An End-Of-Year Pot Shot From House Dems

House Democrats (and more than a few Republicans) have signed on to a 228-164 lame duck bill that decriminalized marijuana at the federal level, and while the legislation will never get a Senate vote, it does mean that Democrats can go to President-elect Joe Biden's position on recreational pot and tell him that can "evolve", Obama-style.

The Democratic-controlled House on Friday approved a bill to decriminalize and tax marijuana at the federal level. The bill would reverse what supporters called a failed policy of criminalization of pot use and take steps to address racial disparities in enforcement of federal drug laws.

Opponents, mostly Republicans, called the bill a hollow political gesture and mocked Democrats for bringing it up at a time when thousands of Americans are dying from the coronavirus pandemic.

Supporters say it would help reverse adverse effects of the decades-long “war on drugs” by removing marijuana, or cannabis, from the list of federally controlled substances while allowing states to set their own rules on pot. The bill also would use money from an excise tax on marijuana to address the needs of groups and communities harmed by the drug war and provide for the expungement of federal marijuana convictions and arrests.

“For far too long, we have treated marijuana as a criminal justice problem instead of as a matter of personal choice and public health,” said Rep. Jerry Nadler, D-N.Y., chairman of the House Judiciary Committee and a key sponsor of the bill. “Whatever one’s views are on the use of marijuana for recreational or medicinal use, the policy of arrests, prosecution and incarceration at the federal level has proven unwise and unjust.”

The vote comes at a time when most Americans live in states where marijuana is legal in some form, and lawmakers from both parties agreed that national cannabis policy has lagged woefully behind changes at the state level. That divide has created a host of problems — loans and other banking services, for example, are hard to get for many marijuana companies because pot remains illegal at the federal level.

The bill also would open up more opportunities for marijuana businesses, including access to Small Business Administration loans to help ensure that minorities can take part in an industry dominated by white farmers and growers.

 

Now the bill would never pass a Senate GOP filibuster, let alone get a vote in the Senate at all, because McConnell knows there's probably 53-55 votes for it. States keep legalizing recreational pot left, right, and center.  

 

Republicans will never allow a bill like this to pass until they start losing Senate seats over it. They definitely won't allow it to pass unless they can eliminate Black and brown people from being able to legally make money selling pot entirely and turn it into a multi billion dollar legalized drug cartel operation the way pharmaceutical companies, breweries, wineries, and distilleries operate today.

 

This could help in Georgia though if Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff are willing to sign off on this, but the state has largely resisted decriminalization efforts, and it could backfire.

The one person that this will put pressure on is Joe Biden, and he's going to get a lot of blowback on this if he does change things at the federal level.

And all these Republicans will suddenly decide that the bill gives the government too much regulatory and taxation power should it come up again next year, which I believe it won't.

Maybe for next Christmas.

Kentucky Goes Viral, Con't

As I expected, Kentucky's GOP Attorney General Daniel Cameron has now filed for an immediate injunction and motion to void all of Democratic Gov. Steve Beshear's COVID-19 orders, leaving the state operating at 100% normal, pre-pandemic capacity and putting Kentuckians entirely at the tender mercies of the state's Republican lawmakers and the cornoavirus.

Attorney General Daniel Cameron filed a motion Wednesday to block all of Gov. Andy Beshear's past and future executive orders under the current COVID-19 state of emergency, alleging that the governor's actions are arbitrary and violate Kentuckians' constitutional rights.

The motion was filed in Boone County Circuit Court, where a judge recently issued a restraining order against Beshear's public health orders related to auto racetracks and daycare centers.

The governor on Wednesday asked the Kentucky Supreme Court to uphold his emergency public health orders in this case and a related one involving agritourism businesses in Scott County, following a ruling against his COVID-19 orders by an appellate judge Monday.

Cameron's motion seeks a temporary injunction to prohibit the governor from "issuing or enforcing any executive order or other directive" under Kentucky's state of emergency statute, calling Beshear's past orders "an arbitrary and unreasonable burden" and a direct violation of citizens' constitutional rights.

Beshear fired back at Cameron in two tweets Thursday morning, stating he had just learned of the motion that, if granted, would "void every COVID-19 rule or regulation, and prevent any future orders needed to respond to escalating cases."

"With no rules, there is no chance of getting kids back to school, we will lose over $10 billion in our economy, and many Kentuckians will die," Beshear tweeted. "I hope everyone understands how scary and reckless this is."

Cameron knows exactly what he's doing too, neutering Beshear, putting 4.5 million Kentuckians at risk, and forcing the governor to call a special session of the state legislature so that Kentucky lawmakers can finish the job of removing all power from him.

In a series of tweets two hours later, Cameron responded by criticizing Beshear for not collaborating with his office and Republican legislators on his public health orders.

"Judges at every level have found constitutional problems with his orders," Cameron wrote. "Instead of collaborating with our office and the General Assembly to fix these issues, he’s pointing fingers."

Cameron's 31-page motion took aim at the rationale of Beshear and Dr. Steven Stack, the commissioner of the Kentucky Department of Public Health, behind the COVID-19 orders, saying a recent deposition by Stack revealed they were based on "values-based judgment and ad-hoc rationalization."
"Although there are nearly 4.5 million people in Kentucky, and state government is composed of three branches of government, with a general assembly composed of 38 senators and 100 representatives, right now nearly every aspect of the lives and livelihoods of those 4.5 million Kentuckian is purportedly governed by one man, and his political appointees: Gov. Andrew Beshear," stated Cameron's motion.

Cameron is also attacking the notion of even needing any of these orders in the first place, all but taking up the reprehensible Rep. Thomas Massie position on health emergency orders, that the government has no business in protecting Americans from health problems.

This is horrific news.  If Cameron is successful, Kentuckians will suffer like never before.

And he knows it.

Amash-ed Potato, Con't

And just as quickly as Glibertarian Contrarian Scold™ Justin Amash entered the 2020 contest seeking the Libertarian ticket, the Libertarians apparently told him to go screw himself, and he's back out.

Michigan Rep. Justin Amash has announced that he will not run for president as a third party candidate. 

"After much reflection, I've concluded that circumstances don't lend themselves to my success as a candidate for president this year, and therefore I will not be a candidate," he tweeted Saturday. 

Amash announced last month that he was exploring a presidential run as a Libertarian Party candidate. 

In a series of tweets on Saturday, Amash said the decision to drop out was "difficult," but that he "believes a candidate from outside the old parties, offering a vision of government grounded in liberty and equality, can break through in the right environment." 

"Polarization is near an all-time high. Electoral success requires an audience willing to consider alternatives, but both social media and traditional media are dominated by voices strongly averse to the political risks posed by a viable third candidate," he added. 

The Libertarian Party, he added, "is well positioned to become a major and consistent contender to win elections at all levels of government." 

"I remain invested in helping the party realize these possibilities and look forward to the successes ahead," he said.

To his credit, Amash realized he was most likely going to hand over Michigan, Wisconsin, and maybe more over to Trump in November if he stayed in, so he's getting out.

It's the first real useful thing he's done since leaving the GOP.

Massie In A Mess, Con't

Trump's pathological need for praise and his malignant desire to be the hero that saved America from COVID-19 is so massive that anyone else who steals the spotlight from him, even for a moment, faces getting run over by Trump's Twitter-based wrath. Justin Amash found this out the hard way, that glibertarian grandstanding at Trump's specific expense gets you crucified and strung up on a meathook to bleed out. 

Yesterday Thomas Massie decided he was going to make national news again with his contrarian tantrum hintong he was strongly considering delaying passage of the COVID-19 phase 3 relief bill by forcing a floor vote. Now Massie is finding out the price for his folly and that there's no room in the GOP at all for anyone whose "principles" interfere with Dear Leader's glory.

A $2 trillion coronavirus stimulus package was supposed to get a voice vote Friday by the House of Representatives — until one Kentucky congressman disrupted those plans.

Republican Rep. Thomas Massie, of Kentucky’s 4th District, has other congressional members fearing he will force an in-person vote on the bill in Washington, D.C., causing the vote to be delayed and potentially forcing representatives to gather in person at the Capitol during the COVID-19 outbreak to vote.

President Donald Trump hammered Massie Friday morning on Twitter, calling him a “third rate Grandstander” and “a disaster for America, and for the Great State of Kentucky.”

“Workers & small businesses need money now in order to survive,” Trump said in one of his tweets about Massie. “Virus wasn’t their fault. It is ‘HELL’ dealing with the Dems, had to give up some stupid things in order to get the ‘big picture’ done. 90% GREAT! WIN BACK HOUSE, but throw Massie out of Republican Party!”

Trump had previously commented on a potential “grandstander” delaying the vote, but he didn’t mention Massey by name. He was still confident it would pass after it passed the Senate unanimously, according to the Washington Post.

“You might have one grandstander, and for that we’ll have to come back and take a little more time and it’ll pass, it’ll just take a little longer. But let’s see whether or not we have a grandstander,” Trump said at the White House Thursday, according to the Washington Post.

Oops.

I stand by my statement that Massie remains a national embarrassment and should be made to resign over this.  It's by far from the first time he's pulled crap like this, delaying votes on disaster relief bills to demand amendments and full floor votes to let everybody on Earth know he has no interest in being a federal government employee in a federal government he has no intent of believing in.

But now he's poked the big orange bear and possibly cost Trump his weekend victory lap.

I'll continue to go unheard as Massie's constituent and a dirty, unwashed plebeian blogger.

He won't survive Trump's wrath much longer though.  And yes, Massie has a serious primary challenge from Republican Todd McMurtry, one of the lawyers representing Nicholas Sandmann in the Covington Catholic defamation case, if you think this area is capable of producing a non-embarrassing, non-asshole Republican.

But you know what?

Massie has a serious Democratic challenger this time, nurse practitioner Alexandra Owensby who is running and needs our help.

 

Massie In A Mess

I've mentioned a number of times how Rep. Thomas Massie, glibertarian asshole, is a national embarrassment, but his comments on COVID-19 here necessitate his resignation.

Northern Kentucky U.S. congressman Thomas Massie blasted novel coronavirus precautions taken by governments on his social media platforms this week.

His posts from Facebook and Twitter knocked the cautionary steps governments took to slow the spread of the pandemic. He called for the private sector to solve testing issues, said eliminating dine-in options at restaurants would "lead to worse public health outcomes than if they had remained open," and was one of the 17 Republicans who didn't vote on the Coronavirus Relief Bill.

"When this is over, I fear FDR’s internment of Japanese-Americans is going to look like a 'light touch.'" he wrote on Facebook Monday morning. President Trump announced at a press conference later in the afternoon that people should avoid crowds larger than 10 people.

The candidates who want to unseat Massie denounced his comments as the number of confirmed novel coronavirus cases in Kentucky rose to a total to 25, as of Monday evening.

Todd McMurtry, a Republican running against Massie in the rescheduled June 23 primary election, called his actions "shameful," in a statement sent to The Enquirer and added "Frankly, he should resign."

"I stand by all of my social media posts," Massie told The Enquirer.

Massie said McMurtry's comment was "laughable," defended his comments and pointed to the thousands of likes and shares the posts got as a sign that they were well received.

McMurtry said Massie's posts weren't appropriate for a crisis like the COVID-19 pandemic.

"He brags about his 'sass,' calling himself 'Sassy Massie,' but these times and our current needs demand someone who is serious," McMurtry said. "What we need from our representative is competence and hard work. Massie has failed us. It’s time for a change."
The two Democrats vying for the Democratic party nomination for the congressional seat, Alexandra Owesnby and Shannon Fabert, also criticized Massie.

A day after he missed the Coronavirus Relief Bill vote, Massie tweeted from his farm in Garrison, Ky., home to 866 people, about the mini ecosystem on his land and his canned pickles and peaches.

Massie told The Enquirer he would have voted no on the bill even if he had been in D.C. because he was concerned the bill would impose hardships on small companies and "put them out of business." He also claimed the bill wasn't fully written yet.
He added that he did vote for the $8 billion coronavirus package in early March, which aimed to combat the spread of the virus. President Trump signed that deal in early March as well.

Massie is not self-quarantining, he told The Enquirer, even after learning one of the attendees of the Conservative Political Action Conference tested positive for novel coronavrius.

"I do think people should exercise caution," Massie said.

Caution he's not willing to engage in himself.

The man is not just a joke, but a dangerous example of what not to do, and he has no business being anywhere near Congress. It really takes something to get both Republicans and Democrats in NKY on the same side, but there you go.

And if you want proof Massie is 100% wrong, you have only to look next door in Tennessee.

Look at the difference between how the Kentucky Governor and Tennessee Governor handled the Coronavirus

And look at the results of those policies pic.twitter.com/U3T4WMuF5a

— Matt Jones (@KySportsRadio) March 21, 2020

Resign, Congressman Massie.

Do the right thing for the first time in your career.

Rand Paul Goes Viral

As usual, Republican glibertarian asshole Rand Paul has decided that being the lone vote against anything that would actually prove the federal government should help people in a time of national crisis by voting against a coronavirus emergency funding package in the Senate yesterday will somehow endear him to the people here in Kentucky.

Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul voted against an emergency response coronavirus bill Thursday afternoon after his proposed amendment to the bill was turned down.

The bill had already received more than 60 affirmative votes, which was more than it needed to pass, when Paul voted against it. The bill passed 96-1.

"Earlier today on the Senate floor, I said that while I support an all-hands-on-deck response to the coronavirus, we should cut out waste and take money from less urgent spending, such as what we are wasting overseas, to put into that response effort," Paul said in a statement after his vote. "We don’t have to borrow more money. We just have to start setting our own priorities."

We can't afford coronavirus testing because GOP tax cuts, which Rand Paul voted for, knowing they would cost the federal government trillions in revenue.  I'm sure that will help.

The U.S. Senate voted earlier Thursday to table an amendment from Paul after the junior senator from Kentucky threatened to hold up the legislation if his amendment did not receive a vote.

The House of Representatives voted overwhelmingly to approve $8.3 billion in emergency aid Wednesday to combat the novel coronavirus, which has caused 11 deaths in the United States so far.

Before a scheduled Thursday afternoon vote on the bill, Paul put forth the amendment, which proposed cuts to State Department Cultural Exchange programs and reduces funding for the United States Agency for International Development, among other things.

The amendment died screaming, but Paul continues to remain in office. If Amy McGrath can't beat Mitch in November, I sincerely hope she goes for Paul's seat in 2022.

Meanwhile in DC, the Trump regime's response continues to be bafflingly inadequate and incompetent to the point of venality.

There will be a notable omission when Vice President Mike Pence visits Washington state Thursday as part of the Trump administration's coronavirus response: health Secretary Alex Azar.

The White House on Wednesday also benched Azar from a coronavirus task force press briefing, the latest sign of diminished standing for an official who was the face of the U.S. response to the disease just a week ago.

Four of Azar’s deputies — including Medicare chief Seema Verma and Food and Drug Administration Commissioner Steve Hahn, who were both added to the task force after Pence took over the federal response — joined the vice president and other officials at the White House on Wednesday.

Azar's absence didn't go unnoticed by allies worried about his standing in the administration and the way he's catching more flak for missteps. Azar was front and center Thursday at a Capitol Hill briefing with House members, during which he took heat from some lawmakers over transparency and whether his department is adequately prepared for the stealthy disease.

Asked why Azar didn’t attend Wednesday's televised briefing, a Pence spokesperson said that Azar left for his office after the task force meeting, and officials wanted to make room on stage for Ben Carson, the Housing and Urban Development secretary and also a task force member. A spokesperson for Azar said that members of the task force will be “rotating through as necessary” now that the group is doing daily briefings.

Azar is being kept on until he can take the maximum amount of blame for the failed response, and everyone knows it.  It won't be long until the epidemic phase kicks in, end of the month at best.  April is going to be a nightmare.

And again, Trump is in charge.

Sunday Long Read: Home Is Where You Hang Your Scam

Our Sunday Long Read this week comes from Vice's Allie Conti, who followed up on getting ripped off by an Airbnb rental and ended up uncovering a massive, systemic bait-and-switch fraud scam that the company almost actually encourages because it gets paid either way.

The call came about 10 minutes before we were set to check into the Airbnb. I was sitting at a brewery just around the corner from the rental on North Wood Street in Chicago when the man on the other end of the line said that our planned visit wouldn’t be possible. A previous guest had flushed something down the toilet, which had left the unit flooded with water, he explained. Apologetic, he promised to let us stay in another property he managed until he could call a plumber.

I had flown with two friends to the city in hopes of a relaxing end-of-summer getaway. We had purchased tickets to attend the September music festival Riot Fest, where Blink-182 and Taking Back Sunday were scheduled to perform. The trip had gotten off to a rough start even before the call. Around a month before, a first Airbnb host had already canceled, leaving us with little time to figure out alternative housing. While scrambling to find something else, I stumbled upon a local Airbnb rental listed by a couple, Becky and Andrew. Sure, the house looked a little basic in the photos online, but it was nice enough, especially considering the time crunch—light-filled, spacious, and close to the Blue Line.

Now, we were facing our second potential disaster in 30 days, and I couldn’t help but feel slightly suspicious of the man on the phone, who had called me from a number with a Los Angeles area code. Hoping to talk in person, I asked him if he was in the area. He said that he was at work and didn’t really have time to chat. Then he added that I needed to decide immediately if I was willing to change my reservation.

As if he could hear me calculating in my head how much of a hassle it would be to find a hotel instead, he then added something else to his pitch.

“It’s about three times bigger,” the man said. “That’s the good news.”

The bad news, which went unstated, was that I had unknowingly stumbled into a nationwide web of deception that appeared to span eight cities and nearly 100 property listings—an undetected scam created by some person or organization that had figured out just how easy it is to exploit Airbnb’s poorly written rules in order to collect thousands of dollars through phony listings, fake reviews, and, when necessary, intimidation. Considering Airbnb’s lax enforcement of its own policies, who could blame the scammers for taking advantage of the new world of short-term rental platforms? They had every reason to believe they could do so with impunity.

I've sworn off Airbnb because of their systemic racism problems built into a platform that really has no way of enforcing state anti-discrimination and innkeeper laws, especially when it's people renting out their own homes, but of course bait-and-switch scams are pretty bad for everyone, except for the fact that Airbnb isn't really doing anything about scammers either because they get paid for cancellations too.

So yeah, there's that inherent gig economy libertarian tech bullshit again, it's cheaper because it gets around the increased overhead of all that 'being legal and non-discriminatory" and offers itself as an alternative, and it works great as long as you're a white guy in a system that doesn't penalize you for not being a white guy.

I know picking on it is low-hanging, practically gravid fruit, but that's the whole point.

Republicans Get Drugged Up

The House Republican Freedom Caucus for some reason certainly doesn't seem to be too concerned about prescription drug prices or the older Republican voters suffering because they're so high, going so far as to publicly warn pharmaceutical companies not to cooperate with the House Oversight Committee's investigation to determine why Americans pay more for prescription drugs than any other country on Earth.

In an unusual move, House Republicans are warning drug companies against complying with a House investigation into drug prices.

Republicans on the House Oversight Committee sent letters to a dozen CEOs of major drug companies warning that information they provide to the committee could be leaked to the public by Democratic chair Elijah Cummings in an effort to tank their stock prices.

Cummings requested information from 12 drug companies such as Pfizer Inc., Johnson & Johnson, and Novartis AG in January as part of a broad investigationinto how the industry sets prescription drug prices.

In their letters, Reps. Jim Jordan and Mark Meadows — leaders of the hardline conservative House Freedom Caucus — imply that Cummings may be attempting to collect the information in order to bring down the industry’s stock prices.

They write that Cummings is seeking sensitive information “that would likely harm the competitiveness of your company if disclosed publicly.” They then accuse Cummings of “releasing cherry-picked excerpts from a highly sensitive closed-door interview” conducted in an investigation into White House security clearances. “This is not the first time he has released sensitive information unilaterally,” says the letter. The authors say they “feel obliged to alert” the drug companies of Cummings’ actions.

Democrats expressed bafflement at the letters. While politicians routinely spar over committee work, warning companies not to comply with an investigation is unconventional — perhaps even unprecedented, Democrats say.

“Rep. Jordan is on the absolute wrong side here,” Cummings said in an emailed statement to BuzzFeed News. “He would rather protect drug company ‘stock prices’ than the interests of the American people.”

In their letter, Jordan and Meadows say that “while we cannot speculate about Chairman Cummings’ motives,” the committee should not pursue an investigation designed to impact stock prices.

It's ridiculous on its face, and I can't see how siding with the folks making insulin cost thousands of dollars per dose over Americans is going to help the GOP in 2020, but hey, keep making this about health care, guys.

The Blue Wave Rises, Con't

Five weeks out and while Republicans are expecting white anger over the Kavanaugh confirmation to save, if not increase their Senate majority, the House is looking more and more like a bloodbath for the GOP as the latest Cook Political Report House chart finds multiple GOP toss-up races moving into the Democratic column.

Five weeks out, several personally popular Republicans who appeared to be defying the "blue wave" in Clinton-won districts are beginning to see their leads erode. GOP Reps. Carlos Curbelo (FL-26), John Katko (NY-24) and Brian Fitzpatrick (PA-01) led most surveys over the summer but are now prime targets as their well-funded Democratic challengers become better-known and the Kavanaugh debate further polarizes voters into red and blue corners. 

It's becoming harder and harder to see Republicans' path to holding the majority. In the past few days, multiple Democrats challengers have announced staggering fundraising totals of more than $3 million during the third quarter of the year, exceeding what many predecessors have raised for an entire cycle. One high-ranking Republican worries his party could be "buried under an avalanche" of Democratic money that GOP outside groups can't match. 

After today's ratings changes, there are 15 GOP-held seats in Lean or Likely Democratic (including seven incumbents) and Democrats would only need to win 11 of the 31 races in the Toss Up column to flip the majority. There's still time for political conditions to change, but today the likeliest outcome appears to be a Democratic gain of between 25 and 40 seats (they need 23 for House control).

And you'll never guess who appears to be in real trouble but our old friend, Ron Paul Junior (Junior) himself, Michigan's favorite Glibertarian con man, Justin Amash.

West central: Grand Rapids, Battle Creek
Likely Republican. Amash, a Freedom Caucus member and heir to Ron Paul's libertarian mantle in the House, has been presumed to be safe thanks to his vocal criticism of President Trump (Amash cited Trump's "dazzling display of pettiness and insecurity" at one point in June). But Democrat Gretchen Whitmer appears to be running away with the governor's race and is giving several Michigan Republicans down-ballot jitters. 

This increasingly professional Grand Rapids seat is a Democratic recruitment failure: Cathy Albro, a pro-single-payer former teacher who won the August primary with 68 percent, had raised just $61,000 at the end of July. However, Amash had just $277,000 on hand and doesn't appear to be running a vigorous campaign either. There's also no guarantee his Trump criticism will earn him as many votes from Democrats as he loses from Trump supporters. 

Despite the parties' utter lack of activity here, the potential for a horrible night for Michigan Republicans makes overlooked districts like this one watching. Trump only won this seat 52 percent to 42 percent, in line with plenty of other districts that are competitive.

See if we can't help out Cathy Albro, eh?

In addition to Amash, Mia Love is in trouble in Utah again, and so is Keith Yoder in KC.  These are seats that could very well fall if the national mood is as bad as it seems to be for the GOP.

Stay tuned.

Mad Don: The Road Warrior

Remember the joke that anti-government Libertarians sure love to use public highways to drive to those rallies?  And you know, it gets even funnier because Libertarians have zero sense of humor and always respond with "Well, maybe if we had more toll roads and bridges, at least they would be paid for." Sure, that would essentially be a massive, regressive tax on the poorest Americans especially in places without public transportation, but it's not like anyone's actually going to do that to the federal highway system, right?

So do we want to take a guess at what Donald Trump's big infrastructure plan is?

Trump, as you might have noticed during this long, emotionally torturous campaign, likes to wax poetic about America's collapsing bridges and “third-world” airports, and he has vowed to fix up the country by doubling Hillary Clinton's proposed spending on infrastructure. At the same time, he’s also promised to pass gargantuan tax cuts while limiting the budget deficit.

This has all raised an obvious question: How, exactly, does America’s angriest clementine plan to pay for all of this building? I mean, Mexico isn't going to cover the wall and repairs to I-95, is it?

Thankfully, we now have an answer from two of Trump's chief economic advisers. In a report from Oct. 27, University of California–Irvine professor Peter Navarro and private equity honcho Wilbur Ross outlined how the candidate would transform about $167 billion of federal tax credits into $1 trillion of infrastructure spending. Factor in the effects of economic growth, they argued, and the cost to taxpayers would amount to zero, zilch, nada. Or, as they put it, the whole thing would be “budget neutral.”

Of course, it‘s not really free. Americans would just end up paying for the construction a bit later on.

Under Trump's plan—at least as it's written (more on that in a minute)—the federal government would offer tax credits to private investors interested in funding large infrastructure projects, who would put down some of their own money up front, then borrow the rest on the private bond markets. They would eventually earn their profits on the back end from usage fees, such as highway and bridge tolls (if they built a highway or bridge) or higher water rates (if they fixed up some water mains). So instead of paying for their new roads at tax time, Americans would pay for them during their daily commute. And of course, all these private developers would earn a nice return at the end of the day.

One of the big fights here in Cincinnati is over the Brent Spence bridge, which carries I-71/75 traffic across the Ohio River and is one of the busiest trucking bridges in the country.  Republicans really, really want to turn it into a private toll bridge because it would be a massive profit generator for whoever got the bid. Voters really, really want to throw out whoever votes for such a plan in either northern Kentucky or southwest Ohio.

Trump vowed to fix the bridge with this plan on Friday at his rally in Ohio.

Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump rallied in Clinton County Friday, announcing he'd replace the Brent Spence Bridge if he is elected.

Trump spoke at 4:30 p.m. Friday at Airborne Airpark, vowing to bring jobs back to America, rebuild inner cities and to keep the country safe from terrorism.

“We’re going to fix and invest in our inner cities, we’re going to bring jobs back to the inner cities,” Trump said.

Trump did not announce how he planned to replace the Brent Spence or what he would do to cover those costs.

Of course not.  Those plans come later, after you've already fallen for the scam.

Pick Up Your Ride And Go Home

Whiny techbros don't like being told what they can and can't do in the Age of Disruption, and Austin, home of SXSW, decided that yes, ride-sharing drivers for services like Uber and Lyft need tougher background checks.  The companies spent nearly $8 million to force a ballot measure repealing the background check ordnance, and voters went to the polls on Saturday.

On-demand ride companies Uber and Lyft suffered an embarrassing defeat in a Saturday election in Austin as voters backed a measure requiring fingerprint background checks for drivers.

The two companies spent more than $8 million to repeal a city ordinance requiring the fingerprint-based criminal checks and launched what turned into the most expensive race in the Texas capital's history. Voters said by a margin of 56 to 44 percent they wanted the fingerprint checks to stay.

The companies outspent their opponents by 80-to-1 and when the votes were tallied their campaign contributions broke down to being more than $200 for each vote in favor of their position.

"Disappointment does not begin to describe how we feel about shutting down operations in Austin," Uber's Austin general manager Chris Nakutis said in a statement.

The stakes were high for the privately held Uber and Lyft, which say their background checks are already rigorous and ensure safety.

"Unfortunately, the rules passed by City Council don't allow true ridesharing to operate," Lyft said, adding it will suspend operations in Austin as of Monday.

That's right, both Uber and Lyft have long threatened to shut down their services if the repeal failed, warning that the city will lose tens of millions in business and that hundreds of drivers will lose their jobs.

Which isn't true, as the cost of the tougher background checks in Austin would have been less than the $8 million they spent lobbying for the repeal, but they figure they can force the city to come crawling back to them eventually.

Most likely I see a Republican-backed statewide measure that repeals the Austin ordnance soon.  In the meantime, the techbros will continue to whine.

Big, Funny-Shaped, Unstable Tent Politics

With the GOP in the middle of a nuclear meltdown, it's up to our Village Betters to make sure that Democrats don't get cocky or think that they matter, because there's always hippie-punching to be done.  Today's example, Charlie Camosy, who has been telling Dems for years now to embrace the "pro-life liberal".

Democrats can make a home for these stranded voters. Opening a big tent to pro-lifers would not only offer a hospitable climate for Democrats who value a “whole life” ethic, which weaves together common Democratic concerns like care for the impoverished and elderly with an equal interest in the unborn; it would also put them in a good position to win the next generation. Millennials and Latinos, after all, are trending more antiabortion than any other young generation in recent U.S. history. Only 37 percent of young people think that abortion is morally acceptable — while 54 percent of Latinos think abortion should be illegal in all or most cases. 

Recent historical research on the progressive roots of the pro-life movement in the United States suggests a Democratic coalition with space for pro-lifers wouldn’t be a novel phenomenon. As Kristen Day, president of Democrats for Life, reminds us: In 1976 there were an astonishing 125 antiabortion Democrats in Congress. Today there are three. Jim Oberstar, who was a Minnesota congressman, used to say that pro-lifers didn’t stop sending people to Congress, but rather “they just stopped sending Democrats.” 

And, because roughly 20 million Democrats identify as antiabortion, it’s possible that inviting antiabortion Dems back into the fold could also reinforce the party’s numbers by heralding the return of the so-called missing pro-life Democrats, along with current Republican voters who might cross party lines.

It’s difficult to predict just how many disaffected pro-lifers currently attached to the Republican party might cast their votes for Democrats given the opportunity. But there is good reason to believe that, especially among Millennial voters, such a strategy could have meaningful returns for Democrats. In 2010, research conducted by NARAL found that there is a significant “intensity gap” between pro-life and pro-choice Millennial voters: While 51 percent of pro-lifers under 30 considered abortion a “very important” voting issue, only 26 percent of pro-choice Millennials said the same. The fact that such a high percentage of young pro-lifers consider abortion a top priority suggests that, should Democrats shift their stalwart pro-choice stance, the next generation of antiabortion voters may well lend them much-needed support. Judging by the example of 2006, such a groundswell could bring about a real, lasting boost for local and congressional Democrats.

In other words, if Democrats abandon all this nonsense about women actually being able to get accessible reproductive healthcare, white Millennial dudebros will come back to the Dems, and they're the only voters that actually matter.  If that sounds like a gigantic pile of crap, it's because it is, and Camosy contributes to the Glibertarian Nonsense machine that is The Federalist.

What Camosy really wants is both parties to get rid of abortion completely, because the Bitches Need To Know Their Place.  If you think Camosy and his 30-something cadre of kinder, gentler MRA slut-shaming misogynists would ever start voting for the Democrats, you're out of your mind.

But that's exactly what Camosy wants stupid people to think.

Last Call For The Cookie Crumbles

Pretty sure we've reached peak Glibertarian Nonsense with the Federalist's Daniel Payne on selling Girl Scout cookies.

It’s that time of year again when the Girl Scouts are going door-to-door and setting up shop outside of supermarkets to sell you those colorful little boxes of reconstituted butter and sugar. It’s Girl Scout cookie season, I mean, which—according to the Girl Scouts of America—is the time of year when the young women of the Girl Scouts learn “goal setting, decision making, money management, people skills, and business ethics.” 

The Girl Scout cookie program, in other words, teaches young girls how to be entrepreneurs; it teaches them how to work. It is, after a fashion, child labor. The great scandal is not that the Girl Scouts are promoting child labor, it’s that there isn’t more child labor in the United States today.

This is amazingly stupid, even for this crew.

When one says the words “child labor,” of course, one immediately thinks of the crushing 14-hour textile-style jobs, pictures of which one usually sees in middle school history textbooks. Surely young children are better off when they are not required to labor under such working conditions. 

Yet the federal government—never to be outdone at overreach—has gone several steps further further and proscribed virtually every meaningful kind of occupation for children younger than 14: “any manufacturing occupation,” “most processing occupations,” “all work requiring the use of ladders, scaffolds or their substitutes,” “outside window washing,” and apparently hundreds of other types of jobs (such as “occupations in connection with…communications and public utilities”).

Remember, this is a group of people that wants safety and wellness regulations eliminated for adults, because it "infantilizes" them.  SO what about the kids?  Eh, free market'll take care of em.

As farmer Joel Salatin points out, labor laws prevent children from using even so simple a tool as a cordless drill in the course of employment, to say nothing of the entire occupations from which children are barred by the Department of Labor. The end result of these laws is ultimately not child protection but prohibiting children from using their innate potential to earn their own money.

All of this is somewhat moot, of course, given the fact that our outdated Prussian-style compulsory education system locks up most children for eight hours each day so they might be subject to a pedagogical model that is extraordinarily efficient at wasting a lot of time. The average homeschooler can often finish his school day at a much faster rate than the average public schooler. There is a strong case to be made for abolishing compulsory education, as well—that more American children might be freed from a system that’s not working for them in favor of something that might.

Yes, because children are really just tiny labor sources.  The real solution to America's stagnant wages? Labor and education policies from 1905.  Look, if you're seriously arguing that we need to get rid of education and child labor laws, you just might be a colossal asshole who shouldn't be writing for a living.

Yeesh.On the other hand, this article certainly seems like it was written by a sixteen-year-old.  Maybe he has a point.

Exit The Randman

After finishing a disappointing fifth in the Iowa Caucuses, Rand Paul is out of the Clown Car.

Rand Paul, the libertarian-minded freshman senator who was once viewed as a formidable presidential contender, is suspending his White House bid. 

Paul discussed the matter with staff Wednesday morning and sent out a statement confirming the decision to drop out of the Republican presidential primary. 

"It's been an incredible honor to run a principled campaign for the White House," Paul said in the statement. "Today, I will end where I began, ready and willing to fight for the cause of Liberty." 

Paul, a Kentucky Republican, is expected to instead place his focus squarely on his Senate reelection bid, where he faces a wealthy Democrat, Lexington Mayor Jim Gray, who has the money to partially finance his campaign. 

Paul finished a disappointing fifth place in Monday's Iowa caucuses, registering just 4.5% of the vote despite placing a heavy emphasis on the state's college towns to bring out younger voters inspired by his libertarian-minded message. He promised that night to continue his campaign.

Paul will not make an endorsement in the GOP presidential race before next week's New Hampshire primary, his spokesman Sergio Gor told CNN. 

But sources close to Paul said a morning-after review made clear to Paul that there was not a viable path to winning the Republican nomination and that fund-raising was becoming extremely difficult.

Well, that's because despite Rand Paul's goofy-ass brand of Glibertarian Nonsense, he has all the charisma of a urinal cake.  Besides, all the dudebros ended up with Bernie, so.

Ironically, Sanders served a damn useful purpose helping to get rid of Rand.

The Mountain Comes For Mohamed

Just another reminder that rampant Islamophobia isn't exclusive to Republicans, because there are some notable assholes on the left as well, you know, the kind that go after a 14-year-old kid for building a friggin' clock.

On his talk show, Real Time With Bill Maher, the host said Mohamed deserved an apology but teachers reacted reasonably in targeting the boy. 

“People at the school thought it might be a bomb … because it looks exactly like a f*cking bomb,” he said during a panel discussion with Mark Cuban, Jorge Ramos, George Pataki, and Chris Matthews. “It’s not the color of his skin. Somebody look me in the eye right now and tell me. Over the last 30 years, if so many young Muslim men … and he’s young, 14, but that’s not like it’s never happened before, hasn’t blown up a lot of sh*t around the world. And this kid deserves an apology, because he wasn’t one of them… Over the last 30 years, it’s been one culture that has been been blowing sh*t up over and over again.” 

He also pointed out that the idea that Mohamed could’ve brought a bomb to school wasn’t unfounded, as several American teenagers have joined ISIS to the shock of people who knew them well. 

Famous atheist and biologist Richard Dawkins agrees that Mohamed suffered an injustice, but the praise he received was uncalled for. 

“If the reassembled components did something more than the original clock, that’s creative. If not, it looks like hoax,” he tweeted. “Disassembling & reassembling is great. But you shouldn’t then claim it was your “invention.”

Now granted, Maher and Dawkins are pretty much the worst examples of the left's more public glibertarian atheists going after Muslims, but they're not alone I suspect, and this will happen again the next time.  Honestly, don't be surprised if Maher agrees with Ben Carson's opinion of Muslims on next week's show.

Not Feeling The Bern

I've said this before and I'll say it again:  Bernie Sanders will not get my vote if he continues to attack President Obama's policies and his administration (Warning, Daily Caller story).

Vermont U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders undermined a key Obama administration talking point Monday when he said the actual unemployment rate in the U.S. is double what the federal government claims. 

“When you talk about the economy we also have to have an honest assessment of unemployment in America,” Sanders told a crowd of 7,500 gathered at a presidential campaign rally in Portland, Maine. 

“Once a month the government publishes a set of figures, and the last figures they published said that official unemployment was 5.4 percent,” the Democratic nominee continued, slightly misstating the Labor Department’s most recent report which put June’s unemployment rate at 5.3 percent. 

“But there is another set of government statistics,” Sanders continued, “and that that real unemployment if you include those people who have given up looking for work and the millions of others who are working part-time 20, 25 hours a week when they want to work full-time, when you all of that together, real unemployment is 10.5 percent.”

Wow.  Straight out of the GOP playbook.  Obama is lying to you about unemployment!  Reeeeeeeeal unemployment is in double digits!  Wake up, sheeple!

Dear Bernie Sanders:  you will never raise yourself up as a Democrat by trying to bring Barack Obama down.  This is the kind of glibertarian nonsense I expect from Rand Paul or Jeb Bush.  If Bernie Sanders is using it too (and it turns out he's been using that "real unemployment" right-wing talking point for a while now) then I have yet another problem with the Sanders campaign.

More Flagging Approval

You thought this flag thing was going to be easy?

.@DrewGriffinCNN’s intv on #ConfederateFlag w/ SC Rep Chumley incl surprising comments on #CharlestonShooting http://t.co/40iWOHz3BS

— Anderson Cooper 360° (@AC360) June 24, 2015

Keep it up Republicans, keep blaming the people killed by the guy who took your rhetoric to its endpoint.

Meanwhile, in Glibertarian land...

A lot of the surrounding media-led outrage over the flag seems somewhat cold, given the horror of what last week brought. We had nine black people brutally murdered because they were black and sitting in a church with a history of fighting white supremacy. With all due deference to hatred for a Confederate flag on a pole at the statehouse, this seems like an almost childlike attempt to miss the seriousness of the situation. It’s as if they expect us to say, “Congratulations! You oppose the flag of an army that was defeated 150 years ago. We’re all very proud of you, journalists!” This generation seems to excel at inventing controversies, weighing in on those invented controversies, and then patting itself on the back for being so courageous and open-minded.

The far more frightening reality that such invented controversies avoid is that mankind is full of sin, and that some of us show that sinfulness in racism and murder. Or as Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn wrote in The Gulag Archipelago:

“If only it were all so simple! If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?”

The murderer of the Emanuel nine has done something particularly bad, but he isn’t the only person capable of evil out there. And getting rid of a flag is hardly the remedy for the racism and violence that infects our culture. How juvenile to think otherwise.

Wanting to get rid of the Confederate flag is "childlike" and "juvenile" so why bother?  It doesn't cure racism, but neither did, you know, the entire civil rights movement, nor did electing and re-electing Barack Obama magically fix racism in America.

I suppose those were juvenile and childlike acts too.  Since nothing you can do to incrementally fix society can totally fix it, why bother at all, right?

It's like these guys are trying as hard as they can to be as awful as possible.

Tyranny Of The Toilet

Newly minted North Carolina GOP Sen. Thom Tillis will see your anti-vaxxer nonsense and raise you the freedom from having to wash your hands.

During a Q&A at the Bipartisan Policy Center on Monday, Tillis related a story from his time in the state legislature in 2010, complaining that the U.S. is “one of the most regulated nations in the history of the planet,”video via C-SPAN shows. 

“I was having a discussion with someone, and we were at a Starbucks in my district, and we were talking about certain regulations where I felt like ‘maybe you should allow businesses to opt out,'” the senator said. 

Tillis said his interlocutor was in disbelief, and asked whether he thought businesses should be allowed to “opt out” of requiring employees to wash their hands after using the restroom. 

The senator said he’d be fine with it, so long as businesses made this clear in “advertising” and “employment literature.” 

“I said: ‘I don’t have any problem with Starbucks if they choose to opt out of this policy as long as they post a sign that says “We don’t require our employees to wash their hands after leaving the restroom,” Tillis said. 

“The market will take care of that,” he added, to laughter from the audience.

Troll factor/Poe’s law quotient here approaching a kazillion.

It’s amazing stuff. We’ve gone from “Ebola is going to kill us all because our public health system is a nightmare!” during campaign season to “We’re the most regulated country ever, why do we even need to make people wash their hands?” three months later.

Beginning to think Tillis is the GOP response to SCOTUS possibly wrecking Obamacare subsidies. “Sick? You need the Free Market to decide.”

Last Call For Lochner

It's pretty easy to dismiss Sen. Rand Paul's run for president as the doomed prattling of a glibertarian slimeball who will drown in his own "all for me but none for thee" flop sweat.  But the problem is like his father's rampant racism and outright hatred for the poor, Rand has some pretty poisonous ideas, and none more so than his views on the Supreme Court and the kinds of justices he'd appoint to it.

In a speech this week, Paul voiced his support for an infamous and long-obsolete Supreme Court ruling asserting that "liberty to contract" was a fundamental Constitutional right — a case, Lochner v. New York, that lent its name to one of the most controversial periods of the Court's history. 

During this "Lochner era", which spanned several decades, the Court struck down several minimum wage, labor, and other regulatory laws for unduly interfering with this liberty of contract. The justices interpreted the Constitution "in such a way as to protect businesses from regulation," says Professor Paul Kens of Texas State University, author ofa book on the case. In the 1930s, though, the Court abandoned this position, and theLochner era is now remembered by most legal scholars as an aberration. 

But Paul believes the Lochner justices had it right. He's previously called it "a wonderful decision," and in his speech at a Heritage Action policy summit last Tuesday, he again praised the ruling as a key example of when judges should step in to strike down government laws or regulations. "I'm a judicial activist when it comes to Lochner," Paul said. 

The full legal implications of Paul's position aren't clear, and his office didn't respond to requests for comment. But it's apparent that Paul's unafraid to embrace a provocative position — in a way that might make the libertarian faithful cheer him on, but could open him up to criticism. "It's a return to the playbook of the early 20th century, and an attack on the progressive movement," says Yale Law professor Akhil Reed Amar.

What the return of the Lochner Era would mean is the complete end of worker's rights in America. It's hard to think of things getting too much worse than they are now with the slow, painful death on unions, but Paul would bring about justices who would want the end of minimum wage laws, worker discrimination protections, and the 40-hour work week.

Paul would effectively make the business contract that employers had over employees to be sacrosanct legally, and that the notion of worker protections, wage laws, overtime, and minimum benefits (like the Affordable Care Act) would all be thrown out because they would violate the employer's right to set whatever contract conditions they wanted when hiring an employer.  The Lochner decision affirmed that this was in fact a Constitutional right and for the first 30 years or so of the 20th Century, worker's rights were smashed.

The "Lochner era" was a period in early 20th century American history during which federal courts routinely struck down laws on the basis of personal liberty and freedom of contract -- two concepts embodied in the guarantees of due process. The era derives its name from the infamous 1905 case of Lochner v. New York.

In Lochner, the Supreme Court considered, in its own words, whether a state maximum hour law "is a fair, reasonable and appropriate exercise of the police power of the State, or is it an unreasonable, unnecessary and arbitrary interference with the right of the individual to his personal liberty or to enter into those contracts in relation to labor which may seem to him appropriate or necessary for the support of himself and his family?"

The Supreme Court in Lochner answered the question in the negative. To reach that conclusion, the Court dismissed the health and welfare purposes of the law as without "reasonable foundation," and reasoned that due process protects a worker's "right to purchase or to sell labor" -- even at his or her own peril. The Lochner decision marginalized the greater good in favor of individual economic rights.

That's the kind of "libertarianism"  that Rand Paul wants to bring back, where government had no right to step in and protect workers from anything.  Our Supreme Court as it is seems to be getting closer and closer to Lochner again, an age where corporations had 100% ownership of employees. but Paul would appoint justices who would no doubt make that the law of the land as soon as possible.

The Gold And Weed Party

Sen. Rand Paul has a new campaign manager for his 2016 adventure in Glibertarianland.

The hiring of strategist Chip Englander, who recently guided a gubernatorial candidate to victory in Illinois, marks a clear step forward for the Kentucky Republican as he prepares to transform his cadre of loyalists into a full-scale campaign. 

Doug Stafford, Paul’s longtime confidant, will remain as his chief political adviser. In an interview Tuesday, Stafford said he will rely on Englander “for the day-to-day execution” of Paul’s operation. 

The move underscores Paul's unorthodox approach to presidential politics and his expected candidacy, with plans to put an emphasis on outreach to the poor and younger voters while also courting conservative activists in early-primary states. 

In an interview Tuesday, Englander argued that Paul’s unconventional positions would lay the foundation for a potent Republican coalition. Paul has articulated mostly non-interventionist views on foreign policy, while taking hardline stances against tax hikes and President Obama’s health-care law domestically. 

“America has intractable problems and it’s going to take a transformational leader to fix them,” Englander said. “Senator Paul is going to be the bold, transformational figure in this race.”

Rand Paul's view is of a federal government that can't afford to pretty much do anything, ever.  That all gets left to the states to tell people how to live their lives.  Also, weed.  Hope this guy works out better than the last campaign hire Rand made, who ended up being only marginally better than the guys working for his dad's campaign.

But it's another sign that Rand is gearing up to lose in 2016.  Should be a fun trip.