In May, Maine Gov. John Baldacci (D) signed legislation legalizing same-sex marriage in the state, saying “you can’t allow discrimination to stand when it’s raised to your level.” Opponents of same-sex marriage immediately vowed to pursue a public referendum to overturn the law. Maine election officials announced today that the ant-gay activists have succeeded in putting the law on the November ballot:
Election officials announced Wednesday that gay marriage foes surpassed the threshold of signatures necessary to put the state law on the November ballot, setting the stage for a furious, two-month campaign that’ll determine whether the number of states allowing same-sex nuptials shrinks to five.
Maine’s gay marriage law was supposed to go into effect on Sept. 12, but it was put on hold while the secretary of state’s office verified the number of signatures. With the signatures validated, Gov. John Baldacci on Wednesday signed a formal proclamation putting the gay marriage law to a statewide vote Nov. 3.
“I fully support this legislation and believe it guarantees that all Maine citizens are treated equally under our state’s civil marriage laws,” Baldacci said. “But I also have a constitutional obligation to set the date for the election once the secretary of state has certified that enough signatures have been submitted.”
On Labor Day, tens of thousands of people will be gathering for the coal-powered “Friends of America Rally” in Holden, WV. The point of the gathering is to rail against the Waxman-Markey clean energy legislation. It will feature right-wing guests such as Sean Hannity and Ted Nugent (who once ranted about killing Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton), and is being pushed by mountaintop-removal mining company Massey Energy. Last week, Massey CEO Don Blankenship even recorded a video inviting people to attend the rally, saying they would learn about how “environmental extremists and corporate America are both trying to destroy your jobs.” Watch it:
The sponsors for the rally are mostly regional oil, gas, and coal companies. However, the list also includes the Science and Public Policy Institute — a fringe climate-denial organization — and Verizon Wireless. CREDO Action recently launched a campaign calling on Verizon to drop its sponsorship. CREDO Political Director Becky Bond contacted Verizon’s Vice President of Corporate Communications Jim Gerace to inform him that that CREDO would be launching a campaign against Verizon. Gerace responded by disparaging Bond:
This is how our response is going over with the activists. Becky once lived in a tree for a while. At least now I know where the emails are coming from.
For the record, Bond never lived in a tree. Verizon’s vice president of federal government relations also sits on the board of the global-warming denier National Association of Manufacturers.
Blankenship recently gained attention because the Supreme Court rebuked him for buying West Virginia judges. He has called opponents of his coal “communists,” “atheists,” and “greeniacs” and labeled a cap and trade system a “Ponzi scheme.”
Verizon Wireless spokeswoman Laura Merritt told the Charleston Gazette that Verizon’s decision to sponsor the rally was made “at the local level to support the community.” “It wasn’t an effort to take a position on any particular issue,” she added. However, the pro-coal policies that Verizon is now sponsoring actually hurt communities in West Virginia. As the Wonk Room’s Brad Johnson has written:
The coal-dominated economy of West Virginia is a troubling example of the cruelty of coalocracy. Despite $118 million in coal-mining annual income, West Virginia has the nation’s lowest median household income, worst educational services, worst social assistance, the highest population with disabilities, and nearly a quarter of West Virginia children in poverty.
Interestingly, Verizon brags that “environmental stewardship is ingrained in Verizon’s heritage, and the company prides itself on having a positive influence on the environment in which it operates.” It has a whole page devoted to its “green initiatives.” Take action here and tell Verizon that if it really wants to be green, it needs to stop sponsoring global warming denial rallies.
The Lousiana newspaper the Advocate recently reported that Gov. Bobby Jindal (R-LA) has been using tax dollars to fund helicopter trips to and from church. Now, a Lousianian pastor who heads a national interfaith group, the Interfaith Alliance, says Jindal should reimburse taxpayers for the trips:
The Rev. Welton Gaddy, president of the liberal Interfaith Alliance, sent a letter to the governor this week, saying Jindal should reimburse the state for the trips.
“It appears that you owe the people of Louisiana an apology and the treasurer of the state a reimbursement of at least $45,000 in addition to whatever money was spent in the period not covered by the Advocate’s investigation. No taxpayer money should have been used for your travel,” Gaddy wrote.
A spokeswoman for Jindal responded to Gaddy’s request by attacking the Interfaith Alliance rather than addressing the issue: “This political group opposes putting crosses up in honor of fallen policemen, has attacked the National Day of Prayer and advocates for same-sex marriage, so it’s not surprising that they are attacking the governor for accepting invitations to speak at Louisiana churches.” Last year, Jindal also came under scrutiny for taking state helicopters to attend Chamber of Commerce banquets, a fishing rodeo, and a halftime appearance at a basketball game.
Yesterday, the AFL-CIO drew “a line in the sand” when it outlined three elements any health care bill it supports must have: a public health insurance option, an employer mandate, and no taxation of health benefits. AFL-CIO Secretary Treasurer Richard Trumka told the press that this means the 11 million member-strong labor organization “won’t support the bill if it doesn’t have the public option in it.” Today, Trumka appeared on MSNBC and explained to Norah O’Donnell that the inclusion of these three elements marks the difference between “coming up with a bill that you have reform and actually having health insurance reform.” Watch it:
The AFL-CIO’s declaration comes at time when there is speculation that Obama may be willing to sacrifice the public option, with reports that “some administration officials welcome a showdown with liberal lawmakers … [for] Obama to show he is willing to stare down his own party to get things done.” Despite the political wrangling over the inclusion of a new public plan in the final health care bill, the public remains overwhelmingly in support of including such an option.
Liberal watchdog group Media Matters appears to be Fox News’s newest target. Karl Frisch explains that they caught a cameraman filming the organization’s headquarters today:
Earlier today a member of our research staff was on his way to lunch when he spotted a man filming the Media Matters office building from across the street.
When the staffer returned from lunch he spoke to one of our building’s great security guards and was told that the cameraman had initially been on our side of the street filming but they’d asked him to move. The cameraman identified himself as affiliated with “Fox TV” and said that his assignment was to take several exterior shots of the building from different angles.
On MSNBC today, Rep. Phil Gingrey (R-GA) argued that if President Obama wanted to find a “bipartisan” health care solution, he should vow to veto any reform legislation that contains a public option or a co-op. “Let’s don’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good,” said Gingrey. “Let’s remove the public option, and also anything that smacks of a public option, like a co-op. And indeed, I will veto that if it comes to my desk with that in there.” Watch it:
Gingrey claimed that the American people “are rejecting the public option,” but this isn’t supported by public opinion. Last month, SurveyUSA found that 77 percent of Americans support a “choice” between a government-run health care insurance option and private coverage. Gingrey also says that a bill without a public option would be “a good bill that we can all agree on,” but a significant amount of Democrats will not agree to a bill without a public option.
RNC Chairman Michael Steele has strongly condemned Democrats who have criticized the town hall protests by opponents of health care reform. Last month, Steele said:
We are not inciting anyone to go out and destroy anything. We’re not organizing the town halls; their senators are. But instead of focusing on the fact that people are genuinely concerned about what is going on, this administration has the arrogance, the arrogance to look down at my mother, to look down at my co-worker.
Yesterday at Howard University, Steele encountered his own “genuinely concerned” citizen — 23-year-old college grad/activist Amanda Duzak. Duzak stood up and interrupted Steele, arguing that “everyone in this country should have access to good health care” and cited the case of her own mother who died of cancer six months ago because she couldn’t afford her prescription chemotherapy medications. The audience applauded her.
Steele responded by chastising Duzak and accusing her of pulling antics to get on TV. “So people go out to town halls, they go to the community, and they’re like this. (SHAKES ARMS) It makes for great TV. You’ll probably make it tonight. Enjoy it.” The audience immediately went “Ohhh” and “Oooo.” Watch it:
On the Huffington Post, Dave Zirin also notes that Steele’s “effort to connect with young black students got off to a rather cringe-worthy start when right before the billed ’student dialogue’ two dozen white members of area young Republicans arrived to sit in the reserved first two rows of the packed room.”
Electric utility giant Duke Energy has quit the American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity (ACCCE) because of the coal group’s unethical opposition to President Obama’s clean energy reform agenda. For the last few years, Duke has been one of the most prominent industry voices calling for the regulation of industrial global warming pollution, but has also supported the efforts of various right-wing lobbying groups to prevent such action. ACCCE, in addition to promoting “clean coal” Christmas carols, employs right-wing public relations firms to paint the American Clean Energy and Security Act as a job-killing energy tax through whatever means necessary — even blatant forgery. According to the National Journal, Duke has finally recognized that the time has come to choose energy reform over old pollution:
Duke Energy left the American Coalition for Clean Coal Energy on Tuesday over differences with “influential member companies who will not support passing climate change legislation in 2009 or 2010,” the company said.
Duke Energy left the right-wing National Association of Manufacturers in May for similar reasons, but Duke’s CEO, Jim Rogers, still sits on the board of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce — alongside right-wing climate deniers Don Blankenship, Harry Alford, and George Argyros — which is spending tens of millions of dollars to kill clean energy jobs.
Yesterday the right-wing site The New Ledger published a report about House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s (D-CA) “problem” with “patriotic music”. For years, when you would call a congressional office and get put on hold, you’d either hear no music or some patriotic tunes. According to The New Ledger, “the Democratic House leadership” made “a sweeping decision” to replace the patriotic music with smooth jazz.
Rep. Fred Upton (R-MI) even sent a letter to House Chief Administrative Officer (CAO) Daniel Beard — who, The New Leader points out, “reports to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi” — objecting to the change. But as ThinkProgress reported yesterday, this story is nothing more than a conspiracy theory. We spoke to Beard’s spokesman Jeff Ventura:
The music was changed during recess as a pilot program in an attempt to offer offices a choice of hold music. [...]
This had nothing to do with the leadership — not in the beginning or the final outcome.
Basically, congressional offices have traditionally been able to have a choice of music or no music. The CD that had been in the congressional muzak system for “a long time” was a “patriotic tunes CD.” The CAO’s office wanted to test a program giving people a choice of multiple CDs and decided to try out a jazz CD because it’s “what a lot of companies have when you’re on hold.” However, based on the feedback they received, they simply decided to go back to the old system.
Nevertheless, Fox News decided to pick up the false report and run with it. From Sean Hannity’s show last night:
HANNITY: Now up until now you probably have been enjoying lovely patriotic tunes. Well, that is until Nancy Pelosi had anything to say about it. Under the current Democratic leadership, patriotic music was replaced with smooth jazz elevator music. … Well, let this serve as a lesson to the Democrats — don’t meddle with our patriotic music.
This morning, Fox and Friends discussed the important issue with former boxer George Foreman, who broke out and started singing “America the Beautiful” at the end of the segment. Foreman said that patriotic music was “a necessity” because it’s a “privilege” to call your federal lawmakers and something you can do “only in America.” “You better not have that jazz playing.” Host Steve Doocy noted that the “Democratic leadership” had decided to go back to the original music. “America wins!” he declared. Watch it:
Since when is jazz not American?
Transcript: More »
On Monday, White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs used his daily press briefing to criticize “Gang of Six” health care negotiator Sen. Mike Enzi (R-WY) for attacking Democratic health care proposals with “generic Republican talking points” when he delivered the weekly Republican radio address on Saturday. “I think Sen. Enzi’s clearly turned over his cards on bipartisanship and decided that it’s time to walk away from the table,” said Gibbs. Now, another top White House aide has dug into Enzi as well as Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA), who recently sent a fundraising appeal saying he was working to “defeat ‘Obama-care.’” In an interview with the Wall Street Journal, senior adviser David Axelrod said the two senators appeared to be “satisfied with the status quo“:
“If you’re sitting at a table negotiating in good faith, then you probably don’t send out mailers saying, ‘Help me stop Obama-care.’ That’s just common sense,” Mr. Axelrod said. The two senators’ actions, he said, “suggested they don’t want to participate” in bipartisan talks. “They’re satisfied with the status quo. We are not,” Mr. Axelrod said.
One of the most bitter opponents of the economic stimulus package is House Minority Whip Rep. Eric Cantor (R-VA), who has repeatedly claimed that the stimulus is “failing.”
Yesterday in an interview with CNBC’s Erin Burnett, Cantor floated the idea of canceling the rest of the economic stimulus and using the money to pay off debt:
CANTOR: Since we know now that the Stimulus has not met the criteria by which it was passed and the White House promoted it, which was to stave off job losses and to stop unemployment from reaching above 8.5%, since we know it’s been a failure, why not do the responsible thing, which is to take the $400 billion that has not been committed yet - or not been spent, but been committed to the stimulus - and just pay off the debt and deficit so we can get our fiscal house back in order?
Watch it:
While Cantor might think that he can score political points by posturing on the stimulus, his constituents continue to benefit from its funds. Last month, Cantor hosted a job fair in Midlothian, VA, where the economic recovery package created dozens of jobs. Additionally, Chesterfield County, where the fair was being held, will receive more than $38 million in stimulus funding over the next two years. Were that money to be paid towards the national debt instead, tens of millions of dollars would have to be taken away from promised funding for higher education, special education, food stamps, and other essential public goods.
Sen. Jon Kyl (R-AZ) made the same suggestion last July, despite the fact that his state has received billions of dollars in stimulus funding that has provided much-needed relief to Arizona’s health and education systems.
While conservative members of Congress continue to slam the stimulus — even while hypocritically touting its effects in their own districts — the Wall Street Journal reports today that the stimulus appears to be “helping the US climb out of the worst recession in decades.”
The White House is “putting the final touches on a new strategy” to push health care reform that will have President Obama specifying what he “wants to see in a compromise health care deal and directly confronting other trouble spots.” “We’re entering a new season,” said senior adviser David Axelrod. “We’re going to approach it in a different way. The president is going to be very active.”
The Wall Street Journal reports today that the stimulus appears to be “helping the US climb out of the worst recession in decades.” Economists say that the stimulus funding is fueling growth well above where it would be without government action.
In “another piece of evidence that the economy was pulling out of recession,” the U.S. manufacturing sector grew in August after 18 months of severe struggles. President Obama called the numbers “a sign that we’re on the path to economic recovery.”
“Low-wage workers are routinely denied proper overtime pay and are often paid less than the minimum wage,” according to a new study of workers in New York, Los Angeles and Chicago. “The study, the most comprehensive examination of wage-law violations in a decade, also found that 68 percent of the workers interviewed had experienced at least one pay-related violation in the previous work week.”
In a declaration to a federal court on Monday, the C.I.A. refused “to make public hundreds of pages of internal documents about the agency’s defunct detention and interrogation program” by invoking national security. “There’s really no distance at all between this declaration and the declarations the C.I.A. was filing during the Bush administration,” said ACLU lawyer Jameel Jaffer.
Last week, Attorney General Eric Holder announced that he will be appointing U.S. attorney John Durham as a special prosecutor to investigate possible crimes committed by CIA interrogators who “went beyond the legal guidelines” for interrogations set out by the Bush administration.
Human Rights Watch responded to the announcement by imploring Holder to go further and investigate those who “planned, authorized, and facilitated the use of abusive methods.” As constitutional attorney and blogger Glenn Greenwald has noted, Holder’s investigation would effectively immunize interrogators who complied with the Bush administration’s Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) interrogation memos, which authorized brutal torture, and ensure that White House officials who authorized torture “will never be held to account.”
In an appearance today on Fox News’s “America’s Newsroom,” Rep. Jerry Nadler (D-NY) echoed the concerns of these advocates. He told Fox’s Megyn Kelly that Holder should not “limit the investigation” to field interrogators and that he should also investigate the people who gave the orders that resulted in abuse and torture, including former Vice President Cheney:
NADLER: Now, the law says very clearly that it is the obligation of the Attorney General to investigate, to see whether crimes were committed, any time there was torture under American jurisdiction. He must do that. If he didn’t do that, he’d be breaking the law. My criticism of the Attorney General is that he should not limit the investigation to people in the field who may have committed the torture, but to people who may have ordered it, such as the Vice President, for example.
Watch it:
Nadler has been one of the most vociferous critics of the Bush administration’s interrogation policies and its record on civil liberties. In the past, he has said that Bush officials “clearly committed war crimes” and that the Obama administration would be “breaking the law” if it did not fully investigate the Bush administration’s complicity in torture. Most recently, he responded to Cheney’s comments opposing a torture probe by saying that his objections show that he “still fails to understand the law.”
On MSNBC earlier today, CNBC’s Maria Bartiromo and Rep. Anthony Weiner (D-NY) debated the merits of government-provided health insurance. When Weiner said that “the quality of care” under government-provided Medicare “is terrific,” Bartiromo shot back, “how come you don’t use it? You don’t have it.” “Because I’m not 65. I would love it,” replied Weiner, noting that only Americans 65 and older can participate in Medicare. “Yeah, come on,” said Bartiromo incredulously. “Medicare for someone age 45? I would take it in a heartbeat,” added Weiner. Watch it:
Today, the right-wing site The New Ledger has a report about House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s (D-CA) “problem” with “patriotic music”:
If you’ve ever been stuck on hold with a congressional office in the past, at least you’ve been able to enjoy some good patriotic music, as opposed to the lilting tones of generic smooth jazz that have been driving elevator users insane for decades. For years, congressional offices have played patriotic anthems as the background music during hold times.
Not any more. After we were startled by the hold music when we called a House office recently, sources on Capitol Hill informed us this week that the Democratic House leadership has made a sweeping decision that congressional offices now have the options of “smooth jazz” elevator music or no music at all.
The post was picked up by various right-wing blogs. Rep. Fred Upton (R-MI) has even sent a letter to House Chief Administrative Officer (CAO) Daniel Beard — who, The New Leader points out, “reports to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi” — objecting to the change.
This conspiracy theory is the craziest thing since freedom fries. And birthers. ThinkProgress spoke with Beard’s spokesman Jeff Ventura, who cleared up the confusion:
The music was changed during recess as a pilot program in an attempt to offer offices a choice of hold music. [...]
This had nothing to do with the leadership — not in the beginning or the final outcome.
Here’s what happened: Congressional offices have traditionally been able to have a choice of music or no music. The CD that had been in the congressional muzak system for “a long time” was a “patriotic tunes CD.” The CAO’s office wanted to test a program giving people a choice of multiple CDs and decided to try out a jazz CD because it’s “what a lot of companies have when you’re on hold.” However, based on the feedback they received, they simply decided to go back to the old system.
So for the record, there is no left-wing conspiracy to ban patriotic muzak.
In an interview with the Washington Times today, former attorney general Alberto Gonzales defended Eric Holder’s decision to investigate CIA interrogation abuses, despite claims by Vice President Cheney that it is an “outrageous political act.” “As chief prosecutor of the United States, he should make the decision on his own, based on the facts, then inform the White House,” said Gonzales, whose tenure was marked by intense political meddling on the part of White House officials. More from the interview:
We worked very hard to establish ground rules and parameters about how to deal with terrorists. And if people go beyond that, I think it is legitimate to question and examine that conduct to ensure people are held accountable for their actions, even if it’s action in prosecuting the war on terror.
Listen here:
Of course, Gonzales said he was reassured that Holder was interested the “one percent of actors” who went beyond the legal authorization and not the 99 percent who “are heroes and and should be treated like heroes for the most part.” No doubt that Gonzales puts himself in that 99-percent group.
Over the August recess, Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA), one of the three Republicans engaged in the “Gang of Six” health care negotiations, has repeatedly made public statements that have created deep doubts about his commitment to reaching a bipartisan deal on health care reform. Just yesterday, the Washington Post’s Ezra Klein reported that Grassley sent out a fundraising letter requesting help in his effort to “defeat ‘Obama-care.’”
Now, Radio Iowa’s O. Kay Henderson reports that on a conference call with Iowa radio reporters today, Grassley suggested that the only way to reach a bipartisan compromise would be to first defeat the current Democratic health care proposals:
Republican Senator Chuck Grassley says there may be only one path Democrats can take to get Republicans to support for health care reform. “There’s a feeling that the only way to get a bipartisan agreement is to defeat a Democratic proposal on the first hand and then the Democrats will come to Republican leadership and then, at that point, they’ll know the only way they’re going to get health care reform is bipartisan,” Grassley says.
In the past month, Grassley has been all over the place whenever he has attempted to describe how a bipartisan deal can be reached. On August 17, Grassley said that he was unwilling to vote for a “good” bill unless it got support from “more than four Republicans.” Days later, he told the Washington Post that “We ought to be focusing on getting 80 votes.” Last week, he said he wouldn’t vote for an “imperfect bill.”
Grassley has also repeatedly changed his “make-or-break issues” for a compromise. On August 19, he told National Review that he needed “no public option, no rationing, no government bureaucrats getting between doctors and patients, and tort reform.” The next day, he expanded the list in an interview with NPR, making it “No public option, no pay-or-play, no things that are going to lead to any rationing of health care, no interference with doctor-patient relationships, and tort reform.” In an interview with the AP yesterday, Grassley said that on instructions from the GOP, he has sought “no public option, no rationing and tort reform.”
The Wonk Room has launched “GrassleyWatch” — an effort to track Grassley’s health care misrepresentations and obstructions. Check it out HERE.
“There’s a feeling that the only way to get a bipartisan agreement is to defeat a Democratic proposal in the first hand and then the Democrats will come to Republican leadership. And then at that point, they’ll know the only way they’re going to get health care reform is bipartisan. But my position has been that if that strategy doesn’t work and the Democrats go ahead and establish a public option, for instance, or a play or pay as a way of putting an 8 percent tax on payrolls for people who don’t offer health insurance — and dozens of other bad things — including leading us to Canadian-style single payer plan, then, if the Democrats are successful in doing that, we’ll be stuck with that plan forever,” Grassley told reporters. “So I’ve been taking to Max Baucus and other Democrats trying to ward off such a role of the dice, and ward off any chance that we’d end up with a government-run, federalized health insurance program like Canada has.”
Josh Kalven of Progress Illinois went to Rep. Jan Schakowsky’s (D-IL) town hall meeting last night, “where over 2,000 people showed up, packing a high school auditorium and spilling onto the sidewalk outside.” One of the most disturbing moments of the event came right after the opening of Schakowsky’s introductory speech, when she said, “You know, Ted Kennedy had said that this was the great issue of his life.” Some audience members applauded her, but there were also a loud amount of booing…just days after Kennedy passed away. Watch it:
At a recent event in upstate New York, Rep. Eric Massa (D-NY) asked for a moment of silence to remember Kennedy. Many attendees shouted throughout the 10-second memorial.
One of the newest right-wing memes is that federal government doesn’t have the constitutional authority to enact health care reform. At a town hall protest in San Diego on Saturday, one attendee tried to make one of these “tenther” arguments by holding up a copy of the “U.S.S. Constitution’:
Right here. I got a book here called the U.S.S. Constitution. I’m sure everybody’s seen this before. And you know what? I’ve this book three times now, and I’ve referenced it dozens of times and I can’t find one little paragraph in here that says the government has the right to take over our health care.
Watch it:
TP’s Ian Millhiser — who has also read and referenced the Constitution a few times — notes that the Constitution gives Congress the power “‘to lay and collect taxes, duties, imposts and excises, to pay the debts and provide for the common defense and general welfare of the United States,’ thus empowering the federal government to levy taxes and leverage these revenues to benefit the American people.” (HT: TP reader Kevin)
At a recent town hall meeting, a 27-year old uninsured waitress named Elizabeth Smith asked Rep. Lynn Jenkins (R-KS) why as a working mother she can’t “get an affordable option” for health care. According to the AP, Smith’s 2-1/2-year-old son “hasn’t been to a doctor in 21 months, except for emergency room visits for ear infections, because she can’t afford either insurance or a doctor’s visit.” When Smith asked her question, Jenkins criticized creating “a government-run program” and said that she advocated tax credits so people like Smith could “go be a grown-up and go buy the insurance“:
SMITH: I want an option that I can pay for. I work. I pay my bills. I’m not a burden on the state. I pay my taxes. So why can’t I get an affordable option. Why are you against that?
JENKINS: A government-run program (laugh) is going to subsidize not only yours (laugh) but everybody in this room. So I’m not sure what we’re talking about here. Well, I think it comes down to the whole discussion of…OK folks. Let’s be respectful. UH-OH (talking over crowd). We’re gonna make time for everybody. We’re gonna all listen to each other respectfully, even if we disagree. I think we can agree we need reforms, again it’s just how we gonna do it. I believe people should be given the opportunity to take care of themselves with an advanceable tax credit to go be a grown-up and go buy the insurance.
Watch it:
(HT: Dave Weigel)
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