NEWS FLASH

Audience Boos Scott Brown For Naming Scalia As ‘Model Justice’ | Sen. Scott Brown (R-MA) was booed by the audience at the second Massachusetts Senate Debate on Monday evening, after he named conservative Justice Antonin Scalia as his model Supreme Court justice. Upon hearing the crowd’s reaction, he quickly added Justices Anthony Kennedy, Sonia Sotomayor, and Chief Justice John Roberts to his list. “That’s the beauty of being an independent,” Brown quipped. Watch it:

New York Attorney General Sues JP Morgan Chase Over Alleged Mortgage-Backed Securities Fraud

By Travis Waldron on Oct 1, 2012 at 6:10 pm

New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman (D) has filed a civil lawsuit against JP Morgan Chase alleging “widespread fraud in the sale of mortgage-backed securities,” the Wall Street Journal reports. The suit is the first action brought by the Obama administration’s mortgage fraud task force, which Schneiderman chairs.

The residential mortgage-backed securities (RMBS) in question were actually tied to Bear Stearns, the failed financial institution that JP Morgan acquired before the 2008 financial crisis.

According to the suit, filed in New York state court, the bank was “aware that many of their loan originators were selling defective loans but continued to buy and securitize those loans,” and, similarly to the “shitty deals” peddled by Goldman Sachs bankers, had openly touted the bad packages they were selling:

Other internal communications reflect Defendants’ awareness of the bad quality of loans that were being included in other securitizations. In connection with the Bear Stearns Second Lien Trust 2007-1 (“BSSLT 2007- 1”) securitization, for example, one Bear Stearns executive asked whether the securitization was a “going out of business sale” and expressed a desire to “close this dog.” In another internal email, the SACO 2006-8 securitization was referred to as a “SACK OF SHIT” and a “shit breather.”

Still, the bankers led investors to believe they “had carefully evaluated – and would continue to monitor – the quality of the loans in their RMBS. In fact, Defendants systematically failed to fully evaluate the loans, largely ignored the defects that their limited review did uncover, and kept investors in the dark about both the inadequacy of their review procedures and the defects in the underlying loans.”

By 2006, Bear Stearns’ RMBS business was the largest and most profitable on Wall Street, with its 345,000 securitized loans worth $69 billion. Between 2003 and 2006, it securitized $212 billion in loans, according to the suit.

“We intend to follow up with similar actions against other sponsors and underwriters of RMBS,” an official in Schneiderman’s office told the WSJ.

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Health

STUDY: Anti-Abortion Legislation May Inspire Anti-Abortion Harassment

By Tara Culp-Ressler on Oct 1, 2012 at 6:01 pm

A new study examines the connection between the states with the most restrictive anti-choice laws and the states with the most aggressive levels of harassment against abortion doctors, providers, and clinics. Although the researchers couldn’t point to causation, they did find an association between more restrictive state-level abortion legislation and increased harassment of abortion providers.

Salon’s Irin Carmon speculated that the increased media spotlight on the states that pass restrictive anti-choice laws could incite the Americans who are obsessively, passionately anti-abortion to take action against abortion providers. Or, as one of the study’s authors told Salon, anti-abortion activists could take their cues from state governments. As she put it, when state legislators target abortion providers, it “probably in some way sanctions targeting us for harassment.”

Although the study’s authors focused on what they deemed to be nonviolent protests — such as vandalism of clinics and intimidation of patients — because acts of anti-abortion violence were relatively rare during their data collection in 2010, they do note that acts of serious violence against abortion providers has been on the rise over the past two decades. Perhaps the most famous symbol of the violence leveled against abortion providers is Dr. George Tiller, a Kansas-area women’s health advocate and abortion doctor who was murdered at his clinic in 2009 — a clinic that was recently purchased by a women’s health group that hopes to re-open it to once again provide abortion services to women in the area.

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Justice

California Governor Signs Bill Allowing Driver’s Licenses For Some Undocumented Immigrants

By Amanda Peterson Beadle on Oct 1, 2012 at 6:00 pm

On Sunday, Gov. Jerry Brown (D-CA) signed a bill into law that will allow young undocumented immigrants to apply for driver’s licenses if they qualify for deferred action under an Obama Administration directive to protect DREAMers. About 400,000 undocumented immigrants are expected to be eligible for licenses in California as a result. Assembly member Gilbert Cedillo (D), who had spent a decade pushing for the bill, said the law will enhance public safety:

“It is a victory for those who were brought here through no choice of their own, played by the rules, and are only asking to be included in and contribute to American society,” Cedillo said in a statement.

He said California is the first state to grant drivers’ licenses to the group singled out under the Obama administration’s policy. Cedillo praised Brown for choosing “public safety over politics” by signing the bill.

“President Obama has recognized the unique status of these students, and making them eligible to apply for driver’s licenses is an obvious next step,” Brown spokesman Gil Duran said.

But on the same day Brown signed the licenses bill, he vetoed the California TRUST Act, an “anti-Arizona” bill that would have protected undocumented immigrants from deportation simply for minor infractions. The bill pushed back against Secure Communities by preventing local law enforcement officials from referring a detainee to ICE unless the person detained has been convicted of a violent or serious felony, but Brown said the bill was “fatally flawed” because the list of crimes was too narrow. The Democratic governor promised to work with the law’s supporters to fix the bill’s wording.

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Health

We Are All Vulnerable: Health Care Expert Tells Personal Story In Defense Of Medicaid

By Jeff Spross on Oct 1, 2012 at 5:43 pm

Harold Pollack

Underneath the potentially dry data involved with health care reporting are millions of untold human stories — the Americans saved by the social safety net, the Americans left in destitution when the safety net is cut, and the Americans sometimes struggling to receive help from that net even when it is in place.

Harold Pollack, a University of Chicago Professor, sits at the intersection of those two realities. While blogging on health care and public policy for The Incidental Economist, Pollack and his wife Veronica also spent the last eight years caring for Veronica’s brother Vincent, who is intellectually disabled and suffers a variety of other medical conditions requiring regular and expensive treatment. Medicare and Medicaid played a crucial role in the Pollacks’ ability to care for Vincent without sacrificing their family’s economic security or the academic future of their two daughters.

To illustrate the human costs of the GOP’s proposed cuts to these social services — in addition to their plan to shift Medicare into a premium support system, Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan have proposed to cut Medicaid by a third over the next decade — Pollack recently produced a video to tell his family’s story. Watch it:

Vincent is one of the 9 million “dual eligibles” who receive support from both Medicare and Medicaid. Those who are eligible for both programs are the poorest and sickest of Americans, and Medicaid in particular helps them cover premiums, co-payments, dental care, and of course the long-term and nursing home care so many of the elderly rely on. Slashing Medicaid by $810 billion through 2022 would cut this support off at the knees. Medicaid’s reimbursement rates are already significantly lower than Medicare’s, making it a stringently spartan program. Romney and Ryan’s cuts would drive these rates still lower, or force 14 to 27 million Americans out of the program entirely. (That’s not counting the other 17 million who would be forced out be their repeal of Obamacare’s Medicaid expansion.)

As much of America’s politics remains fixated on lower taxes and shrinking government, it’s worth remembering the Pollacks and the millions like them — and remembering that the care they receive is the care we as a country are willing to pay for.

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Economy

Chicago Fed Officials Warned Regulators About Perils Of High-Speed Trading Two Years Ago

By Travis Waldron on Oct 1, 2012 at 5:40 pm

Two years ago, the Federal Reserve of Chicago warned the Securities and Exchange Commission about the dangers high-frequency trading posed to financial markets and the overall economy, but SEC regulators have been slow to move on reforms and rules that would limit the practice, according to a Reuters report.

High-frequency trading has caused multiple damaging “flash crashes” in the two years since, and the SEC has instituted small reforms aimed at mitigating the damage. But it is still dragging its feet on large-scale proposals by the Chicago Fed and other proponents of limiting the practice, Reuters noted:

The Chicago Fed said exchanges and other trading platforms should install more risk controls, even if it slowed down trading, including a “kill switch” at the trader workstation level. “The competitive quest for greater and greater speed must be balanced with appropriate risk controls so that a clearly erroneous trade does not destabilize markets by precipitating a cascade of other trades in response,” the Chicago Fed’s then Financial Markets Group Senior Vice President David Marshall said in the submission. [...]

And still the move towards reforms has been slow.

Proponents of limiting high-frequency trading include Thomas Peterffy, the man who pioneered computer-based high speed trading in the 1980s. In an interview with NPR’s Planet Money, Peterffy said the speed of today’s trading, which earns traders and firms millions of dollars in revenue by speeding up their ability to make transactions, “has absolutely no social value.” And still, with little oversight from regulators, high-frequency trading has exploded, as this chart from the market research firm Nanex shows:

Germany last week became the first country to make an explicit move toward limiting high-speed trading when its lawmakers approved draft legislation that would require licensing of all trades and limit the number of overall trades made at high-frequency. In the United States, Democratic lawmakers have proposed a return of the financial transactions tax, which would limit trading by levying a small tax on transactions. Such a plan would generate billions of dollars in revenue each year, according to Rep. Peter DeFazio (D-OR), while limiting the market volatility and sudden crashes that occur when high-frequency trades go wrong.

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NEWS FLASH

Barney Frank Opposes Medical Treatment For Trans Prisoners | Rep. Barney Frank (D-MA) is the latest public figure to come out against providing sex reassignment surgery to transgender prisoners when deemed medically necessary, joining opposing Senate candidates Scott Brown (R) and Elizabeth Warren (D). Defending Massachusetts’s decision to appeal the case against Michelle Kosilek, Frank told MetroWeekly that the prescribed surgery is not “a good use of taxpayer dollars,” rebutting transgender activists by claiming that “they’re making a mistake if they think it’s a general trans issue.” It very much is a trans issue if proper medical treatment is being denied because of a person’s gender identity, and the true waste of taxpayer money is how much has been spent fighting Kosilek’s case, which have far exceeded the projected cost of her surgery.

Climate Progress

Irony Alert: Postal Service’s New ‘Forever’ Stamp Is Shrinking Alaskan Glacier!

By Joe Romm on Oct 1, 2012 at 5:08 pm

An eagle-eyed reader directs us to this new ‘Forever’ stamp from the U.S. Postal Service.

On Sunday, National Parks Traveler online explained:

Come Monday, you can send Kenai Fjords National Park around the country. At least figuratively, thanks to a new stamp from the U.S. Postal Service.

On Monday the Postal Service releases its Earthscapes stamp series featuring a new perspective on one of Kenai Fjords’ most photographed locations, Bear Glacier.

It is a very photographed glacier. Here, for instance, are a couple of Landsat photos NASA and the U.S. Geological Survey have put together in their fact sheet, “A Sensitive Giant: Alaska’s Bear Glacier:”

As the caption from NASA and USGS explains:

Look closely at the massive Bear Glacier shown in these Landsat satellite images and you’ll notice significant changes between 1986 and 2002. As the glacier has receded, many pieces of ice have broken off its end. In the 2002 image, you can see them floating like shards of white glass in the blue water. Bear Glacier is shrinking! From the early 1950s–1990s, Bear Glacier thinned about 2.5 feet (0.75 m) per year. Glaciers are particularly sensitive to climate trends, and widespread glacier recession is considered an indicator of global warming.

Note to Postal Service: Diamonds are forever. Glaciers, not so much.

Finally, the USGS has a series of images of Bear Glacier from 2002, 2005 and 2007 with a full explanation of the recent changes, which include thinning by “about 10 meters (33 feet)”:

Read more

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Justice

One Year After VAWA’s Expiration And Counting: House Leaders Still ‘Splitting Hairs’ Over Rape Victims

By Guest Blogger on Oct 1, 2012 at 5:00 pm

Our guest blogger is Erik Stegman, Manager of the Half in Ten Campaign at the Center for American Progress Action Fund

One year ago, the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA) expired. Since 1994, this landmark legislation has been funding clinics, shelters, and hotlines for victims in crisis across the country, and provided tremendously important tools for law enforcement to crack down on abusers and rapists. Over the past year, VAWA has trained 500,000 law enforcement officers and judicial officials, and provided a national crisis hotline that served 264,000 victims. So why do victims and service providers find themselves one year later without the certainty of a renewed law? Some in the House are still trying to figure out which victims deserve its protection.

“Rape is rape and there’s no splitting hairs over rape.” That’s what Rep. Paul Ryan, Mitt Romney’s Vice Presidential running mate, said in an interview about an abortion funding bill he cosponsored that tried to split hairs by defining “forcible” rape. But Reps. Ryan, Todd Akin, and their colleagues in the House are splitting hairs over something much more dangerous for rape victims: which women deserve protection and services under VAWA. Originally passed in 1994 as the first and only comprehensive bill to combat rape and domestic violence, VAWA has been reauthorized unanimously by Congress in 2000 and 2005. For years, protecting women from rape and domestic violence has been the issue too important to argue about for Congress: until now.

After passing the Senate in April by a now-rare supermajority of 68, including every female senator, the House stopped the bill in its tracks. And, there’s not much time left for the House to act in the 112^th Congress. But, why block a bill that protects women from rape? According to the House, some victims aren’t legitimate enough. After a grueling full day committee meeting, the House Judiciary Committee stripped improved provisions out of the Senate bill protecting Native American, LGBT and immigrant victims. During the meeting, Rep. John Conyers (D-Mich.), ranking minority member, offered an amendment to restore the inclusive Senate provisions, but Rep. Lamar Smith (R-TX) wouldn’t even allow a vote on it.

The full House hastily passed their version of the bill in May on a narrow vote of 222-205, parsing out Native American, LGBT and immigrant victims. What now? Instead of passing the bipartisan Senate bill and sending it to the president, House leadership have dug in their heels and continue to let the bill languish over a fight about who deserves protection. Leadership in the House can pass this bill as soon as they get back from recess and send it to the president. It’s solely in their court. No one in Congress should be splitting hairs about rape, or which women are “legitimate” victims to receive support and services.

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Alyssa

Shonda Rhimes Sells A Comedy From ‘Awkward Black Girl’ Creator Issa Rae to ABC

By Alyssa Rosenberg on Oct 1, 2012 at 4:21 pm

Since my readers introduced me to Issa Rae’s web series The Misadventures of Awkward Black Girl, I’ve wished someone would give Rae, whose biting, original, low-budget show has earned her a well-deserved following, a deal and the resources to take her show national. Now, Shonda Rhimes, one of the few women and few African-Americans who can basically get a network to greenlight anything she wants, has found a way to do precisely that. Through her Shondaland production company, Rhimes has helped Rae sell a new series, I Hate La Dudes, about the sole woman on an internet radio talk show, to ABC.

This is good, and illuminating, news for two reasons. First, it’s a sign that production companies and networks are finally starting to look to web-based content the way they should, as a source of genuinely new voices and of fresh storylines. In an ideal world, the internet and the distribution platforms native to it, Hulu in particular, should function as a kind of minor leagues for television, allowing artists to test ideas, improve their tool kits as low budgets require many of them to write, direct, edit and score as well as act, and build followings. Not all projects will succeed, but web shows, which are free from the pressures of network scheduling, can take time to develop audiences by word of mouth. If a show becomes a hit online without the benefit of a major publicity campaign, as Awkward Black Girl did, it’s fantastic proof of concept. That Rhimes and ABC recognized Rae’s talent and her audience is a testament to them, as well as to Rae’s work and vision.

The question will be how much leeway Rae has at ABC. Because it’s a network, it’s hard to imagine she’ll have as much freedom when it comes to content or to ratings as Louis C.K. has at FX or Lena Dunham has had at HBO. ABC picked up the show because the network thinks it can make money from Rae, not merely to pick up awards nominations or critical praise, and no matter how original Rae is, she’ll be getting network notes. But in a sense, there’s something invigorating about that proposition: ABC must think it’s possible to do well with a show from the perspective of a nerdy African-American woman whose prior selling point has been the social awkwardness of the character she portrayed, not precisely a demographic that gets heavy representation on network television.

And it’s also exciting to see Rhimes use her capital in Hollywood this way. Tyler Perry, the other person of color who can get almost any television or film project he wants into development, has never seemed particularly interested in using his shingle to help other writers and directors get projects moving (though he produced Lee Daniels’ Precious). And today he signed an exclusive development deal with the Oprah Winfrey Network, locking in profits but limiting his influence. There’s nothing wrong with Perry making that money. But it’s more exciting to see Rhimes single-handedly use her influence to make television a place that’s not just more diverse but more interesting, even in a way that goes beyond her own shows. I’ll be crossing my fingers for Rae to succeed not just because I can’t wait to watch whatever she creates, but because if she does well, that can only rebound to Shondaland’s credit, and if this is any indication, to our benefit as well.

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