Monday Reads: Oh, I wish I was in the land of data …
Posted: February 24, 2014 Filed under: morning reads | Tags: Freddie Mercury Crow Laws, global warming, Recovery Act, T Bone Burneett, Train Song, True Detective, Vashti Bunti 35 Comments
Good Morning!
I’m forever aghast at the number of folks that prefer tropes and memes to actually investigating what works and doesn’t work for the economy. It’s a bit like watching people rush to that wagon where the snake oil salesman promises a miracle cure. Meanwhile, back here in the land of data, we use the scientific method. Wishful thinking just doesn’t cure math deficiency.
Of all the myths and falsehoods that Republicans have spread about President Obama, the most pernicious and long-lasting is that the $832 billion stimulus package did not work. Since 2009, Republican lawmakers have inextricably linked the words “failed” and “stimulus,” and last week, five years after passage of the Recovery Act, they dusted off their old playbook again.
“The ‘stimulus’ has turned out to be a classic case of big promises and big spending with little results,” wrote Speaker John Boehner. “Five years and hundreds of billions of dollars later, millions of families are still asking, ‘where are the jobs?’ ”
The stimulus could have done more good had it been bigger and more carefully constructed. But put simply, it prevented a second recession that could have turned into a depression. It created or saved an average of 1.6 million jobs a year for four years. (There are the jobs, Mr. Boehner.) It raised the nation’s economic output by 2 to 3 percent from 2009 to 2011. It prevented a significant increase in poverty — without it, 5.3 million additional people would have become poor in 2010.
And yet Republicans were successful in discrediting the very idea that federal spending can boost the economy and raise employment. They made the argument that the stimulus was a failure not just to ensure that Mr. Obama would get no credit for the recovery that did occur, but to justify their obstruction of all further attempts at stimulus.
So the American Jobs Act was killed, and so was the infrastructure bank and any number of other spending proposals that might have helped the country. The president’s plan to spend another $56 billion on job training, education and energy efficiency, to be unveiled in his budget next month, will almost certainly suffer a similar fate.
This may be the singular tragedy of the Obama administration. Five years later, it is clear to all fair-minded economists that the stimulus did work, and that it did enormous good for the economy and for tens of millions of people. But because it fell short of its goals, and was roundly ridiculed by Republicans and inadequately defended by Democrats, who should have trumpeted its success, the president’s stimulus plan is now widely considered a stumble.
There are so many people that would rather look at what’s in front of their nose rather than examine information over time and look for trend and random events. Did you know that January 2014 was the 4th warmest on record for our world?
But it turns out that according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), this January was the warmest since 2007 and the fourth warmest January on record. It was also the 38th January in a row that boasted temperatures above the average for the 20th century: temperatures were 1.17 degrees above average globally.
You have to go all the way back to 1976 – the year Paul McCartney and Wings made it to #1 with “Silly Love Songs” and Elton John and Kiki Dee followed close on their heels with #2′s Don’t Go Breaking My Heart, to find a below average temperature for January.
Think about it: If February’s temperatures are also above average, we will have seen 29 years since the last month of below average temperatures.
And global warming deniers never once mentioned California’s drought. It was as though it was not even happening. But these extremes of weather are predicted by the scientific model. Instead of intelligent discourse, we had Todd Akin (R-MO) claiming back in 2009that regulating CO2 will make the seasons stop,” showing he knows no more about climate science than he does about biology. That same year we saw Rep. Joe Barton (R-TX) say that because CO2 is in Coca Cola that it is safe and should not be regulated. More recently, we getTony Perkins asserting there is more evidence that God is behind “hurricanes and storms” than there is for climate change. We get David Barton saying last October that abortion is really to blame for climate change. And we get Glenn Beck claiming those who deny climate change will shortly be sent to internment camps.
In other words, you are not going to get an intelligent debate on climate change from Republicans. And Beck, who is a genre unto himself? Nice a fantasy as this is, it’s not going to happen.What is going to happen to everyone is going to be much worse than internment if something isn’t done. The melting of the Antarctic ice sheet would mean sea levels rising more than 200 feet. If you want to know what the world will look like then, go to National Geographic and take a look.
Keith Brekhus reported here in January that “the Australian based Centre of Excellence for Climate System Science has released a new study arguing that climate models have underestimated the extent to which the doubling of carbon dioxide will affect global surface temperatures.” What we get in response is the Exxon-funded Center for the Study of Carbon Dioxide and Global Change telling us that CO2 is actually good for us, and that global warming will be beneficial, and that anyway, the fact that the planet is warming and that CO2 emissions are increasing, is not evidence of causation.
When Rep. Marsha Blackburn (R-TN), vice chair of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, says that CO2 is good for plants it is because that is what Exxon and other fossil fuel giants are paying her to say.
It’s equally interesting that a law denying rights to GLBTs boils down to a few crazy businesses that don’t want to send wedding accouterments to gay couples because OMG! Have any of these folks ever read about the abuses that lead to our Constitutional concept of religious liberty? Do they think really think that selling a wedding cake is the same as subjecting oneself to the Inquisition?
The Arizona law seems to apply to services beyond those tied to weddings, but same-sex weddings are the impetus for these bills. Specifically, they are in response to lawsuits against three different Christians who refused to photograph, bake a cake, and sell flowers for same-sex weddings. The backers of these laws claim that a Christian cannot, in good conscience, provide a good or service for a same-sex wedding because it violates the teachings of Christianity.
If these bills become law, we could see same-sex couples being denied service not just by photographers and florists, but also restaurants and hotels and pretty much anyone else who can tie their discrimination to a religious belief.
Many on the left and right can agree that nobody should be unnecessarily forced to violate their conscience. But in order to violate a Christian’s conscience, the government would have to force them to affirm something in which they don’t believe. This is why the first line of analysis here has to be whether society really believes that baking a wedding cake or arranging flowers or taking pictures (or providing any other service) is an affirmation. This case simply has not been made, nor can it be, because it defies logic. If you lined up 100 married couples and asked them if their florist “affirmed” their wedding, they would be baffled by the question.
Strangely, conservative Christians seem to have little interest in this level of analysis and jump right to complaints about their legal and constitutional rights. It’s not that these rights don’t matter. Rather, they should be a secondary issue for Christians. Before considering legal rights, Christians wrestling with this issue must first resolve the primary issue of whether the Bible calls Christians to deny services to people who are engaging in behavior they believe violates the teachings of Christianity regarding marriage. The answer is, it does not.
Nor does the Bible teach that providing such a service should be construed as participation or affirmation. Yet Christian conservatives continue to claim that it does.
Okay, and now for something about True Detective. It’s my latest addiction and I fully confess that I passed it on to BostonBoomer, my sister, and Doctor Daughter. (MAJOR SPOILER ALERT)
David Haglund: This show gets into your head something fierce. About halfway through this episode, called “Haunted Houses,” Rust’s commanding officer chews out his subordinate for bothering people about the long-since-closed Dora Lange case. My eye flashed to the officer’s nameplate: Leroy Salter (played by Paul Ben-Victor, by the way, also known as Vondas from The Wire). Leroy … that derives from French for “the king.” As in the Yellow King? And what could “salter” mean?
Before I could start Googling surname origins, Rust began spouting his theories about a high-reaching murderous conspiracy and, for the first time (in my book, anyway), they sounded like the mad ravings of a paranoid. I recalled that Satan-themed T-shirt on one of the jailed boys who had sex with Marty’s daughter—a shirt that sported a black star or two—and thought about how sometimes the signifiers of devil worship are just for show. The ground beneath me started to shift.
Bring me back from the brink, Willa.
I haven’t had this much fun since Twin Peaks.
I’ve been haunted by this song since I started watching the series. The music track is as haunting as the imagery and the story line. It’s chosen by T Bone Burnett who is an artist I’ve had the pleasure to mic and mix. I love the Train Song By Vashti Bunyan and it’s perfectly placed in the series.
BTW, do you watch “Big Bang Theory”? I hope you know that Mayim Bialik who plays Amy Farrah Fowler actually has a doctorate in neuroscience. You can’t do many advanced degrees without a lot of calculus. I actually started to like math when I went into the part that wasn’t bounded as finite. Most folks may remember her as Blossom but …
During a red carpet interview at the SAG awards this January, the actress was forced into an awkward situation after Bono’s doppelganger tried to asked her if people assume that she can do advanced math because she plays a smart character on TV. As it turns out, she can do calculus in her sleep because she’s secretly a neuroscientist. And by secretly, I mean she publicly taught for several years, wrote a book about the science of hormones for parenting and has given several public (and very recent) lectures about the importance of investing in STEM careers and research. Oh and she’s also the official spokesperson for Texas Instruments graphing calculators.
She’s a scientist and an actress.
Just one more thing …
I know my fiction from my fact. I’m not so sure that’s true about a lot of policy makers these days of the Republican Persuasion.
Friday Reads: With Liberty and Justice for All
Posted: February 21, 2014 Filed under: morning reads 42 Comments
Good Morning
I guess there’s something about “FOR ALL” that some people just don’t seem to understand.
I’m not sure where Arizona belongs in the category of states that really haven’t signed onto the Constitution yet, but it’s WAyyyyyy down there.
State senators voted Wednesday to let businesses refuse to serve gays based on owners’ “sincerely held” religious beliefs.
The 17-13 vote along party lines, with Republicans in the majority, came after supporters defeated an attempt to extend existing employment laws that bar discrimination based on religion and race to also include sexual orientation. Sen. Steve Yarbrough, R-Chandler, said that’s a separate issue from what he is trying to do.
But Sen. Steve Gallardo, D-Phoenix, said that’s precisely the issue.
“The bill opens the door for discrimination against gays and lesbians,” he said.
Yarbrough, however, said foes of SB 1062 are twisting what his legislation says.
“This bill is not about discrimination,” he said. “It’s about preventing discrimination against people who are clearly living out their faith.”
A similar measure is awaiting a vote in the House, probably later today.
Arizona already has laws which protect individuals and businesses from any state action which substantially interferes with their right to exercise their religion. This bill extends that protection to cover what essentially are private transactions.
The push follows a decision by the New Mexico Supreme Court which said a gay couple could sue a photographer who refused on religious grounds to take pictures of their nuptials. Yarbrough’s legislation would preclude such a ruling here.
But Gallardo said this legislation makes one person’s religious freedom an attack on others.
“We all have the right to our religious beliefs,” he said.
“But I do not agree that we have the right to discriminate because of our religious beliefs,” Gallardo continued. “I do not believe we have to throw our religious beliefs to others that don’t share our same beliefs.”
I had thought we’d gotten to the point where denying the rights of others was considered wrong. But, I guess I’m wrong. Jim Crow just keeps on raising his head. Now, it’s Jane Crow, Juan Crow, and Freddie Mercury Crow.
Republicans lawmakers and a network of conservative religious groups has been pushing similar bills in other states, essentially forging a national campaign that, critics say, would legalize discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation. Republicans in Idaho, Oregon, South Dakota, and Tennessee recently introduced provisions that mimic the Kansas legislation. And Arizona,Hawaii, Ohio, Oklahoma, and Mississippi have introduced broader “religious freedom” bills with a unique provision that would also allow people to deny services or employment to LGBT Americans, legal experts say.
“This is a concerted campaign that the religious Right has been hinting at for a couple of years now,” says Evan Hurst, associate director of Truth Wins Out, a Chicago-based nonprofit that promotes gay rights. “The fact that they’re doing it Jim Crow-style is remarkable, considering the fact that one would think the GOP would like to be electable among people under 50 sometime in the near future.”
Several of these measures have sprung up within a short period of time. The Kansas bill wasintroduced by Republican state Rep. Charles Macheers on January 16. On January 28, Idaho state Rep. Lynn Luker (R-Boise) introduced a bill that would prohibit the state from yanking the professional licenses of people who deny service or employment to anyone (including LGBT customers) on the basis of their religious beliefs. (There’s an exception for emergency responders.) Luker has since pulled that bill back into committee, to address concerns about the language being discriminatory.
On January 30, a coalition of Republican senators and representatives in South Dakotaintroduced a bill that would have allowed a business to refuse to serve or people due to their sexual orientation, or be compelled to hire someone because of their sexual orientation. Under this measure, a gay person who brought a lawsuit charging discrimination based on sexual orientation could have faced punitive damages of no less than $2,000. The bill also declared that it is protected speech to tell someone that his or her lifestyle is “wrong or a sin.” The bill was killed this week by the state Senate judiciary committee.
On February 5, Republicans introduced legislation in both chambers of the Tennessee Legislature allowing a person or company to refuse to provide services such as food, accommodation, counseling, adoption, or employment to people in civil unions or same-sex marriages, or transgender individuals, “if doing so would violate the sincerely held religious beliefs of the person.” (Government employees are excluded.) State Rep. Bill Dunn (R-Knoxville) tells Mother Jones that he sponsored the bill because “a person shouldn’t get sued for choosing not to participate in a person’s wedding.” But this week, the bill’s lead sponsor in the Senate, Sen. Brian Kelsey (R-Germantown), shelved the measure until next year after facing heavy criticism. And in Oregon, voters could have the opportunity this year to vote on a ballot initiative that would also allow people to refuse on religious grounds to support same-sex couples.
In addition to these bills, lawmakers in Arizona, Hawaii, Ohio, Oklahoma, and Mississippi have recently introduced Religious Freedom Restoration Acts with a provision that could also allow discrimination against LGBT Americans. These state-sponsored RFRAs, which aim to stop new laws from burdening religious exercise, are nothing new—29 states already have some kind of RFRA in place through legislation or court action. But legal experts say that these particular bills are unique in that they allow individuals—and in some states, businesses—to cite religion as a defense in a private lawsuit.
My latest “Republican Asshat of the Day” is McConnell’s primary challenger who thinks that gay marriage will lead to Parent/Child Marriage.
Seriously. I’m SERIOUSLY. WTF?
Kentucky Republican Senate candidate Matt Bevin suggested that legalizing same-sex marriage could lead to legalizing marriage between a parent and child.
The comments by Bevin, who is running in the Republican primary against Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY), were made on The Janet Mefferd Show on Wednesday and highlighted by Right Wing Watch.
“If it’s all right to have same-sex marriages, why not define a marriage — because at the end of the day a lot of this ends up being taxes and who can visit who in the hospital and there’s other repressions and things that come with it — so a person may want to define themselves as being married to one of their children so that they can then in fact pass on certain things to that child financially and otherwise,” Bevin said. “Where do you draw the line?”
There’s a number of Republicans that just can’t seem to grok the idea of the “FOR ALL” idea. Some of them sell out their own demographic for religion or money or stupidity. Michelle Bachmann may be leaving Congress, but, she is not going quietly into the night. I almost hate to link to this site, but it’s the original source.
Bachmann was the only female GOP candidate in the race when she ran for president in 2012. She says, “Two things that need to be done: Remind people (Clinton) is seeking to become commander in chief (and) how she has operated in the past with these types of responsibilities. She was in charge during the Benghazi debacle. If a person reads the Senate Intelligence (Committee) report and the House Foreign Affairs (Committee) report released (last) week, it is damning for Hillary Clinton.”
Bachmann says Clinton testified before Congress that she was “aware” of the deteriorating conditions in Benghazi but did nothing. “She has a real problem when it comes to Benghazi,” says Bachmann.
In addition, she says, Clinton is “the godmother of Obamacare,” trying “behind closed doors” to push through something similar when Bill Clinton was president.
Maybe such an approach will work, but would the lure of the “first female president” overcome these concerns in voters’ minds? Bachmann says: “Effectively she would be Obama’s third and fourth term in office.” That might scare enough people to vote for the Republican nominee.
Bachmann says a lot of people “aren’t ready” for a female president. “I think there was a cachet about having an African-American president because of guilt.” (Presumably she means because of slavery and the lengthy denial of civil rights to blacks.) “People don’t hold guilt for a woman,” she says, adding that while people vote for women for virtually every other office “I don’t think there is a pent-up desire” for a woman president.
She says while Obama was “new and different,” Hillary Clinton has been around a long time and is less likely to stir the juices as Obama did.
It’s difficult to imagine any one that’s in less touch with reality than Bachmann.
“I think there was a cachet about having an African-American president because of guilt,” she said. “People don’t hold guilt for a woman.”
She added that while voters elect women for virtually every other office, she doesn’t think there is “a pent-up desire” for a woman president.
Bachmann, who was the Republican Party’s only female candidate for president in 2012, did have some prescriptions for would-be Clinton challengers, should Clinton run.
“Two things that need to be done: Remind people [Clinton] is seeking to become Commander-in-Chief [and] how she has operated in the past with these types of responsibilities,” Bachmann said. “She was in charge during the Benghazi debacle. If a person reads the Senate Intelligence [Committee] report and the House Foreign Affairs [Committee] report released [last] week, it is damning for Hillary Clinton.”
Least we forget, racist dog whistles still define many folks and these folks have now found a home in the Republican Party. This sad news comes from the Wisconsin statehouse. Outright Racism isn’t just for Southerners any more.
According to documents released Wednesday related to a secret investigation of Walker and his staff, then-deputy chief of staff Kelly Rindfleisch received an email in April 2010 that contained a photo of four dogs and mocked welfare recipients.
“This morning I went to sign my Dogs up for welfare. At first the lady said, ‘Dogs are not eligible to draw welfare’,” the email, first reported by Buzzfeed, read. “So I expla ned [sic] to her that my Dogs are mixed in color, unemployed, lazy, can’t speak English and have no frigging clue who the r [sic] Daddys are. They expect me to feed them, provide them with housing and medical care, and feel guilty because they are dogs.”
“That is hilarious. And so true,” Rindfleisch replied.
Rindfleisch was convicted of misconduct in office in 2012 for doing campaign work for a Republican candidate for lieutenant governor on government time.
The Scott Walker documents also contained a questionable email forwarded by another former aide, then-chief of staff Thomas Nardelli, involving a nightmare about waking up as black, Jewish, disabled, and gay.
Nardelli also circulated an off-color email containing a photoshopped picture of President Barack Obama wearing an acorn top for a hat, a reference to the now-defunded Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN).
It’s difficult for me to leave Republicans alone these days because they just. DONT. SEEM. To. GET. ANYTHING. There’s no convincing them that actual history, economic, psychology, and ever branch of science negates their delusions. It’s beginning to look like some kind of personality disorder.
Former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-TX) on Thursday reminded Americans who wrote the Constitution.
“I think we got off that track when we allowed our government to become a secular government, when we stopped realizing that God created this nation, that He wrote the constitution, that’s based on biblical principles,” DeLay said when asked when people stopped doing good for others in the name of God on “The Difference,” a talk show on Global Evangelical Television.
Delay said he was optimistic about the return of faith to America, noting that he encouraged House members to take up Bible studies when he was leader.
“I pray every day for an awakening in this country, and I think it’s coming,” he said.
Ya know, I’m the GGGG grandaughter and niece of a lot of signers of both the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution and nearly every damned one of us at the family picnics are not religious people. I’ve heard many tales passed down from the greats, but a gawd writing The Constitution is not one of them. In fact, no gawd is even mentioned in it.
Anyway, I’m turning the post over to you for the day. What’s on your reading and blogging list?
Throwdown Thursday
Posted: February 20, 2014 Filed under: open thread 37 CommentsSo, I’ m thinking we need some kind of new thread. The morning one is getting rather full. Thought I’d share a few things I’ve been thinking about today and encourage you to do the same.
First, if you are in town, please come to my favorite Rap Star’s debut! Actually, she’s my neighbor too. This is 91 year old Laura Swinney, the sage of Poland Avenue. She is doing her thing at Siberia. One of the things that always amazes me about this city is the interesting people I meet. This is especially true of the local women. I have met a mistress of Humprey Bogart and one of the original Rockettes. Gives me some hope.
So, it’s an open thread with an open mind.
What’s on yours?
Monday Reads: People are strange
Posted: February 17, 2014 Filed under: morning reads 49 Comments
Well, Good Morning!
I’ve been doing this thing on my facebook every day this year where I thought I could select just one Republican Asshat of the Day. I figured it might be a bit of a stretch to come up with just one. It turned out that I’ve found multiples of them every single day. This has put me in a strange frame of mind. I’ve been sitting here questioning the nature of mind again; mine AND theirs. So, here’s a weirdish set of morning reads for you.
First up, the death of a snake handler that at one point had his own reality show. Yea. A snake bit and killed him. Are any of us really surprised? Oh, he’s from Kentucky and not to be confused with my governor as folks are want to do these days.
Snake-handling preacher Jamie Coots, who never backed away from his beliefs despite derision, criminal charges and excruciating bites, died Saturday night after being bitten by a rattlesnake during a church service.
Family members of Coots, 42, refused medical treatment for him. He was pronounced dead about two hours after the rattler sank its fangs into his right hand.
His son think he died some time before that, however.
“It was the quickest snakebite (death) I ever seen in my life,” Cody Coots said Sunday.
Jamie Coots’ death appears to be the first from a snakebite in a Kentucky church service since November 2006, when a woman died after being bitten while worshipping at a Laurel County church.
Coots, a third-generation snake handler, was the pastor of a small church in Middlesboro, Full Gospel Tabernacle in Jesus Name.
He had long been prominent among the small, close-knit circle of snake-handling Pentecostal churches in Appalachia, but he gained wider notice last fall though a National Geographic Channel program called Snake Salvation, which profiled him and other snake handlers. The show was not renewed for a second season.
Coots and 35 to 40 others were at a service at his church between 8 and 8:30 p.m. Saturday when a 21/2-foot-long timber rattler snake bit him near the base of his right thumb.
Cody Coots said his father was handling three rattlesnakes at the time.
Some of us are waiting for the verdict of the latest angry white man enabled by Florida Law to shoot and murder an unarmed teenage because he was very very scared. The jury appears to be hung up on the murder charge because of the weirdness of the laws in Florida . So, here’s a little bit on the poor frightened white man who is trodding in George Zimmerman’s psychopathic footsteps via a neighbor who knows him well. This little item was found by Susie Madrak. This appears to be another dude just out there looking for a confrontation where he can shoot and kills some one.
Charles Hendrix, Michael Dunn’s former next-door neighbor, describes violent behavior, lies, insurance fraud, cocaine use, bragging about putting a hit out on someone, and a first wife who said he’d held a gun to her head and threatened to kill her. He says Dunn bragged that he was smarter than everyone else and could outthink them.
Watch the video interview. I’ve lived next to a violent, angry, white man before. Thankfully, he moved to Florida last year. I’m just waiting for him to be the subject of the next stand your ground trial but I believe he will shoot a woman. However, it could possibly be his wife so they will probably ignore the whole thing and call it just simple destruction of unwanted property there.
Russian children will no longer be placed for adoption in countries that recognize same sex marriage. Perhaps Russia thinks Uganda is a hunky dory place to live and the UK is a hell hole?
Citizens of the countries that permit same-sex marriages are no longer able to adopt orphans from Russia. A decree to that effect was signed by Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev.
The Russian government has changed the rules for the transfer of orphans for adoption, having introduced an additional ban on foreign adoptions by same-sex couples. The decree published today on the government website contains a paragraph, according to which children can be adopted by adult citizens of both sexes, except for “persons of the same sex in alliance recognized and registered as marriage in accordance with the laws of the State in which such marriage is allowed, as well as persons who are not married, but are citizens of such state.”
Thus, the prohibition applies not only to adoption by same-sex couples (a law to that effect was signed by President Vladimir Putin in July 2013), but also to all citizens of the countries that recognize such marriages. “Implementation of this decree will ensure more streamlined arrangements for transfer of children without parental care to families of citizens of the Russian Federation and foreign citizens and will protect the rights and interests of these children,” believes the government.
Paul Ryan appears to be serious about trying to impeach President Obama over Executive Orders. Since when are executive orders a “high crime or misdemeanor”?
During an interview on CNN, Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) laid the groundwork for impeaching President Obama by claiming that the president is abusing his powers and violating the Constitution with executive orders.
Ryan said,
There’s a difference between effectively using the bully pulpit to encourage good things in America and doing an end run around Congress. Look, everytime a president or a member of congress is sworn in, they swear an oath to protect and uphold the Consitution.
It sounds like to me the president looks like he is willing to circumvent the Constitution. The presidents do not write laws. That’s what Congress does. That’s Congress’ job, and if presidents try to circumvent congress by writing their own laws, then he is circumventing the Constitution. That is not our form of government.
I thought I’d give you some perspective on this. Executive Orders have been used by Presidents since George Washington who used them 8 times. Ronald Reagan used them a total of 381 times. Dubya Bush used them 291 times. Obama has used them 168 times.
Gov. Bobby Jindal‘s administration is on its way to completely draining a trust fund for elderly care that lawmakers had expected to last for decades.
Louisiana’s Legislative Fiscal Office reportsthat the Medicaid Trust Fund for the Elderly, once flush with more than $800 million in cash, will be “almost entirely depleted” if Jindal’s budget for the next fiscal year goes through as proposed. By the middle of 2015, it will be completely wiped out, according to the analysis.
The governor, with approval from the Legislature, has been drawing money out of the fund for years to backstop health care budget gaps. Critics says the elderly trust fund was not initially created to be used in that way, though the Jindal administration and lawmakers are allowed to withdraw as much money as they need.
The $800 million was essentially supposed to stay intact, with only the interest and investment revenue being withdrawn every year to pay for state services. The idea was that the $800 million principal would continue to provide a steady stream of funding for the state government through its interest and investment earnings each year.
Yet during the next budget cycle, the Jindal administration has proposed effectively to take what’s left of the fund’s money, around $232 million, and use it to pay for nursing home payments for Medicaid patients.
The Department of Health and Hospitals said it needs the funding to make sure critical services aren’t interrupted for some of the state’s most vulnerable residents. The federal government recently passed a Medicaid reduction that slashed the program’s funding in Louisiana to its lowest rate in 25 years, according to the agency.
“Ultimately, the trust fund has helped to prevent steep reductions in provider reimbursement rates that would have impacted access to care,” said Jerry Phillips, undersecretary of the Department of Health and Hospitals.
This may leave the next governor and future Legislatures in a financial pickle, according the Legislative Fiscal Office’s report, particularly if the voters approve a constitutional amendment on the ballot in November that ensures nursing home payments cannot be cut.
Jindal has been balancing the budget on the backs of higher education and public health for some time now.
I got a really weird phone call the other day from a pollster whose questions were so loaded that I could hardly answer them. I think this explains it all. I was being tested to see if these Koch ads had any impact on me as well as ads by outstate republican congressmen who may run against Landrieu. I basically told them I was an independent with a brain and they were barking up the wrong tree.
A new political attack ad from the Koch brothers-funded group Americans for Prosperity calls on Louisianans to tell Sen. Mary Landrieu that Obamacare is hurting their families.
The ad shows a number of people, who appear to be Louisianans, opening their mail to find a letter stating that their health care policy has been cancelled because of the Affordable Care Act.
“Due to the Affordable Care Act, your monthly premium has increased,” a voice-over says in the ad as a man in a rural neighborhood opens a cancellation letter and looks at his young daughter standing next to him. “No longer covered, due to the Affordable Care Act.”
But the people in the emotion-evoking ad are not Louisianans at all; they are paid actors
Landrieu’s support for the Affordable Care Act is a major sticking point in what promises to be a tough reelection campaign for the three-term senator. And her campaign is taking issue with the ad, characterizing its use of actors as “misleading” and “low.”
“Hiring professional actors to impersonate Louisiana families is low even for the billionaire Koch brothers,” Friends of Mary Landrieu Campaign Manager Adam Sullivan told ABC News. “If the Koch brothers had even a shred of credibility before launching their latest misleading ad campaign against Sen. Landrieu, they’ve surely lost it now.”
Americans for Prosperity is not backing down from the ad, with spokesman Levi Russell telling ABC News that it’s no secret that the people in the ad are actors.
“I think the viewing public is savvy enough to distinguish between someone giving a personal story and something that is emblematic,” Russell said when reached on the phone. “And we make it very clear when someone is giving a personal testimonial.”
Russell said the ad, in contrast to a “personal testimonial ad” that would use the story of a real voter, is “cinematic” and meant to be a “representative of Americans from all walks of life.”
My premiums have increased slightly but I am on a significantly better plan as a result of the Affordable Health Care Act. That’s just for the record from this Louisianan.
But, I’m still not a person from Kansas or Mississippi. Kansas still gives Texas a run for the money on outrageously horrible things to do to people. Maybe we should offer the people there up to Russia and turn the entire place into a Buffalo wildlife preserve.
The state’s wealthy governor, a moderate Republican, was hobnobbing with the attorneys at a prestigious Kansas City law firm one day in 1998; the mood was one of pleasant professional joviality, till one person worked up her nerve and chastised the governor to his face. Who among them dared? A secretary at the law firm, who faulted this celebrated Republican for insufficient conservatism.
What I found was that the descendents of the Populists were in rebellion; they were furious at “elites” and their social betters; it’s just that the politics of the situation had been inverted. (“Like a French Revolution in reverse — one in which the sans-culottes pour down the streets demanding more power for the aristocracy,” I wrote.) This was the dark secret of the whole nasty business: The right had developed an entire ersatz proletarian movement, a full-blown astrology of class discontent in which the hard-working average citizen was invited to feel himself imposed upon by upper-class liberals. Class animus was — is — central to who they are and how they think about the world. And it has caught on. In a place like Wichita, Kansas, you encounter it on every street corner. Hating “elites,” hating Hollywood, hating government, hating scientists — these are all part of everyday life. Yes, the reasoning behind this philosophy may be faulty; its origins may be suspicious; but it is powerful stuff, and in lots of heartland locales these days, it is just about the only form of social grievance being offered.
I say “secret,” but in truth the thing was obvious. It is everywhere — bestseller lists, cable news, AM radio, the floor of Congress. Polls have steadily tracked the migration of the white working-class vote to the GOP, and the disastrous results of this shift are plain to anyone with access to a Web browser. It is “secret” only because looking deeply into this situation was and is something that few are really interested in doing.
Why not? Well, for conservatives, the whole thing is mentally off-limits thanks to the blatant contradictions between their populist rhetoric and their rich-enriching policy deeds. They may talk proletarian righteousness constantly, but always in an evasive, sentimental way, more Norman Rockwell than John L. Lewis. If you want something more than rhetoric from them — something more solid than anger-stirring culture-war clichés — you basically have to be the Koch Brothers.
I should mention something in passing about that prestigious law firm and my cousins’ presence. Don’t disown me. I’m considered the strange one in my family.
Since I ripped off the song title today, I thought I’d share the actual song.
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Friday Reads: The Hell-to-all-ya Chorus
Posted: February 14, 2014 Filed under: morning reads, religious extremists, The Right Wing, Women's Rights 33 CommentsThe most ridiculous meme to come out of the right wing recently is that the Constitution supports the right to ruin other people’s lives 
because of one’s narrow grasp on reality coming from one fairly narrow view of one very specific religion. Those of us that don’t want to adhere to their delusions are persecuting them! No matter how many times these people couch their bigotry, suspension of belief in science, and greed agenda in their religious beliefs, most of us know that it’s simply an agenda of narrow minded hatred that demands conformity from all. The sad thing is that one political party in a two party state has been completely railroaded by these religious extremists who confuse the establishment clause of our Constitution with their right to ramrod everything they label the correct”religion” down every one else’s throat.
One of the worst examples of blatant pandering to this crowd comes from this speech by Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal who professes to be a Catholic, has a degree in biology from a good school, and seems to wander one day from the message of not being the stupid party to being its main spokesperson. Why does Politico give this loser–who has no chance at ever being President and will never hold another elected office in Louisiana because we all royally disapprove of him–a voice? Which Billionaire Asshat has paid for the virtual column space? Bobby Jindal is obviously going for the Bachmann contingent in Iowa’s weird republican caucuses. He’s picked up Sarah Palin’s War on Christmas book and read straight from it.
In a Thursday night speech at Ronald Reagan’s presidential library, Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal will warn of a “silent war” on religious liberty in America and urge states to pass laws designed to block overreach by the Obama administration.
The 4,500-word address, shared first with POLITICO, touches on several hot-button issues, including same-sex marriage and contraception. Jindal, a potential 2016 GOP presidential candidate trying to woo social conservatives, argues that liberals will use the mantra of anti-discrimination to force people to violate their religious beliefs.
“The American people, whether they know it or not, are mired in a silent war,” Jindal will say at the Simi Valley, Calif., event. “It threatens the fabric of our communities, the health of our public square and the endurance of our constitutional governance.”
“This war is waged in our courts and in the halls of political power,” he adds, according to the prepared remarks. “It is pursued with grim and relentless determination by a group of like-minded elites, determined to transform the country from a land sustained by faith into a land where faith is silenced, privatized and circumscribed.”
The 42-year-old governor calls the upcoming Supreme Court decision on whether government can force Hobby Lobby craft stores to cover contraception through their health insurance plans just one of the battles being fought over religious liberty.
Citing a piece of failed legislation in Illinois, Jindal suggests that liberals will eventually try to pass laws designed to pressure churches to perform same-sex marriage ceremonies against their will. He also will blast the New Mexico Supreme Court for ruling last August that a wedding photography business violated the state’s Human Rights Act by refusing to photograph a same-sex commitment ceremony.
“This is the next stage of the assault, and it is only beginning,” Jindal plans to say. “Today, an overwhelming majority of those who belong to a religious denomination in America — that’s more than half the country — are members of organizations that affirm the traditional definition of marriage. All of those denominations will be targeted in large and small degrees in the coming years.”
This is pure nonsense and is obviously Jindal’s bid to get attention in the Iowa Caucuses. No one is doing anything to any one inside their churches. This so reminds me of watching the screaming mimis in front of schools being forced to segregate. None of us should have to endure their craziness in public spaces. PERIOD. No one should be treated like a second class citizen because some one selectively pulls a few lines out of a seriously edited, reedited, and badly translated bit of iron age fiction then screams it’s my right to do whatever I want to because BIBLE! That’s just so astoundingly unAmerican it’s not even funny. In that case, I’ll just suggest we all stand out there with stones in our hands and assert our right to stone them for wearing the wrong hair style, eating shellfish and pigs, and sporting polyblend clothing. It’s our gawdamned religious rights!!!
Unfortunately, Jindal’s delusions are the new crazy republican legislative push. Kansas continues to be at the epicenter of insanity and hatred. Opposing marriage equality by way of screaming religious freedom is the new refuge of the narrow minded. It was the same refuge used to justify slavery and stop interracial mixing and marrying back in the day. It’s also being used on women who overwhelmingly use birth control. A few folks think all women should live within the bounds of their weird ethos. This group that seems to have no idea that forcing you religious beliefs on birth control or abortion on your employees or your neighbors is the religious bigotry. These religious views should not get to trump every one else’s ethos.
Virtually all secularists and even the vast majority of American Catholics see no problem with the use of artificial birth control, so the issue doesn’t generate much sympathy in the public at large. Then there’s the fact that the Obama administration created a contraception exemption for churches and at least some other religiously based organizations. Isn’t that good enough?
Apparently it isn’t for the numerous groups that have filed suit in the matter. And sorry, but their concerns can’t just be waved away by linking to a column by Linda Greenhouse that expresses contemptuous condescension for the plaintiffs in one of the cases (an order of nuns called the Little Sisters of the Poor). The Supreme Court has agreed to hear the case, but Greenhouse thinks the suit is ridiculous; therefore, the justices have been brainwashed by a seductive “story.” That’s really all there is to her argument.
As Lyle Denniston explains in a helpful post at SCOTUSblog, the issues raised by the case — and by the other mandate-related cases before the court this term — are real, though they will inevitably appear to be trivial to those who regularly view religious truth claims as trivial.
As for gay marriage and anti-discrimination, Chotiner appears not to recognize that his own flippant views — which are very widely held among secular liberals — pose a very real threat to the religious freedom of millions of his fellow citizens. As countless liberals have done before him, Chotiner breezily equates those believers who once appealed to Scripture in defense of racism and those who currently reject gay marriage. The first position has been socially, morally, and legally marginalized with no negative consequences for faith, Chotiner asserts, and the same will soon be true about the second. So what’s the big deal?
The big deal is that strictures against homosexuality are rooted far more deeply in the Judeo-Christian tradition than racism ever was. Yes, slavery is found throughout the Scriptures and comes in for criticism only, at best, by implication. But race-based slavery — and the racism that made it possible and continues to infect ideas and institutions throughout the West to this day — receives no explicit endorsement from the Bible.
Which isn’t to say that those seeking to justify race-based slavery or racism couldn’t, and didn’t, twist biblical passages to make them provide such justification. But the Hebrew Bible and New Testament clearly do not teach (either explicitly or implicitly) that buying, owning, and selling African slaves is next to godliness.
Yes, folks, separate and unequal may become the law in Kansas if the religious kooks get their way.
Denying services to same-sex couples may soon become legal in Kansas.
House Bill 2453 explicitly protects religious individuals, groups and businesses that refuse services to same-sex couples, particularly those looking to tie the knot.
It passed the state’s Republican-dominated House on Wednesdaywith a vote of 72-49, and has gone to the Senate for a vote.Such a law may seem unnecessary in a state where same-sex marriage is banned, but some Kansas lawmakers think different.
They want to prevent religious individuals and organizations from getting sued, or otherwise punished, for not providing goods or services to gay couples — or for not recognizing their marriages or committed relationship as valid.
This includes employees of the state.
The law claims to protect the rights of religious people, but gender rights advocates such as Equality Kansas are dismayed.
“Kansans across the state are rightly appalled that legislators are spending their efforts to pass yet another piece of legislation that seeks to enshrine discrimination against gay and lesbian people into law,” state chairwoman Sandra Meade said.
“HB 2453 is a blatant attempt to maintain second-class citizen status for taxpaying gay and lesbian Kansans.”
Despite the blowback, its chances of passing seem pretty good.
Republicans dominate the state’s Senate and Gov. Sam Brownback is a conservative Christian known for taking a public stand against same-sex marriage.
Brownback has already praised the bill in an interview with a local newspaper.
“Americans have constitutional rights, among them the right to exercise their religious beliefs and the right for every human life to be treated with respect and dignity,” he told The Topeka Capital-Journal.
Yes. If you offend some one’s religious “sensibilities” in Kansas, it is perfectly alright for them to persecute you, deny you service, and basically turn you into third class citizen. How can any of this be remotely legal let alone put into law? How can your employers religion or the religion of the Subway franchise owner on the corner trump your right to avoid their prescriptions and proscriptions?
Let’s start, though, with the argument most people have focused on during the run-up to the contraceptive-mandate cases—that being for-profit corporations, the challengers cannot assert a “free exercise” claim at all. It’s a strong argument, but one that takes more subtlety to assert than most published comments seem to display.
That’s because it is routine to say that free exercise is an individual right, and that “corporations are not people.” But in this context, the argument is flawed at the outset. Free exercise is actually primarily a group right, extended to religious bodies, in corporate form or other wise. The term “free exercise” in fact originally referred to a right held only by groups. It dates back at least to the 17th Century, and is defined by the Oxford English Dictionary as “the right or permission to celebrate the observances (of a religion)”—that is, a privilege granted by monarchs to specific faiths to hold their services in public.
Religion, Emile Durkheim wrote, is primarily a set of “beliefs and practices which unite into one single moral community called a Church, all those who adhere to them.” Most religious “exercise” can’t be done alone. One of the earliest—and most embarrassing—cases brought under the Free Exercise Clause was entitled Late Corporation of the Presiding Bishop v. United States, which upheld an Act of Congress dissolving the Mormon Church and seizing all its property ($3,000,000 in 1887 dollars). The Mormons argued that punishing their church for polygamous beliefs violated the First Amendment, but the Court ridiculed the idea. “No doubt the Thugs of India imagined that their belief in the right of assassination was a religious belief,” the justices briskly reasoned, “but their thinking so did not make it so.”
Can anyone imagine this case coming out the same way in 2014, on the grounds that a corporation has no religious rights? Or that the Jehovah’s Witnesses’ parent company, The Watchtower Bible & Tract Society of Pennsylvania, Inc., has no rights except the individual rights of its members?
The important distinction here, of course, is that Hobby Lobby and the other challengers are for-profit corporations. The Mormon Church, like a lot of religious bodies, is a religious corporation. And despite the disinformation floating around about the Little Sisters of the Poor case, religious corporations have a very firm exemption to the contraceptive mandate. Would the Court want to rewrite the statute—and possibly make corporate law into a teeming mess of exemptions and inquisitions?
There’s a way out, of course; and that is to rely on precedents like Lee and say that the “for profit issue” doesn’t need to be decided, because in any case the government’s interest in uniform application of the mandate trumps whatever burden it may place on any secular employer, corporation or not. If Congress disagrees, it knows how to write a limited exemption to the mandate, the way it did for Edwin Lee. That would be the best all around; the Tenth Circuit opinion upholding Hobby Lobby’s claims is such a wretched piece of work that a sane justice might not want to touch it, much less affirm it.
Let’s put all this enforced public piousness in light of a changing USA and a changed Europe. What seems to drive these pious folks is fear and insecurity.
Just last year, the Princeton economist Angus Deaton, in his book “The Great Escape,” demonstrated that the enlargement of well-being in at least the northern half of the planet during the past couple of centuries is discontinuous with all previous times. The daily miseries of the Age of Faith scarcely exist in our Western Age of Fatuity. The horrors of normal life in times past, enumerated, are now almost inconceivable: women died in agony in childbirth, and their babies died, too; operations were performed without anesthesia. (The novelist Fanny Burney, recounting her surgery for a breast tumor: “I began a scream that lasted unremittingly during the whole time of the incision. . . . I felt the knife rackling against the breast bone, scraping it while I remained in torture.”) If God became the opiate of the many, it was because so many were in need of a drug.
As incomes go up, steeples come down. Matisse’s “Red Studio” may represent the room the artist retreats to after the churches close—but it is also a pleasant place to pass the time, with an Oriental carpet and central heating and space to work. Happiness arrives and God gets gone. “Happiness!” the Super-Naturalist cries. “Surely not just the animal happiness of more stuff!” But by happiness we need mean only less of pain. You don’t really have to pursue happiness; it is a subtractive quality. Anyone who has had a bad headache or a kidney stone or a toothache, and then hasn’t had it, knows what happiness is. The world had a toothache and a headache and a kidney stone for millennia. Not having them any longer is a very nice feeling. On much of the planet, we need no longer hold an invisible hand or bite an invisible bullet to get by.
Yet the wondering never quite comes to an end. Relatively peaceful and prosperous societies, we can establish, tend to have a declining belief in a deity. But did we first give up on God and so become calm and rich? Or did we become calm and rich, and so give up on God?
Here’s yet another attempt at trying to free up religious practice while making certain only the right religion gets it’s due. This is a law 
offered up in Georgia.
A prime example is the proposed Senate Bill 283, sponsored by state Sen. Mike Dugan, R-Carrollton.
The bill, if passed, would allow local school systems that chose to do so to “educate students about the history of traditional winter celebrations and allow students and school system staff to offer traditional greetings regarding the celebrations, including … ‘Merry Christmas’; … ‘Happy Hanukkah’; and … ‘Happy holidays.’”
Senate Bill 283 also would allow “scenes or symbols associated with traditional winter celebrations, including a menorah or a Christmas image, such as a nativity scene or Christmas tree” to be displayed on school property, as long as the display “includes a scene or symbol of … more than one religion; or … one religion and at least one secular scene or symbol.”
Such displays could be put in place under the condition that they “shall not include a message that encourages adherence to a particular religious belief.”
Of course, Dugan’s bill owes as much to political considerations as to any particular concern that he or other lawmakers might have with regard to any inadequacy in public-school instruction on “winter celebrations.” It’s clear that the sole purpose of the bill is to allow Republican lawmakers, who comprise a majority of General Assembly members, to go back home claiming to have struck a blow against the alleged “war on Christmas” as part of their re-election bids.
If you’ll pardon the expression, though, the devil is in the details here. Let’s suppose the bill does become law. A couple of issues, which might be attractive to any litigiously minded heathen like the ACLU, or any number of godless liberals who might imprudently insist on an exact interpretation of a state law, immediately present themselves.
First, of course, is the broad phrase ‘traditional winter celebrations.’ In ancient times, it was traditional to celebrate the winter solstice, sometimes in debauched fashion. If, as the argument might go, students are to be educated about Christmas, should they not also be taught about other, arguably more problematic, winter observances?
There’s also the language in the bill prohibiting holiday displays from including “a message that encourages adherence to a particular religious belief.” Clearly, the intent here is to ensure that overtly religious phrases — “Jesus is the Reason for the Season” immediately springs to mind — don’t intrude into the public arena.
It would, however, certainly be possible to argue that even the presence of a holiday symbol — say, a Nativity scene — in a school display is “a message that encourages adherence to a particular religion.”
On Wednesday, the Metro Council voted on what was intended to be a symbolic gesture of support for a legislative proposal by state Rep. Patricia Smith, D-Baton Rouge, to remove the anti-sodomy laws from the books.
Such laws were declared unconstitutional by the U.S. Supreme Court in 2003, but the East Baton Rouge Parish Sheriff’s Office cited the state’s law in recent years when it arrested more than a dozen gay men in sting operations for consenting to sex. The District Attorney’s Office refused to prosecute the cases.
Ahead of the vote, groups such as the Louisiana Family Forum and the Baptist Association of Southern Baton Rouge expressed their strong opposition to the measure.
The Family Forum emailed residents urging them to voice their disapproval to the council, which prompted a flood of emails against the resolution.
However, some prominent local groups expressed disappointment Thursday with the Metro Council’s action, saying the council was continuing to project an image that Baton Rouge is intolerant toward gays and lesbians.
The Metro Council is “out of sync with the rest of the community,” according to John Davies, president of the Baton Rouge Area Foundation, adding recent surveys show local and statewide residents are generally supportive of gay and lesbian rights.
There’s always been backlashes to progress and modernity. History is full of such examples and many of them are wrapped up in religious mantels. What is so amazing to me is how extremist pols seem to have crept into the halls of power in such unimaginable ways with such horrible legislation. The Republican Party seems to have sold its soul to extremists. Little wonder that so few people these days actually self-identify as Republican.
Forty-two percent of Americans, on average, identified as political independents in 2013, the highest Gallup has measured since it began conducting interviews by telephone 25 years ago. Meanwhile, Republican identification fell to 25%, the lowest over that time span. At 31%, Democratic identification is unchanged from the last four years but down from 36% in 2008.
Let’s just hope that more and more people know what this minority party has in store for us all.
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