Last Call For Shutdown Watch '15

Forbes's Stan Collender ups his GOP government shutdown forecast to 67% from last month's 60%, saying that President Obama getting the 41 votes he needs to filibuster the GOP's attempt to derail the Iran nuclear deal makes it all the more likely that Republicans will exact revenge.

Because the CR will include appropriations for all cabinet departments, it’s very likely – if not almost certain – that there will be at least one attempt in the House and Senate to include language that prevents from using any of the funds to implement the deal. 

That’s not to say this proposed language will survive, but the process will further slow down a debate on the CR that already was pushing against the time limit. 

Even more important is that an effort to stop the Iran deal in the CR will provide a second take-no-prisoners issue that will further intensify the politics for many Republicans. When combined with the expected efforts to defund Planned Parenthood, it will add significant highly emotional fuel to the partisan fire and make a government shutdown far more politically palatable. 

If that wasn’t enough, neither Iran implementation nor Planned Parenthood funding has anything to do with the big budget issue — military vs. domestic spending — that still must be resolved in the continuing resolution. There doesn’t seem to have been any progress whatsoever on the dispute between Republicans, that want to increase military and cut domestic programs, and the White House, that wants to increase them both.

And somehow this all has to be worked out quickly. Yes, there are only three weeks between now and the start of fiscal 2016, but the debate and votes on the CR have to be completed in the 10 days Congress will be in session before October 1. But because several of these days will be devoted to the Iran deal and Pope Francis’ visit to Washington, Congress and the White House really only have about seven days left to get all of the work done.

I would put the likelihood at 90% or higher.  Once again, there's no way John Boehner will be able to deliver his caucus for a continuing resolution in the House, and with Sens. Cruz, Paul and Rubio all looking for a way to get back into the race, whoever shuts down the government first wins in the Age of Trump.

It's going to be a meltdown, and Republicans will get blamed again.

Whether or not that actually hurts the GOP, well, who knows.  It certainly didn't hurt them in 2014.

Bush Tax Cuts Forevah

Jeb Bush is tired of getting 5% in the polls, so he's going to amaze people with something they've never seen before:  more Bush tax cuts!

Republican presidential candidate Jeb Bush convened an hour-long gathering in Manhattan on Tuesday morning with three longtime advocates for sweeping tax cuts, seeking their counsel at the office of New York Jets owner Woody Johnson and sharing the details of his campaign’s economic plan, which will be formally unveiled Wednesday in Raleigh, N.C. 

The trio of supply-side conservatives — Heritage Foundation economist Stephen Moore, publishing executive Steve Forbes and CNBC contributor Larry Kudlow — met with Bush alongside Johnson, Bush’s national finance chairman, according to two Republicans familiar with Bush’s schedule. 

Those Republicans, who requested anonymity to discuss the private session and the Bush campaign’s outlook, said the former Florida governor hopes his tax offering will jumpstart his candidacy, which has lagged behind GOP front-runner Donald Trump for months, by proposing lower corporate and personal tax rates while also eliminating a number of deductions that favor Wall Street investors.

Courting the party’s tax-cut enthusiasts Tuesday was the first step in that effort, the Republicans said, calling it a gesture of goodwill and a signal to the party’s business wing that in spite of the rollicking race so far, Bush is mounting an aggressive fall campaign built around traditional GOP principles. Later Tuesday, Bush will visit the offices of The Wall Street Journal’s editorial page, whose writers have for decades been ardent proponents of smaller government and lower taxes.

Yay tax cuts for the rich!  That'll totally fix all of America problems.

Well, it will for the rich.  Until the economy collapses again, but hey, rich people can survive that, so no problemo, dude!

Seriously, do you get the feeling that the Jeb Bush campaign might be out of ideas?

Jailhouse Rockhead

Judge David Bunning has released Rowan County Clerk Kim Davis from jail for contempt with the instructions that she no longer interfere with her deputy secretaries in issuing marriage licenses to same-sex couples.

Guess who's bad at instructions?

Just minutes after a judge ordered Kim Davis released from jail on Tuesday, her lawyers told CNN that she would violate a court order by forcing her clerks to stop issuing marriage licenses to same-sex couples.

An order from U.S. District Court Judge David Bunning said on Tuesday that Davis would be released after serving six days in jail on the condition that she “shall not interfere in any way, directly or indirectly, with the efforts of her deputy clerks to issue marriage licenses to all legally eligible couples.”

CNN correspondent Martin Savidge, who was at the jail, explained following the order that her attorney, Harry Mihet, said that the judge had ordered the release because her office had satisfied the court by issuing marriage licenses to same-sex couples while she was behind bars.

“The problem here is that the attorney says she has not changed her mind, that Kim Davis is adamant that as long as her name appears on those marriage licenses, she objects and she will attempt to stop those licenses from being distributed,” Savidge reported. “Which means if she goes back on the job as is expected, she will bring the process to a halt. That’s what her attorneys believe.”

“They have said they expect her to go by her conscience which means we may go through this all again,” the CNN correspondent noted.

If that actually happens, well, we'll find out pretty soon should Davis burst forth from her office like the evil Kool-Aid Man and tackle the next same-sex couple that comes in the door.

Which necessitates the question being asked: if it's so obvious to Davis's lawyers that she'll violate the court order, how did she get released in the first place?

Won't last long, I'm thinking.

Meanwhile both Mike Huckabee and Ted Cruz showed up at the County jail, and Huckabee especially went on with dangerous rhetoric about openly defying the Supreme Court on same-sex marriage.

"We do not want this country to become the smoldering remains of what was once a great republic, where the people rule," the former Arkansas governor told the crowd. That vision of America should not be "exchanged for a place where five unelected lawyers think that they can rule," he said.

"We're here to say, 'No, they cannot,'" Huckabee declared.

Once again, Republican running for President openly saying that Supreme Court rulings he doesn't like are simply invalid.  Somehow, it's  Democrats who are the extremists.  Probably something about Black Lives Matter, I'm sure.

Nodding to the separation of powers and "the genius of our Constitution," Huckabee told Davis supporters on Tuesday that the Supreme Court's power is "limited" and that it "can only review a law." Reasonably true.

But then came his warning that "the founders never gave that one branch of government the power to make a law."

Huckabee added, "That is reserved for the representatives of the people. Our founders were so concerned that they said that should we ever come to the place that we allow a court to run amok of its purpose, then we would be living under what is no less than judicial tyranny."

That's not how it works, the Supreme Court is the final arbiter over what is Constitutional or not, and they have found that laws banning same-sex marriage are unconstitutional.  What Huckabee is proposing, that the Executive Branch can simply ignore the Judicial Branch, is actual tyranny.

And yet, he's still considered a serious candidate for the GOP nomination rather than a dangerous lunatic.

Spoilers: he's not alone in this view, either.

StupidiNews!

• Officials say 13 people were injured at Las Vegas's McCarran International Airport when the engine of a British Airways flight caught fire on the runway before takeoff.
• The Late Show With Stephen Colbert premiered last night on CBS as the talk show host began his run replacing David Letterman.
• United Nations officials estimate at least 850,000 refugees and migrants will cross into Europe by the end of 2016, the bulk of which will be from war-torn Syria.
• Tesla Motors CEO Elon Musk says the long-awaited Model X SUV will roll off the assembly lines in California starting September 29.
• Silicon Valley mogul John McAfee announced his intent to run for President as a third party candidate for the new Cyber Party he is founding.

Last Call For Rounding Up The Riff-Raff

Nothing quite like the age-old canard of "If black people would behave, racism would go away."  Juan Williams blames Black Lives Matter for angering white people and accuses them of "being their own worst enemy".

It lacks an agenda, it is antagonizing the black community’s top white political allies, including Democrats running for the party’s 2016 presidential nomination, and it is not finding common ground with any of the Republican majority in Congress.

The catalyst for the movement was outrage over the deaths of young black men like Freddie Gray, Michael Brown and Eric Garner at the hands of police officers who arguably used excessive, even deadly force. But where is the list of solutions to the injustices it so often decries? 

The movement’s failure to get its collective act together carries real danger for the political clout of the African-American community in the 2016 elections and beyond.

With the movement potentially discouraging black American trust in Democrats, #BlackLivesMatter is increasing the odds of a sharp drop in black voter turnout in 2016. Already Democrats privately worry that without President Obama on the ballot, the black vote will decrease the turnout needed to keep the White House and win back the Senate.

Williams is already setting BLM up as the source of all the Democrats' problems in 2016.  You have to wonder what his reaction to the civil rights movement of 50 years ago would have been.  He goes on to say Rand Paul and Chris Christie are who black America ought to be listening to (after attacking black Democrats for not being faithful to the Democrats, mind you) and wonders why the movement isn't embracing them

If Williams can't figure that out, he's further gone than I realized.

Patriot Games And Other Cheating

If this ESPN story on former New England Patriots coach Bill Belichick and NFL Commissioner Roger Goddell is even close to being correct, then Goddell needs to be immediately fired.  It turns out that "Spygate", the controversy over the Patriots getting busted for recording signal calls of opposing teams, was much, much worse than originally thought, and that Gooddell did everything in his power to cover up the mess.

His bosses were furious. Roger Goodell knew it. So on April 1, 2008, the NFL commissioner convened an emergency session of the league's spring meeting at The Breakers hotel in Palm Beach, Florida. Attendance was limited to each team's owner and head coach. A palpable anger and frustration had rumbled inside club front offices since the opening Sunday of the 2007 season. During the first half of the New England Patriots' game against the New York Jets at Giants Stadium, a 26-year-old Patriots video assistant named Matt Estrella had been caught on the sideline, illegally videotaping Jets coaches' defensive signals, beginning the scandal known as Spygate. 

Behind closed doors, Goodell addressed what he called "the elephant in the room" and, according to sources at the meeting, turned over the floor to Robert Kraft. Then 66, the billionaire Patriots owner stood and apologized for the damage his team had done to the league and the public's confidence in pro football. Kraft talked about the deep respect he had for his 31 fellow owners and their shared interest in protecting the NFL's shield. Witnesses would later say Kraft's remarks were heartfelt, his demeanor chastened. For a moment, he seemed to well up. 

Then the Patriots' coach, Bill Belichick, the cheating program's mastermind, spoke. He said he had merely misinterpreted a league rule, explaining that he thought it was legal to videotape opposing teams' signals as long as the material wasn't used in real time. Few in the room bought it. Belichick said he had made a mistake -- "my mistake." 

Now it was Goodell's turn. The league office lifer, then 49 years old, had been commissioner just 18 months, promoted, in part, because of Kraft's support. His audience wanted to know why he had managed his first crisis in a manner at once hasty and strangely secretive. Goodell had imposed a $500,000 fine of Belichick, a $250,000 fine of the team and the loss of a first-round draft pick just four days after league security officials had caught the Patriots and before he'd even sent a team of investigators to Foxborough, Massachusetts. Those investigators hadn't come up empty: Inside a room accessible only to Belichick and a few others, they found a library of scouting material containing videotapes of opponents' signals, with detailed notes matching signals to plays for many teams going back seven seasons. Among them were handwritten diagrams of the defensive signals of the Pittsburgh Steelers, including the notes used in the January 2002 AFC Championship Game won by the Patriots 24-17. Yet almost as quickly as the tapes and notes were found, they were destroyed, on Goodell's orders: League executives stomped the tapes into pieces and shredded the papers inside a Gillette Stadium conference room.

And within three days, the story went away. The Patriots were fined, and that was the end of it.

Only of course, it was only the beginning.

Interviews by ESPN The Magazine and Outside the Lines with more than 90 league officials, owners, team executives and coaches, current and former Patriots coaches, staffers and players, and reviews of previously undisclosed private notes from key meetings, show that Spygate is the centerpiece of a long, secret history between Goodell's NFL, which declined comment for this story, and Kraft's Patriots. The diametrically opposed way the inquiries were managed by Goodell -- and, more importantly, perceived by his bosses -- reveals much about how and why NFL punishment is often dispensed. The widespread perception that Goodell gave the Patriots a break on Spygate, followed by the NFL's stonewalling of a potential congressional investigation into the matter, shaped owners' expectations of what needed to be done by 345 Park Ave. on Deflategate. 

It was, one owner says, time for "a makeup call."

So QB Tom Brady was rung up for Deflategate to pacify the NFL owners who knew that the Patriots had gotten away with cheating for years.  Only, that backfired too.  Brady's suspension was lifted by a judge last week.

And now, ESPN drops this story just as the season begins.

Moose-Information Campaign

I can't imagine how this particular scholar of a candidate didn't win in 2008.

Immigrants to the United States should "speak American," former Republican vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin said on Sunday, adding her voice to a controversy triggered by Donald Trump's criticism of fellow Republican White House hopeful Jeb Bush's use of Spanish.

"It's a benefit of Jeb Bush to be able to be so fluent in Spanish, because we have a large and wonderful Hispanic population that is helping to build America," Palin said on CNN's "State of the Union."

"On the other hand, you know, I think we can send a message and say: 'You want to be in America? A, you better be here legally, or you're out of here. B, when you're here, let's speak American.' I mean, that's just, that's - let's speak English," added Palin, Republican presidential nominee John McCain's running mate in 2008.

Politics is hard.  We need somebody mean, not smart.

CNN's Jake Tapper asked Palin Sunday for her thoughts on Trump's exchange last week with radio host Hugh Hewitt. Trump had since called Hewitt's questions "gotcha questions."

"I think I’d rather have a President who is tough and puts America first than can win a game of Trivial Pursuit," Palin told Tapper. "I don’t think the public gives a flying flip who, today, is a specific leader of a specific region because that leader will change of course."

Loud, stupid, and wrong beats measured, intelligent and right any day of the week, stupid liberal nerds!  Just ask President McCain!

StupidiNews!

• Secretary of State John Kerry is warning that Russia's military presence in Syria could worsen the nearly five-year-old conflict and resulting refugee crisis.
• Prolific horror author Stephen King will receive the National Medal of Arts from President Obama later this week in a White House ceremony.
• Jailed Kentucky County Clerk Kim Davis is now suing Gov. Steve Beshear for violating her religious freedom and is once again petitioning for an emergency injunction.
• German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble says the flood of Syrian refugees into Europe is an "absolute priority" in Berlin's latest budget plan.
• Google says it will comply with Chinese censorship laws in order to get its Google Play app store into the largest mobile app market on Earth.

Last Call For Labor, Dazed

This Labor Day, we find that Ohio workers under Gov. John Kasich haven't had a good year.   Whereas America grew by 3.5 million more jobs in the last 12 months, Kasich's policies managed to cause to the state to lose 35,000 jobs since the 2007 recession began.  The state has yet to recover.

More than six years into the official recovery from the last recession, Ohio has not yet recovered the jobs we lost. The country as a whole and most states passed that threshold over a year ago. Ohio had 35,400 fewer jobs in June 2015 than it had when the recession officially started in December 2007, a 0.7 percent loss. The nation added 2.5 percent to its job base over that period. Ohio has underperformed the nation over various time periods – since June 2005 when Ohio passed tax cuts targeted to the wealthiest in the name of job creation; since January 2011 when John Kasich became governor; since December 2007, when the recession started; and over the last year, since July 2014. By June 2015, the most recent revised data available, we had 5,384,200 jobs in Ohio, still more than 240,000 jobs shy of 2000, the peak job year.

 Wages are down too under Kasich, no surprise there.

Ohio’s median wage, once more than 8.7 percent above that of the nation, was over 5 percent less than the national in 2014. Ohio’s median wage dipped slightly last year to $16.05 an hour and remains lower than in all but eight of the last 36 years, adjusted for inflation. This is at the heart of what remains wrong with the Ohio labor market – regular Ohioans are left out of our productivity growth. The entire bottom 80 percent of the earnings spectrum is earning less than comparable workers did in 1979, adjusted for inflation.

Kasich has taken aim at the unions and is desperately trying to turn Ohio into a right to work state.  His policies have cut wages dramatically.

And let's keep is mind he wants to do to America what he did to Ohio.

What did you expect from George W. Bush's budget director?

The Labors Of Obama

President Obama just made a lot of conservative heads explode with this badly needed labor reform.

President Obama will sign an executive order Monday requiring federal contractors to give their employees seven paid sick days a year.

It's the latest in a series of presidential actions on workplace issues, as Obama has taken unilateral action to raise the minimum wage for federal contractors, offer paid paternal leave for federal workers and encourage cities and states to enact similar policies.

Obama will announce the executive order in a Labor Day speech to a labor group in Boston, where the City Council passed an ordinance requiring up to six weeks of parental leave in April.

In all, 21 cities, counties and states have enacted paid leave policies since Obama called for local action in his State of the Union address — a key part of a White House effort to work around Congress on the issue.

That's great for federal employees, but what about the rest of us?

But many of those city ordinances, like Obama's executive orders, apply only to city employees and contractors, leading to big gaps in who's covered. So Obama will renew his call for has taken as he calls on Congress to pass legislation requiring allbusinesses with 15 or moreemployees to offer up to seven paid sick days each year.

Republicans have been lukewarm to that proposal, saying they would burden small businesses that already face too much government regulation.

Lukewarm?  They've been outright hostile to the notion that American workers are anything other than lazy losers who aren't working hard enough to be millionaires yet, and those Americans who are in the 1% are the only ones who should count. 

No, Republicans have made that very clear, blocking paid leave policies whenever possible, even though American productivity is up almost 250% from 1970.  Democrats have introcduced the Healthy Families Act in the last two Congresses, and it never got a vote.  Republicans saw to that.

Labor Secretary Tom Perez said the nation's paid leave policy is "stuck in the Leave it to Beaver era."

"You shouldn't have to win the boss lottery to have access to paid leave, just as you shouldn't have to win the geographic lottery in order to get a minimum wage that allows you to feed your family," he told reporters Sunday, previewing the president's executive order.

You would think red state Republicans would actually respond to that message.  Sadly, their response is "Well, those people get leave and benefits and I don't.  I will do everything I can to take that away from them and maybe my company will let me have them.  Any day now."

And they've been waiting for 40 years.

Pro-Arson, I Guess

At some point, the right-wing smear machine spewing ridiculous lies against Planned Parenthood has to take responsibility for actions of the fanatics they stir up.

An early-morning fire at Planned Parenthood in Pullman Friday was arson, according to the Pullman Fire Department and the Inland Northwest Joint Terrorism Task Force.

The fire, which started around 3:30 a.m., caused significant damage that may keep the health center closed for a month or more, Planned Parenthood spokeswoman Tanya Riordan said.

Karl Eastlund, CEO of Planned Parenthood of Greater Washington and North Idaho, said in a statement, “This is an appalling act of violence towards Planned Parenthood, but unfortunately a predictable ripple effect from the false and incendiary attacks that fuel violence from extremists.”

FBI Special Agent Frank Harrill said federal agencies were involved because of the history of domestic terrorists targeting healthcare providers offering abortion services.

By the way, you idiots who like "burning down abortion clinics"...

Planned Parenthood’s Pullman health center offers abortion referrals but does not provide abortion services, according to its website.

So yes, all you've accomplished is denying women in the area health services.  Oh wait, that's the point because those dirty sluts had it coming, right?

I mean, these nutjobs bomb clinics, they assassinate doctors, but we're supposed to be shocked and appalled at the edited videos they put up?

Please.

Last Call For Martyr And Meathead

Rowan County Clerk Kim Davis remains in jail for not doing her job as Republicans gleefully co-opt black civil rights history and compare her to every icon they can find.

Davis, the elected Rowan County clerk, was sent to jail in contempt of court on Thursday after openly defying multiple court orders to obey the Supreme Court ruling legalizing same-sex marriage in all U.S. states. Davis has maintained doing so is against her Christian beliefs.

This has prompted her attorneys and supporters to come up with some wildly fanciful comparisons.

“Kim joins a long list of people who were imprisoned for their conscience,” her Liberty Council attorney Mat Staver said. “People who today we admire, like Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Jan Huss, John Bunyan, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, and more. Each had their own cause, but they all share the same resolve not to violate their conscience.”

Staver also said Davis is being persecuted the same way Jewish people were under Nazi Germany, while others have compared her to the “tank man,” an unnamed man who faced down Chinese military tanks during the 1989 Tiananmen Square uprising.

According to a Twitter account that appears to be run by Davis’ husband Joe, Davis reportedly also wrote “a letter from a Carter County jail,” possibly mimicking Martin Luther King’s legendary and tide-turning Letter from Birmingham Jail.

“I have no doubt your opinion of me has been swayed by the liberal media gotchyas,” Davis allegedly wrote. “I am here because there is a war on Christians in America. This country was founded on the beliefs of Christianity. This is a fact.”

Davis also wrote in her letter that she believed Rosa Parks “had it easy.”

“The whole world is watching me,” the letter reads. “Under this microscope, I am now not only an example for my family but for the millions of Christians in America facing persecution and the loss of their fundamental right of Religious FREEDOM!!!”

Rep. King is apparently not a fan of honoring Supreme Court rulings he doesn’t agree with. The 1963 Abington Township School District v. Schempp King’s tweet refereed to didn’t ban prayer from schoools, according to the First Amendment Center. It enforced the Establishment Clause by making it illegal for public schools to force students to participate in prayer or promote religion. Students are free to express religion or pray on campus as long as it doesn’t interfere with lessons.

It’s unclear which “award” King believes Davis should receive, but some pointed out that Davis’ actions are more similar to the bus driver that had Rosa Parks arrested for refusing to give her seat up to a white passenger.

I'm not at all surprised by this, Republicans, particularly evengelical Christians, love to believe themselves to be persecuted when other people get rights they've had for decades or even centuries.   That's not persecution, of course.  Nobody is say, burning a gay flag on Davis's lawn or you know, firebombing her church with little girls inside it at the time.  Nobody is physically assaulting her, turning water cannons or dogs on her.

And again, I can't stress this enough: Kim Davis was arrested for refusing to do the job she swore an oath to, and refusing to serve the people in the office she was elected to serve in.  Her reasons for doing so are irrelevant as to why she's in jail.

Same-sex marriage is not persecution of millions of Christians, no matter how badly you dislike it.

And co-opting the memory of civil rights leaders who fought for justice, not bigotry in the name of a God who hates, is really, really the most awful thing here.

But it continues.

Return Of The Podcast

Hey guys, got a surprise for ya.

Podcast Versus The Stupid is back for the 2016 election season!

Check Out Politics Progressive Podcasts at Blog Talk Radio with Zandar Versus The Stupid on BlogTalkRadio

Give a listen to this week's episode, and be on the lookout for more...

Feeling The Pressure

You think DNC Chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz is aware of how bad voting against the President's Iran deal would look, considering she's already in a position where she should lose her job for incompetence?  Today she's out in favor of the deal in an opinion piece in the Miami Herald:

In July, I committed to an exhaustive review process to carefully examine the facts and consider the intangible elements of this agreement, basing my decisions exclusively on what I believed would be most likely to prevent Iran from achieving its nuclear-weapons goals.

I have subsequently come to the conclusion that the agreement promotes the national-security interests of the United States and our allies and merits my vote of support.

I do not come to this decision lightly. I have probed the details of this agreement page by page, word by word, and had personal meetings with President Obama, Vice President Biden and Treasury Secretary Lew. I heard directly from Secretary of State John Kerry and Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz and had numerous highly classified briefings. I also spoke or met with independent economists, nuclear experts, military and intelligence experts in Israel and the United States, and ambassadors from our allies that are parties to the agreement as well as Israel’s ambassador.

Finally, before I finished my lengthy review, I held a series of meetings with my constituents so I could hear their concerns directly. I am proud to represent such an engaged constituency on the issues that matter, and I am proud of the time, energy and thoughtfulness the hundreds of individuals I met with or spoke to put into their review, whether for or against.

Vice President Biden saw these attributes on display firsthand when he led a roundtable discussion last week in my district, in an effort to answer questions and dispel myths for both me and some of my constituents.

This agreement is not perfect. But I join many in the belief that with complex, multilateral, nuclear non-proliferation negotiations with inherent geopolitical implications for the entire world, there is no such thing as a “perfect” deal.

I am somewhat pleasantly surprised at her decision, and her reasoning is what we've heard from other Democratic lawmakers supporting the bill.  It doesn't change the fact she presided over the disastrous 2010 and 2014 cycles and lost more than 80 House seats and nearly 20 Senate seats total in those two elections, and she still needs to be replaced.

But she did the right thing here, for once.

Read more here: http://www.miamiherald.com/opinion/op-ed/article34233213.html#storylink=cpy

Sunday Long Read: More Tales Of Two Cincys

CityBeat Cincinnati takes a look at the Queen City's race and inequality problem and finds that there are no easy answers, and a whole hell of a lot of hard questions.

Cincinnati’s economic and geographic segregation hasn’t gone unnoticed. A 2011 study by researchers at the University of Michigan’s Social Science Data Analysis Network found that Cincinnati is the eighth most-segregated city in America. A study of major U.S. cities by social science journal New Geography published in January ranked Cincinnati 50 out of 52 cities when it came to the economic prospects of black residents. 

A CityBeat analysis of 2010 Census neighborhood and census tract-level demographic data shows the disturbing extent of the economic isolation in Cincinnati’s black neighborhoods. And that isolation seems to be getting worse. 

Of the city’s 10 neighborhoods with the lowest median household incomes, nine are more than 70-percent black. Six of those neighborhoods with considerable populations — The Villages at Roll Hill, Winton Hills, West End, Millvale, South Cumminsville and Avondale — are more than 90-percent black. 

Each of these neighborhoods has a median household income around half, or less, than the city’s median of about $34,000 a year. In these places, life expectancies are five to 10 years lower than the city as a whole. 

At least one of these neighborhoods, Over-the-Rhine, is undergoing a kind of revitalization, and its triumphs and travails are well-covered by the media. But the others are neglected, rarely considered places. 

One Cincinnati neighborhood, English Woods, today consists almost entirely of a single housing tower looming over vast, empty, fenced-off fields that once contained the rest of the housing project. It is home to about 400 people, 90 percent of them black. Its median household income is just $8,474 a year. 

Together, these lowest-income and predominantly black neighborhoods account for more than 36,000 people, a quarter of the city’s black population. 

The history behind why black neighborhoods in Cincinnati are not the kind of things you read in history class.  Redlining, white flight, urban renewal and gentrification have all come at the expense of the city's poorer, black neighborhoods.  It's still going on today and in fact things have gotten worse.

Black Cincinnati has never recovered from the financial devastation in 2008.  It was left behind, yet again.  The systemic issues in this country have blown a hole in the side of the boat, and the rising tide only serves to drown millions in poverty.

Still A Champion

Remember Bengals player Devon Still, who the Cincinnati NFL team rallied around for his daughter Leah, who was diagnosed with cancer? Still played several games with the Bengals last season, and has in fact not made the team this year after the pre-season cut.

But the team will pick up the tab for Leah's insurance for the next five years.

Devon Still has been released by the Cincinnati Bengals, the teamannounced Saturday.

Still played 12 games for the Bengals last season. He recorded 19 total tackles.

In 2014, the Bengals kept Still on the team's practice squad to help him financially with his daughter Leah's cancer diagnosis. He eventually joined the 53-man roster.

In March of this year, Still announced his daughter Leah's cancer was in remission. As of July, Leah's cancer is still in remission.

Because Still was on the Bengals’ roster last year, he and his daughter will have five years of NFL health insurance, even if Still is not on an NFL roster, reportsThe Cincinnati Enquirer's Paul Dehner.

Some good news out the Bengals camp this year, even if the team itself is probably destined for another first-round playoff exit.

Waging War On The Poor

The NY Times editorial board takes on the $15 minimum wage on this Labor Day weekend, and does a pretty good job of dismantling the Republican objections to it.

States should decide: Mrs. Fiorina has said that setting a minimum wage should be “a state decision, not a federal decision,” because of differences in the cost of living around the country. Many Republicans who want to leave the federal minimum where it is, including Jeb Bush and Gov. Scott Walker, make basically the same argument.

Experience shows that state minimums are inadequate without a robust federal minimum. Today, 21 states do not impose minimums higher than $7.25, which was already too low when it was mandated by Congress in 2007. None of the other 29 states have minimums high enough to cover local expenses for an individual worker. In New York, including New York City, the minimum will top out at $9 at the end of this year, even though it takes an hourly wage of $12.75 for one person to cover living costs in the state.

If there were no federal minimum, states would be free to perpetuate poverty level wages. Under the law in Alabama, Louisiana, Mississippi, South Carolina and Tennessee, there is no state minimum wage; in Georgia and Wyoming, the state minimums are $5.15 an hour.

The market should decide: Jeb Bush has said that ideally each state’s minimum wage would be decided by the “private sector.” Mr. Walker and Senator Rand Paul have said much the same thing; Mr. Paul could have been speaking for the pack when he said the “minimum wage is only harmful when it’s above the market wage.”

Markets do reliably establish the prices of goods and services when businesses have to compete. When businesses compete for workers, for example, wages rise because employees gain a modicum of bargaining power. The law has long recognized, however, that low-wage workers seldom have bargaining power. An adequate federal minimum wage effectively substitutes for that lack.

Businesses will be hurt: Donald Trump has said a higher minimum wage would make it impossible for American companies to compete with low-paying foreign rivals. That stance is baffling given his stated aim to “make America great again,” because broad prosperity requires rising wages, not a race to the bottom with countries whose economies are built on low pay.

Robots will replace workers: Senator Marco Rubio has been trotting out this scare tactic at every opportunity: “I don’t want to deny someone $10.10. I’m worried about the people whose wages are going to go down to zero because you’ve made them more expensive than a machine.”

But keeping worker pay low to discourage capital investment is a recipe for a faltering economy and ignores history, in which new technology has bothreplaced and created jobs.

Here's the greater argument as to why every single Republican take on the minimum wage is complete hogwash: All of them at some point include the absolute falsehood that businesses will invest profits in worker wages. You have only to look at our current economy, with wages having stagnated for 40 years, productivity up dramatically, and and record corporate profits to see that unless federal law is there to set a floor, businesses will pay workers as little as possible whenever possible in order to "maximize shareholder value".

American businesses have been doing everything they can to reduce wages.

Poll Position Update

Well now, things have come a long way for The Donald, haven't they.

Republican presidential front-runner Donald Trump leads Democrat Hillary Clinton head-to-head, according to a new poll released Friday.

The poll by SurveyUSA finds that matched up directly, Trump garners 45 percent to Clinton’s 40 percent.

In other head-to-head matchups, Trump beats out Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) by 44 percent to 40 percent; Vice President Joe Biden by 44 percent to 42 percent; and former Vice President Al Gore by 44 percent to 41 percent.

The poll also found that 30 percent of respondents believe Trump will eventually be the Republican nominee, leading the field.

Kind of interesting to see this, as it proves that Trump motivates the GOP base, unlike depressing it like, say, Rick Perry or Jeb Bush.

It's also just one poll, but Republicans are certainly ready to vote for him, and Democrats are still at the "meh, whatever" stage.

We'll see.

Last Call For Rowan County Calculus

Lexington Herald-Leader political columnist Sam Youngman weighs in on the situation in Rowan County and how it will affect Kentucky's gubernatorial election in two months.

The longer Davis sits in a Carter County jail cell, the worse it is for Conway. Bevin is enjoying daily opportunities to motivate his base and present a clear, if at times misleading, message. 

Keep in mind that there are two other county clerks refusing to issue marriage licenses, and really it's anybody's guess how Davis eventually gets out of jail or what she will do when that happens. 

Regardless, this is not a story that will end in the next few days. 

Time is running out before Election Day, and the longer the saga endures, the harder it will be for Conway to get voters to focus on state issues — jobs, education, pensions — and his opponent's flaws. 

The bottom line is that we don't know how this will impact the fall elections. 

It could be the first ripple in the water that becomes a wave that wipes out the entire Democratic slate. Or it could marginalize Bevin and make Conway look more palatable to the broader electorate. 

It has been a quiet race so far, and the general consensus is that very few Kentuckians have been paying attention. 

But given the attention this episode is generating, it seems like a safe bet that voters will be tuned in from here on out.

Youngman's take is pretty much in line with my own opinions here.  It's is a safe bet to say that yes, as long as this election remains about "Barack Obama persecuting the good white Christian people" of Rowan County, Matt Bevin is going to be the commonwealth's next governor by double digits.

On the other hand, Bevin really, really, really tends to overplay his hand and he clearly doesn't know when to shut up while being ahead.

But if Huckabee, Paul, etc. show up and make constant news, it's only going to be helping Matt Bevin.

That means Jack Conway had better work damn hard to get this election back to being about what Matt Bevin will destroy if he's allowed to win, and fast.

Read more here: http://www.kentucky.com/2015/09/04/4020284_sam-youngman-unpacking-the-political.html?utm_source=dlvr.it&rh=1#storylink=cpy

A Bad Judgment Call In Kansas

I've been talking for months about how Kansas Republicans have effectively decimated the state, cutting taxes to the point where the state can no longer fund itself, under the nightmare tenure of Gov. Sam Brownback.  But now the state is rapidly going from permanent Laffer Curve punchline to third-world banana republic status with blinding speed.

On Wednesday night, a district judge in Kansas struck down a 2014 law that stripped the state Supreme Court of some of its administrative powers. The ruling has set off a bizarre constitutional power struggle between the Republican-controlled legislature and the state Supreme Court. At stake is whether the Kansas court system will lose its funding and shut down. 

Last year, the Kansas legislature passed a law that took away the top court's authority to appoint chief judges to the state's 31 judicial districts—a policy change Democrats believe was retribution for an ongoing dispute over school funding between the Supreme Court and the legislature. (Mother Jones reported on the standoff this spring.) When the legislature passed a two-year budget for the court system earlier this year, it inserted a clause stipulating that if a court ever struck down the 2014 administrative powers law, funding for the entire court system would be "null and void." Last night, that's what the judge did. 

The Republican legislature has threatened to destroy the state's court system unless the GOP can strip the power the judiciary has to appoint judges and give that power to lawmakers instead.  The judiciary called the legislature's bluff.

Kansas Attorney General Derek Schmidt warned that last night's decision “could effectively and immediately shut off all funding for the judicial branch.” That would lead to chaos. As Pedro Irigonegaray, an attorney for the Kansas judge who brought the legal challenge against the administrative law, put it, “Without funding, our state courts would close, criminal cases would not be prosecuted, civil matters would be put on hold, real estate could not be bought or sold, adoptions could not be completed."  

Both parties in the case have agreed to ask that Wednesday's ruling remain on hold until it can be appealed to the state Supreme Court, so that there is a functioning court to hear the appeal. On Thursday, a judge granted the stay. Meanwhile, lawyers involved in the case and advocates for judicial independence are preparing a legal challenge to the clause of the judicial budget that withholds court funding. Sometime in the next few months, the state Supreme Court is likely to rule on whether the legislature has the right to strip the Supreme Court of its administrative authority, and whether it can make funding for the courts contingent on the outcome of a court case. 

“We have never seen a law like this before," Randolph Sherman, a lawyer involved in fighting the administrative law, said in a statement, referring to the self-destruct mechanism in the judicial budget. "[I]t is imperative that we stop it before it throws the state into a constitutional crisis.”

So depending on the outcome, Kansas may or may not have courts.  Amazing.

Imagine if a Republican Congress and Republican president passed a law that said the President could no longer appoint federal court or Supreme Court judges, and that instead they would be appointed by the Speaker of the House and approved by the Senate, and that the law also said that if the Supreme Court struck the law down, that Congress would automatically end all funding for the federal court system.

That's the kind of thing you find in a dictatorship, not a representative, Constitutional democracy. But here we are.

The most broken state in the Union continues to stay broken.