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Controversial Kentucky Redistricting Effort Fuels Tensions, Prompts Assault Inside Capitol Building

By Adam Peck on Jan 25, 2012 at 7:50 pm

Stephen Trask is escorted out of the Capitol Building in Frankfort Kentucky. (Photo courtesy of Rikka Wallin)

On Tuesday, the Kentucky state senate voted to approve shifting progressive Democrat State Senator Kathy Stein’s district to the northeast of the Lexington constituency that elected her in 2008. Because of Kentucky’s residency requirements, Stein won’t even be able to run for reelection in her new district, forcing her out of the senate when her term expires at the end of the year until at least 2014. Lexington’s new senator is Dorsey Ridley, who lives 200 miles outside of the district he now represents.

Opponents of the decision called the redistricting a “travesty” and “unprecedented,” and after a heated debate on the senate floor during an open session, tempers poured out into the hallways outside.

Stephen Schwartz, a Kentucky resident who also goes by Stephen Trask, confronted Republican State Senate President David Williams in a hallway after the session. In response, eyewitnesses say, a doorman for Senator Williams grabbed Trask by the neck—twice—and police officers forcefully escorted other protestors out of the building.

“Within a split second, someone dressed in a suit lunged at Stephen and had his hands around his throat,” said April Browning, an eyewitness who was in the gallery in support of the senator who was affected by the redistricting.

Senate Majority Leader Robert Stivers told police and local media he witnessed Trask first grab doorman John Barton by the neck, but that recollection was strongly disputed by Browning and two other eyewitnesses, Rikka Wallin and Karen Conley.

“It’s a total lie,” said Wallin. “That’s an outright lie,” echoed Conley, who organized the protest on Facebook. “I have never seen anything like this in my life.” Both women also reported being shoved and pushed by officers who responded to the scene

A related yet independent rally held by Occupy Lexington and the progressive group Kentuckians for the Commonwealth took place outside the capitol building earlier in the day, and some attendees also reported aggression by capitol police.

“At least a couple of folks not involved in the confrontation with Sen. Williams said they were treated roughly by the police and essentially shoved out,” said Jerry Hardt, the Communications Director for Kentuckians for the Commonwealth in an email to Think Progress. “We know of at least one other person who said she was similarly mistreated.”

Climate Progress

ConocoPhillips Announces $3.4 Billion in Q4 Profits — Bringing 2011 Profits to $12.4 Billion

By Climate Guest Blogger on Jan 25, 2012 at 7:31 pm

by Noreen Nielsen

This morning, ConocoPhillips announced its 2011 fourth-quarter earnings, reporting profits of $3.4 billion — a 66 percent gain– bringing total profits in 2011 to $12.4 billion. Below is a quick look at some other facts about ConocoPhillips:

Chevron Corp. plans to release its quarterly figures on Friday, followed by Exxon Mobil Corp. and Royal Dutch Shell next week.

Alyssa

Super Bowl Players Should Stand Up For Indiana Workers

By Travis Waldron on Jan 25, 2012 at 6:37 pm

Tom Brady (left) and Osi Umenyiora

Last July, Major League Baseball blew an opportunity to make a difference. With 28 players who were either Hispanic or of Hispanic descent participating in the league’s annual All-Star Game in Phoenix, Arizona, and the eyes of the sports world watching, nary a one spoke out against the radical anti-immigration law Arizona had passed a year before, even though it could have directly affected the players and will directly affect many of their fans. “I ain’t Jackie Robinson,” David Ortiz, one of baseball’s biggest characters, said.

Over the next 10 days, the National Football League will have a similar chance to make a difference.

Just two weeks before Super Bowl XLVI kicks off at Lucas Oil Field in Indianapolis, more than 10,000 people marched through the city to protest right-to-work legislation that is being pushed through the state’s legislature. The legislation passed the state Senate this week and the state House today, and is backed by Gov. Mitch Daniels (R). Considering the NFL nearly lost its 2011 season, and Super Bowl XLVI with it, to a labor dispute, Indiana Republicans’ assault on workers is a cause the players should be familiar with.

Fortunately, there are signs that the NFL players aren’t going to repeat Major League Baseball’s mistake. Several players have spoken out against the legislation, and NFL Players Association President DeMaurice Smith said his organization is already taking action. “We’ve been on picket lines in Indianapolis already with hotel workers who were basically pushed to the point of breaking on the hotel rooms that they had to clean because they were not union workers,” Smith told the Nation. “We’ve been on picket lines in Boston and San Antonio. So, the idea of participating in a legal protest is something that we’ve done before.”

That’s a good first step. But it’s not enough. Indiana union officials are contemplating disrupting Super Bowl-related events to draw attention to their cause, clogging city streets and slowing down events around Lucas Oil Stadium (which was built and is maintained by union workers). Labor leaders are hesitant, though, fearing that such actions could give the city and their cause “a black eye” with people who think sports and politics don’t mix. If some of the league’s top players, particularly those participating in the Super Bowl, spoke in support of those efforts, however, that perception could change.

New England Patriots quarterback Tom Brady, one of the NFL’s most recognizable players, felt strongly enough about his own rights that he signed on as a plaintiff in the players’ antitrust lawsuit against the league last year. So did Logan Mankins, Brady’s teammate, and Osi Umenyiora, a prominent defensive end for the New York Giants. Those players were willing to risk backlash from the league, public scrutiny, and their own images to fight league owners for better benefits and wages. In the week leading up to the Super Bowl, they should do the same for workers who don’t have the luxury of multimillion-dollar contracts, rich endorsement deals, and the good fortune of playing a game for a living.

Sure, with Super Bowl week ahead of them, political causes may be the furthest thing from the minds of most players. But with thousands of reporters conducting hundreds of interviews before, during, and after the big game, the players will have the chance to stand up for the rights of people they should be fighting for. Unlike their counterparts in baseball, they shouldn’t blow it.

NEWS FLASH

Gingrich Pledges To Establish Permanent Base On The Moon ‘By The End Of My Second Term’ | In a speech pandering to Florida’s aerospace community ahead of the state’s primary, GOP contender Newt Gingrich made a bold pledge to establish a permanent U.S. base on the moon “by the end of my second term.” He further promised that if he becomes president, America will get a man to Mars “in a remarkably short time.” A budget-conscious President Obama ended the program for a lunar colony and moon trip after NASA reported it didn’t have the money for any part of the plan, “and even if it were to get a budget infusion, the schedule was unworkable.” Gingrich rebutted the charge that he is “grandiose” by comparing himself to Abraham Lincoln, the Wright Brothers and John F. Kennedy. ThinkProgress has previously reported on Gingrich’s curious space fetish, which has included an idea for a “mirror system in space could provide the light equivalent of many full moons” for nighttime driving.

Watch it:

By Marie Diamond on Jan 25, 2012 at 6:07 pm

Climate Progress

Figs In Boston: New Plant Hardiness Zones Reflect Dramatic Global Warming

By Brad Johnson on Jan 25, 2012 at 6:06 pm

The Department of Agriculture’s plant hardiness maps are finally reflecting a fact that gardeners have already realized — the United States is changing dramatically with global warming pollution. The USDA released a new plant hardiness zone map to replace the 1990 map, reflecting twenty years of rapid global warming:

The 1990 map was based on temperatures from 1974 to 1986, the new map from 1976 to 2005. The nation’s average temperature from 1976 to 2005 was two-thirds of a degree higher than it was during the old time period, according to the National Climatic Data Center.

The new map is generally one half-zone warmer than the previous map throughout much of the United States. Cities as varied as Boston, Honolulu, St. Louis, Des Moines, Iowa, St. Paul, Minnesota, and Fairbanks, Alaska, are in newer, warmer zones. Almost all of Ohio, Nebraska and Texas are in warmer zones.

The Washington Post quoted several experts who noted the new map, whose changes in hardiness zones are based on rising minimum temperatures across the nation, isn’t news to gardeners.

Boston University biology professor Richard Primack:

People who grow plants are well aware of the fact that temperatures have gotten more mild throughout the year, particularly in the wintertime.

George Ball, chairman and CEO of the seed company W. Atlee Burpee:

Climate change, which has been in the air for a long time, is not big news to gardeners.

Stanford University biology professor Terry Root:

It is great that the federal government is catching up with what the plants themselves have known for years now: The globe is warming and it is greatly influencing plants (and animals).

Vaughn Speer, an 87-year-old master gardener in Ames, Iowa, said he has seen redbud trees, appear ten miles north of their traditional limit in recent years. Our nation’s forests are dying with the changes. Lodgepole pines, aspens, walnut trees, and other dominant species adapted to a climate without greenhouse pollution are already suffering in our hotter planet.

In coming decades, the rate of global warming will increase significantly, a result of the rapid rise in fossil fuel pollution, making it ever more difficult for plants to adapt, and destabilizing all of our nation’s ecosystems.

NEWS FLASH

Crowds Gather In Tahrir Square To Mark One-Year Anniversary Of Egyptian Uprising | Tens of thousands of Egyptians massed in Cairo’s Tahrir Square today, marking the one-year anniversary of protests which ultimately toppled Hosni Mubarak’s 30-year rule. One year later, activists demand an end to military rule and expressed distrust with the military council that took control on February 11 following Mubarak’s resignation.

Mohamed Abd El-Ghany/Reuters

By Eli Clifton on Jan 25, 2012 at 5:37 pm

Economy

Predatory Payday Lenders Threaten Missouri Churches For Circulating Petition In Favor Of New Regulation

By Marie Diamond on Jan 25, 2012 at 5:25 pm

As ThinkProgress has reported, millions of struggling Americans have resorted to taking out payday loans in a desperate attempt to pay for unexpected expenses. But too often the loan is a trap for borrowers who are stuck in a cycle of loan “churning,” paying off exorbitant interest costs for years.

Now, Faith in Public Life reports that payday lending companies are trying to intimidate churches in Kansas City, Missouri that are educating their communities about the dangers of these loans. The Kansas City Star describes threatening letters that suggest church members could face prison time for circulating a petition in favor of a ballot initiative that would cap payday loan interest rates at 36 percent:

The letter from the Texas law firm, Anthony & Middlebrook, advised churches in bold letters that “strict statutes carrying criminal penalties apply to the collection of signatures for an initiative petition.”

That’s true, of course, if one distributes a false affidavit or signs someone else’s name to a petition. No one has accused the payday loan opponents of doing any of those things.

The letter also warns churches that their tax-exempt status could be threatened if they engage in lobbying or attempts to influence legislation. The letter interprets “influencing legislation” to include “supporting or encouraging action with respect to the (payday lending) petition.”

That is intimidation, pure and simple.

The law firm represents a campaign committee that has already raised $850,000 to stop the initiative petition regulating payday lenders. They’ve insisted the menacing letters were simply intended as an “educational tool.”

Forty-four percent of payday loan borrowers ultimately default, even after paying back their loans several times over, pushing them even closer to poverty. Payday lending has ballooned to a $7 billion industry by charging interest rates as high as 1,950 percent, which is still allowed under current law in many states.

Alyssa

Please Let ABC’s Lawmaker Roomies Comedy Base A Character On Barney Frank

By Alyssa Rosenberg on Jan 25, 2012 at 5:22 pm

Given the press attention given to representatives who share group houses in Washington, I’m actually sort of shocked that no one’s greenlit a movie or television show along those lines. Until now: Arianna Huffington*, seizing yet another obvious opportunity, has sold a show based on a group of lawmakers rooming together to ABC.

This is the second political show ABC’s investing in. The first, Shonda Rhimes’ Scandal, which I’d describe as Revenge set in Washington, premieres this spring, and from the episodes I’ve seen, is soapy and dramatic and, despite its inaccuracies, really fun. Given that Greg Malins, who’s the executive producer for How I Met Your Mother, is working with Huffington on this, I’d expect that this show will be a little less over the top, though he is saying things like, “There is no better time to do a show about Washington,” Malinssaid. “It’s such a dynamic place right now, it’s the coolest placein the universe,” and apparently of the three main characters, “One is swept up in the movement of change and goes to D.C. to make a difference; one has been in politics for a long time; and one is a master of the media and sound bites.”

While these are cliches, I think the set-up has the potential to do something important: look at legislators as people. Ideology and policy are important, and I certainly spend a lot of my time complaining about shows that are afraid to name lawmakers’ political parties, or that focus on rhetoric instead of substance. But being a legislator is a deeply weird thing. You’re away from your family and the people you represent for a lot of the time. You live a deeply managed existence, one in which there’s always more information than you can possibly consume and process in a reasonable way coming at you. This is not a good setup to produce sane, balanced people, much less sane, balanced legislation, and that’s worth examining. Plus, Washington is full of super-wacky people who would make for a great sitcom. If one of these lawmakers ends up being based on Barney Frank, I will be so happy.

*I keep forgetting her ex-husband Michael is a movie producer. I saw Save the Date, which his company put out, at Sundance. Review to come.

Health

The War On A Woman’s Right To Choose, 2012 Edition

By Tanya Somanader on Jan 25, 2012 at 5:20 pm

2011 was a banner year for anti-choice activists who succeeded in pushing through a record number of abortion restrictions. But it’s a new year, and it appears the GOP is dead set on outdoing itself. Republicans in Congress and across the country are introducing a variety pack of extreme anti-abortion bills — including personhood initiatives, heartbeat bills, and fetal pain bills — that saw some success last year. Here is a run-down of the abortion restrictions American women across the country are already facing in the first month of 2012:

– PERSONHOOD: The Virginia General Assembly’s very first bill, House Bill 1, is a “personhood” measure that defines life as beginning at conception and would essentially outlaw abortions. Modeling it on Mississippi’s failed measure, Virginia Republicans threaten to outlaw birth control and in vitro fertilization for couples trying to have a baby. Anti-choice activists hope to push similar measures in at least 11 other states, including Ohio and Kansas.

– RACE-BASED ABORTIONS: Following in Arizona’s footsteps, Florida Republicans introduced a bill that would “require abortion providers to sign an affidavit stating they’re not performing the procedure because the woman did not want a child of a particular gender or race.” Despite a complete lack of evidence, they insist that minority women are seeking abortions, or have a higher abortion rate in their communities, because they loathe the race of the fetus.

– FETAL PAIN: Florida Republicans are simultaneously pushing a bill that prohibits abortion after 20 weeks based on the unfounded idea that fetuses can feel pain. “They suck their thumbs,” said state sponsor Rep. Daniel Davis (R). “They get hiccups. They get excited when their mom talks. They feel pain.” The medical community, however, insists that it is highly unlikely the fetus registers pain as its brain is not developed enough. U.S. Rep. Trent Franks (R-AZ) introduced the same measure to ban post-20 week abortions for women in Washington, D.C in order to protect a fetus from “the agonizing process of being aborted.”

– HEARTBEAT BILL: While a more radical heartbeat bill is slowly proceeding in Ohio, another kind of “heartbeat” bill is also gaining a foothold in the Oklahoma legislature. State Sen. Dan Newberry (R) and state Rep. Pam Peterson (R) filed companion measures that “require abortion providers to use a fetal heart rate monitor on the fetus of a woman who is at least eight weeks pregnant and make the heartbeat of the unborn child audible before an abortion is performed.” The heartbeat can often be detected as early as “six to seven weeks,” before a women even knows she is pregnant.

House GOP Reps. Jeff Duncan (R-SC) and Jim Jordan (R-OH) are also pushing their own anti-abortion bills in Congress. Duncan’s bill would “require abortion providers to obtain written certification from a woman seeking an abortion, then to wait 24 hours after that certification before performing the abortion.” Jordan’s bill would “require women seeking an abortion to be given the chance to view an ultrasound of their unborn child before obtaining the abortion.”

NEWS FLASH

Ann Romney Says It’s Unfortunate That They Had To Release Tax Returns | MIAMI, Florida — Mitt Romney’s campaign finally released two years of tax returns yesterday after weeks of refusals and equivocation. Presidential candidates from both parties have released their returns for over 50 years — Romney’s father, George, released 12 years worth. But Romney resisted, and apparently his wife was not too happy about it either. At an event at Freedom Tower in Miami this afternoon, Ann Romney said “unfortunately” the world now knows how “successful in business” Romney has been. Watch it:

By Alex Seitz-Wald on Jan 25, 2012 at 5:15 pm

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