Evening News Reads: Knew it was a matter of time…
Posted: January 11, 2012 Filed under: 2012 presidential campaign, Civil Liberties, Civil Rights, Mental Health, Psychopaths in charge, Reproductive Health, Reproductive Rights, SDB Evening News Reads, Women's Rights | Tags: abortion, Superbowl, Tebow 6 Comments
Good Evening
I am writing this post a bit early today. Here in Banjoville we have some bad weather heading our way…I figured might as well get this scheduled if we lose electricity.
Newt Gingrich must have gotten word from up on high to lay off Romney. Newt Gingrich: I crossed the line – Jonathan Allen and Jake Sherman – POLITICO.com
Newt Gingrich signaled Wednesday that he believes his criticism of Mitt Romney’s record at Bain Capital is a mistake — and that he’s created an impression that he was echoing Democratic rhetoric.
Gingrich conceded the problem when pressed by a Rick Santorum supporter at a book-signing here Wednesday.
[…]
After ditching promises of a positive campaign, Gingrich had been leading a multi-candidate pile-on of candidates attacking Romney’s Bain record, starting in Sunday’s debate and continuing in campaign events Tuesday. If he pulls back on the criticism now, it would be the latest abrupt shift in tactics from a candidate whose campaign has been full of them.
In addition to providing another example of Gingrich’s erratic campaign style, the decision could put the former House speaker in a precarious spot: the pro-Gingrich super PAC Winning Our Future is set to begin a $3.4 million airtime buy for a 27-minute long documentary showcasing people who lost their jobs when companies Bain was invested in closed. Through Tuesday, Gingrich had expressed support for the film.
After the event, Gingrich spokesman R.C. Hammond argued the film was not actually about Bain specifically.
“It’s the decisions that Romney was making as CEO that are under review of public opinion,” Hammond said. “We’re not bringing Bain up, we’re responding to questions” prompted by the video.
In more…we knew it was a matter of time, news today:
Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker (R) may have violated his state’s campaign finance law over 1,000 times in the 2010 gubernatorial campaign by failing to properly report contributions, according to a new report.
Wisconsin law requires gubernatorial campaigns to disclose information about contributors who give more than $100. Again and again, Walker appears to have skirted that requirement.
One Wisconsin Now examined the Walker for Governor’s finance records and found 1,115 instances where the campaign received contributions of more than $100 but did not properly disclose who gave the money. In total, “Walker has improperly reported well over $500,000 in contributions from inside and outside of Wisconsin,” said Scot Ross, One Wisconsin Now Executive Director. According to the group, which has filed a complaint with the state Government Accountability Board, Walker’s violations could result in a fine of $557,500.
This next link is from last week, however I think it is important to bring to your attention. Yes, it focuses on the State of Georgia, and the cuts to its Mental Health programs, but it is indicative of what many other states are doing in response to bad economic times. Some mentally disabled lose services | ajc.com
Evette King recently sat in her south Atlanta home fretting about how she could avoid eviction without someone to watch, feed and bathe her severely autistic son so she can work and pay the bills.
Last spring, King’s 19-year-old son, Gerald Stephens, joined a growing number of Georgians with mental illness or developmental disabilities who have been discharged or are at risk of being cut off from a state program that has been a life line for thousands of elderly and disabled people for the past 15 years.
The program — which provides housekeeping, transportation to adult day centers, care management and other services — not only helps people avoid ending up in nursing homes but ultimately saves taxpayers money, advocates say. Caring for someone in the community costs thousands of dollars less each month than in a nursing home.
In 2007, however, a federal agency told the state it had to move the program known as SOURCE — Service Options Using Resources in a Community Environment — under a different umbrella. The new, more restrictive framework limited it to the elderly and physically disabled — excluding some people who suffer from schizophrenia, Down syndrome, bipolar disorder, depression, and other mental and developmental disabilities.
“It’s destroying people’s lives,” said Talley Wells, an Atlanta Legal Aid Society attorney who represents half a dozen individuals in danger of being eliminated who sued the state in 2010.
Under the more stringent rules, the state Department of Community Health has had to carefully reassess on a case-by-case basis whether SOURCE participants require a nursing home level of care. That includes people with physical disabilities whose health may have improved over time, said Catherine Ivy, deputy director of aging and special populations in the agency’s Medicaid division.
And this is in addition to other mental health services being cut in the state.
The loss of services comes at the same time Georgia is also shelling out tens of millions of dollars to move mentally ill and developmentally disabled people out of state institutions — an effort spurred by a U.S. Department of Justice investigation into the abuse and deaths of dozens of mental hospital patients. A series of articles by The Atlanta Journal-Constitution uncovered the abuse starting in 2007.
The Department of Community Health said it doesn’t have information on how many people with mental illness or developmental disabilities have been discharged from SOURCE. But Wells said his office has received calls weekly since the beginning of 2010 from families in danger of losing funding, and he estimates hundreds could be affected.
Oh, but hang on…I have another story that will not surprise you. This time it comes from ACLU: Results of Our Poll for the Worst Prison Innovation of 2011: And the Loser Is… » Blog of Rights: Official Blog of the American Civil Liberties Union
In December, we asked you to pick among three candidates for the worst prison idea of 2011: denying prisoners lunch, charging families to visit prisoners or a pilot program in South Korea involving robotic correctional officers. You cast your votes, and the results are in!
Coming in at first place for worst prison idea of 2011, with 45% of your votes, is Gouging Families: A new law in Arizona allows the Department of Corrections to charge family members and other visitors who want to see prisoners a $25 fee. Visiting loved ones is hard enough without the new charge because, as the New York Times reports, family members “in many cases already shoulder the expense of traveling long distances to the remote areas where many prisons are located.” New fees just make it harder.
A close second, with 41% of the vote, is No Lunch: Texas has abolished lunch on weekends. On Saturdays and Sundays, inmates in 36 Texas prisons will receive one meal between 5:00 a.m. and 7:00 a.m., and a second meal between 4:00 p.m. and 6:30 p.m. — and no meal in between.
And in third place, it’s Robo-guards: South Korea is launching a test of robotic correctional officers. As the Los Angeles Times reports, these robo-guards (or should we say guard-bots?) are designed to act as “‘friendly robots’ that will not just guard prisoners but keep an eye on their well-being to boot.” And they may be used for matters that require something of a human touch — like detecting suicidal behavior. In fact, according to Time Magazine, the robots supposedly are “in touch with prisoners’ emotions, sensing aggressive or suicidal shifts.”
But it is all not bad news…
There was also a lot of good news in 2011 when it came to criminal justice reform, including a report of the first decline in the total prison population in nearly 40 years and a growing realization in many states that overincarceration is bad policy. Many of your comments in response to the poll called for continued change to ensure to a fair, just and safe criminal justice system, such as reducing overincarceration, creating humane prison conditions and putting an end to for-profit prisons.
And lastly, yes I know…it is a rushed post today.
Aborted Fetuses: The Awkward Guest at Your Super Bowl Party | Mother Jones
Anti-abortion activist Randall Terry has been running graphic ads of aborted fetuses in key primary states, as my colleague Tim Murphy has reported. Now the greusome ads are coming to the Super Bowl.
Nothing says “pass the dip” like a bloody fetus. Normally, Terry wouldn’t be able to get these kinds of ads on television. So he’s launching a non-serious campaign for president (running as a Democratic challenger to President Obama) in order to exploit a loophole in Federal Communications Commission rules that requires station to run campaign ads in the weeks ahead of a primary election—no matter how grisly they might be. In the 45 days ahead of a primary and 60 days ahead of a general election, candidates for federal office can run whatever they want on local stations, as long as they pay for the airtime.
Yes, the FCC can try to fine you a half-million dollars for a “wardrobe malfunction,” but bundles of bloody body parts is A-okay.
Terry can’t, however, force the networks to run his ads nationally, as Jezebel points out. So if you live in a state that doesn’t have a primary within 45 days of the Superbowl, you can enjoy your nachos without looking at fetal body parts. (Which, it’s probably worth pointing out, are from late-term abortions; the vast majority of abortions take place in the first trimester.) But if you live in a Super Tuesday state or any of the others voting in February or early March, be prepared. The Greeley Gazette writes that Terry and his group have ads “ready to go” in 40 markets.
Tie that in with a big wave of Tebowing and you’ve got yourself an evening!
So, with that have a good night, and lets hope my electricity stays on this time.
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They can’t throw Scott Walker in jail soon enough, for me. But election finance is only a small part. His crime is attempted murder of democracy.
Who moved my smelling salts? Where are they? I need them.
I was just at Echidne’s place reading this quote from David “Mass Mansplainer” Brooks.
Or, as Echidne points out, you could just impoverish women and achieve the same end. … Oh. Wait.
My first rule of media: Never, never never read David Brooks. Because I will become so enraged that I won’t be able to think of anything else all day. I can’t stand that man! Could anyone be more shallow?
Oh, wait. Mitt Romney is more shallow than even David Brooks.
I was afraid they’d get to Newt. I must say, I’m deeply disappointed.
It was inevitable he’d sell out I suppose, sigh.
This is about the “boyz” being intellectually lazy again. They posit that Paul is the only one in the race that is addressing this issue. A statement which is patently false. The truth is Paul is the only one from the two major parties addressing the issue. The “boyz” don’t want to have to do the heavy lifting. They don’t want to continually have to promote someone that has little exposure, not when it is so much easier to try to co opt someone with a base of support. Of course, that is part and parcel to how we got our present President. The “boyz” ability to gloss over the things they didn’t like and instead focus on what they did.
I found Stoller’s pieces(and there were 2 of them) incredibly condescending and filled with holes. He made at least 2 false assumptions right out the gate 1)that liberals can’t oppose Paul on policy. Can’t? Just watch me. I can shred even his better than the average conservative positions. Foreign policy? Paul is a unilateralist. It’s the same behavior W utilized in Iraq. Paul opposes foreign bodies like the UN. I’d even go further to suggest that Paul has a UN fetish. He thinks they are intent on creating a one world government. Meanwhile he’s not ideologically consistent because he uses international bodies like IAEA to make his arguments. These bodies wouldn’t even exist if everyone had Paul’s logic. Paul opposes foreign aid. All those brown people that Paul advocates we not bomb, Paul would be perfectly willing to let them starve or die of disease. There would be no aid for AIDS. No aid for poverty. No aid period. Paul also opposes treaties. In short, if you believe in global cooperation than Paul really isn’t that great on foreign policy at all. See? I can oppose Paul’s policy from the left coherently. I can oppose wars and still criticize Paul from the left. I can do it on civil liberties too. Since anyone not able bodied, white or male becomes a second class citizen when Paul shreds regulatory agencies that deal with discrimination and equal opportunity. It’s not that hard.
2) That those interested in attacking Paul are interested in protecting the status quo. Uh no? Actually Stoller is promoting the idea that the status quo should remain when he makes patently false statements like Ron Paul is the only candidate addressing civil liberties. He’s protecting the idea that only the duopoly bought by corporate America are addressing issues. You can’t get more status quo then that. In contrast, most of the people who oppose “using” Paul are fervent supporters of Anderson and Stein, third party candidates that are far from a status quo solution. They posit that we should be pulling from the left and not satisfied with center right as our position in which starting debates. And you know what? I’m with them. I see how starting health care from the center hurt our final approach to health care. We would have been better served to start from the right. I also find it ironic that people who consistently criticize the MSM for bias and giving half stories would actually engage in the same behavior. My problem is less about them covering Paul as it is about them suggesting that Paul is the sole way we get a conversation going on war and defense. It isn’t. And to suggest those of us that realize it are just engaging in some kind of protection of the Democrats is as smear worthy as the position that people who opposed the war were terrorist sympathizers and traitors. It simply isn’t true.
Those are just two of the errors I saw straight out.