[Oops -- forgot to put this where folks could see it!]
Electric-car backers launch new ads as energy votes loom
A corporate coalition seeking Capitol Hill support for bills that expand the market for electric vehicles is ramping up an ad campaign that promotes the technology as a cure for reliance on oil imports.
Today, Senate candidate Marco Rubio (R-FL) released his economic platform, which he claims is a “a clear alternative to the anti-growth, anti-job creation economic policies coming out of Washington.” “We have reached a point in our history when we must decide if we are to continue on the free market, limited government path that has made us exceptional, or if we are prepared to follow the rest of the world down the road of government dependency,” he said.
However, as the Orlando Sentinel’s Jim Stratton pointed out, “after perusing the list, the sharp-eyed reader will likely notice a recurring theme: This Rubio guy appears to be a big supporter of tax cuts. The proposals are sure to please his conservative base, many of whom see tax cuts as a magical elixir, good for pretty much anything that ails you.” Indeed, of the 12 steps that Rubio proposed, six are tax cuts, and another three are directives to stop regulations or taxes from being implemented. Here are some highlights:
– IDEA #1: Permanently Extend The 2001 And 2003 Tax Cuts
– IDEA #2: Cut Taxes On American Businesses
– IDEA #3: Permanently End The Death Tax
If this plan looks like a simple doubling-down on the Bush tax cuts, it is, with an unspecified corporate tax cut thrown on top for good measure. This comes despite the fact that the Bush tax cuts led to “the weakest jobs and income growth in the post-war period,” with monthly job growth the worst of any business cycle since 1945. In fact, the supply side tax cuts of both 1981 and 2001 failed to deliver as much investment growth, GDP growth, household income growth, wage growth or employment growth as the Clinton-era economic policies.
The cuts that Rubio proposes would also spend trillions of dollars while overwhelmingly sending the benefits to the very rich. In fact, at the 2009 level, the estate tax only affects the richest 0.2 percent of households in the country. So Rubio would spend billions on the hope that a tiny percentage of the population creates some jobs. “Those 2001 and 2003 tax cuts didn’t seem to help America avoid the recession, and Jeb Bush’s effort to cut taxes in Florida didn’t seem to help this state avoid becoming one of the worst hit by that recession,” wrote Kyle Munzenrieder at the Miami New Times.
Rubio has consistently tried to position himself as a deficit hawk, criticizing the government for “spending money we don’t have,” but as Stratton noted, “the campaign release doesn’t address what programs it would cut or any way to make up revenue lost from the tax cuts.” Of course, Rubio could just subscribe to the version of economic principles espoused by Sen. Jon Kyl (R-AZ) which says that “you should never have to offset” tax cuts for the rich.
Yesterday, the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals instructed immigration officials to consider recognizing young Guatemalan women as a “particular social group” for asylum purposes. Under the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA) an individual qualifies for asylum only if that person meets the legal definition of a refugee. Traditionally, asylum petitions from Latin Americans have been dismissed outright as “fraudulent or frivolous.” Refugees are often viewed as people “fleeing oppressive political regimes or have been members of religious or ethnic minorities facing persecution.” However, as violence soars in Mexico and parts of Central America, judges are faced with a growing need to take asylum claims from Latin America much more seriously than they did before.
An immigration judge initially denied Guatemalan immigrant Yajayra Perdomo asylum, arguing that women between the ages of 14 and 40 should not be recognized as a “particular social group.” The Board of Immigration Appeals agreed. However, the 9th Circuit repealed the decision, calling the board’s ruling “inconsistent with its own precedent and this court’s case law.” “[W]e clearly acknowledged that women in a particular country, regardless of ethnicity or clan membership, could form a particular social group,” Judge Richard Paez wrote. The 9th Circuit left it up to the Board to issue a decision whether Perdomo qualifies for asylum.
The court also ruled that fear of “femicide” constitutes a valid asylum claim. Since the year 2000, more than 3,800 women and girls (mostly from ages 13 to 36) have been murdered in Guatemala. The Hastings College of Law has noted in the past that “Guatemala’s legal system is rife with provisions that minimize the seriousness of violence against women.” Amnesty International writes that “investigations into crimes against women, including transgender women, are often inadequate and obstructed by investigating police who act with a gender bias.”
Watch a report by Al Jazeera on femicide in Guatemala:
While females are often killed “simply because of their gender,” violence cuts across gender lines in Guatemala and other neighboring countries. The United Nations Development Program found that “Central America is the most violent region of the world, with the exception of those regions where some countries are at war or are experiencing severe political violence.” More than 5,600 murders were registered in Guatemala in 2009. Ninety-eight percent of those murders went unpunished. El Salvador ended 2009 with a “historic number” of 4,365 homicides. Honduras is said to have the highest murder rate: 66.8 for every 100,000 inhabitants. Mexico, which is significantly larger and more populous than three other Central American countries has a homicide rate of 12 per 100,000.
In August 2009, A DHS spokesman told the Wall Street Journal that the government is “developing regulations to better define grounds for asylum.” In 2009, the government reopened the monumental case of a Salvadoran family who argue that the Court should consider resistance to joining gangs as grounds for asylum. However, not everyone is so lucky. Last month, the New York Times reported that Benito Zaldívar, a Salvadoran immigrant who was deported back to El Salvador after a court denied his asylum petition was shot in the face as “revenge” for speaking against the gang. “I’ve done about a hundred cases of Salvadoran males who refused to join gangs,” said Roy Petty, Zaldívar’s lawyer. “I have to tell them you are probably going to lose. The immigration system did not believe these people were really in danger.”
In Washington, there’s little appetite amongst politicians to deal with the “illogical” and “perverse” legal hurdles of the U.S. asylum system. In March, Senator Patrick J. Leahy (D-VT) boldly sponsored the Refugee Protection Act which “addresses shortfalls in current law that place unnecessary and harmful barriers before refugees with legitimate asylum claims.” The bill is currently stalled in Congress.
Reports have emerged this week on the group Emergency Committee for Israel (ECI), an organization led by pro-war neocons and evangelical Christians seeking to attack President Obama’s Middle East policy. The group launched an ad this week bashing Rep. Joe Sestak (D-PA) for allegedly not understanding that Israel is a U.S. ally.
War hawk flack John Bolton commented on the new group today in an email to right-wing Commentary Magazine:
I don’t understand why so many people accept the Obama Administration’s ritualistic recital of the pro-Israel catechism, rather than looking at its specific policies and actions. You can say “unbreakable relationship” as many times as you want, but it has no real-world impact. I don’t see how anybody can object to a new group that simply points out the obvious disjunction between what Obama and his acolytes are saying and what they are actually doing.
So what is this “obvious disjunction” between ECI and “what Obama and his acolytes are saying and what they are actually doing?” The President has made it clear that the United States will achieve its foreign policy goals in the Middle East, particularly regarding Iran’s nuclear program, through diplomatic means — a position that both Defense Secretary Robert Gates and Joint Chiefs Chairman Adm. Mike Mullen support. What are those on the right like Bolton supporting? The former U.N. ambassador outlined his views today in the Wall Street Journal:
[Opinion leaders need] to increase political support for an Israeli strike against Iranian nuclear and ballistic missile facilities. [...] What outsiders can do is create broad support for Israel’s inherent right to self-defense against a nuclear Holocaust and defend the specific tactic of pre-emptive attacks against Iran’s Esfahan uranium-conversion plant, its Natanz enrichment facility, and other targets.
Indeed, the Weekly Standard’s Bill Kristol — a member of ECI’s leadership board — has been supporting and advocating a strike on Iran’s nuclear program for quite some time. So yes, Bolton is right, there is an “obvious disjunction” between ECI and the Obama administration’s policy; despite the debacle in Iraq, the former still appears to believe that war will achieve peace in the Middle East, while the latter has learned from the neocons’ mistakes in favor of negotiation and diplomacy.
The constitutional case against health reform is exceptionally weak — even ultraconservatives like Chief Justice Roberts and Justice Scalia reject a narrow vision of the Constitution which would hold this law unconstitutional. So with the cards already laid out against them, the right has decided it needs to stack the deck by eliminating justices who are likely to uphold the law. Today’s Wall Street Journal editorial falsely claiming that Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan must recuse herself from health care litigation just their first cut at this deck stacking:
Ms. Kagan was unlikely to have been consulted on the merits of health-care policy, and even if she did express an opinion on policy this would not be grounds for recusal. The legal precedents on that are clear.
Recusal arises as a matter of judicial ethics if as a government official she expressed an opinion on the merits of the health-care litigation. This is what she would have to render a judgment on were she to be confirmed for the High Court. It is also the question on which she is likely to have participated given her role at the Justice Department.
Simply put, the WSJ is not telling the truth about when a judge must recuse themselves. Later in the editorial, the WSJ quotes the federal law governing recusals by judges who are former government officials — judges must recuse themselves from cases where they “participated as counsel, adviser or material witness concerning the proceeding or expressed an opinion concerning the merits of the particular case in controversy” — but this language does not say what the WSJ wants it to say.
To have “participated” in a “particular case in controversy,” a judge must have been a lawyer, adviser or witness in the exact same lawsuit that is now before their court. Because none of the health care cases currently pending in federal court have been appealed, Kagan would not have done any work on those specific cases. Normally, the Solicitor General first becomes involved in federal litigation at the appellate level, if at all.
Contrary to the WSJ‘s claim, a judge is not required to recuse themselves simply because they have previously expressed an opinion on a legal issue that is now before them in a new case, even if they expressed that opinion while giving advice to a client. Were judges forbidden from deciding issues that they have already expressed opinions on, Justices Scalia and Thomas would be required to recuse themselves from all abortion cases, since they have both previously expressed the opinion that Roe v. Wade should be overruled.
There is also ample precedent indicating that Kagan does not need to recuse herself from health care litigation. The last Solicitor General to be elevated to the Supreme Court was Justice Thurgood Marshall. Of the 53 cases Justice Marshall recused himself from due to his work as SG, 48 were cases that he had previously signed a brief in, and the other five were all cases where he either authorized an appeal or otherwise was involved in that exact same case. Justice Marshall did not recuse himself from a single case that he had not previously done work on, and he certainly didn’t recuse himself from all school desegregation cases, even though he had done significant previous litigation in that area.
Likewise, Justice Hugo Black actually wrote the Fair Labor Standards Act while he was a senator, but Justice Black repeatedly heard cases interpreting this law while he served as a justice.
So the WSJ is simply making things up when it claims that Kagan is required to recuse herself from health care litigation. Just like the frivilous lawsuits claiming that health reform is unconstitutional, the WSJ claims that it can make up the law as it goes.
Late last month, House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-OH) announced that the GOP would try to rally social conservatives ahead of the midterm elections by introducing legislation that would permanently “bar Congress from using taxpayer money to support abortions or abortion coverage” by codifying the so-called Hyde amendment. Today, Boehner hinted that he will re-open the abortion debate within the context of health care reform.
Boehner tweeted a press release from the National Right to Life Committee which claims that “The Obama Administration will give Pennsylvania $160 million to set up a new “high-risk” insurance program…and has quietly approved a plan submitted by an appointee of Governor Edward Rendell (D) under which the new program will cover any abortion that is legal in Pennsylvania”:
Examination of the detailed Pennsylvania plan (posted here:www.nrlc.org/AHC/PennsylvaniaHighRiskPoolPlan.pdf), reveals that the “much more” will include insurance coverage of any legal abortion.
The section on abortion (see page 14) asserts that “elective abortions are not covered.” However, that statement proves to be a red herring, because the operative language does not define “elective.” Rather, the proposal specifies that the coverage “includes only abortions and contraceptives that satisfy the requirements of” several specific statutes, the most pertinent of which is 18 Pa. C.S. § 3204, which says that an abortion is legal in Pennsylvania (consistent with Roe v. Wade) if a single physician believes that it is “necessary” based on “all factors (physical, emotional, psychological, familial and the woman’s age) relevant to the well-being of the woman.” Indeed, the cited statute provides only a single circumstance in which an abortion prior to 24 weeks is NOT permitted under the Pennsylvania statute: “No abortion which is sought solely because of the sex of the unborn child shall be deemed a necessary abortion.”
Indeed, the Nelson amendment in the health care law and President Obama’s subsequent executive order places restrictions on federal funding within the exchanges and the community health centers but says nothing of the moneys appropriated to the temporary high risk pools or other programs like reinsurance for early retirees or the small business tax credits.
The law gives the states the necessary flexibility to appropriate those dollars as they see fit, so long as it comports with state and federal law. Pro-choice advocates disagree with the notion that states should be able to deny fundamental reproductive right to women, but by protesting the state-based nature of these provisions, anti-abortion advocates are also changing their argument. Throughout the health care debate, they’ve maintained that abortion should be left to the states and have insisted that states be given the option to eliminate abortion from the exchanges, as some have done. Now that progressive states have chosen to cover full reproductive benefits, however, those same “state rights” voices are crying foul and claiming that the federal government should determine how abortion funds are or not spent.
Of course, whether or not the enrollees in high risk insurance pools will need abortion coverage is another matter altogether. The typical high risk pool beneficiary is older and sicker and most health experts I’ve spoken to don’t expect abortion to become a very popular benefit.
The North Iowa Tea party, like many sympathizers of the movement, denounce media attempts to portray tea party members as extreme or outside the mainstream. On its website, the North Iowa Tea party links directly to a report by the conservative Media Research Center that decries the media’s characterization of Tea Party protesters as “‘ugly,’ ‘unruly,’ ‘nasty’ mobs, with reporters presenting the most odious images (such as pictures of Obama drawn as Hitler) as somehow representative of the entire group.” Ironically, despite disassociating themselves from Obama-Hitler comparisons in the past, the North Iowa Tea Party is now a leading propagator of this abhorrent image. Last week, they created a billboard that features President Obama “flanked” by Adolph Hitler and Vladimir Lenin:
A new billboard in downtown Mason City features a photo of President Obama, flanked by pictures of German dictator Adolph Hitler and Communist leader Vladimir Lenin.
The billboard features phrases like “Live Free or Die” and “Radical leaders prey on the fearful and naive.”
It’s the same spot where a billboard last fall featured the phrase “Obama-Nation, Live Free or Die” with the Communist symbol of a hammer and sickle. The billboards were paid for by the North Iowa Tea Party.
Iowa Tea Party leaders now say they disagree with the use of the pictures, but not the Obama-is-Hitler message. North Iowa Tea Party co-founder Bob Johnson stated that while the “the pictures might be overwhelming,” the sign “highlights” the right message. Iowa state Tea Party coordinator John White agrees that while the “sign goes” where “the Tea Party doesn’t want to be”, “everything Obama has done is ‘lock-step’ with what Hitler did in his day.”
Boston Federal Reserve President Eric Rosengren
Last week, the Washington Post published an article reporting that the Fed is weighing “new steps to bolster growth” in the face of the sluggish economic recovery, but Lacker and Duke seem to think otherwise. (It should be noted that Lacker doesn’t have a vote on the Fed’s Federal Open Market Committee this year, due to the voting positions rotating.)
Yesterday, I wondered whether President Obama’s three nominees for the Fed Board, who are scheduled to come before the Senate Banking Committee on Thursday, can push the central bank into taking more action to boost employment, considering that maximizing employment is one half of its mandate. But there are already members of the FOMC who aren’t quite so willing to rule out additional steps. In an interview with the Wall Street Journal, Boston Fed President Eric Rosengren said that if Congress doesn’t step up to do more about the unemployment rate, it will be up to the Fed to fill the void:
If it looks like we’re not going to meet either element of our objective in a two- to three-ear horizon, we need to start thinking about what else we could do or what else the fiscal authorities could do. But in the absence of fiscal action we’d have to think about what more we could do … if the economy gets weaker and the inflation rate gets lower, we should be thinking about alternative policies.
“I’m not expecting to see that much progress on the unemployment rate over the course of the second half of this year,” Rosengren said. “Ideally we’d be seeing growth north of 4% in order to be really pushing the unemployment rate down from its very elevated levels and we’re not seeing growth at nearly 4% at least for the second half this year. Unfortunately, it looks like it will be a good bit slower than that.”
Yesterday, Paul Krugman laid out what additional Fed steps to boost employment in the face of anemic growth might look like:
It can buy longer-term government debt. It can buy private-sector debt. It can try to move expectations by announcing that it will keep short-term rates low for a long time. It can raise its long-run inflation target, to help convince the private sector that borrowing is a good idea and hoarding cash a mistake. Nobody knows how well any one of these actions would work. The point, however, is that there are things the Fed could and should be doing, but isn’t.
Deficit hysteria has gripped Capitol Hill, making it all but impossible to move the most common sense stimulus measures, like extending unemployment benefits. So Rosengren’s scenario under which more Fed action is called for is likely to become reality.
I was meant for you:
— It’s all about the shadow banking.
— Dave Weigel’s too hot for the Washington Post but Marc Thiessen is unstoppable.
— Perhaps executives should be paid with debt not equity?
— Regarding the above, time to brush up on your Modigliani-Miller Theorem.
— Americans don’t trust Republicans to make the right decisions, plan on voting them into office anyway.
In lieu of a song of the day, watch Jewel don a disguise to go sing Jewel songs at a karaoke bar.
The White House unveiled its long awaited National HIV/AIDS Strategy this afternoon with the twin goals of cutting new infections in the U.S. by 25% over the next five years and ensuring that 85% of patients begin receiving care within three months of diagnosis. HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius described the strategy as, “not a white paper,” but a “detailed action plan” that calls on federal agencies, the states and community organizations to act in a coordinated manner to help reduce the number of people who become infected with HIV, increasing access to care and optimizing health outcomes for people living with HIV, and reducing HIV-related health disparities.
The LA Times’ Noam Levey gets into some of the details, noting that the biggest sticking point is the lack of new federal funding:
Obama’s strategy includes broad goals as well as dozens of directives for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, and other federal agencies. Those steps include developing standards to evaluate care, investigating community programs to see whether they’re effective and simplifying grant applications. The Bureau of Prisons would expand HIV screening of inmates, and the Justice Department would fast-track investigations of discrimination involving those with HIV.
The report warns about the need for more attention on gay and bisexual men, who account for more than half of new infections annually, and on African Americans. [...]
But the president’s strategy contains no additional federal spending. That drew pointed criticism from Michael Weinstein, who heads the Los Angeles-based AIDS Healthcare Foundation, a leading provider of medical care to those with HIV/AIDS. “It’s really shocking,” Weinstein said. “We have thousands people on a waiting list for AIDS drugs. So, the whole premise is that we are going to test more and treat more. But we don’t have the capacity. Why should anyone be tested if they don’t have access to medications?”
That’s the sense I got from Julie Scofield, director of the National Alliance of State and Territorial AIDS Directors (NASTAD), which “represents the nation’s chief state health agency staff who have programmatic responsibility for administering HIV/AIDS” programs. She praised the document for identifying the communities at highest risk for HIV and acknowledging the “urgency of addressing the epidemic among gay and bisexual men of all races.” “We’ve seen past efforts that want to continue to suggest that everyone is at equal risk for HIV, and it’s not true,” she told me.
She also said the report broke new ground in calling for greater coordination across federal agencies, noting that “that is very much needed.” “We’ve got too many funding silos with too many different reporting requirements and evaluation measures that make these programs extremely difficult and complex to administer at the state and local level.” But Scofield acknowledged that the strategy — while itself admits the need for greater investment — will not do enough to help states struggling to meet the needs of AIDS patients. Last week, HHS announced that it would provide $25 million more to help states buy needed medicines, but advocates argue that this is not enough. Across the country, states have narrowed eligibility, limited enrollment or restricted the drugs for which they will pay to help deal with growing budget deficits. Here is just a sampling:
- SOUTH CAROLINA: “The current version of the state budget for the 2010-11 fiscal year, which starts July 1, eliminates all money for the Drug Assistance Program, which provides life-saving HIV/AIDS drugs to the state’s low-income, uninsured and underinsured residents. The budget also eliminates all money for the state’s HIV/AIDS prevention programs.”
- OHIO: “The Ohio Department of Health cut 320 people from HIV-medication assistance, instituted a waiting list and made other cuts yesterday to a program that serves about 5,000 people who have the virus.”
- FLORIDA: The state Department of Health will start a waiting list for the program on June 1, will reduce the number of covered drugs in the program on Aug. 1, and will study other cuts, said Tom Liberti, chief of the department’s HIV/AIDS bureau.”
“I’m really hoping that the administration and all of us in the community will use this to mobilize for additional resources.” “There is no question that we need more funding to accomplish this strategy, but I’m at this point thinking, I rather use it to mobilize and garner that support and turn to the Congress and ask for those resources than try to shoot down this strategy without even trying to garner the resources to make it successful,” Scofield said.
Federal agencies will now have 150 days to submit a report on operationalizing the strategy and the federal agencies will begin to work with state and community groups to meet the goals of the plan. But going forward, Scofield expects that the plan will “inform the President’s next budget request, and next budget request, and next budget request.”
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