Panamaniacs, Or Coming To America

The "Panama Papers", a treasure trove of terabytes of leaked tax law documents from Panamanian law firm Mossack Fonseca, shows just how corrupt over the years the world's elite have been when it comes to hiding what could be trillions from the tax man.  Several current and former world leaders, high-profile criminals, and even wealthy celebrities all use shell corporations set up by the law firm as tax havens, and now the information is there for the world to see.

Mossack Fonseca is not a household name, but the Panamanian law firm has long been well known to the global financial and political elite, and thanks to a massive 2.6 terabyte leak of its confidential papers to the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists it's about to become much better known. A huge team ofhundreds of journalists is pouring over the documents they are calling the Panama Papers.

The firm's operations are diverse and international in scope, but they originate in a single specialty — helping foreigners set up Panamanian shell companies to hold financial assets while obscuring the identities of their real owners. Since its founding in 1977, it's expanded its interests outside of Panama to include over 40 offices worldwide, helping a global client base to work with shell companies not just in Panama but also the Bahamas, the British Virgin Islands, and other notorious tax havens around the world.

The documents provide details on some shocking acts of corruption in Russia, hint at scandalous goings-on in a range of developing nations, and may prompt a political crisis in Iceland.

But they also offer the most granular look ever at a banal reality that's long been hiding in plain sight. Even as the world's wealthiest and most powerful nations have engaged in increasingly complex and intensive efforts at international cooperation to smooth the wheels of global commerce, they have willfully chosen to allow the wealthiest members of Western society to shield their financial assets from taxation (and in many cases divorce or bankruptcy settlement) by taking advantage of shell companies and tax havens.

If Panama or the Cayman Islands were acting to undermine the integrity of the global pharmaceutical patent system, the United States would stop them. But political elite of powerful western nations has not acted to stop relatively puny Caribbean nations from undermining the integrity of the global tax system — largely because western economic elites don't want them to.

And that's the rub: these are the kind of people who have plenty of money to give to politicians to get them to look the other way on things like setting up shell corporations in Panama.  But with it all now out in the open, nearly 40 years of record dating back to 1977, the elephant in the room can no longer be ignored.

As you would imagine, there is quite a lot in the 2.6 terabytes. Here are a few of the highlights that the team found, with links to the full stories where you can read the details: 

• Vladimir Putin's inner circle appears to control about $2 billion worth of offshore assets.
• The Prime Minister of Iceland secretly owned the debt of failed Icelandic bankswhile he was involved in political negotiations over their fate.
• The family of Pakistan's prime minister owns millions of dollars worth of real estate via offshore accounts.
• Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko pledged to sell his Ukrainian business interests during his campaign, but appears instead to have transferred them to an offshore company he controls.

The International Consortium of Investigative Journalists has a full profile of political figures and their relatives named in the Panama Papers for your reading pleasure.

But though political corruption is fun and newsy, the document dump also features a leaked memorandum from a Mossack Fonseca partner revealing the more boring truth that "Ninety-five per cent of our work coincidentally consists in selling vehicles to avoid taxes."

The Panama Papers show everyday tax avoidance by the rich stretching over decades, and for the most part it's perfectly legal.  That's how the game is played, all we know now is how big that game is.  The global elite have been cheating the world's government for decades because that's what they have the money to do.

Spoilers: taking Panama out of the offshore tax haven game makes it easier on the competition.  You know, America.

After years of lambasting other countries for helping rich Americans hide their money offshore, the U.S. is emerging as a leading tax and secrecy haven for rich foreigners. By resisting new global disclosure standards, the U.S. is creating a hot new market, becoming the go-to place to stash foreign wealth. Everyone from London lawyers to Swiss trust companies is getting in on the act, helping the world’s rich move accounts from places like the Bahamas and the British Virgin Islands to Nevada, Wyoming, and South Dakota. 

“How ironic—no, how perverse—that the USA, which has been so sanctimonious in its condemnation of Swiss banks, has become the banking secrecy jurisdiction du jour,” wrote Peter A. Cotorceanu, a lawyer at Anaford AG, a Zurich law firm, in a recent legal journal. “That ‘giant sucking sound’ you hear? It is the sound of money rushing to the USA.” 

Rothschild, the centuries-old European financial institution, has opened a trust company in Reno, Nev., a few blocks from the Harrah’s and Eldorado casinos. It is now moving the fortunes of wealthy foreign clients out of offshore havens such as Bermuda, subject to the new international disclosure requirements, and into Rothschild-run trusts in Nevada, which are exempt.

US states serving as tax havens is nothing new, both Dakotas, Delaware, Rhode Island and Florida have been playing that game nearly as long as Panama has.  Apparently the world likes a quality tax haven however.  Why dick around with a banana republic when US states with 50 different sets of business and corporate tax laws can provide all you need?

Trump's wrong. America really is the best in the world at some things in 2016.

StupidiNews!

• The first boatloads of migrants were sent today from Greece back to Turkey under a new EU deal, despite human rights groups saying Turkey is forcing migrants back to war-torn Syria.
• Mississippi GOP Gov. Phil Bryant is under fire for once again declaring April to be the state's "Confederate Heritage Month".
• Amtrak officials say rail service from Philadelphia will run normally today after this weekend's passenger train crash and derailment that killed 2 and injured 35.
• A large cache of leaked documents from a Panama law firm appears to show that politicians, crooks, and celebrities all use shell corporations in the country to hide billions. 
• After the FBI received assistance in unlocking an iPhone of one of the San Bernardino shooters, the agency say it will help local law enforcement with the same.

In And Up In Elkhart

I've talked about Elkhart, Indiana before, the self-styled RV Capital of the United States is only a couple of hours from here and President Obama made the city his showcase of what his stimulus package could do after the place fell on hard times after the Bush Bust and suffered from 15%+ unemployment.

I noted recently that Elkhart's unemployment is under 5% now and the good times are definitely back as retiring Boomers skip the hassle of home ownership and hit to road to see the country. But if you thought President Obama was ever going to get any credit at all in a state like Indiana, you haven't been paying attention to this blog for the last seven years, or to guys like Ed Neufelt, who introduced the President back in 2009.

Mr. Obama, whose four trips here during 2008 and 2009 tracked the area’s decline, is expected to return for the first time in coming weeks, both to showcase its recovery and to warn against going back to Republican economic policies. Yet where is Mr. Neufeldt leaning in this presidential election year? He may keep a photograph of himself and Mr. Obama on a desk at the medical office he cleans nightly, but he is considering Donald J. Trump.

“I like the way he just won’t take nothing off of nobody,” Mr. Neufeldt said, though days later he allowed: “He scares me sometimes.”

Billboards proclaim, “Hiring: Welders. Up to $23/hour,” but for all the progress, many people here — like Americans elsewhere — harbor unshakable anxiety about stagnant wages, their economic future and the erosion of the middle class generally. Antigovernment resentments over past bank bailouts linger, stoked by candidates in both parties (though taxpayers got their money back, with dividends). And social issues such as abortion, gun rights, same-sex marriage, the Affordable Care Act and immigration loom larger than any other for some voters.

The enduring wounds of the Great Recession, together with discouraging economic trends that long predated it, have fueled anger on the left but especially on the right, thanks to Mr. Trump, the maverick Republican front-runner. Mr. Obama is not getting the recognition historically accorded a president who presides over economic revival, but then again, neither are divided Republicans seen as offering a positive alternative.

“Whether he gets the credit or not, people’s home equity has gone back up, fuel prices are the best we’ve had in a long time, there’s a lot of things that make this all go,” Larry Thompson, a former longtime mayor of nearby Nappanee and a Republican, said as he showed off an expanding cabinetry factory, Kountry Wood Products.

“But I think that maybe it’s just some of the other things he’s been involved with that people in our area” — Mr. Thompson stopped, shaking his head in unspoken reference to various social issues.

President Obama got a lot of stuff done despite Republican sabotage in Congress, but that sabotage has worked for the GOP.  Bush certainly destroyed the economy, but it's allowed the GOP to say "Hey, has Obama really fixed it in eight years?"

For a lot of people in places like Elkhart, the answer is absolutely not.  And they think Trump will get the job done.

In 2008 Mr. Obama won Indiana, the first Democratic presidential candidate to do so since 1964. In 2012 he did not even contest the state. Among those who opposed him was Mr. Neufeldt. Now 69, he holds four part-time jobs, but boasts that a daughter and three sons-in-law again have good jobs in Elkhart’s boom-and-bust recreational vehicle industry where he worked 32 years. His problem with the president is over abortion.

Brian A. Howey, publisher of the Howey Politics Indiana newsletter and once a reporter in Elkhart, sounded stumped, even allowing for the state’s conservatism: “I’m a lifelong Hoosier. I’m just amazed that not only do people not appreciate what happened in ’09, but there’s a lot of hostility toward Obama. I think part of it is racial and a lot of it is political.”

“This state stood to lose 150,000 auto jobs if Chrysler and G.M. had liquidated,” Mr. Howey added. “We would have had a bona fide depression here.”

But that doesn't matter to Elkhart. If the problem is abortion, but you're considering Donald Trump, whose position on abortion literally changed 5 times this week? The problem isn't abortion and it never was.

The problem is white trash who can't be grateful for a second to a black president and are looking for any other reason to come up with hating him.

Trump Cards, Con't

Trump continues to play the white guy victim card with aplomb and is putting his skills to great use in politics: he's selling the Obama economy as an absolute disaster for white men forced to deal with the changing demographics of power in America, and selling himself as the only possible "solution".

Donald Trump said in an interview that economic conditions are so perilous that the country is headed for a “very massive recession” and that “it’s a terrible time right now” to invest in the stock market, embracing a distinctly gloomy view of the economy that counters mainstream economic forecasts.

The New York billionaire dismissed concern that his comments — which are exceedingly unusual, if not unprecedented, for a major party front-runner — could potentially affect financial markets.

“I know the Wall Street people probably better than anybody knows them,” said Trump, who has misfired on such predictions in the past. “I don’t need them.”

Trump’s go-it-alone instincts were a consistent refrain — “I’m the Lone Ranger,” he said at one point — during a 96-minute interview Thursday in which he talked candidly about his aggressive style of campaigning and offered some new details about what he would do as president.

The real estate mogul, top aides and his son Don Jr. gathered over lunch at a makeshift conference table set amid construction debris at Trump’s soon-to-be-finished hotel five blocks from the White House. Just before, he had met there with his foreign-policy advisers and just after he visited officials at the Republican National Committee — signs that, in spite of his Trump-knows-best manner, the political novice is making efforts to build a more well-rounded bid.

Over the course of the discussion, the candidate made clear that he would govern in the same nontraditional way that he has campaigned, tossing aside decades of American policy and custom in favor of a new, Trumpian approach to the world.

In his first 100 days, Trump said he would cut taxes, “renegotiate trade deals and renegotiate military deals,” including altering the U.S. role in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.

He insisted that he would be able to get rid of the nation’s more than $19 trillion national debt “over a period of eight years.”

Most economists would consider this impossible because it could require taking more than $2 trillion a year out of the annual $4 trillion budget to pay off holders of the debt.

Doesn't matter if Trump can actually do it or not, he's saying what the hard hats and dudebros want to hear. If Trump's economic plan wrecks the place for everyone, it means that white guys are back in charge by default again. They're okay with that.  The folks that want to burn it all down and start over again are looking for thermite and napalm, and boy, did they ever find it with Trump.

Sunday Long Read: The Hateful Eight

Emily Perper over at Longreads has put together eight stories about North Carolina's ridiculously savage HB2 law, and these are all excellent reads.

Two of the best of these are from Alania Monts at Atuostraddle:

The danger of the discourse surrounding “biological sex” comes from the fact that it paints while it’s harmful to all trans folks, in the discussions around public restrooms, it usually paints all trans women as rapists and sexual assaulters. Trans women become perpetrators of violence in the restroom when in reality, trans women are much more likely to be the victims of violence, both in public and in restrooms. Bills like this get passed because their proponents suggest that trans women are going to go into women’s spaces and attack women. Like the writings of Janice Raymond in the early 1970s, this sort of talk paints trans women as monster-men who are trying to infiltrate women’s private sphere and commit acts of violence, ignoring the fact that trans women are much more likely to be at the receiving end of violence, especially in bathrooms. “Biological sex” is an insidious way to be transphobic under the guise of working for women’s rights. Men are all rapists, and trans women are men according to this false logic; to protect women, “biological sex” discourse says that it is okay to harm a trans woman. This is dangerous. It’s untrue, it’s old, and it’s got to stop.

This law also creates a situation where in North Carolina it is now legal to police the bodily appearance of people whose gender doesn’t conform to normative standards of being. North Carolina’s lawmakers have given cisgender people the power to attack trans people—to demand their birth certificate even—if they don’t believe that they belong. This hostile environment privileges the privileged over those who need protection the most. When GLAAD reports that 38.7% of students feel unsafe at school because of their gender expression and that 61.6% had no teacher intervention when they reported bullying, this law puts people in danger. I also want to point out that in North Carolina, the only way one can change their “biological sex” is through changing their birth certificate which can only happen through surgery–an intervention that isn’t always wanted or affordable for trans people, especially trans children.

It also works very hard to maintain the status quo in North Carolina. By refusing to allow the minimum wage to be raised unless the whole state raises it, North Carolina has effectively prevented liberal pockets of the state from enacting policies to keep their constituents safe. It furthers the school-to-prison pipeline by telling trans and gender nonconforming students of color in North Carolina that their options are limited: come to school and be disrespected by your government and peers, come to school and use the restroom that aligns with their gender identity and is arrested, or risk not showing up to school and being arrested for truancy. If you are not white, straight, cis, and well off in North Carolina right now, the government has just handed you a statement saying that they don’t care whether or not you live.

North Carolina is an interesting state to look at demographically—with 17 state funded colleges and universities, there is a highly educated and liberal population. But that population is younger, less likely to vote, and they exist in large concentrations in small parts of the state. So places like Charlotte, Greensboro, Raleigh, and other urban areas are trying and failing to enact legislation that reflects their progressive values because so much of the state is rural and conservative. Watching people around me react to the decision has highlighted some really unpleasant things about the way we as a state function in regards to our government.

I’ve primarily seen two reactions: #WeAreNotThis coming primarily from white communities and calls for mobilization coming from communities of color. I don’t want to imply that hashtag activism isn’t important because it is—especially from an accessibility standpoint. But it is interesting to me that most of the action coming from white people has been to distance themselves from those who put these laws into place. When I see #WeAreNotThis, I see North Carolinians doing what Southerners have been good at for centuries, hiding bigotry under Southern hospitality. #WeAreNotThis to me doesn’t do anything to for the trans youth who have effectively been expelled from school, nor does it offer solutions to communities trying to improve the quality of life. It makes me wonder about the effectiveness of separation. In a situation like this, what does separating ourselves from our lawmakers really do? Especially since in the primary election, slightly more than 17% of North Carolina’s 6.5 million registered voters voted, and that was a record high. If our communities aren’t voting, if our activism is only coming from the internet, and doesn’t participate in local government or grassroots organizing, how is it beneficial? Can wereally say that we aren’t the decision our government made if we don’t even work to change the government?

On the other hand, there are communities that are working and have been working to make North Carolina a better place to live for queer and trans people. Communities of color are calling for mobilization all across the state—on March 24th, a Black Lives Matter QTPOC rally in front of the Governor’s mansion is being organized by local grassroots organizations all over the State. Queer and trans people of color are organizing collectively to make sure that their communities are safe. They’re finding the important phone numbers to call, organizing voter education seminars for the future, and (most importantly to me at least) taking the time to honor the pain this decision has caused so many in North Carolina.

And from SE Smith at Rolling Stone:

There's a reason bathroom bills are exploding right now. It's not just about trans visibility and a growing sense of transphobia in conservative communities as they're forced to come to grips with the existence of the trans community. It's also closely associated with the 2016 presidential election, in which Republicans want to maintain their stranglehold on Congress. For them, opposing trans rights dovetails neatly with the interests of the right, allowing candidates to come out swinging against civil rights to appeal to conservative voters. Moreover, reintroducing constant fear brings voters out for downticket races, as right-leaning voters will turn out in force to prevent state houses from passing inclusive legislation and they'll also vote for Republican Congress members.

There's alarming overlap between states where bathroom access is being debated and those with contested Congressional seats: Florida, Indiana and Nevada all face open seats, since Marco Rubio, Dan Coats and Harry Reid don't intend to seek reelection. Representatives with a history of introducing and supporting bathroom bills could enjoy an edge with conservatives who want to limit trans rights.

Meanwhile, Republican Sen. Ron Johnson of Wisconsin is struggling, and Sen. Mark Kirk of Illinois will be going up against Democrat Tammy Duckworth, a disabled veteran who has crushed her opposition on more than one occasion. The GOP also hopes to pick up a seat in Colorado. In all cases, nudging on a bathroom bill could help tip the scales.

In the House, Rep. Alan Grayson is fighting for spot representing Floridians, while Colorado Republicans are eyeing Democrat Michael Bennett's seat. Seats in Illinois, Indiana, Minnesota and Nevada are also potential tossups that could turn into ferociously competitive races. Conservatives, highly skilled at crafting tight, single-issue political messages will likely engage with the subject of bathroom bills because they're so high-profile.

For some, that might mean touting voting and performance records. Others might show up in support of such bills in the hopes of being able to bask in some reflected glory, and yet others will be making campaign promises relating to bathroom restrictions. With Republicans already employing transphobic rhetoric in support of such legislation, the base is primed to fear trans people in bathrooms and to see these kinds of bills as a natural extension of American values, designed to protect people from influences that conservatives describe as predatory.

It's troubling that bathroom bills could be used in a naked ploy to dominate downticket races in this election, as it further demonstrates that American conservatives have perfected the art of striking fear into worried audiences. All it takes is the suggestion of danger to create a highly reactive response that could restrict trans rights even as the community makes its way into the daylight.

A gigantic feature of American politics over the last 150 years or so has been "find a group of people to hate and then mobilize people to vote to punish them."  Expect to see more and more red states take up "common sense legislation" that "creates a statewide standard" to "protect schools, locker rooms and public venues".  The rest of the stuff that NC snuck in is just more red state race to the bottom garbage, designed to drive out those people so the electorate swings to the right.  In a state like NC, that's not hard to do at all. 

The state edged blue in 2008 and helped to elect Barack Obama. Republicans are making sure that can never happen again, and they've largely succeeded.

A Mess Of Carolina Barbecue

That's the funny thing about red state Republicans telling the federal government to go screw itself and making legislation that enshrines unconstitutional discrimination into state law.  The federal government might be inclined to actually do something about it, as North Carolina is about to find out the hard way.

The Obama administration is considering whether North Carolina’s new law on gay and transgender rights makes the state ineligible for billions of dollars in federal aid for schools, highways and housing, officials said Friday.

Cutting off any federal money — or even simply threatening to do so — would put major new pressure on North Carolina to repeal the law, which eliminated local protections for gay and transgender people and restricted which bathrooms transgender people can use. A loss of federal money could send the state into a budget crisis and jeopardize services that are central to daily life.

Although experts said such a drastic step was unlikely, at least immediately, the administration’s review puts North Carolina on notice that the new law could have financial consequences. Gov. Pat McCrory of North Carolina had assured residents that the law would not jeopardize federal money for education.

But the law also represents a test for the Obama administration, which has declared that the fight for gay and transgender rights is a continuation of the civil rights era. The North Carolina dispute forces the administration to decide how aggressively to fight on that principle.

The North Carolina law created a mandatory statewide anti-discrimination policy, but it did not include specific protections based on sexual orientation or gender identity. The law prohibits transgender people from using public bathrooms that do not match the sexes on their birth certificates.

Anthony Foxx, the secretary of transportation, first raised the prospect of a review of federal funding in public remarks on Tuesday in North Carolina. The Department of Transportation provides roughly $1 billion a year to North Carolina. The New York Times then asked other federal agencies whether they were conducting similar reviews.

Billions in dollars of federal funding losses I'm sure will make NC GOP lawmakers very, very popular heading into November.  The Tarheel State painted a big ol' target on the place and dared Obama to do something about it.

Allow the White House to take you up on that, boys.

Flipping The Script On SCOTUS, Con't

Meanwhile, President Obama's strategy of getting Republicans stuck in "damned if you do, damned if you don't" territory is working wonderfully. Simon Maloy details the atrocities:

The trick to making blanket obstructionism work as a political tool is to make it a team effort. The Republicans in Congress understand this well – their strategy for the Obama administration from day one was to oppose everything and enforce unanimity among their members. They understood that any Republican defections would feed political ammunition to the Democrats and the White House, who would claim bipartisan backing for their initiatives and paint the Republicans in opposition as unreasonable. For a while, that strategy worked: the president’s biggest legislative items were passed without any Republican backing, and Republicans ran hard against those laws to make gains in Congress. The key to it all was putting up a united front.

That’s what Senate Republicans tried to accomplish when news broke that Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia had passed away. Their immediate reaction was to clamp down hard: no hearings, no meetings, not even a mote of consideration for any nominee President Obama would put forward. They came up with a number of reasons justifying this position, but they’re all bullshit – the real reason is that they’re holding out hope that a Republican president will restore the court’s conservative majority next year. But the key to making this obstructionist strategy have at least some political viability was unanimity of opposition.

Well, say goodbye to that plan. The wall of obstruction put up by GOP leaders is showing a number of cracks as Senate Republicans – from blue and red states alike – defy their leadership and actually show minimum levels of professional courtesy to President Obama’s nominee, judge Merrick Garland. Sen. Mark Kirk of Illinois (who happens to be facing a tough reelection fight) has already met with Garland and is actively pushing his colleagues to hold hearings and “man up and cast a vote.” Garland has more meetings lined up with Sen. Susan Collins of Maine and Sen. John Boozman of Arkansas. According to NBC News, one-quarter of Republican senators have expressed openness to at least meeting with Obama’s nominee.

None of this means that Garland is any closer to actually having hearings or receiving a vote, but the fact that so many Republicans are deviating from the official line is bad news for the GOP politically. Republican leaders have invested a good deal of time building up a case for why Garland’s nomination doesn’t even merit cursory attention, and it’s being ripped down by their own colleagues. Orrin Hatch insists that Republicans are doing their jobs by blocking Garland, while Jerry Moran says they’re actually abdicating their responsibilities. Chuck Grassley insists Republicans are standing on principle by pushing hearings off until after the election, while Mark Kirk says they’re actually being cowards. The obstructionist plan was never popular to begin with, and internal fractures like these make it supremely difficult to convince anyone that Republicans are on the right side of this issue.

The Democrats, meanwhile, have successfully gotten Garland’s foot in the door, so now they have an opening to push things even further: If meetings are okay, why not hearings? And every Republican senator Garland meets with is another opportunity for the White House to pit Republicans against one another. The Senate GOP leadership wanted nothing more than to make this nomination process a referendum on Obama, but now they have to explain why their own colleagues are wrong for meeting with Garland.

It's easy to demonize President Obama, they've had nearly a decade to do it.  But Garland?  No, it's backfiring completely, and eventually it'll all fall down.

Last Call For Less Money, More Problems

While it's great that America added 215K new jobs last month, and that we've had a record six years of private sector job growth under President Obama, we've still got a lot of inequality problems especially when it comes to affordable housing and living wages.

Low-income Americans are experiencing a staggering price hike in housing costs — a change that makes it sometimes impossible to afford basic necessities. 

A new Pew Charitable Trusts analysis of data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics shows that in 2013, low-income Americans spent a median of $6,897 on housing. In 2014, that rose to $9,178 — the biggest jump in housing spending for the 19-year period of data that Pew studied. 

The cost of other necessities, like transportation and food, also rose, albeit not as dramatically. 2014 was the first year that Pew studied in which median spending on these three categories was higher than the median income for those in the lower third of income groups.

The chart makes it pretty stark:



As you can see, in 2014 for the lowest third of Americans, median income dropped below the cost of rent, food, and transportation combined.

Rent for low-income Americans has never been higher because the supply of affordable housing has cratered with the return of the high-end housing market, and Americans are going back to work, but for less pay.  Millennials can't afford starter homes, and Gen X'ers got wiped out in the Great Recession.  They're barely holding on.  Finally, look at how many states are cutting low-income housing programs across the board.

So yeah, the housing market in most places is still completely broken and will remain that way for some time.

Race To The Bottom Of Bigotry

I've already talked about how North Carolina's bigot bill passed in a 12-hour emergency session of the state's General Assembly and was signed into law by GOP Gov. Pat McCrory, and how LGBTQ groups are already taking the new law to court.  But as bad as the NC GOP's law is stripping local equality protections, Mississippi is about to pass an even worse law.

The Republican-dominated Mississippi Senate voted 31-17 on Wednesday night for a religious freedom bill that critics believe is the the most sweeping anti-LGBT legislation in the United States, allowing denial of products and services in a wide range of venues.
Immediately after the vote, a Democrat proposed a motion to reconsider — thereby requiring another vote later this week, which many consider a procedural formality, but could buy critics time to build opposition. 

The bill already passed the House 80-39 in February. However, the Senate’s version was amended slightly, and the House must concur before the legislation can go to the governor. 

Republicans, who hold a majority in both chambers, have argued the bill fixes problems created for people of faith by the Supreme Court’s 2015 marriage equality ruling. 

“It gives protection to those in the state who cannot in a good conscience provide services for a same-sex marriage,” Sen. Jennifer Branning said in an address to her colleagues. 

“I don’t think this bill is discriminatory,” she continued, saying the bill instead protects the rights of Christians from government retribution if they oppose same-sex couples getting married “It takes no rights away from anyone.” 

But Democrats fiercely contend the bill is overly broad, specifically targeting LGBT people for discrimination in numerous settings, thereby inviting backlash that other states, including North Carolina, have faced for passing laws targeting LGBT people.
“This is probably the worst religious freedom bill to date,” Ben Needham, director of Project One America, an LGBT advocacy project in the Deep South run by the Human Rights Campaign, told BuzzFeed News. 

Critics widely argue the bill would explicitly allow the denial of services, goods, wedding products, medical treatment, housing, and employment to LGBT people. 

Specifically, House Bill 1523 would protect individuals, religious organizations, and certain businesses who take actions due to their religious objections to same-sex marriage. It would also protect those who object to transgender people. The bill says they could not face government retribution if they were acting based on “sincerely held” religious beliefs. 

Further, it covers those who decline for reasons of faith to provide counseling services, foster care, and adoption services — even, apparently, those receiving government funding. Clerks who issue marriage licenses could also recuse themselves.

Again, as bad as NC's law is, removing specific protections at the local level for a statewide law that offers no protections at all for equality, Mississippi takes that and makes active discrimination state law enshrined and bring the power of the state to protect those who actively discriminate against people based on sexual orientation and gender identity.

It's what both Indiana and Georgia tried to do.  We'll see how far Mississippi gets with it.

Historical Details And All That Jazz

Yesterday I referenced Larry Sabato's political prognostications showing that a Clinton-Trump matchup would be a relatively easy win for the Democrats.  Sabato's analysis does have some important caveats that need to be addressed, however.

Every now and then, one of the major parties goes off the track and forfeits an election, as in 1964 and 1972. This time, it is possible that the Republicans are the new Whigs, headed for a crackup, an oft-made comparison that historian Michael Holt recently examined in the Crystal Ball. 

However, it’s just as possible, maybe probable, that the party would repair itself by 2020. Four years after the Goldwater debacle, the Republicans elected a president. Four years after the McGovern disaster, the Democrats elected a president. Odds are, there will be no need for a bugler playing taps for the GOP this time either. Somehow, though, Republicans will have to find ways to heal the deep rifts in their party, while becoming more mainstream and accommodating to this century’s American electorate. It will take far more than another “autopsy report” like the one in 2013 to accomplish this.

I think that view is strengthened incredibly by a 2018 midterm election that I expect will go just as badly for the Democrats as 2010 and 2014 did. Whatever gains the Dems make in 2016, say, six or seven Senate seats and 20 or so House seats will almost certainly be given right back and then some in 2018.

In the Senate, Democrats Heidi Heitkamp (ND), Joe Manchin (WV), Jon Tester (MT), Bill Nelson (FL), Joe Donnelly (IN), Sherrod Brown (OH), Tim Kaine (VA) and Tammy Baldwin (WI) would all have tough races, and that's before any retirements factor in.

The House, without Trump weighing them down, would probably end up back where it is now, with Republicans having close to or at the largest margin since the Hoover era, if not more.  You thought Dems mailed it in and gave up on Obama in midterms, wait until 2018 and Clinton.

The counter to that is the GOP will somehow have to get their crap together in time to make a run at 2018, and I'm not 100% sure they'll be ready to go by then.  The damage from Trump may be too deep to repair in two years.

But that's just back of the napkin stuff at this point.  A lot could happen, and will, before the 2016 and 2018 elections that will change everything.

StupidiNews!

• A new study in the British medical journal Lancet finds that obesity is a global problem, with about 20% of the world's population expected to be clinically obese by 2025.
• A Virginia state trooper was shot and killed at a Richmond bus station on Thursday after a man opened fire, injuring two more before being killed by police.
• Tesla Motors has unveiled its long awaited electric Model 3 sedan, with production set to start next year and already more than 100,000 vehicles pre-ordered by drivers.
• Saudi Arabia is planning to create a $2 trillion sovereign investment fund to help the country deal with the global decline in oil production.
• A presidential council on dealing with drug-resistant "superbugs" that sicken millions each year is recommending the creation of a White House "czar" position to coordinate agencies.

Last Call For We'll See, Bernie

Sen. Bernie Sanders appeared on Rachel Maddow's show last night and when asked about raising money and campaigning for downticket Dems in Congress, Sanders just shrugged the question off.

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) wouldn't say if he will turn his fundraising juggernaut toward the Democratic House and Senate campaign committees and down-ballot Democratic candidates in a Wednesday night interview on MSNBC's "The Rachel Maddow Show."

"Right now, our job is to, what I'm trying to do is win the Democratic nomination," Sanders said. 

He said he is "blown away" by his campaign's small-dollar fundraising. 

"Without that type of support, we would not be where we are right now," he said. 

Host Rachel Maddow said rival Hillary Clinton has been fundraising for her campaign as well as the Democratic Party. Will the Sanders campaign begin this type of fundraising as well, Maddow asked. 

"We'll see," Sanders said. "Right now, our focus is on winning the nomination."

Wrong answer, Bernie.  But thanks for letting everyone know that you really aren't in it for anyone but yourself.

Will I vote for him in Kentucky's primary in May?

We'll see, I guess.

Trump's Punishment Detail

The anti-choice industry is furious with Donald Trump's comments on MSNBC yesterday that women deserve "some sort of punishment" for getting abortions once the procedure is criminalized by the GOP.

After saying on Wednesday that he believes there should be punishment for women who undergo abortions if the procedure was outlawed, Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump walked back the comment hours later.

In an exclusive interview with MSNBC's Chris Matthews, the GOP front-runner described himself multiple times as "pro-life" but struggled to define what the legal ramifications of that position should be. When continually pressed for what the answer is regarding punishing women who would break any theoretical ban, Trump said the "answer is that there has to be some form of punishment, yeah."

Later in the day, his campaign released a statement refocusing who would be punished should abortion become illegal. "If Congress were to pass legislation making abortion illegal and the federal courts upheld this legislation, or any state were permitted to ban abortion under state and federal law, the doctor or any other person performing this illegal act upon a woman would be held legally responsible, not the woman," the statement said. "The woman is a victim in this case as is the life in her womb. My position has not changed — like Ronald Reagan, I am pro-life with exceptions."

But the damage has been done, and Trump has given away the endgame of the anti-choice people. Of course the goal is to punish women for seeking abortion, and it always has been. Red states make trying to get an abortion as crushing and as difficult as possible to restrict access to it while the anti-choice advocates sadly cluck their tongues and say women and the unborn have to be helped.  Actually providing that help doesn't happen, these "loose hussies" are on their own unless they repent and the nation's churches take pity on them, for surely child and family services are being dismantled across the country by Republicans seeking to trap women in squalor.

Trump coming along and reminding everyone that the real goal has always been to criminalize abortion and women having sex for anything other than procreation blows a hole in the whole facade, and the anti-choice forces know it.  You can't say you're worried about protecting the mother and unborn child if you're willing to admit the goal is to have women so scared of going to prison over miscarriages that they are afraid to have sex. The tacit understanding is that only those women get punished for wanting an abortion, the rest quietly have the procedure because they're "responsible people" who don't abuse the "availability" of it.  The notion that all women get punished, that there's not exceptions made for the right women to have one, well that gives away the game.

If it was somehow possible before for Trump to get zero percent of the women's vote in 2016, it's even more possible now. Trump has single-handedly destroyed the Republican defense of "we're not leading a War on Women!"

And they're furious at him for it for good reason.

We’re now at the point in the nominating process where it is, er, crystal clear that Hillary Clinton will end up being the Democratic candidate, and Donald Trump, while not at all the certain winner, is the leading candidate to become the Republican nominee. So it’s time to adjust our 2016 electoral map for the first time since we rolled out our initial ratings last May. That map, shown below as Map 1, reflected a generic Democrat versus Republican matchup, and it depicted a close, competitive general election.

The new map, as you will see, does not show a close and competitive general election. The Republicans now find themselves in a deep hole.

Imagine Trump screwing up so badly that Clinton actually outperforms either of Obama's presidential wins.  Not hard to imagine if he keeps giving the game away like this.  After all, he's now unpopular even with a majority of white men.



Trump is going to wreck the party before he's done.  Get the popcorn and watch it burn.

In The (Septic) Tank

So while Donald Trump's campaign manager is being charged with battery for physically grabbing a member of the press and searching for blame as to how Trump rose to GOP frontrunner status amid billions in nonstop free press coverage and call-in interviews, it turns out that what the Village really can't stand is that Barack Obama guy daring to call them out on the mess. Politico's Jack Shafer:

The last person in the world who should be lecturing journalists on how to do journalism is President Barack Obama. Yet there Obama was Monday night at a journalism award ceremony, yodeling banalities about the role of a press in a free society, moaning over the dangers posed by “he said/she said” reporting, and—to the delight of the assembled audience—attacking Donald Trump in every way but name. The press-heavy crowd, convened by Syracuse University’s S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications to give the Toner Prize for Excellence in Political Reporting to Alec MacGillis, clapped at Obama’s 30-minute address, encouraging his best Trump-baiting lines about “free media” and the dangers of “false equivalence.” 

What they should have done is bombard Obama with rotten fruit or ripped him with raspberries for his hypocrisy.

How do we hate Obama’s treatment of the press? Let me count the ways. Under his administration, the U.S. government has set a new record for withholding Freedom of Information Act requests, according to a recent Associated Press investigation. FOIA gives the public and press an irreplaceable view into the workings of the executive branch. Without timely release of government documents and data, vital questions can’t be answered and stories can’t be written. 

Obama’s “Insider Threat Program” has turned employees across the government—from the Peace Corps to the Social Security Administration to the Department of Agriculture—into information-squelching snitches. If this isn’t Trumpian behavior, I don’t know what is. 

“Obama hates the press,” New York Times national security reporter James Risen said not long ago, “and he hates leaks.” AP Washington Bureau Chief Sally Buzbee has decried the “day-to-day intimidation of sources” by the Obama administration, judging it worse than the Bush administration on that score. And in a 2013 piece, POLITICO’s Jim VandeHei and Mike Allen documented Obama’s mastery of “limiting, shaping and manipulating media coverage of himself and his White House.” 

As ProPublica has reported, at the same time the Obama administration has been paying lip service to protecting whistleblowers, it has pursued national security leaks to the press with a vehemence unmatched by any previous administration, using the Espionage Act to prosecute whistleblowers who leak to journalists more times than all previous administrations combined. Obama holds infrequent news conferences, and he wastes reporters’ time by refraining from answering questions with any candor. He claims to helm “the most transparent administration in history,” while bending government policies and practices toward secrecy. 

“The administration’s war on leaks and other efforts to control information are the most aggressive I’ve seen since the Nixon administration,” wrote Leonard Downie Jr. in a Committee to Protect Journalists report. And it’s not just Downie complaining. You could break Google by asking it to list all the top journalists who regard the Obama administration as Press Enemy No. 1. 

The deeper you study Obama’s relationship with the press, the more you want to ask what business he has giving out a press award. Was Trump himself busy that night?

What really bothers the Village about all this "secrecy" and "manipulation" is the Obama administration realizing pretty early on that this whole internet thing is pretty useful for getting out the information the White House wants to get out, and doing so without the Village pearl-clutchers getting in the way.

Particularly since the massive damage caused to American national security by Edward Snowden and friends, you'd be forgiven for thinking the White House might want to be more careful with leaks and information in general, which it is.

What the Obama administration is not doing is physically battering journalists, insulting them by name on Twitter, citing them to rally angry campaign crowds, and making public enemies lists of them like Trump (for starters).

Considering how complicit the media is with Trump and his other enablers, it's a wonder Shafer doesn't fall over from the weight of his own hypocrisy.

StupidiNews!

• A bridge collapse in Kolkata, India has killed at least 10 people and injured dozens more as police are struggling to account for missing people on the bridge at the time.
• A collection of work from street artist Banksy is expected to fetch more than $500,000 at an auction in Los Angeles this week.
• Moscow is denying a report that Russia and the US have reached an agreement on the future of Syrian President Bashar al-Asaad's role in the country.
• US oil production and China's appetite for crude means Beijing is expected to pass Washington as the world's largest oil importer in 2016. 
• New climate change models show that melting Antarctic ice by itself could be responsible for up to a meter's rise in sea level by 2100.