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NEWS FLASH

Senate Leaders Reach Agreement To Prevent Student Loan Rates From Doubling | After two filibusters by Republicans, it seems that the Senate has finally come to an agreement on freezing student loan rates. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) and Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) are apparently working out the final details on how they will cover the cost of the bill, which will prevent student loans from doubling this month. Methods to pay for it, according to the National Journal, “include Democratic proposals involving pensions. The deal also includes a GOP proposal to cut off subsidized student loans after six years, saving about $1.2 billion a year.”

NEWS FLASH

Financial Executives Call For A Financial Transactions Tax | In an open letter to G20 and European leaders, 52 experts in the financial industry, including seven former executives from Goldman Sachs and JP Morgan, urged the world’s leaders to pass a financial transactions tax (a small tax on stock trades). The letter states that “these taxes will rebalance financial markets away from a short-term trading mentality that has contributed to instability in our financial markets.” Even a small tax could raise large amounts of revenue and many of the tax’s proponents say that the money could go to the world’s poor. This week, Rep. Peter DeFazio (D-OR) told ThinkProgress that a transactions tax would be beneficial for the U.S. economy.

– Nina Liss-Schultz

By Guest Blogger on Jun 22, 2012 at 6:20 pm

LGBT

Illinois Reception Hall Refuses To Help Same-Sex Couple ‘Celebrate That Sin’

By Zack Ford on Jun 22, 2012 at 5:50 pm

If Taylor Schumaker had known the University Club in downtown Moline, Illinois blatantly discriminated against same-sex couples, she wouldn’t have bothered inquiring about holding her wedding reception there. When Bar Manager Kristen Stewart offered to give Schumaker and her fiancé (“he”) a tour of the facility and learned that “he” was in fact “she,” she abruptly rescinded the offer because “we don’t rent to homosexual couples.” When WQAD caught up with Stewart —whose husband is President of the University Club — she defended her decision with her religious beliefs:

STEWART: I am a biblical Christian and I do not believe in homosexual marriage, that’s correct. And because marriage is a covenant that God created for man and woman, as a biblical Christian, I cannot help them into or celebrate that sin. My husband’s family does not hold the same view. If there is a homosexual couple I will pass them onto them. I have told him if they want to do homosexual receptions I would not have any part of that. He and his family have decided they will.

Though same-sex marriage is not legal in Illinois, the state does ban discrimination based on sexual orientation, suggesting Stewart’s decision is unlawful. Though Schumaker was hurt by the experience, she and her fiancé (she) are looking elsewhere.

Just today, Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council sent an email asking conservatives to oppose the “discrimination” imposed by the “homosexual rights movement,” citing three similar examples of Christians refusing to abide by nondiscrimination protections:

CLAIM: “Catholic Charities of Boston–forced out of the adoption business after more than 100 years and surrendered their license because they would not obey the state’s mandate to place orphans with same-sex couples.”

REALITY: Catholic Charities had two choices to continue its work: stop relying on government subsidy or stop discriminating against same-sex couples. They gave up entirely. When Catholic Charities faced the same dilemma in Illinois, a judge upheld the state’s right to pull funding because of the agency’s discriminatory practices.

CLAIM: “Ocean Grove Camp Meeting Association, a historic New Jersey Christian camp, ordered by a judge to allow same-sex ‘commitment’ ceremonies on their property, even though it violated their religious views.”

REALITY: The pavilion’s tax-exempt status was part of a recreational real estate agreement with the state to ensure its availability to the public. It was not tied the church’s religious designation.

CLAIM: “Marcia Walden, a counselor with the Centers for Disease Control, fired when she politely declined to help a lesbian continue a same-sex relationship. Marcia, a Christian, felt she wasn’t the best counselor.”

REALITY: The 11th Circuit Court of Appeals upheld Walden’s firing — not because of the anti-gay religious beliefs she held, but because of her insistence upon imposing them on clients.

The question at stake isn’t even same-sex marriage, but whether or not religious beliefs qualify as legal criteria for discrimination. Conservatives will likely come to Stewart’s defense, claiming that she is the victim. But the real victims are the LGBT people who are routinely treated as second-class citizens in society.

Climate Progress

How The Rio+20 Text Could Have Been Stronger

By Climate Guest Blogger on Jun 22, 2012 at 5:48 pm

Brazil's President Dilma Rousseff and UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon at the Rio+20 summit

by Adam James, Andrew Light, and Gwynne Taraska

The final draft text of the Rio+20 Earth Summit agreed on today has disappointed many delegates and activists around the world. Other than the Brazilian chair of the meeting, no one seems to be strongly defending the document.

The World Wildlife Fund has declared the text “a colossal failure of leadership and vision.”  Ida Auken, the Danish Environment Minister and Chair of the European Environment Council, remarked that “the EU would have liked to see a much more concrete and ambitious outcome, so in that respect I’m not happy with it.” Even Ban Ki-moon, the UN Secretary-General, said that he had hoped for a more “ambitious” outcome, though he quickly added that we should understand the difficulty has been over resolving “conflicting interests” among the parties.

Some of this criticism could be overwrought.  Unlike the first Rio Earth Summit 20 years ago, this meeting never aimed to produce a new international treaty or a process that would lead to an international agreement.  From the start, its most ambitious aim was to create a set of Sustainable Development Goals that would replace the Millennium Development Goals, which were agreed to in New York City in 2000 and are set to expire in 2015.  Given the conflicting interests identified by Moon, it is impressive that the parties were able to go on the record supporting as many progressive changes in the development and environment agenda that they did.  But while the current Rio text acknowledges (and occasionally even underlines, underscores, and stresses) that action on sustainable development and climate change is urgently needed, it is deficient in specific goals, details on how to achieve them, and target dates.

Some, like former U.S. Senator Tim Wirth, President of the U.N. Foundation, reply that we shouldn’t focus on the text as much as we should focus on the public-private partnerships that are being announced at the meeting around initiatives such as Moon’s Sustainable Energy For All initiative, which has drawn $2 billion in support from the U.S.

Wirth has a good point.  At this moment, there may be no need to wrangle further over why the Rio text is as weak as it is. Instead, we should move on to make these newly emerging institutions of international cooperation work as well as they can.  In the end, what was produced at Rio looks much more like a G20 text, simply articulating the lowest common denominator among the parties.  While activists may have hoped for more, this could be the best we could hope for in this kind of process when an actual treaty is not on the table.

Still, there are some interesting lessons to be learned here from how this text went wrong.  If we go back and look at the development of the Rio text, we can see that it could have been bolder if some parties had been allowed to strengthen it.

The Evolution of the Text

We compared the current final text in Rio with the text as it had been negotiated up to June 2nd.  We chose the June 2nd version because it still identified requests by parties to put in or take out language from the document.  Parties at the time were half-way through a two-week long meeting at the UN in New York during the third round of informal negotiations to draft a text. In contrast, the final draft from earlier this week is a text determined by the Brazilian chair of the meeting to be the best compromise between the competing interests of the parties.

Our main conclusion is that while responsibility for this final text now rests with all the assembled parties in Rio, the chair of the meeting could have pushed harder on the parties to produce a more ambitious text by negotiating throughout the week.  Instead, the pattern seems to be one of eliminating any disagreement on any item, which resulted in a joint declaration now charged with failing to provide adequate targets, timelines, or guidelines for achieving any of its aspirations.

Read more

Justice

Indiana Senate Candidate Finding New Ways To Circumvent Coordination Rules

By Josh Israel on Jun 22, 2012 at 5:20 pm

Indiana Republican Senate nominee Richard Mourdock

Indiana Republican Senate nominee Richard Mourdock

A new web video by Indiana Treasurer Richard Mourdock (R), the Republican nominee for Sen. Dick Lugar’s now-open Senate seat this November, is yet another indication of just how wrong the assumptions underling Justice Anthony Kennedy’s Citizens United majority opinion were. In it the 5-4 majority agreed that “The appearance of influence or access, furthermore, will not cause the electorate to lose faith in our democracy. By definition, an independent expenditure is political speech presented to the electorate that is not coordinated with a candidate.”

Already, “independent” Super PACs have been hiring the same political consulting firms as the candidates they are supporting. Already, the Romney campaign has enlisted Karl Rove, the co-founder of two of the largest pro-Romney outside groups, to participate in a strategy retreat with top-level campaign donors and bundlers. Both are apparently-legal moves that fly in the face of the spirit of non-coordination rules.

Now, Mourdock’s campaign is apparently using yet another loophole. Since the campaign made not directly work with allied “outside” groups, it has posted a four-minutes-and-36-seconds-long video of footage of the candidate online, just in case any outside groups happen to want to use it.

The National Journal describes the video, titled “Indiana Footage,” as “essentially a soundless highlight reel of high-quality, uplifting footage of Mourdock shaking hands with voters, speaking, and driving.”

Watch the spot:

Mourdock’s primary win relied heavily on outside spending. This video is either one of the most boring political ads of all time or a not-so-subtle request to well-heeled outside groups to invest more for the November general election.

NEWS FLASH

Mary Cheney, Former VP’s Daughter, Marries Longtime Partner Heather Poe | Mary Cheney, the daughter of former Vice President Dick Cheney, married her longtime partner, Heather Poe, in Washington D.C. today. In a statement provided to the Daily Caller, “both the former vice president and his wife were ‘delighted’ that the couple could have their ‘relationship recognized.’” Unfortunately, because the state of Virginia amended its constitution in 2006 to limit marriage to one man and one woman, the couples’ license will not be recognized when they return to their home in Virginia where they have two children.

–Nina Liss-Schultz

By Guest Blogger on Jun 22, 2012 at 5:15 pm

NEWS FLASH

Majority Of Consumers Prefer Food Without Antibiotics | A recent poll conducted by the Consumers Union found that the majority of Americans do not like antibiotics in their food and agree that the antibiotics pose health risks. According to the full report, “more than 60% of respondents stated that they would be willing to pay at least five cents a pound more for meat raised without antibiotics. Over a third (37%) would pay a dollar or more extra per pound.” Despite growing scientific evidence that antibiotics are unhealthy, the FDA continues to do very little to restrict their use.

–Nina Liss-Schultz

By Guest Blogger on Jun 22, 2012 at 5:00 pm

Politics

The Wild Conspiracy Theory Driving The Fast And Furious Investigation

By Annie-Rose Strasser on Jun 22, 2012 at 4:45 pm

Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA)

Here is theory that some Congressional Republicans believe: The Obama Administration intentionally handed over automatic weapons to Mexican drug cartels, who they knew would commit violent acts, because they wanted to scare Americans into supporting stricter gun laws.

That supposed series of events has now led Congress to hold Attorney General Eric Holder in contempt.

Holder is caught up in a scandal over what happened during Operation Fast and Furious, one in a series of efforts started under former President Bush, in which firearms owned by the U.S. government are intentionally sold to criminals with the hopes that they can be traced back, and criminal activity can be monitored. One such firearm turned up at the crime scene where border patrol agent Brian Terry was killed.

Republicans cite the case as a national security issue, but they’ve simultaneously turned it into an indictment over what they believe is a conspiracy aimed at taking away their own firearms. They argue that this was all a ploy to expose how dangerous guns can be. Here are the facts you should know about the conspiracy, and who’s behind it:

The man who started the conspiracy theory also rallied people to break congressional windows. Mike Vanderboegh, a man who once called for militias to break the windows of members of Congress because of the passage of the Affordable Care Act, started this conspiracy theory. Rachel Maddow uncovered that Vanderboegh has been encouraging members of Congress to embrace the theory.

Major Republicans, including Darrell Issa, endorse this conspiracy theory. Among those are Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA), who is Chair of the House Oversight Committee and is heading up the investigation of Eric Holder. In an interview on FOX, Issa said, “very clearly, they made a crisis, and they’re using this crisis to somehow take away or limit people’s Second Amendment rights.” He also pushed the theory at an NRA convention. But Issa isn’t the only one who is buying in: former Presidential candidate Newt Gingrich just two days ago agreed with the theory. Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-AL), Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA), Rep. Trent Franks (R-AZ), and many other Republicans have voiced support for this theory too.

The NRA is driving the conspiracy theory paranoia though ads. The National Rifle Association is furthering the paranoia as a way to rally gun owners by running advertisements and a petition calling on President Obama to fire Eric Holder. The ads don’t specifically mention the gun control conspiracy, but the Executive Director of the NRA’s Institute for Legislative Action is a full-throttle conspiracy believer. The NRA also threatened members of Congress who voted on the contempt charge yesterday, saying that a vote against contempt would reflect poorly on that member’s pro-gun ratings.

Conspiracy theorists blame Holder for a new gun law he didn’t make. Even if one were to believe the vast conspiracy theory, a linchpin in the theorists’ argument is based on a false premise. They say that recently Holder ordered the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms (ATF) to report anyone who bought more than one large gun in five day as a way to track American gun owners. In reality, ATF made a request about reporting gun purchases and the Justice Department only approved it after a delay.

Issa defended Bush for the same thing of which he is accusing Holder. Issa has been tearing apart Holder for not wanting to hand over private communications from the Justice Department that could compromise ongoing criminal investigations. But when George Bush refused to do the same thing in 2007, Issa blasted the move as a “political witch hunt.”

Last year, the Vice President of the NRA said that there is “a massive Obama conspiracy to deceive voters and hide his true intentions to destroy the Second Amendment.” This conspiracy theory feeds directly into that sentiment. But there is absolutely no evidence that the President has any intention of tightening gun laws. In fact, he’s loosening regulations on firearm exports.

LGBT

Uganda Official Backs Away From Effort To Dissolve LGBT Groups

By Zack Ford on Jun 22, 2012 at 4:40 pm

Ethics and Integrity Minister Fr. Simon Lokodo

On Wednesday, Uganda Ethics Minister Simon Lokodo announced plans to dissolve 38 organizations because they “empower, enhance, and recruit” people into homosexuality. Now, Lokodo is backing away from such claims, having put out a statement saying that the Ugandan government does not discriminate against people “of a different sexual orientation”:

LOKODO: No government official is (supposed) to harass any section of the community and everybody in Uganda enjoys the freedom to lawfully assemble and associate freely with others.

Lokodo’s statement is odd, as his history of anti-gay hostility is well-documented. Though the “Kill the Gays” bill is still pending in the legislature, homosexuality continues to be illegal in Uganda. To say that the government does not discriminate against people based upon their sexual orientation falls far short of the truth.

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