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LGBT

Alabama Supreme Court Justice Compares DADT Judge To Al-Qaeda

By Ian Millhiser on Oct 29, 2010 at 7:35 pm

Justice Tom Parker (center) poses with the leaders of two hate groups

Alabama Supreme Court Justice Tom Parker, a disciple of disgraced former Alabama Chief Justice Roy Moore, released a campaign ad comparing the judge who recently struck down the unconstitutional Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell policy to Al-Qaeda:

Recently, U.S. District Judge Virginia Phillips ordered a worldwide injunction to overturn the Don’t Ask/Don’t Tell policy on homosexuals serving in the military.  With a stroke of a pen, this Clinton appointed judge—who got her law degree at Berkeley—unilaterally made the biggest single change in military policy in American history. . . . Most people believe that Al-Qaeda is one of America’s biggest security threats, I think it’s time to add liberal activist judges like Judge Phillips to that list.

Listen:

Parker’s hyperbolic claim about American history would come as a big surprise to the actual framers of the Constitution, who generally shared the view that the mere existance of a permanent standing army invites tyranny, but this kind of absurd and bigoted rhetoric is nothing new for Justice Parker. The picture above depicts Parker with two local hate group leaders.  One is Leonard Wilson, a segregationist and national board member of a group called the Council of Conservative Citizens that has described African-Americans as “a retrograde species of humanity.”  The other is Mike Whorton, Alabama state leader of the neo-Confederate League of the South.

(As the Wonk Room recently explained, Parker is not the only candidate with ties to the League.  Martha Dean, the GOP nominee for Connecticut Attorney General, is apparently taking cues from one of the League’s co-founders, right-wing pseudo-historian Tom Woods.)

Nor is Parker’s radicalism limited to hatred towards gay men, lesbians or other minority groups.  In a op-ed published during his tenure as a justice, Parker attacked his colleagues for “passively accommodat[ing] — rather than actively resist[ing] — the unconstitutional opinion of five liberal justices on the U.S. Supreme Court.”  The same op-ed elaborated that he objects to the U.S. Supreme Court because they look down on “pro-family policies” and “Southern heritage.”

Health

HHS Announces New ‘Early Innovators Grants’ To Help States Develop Technology For The Exchanges

By Igor Volsky on Oct 29, 2010 at 6:50 pm

The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) announced a new round of grants this afternoon to help states expedite and simplify the process of developing IT systems for the new exchanges (the Travelocity-like market places that will help Americans find comprehensive insurance coverage). By the time the exchanges become operational in 2014, states should be able to use information technology to determine eligibly, enrollment, premium tax credits, cost-sharing assistance administration, and integrate the system with Medicaid and CHIP. Officials believe that sophisticated, yet “consumer friendly” IT systems are “critical to the success of the exchanges” and hope that the final product will look similar to the new HealthCare.gov website, where beneficiaries can compare different plans, identify if they’re eligible for government aid, and enroll in insurance.

But as Politico’s Jennifer Haberkorn points out this morning, “states view the project as an enormous undertaking, requiring them to design a system, develop the information technology and put it into action in just three years amid tight budgets. In response, the Department of Health and Human Services is planning to ask five states to develop systems that can hopefully serve as prototypes for other states to replicate.” “The states have told us that they don’t all want to all have re-invent the wheel on each aspect of the exchange; they want to be able to re-use and leverage the work of their fellow states so that the resources are used more efficiently and effectively,” Joel Ario the Director of the Office of Insurance Exchanges at HHS said on a conference call attended by the Wonk Room.

The so-called “Early Innovators Grants” will be offered to five states or coalition of states “that demonstrate leadership in developing cutting-edge and cost-effective consumer-based technologies and models for insurance eligibility and enrollment for Exchanges” that “can be adopted and tailored by other States.”

“The benefits to the states are three-fold,” Ario said. “First, there are lower costs through the uses of shared models, second there is an improved implementation schedule, increased quality and reduced risk through the re-use, the peer-collaboration and the leveraging of lessons learned across the state boundaries. And finally, there is improved capacity for program evaluation because of the more uniform implementation theory,” he explained.

Last month, the federal government awarded exchange planning grants to 48 states and the District of Columbia and has announced that it will award “Establishment Grants” in February of 2011. “We’re looking for a lot of collaboration, we’re looking for states to lead….to really kind of provide the direction and progress that needs to be made early rather than later,” Henry Chao — the Chief Technology Officer at the Office of Consumer Information and Insurance Oversight — explained on the call, noting that states struggled to implement the IT requirements in Medicare Part D because they were given “very very short timeframes” “in terms of systems development.” “I think the lessons learned have really told us that we need to collaborate much more so upfront, not just with the states, but across the federal government, with other agencies.”

Economy

275 Investors Demand U.S. Chamber Disclose Funds And Stop ‘Punitive Campaign’ Against Health Care Law

By Tanya Somanader on Oct 29, 2010 at 6:50 pm

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce has become a behemoth of political influence, making high-powered and well-funded attempts to reshape policies to fit its agenda. Thanks to the Citizens United Supreme Court decision and its trade association designation, the Chamber can leverage significant funds from its 501(c)(6) account — which includes donations solicited from foreign corporations — in campaign attacks against Democrats without ever having to disclose its donors. Despite significant scrutiny and criticism, the Chamber refuses to disclose how dues and other contributions are being spent.

But not all of the Chamber’s members are happy about its opaque political activities. Last week, a coalition of 275 institutional shareholders with $100 billion in assets under management from the Interfaith Center on Corporate Responsibility (ICCR) sent a letter to company directors who are members of the Chamber to express deep concern over the Chamber’s “extremely antagonistic position” on the Affordable Care Act. Concerned that the Chamber’s pursuit of an anti-health care agenda — especially with the possible use of “foreign monies” — may damage their reputation, these investors are demanding the Chamber reveal whether company dues are being used in this “ill-conceived strategy,” and that company directors withhold all dues or withdraw membership “until the Chamber refrains from further investment in negative advertising”:

The Interfaith Center on Corporate Responsibility and its members…are writing to express our profound concerns about our company’s potential role in furthering the highly politicized agenda of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce in the 2010 mid-term election and the Chamber’s continued hostile opposition to health care reform. [...]

The Chamber’s punitive campaign, a veritable “hit list” of health care supporters, is counter-productive and explicitly partisan. … As [our company]‘s board representative to the Chamber, it is vitally important to ensure that the company is not seen to be the unwitting supporter of this initiative. We strongly believe that the media attention this issue has generated, particularly surrounding allegations of the co-mingling of foreign monies, poses significant risk to our company’s reputation. Further, we fully expect that you will use your influence to encourage other Chamber members to abandon this ill-conceived strategy.

As concerned shareholders, many of us working in the health care industry, we ask that you take steps to eliminate any risks associated with this issue, and make available all information regarding the use of our membership dues to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce for review no later than October 30th. Further, as we believe that dues to the Chamber support the infrastructure which coordinates this campaign, we request that you publicly declare your opposition by either withholding your dues until the Chamber refrains from further investment in negative advertising, or if necessary, withdraw your membership in protest.

This is the ICCR’s second appeal to Chamber members on health care reform. In November 2009, ICCR members “called on Chamber members with stated positions similar to ICCR’s Health Care Reform principles to challenge the Chamber’s lobbying efforts against the passage of health care legislation.”

While the ICCR issues final warnings, Chamber members like Apple have left the Chamber altogether. In a newly-released comprehensive investigative series, Harry Hanbury and GRITtv reveal the ubiquitous role the Chamber plays in American politics and why companies may blanche at its secretive activities.

Watch it:

Economy

Volcker: Don’t Let The Banks Weaken My Rule

By Pat Garofalo on Oct 29, 2010 at 6:00 pm

As I’ve been documenting, Republicans on the House Financial Services Committee have set their sights on weakening some of the key provisions in the Dodd-Frank financial reform law. One of these is the Volcker rule — named after former Federal Reserve Chairman and current Obama administration adviser Paul Volcker — which is aimed at preventing banks from trading for their own benefit with federally insured funds.

Banks are already thumbing their nose at the Volcker rule and laying the groundwork for a return to risky trading; they’re taking advantage of Dodd-Frank’s infancy, going on new adventures as regulators work out what, exactly, the Volcker rule should outlaw. And the banks are betting that the GOP will push regulators into making exceedingly narrow, so that risky (but profitable) trading can go on unabated.

But Volcker is pushing back, telling regulators to leave the rule more open, thus allowing them to crack down on a potentially wider range of activities:

His suggestion: Bar banks from trading with their own funds if they benefit from any type of government guarantee, such as deposit insurance, these people said. Banks would have to police their own activities to make sure they are in compliance, with Federal Reserve examiners ensuring that is the case…Mr. Volcker’s concern, according to several people familiar with the matter, is that narrow or prescriptive rules would invite gamesmanship on the part of banks and could allow firms to evade the rule’s intent. Already, some banks and their lobbyists are seeking to sway regulators and encourage them to narrowly define certain types of trading activities.

Volcker is not alone in his attempt to push regulators into a more inclusive rule. A group of Senators led by Sen. Carl Levin (D-MI) — who was one of the Volcker rule’s biggest advocates during the financial reform debate — penned a letter to regulators stating that Congress “provided you with a clear mandate and broad authority to act. The American people are now relying upon you to fully carry out the law.” “Congress voted for change and we need the regulators to move forward with change. They shouldn’t be giving away the ranch so we get back in this situation again,” said Sen. Tom Udall (D-NM), one of the letter’s signers.

Volcker was reportedly disappointed in the final version of his rule, after exemptions were added to it in an attempt to win Republican votes for Dodd-Frank, so it’s not surprising that he’d go to bat to prevent even more backsliding. And that he has to wrangle with the regulators at all is symbolic of both the promise and potential pitfalls in Dodd-Frank: depending on how the regulators craft the rules, the law could be extremely effective or simply window-dressing.

Politics

GOP Candidate’s Claims That Mexicans Are Being Bused In To Vote Dismissed By AZ Secretary Of State

By Andrea Nill Sanchez on Oct 29, 2010 at 5:50 pm

This past Wednesday, Arizona Secretary of State Ken Bennett released a statement indicating that right-wing allegations that the SEIU-affiliated Mi Familia Vota had committed voter fraud in Arizona’s Yuma County “are without merit.” However, that same day congressional candidate Jesse Kelly (R-AZ) told right-wing radio host Mark Levin that there were “rumors” that Mexicans were being brought into his own precinct to vote:

LEVIN: You’re gonna have to squeeze out every single vote there plus some because they’re gonna pull their dirty tricks like they always do, Jess.

KELLY: They already are down here. We’re already getting reports of voter fraud. Especially in one of the counties in my district there is actually rumors — people have video of them bussing people across from our southern border. We’re a border district. They literally bus people across from Mexico to have them vote at the polls on election day, give them a meal, and then bus them back. So we’re really fighting against that down here.

Listen:

Matthew Benson, communications director for the Arizona Secretary of State’s Office responded directly to Kelly’s allegations, saying, “We’ve seen no evidence of that allegation.” Benson called it an “urban legend” and pointed out that “in terms of specific instances, we haven’t seen it.”

Though right-wing claims of voter fraud in Arizona have been dismissed, a message issued by Arizona Sheriff Joe Arpaio to his supporters has others worried about voter intimidation. Arpaio wrote: “”STOP ILLEGALS FROM STEALING THE ELECTION! Our grassroots army of VOTER FRAUD PREVENTION VOLUNTEERS will stand vigilant across the nation. We will be the first and strongest line of defense to ensure that only legal citizens vote on November 2nd.”

For more on the right-wing allegations of voter fraud, see today’s Progress Report.

Yglesias

The Party of Medicare

By Matthew Yglesias on Oct 29, 2010 at 5:32 pm

Excellent article from Shikha Dalmia about the Party of Medicare:

For starters, polls by the New York Times and Bloomberg have found that although a vast majority of Tea Party supporters favor smaller government, they don’t want cuts in their Medicare or Social Security, a contradiction perfectly captured in a sign at a Tea Party rally: “Keep the Guvmint out of my Medicare.” Indeed, the Bloomberg poll discovered that even though Tea Partiers dislike ObamaCare, they want Medicare to offer more drug benefits and the government to force insurance companies to cover pre-existing conditions. [...]

Kentucky’s Rand Paul, who is running as an uncompromising apostle of limited government and free markets, has pulled the most distressing switcheroo of them all. A doctor himself, he denounced Medicare as socialized medicine. Yet he has balked at the idea of cutting physician salaries, even though American physicians make twice as much as doctors in OECD countries. Why? Because their cartel, the American Medical Association, both restricts the supply of physicians through insanely restrictive licensure requirements and controls the Medicare board that determines physician compensation, as the Wall Street Journal reported this week. Yet, Paul now maintains: “Physicians should be allowed to make a comfortable living.” (But he is just being fair – not pleading for his special interest of course!) Likewise, after calling Social Security a Ponzi scheme, Paul is now talking less about reforming it and more about protecting it for those now reaching retirement age.

I think the biggest thing to watch for is a sharp pivot toward a strategy of pure generational warfare. Pay out 100% of promised benefits to the over 55 crowd and massively slash benefits for people under 40.

LGBT

Conservative Military Chaplains Complain About DADT Repeal Again, AP Runs Full Article Treatment

By Igor Volsky on Oct 29, 2010 at 5:10 pm

Conservative military chaplains have opposed repealing Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell so frequently and vociferously this year that I’ve devoted an entire tag to explaining why their warnings of a mass exodus of Christian chaplains and soliders is overblown. But their frequent outings (pun intended) didn’t stop the Associated Press from running a story detailing their latest stunt. Titled, “Retired chaplains warn against ‘don’t ask’ repeal” the article breathlessly reports on a letter the chaplains sent to Defense Secretary Robert Gates, regurgitating the very same claims the chaplains have been making all year — only now, they’re standing on the AP’s soap box rather than in the event room of Tony Perkins’ Family Research Council. From the AP story:

Dozens of retired military chaplains say that serving both God and the U.S. armed forces will become impossible for chaplains whose faiths consider homosexuality a sin if the “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy is thrown out.

If a chaplain preaches against homosexuality, he could conceivably be disciplined as a bigot under the military’s nondiscrimination policy, the retired chaplains say. The Pentagon, however, says chaplains’ religious beliefs and their need to express them will be respected.

Clergy would be ineligible to serve as chaplains if their churches withdraw their endorsements, as some have threatened to do if “don’t ask, don’t tell” ends. Critics of allowing openly gay troops fear that clergy will leave the service or be forced to find other jobs in the military that don’t involve their faiths.

“The bottom line is religious freedom,” said retired Army Brig. Gen. Douglas Lee, one of 65 former chaplains who signed a letter urging President Barack Obama and Defense Secretary Robert Gates to keep “don’t ask, don’t tell.”

In a recent Letter to the Editor published in USA Today, Rt. Rev. V. Gene Robinson — the first openly gay priest elected bishop in the worldwide Anglican Communion — writes that this argument “raises needless fears based on a flawed understanding of the policies that govern the military chaplaincy.“

“These policies are designed to preserve and protect the free exercise of religion in the military and would remain in effect after the repeal of “don’t ask, don’t tell” (DADT),” he notes. “No Roman Catholic, fundamentalist Christian or Orthodox Jewish chaplain would have to change her or his beliefs about homosexuality. If any gay or lesbian servicemembers went to one of these chaplains, they would still receive the counseling against homosexuality they have always received. What they wouldn’t receive is a discharge from their military service for being gay and speaking about it.” “Within each chaplain’s congregation, he or she will continue to be free to preach according to the tenets of his or her own faith. That will not change,” he says.

Fortunately, many military chaplains support repealing the ban. “As military chaplains, we routinely work with service members whose faith traditions and belief systems are different from ours. The idea that repeal of DADT will infringe on our religious liberty is insulting to all the serving chaplains who professionally minister to and with people of diverse beliefs every day,” said Captain John F. Gundlach, a retired Chaplain of the U.S. Navy. HRC has more on the broad coalition of faith leaders who support repeal here.

Yglesias

The Folly of Empire

By Matthew Yglesias on Oct 29, 2010 at 4:52 pm

MG Siegler has an interesting TechCrunch item about Microsoft’s eye-popping losses in its online business:

Microsoft released their Q1 2011 earnings today. The results were very good except for one very big blemish: the Online Division. Last quarter, the division lost $560 million for Microsoft. That’s better than the previous quarter when it lost a staggering $696 million, but it’s much worse than a year ago, when it lost $477 million. In the past year, Microsoft has lost well over $2 billion from the division.

Let me repeat that: 1 year, a $2 billion loss.

Obviously, any startup that did that would have long since gone under — with that kind of burn rate, they probably would have gotten the plug pulled a few weeks into existence no matter how well-funded they were. But Microsoft keeps pumping money into the division. And they have to. Because even they realize it’s the future.

There’s an interesting divergence here between the perspective of Microsoft qua institution and Microsoft as a cooperative enterprise undertaken for the benefit of its shareholders. The conventional wisdom is that Microsoft needs to expand beyond its super-profitable core businesses because “[t]he web is making Windows (and every operating system) less vital, while at the same time coming up with free and/or cheap tools to replace the relatively expensive Office.” Therefore, the smart strategy for Microsoft is to take the giant profit margins of Office and Windows and plow them into new ventures.

An alternative approach would be to just say “we’ve got a great core business here that’s still great today and may or may not be obsolete in the future, so we’re just going to keep doing what we do well and pay out giant dividends.”

In practice that never happens. As firms like Microsoft mature, they do start paying dividends, but they never really go “all in.” Psychologically, successful business executives are bound to regard themselves as above-average businessmen who can maximize shareholder value by keeping profits in-house. And from a talent-retention/recruitment perspective it would probably seem demoralizing to just say “eh, we’re giving up on growth.” And of course it’s more fun to be the CEO of a large growing firm that’s a vital player on the cutting edges of technology than to preside over a stagnant-though-wealthy mechanism for funneling billions of dollars from corporate IT departments to shareholders. And in practice, the logistics of hostile takeovers are horrible and they’re rarely attempted.

And Microsoft is by no means unusual in this regard. Google is very aggressively pushing into new businesses instead of sitting on its existing cash cows, and Apple has a famously gigantic cash stockpile being presumably conserved for some nebulous future M&A activity.

Politics

Woman Receives Death Threats Days After Beck Targets Her On His Show

By Alex Seitz-Wald on Oct 29, 2010 at 4:49 pm

The League of Women Voters has filed complaints with police in Evanston, IL and the FBI saying that one of their officials has been targeted by death threats relating to a candidatess debate she moderated last week. Kathy Tate-Bradish was a volunteer moderator at the October 21 debate in the state’s 8th District and sparked conservative outrage when she expressed what was perceived as “lukewarm” support for reciting the Pledge of Allegiance.

Just as the debate was about to begin, an audience member asked Tate-Bradish whether the pledge would be recited. When she “explained the pledge was not scheduled to begin the event, almost all in the crowd of more than 300 stood and enthusiastically recited it anyway.” Tate-Bradish recited the pledge as well, but told the crowd afterwards that the Pledge is not typically recited at candidate debates moderated by the League.

Within a few days, Tate-Bradish went from an unknown local League official to a right-wing villain, thanks to Fox News host Glenn Beck, who devoted a significant portion of his October 25 show to attacking her personally:

BECK: We wanted to look at the moderator, Kathy Tate-Bradish, from the League of Women Voters. Oh, she sounds so neutral and everything. I mean, she’s even neutral on the Pledge, apparently — just a typical woman voter trying to get the truth out. No, not so much — not so much.

She is on fire for Obama. She is a big-time Obama supporter. In fact, so much so, she’s part of his Organizing for America arm. Hmm. She’s even hosted campaign event in her home in 2007, part of her post on OFA’s, Organizing for America Web site, “Hope Action Change.”

Watch it:

The FBI told the Arlington Heights Daily Herald that Tate-Bradish’ complaint has been received and “is receiving due consideration.” League of Women Voters Illinois Executive Director Jan Czarnik, who filed the complaint, told the FBI that Tate-Bradish had been “turned into a cause celebre by Glenn Beck and Fox News.” Czarnik provided the FBI death threats posted on the Internet against Tate-Bradish, and “reported menacing posts on Fox News Channel’s Facebook page and Beck’s website, The Blaze.”

Joel Cheatwood, an executive who oversees Beck’s show, issued a statement yesterday saying, “We’re not going to comment on something that’s hypothetical as we have not heard about this complaint.”

For more on right-wing violence, see yesterday’s Progress Report.

Update

Mary Schaafsma, the issues and advocacy coordinator for the Illinois League, told ThinkProgress this afternoon that the only reason Tate-Bradish resisted reciting the Pledge was because it had not been included in the debate format, which the candidates had agreed to ahead of time, noting that the League has been doing candiate forums and debates like the one Beck highlighted “for decades.” She also said that following the threats, the League locked the doors to its Chicago offices for several days and alerted the building management of the possible threat. “I’ve been working in politics and nonprofits for a long long time and I never seen this level and pitch of vitriol,” she said.

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