Last Call For Following Jindal Down The Drain

On Monday Louisiana GOP Gov. Bobby Jindal (who spent this afternoon at the Clown Car Kids' Table) ended that state's Medicaid contract with Planned Parenthood, not even bothering to wait for the results of the investigation he demanded.

Today, Alabama GOP Gov. Robert Bentley followed Jindal's shining example of stupidity.

Gov. Robert Bentley announced today he was terminating an agreement between the Alabama Medicaid Agency and Planned Parenthood. 

Bentley's office sent out copies of the termination letter to Planned Parenthood Southeast in Atlanta. 

The letter does not say what services Planned Parenthood provides for the Medicaid Agency. That information was not immediately available. 

The governor's office released a statement from the governor. 

"The deplorable practices at Planned Parenthood have been exposed to Americans, and I have decided to stop any association with the organization in Alabama," Bentley said. 

"As a doctor and Alabama's governor, the issue of human life, from conception to birth and beyond, is extremely important. I respect human life and do not want Alabama to be associated with an organization that does not." 

The letter says that the Alabama Medicaid Agency is exercising its ability to terminate its provider contract with Planned Parenthood with a 15-day notice. 

The letter says that if Planned Parenthood opposes the decision it has 60 days to apply for a fair hearing.

That 15-day notice means that Alabama will actually cut off their agreement before Louisiana does, as it has a 30-day cutoff agreement.  Go figure.

Anyhow, it's not like Louisiana and Alabama have high teen pregnancy rates or anything.  Oh wait, they do: Alabama is just ahead of Kentucky at #15, and Louisiana is #5, so naturally cutting off funding for poor women from affordable contraception services will totally improve that ranking.

For comparison, Louisiana has the same teen pregnancy rate as Costa Rica and Jamaica with 69 pregnancies per 1,000 teens and at 62 per 1,000, Alabama has the same rate as our happy neighbors to the south, Mexico.

So sure, this seems like a good way to reduce the instance of possibly unwanted pregnancies that might end in abortion or something.

Good job!

The Turtle's White Flag

Looks like my state's senior Senator is killing talk of "shutting down the government" early, but what happens when Mitch McConnell loses control of his caucus again?

Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) on Tuesday said he would begin negotiations with Democrats to prevent a government shutdown in September. 

The majority leader vowed there would not be another shutdown on his watch — but it could be difficult to avoid, given the long list of thorny issues he will have to tackle this fall.

Funding for the government is set to run out at the end of September, and Democrats and the White House want to increase defense and nondefense spending. 

Some Republicans are also demanding new defense spending, and many GOP lawmakers and Republicans running for president want to defund Planned Parenthood. The debt ceiling is also going to have to be lifted later this year. 

As usual, McConnell has been playing his cards close to the vest. But his main goal is to minimize drama and maintain the Senate Republican majority in 2016. Messy fiscal fights could increase the chances Democrats win back the upper chamber. 

The Kentucky Republican hasn’t told colleagues of his endgame plans, but they suspect he is angling for a yearlong spending measure that would allow him to sidestep a fight over busting the caps set by the 2011 Budget Control Act. 

“Whatever minimizes the drama, because Mitch is not a big fan of drama,” said a Republican senator who requested anonymity.

Mitch wants this battle out of his hair.  I'm betting the four GOP senators running for the White House aren't going to be much help in the new Trump Party.  BooMan calls it what it is: capitulation.

He’ll need the Democrats to go along with his plan, in both the Senate and the House. And he’ll have to let his own caucus vote on a bunch of riders to do things like ban spending on Planned Parenthood, kill Obamacare (again), declare Iran the second coming of the Third Reich, and obliterate the Environmental Protection Agency. But, since the only way the Republicans could conceivably prevail on any of those issues is to shut down the government and pray for a miracle, McConnell doesn’t really give a shit about them. He’s not interested in another government shutdown that yields nothing but aggravated voters and higher disapproval numbers for his party. 

However, he’s going to have to contend with 17 presidential contenders braying at him to fight, fight, fight, as well as constant bellowing about what a sellout he is and how Washington Republicans never keep their promises. The only thing he has going for him, besides reality, is that he’s not Speaker Boehner. He can hide behind Democratic filibusters, for example, and he doesn’t have 150 members who make Michele Bachmann look statesmanlike. Boehner will deliver a conservative heat-fever wish list of a budget and then have to turn around and sell McConnell’s nothing burger to his caucus.
And, of course, the House Republicans won’t go for it. At all. So, Boehner will have to go hat in hand (again) to Nancy Pelosi and beg her to deliver her caucus. 

Pelosi, of course, wants nothing more than another government shutdown, provided that she can avoid taking much blame for it. So, her inclination to give Boehner some kind of fig leaf to disguise his humiliation will be limited. And, yet, with all these presidential candidates claiming that if we just elect them things will magically get done the way that conservatives want them done, Boehner will have a tough sell to explain why a Republican-led House and a Republican-led Senate cannot accomplish even one item on their insane wish list. 

What McConnell’s trying to do is preemptively accept a harsh reality, but he’s going to have very few supporters and they’ll be quieter than church mice.

We all know where the game ends: the budget passes that President Obama and Nancy Pelosi want. The question is how much damage is done to the place on the way through bat country.

The Fight To Vote, Con't

President Obama is using the 50th Anniversary of the Voting Rights Act today to call on Republicans who control Congress to act to restore it.  The GOP Congress won't.  The great part is the people who are losing their vote because of Congress's inaction have no recourse to remove the lawmakers who continue to disenfranchise them, too.

President Obama will call for the restoration of the Voting Rights Act on its 50th anniversary Thursday, the White House said.

Obama will hold a teleconference to commemorate the landmark legislation and call for its renewal, following a 2013 Supreme Court ruling that voided one of its central provisions. 

Attorney General Loretta Lynch and Rep. John Lewis (D-Ga.), who rose to prominence in the 1960s as a civil rights leader, will participate.

The event will allow Obama to draw a sharp contrast with Republicans, many of whom argue some provisions of the 1965 law went too far. It will take place on the same day as the first GOP presidential primary debate.

Asked about the timing of the event, White House press secretary Josh Earnest said that “one person’s irony is another person’s serendipity.”

“Maybe there will be an opportunity for Republican candidates to discuss the right for every American to cast a vote,” he added.

As we learned in this week's Sunday Long Read, the Republican battle to destroy the Voting Rights Act has been a fifty year battle, and at this point they have won the right to disenfranchise millions. Unless the legislation's provision for keeping tabs on the 150 year effort to steal the vote from black voters over the years, it will only happen again and again.

Good for President Obama and AG Lynch to fight for this publicly, and call the Republicans out on this.

StupidiNews!

• Tennessee officials say a man drew a hatchet and pepper spray to injure three moviegoers in Nashville Wednesday afternoon, he was killed when charging a SWAT team with an air pistol.
• New Hampshire Republicans have cut a third from the state's funding for Planned Parenthood clinics in response to several videos of employees discussing fetal tissue donations.
• Malaysian officials are confirming that wing debris washed up on Reunion Island matches part numbers for Malaysian Airlines Flight MH370, which disappeared over the ocean last summer.
• Four years after the Fukushima nuclear disaster mothballed the country's nuclear power plants, Japan is bringing the first reactors back online with additional safety standards.
• Google says it will push the "largest software update in history" to correct a critical text messaging flaw in Android smartphones that could give hackers instant control over phones.

Last Call For The Education Of Kansas Voters

The Sam Brownback GOP Disaster in Kansas continues as massive austerity cuts to public schools has now left districts without enough licensed teachers to fill jobs, as experienced teachers are leaving in droves.

While the tax cut experiment didn’t create jobs, it did destroy the Kansas budget, and one major consequence of that has been massive funding cuts for Kansas schools. Several districts ended the school year early for lack of funds. Education funding levels are so low, and unequal across school districts, that judges have ruled them unconstitutional and the case is currently pending at the state Supreme Court. 

Kansas’ teacher pay is among the lowest in the nation. The Kansas legislature has removed teachers’ tenure protections, tried to make it possible to criminally prosecute them for teaching offensive material, and attempted to weaken collective bargaining. Teachers are retiring in fear that the state will soon target their retirement benefits, one superintendent from a nearbyMissouri school district said. 

There are double the normal openings for school staff in Kansas, teachers are quitting and retiring at high rates, and new teachers aren’t looking to start careers in Kansas. The Independence, Missouri School District has billboards to lure teachers from over the border, and they’ve seen an doubling in applicants with Kansas addresses, even as applicants from Iowa and Arkansas have held steady. 

A piece of legislation written by the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) now allows several Kansas school systems to hire unlicensed teachers to fill the gap.

Republicans got exactly what they've been calling for nationally in Kansas: major teacher pay cuts, retirement benefit cuts, tenure system loss, weakened teachers' unions, all of which were supposed to magically improve the system, get rid of "lazy bad teachers making too much money" and make super smart kids.

Surprise!

Kansas education is a wasteland, teachers are fleeing and giant corporate lobbyist ALEC wants to turn schools into factories churning out ignorant, compliant workers.

All part of the plan.

We're Gonna Drive On Through Electric Avenue

Meet Mary Nichols, the woman who helped LA clean up its smog problem over her long career as an environmental force in California state politics.  California could be the first state to require all new vehicles sold be electric if Nichols, the state's top clean air regulator, has anything to say about it.

And she does.

Sergio Marchionne had a funny thing to say about the $32,500 battery-powered Fiat 500e that his company markets in California as “eco-chic.” “I hope you don’t buy it,” he told his audience at a think tank in Washington in May 2014. He said he loses $14,000 on every 500e he sells and only produces the cars because state rules re­quire it. Marchionne, who took over the bailed-out Chrysler in 2009 to form Fiat Chrysler Automobiles, warned that if all he could sell were electric vehicles, he would be right back looking for another govern­ment rescue. 

So who’s forcing Marchionne and all the other major automakers to sell mostly money-losing electric vehicles? More than any other person, it’s Mary Nichols. She’s run the California Air Resources Board since 2007, championing the state’s zero-emission-vehicle quotas and backing Pres­ident Barack Obama’s national mandate to double average fuel economy to 55 miles per gallon by 2025. She was chairman of the state air regulator once before, a generation ago, and cleaning up the famously smoggy Los Angeles skies is just one accomplishment in a four-decade career. 

Nichols really does intend to force au­tomakers to eventually sell nothing but electrics. In an interview in June at her agency’s heavy-duty-truck laboratory in downtown Los Angeles, it becomes clear that Nichols, at age 70, is pushing regula­tions today that could by midcentury all but banish the internal combustion engine from California’s famous highways. “If we’re going to get our transportation system off petroleum,” she says, “we’ve got to get people used to a zero-emissions world, not just a little-bit-better version of the world they have now.”

In that speech in Washington, Mar­chionne was talking up the little-bit-better option. He touted the improved efficiency to be wrung from traditional engines and gasoline-electric hybrids. But Nichols isn’t scared of auto executives and has never ac­cepted their vision of what’s possible. (Gen­eral Motors said catalytic converters, an early advance in tailpipe pollution control that Nichols promoted in the 1970s, could kill the company. They’re commonplace today, and GM’s not dead yet.) 

Even if most people outside California have never heard of Mary Nichols, she’s the world’s most influential automotive regu­lator, says Levi Tillemann, author of The Great Race, a book on the future of automo­bile technology. “Under her leadership, the Air Resources Board has been the driving force for electrification,” Tillemann says.

As goes California, home to one-seventh of America's population and the cars to go with it, so goes the nation. And Mary Nichols is calling the shots.  I'm betting Republicans are going to go berserk over this, particularly California Republican (and professional car thief) Darrel Issa.  We'll see what happens, but when it comes to putting pressure on the rest of the auto industry, California has a big axe to swing.

Trials And Tribulations In Cincy

Didn’t take long for this to happen, did it?

Some of the contents of Sam DuBose’s car at the time of his death have been identified. 

WLWT has confirmed through CPD’s search warrant inventory document that four bags and a jar of marijuana were in Dubose’s car at the time of the July 19 traffic stop that ended in former UC Officer Ray Tensing fatally shooting DuBose. 

However, multiple sources have told WLWT officers found a little less than 2 pounds of marijuana. 

No officials were immediately able to confirm the amount of marijuana found. 

According to reports, the marijuana was found in the car’s center console, under the front passenger seat and on the floor behind the driver’s seat. 

Police sources said the street value for the amount of marijuana found in DuBose’s car is anywhere between $2,000 and $5,000 depending on the quality and the demand. 

Police said any marijuana weighing more than two pounds is considered a felony. 

Officers said the search warrant was obtained two days after the deadly shooting.

Because a police state that murders people certainly isn’t above planting evidence after the fact, even if having pot was worth justification for Sam DuBose’s summary execution by Ray Tensing, or that it had anything at all to do with Tensing pulling the trigger. Because of course a black person killed by a white cop had pot on them, right? Michael Brown, Sandra Bland, Sam DuBose, yadda yadda forever and ever amen. Always do, ya know.

So now thanks to the Cincinnati media that bungled this story from day one, accepting the police report that Tensing was being dragged and didn’t think to question it until after the bodycam footage surfaced, we have the same media accepting this police report, a warrant executed two days after the shooting, by cops that we already know lied to the media in the first place. It’s not like they’d have any motive to make DuBose look like a felon or anything.

The stenography goes unquestioned again around here. Good job, guys!

StupidiNews!

• US Air Force officials in Florida say two airmen were killed during a parachute training accident, the airmen were part of the 24th Special Operations Wing based at Eglin AFB.
• A California man has plead guilty to felony hate crime charges after telephone threats to the offices of the Council on American-Islamic Relations after last year's Charlie Hebdo massacre.
• GOP Govs. John Kasich and Chris Christie made the cut for FOX's prime-time GOP debate Thursday, former Texas Gov. Rick Perry and 2012 runner-up Rick Santorum did not.
• Netflix is allowing its employees as much parental leave as necessary for the first 12 months after a birth or adoption, a new standard among already generous Silicon Valley companies. 
• Major League Baseball's streaming media division has cut a $600 million deal with a new partner: the National Hockey League, for streaming out of market games over six years.

Last Call For The Late, Great Planet Cruz

President Obama today revealed tough new emissions rules on power plants to drastically lower carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases.

The Obama administration will formally adopt an ambitious regulation for cutting greenhouse-gas pollution on Monday, requiring every state to reduce emissions from coal-burning power plants and putting the country on a course that could change the way millions of Americans get their electricity. 

A retooled version of the administration’s Clean Power Plan, first proposed a year ago, will seek to accelerate the shift to renewable energy while setting tougher goals for slashing carbon emissions blamed for global warming, according to administration officials briefed on the details. 

The new plan sets a goal of cutting carbon pollution from power plants by 32 percent by the year 2030, compared with 2005 levels — a 9 percent jump from the previous target of 30 percent — while rewarding states and utility companies that move quickly to expand their investment in solar and wind power. 

Many states will face tougher requirements for lowering greenhouse-gas emissions under the revised plan. But state governments also will be given more time to meet their targets and considerably more flexibility in how they achieve their pollution-cutting goals, according to two senior officials knowledgeable about the rule. For the first time, the officials said, the plan also includes a “reliability safety valve” that can buy states additional time if needed to avoid disruptions in the power supply.

That's what one party is doing about climate change.

This is what the other party in American politics is doing about it.

Sen. Ted Cruz on Sunday said facts don’t support climate change, in a speech that described the notion as a front for power-hungry politicians who want to control Americans’ lives. 

During an appearance before some of the most influential conservative donors in the country, the Texas Republican said there is no factual basis for scientists’ research that shows the planet is changing. The 2016 White House hopeful said none of the research is worth the paper it is printed on. 

“If you look at satellite data for the last 18 years, there’s been zero recorded warming,” Cruz said in California’s Orange County. “The satellite says it ain’t happening.” 

Instead, Cruz said, government researchers are reverse engineering data sets to falsify changes in the climate. “They’re cooking the books. They’re actually adjusting the numbers,” Cruz said. “Enron used to do their books the same way.”

One party wants to save the planet.  The other party is accusing scientists around the world of a massive political conspiracy to destroy the world economy or something.  It's insanity.

Don't ever tell me there's no difference between the two parties ever again.

The Revenge Of Shutdown Countdown

Forbes's Stan Collender pegs the chances of Republicans shutting down the government on October 1 at 60% now that Planned Parenthood is the new ACORN, and if anything, he belives that number to be low.

Republicans are vowing with ever-increasing vehemence to vote against legislation – including a CR — that includes funding for Planned Parenthood and that means that a continuing resolution that simply extends existing funding at current levels won’t be acceptable to the GOP majorities in the House and Senate. The House and Senate Republican leadership could cobble together a coalition with the moderate members of their own caucus and Democrats, but they would do so by placing themselves and their members in extreme political peril. 

This will be more of a problem in the Senate where the four senators running for the GOP presidential nomination will likely fight each other to lead the filibuster that prevents a CR that funds Planned Parenthood from being debated. Given the very little time left before the start of the fiscal year, that filibuster alone could lead to at least a quick shutdown (Fiscal 2016 starts on a Thursday so a short-term shutdown over the two days leading to the weekend plus Saturday and Sunday is certainly possible). 

Even if cloture in invoked and the Senate adopts a CR with Planned Parenthood funding, it will still have to be compromised with the continuing resolution that comes from the far more socially conservative House Republican majority that is far less likely to accept it. 

In addition, a CR that doesn’t include funding for Planned Parenthood will be filibustered by Senate Democrats. 

And the White House has already promised to veto a continuing resolution that cuts funds for Planned Parenthood, and almost no one thinks the votes will exist in either house to override it even if the government closes down as a result. 

All of this justifies the increase from 40 percent to 60 percent of the chances of a shutdown this fall. If anything, 60 percent may understate the odds of it actually happening.

I personally think this number is closer to 90% if not more.  Given what Oliver Willis calls the continuing "Trumpification" of the GOP, whoever gets to shut down the government at this point wins and breaks out of the pack like Trump has.  Senators Cruz, Rubio, Paul, and Graham will be tripping over themselves trying to make it happen.

The nutjobs in the House will run Boehner over to take advantage of that opportunity.  It'll be a madhouse and the Republican voters will be egging them on the whole way.  State are local Republicans will say "Hey, we're finally sticking it to those assholes in Washington!"  And as long as Grandma's Social Security and Medicare checks keep coming (and there's 0% chance that will stop) they won't care.

Ted Cruz proved in 2013 that you can blow things up and get rewarded for it.  Why wouldn't Republicans do it now?

The Bar For Execution

This is where we are in 2015: citizens, in particular black citizens, are only allowed to survive encounters with police without being summarily executed solely because the officer in question didn't think they saw a weapon.

The shooting looked bad. But that is when the professor is at his best. A black motorist, pulled to the side of the road for a turn-signal violation, had stuffed his hand into his pocket. The white officer yelled for him to take it out. When the driver started to comply, the officer shot him dead.

The driver was unarmed.

Taking the stand at a public inquest, William J. Lewinski, the psychology professor, explained that the officer had no choice but to act.

“In simple terms,” the district attorney in Portland, Ore., asked, “if I see the gun, I’m dead?”

“In simple terms, that’s it,” Dr. Lewinski replied.

When police officers shoot people under questionable circumstances, Dr. Lewinski is often there to defend their actions. Among the most influential voices on the subject, he has testified in or consulted in nearly 200 cases over the last decade or so and has helped justify countless shootings around the country.

His conclusions are consistent: The officer acted appropriately, even when shooting an unarmed person. Even when shooting someone in the back. Even when witness testimony, forensic evidence or video footage contradicts the officer’s story.

He has appeared as an expert witness in criminal trials, civil cases and disciplinary hearings, and before grand juries, where such testimony is given in secret and goes unchallenged. In addition, his company, the Force Science Institute, has trained tens of thousands of police officers on how to think differently about police shootings that might appear excessive.

A string of deadly police encounters in Ferguson, Mo.; North Charleston, S.C.; and most recently in Cincinnati, have prompted a national reconsideration of how officers use force and provoked calls for them to slow down and defuse conflicts. But the debate has also left many police officers feeling unfairly maligned and suspicious of new policies that they say could put them at risk. Dr. Lewinski says his research clearly shows that officers often cannot wait to act.

“We’re telling officers, ‘Look for cover and then read the threat,’ ” he told a class of Los Angeles County deputy sheriffs recently. “Sorry, too damn late.”

In 2015, as long as the officer believes you have a weapon, your life is forfeit and you can be executed on the spot.  And of course, this is being used to end black lives exponentially more often than with other people.

And let's be clear about what we have here in Professor Lewinski here: a man willing to testify to get cops off for murder because "they thought they saw a gun".  That is all it takes to lose your life, and this man is dedicated to make sure that these cops can kill as man people as necessary based on that.

We all live in a police state now.  If you are black, you are much more likely to die in one.

StupidiNews!

• The Senate GOP vote to defund Planned Parenthood was unable to clear a Democratic filibuster, with Republicans vowing to block any future budget bill that funds the organization.
• Puerto Rico has defaulted on a bond payment on its $73 billion in debt due Monday, the first default in what bond ratings agency Moody's terms "broad defaults on commonwealth debt."
• Three major US airline carriers will no longer transport large game animals killed as trophies in the latest corporate reaction to the outrage over the death of Zimbabwe's Cecil the Lion.
• The reaction by Greek citizens to not having cash during the country's recent financial crisis has been Greeks lining up to get at least one million bank-issued debit cards.
• Homeland Security is concerned with hobbyist drones possibly being used by terrorists to harm the US, issuing an advisory on recreational drones to the nation's law enforcement agencies.

Last Call For Investigations Are For Losers

You may recall that one of the first reactions by the GOP over this Planned Parenthood video nonsense was Louisiana GOP Gov. Bobby Jindal trying to revive his moribund 2016 presidential run by immediately calling for an investigation into the organization's clinics in the state.

Well, seeing as how he only until tomorrow to get his terrible numbers high enough to get into the FOX debate in Cleveland this week, he's now no longer waiting for the results of the investigation.

Today, the Louisiana Department of Health and Hospitals informed Planned Parenthood it is exercising its right to terminate Planned Parenthood’s Medicaid provider agreement. In recent weeks, multiple videos have surfaced showing Planned Parenthood Federation of America senior personnel and other employees describing how they actively engage in illegal partial birth abortion procedures and conduct these abortions in a manner that leaves body parts intact so that they can later be sold on the open market. Since these videos have surfaced, Governor Jindal has directed DHH to investigate Planned Parenthood’s activities in Louisiana and also sent a letter to both the Louisiana Inspector General and the F.B.I. asking them to assist in the investigation. 

According to the Medicaid provider contract between DHH and Planned Parenthood, along with relevant Louisiana law, either party can choose to cancel the contract at will after providing written notice. Governor Jindal and DHH decided to give the required 30-day notice to terminate the Planned Parenthood Medicaid provider contract because Planned Parenthood does not represent the values of the State of Louisiana in regards to respecting human life. Pending the ongoing investigation, DHH reserves the right to amend the cancellation notice and terminate the provider agreement immediately should cause be determined.

As near as I can tell, the figures I can find have about 30% of the state on Medicaid.  You figure half are women (if not more) and with 4.65 million people in the state, that's roughly 700,000 women on Medicaid for Louisiana.

That's a lot of women who are no longer able to go to a Planned Parenthood clinic for basic services, because of a questionable video.

But what does Jindal care?

King Cotton And Queen Misery

Twenty years ago, textile mills in the Carolinas closed up shop due to cheap Chinese labor.  Now in 2015, Chinese textile giants like Keer Group are finding out that the cheaper labor is over here in Red State, "right-to-work" America.

Once the epitome of cheap mass manufacturing, textile producers from formerly low-cost nations are starting to set up shop in America. It is part of a blurring of once seemingly clear-cut boundaries between high- and low-cost manufacturing nations that few would have predicted a decade ago.

Textile production in China is becoming increasingly unprofitable after years of rising wages, higher energy bills and mounting logistical costs, as well as new government quotas on the import of cotton.

At the same time, manufacturing costs in the United States are becoming more competitive. In Lancaster County, where Indian Land is located, Keer has found residents desperate for work, even at depressed wages, as well as access to cheap and abundant land and energy and heavily subsidized cotton.

Politicians, from the county to the state to the federal government, have raced to ply Keer with grants and tax breaks to bring back manufacturing jobs once thought to be lost forever.

The prospect of a sweeping Pacific trade agreement that is led by the United States, and excludes China, is also driving Chinese yarn companies to gain a foothold here, lest they be shut out of the lucrative American market.

Keer’s $218 million mill spins yarn from raw cotton to sell to textile makers across Asia. While Keer still spins much of its yarn in China, importing the raw cotton from America, that is slowly changing.

“The reasons for Keer coming here? Incentives, land, the environment, the workers,” Zhu Shanqing, Keer’s chairman, said on a recent trip to the United States.

“In China, the whole yarn manufacturing industry is losing money,” he added. “In America, it’s very different.”

Automation is a huge part of the deal.  Maximum profits, minimum workers.

“I never thought the Chinese would be the ones bringing textile jobs back,” said Keith Tunnell, president of the Lancaster County Economic Development Corporation, who helped put together subsidies for Keer estimated at about $20 million, including infrastructure grants, revenue bonds and tax credits.

The inner workings of Keer’s factory in Lancaster County help demonstrate why yarn can now be produced for such a low cost in the United States and point to the kind of capital-intensive manufacturing that could thrive again in America.

Inside the 230,000-square-foot spinning plant, giant machines help clean the seeds and dirt from the cotton and send the fluff into carding machines that assemble the cotton into thick, long ropes of fiber. Workers then feed the ropes into machines that spin the cotton into spools of yarn or thread.

The work is highly automated, with the factory’s 32 production lines churning out about 85 tons of yarn a day. Even when Keer opens a second factory next year, it will hire just 500 workers, a fraction of the thousands of workers who toiled at cotton mills across the South for much of the 19th and 20th centuries — a big reason Keer is able to keep costs down.

$20 million in tax credits for 500 jobs.  Seems like a pretty good deal for Keer Group, huh?

Not so much for Lancaster County taxpayers, or schools, or roads, or bridges, or infrastructure, or people.  TPP or not, Red State America is already moving forward with the dark side of international trade, and we're on the wrong side of the ledger for sure. No unions, no benefits, no hope.

But shrinking manufacturing jobs have spurred a willingness in places like Lancaster County to work for lower pay, making them increasingly attractive production bases. Global manufacturers have also been drawn to so-called right-to-work states like South Carolina, where there is little unionization.

“I think I’m going to like it here,” said Enabel Perez, a former apparel factory worker and one of Ms. Ni’s trainees. Ms. Perez said she had jumped at Keer’s call for workers, an event welcomed in Lancaster County with a segment on the evening news.

Future of America seems pretty bleak.

Saving America, Koch Style

Carles Koch considers himself a patriot, you know.  He's putting his considerable fortune as a billionaire on the line to help America stop the scourge of our age: billionaires paying taxes for programs that help the rest of us awful, unworthy, non-billionaires.

Koch, speaking on a low stage in front of an elaborately manicured lawn at the St. Regis Monarch Beach luxury resort, warned about 450 assembled donors and a slew of Republican elected officials – including Sens. Cory Gardner, Mike Lee, Ben Sasse and Dan Sullivan – of a “life or death struggle for our country.”

“One of the things I ask you to think about over this weekend is will you stand together with us to help save our country. It can’t be done without you and many, many others,” said Koch, who seldom speaks in the presence of reporters.

His speech, which came after on-stage interviews by POLITICO’s Mike Allen of GOP presidential candidates Carly Fiorina and Scott Walker, marked the kickoff of a three-day gathering hosted by the deep-pocketed political and public policy network spearheaded by the billionaire industrialists Charles and David Koch.

Charles Koch – introduced by the meeting’s emcee Kevin Gentry as “our great leader” – stumbled slightly on his way to the stage, as attendees squinted into a hot Southern California sun.

“That was Harry Reid that was trying to trip me there,” Koch cracked of the Senate Democratic leader, who has waged a campaign to brand the Koch brothers as the personification of the big-money takeover of American democracy. “I didn’t see him, but I know he’s watching. No, he’s got the bad eye, he’s probably not even watching us anymore,” said Koch, alluding to exercise accident early this year that left Reid blind in one eye.

Koch went on to lambast “irresponsible government spending from both political parties that’s bankrupting out nation,” and a “foreign policy that repeats the mistakes of the past and feeds special interests at the expense of a national defense that truly makes Americans safe.” And he called on the assembled business leaders to reject “corporate welfare,” that he said is creating “a two-tier society” by “creating a permanent underclass, crippling our economy and corrupting the business community – present company excepted, of course.”

Now that's an interesting premise.  He calls it "corporate welfare" but what he's actually describing are the attacks used by Republicans on corporate taxes used to help fund Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and Obamacare.  It's almost like Koch is expecting the government to stop helping small businesses at all, so that huge conglomerates like Koch Industries can rule America completely.

And the Kochs have the candidates in their pockets to prove it.