CLINTON GRANDCHILD, A CAMPAIGN PLOY, OR ANOTHER OBAMA DIVERSION?

Maybe this is not a Hillary ploy - but one of Obama's diabolical schemes to create another diversion from Fast and Furious, IRS scandals and the worst terrorist event in our time, the dreaded Benghazi attack.

NFTOS

Editor-In-Chief

Roger West

"Women Need To Be Paid Less So They Can Find Husbands"

Phyllis Schlafly - Radical Right Wing Nut Job

On Sunday, Rep. Marsha Blackburn sought to advance the GOP’s re-branding effort among female voters by suggesting that Republicans have long “led the fight for women’s equality.” The statement came just days after Republicans voted down the Paycheck Fairness Act and sought to downplay the problem of equal pay for equal work by suggesting that Democrats were using the issue to distract from Obamacare.

Now three days later, a prominent member of the Republican movement further undermined the party’s campaign to appeal to women voters by suggesting that the current pay gap isn’t wide enough. In an op-ed published by the Christian Post, Phyllis Schlafly — the founder of the Eagle Forum — maintained that increasing the pay gap will help women find suitable husbands:

Another fact is the influence of hypergamy, which means that women typically choose a mate (husband or boyfriend) who earns more than she does. Men don’t have the same preference for a higher-earning mate. 

While women prefer to have a higher-earning partner, men generally prefer to be the higher-earning partner in a relationship. This simple but profound difference between the sexes has powerful consequences for the so-called pay gap. 

Suppose the pay gap between men and women were magically eliminated. If that happened, simple arithmetic suggests that half of women would be unable to find what they regard as a suitable mate. 

Obviously, I’m not saying women won’t date or marry a lower-earning men, only that they probably prefer not to. If a higher-earning man is not available, many women are more likely not to marry at all.

The best way to improve economic prospects for women is to improve job prospects for the men in their lives, even if that means increasing the so-called pay gap.

Schlafly has long been crusader for “traditional values” within conservative movement and the Republican party, serving as a member of the National GOP Platform Committee as recently as 2012 and as a delegate to the National Convention. Her Eagle Forum PAC has also donated thousands to prominent Republicans like Eric Cantor, Michele Bachmann, Steve King, and Ted Cruz.

Since losing the presidential election in 2012, Republicans have repeatedly tried to enhance the GOP’s appeal beyond its traditional white male voting base. In 2013, the Republican National Committee published a widely discussed “autopsy,” promising to “addresses concerns that are on women’s minds in order to let them know we are fighting for them,” and held training sessions advising candidates to simply avoid talking about rape. Schlafly’s comments appear to undermine that effort.

Phyllis Schlafly, you are today's worst person in the world. Congratulations!

NFTOS

Editor-In-Chief

Roger West

ABORTION BAN OVERTURNED

A federal judge permanently struck down North Dakota’s six-week abortion ban on Wednesday. The so-called “fetal heartbeat” measure, which used to represent the harshest ban in the nation, had already been temporarily blocked from taking effect while the legal challenge against it proceeded.

U.S. District Judge Daniel Hovland ruled that the law is “invalid and unconstitutional” and “cannot withstand a constitutional challenge,” pointing out that Roe v. Wade guarantees the right to abortion up until the point of viability.

Six week abortion bans seek to ban abortion after a fetal heartbeat can first be detected, even though that typically occurs so early that some women don’t even realize they’re pregnant yet. This type of restriction is so radical that many Republicans won’t sign onto it, signaling the beginning of a larger split within the anti-choice community. Although lawmakers in at least five different states considered fetal heartbeat bans this year, none have been able to advance.

Arkansas is the only other state that’s been able to pass a harsh abortion restriction based on the fetal heartbeat framing. After widespread outcry, that measure ended up being amended to a slightly less restrictive 12-week ban — but it hasn't fared any better in the courts. Last month, a federal judge struck it down.

The decision is a victory for women in North Dakota, who face huge barriers to abortion services. There’s only one abortion clinic left in the state, which has been struggling to remain open amid anti-choice attacks. Thanks to the hostile environment surrounding reproductive rights, many women in the state actually assume that conservative lawmakers have succeeded and abortion is already illegal.

Although abortion rights supporters have recently won several legal victories against harsh bans, it’s important to remember that other serious threats to women’s access to abortion often fly under the radar. States have successfully enacted a complex web of restrictions targeting clinics and providers that don’t grab as many headlines as more obviously harmful laws do. That’s why anti-choice groups tend to split over six-week abortion bans — the leaders of the movement know they’ll have more success with an incremental strategy to chip away at abortion rights when no one is looking.

“The court was correct to call this law exactly what it is: a blatant violation of the constitutional guarantees afforded to all women. But women should not be forced to go to court, year after year in state after state, to protect their constitutional rights,” Nancy Northup, the president of the Center for Reproductive Rights, said in a statement. “We hope today’s decision, along with the long line of decisions striking down these attempts to choke off access to safe and legal abortion services in the U.S., sends a strong message to politicians across the country that our rights cannot be legislated away.”

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STAFF WRITER

BUNDY RANCH TERRORISTS

With the withdrawal of agents of the BLM and their contractors from Gold Butte and the release of the cattle already rounded up, the right wing “militia” supporters of Cliven Bundy have declared victory over the “tyrannical” U.S. government. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) however, disagrees.

“Well, it’s not over,” Reid told KRNV-TV on Monday. “We can’t have an American people that violate the law and then just walk away from it. So it’s not over.”

While Reid declined to speculate further on the next move, BLM has said it will return to the courts, although that route has proven ineffective against this family, who for the last 20 years, have defied both the BLM and the courts.

Meanwhile, Cliven Bundy and his two sons, defiant as ever, appeared on Fox News with Sean Hannity who asked Cliven for a response to Reid’s remarks

“I don’t have a response for Harry Reid, but I have a response for every county sheriff across the United States,” Bundy said. “Disarm the federal bureaucrats.”

There you have it, a true supporter of the Constitution, as are all of the thugs who traveled across the country to confront and intimidate law enforcement officers doing their job last week.

Bundy claimed that he and the “patriots” who supported him had so badly frightened the federal agents that they backed down.

“Let me tell you how they backed down,” he told Hannity. “They backed down, they run and got on the freeway and went to Mesquite and grabbed their stuff and moved out of the state, now, the state, towards the state of Utah. Utah county sheriffs finish this job that [Sheriff Douglas] Gillespie didn’t do, take the guns away from these federal bureaucrats.”

Cross-Posted from Crooks & Liars



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Editor-In-Chief
Roger West

NOT SO GOOD NEWS FOR ACA NAY-SAYERS

Premiums for health care insurance in the Affordable Care Act are lower than the federal government had anticipated, the Congressional Budget Office reported on Monday when it revised its cost estimate for the health care law. The nonpartisan office now believes that the ACA will cost the government $5 billion less than projected in 2014 and $104 billion less for the 2015-2024 period. It also found “no clear evidence” that premiums will surge in 2015, noting that “enrollees in the future will be healthier, on average, than the smaller number of people who are obtaining such coverage in 2014.” The agency estimated that the national average premium for individual silver policy plans would increase by $100 that year.

The CBO attributes the additional savings to government, relative to the CBO’s last assessment from February 2014, to lower-than expected premiums, which in turn lowered the cost for exchange subsidies, and higher-than expected revenues from the excise tax on high-premium insurance plans.

“Despite projecting that slightly more people will receive insurance coverage through exchanges over the 2015–2024 period than they had anticipated previously,” the report says. “CBO and JCT project that costs for exchange subsidies and related spending will be $164 billion (or 14 percent) below the previous projection, mainly because of the downward revision to expected exchange premiums.” The office also predicted that plans offered in the exchanges will provide wider provider networks and higher reimbursement rates to providers as enrollment increases. “That pattern will put upward pressure on exchange premiums over the next couple of years, although CBO and JCT anticipate that the plans’ characteristics will stabilize after 2016,” it found.

The office also concluded that the law’s so-called shock absorbers — reinsurance payments that are distributed to insurers that attract high-cost enrollees — “reduced exchange premiums this year by approximately 10 percent” and will “reduce premiums by smaller amounts in 2015 and 2016.” CBO found additional savings in Medicaid, revising downward government spending per adult enrolled in the program.

Ultimately, 12 million more nonelderly people will have health insurance in 2014 as a result of the law. Twenty-six million more “will be insured each year from 2017 through 2024 than would have been the case without the ACA,” the CBO concluded.

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STAFF WRITER

Meet The 'New Republican Party'

Meet the new Republican party... same as the old Republican party.

NFTOS

Editor-In-Chief

Roger West

CALL OF THE RILED

Bill Maher ended his show Friday night going after right-wing talk radio and how, as he views it, the industry purely exists to “bitch” about the government where they can have a “greater effect on influencing stupidity outside of government,” and tear down any Republican who isn’t “the single biggest prick in the room.”

Maher was spurred on by the odd decision of Congressman Mike Rogers to resign for a position in talk radio, and Maher couldn’t figure out why someone who wants to have a bigger impact on policy would leave the very institution where policy is actually made.

“The GOP has kind of become talk radio, an echo chamber where people are not interested in actually legislating or compromising or fixing America, just in screeching about how liberals have ruined it. So why not do it on the radio? The money’s better. And no one can see your toupée.”

Maher argued that this “lucrative business of bitching about government” is so determined to take down any impure Republican that the only one they truly idolize is Ted Cruz, because as Maher put it, he views public office as “just a higher form of talk radio.”



Episode 314 by BillMaher1956

NFTOS

Editor-In-Chief

Roger West

GRAZING IN THE GRASS

“We provide armed response,” according to a Montana militia member named Jim Lordy. Lordy traveled to Nevada in order to support a local rancher for believes that he should not have to follow federal court orders. When he arrived there, he told a local reporter that “we need guns to protect ourselves from the tyrannical government.”

Lordy belongs to a militia group called Operation Mutual Aid, which provides “defense of public and private property, lives, and liberty to exercise God-given rights, seen plainly in the laws of Nature, and codified in the Declaration of Independence and Bill of Rights, at the request of such parties in need of such defense,” according to a website associated with the group. Although only three militia members had arrived at the Nevada ranch by late Wednesday, when the latest reports came out, other militia groups reportedly “inundated the rancher's household with calls and pledges to muster at the site.”

The Oath Keepers, a right-wing law enforcement organization that warns about the government “disarming the American people” and “blockading American cities, thus turning them into giant concentration camps,” also announced that it will send people to support the defiant rancher.

This conflict arises out of rancher Cliven Bundy’s many years of illegally grazing his cattle on federal lands. In 1998, a federal court ordered Bundy to cease grazing his livestock on an area of federal land known as the Bunkerville Allotment, and required him to pay the federal government $200 per day per head of cattle remaining on federal lands. Around the time it issued this order, the court also commented that “[t]he government has shown commendable restraint in allowing this trespass to continue for so long without impounding Bundy’s livestock.” Fifteen years later, Bundy continued to defy this court order.

Last October, the federal government returned to court and obtained a new order, providing that “Bundy shall remove his livestock from the former Bunkerville Allotment within 45 days of the date hereof, and that the United States is entitled to seize and remove to impound any of Bundy’s cattle that remain in trespass after 45 days of the date hereof.” A third federal court order issued the same year explains that Bundy did not simply refuse to stop trespassing on federal lands — he actually expanded the range of his trespassing. According to the third order, “Bundy’s cattle have moved beyond the boundaries of the Bunkerville Allotment and are now trespassing on a broad swath of additional federal land (the “New Trespass Lands”), including public lands within the Gold Butte area that are administered by the BLM, and National Park System land within the Overton Arm and Gold Butte areas of the Lake Mead National Recreation Area.” The third order also authorizes the federal government to “impound any of Bundy’s cattle that remain in trespass.”

On Saturday of last week, the government hired wranglers to round up Bundy’s livestock. As of Wednesday, they’d impounded a total of 352 cattle. That’s when a tense standoff broke out between a group of Bundy’s supporters and federal rangers armed with stun guns and police dogs. In one video, a ranger tackles Bundy’s sister away from a moving vehicle (she later admitted that she was blocking the path of government trucks shortly before this incident). Another video shows rangers using a stun gun on a protester immediately after he kicks a police dog.




Bundy, for his part, claims that “our Constitution didn’t provide for anything like the federal government owning this land.” He’s wrong. The Constitution provides that “the Congress shall have power to dispose of and make all needful Rules and Regulations respecting the Territory or other Property belonging to the United States.”

Congratulations both oath keepers and Cliven Bundy, you are today's asshats of the day.

NFTOS

Editor-In-Chief

Roger West

With the first enrollment period of Obamacare successfully concluded, despite its disastrous roll-out, Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius is resigning.

Mr. Obama accepted Ms. Sebelius’s resignation this week, and on Friday morning he will nominate Sylvia Mathews Burwell, the director of the Office of Management and Budget, to replace her, officials said. 

The departure comes as the Obama administration tries to move beyond its early stumbles in carrying out the law, persuade a still-skeptical public of its lasting benefits, and help Democratic incumbents, who face blistering attack ads after supporting the legislation, survive the midterm elections this fall. […] 

The president is hoping that Ms. Burwell, 48, a Harvard- and Oxford-educated West Virginia native with a background in economic policy, will bring an intense focus and management acumen to the department. The budget office, which she has overseen since April of last year, is deeply involved in developing and carrying out health care policy. 

“The president wants to make sure we have a proven manager and relentless implementer in the job over there, which is why he is going to nominate Sylvia,” said Denis R. McDonough, the White House chief of staff.

Administration officials told The New York Times that the decision was Sebelius's and she wasn't being forced out, that she had been talking with President Obama about her future and about this transition since last month. “What was clear is that she thought that it was time to transition the leadership to somebody else,” McDonough told the paper.

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STAFF WRITER

HATRED OF THE LOST ARK

The Daily Show's Jon Stewart took on the likes of Glenn Beck and his buddies over at Faux "news" to task for their carping about the new Noah movie, and the complaint that it's "not a documentary.

" STEWART: So you're telling me, the movie about a man who lives to 950 and loads two of every animal onto a 350 cubit long boat... you're telling me that film won't qualify to submit in the documentary category. That's outrageous. I guess what they're trying to say is this version is a bit different than what's from in the Bible."

Video Courtesy of Comedy Central

N FTOS

Editor-In-Chief

Roger West

AS ONLY MITCH MCCONNELL CAN

MITCH "THE TURTLE" MCCONNELL

On Tuesday, Senate Minority Leader Mitch "The Turtle" McConnell honored Equal Pay Day — a day that symbolizes the amount of time it takes women to earn what men make in a year — by accusing Democrats and President Obama of a “never-ending political road show” that merely blows “a few kisses” to their voter base.

“Instead of focusing on jobs, he launched into another confusing attack on the left’s latest bizarre obsession,” McConnell said on the Senate floor Tuesday. “Just think about that. The percentage of Americans in the workforce is at an almost four-decade low, and Democrats chose to ignore serious job-creation ideas so they could blow a few kisses to their powerful pals on the left.”

McConnell argued the fact that women still earn 77 percent of what men make should take a backseat to more serious Republican priorities. These priorities typically include building Keystone XL pipeline and repealing Obamacare (which Republicans have attempted more than 50 times).

Leading up to Democrats’ latest push for equal pay, Republicans have claimed that the gender wage gap is a “myth” and that it is “condescending” to discuss. But the reality is that women still earn less even when they achieve the same education and job level, with gender discrimination accounting for as much as much as 40 percent of their pay gap.

In the past, McConnell’s voting record against women has not stopped him from taking credit anyway. He once touted the Violence Against Women Act to women voters, although he opposed it in both 1993 and 2012. McConnell has also opposed both the Lilly Ledbetter Act and the Paycheck Fairness Act. And the very health care law that McConnell wants to repeal prevents insurance companies from charging women more and ensures contraception coverage.

NFTOS

Editor-In-Chief

Roger West

'God Almighty Is A Hater' Too

Televangelist Pat Robertson on Monday blasted "gay activists" for forcing out Mozilla CEO Brendan Eich after it was discovered that he backed the California Proposition 8 effort that stripped LGBT people of their marriage rights.

"Here this man at Mozilla, Eich, had given $1,000 about six or seven years ago -- $1,000 -- to a proposition," Robertson explained. "And somebody came around and said, 'Will you contribute?' And he said, 'Here's a grand, get off my back.' I mean, that's probably all that it amounted to." 

"But instead of that, he's being forced out by gay activists, who said that was hate speech to say that the union between a man and a woman is marriage -- that's hate speech."

The TV preacher continued: "Well then, the Bible then is full of hate. If that the way it is, then God almighty is a hater. If that's the way they want to define it. And I, of course, don't agree."

Robertson said that this is the reason that the Internal Revenue Service should not force non-profit groups to disclose donors.





NFTOS

Editor-In-Chief

Roger West

Neil DeGrasse Tyson [SNL's] Explains Science to Fox & Friends

The Fox & Friends gang returned to SNL tonight to take on Obamacare. Brian Kilmeade complained, “It’s tough to sign up for things, I’ve tried for years to sign up for the NAACP!” They also found a typical American (played by host Anna Kendrick) who’s upset that President Obama promised you could keep your doctor, “but because of court order, I am not allowed within 500 yards of my doctor.”

They also took on climate change, with surprise guest Neil DeGrasse Tyson patiently explaining how science works to the confused hosts (including an especially dumbstruck Kilmeade), calmly talking about the seriousness of issues like climate change all while they laughed it off by assuring themselves that polar bears have Coke so their lives can’t possibly be that bad.

They also ran a laundry list of show corrections, including “Malaysia is not the female version of Asia” and “the periodic table is not about ‘lady stuff.’”

Watch the video below, via NBC:

NFTOS

Editor-In-Chief

Roger West

WIENER SCHNITZEL

In New Rules last night Bill Maher discusses the middle class and income inequality.

Check it out below.

VIDEO COURTESY OF HBO


Episode 313 by BillMaher1956

NFTOS

Editor-In-Chief

Roger West

INCOME INEQUALITY BILL O'REILLY STYLE

NFTOS

Editor-In-Chief

Roger West

FLORIDA'S "THREATENED USE OF FORCE" BILL

JUSTICE FOR TRAYVON

Attempts to roll back any of the Florida Stand Your Ground law’s most incendiary elements have foundered more than two years after the death of Trayvon Martin. But a bill to expand the law passed Thursday, mere months after it was introduced.

The National Rifle Association-backed bill would expand Stand Your Ground-like protections to those who point a gun at an attacker or fire a gun as a self-defense threat or warning, expanding the scope of the discretion judges and juries retain to exempt shooters from criminal charges for gun violence. The final bill also includes a provision to keep Stand Your Ground records secret.

The “Threatened Use of Force” bill passed the Senate Thursday 32-7, and will become law if signed by Gov. Rick Scott. The bill initially gained traction after Republicans exploited the outrage over the 20-year prison sentence for Marissa Alexander, who fired a warning shot during an altercation with her abusive husband. The bill was then dubbed the “warning shot” bill, because a judge rejected Alexander’s move to invoke the law. But opponents were quick to point out that injustice in Alexander’s case hinged in large part on a draconian mandatory minimum sentence that required the 20-year prison term, insensitivity to domestic violence, and racial disparities that are already baked into the existing Stand Your Ground law.

Rather than protect those like Alexander, the law is likely to expand immunity for violent conduct in as vague and sweeping a manner as Florida’s existing Stand Your Ground law, and could represent the newest mechanism for encouraging even more vigilantism.

A new amendment that made its way into the final bill would also make secret all records from Stand Your Ground cases, meaning that the records would be sealed in cases where charges are later dropped, and those who are granted immunity would have their records expunged. But the law also means that media outlets seeking to document the impact of the law would not have access to any records.

Dream Defenders Legal and Policy Director Ahmad Abuznaid called this a “double standard,” pointing out that no legislation in Florida protects young children arrested for offenses that often amount to disciplinary violations. “If the legislature is concerned with expunging criminal records, they should start with the tens of thousands of students who were arrested in school for minor misbehavior last year or the many people of color unable to vote in Florida because of a broken criminal justice system – not defendants with an itchy trigger finger and unchecked biases against black and brown people,” he said in a statement.

Last summer, Dream Defenders led a sit-in at the Florida Capitol that lasted more than eight days imploring repeal after George Zimmerman was acquitted in the killing of Trayvon Martin. But those efforts have been summarily rejected, even after a review panel was commissioned to identify flaws in the law. That “farce” panel stacked with many of the original proponents of the law did not even consider studies finding that the law is associated with a significant increase in homicides, has a disproportionate impact on African Americans, and does not appear to deter crime at all. The NRA continued its lobbying on this warning shot bill even as trial was underway for the killing of another Florida 17-year-old, Jordan Davis.

Over the past two years, Florida courts have granted immunity under the Stand Your Ground law to “a man who went back to his car to get a gun, and another who shot an acquaintance for threatening to beat him up.” And just last week, an appeals court ruled that a prison guard could invoke the law to defend allegations that he severely beat an inmate on the job. There is another new compromise bill advancing in the Senate intended to make some reforms to the law, but even that bill would make the legal process even easier for defendants.





NFTOS

Editor-In-Chief

Roger West

LEGALIZED MONEY LAUNDERING

Chief Justice John Roberts begins his opinion in McCutcheon v. FEC with a flourish: “[t]here is no right more basic in our democracy than the right to participate in electing our political leaders.” He then spends the next forty pages explaining why that participation includes the right of rich people to attempt to buy elections. Thanks to the decision Roberts and his four fellow conservative justices handed down today (Though Thomas did not join Roberts’ opinion, he wrote a more radical opinion calling for all limits on campaign donations to be eviscerated), wealthy donors now have a broad new power to launder money to political candidates — they just have to be a bit creative about how they do it.

Prior to Wednesday’s opinion, federal law placed two complementary limits on campaign donors. During the current election cycle, donors may give no more than $5,200 per election cycle ($2,600 for the primary and another $2,600 for the general) to a given federal candidate, and there are also higher limits on how much they can give to party committees and political action committees. These limits remain intact.

What McCutcheon invalidates are aggregate limits on the total amount of money that donors may give to all federal candidates ($48,600) and to all political committees ($74,600). Thus, before Wednesday, donors could spend as much as $123,200 seeking to influence the 2014 election cycle — now they can spend as much as they want. Make no mistake, this decision benefits no one except for a handful of very wealthy donors (and the candidates they give to). Who else can say that they’ve already given more than a hundred thousand dollars worth of donations and that they are upset that they cannot give even more?

A major purpose of the aggregate limits was to prevent money laundering schemes that could enable donors and political parties to evade the cap on donations to individual candidates. In dissent, Justice Stephen Breyer lays out what some of these schemes could look like. The Democratic or Republican Party, in one example, may set up a “Joint Party Committee” consisting of all three of their national party committees and a state party committee from each of the 50 states. Under McCutcheon, a single donor may now give as much as $1.2 million to this joint committee, which would then be distributed to the various smaller party organizations.

Once the money is distributed, however, it can legally be redistributed to the races where it is likely to have the most impact. Thus, for example, the Republican Party committees in safe red states like Idaho, Utah or Mississippi — where large infusions of money aren’t exactly needed to win elections — can redistribute their funds to battleground states like Ohio or Florida. Meanwhile, blue state Democratic committees in Vermont and Rhode Island can do the same.

Similarly, the same wealthy donor might decide to write a maximum dollar donation to every single Republican House and Senate candidate in the country — perhaps by writing a single $2.4 million check to the same “Joint Party Committee” which then distributes the funds. Once this money is distributed, candidates in safe seats can then redistribute at least some of it to candidates in disputed seats — and the rest can frequently be used to benefit candidates in tough races through “coordinated expenditures.”

Roberts denies that these money laundering schemes will actually arise, but many of the arguments he raises to defend this point betray his own naivete how modern elections work. The Chief Justice argues, for example, that for these money laundering schemes to work a donor would have to engage in “illegal earmarking” — federal law prohibits a donor from “directing funds ‘through an intermediary or conduit’ to a particular candidate.” But a wealthy donor does not need to earmark his donations for these money laundering schemes to work. Indeed, it is in both the donor’s interest and the party’s interest if the donor does not do so. A donor will typically want his money to go to the candidates who are most likely to benefit from his money — those in closely contested races. By donating to a joint party committee, the donor gives their party more flexibility to redirect their money to the candidates who appear most in need as the election approaches.

Similarly, Roberts claims that “[t]he Government provides no reason to believe that many state parties would willingly participate in a scheme to funnel money to another State’s candidates.” But this argument assumes that each state Democratic or Republican Party is an island. If Republicans control the Senate, Mississippi’s Republican senators have more clout and Mississippi Republicans benefit. The same applies to Rhode Island’s Democratic senators when Democrats control the Senate. America has two national parties and it has a national legislature. When Iowa elects Republicans to Congress, that makes it more likely that Republicans in Mississippi will see their preferred policies enacted into law.

Roberts does, however, raise one fairly strong argument in support of his belief that wealthy donors will not resort to complicated money laundering schemes — thanks to the line of cases culminating in Citizens United, they won’t have to. Before McCutcheon, wealthy donors basically had free reign to spend as much money as they wanted seeking to influence elections, just as long as they give that money to “independent” organizations such as super PACs. In light of this body of law, why would a candidate resort to an elaborate money laundering scheme when they can simply write a check to the super PAC of their choice?

It’s a good question, and not an easy one to answer. But it’s hardly an argument for eliminating even more limits on how far the wealthy can go to influence elections. If allowing a single person to spend millions of dollars to change the outcome of an election is a bad idea, then it is a bad idea no matter what kind of legal regime permits that spending to take place.

cross posted from thinkprogress

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STAFF WRITER

"COOKING THE BOOKS"

OBAMA "COOKING THE ACA BOOKS"

A tea bagging senator said on Sunday that the lack of details about ObamaCare enrollment numbers suggests the Obama administration has “cooked the books.”

Sen. John Barrasso, R-Wyoming, made his comments just hours before the Monday deadline to enroll in the Affordable Care Act and was skeptical of the administration’s most recent enrollment figure of more than 6 million Americans.

“I don't think it means anything,” he told “Fox News Sunday.” “They are cooking the books on this.”

Watch below - as only Maddow can present

VIDEO COURTESY OF MSNBC

NFTOS
Editor-In-Chief

Roger West

RICHARD H. RICHARDS IV - CHILD RAPIST

Robert H. Richards IV does not work. He doesn’t have to. The great-grandson of Irénée du Pont, the chemical magnate who provided much of the financial backing to a failed effort to defeat Franklin Delano Roosevelt during the 1930s, Richards lives off a trust fund in a 5,800 square foot mansion he bought for $1.8 million. When he is not staying in his mansion, he might be found in his beach home “in the exclusive North Shores neighborhood near Rehoboth Beach.”

Richards is also a child rapist.

In 2005, Richards started sexually abusing his three year-old daughter. The abuse ended two years later when the girl told her grandmother that she didn’t want “my daddy touching me anymore.” When Richards’ former wife confronted him this abuse, Richards admitted to doing so but claimed “it was an accident and he would never do it again.”

And yet, Robert Richards, who raped his own child and then told her not to tell anyone so that it could be “our little secret,” will likely not spend a day in prison. Although Richards was originally charged with two counts of second-degree rape of a child — counts that carry a mandatory 10 year prison term — the prosecutor offered him a plea bargain just days before the trial. Richards admitted in open court that he abused his daughter, and he plead to a single count of fourth-degree rape, a much less serious crime with no mandatory minimum.

Though the maximum sentence for fourth-degree rape is 15 years in prison, the prosecution recommended that Richards only receive probation. And Judge Jan Jurden largely agreed. Though she sentenced Richards to an eight-year prison term, she immediately suspended the term in favor of probation. Richards, Jurden wrote in her sentencing order, “will not fare well” if he is sentenced to prison.

I'm not sure which is more troubling - the fact that the judge felt "empathy" toward a child rapist - because he would not fare well in prison due to his wealth and crime, or the fact that the same judge and the same system believes that black males fare perfectly fine in such a system.

NFTOS

Editor-In-Chief

Roger West

JUST WHEN YOU THINK YOU HAVE HEARD IT ALL

When Rohn Neugebauer, an otherwise-healthy 48-year-old man, died suddenly of a heart attack on March 16, his family knew he wanted to donate his tissue and organs to someone in need. Just a few months earlier, he had co-hosted a fundraiser for a local organ donation organization, the Center for Organ Recovery & Education (CORE), that had raised several thousand dollars.

At the hospital a couple hours after Rohn died, his sister Sandy Schultheis said she patiently answered nearly 20 minutes of questions from a CORE representative about his health and medical history. Then came the final question: Had Rohn been in a homosexual relationship over the last 5 years?

When she answered that Rohn was a gay man in a long-term relationship, the CORE representative said that, as a result, her brother was not an eligible donor. The interview was over.

There is no blanket prohibition on organ donations from sexually active gay men. Rather, CDC guidelines say that “men who have had sex with another man in the preceding 5 years… should be excluded from donation of organs or tissues unless the risk to the recipient of not performing the transplant is deemed to be greater than the risk of HIV transmission and disease.” That is defined as a circumstance where “emergent, life-threatening illness requiring transplantation when no other organs/tissues are available and no other lifesaving therapies exist.”

Dan Burda, who has been Rohn’s partner for the last 8 years, and who co-hosted the fundraiser for CORE, was very upset with the group’s decision. He started a campaign on Facebook to draw attention to Rohn’s situation. That soon drew the attention of WPXI, the local Pittsburgh NBC affiliate. The station posted an article detailing Rohn’s story, and CORE’s response, on their website on Wednesday afternoon at 5:00 pm. A short segment aired during the 6:00 broadcast.

But just a few hours later, without explanation, WPXI removed the story from the internet. An executive producer at the station who would only identify herself as Betsy said that the story had been removed after Rohn’s father contacted them very upset and asked that it be taken down. Betsy confirmed that WPXI stood by the accuracy of their report, but took the story down because Rohn’s father said some members of the family did not know Rohn was gay and he didn't want them finding out through the article.

Rohn’s sister said that he was an openly gay man and that anyone who knew him also knew of his long-term relationship with Dan.

In the deleted article (available through Google cache) CORE told WPXI they could not comment specifically on Rohn’s situation but cited an FDA guideline that prohibited the donation of human tissue from male donors that “who have had sex with another man in the preceding five years.” That prohibition does not apply to organ donation.

In fact, many groups encourage gay men to register as organ donors. There are currently 121,910 people on the waiting list for organ donations.

The rules on organ donations from sexually active gay men mirror, to some degree, the prohibition on blood donation from that group. The policy, which dates to the AIDS epidemic of the 1980s, was recently criticized by the American Medical Association as “discriminatory and not based on sound science,” and members of Congress are working to get it overturned. The AMA said decisions should be based on “individual level of risk” rather than sexual orientation.

Footnote: After publication CORE stated that “Sexual orientation has no effect on a person’s eligibility for organ donation.” While not addressing Rohn’s case specifically, the representative stated that an individual who dies from cardiac arrest — as Rohn did — is not able to donate their organs. For tissue donation, CORE again referenced the FDA guideline which “requires CORE to conduct a medical/social history to screen donors for increased risk of transmissible diseases to ensure the safety of grafts for transplant. ” Under those guidelines, a man who has had sex with another man in the preceding five years is considered high risk and is not an eligible donor.

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STAFF WRITER

LEFT BEHIND

Bill Maher ended his show Friday night with a plea for Democrats to stop feebly going along with the Republicans and “stand your ground” on issues like Obamacare instead of going “Yeah, sucks to be us right now” and lamely apologizing for everything like a husband who says of his wife, “She’s not perfect, but it’s better than masturbating alone!”

Maher told Democrats to start trotting out the Obamacare success stories. He said it’s not that hard to do; “You just need someone who’s been to a gynecologist, not Bigfoot!” He cried, “It’s not like you’re trying to sell a Vince Vaughn movie, this is a good thing!”

But Maher got very adamant about Democrats abandoning the “false meme” from the right that Jimmy Carter‘s presidency was a failure, saying the real failure came from “wimps” who never had his back.

NFTOS
Editor-In-Chief

Roger West

CHRIC CHRISTIE INVESTIGATES SELF AND FINDS NO WRONG DOING IN BRIDGEGATE

CHRISTIE SAVES CHRISTIE PART I




With his office suddenly engulfed in scandal over lane closings at the George Washington Bridge, Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey two months ago summoned a pair of top defense lawyers from an elite law firm to the State House and asked them to undertake an extensive review of what had gone wrong.

Now, after 70 interviews and at least $1 million in legal fees to be paid by state taxpayers, that review is set to be released, and according to people with firsthand knowledge of the inquiry, it has uncovered no evidence that the governor was involved in the plotting or directing of the lane closings.

The review is the first of multiple inquiries into a scandal that has jeopardized Mr. Christie’s political future. It will be viewed with intense skepticism, not only because it was commissioned by the governor but also because the firm conducting it, Gibson Dunn & Crutcher, has close ties to the Christie administration and the firm’s lawyers were unable to interview three principal players in the shutdowns, including Bridget Anne Kelly, the governor’s former deputy chief of staff.

CHRISTIE SAVES CHRISTIE PART II




Its pretty sad when Christie's law firm, "Chutzpah", 'Bullshit", and "Hubris" concoct a story so far stretching, [which includes a purported sordid tryst between Bridget Kelly and Bill Stepien] that even right wing nut jobs have a hard time fathoming it.

New Jersey tax payers, one million dollars poorer - and still having to deal with the bloviated Kripsy Kreme liar as their Governor.

NFTOS

Editor-In-Chief

Roger West

SIX MILLION AND COUNTING

On Thursday, President Obama announced on a call with volunteers that the number of Americans who have enrolled in health insurance plans under Obamacare has hit six million.

With several days left to go before open enrollment ends on March 31, the administration has met its target. The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office estimated that Obamacare enrollment would hit six million by the end of its enrollment period. Although the CBO initially projected a seven million enrollment figure, that number was revised down after technological issues plagued the insurance marketplaces’ websites this past fall.

Just ten days ago, the Obama administration announced that enrollments had hit five million— meaning that the pace of enrollment has significantly picked up recently, and a million Americans enrolled in less than two weeks. The White House has always anticipated a last-minute surge in enrollment, since previous efforts to enroll Americans in government-run health care programs have demonstrated that people typically wait until the last minute to sign up.

Obamacare enrollment is frequently compared to the Bush administration’s effort to enroll seniors in Medicare Part D. That prescription drug program, widely considered to be a success now that it’s fully implemented, also struggled with initial website glitches. Medicare Part D ended up falling slightly short of its CBO projection, hitting 70 percent of that goal by the end of its enrollment period.

Although open enrollment technically ends in four days, there will be a few more weeks for some Americans to sign up. On Wednesday, the administration announced that the people who have experienced technological difficulties will be allowed to complete their enrollment in April.

NFTOS

STAFF WRITER

BENGHAZI WITCH-HUNT COST MILLIONS

The Department of Defense has spent millions of dollars and thousands of hours trying to fulfill requests from Congress’s six investigations into Benghazi, according to a letter from the Pentagon to a top-ranking Democrat.

“The Department has devoted thousands of man-hours to responding to the numerous and often repetitive congressional requests regarding Benghazi,” Assistant Secretary of Defense for Legislative Affairs Elizabeth King said in a letter to Congress dated earlier this month. That estimate includes “time devoted to approximately 50 congressional hearings, briefings, and interviews which the Department has led or participated in.” While no total calculation has been completed yet, King estimated that total cost of compliance with Congress’ requests to the Pentagon and other agencies runs “into the millions of dollars.”

“We continue to work fervently to address outstanding items,” King continued, including document requests and additional interviews — including with people who have already submitted to previous hearings or interviews. “Since the tragic events of September 2012, we have made every effort to provide information to the various congressional committees regarding Department’s actions in response to the attacks, and have accommodated Congress’ every request regardless of expense,” King wrote in the letter, which was sent to Rep. Adam Smith, ranking member on the House Armed Services Committee. Committee chairman Rep. Howard “Buck” McKeon was also sent a copy of the letter.

Smith first contacted the Pentagon last month to “gain a better understanding of the resources exhausted” in the DOD response to the now multiyear investigation into the Obama administration’s response to the attacks in Benghazi, Libya. According to The Hill, following the Pentagon’s response, Smith reached out to McKeon to call off the witch-hunt that has to date produced no evidence of nefarious wrongdoing on the part of the White House, Pentagon, State Department, or intelligence community. “We must stop wasting this committee’s and our military’s scarce resources chasing a scandal that does not exist,” Smith wrote.

But it appears, even though the American public long ago stopped believing Republican claims of some kind of cover-up related to Benghazi, that there is no sign of the investigations to end. “It is important that the Committee see this oversight effort through to its conclusion,” McKeon spokesman Claude Chafin told the Hill. “Chairman McKeon appreciates Ranking Member Smith’s concerns as well as the support he has given to our oversight of this matter.”

That drive to press forward with the investigations only seems to rest in the Republican members of Congress — who continue to stress the issue despite issuing reports debunking many of the conspiracies they promote — and fringes of the conservative base whose support they seek. Even their aides seem to have grown weary of the pursuit of a non-existent cover-up. “There are some real issues there and then there is just some crazy stuff,” one senior House GOP aide was quoted as saying almost a year ago. (HT: The Hill)

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STAFF WRITER

SUPREME SCIENCE DENIERS

Arguments were all going well for the ACA until Justice Kennedy asked the magic question.

Today's Supreme Court arguments about contraception, the ACA and religious liberty began with the ACA in a winning position.

ThinkProgress:

It was clear from the get go that the Court’s liberals understood that their best course involved highlighting the dangerous consequences of a victory for Hobby Lobby. Paul Clement, the de facto Solicitor General of the Republican Party who argued the case on Hobby Lobby’s behalf, barely uttered his first sentence before Justice Sonia Sotomayor cut him off to ask what other medical procedures religious employers could refuse to cover in their employee health plans. Justice Elena Kagan quickly joined the party. If Hobby Lobby can deny birth control coverage, Kagan asked, what about employers who object to vaccinations? Or blood transfusions?

When Clement tried to deflect this list, Kagan came armed with an even bigger what. What of religious employers who object to gender equality, or the minimum wage, or family medical leave, or child labor laws? If the Supreme Court agrees with Hobby Lobby’s brief, which argues that laws burdening a corporation’s purported religious faith must survive the “most demanding test known to constitutional law,” then there would be few laws corporations could not exempt themselves from following.

So far, so good. And then Justice Kennedy dropped the bomb:

Kennedy did something different, he did not weigh in on the question of whether non-abortions can count as abortion — indeed, he seemed to understand the difference between birth control and abortion. Nevertheless, he looked at the government’s requirement to provide birth control coverage and envisioned a future law compelling Hobby Lobby to pay for actual abortions — just as he once gazed upon a requirement to buy health insurance and imagined the government forcing everyone to buy broccoli. In Justice Kennedy’s Courtroom, the government doesn’t have to defend the law it actually passed, it has to defend the worst law Kennedy can imagine them passing — even if that law would never make it through Congress.

Clement pounced on the opening Kennedy gave him the second he took the podium for his rebuttal argument. The government’s position, he claimed, goes straight to abortion and “that cannot be what Congress meant when it passed RFRA.” Kagan’s face grew even more worried.

In order to get through that line of logic, Kennedy would have to deny science and assume that IUDs, as one example, cause abortions. Despite reams of scientific literature to the contrary, it appears that he may be poised to go in that direction. And that will mean that any concerns he might have about employers denying other medical treatments in the name of religious liberty will also fly out of the window, because abortion trumps all else.

What's next? Will taxes be the next "religious liberty" argument? These forced birth advocates worship at the Altar of the Almighty Fetus first, then baptize themselves in fountains of coins. It's enough to make baby Jesus weep.

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Editor-In-Chief

Roger West

“IMMIGRATION REFORM FORCES PEOPLE TO BECOME CITIZENS AGIANST THEIR WILL”

JEFFERSON, LA — One reason Rep. Steve Scalise opposes the Senate’s bipartisan answer to immigration reform is because he insists it would force immigrants to become unwilling citizens of the U.S.

“There are a lot of people who come here, just want to work and go back home and not be a legal citizen that the Senate bill would actually force onto an amnesty track,” Scalise said that after a town hall in his district Friday. “If you look at the 1986 law, 40 percent that were eligible for amnesty chose not to go that route because they just wanted to work and go back home. And yet the Senate bill would force them to become American citizens and that’s not even what they want.”

He proposed that the country strengthen immigration enforcement and secure its borders instead.

But contrary to what Scalise suggested, at no point are the 11.7 million undocumented immigrants automatically enrolled or forced to become citizens. In fact, the bill’s path to earned citizenship is a rather difficult one.

Under the comprehensive immigration reform bill that was passed by the Senate, unauthorized residents can only gain citizenship over a minimum 13 years, after a multi-step process that first grants probationary legal status and later permanent legal status. Then, they must meet a long list of criteria for earned citizenship, including paying back taxes and fees, background checks, and a working knowledge of English. An analysis of the bill from the Congressional Budget Office estimated that 8 million of the approximately 11 million unauthorized residents “would initially gain legal status under the bill.”

With the unmet promise of immigration reform still hanging over the House of Representatives, it is convenient now to argue that the undocumented themselves do not want a path to citizenship. Last year, Rep. Trey Gowdy and Rep. Paul Ryan both claimed immigrants have little interest in the idea.

 

 

 

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STAFF WRITER

ITS ALL IN THE NUMBERS

Preschoolers are being suspended in American schools, and a disproportionate number of those young students receiving the punitive treatment are black, according to a new report out Friday from the Department of Education.

While black children make up just 18 percent of kids enrolled in preschool programs, they constitute 48 percent of the students suspended more than once. Across all grades, black students suffer suspensions or expulsions at three times the rate of their white counterparts. Black girls, in particular, suffer disproportionate rates of suspension; they receive higher rates of suspension “than girls of any other race or ethnicity and most boys,” the report finds.

The same holds true for arrests in school. Black students are just 16 percent of total students in schools, but make up 27 percent of those who are referred to law enforcement and 31 percent of those who receive a school-related arrest.

Friday’s new data is consistent with previous findings on disproportionate suspensions, expulsions, and arrests of black students. In 2013, a study from the University of California – Los Angeles’s Civil Rights project found that American students have, on average, an 11 percent chance of suspension, but that black students have a 24 percent chance of the same punishment. A 2010 Education Department also found that black and Hispanic students account for 70 percent of school-related arrests.

Suspensions are not just reserved for serious infractions. Students can be kept out of class for things as minor as a dress code violation. One controversial policy is that of suspension for “defiance.” A bill in California last year sought to get rid of suspensions caused by “willful defiance,” pointing to the fact that such an amorphous term may lead to the type of discrimination that the report finds. That bill never made it into law, but its guiding principle was adopted by Los Angeles area schools.

The rate of suspension has doubled since the 1970s as a growth in ‘zero tolerance’ policies has gripped school districts around the U.S. But studies show that the policy has serious negative implications; students who are suspended, even once, are significantly more likely to drop out of school.

There are, of course, alternative forms of punishment or other ways of dealing with student problem — especially at ages as young as preschool.

“The most important [potential solution] is a shift to more positive programs,” said Dr. Russ Skiba, a professor at Indiana University who studies educational equity and school discipline. Skiba pointed to some schools that are taking a more holistic approach. “We’ve found more effective forms of discipline. Those have a focus on school climate first. They say it’s the responsibility of the school, the community, the principle. to change the climate of the school.” This can mean using one-on-one conversations or discussion circles to get to the root of why a disciplinary problem happened, and then working to prevent it in the future. “And then use those tools of suspension and expulsion as last result,” Skiba said.

Another step some schools are taking is to simply phase down suspension policies — turning a 10-day suspension into a seven-day one, a five-day into a three-day.

It’s also vital to collect more data on why and when suspension and expulsion are taking place. “The preschool finding is exactly a result of having the data. If we didn’t collect and report it, we would never know about these really shocking discrepancies.” he said. “So we need to make the requirements about reporting data more universal. Right now there are only regulations for students with disabilities. We have no such requirement for all kids in general.”

While some states have detailed data on suspensions and expulsions, down to the school level, others have data that is widely unavailable. Still others have nothing at the school level at all. This lack of data can mean we don’t know exactly who is facing suspension or expulsion — and when discrimination is occurring. LGBT students, for example, face disproportionate rates of suspension and expulsion, but you wouldn't know that from most available data.

cross posted from thinkprogress

NFTOS
STAFF WRITER

ITS ALL IN HOW YOU WORD IT

Episode 311 by BillMaher1956

NFTOS 

Editor-In-Chief

Roger West

MICHIGAN JUDGE OVERTURNS SAME SEX MARRIAGE BAN

A federal judge has overturned Michigan’s constitutional and statutory bans on same-sex marriage. In the decision, Judge Bernard Friedman, a Regan appointee, argued that this is a case about people’s equal protection, lauding the couple that brought the case for the sacrifices they've made to raise their children:

In attempting to define this case as a challenge to “the will of the people,” state defendants lost sight of what this case is truly about: people. No court record of this proceeding could ever fully convey the personal sacrifice of these two plaintiffs who seek to ensure that the state may no longer impair the rights of their children and the thousands of others now being raised by same-sex couples. It is the Court’s fervent hope that these children will grow up “to understand the integrity and closeness of their own family and its concord with other families in their community and in their daily lives.” Today’s decision is a step in that direction, and affirms the enduring principle that regardless of whoever finds favor in the eyes of the most recent majority, the guarantee of equal protection must prevail.

Michigan’s trial was unique because it included testimony from a panel of experts, and the state brought in several researchers that have been responsible for fueling conservatives’ claims that children of same-sex couples fare worse than those raised by a married mom and dad. Outlining the case’s findings of fact, Judge Friedman rejected the anti-gay researchers’ claims, saying in particular of Mark Regnerus’s testimony that it was “entirely unbelievable and not worthy of serious consideration”:

Marks, Price, and Allen all failed to concede the importance of “convenience sampling” as a social science research tool. They, along with Regnerus, clearly represent a fringe viewpoint that is rejected by the vast majority of their colleagues across a variety of social science fields. The most that can be said of these witnesses’ testimony is that the “no differences” consensus has not been proven with scientific certainty, not that there is any credible evidence showing that children raised by same-sex couples fare worse than those raised by heterosexual couples.

In other words, though the research on same-sex parenting is still advancing, nothing worth considering has yet contradicted the consensus that same-sex couples make just as effective parents as their heterosexual counterparts.

Friedman’s decision follows similar rulings in Texas, Kentucky, Virginia, Oklahoma, Ohio, Illinois, and Utah.

Cross posted from thinkprogress

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STAFF WRITER

FRED PHELPS NOW LEARNING WHAT GOD TRULY HATES

THE DISGUSTING POS NAMED FRED PHELPS

BREAKING: Hell welcomes its newest resident.

Wednesday night, anti-gay, military gravesite protester, and Westboro Baptist Church founder Fred Phelps passed away at the age of 84. His church’s rallying cry of “God Hates Fags” has long drawn the ire of people everywhere - all across the spectrum - his death only served to underscore this worldly unity of hate for this asshat.

Yes, Fred Phelps was the lowest form of human excrement to ever troll this earth.

The truth is, Fred Phelps made a lot of people angry. Not only the families of AIDS patients, but gay men and American soldiers alike - celebrities whose funerals he relentlessly picketed along with a few dozen members of his Westboro Baptist Church. As journalist Donna Minkowitz chronicled almost twenty years ago in Poz magazine, “harassing bereaved families is Phelps’s specialty.” “I love to use words that send them off the edge emotionally,” he told her, “There’s nothing better than that.”

Phelps’s early victims included not just AIDS advocates like Nicholas Rango (1993) and Randy Shilts (1994) and gay men of modest fame like composer Kevin Oldham (1993), but also anonymously harassed individuals like Kenneth Scott, a Topeka graduate student who died in 1992. Scott’s sister Sue Mee told Minkowitz, “When Kenny died, they came to the funeral with a sign that said ‘Fags=Death’ with a big smiley face,” and that years later, Scott’s family would still receive phone calls from random individuals asking, “Is this the house where fags live?”

Later, Phelps would broaden his grotesque trolling to include the funerals of slain US soldiers, whom he reckoned God had killed as punishment for America’s sexual immorality.

Phelps ranted on about God’s hate for fags, for America, for Muslims, for Catholics, gun massacre victims and US troops. If American exceptionalism is in some way an attempt to imbue the profane - Phelps merely reversed polarities, swapping in eternal damnation. To discuss Phelps as if he were a morally vexing and profound evil - is to kind for this disgusting prick, dignifying him with a complexity he lacked. His hatred was banal, his existence, a waste of human flesh.

May his judgment be harsh, and may his nasty soul burn in hell for eternity. Good riddance asshat, this world is much better with you gone.

NFTOS
Editor-In-Chief

Roger West

VIRGINIA GOPER SAYS MEDICAID EXPANSION MUCH LIKE A TAR BABY

FRANK "TAR BABY" RUFF

Virginia State Senator Frank M. Ruff’s ardent opposition to the Medicaid expansion offered to the states under the Affordable Care Act took a new turn on Tuesday. Ruff has confirmed that he “compared reliance on promised funds to provide health insurance for thousands of low-income Virginians to a ‘tar baby,’” a statement that was first reported in the Virginian-Pilot.

Ruff told attendees at the Danville Pittsylvania County Chamber of Commerce’s legislative breakfast that Virginia would be stuck if Medicaid expansion became financially disadvantageous in the future, like a “tar baby.” The Virginian-Pilot noted that the term “comes from the Uncle Remus collection of African American folklore tales published in the post-Reconstruction South and written in the eye dialect of rural blacks of that era,” and is “perceived as a racial slur against African Americans in some circles.”

John Gilstrap, a member of the Danville City Council, denounced the comment as “not a correct statement to make” and “offensive to a couple African Americans in the audience.” Gilstrap told the Pilot that Danville Mayor Sherman Saunders had walked out of the meeting after Ruff’s comparison.

In an email, Ruff said:

“Speaking with no prepared remarks I used the term ‘tar baby’ referring to a sticky situation one time. Never have I ever heard this as a racial term. I called the Mayor yesterday afternoon to clarify that. I consider Sherman a friend and do not expect this to change our working together in the future for all of the people of the region.”

Ruff was one of 17 Senate Republicans to vote against accepting billions of dollars in federal funding to expand Medicaid eligibility to roughly 400,000 Virginians. Ruff and other legislative Republicans say they are worried that the promised federal funding will not come through, and thus have voted to effectively let $5 million each day of Virginians’ tax dollars subsidize other states that have opted into the expansion. Though the expansion passed the Democratic Party-controlled Senate (with three Republicans joining all 20 Democrats) and enjoys the strong support of Gov. Terry McAuliffe , the Republican-controlled House of Delegates has, thus far, refused to accept it.

A standoff over this issue prevented agreement on a state budget and a special session has been called for next week. At the breakfast, Ruff expressed hope that Democrats would accept a “clean budget” without the expansion, effectively surrendering their leverage.

Congratulations Frank Ruff, you are today's asshat of the day and today's worst person in the world.

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Editor-In-Chief

Roger West

TIN FOIL HAT SOCIETY IN WISCONSIN AIDING AND ABETTING SCOTT "KOCH WHORE" WALKER

Photo from Crooks and Liars

Scott Walker is barely maintaining his governorship - between the John Doe investigation and a strong Democratic challenger - now enters the Wisconsin tea baggers, who are working to ease the pains of the reckless Governor.

Troubled Scott Walker - After last month's massive email dump revealed the depth of his staff's probable illegal on-the-job campaign activity and their awful attitudes, he's barely holding on against challenger Mary Burke.

But not to worry, Scottie! Your Senate cronies are on it for you. PRWatch:

SB 654, quietly introduced earlier this month by Senate Majority Leader Scott Fitzgerald, who is reportedly under investigation in the John Doe probe, would reverse judicial precedent and declare that "issue ads" cannot be considered a candidate contribution. Those changes, if enacted, would conform Wisconsin statutes to Wisconsin Club for Growth's arguments in the John Doe case, and legalize the conduct under investigation in time for statewide elections later this year.

No worries says Walker, when in trouble, have your fellow society members change the law for you - if you fail to follow the law, change it, especially if it means you could coordinate with outside groups.

If enacted, the legislation would not necessarily stop the John Doe probe. It would, however, legalize the conduct under investigation in the John Doe for state elections later this year -- including Scott Walker's hotly-contested reelection campaign. 

This means that the Walker campaign could work hand-in-glove with an "issue ad" group like Wisconsin Club for Growth, which can accept secret, unlimited donations. 

"The proposed policy change is a horrible one," the Campaign Legal Center's Ryan told CMD. "It would pose a serious threat of corruption in Wisconsin politics, and open the door wide to unlimited and undisclosed political expenditures." 

As CMD has previously pointed out, allowing coordinated issue ads could undermine campaign finance and disclosure laws, since a multi-million-dollar donation to Wisconsin Club for Growth would have almost the same value as a donation directly to Walker -- with the same opportunity for corruption, and the same problems with the press and the public not knowing about the true source of the donations. Because a donation to a candidate-aligned issue ad group would not be publicly disclosed, the public would be unable to track whether the donation resulted in favorable treatment.

Its time to amp up the pressure on this Koch Whore!

NFTOS
Editor-In-Chief

Roger West

ANOTHER UNBELIEVABLE STORY FROM TEA BAGGER LAND

A Republican lawmaker in South Dakota believes that businesses should be able to deny services to African Americans, gay people, or anyone else who offends their religious beliefs.

Phil Jensen, who the Rapid City Journal describes as the state’s most conservative senator, argues that the government should get out of the way and allow the free market to shut down discriminatory businesses. Last session, he introduced a measure that would have allowed employers to turn away undesirable clients without any legal repercussions:

“It’s a bill that protects the constitutional right to free association, the right to free speech and private property rights,” he said. 

Jensen goes so far as to say that businesses should have the right to deny service based on a customer’s race or religion – whether that’s right or wrong, he says, can be fairly addressed by the free market, not the government. “If someone was a member of the Ku Klux Klan, and they were running a little bakery for instance, the majority of us would find it detestable that they refuse to serve blacks, and guess what? In a matter of weeks or so that business would shut down because no one is going to patronize them,” he said.

The measure, Senate Bill 128, ultimately died in committee, after LGBT advocates and even some Republicans characterized it as “a mean, nasty, hateful, vindictive bill.”

Multiple states have defeated similar proposals, including Mississippi, Arizona, Ohio, Indiana, Georgia Kansas, Maine, Tennessee, and Idaho. Missouri is the only state that is still considering a similar measure.

Phil Jensen, you are today's worst person in the world!

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Editor-In-Chief

Roger West

AMERICANS FOR PROSPERITY DUMPING COPIUS AMOUNTS OF CASH TO DENY POOR HEALTH CARE

 KOCH ADS

Obamacare opponents have already run more than 30,000 television ads attacking the health law and Democratic candidates who support it, according to the media tracking group CMAG — a staggering 12-fold increase from four years ago. Many of the ads are being run in states with high un-insurance rates where hundreds of thousands of poor people could benefit from the Affordable Care Act, including Arkansas, Kentucky, and Louisiana.

Nearly half of all ads that have been run about the health law in House and Senate races through March 9 are critical of the ACA. And in a reflection of the post-Citizens United political landscape, spending by outside groups without any official connection to a particular organization or party accounts for almost three-fourths of all the commercials, compared to just 13 percent in 2010.

“We knew there would be heightened public awareness around the implementation of the law, and we thought it was important to go up early with a heavy effort,” said Tim Phillips, president of the Koch brother-funded group Americans for Prosperity (AFP), in an interview with Bloomberg.

AFP has run the most anti-Obamacare ads of any political group by a large margin, targeting vulnerable Democrats who are up for re-election, such as Sen. Mark Pryor (D-AR) and Sen. Mary Landrieu . The organization’s spots play up misleading “horror stories” related to the health law, such as Americans who have had their insurance policies cancelled or seen their premiums spike. But the ads’ content tends to range from exaggeration to outright misinformation — and AFP has even been caught hiring paid actors to play the roles of “real” local residents.

It remains to be seen just how much the advertising assault will affect this November’s elections. But many of the commercials are concentrated in regions where large numbers of people can — and already have — take advantage of Obamacare’s consumer protections and financial assistance, especially the health law’s optional expansion of Medicaid.

More than 100,000 of the poorest Arkansas residents have enrolled in private health plans under the state’s alternative to Medicaid expansion. Louisiana, which has rejected the expansion, has seen more than 45,000 people sign up for plans through the state’s Obamacare marketplace as of March 1. And Kentucky, where AFP is going all out to assist Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell’s re-election bid, has one of the most successful Obamacare marketplaces in the entire country, with over 87,000 enrollments through the Medicaid expansion and 55,000 enrollments through the private exchange.

A Bloomberg poll from Thursday also suggests that the “repeal-or-bust” stance being advanced by Obamacare foes isn’t particularly popular. Just under 65 percent of Americans either support the ACA outright or small fixes to the health law while just 34 percent endorse full repeal, according to the poll.

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Editor-In-Chief

Roger West