Last Call For What He Should Say

Ahead of SOTU, here's what Brian Beutler thinks President Obama should do: go directly after the Republicans for wanting SCOTUS to destroy Obamacare when given the GOP now controls Congress, they can fix the basic problem of King v Burwell at any point and refuse to do it.

The King v. Burwell challenge is an impressive blow for the preposterous idea that judges should scold legislators for exhibiting awkward statutory draftsmanship. The obvious venue for anyone genuinely concerned that the ACA text doesn’t technically authorize insurance subsidies in states that haven’t set up their own exchanges is Congress. With a single sentence, Congress could stipulate that the law does indeed authorize premium subsidies in exchanges established by both states and the federal government. 

Congress only leaves this in the Supreme Court’s hands if it wants the Court to break Obamacare, and many Republicans in Congress openly admit that this is their hope.
The guardians of such things consider it rude and improper for the president to lecture or lobby the Supreme Court in a State of the Union address, as Obama did in 2010 when he scolded the justices for gutting campaign finance law. But Obama needn’t address the justices directly. Only legislators, and perhaps, the unsavory actors asking the Court to accomplish for them what they’ve failed to accomplish through political channels. 

The two-part message would combine classic State of the Union positivity with a clear warning to conservatives to be careful what they wish for. First, the sensible proposition: Congress should take this issue out of the Court’s hands. It makes no sense to leave nine million insurance beneficiaries and the individual and small group health insurance markets in three dozen states facing tremendous uncertainty at the whim of the Court. If Congress were to pass a one sentence bill affirming what everyone knows, it would moot the case, and thus end the uncertainty. 

But of course, Republicans will never do that.  There's zero chance that this will happen, because as the last three elections have shown, American voters have no interest in punishing the GOP for terrible behavior.

There are a number of reasons why, but the main one is that Republicans have convinced a lot of voters that President Obama's six years in office have been one long handout to minorities, specifically at the expense of white Americans.  And there's no bigger "handout" in this category than Obamacare.

That's not what it actually does of course.  Kentucky a state that's 88% white and has the most effective Obamacare state exchange in the country in Kynect is proof of that.  But the hatred here for the program helped Mitch McConnell to a 16 point win in November, even though the people using it are very happy with it.

The Republican Congress is betting they won't have to lift a finger.  I'm not so certain they will have to myself.

Halfway Home

As we wait for President Obama's speech tonight, a reminder that the last couple of months of good jobs news has finally gotten through to the American public, and that his approval rating is up to 50%.

President Barack Obama's approval rating has risen to 50 percent in a new Washington Post-ABC News poll released Monday, his strongest showing in the survey since the spring of 2013. 

Forty-four percent disapprove of how he's handling his job as president.

The improving poll numbers come one day before Obama's State of the Union speech, amid positive economic news and complete Republican control of Congress for the first time in his presidency. 

By a 40 to 36 percent margin, Americans said they trust Obama over Republicans to "do a better job coping with the main problems the nation faces over the next few years."

People are starting to come around a bit.  Maybe they'll tune in tonight when they wouldn't have bothered to listen if you asked them last month.

The Real Clear Politics poll average has him at 44.7%, his best number since October 2013 and the launch of the Affordable Care Act's exchanges.  There's a lesson there for the GOP.  Obamacare didn't doom the President.  Failing to support it did doom the Democrats in the Senate.

We'll see if any lessons are learned headed into 2016,

You're Not Panicking Enough, Citizen

SCARY BETURBANED HORDE IS SCARY AND ALSO EVERYWHERE.

A key U.S. senator said Sunday that Americans have to assume there are some "sleeper cells" within the U.S. that would like to carry out a terror attack. 

Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) said he was not aware of any specific cells, but noted that the recent attacks elsewhere in the Western world make it a safe assumption. Johnson is chairman of the Senate Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee. 

“What you’re seeing happen in Europe, you’re seeing how widespread that is,” he said on “Fox News Sunday.” “I think you have to assume that that is a risk that we have to consider.”

We're not at war with Islam, we just want you to assume that your Muslim neighbors may be sleeper agents who will kill you and your family.

Sen. Ben Cardin (D-Md.), a member of the Foreign Relations Committee, said U.S. intelligence needs to focus on the greatest threats to home. 

“In some cases these are Americans that we know have been associated with these extreme groups,” he said. “It’s really important that our intelligence community focus on those that are the highest risks to the United States.”

You know, brown people with funny hats.

We will be expecting evidence of the proper minimum of urine soaking your clothing in our next report, citizen.  Please make sure you and your loved ones are pissing themselves as much as possible over Terrah.

StupidiNews!

• A construction worker is dead and a semi truck driver was injured when a partial collapse of an overpass scheduled to be demolished fell on Interstate 75 in Cincinnati.
• Several hundred barrels of crude oil have spilled into the Yellowstone River as a pipeline break in Montana is being cleaned up.
• President Obama's State of the Union address tonight will focus on middle-class Americans and challenge Republicans to raise taxes on the wealthiest Americans and big banks.
• Islamic State militants have issued death threats against two captured Japanese hostages as the cash-strapped terrorist group is now resorting to ransom as oil revenues are drying up.
• Boston cabbies are the latest group to take to the courts to stop ride-share services like Uber and Lyft, saying the services are operating illegally under Boston law.

Last Call For An MLK Day Play In One Act

America’s civil rights journey in two sentences:

“Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.”

–Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr, Letter From a Birmingham Jail, April 16, 1963

“It isn’t hard to find injustice around us, but we must not let injustice smear the good deeds that do occur everyday.”

–Sen. Rand Paul, Break Down The Wall That Separates Us From The ‘Other America’, January 19, 2015

Sage nodding from CHORUS.

Exeunt, FIN.

Because of course, we have to focus on the justice that's being done on a daily basis, not the icky injustices that still exist 52 years later in Post-Racial Obama's America.

But as bad as Rand Paul is, the winner today for All-Time MLK False Equivalence Asshole Bingo goes to convicted felon Dinesh D'Souza!

AN INTERESTING PARALLEL: MLK was targeted by J. Edgar Hoover, an unsavory character; I was targeted by the equally unsavory B. Hussein Obama
— Dinesh D'Souza (@DineshDSouza) January 19, 2015

Letters From A Minimum Security Country Club Prison.

Whatever Would Give You That Idea?

Gotta hand it to Maryland's pro-Confederacy crew, knowing that Dr. King's birthday is on the 15th of January means the third weekend in January is always a good time to celebrate General Robert E. Lee's birthday too, because both sides.

Dozens of demonstrators wearing Confederate uniforms marched Saturday morning in Baltimore to honor Generals Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson, two days before the holiday honoring Martin Luther King Jr. 

About 50 protesters stood silently across the street from the pro-Confederate rally, and some of them carried signs urging the Civil War enthusiasts to change the date of their annual demonstration, reported The Baltimore Sun. 

Members of the Sons of Confederate Veterans and United Daughters of the Confederacy said they chose the date to honor the Confederate generals at their birthdays – which are Jan. 19 and 21. 

King’s birthday was Jan. 15, and the federal holiday is held on the third Monday of each January. 

The pro-Confederate demonstration has been held on the third weekend of January for years, although members are not sure how the long the event has been held. 

Some group members said they had attended ceremonies in the 1950s at the Lee-Jackson monument, near the Baltimore Museum of Art. 

The event has drawn more attention in recent years, and local Quakers have helped organize silent protests for the past three years asking them to choose another weekend to honor the Confederate generals.

"Oh it's Dr. King's weekend?  Well, we were here first, you know.  Perhaps you should find another time to celebrate your little holiday or whatever while we celebrate our 150 years of Southern culture."

Pretty masterful job or trolling, frankly.  

History Is Censored By The Winners

The producers of the movie Selma arranged for free tickets for hundreds of thousands junior high school kids to go see it and learn about the civil rights struggle of the 1960's, a struggle that continues today.  But in Alabama, where the real-live events depicted in the movie took place, one high school history club has been barred from seeing the movie because of "language and violence concerns".

DeKalb County school superintendent Hugh Taylor cancelled the outing by students at the predominately minority school, saying he was concerned about obscene language and “racial profanity” in the Oscar-nominated film.

An African-American parent of one senior in the history club who had planned on seeing the film questioned the superintendent’s motives.

“It raises my curiosity as to whether something that they are not wanting exposed or the children not to know about.” said Reverend James Stanton. “I don’t believe it is just about the profanity.”

Stanton, who was 20 in 1965, explained that he lived through the era and was warned to stay away out of safety concerns.

“They did not want me to come down and visit because of the violence and the racial problems that they were having at the time.” said Stanton.

According to Taylor, he is concerned about what would happen if a child was offended by the film and wanted to leave the theater, saying he didn’t think teachers should have to be put in the position of playing parent.

Ahh, the ol' in loco parentis argument. Isn't that what permission slips are for?  If Taylor is right, why have after school activities and clubs at all in public school?

Oh, and Taylor's own four kids?  They go to private school.  Go figure.

Here are a bunch of kids who like school and learning, in a predominately minority school.  They like it so much they joined the school's history club to learn more about America's history.  Then you tell them "No, sorry, when it's the history of your people in the state that you lived in, history that your grandparents lived through, well, we think you might be offended by it, so you can't go."

Amazing.  You mean that black kids might learn that there's still racism in Alabama, and in fact it's been part of a long history?

We can't have schools being involved in teaching that.  They need to learn less controversial stuff like the Earth is only 6,000 years old and about intelligent design, right?  Or better yet, we need to let churches teach that in Alabama.

Right?

StupidiNews!

• Yemeni Prime Minister Khaled Bahah came under attack by Houthi rebels in the capital of Sanaa less than one week after the kidnapping of the Yemeni President's chief of staff.
• The share of the world's wealth in the hands of the richest 1% is expected to top 50% by sometime next year, according to Oxfam International.
• Ukraine's military has retaken Donetsk airport from Russian-backed separatists in heavy fighting over the weekend.
• The European Central Bank may announce a half billion-euro plus quantitative easing package as soon as this week to combat eurozone deflation.
• Analysis from water runoff during a music festival in Taiwan in 2011 showed that the 600,000 concertgoers did indeed have a major short-term environmental impact on local ecology.

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.

Sunday Read: Paying For Free Community College

Saturday the White House announced its plan to pay for the President proposal to send millions of people to community colleges by covering tuition: raising the capital gains tax, and assessing fees on the megabanks.

The president’s plan would raise $320 billion over the next decade, while adding new provisions cutting taxes by $175 billion over the same period. The revenue generated would also cover an initiative Mr. Obama announced this month, offering some students two years of tuition-free community college, which the White House has said would cost $60 billion over 10 years.

The centerpiece of the plan, described by administration officials on the condition of anonymity in advance of the president’s speech, would eliminate what Mr. Obama’s advisers call the “trust-fund loophole,” a provision governing inherited assets that shields hundreds of billions of dollars from taxation each year. . The plan would also increase the top capital-gains tax rate, to 28 percent from 23.8 percent, for couples with incomes above $500,000 annually.

Those changes and a new fee on banks with assets over $50 billion would be used to finance a set of tax breaks for middle-income earners, including a $500 credit for families in which both spouses work; increased child care and education credits; and incentives to save for retirement.

Of course the problem is now that Obama has said "Hey, Republicans agreed to this in the past, let's do this" Republicans can now say "That was before your immigration thing" and it becomes another hostage situation.

It was cool before Obama thought it was a good idea.

Brownback To The Future

Well, if you thought that Kansas Republican Gov. Sam Brownback was going to change course after driving the state into a $700 million hole from his massive tax cut scheme, well, you'd be completely wrong. Not only is he going to continue cutting taxes and assuming growth will somehow magically appear, he's going to raise regressive taxes on the little people.

Kansas would dramatically raise its tobacco and liquor taxes and slow the implementation of promised income tax cuts to help close a projected deficit under Gov. Sam Brownback’s budget proposals for the next two fiscal years, which were unveiled Friday. 

The state’s cigarette tax would be nearly tripled, from 79 cents to $2.29 a pack, and the tax on packaged alcoholic beverages would go from 8 percent to 12 percent under the Republican governor’s budget plans.

Oh, but that'll only make up about half of the hole.  The rest?  Going after Medicaid, of course.

The governor said he wants to move the state from income taxes to consumption taxes to “reward productivity.”

“Transitioning to consumption taxes allows Kansans more freedom to determine their spending and reinforce the principle that the family budget is more important than the government budget,” he said in a statement. 

Brownback also proposed levying $162 million in fees over two years on the three private health insurance companies managing the state’s Medicaid program since 2013. 

Other measures would further eliminate the shortfalls, including spending cuts and changes to the Medicaid program, which provides health coverage to the poor and disabled.

In Sam Brownback's state, if you're sick or poor, you're not rewarded for your productivity, you're punished for lack of it.

I want to know how many people who happen to be smokers voted for Brownback in November specifically because of his tax cut plan.

And when the tax cuts don't grow revenues, and the budget shortfall gets even worse, I wonder which "consumers" that Gov. Brownback will target next?  My guess is all of them, through a ridiculously high state sales tax.  That's the next step.

Oh?  You didn't vote for tax increases on cigarettes and booze?  Oh, but my dear droogies, you did. You most certainly did.  You elected a Republican.

New tag: Sam Brownback.

Last Call For Losing By Forfeit

Civil forfeiture seizures by greedy cops and cash-strapped municipalities was a win-win situation for the both of them. Cities and counties, beaten into submission where ever raising taxes on taxpayers meant being crushed by the national Tea Party machine, needed the money from the poor and those without political power to defend themselves.  Police, corrupt and increasingly in want of new military gear to terrorize civilians, needed the excuse to treat citizens as the enemy in order to justify using weapons of war on domestic soil.  They were both very happy.

Until Eric Holder came along and pulled the rug out from under them.

Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. on Friday barred local and state police from using federal law to seize cash, cars and other property without proving that a crime occurred.

Holder’s action represents the most sweeping check on police power to confiscate personal property since the seizures began three decades ago as part of the war on drugs.

Since 2008, thousands of local and state police agencies have made more than 55,000 seizures of cash and property worth $3 billion under a civil asset forfeiture program at the Justice Department called Equitable Sharing.

The program has enabled local and state police to make seizures and then have them “adopted” by federal agencies, which share in the proceeds. The program allowed police departments and drug task forces to keep up to 80 percent of the proceeds of the adopted seizures, with the rest going to federal agencies.

“With this new policy, effective immediately, the Justice Department is taking an important step to prohibit federal agency adoptions of state and local seizures, except for public safety reasons,” Holder said in a statement.

Of course cash and property seizures are by no means over with.  It just means more states will turn to state laws in order to conduct pillaging and piracy from citizens...but those may run afoul of the courts.  The federal setup made it simple and easy to take property from people for any reason.

But that's over with.

Hey cops?  Treat us like the enemy, and guess what?  We take away your toys.

 

Sins Of The Father

Reason number one why Rand Paul has no conceivable shot at winning the White House in 2016: his dad is a complete lunatic.

An institute named for the father of possible presidential candidate Rand Paul has published a piece saying the Charlie Hebdo massacre, like 9/11, was a false flag operation. The claim comes in piece titled, "Charlie Hebdo Shootings: False Flag?," put online today at the Ron Paul Institute. 

"The Charlie Hebdo affair has many of the characteristics of a false flag operation. The attack on the cartoonists’ office was a disciplined professional attack of the kind associated with highly trained special forces; yet the suspects who were later corralled and killed seemed bumbling and unprofessional. It is like two different sets of people," reads the first paragraph of the piece.

Yes, that's a Weekly Standard link, but if even those guys are calling out Rand publicly for this, it's because out of all the Clown Car '16 squad, the neocons hate Rand Paul the most.  It's not going to take long for Ron Paul's peanut gallery to completely ruin Rand's shot at the White House, and the best part is they think they are helping him.

I really hope that somewhere whichever Democrat goes after Rand's Senate seat next year is paying attention, because should Rand dump his White House bid and work on keeping it, the same opposition playbook should be used.  Ron Paul is 10 pounds of batshit crazy in a 5 pound bag, and unlike 2010, Rand's not going to be able to dodge his father's shadow.

A New Way To Clock Pitches

Here's your weekend baseball story courtesy Deadspin.  It seems Major League Baseball has been running into a lot of problem with the fact the average MLB game now lasts on average over three hours.  One way to speed things up?  The pitch clock.

An experiment to speed up the pace of games was apparently successful enough for baseball officials to bring it to the next level: some minor league stadiums at the Double-A and Triple-A levels will be outfitted with 20-second pitch clocks by the beginning of the season. 

The news was first reported by MLB Daily Rumors, and confirmed and fleshed out by Fox Sports. While specifics of where and how often the clock will be tried out have yet to be established, we know how it'll work from its use in the Arizona Fall League: pitchers have exactly 20 seconds from the moment they receive the ball to come to the set position for the next pitch. It'll be tracked by on-field scoreboards visible to pitchers and umpires, and if they fail to come set, the umpire declares an automatic ball.

So in practice, the pitch clock works.  It's cut games from three hours to around 2:15, and hopefully will become standard practice in AA and AAA games.  That's the good news.

The bad news:  it'll never happen in the majors.

MLB is taking this very seriously, using the AFL and now the minors as a proving ground for six new rules, some fairly radical, to get things moving again. In addition to the pitch clock, these experimental minor-league games will also adopt time limits on pitching changes and breaks between innings, and a rule that batters must remain inside the batter's box between pitches.

It's not clear if the other two rules tried out in the AFL—one limiting the number of mound visits a team can make, and one allowing teams to signal for intentional walks rather than having to deliver four balls—will be instituted. 

What is clear is that you won't be seeing any of these changes in MLB this season, if ever. Instituting any of these new rules would require negotiations with the MLBPA, and while the union has said all the right things about speeding up games, whether it will actually support something this drastic—and opposed by a good number of pitchers—is very much in question.

You'll hear massive crying from baseball purists that this will destroy the sport, and MLB games will continue to take three hours plus to watch, the main reason I don't really attend Reds games.  A 7:05 start time usually means you won't get out of Great American Ball Park before 10, if not later.  On a weeknight that's getting home at 11, and that's just too much for a lot of people to handle.  Knocking 45 minutes off that would cause attendance to increase, big time.

Of course, what clubs want is for people to spend three hours plus at the ball park for 82 home games, it means more concession sales the longer people are there.  It also means the city collects more parking fees, so it's not like individual teams are tripping over themselves to shorten games.

We'll see if the players' union gets on board with it.  I think it's a great idea.  I also think that that's why it'll never happen.

StupidiNews, Weekend Edition!

• After joining the International Criminal Court last year, the Palestinian Authority has requested an investigation into attacks by Israeli military forces in Gaza, enraging the Israelis. 
• The US Supreme Court will hear all four state cases from the Sixth Circuit on same-sex marriage in April, setting up a decision that could affect the entire country.
• The official temperature numbers show that 2014 was the hottest year on record, slightly edging out 1997, according to NOAA and NASA figures.
• Bond rating firm Moody's has cut Russian debt to Baa3, just one step above junk status. 
• A House Republican bill to strip the FCC of authority to regulate the internet as a public utility is expected to start in committee hearing next week.