Sophianotloren

Pivotal swing states under Republican control are embracing significant new electoral restrictions on registering and voting that go beyond the voter identification requirements that have caused fierce partisan brawls.

The bills, laws and administrative rules — some of them tried before — shake up fundamental components of state election systems, including the days and times polls are open and the locations where people vote.

Republicans in Ohio and Wisconsin this winter pushed through measures limiting the time polls are open, in particular cutting into weekend voting favored by low-income voters and blacks, who sometimes caravan from churches to polls on the Sunday before election.

Democrats in North Carolina are scrambling to fight back against the nation’s most restrictive voting laws, passed by Republicans there last year. The measures, taken together, sharply reduce the number of early voting days and establish rules that make it more difficult for people to register to vote, cast provisional ballots or, in a few cases, vote absentee.

In all, nine states have passed measures making it harder to vote since the beginning of 2013. Most have to do with voter ID laws. Other states are considering mandating proof of citizenship, like a birth certificate or a passport, after a federal court judge recently upheld such laws passed in Arizona and Kansas. Because many poor people do not have either and because documents can take time and money to obtain, Democrats say the ruling makes it far more difficult for people to register.

There's no other explanation for this other than Republicans want fewer people to be able to vote, period.  Higher turnout helps Democrats, as 2008 and 2012 showed.  When turnout is low, as in 2010, Republicans win overwhelmingly, if not crushing Democrats completely.

If Republicans can reduce black and Latino turnout by 10% in swing states, they're no longer swing states.

They're red states.  And the GOP knows it.

For the highly paid Journalistic Walking Dead of the Mouse Circus, there is never a Season Finale.

They have been dead and rotting for years, and yet every week, without fail, there they are, dressing in their network celebrity winding cloth,


shambling unstoppably across the political landscape.

Which is why, as a dirty Liberal, one of the things I ask myself when I am offered a big ol' plate of steaming conventional wisdom from some Sunday Morning "expert" is "Hey, does this guy have a long record of lying about important stuff?  Especially in the area in which he is now being touted as an expert?"

For example, this Sunday when one of America's Most Respected Sunday Zombie Gasbags programs put on Avik Roy -- "...contributor to National Review Online, where he was described as a member of Mitt Romney's Health Care Policy Advisory Group" -- to talk about health care (right after having Rudy Ghouliana on to personally attest to the honor and integrity of Chris Christie) this first question I asked myself was whether or not he has, say, a record of Gish Galloping wingnut healthcare bullshit every time he gets is front of a camera.

Turns out, yeah, he does:

Premium Bullshit.

Forbes Tells The Truth, Then Lies About Obamacare.

Avik Roy has facts wrong on Arkansas "private option".

Avik Roy and the wonk gap

06/03/13 04:31 PM—UPDATED 10/31/13 02:54 PM

...note that Roy was on “All In with Chris Hayes” last week, and as Kevin Drum noted, Roy “offered up a criticism of Social Security’s disability program that was so misleading that Michael Astrue, a former commissioner of the Social Security Administration appointed by George Bush, nearly had a heart attack on the air.”

Shortly thereafter, Roy weighed in on the latest report on California’s exchanges under the Affordable Care Act. While most of us saw the news from the Golden State as excellent news and proof that “Obamacare” implementation is proceeding apace, Roy published a remarkably dishonest piece arguing the opposite, deliberately omitting relevant details.

The always-mild-mannered Jonathan Cohn explained in detail why Roy is plainly, demonstrably wrong, but added an important point about the larger issue.

If you want to know why we can’t have an honest debate about Obamacare, all you have to do is pay attention to some recent news from California – and the way a highly distorted version of it, by one irresponsible writer, has rippled through the conservative press.

Right. Jon, Krugman, and Ezra, among others, have detailed reports explaining why Avik Roy’s analysis simply doesn’t make sense – I won’t recreate the wheel here – and I hope folks will follow the links to understand the underlying policy dispute. It’s not just of a gray area; Roy is simply wrong.

But it’s the point about “why we can’t have an honest debate” that resonates with me.

Indeed, it reinforces the “wonk gap” thesis I’ve been kicking around for a while.

Remember, Avik Roy isn’t just some guy who shows up on Fox to rant and rave about “death panels”; Roy is one of the conservatives who hopes to prove that serious policy scholarship still exists on the right. He publishes content with a credible tone; he doesn’t fly off the rhetorical rails; and he genuinely understands the policy details.

But when it comes to advancing a partisan/ideological agenda, Roy is nevertheless willing to publish “Obamacare” criticisms that are transparently ridiculous.

I believe this is yet another data point that highlights the wonk gap. As Republicans become a post-policy party, even their wonks – their sharpest and most knowledgeable minds – are producing shoddy work that crumbles quickly under mild scrutiny.

...

Run Everybody! Avik Roy is Coming!

ObamaCare in California – Reuters Rehashes Avik Roy’s Lie

They Can't Stop Lying About Obamacare

Avik Roy has a habit of dropping patently false narratives then when called on it is like,"Whatever, my real point is" #Fail #Nerdland
— Lizz Winstead (@lizzwinstead) February 23, 2014

So when I saw that Emergency Backup Gregory Chuck Todd



put Mr. Roy on the teevee, I eased slowly away, and navigated my way over to the ABC network, where I found this guy...



...getting paid to give America his opinions about foreign policy.

Yikes.

So, just for goofs, back I went to Emergency Backup Gregory Chuck Todd , who had moved on to talking to this guy about stuff:

Click.

Updated below

Six weeks ago Ray Rice allegedly hit his fiancee hard enough to render her unconscious.

Subsequently:

On Thursday, Ravens running back Ray Rice was indicted for aggravated assault of his fiancee. On Friday, he married her.

According to Adam Schefter of ESPN, Janay Palmer and Rice exchanged vows last night, in a ceremony that had been scheduled for weeks.

The conscious coupling could insulate Palmer from having to testify against the man who allegedly rendered her unconscious. But the niceties of New Jersey law won’t matter. Since the incident happened in a casino, chances are that the only evidence needed will be the videotape of the alleged punch that knocked her out.

The video reportedly exists, and it will go a long way toward proving beyond a reasonable doubt that assault was committed, regardless of whether Palmer takes the stand.

Rice faces three to five years in prison on the felony charge. In the wake of his indictment, the Ravens have expressed support for the veteran running back.

The temptation in this situation is to plunge straight into victim-blaming — a temptation which will prove even more difficult to resist in the not-unlikely event that Janay Palmer eventually ends up getting murdered by Ray Rice.

It’s possible to have sympathy for everyone in this situation: for Palmer, who has grown up in a culture in which it’s totally normal and to a great degree socially acceptable for a woman to marry a man who severely beat her last month; for the law enforcement officials who understandably get sick of trying to prosecute cases featuring victims who do everything they can to interfere with prosecuting their victimizers; and even with Rice, who after all has been rewarded richly for engaging in an ultra-violent profession, that in turn expects him to leave that ultra-violence at the office, so that he can live a nicely compartmentalized life.

All of which is to say that structural problems need structural solutions, rather than emotionally satifisfying moralizing.

Update: Some of the comments in this thread are reprehensible. Brien Jackson in particular seems to think that alluding to the ways in which the violent world of professional football intersect with what appears to be the very high rate of domestic violence committed by NFL football players is some sort of crypto-racism. Others go to the other extreme, arguing that any attempt to place what appears to be a fairly severe act of violence (a very muscular man hitting a woman literally half his size hard enough to knock her unconscious) within a larger cultural context is some sort of excuse-making for that violence.

Rice is due his day in court, and perhaps the facts in the case are less damning than they seem to be on the basis of the publicly available evidence. It’s too bad that trying to talk about the complex cultural forces at work in this sort of context triggers these sorts of comments.

Oh South Carolina:

Earlier this year eight-year-old Olivia McConnell wrote her state representatives to suggest that since South Carolina doesn’t currently have a state fossil, it should be given one! Olivia decided that she needed a legitimate reason to suggest this besides liking fossils, so she came up with three:

She sent the letter to Representative Robert Ridgeway(D) and Sen. Kevin Johnson(D), asking them to sponsor a bill officially making the woolly mammoth the official state fossil.

“We can’t just say we need a sate fossil because I like fossils,” the third grader told The State. “That wouldn’t make sense.” She ended the letter “Please work on this for me” before signing, “Your friend, Olivia.”

…

The bill passed the House with overwhelming support but encountered some difficulties when Senator Mike Fair(R-Turd) objected to the bill for “religious reasons.”

Fair, who has compared the President to Osama Bin Laden, helped to block funding for a rape crisis center, called climate change a hoax, and blocked evolution from the state’s science standards, saying “I don’t have a problem with teaching theories. I don’t think it should be taught as fact,” stood up for Biblical representation in the state fossil–after all, what’s science without Jesus?

Bryant proposed an amendment to the bill to include a passage from Genesis explaining the Biblical creation of life–because why not?

“I think it’s a good idea to designate the mammoth as the state fossil, I don’t have a problem with that. I just felt like it’d be a good thing to acknowledge the creator of the fossils,” Bryant told the Daily Beast.

Lt. Gov. Glenn McConnell blocked the proposed amendment because it introduced a new subject. He has since amended the amendment to describe the Columbian Mammoth as “created on the Sixth Day with the beasts of the field.”

In response to the Lt. Governor’s ruling Senator Mike Fair placed an objection to the bill, which has been put on hold until they can take what was a simple thing that would benefit children across South Carolina and make one little girl very happy–and figure out how to please the Creationists.

If anyone is putting together a time capsule so people a century from now can open it to understand what the heck was wrong with the early 21st century United States, print out this story and include it.

I don’t really know what kind of history books bigots like you read.

The Great Libraries of Timbuktu? The steel metallurgy of the Haya? Dentistry? Caesarean section? Premature neonatal care? Mathematics, architecture, engineering?

I know it’s hard for a racist like you who imagines “technological advancement” to be some kind of end-all-be-all, or proof of some “inherent intelligence”. I know, I know. It’s hard to imagine, but Europeans have been drawing knowledge from everyone around them since the dawn of time. What did you think ended the Dark Ages?

Your magical (read: white supremacist) idea of a purely 'white' Rome never existed.

Nevertheless…

The Minoan culture on the island of Crete between 1500-1700 B.C.E. had a highly developed waste management system. They had very advanced plumbing and designed places to dispose of organic wastes. Knossos, the capital city, had a central courtyard with baths that were filled and emptied using terra-cotta pipes. This piping system is similar to techniques used today. They had large sewers built of stone.”

In case you needed further clarification, neither the Minoans nor other (later) Greeks were ethnically uniform. They also had the first flush toilets, dating back to 18th century B.C.E. They had flushing toilets, with wooden seats and an overhead reservoir. The Minoan royals were the last group to use flushing toilets until the re-development of that technology in 1596.

Oh, and look the Mayans had indoor plumbing, acqueducts, and pressurized water too. I mean, you can ignore that the area Mayans lived in had little to few rivers, no lakes or standing water, nor other sources of running water, while simultaneously dealing with monsoons and flooding due to one of the heaviest yearly rainfalls in the Americas.

Classic Maya even used household water filters using locally abundant limestone carved into a porous cylinder, made so as to work in a manner strikingly similar to modern ceramic water filters.

Of course, by this time millenia later none of your precious “white people” had developed any methods besides shitting in pots.

Filters for solid waste.

What do a fetus and a corporation now have in common?

Legally, they’re both people. And in some situations, their rights take precedence over those of actual people.

I hope you won’t turn off to the upcoming Hobby Lobby Supreme Court battle thinking it’s just a boring, incomprehensible conversation about that distant thing called the Constitution.

To summarize the case: Hobby Lobby’s owner (remember, Hobby Lobby is a corporation, not an actual person) says the company shouldn’t have to follow the new federal requirement to include no-cost birth control in employee health-care insurance. Note that Hobby Lobby doesn’t have to dispense or encourage birth control, and employees are not required to use it.

But the company’s owner says the company has a right to not follow the law if doing so would violate his religious beliefs. “Freedom of religion, free of government interference,” is the rallying cry.

You don’t see companies refusing to provide legally-required handicap parking or accessible bathrooms because of religious beliefs. You don’t see companies refusing to obey food safety regulations in company cafeterias or worker safety regulations on factory floors because of religious beliefs.

No, “religious beliefs” are always about sex.

The Religious Right says the Hobby Lobby case is about freedom of religion. Their deliberate misinterpretation of our Constitution is shameful.

The Bill of Rights guarantees that government will let PEOPLE worship however they wish, and won’t force PEOPLE to worship in ways they don’t want. It’s the most radical promise of its kind in human history, of which every American (including atheists) should be proud.

But under the guise of religious freedom, Hobby Lobby and other “conscience clause” believers want to opt out of government regulations that have nothing to do with worship.

Contraception is not about worshipping. You want to worship, go ahead. You want to preach against contraception, go ahead. You want to try to dissuade others from contracepting, go ahead.

You want your company to be exempt from a law that allows other people to do things you disapprove of? No. That’s how they run things in Russia, Iran, and Venezuela, not in a modern democracy.

Hobby Lobby says it can’t obey the law because it would be helping others behave in ways it finds unacceptable. That’s like saying you can’t stop at a red light in front of a mosque because you’d be enabling people to pray to Allah. Or that your taxi company can’t pick up people in Black neighborhoods and take them to White neighborhoods because you’d be helping the races mix.

Religious beliefs should not give anyone—or any corporation—an exemption from following civil laws.

And consider: What about companies with all white employees who want to discourage contraception not because of religious belief, but because they fear people of color are taking over the country? Is one reason really better than another?

Privileging religious belief over other “sincerely held beliefs” is anti-democratic at its core. It suggests that some people’s beliefs are more important than others. I think Napoleon says I shouldn’t provide clean bathrooms for my employees, the law says I’m wrong. I think Jesus wants me to reject America’s new health insurance regulations, that should be OK?

And let’s talk about those bathrooms. It apparently says right there in the Bible (as well as the Koran) that women should not be too damn uppity (I’m paraphrasing here). So what if an employer decides to provide bathrooms for male employees but not for female employees, who really should stay home? Or if an employer decides that pregnant women shouldn’t work, and claims the right to fire a woman as soon as she becomes pregnant? Or if an employer decides that the Bible demands obedience in children, and insists on hiring 13-year-olds despite child labor laws?

Once you let “sincerely felt beliefs” exempt people, there’s no limit to how much they can challenge a democracy’s laws.

And that affects all of us. That’s why the “freedom of religion” argument is bogus. This isn’t about challenging a law that prevents people from worshipping or believing as they will. It’s about challenging a law whose democratic, scientific ideology they reject—and hiding behind Mary’s skirts to do so.

A year of living in Saudi Arabia or Nigeria might help these people understand what it really means to lose freedom of religion.

Hobby Lobby is dishonest. Jesus wouldn’t like that. But then again, very little of the Religious Right’s behavior is about what Jesus would like. It’s mostly about economic and political power—which Jesus apparently understood quite well.
************
I cover this issue extensively in my book America’s War On Sex: The Attack on Law, Lust, & Liberty, recently released in an updated edition.

If I’m being honest with myself, there have only been a handful of animated films that have really captured my attention, then kept it. Don’t get me wrong– in the past decade or so many excellent animated films have been released. Some of these films were beautifully-animated and beautifully-acted. Some of them had clever, intriguing plots. But there were only a few that I really, really liked and that I wanted to revisit.

“Frozen” will now be in that pantheon for me–wow, what a treat!! It’s beautiful to look at (especially if you’re nuts about winter wonderlands like I am), the voice acting is superb, the songs are engaging (a rarity), and it’s the first animated film in a long time that really tickled my funny bone. This may seem weird to some people considering some of the high-quality humorous offerings that have come down the pike since “The Little Mermaid” came out in 1989. But “Up” was not funny; it was just poignant to me. I bawled during the first few minutes of the film…and inside I never really stopped bawling. It was not light viewing for me. The same goes for the terrific “WALL-E.” It was hard for me to get past the movie’s poignance; I’m not sure I ever cracked a smile. And, then there were films like “A Bug’s Life” and “Monster’s Inc,” which were good, but didn’t really stay with me.

Then along came “Frozen,” a film which has rekindled my love affair with animation. I can’t recommend  it highly enough. The acting by Kristen Bell and Josh Gad is just phenomenal (and they’re phenomenally funny), the film is consistently hilarious, and it strikes the right balance between tension/poignance and humorousness. It’s just…well, I kind of just want to scream things like “whoopee!” and “amazeballs!” I feel like Disney got its groove back with this one. I’d be curious to know if any of you agree.

Also, if you haven’t seen “Surf’s Up,” please see it. Everything I said about “Frozen” applies to it, though it is not a musical. It is, however, criminally under-appreciated, a true hidden gem of the animated world. I pretty much have it memorized, because I–a full-grown woman–find it sweet and at times laugh-out-loud funny.

Also…THE INCREDIBLES!

What are your favorite animated films?

BP's oil spill from their Whiting, Indiana processing plant into Lake Michigan doubled in size. BP raised the "estimated" amount of oil spilled up from 600 gallons to well over 1600 gallons. But, in reality, this latest estimate is just a guess by BP, as well, and the final total and damage is sure to increase.

Lake Michigan, as one of the Great Lakes the repository of 21% of the World's Fresh Water, is the primary source for drinking water used by 7-12 million people.

Initially, BP claimed the cold conditions and ice on the water allowed them to collect the waxy oil spilled, which was characterized as small. However, Illinois Senators Mark Kirk and Dick Durbin made several public declarations and vowed to investigate the spills causes and effects.

Mark Kirk's refusal to slander Dick Durbin and his non-deference to BP has greatly angered the Illinois Republican Party and Conservatives, in general. Over at the fetid Hotair, Ed Morissey declares Kirk is a coward who won't go Nuclear on Durbin while commenters declare Kirk is a "crap weasel" with "no testicles". Meanwhile, the Illinois Republican Party is looking to implant Jim Oberweis another Corporate scumbag who will vote to eliminate regulations and unchain Corporations.

Just last week, US House Republicans voted to allow Coal Mining Companies to dump Coal Ash into lakes, rivers and streams. In 2011, US House Republicans passed H.R. 2018 to eliminate the Clean Water Act of 1972 and allow Polluting Corporations to do so with total impunity and immunity.

The vote last week by the Republicans was in response to President Obama's decision to empower the EPA and Army Corps of Engineers to protect and defend 20 million acres of wetlands and river sheds from the Pollution Industry. So, the Republicans decided to look out for their constituents.

The Pollution Industry is a big money maker so, of course, Republicans will look out for the Corporations Interest and harm Americans because their job is to defend and empower Corporations at the expense of America.

The scourge of companies subcontracting labor in order to maximize profit continues. Tokyo Electric Power Company runs the damaged Fukushima nuclear reactor. Rather than employ the cleanup workers itself, it is relying on subcontractors that, not surprisingly, cut corners on such things as keeping workers safe.

Most workers inside the plant are contract laborers hired by multiple layers of construction companies. A Reuters investigation last year found widespread labor abuses, where workers said their pay was skimmed and there was little scrutiny over working conditions inside the plant.

Tepco on Friday would not name the worker’s direct employer, but said he reported up to Toso Fudosan Kanri Company, a first-tier contractor under Tepco. The worker was in his 50s, the utility said.

The company confirmed it had hired the worker through another subcontractor.

Tepco has been widely criticized for its handling of the cleanup. The operator was plagued by a series of leaks of radioactive water from hastily built tanks at the site last year and it has repeatedly promised to improve working conditions.

Of course not using subcontractors would probably be the best idea for improving those working conditions.

I’ll also note that when I write these subcontracting posts, commenters inevitably start talking about the benefits of subcontracting since why should every company have its own IT staff. A couple points here to hopefully reduce this kind of thing. First, during the greatest time of economic growth in American history, subcontracting barely existed. It’s not as if you need subcontracting in order to have a successful business model. Second, there may well be times when you can subcontract and have it make sense, such as IT. However, is there any good reason why we should allow subcontracting where the workers labor for less pay, benefits, and safety precautions than directly employed workers? No. There is not. Third, those who defend subcontracting on principle are sort of missing what’s important here. Or at least, for me keeping workers safe and making living wages is more important than a streamlined business process that concentrates wealth at the top. Maybe that’s not everyone’s priority, I don’t know. Once we get to the point where there’s a bill before Congress to ban subcontracting, we can start worrying about the exceptions that make sense. For now, I’m not going to worry too much about the concerns of business.

stephendann:

tallestsilver:

stardusted:

Aussie Builders surprise public with loud empowering statements in new Snickers Australia Ad.

NO BUT REALLY

Male paid actors in a commercial shoot harass unsuspecting women on the street. Those women are then stopped by a further stranger and asked to sign waivers for the use of their image in the commercial advert, paid a minor fee and larger fee if image is used (thanks to the clarification from a participant).

Let’s breakdown this empowerment for a moment.  The men know the conditions and circumstances of the advert, the scripts, the set up, and elect to participate after being recruited into the process. Chances are that they applied for the work, and/or were sought for the role. Actors in adverts are paid as professionals.  

Contrast the women.  First, the agency didn’t hire female actors to the role of the recipients.  There’s female actors for commercials who were not given a day’s work in the name of :empowerment: of women by Snickers.  There’s a fun gender dynamic for you already. No female actors were paid in the production of this empowerful message of gender stuffs.

It’s an awful message too.  The snickers tag line is “You’re not yourself when you’re hungry”. So if builders are “empowering” and then eat their snickers, the default male state is being a misogynistic prick

Actually being pro-women and empowering is your “not yourself” state.

So, why again is this an empowering message? Sure, looks good in the gifs, but it’s a shitty message with a worse execution.

Also, have a look at the gender breakdown of the production team who greenlit the prtoject. Surprises anyone?

First, I was like, oh that’s kind of a nice message (even though having a bunch of dudes shout feminism at me would still be intimidating and intrusive), is it for like an anti-street harassment campaign?  But then I’m like oh… a Snicker’s ad?  How is that a… oh this is the “you’re not yourself when you’re hungry” ad campaign.  Wait, so they’re basically saying the normal proper behaviour of men (specifically working class men because let’s throw in some classism too) is to be misogynist sexual harassers? -_-

And then all the other stuff about the background.  Gross.

This isn’t Snicker’s hoping for a better world, this is Snicker’s saying a better world is abnormal and weird, and should be warded off (by buying their product, no less).

This essay first appeared in Cliterati on March 9^th; I have modified it slightly to fit the format of this blog.

For most of the Twentieth Century, “authorities” in many Western countries (especially the United States) chose to portray sex workers as either criminals to be jailed or “problems” to be solved, “social evils” as the Victorians had termed us.  But by the 1970s, that narrative was wearing thin:  the sexual revolution had opened many people’s eyes to the fact that sex is not some magical polluting force, and early feminists campaigned for sex workers’ rights.  Though mainstream feminism went anti-sex in the ‘80s, the legacies of the civil rights movement, the gay rights movement and the sexual revolution had by then undermined the official narrative; the portrayal of sex workers in movies and TV shows had become much more positive, and the average person was beginning to see anti-harlot crusades for what they are:  authoritarian interference in people’s private lives.  Clearly, that couldn’t be allowed to continue; something had to be done, so prohibitionists…

…created the “sex trafficking” hysteria as a means of rallying the public behind criminalization again.  As the “Nation Strategy” of Swanee Hunt’s Demand Abolition organization states, “Framing the Campaign’s key target as sexual slavery might garner more support and less resistance, while framing the Campaign as combating prostitution may be less likely to mobilize similar levels of support and to stimulate stronger opposition.”  In other words, “since people now recognize it’s wrong for the government to stick its nose into private bedrooms, we have to pretend this is really about something else.”

Nowadays, it’s rare to hear old-style police talk about locking up the dirty whores to protect the public from them; far more often, armed raids in which women are terrorized, handcuffed, evicted in freezing weather, humiliated, caged, gang-raped or otherwise brutalized are described as “rescues”.  “Sex trafficking” does far more than let cops rebrand their usual sadism as heroism, however; it also produces more practical results, such as immigration control:

Specialist anti-slavery teams are to be based inside UK airports in a bid to clamp down on human trafficking…The first team will be based at Heathrow from 1 April before the scheme is rolled out to other airports.  They will be tasked with identifying victims and disrupting criminal gangs involved in international trafficking.  The government says the scheme will ensure there is “no easy route into the UK for traffickers”…

“The scheme is part of a larger plan to ensure there is no easy route into the UK”.  There, fixed it for you.  But pandering to xenophobia is only one way in which “sex trafficking” hysteria is useful to politicians:

[Maine state] Rep. Amy Volk…would give courts permission to vacate prostitution convictions against people who [can prove they] were forced or coerced into the crime.  [Her] bill…also would set up a compensation fund for victims, paid for with increased fines for those who are convicted of promoting prostitution.  It also would make the crime of furnishing drugs to a prostitute an aggravated offense…Ben Grant, chairman of the Maine Democratic Party, accused Volk, a pro-life legislator, of trying to “soften her edges” on women’s issues by sponsoring the bill…

This is, of course, a nonsensical accusation; a bill which infantilizes women (compare “furnishing drugs to a prostitute” with “furnishing alcohol to a minor”) would hardly seem out of character for an anti-abortion politician, and the “sex trafficking” hysteria is so thoroughly grounded in Protestant Christian morality that the politician Linda Smith, founder of Shared Hope International, once described “anti-trafficking” activism as “an extension of the ‘pro-life’ cause”.  Yet the most important advantage of the hysteria to governments is only hinted at in the article above; it is spelled out clearly in the one below:

Recently the Virginia House of Delegates passed two bills ostensibly aimed at…human trafficking…HB 235 forces people convicted of soliciting an underage prostitute to register as sex offenders.  HB 660 enables prosecutors to seize the earnings of sex workers.  The bills were submitted by…Rob Bell…who in 2012 voted in favor of a bill requiring all women to undergo a transvaginal ultrasound prior to having an abortion.  In the same session, he was the primary sponsor of a bill…requiring police to inquire into the citizenship of anyone arrested, regardless of criminal charges…[So-called] abolitionists want to eliminate sex work through more punitive legislation.  Generally motivated by moral opposition to sex work, they have moved into using outrage and concern over human trafficking to push for harsher laws aimed at punishing sex workers.  HB 660 is exactly this sort of bill.  It allows police to take possession of these women’s property, including cash and vehicles, upon their arrest.  The women don’t even need to be convicted…incentivizing cops to arrest more grown women by allowing them to seize their earnings will do nothing but line the pockets of police department at the expense of an already-vulnerable population…

All three strands come together in the person of Rob Bell:  the fundamentalist Christian crusade to control women’s bodies, a xenophobic anti-immigrant agenda and an opportunity to fill the state’s coffers by legalized theft.  Official narratives pretend that government actors want to “help” sex workers, but in reality the only people these “authorities” are “helping” is themselves.

The obvious next step is to strip funding from universities who teach about slavery. They are inciting race hatred after all:

Michigan State University could risk losing $500,000 if it does not stop offering courses that allegedly promote unionization.

A state Senate panel approved a measure Thursday banning courses at public universities that promote or discourage organizing efforts. It’s a reaction to MSU’s recent decision to take over some programs from the National Labor College.

Republicans say those courses violate the proposed rule.

“I believe in academic freedom, and you’re going to have difficult subjects that you’re going to cover at any university,” said state Rep. Al Pscholka, R-Stevensville, who chairs the panel that directs higher education funding in the House.

I believe in academic freedom unless I disagree with the subject matter. That is indeed the true meaning of academic freedom.

Some years ago, in a brief hiatus when all our children had  left the nest and none had yet returned, my husband said to me, “We can run around the house naked if we want!”  Well, yes, we could.  And we could fly down the hallway, undressing as we went, to pop into the tub or shower after an afternoon slaving in the yard.  We could dash to the bathroom in the morning and forget to close the door.  Ah, freedom!

That was what I thought feminism was about, too.  Freedom.  To be naked or not.  To be religious or not.  To be employed outside the home or not.  To wear pants instead of skirts or not.  To drive or not.  To wear pink or not.  To get an education or not.  To marry or not.  To divorce or not. To have wild sex or not. To smoke or not.  To drink or not. To choose an abortion or not.  To have a baby or not.  To buy a house or not.  To own a car or not. To vote or not.  To like boots better than high heels or not.  To use make up or not.

But somewhere on the road from there to here, something prescriptive happened.  It stopped being a choice with an attached ‘or not’ somewhere.  If there is not an “or not” how the hell is it a real choice? Women HAD to have an education.  Feminists should NOT marry and “sleep with the enemy”.  Dressing up and being pretty meant you HAD to be pretty — not that you felt like it would be fun.  Having sex with a man was equated to rape in EVERY penetrative event. (They really lost me at that one.) Voices seemed to lift, not in any jubilation over freedoms discovered and celebrated — and freedoms gained; but in condemnation of ordinary human things.  Everyone nowadays — male AND female — seem answerable to entirely too many commanding voices.  Some of them are pretty stupid, too.

Women should keep silent in church, not even saying “Amen” because Paul said so.  (Fuck Paul!)  Big boys AND big girls don’t cry now — emotional suppression for ALL; yay, that is some good psychological bit, eh?  Real equality of misery for all, yay!??  Stay at home moms are lazy bitches.  Women who work are taking food out of the mouths of men and THEIR families.  I love how it all contradicts itself within pages in the same reading material at times, don’t you?

These days?  I think the first tenet of ANY ideology should possibly be like that little graphic up there — there should FIRST be a freedom to still all those shrill demanding damned voices so one can hear one’s OWN voice.  And decide one by one, if the other voices belong to thinking humans — or assholes!

 

Filed under: Politics, Religious Nuts & Bolts, War on Women Tagged: feminism, freedom from religion, stfu!

Good news, both directly for 300 people and for what the action represents:

Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. on Friday intervened in another state legal battle over gay marriage, announcing that the federal government would recognize same-sex marriages that were recently held in Michigan.

Three-hundred same-sex couples married in Michigan over the weekend before a federal appeals court granted a stay to stop the weddings from being performed. Democrats in Michigan’s congressional delegation, led by Rep. Dan Kildee, had called on Holder to recognize the marriages as legal under federal law.

[...]

Last month, Holder instructed all Justice Department employees across the country to give lawful same-sex marriages equal protection under the law in every program the department administered.

“Last June’s decision by the Supreme Court was . . . a victory for equal protection under the law and a historic step toward equality for all American families,” Holder said Friday. “The Department of Justice continues to work with its federal partners to implement this decision across the government.”

…But white country songs about killing women, well, that’s just sweet:

Prosecutors are treating the lyrics as persuasive evidence of guilt. “Just because you put your confession to music doesn’t give you a free pass,” former Los Angeles County prosecutor Alan Jackson tells the Times. In a court case, a confession is often the closest thing to ironclad proof.

Rap lyrics themselves may be viewed as criminal. Two Pittsburgh men made a rap video deemed so hostile to police that they were convicted of issuing terrorist threats.

I imagine prosecutors have more to go on than rap lyrics alone, but it’s easy to see how, in these cases, rap is the new hoodie—a symbol of black male aggression. Rap is frequently viewed as threatening; listening to it is taken as a form of misbehavior to be corrected. Witness the case of Michael Dunn, the Florida man who murdered seventeen-year-old Jordan Davis and shot at Davis’s friends after they refused to turn down the “rap crap” they were blasting in their car. Dunn believed the teens were a danger to him. Would he have felt the same way had they been listening to the Beach Boys?

Well of course not. The Beach Boys were white and thus good boys with some bad fantasies maybe. But the black men, they are a threat to white women.

Of course I have no way to know whether the individual at the heart of this case is guilty or not. But his rap lyrics are beyond irrelevant.

Still, someone get Tipper Gore on Line 1, there is a threat to our nation’s youth on the march.

Filed under: Life

Set off by the genuinely appalling theft of a huge anti-abortion sign (one of those signs with gross photos of allegedly abortion-age fetuses) by a feminist Professor at UC Santa Barbara, Freddie deBoer has a pair of posts arguing that the “social justice left” is abandoning free speech.

Although I don’t question Freddie’s report that “it is not at all unusual, for me, to encounter liberals and leftists who [...] do not believe that controversial speech (what they call hate speech) should be legally expressible,” I do wonder if the people Freddie hangs out with are a representative sample of lefties. As Corey Robin points out, if anything today’s left seems less likely to question the legal doctrine of free speech than (say) during the Reagan years, when the MacKinnon/Dworkin anti-porn legislation was a major issue. Where is today’s equivalent of Catherine MacKinnon?

Anyway, I’m not posting to argue with Freddie. Rather, I wanted to get down some thoughts about different types of threats to free speech.

First, we have Government Suppression of Free Speech. This includes (but isn’t limited to):

1) When governments directly outlaw certain speech content – for example, the German government outlawing Holocaust Denialism, or the US outlawing cigarette advertising on TV.
2) The government determining that some public areas are not open to protest, such as “free speech zones.”
3) Copyright laws and trademark laws.
4) The government using the law, or the bureaucracy, to punish people for their speech. Or even just threatening to do so, as Boston Mayor Thomas Menino did when he said “If [Chick-Fil-A] needs licenses in the city, it will be very difficult,” in response to Chick-Fil-A’s owner’s opposition to same-sex marriage. (Menino backed down from his position, thankfully.)
5) Laws against libel and slander.
6) Directly shutting down newspapers and other media outlets.
7) Arresting protestors.

It doesn’t take much imagination to imagine contexts for most of those forms of government suppression of free speech that almost anyone who isn’t an anarchist would say is legitimate. We can’t say that it’s always wrong to arrest a protestor; to be able to make that call, we’d want to know the fuller context (what was the protestor actually doing that got her arrested?).

Second, we have Social Suppression of Free Speech. This includes (but isn’t limited to):

1) Social sanctions for stating the “wrong” opinions – or so much fear of social sanctions that speech is “chilled.” When right-wingers complain that for a left-winger to use the term “bigot” or “racist” “shuts down speech,” I think this is what they mean.
2) Economic sanctions for stating the “wrong” opinions. Or, again, so much fear of economic sanctions (such as losing a job) that speech is “chilled.”
3) Protests that have the effect of shutting down opposing speech – for instance, if protestors in an audience yell so loud that it’s not possible to hear the speaker.¹
4) Capitalistic suppression, in which the owners of capital – such as newspapers, blogs, auditoriums, tv networks, etc – decide not to publish certain views. Or, for that matter, when the owners of an auditorium have security remove the people protesting the speaker.

I think that, for most Americans, social and economic sanctions are probably the things that are actually most likely to be shutting us up on a day-to-day basis. And when people say they want a “culture of free speech,” I think what they mean is they want a culture in which social and economic sanctions for speech are rare, or at least proportionate.

I can’t imagine any possible policy approach to decreasing “social sanctions” in which the cure wouldn’t be worse than the disease. But I would favor legal protections for employees so that they don’t have to fear being fired for their off-work-hours political speech, unless that speech is somehow directly relevant to job performance.

1. Ken White at Popehat had a great comment about this: “The doctrine of the Preferred First Speaker holds that when Person A speaks, listeners B, C, and D should refrain from their full range of constitutionally protected expression to preserve the ability of Person A to speak without fear of non-governmental consequences that Person A doesn’t like. The doctrine of the Preferred First Speaker applies different levels of scrutiny and judgment to the first person who speaks and the second person who reacts to them; it asks “why was it necessary for you to say that” or “what was your motive in saying that” or “did you consider how that would impact someone” to the second person and not the first. It’s ultimately incoherent as a theory of freedom of expression.”

Months before Florida Crystals Corp. won a no-bid contract to farm sugar on state-owned land, its top lobbyist and president met with Governor Rick Scott in the home of King Juan Carlos of Spain.

They got access during a 2012 trade mission underwritten by corporations including the company, which is co-owner of the Domino Sugar brand. The trip, intended to recruit businesses to Florida, also provided a lobbying opportunity for those already in the state. After the meeting at the palace, Florida Crystals executives joined Scott at a reception they sponsored, featuring Spanish omelets and dry-cured ham.

Governors increasingly are using corporate money to fund their excursions, often from businesses that stand to benefit from state decisions. While taxpayers traditionally paid for trade missions, at least 15 states have started collecting donations to cover costs, including six since 2010. Scott, a 61-year-old Republican, has tapped the private money most often, making 10 overseas visits in the past three years, twice the pace of his predecessor, according to public records.

“It’s an opportunity that the vast majority of people and companies never get,” said Hayden Dempsey, a Tallahassee lobbyist and former aide to the governor who went on the Spain trip. Scott, he said, was “very accessible.”

In the months after, Scott approved a 30-year lease extension that Florida Crystals sought on 8,700 acres of state land. He also signed a bill helping the company limit payments to clean up pollution near its South Florida farms.

That's how government works. Lobbyists buy the government with trips and loot and get the laws they need to make tons of profit at taxpayer expense, and they even get to destroy the environment free of charge. And all of this is 100% legal, because the laws are written to make it this way.  Free speech baby, free speech.

So what if regular Floridians get exploited and harmed?  Who cares?  They don't have the corporate billions.  If their rights meant anything, God would have made them rich enough to afford free speech.

It's the GOP way.

Like other presidents in recent decades, regardless of political party, Obama has pushed for fast track authority to slam free trade bills through without taking into account the concerns of American workers or those concerned about environmental issues. Obama’s goal is to create the Trans-Pacific Partnership, a 12-nation free trade agreement covering nations from Chile to Brunei, would continue allowing American companies to operate without consequences. So far Congressional Democrats have rejected the TPP because it would ship even more American jobs overseas and increase the environmental impact of American manufacturing. Organized labor is pointing out the environmental impact of such a deal. Says the International Brotherhood of Boilermakers, “Let’s not exacerbate the pollution problems of the world and perpetuate human exploitation by including nations like Malaysia and Vietnam in a free trade pact, as the TPP would do.”

Like other trade agreements such as NAFTA, the TPP would effectively encourage American corporations to move operations into countries with terrible human rights, labor rights, and environmental records, providing no legal framework to make companies responsible for what happens in outsourced factories. It allows companies to take advantage of Vietnam’s 28 cent an hour minimum wage and buildings that kill workers in fires. It continues the outsourcing of American jobs, the increase in income inequality, and the conditions of the New Gilded Age.

Of course, the TPP could mandate better conditions for labor. The House initially rejected NAFTA’s renewal in 1997, forcing Clinton to compromise and include a labor enforcement mechanism in a trade deal with Cambodia. Proposed by UNITE, a union decimated by the outsourcing of the clothing industry, the U.S. provided Cambodia incentives to allow workers to unionize in return for an increased export quota. They received $50 a month for a 48-hour week, received a dozen federal holidays, vacation days, sick leave, and maternity leave. The plan worked, at least initially. Overseen by the International Labour Organization, Cambodian clothing exports skyrocketed at the same time that union density grew and apparel makers signed contracts with workers. It was not a perfect system—factory owners tried to avoid the regulations and coached workers on what to say to ILO inspectors. But it still made enormous improvements and showed how government could still intervene in a global marketplace for good. But like most trade agreements, this one came to an end. With the decline of multi fibre quota system in 2004, the U.S.-Cambodian trade pact also ended and its replacement lost this mechanism. Within weeks of the quota ending in 2005, underground sweatshops appeared with terrible working conditions. Now even freer than ever before to concentrate in nations with the worst workplaces standards, Cambodian labor saw its union pacts quickly scuttled and its working conditions and wages plummet to some of the lowest in the industry. Wages fell by 17 percent for Cambodian garment workers between 2001 and 2011.

So the TPP could create safe and reasonably paying work when American companies move overseas but of course it won’t. It could mandate that American companies sign the Bangladesh Accord or a similar agreement, which European companies have signed to mandate improved conditions in outsourced Bangladeshi apparel factories. It provides money to upgrade the sweatshops and at least a minimal legal framework for enforcement. Of course the American manufacturers have refused to sign this, led by Wal-Mart and Gap. There’s no evidence the American government has any desire to pressure them to do so, but regardless, we know that terrible labor conditions have not blocked Obama’s desire for the TPP to pass. It’s a shame because the American government could do a lot to improve the lives of overseas workers producing goods for the American market and it chooses not to.

Yesterday the United Nations Human Rights Committee released its report on U.S. compliance with its obligations under the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR). Advocates for sex worker rights from BPPP and SWOP-Phoenix were present during the Committee’s review of the U.S. government, and filed a shadow report with the Committee on rights abuses against people involved in commercial sex. The Committee is comprised of eighteen independent human rights experts who monitor states’ compliance with the ICCPR.  The United States ratified the ICCPR in 1992.

The “Concluding Observations” from the Committee included important points on racial profiling, police abuse, and immigrants’ rights. The Committee also called on the U.S. to re-align its anti-human trafficking efforts with human rights norms, which reject criminalizing people who are trafficked. Importantly, the Committee’s report placed the problem of forced labor within a larger framework of economics and immigration policies, and noted its concern “about the insufficient identification and investigation of cases of trafficking for labor purposes.”

Earlier in March, in Geneva, Human Rights Committee members questioned the U.S. Justice Department’s position that criminalizing sex workers (by calling for jail time for sex workers) is a sound way to combat human trafficking, noting the harm criminalization causes. During the hearing, Roy L. Austin, Jr., Deputy Assistant Attorney General with the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division made clear that criminalization of sex workers is part of the administration’s approach to trafficking. Addressing advocates’ questions on the issue, Mr. Austin stated, “This issue is incredibly challenging, because to get those who exploit women, the only tool is to get those women to testify [by arresting them]. [We] sees those women as victims.”

Human Rights Committee Chair Sir Nigel Rodley specifically asked how the government could expect people victimized and targeted by police and prosecutors to help provide evidence on traffickers. “[Mr. Austin] talked about the policy being victim-centered and in relation to sex trade workers, clearly the victims are the sex trade workers. If as I understood the policy is to prosecute them for doing something illegal, and I hope I’ve understood wrongly, then isn’t that going to make it particularly difficult to get the necessary evidence in order to reach effective prosecutions of traffickers, not to mention the double victimization?” he asked.

Advocates from SWOP-Phoenix and BPPP educated Committee members prior to the hearing about ways that U.S. policing practices and anti-trafficking initiatives violate the civil and human rights of arrestees. Specifically, advocates described how Project ROSE, a Phoenix-based ostensible anti-trafficking initiative actually results in mass arrest and imprisonment of people police suspect to be doing sex work, and violates the due process rights of arrestees in the process.

Advocates noted how criminalization harms sex workers, people profiled as sex workers, and people who are trafficked. They also spoke about how there is forced labor in an array of industries, including farm work, domestic work and factory work, but there is no other arena aside from sex work where the approach is to criminalize people who may be trafficked in order to prosecute human traffickers.

During a civil society briefing with the U.S. government delegation attending the review in Geneva, advocates pointed out to the Justice Department official that places like Phoenix, AZ impose mandatory minimum sentences for criminal convictions for sex work, meaning arrestees are imprisoned in Arizona’s notorious detention facilities. In 2009, Arizona’s Department of Corrections killed Marcia Powell, who was sentenced to a 27-month prison term for sex work, by confining her in a metal cage in the desert with no water. As in some other states, escalating penalties in Arizona for additional sex work convictions eventually lead to an automatic felony, depriving arrestees of voting rights and other civil and human rights.

In a statement before the Human Rights Committee, SWOP-Phoenix member Jaclyn  Moskal Dairman asked that the Committee, “call on the US to ensure that sex workers and people profiled as such are afforded their constitutional rights when arrested under ostensible ‘anti-trafficking’ initiatives, and call on the government to monitor anti-trafficking funds to ensure they are not being used to violate civil rights.”

Though it may never be nominated for an Oscar, the contemporary ad has unarguably become a genre of its own. Over at McSweeney’s, Kendra Eash pokes fun at some of the genre’s tricks and tropes.

See how this guy in a lab coat holds up a beaker?
That means we do research.
Here’s a picture of DNA.

Related Posts:

• Of Mice and Machines
• Ballad of a WiFi Hero
• A Heap of Cake
• A “Ridiculous, Potent Musical Minefield”
• Commas, and How Complicated Things Might Really Be

As you may recall, Republicans have convinced themselves that neutral regulations that don’t actually require companies or their managers to do anything represent a “substantial burden” on the Deeply Held Religious Principles of said secular for-profit coroporations and/or their managers, even when these Deeply Held Religious Principles were re-defined two years ago to become to compliant with the Republican war on the Affordable Care Act. On the other hand, for most Republicans non-neutral regulations that have demonstrably achieved their goal of causing many safe abortion clinics to close and in so doing make it enormously difficult or impossible for many women to obtain abortions do not constitute an “undue burden” on a woman’s right to choose to have an abortion:

The Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled Thursday that two provisions of a Texas abortion law are constitutional, including one that has closed a third of the state’s clinics. The unanimous panel, made up of three women appointed by Republicans, had already allowed the full brunt of the law – the same one now-gubernatorial candidate Wendy Davis tried to block – to go into effect.

[...]

The Fifth Circuit wasn’t impressed at how much harder it has become for Texas women to have abortions, both because clinics whose providers have been rejected for privileges have closed outright and because clinics with doctors that have been able to get privileges are operating at reduced capacity. According to a map by RH Reality Check’s Andrea Grimes, “As of March 6, there are 25 open abortion clinics, six of which are ambulatory surgical centers, in Texas.” There were 36 abortion clinics in Texas at the time the law was passed, meaning that the dire prediction that a third of the clinics would close has come true. When requirements that abortions be provided in ambulatory surgical clinics go into effect in September, that will leave only six clinics, plus another one Planned Parenthood is building in San Antonio. In 2011, there were 73,200 abortions in Texas.

All three members of the 5CA panel were appointed by Reagan or George W. Bush. Odd — I was told by Real Progressives that the typical Republican nominee these days is like Earl Warren and William Brennan. More on this Monday, but the ruling is an (all-too-predictable) disaster.

With Facebook acquiring virtual-reality company Oculus, one of the all time great sucker plays -- the “Jumpstart Our Business Startups Act,” signed by President Barack Obama on April 1, 2012 -- has been revealed as the massive bait-and-switch it is. (The JOBS Act? Hows that for a misleading title?)

It is relatively uncommon for the chairperson of the SEC to object to new deregulation, but when new laws are thought to be anti-investor, it's no surprise. Regardless of strenuous objections, the JOBS Act became law, making it all-too-easy for companies to raise money. It was more of the same radical deregulation that helped cause the financial crisis. This was not about making markets work more smoothly, but rather, an extreme form of “smash & grab” capitalism.

Bill Black called it a “recipe for fraud.” But Professor Black was wrong -- it's not a fraud, it’s a scam. You see, fraud involves something where there is a violation of the law; no rules appear to have been broken here. This is how the JOBS Act is supposed to work: Let people make dumb decisions on their own, without any protection.

A scam on the other hand, is when people are legally duped out of their money. When the auto dealer offers you “rust-proofing,” it’s a scam. When a retail stockbroker offers you entry into a special purpose acquisition company, it’s a scam. Ordering something from a late-night infomercial -- Order now, and get a 2nd one free, you just pay shipping & handling! -- is a scam. These are legal ways to separate fools from their money.

And who got scammed?  Why, the Kickstarter backers, of course.

What did the KickStarter funders of Oculus get? Note I use "funder" and not "investor," because investors have a potential for an investment return. These funders, who backed the company three months after the JOBS Act passed, did not. As the Journal noted, they were promised “a sincere thank you from the Oculus team.” And, for $25, a T-shirt. For $300, the dangle of “an early developer kit” including a prototype headset. Total money raised: $2.4 million from 9,500 contributors.

Which just got turned into $2 billion.  The Kickstarter folks get a t-shirt for seeing their investment multiplied a thousand-fold.

And from a legal standpoint, thanks to the deregulation in the JOBS Act that the GOP created, they don't even have to cough up the damn t-shirt.  Legally, they get nothing.

Working as intended.  Have you contributed to any startups through Kickstarter or any other crowdsourced avenue since the JOBS Act became law?

Might want to reconsider in the future.  Very much so.

I have friends in Snohomish County.  I was calling them in alarm this past weekend because on Saturday morning there was a catastrophic landslide that rushed across the Stillaguamish River.  As the week went on, with despairing reports of would-be rescuers stymied by shifting quicksands in the huge slide area, we read how there had been a nearly catastrophic slide in 2006, and repeated warnings since 1999 about the risks of this slope.

That is why there was no post for a while, as my mind swirled like the muddied waters of that mud/debris diverted river.  Because the loudest voice in my head was screaming “Why were people allowed to build/buy houses there?”  Why indeed?  I would suggest that because money was to be made, and damn the torpedos risk of death-dealing mudslides.  I have to say, if government is to protect the interests of the ordinary citizen and not real estate development companies and banks making interest off home loans; they surely should have taken a look upslope first.  Yes, someone will shrill at me for (1) being insensitive in a time of grief, and (2) asking for a nanny state to tell people where they can live.

Well, damn it, you can’t have it both ways — if education is so sparse that the people BUYING homes in this area couldn’t look upslope and go, “Hey, no fucking WAY I am buying here,” then some damned governmental body ought to be on the lookout.  And once it DID slide in 2006, narrowly missing taking out homes?  WTF was the reason for no strong overlook THEN?  Saying shit massive mudslides “just happen” seems pretty chickenshit to me.

We looked for a home here in Washington State in 1987.  I was in a tiny kitchenette motel with three children in January.  The realtor took me out every day while my military husband settled in with “First Group” on Ft. Lewis.  Looking at a sweet new home on some very green level ground, spotting a tree line about 50 yards off, I asked, “Is that a river?”  Why, yes, she believed it was…so when I said, “Is this a floodplain?” she stammered and I never even walked inside that sweet little house.  Starting up a hill in her car, I asked her — “Is this house up on that bluff we saw?” and her “Yes,” meant we turned around right then.    This is a seismically active zone, that pretty snowy mountain right there is a volcano, after all.  In quake swarms preceding possible eruptions, those soft-piled soil bluffs left there by glaciers tend to LIQUIFY. She asked me if a pretty little place called “Orting” interested me.  I consulted a small map and said no.  Orting is in a “lahar zone” — this means, if MY mountain (Rainier/Tahoma) ever erupts like Mt. St. Helens did in 1980, that a vast river of moving mud will take Orting all all around it clear to Commencement Bay on Puget Sound.  Not my idea of how to achieve beach-front property.  ”You have to live SOMEwhere.” she said.

Yes, we needed to be within a half hour of Ft. Lewis.  And so we are…tucked OUT of the lahar zone, not near any water feature larger than a marsh with a “creek” going through it, and tucked behind several tall rocky ridges that should block/divert lava or mud flows from my mountain.  I’m on the top of a low flat rocky glacial moraine created hill that drains well and does NOT slide anywhere.  My trees are not bowed with “creep” that would warn me of a slipping-slide minded hill.  We’ve weathered snowstorms, ice storms, a couple quakes, torrential rainstorms and some very dry hot summers of late.  So far, so good.

I wish I could say the same for the poor people of Oso — digging out their neighbors so they can bury them again.  The heart breaks to think someone, anyone in local government could have said to a builder or ten “Is that really a sound idea…near that hill, on that branch of the river?”  Nothing left for it now, one supposes, but funerals and lawsuits.

Filed under: Life, WTUnholyF? Tagged: death, disaster, geology

Darleen Click, I’m sure your brief post on the challenge to the ACA’s employer contraception non-mandate will be all too representative!

Seven words to the Left Feminist Fascists

I think we can all agree that if there was anything central to fascism, it was that the insurance that women pay for or receive in lieu of wages actually cover things that are important to the health of women. If you don’t understand this, you probably haven’t spent much time at the Evil Sluts and Their Minimum Coverage Requirements Museum in D.C..

their “bosses” won’t pay for their birth control

It’s the insurance that employees earn as compensation, not their employers per se, that will pay for birth control when companies provide insurance that meets the minimum requirements. But I’m having trouble focusing on this particular terrible argument because I’m fascinated by the scare quotes around “bosses.” Clearly, when Hobby Lobby employees think that the Greens set policy for their chain, they’re just imagining things! You’re the boss, if you want it. I don’t know if this is a thing on the right, but either way I’ve rarely seen anything that captures the particular mix of servility and authoritarianism that characterizes contemporary Republican ideology this well.

– including abortifacients –

The idea that any form of contraception is an “abortifacient” doesn’t even rise to the level of junk science. But you knew that, so read this about the origins of this particular bit of lunacy from Jamelle Bouie.

it constitutes denial of access &

Again, nobody thinks that carving out exemptions to minimum coverage requirements will represent a total denial of access to contraception, although it would certainly make contraception less accessible for some less affluent women.

“rights” to free stuff

Again with the scare quotes. First, the insurance your employers gets tax benefits for compensating you with instead of wages isn’t “free”; the employee earns it. Second, the minimum coverage is an actual statutory right, not a “right.” What’s amazing about this particular line of argument — that statutory rights aren’t “real” rights — is that the Hobby Lobby’s challenge is based on a statutory right. If the rights created by Congress are just meaningless fake “rights,” then we can all go home because RFRA is just symbolic legislation that confers no legal rights, and so nobody has standing to bring a suit. (There is also a constitutional right to the free exercise of religion, but based on current 1st Amendment law a challenge to the contraception coverage requirement would be frivolous, and properly so.)

And now, the punchline:

Pay for your own damn coat hanger.

Hahaha, remember when women who didn’t have the wealth or connections to get abortions on the grey market used to get maimed and killed when they got abortions? Hiiiii-larious, I tell you! I laughed like I was watching the Half-Hour News Hour! In the meantime, make sure to let Click know how she should spend her salary, since according to her she didn’t earn it…

The fact that the IWF’s attacks on the ACA’s contraception non-mandate were just consevertarian attacks on the ACA with no particular religious freedom content was no coincidence.  As Stephanie Mencimer notes in her brilliant piece, the particular ad hoc challenge to the ACA advanced by the Hobby Lobby’s lawsuit makes the political roots of the challenge particularly clear:

On many levels, the Hobby Lobby case is a mess of bad facts, political opportunism, and questionable legal theories that might be laughable had some federal courts not taken them seriously. Take for instance Hobby Lobby’s argument that providing coverage for Plan B and Ella substantially limits its religious freedom. The company admits in its complaint that until it considered filing the suit in 2012, its generous health insurance plan actually covered Plan B and Ella (though not IUDs). The burden of this coverage was apparently so insignificant that God, and Hobby Lobby executives, never noticed it until the mandate became a political issue.

I’ll return to the issue of how the court should interpret RFRA later today. But the fact that the managers of the Hobby Lobby never noticed that the contraceptive coverage in the insurance they offered to their employees intolerably contradicted their Deeply Held Religious Principles until the Republican Party decided that the  Affordable Care Act was the greatest threat to freedom in known human history tells you what you need to know about how seriously we should take these legal arguments.

Given that the religious freedom claim being advanced by Hobby Lobby seems to be a combination of scientific ignorance and political opportunism, it’s tempting to conclude that their claim should be dismissed as not being based on a sincere religious belief at all. Tempting, but I think wrong. The courts have been reluctant to question the sincerity of religious beliefs (and opposed to making determinations about the centrality of religious belief) when addressing free exercise claims for good reason. Granting that Hobby Lobby is close to the line, this deference is correct.

The better question is whether, assuming arguendo that there is a religious conflict, whether the burden placed on these beliefs is sufficient to trigger heightened scrutiny. The free exercise framework established by RFRA has two parts. The first states that “[g]overnment shall not substantially burden a person’s exercise of religion even if the burden results from a rule of general applicability.” This establishes a threshold test; litigants must show that their exercise of religion has been “substantially burdened.” If this threshold is passed, the burden switches to the government to show that the law is in “furtherance of a compelling government interest” and “is the least restrictive means of furthering that compelling governmental interest.” Many of you will recognize this as analogous to the strict scrutiny test the federal courts use to evaluate racial classifications under the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments.  Applied properly, this is an enormously difficult test to pass.

As you can see from Paul Clement at the oral argument, the strategy of the litigants has been to for all practical purposes read the threshold test out of RFRA. Under Clement’s theory, almost any bare assertion of any degree of conflict with religious practice is sufficiently “substantial” to trigger strict scrutiny. For reasons I’ve discussed already, this would be a bad and unworkable way to read the statute.

As Justice Kagan noted:

But, again, Mr. Clement as Justice Ginsburg said, this was a very uncontroversial law. Your understanding of this law, your interpretation of it, would essentially subject the entire U.S. Code to the highest test in constitutional law, to a compelling interest standard. So another employer comes in and that employer says, I have a religious objection to sex discrimination laws; and then another employer comes in, I have a religious objection to minimum wage laws; and then another, family leave; and then another, child labor laws. And all of that is subject to the exact same test which you say is this unbelievably high test, the compelling interest standard with the least restrictive alternative.

This is correct. RFRA passed with almost no opposition from either house of Congress, both of which were controlled by Democrats. The idea that not only did Congress mean to say “trivial” when they enacted “substantial” but that they expected the entire U.S. Code and Code of Federal Regulations to be subject to strict scrutiny based solely on a nearly irrefutable bare assertion of any religious conflict is implausible in the extreme. The alternative proposed by the Solicitor General is a much more sensible and workable reading of the statute:

And so we think the substantial burden analysis has got to be more strenuous than that. It’s got to incorporate principles of attenuation and proximate cause, and that when you think about this case where the requirement is to purchase insurance which enables actions by others, that you’re really closer to the tax situation than to imposing a direct obligation to act.

And, of course, Clement wants an exceptionally undemanding “substantial burden” standard because the burden in this case is so attenuated Hobby Lobby’s claim would have no chance otherwise. A provision that doesn’t force employers to do anything and places the burden for not complying with the law on third parties should not meet the RFRA threshold. The fact that the Hobby Lobby didn’t believe that it was complicit in providing contraception through its insurance until 2012 just draws a line under how insubstantial this burden is. The Court should read RFRA to mean what it says, and if it does so would reject the claim against the contraceptive coverage provision easily.

Seems like a lifetime ago, in the 1960s, philosopher Hannah Arendt gave us the phrase “the banality of evil” to describe Nazi Adolf Eichmann’s demeanor during his war crimes trial in Jerusalem.

Despite all the efforts of the prosecution, everybody could see that this man was not a “monster,” but it was difficult indeed not to suspect that he was a clown. And since this suspicion would have been fatal to the entire enterprise [his trial], and was also rather hard to sustain in view of the sufferings he and his like had caused to millions of people, his worst clowneries were hardly noticed and almost never reported (p. 55).

Arendt has always had critics of her thesis about Eichmann’s “ordinariness.”  Still, I find her ironic notion of the “banality of evil” a very useful device for characterizing some of the inexplicable nuttiness afoot in 21st century America.

For example . . . I have usually counted Greta Van Susteren as one of the saner members of the Fox News Crew [not saying much, I know].  And, of course, there’s the whole Scientology thing but, hey . . . First Amendment, right?  So, a few nights ago, there’s Greta on the blower, with none other than Former Bush administration Secretary of Defense, Donald H. Rumsfeld . . .

This is a guy that “Tricky Dick” Nixon called “a ruthless little bastard.”  A guy who was forced to resign his cabinet position as Secretary of Defense because a gang of top brass launched “The Generals’ Revolt,” accusing Rumsfeld of “abysmal” military planning and lack of strategic competence.”  The same guy who plays a starring role in Cobra II, a well-sourced account of blunders made in the preparation, execution and aftermath of the 2003 invasion of Iraq.

The very same guy whom that old warhorse Sen. John McCain, also a Republican, blasted thus:

We are paying a very heavy price for the mismanagement — that’s the kindest word I can give you — of Donald Rumsfeld, of this war. The price is very, very heavy and I regret it enormously. I think that Donald Rumsfeld will go down in history as one of the worst secretaries of defense in history.

John McCain
Associated Press (2007-02-19). “McCain blasts Rumsfeld for Iraq war missteps”. MSNBC.com. Retrieved on 2007-02-20.

And there sits Old Rummy, a fossilized éminence grise, bloviating about the current President’s “mishandling” of Hamid Karzai, as if Rummy knew his arse from a hole in the ground.  And telling Greta how Obama should be making nice to the ineffectual Afghan con-man that Bush & Co. set up as their man in Kabul.  The same Rummy who proudly declaimed “I don’t do diplomacy,” in a 2004 ABC News interview.

Now he’s an expert . . . 

Most of the attention that Rumsfeld has gotten over his latest outing has had to do with the unfortunate “trained ape” bit that floated out with the rest of Rummys updraft of hot air.  I don’t believe, in this case, that was a racist comment—so I can get that out of the way.  As Jamelle Bouie has pointed out “trained ape” is just one of this nasty old man’s pet put-downs which he has applied in a broad-brush multiracial way for some years, now, whenever he needs to puff himself up.

I suppose that it won’t matter much to Donald Rumsfeld that Sen. Lindsey Graham, a member of his own party said, only a month ago, in a Senate Armed Services committee meeting, that Karzai was “singlehandedly destroying the US relationship with Afghanistan.” 

Not the other way around.

My point in all of this is—what conceivable value can there be in a national news organization seeking “expert opinion” from a wholly discredited and disgraced man, a man convicted-in-absentia in an International Court, for abhorrent war crimes.  A man who stood before the American people, along with his cronies, and blatantly, egregiously lied 935 times, according to the Center for Public Integrity:

President George W. Bush and seven of his administration’s top officials, including Vice President Dick Cheney, National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, made at least 935 false statements in the two years following September 11, 2001, about the national security threat posed by Saddam Hussein’s Iraq. Nearly five years after the U.S. invasion of Iraq, an exhaustive examination of the record shows that the statements were part of an orchestrated campaign that effectively galvanized public opinion and, in the process, led the nation to war under decidedly false pretenses.

It doesn’t make any sense, to me, to even ask such people what time it is.  So, why would a news organization ask notorious liars for their opinion on how the current administration is doing things?  That’s like asking Bruno Hauptmann what he thought of the Lindbergh’s parenting skills—irrelevant and inappropriate.

I honestly can’t fathom it.  And I’m afraid that there must be something terribly wrong with a society that feeds on such reportage.  Do americans want to be lied to?

Or are we just that blase about the banality of evil among us?

Imagine living in a town called “Toad Suck” — a dry town.  So, your family goes to a nearby town after a funeral to very mildly “wake” a dead relative.  And pizza and beer is pretty mild, what’s the harm?  If you are breast-feeding a baby — plenty.  So to have a beer is to endanger the babe at breast, eh?

Fuck that shit, Alabama.  I gave birth to my final child in Bavaria, Germany.  IN the German hospital, newborn at breast, I was SERVED my choice of beer or wine BY MY CATHOLIC NUN-NURSES.  I had a nice hefe-weisen — it helps bring in the milk.  And it relaxed me to sleep in my over-exhasuted state.  I breast-fed every 1 1/2 to 2 hours.  And every time a sweet little nun was at my side offering me food and beer.

So, I think Alabama is sucking at brains and much more involved in controlling the ‘wimmens’ and punishing them for revealing titties in public.  Specially since there isn’t even a law on the books making breastfeeding while drinking illegal.  Sadly, I expect the yahoos in the State House will get right ON that…

Filed under: Snark, War on Women Tagged: American-crazy, parenthood