he was born in Canada, he is a U.S. citizen.
Speaking Monday night on Fox News' "Hannity [ http://www.foxnews.com/on-air/hannity/index.html ]", Cruz gave some insight into his recent keynote speech [ http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/sen-ted-cruz-delivers-cpac-keynote-address/2013/03/17/fe084e56-8f63-11e2-bdea-e32ad90da239_video.html ] at the Conservative Political Action Conference and short time in the Senate so far. Towards the end of the interview, however, host Sean Hannity pointed out that recent buzz around the tea party favorite has gained Cruz some attention as a possible presidential nominee.
"Are you eligible to run for president? You were born in Canada," Hannity asked.
Cruz attempted to downplay the question and turned to his work "defending the Constitution" in the Senate.
But Hannity went on to note that while while Cruz was born in Canada to a Cuban father, Cruz's mother was a U.S. citizen, which led Cruz to agree that he was, in fact, a U.S. "citizen by birth."
Cruz was born in Calgary, Canada. His camp has responded to prior questions about his birthplace and presidential eligibility by stating [ http://washingtonexaminer.com/spokesman-senator-cruz-is-a-u.s.-citizen-by-birth/article/2523832 ] that his mother's citizenship makes him a "U.S. citizen by birth."
Under the Constitution [ http://www.usconstitution.net/consttop_citi.html ], eligibility for holding the office of the president requires the candidate to be a "natural-born" citizen. While the term is not defined concretely, birther conspiracy theorists have long insisted that President Barack Obama isn't eligible to be president because of their belief that he was born in Kenya, a claim they've argued would disqualify him regardless of his mother's U.S. citizenship. While Obama was in fact born in Hawaii, it appears that Cruz could be susceptible to the same kind of scrutiny that Obama has faced if he decides to run for president.
Hannity predicted that Democrats might use Cruz's Canadian birthplace against him in the future, saying that he heard "birther cries building on the left."
Copyright © 2013 TheHuffingtonPost.com, Inc.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/03/19/ted-cruz-birther_n_2909774.html [with embedded video, and comments]
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Secrets of the right-wing conspiracy playbook
The debate over immigration and the border is a classic example of how the extreme right manipulates real issues
Mar 23, 2013
http://www.salon.com/2013/03/23/secrets_of_the_right_wing_conspiracy_playbook/ [with comments]
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Arkansas Voter ID Bill Approved By State Senate, Headed To Mike Beebe's Desk
03/19/2013
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/03/19/arkansas-voter-id-bill_n_2911885.html [with embedded video report, embedded slideshow, and comments]
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Man accused of slapping toddler on Delta flight pleads not guilty
By Alexis Stevens
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Posted: 3:35 p.m. Wednesday, March 20, 2013
Updated: 6:53 p.m. Wednesday, March 20, 2013
The man accused of slapping a toddler on a Delta Air Lines flight to Atlanta in February pleaded not guilty Wednesday in federal court.
But Joe Rickey Hundley’s attorney admitted the 60-year-old made a racial statement to the mother of the toddler, who was crying during the flight.
Hundley, of Hayden, Idaho, was arrested following the alleged incident and charged with simple assault, a misdemeanor. He was later released after posting $10,000 bond.
The toddler’s mother, Jessica Bennett, told investigators Hundley told her to “to shut that (racial slur) baby up” before he slapped the 19-month-old on the face.
Hundley was sitting next to Bennett, of Minneapolis, when her son, Jonah, began crying from the change in cabin pressure, Bennett told FBI Special Agent Daron Cheney in Atlanta in a Feb. 12 federal affidavit four days after the incident. The incident allegedly happened as Flight 721 from Minneapolis to Atlanta headed for Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport on Feb. 8.
Delta spokesman Morgan Durrant previously told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution that flight attendants separated the passengers after the incident and the crew arranged for law enforcement to meet the flight when it landed.
Hundley was on his way to Atlanta to take his only child off life support after his son had overdosed on insulin, Hundley’s attorney, Marcia Shein, said following Wednesday’s hearing. Shein said Hundley had been awake 24 hours straight prior to the altercation on the plane and that his son died days later.
“He was grieving and very upset,” she said. “That’s why we’re going to trial.”
Hundley has admitted to making the racial slur, she said. Shein said Hundley is hopeful that Bennett and others can forgive his statements made aboard the plane.
Hundley, former president of Unitech Composites and Structures, was fired by his company’s parent company following news of the allegations.
If convicted of hitting the toddler, Hundley could face up to one year in prison and be ordered to pay a $100,000 fine.
His next court appearance is scheduled for April 9 and a tentative trial date was set for May 13.
© 2013 Cox Media Group
http://www.ajc.com/news/news/man-accused-of-slapping-child-on-delta-flight-expe/nWyTT/
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Massachusetts Sheriff Makes Funny Comedy Joke About How Obama Should Get Shot, Why Don’t You People Have A Sense Of Humor?
by Doktor Zoom
1:14 pm March 19, 2013
We’ve decided that there’s only one thing more difficult than coming up with a funny joke about assassinating the president, and that is coming up with a creative lede for a story about the latest small-time GOP bigot to make a stupid joke about assassinating the president. It’s all been done, even the meta stuff, and now here comes Plymouth County Sheriff Joseph D. McDonald, Jr., who tried out his comedy chops at a Massachusetts Republican Party St. Patrick’s Day breakfast this weekend with a hilarious joke [ http://thinkprogress.org/justice/2013/03/18/1738531/massachusetts-sheriff-jokes-that-president-obama-should-be-shot/ ] about how America would be a better place if Barack Obama had a bullet in his head:
McDonald offered a joke about Barack Obama being visited in a dream by three past presidents, who offered advice on how to improve the country. Lincoln’s advice: “Go to the theater.”
The joke was reportedly met with “scattered laughter.”
For the sake of distinguishing him from the guy who brought us the Fish Cheer [ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ScxI94XDdtY (next below)],
We get it, Republicans, you really don’t like Barack Obama and the fastest way to get a different President would be to blow his brains out. We know it’s just a fantasy, because you would not actually love President Joe Biden all that much either. But for some reason the PC Police just can’t take a good old kneeslapper like a lawman saying it would be funny to murder the president of the US. Fucking liberals, never understanding a joke [ http://wonkette.com/406562/406562 ].
©2013 Wonkette Media LLC
http://wonkette.com/507179/massachusetts-sheriff-makes-funny-comedy-joke-about-how-obama-should-get-shot-why-dont-you-people-have-a-sense-of-humor [with comments]
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Assassination ‘Joke’ Sheriff Doubles Down, Compares Critics To Nazis
Plymouth County, MA Sheriff Joe McDonald (R)
Mar 19, 2013
A day after ThinkProgress and others reported that Joseph D. McDonald, Jr. (R), Sheriff of Plymouth County, Massachusetts, told a “joke” at a Republican St. Patrick’s Day breakfast [ http://thinkprogress.org/justice/2013/03/18/1738531/massachusetts-sheriff-jokes-that-president-obama-should-be-shot/ ] suggesting the nation would be better off if President Obama were assassinated, McDonald stood by his joke and compared his critics to Nazis.
[...]
http://thinkprogress.org/justice/2013/03/19/1745331/assassination-joke-sheriff-doubles-down-compares-critics-to-nazis/ [with comments]
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Fox: Americans Need Assault Weapons To Protect Themselves From An Iranian Invasion, Al Qaeda
By Igor Volsky on Mar 23, 2013 at 1:09 pm
During a roundtable discussion on Friday, Fox News’ Lou Dobbs agreed with a network contributor who argued that Americans need to access military-style assault weapons to protect themselves from an Iranian invasion.
“What scares the hell out of me we have a president, as we were discussing during break, that wants to take away our guns, but yet he wants to attack Iran and Syria. So if they come and attack us here, we don’t have the right to bear arms under this Obama administration,” Angela McGlowan, a former lobbyist for News Corp. [ http://www.foxnews.com/on-air/personalities/angela-mcglowan/bio/#s=m-q ], said in the midst of a conversation about violence in Syria.
Dobbs quickly agreed, adding, “we’re told by Homeland Security that there are already agents of Al Qaeda here working in this country. Why in the world would you not want to make certain that all American citizens were armed and prepared? ” Watch it [ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JE8LHmIcQZY ]:
© 2013 Center for American Progress Action Fund
http://thinkprogress.org/media/2013/03/23/1766581/fox-americans-need-assault-weapons-to-protect-themselves-from-an-iranian-invasion-al-qaeda/ [with comments] [and keep in mind, of course, that thanks to the NRA/GOP et al, being on the terrorist watch list and/or the no-fly list does not even come up, let alone constitute grounds for denial, when a person undergoes a background check to purchase a firearm]
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Hitler Joins Gun Control Debate, But History Is In Dispute
(AP Photo/File)
By ADAM GELLER
03/23/13 01:30 PM ET EDT
When the president of Ohio's state school board posted her opposition to gun control, she used a powerful symbol to make her point: a picture of Adolf Hitler. When a well-known conservative commentator decried efforts to restrict guns, he argued that if only Jews in Poland had been better armed, many more would have survived the Holocaust.
In the months since the Newtown, Conn., school massacre, some gun rights supporters have repeatedly compared U.S. gun control efforts to Nazi restrictions on firearms, arguing that limiting weapons ownership could leave Americans defenseless against homegrown tyrants.
But some experts say that argument distorts a complex and contrary history. In reality, scholars say, Hitler loosened the tight gun laws that governed Germany after World War I, even as he barred Jews from owning weapons and moved to confiscate them.
Advocates who cite Hitler in the current U.S. debate overlook that Jews in 1930s Germany were a very small population, owned few guns before the Nazis took control, and lived under a dictatorship commanding overwhelming public support and military might, historians say. While it doesn't fit neatly into the modern-day gun debate, they say, the truth is that for all Hitler's unquestionably evil acts, his firearms laws likely made no difference in Jews' very tenuous odds of survival.
"Objectively, it might have made things worse" if the Jews who fought the Nazis in the 1943 Warsaw ghetto uprising in Poland had more and better guns, said historian Steve Paulsson, an expert on the period whose Jewish family survived the city's destruction.
But comparisons between a push by gun control advocates in the U.S. and Hitler have become so common – in online comments and letters to newspaper editors, at gun rights protests and in public forums – they're often asserted as fact, rather than argument.
"Absolute certainties are a rare thing in this life, but one I think can be collectively agreed upon is the undeniable fact that the Holocaust would have never taken place had the Jewish citizenry of Hitler's Germany had the right to bear arms and defended themselves with those arms," former Major League Baseball pitcher John Rocker wrote in an online column in January.
After some gun advocates rallied at New York's capitol in February carrying signs depicting Gov. Andrew Cuomo as Hitler, National Rifle Association President David Keene said the analogy was appropriate.
"Folks that are cognizant of the history, not just in Germany but elsewhere, look back to that history and say we can't let that sort of thing happen here," Keene, who was the lead speaker at the rally, told a radio interviewer March 1.
Those comparisons between gun control now and under Hitler joined numerous other statements, including the one by the Ohio school board president, Debe Terhar, on her personal Facebook page in January and by conservative commentator Andrew Napolitano, writing in The Washington Times.
The comparisons recently prompted the Anti-Defamation League, a Jewish civil rights group, to call on critics of gun control to keep Hitler and the Nazis out of the debate.
The rhetoric "is such an absurdity and so offensive and just undermines any real understanding of what the Holocaust was about," said Ken Jacobson, the ADL's deputy national director. "If they do believe it, they're making no serious examination of what the Nazi regime was about."
But some gun rights advocates firmly disagree.
"People who fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it," said Charles Heller, executive director of Jews for the Preservation of Firearms Ownership, which has long compared U.S. gun control to Nazi tactics. "I guess if you're pro-Nazi, they are right. But if you're pro-freedom, we call those people liars."
Comparing gun control activism to Hitler is not new. In a 1994 book, "Guns, Crime and Freedom," NRA Executive Vice President Wayne LaPierre wrote that "In Germany, firearm registration helped lead to the Holocaust."
But the history of civilian gun ownership under the Nazis, scholars say, is far more complicated than the rhetoric indicates.
After World War I, Germany signed a peace treaty requiring dismantling of much of its army and limiting weapons import and export. But many of the 1 million soldiers returning home joined armed militias, including a Nazi Party force that saw Communists as the leading threat.
"Technically, they (the militias) were illegal and the guns were illegal, but a lot of government officials didn't care about right-wingers with guns taking on Communists," said David Redles, co-author of "Hitler and Nazi Germany: A History," a popular college text. By 1928, however, officials decided they had to get a handle on the militias and their weapons and passed a law requiring registration of all guns, said Redles, who teaches at Cuyahoga Community College in Cleveland.
Soon after Hitler was named chancellor in 1933, he used the arson of the Reichstag as an excuse to push through a decree allowing for the arrest of many Communists and the suspension of civil rights including protections from search and seizure. But as the Nazis increasingly targeted Jews and others they considered enemies, they moved in 1938 to loosen gun statutes for the loyal majority, said Bernard Harcourt, a University of Chicago professor of law and political science who has studied gun regulations under Hitler.
The 1938 law is best known for barring Jews from owning weapons, after which the Nazis confiscated guns from Jewish homes. But Harcourt points out that Hitler's gun law otherwise completely deregulated acquisition of rifles, long guns and ammunition. It exempted many groups from requiring permits. The law lowered the age for legal gun ownership from 20 to 18. And it extended the validity of gun permits from one year to three years.
"To suggest that the targeting of Jews in any of the gun regulations or any of the other regulations is somehow tied to Nazis' view of guns is entirely misleading," Harcourt said, "because the Nazis believed in a greater deregulation of firearms. Firearms were viewed, for the good German, were something to which they had rights."
With the 1938 law, Nazis seized guns from Jewish homes. But few Jews owned guns and they composed just 2 percent of the population in a country that strongly backed Hitler. By the time the law passed, Jews were so marginalized and spread among so many cities, there was no possibility of them putting up meaningful resistance, even with guns, said Robert Gellately, a professor of history at Florida State University and author of "Backing Hitler: Consent and Coercion in Nazi Germany."
U.S. gun rights advocates disagree, pointing to the 1943 Warsaw ghetto uprising by about 700 armed Jews who were able to fend off a much larger force of German troops for days until retreating to tunnels or fleeing. The Nazis won out by systematically burning the ghetto to the ground, house by house.
"Once the Germans began adopting that strategy there really wasn't very much that people armed with pistols, or even rifles and machine guns, could do," said Paulsson, the historian and author of "Secret City: The Hidden Jews of Warsaw."
Paulsson said it is possible that if Polish Jews had limited their resistance, Nazi troops might not have destroyed the ghetto, allowing more to survive in hiding or escape. When armed Jews shot at mobs or troops at other times in 1930s and 1940s Poland, it incited more vicious counter-attacks, he said.
But to Heller, the gun rights activist, the Warsaw uprising is proof of power in firearms. Giving Jews more guns might not have averted the Holocaust, but it would have given them a fighting chance, enough that perhaps a third of them could have shot their way out of being marched to the concentration camps, he said.
"Could they have fought back? They did (in Warsaw). You know why they (the Nazis) destroyed the ghetto? Because they were afraid of getting shot," he said. "Now, will it get to that in the U.S.? God, I hope not. Not if (U.S. Attorney General Eric) Holder doesn't start sending people to kick doors down."
But Paulsson, whose mother was freed from the Auschwitz concentration camp at the end of the war, dismisses that argument as twisting the facts.
"Ideologues always try to shoehorn history into their own categories and read into the past things that serve their own particular purposes," he said.
Copyright 2013 The Associated Press
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/03/23/hitler-gun-control_n_2939511.html [with comments]
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Assault Weapons Ban Push Will Continue For Obama Administration: Joe Biden
By JOSH LEDERMAN
03/20/13 08:31 PM ET EDT
WASHINGTON -- The White House is still pushing for an assault weapons ban, Vice President Joe Biden said Wednesday, even though Senate Democrats all but sealed its fate by dropping it from the gun-control package they plan to consider next month.
Although the ban's sponsor still plans to offer it as an amendment, it is almost certain to fall victim to opposition from Republicans and likely some Democrats, too. In jettisoning the ban Tuesday, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said it fell far short of the amount of support it would need to survive a vote and said including the assault weapons ban could sink the whole bill.
"Attitudes are changing," Biden said in an interview with NPR News. "The president and I are going to continue to push, and we haven't given up on it."
Biden and President Barack Obama have walked a fine line on the assault weapons ban, widely considered the most politically challenging element of the gun-control proposals the administration is pushing. While fully embracing the ban as a matter of policy, the administration has avoided describing it as a must-have, wary of letting the perfect be the enemy of the good. Instead, they've argued that at the very least the ban deserves a vote, even if political considerations ultimately place its passage out of reach.
Gun-control advocates have insisted on the ban after an assault-type weapon was used in the massacre of 20 children and six adults at a school in Newtown, Conn., in December, galvanizing a national discussion about efforts to curb gun violence. Soon after the shooting, Obama tapped Biden to spearhead an effort to reduce gun deaths. The legislative proposal Biden developed includes the assault weapons ban, universal federal background checks and limits on high-capacity ammunition magazines.
But staunch opposition from the National Rifle Association and other groups has underscored the political risks for lawmakers who support the measures, and Democrats are eager to pass whatever they can before Americans lose interest in the issue and the window to act closes.
It was that sentiment that led Reid, D-Nev., to drop the ban from the bill the Senate plans to debate in April. But Biden insisted that the ban's failure is not a foregone conclusion. He pointed to the original, 10-year assault weapons ban that Congress passed in 1994, noting that it too had been written off long before it eventually was adopted.
"I don't see this as there's an automatic endpoint, that, OK, there's one vote, this is it, fails, now we move on," Biden said. "We are going to continue to push for logical gun-safety regulations."
Still, Biden acknowledged that if Congress expanded background checks but failed to adopt the assault weapons ban, the White House would not consider the broader effort a failure.
"That would be gigantic," Biden said.
The fate of expanded background checks is also uncertain, with the NRA arguing that they could open the door to a national gun registry. Biden said the notion of registering guns crosses a cultural line, noting that unlike cars, which must be registered, guns are explicitly protected by the Constitution.
"When you go to registration, it raises all the `black helicopter' crowd notion that what this is all about is identifying who has a gun," Biden said, using a term referring to conspiracy theorists, "so that one day the government can get up and go to the house and arrest everyone who has a gun, and they'll cite Nazi Germany and all that."
In the Republican-run House, GOP leaders have said they'll wait for the Senate to act before considering legislation. But they've not expressed support for an assault weapons ban and have shown little enthusiasm for most of Obama's proposals.
Copyright 2013 The Associated Press
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/03/20/assault-weapons-ban_n_2919544.html [with embedded video reports, and comments]
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Michael Bloomberg, Mayors Against Illegal Guns To Launch Gun-Control Ad Blitz
03/23/13
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/03/23/bloomberg-gun-ads_n_2941612.html [with embedded video report, and comments]
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Court Cites Newly Enacted Louisiana Amendment To Strike Down Ban On Felon Gun Possession
Mar 22, 2013
In the wake of an amendment to the Louisiana Constitution that arguably makes state protection of gun rights even greater than under the Second Amendment [ http://thinkprogress.org/justice/2012/11/08/1164791/louisiana-amendment-gives-gun-rights-strictest-constitutional-protection/ ], a trial judge has invalidated [ http://www.nola.com/crime/index.ssf/2013/03/new_orleans_judge_rules_statut.html ] a statute prohibiting those convicted of “crimes of violence” from possessing guns.
The NRA-backed amendment, passed by ballot initiative in November, established that [ http://blogs.wsj.com/law/2012/11/07/louisiana-amendment-beefs-up-the-right-to-bear-arms/ ] the right to bear arms is a “fundamental right” and any infringement of that right is subject to “strict scrutiny,” the highest level of skepticism courts apply to legislation. The U.S. Supreme Court has never established a level of scrutiny for the Second Amendment — a failure that has led to disparate interpretations and confusion among lower courts. However, as law professor Adam Winkler notes, “challenged gun laws almost always survive [ http://www.acslaw.org/files/Mehr%20and%20Winkler%20Standardless%20Second%20Amendment.pdf ].”
Even Justice Antonin Scalia wrote for the U.S. Supreme Court in 2008 that the Second Amendment does not impede “longstanding prohibitions on the possession of firearms by felons [ http://www.law.cornell.edu/supct/html/07-290.ZO.html ] and the mentally ill, or laws forbidding the carrying of firearms in sensitive places such as schools and government buildings, or laws imposing conditions and qualifications on the commercial sale of arms.”
[...]
http://thinkprogress.org/justice/2013/03/22/1763301/court-cites-newly-enacted-louisiana-amendment-to-strike-down-ban-on-felon-gun-possession/ [with comments]
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Evan Ebel now called suspect in death of Colorado prison director
Paroled inmate Evan Spencer Ebel, who was killed in a gunfight with Texas authorities, is now officially a suspect in the killing of Tom Clements, the chief of the Colorado prison system.
(Colorado Department of Corrections / March 21, 2013)
By Paloma Esquivel
March 23, 2013, 9:50 p.m
A Colorado parolee who was killed in a gunfight with authorities in Texas this week is officially considered a suspect in the death of Colorado’s prisons chief, a spokesman for the El Paso County Sheriff's Office said Saturday.
Tom Clements, who had served as head of Colorado's prison system for two years, was shot to death Tuesday when he answered the door of his home near Colorado Springs. The suspect, Evan Spencer Ebel, 28, was shot two days later by law enforcement following a high-speed chase that ended about 60 miles west of Dallas.
A warrant application filed by investigators showed [ http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-colorado-suspect-20130323,0,1033784.story ] that the brand and caliber of shell casings from the gunfight with Ebel matched those found at Clements' home. The black Cadillac he was driving also matched the description of a car seen outside the prisons chief's home.
Until Saturday, investigators had stopped short of calling Ebel a suspect in the case. The announcement was first reported by the Associated Press. El Paso County Sheriff’s Lt. Jeff Kramer confirmed it to the Los Angeles Times.
In an email statement, Kramer said “information gained in Texas is a strong lead.” He added that ballistic tests need to be completed to confirm whether the gun used in Texas is the same one used to kill Clements.
Evel is also being viewed as possible suspect in the killing on Sunday of Nathan Leon, a Denver pizza delivery man.
Kramer declined to confirm reports that Ebel was a member of 211 Crew, a Colorado-based white supremacist prison gang, but did say investigators are looking into his background.
In a twist, Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper said Friday that he knew Ebel's father and had known of his son's troubles.
"I met Jack Ebel some 30 years ago when working for an oil company soon after moving to Colorado. Jack is one of the most kind and generous people I know. His son had a bad streak that I know he tried desperately to correct," Hickenlooper said in the statement [ http://www.colorado.gov/cs/Satellite?c=Page&childpagename=GovHickenlooper%2FCBONLayout&cid=1251640875538&pagename=CBONWrapper ].
The governor added that "the events of the past few days have been devastating for all involved. I am in shock and disbelief about how everything seems connected in this case. It makes no sense."
Copyright © 2013, Los Angeles Times
http://www.latimes.com/news/nation/nationnow/la-na-nn-evan-spencer-ebel-gunman-20130323,0,1608423.story [with comments]
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Portrait emerges of Colorado shooting suspect
Evan Ebel served several years in solitary confinement and had been recently paroled.
(Photo: Colorado Department of Corrections via AP)
Evan Spencer Ebel, suspected of killing the state's prison chief, had ties to a white supremacist group, authorities say. His father says years in solitary confinement damaged Ebel's psyche.
Rick Jervis, USA TODAY
12:09a.m. EDT March 24, 2013
Authorities are piecing together a conflicting picture of a man from a good family whose time in prison and ties to a white supremacist group culminated this week in a shooting spree in Colorado and Texas.
Evan Spencer Ebel, 28, is believed to be the gunman who fatally shot Colorado's top prison official, as well as a pizza delivery man.
El Paso County sheriff's spokesman Lt. Jeff Kramer said Saturday that evidence gathered in Texas after Ebel's death provides a "strong, strong lead" in the slaying of Tom Clements, director of the Colorado Department of Corrections.
Blog entries from his mother and interviews with his former attorney depict a man troubled since youth, who was in and out of behavioral programs before landing in prison, and who showed gradual violent tendencies that ended with a deadly shootout with police.
Investigators are also looking into Ebel's ties with Crew 211, a notorious white supremacist prison gang operating in Colorado.
"In my 38 years of being a lawyer, I've never had anyone go so wrong," said Scott Robinson, Ebel's lawyer when he first got in trouble with the law at 19. "So completely, deadly wrong."
Ebel died Thursday in a Fort Worth hospital after leading police on a harrowing 100-mph car chase through Decatur, Texas, that ended with a shootout with Wise County Sheriff's deputies and other law enforcement agents. Colorado plates on the black Cadillac sedan Ebel drove and other items found in the car make him a suspect in Tuesday's fatal shooting of Clements in Monument, Colo., and Nathan Leon, a pizza delivery driver slain the previous week in Golden, Colo., Wise County Sheriff David Walker said at a news conference Friday.
Many questions remained, he said, including where Ebel was headed when he was confronted by police.
"This is an ongoing case," Walker said. "We're still trying to figure out why he was in Texas."
Ebel grew up in a middle-class family in the Denver suburb of Lakewood, Robinson said. His parents were divorced and, in their teens, Ebel and his sister, Marin, lived with their father, Jack. Evan Ebel would attend many of his sister's softball games and Jack Ebel, a well-known oil-and-gas attorney, was also intimately involved, he said. "They had a healthy, safe environment to live in, attended good schools," Robinson said.
But in January 2004, Marin, then 16, died in a car accident — an event that jolted Evan Ebel, Robinson said. He soon began getting into trouble. He was arrested in July 2004, at age 19, on robbery charges and ordered to a halfway house, he said. But later arrests for burglary and criminal trespass landed him in prison. While in prison, he also served several years in solitary confinement.
His father visited him frequently in prison, Robinson said. Jack Ebel went as far as testifying before the Colorado Legislature in 2011 that solitary confinement in the Colorado prison was destroying his son's psyche. When Jack Ebel's longtime friend, Gov. John Hickenlooper, was interviewing a Missouri corrections official for the top prisons job in Colorado, he mentioned the case as an example of why the prison system needed reform. And once Clements came to Colorado, he eased the use of solitary confinement and tried to make it easier for people housed there to re-enter society.
Evan Ebel never mixed with gangs or had a noticeable temper while he represented him, Robinson said. He was shocked to hear of his former client's alleged involvement in the recent killings.
"I thought the kid was salvageable," he said. "I was pretty sure prison would not work out well for him."
Evan Ebel's mom, Jody Mangue, started a blog to memorialize her daughter after she was killed in the accident. The site is filled with pictures of Marin and Evan sharing hugs, Marin's softball team and pictures of the family in happier times. But it also contains blog posts of her visits to Evan in prison, emotionally draining events for Mangue.
"Visits there are intense, emotional. I try very hard not to cry, but I do," she wrote in one blog entry titled "Prison Life."
Later in the entry, Mangue describes Evan Ebel attending behavioral programs since he was 12, in Jamaica and later Samoa, Mexico and Utah.
"Some people may blame us for what has happened to Evan. I can only say that his dad and I had to make hard decisions when he was younger hoping to avoid where he is now (prison)," she wrote. "We did try every approach we could with Evan, but here he is at some point we could not save him from this situation."
According to court records obtained by KUSA-TV in Denver, Evan Ebel was sentenced to probation in 2004 for possessing a defaced firearm then later shot himself — twice — violating his probation. He shot himself in the stomach on June 6, 2004, and was taken to the hospital, then shot himself in the leg three weeks later, according to the records.
Ebel was sentenced to eight years in prison in 2005 after court records show he carjacked a man's car, pistol whipped the driver and crashed the car in Commerce City, Colo., according to KUSA-TV. He was sentenced to serve three years parole after serving his prison time. He was released on parole in January.
"It's a completely awful situation," Robinson said. "I still don't understand why he would have done this."
Investigators are also looking into Ebel's links to the 211 Crew, a white supremacy prison gang operating mostly in Colorado. The gang numbers between 200 and 1,000 members, carries out deadly retributions in prison and earns money running methamphetamine and guns outside prison, said Mark Potok, a senior fellow at the Southern Poverty Law Center. The money is funneled back to gang leaders serving time, he said.
The 211 Crew — named after the California penal code for robbery — follows the "blood in, blood out" tradition, meaning potential members have to carry out a bloody attack to join and only leave in death, Potok said.
In 2005, the Denver County District Attorney's Office indicted 24 gang members and associates on charges ranging from robbery and assault to first-degree murder, according to the indictment. The gang's founder, Benjamin Davis, was later sentenced to 108 years in prison.
In January, Kaufman County, Texas, prosecutor Mark Hasse was gunned down outside the courthouse where he worked. Investigators have not announced any leads or suspects in that case but reports showed Hasse was investigating the Aryan Brotherhood of Texas, a large white supremacy group operating in Texas, Potok said. Police in Ebel's case have not found any connections to that case, Walker said.
It's extremely rare for members of the 211 Crew or other supremacist groups to target high-level law enforcement officials, such as Clements and Hasse, Potok said. But if there is a connection to either killing, retribution by authorities will be swift and strong, he said.
"We will see what will amount to a war," Potok said. "Law enforcement will come down on this gang like a ton of bricks."
Contributing: Associated Press
Copyright Gannett 2013
http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2013/03/23/shooter-colorado-corrections-texas-shootout/2011623/ [with embedded video report]
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Gov. John Hickenlooper unknowingly referenced Evan Ebel in statement about Tom Clements' death
Apparent tragic irony for the governor
Phil Tenser
Posted: 03/23/2013
DENVER - When Gov. John Hickenlooper spoke on the morning after the murder of prison chief Tom Clements, he unknowingly referenced the family of Clements' possible killer.
Hickenlooper was speaking about a conversation he'd had while interviewing Clements for the job.
"I'd had an old friend whose son had gone on the wrong track and been arrested and put into administrative segregation for a long period of time -- you know, solitary confinement," Hickenlooper said.
Although Hickenlooper never mentioned Evan Ebel or his father, Jack Ebel, by name, the governor's office confirmed that Jack Ebel was who Hickenlooper had been referring to.
In March 2011, Jack Ebel testified before a committee of the Colorado Legislature regarding a proposal to require prisoners spend time outside solitary before leaving prison.
"He's served six years of an eight year sentence and (in) all but five months of the six years, he's been held in solitary confinement," Jack Ebel said about his son.
Jack Ebel also told lawmakers he noticed his son's behavior change during the two times Evan was incarcerated.
"Even though he's well-read and he's a good conversationalist and gentle -- he started out that way, what I've seen over six years is he has become increasingly ... he has a high level of paranoia and (is) extremely anxious. So when he gets out to visit me, and he gets out of his cell to talk to me, I mean he is so agitated that it will take an hour to an hour-and-half before we can actually talk," Ebel told lawmakers.
While speaking about Clements Wednesday morning, Hickenlooper said the slain prisons chief had spent a lot of time thinking about the use and impact of solitary confinement.
"Tom had thought deeply about it before he ever came to interview with us in his own experience in Missouri and saw how it was doomed to failure, that number of people and in many cases people who had been in administrative segregation - solitary confinement - for years would be released directly into the community, which is a very, for those individuals, really emotionally traumatic," Hickenlooper said. "He laid out a plan by which to analyze the issue, get what the facts were and make sure we moved in the right direction."
Jack Ebel and Hickenlooper have been friends for a long time. In fact, Ebel's father contributed $1,050, in two installments, to Hickenlooper's campaign for the governor's office in 2010.
The governor's office told 7NEWS Evan Ebel was released on Jan. 28, 2013 after serving a full sentence. He was placed on mandatory parole.
-- Governor Hickenlooper's statement --
"Every killer has a mother and father, usually with broken hearts. I met Jack Ebel some 30 years ago when working for an oil company soon after moving to Colorado. Jack is one of the most kind and generous people I know. His son had a bad streak that I know he tried desperately to correct.
"Although Jack loved his son, he never asked me to intervene on his behalf and I never asked for any special treatment for his son. Based on information we received today, we understand that Evan Ebel served every day of his original sentence and was released on mandatory parole at the end of the time he was ordered to be incarcerated.
"The events of the past few days have been devastating for all involved. I am in shock and disbelief about how everything seems connected in this case. It makes no sense. Tom’s death at the hands of someone hell-bent on causing evil was tragic in every way. It also now appears Tom’s killer may have had another victim. Our hearts and prayers are with Nathan Leon’s family as well. We are most appreciative for law enforcement at all levels in Colorado and Texas and are anxious to learn more as the investigation continues."
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Related Links
Ammo, Domino's shirt tie man to killings
http://www.thedenverchannel.com/news/local-news/parolee-evan-evel-may-be-tied-to-murders-of-doc-chief-tom-clements-and-dominos-driver-nate-leon
Raw video: Shootout with Evan Ebel
http://www.thedenverchannel.com/news/local-news/raw-video-of-the-shootout-that-ended-with-evan-ebel-being-shot-in-the-head
Ebel had ties to white supremacist gang
http://www.thedenverchannel.com/news/local-news/evan-ebel-suspect-in-2-colorado-murders-and-texas-shootout-had-ties-to-white-supremacist-gang
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Copyright 2013 Scripps Media, Inc.
http://www.thedenverchannel.com/news/front-range/denver/governor-john-hickenlooper-referenced-unknowlingly-evan-ebel-in-statement-after-tom-clements-death [with embedded video reports, and comments]
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Three Gun Control Bills Signed in Colorado
By SAM REYNOLDS
Thursday, March 21, 2013
Last Update: 1:30 PM PT
DENVER (CN) - The morning after the state's prison chief was shot to death in his own house, Colorado's governor signed three gun-control bills into law, including a ban on sale of large-capacity ammunition magazines.
Gov. John Hickenlooper, a Democrat, signed the bills Wednesday in a largely partisan effort to stem gun violence in a state that suffered the mass murders at Columbine High School and the Aurora movie theater.
Democrats control both houses of the Colorado Legislature, and the governor's office.
Hickenlooper signed the bills the day after the director of Colorado's state prisons was shot to death in the doorway of his house.
Department of Corrections Chief Tom Clements was killed by an unidentified assailant Tuesday night. A motive for the murder, if any, was not known.
Many groups and people, including law enforcement officials, vowed to fight or ignore the new laws.
Some Colorado sheriffs said they would not enforce them.
Weld County Sheriff John Cooke, in Greeley, told his local newspaper that he "wouldn't bother" to enforce the laws, calling them "feel-good, knee-jerk reactions."
El Paso County Sheriff Terry Maketa, in Colorado Springs, said he would not enforce the laws, which he called "extortion" by Democrats, according to ABC News.
Larimer County Sheriff Justin Smith, in Fort Collins, said he would not enforce any federal gun control measures he considers unconstitutional.
House Bill 13-1224 bans the sale, transfer and possession of magazines that contain more than 15 rounds, or 28 inches of shotgun shells.
People who own large-capacity magazines can continue to possess them legally.
The law goes into effect on July 1.
Hickenlooper also signed House Bill 13-1229, which requires gun buyers to submit to a background check, and House Bill 13-1228, which requires the purchaser to pay for the background check.
The signing came 8 months after a gunman killed 12 people and wounded dozens at a movie theater in Aurora. James Holmes is believed to have used an AR-15 assault rifle with a 100-round drum magazine, among other weapons, to attack the crowd at a midnight premier of Batman movie, "The Dark Knight Rises."
According to court documents one victim, Matthew McQuinn, was shot nine times in the attack.
Colorado Senate President John Morse said in a statement that the massacres in Aurora and Newtown, Conn. had compelled the Legislature to take action.
"This legislative session became about guns. It was not planned that way," Morse said. "It was forced upon us by two horrific massacres in one year, one in our own back yard. So in the wake of these massacres and everyday gun violence, today three gun safety bills were signed into law.
"Let's be clear, zero of these laws take guns from law-abiding citizens. Instead, these are laws that the majority of Coloradans want. They are reasonable. As leaders, we have to make tough decisions. We know that some criminals will find ways around these laws, but that doesn't mean we should surrender to them. We must try to save lives."
State Sen. Mary Hodge, co-sponsor of the magazine limit bill, said: "The fact is large-capacity magazines are what were used in the massacres that rocked our nation. They helped the shooters spray crowds of people, destroying life as we know it. These large-magazines aren't welcome [in] our Colorado communities."
Not surprisingly, many groups vowed to fight the laws.
The president of the Independence Institute, a self-described "free market" think tank based in Colorado, claimed that the "continuous possession" clause of the magazine ban meant that a person could be arrested for simply handing a large-capacity magazine to another person.
Hickenlooper denied that. He said ban would be "applied narrowly."
"We ... have heard concerns about the requirement in the law that a person who owns a large-capacity magazine prior to the law's enactment may legally possess that magazine only as long as he or she 'maintains continuous possession' of it," Hickenlooper said in a statement.
"We do not believe a reasonable interpretation of the law means that a person must maintain continuous 'physical' possession of these items. Responsible maintenance and handling of magazines obviously contemplates that gun owners may allow others to physically hold and handle them under appropriate circumstances. We are confident that law enforcement and the courts will interpret the statute so as to effectuate the lawful use and care of these devices."
Hickenlooper continued: "In considering the language of HB13-1224, we have consulted with the Office of the Attorney General and we concur with its advice that the large-capacity magazine ban should be construed narrowly to ensure compliance with the requirements of the Second Amendment and the Due Process Clause of the 14th Amendment. We have signed HB13-1224 into law based on the understanding that it will be interpreted and applied narrowly and consistently with these important constitutional provisions."
Some people took more extreme measures.
Police arrested one man who allegedly threatened to kill state Rep. Rhonda Fields, a co-sponsor of two of the bills. Racist insults and taunts were redacted from the arrest warrant, but still visible.
Fields, a Democrat from Arapahoe County, where the Aurora massacre took place, said that many of her colleagues received similar "personal, violent" threats for backing the legislation.
Also Wednesday, Hickenlooper ordered the U.S. flag flown at half staff in public buildings to commemorate the murder of the prison chief.
Copyright 2013 Courthouse News Service
http://www.courthousenews.com/2013/03/21/55920.htm
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340 Sheriffs Refuse To Enforce Unconstitutional Gun Control Laws
By Gregory Gwyn-Williams, Jr.
March 19, 2013
Including Sheriff John Cooke of Weld County, Colorado, 340 sheriffs have publicly stated they will not enforce gun laws they believe are unconstitutional.
In response to the passage of two new gun control bills in Colorado last week, Sheriff John Cooke told the Greeley Tribune [ http://www.greeleytribune.com/news/crime/5575283-113/gun-state-background-colorado ] that he "won't bother enforcing the laws."
One bill requires gun buyers to pay for their own background checks, a service that was previously free and now estimated to cost the buyer $10-$12 per purchase. The second bill puts a 15-round limit on magazines.
Cooke says of the new laws: "They're feel-good, knee-jerk reactions that are unenforceable."
Governor John Hickenlooper is expected to sign each bill into law this week.
Cooke is part of a growing list of sheriffs that have vowed to uphold the Constitution against gun control measures.
The Constitutional Sheriffs and Peace Officers Association (CSPOA [ http://cspoa.org/sheriffs-gun-rights/ ]) has a running tally of all the sheriffs across the nation that have joined together to defend the Constitution.
At the time of this post, there are 15 sheriffs associations, 340 sheriffs, one police chief and one deputy sheriff who have stated they will not enforce any new gun laws.
As the "Right Views" previously reported [ http://cnsnews.com/blog/gregory-gwyn-williams-jr/number-nations-sheriffs-refusing-enforce-unconstitutional-gun-laws ], the number of sheriffs taking action continues to climb as the gun control debate heats up.
Copyright 2013 Cybercast News Service (emphasis in original)
http://cnsnews.com/blog/gregory-gwyn-williams-jr/340-sheriffs-refuse-enforce-unconstitutional-gun-control-laws [with comments]
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Obama Withdraws Caitlin Halligan's Nomination To D.C. Circuit Court
The White House formally withdrew President Barack Obama's nomination of Caitlin Halligan to the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals on Friday, March 22. Senate Republicans repeatedly filibustered the nomination over a period of nearly two and a half years.
(Alex Wong/Getty Images)
By Sabrina Siddiqui
Posted: 03/22/2013 4:36 pm EDT | Updated: 03/22/2013 6:43 pm EDT
WASHINGTON -- The White House officially withdrew President Barack Obama's nomination of Caitlin Halligan to serve on the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals. A statement issued on Friday comes after repeated attempts to confirm the former New York state solicitor general were filibustered by Senate Republicans.
In a statement, Obama said he was "deeply disappointed" that a minority of senators had blocked Halligan's nomination for almost two and a half years, and called the vacancies on what is arguably the country's second-highest federal court "unacceptable."
"Today, I accepted Caitlin Halligan's request to withdraw as a nominee for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit," Obama said in an emailed statement. "This unjustified filibuster obstructed the majority of Senators from expressing their support. I am confident that with Caitlin's impressive qualifications and reputation, she would have served with distinction."
Republicans objected to Halligan's nomination because of what they claim is her history of legal advocacy, having focused specifically on a lawsuit in which she participated that would make gun manufacturers legally accountable for criminal acts of gun violence.
The most recent GOP filibuster [ http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/plum-line/wp/2013/03/07/the-morning-plum-what-rand-pauls-filibuster-accomplished/ ] incidentally came on the same day that Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) gained national media attention for his 13-hour talking filibuster. Democrats fell short of the required 60-vote threshold to end debate and bring Halligan's nomination to a vote, with only Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) breaking from her party in support of invoking cloture. Halligan was nominated on Sept. 29, 2010, to replace current Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts; her nomination was first filibustered in 2011.
Shortly after the vote, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) said Halligan would "bring that activism to the court."
"Because of her record of activism, giving Ms. Halligan a lifetime appointment on the D.C. Circuit is a bridge too far," McConnell said.
Judiciary Committee Chairman Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) called it a "shame" that Republicans had succeeded in blocking an "extraordinarily well-qualified" woman, who he said would've made an "outstanding judge."
"Caitlin Halligan is a woman who is extraordinarily well-qualified and amongst the most qualified judicial nominees I have seen from any administration," Leahy said in a statement. "It is a shame that narrow, special interests hold such influence that Senate Republicans for two years blocked an up-or-down vote on her confirmation."
Read Halligan's letter to Obama withdrawing her nomination [ http://www.docstoc.com/docs/149605124/Caitlin-Halligan-Withdrawal ]:
[documemt embedded, Scribd-style]
Copyright © 2013 TheHuffingtonPost.com, Inc.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/03/22/obama-caitlin-halligan_n_2934986.html [with embedded video report, and comments]
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T.J. Lane Life Sentence: Chardon High School Shooter Appears In Court Wearing 'KILLER' T-Shirt
[ http://www.cleveland.com/chardon-shooting/index.ssf/2013/03/tj_lane_sentenced_in_chardon_h.html ]
03/19/2013
T.J. Lane, who appeared in court Tuesday morning [ http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/03/19/tj-lane-sentencing-ohio-school-shooting-murders_n_2906423.html ] wearing a t-shirt with the word "KILLER" in marker across his chest, will spend the rest of his life in prison for the murder of three teenagers at an Ohio high school.
Going against the recommendation of his counsel, Lane addressed the courtroom before learning his fate. He smiled periodically and showed little remorse for his actions [ https://twitter.com/MelissaReidFox8/status/314019163876245504 ].
"F--- all of you," he said [ http://www.cleveland.com/chardon-shooting/index.ssf/2013/03/tj_lane_sentenced_in_chardon_h.html ], before raising his middle finger at the victims' families, according to the Plain Dealer.
On Feb. 27, 2012, Lane, then 17, entered Chardon High School, east of Cleveland and opened fire, killing Daniel Parmertor and Demetrius Hewlin, both 16, and Russell King Jr., 17. Three other students were wounded.
[...]
Wearing a T-shirt with "killer" scrawled across it, a teenager cursed and gestured obscenely as he was given three life sentences Tuesday for shooting to death three students in an Ohio high school cafeteria.
T.J. Lane, 18, had pleaded guilty last month to shooting at students in February 2012 at Chardon High School, east of Cleveland. Investigators have said he admitted to the shooting but said he didn't know why he did it.
Before the case went to adult court last year, a juvenile court judge ruled that Lane was mentally competent to stand trial despite evidence he suffers from hallucinations, psychosis and fantasies.
Lane was defiant during the sentencing, smiling and smirking throughout, including while four relatives of victims spoke.
After he came in, he calmly unbuttoned his blue dress shirt to reveal the T-shirt reading "killer," which the prosecutor noted was similar to one he wore during the shooting.
At one point, he swiveled around in his chair toward the gallery where his own family members and those of the slain teenagers were sitting and spoke suddenly, surprising even his lawyer.
"The hand that pulls the trigger that killed your sons now masturbates to the memory," he said, then cursed at and raised his middle finger toward the victims' relatives.
[...]
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/03/19/tj-lane-sentenced-to-life-chardon_n_2907540.html [with embedded video reports, and comments]
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Stimulus Derangement Syndrome
By Paul Krugman
March 20, 2013, 2:54 pm
Miles Kimball [ http://qz.com/64546/the-stanford-economists-are-so-wrong-a-tighter-budget-wont-be-accompanied-by-tighter-monetary-policy/ ] goes after John Taylor’s latest, and in the process reminds us of an earlier Taylor episode, in which JT argued that low interest rates are actually contractionary — a conclusion he reached by confusing the Fed’s setting of an interest rate target, which is achieved by buying bonds, with a rent-control-type price ceiling enforced by simply banning above-target transactions. It was an amazing thing for a highly credentialed macroeconomist to say. But it wasn’t unique; just offhand I can think of multiple comparable flubs ever since we began monetary and fiscal stimulus to fight the Great Recession.
So, for example, we had Robert Barro [ http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/01/22/war-and-non-remembrance/ ] arguing that multipliers are small because private spending fell during World War II (hello? Rationing? Banning of private construction?). We had “new monetarists” arguing that low interest rates cause deflation [ http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/08/25/nick-rowe-loses-it/ ], not the other way around. We had Robert Lucas completely misunderstanding [ http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/12/26/a-note-on-the-ricardian-equivalence-argument-against-stimulus-slightly-wonkish/ ] what Ricardian equivalence says about the effects of government spending. And I’m sure I’m missing other examples.
Notice that what I’m highlighting here aren’t “mistakes” as in “saying something I disagree with”; I would not, for example, put claims that our problems are mainly structural in the same category. I’m talking about much cruder mistakes, basic failures to remember history or logic — the kind of thing you really would not expect from big guns in the field.
What do these episodes tell us? First, how much people of conservative politics hate hate hate the idea of any kind of activist government policy to help the economy. Second, how weak their grip on their own intellectual principles is when it comes to arguments that seem to support that hatred.
It has been a revelation.
© 2013 The New York Times Company
http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/03/20/stimulus-derangement-syndrome/ [with comments]
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Paul Krugman: Conservatives Hate The Idea Of Policy That Helps The Economy
By Bonnie Kavoussi
Posted: 03/21/2013 12:58 pm EDT | Updated: 03/22/2013 10:21 am EDT
Paul Krugman says that Republican ideology is holding the economy back.
"People of conservative politics hate hate hate the idea of any kind of activist government policy to help the economy," the Nobel Prize-winning economist wrote in a blog post for the New York Times on Wednesday [ http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/03/20/stimulus-derangement-syndrome/ (just above)] .
Krugman, like many other economists, has long advocated for increases in government spending to boost the economy.
In a 2012 survey, 80 percent of economists [ http://www.igmchicago.org/igm-economic-experts-panel/poll-results?SurveyID=SV_cw5O9LNJL1oz4Xi ] on the IGM Economic Experts Panel said that the stimulus lowered the unemployment rate. And in a blog post published in Project Syndicate on Wednesday, Yale economist Robert Shiller wrote [ http://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/balanced-budgets-without-austerity-by-robert-j--shiller ] that stimulus is necessary to get out of the current economic slump, which has been exacerbated by government spending cuts.
The sequestration -- a series of across-the-board government spending cuts -- took effect earlier this month as a result of partisan gridlock and will eliminate 750,000 jobs this year alone if the cuts stay in place, the Congressional Budget Office estimates [ http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/02/13/sequester-job-cuts_n_2678701.html ].
Many economists say that Republican plans to slash spending would hurt the economy. Rep. Paul Ryan's (R-Wis.) proposed budget would destroy 2 million jobs [ http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/03/12/paul-ryan-budget-jobs_n_2862283.html ] in 2014 alone if it were implemented, according to the Economic Policy Institute.
Copyright © 2013 TheHuffingtonPost.com, Inc.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/03/21/paul-krugman-conservatives_n_2923857.html [with comments]
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Paul Ryan Budget Passed By House Republicans
03/21/13
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/03/21/paul-ryan-budget-passed_n_2924126.html [with embedded video reports, embedded slideshow, and comments]
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Economists See No Crisis With U.S. Debt as Economy Gains
Welders work on a joint between two sections of pipe during construction of the Gulf Coast Project pipeline in Prague, Oklahoma,on March 11, 2013.
Daniel Acker/Bloomberg
Video [embedded]
March 21 (Bloomberg) -- U.S. Representative Paul Broun, a Republican from Georgia, talks about his New York Times op-ed piece ["Paul Ryan’s Ax Isn’t Sharp Enough", at/see (linked in) http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=85895311 and preceding and following] criticizing Representative Paul Ryan's budget proposal and U.S. fiscal policy. Broun speaks with Betty Liu on Bloomberg Television's "In The Loop."
(Source: Bloomberg)
Video [embedded]
March 22 (Bloomberg) -- U.S. Representative Peter Welch, a Vermont Democrat, talks about the outlook for fiscal budget negotiations. He speaks with Betty Liu on Bloomberg Television’s "In the Loop."
(Source: Bloomberg)
Contractors work on the roof of a new residential apartment building in Sandy, Utah, U.S., on Tuesday, Jan. 15, 2013. The U.S. Census Bureau is scheduled to release new home sales data on Feb. 26.
George Frey/Bloomberg
Representative Paul Ryan, a Republican from Wisconsin.
Andrew Harrer/Bloomberg
By David J. Lynch - Mar 21, 2013 11:00 PM CT
Representative Paul Ryan, chairman of the House Budget Committee, declared this month that the U.S. national debt “is hurting our economy today.” It’s an idea embraced by almost every Republican and even some Democrats.
Economic data -- on jobs, housing and investment -- don’t support that claim. And economists across the political spectrum dispute the best-known study of the subject, by Carmen Reinhart and Kenneth Rogoff, which found that nations with debt loads greater than 90 percent of their economies grow more slowly.
Three years after a government spending surge in response to the recession drove the U.S. past that red line -- the nation’s $16.7 trillion total debt is now 106 percent of the $15.8 trillion economy -- key indicators reflect gathering strength. Businesses have increased spending by 27 percent since the end of 2009. The annual rate of new home construction jumped about 60 percent. Employers have created almost 6 million jobs.
And with borrowing costs near record lows, the cost of paying off the debt is lower now than in the year Ronald Reagan left the White House, as a percentage of the economy.
“The argument that heavy debt loads slow economic growth doesn’t hold a lot of water,” says Guy LeBas, chief fixed- income strategist at Janney Montgomery Scott LLC in Philadelphia who oversees $12 billion. “It suffers from a mix-up of cause and effect: When weak economic conditions arise, it tends to encourage deficit spending, which is what has led to more U.S. debt being issued, and not the other way around.”
Tipping Point
Republicans like Ryan of Wisconsin, joined by Democrats such as former Senate Budget Committee Chairman Kent Conrad of North Dakota, embrace as economic gospel the idea of a tipping point for debt, even as it is hotly debated among economists.
Some studies have found no evidence that high debt inevitably chills growth -- especially for countries like the U.S. that print their own currency. One 2012 paper by two French economists even concluded that growth rates increased as the debt-to-GDP ratio passed 115 percent.
“The Rogoff-Reinhart 90 percent is really quite a fragile number,” says Joseph Gagnon, a former economist in the Fed’s monetary affairs division. “There is no threshold like that for countries that have control of the currency they borrow in.”
Reinhart and Rogoff said in a 2010 paper that once debt rises beyond 90 percent of gross domestic product for advanced economies, median growth rates are 1 percentage point lower. The U.S. passed the 90 percent mark in early 2010, according to the International Monetary Fund.
Lower Growth
“Across both advanced countries and emerging markets, high debt/GDP levels (90 percent and above) are associated with notably lower growth outcomes,” Reinhart and Rogoff wrote, drawing on data from 44 countries over a 200-year period.
Rogoff declined to comment for this story, and Reinhart didn’t respond to e-mails or telephone requests.
To be sure, the U.S. economy is expanding only slowly. Growth over the past three years has averaged 2.2 percent compared with an average of 2.5 percent between 1989 and 2009. And the recent stirring could fizzle, either because of government spending cuts or what Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke described at a March 20 news conference as the economy’s “tendency for a spring slump.”
And while there’s no way to know whether the economy would be expanding faster if the debt burden were lower, the traditional way that government debt hurts growth is by raising the cost of money as public sector borrowing “crowds out” private borrowers. That isn’t happening.
Investors Unbothered
Even as the U.S. continues borrowing to cover this year’s projected $845 billion deficit, bond markets remain untroubled. Yesterday’s 1.91 percent yield in New York on the 10-year Treasury note was lower than on the day President Barack Obama was sworn in for his first term. It’s lower than on Aug. 5, 2011, when Standard & Poor’s lowered the U.S. credit rating. And it’s well below the 5.3 percent average over the past 25 years.
“Financial markets are begging the government to borrow at negative real interest rates for 10-year maturities,” says Gagnon, now at the Peterson Institute for International Economics. “There’s no way our debt is slowing us today.”
Still, those warning about deficits say debt loads can hinder growth by dimming expectations. The prospect of higher taxes or lower government spending needed to reduce borrowing could cause companies and individuals to retrench.
“That has to be hurting us right now,” says economist Douglas Holtz-Eakin, former director of the Congressional Budget Office and an adviser to 2008 Republican presidential contender John McCain.
Testing Limits
Testing the upper limit of debt sustainability would be foolish, he said. Maintaining today’s debt load would leave the U.S. unable to easily respond to a future financial crisis by ramping up spending. Plus, when interest rates rise from current low levels, the government’s annual interest burden -- the CBO projects it will be $224 billion this year -- will mushroom.
“Our debt load could be $500 billion overnight,” he says. “Think how fast spreads move.”
CBO projections don’t support that point of view. They predict interest payments will remain below current levels until 2018 when it says economic output will reach $21 trillion. This year, the U.S. will spend 1.4 percent of GDP servicing its debt, less than half the amount in 1989, the year Reagan left office.
Debt hawks take solace from a 2011 paper by the Bank for International Settlements, the Basel, Switzerland-based group that facilitates cooperation among central banks. It said government debt becomes a drag on growth at 85 percent of GDP.
IMF Study
And two IMF economists, Manmohan Kumar and Jaejoon Woo, found “a significant negative effect on growth” above the 90 percent threshold. For every 10 percentage-point increase in an advanced country’s overall debt-to-GDP ratio, growth fell by 0.15 percentage points per year, they said.
That suggests the U.S. economy this year is losing 0.6 percentage points from its growth rate, based on the increase in the gross debt ratio since 2007. The U.S. will grow this year between 2.3 percent and 2.8 percent, according to the Fed’s latest forecast.
Indicators of future activity, however, have yet to reflect such worries. The index of leading economic indicators reached 94.8 in February, its highest level since before the 2008 financial crisis. Stocks (INDU) are near record highs, and the dollar is up more than 6 percent since Dec. 31, 2009.
Testifying on Feb. 26 before the Senate Finance Committee, Robert Greenstein, director of the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities, said: “The notion that we are already in a danger zone because gross debt exceeds 90 percent of GDP and that this is already costing jobs is not one most economists would agree with.”
2009 Book
Reinhart and Rogoff rocketed to prominence following the global financial crisis. Their 2009 book “This Time It’s Different,” which made The New York Times bestseller list and was translated into 20 languages, drew applause from politicians in both parties.
In 2011, the White House cited their finding that recoveries from financial crises are slower and less robust to explain what it called the “disappointing” economy.
“It’s not a particularly reliable gauge,” economist John Makin of the Republican-leaning American Enterprise Institute, a former consultant to the Treasury Department and Fed, said of the 90 percent threshold. “The evidence is not strong.”
Though Reinhart and Rogoff emphasize the number of countries they studied, some economists question whether those examples apply to the world’s largest economy and holder of the global reserve currency.
Not Sweden
“Comparing the U.S. to Sweden or to Japan even, it really just doesn’t cut it,” Drew Matus of UBS Securities LLC told Bloomberg Radio earlier this year.
Thanks to the Federal Reserve, the U.S. is able to borrow more without yields rising. Since the Lehman Brothers bankruptcy in September 2008, the Fed has more than tripled the size of its balance sheet to $3.2 trillion.
The central bank’s bond purchases have kept the 10-year yield 80 to 120 basis points, or 0.8 to 1.2 percentage points, lower than it otherwise would have been, thus boosting economic growth, according to Bernanke.
Dean Baker, co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research, called the idea of debt limiting growth “very silly,” saying the U.S. retains vast assets, including technically recoverable oil and gas reserves estimated by the Institute for Energy Research at $128 trillion.
“If it sold off $5 trillion to lower its debt to GDP ratio by 30 percentage points do we really think we would suddenly grow faster?” Baker wrote in an e-mail.
To contact the reporter on this story: David J. Lynch in Washington at dlynch27@bloomberg.net
To contact the editor responsible for this story: Clark Hoyt at choyt2@bloomberg.net
©2013 BLOOMBERG L.P.
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-03-22/economists-see-no-crisis-with-u-s-debt-as-economy-gains.html [with comments]
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John Boehner Sets Up Debt Ceiling Battle With Demand For Major Cuts
By Sabrina Siddiqui and Michael McAuliff
Posted: 03/21/2013 12:26 pm EDT | Updated: 03/21/2013 3:04 pm EDT
WASHINGTON -- House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) laid down a tough requirement for raising the debt ceiling Thursday, all but ensuring a reprise of the tense standoff two years ago that saw America's credit rating downgraded.
Speaking at his regular news conference, Boehner said the only way the House would go along with raising the country's borrowing cap was if President Barack Obama and the Democrats came up with an equal amount in budget cuts.
"Dollar for dollar is the plan," Boehner told reporters, adding that there have been no major talks on the debt limit at this point.
"The president has been clear that he's not going to address our entitlement crisis unless we're willing to raise taxes. I think the tax issue has been resolved," said Boehner. "So at this point then, I don't know how we're going to go forward."
With the budget cuts from sequestration now taking effect and politicians on all sides trying to further trim the deficit in ongoing budget negotiations, launching yet another round of spending cuts to meet the speaker's standard would be daunting, to say the least.
Republicans have been eying steep cuts to health care and entitlement programs as a way to slash more. Asked if he saw the borrowing cap as leverage to extract entitlement reform from the president, Boehner said, "There might be some there."
"But I'm not going to risk the full faith and credit of the federal government," he added, suggesting instead that the differences between Republicans and Democrats could be resolved through the ongoing budgetary process.
Boehner is the second GOP leader this week to foretell a new debt showdown this summer. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) also did so, arguing that the only way to get Obama to the table for "serious" talks was to drag him ""kicking and screaming [ http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/03/19/mitch-mcconnell-debt-ceiling_n_2911013.html ]" over the debt limit.
Earlier this year, House Republicans avoided a confrontation [ http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/01/23/house-debt-ceiling_n_2533597.html ] over the debt limit by passing a measure that suspended the nation's borrowing cap until May.
Copyright © 2013 TheHuffingtonPost.com, Inc.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/03/21/john-boehner-debt-ceiling_n_2924662.html [with embedded video report, and (over 11,000) comments]
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The GOP’s Three Fiscal Lies
Modest deficits are fine. Cutting spending harms the economy. And balanced budgets don’t create jobs.
Mar 23, 2013
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2013/03/23/the-gop-s-three-fiscal-lies.html [with comments]
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Private sector parasites
The real “takers” in America are not poor people dependent on welfare, but the unproductive, rent-extracting rich
Mar 21, 2013
http://www.salon.com/2013/03/21/private_sector_parasites/ [with comments]
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How rich “moochers” hurt America
The 3-point plan of wealthy landlords, lenders and insurance providers -- the true "takers" threatening the nation
Mar 22, 2013
http://www.salon.com/2013/03/22/how_rich_moochers_ruin_america/ [with comments]
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Supreme Court Refuses To Hear Goldman Sachs' Appeal To Financial Crisis Lawsuit
03/20/2013
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Goldman Sachs Group Inc suffered a defeat on Monday as the U.S. Supreme Court let stand a decision forcing it to defend against claims it misled investors about mortgage securities that lost value during the 2008 financial crisis.
Without comment, the court refused to consider Goldman's appeal of a September 2012 decision by the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New York. Goldman shares sank more than 2 percent.
That court let the NECA-IBEW Health & Welfare Fund, which owned some mortgage-backed certificates underwritten by Goldman, sue on behalf of investors in certificates it did not own, but which were backed by mortgages from the same lenders.
Goldman and other banks have faced thousands of lawsuits by investors seeking to recoup losses on mortgage securities.
The bank has said that letting the 2nd Circuit decision stand could cost Wall Street tens of billions of dollars.
[...]
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/03/18/goldman-sachs-supreme-court_n_2900929.html [with embedded video report, and comments]
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Freddie Mac Sues More Than A Dozen Banks Over Libor Losses
03/19/2013
NEW YORK (Reuters) - Mortgage finance company Freddie Mac is suing more than a dozen banks for losses from the alleged manipulation of the benchmark interest rate known as Libor.
Bank of America Corp, JPMorgan Chase & Co, UBS AG and Credit Suisse Group AG are among the banks named as defendants in the lawsuit.
Freddie Mac, which invested in mortgage bonds and swaps tied to U.S. dollar Libor, claims the banks colluded to rig the benchmark from 2007 to 2010, according to the complaint, which was filed March 14 in U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia.
Freddie Mac sued for undetermined damages.
The inspector general of the Federal Housing Finance Authority, which oversees Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae, said the two government-controlled mortgage companies may have suffered more than $3 billion in losses as a result of Libor manipulation, according to an internal memo obtained by Reuters in December.
[...]
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/03/19/freddie-mac-libor-lawsuit_n_2911457.html [with embedded slideshow, and comments]
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With JPMorgan Settlement, MF Global Clients Move Closer to Payout
By BEN PROTESS
March 20, 2013, 9:37 am
MF Global customers moved one step closer to recouping their missing money late on Tuesday when JPMorgan Chase released its claim to more than $500 million belonging to the bankrupt brokerage firm.
The settlement deal, struck between JPMorgan and the trustee overseeing the return of customer money, puts to rest more than a year of tough negotiations. JPMorgan was reluctant to part with the money, arguing in part that it was owed tens of millions of dollars as a creditor of MF Global.
But the settlement deal, which includes a $100 million cash payout to the trustee and a promise from JPMorgan not to clawback $417 million it doled out last year, paves the way for MF Global’s customers to recover nearly all the money that disappeared when the brokerage firm imploded. That goal, surprisingly within reach, is a stunning turnaround from MF Global’s bankruptcy filing in October 2011, when $1.6 billion vanished from the firm.
“This is a significant milestone in returning assets to former customers,” James W. Giddens, the trustee, said in a statement.
In a sign that Mr. Giddens is moving closer to making MF Global’s customers whole, he asked a bankruptcy court judge on Tuesday to approve $300 million in cash payouts. The request comes on the heels of a payout in January that brought most American customers to 93 percent of their original investment, up from 80 percent. The new request, if approved by Judge Martin Glenn of the United States Bankruptcy Court in Manhattan, will further aid customers by “several percentage points,” according to Mr. Giddens.
Foreign customers are not as well-positioned, though they too could receive additional money from the JPMorgan settlement.
The accord closes a bitter chapter in the MF Global debacle.
MF Global customers have long questioned whether JPMorgan was playing hardball, echoing accusations the bank faced in the aftermath of the Lehman Brothers bankruptcy. The customers complained that JPMorgan was slow to settle with Mr. Giddens, and even now they wonder whether the bank should have returned more.
Mr. Giddens noted, however, that the deal was an “economically sound agreement ending what would have been a costly, protracted, and uncertain legal battle.” Without the agreement, he said, fresh payouts to customers could have stalled “for at least two or three years.”
While JPMorgan had already returned $1 billion belonging to customers and $417 million in the firm’s proprietary funds, it attached a lien to the latter payment. Under the deal to pay $100 million to Mr. Giddens, it also released the lien on Tuesday.
“We are pleased to have reached this settlement, which will help restore funds to MF Global’s customers,” a JPMorgan spokeswoman said in an e-mail, adding that bank officials “don’t expect this settlement will have a material impact on our results.” The spokeswoman, Jennifer Zuccarelli, explained that “the agreement resolves all outstanding matters” between the bank and the MF Global “estate, its customers and creditors.”
JPMorgan was an obvious target for Mr. Giddens. It was at the center of MF Global’s downfall, lending to the firm and clearing its trades.
The bank was also a major recipient of customer money during MF Global’s chaotic final moments. When MF Global posted extra collateral to back its trades, aiming to reassure JPMorgan about its precarious position, some of the funds most likely belonged to customers.
Federal authorities have also scrutinized a $175 million transfer MF Global made from customer accounts to JPMorgan the day before the brokerage collapsed. The transfer, which was authorized by the firm’s Chicago office, was made to patch an overdraft in a London account.
While JPMorgan questioned the origin of the funds, seeking written assurances that the transfer was legitimate, MF Global balked. JPMorgan seized the money anyway, though the bank has said that it received oral assurances.
“As we have said before,” the JPMorgan spokeswoman said, the bank “worked to assist our client in a responsible manner under very challenging circumstances.”
James L. Koutoulas, a Chicago hedge fund manager who became a voice for thousands of customers whose money disappeared, might disagree. After he appeared on CNBC in 2011 to criticize JPMorgan, the bank closed his account and froze his credit card.
The bank has declined to discuss Mr. Koutoulas.
Copyright 2013 The New York Times Company
http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2013/03/20/with-jpmorgan-settlement-mf-global-clients-move-closer-to-payout/ [with comments]
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Synthetic CDOs Return To Wall Street, What Could Possibly Go Wrong?
Synthetic CDOs, which contributed to the financial crisis, have returned.
(JOHANNES EISELE/AFP/Getty Images)
By Mark Gongloff
Posted: 03/21/2013 9:07 am EDT | Updated: 03/21/2013 11:34 am EDT
Japan swore off nuclear weapons for generations after the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Wall Street's memory vis-a-vis weapons of mass destruction is just a bit shorter.
Ladies and gentlemen, whether you like it or not, the synthetic collateralized debt obligation (CDO) is making a comeback [ http://www.businessweek.com/news/2013-03-20/synthetic-cdos-making-comeback-as-yields-juiced ], Bloomberg reports. The numbers are small so far, and the bets being made with them appear to be sober. But that's always how these things start out.
What on earth is a synthetic CDO, you likely ask? It is a side bet on a bunch of side bets on somebody else's debt. First you take a bunch of corporate bonds. Then you write insurance protection on those bonds, in the form of derivatives called credit default swaps. And then you jam a bunch of those credit default swaps together into a toxic meatball called a synthetic CDO, on which you can also bet as much money as you like, assuming you have any money, considering you are the kind of doofus who bets money on toxic meatballs.
These have absolutely no economic value, aside from enriching the bankers that sell them and maybe giving investors a way to make an extra buck. And they are potentially disastrous, depending on how they're filled: These were among the derivatives that helped nearly bring down American International Group [ http://www.huffingtonpost.com/david-fiderer/the-cdos-that-destroyed-a_b_499875.html ] and the financial system less than four years ago. Now, with investors hungry for anything that offers the slightest bit of yield, these derivatives are making a comeback, which I'm sure is totally fine, because Wall Street has of course learned its lesson.
So far these things are only being sold to hedge funds; they're not getting credit ratings or being pitched to less-sophisticated investors the way synthetic CDOs were during the crisis. The filler in the meatballs so far are corporate bonds, not subprime mortgages. And we're not talking about a bunch of money here, yet. Synthetic CDOs on about $2 billion in debt were sold last year, Bloomberg writes, citing Citigroup data, and CDOs on another $1 billion have been sold so far this year.
And those totals overstate the total amounts actually being wagered on CDOs [ http://blogs.reuters.com/felix-salmon/2013/03/20/synthetics-rise-from-the-dead/ ], Felix Salmon points out -- they're what's known as "notional" amounts, or the total of the underlying debt on which investors are betting.
If you're betting on the default of $100 million in bonds, for example, you don't have to bet $100 million. You can just bet $1 million. So far, the amounts being bet in the synthetic CDO market are pretty tiny.
But of course this is not the only sign of pre-crisis craziness making a comeback. Last week a bunch of private-equity investors gathered together in San Francisco [ http://www.bizjournals.com/sanfrancisco/blog/2013/03/san-francisco-private-equity-bank-loans.html?page=all ] and observed that the ease of getting bank loans for deals has gotten right back to levels seen in 2006 and 2007, just ahead of the crash.
Unlike synthetic CDOs, private-equity deals didn't contribute to the financial crisis. They were more of a symptom of credit insanity than anything. But easy credit does encourage bankers to do dumb and damaging things with their private equity cash, like load up a company with debt in order to pay themselves huge dividends.
And even though today's synthetic CDOs don't seem quite as dangerous as those of five years ago, when they were betting on subprime mortgage debt, that doesn't mean they can't cause trouble. JPMorgan Chase's "London Whale" losses came from betting on derivatives of boring corporate debt, remember.
The return of synthetic CDOs does not signal that another crisis is around the corner. But rest assured that Wall Street will find ways to manufacture one, just as soon as it is able.
Copyright © 2013 TheHuffingtonPost.com, Inc.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/03/20/synthetic-cdos-return_n_2918704.html [with embedded video report, embedded slideshow, and comments]
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Wall Street Deregulation Garners Bipartisan Support Despite Devastating JPMorgan Report
Jamie Dimon, CEO of JPMorgan Chase, smiles while testifying before the House Financial Services Committee in Washington on June 19, 2012.
(AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin)
By Zach Carter
Posted: 03/19/2013 7:38 pm EDT | Updated: 03/21/2013 4:07 pm EDT
WASHINGTON -- A bipartisan cadre of House lawmakers will move on legislation to deregulate Wall Street derivatives Wednesday, less than a week after Sen. Carl Levin (D-Mich.) released a devastating report on the multibillion-dollar derivatives debacle [ http://s3.documentcloud.org/documents/623882/jpmorgan-chase-whale-trades-a-case-history-of.pdf ; http://www.propublica.org/documents/item/623882-jpmorgan-chase-whale-trades-a-case-history-of ] at JPMorgan Chase.
"The road to hell is paved with these bills," said Rep. Alan Grayson (D-Fla.), an advocate of financial reform.
The House Agriculture Committee will mark up several derivatives bills on Wednesday [ http://agriculture.house.gov/markup/consider-hr634-hr-677-hr-742-hr-992-hr-1003-hr-1038-and-hr ] despite opposition from a coalition of public interest and consumer advocacy groups known as Americans for Financial Reform. The effort to weaken regulation of these sophisticated financial instruments follows multiple in-depth autopsies [ http://www.scribd.com/doc/130464900/GF-Co-JPM-Out-of-Control ] of the London Whale debacle at JPMorgan [ http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/03/15/london-whale-hearing-carl-levin_n_2883719.html ], which has already cost the company $6.2 billion and tarnished its reputation as a prudent risk manager. It also comes less than three years after the Dodd-Frank Wall Street reform legislation, signed into law by President Barack Obama in 2010, set a host of new standards for the derivatives business, including heightened transparency and reduced taxpayer support.
In a statement provided to The Huffington Post, Levin expressed exasperation at the House efforts.
"Last year, some members of Congress supported watering down Dodd-Frank derivative safeguards, but abandoned those efforts after the world learned that JPMorgan Chase had lost billions of dollars on derivative trades made out of its London office," Levin said. "It is incredible that less than a week after new JPMorgan Whale hearings detailed how the bank's London office piled up risk, hid losses, and dodged regulatory oversight, that some House members are again supporting the weakening of derivative safeguards."
Derivatives were at the heart of the 2008 financial collapse. The preferred financial vehicle for a host of risky bets on the U.S. mortgage market, they created artificial demand for subprime mortgages, encouraging banks and mortgage brokers to extend loans to doomed borrowers. Derivatives pushed insurance giant AIG to the brink of bankruptcy and proved a hotbed for abuse on Wall Street. Goldman Sachs famously settled with the Securities and Exchange Commission [ http://www.sec.gov/news/press/2010/2010-123.htm ] for betting against the very derivatives it created and sold to its clients.
Yet in an era of partisan gridlock in the nation's capital, Democrats and Republicans have come together to repeal or weaken those rules. Although Obama may not want to sign a standalone package of Wall Street deregulation into law, bipartisan legislation could be inserted into a broader bill that the president might find difficult to reject.
Many of the supporters of the latest derivatives [ http://agriculture.house.gov/sites/republicans.agriculture.house.gov/files/pdf/legislation/HR1003.pdf ] bills [ http://agriculture.house.gov/sites/republicans.agriculture.house.gov/files/pdf/legislation/DiscussionDraftETSWAPSUpdated.pdf ] are longtime anti-regulation Republicans, including Reps. Patrick McHenry (R-N.C.) and Scott Garrett (R-N.J.). But some Democratic supporters point to constituents off Wall Street when asked about the legislation by HuffPost.
A staffer for Rep. Gwen Moore (D-Wis.) said that her bill was designed not to pad banking profits, but to relieve regulatory burdens on other companies that do business with banks. "You have these huge corporations -- I'm just gonna use Caterpillar because I guess you know they're in our district. They do business in Russia and Canada. They do mining and sell huge pieces of equipment that take years to construct ... and they need to hedge those risks," said the staffer.
Moore's bill would allow a company like Caterpillar to trade derivatives with its offshore affiliates -- firms that it owns in other countries -- without posting money to a third party guaranteeing that it can make the trade.
Exempting such trades from oversight could also help foster tax avoidance, however, since companies have used sham derivatives transactions to dodge the Internal Revenue Service. Such activity is usually illegal, but the IRS has been short on resources to investigate and combat it. Requiring companies to post monetary guarantees creates an upfront cost to sham transactions that may serve as a deterrent.
"We have not taken a position on, nor advocated for this bill," Caterpillar spokesman Jim Dugan told HuffPost.
According to a 2008 report by the Government Accountability Office, Caterpillar operates 49 subsidiaries in countries classified as tax havens [ http://www.gao.gov/new.items/d09157.pdf ], including 13 in Bermuda alone.
Rep. John Garamendi (D-Calif.) is sponsoring a bill to help exempt companies that trade derivatives with public utilities [ http://agriculture.house.gov/sites/republicans.agriculture.house.gov/files/pdf/legislation/HR1038.pdf ] from Dodd-Frank's business conduct standards. He said this would save money for the utilities and argued that his bill should not be considered as part and parcel with other derivatives legislation.
"I don't have an opinion about the other bills," Garamendi told HuffPost. "I'm considering them."
At a congressional hearing last week, Wallace Turbeville, a former Goldman Sachs banker and current senior fellow at the public policy group Demos, testified on behalf of Americans for Financial Reform that exempting utilities from the rules would ultimately help unscrupulous firms that sell derivatives to the utilities.
"I had the uncomfortable opportunity to witness sales calls by derivatives specialists on governmental utilities," Turbeville said [ http://agriculture.house.gov/sites/republicans.agriculture.house.gov/files/pdf/hearings/Turbeville130314.pdf ]. "I have seen the technique of fostering a sense of trust, encouraging an advisory relationship that can be exploited to sell an immensely profitable derivative when other alternatives could be better."
Garamendi dismissed Turbeville's concerns.
"The question is, 'Will the sharks on Wall Street take advantage of the power companies?'" Garamendi said. "Wall Street certainly tries to take advantage everywhere it can. But there are always risks to running a business … The way that this sector has been abused before, the Enron situation, that isn't applicable here."
The bills to be considered Wednesday also include legislation from Rep. Jim Himes [ http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/03/13/jim-himes-dodd-frank_n_2870795.htmll ] (D-Conn.) -- another Goldman alum -- that would roll back Dodd-Frank's ban on taxpayer support for some kinds of derivatives trades. Himes has defended his bill as a way to ensure that more regulators oversee derivatives, though the measure is opposed by the Americans for Financial Reform.
Another bill would force the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, a regulator with derivatives responsibility, to conduct economic cost-benefit analyses for new agency rules using guidelines that would be more favorable to Wall Street banks. If the proposed rules failed the test, they could not be imposed.
*
Related
White House Petition: Make Lawmakers Wear Logos Of Financial Backers On Clothing, Like In NASCAR
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/03/20/white-house-petition-logos_n_2912087.html
*
Copyright © 2013 TheHuffingtonPost.com, Inc.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/03/19/wall-street-deregulation-_n_2910168.html [with embedded video reports, embedded slideshow, and comments]
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JPMorgan Chase Wins Actual Award For Its Handling Of The London Whale Debacle
JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon indicates that he is "Number One" at investor relations. The bank won an award for its handling of the London Whale debacle.
(AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin)
By Mark Gongloff
Posted: 03/22/2013 2:18 pm EDT
What's dumber than JPMorgan Chase losing $6 billion in credit derivatives, along with its sterling reputation for crisis management? Giving JPMorgan an award for its crisis management, that's what.
Yes, JPMorgan has won an honest-to-goodness, great-job award for its handling of the London Whale trading debacle, and it is not a Golden Raspberry or a Dubious Achievement Award. At a black-tie awards ceremony on Thursday that was the Oscars of investor relations, IR Magazine gave JPMorgan the prize for "best crisis management," reports [ http://blogs.wsj.com/deals/2013/03/22/london-whale-snags-a-prize/ ] Anton Troianovski of the Wall Street Journal.
Just like the Oscars, there were terrible jokes:
Kathy Hu, an executive director in J.P. Morgan’s investor relations department, accepted the award and quipped: “Can I just say, ‘Crisis? What crisis?’”
Ha ha, yes, very funny, but maybe not for the reasons Hu thinks. What's super hilarious about this is the fact that, while the London Whale crisis was exploding in the newspapers a year ago, JPMorgan executives were seriously saying, "Crisis? What crisis?" to investors.
In an earnings conference call on April 13, as part of JPMorgan's award-winning investor relations, CEO Jamie Dimon dismissed the London Whale story as a "tempest in a teapot." That performance helped Dimon win his own award from IR Magazine last night, for "Best Investor Relations by a CEO or chairman -- large cap.” Hu accepted on behalf of Dimon, who couldn't make the dinner for some reason.
During that same award-winning April 13 call, chief financial officer Douglas Braunstein waved off the London Whale trades as totally fine, vetted by risk managers and made in full view of regulators. That, as he admitted to Sen. Carl Levin (D-Mich.) during a Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations hearing [ http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/03/15/london-whale-hearing-carl-levin_n_2883719.html ] last week, was not exactly true. But those are the breaks when you're managing crises in an award-winning way.
Of course, the very fact that, more than a year after the news broke, JPMorgan executives are testifying on Capitol Hill, with the bank and its executives facing potential legal trouble [ http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/03/16/jpmorgan-scandal-london-whale-legal_n_2885951.html ] for years to come, raises its own questions about just why JPMorgan's crisis management is award-winning.
The Senate subcommittee's damning report on the London Whale debacle [ http://www.hsgac.senate.gov/subcommittees/investigations/hearings/chase-whale-trades-a-case-history-of-derivatives-risks-and-abuses ] raises serious questions about JPMorgan's risk management and crisis management, painting a picture of executives who were clueless about the risks the London Whale was taking on, and then desperately tried to hide the true size of the problem from investors and regulators. The bank's overseers at the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency last year cut its rating for the bank's award-winning management [ http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/03/20/jpmorgan-rating-bank-management-camels_n_2915483.html ] to signal it "needs improvement."
JPMorgan denies it tried to hide anything from investors and revealed all just as soon as it could. It accepts its award for crisis management with the appropriate humility:
“It’s really an honor to be recognized," bank executive Doug Levin said, according to the WSJ. "It’s a lot of hard work on the part of the team.”
And apparently JPMorgan's investor relations were just good enough to satisfy investors: The award was based on voting by analysts and investors, one of whom said: “We needed handholding this year, and J.P. Morgan came up trumps.”
Copyright © 2013 TheHuffingtonPost.com, Inc. (emphasis in original)
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/03/22/jpmorgan-london-whale-award_n_2933757.html [with embedded video report, embedded slideshow, and comments]
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DOJ Criminal Probe Into JPMorgan Whale Trade At 'Advanced Stages': Report
03/23/2013
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/03/22/jpmorgan-criminal-probe_n_2935606.html [with comments]
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Big Banks Offer Payday Loans At 300 Percent Interest: Study
A new study points out that Wells Fargo and other big banks are offering payday loans with high interest rates.
(AP Photo/CX Matiash, File)
By Mark Gongloff
Posted: 03/21/2013 1:11 pm EDT | Updated: 03/22/2013 3:03 pm EDT
Step aside, Tony Soprano: Big banks will now lend money at 300 percent interest without threatening to break a leg.
Then again, the payday loans some big banks are offering can have other ill effects, such as financial ruin, according to a new study by the Center for Responsible Lending [ http://www.responsiblelending.org/payday-lending/research-analysis/triple-digit-danger.html ]. Even as public anxiety grows about the dangers of payday lending, with 15 states recently banning the practice [ http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/24/business/major-banks-aid-in-payday-loans-banned-by-states.html?pagewanted=all ], many big banks are offering the service to their customers.
"Despite federal banking regulators’ recognition of the abuses of payday lending and aggressive action blocking previous bank partnerships with payday lenders, a few large banks have begun offering payday loans directly through checking accounts," the study says. Large banks offering the service include Wells Fargo, U.S. Bank, Regions Bank and Fifth Third Bank.
The average annual percentage rate on a bank payday loan is 225 to 300 percent, the study says. Banks that offer payday loans extract payments automatically from the borrowers' checking accounts on the next pay cycle. In some cases, that withdrawal cleans out a borrower's checking account, leading to bounced checks. According to the study, users of paycheck advances are twice as likely to overdraw their bank accounts, leading to even more fees for the banks. And that's just the start of the potential problems.
"Research has shown that payday lending often leads to negative financial outcomes for borrowers," the study says. "These include difficulty paying other bills, difficulty staying in their home or apartment, trouble obtaining health care, increased risk of credit card default, loss of checking accounts, and bankruptcy."
The elderly, already financially vulnerable and short on retirement savings, are making increasing use of these loans. According to the study, more than a quarter of bank payday loan borrowers are on Social Security.
Wells Fargo spokeswoman Richele Messick said the bank has been offering a payday loan service it calls "Direct Deposit Advance" since 1994. Available only to Wells Fargo customers, this loan has a set fee of $7.50 per $100, regardless of the length of the loan, which Messick said compares to the payday loan industry standard of about $17 per $100.
"It is an expensive form of credit, and we're very clear with our customers that it is an expensive form of credit and not to be used as a long-term solution," Messick said. "We have policies in place to make sure customers don't use the service in the long term."
Wells Fargo will not clean out a borrower's account when taking money to pay itself back for payday loans, Messick said. The bank makes sure the customer gets to keep at least $100 from each paycheck, and if customers use the service for six months in a row, Wells Fargo will cut them off from more paycheck advances for a bit -- what the CRL study calls a "cooling-off" period.
The study singles out this Wells Fargo practice for criticism, saying it's not enough to keep borrowers out of trouble.
"After six consecutive months with loans, a borrower will typically have paid hundreds of dollars in fees and still effectively owe the original principal on the loan -- a deep hole from which to recover," the study says. "As currently structured, banks’ cooling-off periods allow borrowers to become mired in a significant, destructive cycle of debt before the cooling-off period is triggered."
Like Wells Fargo, Regions Financial also warns its customers that its payday lending service, called Ready Advance, is expensive. It charges $1 per every $10 advanced during an early probationary period and 70 cents thereafter. (Non-bank payday lenders typically charge between $1.50 and $2 for every $10.) It also charges high interest if a customer wants to pay back the loan in installments -- 21 percent above prime rate.
"We introduced the product after extensive research with our customers, who told us that they were either already using a non-bank advance loan product, or would like for Regions to offer an alternative," Regions spokeswoman Evelyn Mitchell said in an statement to The Huffington Post. "Ready Advance is intended to meet the credit needs of existing Regions Bank customers who have a checking account in good standing. Our fees are generally half what customers would pay elsewhere and we offer customers a pathway to qualify for less expensive credit products."
Fifth Third, which calls its payday-loan service "Early Access Advance [ https://www.53.com/doc/pe/pe-eax-tc.pdf ]," costing $1 per $10 advance, declined to comment on CRL study.
"Our goal is to give customers access to funds in the case of an emergency," U.S. Bank spokeswoman Teri Charest said in an email to the Huffington Post. "We make it very clear that [U.S. bank's payday-loan product] Checking Account Advance is for short-term use only, and that lower cost alternatives may be available. Of those that have used the advance, more than 96 percent say they are satisfied or very satisfied with the service."
Even banks that do not directly offer payday loans themselves often help the less-scrupulous lenders who do, giving them access to customers' bank accounts to extract payments for loans at interest rates that sometimes run to 500 percent. JPMorgan Chase recently said it would do more to help protect its customers [ http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2013/03/19/jpmorgan-reining-in-payday-lenders/ ] from these lenders, making it easier for them to block withdrawals and close accounts. The bank will also offer a discount on the fees it charges to customers whose accounts have been picked clean by payday lenders.
JPMorgan's policy shift comes as regulators, including the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau [ http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/24/business/major-banks-aid-in-payday-loans-banned-by-states.html?pagewanted=all (about three-quarters of the way down at/see {linked in} http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=85141987 and preceding and following)], are investigating how banks help payday lenders, The New York Times reports. Those lenders are in turn scrambling offshore and online as they come under increasing scrutiny in the U.S.
Copyright © 2013 TheHuffingtonPost.com, Inc. (emphasis in original)
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/03/21/big-bank-payday-loan_n_2924657.html [with comments]
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Published on Mar 17, 2013 by depfox [ http://www.youtube.com/user/depfox ]
So our kids know that Prop 8 is coming to the Supreme Court soon and that could be a very big deal for our family. When they found out that one of the Justices hearing the case had two adopted children, they said, "Hey! They're just like us!"...and so, in a moment that made his dads very proud, Daniel decided to write a letter to Justice Roberts in the hopes that he will see that our families are not so different.
http://gayfamilyvalues.blogspot.com/2013/03/no-second-best.html
DANIEL:
Dear Justice Roberts,
My name is Daniel Martinez-Leffew. I'm 12 years old and I live in northern California. I have a younger sister named Salina, and we were adopted by two dads. We were adopted when I was five and my sister was about twelve months old.
When I was in foster care I was told that I was considered unadoptable because of my Goldenhar syndrome. That is a genetic disorder that affects the whole left side of my body.
I lost my little brother Emilio because some people wanted to adopt him, but they weren't willing to adopt me because of my medical conditions. Lucky for me, that's when my two dads came along.
I recently found out that you yourself adopted two kids, a boy and a girl, kind of like me and my sister.
Family means a lot of different things to a lot of different people, but some people believe that you have to have the same blood to be a family. You and I both know that family goes deeper than blood.
I was lucky to be adopted by two guys I can both call dad. They give me and my sister so much love. My dad Jay works in San Francisco as a deputy sheriff, and my dad Bryan stays at home and takes care of me and my sister.
My dads really encourage me to excel in life. Since I want to be a cook when I grow up, they're letting me take cooking classes. My parents want me to improve, whether it's schoolwork, or my social life.
I know you have a tough decision to make with the gay marriage issue, but my family is just as valuable and worthwhile as any other.
It's especially tough for you because I know you don't necessarily believe in gay marriage religiously. Lucky for us, though, you also don't believe in taking away a right, even from people like us.
My family and I have spent the last four years making YouTube videos to show people who don't understand that our family is like any other. If Prop 8 is allowed to stand, imagine the pain we would feel knowing that we are not considered equal to everyone else.
I guess to end this, it is important that all families are protected and valued. In our country we may not all be the same, but we are all Americans and deserve an equal chance at bettering our lives.
I hope you make the right decision in the end.
Sincerely,
Daniel
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W_bAiTwJAnc
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Catholic Justice
Will Roberts keep the faith?
Quit tiptoeing around John Roberts' faith.
By Christopher Hitchens
Posted Monday, Aug. 1, 2005, at 4:27 PM
Everybody seems to have agreed to tiptoe around the report that Judge John G. Roberts said he would recuse himself in a case where the law required a ruling that the Catholic Church might consider immoral. According to Jonathan Turley, a professor of law at George Washington University, the judge gave this answer in a private meeting with Sen. Richard J. Durbin, D-Ill., who is the Senate minority whip. Durbin told Turley that when asked the question, Roberts looked taken aback and paused for a long time before giving his reply.
Attempts have been made to challenge Turley's version, and Sen. Durbin (who was himself unfairly misquoted recently as having made a direct comparison between Guantanamo, Hitler, and Stalin when he had only mentioned them in the same breath) probably doesn't need any more grief. But how probable is it that the story is wrong? A clever conservative friend writes to me that obviously Roberts, who is famed for his unflappability, cannot have committed such a bêtise. For one thing, he was being faced with a question that he must have known he would be asked. Yes, but that's exactly what gives the report its ring of truth. If Roberts had simply said that the law and the Constitution would control in all cases (the only possible answer), then there would have been no smoke. If he had said that the Vatican would decide, there would have been a great deal of smoke. But who could have invented the long pause and the evasive answer? I think there is a gleam of fire here. At the very least, Roberts should be asked the same question again, under oath, at his confirmation.
It is already being insinuated, by those who want this thorny question de-thorned, that there is an element of discrimination involved. Why should this question be asked only of Catholics? Well, that's easy. The Roman Catholic Church claims the right to legislate on morals for all its members and to excommunicate them if they don't conform. The church is also a foreign state, which has diplomatic relations with Washington. In the very recent past, this church and this state gave asylum to Cardinal Bernard Law, who should have been indicted for his role in the systematic rape and torture of thousands of American children. (Not that child abuse is condemned in the Ten Commandments, any more than slavery or genocide or rape.) More recently still, the newly installed Pope Benedict XVI (who will always be Ratzinger to me) has ruled that Catholic politicians who endorse the right to abortion should be denied the sacraments: no light matter for believers of the sincerity that Judge Roberts and his wife are said to exhibit. And just last month, one of Ratzinger's closest allies, Cardinal Schonborn of Vienna, wrote an essay in which he announced that evolution was "ideology, not science."
Thus, quite apart from the scandalous obstruction of American justice in which the church took part in the matter of Cardinal Law, we have increasingly firm papal dogmas on two issues that are bound to come before the court: abortion and the teaching of Darwin in schools. So, please do not accuse me of suggesting a "dual loyalty" among American Catholics. It is their own church, and its conduct and its teachings, that raise this question.
If Roberts is confirmed there will be quite a bloc of Catholics on the court. Scalia, Kennedy, and Thomas are strong in the faith. Is it kosher to mention these things? The Constitution rightly forbids any religious test for public office, but what happens when a religious affiliation conflicts with a judge's oath to uphold the Constitution? Some religious organizations are also explicitly political and vice versa—the Ku Klux Klan was founded partly to defend Protestantism—and if it is true that Scalia is a member of Opus Dei then even many Catholics would consider him to have made a political rather than a theological choice. Are we ready for a Scientologist on the court rather than having him or her subjected to the equivalent of a religious test? I merely ask.
Another smart conservative friend invites me to take comfort from Justice Scalia's statement that a believer who finds his conscience in conflict with the law should forthwith resign from the bench. I wish I found this more comforting than it actually is. In the first place, Scalia's remarks had to do with a possible reluctance, on the part of a Catholic, to impose the death penalty. The church's teaching on this is not absolute and is not enforced by the threat of excommunication, though it's nice to know that Scalia regards weakness about executions as a "litmus." In the second place, it is not at all clear that Scalia admits the supremacy of the U.S. Constitution in the first place. In oral argument in March this year, on cases dealing with religious displays on public property (Van Orden v. Perry and McCreary County v. ACLU of Kentucky), he described the display of the Ten Commandments as "a symbol of the fact that government comes—derives its authority from God. And that is, it seems to me, an appropriate symbol to be on State grounds." At another point, he opined that "the moral order is ordained by God. … And to say that that's the basis for the Declaration of Independence and our institutions is entirely realistic." Display of the Ten Commandments, he went on to write, affirms that "the principle of laws being ordained by God is the foundation of the laws of this state and the foundation of our legal system."
To the extent that this gibberish can be decoded at all, it is in flat contradiction to the Declaration of Independence, which is unique precisely because it locates the just powers of government in the consent of the governed, and with the Constitution, which deliberately does not mention God at any point. The Constitution was carefully drafted and designed to guard against majoritarianism, another consideration ignored by Scalia when he opines that "the minority has to be tolerant of the majority's ability to express its belief that government comes from God." (Sandra Day O'Connor, in her last written opinion, phrased it much better when she said, "We do not count heads when deciding to uphold the First Amendment.") Speaking to the Knights of Columbus in Baton Rouge, La., in January, Scalia implored them to "have the courage to have your wisdom regarded as stupidity. Be fools for Christ. And have the courage to suffer the contempt of the sophisticated world." Whether for "Christ" or not, Scalia is certainly a fool. He should have fewer allies and emulators on the court, not more. And perhaps secular America could one day have just one representative on that august body. Or would that be heresy?
© 2005 The Slate Group, LLC
http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/fighting_words/2005/08/catholic_justice.html
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Pope Francis was often quiet on Argentine sex abuse cases as archbishop
Argentine priest Julio Cesar Grassi remains free on a conditional release after being convicted of molesting a boy in his care.
Rolando Andrade Stracuzzi/AP
The unkempt grounds of Felices los Niños in Hurlingham, Argentina, founded by Father Julio Cesar Grassi.
Jahi Chikwendiu/The Washington Post
By Nick Miroff
March 18, 2013
HURLINGHAM, Argentina — Father Julio Cesar Grassi was a celebrity in the Archdiocese of Buenos Aires. The young, dynamic, ¬media-savvy priest networked with wealthy Argentines to fund an array of schools, orphanages and job training programs for poor and abandoned youths, winning praise from Argentine politicians and his superior, Archbishop Jorge Mario Bergoglio [ http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/cardinal-jorge-mario-bergoglio-of-argentina-is-named-new-pope/2013/03/13/ef0cb96c-8c0e-11e2-b63f-f53fb9f2fcb4_gallery.html ].
Grassi called his foundation Felices los Niños, “Happy Children.”
Today, Grassi is a convicted sex offender who remains free on a conditional release after being sentenced to 15 years in prison in 2009 for molesting a prepubescent boy in his care.
Yet in the years after Grassi’s conviction, Bergoglio — now Pope Francis [ http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/pope-franciss-first-day/2013/03/14/5d997c54-8cea-11e2-b63f-f53fb9f2fcb4_gallery.html ] — has declined to meet with the victim of the priest’s crimes or the victims of other predations by clergy under his leadership. He did not offer personal apologies or financial restitution, even in cases in which the crimes were denounced by other members of the church and the offending priests were sent to jail.
Since he was elected to the papacy Wednesday, media attention has focused primarily on Bergoglio’s actions during the “Dirty War” [ http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/europe/popes-role-in-dirty-war-under-scrutiny/2013/03/15/53d6e3e6-8da3-11e2-b63f-f53fb9f2fcb4_story.html ] years of Argentina’s military dictatorship. But at a time when the Vatican [ http://www.washingtonpost.com/thenextpope ] is facing a costly legal and moral crisis on several continents over sex crimes committed by its priests, Bergoglio’s handling of pedophilic clergy under his authority offers insight into how he might approach the scandals.
There is no evidence that Bergoglio played a role in covering up abuse cases. Several prominent rights groups in Argentina say the archbishop went out of his way in recent years to stand with secular organizations against crimes such as sex trafficking and child prostitution. They say that Bergoglio’s resolve strengthened as new cases of molestation emerged in the archdiocese and that he eventually instructed bishops to immediately report all abuse allegations to police.
In September, after an Argentine priest from a rural area was convicted of abusing dozens of boys between 1984 and 1992, the archbishop’s office released a statement saying the case had “reaffirmed our profound shame and the immense pain that result from the grave mistakes committed by someone who should be setting the moral example.”
But during most of the 14 years that Bergoglio served as archbishop of Buenos Aires, rights advocates say, he did not take decisive action to protect children or act swiftly when molestation charges surfaced; nor did he extend apologies to the victims of abusive priests after their misconduct came to light.
“He has been totally silent,” said Ernesto Moreau, a member of Argentina’s U.N.-affiliated Permanent Assembly for Human Rights and a lawyer who has represented victims in a clergy sexual-abuse case. Victims asked to meet with Bergoglio but were turned down, Moreau said. “In that regard, Bergoglio was no different from most of the other bishops in Argentina, or the Vatican itself.”
The Catholic Church has paid out at least $2 billion [ http://ncronline.org/blogs/ncr-today/vatican-abuse-summit-22-billion-and-100000-victims-us-alone ] in the United States alone to settle abuse claims, according to monitoring groups. In many Latin American countries, though, the scope of crimes has only begun to surface, and in Argentina, no victims have received restitution in public settlements, rights groups and lawyers said.
The case of Father Grassi has been particularly troublesome to children’s advocates here because Bergoglio was widely viewed as close to the young priest, who told reporters before his conviction that he spoke with Bergoglio often and that the archbishop “never let go of my hand.”
Grassi was not expelled from the priesthood after the guilty verdict. Instead, church officials led by Bergoglio commissioned a lengthy private report arguing that Grassi was innocent.
The report was submitted as part of the priest’s legal appeal, which is pending, and prosecutors say the document has helped Grassi avoid jail time so far. A court has granted him a provisional release [ http://www.buenosairesherald.com/article/102404/court-annuls-priest-grassis-house-arrest- ] that allows him to continue residing across the street from the classroom and dormitories of Happy Children.
The sprawling, gated complex in a working-class neighborhood on the outskirts of Buenos Aires once had more than 600 students and resident orphans. It became the economic and religious hub of the community as Grassi channeled private donations into its schools, vocational workshops, bakeries and playgrounds.
Today its classrooms are mostly shuttered. The foundation’s grounds are choked with weeds and uncut grass, its swings are rusting, and its statuary is dimmed by creeping mold.
“He gave with one hand, but he took away with the other,” said neighbor Sabina Vilagra, whose husband worked as a janitor at the foundation and was called to testify in the trial.
“He had his favorites — always boys,” said her daughter, Florencia Vilagra, who also worked at Happy Children at the time.
“He would give them bicycles or toys and would designate one as his special ‘secretary,’?” she said.
There were three accusers in the trial — given the names “Ezequiel,” “Gabriel” and “Luis” to protect their identities — who ranged from ages 9 to 13 at the time of the abuse, according to prosecutor Juan Pablo Gallego.
One of Argentina’s best-known advocates for child-abuse victims, Sister Martha Pelloni, said she was called in several times to consult with psychologists who treated Grassi’s alleged victims. She said the meetings left her with no doubt that the priest was guilty, despite the church-commissioned report attempting to exonerate him. He was eventually convicted on the charges made by one of the boys. “A lot of Catholics have wanted to protect and defend him,” she said. “But the abuses were real.”
Still, Pelloni praised Bergoglio for evolving over the years and taking an increasingly firm stance against predatory clergy. Argentine law makes it a crime to fail to report allegations of abuse against children. “Now if you go to a bishop with a claim, they’ll say, ‘Report to the police,’?” she said. “Bergoglio must have ordered that.”
Yet past victims of sexual abuse might have been spared if their cases, too, had received such decisive action, Bergoglio’s critics contend.
In one of Argentina’s most egregious abuse cases, another priest in the Archdiocese of Buenos Aires was assigned to work with children even when church leaders knew of allegations against him.
After local parishioners accused Father Mario Napoleon Sasso of molesting children in a poor, rural province of eastern Argentina in the early 1990s, he was sent to a private rehabilitation center for wayward clergy, La Domus Mariae (the House of Mary), north of Buenos Aires. He lived for two years at the center and was then reassigned to work in a soup kitchen for poor children in a town outside the capital. There, he went on to sexually abuse girls as young as 3.
“His bedroom was adjacent to the cafeteria, and it had the only bathroom in the chapel,” said Moreau, the attorney for the victims’ families.
Moreau said that in 2003 he accompanied two nuns and a priest who had denounced Sasso, along with the victims’ families, to a meeting with the Vatican emissary in Buenos Aires. He said the families were told to be “patient” and were offered gifts of rosaries “blessed by the pope.”
“They just wanted to cover it up,” Moreau said.
Three years later, as the evidence against Sasso mounted, the families asked to see Bergoglio, Moreau said, but they never received a response. Sasso was convicted in 2007 and sentenced to 17 years in prison. He has since been released on parole.
Religious-affairs scholar Fortunato Mallimaci, a sociologist at the University of Buenos Aires, said that as Pope Francis [ http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/europe/on-day-2-of-papal-conclave-alliances-should-take-shape/2013/03/13/5d88b616-8bba-11e2-9838-d62f083ba93f_story.html ], Bergoglio will face an entirely different set of expectations for how to handle abuse claims. “In the United States and Europe, there is a clear separation of church and state,” he said. “Not in Latin America.” There, he said, civil society is often too weak to take on the power of the clergy, and suspicion falls first “on the accuser, not the accused.”
But, Mallimaci added, “as a bishop from Latin America, he is going to be very sensitive to what is going on in society around him and the politics of the era. If he wants to reestablish the church’s credibility, he’ll be the first to say that no abuse will be tolerated, whether in Washington or Rome or Buenos Aires.”
© 2013 The Washington Post
http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/the_americas/pope-francis-was-often-quiet-on-argentine-sex-abuse-cases-as-archbishop/2013/03/18/26e7eca4-8ff6-11e2-9cfd-36d6c9b5d7ad_story.html [with comments]
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The Secret Gingrich-Santorum 'Unity Ticket' That Nearly Toppled Romney
March 22, 2013
It’s one of the great untold stories of the 2012 presidential campaign, a tale of ego and intrigue that nearly upended the Republican primary contest and might even have produced a different nominee: As Mitt Romney struggled in the weeks leading up to the Michigan primary, Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum nearly agreed to form a joint “Unity Ticket” to consolidate conservative support and topple Romney. “We were close,” former Representative Bob Walker, a Gingrich ally, says. “Everybody thought there was an opportunity.” “It would have sent shock waves through the establishment and the Romney campaign,” says John Brabender, Santorum’s chief strategist.
But the negotiations collapsed in acrimony because Gingrich and Santorum could not agree on who would get to be president. “In the end,” Gingrich says, “it was just too hard to negotiate.”
[...]
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Related
The Best #GingrichSantorum2012 Campaign Slogans
http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2013-03-22/the-best-no-gingrichsantorum2012-campaign-slogans
In Foreign Press, Cheers for an Obama Win and 'Olympic Levels of Schadenfreude' for Romney
http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2012-11-07/an-obama-win-and-olympic-levels-of-schadenfraude-for-foreign-press
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http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2013-03-22/the-secret-gingrich-santorum-unity-ticket-that-nearly-toppled-romney [with comments]
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Emotional arguments for and against legalizing gay marriage in R.I.
Wheeler School sixth-grader Matthew Lannon, 12, of Providence, may have been the youngest to testify last night in favor of a bill sponsored by his aunt, state Sen. Donna Nesselbush, that would legalize gay marriage.
Providence Journal video by Kris Craig [ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LsUN6RbN0Ms ]
By RANDAL EDGAR and KATHERINE GREGG
JOURNAL STATE HOUSE BUREAU
March 22, 2013 11:08 am
PROVIDENCE, R.I. -- A hearing on two gay marriage bills that began at 4:47 Thursday afternoon didn't end until 4:57 Friday morning, lasting an unprecedented 12 hours.
They gathered together in the State House rotunda, holding opposing signs with messages such as "marriage is a holy institution" and "vote for love."
Already passed by the House with a vote of 51to19, the same-sex marriage issue sat squarely before the Senate Judiciary Committee Thursday, putting the outcome in the hands of 10 lawmakers who have the power to send it over another hurdle or stop it from going any further.
Same-sex marriage supporters, feeling momentum based on the recent House vote, as well as recent polls and votes in other states, argued it is time for Rhode Island to join the rest of New England and make marriage available to all loving couples.
"I have been characterized as an abomination, a sinner, an unnatural parent, blasphemous, cursed, dangerous, Satanic and immoral and that's just this evening," said Wendy Becker of Providence. "But of course these characterizations are not true. What is true: I am the mother of two amazing adopted kids, a college professor, a partner of 25 years, the house in the neighborhood where all the kids hang out, the organizer of the block party, the classroom parent-volunteer.
"My partner and I cheer loudly at our son's hockey games, sit mesmerized at our daughter's singing recitals, help with homework," she said. "Our lives are consumed by the needs of our kids and our love for each other."
Opponents, citing God's law and natural law as well as recent research, argued that approving same-sex marriage will hurt society and, especially, hurt children.
"It's true some people claim that it doesn't make a difference whether a child is raised by a mother and father or whether she's raised by adults engaged in homosexual lifestyles. We've heard that case made personally tonight through anecdotes and very moving stories," said Susan Yoshihara, director of research at the Catholic Family and Human Rights Institute, in Washington, D.C. "Some go even further and say that two lesbians might make better parents than a mother and a father, and there was a study that came out a few years ago that pointed to that effect as well. But any scholarly basis for those claims has been shattered by the latest and best social science research [absolute bullshit, an absolute lie - as has been exhaustively documented in the (linked in the) previous posts in this string, most recently with the "Goal of UT parenting study was to influence SCOTUS decisions on gay marriage, docs show" linked about half-way into the post to which this is a reply]."
More than 650 people signed up to speak at the hearing and with dozens of others on hand to watch, many were sent to overflow rooms on the first, second and third floors of the State House. Televisions were set up so they could watch as the committee, which took no action, heard testimony on two competing bills.
Senate Bill 38, sponsored by Sen. Donna M. Nesselbush, D-Pawtucket, and nearly identical to the bill that passed in the House, would define marriage as "the legally recognized union" of two people, removing gender-specific language from state law.
Senate Bill 708, sponsored by Sen. Frank A. Ciccone III, D-Providence, would put a referendum before voters, asking if they want to legalize same-sex marriage by adding language to the state Constitution that defines marriage as "the legally-recognized union of two people."
Ciccone's bill would also establish legal protections for people of faith -- including "small business" owners -- who choose not to officiate or provide goods, services or accommodations for a marriage ceremony that violates their "religious beliefs."
Same-sex marriage supporters -- Governor Chafee and state General Treasurer Gina M. Raimondo among them -- championed the Nesselbush bill, and some of them blasted the Ciccone bill for taking "a human rights" issue out of the hands of lawmakers and putting it before voters.
"The time has come for you to cast a vote on marriage equality in Rhode Island," said former state Rep. Anthony DeLuca, of North Kingstown, who argued that the referendum bill would "undermine the importance of your office to which you have been elected, often to make tough decisions and cast difficult votes."
Same-sex marriage opponents were split on Ciccone's bill, with some saying the matter should go before voters and others urging the committee to uphold the traditional view of marriage as between one man and one woman.
"Historically our marriage laws have been based on the Judeo-Christian view of marriage with its roots in the He-brew and Christian scriptures," said the Rev. Philip H. Curtis, of Exeter Chapel. "If this goes forward, I ask you: by what authority will you redefine marriage?" And "by what standard shall our marriage laws be defined now and in the future ... Where and by what logic will we draw the line?"
The same-sex marriage debate began early in the 2013 legislative session, with openly gay House Speaker Gordon D. Fox stating from the outset that his goal was to pass a bill out of the House by the end of January.
The House bill, sponsored by Rep. Arthur Handy, D-Cranston, became only the second same-sex marriage bill in 16 years to receive a committee vote, and it became the first to pass out of committee. The vote was unanimous.
Two days later, on Jan. 24, the full House voted, putting the issue in the hands of a divided Senate.
Senate President M. Teresa Paiva Weed, who opposes same-sex marriage, said at the outset of the 2013 session that she would not use her position to influence the outcome, and in appointing 10 people to the Senate Judiciary Committee -- six of them returning and four of them new -- she appeared to leave the committee divided on the issue. Just this week, however, one member -- Sen. Leonidas P. Raptakis, D-Coventry -- withdrew his support for Ciccone's bill and softened his stance on Nesselbush's bill, leaving open the possibility that he might provide the sixth voted need to send it to the Senate floor.
Thirty-seven states define marriage as the union of one man and one woman, but there are now nine that recognize same-sex marriage, including all the other New England states, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures.
Rhode Island allows same-sex couples to enter civil unions -- an option that some same-sex marriage opponents say is a fair compromise. But same-sex marriage supporters say the law contains discriminatory religious protections and perpetuates a system where some couples can marry and some cannot.
*
More on R.I's gay marriage debate
http://news.providencejournal.com/breaking-news/gay-marriage.html
*
© 2013, Published by The Providence Journal Co.
http://news.providencejournal.com/breaking-news/2013/03/emotional-arguments-for-and-against-legalizing-gay-marriage-in-ri.html [with comments]
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Study of Men’s Falling Income Cites Single Parents
The line outside a job fair in Chicago last year. The economic struggles of male workers are both a cause and an effect of the breakdown of traditional households, a survey suggests.
Scott Olson/Getty Images
Graphic
Diverging Fortunes for Men and Women
http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2013/03/20/business/diverging-fortunes-for-men-and-women.html
By BINYAMIN APPELBAUM
Published: March 20, 2013
WASHINGTON — The decline of two-parent households may be a significant reason for the divergent fortunes of male workers, whose earnings generally declined in recent decades, and female workers, whose earnings generally increased, a prominent labor economist argues in a new survey of existing research.
David H. Autor [ http://economics.mit.edu/faculty/dautor ], a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology [ http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/organizations/m/massachusetts_institute_of_technology/index.html ], says that the difference between men and women, at least in part, may have roots in childhood. Only 63 percent of children lived in a household with two parents in 2010, down from 82 percent in 1970. The single parents raising the rest of those children are predominantly female. And there is growing evidence that sons raised by single mothers “appear to fare particularly poorly,” Professor Autor wrote in an analysis [ http://www.thirdway.org/publications/662 ] for Third Way, a center-left policy research organization.
In this telling, the economic struggles of male workers are both a cause and an effect of the breakdown of traditional households. Men who are less successful are less attractive as partners, so some women are choosing to raise children by themselves, in turn often producing sons who are less successful and attractive as partners.
“A vicious cycle may ensue,” wrote Professor Autor and his co-author, Melanie Wasserman, a graduate student, “with the poor economic prospects of less educated males creating differentially large disadvantages for their sons, thus potentially reinforcing the development of the gender gap in the next generation.”
The fall of men in the workplace is widely regarded by economists as one of the nation’s most important and puzzling trends. While men, on average, still earn more than women, the gap between them has narrowed considerably, particularly among more recent entrants to the labor force.
For all Americans, it has become much harder to make a living without a college degree, for intertwined reasons including foreign competition, advancements in technology and the decline of unions. Over the same period, the earnings of college graduates have increased. Women have responded exactly as economists would have predicted, by going to college in record numbers. Men, mysteriously, have not.
Among people who were 35 years old in 2010, for example, women were 17 percent more likely to have attended college, and 23 percent more likely to hold an undergraduate degree.
“I think the greatest, most astonishing fact that I am aware of in social science right now is that women have been able to hear the labor market screaming out ‘You need more education’ and have been able to respond to that, and men have not,” said Michael Greenstone, an M.I.T. economics professor who was not involved in Professor Autor’s work. “And it’s very, very scary for economists because people should be responding to price signals. And men are not. It’s a fact in need of an explanation.”
Most economists agree that men have suffered disproportionately from economic changes like the decline of manufacturing. But careful analyses have found that such changes explain only a small part of the shrinking wage gap.
One set of supplemental explanations holds that women are easier to educate or, as the journalist Hanna Rosin wrote in “The End of Men [ http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/02/magazine/who-wears-the-pants-in-this-economy.html?pagewanted=all ],” because women are more adaptable. Professor Autor writes that such explanations are plausible and “intriguing,” but as yet unproven.
He disagrees entirely with the view of the conservative analyst Charles Murray, in “Coming Apart [ http://www.aei.org/book/society-and-culture/coming-apart-the-state-of-white-america-1960-2010/ (and see {linked in} http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=72004206 and preceding and following, http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=72076256 and preceding and following, and http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=73504847 and preceding and following)],” that men have become “less industrious.”
“We’re pretty much in agreement on most of the facts,” Professor Autor said of Mr. Murray. “But he looks at the same facts and says this is all due to the failure of government programs, eroding the commitment to working. And we’re saying, what seems much more plausible here is that the working world just has less and less use for these folks.”
Professor Autor’s own explanation builds on existing research showing that income inequality [ http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/subjects/i/income/income_inequality/index.html ] has soared, stretching the gap between rich and poor, and that a smaller share of Americans are making the climb. The children of lower-income parents are ever more likely to become, in turn, the parents of lower-income children.
Moreover, a growing share of lower-income children are raised by their mother but not their father, and research shows that those children are at a particular disadvantage.
Professor Autor said in an interview that he was intrigued by evidence suggesting the consequences were larger for boys than girls, including one study finding that single mothers spent an hour less per week with their sons than with their daughters. Another study of households where the father had less education, or was absent entirely, found the female children were 10 to 14 percent more likely to complete college. A third study of single-parent homes found boys were less likely than girls to enroll in college.
“It’s very clear that kids from single-parent households fare worse in terms of years of education,” he said. “The gender difference, the idea that boys do even worse again, is less clear cut. We’re pointing this out as an important hypothesis that needs further exploration. But there’s intriguing evidence in that direction.”
Conservatives have long argued that society should encourage stable parental relationships. A recent report [ http://twentysomethingmarriage.org/ ] by the National Marriage Project at the University of Virginia concluded that promoting marriage is the best way “to make family life more stable for children whose parents don’t enjoy the benefit of a college education.”
Liberals have tended to argue that the government should focus instead on improving economic opportunities. Jonathan Cowan, the president of Third Way, said the paper underscored that addressing social problems was a means to improve economic opportunities.
“If Democrats have as their goal being the party of the middle class, they have to come to the realization that they’re not going to be able to get there solely through their standard explanations,” said Mr. Cowan, a veteran of the Clinton administration. “We need to ask, ‘How can we get these fathers back involved in their children’s lives?’ ”
But some experts cautioned that Professor Autor’s theory did not necessarily imply that such children would benefit from the presence of their fathers.
“Single-parent families tend to emerge in places where the men already are a mess,” said Christopher Jencks, a professor of social policy at Harvard University. “You have to ask yourself, ‘Suppose the available men were getting married to the available women? Would that be an improvement?’ ”
Instead of making marriage more attractive, he said, it might be better for society to help make men more attractive.
© 2013 The New York Times Company
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/21/business/economy/as-men-lose-economic-ground-clues-in-the-family.html [ http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/21/business/economy/as-men-lose-economic-ground-clues-in-the-family.html?pagewanted=all ] [with comments]
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’90s Alt Folk Rocker, Now Christian, Michelle Shocked Stuns San Francisco Club With Homophobic Rant
Rick Diamond / Getty Images
March 18, 2013 1:55 PM
Singer-songwriter Michelle Shocked lived up to her stage name over the weekend when she stunned a San Francisco audience by going on a homophobic rant during a concert that included the statement, “God hates fags.”
The show-stopping moment happened during Shocked’s second set of the night at SF club Yoshi’s this past Sunday night (March 17), and was live-tweeted by Matt Penfield [ https://twitter.com/TheGuapo ].
“Music was good. Hate speech was excruciating. 2nd set became a hostage situation–luckily we could all leave,” Penfield tweeted about the incident, adding that it was “super anti-gay and hateful.”
Shocked, who has identified herself as a born-again Christian in recent years (she joined the Pentecostal West Angeles Church of God in Christ in 2008), originally came to prominence in the late ’80s with the release of The Texas Campfire Tapes [ https://itunes.apple.com/us/album/the-texas-campfire-tapes/id183348194 ], a bootleg recording that was eventually reissued on Mercury Records.
This is not the first time Shocked has lashed out publicly at homosexuality. According to Religion Dispatches Magazine [ http://www.religiondispatches.org/archive/sexandgender/4888/wild_goose_festival%E2%80%99s_%28mostly%29_welcoming_spirit_for_lgbt_christians_/ ], when she was asked about her “position on homosexuality” during a 2008 Christian music-focused Wild Goose Festival, a visibly upset Shocked railed, “Who drafted me as a gay icon? You are looking at the world’s greatest homophobe. Ask God what He thinks.”
“There is always someone who wants to catch me,” she added to a festival staffer after shutting off her microphone.
The self-described “radical skateboard punk-rock anarchist” was something of a lesbian icon during her ’90s heyday, something she now disavows completely. The alleged about-face comes as a complete surprise to Shocked’s long-time fans.
“Ask any lesbian who was a fan of hers in the ’80s and 90s and they will tell you that they have NO doubt she is a lesbian,” commented one such reader on Queerty.com [ http://www.queerty.com/alt-folk-singer-michelle-shocked-goes-on-homophobic-rant-tells-audience-god-hates-fags-20130318/ ]. “Just another sick sad, twisted closet case whose sanity is ruined by buying in to the bigoted religion she is a member of. Pathetic.”
According to her Twitter feed, Shocked was adamant that her message get out.
Michelle Shocked
@MShocked
Everybody in the audience at this Yoshi's show, make sure you take a second and tweet Michelle a note! She's crushing it.
2:55 AM - 18 Mar 13
After the onstage rant which allegedly cleared the club, Shocked has only posted one tweet.
Michelle Shocked
@MShocked
Truth is leading to painful confrontation #shortsharpshocked [ https://twitter.com/search?q=%23shortsharpshocked&src=hash ]
3:28 AM - 18 Mar 13
The fallout from the shocking tirade has been immediate, with the news site Gambit linking to two different venues in Bolder, Co, and Novato, CA, that have canceled previously scheduled Michelle Shocked shows in light of the incident.
Gambit
@The_Gambit
Venues in Boulder, CO & Novato, CA cancel @mshocked tour shows after anti-gay comments: on.fb.me/ZNNTD2 [ http://t.co/jPdCo3iI7o ] http://bit.ly/ZNNW1I [ http://t.co/ihHnIZN45t ]
7:33 PM - 18 Mar 13
©2013 CBS Local Media, a division of CBS Radio Inc.
http://kroq.cbslocal.com/2013/03/18/90s-alt-folk-rocker-now-christian-michele-shocked-stuns-san-francisco-gay-club-with-homophobic-rant/ [with comment]
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Saxby Chambliss: 'I'm Not Gay. So I'm Not Going To Marry One.'
03/21/2013
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/03/21/saxby-chambliss-gay-marriage_n_2923091.html [with embedded video report, and comments]
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Ohio Governor Flip Flops On Civil Unions Support In 10 Hours
By Aviva Shen on Mar 21, 2013 at 5:51 pm
Ohio Governor John Kasich (R) briefly wavered on his staunch opposition to all forms of same-sex unions in an interview [ http://www.kypost.com/dpps/news/state/ohio-gov-john-kasich-supports-rob-portman-and-civil-unions-but-wont-support-same-sex-marriage_8339734 ] on Thursday morning. When pressed about fellow Ohio Republican Sen. Rob Portman’s recent embrace of gay marriage [ http://thinkprogress.org/lgbt/2013/03/15/1724841/gop-senator-embraces-gay-marriage-after-his-son-comes-out/ ], Kasich claimed he supported civil unions but not marriage for gay couples:
Kasich was asked if he could imagine a situation that might cause him to change his position.
“I really can’t see one, I mean, I talked to Rob and encouraged him,” Kasich said. “If people want to have civil unions and have some way to transfer their resources, I’m for that. I don’t support gay marriage.”
“I’ve got friends that are gay and I’ve told them ‘Look, (same sex marriage) is just not something I agree with’ and I’m not doing it out of a sense of anger or judgment, it’s just my opinion on this issue.”
“I just think marriage is between a man and a woman, but if you want to have a civil union that’s fine with me,” Kasich said.
Despite this fairly strong endorsement for civil unions, his office quickly walked back the governor’s statement, stressing that Kasich maintains his opposition to all forms of same-sex unions. Spokesperson Rob Nichols told Buzzfeed [ http://www.buzzfeed.com/evanmcsan/ohios-republican-governor-endorses-civil-unions-then-takes-i ], “He’s opposed to discrimination against any Ohioan and, while he may have used the term ‘civil union’ loosely in this instance, he recognizes the existing rights of Ohioans to enter into private contracts to manage their personal property and health care issues.”
Kasich holds a long anti-gay record [ http://votesmart.org/candidate/key-votes/27017/john-kasich/76/sexual-orientation-and-gender-identity ], beginning into his time in Congress, where he voted to ban adoptions by gay parents, as well as for the Defense of Marriage Act and the military’s defunct “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy. As governor, Kasich broke his pledge [ http://thinkprogress.org/lgbt/2011/01/24/177230/kasich-eo/ ] to extend anti-discrimination protections for LGBT individuals, allowing state and contracted employers to fire anyone based on sexual orientation.
Kasich may have felt pressure on the spot to be flexible in his views, as his hardline stance on gay marriage and civil unions is now far outside the norm. Support for gay marriage is at an all-time high [ http://thinkprogress.org/lgbt/2013/03/20/1751381/polls-reuters-and-cnn-confirm-momentum-for-marriage-equality/ ]. Civil unions are currently banned in Ohio, but a ballot initiative [ http://www.buzzfeed.com/evanmcsan/ohios-republican-governor-endorses-civil-unions-then-takes-i ] this fall could change that.
© 2013 Center for American Progress Action Fund (emphasis in original)
http://thinkprogress.org/lgbt/2013/03/21/1758801/ohio-governor-flip-flops-on-support-for-civil-unions-in-10-hours/ [with comments]
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Will Portman, Senator's Gay Son, Criticized By Conservatives After Dad's Gay Marriage Reversal
03/20/2013
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/03/20/will-portman-criticized-conservatives-senator-gay-marriage_n_2910103.html [with embedded video report, and comments]
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Steven Simpson, Gay British Teen, Dies After Being Set On Fire At Birthday Party
03/23/2013
A young British man has been convicted of manslaughter after killing a gay teen by setting him on fire.
The BBC reports that 20-year-old Jordan Sheard has been sentenced to three and a half years in jail for the death of Steven Simpson [ http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-south-yorkshire-21887535 ] after pleading guilty to manslaughter charges. Simpson, 18, died one day after sustaining "significant burns" in June 2012, according to the report.
Simpson had Asperger's syndrome, a speech impairment and epilepsy, the Yorkshire Post noted [ http://www.yorkshirepost.co.uk/news/at-a-glance/general-news/teen-dies-at-his-birthday-party-after-friend-covers-him-with-tanning-oil-and-sets-him-alight-1-5519548 ]. The teen had reportedly been dared to strip down to his underpants before being doused in tanning oil, after which Sheard set him aflame at the party. Other reports said that anti-gay messages [ http://news.ninemsn.com.au/world/2013/03/22/10/32/teen-set-alight-at-birthday-party ], including "gay boy" and "I love d*ck," had been found scrawled across Simpson's body.
[...]
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/03/23/steven-simpson-gay-teen-burned-birthday-_n_2939092.html [with comments]
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SOUTHGATE: Authorities seek motive behind teen’s suicide at school
March 23, 2013
http://www.thenewsherald.com/articles/2013/03/23/news/doc514b5816dd64d435577977.txt [ http://www.thenewsherald.com/articles/2013/03/23/news/doc514b5816dd64d435577977.txt?viewmode=fullstory ] [with comments] [see also http://www.detroitnews.com/article/20130321/SCHOOLS/303210418/1409/METRO/Student-who-killed-self-took-gun-from-relative-police-say (with comments)]
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North Dakota Republican Pols To Protest Anti-Abortion Laws: 'We Have Stepped Over The Line'
Rep. Kathy Hawken, R-Fargo, poses at the state Capitol in Bismarck, N.D., Tuesday, March 19, 2013. Hawken and a group of bipartisan lawmakers are urging Gov. Jack Dalrymple to veto measures that would make North Dakota home to the nation's most restrictive abortion laws.
(AP Photo/James MacPherson)
By Laura Bassett
Posted: 03/21/2013 5:44 pm EDT | Updated: 03/22/2013 12:56 pm EDT
A group of GOP state lawmakers in North Dakota will protest new abortion restrictions on Monday at a Stand Up for Women rally [ https://www.facebook.com/StandUpforWomenND ] in Bismarck, N.D., because they believe their fellow Republicans have gone too far.
"It's to say, hey, this isn't okay. We have stepped over the line," said state Rep. Kathy Hawken (R-Fargo) in a phone interview with The Huffington Post. "One of the key tenets of the Republican Party is personal responsibility. I'm personally pro-life, but I vote pro-choice, because you can't make that decision for anyone else. You just can't."
North Dakota recently passed the most restrictive abortion ban in the nation [ http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/03/15/north-dakota-abortion_n_2885452.html ], which prohibits abortions after six weeks of pregnancy, and a bill preventing pregnant women from choosing abortion based on a fetal anomaly or genetic disorder. The state also has a "trigger ban," which would prohibit abortion entirely if Roe v. Wade were to be overturned.
Lawmakers are currently considering two "fetal personhood" measures [ http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/03/18/north-dakota-abortion-ban_n_2903599.html ] that would effectively ban abortion in the state and complicate the legality of birth control, stem cell research and in vitro fertilization. Hawken said the personhood bills are so extreme that she and approximately 10 of her Republican colleagues in the state legislature -- both men and women -- were inspired to speak out in defense of women's rights.
"North Dakota hasn't even passed a primary seatbelt law, but we have the most invasive attack on womens health anywhere," she said. "I got a letter yesterday from a pharmacist who said, 'We don't want to be in jail because we prescribed something!' We're spending an inordinate amount of time on social or personal issues, however you want to put it, but we haven't done anything on property tax relief, higher education funding, fixing the roads. There are all kinds of other things we need to be doing besides this."
Voters have rejected fetal personhood bills in every other state where they've been proposed, including Mississippi, but the bill stands a strong chance of becoming law in North Dakota. The state Senate passed two personhood measures in February, and the House is expected to vote on them Friday.
Hawken said that as a strong fiscal conservative, she is worried that the state will spend millions of dollars that could be put to better use defending these laws in court. "They could fund my childcare bill with what we're going to spend on lawsuits," she said. "Can't we let Arkansas be the poster child for this? Why does it have to be us?"
Hawken said she has introduced bills during her 17 years in office that she considers to be "pro-life," such as a prenatal care for minors bill [ http://votesmart.org/bill/4018/12494/11479/prenatal-care-for-minors ] and a bill ensuring quality childcare for single moms, but those were rejected by her colleagues. "It seems like we want to get [babies] here," she said, "but we don't care if they're healthy once they get here. That's just bad policy."
Copyright © 2013 TheHuffingtonPost.com, Inc.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/03/21/north-dakota-abortion-_n_2926858.html [with embedded video reports, embedded slideshow, and comments]
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North Dakota Personhood Measure Passes State House
North Dakota state Sen. Margaret Sitte (R-Bismarck) speaks in favor of an anti-abortion bill during the chamber floor debate at the state Capitol, Friday, March 15, 2013.
(AP Photo/The Bismarck Tribune, Mike McCleary)
By Laura Bassett
Posted: 03/22/2013 3:20 pm EDT | Updated: 03/22/2013 4:02 pm EDT
North Dakota became the first state on Friday to pass a fetal personhood amendment, which grants legal personhood rights to embryos from the moment of fertilization. The state House of Representatives voted 57 to 35 to pass the amendment, after the Senate passed the same measure last month.
The measure will now appear on the November 2014 ballot, and voters will be able to accept or reject it. If it passes, it will amend North Dakota's constitution to state that “the inalienable right to life of every human being at any stage of development must be recognized and protected.” The amendment would ban abortion in the state, without exceptions for rape, incest or life of the mother, and it could affect the legality of some forms of birth control, stem cell research and in vitro fertilization.
“The North Dakota legislature has taken historic strides to protect every human being in the state, paving the way for human rights nationwide,” Keith Mason, president of the anti-abortion advocacy group Personhood USA, said in a statement on Friday. “This amendment strikes the balance of accomplishing more for the unborn than any other amendment the nation has ever seen, while protecting pregnant women and their right to true medical care. We applaud the North Dakota House and Senate for their willingness to protect all of the people in their state.”
Similar fetal personhood initiatives have been rejected by voters in several other states, including Mississippi, one of the most socially conservative states in the country.
North Dakota state Rep. Kathy Hawken (R-Fargo) told HuffPost on Thursday [ http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/03/21/north-dakota-abortion-_n_2926858.html?utm_hp_ref=politics (just above)] that she and several of her Republican colleagues strongly oppose the bill and are planning to protest it at a women's health rally on Monday. "I have so many friends with grandchildren from in vitro fertilization, and to take that away from these people who desperately want children is not okay," she said. "I believe if men had babies we would not be having this discussion."
Copyright © 2013 TheHuffingtonPost.com, Inc.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/03/22/north-dakota-personhood_n_2934503.html [with embedded video report, and (over 12,000) comments]
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Darin Evans Sex Assault: Ex-Youth Pastor Accused Of Assaulting Teen From Church For Nearly 7 Years
Darin Evans, an ex-pastor of a suburban Elmhurst church, is accused of sexually assaulting a teen congregant starting in 2004.
(DuPage County Sheriff's Office)
Posted: 03/19/2013 5:44 pm EDT | Updated: 03/19/2013 11:14 pm EDT
The former youth pastor of a suburban Chicago church has been accused of sexually assaulting a teen girl from his own congregation, starting when he was the girl's counselor, according to the DuPage County State’s Attorney’s office.
Darin Evans, 41, the former associate pastor and youth minister at West Suburban Community Church in Elmhurst, Ill., had bond set at $300,000 Tuesday [ http://www.nbcchicago.com/news/local/associate-pastor-darin-evans-sexual-assault-199025661.html ], according to NBC Chicago.
Authorities say Evans had sexual contact with the girl "in his vehicle, in parks, cemeteries and men's restrooms, and during a religious retreat in Wisconsin [ http://www.dailyherald.com/article/20130319/news/703199855/ ]," according to the Daily Herald.
The victim was just 16 when the alleged sexual relationship started in 2004, when the girl was seeing Evans as a counselor [ http://abclocal.go.com/wls/story?section=news/local&id=9033271 ], ABC Chicago reports. The girl ended the relationship in 2011 and recently went to police.
There are no other reports Evans abused other children.
DuPage State’s Attorney Robert Berlin described Evans’ alleged predatory acts as “just despicable [ http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/suburbs/elmhurst/chi-elmhurst-youth-minister-accused-of-sex-with-teen-20130319,0,3692802.story ],” according to the Tribune, while the pastor of the church describes the congregation as "heartbroken and devastated" by the news.
"Unfortunately, he had this secret side none of us knew about," Rev. Jim Lennon of West Suburban Community Church told the Herald.
Prosecutors said the married father of three from Ohio "groomed" the girl to trust him, and allegedly said he would kill himself if their relationship became public.
According to the DuPage County Sheriff's office, Evans is charged with 11 counts of criminal sexual assault and two counts of aggravated criminal sexual assault [ http://inmatesearch.dupagesheriff.org/new_inmate_details.asp?txtInmateNum=230450&txtInmateID=0MJV418000DUP3EU (that record now evidently out-of-date/superceded)] and faces up to 47 years in prison if convicted.
Evans is due back in court April 2.
Copyright © 2013 TheHuffingtonPost.com, Inc.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/03/19/darin-evans-sex-assault-e_n_2909889.html [with comments]
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Reproductive Health Care Provider Uses Stork Costume To Prank Anti-Contraception Protesters
03/22/2013
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/03/22/anti-contraception-stork-protesters_n_2934735.html [with comments]
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O’Reilly Sounds The Alarm About The Left’s War Against The Easter Bunny
By Adam Peck on Mar 22, 2013 at 11:54 am
Culture warrior and Fox News host Bill O’Reilly sounded the alarms on his show yesterday over the looming threat being posed by secularists towards…the Easter bunny.
O’Reilly, perhaps best known for his annual winter jeremiads on the imminent destruction of Christmas, explained to his audience that “secular progressives” are seeking to destroy such holy biblical figures as grown men in bunny costumes so they can legalize marijuana and allow abortions on demand:
O’REILLY: Secular progressives are running wild with President Obama in the White House. They feel unchained, liberated, and they’re trying to diminish any form of religion. The goal is to marginalize religious opposition to secular programs. For example, in Canada and China a woman can have an abortion for any reason at any time. Secular progressives want that here. But traditional forces in America are in opposition. Therefore in this country, you can’t terminate a baby about to be born without a damn good reason. And if you do abort a late term baby, you could be charged with murder. SPs hate that. In Scandanavia, there are laws that say you cannot criticize minorities and if you do, you could be arrested. Secular progressives want laws like that here. Also the legalization of drugs, well under way in many places, and that is a secular cause. So, if the far left can marginalize Santa and the Easter bunny, of they can tell the children those symbols are obsolete and unnecessary, they then set the stage for a totally secular society in the future.
Forgetting for a minute that religiously-affiliated lawmakers are actually imposing tougher [ http://thinkprogress.org/health/2013/03/15/1724911/north-dakota-six-week-heartbeat-ban/ ] abortion [ http://thinkprogress.org/health/2013/02/07/1552611/alabama-trap-laws/ ] laws [ http://thinkprogress.org/health/2012/03/19/446875/tennessee-bill-may-expose-identities-of-women-seeking-abortions/ ] around the country [ http://thinkprogress.org/health/2012/03/07/439383/interactive-map-abortion/ ], that nobody is pushing for a law to criminalize free speech, and that legalizing drugs is far from [ http://thinkprogress.org/justice/2012/03/08/441050/pat-robertson-endorses-marijuana-legalization/ ] a secular progressive cause, there is simply no “war on Easter.” O’Reilly points to a handful [ http://nation.foxnews.com/war-easter/2013/03/20/war-easter-schools-cities-planning-another-round-spring-egg-hunts ] of small community centers and elementary schools that are hosting “spring egg hunts,” sometimes with a “spring bunny” emceeing the festivities. Nowhere to be found is the word “Easter,” laments O’Reilly, fearful that the nation’s six year olds will one day forget the religious symbolism of crawling around a grassy schoolyard on all fours searching for chocolate-filled plastic eggs. Each of the schools highlighted by O’Reilly has off the day following Easter Sunday, an opportunity for parents to teach their children about the significance of the holiday and a luxury rarely afforded to the practitioners of any other religion in the country.
Conservative radio host Laura Ingraham joined O’Reilly to discuss this latest atrocity, and both agreed that the fault belongs to the nation’s “traditional forces,” who aren’t doing enough, in their estimation, to fight back against the rise of secularism and the persecution of religious Christians. It’s a bold statement coming from two people who have a history [ http://thinkprogress.org/media/2010/10/14/124290/goldberg-behar-oreilly/ ] of being chief persecutors [ http://mediamatters.org/blog/2011/07/23/fox-juxtaposes-norwegian-terrorist-attack-nyc-i/183060 ] towards people of other faiths.
HT: Mediaite [ http://www.mediaite.com/tv/bill-oreilly-kicks-off-crusade-against-the-war-on-easter-laura-ingraham-warns-of-new-era-of-persecution/ ]
© 2013 Center for American Progress Action Fund (emphasis in original)
http://thinkprogress.org/media/2013/03/22/1760681/oreilly-easter-bunny/ [with comments]
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Climate science-denying GOPer to head climate subcommittee
(Credit: Facebook/ChrisStewartforCongress)
Another day, another anti-science move by the House Science Committee
By Jillian Rayfield
Wednesday, Mar 20, 2013 04:06 PM CDT
A House subcommittee on climate change announced that its new Chair will be Rep. Chris Stewart, a Republican from Utah who does not believe in man-made climate change, and who has written several end-times novels that were endorsed [ http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2012/09/chris-stewart-utah-republican ] by none other than Glenn Beck.
“I’m not as convinced as a lot of people are that man-made climate change is the threat they think it is,” Stewart told the Salt Lake Tribune [ http://www.sltrib.com/sltrib/politics/56029666-90/climate-stewart-utah-committee.html.csp ]. “I think it is probably not as immediate as some people do.”
As Tim Murphy from Mother Jones [ http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2013/03/chair-climate-change-subcommittee-jury-still-out-climate-change ] reports, Stewart is no big fan of the EPA or Endangered Species Act either:
But if Stewart isn’t sure how he feels about climate change, he’s dead-set in his view of the EPA: He wants the agency dissolved. In August, following a campaign event in the southwest corner of the state, Stewart told the St. George News [ http://www.stgeorgeutah.com/news/archive/2012/08/25/republican-congressional-candidate-visits-st-george-tells-crowd-to-keep-faith-in-america/ ] that the Environmental Protection Agency should be eliminated because, as he put it, “The EPA thwarts energy development.”
During his congressional campaign, Stewart highlighted the Endangered Species Act as the mark of a regulatory state gone wrong. “There is no better example of the overreach of government than in environmental law,” he said in an interview [ http://freemencapitalist.com/interviews/chris-stewart ; http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gT_LtZV0Xsg (below)] last April with the Freemen Capitalist [ http://freemencapitalist.com/ ], a conservative website.
Stewart is in good company on the House Science Committee [ http://www.salon.com/2012/11/12/anti_science_gopers_vying_for_house_science_chair/ ]: The current chair, Rep. Lamar Smith of Texas, once decried media coverage “slanted in favor of global warming alarmists,” and another Republican, Rep. Jim Sensenbrenner of Wisconsin, has dismissed “scientific fascism” and called climate change research part of an “international conspiracy.”
Copyright © 2013 Salon Media Group, Inc.
http://www.salon.com/2013/03/20/climate_science_denying_goper_to_head_climate_subcommittee/ [with comments]
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Calvin Beisner, Evangelical Christian, Claims Environmentalism Great Threat To Civilization
Calvin Beisner of the Cornwall Alliance recently explained why environmentalism is the 'greatest threat to Western Civilization.' Here, Beisner delivers a speech at Biola University in 2009.
By Meredith Bennett-Smith
Posted: 03/21/2013 11:33 am EDT
A representative for an evangelical group that doesn't believe in man-made climate change has suggested that the modern environmental movement is harming civilization.
Speaking on the Janet Mefferd Show on March 18, Dr. Calvin Beisner of the Cornwall Alliance laid out four reasons why environmentalism is "the greatest threat to Western civilization [ http://janetmefferdpremium.com/2013/03/18/janet-mefferd-radio-show-20130318-hr-3/ ]."
Environmentalism is insidious, Beisnser explained, and it dangerously "speaks to the inherent spiritual yearnings of human souls and it provides plausible answers to dogged questions." It also incorporates the similarly dangerous threats of utopian Marxism, the secular humanism and the "religious fanaticism of jihad."
Lastly, "environmentalism encompasses all the vague spiritualities that have frankly overwhelmed secular humanism in the West and now threaten the Christian faith."
The Cornwall Alliance [ http://www.cornwallalliance.org/ ] is made up of activists that are "committed to bringing a balanced Biblical view of stewardship to the critical issues of environment and development." According to the group's website, members believe "Recent global warming is one of many natural cycles of warming and cooling in geologic history."
While the majority of climate researchers believe climate change is caused by human activity [ http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2010/06/04/1003187107.abstract ], a 2011 poll found that Tea Party members and white evangelicals, such as Beisner, were statistically less likely to believe in evolution and climate change [ http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/09/22/evangelicals-evolution-climate-change-poll_n_975699.html ] than most Americans.
Beisner is a popular guest on conservative evangelical shows that promote an anti-climate change agenda.
In November, he told the hosts of the American Family Association "Today's Issues" program that humans could not possibly be causing the "catastrophic consequences for the climate [ http://www.rightwingwatch.org/content/beisner-belief-climate-change-insult-god ; http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r6Q6vkxs3XQ (next below)]"
warned by global warming scientists.
"That doesn't fit well with the biblical teaching that the earth is the result of the omniscient design, the omnipotent creation and the faithful sustaining of the God of the Bible. So it really is an insult to God," Beisner said.
The professor, who has a doctorate in Scottish history [ http://ecalvinbeisner.com/bio.pdf ], was also featured in Bill Moyers' 2006 documentary [ http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/11/arts/television/11gate.html ] "Is God Green?"
During interviews for the special, Beisner said that Genesis dictates [ http://www.pbs.org/moyers/moyersonamerica/print/beisner_print.html ] humans should "Be fruitful and multiply, fill the earth and subdue it." This disproves the opinion of the "anti-population growth" activists, according to Beisner, who adds that pollution is a natural byproduct of reality.
It should be noted that not all evangelical Christians oppose global warming reforms. Groups like the Young Evangelicals for Climate Action [ http://www.yecaction.org/ ] take the stance that it is a Christian's duty to protect the planet [ http://www.christianpost.com/news/is-climate-change-a-christian-responsibility-evangelicals-call-obama-and-romney-to-action-83613/ ].
(h/t Right Wing Watch [ http://www.rightwingwatch.org/content/beisner-explains-why-environmentalism-represents-greatest-threat-western-civilization ])
View the video below to hear Calvin Beisner speak at Biola University in 2009 [ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xhATyCzELuc (next below, as embedded)]:
Copyright © 2013 TheHuffingtonPost.com, Inc.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/03/21/calvin-beisner-environmentalism-greatest-threat-civilization_n_2919756.html [with additional embedded video, embedded slideshow, and comments]
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Steve Stockman, GOP Congressman, Says Best Thing About Earth Is Oil
Rep. Steve Stockman recently sent out a tweet saying the best thing about Earth is the oil that comes out of it.
By Meredith Bennett-Smith
Posted: 03/22/2013 4:21 pm EDT | Updated: 03/22/2013 4:37 pm EDT
A Republican politician known for making controversial statements may have just raised the bar with a Tweet about global oil and gas consumption.
On Thursday, Rep. Steve Stockman [ http://stockman.house.gov/about/full-biography ] (R-Texas) sent out a tweet stating the best thing about Earth is its oil [ http://www.politico.com/blogs/on-congress/2013/03/stockman-the-best-thing-about-the-earth-is-if-you-159944.html ].
Rep. Steve Stockman
@SteveStockmanTX
The best thing about the Earth is if you poke holes in it oil and gas come out.
5:33 PM - 21 Mar 13
The politician continued to focus much of his online energy [ http://news.yahoo.com/twitter-destroys-pro-oil-senator-best-thing-earth-191453282.html ] targeting environmentalists and liberals, who he claims hate oil, gas and science.
Rep. Steve Stockman
@SteveStockmanTX
Energy-rich oil propelled civilization into the 21st Century. But liberals want to turn back the clock to inefficient Bronze Age wind power.
6:16 PM - 21 Mar 13
Rep. Steve Stockman
@SteveStockmanTX
There is reportedly $1 trillion in oil off the coast of California. But liberal hatred of science and human progress keeps them bankrupt
6:14 PM - 21 Mar 13
Rep. Steve Stockman
@SteveStockmanTX
What saved whales from extinction? Oil drilling. The oil industry has literally done more to save species than Greenpeace.
2:57 AM - 22 Mar 13
While Stockman's "Best thing about the Earth" tweet was quickly parodied online [ http://www.theatlanticwire.com/politics/2013/03/steve-stockman-best-thing-about-earth/63399/ ], MSNBC notes that this is far from the most outrageous thing the Texan [ http://tv.msnbc.com/2013/03/21/offended-by-steve-stockmans-poke-holes-in-it-remark-dont-be-hes-said-much-worse/ ], who serves on the Science, Space and Technology Committee, has said.
In the past, the congressman has claimed that the “Violence Against Women Act” was a bad bill [ http://thinkprogress.org/lgbt/2013/03/18/1736201/gop-lawmaker-mocks-lgbt-protections-in-vawa-change-gender-how-is-that-a-woman/ ] that helps “men dressed up as women.” He has also claimed that former President Bill Clinton staged the bloody Waco raid [ http://www.sfgate.com/news/article/Texas-Lawmaker-Says-Waco-Was-a-Setup-GOP-3033544.php ] in order to gain support for an assault weapons ban.
And in 2009, Stockman called global warming [ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1rXEIeyUjRw (next below)]
a "new fad thing."
In an opinion piece on the Austin Statesman, the editorial board once quipped that the politician "rarely met a fact he’s willing to support [ http://www.statesman.com/news/news/opinion/house-science-panel-sees-no-climate-change/nTrM2/ ]."
Stockman "seems to relish the role of provocateur [ http://www.salon.com/2013/03/21/steve_stockman_the_new_michele_bachmann/ ]," Salon's Alex Seitz-Wald notes, and he may even be positioning himself to become "a new Michele Bachmann — someone equally loved on the far right and loathed on the left."
Copyright © 2013 TheHuffingtonPost.com, Inc.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/03/22/steve-stockman-earth-oil-tweets-gop-congressman_n_2933964.html [with embedded video report "Steve Stockman Compares Obama To Saddam Hussein", and comments]
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Tom Coburn Amendment Limiting National Science Foundation Research Funding Passes Senate
By Mollie Reilly
Posted: 03/21/2013 1:06 am EDT | Updated: 03/21/2013 1:34 pm EDT
A measure limiting National Science Foundation funding for political science research projects passed the U.S. Senate on Wednesday, quietly dealing a blow to the government agency.
Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.) submitted a series of amendments to the Continuing Appropriations Act of 2013 [ http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/03/20/senate-passes-six-month-s_n_2917853.html ], the Senate bill to keep the government running past March 27. One of those amendments [ http://www.coburn.senate.gov/public//index.cfm?a=Files.Serve&File_id=eee8f9bb-6313-4c0b-a766-4b57cd7fa27b ] would prohibit the NSF from funding political science research unless a project is certified as "promoting national security or the economic interests of the United States."
"Studies of presidential executive power and Americans' attitudes toward the Senate filibuster hold little promise to save an American's life from a threatening condition or to advance America's competitiveness in the world," Coburn wrote in a letter [ http://www.coburn.senate.gov/public//index.cfm?a=Files.Serve&File_id=60c99a67-2f0d-4c83-9b3d-1d65225d6abb ] to NSF director Subra Suresh last week explaining his proposal.
Coburn's NSF amendment was approved by the Senate during a voice vote [ http://democrats.senate.gov/2013/03/20/amendments-to-h-r-933-the-continuing-appropriations-bill/ ] on Wednesday afternoon.
"I’m pleased the Senate accepted an amendment that restricts funding to low-priority political science grants," Coburn said in a statement following the vote. "There is no reason to spend $251,000 studying Americans' attitudes toward the U.S. Senate when citizens can figure that out for free."
NSF funding for such research has long been a target of Coburn's. The Republican offered a similar amendment [ http://www.coburn.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?a=Files.Serve&File_id=82180b1f-a03e-4600-a2e5-846640c2c880 ] in 2009, and in 2011 released an oversight report [ http://www.coburn.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/pressreleases?ContentRecord_id=8a114193-dcf7-4ae8-ae8b-146797e5c162 ] on the NSF's "mismanagement and misplaced priorities."
The passage of Coburn's amendment was met with backlash from members of the academic community, including the American Political Science Association.
"Adoption of this amendment is a gross intrusion into the widely-respected, independent scholarly agenda setting process at NSF that has supported our world-class national science enterprise for over sixty years," the association said [ http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/senate-delivers-a-devastating-blow-to-the-integrity-of-the-scientific-process-at-the-national-science-foundation-199221111.html ] in a statement. "The amendment creates an exceptionally dangerous slippery slope. While political science research is most immediately affected, at risk is any and all research in any and all disciplines funded by the NSF. The amendment makes all scientific research vulnerable to the whims of political pressure."
Copyright © 2013 TheHuffingtonPost.com, Inc.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/03/21/tom-coburn-national-science-foundation_n_2921081.html [with embedded video reports, and comments]
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Wayne State, University of Michigan Funding Could Be Cut By GOP After Right To Work Clash
03/20/2013
After two Michigan universities circumvented new anti-union laws [sic - acted before the new "right-to-work" law { http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/12/11/rick-snyder-right-to-work_n_2280050.html } goes into effect] to lock in new labor contracts, Republican legislators in the state House are striking back with a new move to slash state funding to both schools.
[...]
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/03/19/wayne-state-funding-michigan-right-to-work_n_2909185.html [with comments]
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Michigan Employee Unions Race to Beat Right-to-Work
Wayne State University in Detroit has negotiated an 8-year agreement with its faculty union. The move may cost the university $27.5 million in state funding.
March 21, 2013
http://www.pewstates.org/projects/stateline/headlines/michigan-employee-unions-race-to-beat-right-to-work-85899461823 [also at http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/03/21/michigan-right-to-work_n_2926951.html (with comments)]
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Tough Laws, Reduced Ranks Have Effect On Unions
Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder
(AP Photo/The Detroit News, Robin Buckson)
By SHARON COHEN
03/23/13 11:20 AM ET EDT
From a sprawling United Auto Workers hall outside Detroit, John Zimmick has seen factories close and grown men cry when their jobs disappear. Through all the economic uncertainties of life in auto country, there has been one constant: the union.
In its nearly 80-year history, Zimmick's UAW Local 174 has been tested by bitter strikes, foreign competition and tenacious opponents. Now comes a new reason for anxiety.
On Thursday, Michigan's right-to-work law takes effect, a stunning shift in this symbolic capital of organized labor. The historic change is just the latest sign of turmoil in the union movement that has seen its nationwide membership shrink to its lowest levels since at least the 1930s – a paltry 6.6 percent in the private sector.
With 14.4 million members, unions still can be a potent political force at the ballot box. But protests in recent years over the passage of right-to-work laws in Michigan and Indiana, clashes over collective bargaining in Wisconsin and Ohio and a sharp drop in union elections across the US have raised larger questions: Where do unions go from here? How they do mend their battered image? Can they recruit new members? And is organized labor even a movement any longer?
Zimmick looks for answers in a union hall steeped in history. It's filled with photos, meeting minutes and other memorabilia belonging to Local 174's first president, Walter Reuther – even a phone used by the legendary leader who transformed the UAW into an economic and political powerhouse. Modern-day realities are far different: With layoffs and some 30 plants closing in the last five years, the local's ranks have dropped by more than a third, to about 5,000.
There could be even more losses with right-to-work, signed into law last December by Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder. Though employees won't have to make mandatory payments to unions that represent them in collective bargaining agreements, Zimmick isn't expecting the measure to have a major impact. "It's going to weaken us," he says, "but it's not going to kill us."
Still, Zimmick worries not just about his local – but the fate of all unions.
"It weighs on me every single night before I go to bed," he says. "Unions don't have the leverage and power that we used to. It doesn't mean we won't regain it. The unions, in my opinion, will come roaring back. ... But the image is terrible right now. The media spins us as hurting business and the non-union workers – there's animosity and jealousy toward us."
Unions still have influence in blue-state strongholds, but the days are long gone when labor leaders were household names and generous contracts were virtually assured. Even in friendly terrain, there are both die-hard supporters and workers who've abandoned the movement.
John Consentino paid his first union dues at 18, following his father on the Ford assembly line in Ohio; now 39 years later, he credits the UAW with lifelong security. When friends who don't belong to unions tell him they're doing OK, he says he warns them: "Wait until the hiccup, when things aren't going fine. You're going to wish you had a union."
Don McGough lost his job as a union steelworker. He found a new position and a decade later, he voted no when the machinists' union tried to organize workers at his company, JWF Industries, in Pennsylvania. "There are so many companies that just closed their doors because the union wouldn't budge," he says.
So, are unions to blame for their dwindling numbers? Yes and no, according to Gary Chaison, an industrial relations professor at Clark University in Massachusetts. He says unions haven't been nimble dealing with globalization and an increasingly mobile workforce.
"I think there still is a labor movement," he says, "but it's having a very difficult time finding its relevancy. It's not sure what to do or how best to serve its members. ... They're sort of wallowing around without direction. They still have a power in their presence. They don't have a power in their mission."
But unions, he says, have been buffeted by forces beyond their control: Improved productivity and technology have reduced the number of workers needed. Non-union employers have expanded in right-to-work-states. Companies have waged aggressive, successful campaigns to keep unions out. Plant closings make it almost impossible to replenish the number of union members lost.
Also, potential recruits are wary. "For most workers, joining a union is a risky deal and it has very little payback," Chaison says. "Most unions have not put their hearts and treasuries into organizing. It's so difficult and the payoff is minimal."
Zimmick knows firsthand. His local tried to organize workers at an auto supplier two years ago. The company, he says, responded by giving employees raises. "They said, `Don't talk to those union guys. We're going to take care of you.'" The campaign didn't get to the vote stage.
The number of elections to certify unions has dropped dramatically. In fiscal year 2012, there were about 1,200 with more than 83,000 eligible voters, according to the National Labor Relations Board. In 1971, there were more than 7,500 with nearly 550,000 eligible voters.
The silver lining for union organizers: Approval rates have been near or above 60 percent since 2006. In contrast, they were just half in 1990. In the heyday of unions in 1950, though, three of four workers voting wanted to sign on.
Union membership declined to 11.3 percent of the workforce last year from 11.8 percent in 2011, according to federal statistics. Especially notable was a loss in the private sector, even as the economy created 1.8 million jobs.
"I chuckle every time I hear the words Big Labor_ 6.6 percent is not big," says Jefferson Cowie, a Cornell University labor historian, referring to the share of private-sector workers in unions.
And yet, unions still have considerable muscle, capable of raising tens of millions of dollars for political campaigns – largely for Democrats – and getting out the vote. Last fall, the AFL-CIO announced it had registered more than 450,000 new voters from union households in the previous 18 months.
The union vote was considered critical to President Barack Obama's victory in states such as Ohio.
While unions representing U.S. manufacturing might – auto and steel – have become smaller, the emphasis in recruiting new members has shifted to the service sector.
The Service Employees International Union, which represents nurses and lower-wage service employees including janitors, security, hospital, home health and child care workers, has doubled in size since 1996, to 2.1 million workers. It says it has added 50,000 workers annually in the last decade.
The union recently organized about 3,000 security officers in Philadelphia commercial office buildings, hospitals and universities, winning a three-year contract that provides salary increases, health care for full-time workers and sick days.
Kevin Upshaw, a 46-year-old Army veteran and security officer at the University of Pennsylvania, says the contract will eventually boost his hourly wage from about $13 to about $15. Just an importantly, he says it'll also reduce medical expenses for his asthmatic wife, which have cost them about $11,000 over the past three years. "That's taking a big load off our shoulders," he says.
"The union gives us a lot more stability," Upshaw says. "It's making this job a career and it's taking us out of poverty."
Upshaw says he had some doubts at first about unions, but the more he heard, the more he liked. "Some people think they're only out to take our money," he says. "But like anything in life, you've got to pay for any service that's provided."
Gabe Morgan, president of the SEIU Pennsylvania State Council, says the yearlong campaign succeeded because it wasn't directed at a single company and workers had a common purpose.
"You have folks who live in the same neighborhoods, who may or may not know each other, doing the same job at different places," he says. "That kind of gives each other the strength to persevere. ... Ironically, it also made the employers more comfortable. It was easier for them to agree to something when they know their competitor was doing the same thing. No one was individually at risk."
Morgan also says the union label still is appealing in working-class communities where organized labor already has a foothold.
"If you're a low-wage worker living on the north side of Philadelphia or the West Side of Chicago, the only person who owns a house or has a lawn mower ... the only person making a decent living is someone with a union job," he says.
Though some unions have been forced to make concessions to save jobs in recent years, wages still can be very attractive.
Michael Bronson, who's starting an apprenticeship next month at Ironworkers Local 55 in northwest Ohio, expects to someday nearly triple the salary he's earned as an auto mechanic.
"For 10 years, I thought it was as good as it was going to get," says the 28-year-old Bronson. "I was just settling for whatever was offered. I was making $11 an hour and I had no health benefits. That was my future. ... You're expendable. They can pick up another guy at $8.50 and fire you."
Bronson began looking for a union job after noticing his in-laws – including a pipefitter – didn't share his financial pressures. "I knew they didn't live like I did, paycheck to paycheck, wondering what's going to happen next month," he says. "That's what persuaded me."
When he completes a four-year apprenticeship, Bronson expects an hourly wage of about $30. "Middle class to me is heaven," he says. "I've been $10,000 below poverty the last 10 years."
Six months ago, Bronson knew nothing about unions. Now he's a convert.
"It's kind of like a religion," he says. "Once you realize what a good union can do for you, you'll live it the rest of your life and you'll push it on everybody."
That attitude isn't universally shared. Approval of unions hovered around 60 percent through 2008, but it's now 52 percent, according to a 2012 Gallup poll. There's great political disparity: The favorability rate among Democrats is 74 percent; among Republicans, it's 31 percent.
Gallup also found slightly more than half those surveyed predict unions will become weaker, with only about one in five thinking they'll be stronger in the future.
Nowadays, fewer people have family roots in organized labor, and that colors the perception of unions. "The image goes back and forth between non-existent and the boogeyman," says Cowie, the Cornell historian.
The image in recent years has been shaped by skirmishes in the public arena, where union membership is nearly 36 percent. Massive protests in two industrial Midwest states in 2011 ended with opposite results.
In Ohio, voters overwhelmingly rejected a sweeping law that placed restrictions on public employee unions – a huge victory for labor. But in Wisconsin, the GOP-controlled Legislature approved Gov. Scott Walker's proposal that effectively ended collective bargaining for most public workers – a move that sparked an unsuccessful gubernatorial recall.
The Wisconsin law may have long-term ramifications. The number of unionized public workers there fell by about 48,000 in 2012 – about a quarter of the total, according to an analysis by Barry Hirsch, a labor economist at Georgia State University.
That suggests the incentive for being in one of those unions is now much weaker, Hirsch says, but it's too early to tell if that will be a trend.
Meanwhile, organized labor is fighting to extend its reach in the private sector, including in the South, generally hostile turf for unions.
The UAW has lost two bids to organize workers at the Nissan Motor Co. auto plant in Smyrna, Tenn. The union is now trying to get the Japanese automaker to allow it in the plant to make its case to workers in Canton, Miss.
Black ministers, college students, the NAACP and political leaders, with an assist from actor Danny Glover, have formed an alliance, staging press conferences, holding rallies and making TV appearances, casting the campaign as a civil rights battle.
Everlyn Cage, a Nissan worker, wants UAW representation. "A union," she says, "would help us have a voice at the plant. It would help us sit down and negotiate our safety."
Cage says Nissan has used "fear tactics," including roundtables with company officials suggesting the plant will close if workers unionize. Similar complaints have come from some Smyrna workers. Many colleagues, she says, tell her they'd support a union "but they don't want to come out publicly. They say, `We have families and children and we need our jobs.'"
Nissan says accusations of intimidation are "simply false." It also notes the company didn't lay off any U.S. workers during the recession when demand dropped and workers shifted to non-production jobs without getting pay cuts.
Kimberly Ragsdale, a Nissan worker in Canton, says her job helped finance two of her kids' college educations – something that would have been impossible in her previous $10-an-hour position driving a forklift.
She thinks unions are pointless. "Why," she asks, "would you pay somebody to talk for you when you have the freedom to voice your own opinion?"
Her message for union supporters: "If they're not satisfied with Nissan, they should leave and leave us alone. If it was that bad here, why have you been here all these years?"
It's no surprise the UAW faces an uphill battle in red-state Mississippi, where unions represent a small fraction of workers.
But last fall in Pennsylvania, workers at JWF Industries, a metal manufacturer for the defense, oil and gas industries in Johnstown, voted 194-38 against joining the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers.
Bill Polacek, company CEO and son of a union steelworker, appealed to his workers, saying he could point in every direction to unionized companies that were vacant or torn down. "If the union can promise you job security, why are all these companies not here anymore?" he says he told them. "A union can't promise you anything. All they can do is promise you union dues."
Still, he insists he's not anti-union.
"I think they have a purpose," he says. "There are companies that don't treat their employees right." But in his case, he adds:, "If the union had come in, it would have been a failure on my part. I wouldn't have been doing the right thing."
Don McGough, an 11-year veteran at JWF, rejected the machinists' bid. A former member of the steelworkers union, he lost his job at a machine shop when staff was cut after a 15-week strike.
That experience, he says, taught him a lesson about union leaders and negotiators. "They're worried about themselves," he says. "They're not worried about us. ... You're really putting your future in the hands of people you don't really know, compared to here. I know the owner really well and trust him."
In Michigan, Zimmick, the UAW man, says if unions don't like their leaders, they can vote them out. He says he knows his members and they aren't happy when he has to deliver painful messages about concessions or higher health care costs, but are pretty accepting.
Now the union faces new pressures with right-to-work, but he says it's a temporary setback. He expects the law will be a major issue in the state's 2014 elections – and his side will rebound.
"Unions will come back," he says. "I don't know when, but they will. They're here for a reason."
Copyright 2013 The Associated Press
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/03/23/union-laws_n_2940184.html [with comments]
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Jeff Sessions: Americans 'Die Sooner' But Have Best Health Care In World
By Michael McAuliff
Posted: 03/21/2013 11:38 am EDT | Updated: 03/21/2013 12:31 pm EDT
Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.) charged Thursday that Obamacare is destroying the "greatest health care system the world has ever known" and that it was "horrible" for anyone to suggest Americans receive anything less than the best care, even though they die younger on average than people in many other countries.
"This is just one example of what happens in this country when people in Washington take on the arrogant view that they know how to fix the health care system -- one of the most massive, complex, marvelous systems the world has ever known," Sessions said on the Senate floor.
Then the senator took issue with the suggestion that the medical system should share the blame for the fact that Americans are not exactly the healthiest people in the world.
"That is one of the most horrible things I've ever heard, really, around here," Sessions said. "So we've got people that die sooner than some other countries. Well, we have a lot of things. We have more obesity, more smoking, less people taking care of themselves sometimes," he continued, going on to cite high murder rates, car crash deaths and generally unhealthy lifestyles.
"That doesn't mean our health care is not the best in the world. All of us have seen that," he said.
Sessions did not mention the provisions of the Affordable Care Act that seek to improve preventive care and encourage healthier lifestyles. Republicans have repeatedly tried to cut those measures [ http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/04/27/student-loan-bill-passes-house_n_1459347.html ], as have some Democrats.
Copyright © 2013 TheHuffingtonPost.com, Inc.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/03/21/jeff-sessions-health-care_n_2924202.html [with embedded video, embedded slideshow "Lies And Distortions Of The Health Care Reform Debate", and comments]
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Uninsured Americans 2012: More Than 45 Million Lacked Health Insurance Last Year, CDC Reports
An uninsured family awaits a free clinic in Bristol, Tenn., in April 2012. During the first nine months of last year, more than 45 million U.S. residents lacked health insurance, according to the Centers For Disease Control and Prevention.
(Mario Tama/Getty Images)
By Jeffrey Young
Posted: 03/21/2013 12:01 am EDT | Updated: 03/21/2013 9:05 am EDT
More than 45 million U.S. residents didn't have health insurance during the first nine months of last year, according to survey findings released Thursday by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention [ http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/pressroom/INS_Jan-Sept_13.pdf ]. Even more people, 57.5 million, were uninsured for at least part of the 12 months before being polled.
Source: Centers for Disease Control and Prevention [ http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/pressroom/INS_Jan-Sept_13.pdf ]
The overall uninsured rate declined slightly from 2011, according to the CDC, which polled 80,618 people between January and September of last year. Just 6.6 percent of children lacked health insurance at the time of the survey, compared to 20.8 percent of adults aged 18 to 64. Virtually everyone 65 and older is covered by Medicare.
Source: Centers for Disease Control and Prevention [ http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/pressroom/INS_Jan-Sept_13.pdf ]
In addition to determining whether a person was uninsured at the time they were interviewed or at any point during the prior 12 months, the CDC also found that 33.8 million people had been uninsured for more than a year.
Source: Centers for Disease Control and Prevention [ http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/pressroom/INS_Jan-Sept_13.pdf ]
Not surprisingly, people with lower incomes were more likely to be uninsured. Forty-one percent of people with incomes below the poverty level -- which was $11,170 for a single person last year -- and 39 percent of those earning between the poverty level and twice that amount had no health insurance at the time they were interviewed, compared to 11.4 percent of people with higher incomes.
Source: Centers for Disease Control and Prevention [ http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/pressroom/INS_Jan-Sept_13.pdf ]
President Barack Obama's health care reform law aims to extend health insurance coverage to a large portion of the uninsured. According to the Congressional Budget Office, health care reform will reduce the number of uninsured people by 27 million [ http://cbo.gov/publication/43900 ] between next year and 2023.
Obamacare targets its assistance to the poor and near-poor who are least likely to have health care coverage. The law will provide Medicaid coverage [ http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jeffrey-young/medicaid-eligibility-stay_b_2529434.html ] to those with incomes up to 133 percent of the poverty level ($15,282 for a single person this year) -- unless they live in a state that opts out of the Medicaid expansion [ http://www.advisory.com/medicaidmap ]. People who earn between the poverty level and four times that amount will be eligible for tax credits for private health insurance [ http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/11/15/health-insurance-exchanges_n_2138576.html ].
Copyright © 2013 TheHuffingtonPost.com, Inc.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/03/21/uninsured-americans-2012_n_2918705.html [with comments]
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Burgers, Fries and Lies
By TIMOTHY EGAN
March 21, 2013, 9:00 pm
The old adage — what will not kill you makes you only stronger — certainly doesn’t apply to a bacon cheeseburger from Five Guys Burgers and Fries. This tasty gut bomb delivers two days’ worth of saturated fat and nearly 1,000 calories, a la carte. I hacked my way through one of these heart-stoppers the other day, and though I still have a pulse, it stayed with me in ways that would not please any doctor.
Immersion journalism was called for after a Five Guys franchise owner, Mike Ruffer, complained last week about the new law requiring him to offer his employees health care next year. At first, he thought Obamacare’s mandate wouldn’t apply to him.
“I was fat, dumb and happy,” said Ruffer, who employs 147 people at his eight burger outlets in the Raleigh-Durham, N.C., area. “I’m not happy anymore.” I will take him at his word on the dumb part.
As for the rest, here’s a guy selling something that is a leading contributor to the major health breakdowns in America, a product that may ultimately hasten an early death. He won’t offer insurance to the poorly paid workers who make said time bombs. But now that he’s forced to, and plans to raise prices to cover the care, he thinks this is an awful thing.
And Five Guys is not exactly struggling. It is the fastest growing restaurant chain in our fast food nation, with revenue projected to pass $1 billion this year.
In the burger master’s view, the government is forcing him to “pass on the costs to customers,” he said. But he already passes on considerable costs to customers who may never sniff a Five Guys fry. Because he doesn’t give his employees health care, they show up as charity cases at the hospital emergency room when something goes wrong. Last year, the uninsured cost the system $39.3 billion. Guess whom the expenses are passed on to?
A cheeseburger from a Five Guys restaurant.
Yuri Gripas/Reuters
This argument — trying to shame those who don’t pay for health insurance and who force those who do to pick up their costs — was originally made by the conservative Heritage Foundation. The mandate was the basis of Mitt Romney’s successful health care overhaul in Massachusetts and is the basis for President Obama’s Affordable Care Act.
But now that the Heritage Foundation has turned against its policy progeny, it needs to flip the debate. So, Mike Ruffer was brought in as the star witness at a Heritage forum designed to show just how egregious it is that businesses will have to provide health care for their employees, or pay a fine. Right wing media — Drudge, Breitbart, Fox — played their part, sounding alarms over a cheeseburger that may cost an additional quarter.
But what the Heritage histrionics unintentionally showed was everything that is absurd, wrong and darkly humorous about the American approach to diet and health care economics.
Consider the business. Five Guys is a great success story. Started in the Washington, D.C., metro area by the family of Jerry Murrell in 1986, it has since expanded to more than 1,000 locations. The family stake in the company is worth about $375 million, according to Forbes. Even President Obama has made a pit stop at the Zagat-rated burger shack. Without doubt, the burgers and fries are addictive.
But they are not necessarily good for you. The Center for Science in the Public Interest placed Five Guys’ bacon cheeseburger on its 2010 list of the most unhealthy meals in America. With fries and soda, that single meal runs to about 2,500 calories.
Heart disease kills more than 600,000 Americans every year and is the leading cause of death. Excess weight, and diets heavy high in saturated fat, have long been identified as high risk factors for heart disease.
And sure, not everyone who consumes double cheeseburgers on a regular basis is going to have life-threatening health troubles. But there’s plenty of evidence to suggest that they will. (Last month, John Alleman, a man who scoffed at the warnings about his favorite restaurant, the Heart Attack Grill in Las Vegas, died of a heart attack. He was 52.)
“There’s a part of me that would love to offer health care to my employees,” said Ruffer, who is just one franchise owner and doesn’t speak for the entire chain. What he will have to give up to comply with the new law, he said, is about $60,000 a year in profits. But if you weigh that figure against the price of coronary heart disease, which costs the United States $109 billion a year in care, medication and lost productivity, it’s a pittance.
And in fact, after Ruffer went public with his whining, other Five Guys franchisees said they would work with the new law and offer insurance while still expanding their businesses. They shrugged off the fuss.
But the stage managers at the Heritage Foundation, and their acolytes in Congress, would have us believe that asking a business like Five Guys Burgers and Fries to pay for a small part of the problem that they helped to create makes them a victim. Gulp.
© 2013 The New York Times Company
http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/03/21/burgers-fries-and-lies/ [with comments]
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Jan Brewer Medicaid Expansion Draws 'Judas' Comparison From Republican
By Mollie Reilly
Posted: 03/21/2013 9:35 am EDT | Updated: 03/21/2013 2:13 pm EDT
A hearing on Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer's (R) plan to expand Medicaid grew heated on Wednesday when a GOP county chairman lashed out at the governor and accused her of betraying the Republican Party.
The Arizona Republic [ http://www.azcentral.com/news/politics/articles/20130320arizona-medicaid-expansion-hearing.html ] reports that Maricopa County GOP Chairman A.J. LaFaro took a harsh jab at Brewer during his testimony at an informational Arizona House Appropriations Committee hearing on the health care proposal.
"Jesus had Judas. Republicans have Governor Brewer," LaFaro said before leaving the podium.
LaFaro immediately drew criticism from Brewer's camp.
"Obviously, his statement was irrational and unhinged," spokesman Matthew Benson told the Republic. "But if that's who opponents of the governor's plan want to have as their spokesperson, I say, 'Fantastic.'"
Benson told the Arizona Daily Star [ http://azstarnet.com/news/science/health-med-fit/brewer-called-a-judas-on-health/article_be2494c5-6fbe-5f2c-875b-98761fffee44.html ] that Brewer herself would not respond to LaFaro's remarks.
"There's nothing I could say that could diminish his credibility any more than he already has," Benson said.
In January, Brewer announced [ http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/01/14/arizona-medicaid-expansion_n_2474726.html ] her plan to participate in the Medicaid expansion, a key component of President Barack Obama's health care reform law.
"Try as we might, the law was upheld by the United States Supreme Court," Brewer said of her decision. "The Affordable Care Act is not going anywhere, at least not for the time being."
Brewer was the third Republican governor to agree to accept the Medicaid funds, and several others have followed suit in recent weeks. However, her decision has drawn immense criticism [ http://www.azcentral.com/news/politics/articles/20130308brewer-medicaid-push-widens-arizona-gop-rift.html ] from Arizona conservatives. LaFaro, a Tea Party [ http://www.maricopagop.org/lafaro-announces-gop-county-chairman-candidacy/ ] member elected as chairman earlier this year, has been one of Brewer's most outspoken critics.
“If you’re a Republican, then act like a Republican," LaFaro said [ ] earlier this month. "I have serious concerns about individuals who will side with the Democrats.”
Wednesday's committee hearing, a four-hour [ http://www.azcentral.com/news/politics/articles/20130320arizona-medicaid-expansion-hearing.html ] affair, marked the first public consideration of Brewer's proposal. No vote [ http://azstarnet.com/news/science/health-med-fit/brewer-called-a-judas-on-health/article_be2494c5-6fbe-5f2c-875b-98761fffee44.html ] was taken, but the measure is expected to face significant challenges in the state legislature.
Copyright © 2013 TheHuffingtonPost.com, Inc.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/03/21/jan-brewer-medicaid_n_2923348.html [with embedded video reports, and comments]
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The Man Who Could Turn Texas Blue: Rick Perry
Digging a hole? Rick Perry
(AP Photo/Eric Gay, File)
By opposing Medicaid expansion, the governor could hurt the GOP in a must-win state.
By Ronald Brownstein
March 21, 2013 | 5:55 p.m.
Updated: March 21, 2013 | 5:58 p.m.
AUSTIN, Texas—Big in all things, Texas leads the nation in failing to provide health insurance. About one in four Texans are uninsured, the highest percentage in any state. That’s some 6 million people, the total population of Missouri.
Yet Gov. Rick Perry, back from his stumbles in the 2012 GOP presidential race, has insisted that Texas will not accept the federal money provided by President Obama’s health care law to expand Medicaid coverage. As Republican governors from Arizona to New Jersey have joined the program, Perry has amplified his opposition. In a bristling speech to conservatives last week, he said governors who accepted the money had “folded in the face of federal bribery.”
In no state does the decision to expand present such profound political and policy issues as in Texas. Whatever Perry decides, many Texans will benefit from the subsidies in the 2010 law that help the uninsured in lower-to-middle-income families purchase private insurance on health care exchanges. Perry has also refused to establish such an exchange, but the law allows Washington to step in, and Texans who qualify will receive those dollars. Rice University demographers Steve Murdock and Michael Cline recently projected those exchanges will cover up to 1.7 million of the state’s uninsured.
The law’s other mechanism for increasing coverage is to broaden Medicaid eligibility for adults near poverty, but Washington can’t mandate this expansion if states refuse it. Murdock and Cline project that another 1.5 million to 2 million Texans would receive coverage if the state participated. Because the law commits Washington to initially paying the expansion’s entire cost, and an elevated share thereafter, local analysts estimate that if Texas expands, it will receive $100 billion in federal dollars over the next decade, while committing only about $15 billion of its own.
The state medical establishment, reluctant to cross the governor too publicly, has been restrained in pressing for expansion. But Republican state Rep. John Zerwas, a health care leader who represents a district outside Houston, says legislators are getting an earful at home from providers and local officials worried about the state rejecting the money.
Against that backdrop, Zerwas and some GOP state House colleagues are searching for ways to steer Texas into the expansion. They assume the state will not move more people into the existing Medicaid program. But they consider it misguided to simply reject the federal money and deny insurance coverage to so many people who could obtain it. “We are not going to make this better … without doing something that substantially reforms how we deliver Medicaid,” Zerwas says. However, “we have to have a solution for this group of people.”
Last week, Zerwas introduced legislation that would authorize state health officials to negotiate with the Obama administration to expand while delivering coverage for the newly eligible through new means. He likes the deal the administration is discussing with Arkansas, which could allow the state to use Medicaid expansion dollars to instead buy private insurance for its eligible adults, and he believes that approach could be “sellable to the governor.”
Key state Senate Republicans, though, are striking a harder line. Senate Finance Committee Chairman Tommy Williams says he will support enlarging Medicaid only if Obama allows Texas to transform the way it delivers Medicaid, not only to the expansion population but also to the current recipients. “The existing program is not sustainable,” Williams says.
That’s a hardball position, but not necessarily disqualifying: The administration has reached an agreement in principle with Florida, for instance, to move more Medicaid recipients into private managed care. Many here, though, wonder if Perry would take any deal. The widespread belief is that he intends to seek the GOP presidential nomination again in 2016, and accepting more Medicaid money would smudge his image of Alamo-like resistance to Obama.
Rejecting the federal money might not pose an immediate political threat to Texas Republicans, whose coalition revolves around white voters responsive to small-government arguments. But renouncing the money represents an enormous gamble for Republicans with the growing Hispanic community, which is expected to approach one-third of the state’s eligible voters in 2016. Hispanics would benefit most from expansion because they constitute 60 percent of the state’s uninsured. A jaw-dropping 3.6 million Texas Hispanics lack insurance.
Texas Democrats are too weak to much affect the Medicaid debate. But if state Republicans reject federal money that could insure 1 million or more Hispanics, they could provide Democrats with an unprecedented opportunity to energize those voters—the key to the party’s long-term revival. With rejection, says Democratic state Rep. Rafael Anchia of Dallas, Republicans “would dig themselves into an even deeper hole with the Hispanic community.”
In 1994, California Republican Gov. Pete Wilson mobilized his base by promoting Proposition 187, a ballot initiative to deny services to illegal immigrants. He won reelection that year—and then lost the war as Hispanics stampeded from the GOP and helped turn the state lastingly Democratic. Texas Republicans wouldn’t be threatened as quickly, but they may someday judge their impending decision on expanding Medicaid as a similar turning point.
Copyright © 2013 by National Journal Group Inc.
http://www.nationaljournal.com/columns/political-connections/the-man-who-could-turn-texas-blue-rick-perry-20130321 [with comments]
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Unfair Punishments
March 16, 2013
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/17/opinion/sunday/unfair-punishments-of-ex-offenders.html
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Why Tea Partiers Are Boycotting Fox News
First it was the ‘left’ turn after the election, then Benghazi coverup accusations. Activists have a list of demands for the conservative network, which some say is ‘not as fair and balanced as I thought.’
Mar 23, 2013
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2013/03/23/why-tea-partiers-are-boycotting-fox-news.html [with comments]
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Peter King Blabs Jordan Secret In Capture Of Bin Laden Son-In-Law
03/22/2013
WASHINGTON -- Rep. Peter King's (R-N.Y.) public thanks to Jordan this month for helping capture Osama bin Laden's son-in-law has upset a delicate U.S. government agreement to keep Jordan's role in the operation secret, U.S. officials told The Huffington Post.
[...]
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/03/22/peter-king-jordan-bin-laden-son-in-law_n_2927305.html [with embedded video report, and comments]
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Lessons in how to hate from experts: Nazis, Klan speak at schools
Ohio high school students taking the “U.S. Political Thought and Radicalism” class have had members of the Westboro Baptist Church [ http://www.washingtontimes.com/topics/baptist/ ], an ardently anti-gay church known for its protests, as guest speakers.
March 18, 2013
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2013/mar/18/lessons-in-how-to-hate-from-experts/ [ http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2013/mar/18/lessons-in-how-to-hate-from-experts/?page=all ] [with comments]
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Tom Tancredo Bashes Rand Paul For Immigration Stance, Sticks To 'Self-Deport' Strategy
Former Rep. Tom Tancredo (R-Colo.) says Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) is supporting "amnesty."
(AP Photo/Ed Andrieski, File)
By Elise Foley
Posted: 03/22/2013 5:45 pm EDT | Updated: 03/22/2013 6:09 pm EDT
Former Rep. Tom Tancredo (R-Colo.), who has devoted much of his career to advocating for stricter immigration enforcement, disavowed Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) on Friday for supporting reform -- and for speaking Spanish when he did so.
"Rand Paul began his speech in Spanish and it went downhill from there," he wrote in an op-ed titled "Why I No Longer Stand with Rand Paul" for The Christian Post [ http://www.christianpost.com/news/why-i-no-longer-stand-with-rand-paul-92423/ ]. "His speech was filled with virtually every single discredited pro-amnesty cliché you could imagine."
Paul gave a speech [ http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/03/19/rand-paul-pathway-to-citizenship_n_2906587.html ] to the U.S. Hispanic Chamber of Commerce on Tuesday outlining his plan for immigration reform, which would include allowing undocumented immigrants to remain in the United States, work legally, and eventually become citizens. He also called for increased border enforcement and has rejected the claims [ http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/03/19/rand-paul-pathway-to-citizenship_n_2909800.html ] that his proposal should be considered "amnesty" or even a "pathway to citizenship."
Tancredo, though, was quick to apply that label and said he no longer supports Paul, despite previously endorsing him. He argued that Paul was wrong to imply that the two options are either legalization or deporting the entire undocumented population.
"The problem is that not one congressman or major commentator has called for deporting all 12 million illegal immigrants," he wrote. "Rather, we argue that strict enforcement of employer sanctions and allowing local police to cooperate in immigration enforcement will encourage most illegals to, in Mitt Romney's words, 'self-deport.'"
Of course, the "self-deport" strategy [ http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/01/24/mitt-romney-florida-gop-debate-self-deportation_n_1227129.html ] didn't work well for Romney, the failed 2012 GOP presidential nominee whose rhetoric on immigration is considered part of the reason for his dismal showing [ http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/11/07/latino-voters-election-2012_n_2085922.html ] among Latino voters. Most Republicans, including the Republican National Committee [ http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/03/18/gop-immigration-reform_n_2899736.html ] as a whole, have rejected the "self-deport" language and other statements that they believe alienated Latinos.
Tancredo said it could be people like Paul who are alienating Latinos.
"Rand Paul said that the only reason why the GOP is losing the Hispanic vote is because we have turned them off with 'harsh rhetoric over immigration,'" Tancredo wrote. "Paul doesn't give a single example of what that 'harsh rhetoric' was. Presumably it could have included his pre-flip flop position on immigration."
Latinos are likely to be supportive of the senator's shift: Polling consistently shows that most Latino voters support comprehensive immigration reform [ http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/03/18/latino-voters-poll_n_2901863.html ] that includes a path to citizenship for undocumented immigrants.
Tancredo left Congress in 2009, after failing in his efforts to establish English as the official national language and to put a moratorium on almost all legal immigration until the undocumented population significantly decreased. He made a failed bid for the Republican presidential nomination in 2008, when he focused largely on the issue of immigration and ran an ad in Iowa [ http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,311279,00.html ] graphically depicting a terrorist attack that he said could happen because of the country's immigration policies.
Since then, he has continued to be a harsh critic of immigration enforcement efforts -- including Arizona's contested SB 1070 law [ http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/04/26/tom-tancredo-arizona-immi_n_552441.html ] -- and has vowed this year to do what he can to advocate against comprehensive reform packages being shaped in Congress.
Tancredo has been similarly disappointed with an immigration reform framework put forward by the so-called "gang of eight" in the Senate. The group proposes that undocumented immigrants be legalized, then allowed to obtain green cards and eventual citizenship once certain border security requirements are met.
"[W]hat they offered represents the worst from both parties," he wrote of the group in a January Townhall op-ed [ http://townhall.com/columnists/tomtancredo/2013/01/29/the-gang-of-8-proposal-is-akin-to-amnesty-n1500280/page/full/ ]. "The comprehensive immigration reform they offer reflects the tired scheme of amnesty and massive increases to legal immigration in exchange for vague promises of enforcement."
Copyright © 2013 TheHuffingtonPost.com, Inc.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/03/22/tom-tancredo-rand-paul-immigration_n_2935485.html [with comments]
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Ted Cruz Responds To Birther Concerns Floated By Sean Hannity
By Nick Abrams
Posted: 03/19/2013 6:04 pm EDT | Updated: 03/20/2013 1:11 am EDT
Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) wants to be clear: Although he was born in Canada, he is a U.S. citizen.
Speaking Monday night on Fox News' "Hannity [ http://www.foxnews.com/on-air/hannity/index.html ]", Cruz gave some insight into his recent keynote speech [ http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/sen-ted-cruz-delivers-cpac-keynote-address/2013/03/17/fe084e56-8f63-11e2-bdea-e32ad90da239_video.html ] at the Conservative Political Action Conference and short time in the Senate so far. Towards the end of the interview, however, host Sean Hannity pointed out that recent buzz around the tea party favorite has gained Cruz some attention as a possible presidential nominee.
"Are you eligible to run for president? You were born in Canada," Hannity asked.
Cruz attempted to downplay the question and turned to his work "defending the Constitution" in the Senate.
But Hannity went on to note that while while Cruz was born in Canada to a Cuban father, Cruz's mother was a U.S. citizen, which led Cruz to agree that he was, in fact, a U.S. "citizen by birth."
Cruz was born in Calgary, Canada. His camp has responded to prior questions about his birthplace and presidential eligibility by stating [ http://washingtonexaminer.com/spokesman-senator-cruz-is-a-u.s.-citizen-by-birth/article/2523832 ] that his mother's citizenship makes him a "U.S. citizen by birth."
Under the Constitution [ http://www.usconstitution.net/consttop_citi.html ], eligibility for holding the office of the president requires the candidate to be a "natural-born" citizen. While the term is not defined concretely, birther conspiracy theorists have long insisted that President Barack Obama isn't eligible to be president because of their belief that he was born in Kenya, a claim they've argued would disqualify him regardless of his mother's U.S. citizenship. While Obama was in fact born in Hawaii, it appears that Cruz could be susceptible to the same kind of scrutiny that Obama has faced if he decides to run for president.
Hannity predicted that Democrats might use Cruz's Canadian birthplace against him in the future, saying that he heard "birther cries building on the left."
Copyright © 2013 TheHuffingtonPost.com, Inc.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/03/19/ted-cruz-birther_n_2909774.html [with embedded video, and comments]
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Secrets of the right-wing conspiracy playbook
The debate over immigration and the border is a classic example of how the extreme right manipulates real issues
Mar 23, 2013
http://www.salon.com/2013/03/23/secrets_of_the_right_wing_conspiracy_playbook/ [with comments]
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Arkansas Voter ID Bill Approved By State Senate, Headed To Mike Beebe's Desk
03/19/2013
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/03/19/arkansas-voter-id-bill_n_2911885.html [with embedded video report, embedded slideshow, and comments]
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Man accused of slapping toddler on Delta flight pleads not guilty
By Alexis Stevens
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Posted: 3:35 p.m. Wednesday, March 20, 2013
Updated: 6:53 p.m. Wednesday, March 20, 2013
The man accused of slapping a toddler on a Delta Air Lines flight to Atlanta in February pleaded not guilty Wednesday in federal court.
But Joe Rickey Hundley’s attorney admitted the 60-year-old made a racial statement to the mother of the toddler, who was crying during the flight.
Hundley, of Hayden, Idaho, was arrested following the alleged incident and charged with simple assault, a misdemeanor. He was later released after posting $10,000 bond.
The toddler’s mother, Jessica Bennett, told investigators Hundley told her to “to shut that (racial slur) baby up” before he slapped the 19-month-old on the face.
Hundley was sitting next to Bennett, of Minneapolis, when her son, Jonah, began crying from the change in cabin pressure, Bennett told FBI Special Agent Daron Cheney in Atlanta in a Feb. 12 federal affidavit four days after the incident. The incident allegedly happened as Flight 721 from Minneapolis to Atlanta headed for Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport on Feb. 8.
Delta spokesman Morgan Durrant previously told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution that flight attendants separated the passengers after the incident and the crew arranged for law enforcement to meet the flight when it landed.
Hundley was on his way to Atlanta to take his only child off life support after his son had overdosed on insulin, Hundley’s attorney, Marcia Shein, said following Wednesday’s hearing. Shein said Hundley had been awake 24 hours straight prior to the altercation on the plane and that his son died days later.
“He was grieving and very upset,” she said. “That’s why we’re going to trial.”
Hundley has admitted to making the racial slur, she said. Shein said Hundley is hopeful that Bennett and others can forgive his statements made aboard the plane.
Hundley, former president of Unitech Composites and Structures, was fired by his company’s parent company following news of the allegations.
If convicted of hitting the toddler, Hundley could face up to one year in prison and be ordered to pay a $100,000 fine.
His next court appearance is scheduled for April 9 and a tentative trial date was set for May 13.
© 2013 Cox Media Group
http://www.ajc.com/news/news/man-accused-of-slapping-child-on-delta-flight-expe/nWyTT/
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Massachusetts Sheriff Makes Funny Comedy Joke About How Obama Should Get Shot, Why Don’t You People Have A Sense Of Humor?
by Doktor Zoom
1:14 pm March 19, 2013
We’ve decided that there’s only one thing more difficult than coming up with a funny joke about assassinating the president, and that is coming up with a creative lede for a story about the latest small-time GOP bigot to make a stupid joke about assassinating the president. It’s all been done, even the meta stuff, and now here comes Plymouth County Sheriff Joseph D. McDonald, Jr., who tried out his comedy chops at a Massachusetts Republican Party St. Patrick’s Day breakfast this weekend with a hilarious joke [ http://thinkprogress.org/justice/2013/03/18/1738531/massachusetts-sheriff-jokes-that-president-obama-should-be-shot/ ] about how America would be a better place if Barack Obama had a bullet in his head:
McDonald offered a joke about Barack Obama being visited in a dream by three past presidents, who offered advice on how to improve the country. Lincoln’s advice: “Go to the theater.”
The joke was reportedly met with “scattered laughter.”
For the sake of distinguishing him from the guy who brought us the Fish Cheer [ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ScxI94XDdtY (next below)],
we’ll just call this sheriff guy Cunty Joe McDonald.
We get it, Republicans, you really don’t like Barack Obama and the fastest way to get a different President would be to blow his brains out. We know it’s just a fantasy, because you would not actually love President Joe Biden all that much either. But for some reason the PC Police just can’t take a good old kneeslapper like a lawman saying it would be funny to murder the president of the US. Fucking liberals, never understanding a joke [ http://wonkette.com/406562/406562 ].
©2013 Wonkette Media LLC
http://wonkette.com/507179/massachusetts-sheriff-makes-funny-comedy-joke-about-how-obama-should-get-shot-why-dont-you-people-have-a-sense-of-humor [with comments]
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Assassination ‘Joke’ Sheriff Doubles Down, Compares Critics To Nazis
Plymouth County, MA Sheriff Joe McDonald (R)
Mar 19, 2013
A day after ThinkProgress and others reported that Joseph D. McDonald, Jr. (R), Sheriff of Plymouth County, Massachusetts, told a “joke” at a Republican St. Patrick’s Day breakfast [ http://thinkprogress.org/justice/2013/03/18/1738531/massachusetts-sheriff-jokes-that-president-obama-should-be-shot/ ] suggesting the nation would be better off if President Obama were assassinated, McDonald stood by his joke and compared his critics to Nazis.
[...]
http://thinkprogress.org/justice/2013/03/19/1745331/assassination-joke-sheriff-doubles-down-compares-critics-to-nazis/ [with comments]
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Fox: Americans Need Assault Weapons To Protect Themselves From An Iranian Invasion, Al Qaeda
By Igor Volsky on Mar 23, 2013 at 1:09 pm
During a roundtable discussion on Friday, Fox News’ Lou Dobbs agreed with a network contributor who argued that Americans need to access military-style assault weapons to protect themselves from an Iranian invasion.
“What scares the hell out of me we have a president, as we were discussing during break, that wants to take away our guns, but yet he wants to attack Iran and Syria. So if they come and attack us here, we don’t have the right to bear arms under this Obama administration,” Angela McGlowan, a former lobbyist for News Corp. [ http://www.foxnews.com/on-air/personalities/angela-mcglowan/bio/#s=m-q ], said in the midst of a conversation about violence in Syria.
Dobbs quickly agreed, adding, “we’re told by Homeland Security that there are already agents of Al Qaeda here working in this country. Why in the world would you not want to make certain that all American citizens were armed and prepared? ” Watch it [ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JE8LHmIcQZY ]:
The panel also falsely argued that widespread gun ownership in Israel has helped prevent terrorist attacks, though access to firearms is strictly limited [ http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2012/12/14/mythbusting-israel-and-switzerland-are-not-gun-toting-utopias/ ] to people who “can prove their professions or places of residence put them in danger.” Approximately “170,000 guns are licensed [ http://news.yahoo.com/israel-rejects-us-gun-lobby-claims-security-201808159.html ] for private use in Israel,” while assault weapons are “banned for private ownership.”
© 2013 Center for American Progress Action Fund
http://thinkprogress.org/media/2013/03/23/1766581/fox-americans-need-assault-weapons-to-protect-themselves-from-an-iranian-invasion-al-qaeda/ [with comments] [and keep in mind, of course, that thanks to the NRA/GOP et al, being on the terrorist watch list and/or the no-fly list does not even come up, let alone constitute grounds for denial, when a person undergoes a background check to purchase a firearm]
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Hitler Joins Gun Control Debate, But History Is In Dispute
(AP Photo/File)
By ADAM GELLER
03/23/13 01:30 PM ET EDT
When the president of Ohio's state school board posted her opposition to gun control, she used a powerful symbol to make her point: a picture of Adolf Hitler. When a well-known conservative commentator decried efforts to restrict guns, he argued that if only Jews in Poland had been better armed, many more would have survived the Holocaust.
In the months since the Newtown, Conn., school massacre, some gun rights supporters have repeatedly compared U.S. gun control efforts to Nazi restrictions on firearms, arguing that limiting weapons ownership could leave Americans defenseless against homegrown tyrants.
But some experts say that argument distorts a complex and contrary history. In reality, scholars say, Hitler loosened the tight gun laws that governed Germany after World War I, even as he barred Jews from owning weapons and moved to confiscate them.
Advocates who cite Hitler in the current U.S. debate overlook that Jews in 1930s Germany were a very small population, owned few guns before the Nazis took control, and lived under a dictatorship commanding overwhelming public support and military might, historians say. While it doesn't fit neatly into the modern-day gun debate, they say, the truth is that for all Hitler's unquestionably evil acts, his firearms laws likely made no difference in Jews' very tenuous odds of survival.
"Objectively, it might have made things worse" if the Jews who fought the Nazis in the 1943 Warsaw ghetto uprising in Poland had more and better guns, said historian Steve Paulsson, an expert on the period whose Jewish family survived the city's destruction.
But comparisons between a push by gun control advocates in the U.S. and Hitler have become so common – in online comments and letters to newspaper editors, at gun rights protests and in public forums – they're often asserted as fact, rather than argument.
"Absolute certainties are a rare thing in this life, but one I think can be collectively agreed upon is the undeniable fact that the Holocaust would have never taken place had the Jewish citizenry of Hitler's Germany had the right to bear arms and defended themselves with those arms," former Major League Baseball pitcher John Rocker wrote in an online column in January.
After some gun advocates rallied at New York's capitol in February carrying signs depicting Gov. Andrew Cuomo as Hitler, National Rifle Association President David Keene said the analogy was appropriate.
"Folks that are cognizant of the history, not just in Germany but elsewhere, look back to that history and say we can't let that sort of thing happen here," Keene, who was the lead speaker at the rally, told a radio interviewer March 1.
Those comparisons between gun control now and under Hitler joined numerous other statements, including the one by the Ohio school board president, Debe Terhar, on her personal Facebook page in January and by conservative commentator Andrew Napolitano, writing in The Washington Times.
The comparisons recently prompted the Anti-Defamation League, a Jewish civil rights group, to call on critics of gun control to keep Hitler and the Nazis out of the debate.
The rhetoric "is such an absurdity and so offensive and just undermines any real understanding of what the Holocaust was about," said Ken Jacobson, the ADL's deputy national director. "If they do believe it, they're making no serious examination of what the Nazi regime was about."
But some gun rights advocates firmly disagree.
"People who fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it," said Charles Heller, executive director of Jews for the Preservation of Firearms Ownership, which has long compared U.S. gun control to Nazi tactics. "I guess if you're pro-Nazi, they are right. But if you're pro-freedom, we call those people liars."
Comparing gun control activism to Hitler is not new. In a 1994 book, "Guns, Crime and Freedom," NRA Executive Vice President Wayne LaPierre wrote that "In Germany, firearm registration helped lead to the Holocaust."
But the history of civilian gun ownership under the Nazis, scholars say, is far more complicated than the rhetoric indicates.
After World War I, Germany signed a peace treaty requiring dismantling of much of its army and limiting weapons import and export. But many of the 1 million soldiers returning home joined armed militias, including a Nazi Party force that saw Communists as the leading threat.
"Technically, they (the militias) were illegal and the guns were illegal, but a lot of government officials didn't care about right-wingers with guns taking on Communists," said David Redles, co-author of "Hitler and Nazi Germany: A History," a popular college text. By 1928, however, officials decided they had to get a handle on the militias and their weapons and passed a law requiring registration of all guns, said Redles, who teaches at Cuyahoga Community College in Cleveland.
Soon after Hitler was named chancellor in 1933, he used the arson of the Reichstag as an excuse to push through a decree allowing for the arrest of many Communists and the suspension of civil rights including protections from search and seizure. But as the Nazis increasingly targeted Jews and others they considered enemies, they moved in 1938 to loosen gun statutes for the loyal majority, said Bernard Harcourt, a University of Chicago professor of law and political science who has studied gun regulations under Hitler.
The 1938 law is best known for barring Jews from owning weapons, after which the Nazis confiscated guns from Jewish homes. But Harcourt points out that Hitler's gun law otherwise completely deregulated acquisition of rifles, long guns and ammunition. It exempted many groups from requiring permits. The law lowered the age for legal gun ownership from 20 to 18. And it extended the validity of gun permits from one year to three years.
"To suggest that the targeting of Jews in any of the gun regulations or any of the other regulations is somehow tied to Nazis' view of guns is entirely misleading," Harcourt said, "because the Nazis believed in a greater deregulation of firearms. Firearms were viewed, for the good German, were something to which they had rights."
With the 1938 law, Nazis seized guns from Jewish homes. But few Jews owned guns and they composed just 2 percent of the population in a country that strongly backed Hitler. By the time the law passed, Jews were so marginalized and spread among so many cities, there was no possibility of them putting up meaningful resistance, even with guns, said Robert Gellately, a professor of history at Florida State University and author of "Backing Hitler: Consent and Coercion in Nazi Germany."
U.S. gun rights advocates disagree, pointing to the 1943 Warsaw ghetto uprising by about 700 armed Jews who were able to fend off a much larger force of German troops for days until retreating to tunnels or fleeing. The Nazis won out by systematically burning the ghetto to the ground, house by house.
"Once the Germans began adopting that strategy there really wasn't very much that people armed with pistols, or even rifles and machine guns, could do," said Paulsson, the historian and author of "Secret City: The Hidden Jews of Warsaw."
Paulsson said it is possible that if Polish Jews had limited their resistance, Nazi troops might not have destroyed the ghetto, allowing more to survive in hiding or escape. When armed Jews shot at mobs or troops at other times in 1930s and 1940s Poland, it incited more vicious counter-attacks, he said.
But to Heller, the gun rights activist, the Warsaw uprising is proof of power in firearms. Giving Jews more guns might not have averted the Holocaust, but it would have given them a fighting chance, enough that perhaps a third of them could have shot their way out of being marched to the concentration camps, he said.
"Could they have fought back? They did (in Warsaw). You know why they (the Nazis) destroyed the ghetto? Because they were afraid of getting shot," he said. "Now, will it get to that in the U.S.? God, I hope not. Not if (U.S. Attorney General Eric) Holder doesn't start sending people to kick doors down."
But Paulsson, whose mother was freed from the Auschwitz concentration camp at the end of the war, dismisses that argument as twisting the facts.
"Ideologues always try to shoehorn history into their own categories and read into the past things that serve their own particular purposes," he said.
Copyright 2013 The Associated Press
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/03/23/hitler-gun-control_n_2939511.html [with comments]
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Assault Weapons Ban Push Will Continue For Obama Administration: Joe Biden
By JOSH LEDERMAN
03/20/13 08:31 PM ET EDT
WASHINGTON -- The White House is still pushing for an assault weapons ban, Vice President Joe Biden said Wednesday, even though Senate Democrats all but sealed its fate by dropping it from the gun-control package they plan to consider next month.
Although the ban's sponsor still plans to offer it as an amendment, it is almost certain to fall victim to opposition from Republicans and likely some Democrats, too. In jettisoning the ban Tuesday, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said it fell far short of the amount of support it would need to survive a vote and said including the assault weapons ban could sink the whole bill.
"Attitudes are changing," Biden said in an interview with NPR News. "The president and I are going to continue to push, and we haven't given up on it."
Biden and President Barack Obama have walked a fine line on the assault weapons ban, widely considered the most politically challenging element of the gun-control proposals the administration is pushing. While fully embracing the ban as a matter of policy, the administration has avoided describing it as a must-have, wary of letting the perfect be the enemy of the good. Instead, they've argued that at the very least the ban deserves a vote, even if political considerations ultimately place its passage out of reach.
Gun-control advocates have insisted on the ban after an assault-type weapon was used in the massacre of 20 children and six adults at a school in Newtown, Conn., in December, galvanizing a national discussion about efforts to curb gun violence. Soon after the shooting, Obama tapped Biden to spearhead an effort to reduce gun deaths. The legislative proposal Biden developed includes the assault weapons ban, universal federal background checks and limits on high-capacity ammunition magazines.
But staunch opposition from the National Rifle Association and other groups has underscored the political risks for lawmakers who support the measures, and Democrats are eager to pass whatever they can before Americans lose interest in the issue and the window to act closes.
It was that sentiment that led Reid, D-Nev., to drop the ban from the bill the Senate plans to debate in April. But Biden insisted that the ban's failure is not a foregone conclusion. He pointed to the original, 10-year assault weapons ban that Congress passed in 1994, noting that it too had been written off long before it eventually was adopted.
"I don't see this as there's an automatic endpoint, that, OK, there's one vote, this is it, fails, now we move on," Biden said. "We are going to continue to push for logical gun-safety regulations."
Still, Biden acknowledged that if Congress expanded background checks but failed to adopt the assault weapons ban, the White House would not consider the broader effort a failure.
"That would be gigantic," Biden said.
The fate of expanded background checks is also uncertain, with the NRA arguing that they could open the door to a national gun registry. Biden said the notion of registering guns crosses a cultural line, noting that unlike cars, which must be registered, guns are explicitly protected by the Constitution.
"When you go to registration, it raises all the `black helicopter' crowd notion that what this is all about is identifying who has a gun," Biden said, using a term referring to conspiracy theorists, "so that one day the government can get up and go to the house and arrest everyone who has a gun, and they'll cite Nazi Germany and all that."
In the Republican-run House, GOP leaders have said they'll wait for the Senate to act before considering legislation. But they've not expressed support for an assault weapons ban and have shown little enthusiasm for most of Obama's proposals.
Copyright 2013 The Associated Press
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/03/20/assault-weapons-ban_n_2919544.html [with embedded video reports, and comments]
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Michael Bloomberg, Mayors Against Illegal Guns To Launch Gun-Control Ad Blitz
03/23/13
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/03/23/bloomberg-gun-ads_n_2941612.html [with embedded video report, and comments]
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Court Cites Newly Enacted Louisiana Amendment To Strike Down Ban On Felon Gun Possession
Mar 22, 2013
In the wake of an amendment to the Louisiana Constitution that arguably makes state protection of gun rights even greater than under the Second Amendment [ http://thinkprogress.org/justice/2012/11/08/1164791/louisiana-amendment-gives-gun-rights-strictest-constitutional-protection/ ], a trial judge has invalidated [ http://www.nola.com/crime/index.ssf/2013/03/new_orleans_judge_rules_statut.html ] a statute prohibiting those convicted of “crimes of violence” from possessing guns.
The NRA-backed amendment, passed by ballot initiative in November, established that [ http://blogs.wsj.com/law/2012/11/07/louisiana-amendment-beefs-up-the-right-to-bear-arms/ ] the right to bear arms is a “fundamental right” and any infringement of that right is subject to “strict scrutiny,” the highest level of skepticism courts apply to legislation. The U.S. Supreme Court has never established a level of scrutiny for the Second Amendment — a failure that has led to disparate interpretations and confusion among lower courts. However, as law professor Adam Winkler notes, “challenged gun laws almost always survive [ http://www.acslaw.org/files/Mehr%20and%20Winkler%20Standardless%20Second%20Amendment.pdf ].”
Even Justice Antonin Scalia wrote for the U.S. Supreme Court in 2008 that the Second Amendment does not impede “longstanding prohibitions on the possession of firearms by felons [ http://www.law.cornell.edu/supct/html/07-290.ZO.html ] and the mentally ill, or laws forbidding the carrying of firearms in sensitive places such as schools and government buildings, or laws imposing conditions and qualifications on the commercial sale of arms.”
[...]
http://thinkprogress.org/justice/2013/03/22/1763301/court-cites-newly-enacted-louisiana-amendment-to-strike-down-ban-on-felon-gun-possession/ [with comments]
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Evan Ebel now called suspect in death of Colorado prison director
Paroled inmate Evan Spencer Ebel, who was killed in a gunfight with Texas authorities, is now officially a suspect in the killing of Tom Clements, the chief of the Colorado prison system.
(Colorado Department of Corrections / March 21, 2013)
By Paloma Esquivel
March 23, 2013, 9:50 p.m
A Colorado parolee who was killed in a gunfight with authorities in Texas this week is officially considered a suspect in the death of Colorado’s prisons chief, a spokesman for the El Paso County Sheriff's Office said Saturday.
Tom Clements, who had served as head of Colorado's prison system for two years, was shot to death Tuesday when he answered the door of his home near Colorado Springs. The suspect, Evan Spencer Ebel, 28, was shot two days later by law enforcement following a high-speed chase that ended about 60 miles west of Dallas.
A warrant application filed by investigators showed [ http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-colorado-suspect-20130323,0,1033784.story ] that the brand and caliber of shell casings from the gunfight with Ebel matched those found at Clements' home. The black Cadillac he was driving also matched the description of a car seen outside the prisons chief's home.
Until Saturday, investigators had stopped short of calling Ebel a suspect in the case. The announcement was first reported by the Associated Press. El Paso County Sheriff’s Lt. Jeff Kramer confirmed it to the Los Angeles Times.
In an email statement, Kramer said “information gained in Texas is a strong lead.” He added that ballistic tests need to be completed to confirm whether the gun used in Texas is the same one used to kill Clements.
Evel is also being viewed as possible suspect in the killing on Sunday of Nathan Leon, a Denver pizza delivery man.
Kramer declined to confirm reports that Ebel was a member of 211 Crew, a Colorado-based white supremacist prison gang, but did say investigators are looking into his background.
In a twist, Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper said Friday that he knew Ebel's father and had known of his son's troubles.
"I met Jack Ebel some 30 years ago when working for an oil company soon after moving to Colorado. Jack is one of the most kind and generous people I know. His son had a bad streak that I know he tried desperately to correct," Hickenlooper said in the statement [ http://www.colorado.gov/cs/Satellite?c=Page&childpagename=GovHickenlooper%2FCBONLayout&cid=1251640875538&pagename=CBONWrapper ].
The governor added that "the events of the past few days have been devastating for all involved. I am in shock and disbelief about how everything seems connected in this case. It makes no sense."
Copyright © 2013, Los Angeles Times
http://www.latimes.com/news/nation/nationnow/la-na-nn-evan-spencer-ebel-gunman-20130323,0,1608423.story [with comments]
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Portrait emerges of Colorado shooting suspect
Evan Ebel served several years in solitary confinement and had been recently paroled.
(Photo: Colorado Department of Corrections via AP)
Evan Spencer Ebel, suspected of killing the state's prison chief, had ties to a white supremacist group, authorities say. His father says years in solitary confinement damaged Ebel's psyche.
Rick Jervis, USA TODAY
12:09a.m. EDT March 24, 2013
Authorities are piecing together a conflicting picture of a man from a good family whose time in prison and ties to a white supremacist group culminated this week in a shooting spree in Colorado and Texas.
Evan Spencer Ebel, 28, is believed to be the gunman who fatally shot Colorado's top prison official, as well as a pizza delivery man.
El Paso County sheriff's spokesman Lt. Jeff Kramer said Saturday that evidence gathered in Texas after Ebel's death provides a "strong, strong lead" in the slaying of Tom Clements, director of the Colorado Department of Corrections.
Blog entries from his mother and interviews with his former attorney depict a man troubled since youth, who was in and out of behavioral programs before landing in prison, and who showed gradual violent tendencies that ended with a deadly shootout with police.
Investigators are also looking into Ebel's ties with Crew 211, a notorious white supremacist prison gang operating in Colorado.
"In my 38 years of being a lawyer, I've never had anyone go so wrong," said Scott Robinson, Ebel's lawyer when he first got in trouble with the law at 19. "So completely, deadly wrong."
Ebel died Thursday in a Fort Worth hospital after leading police on a harrowing 100-mph car chase through Decatur, Texas, that ended with a shootout with Wise County Sheriff's deputies and other law enforcement agents. Colorado plates on the black Cadillac sedan Ebel drove and other items found in the car make him a suspect in Tuesday's fatal shooting of Clements in Monument, Colo., and Nathan Leon, a pizza delivery driver slain the previous week in Golden, Colo., Wise County Sheriff David Walker said at a news conference Friday.
Many questions remained, he said, including where Ebel was headed when he was confronted by police.
"This is an ongoing case," Walker said. "We're still trying to figure out why he was in Texas."
Ebel grew up in a middle-class family in the Denver suburb of Lakewood, Robinson said. His parents were divorced and, in their teens, Ebel and his sister, Marin, lived with their father, Jack. Evan Ebel would attend many of his sister's softball games and Jack Ebel, a well-known oil-and-gas attorney, was also intimately involved, he said. "They had a healthy, safe environment to live in, attended good schools," Robinson said.
But in January 2004, Marin, then 16, died in a car accident — an event that jolted Evan Ebel, Robinson said. He soon began getting into trouble. He was arrested in July 2004, at age 19, on robbery charges and ordered to a halfway house, he said. But later arrests for burglary and criminal trespass landed him in prison. While in prison, he also served several years in solitary confinement.
His father visited him frequently in prison, Robinson said. Jack Ebel went as far as testifying before the Colorado Legislature in 2011 that solitary confinement in the Colorado prison was destroying his son's psyche. When Jack Ebel's longtime friend, Gov. John Hickenlooper, was interviewing a Missouri corrections official for the top prisons job in Colorado, he mentioned the case as an example of why the prison system needed reform. And once Clements came to Colorado, he eased the use of solitary confinement and tried to make it easier for people housed there to re-enter society.
Evan Ebel never mixed with gangs or had a noticeable temper while he represented him, Robinson said. He was shocked to hear of his former client's alleged involvement in the recent killings.
"I thought the kid was salvageable," he said. "I was pretty sure prison would not work out well for him."
Evan Ebel's mom, Jody Mangue, started a blog to memorialize her daughter after she was killed in the accident. The site is filled with pictures of Marin and Evan sharing hugs, Marin's softball team and pictures of the family in happier times. But it also contains blog posts of her visits to Evan in prison, emotionally draining events for Mangue.
"Visits there are intense, emotional. I try very hard not to cry, but I do," she wrote in one blog entry titled "Prison Life."
Later in the entry, Mangue describes Evan Ebel attending behavioral programs since he was 12, in Jamaica and later Samoa, Mexico and Utah.
"Some people may blame us for what has happened to Evan. I can only say that his dad and I had to make hard decisions when he was younger hoping to avoid where he is now (prison)," she wrote. "We did try every approach we could with Evan, but here he is at some point we could not save him from this situation."
According to court records obtained by KUSA-TV in Denver, Evan Ebel was sentenced to probation in 2004 for possessing a defaced firearm then later shot himself — twice — violating his probation. He shot himself in the stomach on June 6, 2004, and was taken to the hospital, then shot himself in the leg three weeks later, according to the records.
Ebel was sentenced to eight years in prison in 2005 after court records show he carjacked a man's car, pistol whipped the driver and crashed the car in Commerce City, Colo., according to KUSA-TV. He was sentenced to serve three years parole after serving his prison time. He was released on parole in January.
"It's a completely awful situation," Robinson said. "I still don't understand why he would have done this."
Investigators are also looking into Ebel's links to the 211 Crew, a white supremacy prison gang operating mostly in Colorado. The gang numbers between 200 and 1,000 members, carries out deadly retributions in prison and earns money running methamphetamine and guns outside prison, said Mark Potok, a senior fellow at the Southern Poverty Law Center. The money is funneled back to gang leaders serving time, he said.
The 211 Crew — named after the California penal code for robbery — follows the "blood in, blood out" tradition, meaning potential members have to carry out a bloody attack to join and only leave in death, Potok said.
In 2005, the Denver County District Attorney's Office indicted 24 gang members and associates on charges ranging from robbery and assault to first-degree murder, according to the indictment. The gang's founder, Benjamin Davis, was later sentenced to 108 years in prison.
In January, Kaufman County, Texas, prosecutor Mark Hasse was gunned down outside the courthouse where he worked. Investigators have not announced any leads or suspects in that case but reports showed Hasse was investigating the Aryan Brotherhood of Texas, a large white supremacy group operating in Texas, Potok said. Police in Ebel's case have not found any connections to that case, Walker said.
It's extremely rare for members of the 211 Crew or other supremacist groups to target high-level law enforcement officials, such as Clements and Hasse, Potok said. But if there is a connection to either killing, retribution by authorities will be swift and strong, he said.
"We will see what will amount to a war," Potok said. "Law enforcement will come down on this gang like a ton of bricks."
Contributing: Associated Press
Copyright Gannett 2013
http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2013/03/23/shooter-colorado-corrections-texas-shootout/2011623/ [with embedded video report]
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Gov. John Hickenlooper unknowingly referenced Evan Ebel in statement about Tom Clements' death
Apparent tragic irony for the governor
Phil Tenser
Posted: 03/23/2013
DENVER - When Gov. John Hickenlooper spoke on the morning after the murder of prison chief Tom Clements, he unknowingly referenced the family of Clements' possible killer.
Hickenlooper was speaking about a conversation he'd had while interviewing Clements for the job.
"I'd had an old friend whose son had gone on the wrong track and been arrested and put into administrative segregation for a long period of time -- you know, solitary confinement," Hickenlooper said.
Although Hickenlooper never mentioned Evan Ebel or his father, Jack Ebel, by name, the governor's office confirmed that Jack Ebel was who Hickenlooper had been referring to.
In March 2011, Jack Ebel testified before a committee of the Colorado Legislature regarding a proposal to require prisoners spend time outside solitary before leaving prison.
"He's served six years of an eight year sentence and (in) all but five months of the six years, he's been held in solitary confinement," Jack Ebel said about his son.
Jack Ebel also told lawmakers he noticed his son's behavior change during the two times Evan was incarcerated.
"Even though he's well-read and he's a good conversationalist and gentle -- he started out that way, what I've seen over six years is he has become increasingly ... he has a high level of paranoia and (is) extremely anxious. So when he gets out to visit me, and he gets out of his cell to talk to me, I mean he is so agitated that it will take an hour to an hour-and-half before we can actually talk," Ebel told lawmakers.
While speaking about Clements Wednesday morning, Hickenlooper said the slain prisons chief had spent a lot of time thinking about the use and impact of solitary confinement.
"Tom had thought deeply about it before he ever came to interview with us in his own experience in Missouri and saw how it was doomed to failure, that number of people and in many cases people who had been in administrative segregation - solitary confinement - for years would be released directly into the community, which is a very, for those individuals, really emotionally traumatic," Hickenlooper said. "He laid out a plan by which to analyze the issue, get what the facts were and make sure we moved in the right direction."
Jack Ebel and Hickenlooper have been friends for a long time. In fact, Ebel's father contributed $1,050, in two installments, to Hickenlooper's campaign for the governor's office in 2010.
The governor's office told 7NEWS Evan Ebel was released on Jan. 28, 2013 after serving a full sentence. He was placed on mandatory parole.
-- Governor Hickenlooper's statement --
"Every killer has a mother and father, usually with broken hearts. I met Jack Ebel some 30 years ago when working for an oil company soon after moving to Colorado. Jack is one of the most kind and generous people I know. His son had a bad streak that I know he tried desperately to correct.
"Although Jack loved his son, he never asked me to intervene on his behalf and I never asked for any special treatment for his son. Based on information we received today, we understand that Evan Ebel served every day of his original sentence and was released on mandatory parole at the end of the time he was ordered to be incarcerated.
"The events of the past few days have been devastating for all involved. I am in shock and disbelief about how everything seems connected in this case. It makes no sense. Tom’s death at the hands of someone hell-bent on causing evil was tragic in every way. It also now appears Tom’s killer may have had another victim. Our hearts and prayers are with Nathan Leon’s family as well. We are most appreciative for law enforcement at all levels in Colorado and Texas and are anxious to learn more as the investigation continues."
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Related Links
Ammo, Domino's shirt tie man to killings
http://www.thedenverchannel.com/news/local-news/parolee-evan-evel-may-be-tied-to-murders-of-doc-chief-tom-clements-and-dominos-driver-nate-leon
Raw video: Shootout with Evan Ebel
http://www.thedenverchannel.com/news/local-news/raw-video-of-the-shootout-that-ended-with-evan-ebel-being-shot-in-the-head
Ebel had ties to white supremacist gang
http://www.thedenverchannel.com/news/local-news/evan-ebel-suspect-in-2-colorado-murders-and-texas-shootout-had-ties-to-white-supremacist-gang
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Copyright 2013 Scripps Media, Inc.
http://www.thedenverchannel.com/news/front-range/denver/governor-john-hickenlooper-referenced-unknowlingly-evan-ebel-in-statement-after-tom-clements-death [with embedded video reports, and comments]
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Three Gun Control Bills Signed in Colorado
By SAM REYNOLDS
Thursday, March 21, 2013
Last Update: 1:30 PM PT
DENVER (CN) - The morning after the state's prison chief was shot to death in his own house, Colorado's governor signed three gun-control bills into law, including a ban on sale of large-capacity ammunition magazines.
Gov. John Hickenlooper, a Democrat, signed the bills Wednesday in a largely partisan effort to stem gun violence in a state that suffered the mass murders at Columbine High School and the Aurora movie theater.
Democrats control both houses of the Colorado Legislature, and the governor's office.
Hickenlooper signed the bills the day after the director of Colorado's state prisons was shot to death in the doorway of his house.
Department of Corrections Chief Tom Clements was killed by an unidentified assailant Tuesday night. A motive for the murder, if any, was not known.
Many groups and people, including law enforcement officials, vowed to fight or ignore the new laws.
Some Colorado sheriffs said they would not enforce them.
Weld County Sheriff John Cooke, in Greeley, told his local newspaper that he "wouldn't bother" to enforce the laws, calling them "feel-good, knee-jerk reactions."
El Paso County Sheriff Terry Maketa, in Colorado Springs, said he would not enforce the laws, which he called "extortion" by Democrats, according to ABC News.
Larimer County Sheriff Justin Smith, in Fort Collins, said he would not enforce any federal gun control measures he considers unconstitutional.
House Bill 13-1224 bans the sale, transfer and possession of magazines that contain more than 15 rounds, or 28 inches of shotgun shells.
People who own large-capacity magazines can continue to possess them legally.
The law goes into effect on July 1.
Hickenlooper also signed House Bill 13-1229, which requires gun buyers to submit to a background check, and House Bill 13-1228, which requires the purchaser to pay for the background check.
The signing came 8 months after a gunman killed 12 people and wounded dozens at a movie theater in Aurora. James Holmes is believed to have used an AR-15 assault rifle with a 100-round drum magazine, among other weapons, to attack the crowd at a midnight premier of Batman movie, "The Dark Knight Rises."
According to court documents one victim, Matthew McQuinn, was shot nine times in the attack.
Colorado Senate President John Morse said in a statement that the massacres in Aurora and Newtown, Conn. had compelled the Legislature to take action.
"This legislative session became about guns. It was not planned that way," Morse said. "It was forced upon us by two horrific massacres in one year, one in our own back yard. So in the wake of these massacres and everyday gun violence, today three gun safety bills were signed into law.
"Let's be clear, zero of these laws take guns from law-abiding citizens. Instead, these are laws that the majority of Coloradans want. They are reasonable. As leaders, we have to make tough decisions. We know that some criminals will find ways around these laws, but that doesn't mean we should surrender to them. We must try to save lives."
State Sen. Mary Hodge, co-sponsor of the magazine limit bill, said: "The fact is large-capacity magazines are what were used in the massacres that rocked our nation. They helped the shooters spray crowds of people, destroying life as we know it. These large-magazines aren't welcome [in] our Colorado communities."
Not surprisingly, many groups vowed to fight the laws.
The president of the Independence Institute, a self-described "free market" think tank based in Colorado, claimed that the "continuous possession" clause of the magazine ban meant that a person could be arrested for simply handing a large-capacity magazine to another person.
Hickenlooper denied that. He said ban would be "applied narrowly."
"We ... have heard concerns about the requirement in the law that a person who owns a large-capacity magazine prior to the law's enactment may legally possess that magazine only as long as he or she 'maintains continuous possession' of it," Hickenlooper said in a statement.
"We do not believe a reasonable interpretation of the law means that a person must maintain continuous 'physical' possession of these items. Responsible maintenance and handling of magazines obviously contemplates that gun owners may allow others to physically hold and handle them under appropriate circumstances. We are confident that law enforcement and the courts will interpret the statute so as to effectuate the lawful use and care of these devices."
Hickenlooper continued: "In considering the language of HB13-1224, we have consulted with the Office of the Attorney General and we concur with its advice that the large-capacity magazine ban should be construed narrowly to ensure compliance with the requirements of the Second Amendment and the Due Process Clause of the 14th Amendment. We have signed HB13-1224 into law based on the understanding that it will be interpreted and applied narrowly and consistently with these important constitutional provisions."
Some people took more extreme measures.
Police arrested one man who allegedly threatened to kill state Rep. Rhonda Fields, a co-sponsor of two of the bills. Racist insults and taunts were redacted from the arrest warrant, but still visible.
Fields, a Democrat from Arapahoe County, where the Aurora massacre took place, said that many of her colleagues received similar "personal, violent" threats for backing the legislation.
Also Wednesday, Hickenlooper ordered the U.S. flag flown at half staff in public buildings to commemorate the murder of the prison chief.
Copyright 2013 Courthouse News Service
http://www.courthousenews.com/2013/03/21/55920.htm
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340 Sheriffs Refuse To Enforce Unconstitutional Gun Control Laws
By Gregory Gwyn-Williams, Jr.
March 19, 2013
Including Sheriff John Cooke of Weld County, Colorado, 340 sheriffs have publicly stated they will not enforce gun laws they believe are unconstitutional.
In response to the passage of two new gun control bills in Colorado last week, Sheriff John Cooke told the Greeley Tribune [ http://www.greeleytribune.com/news/crime/5575283-113/gun-state-background-colorado ] that he "won't bother enforcing the laws."
One bill requires gun buyers to pay for their own background checks, a service that was previously free and now estimated to cost the buyer $10-$12 per purchase. The second bill puts a 15-round limit on magazines.
Cooke says of the new laws: "They're feel-good, knee-jerk reactions that are unenforceable."
Governor John Hickenlooper is expected to sign each bill into law this week.
Cooke is part of a growing list of sheriffs that have vowed to uphold the Constitution against gun control measures.
The Constitutional Sheriffs and Peace Officers Association (CSPOA [ http://cspoa.org/sheriffs-gun-rights/ ]) has a running tally of all the sheriffs across the nation that have joined together to defend the Constitution.
At the time of this post, there are 15 sheriffs associations, 340 sheriffs, one police chief and one deputy sheriff who have stated they will not enforce any new gun laws.
As the "Right Views" previously reported [ http://cnsnews.com/blog/gregory-gwyn-williams-jr/number-nations-sheriffs-refusing-enforce-unconstitutional-gun-laws ], the number of sheriffs taking action continues to climb as the gun control debate heats up.
Copyright 2013 Cybercast News Service (emphasis in original)
http://cnsnews.com/blog/gregory-gwyn-williams-jr/340-sheriffs-refuse-enforce-unconstitutional-gun-control-laws [with comments]
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Obama Withdraws Caitlin Halligan's Nomination To D.C. Circuit Court
The White House formally withdrew President Barack Obama's nomination of Caitlin Halligan to the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals on Friday, March 22. Senate Republicans repeatedly filibustered the nomination over a period of nearly two and a half years.
(Alex Wong/Getty Images)
By Sabrina Siddiqui
Posted: 03/22/2013 4:36 pm EDT | Updated: 03/22/2013 6:43 pm EDT
WASHINGTON -- The White House officially withdrew President Barack Obama's nomination of Caitlin Halligan to serve on the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals. A statement issued on Friday comes after repeated attempts to confirm the former New York state solicitor general were filibustered by Senate Republicans.
In a statement, Obama said he was "deeply disappointed" that a minority of senators had blocked Halligan's nomination for almost two and a half years, and called the vacancies on what is arguably the country's second-highest federal court "unacceptable."
"Today, I accepted Caitlin Halligan's request to withdraw as a nominee for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit," Obama said in an emailed statement. "This unjustified filibuster obstructed the majority of Senators from expressing their support. I am confident that with Caitlin's impressive qualifications and reputation, she would have served with distinction."
Republicans objected to Halligan's nomination because of what they claim is her history of legal advocacy, having focused specifically on a lawsuit in which she participated that would make gun manufacturers legally accountable for criminal acts of gun violence.
The most recent GOP filibuster [ http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/plum-line/wp/2013/03/07/the-morning-plum-what-rand-pauls-filibuster-accomplished/ ] incidentally came on the same day that Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) gained national media attention for his 13-hour talking filibuster. Democrats fell short of the required 60-vote threshold to end debate and bring Halligan's nomination to a vote, with only Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) breaking from her party in support of invoking cloture. Halligan was nominated on Sept. 29, 2010, to replace current Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts; her nomination was first filibustered in 2011.
Shortly after the vote, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) said Halligan would "bring that activism to the court."
"Because of her record of activism, giving Ms. Halligan a lifetime appointment on the D.C. Circuit is a bridge too far," McConnell said.
Judiciary Committee Chairman Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) called it a "shame" that Republicans had succeeded in blocking an "extraordinarily well-qualified" woman, who he said would've made an "outstanding judge."
"Caitlin Halligan is a woman who is extraordinarily well-qualified and amongst the most qualified judicial nominees I have seen from any administration," Leahy said in a statement. "It is a shame that narrow, special interests hold such influence that Senate Republicans for two years blocked an up-or-down vote on her confirmation."
Read Halligan's letter to Obama withdrawing her nomination [ http://www.docstoc.com/docs/149605124/Caitlin-Halligan-Withdrawal ]:
[documemt embedded, Scribd-style]
Copyright © 2013 TheHuffingtonPost.com, Inc.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/03/22/obama-caitlin-halligan_n_2934986.html [with embedded video report, and comments]
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T.J. Lane Life Sentence: Chardon High School Shooter Appears In Court Wearing 'KILLER' T-Shirt
[ http://www.cleveland.com/chardon-shooting/index.ssf/2013/03/tj_lane_sentenced_in_chardon_h.html ]
03/19/2013
T.J. Lane, who appeared in court Tuesday morning [ http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/03/19/tj-lane-sentencing-ohio-school-shooting-murders_n_2906423.html ] wearing a t-shirt with the word "KILLER" in marker across his chest, will spend the rest of his life in prison for the murder of three teenagers at an Ohio high school.
Going against the recommendation of his counsel, Lane addressed the courtroom before learning his fate. He smiled periodically and showed little remorse for his actions [ https://twitter.com/MelissaReidFox8/status/314019163876245504 ].
"F--- all of you," he said [ http://www.cleveland.com/chardon-shooting/index.ssf/2013/03/tj_lane_sentenced_in_chardon_h.html ], before raising his middle finger at the victims' families, according to the Plain Dealer.
On Feb. 27, 2012, Lane, then 17, entered Chardon High School, east of Cleveland and opened fire, killing Daniel Parmertor and Demetrius Hewlin, both 16, and Russell King Jr., 17. Three other students were wounded.
[...]
Wearing a T-shirt with "killer" scrawled across it, a teenager cursed and gestured obscenely as he was given three life sentences Tuesday for shooting to death three students in an Ohio high school cafeteria.
T.J. Lane, 18, had pleaded guilty last month to shooting at students in February 2012 at Chardon High School, east of Cleveland. Investigators have said he admitted to the shooting but said he didn't know why he did it.
Before the case went to adult court last year, a juvenile court judge ruled that Lane was mentally competent to stand trial despite evidence he suffers from hallucinations, psychosis and fantasies.
Lane was defiant during the sentencing, smiling and smirking throughout, including while four relatives of victims spoke.
After he came in, he calmly unbuttoned his blue dress shirt to reveal the T-shirt reading "killer," which the prosecutor noted was similar to one he wore during the shooting.
At one point, he swiveled around in his chair toward the gallery where his own family members and those of the slain teenagers were sitting and spoke suddenly, surprising even his lawyer.
"The hand that pulls the trigger that killed your sons now masturbates to the memory," he said, then cursed at and raised his middle finger toward the victims' relatives.
[...]
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/03/19/tj-lane-sentenced-to-life-chardon_n_2907540.html [with embedded video reports, and comments]
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Stimulus Derangement Syndrome
By Paul Krugman
March 20, 2013, 2:54 pm
Miles Kimball [ http://qz.com/64546/the-stanford-economists-are-so-wrong-a-tighter-budget-wont-be-accompanied-by-tighter-monetary-policy/ ] goes after John Taylor’s latest, and in the process reminds us of an earlier Taylor episode, in which JT argued that low interest rates are actually contractionary — a conclusion he reached by confusing the Fed’s setting of an interest rate target, which is achieved by buying bonds, with a rent-control-type price ceiling enforced by simply banning above-target transactions. It was an amazing thing for a highly credentialed macroeconomist to say. But it wasn’t unique; just offhand I can think of multiple comparable flubs ever since we began monetary and fiscal stimulus to fight the Great Recession.
So, for example, we had Robert Barro [ http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/01/22/war-and-non-remembrance/ ] arguing that multipliers are small because private spending fell during World War II (hello? Rationing? Banning of private construction?). We had “new monetarists” arguing that low interest rates cause deflation [ http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/08/25/nick-rowe-loses-it/ ], not the other way around. We had Robert Lucas completely misunderstanding [ http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/12/26/a-note-on-the-ricardian-equivalence-argument-against-stimulus-slightly-wonkish/ ] what Ricardian equivalence says about the effects of government spending. And I’m sure I’m missing other examples.
Notice that what I’m highlighting here aren’t “mistakes” as in “saying something I disagree with”; I would not, for example, put claims that our problems are mainly structural in the same category. I’m talking about much cruder mistakes, basic failures to remember history or logic — the kind of thing you really would not expect from big guns in the field.
What do these episodes tell us? First, how much people of conservative politics hate hate hate the idea of any kind of activist government policy to help the economy. Second, how weak their grip on their own intellectual principles is when it comes to arguments that seem to support that hatred.
It has been a revelation.
© 2013 The New York Times Company
http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/03/20/stimulus-derangement-syndrome/ [with comments]
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Paul Krugman: Conservatives Hate The Idea Of Policy That Helps The Economy
By Bonnie Kavoussi
Posted: 03/21/2013 12:58 pm EDT | Updated: 03/22/2013 10:21 am EDT
Paul Krugman says that Republican ideology is holding the economy back.
"People of conservative politics hate hate hate the idea of any kind of activist government policy to help the economy," the Nobel Prize-winning economist wrote in a blog post for the New York Times on Wednesday [ http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/03/20/stimulus-derangement-syndrome/ (just above)] .
Krugman, like many other economists, has long advocated for increases in government spending to boost the economy.
In a 2012 survey, 80 percent of economists [ http://www.igmchicago.org/igm-economic-experts-panel/poll-results?SurveyID=SV_cw5O9LNJL1oz4Xi ] on the IGM Economic Experts Panel said that the stimulus lowered the unemployment rate. And in a blog post published in Project Syndicate on Wednesday, Yale economist Robert Shiller wrote [ http://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/balanced-budgets-without-austerity-by-robert-j--shiller ] that stimulus is necessary to get out of the current economic slump, which has been exacerbated by government spending cuts.
The sequestration -- a series of across-the-board government spending cuts -- took effect earlier this month as a result of partisan gridlock and will eliminate 750,000 jobs this year alone if the cuts stay in place, the Congressional Budget Office estimates [ http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/02/13/sequester-job-cuts_n_2678701.html ].
Many economists say that Republican plans to slash spending would hurt the economy. Rep. Paul Ryan's (R-Wis.) proposed budget would destroy 2 million jobs [ http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/03/12/paul-ryan-budget-jobs_n_2862283.html ] in 2014 alone if it were implemented, according to the Economic Policy Institute.
Copyright © 2013 TheHuffingtonPost.com, Inc.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/03/21/paul-krugman-conservatives_n_2923857.html [with comments]
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Paul Ryan Budget Passed By House Republicans
03/21/13
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/03/21/paul-ryan-budget-passed_n_2924126.html [with embedded video reports, embedded slideshow, and comments]
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Economists See No Crisis With U.S. Debt as Economy Gains
Welders work on a joint between two sections of pipe during construction of the Gulf Coast Project pipeline in Prague, Oklahoma,on March 11, 2013.
Daniel Acker/Bloomberg
Video [embedded]
March 21 (Bloomberg) -- U.S. Representative Paul Broun, a Republican from Georgia, talks about his New York Times op-ed piece ["Paul Ryan’s Ax Isn’t Sharp Enough", at/see (linked in) http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=85895311 and preceding and following] criticizing Representative Paul Ryan's budget proposal and U.S. fiscal policy. Broun speaks with Betty Liu on Bloomberg Television's "In The Loop."
(Source: Bloomberg)
Video [embedded]
March 22 (Bloomberg) -- U.S. Representative Peter Welch, a Vermont Democrat, talks about the outlook for fiscal budget negotiations. He speaks with Betty Liu on Bloomberg Television’s "In the Loop."
(Source: Bloomberg)
Contractors work on the roof of a new residential apartment building in Sandy, Utah, U.S., on Tuesday, Jan. 15, 2013. The U.S. Census Bureau is scheduled to release new home sales data on Feb. 26.
George Frey/Bloomberg
Representative Paul Ryan, a Republican from Wisconsin.
Andrew Harrer/Bloomberg
By David J. Lynch - Mar 21, 2013 11:00 PM CT
Representative Paul Ryan, chairman of the House Budget Committee, declared this month that the U.S. national debt “is hurting our economy today.” It’s an idea embraced by almost every Republican and even some Democrats.
Economic data -- on jobs, housing and investment -- don’t support that claim. And economists across the political spectrum dispute the best-known study of the subject, by Carmen Reinhart and Kenneth Rogoff, which found that nations with debt loads greater than 90 percent of their economies grow more slowly.
Three years after a government spending surge in response to the recession drove the U.S. past that red line -- the nation’s $16.7 trillion total debt is now 106 percent of the $15.8 trillion economy -- key indicators reflect gathering strength. Businesses have increased spending by 27 percent since the end of 2009. The annual rate of new home construction jumped about 60 percent. Employers have created almost 6 million jobs.
And with borrowing costs near record lows, the cost of paying off the debt is lower now than in the year Ronald Reagan left the White House, as a percentage of the economy.
“The argument that heavy debt loads slow economic growth doesn’t hold a lot of water,” says Guy LeBas, chief fixed- income strategist at Janney Montgomery Scott LLC in Philadelphia who oversees $12 billion. “It suffers from a mix-up of cause and effect: When weak economic conditions arise, it tends to encourage deficit spending, which is what has led to more U.S. debt being issued, and not the other way around.”
Tipping Point
Republicans like Ryan of Wisconsin, joined by Democrats such as former Senate Budget Committee Chairman Kent Conrad of North Dakota, embrace as economic gospel the idea of a tipping point for debt, even as it is hotly debated among economists.
Some studies have found no evidence that high debt inevitably chills growth -- especially for countries like the U.S. that print their own currency. One 2012 paper by two French economists even concluded that growth rates increased as the debt-to-GDP ratio passed 115 percent.
“The Rogoff-Reinhart 90 percent is really quite a fragile number,” says Joseph Gagnon, a former economist in the Fed’s monetary affairs division. “There is no threshold like that for countries that have control of the currency they borrow in.”
Reinhart and Rogoff said in a 2010 paper that once debt rises beyond 90 percent of gross domestic product for advanced economies, median growth rates are 1 percentage point lower. The U.S. passed the 90 percent mark in early 2010, according to the International Monetary Fund.
Lower Growth
“Across both advanced countries and emerging markets, high debt/GDP levels (90 percent and above) are associated with notably lower growth outcomes,” Reinhart and Rogoff wrote, drawing on data from 44 countries over a 200-year period.
Rogoff declined to comment for this story, and Reinhart didn’t respond to e-mails or telephone requests.
To be sure, the U.S. economy is expanding only slowly. Growth over the past three years has averaged 2.2 percent compared with an average of 2.5 percent between 1989 and 2009. And the recent stirring could fizzle, either because of government spending cuts or what Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke described at a March 20 news conference as the economy’s “tendency for a spring slump.”
And while there’s no way to know whether the economy would be expanding faster if the debt burden were lower, the traditional way that government debt hurts growth is by raising the cost of money as public sector borrowing “crowds out” private borrowers. That isn’t happening.
Investors Unbothered
Even as the U.S. continues borrowing to cover this year’s projected $845 billion deficit, bond markets remain untroubled. Yesterday’s 1.91 percent yield in New York on the 10-year Treasury note was lower than on the day President Barack Obama was sworn in for his first term. It’s lower than on Aug. 5, 2011, when Standard & Poor’s lowered the U.S. credit rating. And it’s well below the 5.3 percent average over the past 25 years.
“Financial markets are begging the government to borrow at negative real interest rates for 10-year maturities,” says Gagnon, now at the Peterson Institute for International Economics. “There’s no way our debt is slowing us today.”
Still, those warning about deficits say debt loads can hinder growth by dimming expectations. The prospect of higher taxes or lower government spending needed to reduce borrowing could cause companies and individuals to retrench.
“That has to be hurting us right now,” says economist Douglas Holtz-Eakin, former director of the Congressional Budget Office and an adviser to 2008 Republican presidential contender John McCain.
Testing Limits
Testing the upper limit of debt sustainability would be foolish, he said. Maintaining today’s debt load would leave the U.S. unable to easily respond to a future financial crisis by ramping up spending. Plus, when interest rates rise from current low levels, the government’s annual interest burden -- the CBO projects it will be $224 billion this year -- will mushroom.
“Our debt load could be $500 billion overnight,” he says. “Think how fast spreads move.”
CBO projections don’t support that point of view. They predict interest payments will remain below current levels until 2018 when it says economic output will reach $21 trillion. This year, the U.S. will spend 1.4 percent of GDP servicing its debt, less than half the amount in 1989, the year Reagan left office.
Debt hawks take solace from a 2011 paper by the Bank for International Settlements, the Basel, Switzerland-based group that facilitates cooperation among central banks. It said government debt becomes a drag on growth at 85 percent of GDP.
IMF Study
And two IMF economists, Manmohan Kumar and Jaejoon Woo, found “a significant negative effect on growth” above the 90 percent threshold. For every 10 percentage-point increase in an advanced country’s overall debt-to-GDP ratio, growth fell by 0.15 percentage points per year, they said.
That suggests the U.S. economy this year is losing 0.6 percentage points from its growth rate, based on the increase in the gross debt ratio since 2007. The U.S. will grow this year between 2.3 percent and 2.8 percent, according to the Fed’s latest forecast.
Indicators of future activity, however, have yet to reflect such worries. The index of leading economic indicators reached 94.8 in February, its highest level since before the 2008 financial crisis. Stocks (INDU) are near record highs, and the dollar is up more than 6 percent since Dec. 31, 2009.
Testifying on Feb. 26 before the Senate Finance Committee, Robert Greenstein, director of the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities, said: “The notion that we are already in a danger zone because gross debt exceeds 90 percent of GDP and that this is already costing jobs is not one most economists would agree with.”
2009 Book
Reinhart and Rogoff rocketed to prominence following the global financial crisis. Their 2009 book “This Time It’s Different,” which made The New York Times bestseller list and was translated into 20 languages, drew applause from politicians in both parties.
In 2011, the White House cited their finding that recoveries from financial crises are slower and less robust to explain what it called the “disappointing” economy.
“It’s not a particularly reliable gauge,” economist John Makin of the Republican-leaning American Enterprise Institute, a former consultant to the Treasury Department and Fed, said of the 90 percent threshold. “The evidence is not strong.”
Though Reinhart and Rogoff emphasize the number of countries they studied, some economists question whether those examples apply to the world’s largest economy and holder of the global reserve currency.
Not Sweden
“Comparing the U.S. to Sweden or to Japan even, it really just doesn’t cut it,” Drew Matus of UBS Securities LLC told Bloomberg Radio earlier this year.
Thanks to the Federal Reserve, the U.S. is able to borrow more without yields rising. Since the Lehman Brothers bankruptcy in September 2008, the Fed has more than tripled the size of its balance sheet to $3.2 trillion.
The central bank’s bond purchases have kept the 10-year yield 80 to 120 basis points, or 0.8 to 1.2 percentage points, lower than it otherwise would have been, thus boosting economic growth, according to Bernanke.
Dean Baker, co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research, called the idea of debt limiting growth “very silly,” saying the U.S. retains vast assets, including technically recoverable oil and gas reserves estimated by the Institute for Energy Research at $128 trillion.
“If it sold off $5 trillion to lower its debt to GDP ratio by 30 percentage points do we really think we would suddenly grow faster?” Baker wrote in an e-mail.
To contact the reporter on this story: David J. Lynch in Washington at dlynch27@bloomberg.net
To contact the editor responsible for this story: Clark Hoyt at choyt2@bloomberg.net
©2013 BLOOMBERG L.P.
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-03-22/economists-see-no-crisis-with-u-s-debt-as-economy-gains.html [with comments]
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John Boehner Sets Up Debt Ceiling Battle With Demand For Major Cuts
By Sabrina Siddiqui and Michael McAuliff
Posted: 03/21/2013 12:26 pm EDT | Updated: 03/21/2013 3:04 pm EDT
WASHINGTON -- House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) laid down a tough requirement for raising the debt ceiling Thursday, all but ensuring a reprise of the tense standoff two years ago that saw America's credit rating downgraded.
Speaking at his regular news conference, Boehner said the only way the House would go along with raising the country's borrowing cap was if President Barack Obama and the Democrats came up with an equal amount in budget cuts.
"Dollar for dollar is the plan," Boehner told reporters, adding that there have been no major talks on the debt limit at this point.
"The president has been clear that he's not going to address our entitlement crisis unless we're willing to raise taxes. I think the tax issue has been resolved," said Boehner. "So at this point then, I don't know how we're going to go forward."
With the budget cuts from sequestration now taking effect and politicians on all sides trying to further trim the deficit in ongoing budget negotiations, launching yet another round of spending cuts to meet the speaker's standard would be daunting, to say the least.
Republicans have been eying steep cuts to health care and entitlement programs as a way to slash more. Asked if he saw the borrowing cap as leverage to extract entitlement reform from the president, Boehner said, "There might be some there."
"But I'm not going to risk the full faith and credit of the federal government," he added, suggesting instead that the differences between Republicans and Democrats could be resolved through the ongoing budgetary process.
Boehner is the second GOP leader this week to foretell a new debt showdown this summer. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) also did so, arguing that the only way to get Obama to the table for "serious" talks was to drag him ""kicking and screaming [ http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/03/19/mitch-mcconnell-debt-ceiling_n_2911013.html ]" over the debt limit.
Earlier this year, House Republicans avoided a confrontation [ http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/01/23/house-debt-ceiling_n_2533597.html ] over the debt limit by passing a measure that suspended the nation's borrowing cap until May.
Copyright © 2013 TheHuffingtonPost.com, Inc.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/03/21/john-boehner-debt-ceiling_n_2924662.html [with embedded video report, and (over 11,000) comments]
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The GOP’s Three Fiscal Lies
Modest deficits are fine. Cutting spending harms the economy. And balanced budgets don’t create jobs.
Mar 23, 2013
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2013/03/23/the-gop-s-three-fiscal-lies.html [with comments]
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Private sector parasites
The real “takers” in America are not poor people dependent on welfare, but the unproductive, rent-extracting rich
Mar 21, 2013
http://www.salon.com/2013/03/21/private_sector_parasites/ [with comments]
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How rich “moochers” hurt America
The 3-point plan of wealthy landlords, lenders and insurance providers -- the true "takers" threatening the nation
Mar 22, 2013
http://www.salon.com/2013/03/22/how_rich_moochers_ruin_america/ [with comments]
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Supreme Court Refuses To Hear Goldman Sachs' Appeal To Financial Crisis Lawsuit
03/20/2013
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Goldman Sachs Group Inc suffered a defeat on Monday as the U.S. Supreme Court let stand a decision forcing it to defend against claims it misled investors about mortgage securities that lost value during the 2008 financial crisis.
Without comment, the court refused to consider Goldman's appeal of a September 2012 decision by the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New York. Goldman shares sank more than 2 percent.
That court let the NECA-IBEW Health & Welfare Fund, which owned some mortgage-backed certificates underwritten by Goldman, sue on behalf of investors in certificates it did not own, but which were backed by mortgages from the same lenders.
Goldman and other banks have faced thousands of lawsuits by investors seeking to recoup losses on mortgage securities.
The bank has said that letting the 2nd Circuit decision stand could cost Wall Street tens of billions of dollars.
[...]
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/03/18/goldman-sachs-supreme-court_n_2900929.html [with embedded video report, and comments]
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Freddie Mac Sues More Than A Dozen Banks Over Libor Losses
03/19/2013
NEW YORK (Reuters) - Mortgage finance company Freddie Mac is suing more than a dozen banks for losses from the alleged manipulation of the benchmark interest rate known as Libor.
Bank of America Corp, JPMorgan Chase & Co, UBS AG and Credit Suisse Group AG are among the banks named as defendants in the lawsuit.
Freddie Mac, which invested in mortgage bonds and swaps tied to U.S. dollar Libor, claims the banks colluded to rig the benchmark from 2007 to 2010, according to the complaint, which was filed March 14 in U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia.
Freddie Mac sued for undetermined damages.
The inspector general of the Federal Housing Finance Authority, which oversees Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae, said the two government-controlled mortgage companies may have suffered more than $3 billion in losses as a result of Libor manipulation, according to an internal memo obtained by Reuters in December.
[...]
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/03/19/freddie-mac-libor-lawsuit_n_2911457.html [with embedded slideshow, and comments]
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With JPMorgan Settlement, MF Global Clients Move Closer to Payout
By BEN PROTESS
March 20, 2013, 9:37 am
MF Global customers moved one step closer to recouping their missing money late on Tuesday when JPMorgan Chase released its claim to more than $500 million belonging to the bankrupt brokerage firm.
The settlement deal, struck between JPMorgan and the trustee overseeing the return of customer money, puts to rest more than a year of tough negotiations. JPMorgan was reluctant to part with the money, arguing in part that it was owed tens of millions of dollars as a creditor of MF Global.
But the settlement deal, which includes a $100 million cash payout to the trustee and a promise from JPMorgan not to clawback $417 million it doled out last year, paves the way for MF Global’s customers to recover nearly all the money that disappeared when the brokerage firm imploded. That goal, surprisingly within reach, is a stunning turnaround from MF Global’s bankruptcy filing in October 2011, when $1.6 billion vanished from the firm.
“This is a significant milestone in returning assets to former customers,” James W. Giddens, the trustee, said in a statement.
In a sign that Mr. Giddens is moving closer to making MF Global’s customers whole, he asked a bankruptcy court judge on Tuesday to approve $300 million in cash payouts. The request comes on the heels of a payout in January that brought most American customers to 93 percent of their original investment, up from 80 percent. The new request, if approved by Judge Martin Glenn of the United States Bankruptcy Court in Manhattan, will further aid customers by “several percentage points,” according to Mr. Giddens.
Foreign customers are not as well-positioned, though they too could receive additional money from the JPMorgan settlement.
The accord closes a bitter chapter in the MF Global debacle.
MF Global customers have long questioned whether JPMorgan was playing hardball, echoing accusations the bank faced in the aftermath of the Lehman Brothers bankruptcy. The customers complained that JPMorgan was slow to settle with Mr. Giddens, and even now they wonder whether the bank should have returned more.
Mr. Giddens noted, however, that the deal was an “economically sound agreement ending what would have been a costly, protracted, and uncertain legal battle.” Without the agreement, he said, fresh payouts to customers could have stalled “for at least two or three years.”
While JPMorgan had already returned $1 billion belonging to customers and $417 million in the firm’s proprietary funds, it attached a lien to the latter payment. Under the deal to pay $100 million to Mr. Giddens, it also released the lien on Tuesday.
“We are pleased to have reached this settlement, which will help restore funds to MF Global’s customers,” a JPMorgan spokeswoman said in an e-mail, adding that bank officials “don’t expect this settlement will have a material impact on our results.” The spokeswoman, Jennifer Zuccarelli, explained that “the agreement resolves all outstanding matters” between the bank and the MF Global “estate, its customers and creditors.”
JPMorgan was an obvious target for Mr. Giddens. It was at the center of MF Global’s downfall, lending to the firm and clearing its trades.
The bank was also a major recipient of customer money during MF Global’s chaotic final moments. When MF Global posted extra collateral to back its trades, aiming to reassure JPMorgan about its precarious position, some of the funds most likely belonged to customers.
Federal authorities have also scrutinized a $175 million transfer MF Global made from customer accounts to JPMorgan the day before the brokerage collapsed. The transfer, which was authorized by the firm’s Chicago office, was made to patch an overdraft in a London account.
While JPMorgan questioned the origin of the funds, seeking written assurances that the transfer was legitimate, MF Global balked. JPMorgan seized the money anyway, though the bank has said that it received oral assurances.
“As we have said before,” the JPMorgan spokeswoman said, the bank “worked to assist our client in a responsible manner under very challenging circumstances.”
James L. Koutoulas, a Chicago hedge fund manager who became a voice for thousands of customers whose money disappeared, might disagree. After he appeared on CNBC in 2011 to criticize JPMorgan, the bank closed his account and froze his credit card.
The bank has declined to discuss Mr. Koutoulas.
Copyright 2013 The New York Times Company
http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2013/03/20/with-jpmorgan-settlement-mf-global-clients-move-closer-to-payout/ [with comments]
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Synthetic CDOs Return To Wall Street, What Could Possibly Go Wrong?
Synthetic CDOs, which contributed to the financial crisis, have returned.
(JOHANNES EISELE/AFP/Getty Images)
By Mark Gongloff
Posted: 03/21/2013 9:07 am EDT | Updated: 03/21/2013 11:34 am EDT
Japan swore off nuclear weapons for generations after the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Wall Street's memory vis-a-vis weapons of mass destruction is just a bit shorter.
Ladies and gentlemen, whether you like it or not, the synthetic collateralized debt obligation (CDO) is making a comeback [ http://www.businessweek.com/news/2013-03-20/synthetic-cdos-making-comeback-as-yields-juiced ], Bloomberg reports. The numbers are small so far, and the bets being made with them appear to be sober. But that's always how these things start out.
What on earth is a synthetic CDO, you likely ask? It is a side bet on a bunch of side bets on somebody else's debt. First you take a bunch of corporate bonds. Then you write insurance protection on those bonds, in the form of derivatives called credit default swaps. And then you jam a bunch of those credit default swaps together into a toxic meatball called a synthetic CDO, on which you can also bet as much money as you like, assuming you have any money, considering you are the kind of doofus who bets money on toxic meatballs.
These have absolutely no economic value, aside from enriching the bankers that sell them and maybe giving investors a way to make an extra buck. And they are potentially disastrous, depending on how they're filled: These were among the derivatives that helped nearly bring down American International Group [ http://www.huffingtonpost.com/david-fiderer/the-cdos-that-destroyed-a_b_499875.html ] and the financial system less than four years ago. Now, with investors hungry for anything that offers the slightest bit of yield, these derivatives are making a comeback, which I'm sure is totally fine, because Wall Street has of course learned its lesson.
So far these things are only being sold to hedge funds; they're not getting credit ratings or being pitched to less-sophisticated investors the way synthetic CDOs were during the crisis. The filler in the meatballs so far are corporate bonds, not subprime mortgages. And we're not talking about a bunch of money here, yet. Synthetic CDOs on about $2 billion in debt were sold last year, Bloomberg writes, citing Citigroup data, and CDOs on another $1 billion have been sold so far this year.
And those totals overstate the total amounts actually being wagered on CDOs [ http://blogs.reuters.com/felix-salmon/2013/03/20/synthetics-rise-from-the-dead/ ], Felix Salmon points out -- they're what's known as "notional" amounts, or the total of the underlying debt on which investors are betting.
If you're betting on the default of $100 million in bonds, for example, you don't have to bet $100 million. You can just bet $1 million. So far, the amounts being bet in the synthetic CDO market are pretty tiny.
But of course this is not the only sign of pre-crisis craziness making a comeback. Last week a bunch of private-equity investors gathered together in San Francisco [ http://www.bizjournals.com/sanfrancisco/blog/2013/03/san-francisco-private-equity-bank-loans.html?page=all ] and observed that the ease of getting bank loans for deals has gotten right back to levels seen in 2006 and 2007, just ahead of the crash.
Unlike synthetic CDOs, private-equity deals didn't contribute to the financial crisis. They were more of a symptom of credit insanity than anything. But easy credit does encourage bankers to do dumb and damaging things with their private equity cash, like load up a company with debt in order to pay themselves huge dividends.
And even though today's synthetic CDOs don't seem quite as dangerous as those of five years ago, when they were betting on subprime mortgage debt, that doesn't mean they can't cause trouble. JPMorgan Chase's "London Whale" losses came from betting on derivatives of boring corporate debt, remember.
The return of synthetic CDOs does not signal that another crisis is around the corner. But rest assured that Wall Street will find ways to manufacture one, just as soon as it is able.
Copyright © 2013 TheHuffingtonPost.com, Inc.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/03/20/synthetic-cdos-return_n_2918704.html [with embedded video report, embedded slideshow, and comments]
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Wall Street Deregulation Garners Bipartisan Support Despite Devastating JPMorgan Report
Jamie Dimon, CEO of JPMorgan Chase, smiles while testifying before the House Financial Services Committee in Washington on June 19, 2012.
(AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin)
By Zach Carter
Posted: 03/19/2013 7:38 pm EDT | Updated: 03/21/2013 4:07 pm EDT
WASHINGTON -- A bipartisan cadre of House lawmakers will move on legislation to deregulate Wall Street derivatives Wednesday, less than a week after Sen. Carl Levin (D-Mich.) released a devastating report on the multibillion-dollar derivatives debacle [ http://s3.documentcloud.org/documents/623882/jpmorgan-chase-whale-trades-a-case-history-of.pdf ; http://www.propublica.org/documents/item/623882-jpmorgan-chase-whale-trades-a-case-history-of ] at JPMorgan Chase.
"The road to hell is paved with these bills," said Rep. Alan Grayson (D-Fla.), an advocate of financial reform.
The House Agriculture Committee will mark up several derivatives bills on Wednesday [ http://agriculture.house.gov/markup/consider-hr634-hr-677-hr-742-hr-992-hr-1003-hr-1038-and-hr ] despite opposition from a coalition of public interest and consumer advocacy groups known as Americans for Financial Reform. The effort to weaken regulation of these sophisticated financial instruments follows multiple in-depth autopsies [ http://www.scribd.com/doc/130464900/GF-Co-JPM-Out-of-Control ] of the London Whale debacle at JPMorgan [ http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/03/15/london-whale-hearing-carl-levin_n_2883719.html ], which has already cost the company $6.2 billion and tarnished its reputation as a prudent risk manager. It also comes less than three years after the Dodd-Frank Wall Street reform legislation, signed into law by President Barack Obama in 2010, set a host of new standards for the derivatives business, including heightened transparency and reduced taxpayer support.
In a statement provided to The Huffington Post, Levin expressed exasperation at the House efforts.
"Last year, some members of Congress supported watering down Dodd-Frank derivative safeguards, but abandoned those efforts after the world learned that JPMorgan Chase had lost billions of dollars on derivative trades made out of its London office," Levin said. "It is incredible that less than a week after new JPMorgan Whale hearings detailed how the bank's London office piled up risk, hid losses, and dodged regulatory oversight, that some House members are again supporting the weakening of derivative safeguards."
Derivatives were at the heart of the 2008 financial collapse. The preferred financial vehicle for a host of risky bets on the U.S. mortgage market, they created artificial demand for subprime mortgages, encouraging banks and mortgage brokers to extend loans to doomed borrowers. Derivatives pushed insurance giant AIG to the brink of bankruptcy and proved a hotbed for abuse on Wall Street. Goldman Sachs famously settled with the Securities and Exchange Commission [ http://www.sec.gov/news/press/2010/2010-123.htm ] for betting against the very derivatives it created and sold to its clients.
Yet in an era of partisan gridlock in the nation's capital, Democrats and Republicans have come together to repeal or weaken those rules. Although Obama may not want to sign a standalone package of Wall Street deregulation into law, bipartisan legislation could be inserted into a broader bill that the president might find difficult to reject.
Many of the supporters of the latest derivatives [ http://agriculture.house.gov/sites/republicans.agriculture.house.gov/files/pdf/legislation/HR1003.pdf ] bills [ http://agriculture.house.gov/sites/republicans.agriculture.house.gov/files/pdf/legislation/DiscussionDraftETSWAPSUpdated.pdf ] are longtime anti-regulation Republicans, including Reps. Patrick McHenry (R-N.C.) and Scott Garrett (R-N.J.). But some Democratic supporters point to constituents off Wall Street when asked about the legislation by HuffPost.
A staffer for Rep. Gwen Moore (D-Wis.) said that her bill was designed not to pad banking profits, but to relieve regulatory burdens on other companies that do business with banks. "You have these huge corporations -- I'm just gonna use Caterpillar because I guess you know they're in our district. They do business in Russia and Canada. They do mining and sell huge pieces of equipment that take years to construct ... and they need to hedge those risks," said the staffer.
Moore's bill would allow a company like Caterpillar to trade derivatives with its offshore affiliates -- firms that it owns in other countries -- without posting money to a third party guaranteeing that it can make the trade.
Exempting such trades from oversight could also help foster tax avoidance, however, since companies have used sham derivatives transactions to dodge the Internal Revenue Service. Such activity is usually illegal, but the IRS has been short on resources to investigate and combat it. Requiring companies to post monetary guarantees creates an upfront cost to sham transactions that may serve as a deterrent.
"We have not taken a position on, nor advocated for this bill," Caterpillar spokesman Jim Dugan told HuffPost.
According to a 2008 report by the Government Accountability Office, Caterpillar operates 49 subsidiaries in countries classified as tax havens [ http://www.gao.gov/new.items/d09157.pdf ], including 13 in Bermuda alone.
Rep. John Garamendi (D-Calif.) is sponsoring a bill to help exempt companies that trade derivatives with public utilities [ http://agriculture.house.gov/sites/republicans.agriculture.house.gov/files/pdf/legislation/HR1038.pdf ] from Dodd-Frank's business conduct standards. He said this would save money for the utilities and argued that his bill should not be considered as part and parcel with other derivatives legislation.
"I don't have an opinion about the other bills," Garamendi told HuffPost. "I'm considering them."
At a congressional hearing last week, Wallace Turbeville, a former Goldman Sachs banker and current senior fellow at the public policy group Demos, testified on behalf of Americans for Financial Reform that exempting utilities from the rules would ultimately help unscrupulous firms that sell derivatives to the utilities.
"I had the uncomfortable opportunity to witness sales calls by derivatives specialists on governmental utilities," Turbeville said [ http://agriculture.house.gov/sites/republicans.agriculture.house.gov/files/pdf/hearings/Turbeville130314.pdf ]. "I have seen the technique of fostering a sense of trust, encouraging an advisory relationship that can be exploited to sell an immensely profitable derivative when other alternatives could be better."
Garamendi dismissed Turbeville's concerns.
"The question is, 'Will the sharks on Wall Street take advantage of the power companies?'" Garamendi said. "Wall Street certainly tries to take advantage everywhere it can. But there are always risks to running a business … The way that this sector has been abused before, the Enron situation, that isn't applicable here."
The bills to be considered Wednesday also include legislation from Rep. Jim Himes [ http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/03/13/jim-himes-dodd-frank_n_2870795.htmll ] (D-Conn.) -- another Goldman alum -- that would roll back Dodd-Frank's ban on taxpayer support for some kinds of derivatives trades. Himes has defended his bill as a way to ensure that more regulators oversee derivatives, though the measure is opposed by the Americans for Financial Reform.
Another bill would force the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, a regulator with derivatives responsibility, to conduct economic cost-benefit analyses for new agency rules using guidelines that would be more favorable to Wall Street banks. If the proposed rules failed the test, they could not be imposed.
*
Related
White House Petition: Make Lawmakers Wear Logos Of Financial Backers On Clothing, Like In NASCAR
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/03/20/white-house-petition-logos_n_2912087.html
*
Copyright © 2013 TheHuffingtonPost.com, Inc.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/03/19/wall-street-deregulation-_n_2910168.html [with embedded video reports, embedded slideshow, and comments]
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JPMorgan Chase Wins Actual Award For Its Handling Of The London Whale Debacle
JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon indicates that he is "Number One" at investor relations. The bank won an award for its handling of the London Whale debacle.
(AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin)
By Mark Gongloff
Posted: 03/22/2013 2:18 pm EDT
What's dumber than JPMorgan Chase losing $6 billion in credit derivatives, along with its sterling reputation for crisis management? Giving JPMorgan an award for its crisis management, that's what.
Yes, JPMorgan has won an honest-to-goodness, great-job award for its handling of the London Whale trading debacle, and it is not a Golden Raspberry or a Dubious Achievement Award. At a black-tie awards ceremony on Thursday that was the Oscars of investor relations, IR Magazine gave JPMorgan the prize for "best crisis management," reports [ http://blogs.wsj.com/deals/2013/03/22/london-whale-snags-a-prize/ ] Anton Troianovski of the Wall Street Journal.
Just like the Oscars, there were terrible jokes:
Kathy Hu, an executive director in J.P. Morgan’s investor relations department, accepted the award and quipped: “Can I just say, ‘Crisis? What crisis?’”
Ha ha, yes, very funny, but maybe not for the reasons Hu thinks. What's super hilarious about this is the fact that, while the London Whale crisis was exploding in the newspapers a year ago, JPMorgan executives were seriously saying, "Crisis? What crisis?" to investors.
In an earnings conference call on April 13, as part of JPMorgan's award-winning investor relations, CEO Jamie Dimon dismissed the London Whale story as a "tempest in a teapot." That performance helped Dimon win his own award from IR Magazine last night, for "Best Investor Relations by a CEO or chairman -- large cap.” Hu accepted on behalf of Dimon, who couldn't make the dinner for some reason.
During that same award-winning April 13 call, chief financial officer Douglas Braunstein waved off the London Whale trades as totally fine, vetted by risk managers and made in full view of regulators. That, as he admitted to Sen. Carl Levin (D-Mich.) during a Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations hearing [ http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/03/15/london-whale-hearing-carl-levin_n_2883719.html ] last week, was not exactly true. But those are the breaks when you're managing crises in an award-winning way.
Of course, the very fact that, more than a year after the news broke, JPMorgan executives are testifying on Capitol Hill, with the bank and its executives facing potential legal trouble [ http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/03/16/jpmorgan-scandal-london-whale-legal_n_2885951.html ] for years to come, raises its own questions about just why JPMorgan's crisis management is award-winning.
The Senate subcommittee's damning report on the London Whale debacle [ http://www.hsgac.senate.gov/subcommittees/investigations/hearings/chase-whale-trades-a-case-history-of-derivatives-risks-and-abuses ] raises serious questions about JPMorgan's risk management and crisis management, painting a picture of executives who were clueless about the risks the London Whale was taking on, and then desperately tried to hide the true size of the problem from investors and regulators. The bank's overseers at the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency last year cut its rating for the bank's award-winning management [ http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/03/20/jpmorgan-rating-bank-management-camels_n_2915483.html ] to signal it "needs improvement."
JPMorgan denies it tried to hide anything from investors and revealed all just as soon as it could. It accepts its award for crisis management with the appropriate humility:
“It’s really an honor to be recognized," bank executive Doug Levin said, according to the WSJ. "It’s a lot of hard work on the part of the team.”
And apparently JPMorgan's investor relations were just good enough to satisfy investors: The award was based on voting by analysts and investors, one of whom said: “We needed handholding this year, and J.P. Morgan came up trumps.”
Copyright © 2013 TheHuffingtonPost.com, Inc. (emphasis in original)
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/03/22/jpmorgan-london-whale-award_n_2933757.html [with embedded video report, embedded slideshow, and comments]
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DOJ Criminal Probe Into JPMorgan Whale Trade At 'Advanced Stages': Report
03/23/2013
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/03/22/jpmorgan-criminal-probe_n_2935606.html [with comments]
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Big Banks Offer Payday Loans At 300 Percent Interest: Study
A new study points out that Wells Fargo and other big banks are offering payday loans with high interest rates.
(AP Photo/CX Matiash, File)
By Mark Gongloff
Posted: 03/21/2013 1:11 pm EDT | Updated: 03/22/2013 3:03 pm EDT
Step aside, Tony Soprano: Big banks will now lend money at 300 percent interest without threatening to break a leg.
Then again, the payday loans some big banks are offering can have other ill effects, such as financial ruin, according to a new study by the Center for Responsible Lending [ http://www.responsiblelending.org/payday-lending/research-analysis/triple-digit-danger.html ]. Even as public anxiety grows about the dangers of payday lending, with 15 states recently banning the practice [ http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/24/business/major-banks-aid-in-payday-loans-banned-by-states.html?pagewanted=all ], many big banks are offering the service to their customers.
"Despite federal banking regulators’ recognition of the abuses of payday lending and aggressive action blocking previous bank partnerships with payday lenders, a few large banks have begun offering payday loans directly through checking accounts," the study says. Large banks offering the service include Wells Fargo, U.S. Bank, Regions Bank and Fifth Third Bank.
The average annual percentage rate on a bank payday loan is 225 to 300 percent, the study says. Banks that offer payday loans extract payments automatically from the borrowers' checking accounts on the next pay cycle. In some cases, that withdrawal cleans out a borrower's checking account, leading to bounced checks. According to the study, users of paycheck advances are twice as likely to overdraw their bank accounts, leading to even more fees for the banks. And that's just the start of the potential problems.
"Research has shown that payday lending often leads to negative financial outcomes for borrowers," the study says. "These include difficulty paying other bills, difficulty staying in their home or apartment, trouble obtaining health care, increased risk of credit card default, loss of checking accounts, and bankruptcy."
The elderly, already financially vulnerable and short on retirement savings, are making increasing use of these loans. According to the study, more than a quarter of bank payday loan borrowers are on Social Security.
Wells Fargo spokeswoman Richele Messick said the bank has been offering a payday loan service it calls "Direct Deposit Advance" since 1994. Available only to Wells Fargo customers, this loan has a set fee of $7.50 per $100, regardless of the length of the loan, which Messick said compares to the payday loan industry standard of about $17 per $100.
"It is an expensive form of credit, and we're very clear with our customers that it is an expensive form of credit and not to be used as a long-term solution," Messick said. "We have policies in place to make sure customers don't use the service in the long term."
Wells Fargo will not clean out a borrower's account when taking money to pay itself back for payday loans, Messick said. The bank makes sure the customer gets to keep at least $100 from each paycheck, and if customers use the service for six months in a row, Wells Fargo will cut them off from more paycheck advances for a bit -- what the CRL study calls a "cooling-off" period.
The study singles out this Wells Fargo practice for criticism, saying it's not enough to keep borrowers out of trouble.
"After six consecutive months with loans, a borrower will typically have paid hundreds of dollars in fees and still effectively owe the original principal on the loan -- a deep hole from which to recover," the study says. "As currently structured, banks’ cooling-off periods allow borrowers to become mired in a significant, destructive cycle of debt before the cooling-off period is triggered."
Like Wells Fargo, Regions Financial also warns its customers that its payday lending service, called Ready Advance, is expensive. It charges $1 per every $10 advanced during an early probationary period and 70 cents thereafter. (Non-bank payday lenders typically charge between $1.50 and $2 for every $10.) It also charges high interest if a customer wants to pay back the loan in installments -- 21 percent above prime rate.
"We introduced the product after extensive research with our customers, who told us that they were either already using a non-bank advance loan product, or would like for Regions to offer an alternative," Regions spokeswoman Evelyn Mitchell said in an statement to The Huffington Post. "Ready Advance is intended to meet the credit needs of existing Regions Bank customers who have a checking account in good standing. Our fees are generally half what customers would pay elsewhere and we offer customers a pathway to qualify for less expensive credit products."
Fifth Third, which calls its payday-loan service "Early Access Advance [ https://www.53.com/doc/pe/pe-eax-tc.pdf ]," costing $1 per $10 advance, declined to comment on CRL study.
"Our goal is to give customers access to funds in the case of an emergency," U.S. Bank spokeswoman Teri Charest said in an email to the Huffington Post. "We make it very clear that [U.S. bank's payday-loan product] Checking Account Advance is for short-term use only, and that lower cost alternatives may be available. Of those that have used the advance, more than 96 percent say they are satisfied or very satisfied with the service."
Even banks that do not directly offer payday loans themselves often help the less-scrupulous lenders who do, giving them access to customers' bank accounts to extract payments for loans at interest rates that sometimes run to 500 percent. JPMorgan Chase recently said it would do more to help protect its customers [ http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2013/03/19/jpmorgan-reining-in-payday-lenders/ ] from these lenders, making it easier for them to block withdrawals and close accounts. The bank will also offer a discount on the fees it charges to customers whose accounts have been picked clean by payday lenders.
JPMorgan's policy shift comes as regulators, including the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau [ http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/24/business/major-banks-aid-in-payday-loans-banned-by-states.html?pagewanted=all (about three-quarters of the way down at/see {linked in} http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=85141987 and preceding and following)], are investigating how banks help payday lenders, The New York Times reports. Those lenders are in turn scrambling offshore and online as they come under increasing scrutiny in the U.S.
Copyright © 2013 TheHuffingtonPost.com, Inc. (emphasis in original)
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/03/21/big-bank-payday-loan_n_2924657.html [with comments]
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