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Benghazi investigation a GOP political ad: Column
Speaker Boehner combines tax money with tragedy to win the 2014 elections
By AriRabin-Havt, May 5, 2014
After investigations by the State Department's Accountability Review Board, the Senate Intelligence Committee, the House Armed Services Committee and the House Committee on Government Oversight and Reform, John Boehner announced he intends to form a select committee to investigate the September 11, 2012 attack on our diplomatic compound in Benghazi.
This new effort was catalyzed by "smoking gun" e-mails unearthed in a FOIA request by Judicial Watch, purportedly unveiling a White House attempt to "cover up" the cause of the attack in Benghazi by foisting blame on a Youtube video, "Innocence of Muslims."
While complaints about the failure to release these e-mails during previous document dumps are not wholly without merit, the information revealed still fails to demonstrate a "cover up" by the White House.
In the critical email Deputy National Security Advisor Ben Rhodes provided UN Ambassador Susan Rice with messaging guidance for her round of appearances on Sunday morning talk shows.
A stated goal of the document was "to underscore that these protests are rooted in an internet video and not a broader failure of policy."
This is not an explicit reference to Benghazi. In dozens of locations around the Muslim world, demonstrators angrily reacted to the "Innocence of Muslims." Many targeted U.S. diplomatic facilities with violence. It was common sense to believe our UN Ambassador would be asked about these protests.
The only reference in the document explicitly linking the attack in Benghazi to the video was taken from talking points Rhodes initially received five hours before sending his email, and subsequently cut and pasted from a version drafted by the CIA 90 minutes later stating: "currently available information suggests that the demonstrations in Benghazi were spontaneously inspired by the protests at the US Embassy in Cairo and evolved into a direct assault against the US Consulate and subsequently its annex." The origin and content of this bulletin have been known now for nearly a year.
This smoking gun does not undercut the judgment of the Senate Intelligence Committee that found "there were no efforts by the White House or any other Executive Branch entities to 'cover-up' facts or make alterations for political purposes."
Regardless, House Republicans, in their continued effort to morph tragedy into political scandal will waste millions of dollars on a new Benghazi investigation while once again failing to ask the most critical question: How do we prevent an attack like this from ever happening again?
John Boehner's select committee is nothing short of an in kind expenditure on behalf of the Republican National Committee, hoping to weaken Democrat's electoral chances.
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Tuesday, May 6, 2014
"... conservatives may finally be moving away from fame-hounds like Herman Cain, and toward serious politicians ... a GOP that ignores the E.W. Jacksons and elevates the Shannons is one that might get a better hearing from skeptical black voters"
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The GOP’s Black Politician Problem.
The Republican Party needs more black politicians, and fewer black personalities
By Jamelle Bouie, May 6, 2014
The rapid rise of T.W. Shannon in Republican politics—he’s a favorite for the Republican Senate nomination in Oklahoma—has prompted an intra-GOP debate over identity politics. Should Shannon’s mixed heritage—black and Chickasaw Indian—stand as a point of pride for Republicans, or should they decline to play this version of the “race card?” Here’s the New York Times, in a profile of the Oklahoma lawmaker, describing one reaction to his presence, and prominence:
There is a long tradition of black-American conservatism, and black Republicans have always had a decent profile in the GOP, despite their small numbers. But since the election of Barack Obama in 2008, we’ve seen a whole host of black conservative personalities who substitute bombast for seriousness, playing to conservative audiences and winning acclaim in the cloistered world of right-wing politics.
Herman Cain built a national following with strong slogans and an image of authenticity (calling himself a “real black man,” in contrast to the presumably inauthentic Barack Obama), making waves in the Republican presidential primary and riding them to strong book sales and a Fox News contract. Former congressman Allen West is a regular on the conservative speaking circuit, and Angela McGlowan parlayed her brief right-wing celebrity into an unsuccessful 2010 congressional run. The Rev. E.W. Jackson ran for Virginia lieutenant governor on the GOP’s ticket, and Rev. Jesse Lee Peterson became a Fox favorite, attacking the Obama administration as the new big “government plantation.”
Even now, the overwhelmingly white base of the Republican Party can’t get enough of these “types,” hence the recent stardom of Dr. Ben Carson, once a mainstay of inner city schools and black churches, now a CPAC speaker and potential presidential candidate—the “Draft Ben Carson” political action committee has raised $2.4 million since the beginning of the year.
With the exception of Carson, none of these figures are popular—or even well-known—with actual black voters. What they offer, instead, is a dual assurance to self-conscious Republican voters: first, that they aren’t racist, and second, that the problem with minorities is that they’re too dependent on government largess to see the appeal of small government conservatism.
For instance, at the 2011 Values Voter Summit, Herman Cain—then at the peak of his popularity—earned huge applause for disavowing any anger or resentment at the country’s treatment of blacks:
Likewise, Allen West won fame by telling many conservatives what they wanted to hear about racism and the Democratic Party. “I’m here as the modern-day Harriet Tubman to kind of lead people on the underground railroad away from that plantation into a sense of sensibility,” said West during a Fox News appearance in 2011, blasting the Congressional Black Caucus and calling its leaders “overseers” on a plantation of welfare.
Jesse Lee Peterson—featured in the FreedomWorks–funded documentary Runaway Slave, on blacks and the “slavery” of entitlement spending—echoed this sentiment, declaring on his radio show, “Thank God for slavery, because if not, the blacks who are here would have been stuck in Africa.” And during the Virginia GOP’s nomination convention last summer, E.W. Jackson wowed the crowd with a speech that played off of identity politics while disavowing them. “I am not an African-American. I am an American!” he said.
But Shannon doesn’t play to this type. Instead, he has moved forward—and found Tea Party support—as a genuine lawmaker, more interested in pursuing a conservative agenda than landing a radio show. And if he makes his way to Congress, he’ll share this space with Sen. Tim Scott of South Carolina, who—as a House member, and now as a senator—rejected the style of Cain, West, and others, opting instead for a kind of wonkishness. As evidenced by his speech at this year’s CPAC, Scott would rather talk about school choice and education policy than complain about the “Democratic plantation.”
In other words, as the Obama era comes to a close, conservatives may finally be moving away from fame-hounds like Herman Cain, and toward serious politicians who could help with the difficult process of genuine outreach to black communities. That’s not to say that either Scott or Shannon will ever pull a substantial number of black supporters—both men are on the right-wing side of the Republican coalition—but a GOP that ignores the E.W. Jacksons and elevates the Shannons is one that might get a better hearing from skeptical black voters.
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The GOP’s Black Politician Problem.
The Republican Party needs more black politicians, and fewer black personalities
By Jamelle Bouie, May 6, 2014
The rapid rise of T.W. Shannon in Republican politics—he’s a favorite for the Republican Senate nomination in Oklahoma—has prompted an intra-GOP debate over identity politics. Should Shannon’s mixed heritage—black and Chickasaw Indian—stand as a point of pride for Republicans, or should they decline to play this version of the “race card?” Here’s the New York Times, in a profile of the Oklahoma lawmaker, describing one reaction to his presence, and prominence:
“His name alone!” Sarah Palin exclaimed at a large, nearly all-white rally of supporters for Mr. Shannon in Tulsa last month. “The Democrats accuse us of not embracing diversity? Oh, my goodness, he is—he’s it. He is the whole package.”Other conservatives, the Times notes, are uncomfortable with this approach, but it’s not a new one. If there’s anything that stands out in Republican racial politics during the Obama years, it is the constant elevation of conservative nonwhites—and black Republicans in particular—as a kind of rebuttal to Democratic claims of diversity. Indeed, when Palin asked rhetorically “The Democrats accuse us of not embracing diversity?” she’s speaking to a real insecurity that consumes conservative attempts at minority outreach.
There is a long tradition of black-American conservatism, and black Republicans have always had a decent profile in the GOP, despite their small numbers. But since the election of Barack Obama in 2008, we’ve seen a whole host of black conservative personalities who substitute bombast for seriousness, playing to conservative audiences and winning acclaim in the cloistered world of right-wing politics.
Herman Cain built a national following with strong slogans and an image of authenticity (calling himself a “real black man,” in contrast to the presumably inauthentic Barack Obama), making waves in the Republican presidential primary and riding them to strong book sales and a Fox News contract. Former congressman Allen West is a regular on the conservative speaking circuit, and Angela McGlowan parlayed her brief right-wing celebrity into an unsuccessful 2010 congressional run. The Rev. E.W. Jackson ran for Virginia lieutenant governor on the GOP’s ticket, and Rev. Jesse Lee Peterson became a Fox favorite, attacking the Obama administration as the new big “government plantation.”
Even now, the overwhelmingly white base of the Republican Party can’t get enough of these “types,” hence the recent stardom of Dr. Ben Carson, once a mainstay of inner city schools and black churches, now a CPAC speaker and potential presidential candidate—the “Draft Ben Carson” political action committee has raised $2.4 million since the beginning of the year.
With the exception of Carson, none of these figures are popular—or even well-known—with actual black voters. What they offer, instead, is a dual assurance to self-conscious Republican voters: first, that they aren’t racist, and second, that the problem with minorities is that they’re too dependent on government largess to see the appeal of small government conservatism.
For instance, at the 2011 Values Voter Summit, Herman Cain—then at the peak of his popularity—earned huge applause for disavowing any anger or resentment at the country’s treatment of blacks:
This nation has made it through the Civil War. This nation has made it through the struggle we had with slavery, Jim Crow laws, civil rights.
A reporter asked me just yesterday: Well, aren’t you angry—angry about how America has treated you? I said: Sir, you don’t get it. I have achieved all of my American dreams and then some because of the great nation United States of America. What’s there to be angry about? Angry?I covered this speech at the time, and one attendee was candid about what it would mean for Cain to win the nomination. “At least, no one would call him a racist.”
Likewise, Allen West won fame by telling many conservatives what they wanted to hear about racism and the Democratic Party. “I’m here as the modern-day Harriet Tubman to kind of lead people on the underground railroad away from that plantation into a sense of sensibility,” said West during a Fox News appearance in 2011, blasting the Congressional Black Caucus and calling its leaders “overseers” on a plantation of welfare.
Jesse Lee Peterson—featured in the FreedomWorks–funded documentary Runaway Slave, on blacks and the “slavery” of entitlement spending—echoed this sentiment, declaring on his radio show, “Thank God for slavery, because if not, the blacks who are here would have been stuck in Africa.” And during the Virginia GOP’s nomination convention last summer, E.W. Jackson wowed the crowd with a speech that played off of identity politics while disavowing them. “I am not an African-American. I am an American!” he said.
But Shannon doesn’t play to this type. Instead, he has moved forward—and found Tea Party support—as a genuine lawmaker, more interested in pursuing a conservative agenda than landing a radio show. And if he makes his way to Congress, he’ll share this space with Sen. Tim Scott of South Carolina, who—as a House member, and now as a senator—rejected the style of Cain, West, and others, opting instead for a kind of wonkishness. As evidenced by his speech at this year’s CPAC, Scott would rather talk about school choice and education policy than complain about the “Democratic plantation.”
In other words, as the Obama era comes to a close, conservatives may finally be moving away from fame-hounds like Herman Cain, and toward serious politicians who could help with the difficult process of genuine outreach to black communities. That’s not to say that either Scott or Shannon will ever pull a substantial number of black supporters—both men are on the right-wing side of the Republican coalition—but a GOP that ignores the E.W. Jacksons and elevates the Shannons is one that might get a better hearing from skeptical black voters.
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The Canadian government is going after progressive environmental charities in Canada but not even touching any charities that are receiving money from the Koch brothers
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Koch Brothers Are the Largest Foreign Lease Holder of Canadian Tar Sands
Video interview by Sharmini Peries, May 5, 2014
[Followed by transcript at this site]
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Koch Brothers Are the Largest Foreign Lease Holder of Canadian Tar Sands
Video interview by Sharmini Peries, May 5, 2014
[Followed by transcript at this site]
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Whether or not we call "the Kochs’ efforts to buy America 'un-American'", we have to call those efforts what they are-- "anti-democratic".
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Why we talk about the Kochs
By Ben Adler, May 1, 2014
Are we all too focused on the Koch brothers? That’s the argument of a feature in the current issue of Newsweek by veteran political reporter Matt Cooper. Cooper claims Charles and David Koch’s influence is overstated by Democrats, who raise money by fearmongering about the brothers’ nefarious plots, and by the media, which loves any pair of eccentric billionaires.
“With the Democrats possibly losing control of the Senate, Harry Reid, their leader in that chamber, has gone after the Kochs with what seems like unprecedented language against private citizens,” Cooper complains, noting that Reid called the Kochs “un-American” for “trying to buy America.” Here is Cooper’s argument in a nutshell:
Cooper makes two arguments: One, that the Kochs are really not all that powerful, and two, that they are just libertarian-leaning philanthropists, not far-right loons trying to buy a favorable political climate for their lawbreaking, polluting company.
This is wrong on both counts. On the first: Cooper notes that the Kochs marshalling of more than $400 million in the last election cycle did not put Mitt Romney in the White House. That’s true, but if the Republicans had nominated a stronger candidate, the Koch money might have put him or her over the top. And Republicans in Congress and at the state level might have done even worse without Koch backing in 2012. Going forward, we don’t know how much the Kochs will spend. Perhaps they will conclude that buying the presidency simply requires a larger investment. They can afford it, as they are worth $80 billion. Suppose they and other Republican fossil-fuel plutocrats spend $4 billion instead of $400 million in 2016?
Cooper seems to argue that if you try to buy an election and fail, then you’ve done no harm. But that misses the point. Either you think it’s OK for billionaires to buy elections, or you don’t. Saying it’s OK because they probably will fail at it — except for when they succeed, like Mike Bloomberg in New York — doesn’t make sense.
Cooper does give the Kochs credit for one thing: turning the GOP against climate action, via Americans for Prosperity (AFP), the Koch-backed anti-regulation organization. “A few years ago, cap-and-trade curbs on greenhouse gas emissions was embraced by the GOP presidential nominee, John McCain,” writes Cooper. “There’s no way that’ll happen in 2016, in part thanks to the AFP.” Well, climate change is currently the worst catastrophe affecting humankind. Preventing one of the two major parties in the most powerful nation on earth from accepting its reality, and thereby preventing national and international action to fight the problem, is no small matter. It is, indeed, the whole ballgame. (Consider the effect of substituting another apocalypse into Cooper’s sentences, to fully appreciate the absurdity: “A few years ago, avoiding a nuclear war with Russia was embraced by the GOP presidential nominee, John McCain. There’s no way that’ll happen in 2016, in part thanks to the AFP.”)
On the second count, just how evil the Kochs are, Cooper is much too generous. He notes their libertarian personal beliefs — e.g., “David Koch told reporters in 2012 he disagreed with Mitt Romney’s opposition to legalizing gay marriage” — as if that matters. It doesn’t. David Koch backs candidates with intolerant, big-government social positions because they share his commitment to eliminating the social safety net and rolling back labor, environment, and public health regulations. Koch’s personal view of gay marriage matters as little as his patronage of the arts or academia — supposedly mitigating factors that Cooper also emphasizes. Sorry, but giving money to Lincoln Center and MIT, two institutions patronized overwhelmingly by the wealthy, does not diminish the harm the Kochs unleash on society as a whole.
“Explaining why, say, David, who donated millions to cancer research and the dinosaur wing at the American Museum of Natural history, is a monster is a tough sell,” writes Cooper. Well, I’m not much of a salesman, but I think I can close this deal. Even the brothers’ seemingly nonpartisan giving to laudable educational causes is tainted by their right-wing agenda. The David H. Koch Hall of Human Origins at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History sows confusion about climate science and depicts climate change as a natural, harmless phenomenon.
And even when the Kochs don’t get their candidates elected, their ideas still become more accepted. As Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) recently noted, David Koch’s far-right policies have moved from the periphery to the mainstream of the GOP over the last three decades:
Most disingenuous is Cooper’s argument that the Kochs cannot be blamed for merely playing by the rules of unlimited campaign spending. Tom Steyer cannot be blamed for that. The Kochs can, since they have worked to elect Republicans who oppose campaign finance regulation and have appointed the Supreme Court justices who have ruled such regulations unconstitutional.
Cooper takes exception to calling the Kochs’ efforts to buy America “un-American.” Fine, let’s call it what it is: anti-democratic. We shouldn’t have to discuss just how “unusual” the Kochs are, because they shouldn’t matter more than any other two citizens. We shouldn’t have to wonder whether their billions can buy elections. The American government exists to govern in the interest of the majority. For example, it should regulate greenhouse gas emissions to prevent harm to everyone from fossil fuels that only benefit a handful of wealthy people like the Kochs. If, instead, the Kochs can buy off politicians to side with them over the public, we are headed for catastrophe.
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Why we talk about the Kochs
By Ben Adler, May 1, 2014
Are we all too focused on the Koch brothers? That’s the argument of a feature in the current issue of Newsweek by veteran political reporter Matt Cooper. Cooper claims Charles and David Koch’s influence is overstated by Democrats, who raise money by fearmongering about the brothers’ nefarious plots, and by the media, which loves any pair of eccentric billionaires.
“With the Democrats possibly losing control of the Senate, Harry Reid, their leader in that chamber, has gone after the Kochs with what seems like unprecedented language against private citizens,” Cooper complains, noting that Reid called the Kochs “un-American” for “trying to buy America.” Here is Cooper’s argument in a nutshell:
Professionals in both parties have a vested interest in building up the already substantial impact of the Kochs. Republicans see them as loyal Americans coming to the rescue, while Democrats get a higher return on their solicitations simply by invoking the Koch name. Neither side has an incentive to say, “Yes, Koch money is a big deal, but it’s not determinative.” And neither side has an incentive to say the obvious: “Even if you believe that it’s crazy to allow that much private money in politics, the Kochs are playing by the rules.” It’s like cockfighting: Don’t hate the player, hate the game. The Koch geyser of money may be unusual but “un-American”? Oh, please.As a writer for one outlet that talks about the Kochs frequently, let me explain why we do so: The Kochs threaten to destroy American democracy, regardless of their views. And, as it happens, their extreme and self-interested positions are taking over the Republican Party.
Cooper makes two arguments: One, that the Kochs are really not all that powerful, and two, that they are just libertarian-leaning philanthropists, not far-right loons trying to buy a favorable political climate for their lawbreaking, polluting company.
This is wrong on both counts. On the first: Cooper notes that the Kochs marshalling of more than $400 million in the last election cycle did not put Mitt Romney in the White House. That’s true, but if the Republicans had nominated a stronger candidate, the Koch money might have put him or her over the top. And Republicans in Congress and at the state level might have done even worse without Koch backing in 2012. Going forward, we don’t know how much the Kochs will spend. Perhaps they will conclude that buying the presidency simply requires a larger investment. They can afford it, as they are worth $80 billion. Suppose they and other Republican fossil-fuel plutocrats spend $4 billion instead of $400 million in 2016?
Cooper seems to argue that if you try to buy an election and fail, then you’ve done no harm. But that misses the point. Either you think it’s OK for billionaires to buy elections, or you don’t. Saying it’s OK because they probably will fail at it — except for when they succeed, like Mike Bloomberg in New York — doesn’t make sense.
Cooper does give the Kochs credit for one thing: turning the GOP against climate action, via Americans for Prosperity (AFP), the Koch-backed anti-regulation organization. “A few years ago, cap-and-trade curbs on greenhouse gas emissions was embraced by the GOP presidential nominee, John McCain,” writes Cooper. “There’s no way that’ll happen in 2016, in part thanks to the AFP.” Well, climate change is currently the worst catastrophe affecting humankind. Preventing one of the two major parties in the most powerful nation on earth from accepting its reality, and thereby preventing national and international action to fight the problem, is no small matter. It is, indeed, the whole ballgame. (Consider the effect of substituting another apocalypse into Cooper’s sentences, to fully appreciate the absurdity: “A few years ago, avoiding a nuclear war with Russia was embraced by the GOP presidential nominee, John McCain. There’s no way that’ll happen in 2016, in part thanks to the AFP.”)
On the second count, just how evil the Kochs are, Cooper is much too generous. He notes their libertarian personal beliefs — e.g., “David Koch told reporters in 2012 he disagreed with Mitt Romney’s opposition to legalizing gay marriage” — as if that matters. It doesn’t. David Koch backs candidates with intolerant, big-government social positions because they share his commitment to eliminating the social safety net and rolling back labor, environment, and public health regulations. Koch’s personal view of gay marriage matters as little as his patronage of the arts or academia — supposedly mitigating factors that Cooper also emphasizes. Sorry, but giving money to Lincoln Center and MIT, two institutions patronized overwhelmingly by the wealthy, does not diminish the harm the Kochs unleash on society as a whole.
“Explaining why, say, David, who donated millions to cancer research and the dinosaur wing at the American Museum of Natural history, is a monster is a tough sell,” writes Cooper. Well, I’m not much of a salesman, but I think I can close this deal. Even the brothers’ seemingly nonpartisan giving to laudable educational causes is tainted by their right-wing agenda. The David H. Koch Hall of Human Origins at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History sows confusion about climate science and depicts climate change as a natural, harmless phenomenon.
And even when the Kochs don’t get their candidates elected, their ideas still become more accepted. As Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) recently noted, David Koch’s far-right policies have moved from the periphery to the mainstream of the GOP over the last three decades:
In 1980, Libertarian vice-presidential candidate David Koch ran on a platform that called for abolishing the minimum wage. Thirty-four years ago, that was an extreme view of a fringe party that had the support of 1 percent of the American people. Today, not only does virtually every Republican in Congress oppose raising the $7.25 an hour minimum wage, many of them, including Republican leaders like Mitch McConnell and John McCain, are on record for abolishing the concept of the federal minimum wage. …
In 1980, the platform of David Koch’s Libertarian Party called for “the repeal of the fraudulent, virtually bankrupt, and increasingly oppressive Social Security system.” Thirty-four years ago, that was an extreme view of a fringe party that had the support of 1 percent of the American people. Today, the mainstream view of the Republican Party is that “entitlement reform” is absolutely necessary. For some, this means major cuts in Social Security. For others who believe Social Security is unconstitutional or a Ponzi scheme this means the privatization of Social Security or abolishing this program completely for those who are under 60 years of age.Just this week, every Republican in the Senate but one voted to block a bill that would raise the federal minimum wage.
Most disingenuous is Cooper’s argument that the Kochs cannot be blamed for merely playing by the rules of unlimited campaign spending. Tom Steyer cannot be blamed for that. The Kochs can, since they have worked to elect Republicans who oppose campaign finance regulation and have appointed the Supreme Court justices who have ruled such regulations unconstitutional.
Cooper takes exception to calling the Kochs’ efforts to buy America “un-American.” Fine, let’s call it what it is: anti-democratic. We shouldn’t have to discuss just how “unusual” the Kochs are, because they shouldn’t matter more than any other two citizens. We shouldn’t have to wonder whether their billions can buy elections. The American government exists to govern in the interest of the majority. For example, it should regulate greenhouse gas emissions to prevent harm to everyone from fossil fuels that only benefit a handful of wealthy people like the Kochs. If, instead, the Kochs can buy off politicians to side with them over the public, we are headed for catastrophe.
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Monday, May 5, 2014
"... certain politicians and talking heads regularly rant against science and scientific findings when they don’t fit their political agenda or their worldview."
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Evans: How did science get so political?
By Lynn Evans, May 5, 2014
In the recent bout of destructive storms that hit Mississippi and surrounding states, we were all very grateful for the science of storm prediction. Meteorologists helped save lives by accurately predicting the intensity and location of the storms, and by quickly alerting residents through apps and varied other media when a particularly deadly weather event was headed their way.
Science and the scientific method are directly responsible for the economic and technological boom that we all benefit from today, from medical breakthroughs to the technology revolution to the changes in farming and manufacturing that have raised people’s standard of living worldwide. Nevertheless, certain politicians and talking heads regularly rant against science and scientific findings when they don’t fit their political agenda or their worldview.
Exhibit A is climate change. Frequent opinion pieces in this paper — one just last month by Cal Thomas — argue that the science behind global warming is just a political argument made by a bunch of loose cannons.
Thomas’s latest rant was in response to the UN’s Panel on Climate Change Report confirming global warming with overwhelming scientific evidence, and recommending that the nations of the world respond now to decrease carbon emissions before the consequences of climate change become overwhelming for all living things on our planet.
Many of those who rebut the reality of climate change just deny that it is happening, a tactic that becomes less and less tenable in the face of rising sea levels and melting ice caps. Tactic number 2 is to assert that the earth’s accelerating warming is just a normal climate cycle for which human beings hold no culpability.
Since good science is based on both careful observation and rigorous testing, the hundreds of thousands of temperature readings showing the earth’s accelerating warming since the start of the Industrial Age should trump any argument denying climate change, even one that makes us feel good and suits our politics. In the scientific method, if the facts contradict the hypothesis the scientist reworks the thesis to fit the facts, not the other way around. Simply denying the facts, however, can mean not facing certain unpleasant truths that demand people and nations change their behavior.
We are now learning that our warming planet is experiencing spring earlier, and plants, animals and birds are migrating northward to escape summer’s heat. The earth’s rising temperatures parallel the rise of carbon dioxide and other emission levels in our atmosphere, levels directly related to human activity such as coal burning power plants and vehicle emissions. The biggest threat to people is probably rising sea levels since so much of the world’s population lives in coastal cities.
If we are sick, we want the latest and best medical science to guide our treatment because that increases the chances that we will recover. The earth’s life-span is so much longer than our own, we have trouble seeing that human history coupled with our own action — or inaction — today will have a direct effect on the world inherited by our children, grandchildren, and great grandchildren.
So we struggle to understand how the Polar Vortex and warming oceans result in more tornados and other powerful storms barreling down on us. If we do not soon change our habit of denying the science we don’t want to hear, it will be long past time to do something to offset what have become the very real threats of global warming.
...................................................................................................................................................................
Evans: How did science get so political?
By Lynn Evans, May 5, 2014
In the recent bout of destructive storms that hit Mississippi and surrounding states, we were all very grateful for the science of storm prediction. Meteorologists helped save lives by accurately predicting the intensity and location of the storms, and by quickly alerting residents through apps and varied other media when a particularly deadly weather event was headed their way.
Science and the scientific method are directly responsible for the economic and technological boom that we all benefit from today, from medical breakthroughs to the technology revolution to the changes in farming and manufacturing that have raised people’s standard of living worldwide. Nevertheless, certain politicians and talking heads regularly rant against science and scientific findings when they don’t fit their political agenda or their worldview.
Exhibit A is climate change. Frequent opinion pieces in this paper — one just last month by Cal Thomas — argue that the science behind global warming is just a political argument made by a bunch of loose cannons.
Thomas’s latest rant was in response to the UN’s Panel on Climate Change Report confirming global warming with overwhelming scientific evidence, and recommending that the nations of the world respond now to decrease carbon emissions before the consequences of climate change become overwhelming for all living things on our planet.
Many of those who rebut the reality of climate change just deny that it is happening, a tactic that becomes less and less tenable in the face of rising sea levels and melting ice caps. Tactic number 2 is to assert that the earth’s accelerating warming is just a normal climate cycle for which human beings hold no culpability.
Since good science is based on both careful observation and rigorous testing, the hundreds of thousands of temperature readings showing the earth’s accelerating warming since the start of the Industrial Age should trump any argument denying climate change, even one that makes us feel good and suits our politics. In the scientific method, if the facts contradict the hypothesis the scientist reworks the thesis to fit the facts, not the other way around. Simply denying the facts, however, can mean not facing certain unpleasant truths that demand people and nations change their behavior.
We are now learning that our warming planet is experiencing spring earlier, and plants, animals and birds are migrating northward to escape summer’s heat. The earth’s rising temperatures parallel the rise of carbon dioxide and other emission levels in our atmosphere, levels directly related to human activity such as coal burning power plants and vehicle emissions. The biggest threat to people is probably rising sea levels since so much of the world’s population lives in coastal cities.
If we are sick, we want the latest and best medical science to guide our treatment because that increases the chances that we will recover. The earth’s life-span is so much longer than our own, we have trouble seeing that human history coupled with our own action — or inaction — today will have a direct effect on the world inherited by our children, grandchildren, and great grandchildren.
So we struggle to understand how the Polar Vortex and warming oceans result in more tornados and other powerful storms barreling down on us. If we do not soon change our habit of denying the science we don’t want to hear, it will be long past time to do something to offset what have become the very real threats of global warming.
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"Observing today’s political discourse ..." shows that "Most people have no clue what they are talking about."
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Most people really don’t care about truth in politics
By Joseph Cotto, May 5, 2014
Observing today’s political discourse has allowed me to realize something: Most people have no clue what they are talking about.
Whether they are pundits, politicians or prospective voters, people all seem to be focused more on a narrative than on a fact-based discussion. This leaves the country with misinformation, if not intellectual, deficit.
For those of us who have not bought into a narrative, the question of what has gotten into our friends’ and neighbors’ minds cannot be ignored. Thankfully, the life’s work of one man can teach us more than a few lessons.
Marshall McLuhan was a revolutionary. Though few outside of select academic circles recognize the Canadian philosopher by name, we owe virtually every development in modern media theory to him. Aside from predicting the the Internet roughly thirty years before it became a reality, he coined the famous phrase “The medium is the message” in his 1964 bestseller, Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man.
Ever since then, this fundamental insight to the process of advertising has guided strategists from Madison Avenue to Main Street in presenting their products persuasively.
Considering that, McLuhan’s aphorism should be regarded as one of the most practical in popular vernacular. If you are served a steak dinner cooked to perfection on a garbage lid instead of on fine china, you will be repulsed. That the dinner itself is excellent matters not a bit. The first impression has been made, a hungry stomach turned into a nauseated one.
As one might imagine, McLuhan’s medium-slash-message connection can be seen in the political arena. For example, throughout the 2008 election cycle, when Barack Obama spoke about economic inequality, he was jeered endlessly by right wing partisans. However, exactly four years later, when Newt Gingrich used a similar argument against Mitt Romney, the very same partisans cheered him on.
How could this be?
Simple: When Gingrich delivered his spiel, he did so from the self-described position of a hardcore Reaganite. The aura derived from this was enough to convince those partisans to accept a position they otherwise would have found totally unacceptable.
Indeed, for a great many people, perception simply is reality.
Considering the monumental impact of McLuhan’s perspective, one might wonder why nobody crafted such a meme long before him. Could it be that someone did, but stated it in a considerably more nuanced way? Or, was McLuhan’s being on the forefront of science and commentary just that?
In either case, the lesson provided is sound: if one has something to sell or an idea to promote, style often eclipses substance. I would argue that this is a monstrosity, but believe that self-confirming biases would lead most to disagree with me.
Then again, the medium is the message.
...................................................................................................................................................................
Most people really don’t care about truth in politics
By Joseph Cotto, May 5, 2014
Observing today’s political discourse has allowed me to realize something: Most people have no clue what they are talking about.
Whether they are pundits, politicians or prospective voters, people all seem to be focused more on a narrative than on a fact-based discussion. This leaves the country with misinformation, if not intellectual, deficit.
For those of us who have not bought into a narrative, the question of what has gotten into our friends’ and neighbors’ minds cannot be ignored. Thankfully, the life’s work of one man can teach us more than a few lessons.
Marshall McLuhan was a revolutionary. Though few outside of select academic circles recognize the Canadian philosopher by name, we owe virtually every development in modern media theory to him. Aside from predicting the the Internet roughly thirty years before it became a reality, he coined the famous phrase “The medium is the message” in his 1964 bestseller, Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man.
Ever since then, this fundamental insight to the process of advertising has guided strategists from Madison Avenue to Main Street in presenting their products persuasively.
Considering that, McLuhan’s aphorism should be regarded as one of the most practical in popular vernacular. If you are served a steak dinner cooked to perfection on a garbage lid instead of on fine china, you will be repulsed. That the dinner itself is excellent matters not a bit. The first impression has been made, a hungry stomach turned into a nauseated one.
As one might imagine, McLuhan’s medium-slash-message connection can be seen in the political arena. For example, throughout the 2008 election cycle, when Barack Obama spoke about economic inequality, he was jeered endlessly by right wing partisans. However, exactly four years later, when Newt Gingrich used a similar argument against Mitt Romney, the very same partisans cheered him on.
How could this be?
Simple: When Gingrich delivered his spiel, he did so from the self-described position of a hardcore Reaganite. The aura derived from this was enough to convince those partisans to accept a position they otherwise would have found totally unacceptable.
Indeed, for a great many people, perception simply is reality.
Considering the monumental impact of McLuhan’s perspective, one might wonder why nobody crafted such a meme long before him. Could it be that someone did, but stated it in a considerably more nuanced way? Or, was McLuhan’s being on the forefront of science and commentary just that?
In either case, the lesson provided is sound: if one has something to sell or an idea to promote, style often eclipses substance. I would argue that this is a monstrosity, but believe that self-confirming biases would lead most to disagree with me.
Then again, the medium is the message.
...................................................................................................................................................................
“What the Republicans have done is turn four dead bodies into a political act that they can play off of.”
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Beckel Bashes GOP on Benghazi: Turned ‘Four Dead Bodies Into a Political Act’
By Josh Feldman, May 5, 2014
The Five co-host Bob Beckel clarified his angry Benghazi rant last week on Monday’s show, explaining that he wasn’t glossing over the deaths of four dead Americans. He said that in the past he had admitted the White House engaged in politics in the wake of Benghazi, but maintained that the ones doing the real political exploitation are the Republicans, saying “What the Republicans have done is turn four dead bodies into a political act that they can play off of.”
Beckel also said that “any Democrat who shows up on this committee oughta have their Democratic registration taken away from them.”
Dana Perino and Greg Gutfeld told Beckel people were so outraged at his remarks because he said the American people don’t care, when many of them clearly do. Beckel insisted “there’s nothing in that that’s an indictable offense to anybody.”
Gutfeld shot back that if a Republican was in the Oval Office, Beckel would say to “hang him high.”
Watch the video below, via Fox News:
Video
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Beckel Bashes GOP on Benghazi: Turned ‘Four Dead Bodies Into a Political Act’
By Josh Feldman, May 5, 2014
The Five co-host Bob Beckel clarified his angry Benghazi rant last week on Monday’s show, explaining that he wasn’t glossing over the deaths of four dead Americans. He said that in the past he had admitted the White House engaged in politics in the wake of Benghazi, but maintained that the ones doing the real political exploitation are the Republicans, saying “What the Republicans have done is turn four dead bodies into a political act that they can play off of.”
Beckel also said that “any Democrat who shows up on this committee oughta have their Democratic registration taken away from them.”
Dana Perino and Greg Gutfeld told Beckel people were so outraged at his remarks because he said the American people don’t care, when many of them clearly do. Beckel insisted “there’s nothing in that that’s an indictable offense to anybody.”
Gutfeld shot back that if a Republican was in the Oval Office, Beckel would say to “hang him high.”
Watch the video below, via Fox News:
Video
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“... the votes of both liberal and conservative justices tend to reflect their preferences toward the ideological groupings of the speaker.” It's “in-group bias.”
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For Justices, Free Speech Often Means ‘Speech I Agree With’
By Adam Liptak, May 5, 2014
Justice Antonin Scalia is known as a consistent and principled defender of free speech rights.
It pained him, he has said, when he voted to strike down a law making flag burning a crime. “If it was up to me, if I were king,” he said, “I would take scruffy, bearded, sandal-wearing idiots who burn the flag, and I would put them in jail.” But the First Amendment stopped him.
That is a powerful example of constitutional principles overcoming personal preferences. But it turns out to be an outlier. In cases raising First Amendment claims, a new study found, Justice Scalia voted to uphold the free speech rights of conservative speakers at more than triple the rate of liberal ones. In 161 cases from 1986, when he joined the court, to 2011, he voted in favor of conservative speakers 65 percent of the time and liberal ones 21 percent.
He is not alone. “While liberal justices are over all more supportive of free speech claims than conservative justices,” the study found, “the votes of both liberal and conservative justices tend to reflect their preferences toward the ideological groupings of the speaker.”
Social science calls this kind of thing “in-group bias.” The impact of such bias on judicial behavior has not been explored in much detail, though earlier studies have found that female appeals court judges are more likely to vote for plaintiffs in sexual harassment and sex discrimination suits.
Lee Epstein, a political scientist and law professor who conducted the new study with two colleagues, said it showed the justices to be “opportunistic free speech advocates.”
The findings are a twist on the comment by Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. that the First Amendment protects “freedom for the thought that we hate.” On the Supreme Court, the First Amendment appears to protect freedom for the thought of people we like.
“Though the results are consistent with a long line of research in the social sciences, I still find them stunning — shocking, really,” Professor Epstein said.
The study considered 4,519 votes in 516 cases from 1953 to 2011.
It was conducted by Professor Epstein, who is about to join the faculty at Washington University in St. Louis; Christopher M. Parker, a political scientist at Centenary College of Louisiana; and Jeffrey A. Segal, a political scientist at Stony Brook University.
There may be quibbles about how they coded individual votes. But it was seldom difficult to tell which side was invoking the First Amendment. Nor is it usually hard to assign an ideological direction to particular speakers or positions.
...................................................................................................................................................................
For Justices, Free Speech Often Means ‘Speech I Agree With’
By Adam Liptak, May 5, 2014
Justice Antonin Scalia is known as a consistent and principled defender of free speech rights.
It pained him, he has said, when he voted to strike down a law making flag burning a crime. “If it was up to me, if I were king,” he said, “I would take scruffy, bearded, sandal-wearing idiots who burn the flag, and I would put them in jail.” But the First Amendment stopped him.
That is a powerful example of constitutional principles overcoming personal preferences. But it turns out to be an outlier. In cases raising First Amendment claims, a new study found, Justice Scalia voted to uphold the free speech rights of conservative speakers at more than triple the rate of liberal ones. In 161 cases from 1986, when he joined the court, to 2011, he voted in favor of conservative speakers 65 percent of the time and liberal ones 21 percent.
He is not alone. “While liberal justices are over all more supportive of free speech claims than conservative justices,” the study found, “the votes of both liberal and conservative justices tend to reflect their preferences toward the ideological groupings of the speaker.”
Social science calls this kind of thing “in-group bias.” The impact of such bias on judicial behavior has not been explored in much detail, though earlier studies have found that female appeals court judges are more likely to vote for plaintiffs in sexual harassment and sex discrimination suits.
Lee Epstein, a political scientist and law professor who conducted the new study with two colleagues, said it showed the justices to be “opportunistic free speech advocates.”
The findings are a twist on the comment by Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. that the First Amendment protects “freedom for the thought that we hate.” On the Supreme Court, the First Amendment appears to protect freedom for the thought of people we like.
“Though the results are consistent with a long line of research in the social sciences, I still find them stunning — shocking, really,” Professor Epstein said.
The study considered 4,519 votes in 516 cases from 1953 to 2011.
It was conducted by Professor Epstein, who is about to join the faculty at Washington University in St. Louis; Christopher M. Parker, a political scientist at Centenary College of Louisiana; and Jeffrey A. Segal, a political scientist at Stony Brook University.
There may be quibbles about how they coded individual votes. But it was seldom difficult to tell which side was invoking the First Amendment. Nor is it usually hard to assign an ideological direction to particular speakers or positions.
...................................................................................................................................................................
Sunday, May 4, 2014
"Petcoke can cause health problems like coughing, wheezing and shortness of breath, in addition to aggravating existing respiratory conditions like asthma ..." -- Thanks, Koch brothers!
...................................................................................................................................................................
Koch Brothers Face Lawsuit Over Chicago's Toxic Black Dust
By Joseph Erbentraut, May 2, 2014
Environmentalists are planning to take billionaires Charles and David Koch to court, alleging the brothers' companies are responsible for polluting Chicago's Southeast Side with the black, thick dust known as petroleum coke -- or petcoke, a byproduct of the oil refining process.
ThinkProgress reported this week that the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) and Southeast Environmental Task Force (SETF) have given a 90-day notice of an intention to sue Koch-owned companies including KCBX Terminals over the pollution associated with their petcoke storage facilities located along the Calumet River in a low-income, partially industrial Chicago community.
In a press release, the groups said the lawsuit stems from neighbors complaining that the dust spewing from the facilities' large, uncovered petcoke piles has polluted the river, "invaded" their homes and blackened area skies.
"People are complaining about finding dust from these sites inside their homes," Peggy Salazar, SETF executive director, said in a statement. "Black dust is coating their houses and probably their lungs. This has to stop. And hopefully this suit will achieve that."
On Wednesday, the Chicago City Council approved regulations that ban new petcoke storage facilities from opening up in the city, but do not require the shutdown of the three sites currently in operation.
The Chicago Tribune reports the storage sites will be newly required to report how much petcoke and coal they ship through the city on a quarterly basis. They will also need to enclose their piles within two years and cannot expand their operations.
Mayor Rahm Emanuel's office described the ordinance as the toughest petcoke regulations in the nation, but environmental groups pushing for an outright ban disagree.
“It is the city’s ultimate obligation to protect its residents,” Salazar said Wednesday, according to the Northwest Indiana Times. “We don’t believe they did that here.”
Most of the petcoke in Chicago is shipped in from the nearby BP refinery in Whiting, Indiana, which is tripling their output of the dangerous dust after expanding their facility. Petcoke can cause health problems like coughing, wheezing and shortness of breath, in addition to aggravating existing respiratory conditions like asthma, according to the Chicago Department of Public Health.
Facing similar concerns voiced by residents living near petcoke facilities there, Detroit moved to ban petcoke last year.
...................................................................................................................................................................
Koch Brothers Face Lawsuit Over Chicago's Toxic Black Dust
By Joseph Erbentraut, May 2, 2014
Environmentalists are planning to take billionaires Charles and David Koch to court, alleging the brothers' companies are responsible for polluting Chicago's Southeast Side with the black, thick dust known as petroleum coke -- or petcoke, a byproduct of the oil refining process.
ThinkProgress reported this week that the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) and Southeast Environmental Task Force (SETF) have given a 90-day notice of an intention to sue Koch-owned companies including KCBX Terminals over the pollution associated with their petcoke storage facilities located along the Calumet River in a low-income, partially industrial Chicago community.
In a press release, the groups said the lawsuit stems from neighbors complaining that the dust spewing from the facilities' large, uncovered petcoke piles has polluted the river, "invaded" their homes and blackened area skies.
"People are complaining about finding dust from these sites inside their homes," Peggy Salazar, SETF executive director, said in a statement. "Black dust is coating their houses and probably their lungs. This has to stop. And hopefully this suit will achieve that."
On Wednesday, the Chicago City Council approved regulations that ban new petcoke storage facilities from opening up in the city, but do not require the shutdown of the three sites currently in operation.
The Chicago Tribune reports the storage sites will be newly required to report how much petcoke and coal they ship through the city on a quarterly basis. They will also need to enclose their piles within two years and cannot expand their operations.
Mayor Rahm Emanuel's office described the ordinance as the toughest petcoke regulations in the nation, but environmental groups pushing for an outright ban disagree.
“It is the city’s ultimate obligation to protect its residents,” Salazar said Wednesday, according to the Northwest Indiana Times. “We don’t believe they did that here.”
Most of the petcoke in Chicago is shipped in from the nearby BP refinery in Whiting, Indiana, which is tripling their output of the dangerous dust after expanding their facility. Petcoke can cause health problems like coughing, wheezing and shortness of breath, in addition to aggravating existing respiratory conditions like asthma, according to the Chicago Department of Public Health.
Facing similar concerns voiced by residents living near petcoke facilities there, Detroit moved to ban petcoke last year.
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"The question of whether to legalize medical marijuana has for far too long been a political football. It's time for politicians to end a game they have played as people have suffered needlessly on the sidelines."
...................................................................................................................................................................
Editorial: A political prescription
Times Union, May 1, 2014
THE ISSUE:
A senator offers a compromise to break New York's impasse on medical marijuana.
THE STAKES:
Will politicians let medical professionals make the medical decisions?
In a perfect world, politicians would leave medical decisions to doctors and other health experts. Alas, when it comes to medical marijuana, we live in an imperfect world.
It's an issue that, in New York and many other places, is unfortunately intertwined with politics. Lawmakers continue to balance the expert opinions of the medical community and best judgments of individual physicians against political considerations, such as their own law-and-order images and fears among some of their constituents that legalizing marijuana, even for a limited and beneficial use, opens the door to full legalization and heralds the decline of civilization.
In that context, the best we can hope for, in the short run, is acceptable compromise. And a reworked bill seeks to achieve just that.
The bill's sponsor, state Sen. Diane Savino, D-Staten Island, is amending the original legislation, which essentially allowed prescribers to determine what ailments qualified for a marijuana prescription. The bill originally defined that broadly as conditions that are severely debilitating or life-threatening, including but not limited to 22 specific ailments. That "but not limited to" clause, however, was too open-ended for some lawmakers, particularly in the Republican Senate conference.
Determined to get a bill passed, Ms. Savino struck the disputed clause and added language to limit prescriptions of smokeable marijuana to people 21 and over, addressing a stated concern among some legislators about allowing underage smoking. People under 21 could, however, be prescribed extracts, vaporizable material, or products infused with marijuana.
Importantly, her amended bill would also set up an advisory committee, appointed by the governor, Legislature and attorney general. It would be made up of health care practitioners, patients or patient advocates, experts on the regulation of controlled substances for medical use, people from the medical marijuana industry, and law enforcement. It could hear appeals of patients or practitioners who are denied prescriptions or the authority to write them.
The committee's most significant role would be to advise the state health commissioner on expanding the list of conditions for which a marijuana prescription would be allowed. The health commissioner would have the power to add conditions to the list or remove them.
While satisfying the concerns of some lawmakers that the earlier bill was too open-ended, this amended version would put the decision about the appropriate use of medical marijuana in the hands of a medical professional, not politicians. Assuming the commissioner's job is held by a thoughtful, compassionate individual who would rely on the latest research and experience, it's a sound approach.
The question of whether to legalize medical marijuana has for far too long been a political football. It's time for politicians to end a game they have played as people have suffered needlessly on the sidelines.
...................................................................................................................................................................
Editorial: A political prescription
Times Union, May 1, 2014
THE ISSUE:
A senator offers a compromise to break New York's impasse on medical marijuana.
THE STAKES:
Will politicians let medical professionals make the medical decisions?
In a perfect world, politicians would leave medical decisions to doctors and other health experts. Alas, when it comes to medical marijuana, we live in an imperfect world.
It's an issue that, in New York and many other places, is unfortunately intertwined with politics. Lawmakers continue to balance the expert opinions of the medical community and best judgments of individual physicians against political considerations, such as their own law-and-order images and fears among some of their constituents that legalizing marijuana, even for a limited and beneficial use, opens the door to full legalization and heralds the decline of civilization.
In that context, the best we can hope for, in the short run, is acceptable compromise. And a reworked bill seeks to achieve just that.
The bill's sponsor, state Sen. Diane Savino, D-Staten Island, is amending the original legislation, which essentially allowed prescribers to determine what ailments qualified for a marijuana prescription. The bill originally defined that broadly as conditions that are severely debilitating or life-threatening, including but not limited to 22 specific ailments. That "but not limited to" clause, however, was too open-ended for some lawmakers, particularly in the Republican Senate conference.
Determined to get a bill passed, Ms. Savino struck the disputed clause and added language to limit prescriptions of smokeable marijuana to people 21 and over, addressing a stated concern among some legislators about allowing underage smoking. People under 21 could, however, be prescribed extracts, vaporizable material, or products infused with marijuana.
Importantly, her amended bill would also set up an advisory committee, appointed by the governor, Legislature and attorney general. It would be made up of health care practitioners, patients or patient advocates, experts on the regulation of controlled substances for medical use, people from the medical marijuana industry, and law enforcement. It could hear appeals of patients or practitioners who are denied prescriptions or the authority to write them.
The committee's most significant role would be to advise the state health commissioner on expanding the list of conditions for which a marijuana prescription would be allowed. The health commissioner would have the power to add conditions to the list or remove them.
While satisfying the concerns of some lawmakers that the earlier bill was too open-ended, this amended version would put the decision about the appropriate use of medical marijuana in the hands of a medical professional, not politicians. Assuming the commissioner's job is held by a thoughtful, compassionate individual who would rely on the latest research and experience, it's a sound approach.
The question of whether to legalize medical marijuana has for far too long been a political football. It's time for politicians to end a game they have played as people have suffered needlessly on the sidelines.
...................................................................................................................................................................
"... Stevens deserves praise for reminding the Senate, and the American public, of the radical consequences of the Supreme Court’s current path"
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Retired justice speaks up: Stinging dissent on political cash
Editorial by Boston Globe, May 5, 2014
EVEN IN his retirement, former Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens can still issue a weighty dissent. On Wednesday, Stevens, 94, inveighed mightily against high court rulings that invalidated limits on campaign contributions. In his first testimony before a Senate panel since his 1975 confirmation, Stevens called for a constitutional amendment to allow Congress and state legislatures to set “reasonable limits” on campaign spending. Such an amendment, currently being pushed primarily by Democrats, would in effect overturn the 2010 Citizens United ruling, which opened the door to unfettered campaign cash.
Stevens, a bitter dissenter in Citizens United, said that decision and others in the same vein ran counter to the concept of a level playing field for voters and “create a risk that successful candidates will pay more attention to the interests of non-voters who provided them with money.” A new report bears Stevens out. The Wesleyan Media Project and the Center for Responsive Politics found that a majority of television advertisements in current US Senate campaigns are sponsored by outside interest groups, and most of them are paid for with “dark money” requiring no donor disclosure. Overall ad spending is already at $43 million, a 45 percent increase from this point in the 2012 election cycle.
Stevens forcefully refuted the legal assumptions behind the Citizens United decision — that campaign spending is nothing more than a form of speech, and that the free-expression rights of corporations deserve the exact same protection as those of individual human persons. A constitutional amendment, which requires a two-thirds majority in the House and Senate and approval by three-fourths of the states, would be a daunting battle — and could present unanticipated legal consequences of its own. Nonetheless, Stevens deserves praise for reminding the Senate, and the American public, of the radical consequences of the Supreme Court’s current path.
...................................................................................................................................................................
Retired justice speaks up: Stinging dissent on political cash
Editorial by Boston Globe, May 5, 2014
EVEN IN his retirement, former Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens can still issue a weighty dissent. On Wednesday, Stevens, 94, inveighed mightily against high court rulings that invalidated limits on campaign contributions. In his first testimony before a Senate panel since his 1975 confirmation, Stevens called for a constitutional amendment to allow Congress and state legislatures to set “reasonable limits” on campaign spending. Such an amendment, currently being pushed primarily by Democrats, would in effect overturn the 2010 Citizens United ruling, which opened the door to unfettered campaign cash.
Stevens, a bitter dissenter in Citizens United, said that decision and others in the same vein ran counter to the concept of a level playing field for voters and “create a risk that successful candidates will pay more attention to the interests of non-voters who provided them with money.” A new report bears Stevens out. The Wesleyan Media Project and the Center for Responsive Politics found that a majority of television advertisements in current US Senate campaigns are sponsored by outside interest groups, and most of them are paid for with “dark money” requiring no donor disclosure. Overall ad spending is already at $43 million, a 45 percent increase from this point in the 2012 election cycle.
Stevens forcefully refuted the legal assumptions behind the Citizens United decision — that campaign spending is nothing more than a form of speech, and that the free-expression rights of corporations deserve the exact same protection as those of individual human persons. A constitutional amendment, which requires a two-thirds majority in the House and Senate and approval by three-fourths of the states, would be a daunting battle — and could present unanticipated legal consequences of its own. Nonetheless, Stevens deserves praise for reminding the Senate, and the American public, of the radical consequences of the Supreme Court’s current path.
...................................................................................................................................................................
Saturday, May 3, 2014
“This is about trying to make this side of the aisle [the GOP] look bad and hard-hearted.” Gee, it doesn't take much to do that!
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Minimum Wage Vote Loss Gives Democrats Their Wedge Issue
By David Hawkings, May 1, 2014
Long before Wednesday’s totally predictable Senate vote blocking a bill to increase the minimum wage, President Barack Obama and his fellow Democrats in Congress had embraced their guaranteed consolation prize.
It’s a construct as venerable as the Capitol itself: They will not have the bill, but they are plenty satisfied to have the issue.
In fact, especially if some sunshine newly cast on policy deliberations in the Clinton administration can be considered instructive, the Democrats may have gotten just what they wanted all along from one of the first big show votes of the campaign season.
“This is all about politics,” Minority Whip John Cornyn declared before the Senate came up five votes short of advancing the minimum wage legislation beyond a GOP filibuster. “This is about trying to make this side of the aisle look bad and hard-hearted.”
To support that assertion, the Texas Republican introduced into the record a document that his side views as powerful past-is-prologue evidence, unearthed from an avalanche of papers created in Bill Clinton’s White House and being released this year by the National Archives. It’s a January 1998 memo to the president about that year’s minimum wage debate. The author was Gene Sperling, who then ran the National Economic Council. Sperling, of course, returned to that job during the Obama administration, leading the NEC for three years ending this March, as Obama’s own minimum wage goals were evolving.
Last year, Obama proposed a straightforward 24 percent increase in the federally guaranteed hourly wage floor, to $9 from the $7.25 in effect since 2009. When Congress turned a frigid shoulder to that idea, the president decided he had nothing to lose strategically, and something to gain politically, by raising his bid. In the most recent State of the Union speech, he called for a 39 percent increase over 30 months, to $10.10, and something more as well, language creating a perpetual, routine increase by changing the amount annually based on the overall cost of living.
Advocates of such indexing say it’s an essential curative so laborers won’t continue to suffer in times when Republicans and their business allies have some control in Washington. In other words, disconnected from the legislative process, the wage would no longer lose its value during long stretches of congressional gridlock.
Viewed another way, if Obama actually got what he’s now asking for, he would be surrendering a political cudgel that he’ll now be able to wield against GOP House and Senate candidates for the next six months. He’d also be taking it away from any Democratic successor who might otherwise benefit from one of the party’s handier wedge issues.
That was the exact political reality Sperling described back in 1998. (When the archives surfaced, Huffington Post took note of the memo’s current relevance.)
At the time, Senate Democrats were starting an uphill push for a minimum wage increase quite similar to this year’s version: a 40 percent hike over a couple of years, with inflation adjustments after that.
The indexing concept is a bad one, the economic policy czar wrote, partly for this reason: “Since the minimum wage would automatically rise each year, it would take away a good political issue for those who believe the minimum wage is an important tool to help low-income families.”
He argued the president should oppose such a hefty raise in part because it could prompt businesses to reduce payrolls — the main policy argument of the Republicans, both then and now. (They currently point to a Congressional Budget Office estimate that a $10.10 wage would have the effect of eliminating about 500,000 jobs, albeit while boosting the incomes of 16.5 million others.)
Little evidence suggests Sperling altered his fundamental views, economic or political, between his two tours of duty. So such candor from the files only strengthens the perception that Obama’s 2014 legislative agenda was designed without a goal of actually achieving his stated objectives.
Obama and the Democrats have not opened the door to negotiating for a smaller increase in the wage, despite signals of openness from a potentially pivotal handful of Republicans.
Wednesday’s final Senate tally was 54-42. Bob Corker of Tennessee was the only Republican voting to advance the bill. Mark Pryor of Arkansas, in one of the year’s toughest re-election races, was the only Democrat who missed the vote. (He was touring tornado damage back home.) Majority Leader Harry Reid switched from “yes” to “no” to preserve his ability to call for a do-over roll call closer to Election Day. Nearly blanket GOP opposition means there won’t be any sort of a House vote this year, no matter what.
And the president, at an East Room pep rally arranged long before the foreordained vote, signaled he was OK with that — and made plain the reason.
“If there’s any good news here, it’s that Republicans in Congress don’t get the last word on this or any issue. You do, the American people, the voters,” he said to charged applause. “So my message to the American people is this: Do not get discouraged by a vote like the one we saw this morning. Get fired up, get organized.”
Laws to change the wage have been enacted just once in each of the past three decades. The current $7.25 has lost more than $1 of its inflation-adjusted buying power since taking effect five years ago. Thanks to something akin to an unholy bipartisan alliance, both those trends have a strong shot at continuing.
...................................................................................................................................................................
Minimum Wage Vote Loss Gives Democrats Their Wedge Issue
By David Hawkings, May 1, 2014
Long before Wednesday’s totally predictable Senate vote blocking a bill to increase the minimum wage, President Barack Obama and his fellow Democrats in Congress had embraced their guaranteed consolation prize.
It’s a construct as venerable as the Capitol itself: They will not have the bill, but they are plenty satisfied to have the issue.
In fact, especially if some sunshine newly cast on policy deliberations in the Clinton administration can be considered instructive, the Democrats may have gotten just what they wanted all along from one of the first big show votes of the campaign season.
“This is all about politics,” Minority Whip John Cornyn declared before the Senate came up five votes short of advancing the minimum wage legislation beyond a GOP filibuster. “This is about trying to make this side of the aisle look bad and hard-hearted.”
To support that assertion, the Texas Republican introduced into the record a document that his side views as powerful past-is-prologue evidence, unearthed from an avalanche of papers created in Bill Clinton’s White House and being released this year by the National Archives. It’s a January 1998 memo to the president about that year’s minimum wage debate. The author was Gene Sperling, who then ran the National Economic Council. Sperling, of course, returned to that job during the Obama administration, leading the NEC for three years ending this March, as Obama’s own minimum wage goals were evolving.
Last year, Obama proposed a straightforward 24 percent increase in the federally guaranteed hourly wage floor, to $9 from the $7.25 in effect since 2009. When Congress turned a frigid shoulder to that idea, the president decided he had nothing to lose strategically, and something to gain politically, by raising his bid. In the most recent State of the Union speech, he called for a 39 percent increase over 30 months, to $10.10, and something more as well, language creating a perpetual, routine increase by changing the amount annually based on the overall cost of living.
Advocates of such indexing say it’s an essential curative so laborers won’t continue to suffer in times when Republicans and their business allies have some control in Washington. In other words, disconnected from the legislative process, the wage would no longer lose its value during long stretches of congressional gridlock.
Viewed another way, if Obama actually got what he’s now asking for, he would be surrendering a political cudgel that he’ll now be able to wield against GOP House and Senate candidates for the next six months. He’d also be taking it away from any Democratic successor who might otherwise benefit from one of the party’s handier wedge issues.
That was the exact political reality Sperling described back in 1998. (When the archives surfaced, Huffington Post took note of the memo’s current relevance.)
At the time, Senate Democrats were starting an uphill push for a minimum wage increase quite similar to this year’s version: a 40 percent hike over a couple of years, with inflation adjustments after that.
The indexing concept is a bad one, the economic policy czar wrote, partly for this reason: “Since the minimum wage would automatically rise each year, it would take away a good political issue for those who believe the minimum wage is an important tool to help low-income families.”
He argued the president should oppose such a hefty raise in part because it could prompt businesses to reduce payrolls — the main policy argument of the Republicans, both then and now. (They currently point to a Congressional Budget Office estimate that a $10.10 wage would have the effect of eliminating about 500,000 jobs, albeit while boosting the incomes of 16.5 million others.)
Little evidence suggests Sperling altered his fundamental views, economic or political, between his two tours of duty. So such candor from the files only strengthens the perception that Obama’s 2014 legislative agenda was designed without a goal of actually achieving his stated objectives.
Obama and the Democrats have not opened the door to negotiating for a smaller increase in the wage, despite signals of openness from a potentially pivotal handful of Republicans.
Wednesday’s final Senate tally was 54-42. Bob Corker of Tennessee was the only Republican voting to advance the bill. Mark Pryor of Arkansas, in one of the year’s toughest re-election races, was the only Democrat who missed the vote. (He was touring tornado damage back home.) Majority Leader Harry Reid switched from “yes” to “no” to preserve his ability to call for a do-over roll call closer to Election Day. Nearly blanket GOP opposition means there won’t be any sort of a House vote this year, no matter what.
And the president, at an East Room pep rally arranged long before the foreordained vote, signaled he was OK with that — and made plain the reason.
“If there’s any good news here, it’s that Republicans in Congress don’t get the last word on this or any issue. You do, the American people, the voters,” he said to charged applause. “So my message to the American people is this: Do not get discouraged by a vote like the one we saw this morning. Get fired up, get organized.”
Laws to change the wage have been enacted just once in each of the past three decades. The current $7.25 has lost more than $1 of its inflation-adjusted buying power since taking effect five years ago. Thanks to something akin to an unholy bipartisan alliance, both those trends have a strong shot at continuing.
...................................................................................................................................................................
"Americans pay more for health care than anyone else in the world, and disparity in drug pricing is one of the reasons why."
...................................................................................................................................................................
An exit visa out of Bumper Sticker Land, perhaps past Obamacare
By Jim Galloway, May 3, 2014
Originality is the exact opposite of politics, where the essential purpose is to merge with the largest herd possible.
In poll-tested campaigns, innovation is relegated to the more superficial elements. And so we have TV ads that feature crying babies, old station wagons, and booming cannons.
Which means that when a truly unique bit of substance surfaces — unsuitable for any bumper sticker smaller than a billboard, incapable of being compressed into a 10-second sound bite — it is worth some attention. Regardless of the source.
Art Gardner, an Atlanta patent attorney, is conducting a quixotic, underfunded Republican campaign for U.S. Senate. His decision to position himself as a “socially tolerant” conservative, who says gay marriage is an inevitable fact, should give you a measure of his chances.
But Gardner has a proposal for lowering health costs in the United States that may deserve to survive the May 20 primary, even if he doesn’t.
Better yet, while Gardner is on record as being opposed to the Affordable Care Act, his idea has nothing to do with Obamacare. It might, in fact, take some of the starch out of that never-ending debate.
But again, this requires us to venture beyond Bumper Sticker Land. “It takes me three or four minutes to describe it to a room,” Gardner said. “They’re all over it then.”
Let’s start with one of the prescriptions pressed on Gardner – and perhaps you — by a doctor. Crestor is a drug designed to reduce cholesterol, and costs $7.50 a tablet in the United States – maybe $6.50 if you have decent insurance.
In Canada, the same tablet can be had for $1.78. In the rest of the developed world, the price varies, but is usually under $2.
Americans pay more for health care than anyone else in the world, and disparity in drug pricing is one of the reasons why.
Gardner, who has a rather wide libertarian streak in him, emphasizes that this has nothing to do with the invisible hand of the market. There is no such thing when it comes to patented medicine – not in Canada, not in Europe, and not in the United States.
”The idea behind a patent is there’s not a free market. We’re giving you the opposite of a free market to reward you for the substantial investment required to develop a new drug,” said Gardner, who has been involved in intellectual property law for the last quarter century.
In other countries, drug companies are able to maintain their competition-free arenas granted by patents, but government regulates the prices they can charge.
No so here. “We in this country abhor price controls. We like a free market. Our society doesn’t want any sort of government interference. We’re taking a hands-off approach,” Gardner said.
And so? “The drug companies can’t charge what they need in the other countries. Take Crestor. They probably need $3 per tablet to make a good profit worldwide. But since they can only get $1.78 in Canada, and similar prices in the other G-7 countries, they’ve got to charge a lot more than $3 in the U.S. to make up for it,” Gardner said.
So Americans are subsidizing artificially low prices throughout the civilized world. The cost of prescriptions drugs is so low in Canada – and elsewhere — precisely because you’re paying more here.
“Intellectually, I can rationalize and justify why we should pay a lot more for medicine than Africans who are living on 50 cents a day,” Gardner said. “But the Germans? It’s absolutely crazy that we should pay a lot more so they can pay a lot less.”
Gardner’s solution isn’t the stuff that normally sets a U.S. Senate race on fire. He wants Congress to make a change in U.S. patent law, so that a drug company’s 20-year lock on its unique product could be challenged if its U.S. price is 25 percent higher than elsewhere in the G-7. And the patent could be lost if the U.S. price were 50 percent higher.
The patent attorney said this would force drug companies to negotiate higher prices abroad. “They will be forced to go to those other countries and say, ‘We can’t screw the Americans anymore,’” he said.
Gardner said his idea wouldn’t neutralize the Obamacare issue, but it might lower the temperature of the argument. “The overarching problem with health care is not how you administer the insurance,” he said. “It’s how much it costs. If you could lower the cost of health care in total in America, we could figure out a way to pay for it that people would like.”
Should Gardner fall on the third Tuesday in May, he’s hoping that a surviving Republican will pick up his baton on drug pricing. But he also thinks it might have some bipartisan allure.
Branko Radulovacki, an Atlanta psychiatrist and Democratic candidate for U.S. Senate, met Gardner at a forum this spring, where the patent attorney had made his pitch.
“Dr. Rad” wasn’t ready to endorse it, but didn’t scoff, either. “It’s a creative idea. It’s worth further consideration. I can applaud him for thinking of a different approach,” said Radulovacki, who writes many a prescription himself.
Now if only Gardner could find a way to get Michelle Nunn’s ear….
...................................................................................................................................................................
An exit visa out of Bumper Sticker Land, perhaps past Obamacare
By Jim Galloway, May 3, 2014
Originality is the exact opposite of politics, where the essential purpose is to merge with the largest herd possible.
In poll-tested campaigns, innovation is relegated to the more superficial elements. And so we have TV ads that feature crying babies, old station wagons, and booming cannons.
Which means that when a truly unique bit of substance surfaces — unsuitable for any bumper sticker smaller than a billboard, incapable of being compressed into a 10-second sound bite — it is worth some attention. Regardless of the source.
Art Gardner, an Atlanta patent attorney, is conducting a quixotic, underfunded Republican campaign for U.S. Senate. His decision to position himself as a “socially tolerant” conservative, who says gay marriage is an inevitable fact, should give you a measure of his chances.
But Gardner has a proposal for lowering health costs in the United States that may deserve to survive the May 20 primary, even if he doesn’t.
Better yet, while Gardner is on record as being opposed to the Affordable Care Act, his idea has nothing to do with Obamacare. It might, in fact, take some of the starch out of that never-ending debate.
But again, this requires us to venture beyond Bumper Sticker Land. “It takes me three or four minutes to describe it to a room,” Gardner said. “They’re all over it then.”
Let’s start with one of the prescriptions pressed on Gardner – and perhaps you — by a doctor. Crestor is a drug designed to reduce cholesterol, and costs $7.50 a tablet in the United States – maybe $6.50 if you have decent insurance.
In Canada, the same tablet can be had for $1.78. In the rest of the developed world, the price varies, but is usually under $2.
Americans pay more for health care than anyone else in the world, and disparity in drug pricing is one of the reasons why.
Gardner, who has a rather wide libertarian streak in him, emphasizes that this has nothing to do with the invisible hand of the market. There is no such thing when it comes to patented medicine – not in Canada, not in Europe, and not in the United States.
”The idea behind a patent is there’s not a free market. We’re giving you the opposite of a free market to reward you for the substantial investment required to develop a new drug,” said Gardner, who has been involved in intellectual property law for the last quarter century.
In other countries, drug companies are able to maintain their competition-free arenas granted by patents, but government regulates the prices they can charge.
No so here. “We in this country abhor price controls. We like a free market. Our society doesn’t want any sort of government interference. We’re taking a hands-off approach,” Gardner said.
And so? “The drug companies can’t charge what they need in the other countries. Take Crestor. They probably need $3 per tablet to make a good profit worldwide. But since they can only get $1.78 in Canada, and similar prices in the other G-7 countries, they’ve got to charge a lot more than $3 in the U.S. to make up for it,” Gardner said.
So Americans are subsidizing artificially low prices throughout the civilized world. The cost of prescriptions drugs is so low in Canada – and elsewhere — precisely because you’re paying more here.
“Intellectually, I can rationalize and justify why we should pay a lot more for medicine than Africans who are living on 50 cents a day,” Gardner said. “But the Germans? It’s absolutely crazy that we should pay a lot more so they can pay a lot less.”
Gardner’s solution isn’t the stuff that normally sets a U.S. Senate race on fire. He wants Congress to make a change in U.S. patent law, so that a drug company’s 20-year lock on its unique product could be challenged if its U.S. price is 25 percent higher than elsewhere in the G-7. And the patent could be lost if the U.S. price were 50 percent higher.
The patent attorney said this would force drug companies to negotiate higher prices abroad. “They will be forced to go to those other countries and say, ‘We can’t screw the Americans anymore,’” he said.
Gardner said his idea wouldn’t neutralize the Obamacare issue, but it might lower the temperature of the argument. “The overarching problem with health care is not how you administer the insurance,” he said. “It’s how much it costs. If you could lower the cost of health care in total in America, we could figure out a way to pay for it that people would like.”
Should Gardner fall on the third Tuesday in May, he’s hoping that a surviving Republican will pick up his baton on drug pricing. But he also thinks it might have some bipartisan allure.
Branko Radulovacki, an Atlanta psychiatrist and Democratic candidate for U.S. Senate, met Gardner at a forum this spring, where the patent attorney had made his pitch.
“Dr. Rad” wasn’t ready to endorse it, but didn’t scoff, either. “It’s a creative idea. It’s worth further consideration. I can applaud him for thinking of a different approach,” said Radulovacki, who writes many a prescription himself.
Now if only Gardner could find a way to get Michelle Nunn’s ear….
...................................................................................................................................................................
"... parents who are insistent that their children adopt their political views inadvertently influence their children to abandon the belief once they become adults"
...................................................................................................................................................................
Do Children Just Take Their Parents' Political Beliefs? It's Not That Simple
A recent study shows that children who are raised to have strong beliefs are also more likely to rebel against those views as they age.
By Te-Erika Patterson, May 1, 2014
It is widely believed that children will imitate their parents’ behaviors and attitudes—whether parents want them to or not. The 1961 Bobo Doll experiment, conducted by Stanford professor Albert Bandura, demonstrated that children will interact with others in the precise manner that was modeled for them by adults.
Given this responsibility, many parents try to instruct their children and impart their views, perhaps hoping their kids become carbon copies of themselves, or become the people they wish they were themselves.
For some parents, this quest takes on a missionary zeal: They work to indoctrinate their children with a designated political viewpoint from an early age, raising them to be young ideologues. But new research suggests trying to plant those seeds during potty training might actually be the fastest way to guarantee political rebellion later on.
[massive snippage]
It’s understandable that parents with strong beliefs would feel it is their duty to see their children adopt those beliefs. But, however well-meaning these efforts are, they may be in vain. A study recently published in the British Journal of Political Science, based on data from the U.S. and U.K., found that parents who are insistent that their children adopt their political views inadvertently influence their children to abandon the belief once they become adults. The mechanism is perhaps surprising: Children who come from homes where politics is a frequent topic of discussion are more likely to talk about politics once they leave home, exposing them to new viewpoints—which they then adopt with surprising frequency.
The study, led by researcher Elias Dinas, also shows that these changes are especially likely to happen during the college years. Conservative culture warriors have warned for years that universities are outposts of liberal indoctrination—and the study seems to confirm at least some of that warning.
“Extreme parental views of the world give children a clear choice for being with the parents through agreement, or against parents through disagreement,” says Carl Pickhardt, an author and child psychologist. “Thus extremely rigid views of right/wrong, trust/distrust, love/hate can be embraced by children who want to stay connected to parents, and can be cast off by children who, for their own independence, are willing to place the parental relationship at risk.”
And that’s the rub with parenting styles like the Russons’ or Wilder’s. Just as the parents came to their views through their own experiences and then tried to teach it as established truth, the Dinas study shows how quickly that teaching can be set aside when the children have strong political awakenings of their own.
[massive snippage]
So what if parents decided not to influence their children at all? Without an expressed standard to rebel or measure their identity against, would the children of parents who foster a politically indifferent home develop a passion for politics or grow to hate it?
[massive snippage]
“I think we all learn early on, that no matter what people tell you, until you experience it yourself, the words of advice offered will fall short,” he says. “And that’s not a bad thing, I don't think.”
...................................................................................................................................................................
Do Children Just Take Their Parents' Political Beliefs? It's Not That Simple
A recent study shows that children who are raised to have strong beliefs are also more likely to rebel against those views as they age.
By Te-Erika Patterson, May 1, 2014
It is widely believed that children will imitate their parents’ behaviors and attitudes—whether parents want them to or not. The 1961 Bobo Doll experiment, conducted by Stanford professor Albert Bandura, demonstrated that children will interact with others in the precise manner that was modeled for them by adults.
Given this responsibility, many parents try to instruct their children and impart their views, perhaps hoping their kids become carbon copies of themselves, or become the people they wish they were themselves.
For some parents, this quest takes on a missionary zeal: They work to indoctrinate their children with a designated political viewpoint from an early age, raising them to be young ideologues. But new research suggests trying to plant those seeds during potty training might actually be the fastest way to guarantee political rebellion later on.
[massive snippage]
It’s understandable that parents with strong beliefs would feel it is their duty to see their children adopt those beliefs. But, however well-meaning these efforts are, they may be in vain. A study recently published in the British Journal of Political Science, based on data from the U.S. and U.K., found that parents who are insistent that their children adopt their political views inadvertently influence their children to abandon the belief once they become adults. The mechanism is perhaps surprising: Children who come from homes where politics is a frequent topic of discussion are more likely to talk about politics once they leave home, exposing them to new viewpoints—which they then adopt with surprising frequency.
The study, led by researcher Elias Dinas, also shows that these changes are especially likely to happen during the college years. Conservative culture warriors have warned for years that universities are outposts of liberal indoctrination—and the study seems to confirm at least some of that warning.
“Extreme parental views of the world give children a clear choice for being with the parents through agreement, or against parents through disagreement,” says Carl Pickhardt, an author and child psychologist. “Thus extremely rigid views of right/wrong, trust/distrust, love/hate can be embraced by children who want to stay connected to parents, and can be cast off by children who, for their own independence, are willing to place the parental relationship at risk.”
And that’s the rub with parenting styles like the Russons’ or Wilder’s. Just as the parents came to their views through their own experiences and then tried to teach it as established truth, the Dinas study shows how quickly that teaching can be set aside when the children have strong political awakenings of their own.
[massive snippage]
So what if parents decided not to influence their children at all? Without an expressed standard to rebel or measure their identity against, would the children of parents who foster a politically indifferent home develop a passion for politics or grow to hate it?
[massive snippage]
“I think we all learn early on, that no matter what people tell you, until you experience it yourself, the words of advice offered will fall short,” he says. “And that’s not a bad thing, I don't think.”
...................................................................................................................................................................
Friday, May 2, 2014
"The Koch brothers must be befuddled", thinking that "they had bought and paid for the loyalty of tea party folks"-- isn't that too darned bad!
...................................................................................................................................................................
Koch brothers face an unexpected new foe: tea party conservatives
By David Horsey, May 2, 2014
In their quest to cripple solar power and protect the profits of their fossil fuels-based businesses, the Koch brothers have run into an unexpected and potent adversary: tea party conservatives.
Recently, I wrote about how the billionaire Koch boys, conservative state legislators and big utilities are leading the charge in several states to force private citizens with solar panels on their homes to pay extra fees to be connected to the power grid. At the time it looked as if they had won a big victory in Oklahoma, where the Republican-dominated Legislature passed a bill authorizing just such a fee scheme.
It turns out all the hard work of the anti-solar forces was immediately blunted by an executive order issued by Gov. Mary Fallin. The order directs the state energy commission to impose solar fees only as a last resort and to continue making expansion of solar power a priority.
The question is how a Republican governor in a deep red state can go against the Kochs, the most notable financial contributors to right wing causes in the country. The answer is that among the thousands of people who are installing solar panels on their roofs (at an estimated rate of one new system every four minutes) are a whole bunch of independent-minded folks with strong libertarian impulses. They may or may not belong to the tea party, but they want to be able to fend for themselves without big government or big business telling them what they can and can’t do.
To these conservative-minded citizens, the extra fee being pushed by the Kochs and the utilities is the worst thing in the world: a tax.
“Monopoly utilities want to extinguish the independent rooftop solar market in America to protect their socialist control of how we get our electricity.” That assertion comes from the website of a group named TUSK, or Tell Utilities Solar Won’t Be Killed. It is a coalition of conservatives led by former California Congressman Barry Goldwater Jr. that, so far, has been very successful in beating back the energy industry attack.
Their next big fight may be in Arizona, where Goldwater’s father, the former senator and Republican presidential candidate, is venerated. There the utilities have managed to get a monthly $5 fee — or tax — slapped on the bills of ratepayers with home solar units. But the state’s largest utility company, Arizona Public Service, one of the many holdings of Pinnacle West Capital Corp., wanted so much more. They had sought a fee of $50 to $100 but got into trouble themselves by conducting a surreptitious campaign against solar users funded by “dark money” and then repeatedly lying about what they were up to. The Koch brothers are alleged to be among the sources of the mysterious funding.
Now Arizona Public Service is pushing a tax on solar companies that lease solar systems to homeowners. This new tactic could be blocked by another female Republican governor, Jan Brewer, who is sometimes called “the solar queen.” If she decides to step in she will have the backing of Goldwater and plenty of conservatives who like getting their power from the sun and not from some giant monopoly.
The Koch brothers must be befuddled. All this time they thought they had bought and paid for the loyalty of tea party folks. Now, it turns out they are dealing with genuine rebels who look at the pushy billionaires as just another manifestation of King George III.
...................................................................................................................................................................
Koch brothers face an unexpected new foe: tea party conservatives
By David Horsey, May 2, 2014
In their quest to cripple solar power and protect the profits of their fossil fuels-based businesses, the Koch brothers have run into an unexpected and potent adversary: tea party conservatives.
Recently, I wrote about how the billionaire Koch boys, conservative state legislators and big utilities are leading the charge in several states to force private citizens with solar panels on their homes to pay extra fees to be connected to the power grid. At the time it looked as if they had won a big victory in Oklahoma, where the Republican-dominated Legislature passed a bill authorizing just such a fee scheme.
It turns out all the hard work of the anti-solar forces was immediately blunted by an executive order issued by Gov. Mary Fallin. The order directs the state energy commission to impose solar fees only as a last resort and to continue making expansion of solar power a priority.
The question is how a Republican governor in a deep red state can go against the Kochs, the most notable financial contributors to right wing causes in the country. The answer is that among the thousands of people who are installing solar panels on their roofs (at an estimated rate of one new system every four minutes) are a whole bunch of independent-minded folks with strong libertarian impulses. They may or may not belong to the tea party, but they want to be able to fend for themselves without big government or big business telling them what they can and can’t do.
To these conservative-minded citizens, the extra fee being pushed by the Kochs and the utilities is the worst thing in the world: a tax.
“Monopoly utilities want to extinguish the independent rooftop solar market in America to protect their socialist control of how we get our electricity.” That assertion comes from the website of a group named TUSK, or Tell Utilities Solar Won’t Be Killed. It is a coalition of conservatives led by former California Congressman Barry Goldwater Jr. that, so far, has been very successful in beating back the energy industry attack.
Their next big fight may be in Arizona, where Goldwater’s father, the former senator and Republican presidential candidate, is venerated. There the utilities have managed to get a monthly $5 fee — or tax — slapped on the bills of ratepayers with home solar units. But the state’s largest utility company, Arizona Public Service, one of the many holdings of Pinnacle West Capital Corp., wanted so much more. They had sought a fee of $50 to $100 but got into trouble themselves by conducting a surreptitious campaign against solar users funded by “dark money” and then repeatedly lying about what they were up to. The Koch brothers are alleged to be among the sources of the mysterious funding.
Now Arizona Public Service is pushing a tax on solar companies that lease solar systems to homeowners. This new tactic could be blocked by another female Republican governor, Jan Brewer, who is sometimes called “the solar queen.” If she decides to step in she will have the backing of Goldwater and plenty of conservatives who like getting their power from the sun and not from some giant monopoly.
The Koch brothers must be befuddled. All this time they thought they had bought and paid for the loyalty of tea party folks. Now, it turns out they are dealing with genuine rebels who look at the pushy billionaires as just another manifestation of King George III.
...................................................................................................................................................................
"It’s up to voters to decide what is true or rubbish in the political arena."
...................................................................................................................................................................
No lie: Political campaign un-truthiness is OK
By Marilou Johanek, May 3, 2014
To lie or not to lie; that is not the question. Of course, “truthiness” as comedian Stephen Colbert puts it, is preferable to lying like a dog.
But everyone lies. Even saints lie, then they repent. Those who tell whoppers in the heat of a political campaign seldom do.
As long as negative, misleading, underhanded, dirty campaigning sways elections, why not twist the truth or discard it outright? Mudslinging works.
Voters say they’re tired of being inundated by false campaign ads that pass for political discourse. But every campaign season, they listen and watch what influences their vote.
Sixteen states, including Ohio, have enacted laws that punish political lies. Ohio’s law is being challenged in a case before the U.S. Supreme Court.
An anti-abortion group is leading the challenge with another group. Petitioners argue that Ohio’s ban on political lies told about a candidate during a campaign is an affront to constitutionally protected political speech.
The Susan B. Anthony List was accused of violating state law during the 2010 congressional elections. At issue was a campaign billboard the group wanted to post against then-U.S. Rep. Steve Driehaus (D., Cincinnati).
It charged him with supporting taxpayer-funded abortions by voting for the federal health reform law. It was a lie.
Public funds for abortion have been banned since the 1970s. President Obama signed an executive order that bars the Affordable Care Act from funding abortions. So Mr. Driehaus filed a complaint with the Ohio Elections Commission to block the ad on the grounds that it violated the state’s false-claims law.
The commission found probable cause for his complaint to advance. But Mr. Driehaus withdrew his complaint after he lost his re-election bid. The Susan B. Anthony group was not mollified and pushed for its day in court.
Members objected to the law itself, and maintained that even the threat of prosecution chills free speech. Lower courts didn’t buy the argument.
They ruled that, absent any prosecution under Ohio’s political-lie ban, the groups challenging the law had no legal standing to litigate. The high court justices, with a history of broadening application of the First Amendment, are likely to disagree.
Chances are they’ll remand the Ohio case to lower courts and let them resolve the constitutional challenge over restricting political speech. If necessary, the Supreme Court will revisit the matter.
But arguments before the high court last month revealed a mind-set on the bench that suggests the justices believe Ohio — and by extension in 15 other states — are wrong to criminalize political speech. The same court that said lying about one’s own military record was protected speech and not a federal crime seems inclined to lean the same way about state laws that punish false political speech.
“Don’t you think there’s a serious First Amendment concern with a state law that requires you to come before a commission to justify what you are going to say?” asked Justice Anthony Kennedy, a swing vote on the court.
Liberal Justice Ruth Ginsburg wondered whether even a probable-cause finding by the commission “is going to diminish the effect” of speech by members of a group, because “they have to answer this charge that they lied.”
Conservative Justice Antonin Scalia likened the elections commission to a “ministry of truth” and implied that “to be dragged” through its preliminary proceeding was harm enough. Political campaigns, added pundit Jack Shafer of Reuters, are about telling voters what they want to hear, not giving legal dispositions.
Wait, critics howl. If government can regulate truth in advertising, why not truth in political campaigns?
Here’s why: Determining the validity of a product’s claim is different from a panel of appointed (partisan?) bureaucrats determining the legitimacy of political claims.
McDonald’s can’t sell Big Macs as healthy. But political combatants can hurl falsehoods against one another during an election. It’s up to voters to decide what is true or rubbish in the political arena. And it’s up to voters to punish or reward political candidates at the ballot box.
Susan B. Anthony List vs. Driehaus is about protecting the right to stand on a political soapbox during an election campaign and concoct whoppers about adversaries.
That’s no lie. And it’s nothing courts or commissions should judge or penalize as a crime.
...................................................................................................................................................................
No lie: Political campaign un-truthiness is OK
By Marilou Johanek, May 3, 2014
To lie or not to lie; that is not the question. Of course, “truthiness” as comedian Stephen Colbert puts it, is preferable to lying like a dog.
But everyone lies. Even saints lie, then they repent. Those who tell whoppers in the heat of a political campaign seldom do.
As long as negative, misleading, underhanded, dirty campaigning sways elections, why not twist the truth or discard it outright? Mudslinging works.
Voters say they’re tired of being inundated by false campaign ads that pass for political discourse. But every campaign season, they listen and watch what influences their vote.
Sixteen states, including Ohio, have enacted laws that punish political lies. Ohio’s law is being challenged in a case before the U.S. Supreme Court.
An anti-abortion group is leading the challenge with another group. Petitioners argue that Ohio’s ban on political lies told about a candidate during a campaign is an affront to constitutionally protected political speech.
The Susan B. Anthony List was accused of violating state law during the 2010 congressional elections. At issue was a campaign billboard the group wanted to post against then-U.S. Rep. Steve Driehaus (D., Cincinnati).
It charged him with supporting taxpayer-funded abortions by voting for the federal health reform law. It was a lie.
Public funds for abortion have been banned since the 1970s. President Obama signed an executive order that bars the Affordable Care Act from funding abortions. So Mr. Driehaus filed a complaint with the Ohio Elections Commission to block the ad on the grounds that it violated the state’s false-claims law.
The commission found probable cause for his complaint to advance. But Mr. Driehaus withdrew his complaint after he lost his re-election bid. The Susan B. Anthony group was not mollified and pushed for its day in court.
Members objected to the law itself, and maintained that even the threat of prosecution chills free speech. Lower courts didn’t buy the argument.
They ruled that, absent any prosecution under Ohio’s political-lie ban, the groups challenging the law had no legal standing to litigate. The high court justices, with a history of broadening application of the First Amendment, are likely to disagree.
Chances are they’ll remand the Ohio case to lower courts and let them resolve the constitutional challenge over restricting political speech. If necessary, the Supreme Court will revisit the matter.
But arguments before the high court last month revealed a mind-set on the bench that suggests the justices believe Ohio — and by extension in 15 other states — are wrong to criminalize political speech. The same court that said lying about one’s own military record was protected speech and not a federal crime seems inclined to lean the same way about state laws that punish false political speech.
“Don’t you think there’s a serious First Amendment concern with a state law that requires you to come before a commission to justify what you are going to say?” asked Justice Anthony Kennedy, a swing vote on the court.
Liberal Justice Ruth Ginsburg wondered whether even a probable-cause finding by the commission “is going to diminish the effect” of speech by members of a group, because “they have to answer this charge that they lied.”
Conservative Justice Antonin Scalia likened the elections commission to a “ministry of truth” and implied that “to be dragged” through its preliminary proceeding was harm enough. Political campaigns, added pundit Jack Shafer of Reuters, are about telling voters what they want to hear, not giving legal dispositions.
Wait, critics howl. If government can regulate truth in advertising, why not truth in political campaigns?
Here’s why: Determining the validity of a product’s claim is different from a panel of appointed (partisan?) bureaucrats determining the legitimacy of political claims.
McDonald’s can’t sell Big Macs as healthy. But political combatants can hurl falsehoods against one another during an election. It’s up to voters to decide what is true or rubbish in the political arena. And it’s up to voters to punish or reward political candidates at the ballot box.
Susan B. Anthony List vs. Driehaus is about protecting the right to stand on a political soapbox during an election campaign and concoct whoppers about adversaries.
That’s no lie. And it’s nothing courts or commissions should judge or penalize as a crime.
...................................................................................................................................................................
"... reporters do an important public service ..." and to maintain their objectiveness they must "... abstain from political campaigning activities ..."
...................................................................................................................................................................
Why reporters abstain from the political process
By Anna Staver, May 1, 2014
A man's question at a Marion County GOP meeting caught me off guard earlier this month, and it's been rolling around in my head ever since.
While waiting on vote tallies for county commissioner nominees, several people weaved their way through the crowd gathering signatures to put issues on the November ballot.
I declined to sign all of them, saying I was a reporter.
One signature gatherer paused and said, "But you're also a human being."
I countered by saying it's company policy that reporters abstain from political campaigning activities like signing petitions, canvassing, placing signs in our yards or bumper stickers on our cars.
A man sitting in the metal folding chair in front of me turned, leaned over and asked whether I was OK with my employer taking my right to free speech.
I'll admit my explanation was convoluted and rambling. The prohibition on political activity for a political reporter was drilled into me from my first journalism school class.
It's just not appropriate.
I don't think that's a satisfactory answer, so hopefully here is a clearer, better reasoned response.
Even if the Statesman Journal had no policy about my participation in the electoral process, my personal moral compass tells me it's wrong.
Why?
Because being a political reporter means I trade parts of my right to free speech for access.
For example: If I have a question about a proposed law on medical marijuana, I'll sit down with the lawmakers, bill writers and experts until I figure out what it does and what it means for you.
I'll call far flung counties and cities in Oregon to see how they are dealing with dispensaries and ask legal experts and political thinkers what that says about our state.
Most people don't have that time in their day-to-day lives, but I hope they can carve out a few moments each day to read articles on the issues they care about.
I believe that makes what I and my fellow reporters do an important public service, and it's a responsibility I don't take lightly.
If I was fund raising for the ballot initiative to allow businesses owners to decline wedding services to same-sex couples, I could imagine Oregon United for Marriage declining to talk to me due to concerns about my ability to be objective.
Do I have an opinion on same-sex unions, marijuana, PERS reform and the Columbia River Crossing?
Yes.
It would be disingenuous of me to say that I sit in marathon meetings, spend hours poring over documents and interview subjects only to find myself personally undecided.
My hope is that those biases don't worm their way into my writing, but I'm sure some of you think they do.
I've been called a "dirty liberal," a "right-wing corporate shill" and a number of other names that aren't suitable for print.
Do I always perfectly correct for my bias? No.
Do I try my best? Yes.
Could you do any better? Maybe.
The point is that I intentionally keep that part of my life hidden in the hopes that over time my sources and you trust me to be tough but fair, and I don't think we could get there if they knew where I stood at the outset.
So, here's my promise: You let me slide on signing your petition, and I will do my best to make sure the public knows about your cause and that your side gets a fair shake.
Deal?
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Why reporters abstain from the political process
By Anna Staver, May 1, 2014
A man's question at a Marion County GOP meeting caught me off guard earlier this month, and it's been rolling around in my head ever since.
While waiting on vote tallies for county commissioner nominees, several people weaved their way through the crowd gathering signatures to put issues on the November ballot.
I declined to sign all of them, saying I was a reporter.
One signature gatherer paused and said, "But you're also a human being."
I countered by saying it's company policy that reporters abstain from political campaigning activities like signing petitions, canvassing, placing signs in our yards or bumper stickers on our cars.
A man sitting in the metal folding chair in front of me turned, leaned over and asked whether I was OK with my employer taking my right to free speech.
I'll admit my explanation was convoluted and rambling. The prohibition on political activity for a political reporter was drilled into me from my first journalism school class.
It's just not appropriate.
I don't think that's a satisfactory answer, so hopefully here is a clearer, better reasoned response.
Even if the Statesman Journal had no policy about my participation in the electoral process, my personal moral compass tells me it's wrong.
Why?
Because being a political reporter means I trade parts of my right to free speech for access.
For example: If I have a question about a proposed law on medical marijuana, I'll sit down with the lawmakers, bill writers and experts until I figure out what it does and what it means for you.
I'll call far flung counties and cities in Oregon to see how they are dealing with dispensaries and ask legal experts and political thinkers what that says about our state.
Most people don't have that time in their day-to-day lives, but I hope they can carve out a few moments each day to read articles on the issues they care about.
I believe that makes what I and my fellow reporters do an important public service, and it's a responsibility I don't take lightly.
If I was fund raising for the ballot initiative to allow businesses owners to decline wedding services to same-sex couples, I could imagine Oregon United for Marriage declining to talk to me due to concerns about my ability to be objective.
Do I have an opinion on same-sex unions, marijuana, PERS reform and the Columbia River Crossing?
Yes.
It would be disingenuous of me to say that I sit in marathon meetings, spend hours poring over documents and interview subjects only to find myself personally undecided.
My hope is that those biases don't worm their way into my writing, but I'm sure some of you think they do.
I've been called a "dirty liberal," a "right-wing corporate shill" and a number of other names that aren't suitable for print.
Do I always perfectly correct for my bias? No.
Do I try my best? Yes.
Could you do any better? Maybe.
The point is that I intentionally keep that part of my life hidden in the hopes that over time my sources and you trust me to be tough but fair, and I don't think we could get there if they knew where I stood at the outset.
So, here's my promise: You let me slide on signing your petition, and I will do my best to make sure the public knows about your cause and that your side gets a fair shake.
Deal?
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33 to go!
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Vermont Calls to Take Money out of Politics
By Steph Machado, May 2, 2014
The Vermont Legislature became the first to pass a resolution calling for a Constitutional Convention to change the country's campaign finance laws.
The effort is focused around overturning Citizen's United, a 2010 decision that equated money with free speech, allowing for an influx of money into political campaigns.
A more recent decision, known as the McCutcheon decision, struck down overall limits of campaign contributions.
There are only two ways to overturn a Supreme Court decision: Congress needs to pass a constitutional amendment, or a coalition of at least 34 states need to form a convention.
"The fact is that because of the Citizen's United decision, because of McCutcheon, and other Supreme Court decisions, there's really no other way to resolve this problem," said State Sen. Ginny Lyons (D-Chittenden), who sponsored the resolution.
Lyons says she wants it to be more clear that states have the right to their own campaign finance laws. Vermont recently passed a campaign finance law that was seven years in the making.
Vermont was the first state to pass such a resolution, so 33 others need to join in.
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Vermont Calls to Take Money out of Politics
By Steph Machado, May 2, 2014
The Vermont Legislature became the first to pass a resolution calling for a Constitutional Convention to change the country's campaign finance laws.
The effort is focused around overturning Citizen's United, a 2010 decision that equated money with free speech, allowing for an influx of money into political campaigns.
A more recent decision, known as the McCutcheon decision, struck down overall limits of campaign contributions.
There are only two ways to overturn a Supreme Court decision: Congress needs to pass a constitutional amendment, or a coalition of at least 34 states need to form a convention.
"The fact is that because of the Citizen's United decision, because of McCutcheon, and other Supreme Court decisions, there's really no other way to resolve this problem," said State Sen. Ginny Lyons (D-Chittenden), who sponsored the resolution.
Lyons says she wants it to be more clear that states have the right to their own campaign finance laws. Vermont recently passed a campaign finance law that was seven years in the making.
Vermont was the first state to pass such a resolution, so 33 others need to join in.
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The creationists "... don't want other people to be swayed by logic and reason. It's bad for business."
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Creationists’ Neil deGrasse Tyson hysteria reaches fever pitch
Creationists find evolution so offensive that this week they attacked Neil deGrasse Tyson and his show Cosmos over the claim that stars evolved and created life as we know it. In episode 8 titled, “Sisters of the Sun,” Tyson highlighted the stellar evolution and explained in detail the life and death of stars.
Of course creationists take issue with stars that are scientifically proven to be billions of years old. The creationist website that’s emerging as the leading opposition to Tyson and his show, Answers in Genesis (AiG), claimed: “We know from the Bible that God created the stars on Day Four of Creation Week about 6,000 years ago.”
Yet they do not know this, because there is zero evidence that any star we see in the sky is less only 6,000 years old, in fact for us to see almost any of the stars in the sky they would have to be hundreds of millions or billions of years old because of how far away they are (as explained in earlier episodes of Cosmos about what a light-year is).
The continued use of the universe’s actual timescale, an estimated 14.8 billion years to now, is a thorn in the side of creationists who know anything older than 6,000 years brings their entire myth to its knees.
AiG even goes as far to deny the fact that stars are born at all: “Whether or not stars are still forming today, the Bible does not specify, but no one has ever seen a star form.”
Yet we do not need to the Bible to know if stars are still being born. Astronomers at from a collection of Universities from the US to Germany have observed such phenomenon, a star being born 800 million light years away. This coupled the Hubble Space Telescope having located massive amounts of stellar nurseries and has helped us fully explain the birth of stars.
Not surprisingly AiG’s own Danny Faulkner, an astronomer by degree, but not in practice claims that if stars are being formed today that we do not need science to explain how because God has the ability to make such things happen on his own.
This kind of thinking is what stunts scientific growth in the US and around the world. Faulkner and those like him aren’t looking for natural answers to the amazing universe we inhabit and simply credit anything and everything to God. When science does make a massive discovery that happens to through a wrench in their faith based beliefs, they simply reject the science.
Tyson really got under creationists’ skin towards the end of the episode when he proclaimed: “The silicon in the rocks, the oxygen in the air, the carbon in our DNA, the iron in our skyscrapers, the silver in our jewelry—were all made in stars billions of years ago. Our planet, our society, and we ourselves are stardust.”
AiG claims the idea that stars created the chemicals for life is nothing but an invention my “big bang cosmologists,” or as the rest of the world calls them, scientists, who realized that they needed a way to explain how the atoms and chemicals needed for life on earth could not have been created during the big bang, in order to explain away God they had to invent the story that stars created these chemicals.
However they brush over all the scientific evidence that confirms the stars do in fact create the chemicals needed for life and the chemicals we find in all of life just happen to be found in all the stars.
In fact, in this new episode and one previous, Tyson explains exactly how we know the composition of the stars, something that has been understood for many generations.
Uncomfortable truths cause creationists to make extraordinary claims, and like Carl Sagan said many years ago, “extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.”
AiG closes their argument against stellar evolution by claiming the naturalist explanation for life is tragic and shames Tyson and the writers of Cosmos for not glorifying God, who they claim is the creator of all things, and then refer back to what they call creation week, this is the same creation week that has light being created before the sun and stars.
Just like each week though, AiG treats us to a list of Bible versus and fail to ever provide a link to peer-reviewed journals that discredit the claims of Tyson and Cosmos.
Relying on Biblical scripture is no way to explain our universe and until creationists realize this they will continue to be offended week in and week out as Tyson explains with great eloquence the truth of our cosmos.
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Creationists’ Neil deGrasse Tyson hysteria reaches fever pitch
Ken Ham's Answers in Genesis website responds to the newest episode of "Cosmos" with a scathing "rebuttal"
By Dan Arel, May 2, 2014Creationists find evolution so offensive that this week they attacked Neil deGrasse Tyson and his show Cosmos over the claim that stars evolved and created life as we know it. In episode 8 titled, “Sisters of the Sun,” Tyson highlighted the stellar evolution and explained in detail the life and death of stars.
Of course creationists take issue with stars that are scientifically proven to be billions of years old. The creationist website that’s emerging as the leading opposition to Tyson and his show, Answers in Genesis (AiG), claimed: “We know from the Bible that God created the stars on Day Four of Creation Week about 6,000 years ago.”
Yet they do not know this, because there is zero evidence that any star we see in the sky is less only 6,000 years old, in fact for us to see almost any of the stars in the sky they would have to be hundreds of millions or billions of years old because of how far away they are (as explained in earlier episodes of Cosmos about what a light-year is).
The continued use of the universe’s actual timescale, an estimated 14.8 billion years to now, is a thorn in the side of creationists who know anything older than 6,000 years brings their entire myth to its knees.
AiG even goes as far to deny the fact that stars are born at all: “Whether or not stars are still forming today, the Bible does not specify, but no one has ever seen a star form.”
Yet we do not need to the Bible to know if stars are still being born. Astronomers at from a collection of Universities from the US to Germany have observed such phenomenon, a star being born 800 million light years away. This coupled the Hubble Space Telescope having located massive amounts of stellar nurseries and has helped us fully explain the birth of stars.
Not surprisingly AiG’s own Danny Faulkner, an astronomer by degree, but not in practice claims that if stars are being formed today that we do not need science to explain how because God has the ability to make such things happen on his own.
This kind of thinking is what stunts scientific growth in the US and around the world. Faulkner and those like him aren’t looking for natural answers to the amazing universe we inhabit and simply credit anything and everything to God. When science does make a massive discovery that happens to through a wrench in their faith based beliefs, they simply reject the science.
Tyson really got under creationists’ skin towards the end of the episode when he proclaimed: “The silicon in the rocks, the oxygen in the air, the carbon in our DNA, the iron in our skyscrapers, the silver in our jewelry—were all made in stars billions of years ago. Our planet, our society, and we ourselves are stardust.”
AiG claims the idea that stars created the chemicals for life is nothing but an invention my “big bang cosmologists,” or as the rest of the world calls them, scientists, who realized that they needed a way to explain how the atoms and chemicals needed for life on earth could not have been created during the big bang, in order to explain away God they had to invent the story that stars created these chemicals.
However they brush over all the scientific evidence that confirms the stars do in fact create the chemicals needed for life and the chemicals we find in all of life just happen to be found in all the stars.
In fact, in this new episode and one previous, Tyson explains exactly how we know the composition of the stars, something that has been understood for many generations.
Uncomfortable truths cause creationists to make extraordinary claims, and like Carl Sagan said many years ago, “extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.”
AiG closes their argument against stellar evolution by claiming the naturalist explanation for life is tragic and shames Tyson and the writers of Cosmos for not glorifying God, who they claim is the creator of all things, and then refer back to what they call creation week, this is the same creation week that has light being created before the sun and stars.
Just like each week though, AiG treats us to a list of Bible versus and fail to ever provide a link to peer-reviewed journals that discredit the claims of Tyson and Cosmos.
Relying on Biblical scripture is no way to explain our universe and until creationists realize this they will continue to be offended week in and week out as Tyson explains with great eloquence the truth of our cosmos.
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Thursday, May 1, 2014
"Broadcasters are required by law to keep information about political ads they air in their stations' public files. Sunlight and CLC found and documented several violations of these rules ..."
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Political TV advertising in the USA: scofflaw broadcasters hide the dark money of political influence
By Cory Doctorow, May 1, 2014
Nicko from the Sunlight Foundation writes, "Today, Sunlight Foundation and the Campaign Legal Center, represented by the Institute for Public Representation at Georgetown University Law Center, filed complaints at the Federal Communications Commission against 11 broadcasters in nine markets for failing to comply with the agency's political ad disclosure rules. Broadcasters are required by law to keep information about political ads they air in their stations' public files. Sunlight and CLC found and documented several violations of these rules, and examples are included in the complaints."
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Political TV advertising in the USA: scofflaw broadcasters hide the dark money of political influence
By Cory Doctorow, May 1, 2014
Nicko from the Sunlight Foundation writes, "Today, Sunlight Foundation and the Campaign Legal Center, represented by the Institute for Public Representation at Georgetown University Law Center, filed complaints at the Federal Communications Commission against 11 broadcasters in nine markets for failing to comply with the agency's political ad disclosure rules. Broadcasters are required by law to keep information about political ads they air in their stations' public files. Sunlight and CLC found and documented several violations of these rules, and examples are included in the complaints."
In the wake of major Supreme Court decisions that changed the shape of campaign finance in the U.S., more and more money is flowing from outside groups who aren't required to file disclosures at the Federal Election Commission. This dark money, is often used to buy ads in support of or against candidates and issues. A recent study by the Wesleyan Media Project found that outside groups have sponsored 59 percent of television ads in the current election cycle. In some markets, outside groups have run 75 percent or more of the ads that have aired.
Often the only way to track this money, which is so obviously influencing our elections, is through the broadcasters' political files, which until last year, were kept only on paper, locked away in file cabinets.
The Sunlight Foundation was instrumental in getting the FCC to require broadcasters to put their files online, but even before that, we gathered files collected by volunteers from across the country and digitized them ourselves, creating Political Ad Sleuth - a searchable database of broadcasters' public and political files.How TV stations are letting political advertisers play hide and seek [Kathy Kiely/Sunlight Foundation]
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The Koch brothers' interference in an Ohio levy vote has backfired! Their involvement has helped voters decide to support the levy.
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Koch brothers don’t belong here
By The Columbus Dispatch, April 30, 2014
The proposed levy for Columbus Zoo and Aquarium is a local issue about a local treasure that will be decided by local voters. To make their decision, Franklin County voters do not need the help of an out-of-state organization that knows nothing about local values and has no stake in the local economy and local quality of life.
Yet, this outside group, Americans for Prosperity, supported by billionaire brothers David and Charles Koch, is pouring in money to oppose the permanent 1.25-mill property-tax levy for the zoo.
The levy would cost the owner of a $100,000 home about $44 a year, up from $21. That’s an outstanding deal, because it would stabilize the zoo’s finances and provide for a number of attractive improvements, all of which would benefit Franklin County.
Many Franklin County voters already have called foul on this outside interference. And central Ohio leaders know this AFP move is fishy. On Monday, Columbus Mayor Michael B. Coleman, City Council President Andrew J. Ginther, Franklin County Board of Commissioners President Marilyn Brown, Columbus Partnership President and CEO Alex Fischer and Ohio AFSCME Council 8 President John Lyall blasted the Koch brothers’ interference:
“A political group funded by undisclosed donors with a Washington-area post office address is trying to influence our election.”
Franklin County voters should decide the zoo issue, local officials said, not “carpetbaggers who don’t live here and don’t care about our community.”
Americans for Prosperity’s participation is having a galvanizing, though unintentional, effect. Many Franklin County residents have said the AFP involvement has helped them decide to support the levy.
Central Ohioans understand the true bottom line. About 2 million people a year visit our world-class zoo. A relatively small investment by taxpayers leverages a $238 million annual boost to the local economy.
AFP’s approach also is deceptive. Its flier describes the zoo levy as “a 105 percent property-tax hike,” implying that each property owner’s total property-tax bill would more than double.
In truth, the levy would amount to less than 1 percent of the overall residential property tax.
Further, while the levy will contribute to building a rain-forest, aquatic-themed zoo attraction Downtown, 85 percent of the levy would be used to update and support popular exhibits at the main zoo.
National political-advocacy groups, including AFP and liberal counterparts such as Emily’s List, long have played a role in supporting local candidates.
That’s fine, given the existence of equally matched donor groups of both stripes. But there’s something unfair about a national heavy-hitter targeting a local ballot issue.
John Kulewicz, co-chairman of the zoo levy campaign, called AFP’s intervention a “stunt.”
“I’ve never heard that they’ve had any interest before in the Columbus Zoo or the people of Franklin County,” he told The Dispatch. “They are playing us.”
Franklin County voters should remember that this group does not have their interests at heart.
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Koch brothers don’t belong here
By The Columbus Dispatch, April 30, 2014
The proposed levy for Columbus Zoo and Aquarium is a local issue about a local treasure that will be decided by local voters. To make their decision, Franklin County voters do not need the help of an out-of-state organization that knows nothing about local values and has no stake in the local economy and local quality of life.
Yet, this outside group, Americans for Prosperity, supported by billionaire brothers David and Charles Koch, is pouring in money to oppose the permanent 1.25-mill property-tax levy for the zoo.
The levy would cost the owner of a $100,000 home about $44 a year, up from $21. That’s an outstanding deal, because it would stabilize the zoo’s finances and provide for a number of attractive improvements, all of which would benefit Franklin County.
Many Franklin County voters already have called foul on this outside interference. And central Ohio leaders know this AFP move is fishy. On Monday, Columbus Mayor Michael B. Coleman, City Council President Andrew J. Ginther, Franklin County Board of Commissioners President Marilyn Brown, Columbus Partnership President and CEO Alex Fischer and Ohio AFSCME Council 8 President John Lyall blasted the Koch brothers’ interference:
“A political group funded by undisclosed donors with a Washington-area post office address is trying to influence our election.”
Franklin County voters should decide the zoo issue, local officials said, not “carpetbaggers who don’t live here and don’t care about our community.”
Americans for Prosperity’s participation is having a galvanizing, though unintentional, effect. Many Franklin County residents have said the AFP involvement has helped them decide to support the levy.
Central Ohioans understand the true bottom line. About 2 million people a year visit our world-class zoo. A relatively small investment by taxpayers leverages a $238 million annual boost to the local economy.
AFP’s approach also is deceptive. Its flier describes the zoo levy as “a 105 percent property-tax hike,” implying that each property owner’s total property-tax bill would more than double.
In truth, the levy would amount to less than 1 percent of the overall residential property tax.
Further, while the levy will contribute to building a rain-forest, aquatic-themed zoo attraction Downtown, 85 percent of the levy would be used to update and support popular exhibits at the main zoo.
National political-advocacy groups, including AFP and liberal counterparts such as Emily’s List, long have played a role in supporting local candidates.
That’s fine, given the existence of equally matched donor groups of both stripes. But there’s something unfair about a national heavy-hitter targeting a local ballot issue.
John Kulewicz, co-chairman of the zoo levy campaign, called AFP’s intervention a “stunt.”
“I’ve never heard that they’ve had any interest before in the Columbus Zoo or the people of Franklin County,” he told The Dispatch. “They are playing us.”
Franklin County voters should remember that this group does not have their interests at heart.
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Hmmm, can we say that Republicans are dependent on handouts of dark money from the Koch brothers and others of their ilk?
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GOP Senate Candidate Likens Food Stamp Recipients To Wild Animals
By Samantha Lachman, May 1, 2014
A Republican Senate candidate equated food stamp recipients to wild animals in a Facebook post Monday.
The candidate, Dr. Annette Bosworth, is running in the Republican primary to succeed Sen. Tim Johnson (D-S.D.), who is retiring. Bosworth shared a viral image on her personal Facebook page criticizing the food stamp program for inviting dependency.
“The food stamp program is administered by the U.S. Department of Agriculture," the graphic reads. "They proudly report that they distribute free meals and food stamps to over 46 million people on an annual basis."
“Meanwhile, the National Park Service, run by the U.S. Department of the Interior, asks us ‘please do not feed the animals.’ Their stated reason for this policy being that … the animals will grow dependent on the handouts, and then they will never learn to take care of themselves,” the post continues. “This concludes today’s lesson. Any questions?”
Former South Dakota Gov. Mike Rounds and state Rep. Stace Nelson are considered the frontrunners in the Republican primary, with Bosworth trailing behind.
The Republican-controlled House of Representatives passed a farm bill in January that cut about $800 million a year from the $80 billion-a-year food stamp program.
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GOP Senate Candidate Likens Food Stamp Recipients To Wild Animals
By Samantha Lachman, May 1, 2014
A Republican Senate candidate equated food stamp recipients to wild animals in a Facebook post Monday.
The candidate, Dr. Annette Bosworth, is running in the Republican primary to succeed Sen. Tim Johnson (D-S.D.), who is retiring. Bosworth shared a viral image on her personal Facebook page criticizing the food stamp program for inviting dependency.
“The food stamp program is administered by the U.S. Department of Agriculture," the graphic reads. "They proudly report that they distribute free meals and food stamps to over 46 million people on an annual basis."
“Meanwhile, the National Park Service, run by the U.S. Department of the Interior, asks us ‘please do not feed the animals.’ Their stated reason for this policy being that … the animals will grow dependent on the handouts, and then they will never learn to take care of themselves,” the post continues. “This concludes today’s lesson. Any questions?”
Former South Dakota Gov. Mike Rounds and state Rep. Stace Nelson are considered the frontrunners in the Republican primary, with Bosworth trailing behind.
The Republican-controlled House of Representatives passed a farm bill in January that cut about $800 million a year from the $80 billion-a-year food stamp program.
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"It is ironic that a decision extolling and relying upon disclosure has led to a significant reduction in the transparency of overall political spending."
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Dollars and Sense: Stopping Secret Political Spending
By Liz Kennedy, April 30, 2014
At a Senate hearing today, retired Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens will testify about the rise of dark money and the impact of what he's called the "grossly incorrect" decision in McCutcheon v FEC.
This truth-teller, who correctly characterized the majority opinion Citizens United v. FEC as a "glittering generality," has pulled no punches indicting Chief Justice Roberts' opinion in McCutcheon, saying "the voter is less important than the man who provides money to the candidate. It's really wrong."
About the only thing the Supreme Court got right in its Citizens United and McCutcheon decisions was its repeated affirmation that transparency for political spending is critical in a functioning democracy in order for voters to make educated judgments about different messages, and to prevent corruption. But though the Supreme Court continuously upholds disclosure requirements, our government has not yet adopted an effective system of disclosure requirements, and dark money is on the rise.
Sophisticated political actors have exploited loopholes and abused the system to hide the identities of their financial supporters and shield them from accountability. More than $300 million in secret political spending influenced the 2012 elections. That's over twice as much as the $130 million in dark money in the 2010 elections, the first after Citizens United. According to OpenSecrets.org, $256 million came from 501(c)(4) groups, and $55 million came from 501(c)(6) trade associations, neither of which disclose the identities of their financial supporters.
The Court was wrong to assume, as it did in Citizens United, that "with the advent of the Internet, prompt disclosure of expenditures can provide shareholders and citizens with the information needed to hold corporations and elected officials accountable for their positions and supporters." While the Court rightly recognized that "disclosure permits citizens and shareholders to react to the speech of corporate entities in a proper way," and that transparency "enables the electorate to make informed decisions and give proper weight to different speakers and messages," the rules that would compel this information aren't in place. It is ironic that a decision extolling and relying upon disclosure has led to a significant reduction in the transparency of overall political spending.
The Court failed to recognize the reality of the rise of dark money and secret political spending again in McCutcheon, where Chief Justice Roberts wrote that "with modern technology, disclosure now offers a particularly effective means of arming the voting public with information." But secret political spending breeds unaccountable political favoritism, undermining the health of our political processes and representative democracy. The Supreme Court recognized in its seminal campaign finance case Buckley v Valeo, that "a public armed with information about a candidate's most generous supporters is better able to detect any post-election special favors that might be given in return."
In this moment, though the Supreme Court has damaged our ability to prevent big money and special interest donors from dominating the political discourse and silencing the rest of us, there is an urgent need to require that this political spending at least be transparent and accountable. If the voices of the wealthiest are those being heard by our government, at least the rest of us will know who our government is listening to if political spenders are required to reveal their identities.
Congress and the executive branch must act swiftly to prevent further secret political spending from influencing our elections. There are several opportunities to respond to the growing crisis of dark money in our democracy and protect the interests of voters in knowing who is behind political messages meant to influence their votes and elections and the interests of citizens in seeing their government business conducted in an above board and accountable manner.
Huge, bipartisan majorities of Americans support transparency for political spending, and Congress should pass comprehensive disclosure legislation. The DISCLOSE Act would have established such a system in 2010 on the heels of Citizens United had it not failed by 1 vote to overcome a party-line filibuster.
The Securities and Exchange Commission has the authority and responsibility to respond to the new circumstances for corporate political spending by issuing a rule to require that all corporate political spending be disclosed to shareholders. Presently, shareholders don't even know how the companies they're invested in may be spending money to influence elections. Investors have a right to this information so they can make informed investing decisions and avoid undue risk.
The Internal Revenue Service should continue with its rulemaking to stop the abuse of the tax exempt form by political nonprofits seeking to hide their donors by masquerading as social welfare groups. And President Obama should increase transparency for political spending, and prevent abuse, by issuing an executive order requiring disclosure of political spending by government contractors.
Congress, the SEC, the IRS, the FEC, and President Obama can and should all take immediate action to bring an end to the scandal of secret political spending in the interests of voters and our free democratic society.
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Dollars and Sense: Stopping Secret Political Spending
By Liz Kennedy, April 30, 2014
At a Senate hearing today, retired Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens will testify about the rise of dark money and the impact of what he's called the "grossly incorrect" decision in McCutcheon v FEC.
This truth-teller, who correctly characterized the majority opinion Citizens United v. FEC as a "glittering generality," has pulled no punches indicting Chief Justice Roberts' opinion in McCutcheon, saying "the voter is less important than the man who provides money to the candidate. It's really wrong."
About the only thing the Supreme Court got right in its Citizens United and McCutcheon decisions was its repeated affirmation that transparency for political spending is critical in a functioning democracy in order for voters to make educated judgments about different messages, and to prevent corruption. But though the Supreme Court continuously upholds disclosure requirements, our government has not yet adopted an effective system of disclosure requirements, and dark money is on the rise.
Sophisticated political actors have exploited loopholes and abused the system to hide the identities of their financial supporters and shield them from accountability. More than $300 million in secret political spending influenced the 2012 elections. That's over twice as much as the $130 million in dark money in the 2010 elections, the first after Citizens United. According to OpenSecrets.org, $256 million came from 501(c)(4) groups, and $55 million came from 501(c)(6) trade associations, neither of which disclose the identities of their financial supporters.
The Court was wrong to assume, as it did in Citizens United, that "with the advent of the Internet, prompt disclosure of expenditures can provide shareholders and citizens with the information needed to hold corporations and elected officials accountable for their positions and supporters." While the Court rightly recognized that "disclosure permits citizens and shareholders to react to the speech of corporate entities in a proper way," and that transparency "enables the electorate to make informed decisions and give proper weight to different speakers and messages," the rules that would compel this information aren't in place. It is ironic that a decision extolling and relying upon disclosure has led to a significant reduction in the transparency of overall political spending.
The Court failed to recognize the reality of the rise of dark money and secret political spending again in McCutcheon, where Chief Justice Roberts wrote that "with modern technology, disclosure now offers a particularly effective means of arming the voting public with information." But secret political spending breeds unaccountable political favoritism, undermining the health of our political processes and representative democracy. The Supreme Court recognized in its seminal campaign finance case Buckley v Valeo, that "a public armed with information about a candidate's most generous supporters is better able to detect any post-election special favors that might be given in return."
In this moment, though the Supreme Court has damaged our ability to prevent big money and special interest donors from dominating the political discourse and silencing the rest of us, there is an urgent need to require that this political spending at least be transparent and accountable. If the voices of the wealthiest are those being heard by our government, at least the rest of us will know who our government is listening to if political spenders are required to reveal their identities.
Congress and the executive branch must act swiftly to prevent further secret political spending from influencing our elections. There are several opportunities to respond to the growing crisis of dark money in our democracy and protect the interests of voters in knowing who is behind political messages meant to influence their votes and elections and the interests of citizens in seeing their government business conducted in an above board and accountable manner.
Huge, bipartisan majorities of Americans support transparency for political spending, and Congress should pass comprehensive disclosure legislation. The DISCLOSE Act would have established such a system in 2010 on the heels of Citizens United had it not failed by 1 vote to overcome a party-line filibuster.
The Securities and Exchange Commission has the authority and responsibility to respond to the new circumstances for corporate political spending by issuing a rule to require that all corporate political spending be disclosed to shareholders. Presently, shareholders don't even know how the companies they're invested in may be spending money to influence elections. Investors have a right to this information so they can make informed investing decisions and avoid undue risk.
The Internal Revenue Service should continue with its rulemaking to stop the abuse of the tax exempt form by political nonprofits seeking to hide their donors by masquerading as social welfare groups. And President Obama should increase transparency for political spending, and prevent abuse, by issuing an executive order requiring disclosure of political spending by government contractors.
Congress, the SEC, the IRS, the FEC, and President Obama can and should all take immediate action to bring an end to the scandal of secret political spending in the interests of voters and our free democratic society.
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