March 18, 2016

Dems' ethics bill would regulate Supreme Court conflicts of interest; Reps not supporting

"S. 1072** and H.R. 1943,* the Supreme Court Ethics Act, would require that the highest judicial body in the land abide by the same set of rules as the more than 750 judges on the nation’s appeals courts and district courts. The bills are sponsored by Sen. Chris Murphy (D-CT) and Rep. Louise Slaughter (D-NY25).

'The questionable activities of some of our Supreme Court justices have been well documented — participating in political functions, failing to report family income from political groups, and attending fundraisers. It doesn’t make sense that members of the highest court in the land are the only federal judges exempt from the code of conduct,' said Slaughter....

A petition calling for implementation has collected more than 131,000 signatures....

(T)here have been cases where members of the Court arguably broke the ethics rules. One of the more notable examples in recent years also involved Scalia, who went hunting in 2004 with then-Vice President Dick Cheney while a lawsuit against Cheney was pending before the Court, yet Scalia refused to recuse himself from the case....

The House version of the bill has 109 cosponsors, all Democrats. GovTrack was unable to locate a single definitive statement from a sitting Republican explaining why they oppose the measure. The party’s opposition — and vice versa the Democrats’ support — may be because most of the concerns regarding Supreme Court members’ ethics in the past few years have regarded conservative justices."
https://medium.com/govtrack-insider/supreme-court-ethics-act-would-extend-recusal-gift-bans-and-other-ethics-rules-to-the-high-court-511f358430f5#.tmn2ruvv8

* https://www.congress.gov/bill/114th-congress/house-bill/1943

** https://www.congress.gov/bill/114th-congress/senate-bill/1072

March 16, 2016

Hillary Clinton sold fracking to the world as Sec of State

"Bulgaria had signed a five-year, $68 million deal, granting US oil giant Chevron millions of acres in shale gas concessions. Bulgarians were outraged. Shortly before Clinton arrived, tens of thousands of protesters poured into the streets carrying placards that read 'Stop fracking with our water' and 'Chevron go home.' Bulgaria's parliament responded by voting overwhelmingly for a fracking moratorium.

Clinton urged Bulgarian officials to give fracking another chance....

The following month in neighboring Romania, thousands of people gathered to protest another Chevron fracking project, and Romania's parliament began weighing its own shale gas moratorium. Again Clinton intervened, dispatching her special envoy for energy in Eurasia, Richard Morningstar, to push back against the fracking bans....

Under her leadership, the State Department worked closely with energy companies to spread fracking around the globe....

Clinton tapped a lawyer named David Goldwyn as her special envoy for international energy affairs; his charge was 'to elevate energy diplomacy as a key function of US foreign policy.' ...

Goldwyn had a long history of promoting drilling overseas....

According to diplomatic cables released by WikiLeaks, one of Goldwyn's first acts at the State Department was gathering oil and gas industry executives 'to discuss the potential international impact of shale gas.' Clinton then sent a cable to US diplomats, asking them to collect information on the potential for fracking in their host countries....

(E)nvironmental groups were barely consulted, while industry played a crucial role...."
http://www.motherjones.com/environment/2014/09/hillary-clinton-fracking-shale-state-department-chevron

March 14, 2016

Food industry conspired to circumvent campaign disclosure laws in anti-GMO label referendum

The nation’s largest food industry group broke the “spirit and letter” of the law when it concealed the backers of a multimillion dollar campaign to kill a food-labeling initiative, a state of Washington Superior Court judge ruled on Friday.

The pre-trial ruling ... found that the Grocery Manufacturer’s Association, the food industry group, violated the state’s campaign finance disclosure laws when it tried to hide the identities of the corporate funders. GMA had waged a fight against Washington’s 2013 food-labeling initiative, with $11 million in donations from PepsiCo, Nestle and Coca Cola.

The state Initiative 522, which would have required food labels for genetically modified ingredients, was narrowly defeated.

http://fortune.com/2016/03/13/big-food-illegally-hid-funders-of-campaign-to-kill-gmo-labeling-effort-judge-rules/

The statute reads: "If the violation is found to have been intentional, the amount of the judgment, which shall for this purpose include the costs, may be trebled as punitive damages."

Triple damages? A trial will decide.

Hirsch determined that there's still a factual dispute over whether the Grocery Manufacturers Association circumvention of Washington law was intentional.

The judge did not determine a penalty, ruling that the case will continue to trial on disputed facts.

http://www.seattlepi.com/local/politics/article/Judge-rules-Washington-D-C-food-lobby-6884935.php

So, here's the thing. Even if the food industry loses at trial, and the loss is upheld on appeal--and that's a BIG if--the amount of money they will be fined, even with the triple amount in punitive damages, will just be a drop in the bucket compared to how much they save by being able to use genetically-modified ingredients and not having to list that on the labels. In other words, just a tiny fraction in the cost of doing business ...

March 13, 2016

Hillary has been pro-Patriot Act; Bernie has been anti-Patriot Act

In the Senate, Hillary voted for the original Patriot Act in 2001, and again for its reauthorization in 2005.

Bernie, serving in the House at the time, voted against it both times. He also voted against its extension in 2011, when he was in the Senate. (Hillary by that time was Secretary of State.)


Does knowing this affect how you feel about them as candidates for president?

March 13, 2016

With all his billions, why doesn't Trump have better makeup?

Why does Donald Trump wear garish orange makeup that looks like it was applied by a half-blind third-grader?

He clearly cares about his appearance to some degree, or why else would he be wearing makeup in the first place?

So why doesn't he pay professionals to choose better-looking makeup products and to make sure they are applied properly?

March 13, 2016

I'm counting the minutes until Marco Rubio turns into a pumpkin

People forget that Rubio was one of the fckers who pushed us into a government shutdown and a first-time ever US government credit downgrade.

Well, now Rubio's 15 minutes of fame are almost up.
He isn't running for re-election to the Senate, and he will lose the GOP primary.
Basta!

(Unfortunately, there's still plenty of damage he can do to our country in the private sector. )

March 12, 2016

I wonder if Hillary had seen this?

The Reagan administration's response to the AIDS crisis was absolutely apalling, no question about that! And I was shocked to read that Hillary had chosen to bring up that particular issue, of all issues, in her words of praise for Nancy Reagan.

But I am wondering whether Hillary (or her people) had seen this PBS show (linked below), or had read what Ron Reagan Jr had said about his mother on AIDS (linked below):

Historian Allida Black:
"Ronald Reagan didn't say the word 'AIDS' until 1987, and that was after Rock Hudson admitted that he had AIDS. At that point, 37,000 Americans had been diagnosed and 21,000 Americans had died....
I am profoundly convinced that Rock Hudson's, and later Roy Cohn's, diagnosis, both of whom were very close friends of Nancy Reagan, encouraged her to force the president and the Secretary of Health to in fact respond to the requests for additional research."

Ron Reagan:
"I spoke to him (President Reagan); she (Nancy Reagan) spoke to him, about, you know, 'You're, maybe you're not understanding just how bad this is. How widespread it is. Maybe your people aren't telling you what you need to know about this.' When Rock Hudson ended up with AIDS--somebody that they knew, somebody from the Hollywood community, somebody they liked--all of a sudden, now it's real. Now it isn't just some abstract thing out there.... So if you could personalize an issue, either because of a tragedy, like Rock Hudson's, or in some other way, that was the way you got to him. And she was well aware of that, of course."
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/nancy-reagan/2011/01/other-headline-9.html

Ron Reagan:
"I don't think I was really able to persuade him much on issues. And for the most part, no, I don't think the things we disagreed about we just continued to disagree about. No, I can't come up with one. I can say that my mother and I both began talking to him about the AIDS crisis at a certain point when we realized that the administration just really was kind of dragging its feet on this and ignoring what was going on. So, we talked to him about that and tried to explain how serious this was. Whether that was responsible for the administration kind of getting it together about AIDS, I don't know. But, certainly made the effort."
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/david-goodman/1on1-with-ron-reagan-jr_b_819346.html


This is not to say that Nancy Reagan did help start a national conversation about AIDS. Far from it.
But maybe she was trying to do a little more behind the scenes than she has been getting credit for. (Admittedly, too little, too late!)

March 10, 2016

Jorge Ramos just pinned Hillary down--she promises she won't deport undocumented

immigrants who are already here if they do not have a criminal record or if they are children.

Republicans will hammer her on this in the general election.

March 10, 2016

Delegates count: Clinton 762 vs Sanders 549--Need 2,383 to win

They're still close, but some media (for example, the Washington Post's Chris Cillizza) are not explaining the difference between actual delegates won in the primaries and caucuses vs superdelegates' votes.
If you include superdelegates' votes, Clinton has a strong lead, but superdelegates can change their votes. Delegates allocated based on primary/caucus votes can't be so easily changed.

https://interactives.ap.org/2016/delegate-tracker/

March 9, 2016

Superdelegates? Even the Founders would approve

I think having superdelegates that can override rank-and-file voters' votes is an abomination.

But let's remember that even the Founders were totally into the idea of having the Establishment be able to override the will of the common (property-owning, white, male) citizenry.

Read the original version of the Constitution of the United States of America:

Article I, section 3:
The Senate of the United States shall be composed of two Senators from each State, chosen by the Legislature thereof, for six Years; and each Senator shall have one Vote.

Article II, section 1:
The executive Power shall be vested in a President of the United States of America. He shall hold his Office during the Term of four Years, and, together with the Vice President, chosen for the same Term, be elected, as follows

Each State shall appoint, in such Manner as the Legislature thereof may direct, a Number of Electors, equal to the whole Number of Senators and Representatives to which the State may be entitled in the Congress: but no Senator or Representative, or Person holding an Office of Trust or Profit under the United States, shall be appointed an Elector.

The Electors shall meet in their respective States, and vote by Ballot for two Persons.... The Person having the greatest Number of Votes shall be the President....