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Economy

Louisiana Bill Would Make It Illegal For Cities To Require That Workers Have Paid Sick Days

By Pat Garofalo on May 25, 2012 at 6:40 pm

Last year, Gov. Scott Walker (R-WI) and Wisconsin’s Republican legislature approved a law making it illegal for Wisconsin’s cities to require that businesses provide their workers with paid sick days. Milwaukee had crafted a law mandating paid sick leave for workers within the city, but Walker and Wisconsin GOP nullified it. A judge, in ruling that the state had the ability to preempt Milwaukee’s law, said “I don’t feel real good about how this happened politically.”

Louisiana’s legislature is now considering a similar bill to preempt local efforts at requiring paid leave for workers, as Half in Ten and the National Partnership for Women and Families noted:

S.B. 521, legislation that would take away Louisianans’ right to enact local paid sick days policies, is about to be voted on by the House — one of the last steps to enactment. Currently, more than 600,000 workers in Louisiana don’t have paid sick days, and if this bill becomes law, cities and parishes would lose the chance ever to put common-sense paid sick days standards in place…Louisiana already prohibits municipalities from setting their own minimum wage and can’t afford another anti-worker policy.

Just a few cities in the country — Washington, D.C., San Francisco, and Seattle — along with the state of Connecticut require that workers receive paid sick leave. The United States is all alone in the industrialized world in not requiring some form of paid leave as a matter of national policy. Each year, the U.S. economy loses $180 billion in productivity due to sick employees attending work and infecting other workers.

Election

Former Republican Congresswoman Blasts Modern GOP, Laments Party’s Approach To Women’s Issues

By Josh Israel on May 25, 2012 at 5:38 pm

Former Rep. Connie Morella (R-MD)

Former Rep. Connie Morella (R-MD)

Over her eight terms as a Congresswoman from Maryland’s Eight District, Connie Morella earned a reputation one of the strongest voices for women’s rights and reproductive choice in the Republican Party. A bipartisan-minded moderate, she worked with members of both parties to shepherd the 2000 re-authorization of the Violence Against Women Act through the House with a 415 to 3 majority. Like former Sen. John Danforth (R-MO), she hardly recognizes her party today.

In an interview with ThinkProgress, Morella expressed disappointment with the anti-women voting record of the 24-member Republican Women’s Policy Committee and the lack of bipartisan House support for the Senate version of the Violence Against Women Act.

Among her observations:

On the GOP’s move to the right:
I think the [Republican] Party has moved more towards the right and it has become more solidified in terms of not offering opportunities for other voices to be heard. Look at [Indiana Republican Senate Nominee Richard] Mourdock’s statement when he proclaimed victory: I’m not going to give into them, they’re going to come over to me. The word compromise is not even in the lexicon, let alone an understanding of what it means.

On moderates in Congress:
I went to Harvard in 2008. My program’s theme was “An Endangered Species: A Moderate in the House of Representatives.” If I were to go back now, I think I’d have to say “An Extinct Species,” not endangered, extinct.

On the GOP-only Women’s Policy Committee:
I’ve always said that when you look at Congress, you had more bipartisanship with Congressional Caucus for Women’s Issues. The number of issues has gotten smaller… I was the prime sponsor in 2000 of the Violence Against Women Act, when it was reauthorized… On the floor, there was hardly a vote against it. And now, I don’t know why these women have been cornered, so to speak. Maybe they are motivated by the fact that this is an election year — and in a presidential election particularly, they want to act to counter the concept of the War on Women. That’s why they’re coming up with their own caucus, I suppose. I’ve always felt [the women's caucus] needed to be bipartisan… I think it’s a defensive attempt on the part of this caucus, because they’re concerned.

On a backlash for the GOP’s votes on women’s issues:
Women are a majority of the voting bloc. If they sense that some of the equities they worked so hard for are being taken away, you’ll see a backlash.

While she thinks the economy will be the biggest issue in the 2012 elections, she warns that if House Republicans insist on a Violence Against Women Act that says “except certain women,” it could hurt the party in November.

Morella says she’s disappointed with where the Republican Party has gone. “If I were there, I’d be one of the minorities voting against the party. There’s no big tent, not even a small tent. It collapsed.”

NEWS FLASH

Dozens Of GOP Congressional Candidates Refuse To Sign Anti-Tax Pledge | At least 27 Republican candidates promoted by the National Republican Congressional Committee have refused to sign the anti-tax pledge circulated by Americans for Tax Reform and its President, Grover Norquist, according to the Washington Post. 25 of those candidates are promoted by the NRCC as “‘Young Guns’ and ‘Contenders’ — the top rungs of a program highlighting promising candidates challenging Democrats or running in open seats.” The pledge asks Republican candidates to promise never to raise taxes for any reason, but Congressional Republicans have been wavering on it in increasing numbers over the last several months.

Related Posts

Election

Trump on Romney: ‘He’d Buy Companies, He’d Close Companies, He’d Get Rid Of Jobs’

By Judd Legum on May 25, 2012 at 5:19 pm

In the last few days, there has been a lively discussion about whether the Obama campaign’s critisims of Bain are “in bounds” or whether such criticism are outside the realm of acceptable political debate.

Mitt Romney, for his part, has said Obama’s criticism amounts to “attacking capitalism.”

Among those who hate capitalism, apparently, is Donald Trump. Last April, Trump described Romney’s experience at Bain as follows: “He’d buy companies, he’d close companies, he’d get rid of jobs.” Watch it:

Trump has subsequently become a prominent Romney surrogate and fundraiser. This week, Trump explained that, at the time of his critical comments he didn’t know Romney and has since come to “realize he’s a terrific guy.”

The Romney campaign has stuck by him even as he aggressively promotes birther conspiracy theories against Obama.

Romney’s tenure at Bain was also harshly criticized by Gov. Rick Perry and Newt Gingrich.

NEWS FLASH

Female Soldiers Sue For The Right To Fight On The Front Lines | Two female soldiers filed a lawsuit yesterday arguing that they have the constitutional right to fight on the front lines in combat. U.S. Army reservists Jane Baldwin and Ellen Haring say that the Constitution’s guarantee of equal protection if the law ensures that they cannot be discriminated against when it comes to combat duty. The military has already expanded some spots to women, but Baldwin and Haring are seeking full equality. They have named Defense Secretary Leon Panetta and other military officials as the defendants in their case.

Health

New Mexico Official Asked To Resign After Advocating Teens Use Condoms

By Amanda Peterson Beadle on May 25, 2012 at 5:10 pm

Erin Bouquin, New Mexico’s chief medical officer, said she was asked to resign after she promoted condom use in a TV interview as a way to slow the growth of sexually transmitted diseases among teenagers. An hour after her interview aired, Bouquin said she met with Health Department Secretary Catherine Torres and was asked to leave because she had not met the expectations of the state’s Republican governor.

The health department spokeswoman said there was no connection between the interview and Bouquin’s resignation, but Bouquin suspects otherwise because she said Gov. Susana Martinez (R-NM) favors abstinence-only sex education. “On the day I was asked to leave, I said the word condom three times on the news,” she told the Santa Fe New Mexican.

The governor’s office and health department denied any involvement in Bouquin’s resignation. Martinez’s spokesman Scott Darnell said in a statement that “the governor is a proponent of taking a balanced and multi-pronged approach to controlling the spread of sexually transmitted diseases; there is nothing in Dr. Bouquin’s interview that would conflict with that approach

New Mexico has the highest teen pregnancy rate in the nation, according to the Guttmacher Institute.

Alyssa

Songs for the Graduates In the Audience

By Alyssa Rosenberg on May 25, 2012 at 5:08 pm

The season of graduation is upon us, a time when those moving on to the next stage in their lives are deluged with cliche wisdom and even worse pop music. So to countervail all of that, here’s a reminder that growing up is awesome, you will stay in touch with all the right people (who mostly won’t be who you expect), and if all else fails, Beth Ditto will be there to bail you out.

First, a reminder: graduation is overhyped. People have been worrying about keeping friends and staying with their school significant others since the Paleolithic age, or at least since the Beach Boys were covering the Four Freshman a capella and having it count as pop music. You will survive, and the ties that endure will not be the ones you fret about the most:

Second piece of caution: fetishizing your youth is silly. Growing up is fantastic. You have more responsibilities, but also infinitely more freedom, and infinitely more sense of what you can do with it. Oh, who am I kidding. I just wanted to post this version of “Forever Young” that’s been turned into a Ron Paul-influenced screed about individual liberty:

But if you are worried, after hanging out with my best friend form high school in San Francisco, I can attest that Vitamin C was totally right that it is possible to stay in touch with folks, though good luck on the finding a job that won’t interfere with your tan thing. That may not be a reasonable thing to expect in your benefits package in this economy:

Blink-182 is criminally underrated. I sort of feel like “Going Away to College,” which acknowledges that you can both love someone and inevitably end up growing apart from them, should be mandatory listening for every high school senior in the country:

I would probably do almost anything that Baz Luhrmann told me to do, but Mary Schmich’s advice (often attributed to Kurt Vonnegut) is honestly dead-on, even if I recognized its value better in hindsight than I did when I heard it in middle school:

And for anyone for whom school wasn’t even close to the best year of their lives, Green Day has the perfect kiss-off:

Do people remember Semisonic? Does liking them make me an Old? Either way, as a follow-up to the whole life gets better when you grow up and go out into the world thing, “Closing Time” is a good reminder that sometimes a definitive, dignified exit is better than hanging around wishing that things wouldn’t have to change:

And Beth Ditto has just the anthem you need to move on to the next one:

Economy

Occupy Protesters Help Los Angeles Woman And Disabled Daughter Save Their Home From Bank Of America

By Pat Garofalo on May 25, 2012 at 4:25 pm

Last month, Bank of America foreclosed on a Los Angeles woman and her disabled daughter. Dima Rodriguez had spent thousands of dollars retrofitting her home to accommodate her daughter — who has cerebral palsy — and fell behind on her loan payments. Bank of America gave her a loan modification, and even though Rodriguez had made her trial modification payments for a year, the bank sold her house at auction, right out from under her.

However, Rodriguez and her daughter will get to stay in their home, thanks to some help from Occupy Wall Street protestors:

Desperate, Rodriguez contacted several community groups including Occupy Fights Foreclosures — the battle to save the Rodriguez home began. Suzanne O’Keeffe, with Occupy Fights Forclosures, says the bank didn’t treat the Rodriguez family right. She charged they not only didn’t fill out the proper paperwork to foreclose, they waited too long. [...]

Now, [Rodriguez] is determined not to look back. “It’s time to look forward,” Rodriguez said. “Thank God the bank listened.”

As ThinkProgress reported back in December, Bank of America is taking the Occupy movement’s foreclosure prevention actions seriously, warning employees to be prepared should Occupy make an appearance. Occupy protesters have successfully prevented foreclosures across the country, from Rochester to Minneapolis to Los Angeles.

Justice

AZ House Candidate Claims White Supremacist Endorsement Is Irrelevant Even Though It Was Renewed Last Week

By Tara Culp-Ressler on May 25, 2012 at 4:00 pm

GOP Candidate Jesse Kelly

Arizona House candidate Jesse Kelly (R) refused to discuss his endorsement from a white supremacist group during an interview with KGUN9 News this week, claiming the question about it was “completely out of bounds.”

When the anchor began to ask Kelly why he accepted the endorsement from political action group Americans for Legal Immigration PAC (ALIPAC), a controversial organization linked to neo-Nazi groups, Kelly’s campaign spokesman jumped in to cut her off, saying the question was “not unacceptable” because it was “not recent.” When the anchor persisted, Kelly echoed his spokesman’s sentiment:

KELLY: It was in 2010. This election is about jobs, and the economy, and lower gas prices. Frankly it’s completely out of bounds.

Watch it:

However, although both Kelly and his spokesman are referring to the endorsement from AILPAC during the 2010 race that Kelly ran against Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (D-AZ), the group actually renewed their endorsement of Kelly just last week. Kelly is currently running again to replace Giffords’ spot now that she is stepping down.

It’s unclear whether Kelly actively sought out the group’s endorsement, or whether he received it unsolicited. And, to be clear, Kelly should not be blamed for someone’s unsolicited decision to endorse him. He is accountable, however, for declining to distance himself from the group when given the opportunity to do so during the KGUN9 interview.

Security

Krauthammer: Obama Should Have Given ‘Weaponry’ To Non-Violent Iranian Democracy Movement

By Ali Gharib on May 25, 2012 at 3:59 pm

It is said that, to Washington’s neoconservative pundits, every problem looks a nail, and they have just the hammer: military force. Washington Post columnist and Fox News commentator Charles Krauthammer nicely encapsulated this concept last night on Bill O’Reilly’s show when he said that the U.S. should have sent “weaponry” to the pro-democracy movement that erupted in Iran after the fraudulent presidential elections of June 2009.

Krauthammer said that President Obama should have ramped up rhetoric against Iran during the brutal crackdown on the Green Movement — the distinctly non-violent protest movement born out of Mir Hossien Moussavi’s failed 2009 presidential campaign. And when O’Reilly asked what else Obama could have done, Krauthammer said he should have armed the protesters and order a covert war against Iran:

O’REILLY: But what else could he have done except rhetoric?

KRAUTHAMMER: Weaponry — he could have done a lot of things. Rhetoric is one thing and not to support the legitimacy of the regime. Clandestine operations. Why do we have $50 billion in secret operations in the CIA if not for an opportunity like this? He was hands off. He did nothing and we lost one of the great opportunities in history.

Watch the video:

Presumptive GOP presidential nominee Mitt Romney and his ideological comrades have made President Obama’s reaction to the 2009 post-election Iranian government crackdown on Green Movement demonstrators a centerpiece of their criticisms. Romney’s campaign issue page for Iran says Obama “refrained from supporting the nascent Green Movement.” In a Washington Post op-ed, Romney wrote that he would “speak out on behalf of the cause of democracy in Iran and support Iranian dissidents who are fighting for their freedom.”

In reality, Obama didn’t, as Krauthammer put it, “support the legitimacy of the [Iranian] regime.” Daniel Larison has pointed out that, when failed presidential candidate Rick Santorum made the same charge, that unlike many world governments, Obama never recognized the elections. Furthermore, Obama condemned the abuses against demonstrators that June.

But more to the point, one hopes that Romney does not conflate symbolic “fighting” for freedom with literal fighting. Unlike in Syria and Libya, the Green Movement in Iran never took up arms. As Ardeshir Amirarjmand, a top adviser to Moussavi now in exile in France, told an audience at MIT last year, “We do not have any other choice than a nonviolent path toward democracy.” Or, as University of Toronto professor Ramin Jahanbegloo put it, “The Green Movement faces a troubling situation, but it is banking on its strategy of nonviolence as moral capital.” Iranian human rights lawyer and Nobel Laureate Shirin Ebadi — who, like Iranian civil society as a whole, opposes attacking Iran — told ThinkProgress in 2010 that she disagreed with critics who said that Obama should have spoken more forcefully in support of the Green movement in June 2009.

Krauthammer worries that Obama is not doing enough to support Iran’s democracy movement. But it’s perfectly clear that the Green Movement doesn’t want the kind of support — weapons and covert war — that Krauthammer is offering.

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