ThinkProgress Logo

Justice

GOP Congressional Nominee In Las Vegas Wants To Get Rid Of Non-English Ballots

By Scott Keyes on Oct 23, 2012 at 5:10 pm

NV-1 nominee Chris Edwards (R)

HENDERSON, Nevada — A Republican congressional candidate in Las Vegas wants to get rid of the Voting Rights Act’s guarantee that citizens can receive a ballot in their native language if they’re not comfortable speaking English.

ThinkProgress spoke with Chris Edwards, the GOP nominee in Nevada’s 1st congressional district, at a candidate forum last week about whether English should be the official language, even if that meant all ballots would have to be printed in English only. “I think that’s a smarter approach,” Edwards said. “That’s not too much to ask for, expect, or do.”

KEYES: I know one of the issues that comes up every once in a while is whether or not English should be declared the official language of the United States, which would necessitate all the government documents, all the government ballots only be in English. Do you where you would stand on that?

EDWARDS: I think that’s a smarter approach, especially when you look at it historically. I know that a lot of people prefer to have multiple languages and so on, but if you look at things throughout world history, when a nation has a common language, they’re able to talk with one another better and able to work with one another better and society is better for it. [...]

KEYES: Even if that meant not having, because right now we allow for instance ballots to be printed in Spanish or other languages. Even if it meant that? [...]

EDWARDS: My preference would be that we make that. That’s not too much to ask for, expect, or do.

Section 203 of the Voting Rights Act protects those American citizens who aren’t native English speakers by requiring all government election materials, including ballots, to be translated wherever 5 percent of the local population or more than 10,000 adult citizens speak a different language. For example, because of recent upticks in Asian voter populations, San Diego County is now translating ballots into Mandarin and Vietnamese.

Currently, over one-quarter of Nevada’s 1st congressional district residents are Latino. For many citizens, ballots in Spanish help them fully understand their vote without having to employ an outside translator.

Edwards’ desire to outlaw translated ballots is just the latest attack on voting rights that could disproportionately impact minority voters. Elsewhere, states have passed voter ID laws and legislation requiring proof of citizenship to register in order to combat the non-existent threat of voter fraud.

Health

STUDY: Hospital Safety Varies Between States

By Sy Mukherjee on Oct 23, 2012 at 5:00 pm

Americans living in Arizona, California, Illinois, and Ohio are in luck. USA Today highlights a new Healthgrades study which finds that patients in these four states enjoy access to the safest hospitals in America — a designation that translates to a 55 percent lower risk of dying while receiving treatment.

The Healthgrades study assesses how well hospitals treated patients across a multitude of medical conditions and procedures from 2005 through 2011, including coronary artery bypass graft, heart attack, pneumonia, and sepsis — altogether, these four areas of medical care account for 54 percent of hospital-related deaths in America. The findings are meant to provide consumers with as much information as possible to help them make their medical decisions, as well as encourage lower-performing hospitals to work on improving their care:

“People need to know how to make informed decisions,” says Roger Holstein, Healthgrades CEO.

“This is the first time we’ve been able to show linkage between a doctor and hospital. It’s particularly important if you’re going to have a surgery. A person can make the best choice by discussing options with his doctor.”

Hospitals in Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Nevada, Oklahoma, West Virginia and Washington, D.C., got the lowest grades, although not all the hospitals in those states performed below average. Healthgrades also grades each hospital; the report says there can be large variances locally.

The differences between states are “substantial,” says Evan Marks, a lead author. “For instance, in Alabama you have a 42% higher risk of dying from a heart attack in a hospital than in Arizona.”

The study is based on official data from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services on 4,500 hospitals across the nation and their treatment records across nearly 30 of the most common medical ailments. The widespread disparities found from state to state are the result of numerous confounding factors, including the historical tendency for doctors to be concentrated near their medical schools and regional income inequality.

Economy

Fox Business Host Admits That Romney’s Tax Plan Doesn’t Add Up

By Guest Blogger on Oct 23, 2012 at 4:25 pm

Arguably the centerpiece of Mitt Romney’s economic policy is his infamously vague tax plan. Romney has promised to reduce income tax rates by 20 percent, but claims the plan won’t add to the deficit due to the elimination of deductions and loopholes.

But the tax cut would cost nearly $5 trillion, and removing tax deductions doesn’t come close to offsetting that loss, unless deductions are cut for the middle-class. In spite of all this, the Romney campaign has adamantly claimed that the numbers do indeed add up.

But now, even Fox News seems be admitting that the math isn’t there. Fox Business host Stuart Varney — a stalwart conservative who openly cheers for Republicans — admitted on Fox and Freinds that he can’t explain how much revenue Romney’s plan would raise:

CARLSON: Alright, so let’s say you do go through these deductions, that, uh…or limiting them, that it doesn’t bring in enough money to offset the tax decreases that you’re going to give to the wealthy.

VARNEY: Yes, that is the other side of the argument, and I cannot calculate how much money would be brought in, because we don’t know the dollar value of the total deductions.

Watch it:

Every independent analysis has found that the various permutations of Romney’s tax plan all involve cutting taxes for the rich, and either raising them on the middle class or blowing up the deficit. There simply aren’t enough deductions used by rich Americans to offset the massive revenue loss that results from a 20 percent cut in rates.

Other Fox hosts have evinced even more frustration with Romney’s continued refusal to supply the details of his plan. Fox’s Greg Jarrett repeatedly tried to drag specifics out of Romney’s policy director during a heated interview, while Chris Wallace took senior Romney adviser Ed Gillespie to task for using debunked studies to claim that the plan adds up. (HT: Media Matters)

– Nathaniel Niemann

Health

New Hampshire Gubernatorial Candidate Touts Obamacare Funds After Campaigning Against It

By Scott Keyes on Oct 23, 2012 at 3:46 pm

NH-GOV nominee Ovide Lamontagne (R)

ATKINSON, New Hampshire — Two years ago, Ovide Lamontagne was running for the U.S. Senate and said he “will use every means possible to repeal the trillion dollar Obamacare takeover.” This year, running for governor of New Hampshire, Lamontagne is embracing Obamacare money.

Stumping at a Rotary Club meeting Friday morning, Lamontagne discussed health care and how New Hampshire can “partner with Washington” to improve the state’s system. “Take those dollars under Obamacare but apply them to a free-market private health insurance exchange” in New Hampshire, he told the audience, failing to mention his past opposition to the landmark health law.

LAMONTAGNE: The delivery system really is local and we ought to continue to work on a New Hampshire solution for health care reform, not turning over our health care system to Washington again. I think we have an opportunity to partner with Washington to come up with a New Hampshire solution. Take those dollars under Obamacare but apply them to a free-market private health insurance exchange with more insurance companies competing and with high-risk pooling or high-risk premium support for those individuals who can’t access the private insurance market because coverages are pricing them out of coverage. That’s where resources should be allocated to.

Watch it:

What Lamontagne proposed to do with Obamacare funds is precisely what they’re intended for: to help states set up “a free-market private health insurance exchange with more insurance companies competing.” It is the same law that he vehemently opposed as a Senate candidate in 2010 because it was a “takeover of our country’s health care system.”

Thus far, Republican legislators in the state have been working to impede creating an exchange. Earlier this year, New Hampshire passed a law barring state officials from setting up an exchange without legislative approval. If New Hampshire doesn’t submit a plan for their own exchange prior to January 1, 2013, federal officials will set up one for the state.

Still, even though Lamontagne is now promising to take advantage of Obamacare funds for the Granite State’s benefit, he also promised earlier this year that he would fight the new law as governor. “The very first thing I would do is direct the attorney general to repeal Obamacare or to fight it and stop it every step of the way,” he said. “We need to make sure we don’t have Obamacare.”

Security

Conservatives Panic Over ‘U.N.-Affiliated’ Election Monitors

By Hayes Brown on Oct 23, 2012 at 3:45 pm

Polling board members in Arlington, Virginia, demonstrate touch screen voting machines to OSCE observers in 2004

Conservative blogs and news media are all buzzing about a team of international election monitors coming to observe the presidential elections in November. The observers are arriving at the invitation of the State Department and the behest of a number of civil rights organizations, including the NAACP, ACLU, and others.

The latter groups’ call for an international team to keep an eye on the U.S. elections focuses particularly on states that have enacted strict voter I.D. laws and other curtailing of voting rights. An NAACP delegation visited the United Nations Human Rights Council in Geneva, Switzerland in September to bring attention to the issue. The NAACP’s move, and the idea of foreign presence in the U.S. to observe elections, has infuriated many on the right.

The response at the state-level is varying. Alabama Speaker of the House Mike Hubbard is, in protest of the monitors’ presence preparing legislation to have all poll watchers in Alabama hold U.S. citizenship. “It’s bad enough that Alabama remains trapped under the provisions of the Voting Rights Act,” Hubbard said “So we certainly don’t need anyone from the United Nations coming into our state and meddling in our elections, as well.”

Catherine Engelbrecht of True the Vote appeared on Fox News on Monday claiming that the monitors’ presence was actually intended to prevent and discourage U.S. voters from exercising their rights. Fox’s Megyn Kelly readily agreed, stressing the left-leaning nature of the civil rights groups, seemingly unaware of the State Department’s role in inviting the monitors. It’s worth mentioning that True the Vote, itself a Tea Party group voter suppression effort, is currently under investigation for possible criminal conspiracy. Watch the full interview here:

What none of these commentators mention is that this is neither an unprecedented event nor particularly worrisome. The Organization for Security and Cooperation (OSCE) is a group of over fifty countries in North America, Europe, and Central Asia committed to security and strengthening democracy. Counter to many of the exclamatory statements by the right-wing, the OSCE is not a part of the United Nations, but instead is loosely affiliated with the global organization.

According to the 1990 Copenhagen Document, which the U.S. has signed, all member states of the OSCE are called upon to accept monitors to observe their elections. As a founding member, the U.S. has taken part in dozens of observer missions over the years. In allowing observers into the country, the United States is preventing setting a precedent for other, less democratic states, to ban these monitors.
Read more

Alyssa

‘Happy Endings’ Eliza Coupe On Playing Hockey, Getting Tattoos, And Building Her On-Screen Marriage With Damon Wayans, Jr.

By Alyssa Rosenberg on Oct 23, 2012 at 3:34 pm

One of my favorite sitcoms is Happy Endings, ABC’s show about a group of friends who live in Chicago. Much like Modern Family found a way to revitalize the family sitcom (though it’s fallen off notably in quality), Happy Endings found new juice in the group-of-close-friends comedy. In part, it did so by changing what that group of friends looked like, adding Max (Adam Pally), who became one of the most innovative gay characters on television simply by being a person rather than a stereotype, and Jane Kerkovich-Williams (Eliza Coupe) and Brad Williams (Damon Wayans, Jr.), a loony-for-each-other new married couple who also happen to be one of the rare interracial couples on television. But it’s also a mile-a-minute joke factory deeply rooted in the characters’ quirks and the specifics of their relationships with each other, whether Max is dosing Penny (Casey Wilson), who he’s been taking care of after she has an accident, with sleepy tea so he can get at her physical therapist, or food truck operator Dave (Zachary Knighton) and Jane’s younger sister Alex (Elisha Cuthbert), whose broken engagement kicked off the series, are trying to date again while denying that they’re in a serious relationship.

Coupe and I spoke in advance of the third season of Happy Endings, which returns to ABC tonight at 9 PM, about Jane, whose combination of obsessive-compulsion and gleefully whacked-out sexual chemistry with Brad have made her one of my favorite characters in television. She told me where her style of physical comedy comes from, how she draws on her own marriage for inspiration, and why New England WASPs are so hilarious. This interview has been edited for clarity and length.

I’ve noticed that you have a very specific approach to physical comedy: Jane gets a lot of mileage out of being very stiff or very boneless. Is that something you developed for her character, or does it come out of personal experience?

It’s really funny, because I used to play ice hockey as a kid. I grew up in New Hampshire. I’m from Plymouth, New Hampshire. It was a thing. My dad was a semi-pro hockey player, both of my brothers played, I mean, I was raised by a boy. I was taught to box, I was taught to play hockey, I played baseball and softball for a while. And it was always an ongoing joke, like when I played hockey, I was so stiff on the ice. My dad would be like, “You gotta crouch down, Liz.” And I’m like, “I know,” and he’s like “No, you gotta get down towards the ice.” And I’d be like this, and I thought it was really funny. I was like, I’m such a stiff person. But then I started realizing that can be really funny. It’s either zero or a hundred with me. I’m either that, or I’m like [in a funny voice] “What’s up?” completely loose, because I think I got so much criticism for being that way, so it was like, let’s do both. The physical comedy of it all, saying all of that, I mean, there was one episode in the first season where I’m drunk and I’m all over the place. But it’s fun to go to extremes. I was obsessed with Jim Carrey, like obsessed, and I was obsessed with, I think Sandra Bullock also does some great physical comedy, and I think subconsciously, I may locked that and my head and said “Oh, that’s how you do it.”

I also think with women, either women are supposed to be totally relaxed and loose or they’re thought to be uptight. You seem to mine a lot of comedy from perfectionism, from people holding themselves together when they really want to just let go.

I think that’s what I love about my character. Coming form New England, which you know, the WASPY “Everything’s fine!” but on the inside they’re just completely crumbling. That’s how I feel like my aunts and my mothers are: “Everything’s great! Everything’s fine! We’re fine! Good, good, good, everything’s fine!” But turn a corner and they’re alone and they’re like “Oh my God! Everything’s falling apart!” And I think watching someone who’s unhinged try to hold it together is one of the funniest things. And I think that it’s far more interesting, unless, of course, we let them be completely unhinged. Whenever I see, on a movie or in a play, watching someone completely full-on cry is not as interesting as watching them trying not to cry. In real life, I’ll cry by myself, alone, in a private place, at home or with my husband. But around a lot of people, if I’m emotional, I’m going to try to hold it together, which is actually, if you’re going to put a camera on that and give it a time slot of 9 o’clock on Tuesday nights, is funny.

One thing you also seem to do is play a lot of characters between how they see themselves and how they come across to other people. Do you find that juxtaposition interesting?

Yeah, I think probably because I am that a lot in my own life. My friend once told me that “You are the most confident insecure person I’ve ever met in my entire life.” And I was like, “You’re right, you’re right, you’re right.” It is really interesting to see someone who thinks “I am totally cool and going with the flow” when it’s “Oh my God, if you honestly believe that about yourself, it’s hilarious.” I guess I’ve noticed that in my characters, especially in Jane, especially the second season, we saw a lot more of that, what she thinks she is and what she really is. It’s an inner struggle she’s having, so conflicted, but if you put it on a TV show it’s really funny, but I think a lot of people can relate to that.
Read more

Climate Progress

Company Held Up As Evidence Of ‘War On Coal’ Quietly Plans To Resume Mining Operations

By Stephen Lacey on Oct 23, 2012 at 3:31 pm

When Consol Energy, a leading U.S. coal and gas company operating in Appalachia, announced it would be closing its flagship mine in Virgina, Republicans were quick to blame their favorite scapegoat: the Environmental Protection Agency.

Shortly after Consol said it was furloughing 620 workers at its Buchanan Mine, Virgina Republican Representative Morgan Griffith blamed “the administration’s ongoing war on coal,” for the company’s troubles. Days later, state Republican officials did the same, saying “the Environmental Protection Agency has followed through” with regulations that shut down the mine.

But the mine is coming back online as expected, bringing workers with it. And the critics are silent.

According to a press release from last week, “Consol Energy expects to produce 13.4 – 13.8 million tons during the quarter, including 0.6 million at the Buchanan Mine, which is expected to re-start on the week of November 5.” (Hat tip to Kate Sheppard of Mother Jones for flagging).

At no point did the company blame EPA regulations in its announcement. Rather, Consol pointed to weak demand for metallurgical coal, which is used for iron and steel production, not power production.

Consol idled two other mines earlier this year for 1-2 weeks due to weakening demand for thermal coal used in power plants. But this has mostly to do with natural gas eating into the competitiveness of coal — a trend Republicans have held up as a miracle of the free market. At no point did Consul blame EPA regulations for those brief closures either.

According to the Analysis Group, an economic consulting firm, most of the coal plants that are set for retirement would retire without any new air pollution rules from the EPA. That’s because our coal fleet is pretty old — the median age of U.S. facilities is 46 years. It’s also because a lot of coal plants are switching to natural gas.

The Brattle Group, another consulting firm, also recently issued an analysis of coal plant closures, concluding that there are “somewhat more retirements are likely (about 25 GW) than we foresaw in late 2010. However, that change is primarily due to changing market conditions, not environmental rule revisions, which have trended towards more lenient requirements and schedules.”

Read: new EPA regulations have had very little impact on any changes taking place within the coal industry.

The Associated Press recently reported on the market forces behind the shift:

Read more

NEWS FLASH

New York Court Ends Challenge To Marriage Equality Law | New York’s highest court, the state Court of Appeals, has declined to hear an appeal challenging the state’s marriage equality. A fringe conservative group, New Yorkers for Constitutional Freedoms, had filed suit against the law, claiming that lawmakers did not follow procedures under the Open Meetings Law when discussing the same-sex marriage bill in 2011. The Appellate Division had already rejected the suit unanimously, and with the Court of Appeals declining to hear the case, the challenge is now over. Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D) praised the decisions, saying, “The freedom to marry in this state is secure for generations to come.”

NEWS FLASH

Growing Number Of Americans Plan To Delay Retirement Until They’re 80 | According to a survey by Wells Fargo, 30 percent of Americans plan to delay retiring until they reach the age of 80, up from 25 percent one year ago. 70 percent of respondents said they intend to work during retirement. Another recent survey showed that 40 percent of Americans report having less than $500 in savings. Meanwhile, 85,000 pensions for American workers have been eliminated since 1985.

Older

Newer

Switch to Mobile
ThinkProgress Signup Overlay Skip and Continue to ThinkProgress Skip and Continue to ThinkProgress

Sign Up