BREAKING: Undercover Investigation Confirms Bachmann Clinic Provides Discredited, Damaging ‘Ex-Gay’ Therapy

By Josh Dorner on Jul 8, 2011 at 9:04 pm

An undercover investigation from a staff member of the organization Truth Wins Out has revealed that the clinic run by Dr. Marcus Bachmann, husband of Republican presidential hopeful Michele Bachmann, is providing discredited “ex-gay” reparative therapy. Dr. Marcus Bachmann has been under intense scrutiny in recent weeks, after a ThinkProgress report documenting his past comments referring to gays as ”barbarians” and an NBC News report that revealed Bachmann and Associates had taken $137,000 in federal Medicaid funds over the past five years despite Michele Bachmann’s strident anti-government stance. John Becker of Truth Wins Out, who went undercover at Bachmann & Associates, writes:

Based on my experiences at Bachmann & Associates, there can no longer be any doubt that Marcus Bachmann’s state- and federally-funded clinic endorses and practices reparative therapy aimed at changing a gay person’s sexual orientation, despite the fact that such “therapy” is widely discredited by the scientific and medical communities. It’s time for Michele and Marcus Bachmann to stop denying, dodging, and stonewalling. They owe it to all Americans to provide a full and honest explanation for their embrace of these dangerous and fraudulent practices.

The scrutiny of the Bachmanns’ extreme anti-gay views has only increased in the past 24 hours, following Bachmann’s decision to sign an extreme anti-gay, anti-Muslim pledge put forward a key Iowa group, the Iowa FAMiLY Leader.

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Politics

Following Controversy Over Pledge, Family Leader Clarifies Anti-Porn Statement

By Ian Millhiser on Jul 8, 2011 at 7:00 pm

GOP presidential candidates Michele Bachmann and Rick Santorum both signed a candidate pledge by the influential social conservative group THE FAMiLY LEADER which ThinkProgress, ABC, the Washington Post, the New York Daily News, Slate, and numerous other news outlets read to call for a blanket ban on all pornography.

The pledge’s language lumps “all forms of pornography” in with a list of items that a candidate is asked to oppose. Specifically, here’s what the language commits a candidate to:

Humane protection of women and the innocent fruit of conjugal intimacy — our next generation of American children — from human trafficking, sexual slavery, seduction into promiscuity, and all forms of pornography and prostitution, infanticide, abortion and other types of coercion or stolen innocence.

THE FAMiLY LEADER’s head Bob Vander Plaats has reacted to the growing controversy about his pledge by backing away from its plain meaning. Today, he claimed, “We are not calling for a nationwide band [sic] on pornography,” and that the pledge is really intended “to imply opposition to women being forced into pornography or prostitution.”

Although Mr. Vander Plaats’ interpretation of his pledge’s language is not consistent with the text as written, we accept that Vander Plaats now believes that his organization was merely calling for a ban on forced participation in pornography and not a ban on all pornography. It is unclear whether Bachmann and Santorum share Vander Plaats’ idiosyncratic reading of this language, or if they believed they were endorsing a ban on all pornography.

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Economy

Santorum Calls For Reductions In Federal Support For Higher Education

By Travis Waldron on Jul 8, 2011 at 6:30 pm

Presidential candidate and former Sen. Rick Santorum (R-PA) called for reductions in federal funding for higher education Wednesday, saying that support should be transferred to states instead. The Daily Iowan, the University of Iowa’s student newspaper, reports:

Former U.S. Sen. Rick Santorum said Wednesday that the federal government should reduce higher-education funding and leave that support to states.

Speaking to Kirkwood Community College officials and eastern Iowa business leaders on the Kirkwood campus on the fourth day of a tour around the state, the GOP presidential nomination-hopeful said colleges ought to partner with local businesses to prep grads for the workforce.

Santorum is apparently ignoring the reality facing many states, which have reduced funding for state colleges and universities in the face of growing budget deficits. In California, for example, legislators slashed millions of dollars from the University of California and California State systems, forcing those schools to raise tuition. As Washington Monthly noted today, public universities in 11 states saw their states reduce support by more than 5 percent this year.

While Santorum wants federal benefit reductions, tuition is skyrocketing across the country, and the amount of student debt accrued during a four-year degree program continues to increase. At Penn State University, Santorum’s alma mater, the average graduate in the class of 2007 left the university with more than $26,000 in debt.

Cutting federal support for public colleges and universities may sound like a good idea in Santorum’s small government world, but those cuts will inevitably get passed down to states — and, more importantly, to students — who are already falling behind an increasingly expensive higher education system.

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Climate Progress

GOP Pushes Bill Giving Czarlike Powers To Department Of Homeland Security To Pollute And Desecrate

By Public Lands Team on Jul 8, 2011 at 6:27 pm

By Jessica Goad, manager of research and outreach, Public Lands Project, Center for American Progress Action Fund.

Regions of United States covered by HR 1505. Pew Environment Group

Forty Republicans in the House of Representatives are promoting a bill that would allow the secretary of homeland security to permanently waive all or part of 36 laws on both public and private lands within 100 miles of any U.S. border or coast. Some of the laws waived by H.R. 1505, the “National Security and Federal Lands Protection Act,” are strictly public health laws, like the Clean Air Act, the Safe Drinking Water Act, and the Superfund law. Others are environmental, such as the National Environmental Policy Act, the Clean Water Act, and the Endangered Species Act. Two-thirds of the American population lives in the areas covered by this bill, because most major cities are along the borders and coasts.

Further, H.R. 1505 could give the Department of Homeland Security complete authority over public lands across the entire United States. It would allow DHS to undertake any activities on public lands the secretary deems necessary for border security, such as building fences and roads, installing monitoring equipment, and instigating closures—all without any opportunity for public comment or judicial review.

During a press conference earlier this morning before a hearing on the bill, Representatives Ed Markey (D-MA), Raul Grijalva (D-AZ), and John Garamendi (D-CA) spoke to the overreach of this bill:

This bill waives the Clean Water Act. We will not keep undocumented workers out of the country by letting pollution into our drinking water. The bill waives the Clean Air Act. We will not keep illegal drugs out of our country by letting smog into the lungs of children and the elderly in our country. The bill waives the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act. We will not honor our national sovereignty by trampling the sovereign rights of native people to protect the grave sites of their ancestors. The bottom line is, we will not prevent illegal entry into this country by degrading the quality of life for nearly two-thirds of the people who already live here.

Watch it:

It’s unclear what exactly this bill would mean on the ground, because so much is left to the discretion of the secretary of homeland security. But it is almost certain that recreation activities on public lands—hunting, fishing, hiking, off-road vehicle use, beach access—etc. could be cut off without any notice on the whim of one agency. Many favorite places on public lands could be closed, like the Superior National Forest, Glacier National Park, and Cape Cod National Seashore.

Perhaps most astoundingly is that the Administrative Procedures Act could be rolled back for lands within the 100-mile zone. This act governs every administrative agency in our country, keeps agencies from enacting regulations that are arbitrary and capricious, and also allows for judicial review of regulations. Without this act in place, our country’s checks and balances system would be extremely compromised.

Real solutions to border security are complex and varied, but certainly mean ensuring a strong budget for security and border patrol. Republicans cut the budget for the Department of Homeland Security by 6.8 percent in their H.R. 1 spending bill, including a drastic 65 percent cut below the president’s request for state and local homeland security grant programs which fund disaster assistance, major emergencies, and first responders to terrorist attacks. Instead of funding these programs, conservative lawmakers in the House have offered a bill that Garamendi called “the epitome of stupidity” and former Solicitor (General Counsel) of the U.S. Department of the Interior John Leshy called “the most breathtakingly extreme legislative proposal of its kind I have ever seen.”

Climate Progress

As Food Prices Hover at Historic Highs, Extreme Weather and Asian Demand are Poised to Boost Prices Even Higher

By Energy Interns on Jul 8, 2011 at 5:53 pm

After peaking in February, food prices have stayed at historic highs.

Food prices are climbing back to historic levels, the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) reports. Prices increased by 1.3% in June due to worries over bad sugar harvests from “a spell of two months without rain.”

Food prices are poised to increase:

Goldman Sachs said it expected further increases in a wide range of commodity prices this year and into 2012 – in food, as well as energy and metals – on the back of strong demand from Asia.

However, Goldman is confident that now is a good time to get back into commodities. “We expect this [Asian] demand growth will be sufficient to tighten key commodity markets over the next six to 12 months, particularly for those markets where supply constraints will become binding even on slower economic growth,” said Jeffrey Currie, Goldman’s global head of commodities research.

In other words, expect more food shortages and high prices. This is good for investors, but bad for the world’s poorest people. The World Bank estimates that these record highs are pushing tens of millions more people into poverty:

Politics

The FAMiLY Leader’s Marriage Pledge Says Unwed Slaves Preferable Parents For African-Americans

By Zack Ford on Jul 8, 2011 at 5:43 pm

The FAMiLY LEADER’s 14-point marriage pledge for presidential candidates references various historic anecdotes to contextualize its principles. The very first point it makes, however, suggests the group didn’t quite do all their history research:

Slavery had a disastrous impact on African-American families, yet sadly a child born into slavery in 1860 was more likely to be raised by his mother and father in a two-parent household than was an African-American baby born after the election of the USA’s first African-American President.

While the laws governing slavery varied from state to state, one point was consistent: slaves were property and could not be party to a contract, including a marriage contract. This meant that no slave unions were legally recognized, and even the Emancipation Proclamation (January 1, 1863) did not change this. For example, the 1860 District of Columbia’s Slavery Code dictated that ministers shall not “join in marriage any negro whatsoever or mulatto slave with any white person” (Sec. 56 on p. 19). Slaveowners encouraged slaves to couple (so as to reproduce free new slaves) and slaves certainly held religious marriage ceremonies, but those marriages had no legal validity. Owners had no obligation to respect them or even keep married couples together on the same plantation. Most importantly, as Baratunde Thurston points out, children born into slavery were the property of their master.

In footnote 8(1) of the pledge, The FAMiLY LEADER notes their “never disproven” belief that the health and well-being of children is “best upheld” through “legal marriage, especially faithful monogamy, as between only one man and one woman.”

Essentially, The FAMiLY LEADER has used its marriage pledge to suggest an exception for African-American children — that not only were they better off born into slavery, they were also better off having unwed parents.

Since the pledge was released yesterday, GOP presidential hopefuls Rep. Michele Bachmann (MN) and former Sen. Rick Santorum (PA) are the only two candidates to have signed it.

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NEWS FLASH

House Bill Increases Defense Spending By $17B Over Current Levels | The Republican-controlled House of Representatives passed a defense appropriations bill for $649 billion — a $17 billion increase over last year’s spending — amid intense pressure to slash the nearly trillion and a half dollar deficit. The bill includes $199 billion for the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, $9.2 billion for new aircraft, and $15.1 billion for new naval ships. Nuclear weapons spending and military construction — totaling $33 billion — were not included. The Senate is expected to take up the military budget in the next several weeks.

Yglesias

Reduce The Debt By Selling Congressional Parking Lots

By Matthew Yglesias on Jul 8, 2011 at 5:29 pm

I’ve long been infuriated by the quantity of valuable DC land currently being used as surface parking lots for congressional staff. But exactly how much free parking is there? Lydia DePillis reports that it’s a secret:

Seriously: After taking note of the many expanses of concrete available for Hill staffers across the Capitol complex, I asked the Committee on House Administration how many parking spaces it oversees, and how many permits it hands out (each office gets a certain number to divvy up). Apparently, that information would imperil the security of…I’m not sure what exactly. But something.

Selling this land to developers would reduce the national debt in a non-austerity kind of way. Rather than sucking economic activity out of the economy, it would spur activity as at least some of the land would be put to use as construction sites. Much of it would presumably continue to be used as parking lots for a while, with market rate pricing. Meanwhile, congressional staff can get metro passes if we want to give them some kind of free transit benefit.

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Economy

GOP Senator Claims Ratings Agencies Are With Him On Debt Ceiling — Agencies Disagree

By Alex Seitz-Wald on Jul 8, 2011 at 5:20 pm

Throughout negotiations over whether to raise the debt ceiling, Republicans have maintained that it would be worse to raise the limit without significant spending cuts than to not raise the limit and risk the country’s first-ever default. This is, of course, not true.

Sen. Roy Blunt (R-MO) made the rounds of local media outlets today to push the GOP message, but ran into some trouble with the facts when he claimed that credit rating agencies like Standard & Poor agree with Republicans during a radio interview with KTRS in St. Louis:

BLUNT: If you read any of the rating agencies — Standard & Poor and the other agencies — they don’t say we’re in trouble because of the debt ceiling or that we might default, they say we’re in trouble and we could be downgraded as an economy to invest in, in our bonds and everything, because we’re spending way too much money relative to our abilities to produce goods and resources.

Listen here:

In fact, the exact opposite is true:

Standard & Poor’s would cut the U.S. credit rating to its lowest level and Moody’s Investors Service said it will probably reduce its ranking if the government fails to increase the debt limit, leading to a default.

S&P would lower its sovereign top-level AAA ranking to D, the last rung on its scale if the U.S. can’t pay its debt, John Chambers, chairman of the company’s sovereign rating committee, said today. Moody’s said it would probably assign a position in the Aa range, or within three steps of its highest level.

An executive for the third major rating agency, Fitch, told Rueters, “If we reach the second of August without a lifting of the debt ceiling, Fitch would assign a rating watch negative to the U.S. sovereign ratings.”

When facts get in the way of the narrative, Blunt just changes the facts. Meanwhile, several Republican lawmakers, including House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan (R-WI), have suggested that default would actually be good for the U.S., despite the credit rating agencies’ dire warnings.

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Alyssa

Eve Myles on ‘Torchwood: Miracle Day,’ Gwen Cooper as a Mother, and Why Gwen and Captain Jack Should Never Get Together

By Alyssa Rosenberg on Jul 8, 2011 at 5:18 pm

Eve Myles, as Gwen Cooper, with John Barrowman as Captain Jack Harkness.

When Torchwood: Miracle Day returns to television tonight, Gwen Cooper will have to come out of retirement from Torchwood to save the world—and the health care system—when everyone on Earth suddenly becomes unable to die. I talked to Eve Myles, the actress who plays Gwen, about what this season of Torchwood has to say about leadership and David Cameron, what it’s like to play an action star who’s also a mother, and why Gwen and Captain Jack Harkness should never get together (though she previews a big scene between the two later this season).

I’ll be recapping Miracle Day for the rest of this season, but this post will function as an open thread for tonight’s episode. A fuller review of the show, with particular attention to its healthcare implications is here. And I’ll be curious to hear what y’all think about Torchwood‘s move to America, and the health care storyline that forms the core of this season.

Obviously transporting Torchwood from Wales to the U.S. is a big shift. How did it change your experience of the show? What about the experience of having a team that’s a blend of old Torchwood members and American intelligence officers?

Well, I mean, initially, I’m playing the same character, so that’s always a help. So I didn’t have to delve into a different pair of shoes. It’s just the surroundings and the situation have changed. The way it’s written is Gwen is finding it all quite awkward…It was just something that we had to do with the series this year. If we’re going to top Children of Earth, we have to make it bigger and better, and the only way to do that was to bring it to the United States. We wanted to make it a blockbuster, and hopefully, that’s what we did.

You’ve got all these individuals with very strong personalities. We’ve been asked constantly about us having a bigger budget and it beging more of an explosive series, because it is aesthetically better, no doubt. But the most engrossing part of the drama is when you’ve got all the individuals under one roof sitting around a table talking to each other.

The main story in Miracle Day’s also quite explicitly political—at least, coming off of health care reform, it’s going to seem that way to American audiences. Do you think it’ll resonate in the UK in the same way?

Well, I think there’s all sorts of resonances in there. There’s so much politics being written into this story…Obviously, with us having a new PM, and David Cameron being so young, it’s all about decision-making. And what the humans do to each other to get by, and it’s disgrace.

Well, and even sex is political. I was particularly struck by that scene in the third episode where Jack and the guy from the bar talk about whether you have to use protection if no one’s going to die.

If you ask people, if the universe is going to end in 24 hours, so many people would say I’d get drunk, and I’d have sex, and I’d do crazy things, and I’d have a wonderful time. But the reality of it is, is if you do get hurt, if you catch a dreadful disease, you have to live with it for eternity. It doesn’t go away. They don’t stop hurting, or being in a terrible kind of state. If you’re involved in something that happens to you because of something you’ve done to yourself, or you’ve had that one-night stand, actually there is a consequence to everything you do. It’s highlighting you have to take care of yourself, because these things do last forever.

Initially, you think it’s a good thing. But you start scratching the surface on it and it’s a curse.
Read more

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