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NEWS FLASH

West Virginia Acts on GOP Front Group’s Efforts to Force Voter Purges | Election officials in West Virginia may be stepping up efforts to purge voter rolls because a GOP front group threatened to sue the state. In an effort to limit voter turnout this election season, Judicial Watch, in conjunction with True the Vote, has sent letters to a number of states threatening lawsuits and further investigations, and has acted on that threat once, suing the state of Indiana. In both Lincoln and Boone County, election officials are moving to “clean up” voter rolls and prevent a lawsuit. As a first step toward removing voters from the rolls, officials in Boone have mailed 9,100 cards to registered voters, and officials in Lincoln have plans to mail 9,610 more. Officials contend that they are mailing cards to people they believe have moved. Lincoln County Clerk Myrl Gue says he hopes that Judicial Watch will look at the work the county is doing and decide not to sue.

–Alex Brown

By Guest Blogger on Jun 13, 2012 at 7:00 pm

NEWS FLASH

Fischer: “Allowing Gay Adoption Is A Form Of Sexual Abuse” | Bryan Fischer’s anti-gay rants have become all too commonplace. But today he was in rare form when he declared that allowing gay parents to adopt is “a form of sexual abuse.” Fischer made his bigoted comments in regards to a recent study funded by two conservatives groups tied to anti-gay organizations. The study, which has drawn criticism for its flawed methodology and clear bias, flies in the face of 30 years of credible research showing that children of same-sex couples fare just as well as other children. But Fischer has reached a new low with this new hateful diatribe, showing just how desperate for attention anti-gay activists are becoming. Watch it:

(HT: RightWingWatch.)

– Steven Perlberg

By Guest Blogger on Jun 13, 2012 at 6:02 pm

Justice

Maine Official Who Sent Threatening Letters To Young Voters Urging Them To Re-Register Elsewhere Wins GOP Senate Nod

By Scott Keyes on Jun 13, 2012 at 5:50 pm

Maine Secretary of State Charlie Summers

Maine’s Secretary of State, who gained national attention last year for sending a threatening letter to hundreds of student voters encouraging them to re-register in another state, won the Republican Senate nomination last night.

As Maine’s election chief, Charlie Summers sent a letter to 206 University of Maine students with out-of-state home addresses last summer and mentioned “allegations of election law violations” against them. The letter strongly implied that the students did not meet Maine’s residency requirements before pushing them to cancel their voter registration and register elsewhere: “If, instead, you are no longer claiming to be a Maine resident, I ask that you complete the enclosed form to cancel your voter registration in Maine so that out our central voter registration system can be updated.”

Despite Summers’ intimidation campaign against out-of-state students registering to vote in Maine, the Supreme Court ruled three decades ago that students cannot be held to a different residency standard than other people within the state.

Still, his letter succeeded in frightening many of its recipients. A few told ThinkProgress they were “beyond scared and freaked out” because they thought the letter meant they were going to be sued.

As bad as the letter itself was, the reason why they were sent in the first place may be even worse. Summers received the list of students from Maine Republican Party Chairman Charlie Webster, who accused the students of committing voter fraud and called for making them pay taxes in order to vote. Webster has called for making voting more difficult because “Democrats intentionally steal elections.”

Though he is supposed to oversee elections in a fair and non-partisan manner as Secretary of State, Summers’ collusion with Webster to disenfranchise hundreds of students calls that into question.

This threatening letter wasn’t the first time Summers took steps that would prevent people from voting. Last year, he spearheaded a campaign to get rid of Election Day registration in Maine, which ultimately passed the state legislature and was signed by the Tea Party governor. However, Mainers rallied against the move, gathering signatures for a November referendum that ultimately rebuked the legislature and restored Election Day registration by a nearly two-to-one margin.

Now, Summers is one step closer to the Senate, where he would have a much larger platform to push for anti-voting measures. As he faces off against Democrat Cynthia Dill and Independent Angus King in the Maine Senate election, Summers currently has no plans to step down from his role as Maine’s elections chief.

Health

Five Reasons Why Michigan’s Anti-Abortion Bill Is The Nation’s Worst (UPDATED)

By Amanda Peterson Beadle on Jun 13, 2012 at 5:46 pm

The Michigan House has passed HB 5711, the nation’s most restrictive anti-abortion bill that combines some of the worst attacks on women’s access to abortion care into one bill. The massive 45-page, Republican-backed legislation limits when a woman could have an abortion and puts a greater, unnecessary burden on abortion providers.

Opponents have loudly protested against the measure that has been jammed through the legislature — it was introduced on May 31 and a committee approved it last week — and Democratic lawmakers spoke out against it before the House passed the bill 70-39. “This bill is not about protecting women’s health,” said state Rep. Kate Segal (D).

Here’s what you should know about these far-reaching anti-abortion bills:

1) Bans Abortions After 20 Weeks, Even For Rape And Incest Victims: A woman would not be able to have an abortion after 20 weeks of gestation based on the widely disputed idea that a fetus can feel pain after that point. The only exception would be if a woman’s life was in danger.

2) Transforms Doctors Into Detectives: The Republican-backed legislation would make it a crime for anyone to coerce a woman into having an abortion. Doctors will have to give their patients a questionnaire to inform them of the illegality of coercion and determine if the woman had been coerced or is the victim of domestic abuse before the abortion procedure.

3) Limits Access For Rural Women: Under the omnibus bill, doctors would have to be physically present to perform a medication abortion, thus preventing a doctor from administering abortion-inducing medication by consulting via telephone or internet. This would especially hurt rural women, who may have to travel hours to meet in-person with a specialist.

4) Requires Doctors To Purchase Costly Malpractice Insurance: If HB 5711 goes into effect, then doctors would be required to carry $1 million in liability insurance if they perform five or more abortions each month or have been subject to two more more civil suits in the past seven years, among other requirements. But the qualifications are so vague that almost all doctors who perform abortions could be required to carry the additional liability insurance at a potential cost of hundreds of thousands of dollars.

5) Regulates Clinics Out Of Existence: HB 5711 would create new regulations so that any clinic that provides six or more abortions in a month or one which advertises abortion services would have to be licensed as a “freestanding surgical outpatient facility.” That means that even if a clinic does not offer surgical abortions, it would be required to have a full surgical suite.

Now that the state House has passed the largest of the three bills, it will likely approve the two companion measures as well. Even though lawmakers rushed the bill through the House, the state Senate is not expected to vote on the measure until September. The body is composed of 26 Republicans and 12 Democrats.

Annie-Rose Strasser contributed to this report.

Update

The ban on abortions after 20 weeks is in HB 5713, one of the companion bills that the House is expected to pass soon.


Update

Lawmakers will not hold votes on the two additional anti-abortion bills, including the 20-week ban. “We decided not to take that up right now so we can discuss the legislation further,” Ari Adler, spokesman for House Speaker Jase Bolger (R), told the Detroit News.

Economy

Romney Endorses Massive Corporate Tax Giveaway That Failed To Create Jobs In The Past

By Travis Waldron on Jun 13, 2012 at 5:40 pm

2012 GOP presidential nominee Mitt Romney, speaking at a Business Roundtable event in Washington DC today, called for the repeal of the tax on corporate profits that is levied when those profits are returned (repatriated) to America. Repealing the tax, Romney said, would drive investment in the United States and spur job creation. In the past, however, temporary tax holidays for profits stored overseas have not led to the job creation that proponents promised.

Instead of creating jobs, companies used a 2004 repatriation tax holiday to line their executives’ pockets, paying stock dividends and buying back shares. The holiday “didn’t accomplish the stated goals of bringing jobs and investment to the US,” according to former member of President Bush’s Council on Economic Advisers.

That failure evidently means nothing to Romney, who seemed to call today for permanently exempting repatriated profits from taxation:

ROMNEY: We have this tax, as you know, the repatriation tax. If you make a lot of money in some other foreign country and you want to leave it there, we don’t tax you. But if you want to bring it home, to invest here, then we do tax you, up to 35 percent. That doesn’t make a lot of sense to me. If you want to bring your money home, please bring it home. Bring that trillion-plus dollars, bring it here. Invest in new plants and equipment and hire people. And I know some people say, ‘Yeah but, companies might put it out as dividends.’ Well that’s OK too! I’d rather have you invest in– but get it out to people, get it out to retirees. I mean, what’s happened to the interest rate on their CDs? Get money out there. Let them use that money out there to buy things and put more Americans to work.

Watch it:

The repatriation gimmick didn’t just fail to create jobs the last time it was tried — it was followed by job destruction. The companies that benefited most laid off tens of thousands of workers after the holiday ended. And though Romney today claimed that he would balance the budget in eight to 10 years, repealing the tax on repatriated profits wouldn’t help him there either. The House GOP’s repatriation holiday would have cost $80 billion over 10 years — getting rid of the tax altogether, as Romney seemed to suggest today, would carry an even larger price tag.

But Romney is right that it makes little sense to let corporations dodge taxes by holding money overseas. Another solution that has been proposed, however, is to adopt a global tax system that taxes multinational corporations no matter where their profits are made and provides credits to avoid double taxation. This type of system would prevent corporations like Apple from dodging billions in taxes by opening subsidiaries in low-tax (or no-tax) countries, raising valuable revenue for the government.

Alyssa

How Chinese Censorship Is Changing American Movies

By Alyssa Rosenberg on Jun 13, 2012 at 5:07 pm

I’ve written in the past about the challenges American film and television studios face in attempting to get their products into the Chinese market, and the Los Angeles Times has a blockbuster piece out about the compromises movie studios are making to win Chinese approval:

In “Salmon Fishing in the Yemen,”a romantic comedy about building a dam in the Mideast, Chinese hydroelectric engineers showed off their know-how; the original book included no such characters. In Columbia Pictures’ disaster movie”2012,” the White House chief of staff extolled the Chinese as visionaries after an ark built by the country’s scientists saves civilization.

In fact, references to the Middle Kingdom are popping up with remarkable frequency in movies these days. Some are conspicuously flattering or gratuitous additions designed to satisfy Chinese business partners and court audiences in the largest moviegoing market outside the U.S. Others, filmmakers say, are simply organic reflections of the fact that China is a rising political, economic and cultural power.

Meanwhile, Chinese bad guys are vanishing — literally. Western studios are increasingly inclined to excise potentially negative references to China in the hope that the films can pass muster with Chinese censors and land one of several dozen coveted annual revenue-sharing import quota slots in Chinese cinemas.

Now, I have no complaint with certain things that can result from Hollywood being held accountable to non-American markets. If Chinese audiences want to see more Chinese characters—something the Times piece said happened with a college comedy called 21 and Over—and want to see them treated like actual people rather than stand-ins for stereotypes—Men In Black III apparently went through reshoots to avoid portrayals that were considered objectionable—that’s progress. Hollywood economics so rarely end up incentivizing progress.

But as the Times points out, it doesn’t stop there. Characters are supposed to speak Mandarin rather than Cantonese, because the Chinese government is trying to make Mandarin the uniform national tongue. Studios aren’t supposed to shoot in cities and give revenue to areas that have pockets of dissidents. They’re not supposed to promote obscenity, gambling, violence, supernaturalism, horrors, ghosts, demons, general supernaturalism, or disturbances of social order, all of which are pretty fantastic story drivers. That’s a lot of creative integrity to hand over. At some point, big talents are going to get frustrated by these restrictions. Even from a business perspective, there’s got to be a point at which it becomes difficult to satisfy both American audiences and Chinese censors. And while the Chinese government and Hollywood studios may believe that Chinese audiences will pay to see anything as long as it’s on a big screen, that is not necessarily a condition that will last forever.

Climate Progress

As House Lawmakers Push Massive Increase In Fossil Fuel Drilling, They Slash 13 Key Clean Energy Programs

By Stephen Lacey on Jun 13, 2012 at 5:00 pm

The GOP’s mantra on energy is “we shouldn’t pick winners and losers.” But all one needs to do is look at Republican legislative priorities to see how hollow that slogan is.

A series of bills currently being considered in Congress make it very clear that House Republicans are attempting to stack the deck in favor of the fossil fuel industry.

Heck, they don’t even try to hide it.

They assume the “we shouldn’t pick winners and losers” line provides enough of a distraction to give them room to write bills stripping funding for clean energy and promote massive increases in fossil fuel extraction.

Next week is a big one for the most anti-environmental House of Representatives in the history of Congress. As outlined in a recent memo from House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-VA), GOP leaders will attempt to pass a sweeping piece of legislation that will open up far more federal lands to drilling.

The bill, called the Strategic Energy Production Act, combines a variety of proposals to roll back EPA safeguards, require more drilling on public lands, and speed up leasing for oil and gas extraction. It’s part of a legislative drumbeat in support of fossil fuels that House Republicans are trying to maintain through the beginning of the summer.

Seeing as how Republicans don’t like picking winners and losers, opening up America to all that drilling would mean maintaining support of clean, renewable sources of energy, right?

Of course not.

Next week’s push for more drilling on public lands follows a series of anti-clean energy amendments adopted into a House water and energy spending bill last week. Those amendments include steep cuts to efficiency programs, a key wind R&D program, clean car rules for federal vehicles, and international commitments to developing countries. Heck, even energy efficiency targets for shower heads weren’t spared in the spending bill.

Rather than balance out these cuts with subsequent cuts to fossil fuels, the bill actually increases R&D spending on fossil fuel technologies by 60 percent.

Maria Gallucci of Inside Climate News documented the 13 different cuts to clean energy programs. Here’s a rundown of some of the programs that lawmakers want to get rid of (see the full story for background on the various programs on the chopping block):

  • National R&D initiative for wind technologies. Sponsor: Rep. Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.)
  • Federal requirements for zero-carbon buildings. Sponsor: Rep. Rodney Alexander (R-La.)
  • Federal ban on carbon-intensive fuels. Sponsor: Rep. Bill Flores (R-Texas)
  • International spending on clean energy initiatives. Sponsor: Rep. Andy Harris (R-Md.)
  • Federal efficiency standards for light bulbs. Sponsor: Rep. Michael Burgess (R-Texas)
  • 40-year old efficiency requirement for DOE grant winners. Sponsor: Rep. Chip Cravaack (R-Minn.)
  • 20-year old efficiency standards for showerheads. Sponsor: David Schweikert (R-Ariz.)
  • Efficiency standards for battery chargers. Sponsor: Rep. Jeff Fortenberry (R-Neb.)

As our lawmakers attempt to open up every square inch of America to more drilling rigs, they’re also working to systematically dismantle any program that helps reduce our energy intensity or helps us transition to cleaner sources energy. The remarkable thing is that some of these effective programs are decades old, have come from Republican administrations, and have never been seen as stripping away consumer rights.

This is the fantasy land that many House Republicans are living in today. By throwing around phrases like “not picking winners and losers” and “protecting individual choice,” they’re attempting to set up a smokescreen for their blatant promotion of fossil fuels and disdain for anything that would disrupt the status quo.

Those mantras are nothing more than political code for more dirty energy, less clean energy, and doing nothing about climate change.

Justice

Michigan On The Cusp Of Passing Latest Anti-Voting Measure

By Scott Keyes on Jun 13, 2012 at 4:50 pm

Michigan is poised to become the latest state to enact legislation making it more difficult for citizens to vote.

Yesterday, the State House passed a trio of voter suppression bills — SB 751, SB 754, and SB 803 — that will create new requirements for people registering to vote, as well as groups that help them.

Among the new restrictions in these bills:

- Photo ID to register: Michiganders who register to vote in person at a government agency would be forced to bring a state-issued photo ID with them. Hundreds of thousands of Michigan residents currently lack such IDs. If they don’t bring them, their application will be treated like a mail registration application, preventing them from voting absentee in the next election.

- Onerous restrictions for voter registration groups: Outside organizations like the League of Women Voters would be required to register with the state, provide the names and addresses of every volunteer who helps register voters, and force them to obtain training from the Secretary of State or election officials. It’s unclear how regularly such trainings would take place. In addition, in the last week of the voter registration period, a particularly high-volume time, groups would be required to submit any completed voter registration forms within two business days. A federal judge blocked a similar provision in Florida two weeks ago.

- New ways to disenfranchise voters: Every time voters uses an electoral form, whether it be an application or a ballot, they must check off a box affirming they are indeed a U.S. citizen. The measure is wholly unnecessary for three reasons. First, people must affirm they are citizens when they first register. Second, citizenship is not a status that changes. Finally, non-citizens are not trying to vote in the United States. The problem this measure presents is that if a voter shows any hesitation whatsoever — perhaps they aren’t a native English-speaker and didn’t understand the question — he exposes himself to an elector challenge that could ultimately invalidate his vote.

The Senate has already passed the three bills. Once discrepancies between the two chambers’ versions are ironed out, they will likely advance to Gov. Rick Snyder’s (R) desk.

In a country where 40-60 percent of citizens don’t vote, the last thing we should be doing is putting up new barriers that make voting more difficult, not less.

Health

Health Insurers May Maintain Delivery System Reforms If Obamacare Is Struck Down

By Guest Blogger on Jun 13, 2012 at 4:40 pm

After pledging to fully repeal Obamacare for the last two years, a growing number of Republicans have expressed support for maintaing some of the law’s most popular provisions if the Supreme Court overturns the measure later this month. Health insurers UnitedHealthcare, Aetna, and Humana soon followed suit, pledging to keep children on their parents’ health care plan until age 26, maintain a ban on lifetime maximums on most benefit payouts, and provide some preventive care at no additional cost.

ThinkProgress spoke with several major health care insurers to see where they stood on maintaining other key parts of Obamacare and found limited interest in preserving the measures that could potentially drive up costs if there is no individual mandate adding healthy people into insurance pools:

– UNITED HEALTHCARE: The company “said it can’t cover children with pre-existing illnesses unless other insurers also agree to cover them, and that it would work with “all other participants in the health- care system.”

– AETNA: “[W]e recognize that the ACA has propelled interest in exploring new ways to deliver care. We believe that our work to collaborate with providers, such as Accountable Care Organizations, is key to building a more effective health care system. We are committed to leading the way in delivering solutions that transform our system and deliver on the goals of reform.”

– CIGNA: “Cigna believes in respecting the court’s process. We remain focused on our global customer programs, and are prepared to proceed as appropriate on behalf of our customers when the court deliberations reach their conclusion.”

– HUMANA: “We’ll have additional comment (beyond the statement we sent out yesterday) after the Supreme Court issues its ruling.”

Republicans are already pointing to the industry’s announcement as proof that the private market has somehow reasoned out health care reforms on its own, conveniently ignoring the industry’s multi-million dollar effort to prevent the measures from becoming law in the first place.

And while insurers’ willingness to maintain these measures is a good start, they would do little to help the millions of Americans with pre-existing conditions find affordable covrage or reduce health care spending.

– Steven Perlberg

Economy

Arizona City Lays Off Workers While Handing Millions To Its Professional Ice Hockey Team

By Guest Blogger on Jun 13, 2012 at 4:30 pm

Our guest blogger is Brian Frederick, Executive Director of the Sports Fans Coalition, the country’s largest nonprofit fan advocacy organization, which fights to give fans a voice on public policy issues.

In May, the city of Glendale, Arizona, home to Jobing.com Arena, where the National Hockey League’s Phoenix Coyotes play, faced a $35 million budget shortfall. Why? For the past two seasons, the city has paid the NHL $25 million per season to manage the Coyotes — a team that the NHL owns — in order to keep the team from moving. The league has owned the team since 2009, when owner Jerry Moyes declared bankruptcy, and has prevented any sale of the team that would have resulted in relocation.

In order to close its enormous budget gap, Glendale laid off 49 employees — two percent of the workforce – and, last night, the City Council passed a final budget that includes cutting social services and raising the city sales tax and secondary property taxes. The Tucson Citizen reported that the layoffs included:

– Community Development, six employees.

– Parks, recreation and library, 15 employees.

– Management and budget, one employee.

– Field operations, 20 employees.

– Police, 5 (non-sworn) employees.

– Transportation, one employee.

– Human resources, one employee.

There’s still the matter of the future of the Coyotes, however, and Glendale is doubling down on its “investment” in the franchise. Last Friday, the City Council voted for a lease agreement that would give any future Coyotes owner an average of $15 million per year for 20 years. It also agreed to pay $24 million in capital improvements to Jobing.com Arena, which is only nine years old. And keep in mind that the city still has to pay over $12 million in annual debt payment for construction of the arena.

So what’s the payoff? “$2.2 million in annual rent payments, ticket surcharges, sales taxes and other fees,” according to the Arizona Republic. Glendale officials also point to the usual intangibles such as jobs provided by the arena and increased tourism. But still, the price seems steep, particularly when the city is laying off workers and cutting social services. As The Arizona Republic’s editorial board wrote:

An analysis revealed that even if the Coyotes went to the Stanley Cup Finals for years, Glendale could still expect to lose about $9 million annually. It also is obligated to make debt payments on the arena, which will average about $12.6 million a year over the next 20 years.

Of course, money being spent on the Coyotes is money not being spent on other things, like capital improvements elsewhere in the city. According to the Arizona Republic, there are no new capital improvements funded in the next budget; plans to finish the city’s courthouse and build a new library are being pushed back until 2017.

The city of Glendale did, though, set up a “transition center” to help out the laid off employees. No word if it simply referred them to Jobing.com.

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