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Alyssa

Five Ways Amazon Can Improve ‘Alpha House,’ The John Goodman Political Comedy It Just Picked Up

By Alyssa Rosenberg on May 21, 2013 at 10:33 am

Politico reported yesterday that Alpha House, the Garry Trudeau-created pilot about a group of Congressmen living together in a townhouse in Washington, DC that’s based on a 2007 New York Times story about real-life legislators who are roommates when they’re in the District of Columbia, has become one of the first shows to be picked up by Amazon as part of its attempts to expand into original content development. It doesn’t shock me that Amazon pulled the trigger on Alpha House, which, if nothing else, let the company lock down John Goodman for a show, a move that follows the playbook laid out by Amazon in its splashy signing of Kevin Spacey to star in its remake of the British series House of Cards. But Alpha House was far from the strongest of Amazon’s adult-oriented pilots (it’s also testing shows aimed at children). And even if Amazon isn’t doing a traditional development process like its competitors in broadcast television, it would be wise for the service to consider taking a page from the networks’ playbooks and consider revamping the show a little bit before its full launch. Here are five suggestions for how to make Alpha House shine.

1. Make The House Bipartisan: One of the dullest decisions in the original pilot of Alpha House was to make all members of the house Republicans, and to make them all risible. Goodman’s Gil Joh Biggs, a do-nothing incumbent from a rural district who teaches Louis Laffer (Matt Malloy), an obviously closeted social conservative, to shoot in the basement, and signs them both up for a trip to Afghanistan when they attract Tea Party challengers and need to look tough. Clark Johnson plays Robert Bettencourt, an African-American Congressman who’s mostly in in for the donations from defense contractors—in one scene, he gives Gil John his notes from a filibuster speech so they can both go on the record saying nice things about the same giant corporations. And Mark Consuelos plays andy Guzman, a recently-divorced freshman who’s schtupping the founder of a Super PAC. All in all, it’s nothing we’ve seen before. But if Alpha House can sharpen the characterizations and give us a fresh take on what bipartisanship actually looks like, it could be refreshing and funny.
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Health

Arizona Congressman Wants To Expand His DC Abortion Ban To Restrict Reproductive Rights Nationwide

By Tara Culp-Ressler on May 20, 2013 at 1:36 pm

Rep. Trent Franks (R-AZ)

Not content with attempting to impose his anti-abortion agenda upon the women who live in the nation’s capital, Rep. Trent Franks (R-AZ) now intends to push for a nationwide bill to criminalize abortions after 20 weeks. Franks, who invoked the illegal abortion provider Kermit Gosnell to justify his decision to re-introduce a 20-week abortion ban in DC, now says that Gosnell’s crimes have compelled him to amend his bill so it applies to women across the country.

The Arizona congressmember announced his decision to expand his bill on Friday. In a statement, Franks compared Gosnell — who has been convicted of killing of three infants that were born alive following botched illegal, unsanitary abortion procedures — to all late-term abortion procedures. “Had Kermit Gosnell dismembered these babies before they had traveled down the birth canal only moments earlier, he would have, in many places nationwide, been performing an entirely legal procedure,” Franks said.

However, that’s a gross mischaracterization of the state of legal abortion services throughout the country. Abortion opponents have repeatedly attempted to twist the facts surrounding Gosnell’s high-profile murder trial to make it appear as if his crimes are rampant throughout legal abortion clinics. But that’s simply not the case. The Philadelphia-area abortion doctor was guilty of much more than simply breaking Pennsylvania’s law that criminalizes abortion after 24 weeks of pregnancy; he was also able to offer discounted prices for his services because he didn’t employ medical professionals or adhere to safety standards. Gosnell’s “house of horrors” isn’t analogous to the way that legal, sanitary late-term abortion clinics provide care to the women who need it.

Furthermore, it’s misleading to pretend that Franks’ quest to cut off legal abortion care at just 20 weeks represents a push to ban late-term abortions. In fact, 20-week abortion bans are a direct challenge to Roe v. Wade‘s guarantee of legal abortion rights until the point of viability, which is generally accepted to occur around 24 weeks of pregnancy. That’s why, after a handful of states recently enacted 20-week bans, several of them landed in court.

DC Delegate Eleanor Holmes Norton (D) has fought against Franks’ 20-week abortion ban every time he’s proposed it. She maintains that imposing abortion bans on the District of Columbia is a “stealth way” for abortion opponents to discreetly challenge Roe, since DC doesn’t have any representation in Congress. Now that the bill will apply to the rest of the nation, she remains committed to working to defeat it. “With the help of women nationwide, we defeated the D.C. abortion ban bill on the House floor last Congress. Now that the Franks bill will expressly target all U.S. women, we can expect an even stronger national response to this attack on women’s health,” Holmes Norton said in a statement.

Ironically, pushing to restrict women’s access to abortion isn’t actually an effective policy solution to prevent future Kermit Gosnells. If Franks and his anti-choice colleagues wanted to ensure that desperate women in other states don’t have to resort to illegal providers like Gosnell, they should actually be working to make abortion services more affordable and accessible to low-income women.

Security

Pam Gellar-Linked Group Puts Out New Anti-Muslim Ad In DC Metro

By Hayes Brown on May 20, 2013 at 11:56 am

AFDI ad at the U St/Cardoza Metrorail station

Yet another Islamophobic ad from a group linked to Pamela Geller has appeared in the Washington, DC Metrorail system, this one lamenting what it claims to be “apartheid” against non-Muslims and calling for the U.S. to cut off all funding to “Islamic” states.

In the newest poster, a Saudi Arabian highway sign is pictured, which instructs drivers travelling to Mecca to keep to the left, while non-Muslims must stay to the right to travel to the nearby city of Jeddah instead. “This is Islamic Apartheid,” the ad declares, imploring that the government “Stop U.S. Aid to Islamic Countries.”

It is unclear what the ad means when it suggests that Saudi Arabia is carrying out “apartheid” against non-Muslims. In apartheid South Africa, the ruling class carried out a series of policies that stripped black Africans of their citizenship, segregated their education, medical care, and other government services, and denied them of the right to assemble or own property. Riyadh’s ban on non-Muslims entering Mecca is definitely a form of segregation, but is a one-off rule, given the city’s unique role in Islamic theology, and one that does not hold true in even the second-most holy city, Medina.

It is true that many other troubling instances of segregation occur throughout Saudi society, particularly when it relates to the treatment of women. It can even be argued that a form of “gender apartheid” exists within the Kingdom, where women are systematically denied legal rights and status. But the example Geller puts forward in her ad does not address that inequality, and fails to reach the same level as seen in the white dominance in Apartheid South Africa. Instead, it seems far more likely that Geller is looking to raise baseless fears of similar policies taking hold in the United States.

It’s also unclear what the ad means in calling on the U.S. to stop sending aid to “Islamic countries.” Without defining what “Islamic countries” means, it could refer to one of two things: either states that have a majority Muslim population or countries that incorporate some degree of Islamic law into their legal system. If the former, Geller could be calling for an end to humanitarian aid to Syria and Somalia, military aid to NATO-ally Turkey, or disaster relief to Indonesia. If the latter, that would mean ending ties between many key U.S. allies in combating terrorism including Pakistan and Yemen, and ceasing assistance to Afghanistan after U.S. combat forces leave in 2014.

The ad is the latest in a series from the American Freedom Defense Initiative (AFDI), a group headed by Geller and whose sole purpose is to trumpet the supposed threat that all Muslims pose to the United States. The AFDI has placed the posters in public transit systems around the country for almost a year now, including in San Francisco, New York City, and DC so far. The posters have sparked a massive backlash wherever they’ve been placed, inspiring response ads from interfaith leaders, Muslim advocacy groups, and grassroots campaigns.

Unlike San Francisco, however, a DC transport press official confirmed to ThinkProgress that DC’s public transit system does not donate the proceeds from Geller’s ads to charity. Instead, WMATA has instituted a policy of placing a disclaimer at the bottom of the ads, disavowing themselves of anything resembling agreement with the content.

Health

Yet Another Republican Lawmaker Tries To Impose His Anti-Abortion Agenda On DC Women

By Tara Culp-Ressler on May 9, 2013 at 11:40 am

Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT)

Lawmakers often take advantage of the fact that the residents of the nation’s capital don’t have any representation in Congress in order to turn DC into their legislative playground. This session is no exception, as Republicans in both chambers of Congress have taken steps to restrict abortion access for the DC women who aren’t actually their own constituents.

Last week, Arizona Rep. Trent Franks (R) reintroduced a bill to criminalize abortion services in DC after 20 weeks of pregnancy, the exact same measure that failed to advance when Franks pushed it last year. And now, Utah Sen. Mike Lee (R) has introduced a companion bill in the Senate. Like Franks, Lee is no stranger to this type of abortion ban. Earlier this year, he tried to accomplish the same goal by offering a budget amendment to restrict DC women’s abortion access.

20-week bans are based on the scientifically dubious claim that fetuses can feel pain after that point — and they’re a top priority for anti-choice activists, who are intent on leveraging the emotional outrage surrounding incredibly late-term abortions to narrow the window for legal abortion services. In reality, however, late-term abortions are already very rare, representing less than one percent of all abortion services across the country. Criminalizing them ends up disproportionately hurting women in two categories: the low-income women who are forced to delay abortion while they save up the money to pay for it, and the women who discover serious fetal abnormalities later in their pregnancies.

Lee’s anti-abortion agenda is keeping him particularly busy lately. He’s also using Kermit Gosnell’s high-profile murder trial as an excuse to spearhead a Senate resolution to encourage more abortion clinic restrictions across the country.

Health

Arizona Republican Keeps Pushing To Limit DC Women’s Abortion Access

By Tara Culp-Ressler on Apr 29, 2013 at 9:00 am

Rep. Trent Franks (R-AZ). (Credit: Roll Call)

Republican Rep. Trent Franks (AZ) has reintroduced a measure to criminalize abortions in the District of Columbia after 20 weeks of pregnancy, based on the junk science that fetuses can feel pain after that point. The Arizona lawmaker has been particularly focused on legislating DC women’s reproductive rights, despite the fact that he does not actually represent them in Congress. He pushed the same legislation last year, although it ended up failing to advance.

Banning late-term abortion services is a popular anti-choice tactic that is currently advancing in states across the country. It’s a successful strategy partly because abortion opponents can exploit gruesome cases — such as the murder trial of Kermit Gosnell, a Philadelphia abortion doctor who is accused of performing horrific, illegal late-term abortion services for vulnerable women — to play on Americans’ emotions. That’s exactly what Franks is doing this time around. He claims that forcing a 20-week ban on the nation’s capital city will help keep attention on the Gosnell case.

Abortion opponents claim that late-term abortions prove that abortion procedures are always violent and immoral. In reality, however, these type of much later abortions are incredibly rare, and the women who seek them out are typically in desperate circumstances. Women who may need an abortion after 20 weeks of pregnancy tend to fall into one of two categories: the economically disadvantaged women who need to delay abortion until they can save up the money for it, and the women who discover serious fetal health issues only after their pregnancy has advanced. 20-week abortion bans don’t actually help put an end to the types of illegal procedures that Gosnell performed; in fact, they simply serve to cut off reproductive health options for these kinds of vulnerable women.

Nonetheless, because the women who live in the District of Columbia don’t have any representation in Congress, their reproductive rights are often left to the whim of Republican lawmakers whom they didn’t actually elect. In addition to Franks, other Republicans often attempt to use DC’s budget negotiations — which currently have to be approved by Congress, since DC doesn’t have the autonomy to appropriate its own funds — to attach anti-abortion riders. Congress has repeatedly prevented DC from using its Medicaid funding from covering low-income women’s abortion services.

Last week, DC held a special election that included a referendum for local budget autonomy, which would prevent Congress from banning its Medicaid coverage of abortion in the future. Unfortunately, budget autonomy won’t prevent lawmakers like Franks from pushing for other types of abortion bans for the District’s residents.

Politics

Florida Congressman Compares DC’s Push For Budget Autonomy To ‘Young Teenagers’ Acting Out

By Aviva Shen on Apr 26, 2013 at 11:58 am

Washington, D.C. residents have long fought for autonomous control over their budget, which has always at the mercy of Congressional approval and, recently, Republican whims. On Thursday, Rep. John Mica (R-FL), one of the committee members who oversees Washington’s budget, dismissed the district’s recent vote in favor of budget autonomy. In an interview with WTTG-TV, Mica literally laughed off the vote, comparing the 85 percent majority to his children asking for more allowance:

Well, when my kids were young teenagers, they always wanted budget autonomy too. But we always, you know, you allow them to go their own way, and if they get out of line, according to the Constitution, the Congress has the right to step in…As long as they are minding their P’s and Q’s, so to say, I think the government can back off. But we must remain vigilant.

Watch it:

Before he made the comment, Mica had just admitted DC’s finance management has vastly improved since the dissolution of a Congressional control board, which restored day-to-day budget decisions to the city council. Regardless of the district’s actual financial behavior, Mica felt that “regression” could take place and emphasized that Congress should continue to have oversight.

Since taking the House in 2010, Republicans have abused their power over DC’s budget to advance their own agenda. Lawmakers from other states have attempted to force the overwhelmingly liberal district to outlaw abortion, reduce contraception access, sell more guns, block union membership, cut public transportation funds, and pay for private schools.

Since DC voters approved budget autonomy, Congress now has 35 legislative days to review the amendment. It will become law unless both houses pass a disapproval resolution and the president signs it.

Health

Republican Congressman Hopes To Use Gosnell’s Case To Restrict Abortion Access For DC Women

By Tara Culp-Ressler on Apr 16, 2013 at 1:15 pm

What could legal abortion access for women who live in the District of Columbia, the high-profile trial of a Philadelphia-area abortion doctor, and a Congressman from Arizona all have in common?

Logically, not much at all. But Rep. Trent Franks (R-AZ) wants to connect the dots anyway. The Republican politician is planning to revive his previous efforts to legislate abortion care in the nation’s capital city — pushing to outlaw abortion services in DC after 20 weeks of pregnancy, based on the scientifically disputed notion that fetuses can feel pain after that point — because he believes “it would keep attention on the Gosnell case.”

Last week, the right-wing media successfully stoked outrage over the ongoing criminal case against Kermit Gosnell, who allegedly performed incredibly late-term, illegal abortions for economically disadvantaged women in Philadelphia. Gosnell’s story exploded into the mainstream media just recently, but this isn’t the first time that abortion opponents have attempted to leverage it to advance their agenda. In 2011, anti-abortion lobbyists invoked Gosnell to pressure the Pennsylvania legislature to approve unnecessary new restrictions for abortion clinics, which ultimately forced nine of the state’s 22 abortion providers to close their doors.

Over-regulating abortion clinics is a popular anti-choice tactic that is currently advancing in at least seven states across the country. But Franks isn’t necessary interested in taking that route. “Sanitizing the clinic is not going to change the suffering and agony of what children go through,” he explained to the Hill. The Arizona lawmaker said that he and his colleagues are actually focused on ending legal abortion services altogether.

As a small step toward that ultimate goal, Franks is hoping to use the Gosnell trial to push a 20-week “fetal pain” ban for DC residents, which failed in the House last year. Franks’ previous efforts to restrict abortion access for people who aren’t in his own district have angered DC residents, who stormed his office last May to protest his overreach. Abortion access is just one of many ways that Republicans often attempt to legislate the Washington, DC area that they do not represent.

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Economy

Washington D.C. Turning Youth Away From Homeless Shelters Despite $400 Million Budget Surplus

By Scott Keyes on Mar 22, 2013 at 1:15 pm

Homeless youth in Washington D.C. are being turned away in droves from shelters after the city slashed its budget for homeless children’s services.

In its latest budget, the city enjoys a $417 million budget surplus, yet they cut funding for youth homeless shelters by $700,000 and overall homeless services by $7 million. Mayor Vincent Gray has announced he will keep the surplus in the city’s savings account, which will now total $1.5 billion.

D.C.’s budget cuts are having a disastrous impact on the city’s homeless. As the Washington Post details, many youth are being turned away from shelters who no longer have the budget to accomodate them.

Counselors at one of the city’s largest shelters for homeless youths have had to turn away more than 80 unaccompanied children — some as young as 12 or 13 — who came to them for help in the past six weeks after the city cut more than $700,000 from the shelter’s budget. [...]

For workers on the ground, the effect of lost — or redirected — money has been clear and immediate. One counselor at Sasha Bruce House recalled trying to counsel a sobbing teen seeking a place to sleep after her mother lost the family apartment, and being able to do little to help.

“To not be able to help somebody and know there is not any other option for them — it’s heartbreaking, it’s awful,” said Gina Bulett, the primary counselor. The program now just has five emergency beds, down from 16 last year, but houses dozens more in apartments.

The city’s cuts to homeless services come at a particular inopportune time as the number of people living on the streets continues to increase. A survey last year found 6,954 homeless people in our nation’s capital, a 6 percent increase from the year prior. It’s no surprise then, with increased demand and less funding for shelter beds, that the end result is scores of homeless individuals being turned away from shelters. One notable exception was two months ago when D.C. kept its shelters open throughout inauguration weekend, perhaps in an attempt to hide its homeless population from hundreds of thousands of revelers in town.

Charles M., a soft-spoken middle-aged man living in Washington D.C., was troubled by the budget cuts. “The daily struggle to get rest supersedes schooling, work, and even most health concerns,” he told ThinkProgress. Charles would know. When he was a young man, he founded a homeless shelter in Rhode Island. Now, decades later, Charles, who fell on hard times during the recent financial crisis, finds himself presently homeless. “Without a safe place to sleep,” he notes, “most other needs cannot be addressed, either by service providers or by the homeless person themselves.”

When money’s tight, services for homeless people are often the first items axed from a city’s budget. So what’s D.C.’s excuse now that times are good?

LGBT

District Of Columbia Prohibits Insurance Companies From Discriminating Against Transgender People

By Andrew Cray, Guest Blogger on Mar 19, 2013 at 11:45 am

Today, the DC Department of Insurance, Securities, and Banking (DISB) issued a bulletin clarifying key protections for transgender people in the District of Columbia. The bulletin provides a clear directive to insurers that discrimination on the basis of gender identity or expression is not an acceptable business practice in Washington.

The bulletin prohibits insurance companies from some of the most egregious practices that have been used to lock transgender people out of health care coverage, including:

  • Denying, cancelling, limiting, or refusing to renew an insurance policy.
  • Limiting insurance coverage on the basis of gender identity or expression.
  • Denying coverage for a procedure that is provided for the treatment of other conditions of illness. For example, if a plan covers hormone therapy for some diagnoses, it cannot categorically exclude coverage for hormone therapy related to gender identity disorder or other transition-related diagnosis.

DC joins a growing number of states, municipalities, and employers who recognize that equal access to health coverage is supported by medical science, improves the health of transgender people, and does not significantly increase costs. Ending arbitrary insurance discrimination against transgender people simply supports what expert medical bodies have been saying for years: transition-related health care is medically necessary for many transgender individuals whose health and well-being depends on bringing their physical body into alignment with their gender identity, and determination of what care an individual patient needs properly rests with medical providers, not insurance companies.

Read the full bulletin and the joint announcement from the Mayor’s Office of Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, and Transgender (GLBT) Affairs and the Department of Insurance, Securities, and Banking.

 

Climate Progress

Beltway Heat: Sweltering Summers To Become The Norm For Nation’s Capital, According To New Climate Report

By Jeff Spross on Jan 16, 2013 at 12:30 pm

Projected average increases in the number of days with a maximum temperature greater than 95°F between 2041-2070, compared to 1971-2000 assuming continued increases in global emissions.

The draft of the Federal Advisory Committee’s National Climate Assessment was released several days ago, with dire warnings of significantly higher temperatures across the nation bringing more heat waves, deluges, droughts, and other forms of extreme weather. It also concluded that much of the climate change seen over the last 50 years was primarily driven by human activity.

But the report also had more locally relevant news for residents of Washington, D.C., which just experienced a record-breaking 11 straight days of temperatures of 95 degrees Fahrenheit this past summer. If humans continue driving up the amount of carbon in the atmosphere at their current pace, the number of days D.C. sees over that temperature threshold could increase by more than 15 days per year by mid-century:

If emissions continue to increase… warming of 4.5ºF to 10ºF is projected by the 2080s; if global emissions were reduced substantially… projected warming ranges from about 3ºF to 6ºF by the 2080s.

Under both emissions scenarios, the frequency, intensity, and duration of heat waves is expected to increase, with larger increases under higher emissions. Regional climate model simulations suggest that the southern part of the region, including large parts of West Virginia, Maryland, and Delaware could experience more than a doubling of days per year over 95ºF by the 2050s.

Much of the southern portion of the region, including the majority of Maryland, and Delaware, and southwest West Virginia and New Jersey, are projected to experience more than 15 additional days per year above 95°F, which will impact the regions vulnerable populations, infrastructure, and agriculture and ecosystems.

2012 was Washington, D.C.’s hottest year, with records going back all the way to 1871. And this past summer was the third hottest the city has seen in that time — and the two summers that beat it out were 2010 and 2011.

According to the climate assessment, the snowless winters the nation’s capital has recently experienced could become the norm as well. If greenhouse gases continue their current rapid increase, the number of days when temperatures dip below 32 degrees Farehnheit would decrease by 25 percent between now and 2050 — a total drop of 20 days.

Along with the heat, D.C. also dealt with persistent drought in 2012, leading to rainfall about 8 inches below normal. Conversely, and consistent with global warming’s tendency to drive more erratic weather, the District has also been hit with more severe flooding as recently as 2006. And the city is already adapting: Thanks to its efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, Washington, D.C. was recognized in 2011 and 2012 as the number one U.S. EPA Green Power Community. The city is constructing a floodgate on the National Mall to protect its core from flooding, it surpassed 1.5 million square feet of green roofs in 2012, and it grew its tree canopy by 818 acres between 2006 and 2011 — bringing added shade, cooler temperatures, and reduced energy use.

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