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Health

Local Tea Party Leader: ‘I Hope The Supreme Court Justices Get Colon Cancer’

By Igor Volsky on Jun 30, 2012 at 12:00 pm

Conservatives have had a series of extreme reactions to the Supreme Court’s Thursday decision to uphold the constitutionality of Obamacare’s individual health care mandate: from charging that Chief Justice John Roberts’s epilepsy medication caused him to support the majority opinion, to calling for an armed rebellion against the Court.

Now, the Merrimack Patch reports that a Tea Party leader in New Hampshire is wishing cancer on the justices:

Former Town Councilor Mike Malzone, the founder of the Merrimack Tea Party, said Thursday in a Facebook post reacting to the Supreme Court ruling on health care, “I hope the (5 supremes) get colon cancer.”

A day after posting the message, Malzone said he stands by what he said. He clarified that he doesn’t want anyone to die, and the cancer reference was more to make a point that he wants them to feel the pain being inflicted on Americans being overburdened by taxes.

“I didn’t wish for anyone to die, but I said I do wish for them to feel our pain,” he said. “No one cares about me, they all make their promises and then go do what they goddamn feel.”

Malzone later apologized for his heated rhetoric, saying in part, “I can’t believe how angry I was. But it is what it is. I apologized to Merrimack Tea followers for my language.”

Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who joined the majority opinion, was diagnosed with colon cancer in 1999 and had pancreatic cancer ten years later.

Climate Progress

NBC Meteorologist On Record Heat Wave: ‘If We Did Not Have Global Warming, We Wouldn’t See This’

By Joe Romm on Jun 30, 2012 at 11:43 am

Tweet of the heat wave, from the National Weather Service:

It is friggin’ hot!

How hot is it? It’s so hot that all-time records are being set in June: “Nashville has reached its hottest temperature on record…109 degrees at 314 pm. The previous all time record was 107 from July 27th and 28th of 1952.”

UPDATE: Meteorologist Dr. Jeff Masters has more all-time heat records:

109° Columbia, SC (old record 107° on two previous occasions)
109° Cairo, IL (old record 106° on 8/9/1930)
108° Paducah, KY (ties same on 7/17/1942
106° Chattanooga, TN (ties same on 7/28/1952)
105° Raleigh, NC (ties same on 8/21/2007 and 8/18/1988)
105° Greenville, SC (old record 104° 8/10/2007 although 106° was recorded by the Signal Service in July 1887)
104° Charlotte, NC (ties same on 8/9 and 10/2007 and 9/6/1954)
102° Bristol, TN (ties same on 7/28/1952-this site now known as `Tri-State Airport’)
109° Athens, GA. This is just 1° shy of the Georgia state record for June of 110° set at Warrenton in 1959.

Here is a great graphic via Capital Climate:

The U.S. surface temperature map from Unisys at 4 pm, June 29,2012, shows 100° temperatures stretching almost continuously from California eastward to the Carolinas.

NBC Meteorologist Bill Karins said on Friday , “We’ve never really seen a heat wave like this in the month of June.” Sadly, in a few decades this will just be considered a normal June (see below).

How hot is it? It is so hot that NBC Washington’s Chief Meteorologist, Doug Kammerer, explained on air “If we did not have global warming, we wouldn’t see this.”

Like a baseball player on steroids, our climate system is breaking records at an unnatural pace (see “March Came In Like A Lamb, Went Out Like A Globally Warmed Lion On Steroids Who Smashed 15,000 Heat Records“).

As Climate Central explains in its post, “Scorching June Heat Wave Puts 50 Million in U.S. on Alert”:

Read more

Health

Workplace Policies Can Help Working Mothers ‘Have It All’ By Not ‘Losing It All’

By Guest Blogger on Jun 29, 2012 at 6:25 pm

Our guest blogger is Kimberly Ortiz, an organizer for the Retail Wholesale and Department Store Union and a member of the Retail Action Project.

Two years ago, I sat in the ER with my two-year-old Aiden, who had a double ear infection. Though I’d been working as a manager at the Statue of Liberty gift shop for five years, we didn’t have health insurance, I only made $9.25 an hour, and I didn’t get a single paid sick day. Knowing I wasn’t “allowed” to be sick or have a sick child, I called my boss in a panic.

I was told she couldn’t guarantee there would be no repercussions.

Aiden was sick for four days, crying in pain as his fever raged on. Back at work I was written up and “cautioned” even after submitting doctor’s notes. Those four days were all unpaid, so I had to borrow money from friends, family, and neighbors for diapers and food. As long as we have basic necessities, I know how to make do with nothing else.

Balancing childcare, rent, chronic conditions, and my job as a single mother living in the Bronx can be nearly impossible. As Ellen Bravo wrote in response to Anne-Marie Slaughter’s “Why Women Can’t Have it All,” I worried about losing it all, not ‘having it all.’

While I identify with Ms. Slaughter’s insanely busy days, I disagree with her statement that “We may need to put a woman in the White House before we are able to change the conditions of the women working at Walmart.” I’m newer to the world of the politics of work-life balance, but I know that we can’t just rely on our elected officials to change the lives of women like me.

Low-wage women workers need to have a greater voice in the conversation. There are far more women working hourly jobs facing issues of limited advancement than “top women leaders” like Anne Marie Slaughter. And we’re less worried about “having it all” than in achieving a job and schedule that can sustain a family.

By providing sick leave, paid family leave, protections so caregivers have opportunities to advance, and scheduling with enough notice to arrange childcare, and by requiring part-time parity in health insurance benefits, we can prevent working caregivers from feeling like we could lose it all at any time.

This Mother’s day, I found myself speaking on a Senate Congressional panel about my experiences and these solutions, because I’m committed to getting what I deserve for my children and other women like me. And I couldn’t have felt like a better mom.

Economy

CHART: Mortgage Debt Is Holding Back The Economic Recovery

By Pat Garofalo on Jun 29, 2012 at 5:30 pm

In a new report, Roosevelt Institute Senior Fellow Mike Konczal looks at several theories that attempt to explain the relationship between the weak housing market and the sluggish economy, and comes to the conclusion that mortgage debt (and not some structural factor) is one of the major factors holding back the recovery:

– The most recent empirical evidence, from academic quarters to the IMF, shows that underwater mortgage debt is creating a drag on the economic recovery. The recovery is weaker in places where mortgage debt is the highest, as more mortgage debt results in lower consumption and higher unemployment.

– Other explanations of the relationship between the housing crash and the weak economy, such as structural unemployment created by the house bubble, contain serious weaknesses.

– Debt writedowns, foreclosure mitigation, and other housing sector specific policies are a crucial tools in dealing with this “balance-sheet recession” and gettng the economy started again.

– Foreclosures exacerbate these problems by creating vicious cycles of destructive economic activity. Some estimate that foreclosures have caused an additional 25 percent of the decline in economic activity.

As this chart shows, the areas with the largest percentage of underwater mortgages have the highest unemployment rates:

A recent study from the Amherst Securities Group found that reducing mortgage debt is the most effective strategy for preventing foreclosures. Iceland, in fact, effectively used mortgage debt forgiveness to boost its economy. A bipartisan bill introduced this month by Reps. Gary Peters (D-MI), John Campbell (R-CA), and Keith Ellison (D-MN) would mandate debt reduction on government held mortgages.

NEWS FLASH

DC Republicans Endorse LGBT Equality In Party Platform | The DC Republican Committee (DCRC) has included a call for LGBT equality in its party platform. “We, the Republicans of the District of Columbia support the belief that all individuals, without regard to sexual orientation, are entitled to full and equal protection under the laws and the Constitution and that everyone has the right to be treated with dignity and respect,” the platform reads. The bold move is utterly out of step with Republican Party platforms across the country which revile gay rights; at the Texas Republican Convention earlier in June, party members included in their platform a claim that “homosexuality tears at the fabric of society and contributes to the breakdown of the family unit.”

– Ben Sherman

By Guest Blogger on Jun 29, 2012 at 5:28 pm

NEWS FLASH

Court Allows Crisis Pregnancy Centers To Deceive Women | Crisis Pregnancy Centers often masquerade as abortion consultation facilities — they lure in women who are pregnant and terrified, and then often try to convince them not to get the procedure. Today, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit ruled that is a totally acceptable practice. The city of Baltimore passed a law in 2009 to require such centers to post disclosures of their positions on abortion and contraception. Then, a lower court put a hold on enforcement of that law. Today, the appeals court agreed with the lower court by a vote of 2-1. It is possible this decision could be reversed by a larger panel of the same court, however. The overwhelming majority of judges on the Fourth Circuit are Democratic appointees, but the panel that decided this case included two Republicans.

Climate Progress

Fish On Fridays: Cape Wind Project And Fishermen Seal A Deal

By Climate Guest Blogger on Jun 29, 2012 at 5:16 pm

by Michael Conathan

Earlier this week, Cape Wind—a proposed wind farm off the coast of Massachusetts—quietly turned aside one of its few remaining challenges by coming to a landmark agreement with the Martha’s Vineyard/Dukes County Fishermen’s Association, which had filed a challenge to the project because fishermen feared they would be displaced from traditional fishing grounds. This compromise helps the project move forward, keeps fishermen in business, and shows how a new concept known as ocean-use planning will be fundamental to future management of our ocean space.

As a result of the settlement, Cape Wind agreed to work with the fishermen to ensure they retain access to the area where the wind farm has been permitted and help them set up a permit bank that will own fishing permits for use by Vineyard fishermen in perpetuity.

Think of permit banks like Zipcar for fishermen. A group—fishermen, nongovernmental organizations, or in some cases, states—acquires permits for a fishing area and then leases the affiliated access or quota to eligible participants. Here, participants will be Vineyard fishermen who might otherwise lose their access due to regulators reducing catch limits for certain species rebuilding to sustainable levels. Fewer fish to catch means fewer fishermen can make a living catching them.

Because of geographic and economic realities, the Vineyard’s small fishing fleets operate at a disadvantage compared to their larger counterparts in New Bedford, Gloucester, and other New England ports. So this potential for increased access can help level the playing field and may literally keep their businesses afloat.

In announcing the decision, Warren Doty, president of the Fishermen’s Association, said, “Instead of being on different ends of the fence, we’re going to work together to determine which areas are open to fishing, what areas will be successful for different kinds of fishing, and how to make that fishing safe and available to all fishermen.”

This kind of creative solution, born of committed negotiations between willing and motivated parties, is precisely the kind of outcome proponents of the Obama administration’s National Ocean Policy have in mind when they talk about one of the policy’s signature initiatives: ocean-use planning. The concept, also referred to as coastal and marine-spatial planning, is intended to reduce conflicts among an increasingly diverse and populous contingent of individuals and industries competing for use of ocean space.

The Center for American Progress released a report earlier this week, “The Foundations of a Blue Economy,” which makes the case for investment in and development of industries that generate strong economic return for coastal communities without compromising the environmental quality of our oceans and coasts. The report called out both sustainable fisheries and offshore renewable-energy development as pillars of this strategy, and for them both to succeed the kind of coordination Cape Wind and Vineyard fishermen have displayed must be a key component of the equation.

Cape Wind has run a gauntlet of challenges since its inception in 2001: from the lack of a federal permitting structure, to angry Cape Codders fearing tourism and property values would suffer, to multiple spurious legal challenges. Read more

LGBT

One Million Moms ‘Highly Offended’ By Pride Oreo, But Stops Short Of Boycott

By Zack Ford on Jun 29, 2012 at 4:40 pm

ABC News may have invented the Kraft Foods boycott over the Pride Month Oreo, but One Millions Moms’ inevitable response doesn’t exactly change the story from fiction to fact. The hate-group affiliated organization lashed out at Kraft Foods today over the rainbow cookie posted on Facebook, urging supporters to write the company that they are “highly offended” that Oreos would claim to “Proudly support love!”

What’s telling is that though the response insinuates a boycott — “There are plenty of cookies on the market for moms to buy for their families that do not support liberal causes. We have a choice.” — it stops short of even using the word. Perhaps OMM knows that Kraft products are so ubiquitous that its already unsuccessful protest efforts would have substantial trouble gaining steam. It’s much easier to convince social conservatives to submit a form email than to empty out half their pantries.

It’s worth noting that the group conceded that having a “neutral” position on LGBT issues is, in effect, the same as having their anti-LGBT position:

One Million Moms will continue to support companies in the future with full understanding where they stand on principles and morality. We will choose to stay away from those who do not support moral decency.

Kraft needs to hear from you. Supporting the homosexual agenda verses remaining neutral in the cultural war is just bad business. If Christians cannot find corporate neutrality with Kraft then they will vote with their pocketbook and support companies that are neutral. Send your email letter to Oreo (Kraft Foods) now!

It’s true: “remaining neutral” and “standing on [conservative] principles and morality” are the same. Choosing not to recognize the diversity of the LGBT community is to help maintain its invisibility and exclusion from society. The Oreo ad didn’t testify before Congress, file an amicus brief, or take a position on a ballot initiative as many companies have — it merely recognized a community and its culture. For OMM, that alone was enough to “disrespect millions of American families by supporting the homosexual agenda.”

Oreo boasts that it is “America’s Favorite Cookie,” and it proved this week that it is a cookie for all Americans. OMM’s ideal version of the country is one where LGBT don’t even exist.

Economy

Obama Threatens To Veto Bill That Defunds Wall Street Reform

By Pat Garofalo on Jun 29, 2012 at 4:16 pm

House Republicans, after failing to prevent the 2010 Dodd-Frank financial reform law from passing Congress, have attempted to undermine it by refusing to give Wall Street regulators adequate funds to do their jobs. Both the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission are short of the funding they require, and House Republicans recently voted in committee to fund the SEC $245 million below the Obama administration’s request for 2013.

However, should that funding bill actually reach President Obama’s desk, he has announced that he will veto it:

The 2013 Financial Services bill is heading to the House floor after being considered by the Rules Committee on Thursday.

“The bill severely undermines key investments in financial oversight and implementation of Wall Street reform to protect American consumers, as well as needed tax enforcement and taxpayer services. It also hampers effective implementation of the Affordable Care Act (ACA),” the White House statement reads.

House Republicans on the Appropriations Committee also recently approved a cut of $25 million to the CFTC’s budget.

Just ten days ago, the Republican chairman of the House Financial Services Committee admitted that Wall Street regulators do not have the resources necessary to do what Congress has asked of them. However, House Republicans have not acted to rectify the situation, instead bringing to the House floor a bill that would simply exacerbate the problem.

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