Ohio Voter ID Bill Dies In State Senate

By Travis Waldron on Jul 29, 2011 at 5:10 pm

Voting rights advocates, who have been busy protesting voter ID laws across the country in 2011, earned a major victory in Ohio Thursday when state House Speaker William Batchelder (R) indicated that state Senate Republicans would not move on a proposed voter ID law. The bill, which passed the House earlier this year, is opposed by Republican Secretary of State Jon Husted and the GOP-controlled state Senate. The Columbus Dispatch reports:

“I think we’ll probably not see it again,” said House Speaker William G. Batchelder after a brief legislative session today. “There’s a limit to the amount of times you want to run your head into a wall, and it makes your ears ring.” [...]

Later, Batchelder spokesman Mike Dittoe said, “Obviously, the speaker wants the bill passed by the Senate, but I don’t believe he has any indication the Senate will be moving on it anytime soon. Certainly our (House GOP) caucus believes that voter fraud is and could be a bigger problem, and every single poll, no matter what polling entity you use, indicates that the American people believe that as well.”

Though Ohio’s voter ID bill is dead for now, Gov. John Kasich (R) did sign a sweeping election reform law that banned various early voting methods used by more than 200,000 voters in Ohio’s capital alone. Like Kasich’s other landmark bill, that law is also subject to a referendum campaign. Ohio Democratic Chairman Chris Redfern, meanwhile, says this likely isn’t the end of voter ID efforts in Ohio. “(This will) be it for the voter ID until a new batch of tea party freshmen join the Republican caucus and go about the business of disenfranchisement,” he told the Dispatch.

And while this is a victory for the voting rights movement, voter ID laws continue to go into effect across the country. As many as 22 states this year considered voter ID laws as they attempted to address the virtually nonexistent voter fraud “problem.” The efforts have drawn sharp rebukes from Democrats and voting and civil rights groups. Former President Clinton and representatives from the Congressional Black Caucus compared the efforts to disenfranchise voters to the South’s discriminatory Jim Crow laws and other efforts to disenfranchise minority voters during and prior to the Civil Rights Movement.

U.S. Rep. Marcia Fudge (D-OH), a CBC member who is pushing the Justice Department to review the new laws, was happy to see the GOP abandon the bill. “I am pleased to see that Republicans have come to understand the detrimental effects of an ID bill on the electorate,” Fudge told ThinkProgress. “In our democracy, everyone has the right to vote, yet these strategically orchestrated measures attempt to stifle voting much more than encourage it. I can’t understand any other reason to mandate these limitations other than to continue an effort to disenfranchise certain voters.”

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Yglesias

Defensive Patents Are Bad Patents

By Matthew Yglesias on Jul 29, 2011 at 4:45 pm

This is well-put by Julian Sanchez. A strategy of defensive patents only works if the “innovation” you’re patenting isn’t worthy of patent protection:

But now think about how defensive patents work. Companies aren’t buying them—or buying into the services of companies like Intellectual Ventures—because they provide otherwise unavailable technical insights. The point, rather, is to acquire (or have access to) a bundle of patents that any potential litigant who sues you is likely to be “infringing” in their own products. Like nuclear weapons, the point is not to actually use them—but only to be able to threaten to use them if anyone else should deploy theirs against you.

This only works, however, if other companies are almost certain to have independently come up with the same idea. A patent that is truly so original that somebody else wouldn’t arrive at the same solution by applying normal engineering skill is useless as a defensive patent. You can’t threaten someone with a countersuit if your idea is so brilliant that your opponents—because they didn’t think of it—haven’t incorporated it in their technology. The ideal defensive patent, by contrast, is the most obvious one you can get the U.S. Patent Office to sign off on—one that competitors are likely to unwittingly “infringe,” not realizing they’ve made themselves vulnerable to legal counterattack, because it’s simply the solution a good, smart engineer trying to solve a particular problem would naturally come up with.

The whole idea of patents is, as Aaron Swartz pointed out to me yesterday, pretty odd. A copyright forbids copying. A patent forbids independent discovery as well. And it does so even though it’s famously common for certain ideas to be “in the air” and independently developed by different people.

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NEWS FLASH

The History Of LGBT Rights At The UN | United Nations human rights chief Navi Pillay reviews the evolution of the LGBT rights at the United Nations, noting how one activist, Nicholas Toonen, filed a case that forced the United Nations Human Rights Committee to reaffirm that freedom from discrimination applies to everyone — gay, straight, lesbian or bisexual. Since 1994, more than 30 countries have taken steps to abolish their anti-homosexuality laws, but criminal sanctions “still remain in place in more than 70 countries,” Pillay notes. Watch it:

Economy

Judge Deals Final Blow To Milwaukee’s Paid Sick Days Law: ‘It’s Over’

By Pat Garofalo on Jul 29, 2011 at 4:35 pm

In 2008, Milwaukee, Wisconsin became the third U.S. city — after San Francisco and Washington, DC — to require paid sick leave for workers, thanks to a referendum overwhelmingly approved by the city’s voters. However, back in May, Wisconsin’s Republican legislature passed, and notoriously anti-worker Gov. Scott Walker (R-WI) signed, a bill that took away the ability of cities to decide for themselves whether they want to mandate paid sick leave.

The sick days law has been tied up in the courts ever since, but yesterday, the Milwaukee County Circuit Court officially said that the state is within its rights to nullify Milwaukee’s law:

After three years of legal and political wrangling over the Milwaukee paid sick-day law that voters approved but business groups denounced, Milwaukee County Circuit Court Judge Thomas Cooper declared Thursday afternoon: “It’s over.”

In doing so he found the city law, passed by 69% of voters in November 2008 and upheld by the state Court of Appeals in March, was moot because of state legislation approved in April that voided it.

“I don’t feel real good about how this happened politically,” he said in announcing his ruling.

Judge Cooper said the bill was perfectly targeted to negate Milwaukee’s paid sick days law. “You put a bull’s-eye on paid sick days,” he said. The ruling comes on the heels of a few wins by proponents of paid sick days, as Connecticut became the first state to require them and residents of Denver got the issue onto November’s ballot. Philadelphia’s city council also approved a sick days bill recently, only to see it vetoed by Mayor Michael Nutter.

At the moment, the U.S. is all alone in the industrialized world in not mandating some form of paid time off for workers, and the U.S. economy as a whole loses $180 billion in productivity annually due to sick employees attending work and infecting other workers. Lack of sick days is a particularly acute problem in the food services industry (where sick workers attending work is obviously even more problematic). It’s a shame that the anti-worker fervor of Wisconsin’s Republicans goes so far as to nullify a law that the people of Milwaukee clearly wanted.

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NEWS FLASH

GOP Rep. Hensarling: It’s ‘Contrary To Our DNA’ To Raise Debt Ceiling — Except Under Bush | Appearing on Fox News this afternoon to discuss Republicans’ opposition to raising the debt ceiling, House Republican Conference Chairman Jeb Hensarling (R-TX) said it is “contrary to our DNA” to raise the debt ceiling. Watch it:

Hensarling must have changed his DNA in the past few years, as, like 97 of his House GOP colleagues, the potential mutant-congressman has voted for a clean increase of the debt ceiling under President Bush.

Alyssa

Debt Ceiling Platinum Coins And Heist Flicks

By Alyssa Rosenberg on Jul 29, 2011 at 4:06 pm

In the midst of the delightfully distracting debate over whether the Treasury Department could solve the debt ceiling crisis by minting a couple of trillion-dollar coins, Jon Chait suggests that such a scenario lends itself to a whole bunch of wacky movie ideas:

I actually feel like this plan could, in addition to rescuing the economy, provide the spark our film industry requires. I could sit here for ten minutes and rattle off a half-dozen great film concepts based on this story.

Bank caper: a dashing Clooney-esque figure assembles a team to steal the trillion dollar coin.

Comedy: a bumbling assistant Treasury Secretary played by Jack Black accidentally picks up the trillion dollar coin and spends it on a Mountain Dew, sending the entire government into a mad scramble for the coin before the world economy collapses.

Noir: Regular person somehow acquires the coin, and is slowly twisted.

Action: Super-villain plots to destroy the coin and bring the economy to its knees, from which he stands to profit due to a nefariously brilliant hedge he has prepared. Maybe we’ll call him “Eric Cantor.”

I like these, but I have some doubts about the first idea. A lot of what makes heist movies fun is the brilliant solutions to the logistical challenges of moving the loot. We’d never have the sheer joy of the Mini Cooper chase scene in The Italian Job if all we had to move was a couple of little coins:

On the other hand, you could do a gorgeous, high-level three card monte, like the climax of the remake of The Thomas Crown Affair, one of my favorite movie sequences for pure fun and style (the clip spoils the end of the movie):

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Yglesias

Evolving Party Cartel Norms

By Matthew Yglesias on Jul 29, 2011 at 3:59 pm

In principle, a debt ceiling bill could pass the US House of Representatives with something like 180 Democratic votes and 40 Republican votes. In that case, you wouldn’t need any tea partiers or even anyone with a safe GOP seat to vote for it. But the option isn’t being explored because it’s taken for granted that nothing will be moved to the floor of the House unless John Boehner signs off on it, and if Boehner were to green light a measure that the majority of his caucus disliked, he might be deposed. This is a “party cartel” dynamic. Powers that are formally assigned to the US House of Representatives are, instead, de facto exercised by the House Republican caucus and only measures that meet with the approval of the caucus can pass the House.

Except, as Jesse Richman writes (PDF) it hasn’t always had to work this way:

Describing his job in 2003, former Republican House Speaker Dennis Hastert asserted that “The job of the speaker is not to expedite legislation that runs counter to the wishes of the majority of his majority.” Cox and McCubbins’ (2005) first commandment for party leaders is consistent with Hastert’s claim: “Thou shalt not aid bills that will split thy party.” Further, Cox and McCubbins (p. 209) suggest that such negative agenda control is a constant in the US House of Representatives.

However, Hastert misunderstood the job of the speaker, and his mismanagement of the agenda contributed to the destruction of the majority he served. Former Democratic Speaker of the House Tip O’Neill described a more flexible approach to agenda control. In his autobiography, O’Neill recalled his reaction to the legislative agenda pursued by Ronald Reagan in 1981. “As Speaker, I could have refused to play ball with the Reagan administration by holding up the president’s legislation inthe Rules Committee. But in my view, this wasn’t a politically wise thing to do.” (O’Neill and Novak 1987, p. 344). O’Neill sacrificed agenda control in order to protect the Democratic majority. The majority was rolled (Cox and McCubbins 2005, p. 257) but the majority survived.

Richman’s thesis is that O’Neill had this right and strong carteling behavior has negative electoral consequences.

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LGBT

Fox News Largely Ignores Pending Repeal Of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell

By Igor Volsky on Jul 29, 2011 at 3:59 pm

A new Equality Matters analysis finds that Fox News largely ignored the government’s decision to certify the repeal of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, covering the story just 5 times between July 21 and July 24. Comparatively, “CNN covered the administration’s certification 26 times, MSNBC covered the story 11 times” and “ran a number of longer segments”:

Ignoring stories which benefit the LGBT community and undermine social conservative causes, however, is the norm at Fox. Back in March, Fox remained silent after a major law firm reversed its decision about defending an explicitly anti-gay law, and last year the network failed to report on former RNC Chairman Ken Mehlman — who had orchestrated President Bush’s gay-bashing 2004 re-election campaign — coming out as gay.

Last month, a similar ThinkProgress analysis revealed that Fox News also offered slim coverage to New York’s historic same-sex marriage law. The network ran the story just 5 times, compared to 32 mentions on MSNBC and 23 on CNN:

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Justice

After Promising To Drive Disenfranchised Voters To The DMV, Gov. Nikki Haley Won’t Give Ride To 76-Year-Old Veteran

By Alex Seitz-Wald on Jul 29, 2011 at 3:40 pm

As ThinkProgress reported earlier this month, South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley (R) promised to drive residents whose right to vote will be jeopordized by her new voter ID law to the DMV to help them obtain a photo license. “Find the people who say this is invading their rights and I will go take them to the DMV myself and help them,” Haley said in a local TV interview.

This week, 76-year-old Army veteran Robert Tucker, who lacks an accurate birth certificate and thus ID, tried to take up Haley on her offer. Tucker’s cousin, Edith Cunningham, caught wind of Haley’s promise and decided to ask the governor for a ride on Tucker’s behalf, only to be turned down:

“When I saw that I thought ‘well maybe they’ll help the plight that we’re in,’” said Cunningham.

Cunningham called Gov. Haley’s office. “They told me the best that they can do is tell me to go to legal aid,” she said. [...] “They talked about how it’s the greatest thing since sliced bread, but they couldn’t do anything for the person whose disenfranchised.”

When a reporter from WISTV asked the governor’s office about tucker’s request, a Haley spokesperson said, “We’ll work to assist anyone who is having trouble getting state services,” but offered no ride. Watch their report:

With 178,000 residents lacking proper IDs, ThinkProgress estimated it would take Haley over seven years to drive all those people to DMV, even if they carpooled. Considering that voter fraud, the problem voter ID laws are meant to address, is exceedingly rare to point of nonexistence, and the potential for disenfranchisement high, Haley’s office could have saved a lot time by merely leaving people’s right to vote unencumbered.

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Health

The Consequences Of Default For Health Care Providers

By Igor Volsky on Jul 29, 2011 at 3:37 pm

Kaiser Health News looks into the consequences of a possible default for the health care sector and finds that while providers wouldn’t feel an impact over several days, given their dependence on Medicare and Medicaid payments, a prolonged crisis could be “apocalyptic“:

But the worst case scenario here would be more apocalyptic, he says. That’s because health care providers would lose revenues from Medicare and Medicaid at the same time. Plus, a debt default could also unnerve the capital markets, making it difficult or impossible for providers to borrow money to stay afloat. And states are having so many financial problems that they’re not in a position to fill in the gaps.

Matt Salo, executive director of the National Association of Medicaid Directors, says that in the “worst-case scenario, Aug. 2 comes around with no deal, Medicaid is not going to shut down.” But if the bond markets melt down, states could face higher interest rates on money they’ve already borrowed from investors, making it even harder for states to pay their share of Medicaid, which is generally about half, he says. The federal government on average pays about 56 percent of Medicaid costs.

The administration will also be in a tough spot, having to figure out “which checks to issue and when after Aug. 2, since it will be missing about 40 percent of the cash required to pay its bills.” Experts expect for that order to look something like this: 1) pay interest on the debt, 2) send Social Security checks. Medicare payments could be held back, since a short delay is not expected to “jeopardize access as long as the crisis did not drag out too long and they were paid after the crisis ended.”

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