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Republican Senator Who Received An ‘A’ Rating From The NRA Backs Assault Weapons Ban | Outgoing Senator Scott Brown (R-MA) told The Republican/MassLive.com on Wednesday that he now supports federal action to ban assault weapons after the shooting in Newtown, Connecticut. Brown, who lost reelection in November to Elizabeth Warren, was once a darling of the National Rifle Association, which awarded Brown a lifetime ‘A’ rating during his first senate campaign for 2010′s special election to fill the late Ted Kennedy’s senate seat. Brown had supported the state’s assault weapon ban but remained opposed to any federal action until last week’s tragedy changed his mind. “As a state legislator in Massachusetts I supported an assault weapons ban thinking other states would follow suit. But unfortunately, they have not and innocent people are being killed…As a result, I support a federal assault weapons ban, perhaps like the legislation we have in Massachusetts,” he told the news organization.

Justice

Sorry, Rick Scott, You Can’t Shift Blame For 6 Hour Voting Lines

By Ian Millhiser on Dec 19, 2012 at 6:30 pm

Florida Gov. Rick Scott (R) signed a law cutting early voting days in what was widely viewed as an effort to frustrate voters who tend to vote both early and Democratic from casting a ballot. Indeed, in the wake of the six hour voting lines created by Rick Scott’s law, several Republicans openly admitted that the goal of Scott’s changes to Florida voting law was to prevent Democrats — and, in particular, African-American Democrats — from casting a vote.

Immediately after election day, Scott was unapologetic for the lines his policy caused, claiming that he “did the right thing” by standing against early voting. Since then, his polling numbers have cratered, with 52 percent of Floridians saying he does not deserve a second term. So Scott decided to hum a different tune in an interview with CNN’s Soledad O’Brien this morning — suggesting that the long lines were somehow someone else’s fault:

SCOTT: We got to go back and look at the number of days of early voting we have.

O’BRIEN: There’s some people who said you could have extended early voting. I mean, I guess I’m asking how much of blame do you hold in this — do you hold yourself accountable for? Because there are people who blamed you, very vociferously frankly, for not extending early voting . . . .

SCOTT: Well Soledad, you know, I complied with the law. We had an election bill that was passed, um, my first year in office by the legislature. It was approved by the Justice Department. So I complied with the law.

Watch it:

Of course, the anti-voting law that Scott supposedly “complied” with was not simply passed by the Florida legislature. It was also signed into law — by Rick Scott! If Scott objected to suppressing the early vote, he could have demonstrated that fact by vetoing this law instead.

Later in the interview, Scott admits that “we do need change,” and he calls for a “bipartisan” plan to restore confidence in his state’s elections. If he is serious about this, State Sens. Arthenia Joyner (D-FL) and Gwen Margolis (D-FL) already have a bill he can endorse. Their bill would reinstate two full weeks of early voting days and would require 12 hours of early voting per weekday and 12 hours total on weekends.

Health

Catholic Countries Slowly Move Toward More Progressive Reproductive Health Policies

By Sy Mukherjee on Dec 19, 2012 at 6:20 pm

A sex education and contraception access bill that had languished for over a decade passed the Philippines’ House of Representatives by a 133-79 vote margin this week — putting the conservative Catholic country on track to enacting more extensive reproductive health care legislation than ever before, including a more progressive policy on sexual education than the United States currently has.

As the New York Times reports, the so-called “RH bill” — which requires schools in the Philippines to teach accurate sex education classes and expands contraception access in poor, rural areas — had already passed the Senate. Now the two legislative houses will work to reconcile minor differences between their respective versions of the bill in order to enshrine it into law.

If passed, the law could make the Philippines more progressive than the United States on some reproductive health issues. The U.S. still doesn’t mandate comprehensive sexual education — allowing many public school students to receive ineffective and misleading “abstinence-only” education instead — and the Catholic Church has waged a full-scale war against the health reform law’s provision to expand access to affordable contraception. Even though Catholics in the U.S. overwhelmingly support birth control, and don’t even particularly oppose Obamacare’s birth control mandate, that hasn’t stopped the Catholic hierarchy from largely dominating the political conversation about women’s health issues.

Despite its recent progress on reproductive health issues, however, the Philippines still has strict anti-abortion laws typical of many Catholic countries. But there does seem to be some indication that — even in Catholic countries — slow gains are being made toward greater reproductive freedom. In Ireland, after worldwide outcry over the miscarriage-related death of a woman who was denied an emergency abortion, Irish lawmakers moved this week to consider loosening the country’s strict abortion laws.

Health

New Cases Of HIV Infection Are Stabilizing, But Some Groups Remain Particularly Vulnerable

By Tara Culp-Ressler on Dec 19, 2012 at 5:30 pm

New data from the Centers for Disease Control estimates that even though the total number of Americans living with HIV steadily increased between 1980 and 2010, the rise is partly due to the fact that treatment programs are helping HIV-positive individuals live longer and healthier lives. Overall, new HIV infections have not increased, and the CDC estimates that prevention efforts have averted more than 350,000 cases of infection to date. Unfortunately, that good news doesn’t hold true for every community once the data is broken down by specific demographics.

The HIV epidemic is still disproportionately impacting the LGBT community — particularly men who have sex with men (MSM), who accounted for nearly two-thirds of all new infections in 2010. And the CDC reported last month that young people between the ages of 13 and 24 aren’t getting the message about HIV testing and treatment, despite the recent public education campaigns on the topic, which may be why the number of new HIV infections among MSM in that age group increased 22 percent from 2008 to 2010:

And gains in HIV treatment are also racially stratified, as African-American men continue to bear the biggest burden. Although the cases of new HIV infections among African-American women did decline between 2008 and 2010, black women still accounted for nearly two-thirds of all new infections among women in 2010. Nearly 90 percent of those women contracted the virus from heterosexual sex. Altogether, the rate of HIV infection for black Americans is about eight times higher than the rate for white Americans:

Fortunately, the U.S. made big strides toward combating HIV over the past year, a time period that is not reflected in the CDC’s new report. Breakthroughs in HIV research and drugs may help ensure that HIV-positive individuals’ life expectancy is extended even further, and the health reform law will help ensure that HIV testing and treatment is affordable for Americans who may have previously gone without it. The next time the CDC runs the numbers, there may be even more good news to report, even for typically hard-hit demographic groups.

Justice

North Carolina Tea Party Group Hosts ‘Great Gun Giveaway’ Before All Newtown Victims Are Even Buried

By Adam Peck on Dec 19, 2012 at 5:30 pm

A flier for the Asheville Tea Party's gun giveaway.

Since the tragic shooting in Newtown, Connecticut, gun advocates have, by and large, wisely kept out of the spotlight. Even the National Rifle Association, hardly a bastion of liberal thinking, was self-aware enough to temporarily suspend their social media accounts and exercise restraint before finally issuing a statement four days after the tragedy.

The Asheville Tea Party has no such moral quandaries. On Monday, the group posted a flyer for a fundraiser they are calling “The Great Gun Giveaway.” They link back to a donate page where supporters can enter for a chance to win one of two semi-automatic guns, a .22 magnum handgun and an AR-15 assault rifle with two 30-round clips.

If that second gun sounds at all familiar, it’s probably because the same gun was used in Newtown to murder 20 children and six others less than a week ago.

Only after word of the gun raffle began circulating on social media sites did the group post a letter in response to charges of insensitivity and disrespect for the dead — many of whom have yet to be buried. But rather than reschedule their fundraiser or even offer an apology for their poor timing, the chair of the group’s PAC instead defended the raffle and argued for introducing more guns into public schools:

We have given the Federal Government permission to disarm school officials by force of law and threat of imprisonment. They are now incapable of defending the children under their care. This is the reality. Does this not need to be changed?…ATPAC decided to go through with this raffle at this time because everyone is paying attention. We refuse to allow the Left and the Liberal mindset to once again hijack the conversation as they have and allow the political hacks to pass laws that continue to limit our inalienable right to protect ourselves and the most defenseless among us.

If in fact gun control advocates are able to pass legislation to help keep military-grade assault rifles out of Kindergarteners’ classrooms, it will hardly be a continuation of any kind. During the first four years of President Obama’s administration, gun owners have actually seen a steady increase in their ability to purchase, carry, and conceal handguns and gun manufacturers have sold more weapons than any other time in U.S history.

The Asheville Tea Party has a history of inflammatory rhetoric, previously comparing President Obama to Hitler, sounding the alarm over the impending threat of Sharia law, and advocating for nullification, the thoroughly debunked and unconstitutional theory that a state can simply decide to ignore federal law within its borders.

Economy

Interest Rate Rigging By Big Banks May Have Cost U.S. Taxpayers Billions Of Dollars

By Pat Garofalo on Dec 19, 2012 at 5:30 pm

UBS and Barclays have both been fined more than $1 billion by regulators for manipulating the LIBOR interest rate, a key global benchmark. UBS bankers were caught in emails bragging about the “fu*king humongous deals” they were arranging by gaming LIBOR.

LIBOR rigging could have affected Americans of all stripes, sucking funds from the cities they live in and hurting the pension funds that hold their retirement savings. And as the Wall Street Journal reported, American taxpayers may lose up to $3 billion due to LIBOR rate rigging:

Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac may have lost more than $3 billion as a result of banks’ alleged manipulation of a key interest rate, according to an internal report by a federal watchdog sent to the mortgage companies’ regulator and reviewed by The Wall Street Journal.

The unpublished report urges Fannie and Freddie to consider suing the banks involved in setting the London interbank offered rate, which would add to the mounting legal headaches financial firms such as UBS and Barclays face from cities, insurers, investors and lenders over claims tied to the benchmark rate. [...]

Analysts from the inspector general’s office said in the internal report, dated Oct. 26, that Fannie and Freddie likely lost more than $3 billion on their holdings of more than $1 trillion in mortgage-linked securities, interest-rate swaps, floating-rate bonds and other assets tied to Libor from September 2008 through the second quarter of 2010, which the report says was the height of banks’ alleged false reporting of the interest rate.

As Reuters’ Alison Frankel wrote, “The drive for profits in people like the UBS traders and their brokerage conspirators, as described in the FSA filing, is obviously more powerful than any qualms about morality or fear of being found out. That’s why moaning about Dodd-Frank whistle-blowers or duplicative actions against the banks rings hollow.” Federal regulators, including Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner (then president of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York), reportedly knew about LIBOR rate rigging as far back as 2008.

Climate Progress

From Sandy to Sandy Hook: The Moral Urgency For Action Even When It Appears ‘The Politics Are Too Hard’

By Joe Romm on Dec 19, 2012 at 5:15 pm

I have a daughter almost as old as those who were senselessly killed at Sandy Hook Elementary school, so my heart goes out to all the victims.

She is also why I fight so hard for climate action. As Obama said in his powerful speech at the Sandy Hook interfaith prayer vigil:

With their very first cry, this most precious, vital part of ourselves — our child — is suddenly exposed to the world, to possible mishap or malice.  And every parent knows there is nothing we will not do to shield our children from harm. And yet, we also know that with that child’s very first step, and each step after that, they are separating from us; that we won’t — that we can’t always be there for them.  They’ll suffer sickness and setbacks and broken hearts and disappointments.  And we learn that our most important job is to give them what they need to become self-reliant and capable and resilient, ready to face the world without fear.

And we know we can’t do this by ourselves…. we come to realize that we bear a responsibility for every child because we’re counting on everybody else to help look after ours; that we’re all parents; that they’re all our children.

This is our first task — caring for our children.  It’s our first job.  If we don’t get that right, we don’t get anything right.  That’s how, as a society, we will be judged.

And by that measure, can we truly say, as a nation, that we are meeting our obligations?  Can we honestly say that we’re doing enough to keep our children — all of them — safe from harm?  Can we claim, as a nation, that we’re all together there, letting them know that they are loved, and teaching them to love in return?

Can we say that we’re truly doing enough to give all the children of this country the chance they deserve to live out their lives in happiness and with purpose?

I’ve been reflecting on this the last few days, and if we’re honest with ourselves, the answer is no.  We’re not doing enough.  And we will have to change.

Dave Roberts at Grist has already noted that many of Obama’s words could have been written in a speech about the moral necessity for climate action, in an eloquent post, “Newtown: Tragedy, empathy, and growing our circle of concern.” I share Roberts’ (and Obama’s) call for “a basic shift in moral perspective.”

The reason Obama’s words at Sandy Hook also speak to the moral urgency of climate action is, I think, because the president has been thinking a great deal about his legacy since winning re-election, thinking about his second-term agenda in terms of how it affects future generations.

The language he used at Sandy Hook clearly echoes a new interview in Time (done before the shooting) on his second term agenda:

My primary focus is going to continue to be on the economy, on immigration, on climate change and energy….

Well, it’s a cliché, but it’s obviously true that for any parent, as you watch your kids age, you are reminded that everything you do has to have their futures in mind. You fervently hope they’re going to outlive you; that the world will be better for them when you’re not around. You start thinking about their kids.

And so, on an issue like climate change, for example, I think for this country and the world to ask some very tough questions about what are we leaving behind, that weighs on you. And not to mention the fact I think that generation is much more environmentally aware than previous generations.

There is that sense of we’ve got to get this right, and at least give them a fighting chance. In the same way that as a parent you recognize that no matter what you do, your kids are going to have challenges — because that’s the human condition — but you don’t want them dealing with stuff that’s the result of you making bad choices. They’ll have enough bad choices that they make on their own that you don’t want them inheriting the consequences of bad choices that you make. We have to think about that as a society as a whole.

You could almost flip the two speeches.

Except that, in the wake of the umpteenth senseless gun tragedy, Obama used the bully pulpit to publicly commit himself to action no matter how tough it might seem:

“In the coming weeks, I will use whatever power this office holds to engage my fellow citizens … in an effort aimed at preventing more tragedies like this.”

He explicitly rejected the notion that “the politics are too hard.”

But for climate, no public speeches, no clarion call to action at all cost.

Read more

Health

Biotech Giant Will Pay Massive Settlement For Illegally Promoting Drugs And Committing Insurance Fraud

By Sy Mukherjee on Dec 19, 2012 at 4:45 pm

In a case that encompasses illegal drug promotion, corporate kickbacks to doctors, and pre-meditated Medicare fraud, Los Angeles Times reports that biotech and pharmaceutical conglomerate Amgen will be fined $762 million after pleading guilty to allegations of improper drug marketing.

Kassie Westmoreland, a former Amgen employee and a whistleblower in the suit, was one of several people to charge that Amgen promoted the anemia-treatment drug Aranesp for off-label use and overfilled doctors’ promotional samples of the drug. In a brazen twist, Westmoreland also claims that the company orchestrated a collusive scheme to allow doctors to fraudulently profit off of their patients’ drug benefits:

[Westmoreland's] suit charged that Amgen overfilled vials of Aranesp to supply doctors with extra medicine at no charge. She alleged the company then encouraged doctors to bill Medicare and private insurers for this surplus amount, reaping them extra profit. Amgen pursued this strategy to take business away from Procrit, a popular anemia drug sold by Johnson & Johnson, according to the suit.

The Westmoreland case cited internal spreadsheets used by Amgen sales representatives to allegedly show doctors how much more money they could make from the overfills.

“Amgen provided extra product in the Aranesp vials as a liquid kickback that doctors could then cash in with federal and state governments through Medicare and Medicaid reimbursements,” said Charles Kester, a Calabasas attorney who represents Westmoreland along with law firms in Boston and Washington, D.C. “Amgen is being held to account in a serious way for its choices to market this drug unlawfully.”

Amgen’s penalties highlight the fact that most federal health care settlements stem from Medicare fraud and pharmaceutical misconduct. While doctors can prescribe drugs for off-label use, it is illegal for pharmaceutical companies to advertise drugs for purposes other than what the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has approved. But settlements of this kind — and the government’s ability to crack down on drug makers’ practices that may threaten public health — could soon be a thing of the past.

A recent appellate court ruling in favor of the pharmaceutical industries’ right to promote their products as they see fit has set the stage for a Supreme Court showdown over drug makers’ First Amendment rights — and opens up big questions about how stringently the FDA can regulate Big Pharma.

Justice

Majority Leader Reid Reportedly On Board With Streamlining Confirmations Process

By Ian Millhiser on Dec 19, 2012 at 4:40 pm

In a report suggesting that Senate Democrats are likely to have the 51 votes necessary to reform the filibuster next month, Ryan Grim reports that Senate Majority Leader Reid (D-NV) has embraced an important reform to prevent obstruction of judicial and other nominees. According to Grim, Reid, “wants to streamline the nomination process, and cut out some of the time it takes to move judges through by limiting debate once a filibuster has been defeated.”

This is a significant addition to the package of reforms Reid already endorsed, which include eliminating the minority’s ability to filibuster the same bill more than once and requiring a senator to speak on the floor in order to maintain a filibuster. Under current Senate rules, the minority can force up to 30 hours of floor time to be wasted even after a supermajority of the Senate votes to break a filibuster on a nominee. When multiplied across the many hundreds of nominees the Senate must confirm, these 30 hours of wasted time allow the minority to bring the Senate to a virtual standstill.

Of course, it remains to be seen just how deeply Reid is willing to cut these 30 hours — in an ideal world, he will embrace Sen. Jeff Merkley’s (D-OR) suggestion to eliminate all of them. Nevertheless, the fact that Reid appears to be on board with cutting short these 30 hours of waste is a significant positive development in the negotiations over filibuster reform.

Economy

CHART: The Global Corporate Tax Rate Plummeted In The Last Decade

By Rebecca Leber on Dec 19, 2012 at 4:15 pm

Evidence that the global corporate tax rate has dropped significantly in the past decade counters a conservative myth that corporations suffer from too-high taxes. As several countries — most prominently the UK — renew scrutiny over tax dodging, a Deutsche Bank report illustrates how the global effective corporate tax rate has dropped significantly in the past decade:

Corporations avoid paying taxes on billions in earnings by registering profits to low-tax havens. Recently, Amazon, and Starbucks, among others, have faced fire in the UK for “immoral” tax dodging. Starbucks pays an overseas tax rate of 13 percent, “one of the lowest in the consumers goods sector,” while Apple and Amazon have paid single-digit global tax rates and just 3.2 percent and 5.3 percent on overseas profit.

In the U.S., corporate profits are at an all-time high, while revenue from the corporate income tax has plummeted. (HT: Business Insider)

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