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deminks
deminks's Journal
deminks's Journal
July 26, 2013
WASHINGTON (AP) — Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg says she’s not surprised that Southern states have pushed ahead with tough voter identification laws and other measures since the Supreme Court freed them from strict federal oversight of their elections.
Ginsburg said in an interview with The Associated Press that Texas’ decision to implement its voter ID law hours after the court struck down a key provision of the Voting Rights Act last month was powerful evidence of an ongoing need to keep states with a history of voting discrimination from making changes in the way they hold elections without getting advance approval from Washington.
The Justice Department said Thursday it would try to bring Texas and other places back under the advance approval requirement through a part of the law that was not challenged.
“The notion that because the Voting Rights Act had been so tremendously effective we had to stop it didn’t make any sense to me,” Ginsburg said in a wide-ranging interview late Wednesday in her office at the court. “And one really could have predicted what was going to happen.”
(snip)
Just a month removed from the decision, she said, “I didn’t want to be right, but sadly I am.”
(end snip)
Justice Ginsburg: I’m Not Surprised By Voter ID Laws Now That VRA Is Gutted
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/news/ginsburg-not-surprised-voter-id-laws-vra-gutted.php?ref=fpbWASHINGTON (AP) — Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg says she’s not surprised that Southern states have pushed ahead with tough voter identification laws and other measures since the Supreme Court freed them from strict federal oversight of their elections.
Ginsburg said in an interview with The Associated Press that Texas’ decision to implement its voter ID law hours after the court struck down a key provision of the Voting Rights Act last month was powerful evidence of an ongoing need to keep states with a history of voting discrimination from making changes in the way they hold elections without getting advance approval from Washington.
The Justice Department said Thursday it would try to bring Texas and other places back under the advance approval requirement through a part of the law that was not challenged.
“The notion that because the Voting Rights Act had been so tremendously effective we had to stop it didn’t make any sense to me,” Ginsburg said in a wide-ranging interview late Wednesday in her office at the court. “And one really could have predicted what was going to happen.”
(snip)
Just a month removed from the decision, she said, “I didn’t want to be right, but sadly I am.”
(end snip)
July 25, 2013
Say someone blows the wheels off a moving train and blames the accident on whoever built the engine. Fair game?
That’s precisely what Republicans are up to with their onslaught against Obamacare. Their tactics go well beyond political opposition: as others have pointed out, what’s happening now is deliberate sabotage of a duly enacted and court-affirmed law. This morning Norm Ornstein, a scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, called the GOP’s efforts to block the implementation of the law “unprecendented” and “sharply beneath any reasonable standards of elected officials with the fiduciary responsibility of governing.”
The GOP has a narrowing window in which to wreck the roll out and blame structural deficiencies in the law, and they’re intent on smashing their way through it. Not only are they sacrificing the wellbeing of millions of Americans—now they're gambling the global economy, too.
(snip)
Waste time and money voting for repeal
In the past three years, House Republicans have devoted at least fifteen percent of their time on the House floor trying to ruin the ACA, voting 39 times to repeal, defund, or delay the law. These legislative efforts have cost taxpayers upwards of $50 million. Meanwhile, the GOP hasn’t offered any alternative health care plans of their own. These votes present no existential threat to the law, since repeal will never get through the Senate or the White House. But repeated attacks reinforce the idea that the ACA is still up for debate and that its future is uncertain. As of April, four in ten Americans were unaware that the ACA is the law and that it is being implemented.
(end snip)
A Blueprint for the GOP's Attempt to Sabotage Obamacare
http://www.thenation.com/blog/175429/blueprint-gops-attempt-sabotage-obamacare#axzz2a5BbKtRISay someone blows the wheels off a moving train and blames the accident on whoever built the engine. Fair game?
That’s precisely what Republicans are up to with their onslaught against Obamacare. Their tactics go well beyond political opposition: as others have pointed out, what’s happening now is deliberate sabotage of a duly enacted and court-affirmed law. This morning Norm Ornstein, a scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, called the GOP’s efforts to block the implementation of the law “unprecendented” and “sharply beneath any reasonable standards of elected officials with the fiduciary responsibility of governing.”
The GOP has a narrowing window in which to wreck the roll out and blame structural deficiencies in the law, and they’re intent on smashing their way through it. Not only are they sacrificing the wellbeing of millions of Americans—now they're gambling the global economy, too.
(snip)
Waste time and money voting for repeal
In the past three years, House Republicans have devoted at least fifteen percent of their time on the House floor trying to ruin the ACA, voting 39 times to repeal, defund, or delay the law. These legislative efforts have cost taxpayers upwards of $50 million. Meanwhile, the GOP hasn’t offered any alternative health care plans of their own. These votes present no existential threat to the law, since repeal will never get through the Senate or the White House. But repeated attacks reinforce the idea that the ACA is still up for debate and that its future is uncertain. As of April, four in ten Americans were unaware that the ACA is the law and that it is being implemented.
(end snip)
July 25, 2013
Believing they are losing the messaging war with progressives, a group of prominent conservatives in Washington—including the wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas and journalists from Breitbart News and the Washington Examiner—has been meeting privately since early this year to concoct talking points, coordinate messaging, and hatch plans for "a 30 front war seeking to fundamentally transform the nation," according to documents obtained by Mother Jones.
Dubbed Groundswell, this coalition convenes weekly in the offices of Judicial Watch, the conservative legal watchdog group. During these hush-hush sessions and through a Google group, the members of Groundswell—including aides to congressional Republicans—cook up battle plans for their ongoing fights against the Obama administration, congressional Democrats, progressive outfits, and the Republican establishment and "clueless" GOP congressional leaders. They devise strategies for killing immigration reform, hyping the Benghazi controversy, and countering the impression that the GOP exploits racism. And the Groundswell gang is mounting a behind-the-scenes organized effort to eradicate the outsize influence of GOP über-strategist/pundit Karl Rove within Republican and conservative ranks. (For more on Groundswell's "two front war" against Rove—a major clash on the right—click here.)
One of the influential conservatives guiding the group is Virginia "Ginni" Thomas, a columnist for the Daily Caller and a tea party consultant and lobbyist. Other Groundswell members include John Bolton, the former UN ambassador; Frank Gaffney, the president of the Center for Security Policy; Ken Blackwell and Jerry Boykin of the Family Research Council; Tom Fitton, the president of Judicial Watch; Gayle Trotter, a fellow at the Independent Women's Forum; Catherine Engelbrecht and Anita MonCrief of True the Vote; Allen West, the former GOP House member; Sue Myrick, also a former House GOPer; Diana Banister of the influential Shirley and Banister PR firm; and Max Pappas, a top aide to Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas).
Among the conveners listed in an invitation to a May 8 meeting of Groundswell were Stephen Bannon, executive chairman of Breitbart News Network; Dan Bongino, a former Secret Service agent who resoundingly lost a Maryland Senate race last year (and is now running for a House seat); Leonard Leo, executive vice president of the Federalist Society; Sandy Rios, a Fox News contributor; Lori Roman, a former executive director of the American Legislative Exchange Council; and Austin Ruse, the head of the Catholic Family and Human Rights Institute. Conservative journalists and commentators participating in Groundswell have included Breitbart News reporters Matthew Boyle and Mike Flynn, Washington Examiner executive editor Mark Tapscott, and National Review contributor Michael James Barton.
(end snip)
Fascinating behavior for the wife of what some call a supreme court justice.
Inside Groundswell: Read the Memos of the New Right-Wing Strategy Group Planning a "30 Front War"
http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2013/07/groundswell-rightwing-group-ginni-thomasBelieving they are losing the messaging war with progressives, a group of prominent conservatives in Washington—including the wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas and journalists from Breitbart News and the Washington Examiner—has been meeting privately since early this year to concoct talking points, coordinate messaging, and hatch plans for "a 30 front war seeking to fundamentally transform the nation," according to documents obtained by Mother Jones.
Dubbed Groundswell, this coalition convenes weekly in the offices of Judicial Watch, the conservative legal watchdog group. During these hush-hush sessions and through a Google group, the members of Groundswell—including aides to congressional Republicans—cook up battle plans for their ongoing fights against the Obama administration, congressional Democrats, progressive outfits, and the Republican establishment and "clueless" GOP congressional leaders. They devise strategies for killing immigration reform, hyping the Benghazi controversy, and countering the impression that the GOP exploits racism. And the Groundswell gang is mounting a behind-the-scenes organized effort to eradicate the outsize influence of GOP über-strategist/pundit Karl Rove within Republican and conservative ranks. (For more on Groundswell's "two front war" against Rove—a major clash on the right—click here.)
One of the influential conservatives guiding the group is Virginia "Ginni" Thomas, a columnist for the Daily Caller and a tea party consultant and lobbyist. Other Groundswell members include John Bolton, the former UN ambassador; Frank Gaffney, the president of the Center for Security Policy; Ken Blackwell and Jerry Boykin of the Family Research Council; Tom Fitton, the president of Judicial Watch; Gayle Trotter, a fellow at the Independent Women's Forum; Catherine Engelbrecht and Anita MonCrief of True the Vote; Allen West, the former GOP House member; Sue Myrick, also a former House GOPer; Diana Banister of the influential Shirley and Banister PR firm; and Max Pappas, a top aide to Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas).
Among the conveners listed in an invitation to a May 8 meeting of Groundswell were Stephen Bannon, executive chairman of Breitbart News Network; Dan Bongino, a former Secret Service agent who resoundingly lost a Maryland Senate race last year (and is now running for a House seat); Leonard Leo, executive vice president of the Federalist Society; Sandy Rios, a Fox News contributor; Lori Roman, a former executive director of the American Legislative Exchange Council; and Austin Ruse, the head of the Catholic Family and Human Rights Institute. Conservative journalists and commentators participating in Groundswell have included Breitbart News reporters Matthew Boyle and Mike Flynn, Washington Examiner executive editor Mark Tapscott, and National Review contributor Michael James Barton.
(end snip)
Fascinating behavior for the wife of what some call a supreme court justice.
July 22, 2013
Over the weekend, The New York Times published its investigation of how Goldman Sachs has made a tidy profit by buying up vast amounts of aluminum and slowing the delivery through the ownership of vast warehouses. Many investment banks purchase physical assets, like pipelines or storage facilities, to gain better market intelligence for speculative trading. The Goldman Sachs strategy, detailed first by Bloomberg News and by Reuters in 2011, has boosted the cost of aluminum, hitting both manufacturers and consumers with higher prices.
Worth noting: Koch Industries, a company often inaccurately described as simply an oil or manufacturing concern, is highly active in the commodity speculation business akin to the big hedge funds and banks like Goldman Sachs.
As Fortune magazine reported, when oil prices dropped from a record high in July of 2008 to record lows in December of that year, Koch bought up the cheap oil to take it off of the market. Koch leased a number of giant oil tankers, including the 2-million-barrel-capacity Dubai Titan, to store the oil offshore. The decrease in supply increased the price for consumers that year, while Koch took advantage of selling the oil off later at higher prices.
(end snip)
Funny we don't have cable shows or late night jokes about 1% hoarders...
Not Just Goldman Sachs: Koch Industries Hoards Commodities as a Trading Strategy
http://www.thenation.com/blog/175387/not-just-goldman-sachs-koch-industries-hoards-commodities-trading-strategy#Over the weekend, The New York Times published its investigation of how Goldman Sachs has made a tidy profit by buying up vast amounts of aluminum and slowing the delivery through the ownership of vast warehouses. Many investment banks purchase physical assets, like pipelines or storage facilities, to gain better market intelligence for speculative trading. The Goldman Sachs strategy, detailed first by Bloomberg News and by Reuters in 2011, has boosted the cost of aluminum, hitting both manufacturers and consumers with higher prices.
Worth noting: Koch Industries, a company often inaccurately described as simply an oil or manufacturing concern, is highly active in the commodity speculation business akin to the big hedge funds and banks like Goldman Sachs.
As Fortune magazine reported, when oil prices dropped from a record high in July of 2008 to record lows in December of that year, Koch bought up the cheap oil to take it off of the market. Koch leased a number of giant oil tankers, including the 2-million-barrel-capacity Dubai Titan, to store the oil offshore. The decrease in supply increased the price for consumers that year, while Koch took advantage of selling the oil off later at higher prices.
(end snip)
Funny we don't have cable shows or late night jokes about 1% hoarders...
July 10, 2013
Ask the average American about super-PACs and I'd venture to guess he or she thinks of: those incessant negative political ads during the evening news, something about the Obama-Romney race, or the sheer amount of spending ($7 billion!) during the last election season. (That is, if they even know what a super-PAC is.) For the broadcasting business, though, super-PACs have come to stand for something altogether different: a big, fat payday.
The title of this post refers to something Les Moonves, the CEO of CBS Corporation, said at an entertainment law conference last year. Moonves was understandably over the moon about the rise of super-PACs: In 2012, he explained, the network's profits were expected to soar by $180 million thanks to political ads.
And it's not just CBS that's riding high thanks to political ad spending. TV stations in battleground states are magnets for ad spending, and they're driving a new wave of consolidation in the broadcast industry, leaving a handful of big media companies well-positioned to reap hundreds of millions during the 2014 midterm elections and, especially, the 2016 presidential race. Just in the past month, the Gannett company bought 20 TV stations for $1.5 billion, and the Tribune Company inked a $2.7 billion deal for 19 stations. Those deals included stations in battleground states.
(end snip)
And you wonder if the MEdia could be complicit in politics? Why the MEdia seems to be propping up the GOP when it should be gone and forgotten? Why the president's speech on the environment was relegated to the Weather Channel? Substitute MSNBC or ABC or any other MEdia out there for CBS, your local stations, too.
"Super-PACs May Be Bad for America, But They're Very Good for CBS"
http://www.motherjones.com/mojo/2013/07/super-pac-ad-spending-broadcast-consolidationAsk the average American about super-PACs and I'd venture to guess he or she thinks of: those incessant negative political ads during the evening news, something about the Obama-Romney race, or the sheer amount of spending ($7 billion!) during the last election season. (That is, if they even know what a super-PAC is.) For the broadcasting business, though, super-PACs have come to stand for something altogether different: a big, fat payday.
The title of this post refers to something Les Moonves, the CEO of CBS Corporation, said at an entertainment law conference last year. Moonves was understandably over the moon about the rise of super-PACs: In 2012, he explained, the network's profits were expected to soar by $180 million thanks to political ads.
And it's not just CBS that's riding high thanks to political ad spending. TV stations in battleground states are magnets for ad spending, and they're driving a new wave of consolidation in the broadcast industry, leaving a handful of big media companies well-positioned to reap hundreds of millions during the 2014 midterm elections and, especially, the 2016 presidential race. Just in the past month, the Gannett company bought 20 TV stations for $1.5 billion, and the Tribune Company inked a $2.7 billion deal for 19 stations. Those deals included stations in battleground states.
(end snip)
And you wonder if the MEdia could be complicit in politics? Why the MEdia seems to be propping up the GOP when it should be gone and forgotten? Why the president's speech on the environment was relegated to the Weather Channel? Substitute MSNBC or ABC or any other MEdia out there for CBS, your local stations, too.
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