Last Call For The "Moderate" John Kasich

You can tell John Kasich's presidential primary bid is on its deathbed as he's now trying to prove just how much he can punish Ohio's poor and sick.

Gov. John Kasich's administration projects tens of thousands of poor Ohioans will lose Medicaid coverage while taxpayers save nearly $1 billion under a plan to charge new fees for the government health coverage and impose penalties on those who miss payments. 

The proposal, subject to federal approval, would require those being treated for breast and cervical cancer, teens coming out of foster care and other working-age, nondisabled adults on Medicaid to make monthly payments into a health-savings account to help cover their expenses beginning Jan. 1, 2018. 

Nearly 3 million Ohioans are enrolled in Medicaid, the government health insurance program for the poor and disabled. About half would be subject to the new requirements which must be approved by federal regulators. Medicaid officials project an average of 130,000 beneficiaries would lose coverage each year of the five-year pilot. The number is not cumulative over five years because numbers may be duplicative, they say. 

The projections and plan details were included in a six-page summary released Tuesday night by the Ohio Department of Medicaid. A full draft of the state's request will be unveiled April 15, initiating a one-month public comment period which will include two public hearings, April 21 in Columbus and May 3 at a location to be announced. State Medicaid Director John McCarthy intends to submit the request to the federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services in June. 

Advocates for the poor say the plan will cause many to be lose Medicaid. 

John Corlett, president and executive director of the Center for Community Solutions and former state Medicaid director, said he believes the state is underestimating the number of beneficiaries who will lose coverage. 

"It would undo a lot of the progress of Medicaid expansion," he said. 

More than 650,000 adults with annual incomes under 138 percent of the federal poverty level, or $16,394 a year, have signed up for benefits since Jan. 1, 2014, when Ohio expanded Medicaid through Obamacare. 

State Medicaid spokesman Sam Rossi said feedback will be included in the request, but cautioned "we can't change the proposal because the language was prescriptive."

This is where Mike Pence in Indiana has gone with Medicaid expansion there, and where Matt Bevin here in Kentucky eventually wants to go: cough up the cash for "medical savings accounts" which you will lose whether or not you actually use it, or lose your Medicaid coverage.

The problem of course is that Ohio has a much larger population than Indiana, so we're talking about hundreds of thousands losing their Medicaid for not being able to come up with the $99 per year.

When that happens, it'll be the fault of those lazy people for not paying into the system...as system many of them already pay into thanks to sales taxes, payroll taxes, and state income taxes.

But of course kicking half a million plus off Medicaid is the entire point.  Kasich's plan is to do that all over the country and make it tens of millions instead.

Between A Rock And A School Of Hard Knocks

I'm torn over this BuzzFeed News story about a massive class-action lawsuit being leveled against NYC public schools for failing students of color across the board.

A New York City mother knew something was seriously wrong when the school called to say her eight-year old son had stabbed himself in the ear with a pencil. He had been bullied relentlessly for months, she said, and when she came to pick him up that day, he told her he had only wanted to make the insults stop. His leg was marked with visible bruises from a bully’s foot.

New York City public schools are bound by law to protect children from bullying by investigating and remediating acts of violence. But the mother said that never happened for her special-needs son. He lost sleep because of stress and anxiety for a half a year until he was finally moved to another class, away from the bully who had repeatedly hit, harassed, and chased him.

The boy and his mother are part of a new class-action lawsuit against the New York City Department of Education, alleging a systemic and unaddressed problem with violence in New York City public schools. Repeatedly, the parents allege, the country’s largest school district has failed to follow its own policies in dealing with an “epidemic” of violence against children. In a violation of state law and its own policies, it has failed to report and investigate incidents, failed to punish teachers who abuse students, and, at times, retaliated against students were themselves bullied.

The suit will be filed late Wednesday night in the Eastern District Court of New York, a lawyer for the plaintiffs said. It is the first time a class-action lawsuit has been filed over school violence in New York.

The suit alleges that New York City students are being deprived of their right to a public education because of the city’s “ineffective and inadequate” response to school violence. Those students are disproportionately black and Latino — meaning, the suit says, the city is violating students’ Fourteenth Amendment rights to equal protection.

“I want the DOE to be held accountable for how they handle violence,” the bullied boy’s mother said in an interview with BuzzFeed News. “They should have had to report and investigate what happened to my son.”

And yes, unequal resources, unequal schools, de facto segregation and the mass abandonment of public schools is very much a gigantic issue of racial and social justice.

Having said that, here's the part that horrifies me.

Backing the lawsuit is one of the most powerful forces in New York politics: Families for Excellent Schools, an advocacy group that spent $10 million on state lobbying in 2014, more than any other lobby group. Until recently, FES’s efforts have been focused on promoting charter schools, in part by skewering the academic failures of the city’s public schools through biting ad campaigns.

“We think the Department of Education is not following the law, and in doing so, they’re jeopardizing the academic and physical livelihoods of kids across the city,” said Jeremiah Kittredge, the organization’s executive director, in an interview with BuzzFeed News. “Students aren’t being protected, and the DOE isn’t following their obligations under the law to remedy it.”

It's that last sentence that should be ringing alarm bells across the nation.  We know full well what the "remedy" of the multipl billion dollar charter school indistry is: turning America's public education system into for-profit centers where the same students they claim to be protecting are victimized in the name of making money off taxpayers.  We know charter schools have failed in Florida, Ohio, Illinois, Michigan, California, DC and elsewhere.  Now the largest city in the US is about to fall for a scam as big as they come, and the grifters are using poor black families in terrible schools in order to do it.

And this is again an area where the Obama administration shoulders a lot of the blame.  Arne Duncan was a disaster as an Education Secretary, and his Race to the Top program and Common Core standards turned into just another way to push charter schools and endless testing quotas, micromanagement of teachers, and more racial inequality in education.

As a direct result, the charter school industry is sweeping in to pick up the pieces, and more and more states are willing to give them a foot in the door.  Republicans are gleefully helping them along with massive austerity cuts to schools and universities, leaving districts begging for private money.

I'm afraid this lawsuit, while correct, is going to be what the charter school corporate goons need to break the largest school district in the country.

Yes, racial disparities in public schools must be addressed.  But charter school funded lawsuits may make things worse in the long run.

Big Dog Craps On The Porch Again

Former President Bill Clinton is a great guy, but I still have major issues with his policies from the 90's, including (and especially) the 1994 crime bill that he cooked up along with Joe Biden.  When Black Lives Matter activists showed up to challenge him as a campaign event for Hillary Clinton in Pennsylvania yesterday, the Big Dog fully went off his chain.

In a prolonged exchange Thursday afternoon, former President Bill Clinton forcefully defended his 1994 crime bill to Black Lives Matter protesters in the crowd at a Hillary Clinton campaign event.

He said the bill lowered the country's crime rate, which benefited African-Americans, achieved bipartisan support, and diversified the police force. He then addressed a protester's sign, saying:

"I don't know how you would characterize the gang leaders who got 13-year-old kids hopped up on crack and sent them out onto the street to murder other African-American children," Clinton said, addressing a protester who appeared to interrupt him repeatedly. "Maybe you thought they were good citizens .... You are defending the people who kill the lives you say matter. Tell the truth. You are defending the people who cause young people to go out and take guns."

The Clintons have faced criticism from BLM activists and younger black voters for months now over that bill, which they say put an unfairly high number of black Americans in prison for nonviolent offenses.

After a protester interrupted him repeatedly, Bill Clinton began to take on that critique directly, making the claim that his crime bill was being given a bad rap.

"Here's what happened," Clinton said. "Let's just tell the whole story."

"I had an assault weapons ban in it [the crime bill]. I had money for inner-city kids, for out of school activities. We had 110,000 police officers so we could keep people on the street, not in these military vehicles, and the police would look like the people they were policing. We did all that. And [Joe] Biden [then senator and chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee] said, you can't pass this bill, the Republicans will kill it, if you don't put more sentencing in it."

"I talked to a lot of African-American groups," Clinton continued. "They thought black lives matter. They said take this bill, because our kids are being shot in the street by gangs. We have 13-year-old kids planning their own funerals."

Throughout the spirited defense of his policy, Clinton continued to be interrupted, and he repeatedly seemed to single out one protester.

"She doesn't wanna hear any of that," Clinton said to the protester. "You know what else she doesn't want to hear? Because of that bill, we have a 25-year low in crime, a 33-year low in murder rate. And because of that and the background check law, we had a 46-year low in the deaths of people by gun violence, and who do you think those lives were? That mattered? Whose lives were saved that mattered?" 

Now, I understand that it wasn't Hillary who passed that bill in 1994.  I understand also that black leaders and Democrats were some of the loudest voices in calling for police help for crime problems in the 90's. The crack epidemic in black neighborhoods was very, very real and very, very deadly, and it was only the crime component -- something that could affect white people -- that motivated any action at all.

But this is the worst defense of Bill Clinton's policies I think I've ever seen Bill Clinton give.  He certainly did no favors to Hillary with this performance, he came across as a tone-deaf jackass, and he made it all about himself.  There are very legitimate concerns that the bill went too far, and that what Republicans wanted in the bill was a way to punish black neighborhoods and the people who lived there while Democratic leaders looked the other way.  The bill absolutely created the mass incarceration state we have today, and the sentencing laws that Clinton wants to shove off on the GOP in a bill he signed still ended up in a bill he signed.

So yes, I blame Clinton, and to an extent Joe Biden, for that.  Neither one of them have given a good answer to black communities about this legislation, and whenever Bill Clinton especially is given the chance to respond, he acts like a sullen goddamn teenager caught taking Mom's car keys to go on a joyride.

"Maybe you should be a bit more grateful to me" is 100% the wrong attitude to be packing when it comes to the Big Bog and Black Live Matter, and it's not like this hasn't happened before.  Hillary's best campaign surrogate is also clearly her worst at times, and it's way past time the Big Dog goes in the doghouse for a while and starts thinking about what he needs to say to the rest of us.

People talk about how the Clintons have learned since their defeat in 2008, but this issue existed then as well, and Bill Clinton at least hasn't learned a goddamn thing.

StupidiNews!

• Pope Francis's latest encyclical calls on the Catholic clergy to be more accepting of people living in "irregular" family situations, but stops well short of blessing same-sex relationships.
• A federal judge has ruled that the County Seal of Los Angeles violates both California and the US Constitution by depicting a cross atop a Christian mission in one corner.
• As Syrian peace talks resume next week, Syrian President Bashar al-Asaad says he has far more leverage now than in 2015 thanks to Russian air strikes targeting rebel forces.
• Keiko Fujimori, daughter of former Peruvian President Alberto Fujimori, remains the favorite in Sunday's elections for her father's old office, but a runoff in June may be necessary.
• Commercial spaceflight company SpaceX will launch its Dragon spacecraft Friday to deliver cargo to the International Space Station and will hopefully land it on a drone ship at sea.

Last Call For Sense Of The Senate

The latest call on US Senate races from Larry Sabato's team at the University of Virginia definitely puts control of the upper chamber in play in November.

When you look at the big picture of presidential elections, and you try to discern the connection between the White House contest and the 34 Senate elections on the same ballot, it becomes obvious there are two types of years. 

The first type we might call “disjointed.” Voters seem to be separating their judgments about these very distinct offices in most competitive races. The presidential candidate who wins adds only a handful — or fewer — additional Senate seats to his party’s total. The presidential coattails are short. 

The second type could be termed “intertwined.” The candidates for the White House are very polarizing and distinct, and one or both major-party contenders color the voters’ perceptions of all officeholders on the same partisan label. The party whose letter (D or R) becomes toxic loses a substantial number of Senate seats; thus, the presidential coattails are long. 

The second type is somewhat rarer, to judge by the elections for president since World War II, as shown in Table 1. However, the six-year cycles of the three different Senate classes and the current party makeup of each class obviously matter. For instance, the Democrats only gained two net Senate seats in 1964, a seemingly small increase considering Lyndon Johnson’s landslide victory. But six years earlier the Democrats netted 15 Senate seats in the 1958 midterm election, meaning they already controlled a large majority of seats in Class 1, the group of states up in 1964. Conversely, the Republicans won 12 net seats in 1980 when the Democrats entered the cycle controlling 24 of the 34 seats up in Class 3 (which is the same class up in 2016). 

No one can say for sure to which category 2016 will belong, but our early expectation is “intertwined.” Considering the rise of Donald Trump, the polarization in U.S. politics, and a higher rate of straight-ticket voting, this could be bad news for the GOP. We have already sketched out a “Trumpmare” doomsday presidential scenario for the Republicans, who control the Senate now by a margin of 54 to 46. Assuming the GOP nominee for the White House is either Trump or Ted Cruz, we think the Democrats will fare reasonably well down-ballot (more so with Trump than Cruz, though Cruz will also have a difficult time carrying many swing states). As shown in Chart 1, in recent presidential cycles, about 80% of states with Senate elections have backed the same party for the presidency and the Senate. In light of the fact that Republicans control 24 of the 34 seats up in 2016, including many in states that President Obama won in 2008 and/or 2012, straight-ticket voting could bode poorly for the GOP.

Indeed, the latest map is good news for the Donks.



Giving the Dems a shot at six seats with two pick-ups likely in Wisconsin and Illinois, is definitely an improvement.  That means the Dems would have to keep Harry Reid's seat, and get two more (if Clinton/Sanders wins) or three more (if Trump/Cruz wins).

Pennsylvania and Florida are definitely winnable, as are Ohio and New Hampshire.  It's even possible that Roy Blount, Richard Burr, and yes, even John McCain's seats are possible pickups for the Democrats if Trump or Cruz wrecks the place as much as I think they will.

But there are a dozen governor's seats up for grabs in November too, and the biggest ones are Mike Pence in Indiana and Pat McCrory in North Carolina.  Sabato's call:

Indiana: One of the surprising margins on Election Night 2012 was now-Gov. Mike Pence’s (R) closer-than-expected win over former state House Speaker John Gregg (D). Pence won by just three percentage points and ran about 4.5 points behind Mitt Romney, who easily carried the state in the presidential race after Barack Obama very narrowly won it in 2008. Gregg is running again. Since winning, Pence has had some shaky moments, most notably a controversy over a 2015 bill that some believed would legitimize discrimination against gays and lesbians. More recently, Pence signed a bill that made Indiana just the second state (along with North Dakota) to outlaw abortions that parents seek because the fetus has been diagnosed with a disability. Gregg, who opposes abortion rights, argues that the bill goes too far. While Indiana is the most conservative state in the Midwest, it’s fair to wonder whether social issues could hurt Pence in his reelection bid. But the bigger problem for Pence is one he shares in common with the other incumbents discussed here: The GOP’s problems at the top of the ticket could potentially trim the Republican presidential nominee’s margins in Indiana, or even allow the Democratic nominee to carry the state, as Obama did once. Obama’s 2008 victory didn’t prevent Pence’s predecessor, Mitch Daniels (R), from easily winning reelection with 58% of the vote, but Pence isn’t Daniels, and he has not yet displayed the kind of crossover appeal that his predecessor enjoyed. Pence remains a favorite in his rematch with Gregg, but we’re moving the race from Likely Republican to Leans Republican. 

North Carolina: The Tar Heel State’s statehouse race has always been the marquee gubernatorial contest this cycle. Not only is North Carolina the most populous state holding a gubernatorial race this year, but it’s also one of only two gubernatorial states (the much-smaller New Hampshire is the other) that are likely to be presidential swing states in the event of a close national race. Gov. Pat McCrory (R) has generally had fairly weak approval numbers throughout his time in office, and he is now dealing with a challenge similar to the one Pence faced last year: McCrory just signed a bill that bans cities from creating local policies dealing with gender-identity discrimination and forces transgender students in public schools to use the bathroom that corresponds with their birth gender. There’s been a backlash over the law, and it has so far led PayPal to cancel plans to create 400 jobs in the state. Republicans have long recognized the threat that Attorney General Roy Cooper (D) presents to McCrory, and both sides are gearing up for an expensive, nasty race. Because of incumbency, we were giving McCrory the benefit of the doubt. But no longer: A Donald Trump or Ted Cruz nomination could very well allow the Democratic nominee to win North Carolina, and even if the GOP nominee does carry North Carolina in the fall there’s no guarantee that McCrory will run ahead of the presidential ticket. McCrory’s reelection bid moves from Leans Republican to Toss-up.

I'd love to see Pence and McCrory gone in a Trump/Cruz meltdown that wipes the GOP out in this election cycle, and I'm sure most of you would love it too.  Equality issues doing both of them in? Sign me up.

It's Not Working Out

So, good news and bad news about the Obama Economy: yes, we've seen six years of private sector job growth (a new record) and a net job growth overall of 9 million jobs since 2005.  The bad news? Basically all of those new jobs are contract positions.

If you believe the Silicon Valley sloganeers, we are in a “gig economy,” where work consists of a series of short-term jobs coordinated through a mobile app. That, anyway, is both the prediction of tech executivesand futurists and the great fear of labor activists.
But anyone who cares about the future of work in the United States shouldn’t focus too narrowly on the novelty of people making extra money using their mobile phones. 

There’s a bigger shift underway. That’s a key implication of new research that indicates the proportion of American workers who don’t have traditional jobs — who instead work as independent contractors, through temporary services or on-call — has soared in the last decade. They account for vastly more American workers than the likes of Uber alone. 

Most remarkably, the number of Americans using these alternate work arrangements rose 9.4 million from 2005 to 2015. That was greater than the rise in overall employment, meaning there was a small net decline in the number of workers with conventional jobs. 

That, in turn, raises still bigger questions about how employers have succeeded at shifting much the burden of providing social insurance onto workers, and what technological and economic forces are driving the shift. 

The labor economists Lawrence F. Katz of Harvard and Alan B. Kruegerof Princeton found that the percentage of workers in “alternative work arrangements” — including working for temporary help agencies, as independent contractors, for contract firms or on-call — was 15.8 percent in the fall of 2015, up from 10.1 percent a decade earlier. (Only 0.5 percent of all workers did so through “online intermediaries,” and most of those appear to have been Uber drivers.) 

And the shift away from conventional jobs and into these more distant employer-employee relationships accelerated in the last decade. By contrast, from 1995 to 2005, the proportion had edged up only slightly, to 10.1 percent from 9.3 percent. (The data are based on a person’s main job, so someone with a full-time position who does freelance work on the side would count as a conventional employee.) 

This change in behavior has profound implications on social insurance. More so than in many advanced countries, employers in the United States carry a lot of the burden of protecting their workers from the things that can go wrong in life. They frequently provide health insurance, and paid medical leave for employees who become ill. 

They pay for workers’ compensation insurance for people who are injured on the job, and unemployment insurance benefits for those who are laid off. They help fund their workers’ existence after retirement, at one time through pensions, now more commonly through 401(k) plans.

The good news again is that the Affordable Care Act anticipated providing insurance in the "gig economy" job market and put in place protections.  The bad news again is that Republicans have done everything they can to weaken those protections in many states where they have control.

That's one major reason why the 2016 elections are so important for state and federal races.  Here in Kentucky we're already seeing the results of what happens when Republicans try to dismantle accessibility to benefits of the safety net, and Gov. Matt Bevin has only been in office for four months.

But there's still a lot of things to work out in the post-2008 labor market.  Automation and globalization are changing a lot of things and doing so very quickly.  Republicans want to make sure that America can't change with it.

Republicans Cheesing The Vote

The real political story out of Wisconsin this week wasn't Tuesday's primary results, it's what Republican voter suppression in the state will achieve in November.

In comments made to TODAY'S TMJ4's Charles Benson on election night, U.S. congressman Glenn Grothman (R-Campbellsport) said he thinks Wisconsin's new voter ID law will help the eventual GOP nominee win in the state. 

Grothman's response came as Benson asked him about the GOP's poor performance across recent presidential contests in the state. 

"You know that a lot of Republicans, since 1984 in the presidential races, have not been able to win in Wisconsin," Benson said. "Why would it be any different for Ted Cruz, or a Donald Trump?" 

After explaining he thought Hillary Clinton would be a weak nominee for the Democrats, Grothman said "now we have photo ID, and I think photo ID is gonna make a little bit of a difference as well." 

Republicans aren't supposed to admit that voter ID laws favor them at the ballot box, not because of stopping mythical Democratic voter fraud, but because of stopping Democratic voters, period.  Yes, elderly, more conservative voters are affected by voter ID laws too, but far higher numbers of college students, people of color, and poor voters are disenfranchised in the process and it's a win the GOP will take in every state they can get away with it in.

That was always the point in November. 2016 is the first year that we will see widespread use of voter ID laws in a presidential race, and that could cost the Democratic candidates thousands, if not millions of votes.

That's the story out of Wisconsin, and Ohio, and North Carolina, and Texas, and the list goes on.

StupidiNews!

• Former Massey Energy CEO Don Blankenship has received a year in prison and a $250,000 fine for his role in the death of 29 miners at the Upper Big Branch mine collapse in 2010.
• Lawmakers in Puerto Rico have passed an emergency debt bill giving Gov. Alejandro Padilla broad latitude to deal with the island's debt payments in order to stave off default.
• The US Treasury Department is speeding up plans for new shell corporation rules in the wake of this week's "Panama Papers" leaks alleging global offshore tax fraud by a Panama law firm.
• A new study indicates that closing the gender pay and employment gap in the US would increase the country's GDP by more than $2 trillion yearly by 2025.
• The "Olympics of online sports" could be coming to Rio this summer as UK organizers want to put together an international e-sports competition for medals and glory.

Last Call For Wacky Mix-Ups

Odd how things that would land any of us in jail are just "mix-ups" when you're a Republican congressman.

Donald Trump’s point man in the House of Representatives improperly used campaign funds on video games and his children’s private Christian school, according to Federal Election Commission filings. And his staff’s explanations for the expenses are not particularly explanatory.

From September 21 through December 16 of last year, Duncan D. Hunter, the Republican congressman from California who endorsed Trump in February, used $1,302 he raised for his reelection campaign on video game fees. Another $1,650 was spent on Christian Unified Schools, a private school district in San Diego, which serves evangelicals.

Joey Kasper, Hunter’s chief of staff, told The Daily Beast it was all a big misunderstanding that was in the process of “being resolved.”

“I’ve got answers for you,” Kasper said. And he did, although they didn’t really help to clarify anything.

Hunter has been in Congress since 2009, when he succeeded his father, Duncan Hunter Sr., who left his office to run, unsuccessfully, for president. The younger Hunter had put himself through college by founding a web design company and then, after September 11, he joined the Marines, serving two tours in Iraq. According to his financial disclosures, Hunter does not have much personal wealth to speak of.

According to Kasper, it was Hunter’s 13-year-old son, also named Duncan, who was to blame for the 67 charges, totaling $1,302, from Steam Games. It’s a gaming platform that allows users to play dozens of different games—including seven versions of Call of Duty—on their computers.

The issue of the video games, Kasper said, was “complicated.”

So, if I had used a company credit card to pay for school tuition or buy $1,300 in video games off of Steam, I'd be fired, I'd have to pay the company back, and most likely they would press charges. Duncan Hunter does it, it's a wacky episode of Seinfeld.

But hey, let's be sure to grind Alan Grayson under an ethics investigation while we're at it.

I guess Hunter would have been in real trouble if he had accidentally bought lobster or t-bone steaks with that money, huh?  I guess we would have to test him for drugs in order to shame him off the public dime.

Jagoffs.

That Big Grayson Area, Con't

With all the newfound scrutiny on offshore hedge funds and tax havens thanks to the Panama Papers, it wasn't going to be long before the fallout started hitting US politicians, and the obvious choice to get roasted over this in a fit of pique is Democratic Rep. Alan Grayson.

There is “a substantial reason to believe” that U.S. Rep. Alan Grayson broke federal law and House ethics rules in connection with his offshore hedge fund and other actions in office, according to an investigative report released Tuesday.

But the House Committee on Ethics, which received the report, said the probe into Grayson requires “further review,” so it did not announce any final decision about his fate.

Investigators were initially looking into whether Grayson, D-Orlando, used his position in Congress to solicit investors to the Grayson Fund, partially based in the Cayman Islands. But the report also found possible ethical and federal law violations in his work as a lawyer, investments and the use of his office and staff.

Grayson issued a detailed rebuttal to the House Office of Congressional Ethics report in which he denied any wrongdoing. He called it “utterly frivolous” and “replete with amorphous catch-phrases like ‘reason to believe.’ It does not identify any instance where the OCE actually found an ethics violation, or any violation of law.”

Grayson, locked in heated Democratic primary campaign for the U.S. Senate, said in a conference call with reporters Tuesday that the only investors in his hedge fund were longtime friends “who were not persuaded to join the fund because I was a member of Congress.” 

 
Five gets you six that the "further review" has to do with the Panama Papers.  The Republicans despise Grayson and this is a good vehicle to go on the attack against him.

We'll see where this goes.  I know I've been critical of Grayson in the past, but any ethics committee in a US House run by the GOP is only going to be used for witch hunts against Democrats.  For this to come out 24 hours after the Panama Papers were released?  That's a hell of a coincidence.

Trump Cards, Con't

And speaking of dinosaur fan fiction:

Brownshirts!
Meet the Brownshirts!
They're The Donald's own security!
Will he
Still have these goons
If he wins our presidency?

One night last week, dozens of chanting activists filed into the lobby of a hotel here, demanding that it cancel a Donald Trump town hall set for the following day. Within minutes, three members of Trump’s advance security team were in the lobby, and things escalated quickly. 

An official with the Trump advance security team, a 61-year-old former FBI agent named Don Albracht, began circling the room, putting his phone in the faces of protesters and filming them. As they chanted “build communities, not walls,” Albracht ripped a sign out of one protester’s hands, jutting his phone within inches of her face, as her comrades shouted objections.

When some of the protesters tried to return the favor by filming Albracht at close range, one of Albracht’s associates pulled a protester away, screaming at her and wagging a finger in her face, an exchange captured in a video taken by activists with the group Stand Up For Racial Justice. 

Neither the Trump campaign nor Albracht would comment on the protest or the role of private security personnel like Albracht on Trump’s campaign. After a Trump speech on Wednesday in Appleton, Wisconsin, Albracht explained “our policy is that we’re not going to comment, because you just never know whether you’re going to get a fair shake.” 

The fracas in Janesville was only one example of the aggressive tactics Trump’s security has been using to tamp down even peaceful protests. A POLITICO investigation revealed that Trump has assembled a privately funded security and intelligence force with a far wider reach than other campaigns’ private security operations: tracking and rooting out protesters, patrolling campaign events and supplementing the Secret Service protection of the billionaire real estate showman during his nontraditional campaign for the GOP presidential nomination. 

The investigation ― which utilized Federal Election Commission reports, state licensing records, court filings and interview accounts or testimony from more than a dozen people who’ve crossed paths with Trump’s security ― found that the tactics of Trump’s team at times inflamed the already high tensions around his divisive campaign, rather than defusing them.

I honestly believe the comparisons of 2016 America to 1939 Germany have been made so often at this point that they have lost nearly all meaning, but let's try to appreciate the fact that Trump's private security goons are there to "track and root out protesters" while the guy is running for president of an ostensible representative democracy.  Please let that sink in for a bit about what that really means.

All the loud nonsense from the right (and the Useful Idiot Left) about Obama "crushing dissent" and all that is actually what Trump is doing here, and nobody seems very concerned about it.  Luckily, somebody figured out this might be illegal and is actually trying to do something about it.

The Trump campaign could be forced to publicly justify its security tactics in June when a New York state court is set to hear a little-noticed case brought by a handful of protesters who allege they were assaulted by five Trump security officials during a raucous protest outside the campaign’s Manhattan headquarters in September. The protesters’ lawyers have asked the Trump campaign to release its contracts for security, its guidelines for use of force, its security team’s personnel records, and complaints against its members ― including for excessive force, assault, battery or “violation of any federal or state constitutional right.” 

Among Trump critics who’ve had run-ins with his security, complaints include unnecessary force, discriminatory profiling and removing people from events based on little more than their appearance. Some question whether the force’s members are properly trained and certified for the work they’re doing, while others assert that the force acts as if it has the power of the law behind it. 

“It was this privatized mercenary force that seemed to have state sanctioning, and that’s something that I haven’t seen before,” said Josh Jenkins, a Madison, Wisconsin, auto mechanic and veteran protester who served as the liaison with police at the Janesville hotel protest.

This is what "crushing dissent" actually looks like, and Trump is happy to do it whenever he can.

Now combine the above with the following, and you get...well...you know.

A total of 80 percent of Trump supporters strongly or somewhat agree with this. Only supporters of Ted Cruz come close, at 76 percent; keep in mind that Cruz has edged towards Trump on immigration by ruling out legalization for the 11 million forever. Seventy two percent of Republicans and GOP-leaning independents also believe it, but John Kasich supporters are evenly split. 

Now, “minority groups” is a pretty loose term. But it seems reasonable to speculate that for a lot of Trump supporters (and for a lot of GOP voters) undocumented Latino immigrants constitute one of those groups. Indeed, this idea is perhaps bolstered by other polling: A recent Post survey found that 54 percent of Trump supporters believe that whites losing out to Hispanics and blacks is a bigger problem than the other way around. 

Anecdotal evidence has suggested that Trump supporters are resentful of government benefits that go to undocumented immigrants. Meanwhile, polls have shown that GOP voters and Trump supporters also support his call for mass deportations. 

Today’s Quinnipiac poll also finds that 78 percent of Trump supporters say they are “falling farther and farther behind economically,” a larger percentage than any other candidate. Meanwhile, 85 percent of Trump supporters say that “America has lost its identity.” This suggests the possibility that the “economic anxiety” often described as the source of Trump’s success does matter, but it’s one side of the coin, while the resonance of Trump’s suggestion that he’d turn back the demographic tide through sheer force of will is the other. As Wonkblog’s analysis of recent polling data concluded, Trump supporters tend to believe their “losses are being caused by other group’s gains.”

I mean yeah, we've destroyed Godwin's Law months ago on Trump, but let's really stop pretending that a violent private security force and a campaign run on punishing those people doesn't evoke these awful parallels, guys.

And let's not pretend the rest of the GOP isn't as bad at its core.  Trump's just saying what the racist bloc wants to hear.

StupidiNews!

• Both Sens. Ted Cruz and Bernie Sanders notched much-needed primary wins in Wisconsin last night over front-runners Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton.
• Mexico has shuffled members of its diplomatic team to the United States, citing an increasingly "hostile climate" towards Mexican citizens in America.
• Online banking giant PayPal says it will pull out of a planned $3.6 million expansion in NC and take 400 jobs elsewhere after the state's anti-trans "bathroom law" passed last month.
• New Obama administration rules to stop companies from shifting tax burdens overseas has scuttled a planned $160 billion merger between drugmakers Pfizer and Allergan.
• The NFL has struck a deal with Twitter to stream ten Thursday night regular season games this fall, beating out Verizon, Yahoo and Amazon.

Last Call For Bjorken Arrow

We have our first major political casualty of the Panama Papers: Iceland's PM, Sigmundur Gunnlaugsson has resigned after large demonstrations calling for his ouster yesterday in the capital, Reykjavik.

Gunnlaugsson’s resignation follows street protests in Reykjavik in which thousands of Icelanders took part. 

Documents leaked on Monday allege that Gunnlaugsson and his wife set up a company in the British Virgin Islands that he then did not disclose to parliament. Critics say that the company’s reported holdings in Icelandic banks mean Gunnlaugsson has a conflict of interest. 

Gunnlaugsson has denied any wrongdoing. 

Writing in Newsweek, Birgitta Jónsdóttir, parliamentary chair of Iceland’s opposition Pirate Party said: “If this was a comedy it would be funny but this is actually our head of state. This is not what Icelanders are like and this is not what Iceland is.”

Three things Icelanders take seriously: fish, handball, and anything related to banking scandals. Tens of thousands protesting in the US wouldn't make a dent.  Tens of thousands protesting in Iceland is 7% of the country's entire population, so Gunnlaugson was going to have to go. (Imagine if 25 million people showed up in Washington to protest anything today.)

By the way Iceland, entirely awesome job with the "getting involved in local politics" thing.

The Paul-churian Ryan-didate

The efficacy of the plan is in massive doubt, but apparently the big Republican donors, frightened of Trump costing the GOP everything, are working to draft GOP House Speaker Paul Ryan as their nominee in July.

Charles Koch is confident House Speaker Paul Ryan could emerge from the Republican National Convention as the party’s nominee if Donald Trump comes up at least 100 delegates shy, he has told friends privately.

Koch believes Ryan would be a “shoo-in” at a contested convention, should the campaign get to that point. Though Koch’s wealth gives him significant influence within the Republican Party, it does not necessarily translate into skill in political prognostication. Still, he and his brother David are fond of Ryan. As a source close to the brothers told The Huffington Post, they appreciate the agenda he has pursued as speaker, including opposition to tax extenders and heightened warnings against corporate welfare — positions that contrast with the admittedly vague portfolio pushed by Donald Trump.

One source close to Ryan said he would only be interested in it if the party could unite behind him, a scenario he can’t envision. “I don’t know what to tell you? He doesn’t want the nomination. And can you imagine the backlash from the Trump forces if someone who didn’t run for president wins the nomination? It would be complete chaos,” he said.

A second source close to the Koch brothers said he wasn’t aware of a conversation about Ryan, but it didn’t surprise him.

Emails to Charles and David Koch were not returned.

Mark Holden, general counsel for Koch Industries, told HuffPost the claim was “completely false.”

“Let me be clear, we never have advocated for a specific candidate in a presidential primary, and we have no plans to do so now,” Holden said.

People close to Ryan continue to insist publicly that he has no interest in the nomination. And one associate of the speaker said he “guarantees” there has been no conversation with Charles Koch about the possibility, “because Paul has not had any conversation about it. He won’t engage any conversation about it.” 

It's not really wishful thinking when you have billions of dollars and massive political influence within the GOP.  Still, this all depends on Ryan, who once again went way out of his way Monday to deny he is running by sounding like someone running.

“I do believe people put my name in this thing, and I say, 'Get my name out of that,'” he said on“The Hugh Hewitt Show." "If you want to be president, you should go run for president. And that’s just the way I see it. 

“I’m not that person. I’d like to think my face is somewhat fresh, but I’m not for this conversation. I think you need to run for president if you’re going to run for president, and I’m not running for president. Period, end of story.”

Ryan also voiced uncertainty over the Republican National Convention in July, arguing it might have different rules than the 2012 version.

“I don’t know, that’s not my decision,” he said of Rule 40(b), which requires candidates to have the backing of at least eight state delegations.

“That is going to be up to the delegates,” Ryan added. "I’m going to be an honest broker and make sure that the convention follows the rules as the delegates make the rules.

“It should not be our decision as leaders. It is the delegates’ decision. So I’m not going to comment on what these rules look like or not."

He's not running, but he's not ruling out convention delegates "making the rules" either, and should those delegates decide to get behind Paul Ryan in July, well, it's the delegates' decision, right?

All I know is that July in Cleveland is going to be epic, which is basically the first time "July in Cleveland" and "epic" has ever been used together.

Dispatches From Bevinstan, Con't

GOP Gov. Matt Bevin is still trying to close one of Kentucky's last two remaining abortion clinics, demanding that the Kentucky Court of Appeals immediately issue an injunction to close the clinic in Lexington while the case is pending.

The Bevin administration asked the Kentucky Court of Appeals on Monday to overturn a lower court’s denial of the state’s request to temporarily close EMW Women’s Clinic on Burt Road.

The state said the appellate court should reverse a ruling last month by Fayette Circuit Judge Ernesto Scorsone and order a temporary injunction prohibiting the clinic from operating an abortion clinic until it receives a license from the state Cabinet for Health and Family Services or until the lower court makes a final judgment in the case.

The state claims the lower court misinterpreted and misapplied relevant state laws and relied on unwarranted assumptions and facts that were not in the court record.

Scorsone said the state cabinet failed to present adequate evidence during a hearing last month that it will eventually prevail in the lawsuit or that allowing the clinic to remain open as the lawsuit proceeds would cause “irreparable injury.”

Scorsone also said closing the clinic would be against the public interest, since it is the only physician’s office that routinely provides abortion services in the eastern half of Kentucky.

The state sued the clinic in early March, alleging that it lacked a required state license. The clinic stopped performing abortions on March 9 pending a judge’s ruling, but said it would resume after Scorsone’s ruling.

Scott White, an attorney representing the clinic, said “we’re confident that Judge Scorsone’s well-reasoned decision will hold up on appeal.”

We'll see if that appeal holds up or not.  It's Kentucky after all, and if there's a reasonable chance that that the appellate court decides that Bevin's TRAP gambit will work, an injunction is very possible.
That would be awful, but then again, despite his protestations Bevin is nothing more than your standard right-wing GOP austerian, who has decided that the people of Kentucky must be punished until they are in line with "Christian values".

And so it goes in Bevinstan.

Read more here: http://www.kentucky.com/news/politics-government/article69911827.html#storylink=cp