Last week, 14 Wisconsin Senate Democrats inspired the nation when they decided to flee the state rather than allow quorum for a vote on a bill that would have decimated the state’s public employee unions and dealt a crippling blow to the state’s hard-working teachers, sanitation employees, and other middle class union members. Since then, tens of thousands of Wisconsinites have taken to the streets in even greater number than before the walkout in support of the fleeing legislators and in opposition to Gov. Scott Walker’s (R) anti-middle class agenda.
Inspired by the events in Wisconsin, thousands of Americans all over the country are taking action to battle legislation that would attack their labor rights, defund their schools, threaten their health and safety, and decimate the American middle class. Here are just some of the places across the nation that are taking part in this new “Main Street Movement” to defend and rebuild the American middle class:
- GEORGIA: Hundreds of workers demonstrated outside the Georgia capitol yesterday, declaring their solidarity with striking Wisconsin workers. Some demonstrators wore “cheesehead” hats, a clear reference to a cultural tradition in Wisconsin.
– IDAHO: Hundreds of teachers marched against legislation that would layoff 770 teachers and leave schools severely understaffed.
– INDIANA: In Indiana, House Democrats fled the state, preventing a vote on legislation that would enact “right-to-work” laws that would’ve crippled the right to organize. After the House Democrats took off, hundreds of workers and students marched into the capitol building and staged a massive sit-in, pledging not to leave until the radical legislation was withdrawn. Yesterday, Indiana’s Main Street Movement scored its first victory as Republican lawmakers withdrew the anti-union bill. Indiana Democrats are refusing to come back until right-wing legislators withdraw legislation to undermine the state’s public education system.
– MONTANA: More than a thousand “conservationists, sportsmen, firefighters, teachers, correctional officers and others” descended on the Montana capitol to protest against “unprecedented GOP attacks on public services and education and laws that protect land, air, water and wildlife.” Students carried signs that read “Keep Us In School,” protesting crippling cuts to the state’s education system.
– OHIO: In Ohio, thousands of ordinary Americans who rely on the right to organize to earn good, middle class incomes are facing off with Wisconsin-style legislation backed by Gov. John Kasich (R). Nearly 10,000 protesters demonstrated in Columbus, Ohio, gaining the support of former Gov. Ted Strickland (D-OH) and Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-OH). So many demonstrators showed up that the Ohio Highway Patrol was ordered to lock the doors of the state capitol to stop more demonstrators from getting into the building.
– TENNESSEE: Hundreds of Tennesseans gathered to protest a bill that would completely strip Tennesee teachers of collective bargaining rights. “What you have right now is 300 or so of us, standing and asking the state legislature to focus on what the priorities are right now, instead of attacking working people,” said Mary Mancini, executive director of Tennessee Citizen Action. “If they listen to us, well then that’s great. … If not, I can see this thing growing.”
– WASHINGTON: 2,000 demonstrators in Olympia, Washington, marched against the state’s proposed budget cuts that would harm students and middle class Washingtonians and in solidarity with workers in Wisconsin. “If Scott Walker succeeds in ending worker rights in Wisconsin, the birthplace of public servants’ liberty, it could happen here,” said Federation of State Employees President Carol Dotlich.
ThinkProgress has put together a video compilation highlighting protests by ordinary Americans all over the nation to defend the middle class from this unprecedented assault. Watch it:
Even larger demonstrations are planned this Saturday, as thousands more Main Street Americans plan to take to the streets to protest the ongoing assault against the middle class. Moveon.org is organizing protests at every single state capitol in the country, aiming to “Save the American Dream.” Meanwhile, US Uncut, an activist group inspired by United Kingdom’s UK Uncut, plans to protest against American tax dodgers, asking why the rich in the country have been able to get off easy on their taxes while low- and middle-income Americans continue to be asked to sacrifice.
For the last two weeks, working people have joined with students and sympathetic lawmakers as part of a Main Street Movement to protest efforts in multiple states to strip workers of their collective bargaining rights. While the protests against Gov. Scott Walker (R-WI) have garnered the most attention, protests have also taken place in Ohio, Indiana, Tennessee, Washington, Montana, and Idaho. The protests have caused Republican governors in multiple states to back down from their anti-worker stances.
Despite the obvious newsworthiness of these protests, the Sunday morning news shows last week (Fox News Sunday, NBC’s Meet the Press, CBS’s Face the Nation, CNN’s State of the Union, and ABC’s This Week) featured no labor leaders or members. Instead, they turned to the likes of conservative commentator George Will, CNBC’s Rick Santelli, Liz Cheney, and even a Thomas Jefferson impersonator, while Walker himself made an appearance on Fox.
AFL-CIO Political Communications Director Eddie Vale reports that the situation has not yet changed for this coming Sunday:
There is still time for the producers of these shows to rectify this situation, and give the Main Street Movement a voice on the national media stage.
The American Petroleum Institute, the Big Oil industry’s chief lobbying organization, will start directly backing political candidates in the second quarter of this year. API, whose membership includes oil giants like Exxon-Mobil and Chevron, already spends tens of millions of dollars every year on lobbying, advertisements and Astroturf campaigns to support the the oil industry agenda. As CAP’s Dan Weiss wrote, API “wants to drill in fragile, sensitive places, keep government tax breaks, expand offshore drilling without reforms, and block global warming pollution reduction requirements.”
“This is adding one more tool to our toolkit,” Martin Durbin, API’s executive vice president for government affairs, told Bloomberg News. “At the end of the day, our mission is trying to influence the policy debate.” As Bloomberg pointed out, oil-supported political action committees like the Independent Petroleum Association of America overwhelmingly donate to Republican candidates.
According to the Center for Responsive Politics, API spent $6.7 million on lobbying alone last year, after clearing $7 million in 2009. In 2010, API was the seventh most prolific spender in the oil and gas industry, following ConocoPhillips, Chevron, Exxon-Mobil, Shell, Koch Industries and BP.
API’s turn toward direct political donations is doubly problematic because, in addition to acting as the industry’s chief lobbyists, the institute runs technical committees that set standards for the oil industry. In its official report, the commission that investigated the BP oil spill found that API was too “compromised” to be setting industry standards. “Because they would make oil and gas industry operations potentially more costly, API regularly resists agency rulemakings that government regulators believe would make those operations safer, and API favors rulemaking that promotes industry autonomy from government oversight,” the commission found. And this was before API established a political action committee!
In its proposed 2012 budget, the Obama administration suggested, once again, removing the billions in subsidies that taxpayers give oil companies every year. API has been at the forefront of the lobbying fight to preserve Big Oil’s subsidies, demonizing the removal of them as new “energy taxes,” even while admitting that cutting the subsidies and plowing the money back into clean energy technology would create “a lot more jobs.”
Cross-posted on The Wonk Room.
Former Arkansas governor and Fox News pundit Mike Huckabee told reporters yesterday that he is “seriously contemplating” a presidential bid in 2012, and that he thinks about running every day. At an event hosted by the Christian Science Monitor, the former presidential candidate said he’s going to wait as long as possible to throw his hat in the ring because he can make more money as a non-candidate. “I walk away from a pretty good income,” he explained. But when Huckabee does declare, he should probably spend time figuring out what he would do should he actually win.
Grilled by reporters for his stances on a number of important policy issues, Huckabee seemed completely flummoxed. Asked about the war in Afghanistan, Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker’s (R) union busting, and President Obama’s debt reduction panel, Huckabee’s responses were repeatedly, “I don’t know.” Roll Call reports:
“I don’t know. The honest answer is that I don’t think any of us knows exactly,” he said when asked what should be done in Afghanistan. [...]
On the labor dispute in Wisconsin, Huckabee was asked whether he supported Gov. Scott Walker’s plan to eliminate collective bargaining for state employees. He wouldn’t say yes or no, offering this answer instead: “If not eliminated, it needs to be contained.”
At the same time, Huckabee offered encouraging words to the Republican governor: “Hang tough, stand tall, hold your ground.”
And when pressed to comment on the recommendations of the Obama administration’s deficit-reduction panel, which including deep spending cuts and tax increases, Huckabee said he favored focusing on spending cuts first. But he would not rule out support for eventual tax increases.
“There are three ways to answer a question,” he said when pressed on taxes. “Yes; no; not now. This is a not now.”
Roll Call also notes that Huckabee “hadn’t yet crafted talking points,” but his lack of knowledge or courage to take a stand on any of these issues underscores a much deeper problem. The fact that Huckabee says he thinks about running every day, but that he might not because of its effect on his personal wealth — combined with fact that he appears to have no actual beliefs on several key policy issues — suggests that he is in this for himself, not for a commitment to policy or service.
Forces loyal to Libyan dictator Muammar Qaddafi launched a vicious counter-attack this morning against pro-democracy protesters who have taken control of large swaths of the country. The rebels are encroaching on Tripoli, and the attack was aimed at securing the capitol. Meanwhile, another round of top government officials have defected.
House Republicans floated a “compromise” bill yesterday that would cut $2 billion per week from federal spending. The areas of reduction were not outlined, but a spokesman for Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) said the “so-called compromise” had no chance of passage in the Senate.
General Motors announced its first annual profit since 2004, a clear sign that its government rescue is reaping real results. The company also said that “45,000 union workers would receive profit-sharing checks averaging $4,300, the most in the company’s history.”
After tweeting his support for the use of “live ammunition” on Wisconsin protesters, Indiana Deputy Attorney General Jeff Cox is “no longer employed” by the Attorney General’s Office, which stated that “we are held by the public to a high standard, and we should strive for civility.” Cox defended his comment as “satirical,” adding, “I think we’re getting down a slippery slope here in terms of silencing people who disagree.”
Indiana House Republicans are dropping the right-to-work legislation that compelled Democrats to flee to Illinois so Republicans couldn’t achieve a quorum to vote on it. While GOP lawmakers supported the bill that would allow workers at unionized companies not to pay dues or be members, Gov. Mitch Daniels (R) said it “was a distraction” and suggested the GOP “not pursue the bill.”
A new Rolling Stone investigation claims to have found evidence of an illegal psychological operations campaign waged by the military against U.S. senators designed to build support for the war. The magazine writes that Lt. Gen. William Caldwell, a three-star general who trained Afghan troops, waged a psyops campaign against not only U.S. senators, but also foreign heads of state and think tank analysts.
Sen. Charles Schumer (D-NY) said yesterday that GOP spending proposals are “a recipe for a double-dip recession.” Pointing to a Goldman Sachs analysis showing the GOP plan to reduce federal spending by $61 billion would result in a GDP reduction of 1.5 to 2 percent, Schumer said the proposal “would snuff out any chance of recovery.”
And finally: Tensions are still raw among Delaware Republicans after witnessing the defeat of their 2010 Senate candidate Christine O’Donnell. At a townhall meeting this week, angry supporters of O’Donnell confronted the chairman of the state Republican Party, who had defected against O’Donnell during the campaign, even saying that she wasn’t capable of being elected dog catcher. But Chairman Tom Ross stood his ground, shouting back at the crowd, “You know why I said that? I said it because it was true!”
Ashley Cowie
The state Senate’s Criminal Justice Committee was considering the bill yesterday when an unexpected speaker arrived: Robert Cowie, whose daughter Ashley was killed last month at a Florida State fraternity house when an AK-74 owned by one of the fraternity members accidentally discharged. Reading from a prepared statement, but frequently overcome with emotion, Cowie — who described himself as a registered Republican that never missed an election — pleaded with legislators not to pass the bill:
COWIE: As parents, we send our children to college campuses hoping that they are safe enough places, and that university officials are doing all that they to monitor the safety of our young people. When we packed Ashley’s belongings into boxes to take her things to Tallahassee, we never expected to be bringing her home in a different sized box. This proposed change to the law will place an undue burden on the universities to keep our campuses safe. Ashley was shot to death at a time when the law prohibited weapons on campus, and still this tragedy has occurred…. Allowing guns in an atmosphere of college parties puts everyone involved at increased and undue risk.
Watch it:
The Miami Herald reported Cowie’s speech “left lobbyists in tears,” and consideration of the bill was postponed. However, Evers maintains he was not swayed by the testimony, and that he still plans to pass the bill. “I haven’t really stopped and thought about (making changes),” Evers said. “He had some moving testimony and we’re very sorry for his loss.”
Notably, the Florida State University police chief opposes the measure because “It’s our job to police the campus and keep them safe.” The NRA, however, supports the bill, and when WCTV attempted to ask an NRA spokeswoman about Cowie’s testimony, “she took off the microphone and refused to speak.”
Over the past few months, over a dozen immigration bills have been filed in the Texas legislature by lawmakers who are intent on getting tough on immigration. Most of the pieces of legislation are essentially carbon copies of bills that have been proposed in other state legislatures — namely Arizona’s. However, state Rep. Lois Kolkhorst (R) has introduced a bill that, to its credit, is certainly original. Kolkhorst’s legislation would allow local law enforcement officials to drop off undocumented immigrants at the doorstep of any U.S. senator or representative. The bill reads:
A law enforcement agency that has custody of an illegal immigrant to whom this article applies may:
(1) release or discharge the illegal immigrant at the office of a United States senator or United States representative during that office ’s normal business hours; and
(2) request an agent or employee of the United States senator or United States representative to sign a document acknowledging the release or discharge of the illegal immigrant at the senator ’s or representative ’s office.
The proposed bill only applies to undocumented immigrants who are about to be released on bail or discharged after completing a sentence. Meanwhile, it doesn’t provide any guidance on what a lawmaker should do with them. “I want us to take these illegal immigrants in custody to a congressman’s office and say, ‘ We don’t know what to do with these people. Do you?,” Kolkhorst told reporters. In a press release, she stated, “If passed, federal lawmakers may get some real-life examples of the severity of the problem facing our constituents and local law enforcement. The bill will spotlight parts of Texas where federal authorities are not enforcing their own immigration law.” Austin County Sheriff DeWayne Burger, who wishes the federal government would pick up more undocumented immigrants, called it a “feel good” law. Wonk Room has more on Kolkhorst’s immigration proposal.
All week, Gov. Scott Walker (R-WI) and national Republicans have been attacking Wisconsin’s Democratic state senators for leaving the state in order to block passage of Walker’s union-busting bill. Walker has sent the state police after the lawmakers, and today even said the senators may be committing “an ethics code violation” or even “a felony.” There is also an effort to repeal the decamped Wisconsin senators. Meanwhile, Democratic lawmakers in Indiana have fled their state to stop a different union-busting measure there.
As ThinkProgress noted, this tactic has a long history in American politics — Republican Abraham Lincoln even once jumped out a window while employing it. But the departed Democrats of Wisconsin and Indiana have more contemporary GOP defenders — two of Walker’s closest allies. Yesterday, Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels (R) defended his state’s vanished senators, saying their fleeing is “perfectly legitimate“:
Daniels, a Republican, said earlier Tuesday he supported the Democrats’ right to deny Republicans a quorum to do business and the rights of labor unions to protest at the Statehouse.
“The activities of today are perfectly legitimate part of the process,” he said. “Even the smallest minority, and that’s what we’ve heard from in the last couple days, has every right to express the strength of its views and I salute those who did.”
Today, appearing on conservative radio host Laura Igraham’s show, Ohio Gov. John Kasich (R) — who has been one of Walker’s most reliable defenders and whom Walker says he talks to “everyday” — refused to condmen the senators’ actions or Daniels’ comments, saying to a displeased Ingraham, “If you were there, you might end up walking out the chamber too!”:
KASICH: Well Laura, let me tell you this. You know, I could have seen a day in Washington when I was down there as a Congressman when the Democrats were using a dictatorial rule, where we would just got up to walk out of the chamber okay? Let’s be fair. If you were there, you might end up walking out the chamber too! It’s just a tactic. They’ll end up coming back.
Listen here:
GOP-led states are tripping over each other to compete for the most absurd response to the perceived threat of Shariah law. Thirteen intrepid states are chasing Oklahoma’s unconstitutional coat-tails to bar any consideration of international or Islamic law, even if it means accidentally banning the Ten Commandments or Native American rights.
But with state Sen. Bill Ketron’s (R) new Senate Bill 1028, Tennessee wins the honor of most radical response to a non-existent threat. Introduced last Thursday, the bill claims that Shariah law “continues to plague the United States generally and Tennessee in particular” and requires Muslims “to actively and passively support the replacement of America’s constitutional republic” with an Islamic state. Thus, adherence to the “legal-political-military doctrine” of Shariah law “is treasonous” and “a felony, punishable by 15 years in jail”:
A proposed new state law would make following the Islamic legal code known as Shariah law a felony, punishable by 15 years in jail.[...]
The bill claims that Shariah law is a danger to homeland security.
“The threat from Shariah-based jihad and terrorism presents a real and present danger to the lawful governance of this state and to the peaceful enjoyment of citizenship by the residents of this state,” the bill reads.
The bill exempts any peaceful practice of Islam.
But it also claims that any adherence to Shariah law – which includes religious practices like feet-washing and prayers – is treasonous.
It would require the state attorney general to investigate Shariah-compliant groups.
State House speaker pro tempore Judd Matheny (R) introduced the companion bill in the Tennessee House. Admitting that he is “still researching” Shariah, Matheny also admitted that the bill “was model legislation, given to him by the Tennessee Eagle Forum,” a right-wing “pro-family” advocacy group dedicated to “self-government and public policy making.”
The group, in turn, “confirmed that the law had been drafted by David Yerushalmi,” a self-professed “expert” on Islamophobia who believes that “Islam was born in violence; it will die that way” and that Muslims should “be taught from the cradle to reject the religion of their forebears.” As the Center For American Progress’ Matt Duss notes, Yerushalmi is a disciple of anti-Islam activist Frank Gaffney and has proposed dealing with America’s Muslim problem by making support or adherence to Islam “punishable by 20 years,” by declaring the U.S at war with the Muslim Nation, by declaring that “all non-US citizen Muslims are Alien Enemies,” and by banning any Muslim an entry visa into the U.S.
Noting that the U.S. Constitution both “trumps religious law” and prohibits the government from labeling religious laws “as wrong or treasonous or evil,” the First Amendment Center’s Charles Haynes takes a slightly different view of the bill: “It’s complete nonsense,” he said.
Gov. Scott Walker (R-WI) has been gaining lots of attention at the moment for his attempt to strip collective bargaining from many of his state’s public employees, essentially busting their union legislatively. But he is far from alone among Republican governors in trying to take a pound of flesh from his state’s working people.
Gov. Chris Christie (R-NJ), for instance, proposed a budget yesterday that holds property tax rebates for seniors hostage to benefit cuts for public employees: if public sector workers don’t agree to the cuts, property tax rebates don’t go out. And of course, Christie has rhetorically bashed teachers’ unions since he came into office, in order to score political points. During an appearance on MSNBC today, Christie actually bragged that his state leads the nation in terms of public sector layoffs, claiming that “unions are trying to break the middle class”:
USA Today recently said that New Jersey has shed by percentage more public sector jobs in the last year than any state in America. And the reason we’ve done this is because our government was bloated and too big at every level…In New Jersey, we’re not trying to break the unions, the unions are trying to break the middle class in New Jersey, through the expenses. And they’re close to doing it.
Watch it:
Because of his mass layoffs of public employees, the number of unemployed workers has actually increased in New Jersey since Christie took office. And Christie’s assertion that unions are not good for the middle class is quite troubling.
As David Madland and Karla Walter pointed out, “the middle class is markedly stronger when workers join together in unions.” In fact, the decline in unionization rates over the last forty years has been almost perfectly mirrored by a drop in middle-class incomes. Income inequality in the U.S. is the worst its been since the 1920′s, with nearly 25 percent of the total income in the country going to the richest one percent. The richest 10 percent of Americans control 2/3rds of the country’s net worth.
When unionization rates were high, prosperity was broadly shared, and workers were able to enjoy their fair share of productivity gains. But the overall economy is also stronger when unions are strong: “From 1947 to 1973, the period when unions were strongest and nearly one-third of workers were organized, U.S. economic output nearly tripled in size, growing at an average of 3.8 percent annually.” Since 2001, economic output has been just 2.2 percent annually.
Cross-posted on The Wonk Room.
Georgia state Rep. Bobby Franklin (R) has made a name for himself by introducing far-right extremist bills. He has introduced legislation barring the state from requiring vaccinations, eliminating income taxes and replacing them with nothing, and requiring state taxpayers to only pay in gold or silver.
Now, he has introduced what may be his most offensive and extreme bill yet. Last week he unveiled HB 1, which would, as the parenting blog Babble explains, “require proof that a miscarriage occured naturally.” If proof could not be provided, the mother could face “felony charges”:
State Rep. Bobby Franklin of Georgia introduced a bill in his state last week that, if enacted, would require proof that a miscarriage occurred naturally. If a woman can’t prove that her miscarriage–or spontaneous abortion–occurred without intervention, she could face felony charges.
According to WebMed, the overall miscarriage rate in the United States is 15-20 percent. The Mayo Clinic estimates that the “the actual number is probably much higher because many miscarriages occur so early in pregnancy that a woman doesn’t even know she’s pregnant. Most miscarriages occur because the fetus isn’t developing normally.” If Franklin’s radical legislation were to be enacted, it could mean that as many as a fifth of pregnant Georgian women would be forced to have their miscarriages reviewed by the government — the bill suggests creating a county registration list for fetal deaths — which would be a dangerous and unprecedented intrusion into their private lives. (HT: ThinkProgress reader Libel)
At a townhall meeting Monday, tea party firebrand Rep. Allen West (R-FL) got into a shouting match with a Muslim attendee who confronted West about his history of highly Islamophobic comments. “Don’t try to blow sunshine up my butt and tell me [Islam] is all warm and fuzzy,” the congressman angrily responded to the questioner’s assertion that Islam is not a violent religion.
West appeared on Fox and Friends this morning to discuss the incident. Propped up by Fox host Steve Doocy, West, a retired lieutenant colonel, said he couldn’t possibly be Islamaphobic because, “I have done my share to bring the light of freedom into the Islamic world” while serving with the Army in Iraq and Afghanistan:
DOOCY: You stood up for the principles of the Muslim countries. You served abroad, and you tried to keep freedom alive in Muslim countries.
WEST: Absolutely. And I think that’s one of the things that we should understand. You know, we went into Kosovo to protect the Muslim population there. You know, I was there in Desert Storm and Desert Sheild to protect Kuwait. I served in Iraq, I’ve been in Afghanistan, I spent two and half years there.
So I think I’ve done my share to bring the light of freedom into the Islamic world. And for this young man to come up to me and try to castigate me as some enemy of Islam, I will not tolerate that.
Watch it:
Indeed, West served for 20 years in the military, but his career ended abruptly in 2003 when he resigned under a cloud while facing a court martial over the brutal interrogation of an unnamed Iraqi man. According to his own testimony during a military hearing, West watched four of his men beat the suspect, then West said he personally threatened to kill the man while holding a pistol. According to military prosecutors, West later took the detainee outside and fired a 9mm pistol inches from the man’s head, in order to make him believe he would be shot. West thought the man had information about an assassination plot against him.
It’s telling that West sees occupying another nation and then brutally mistreating one of their citizens as bringing “the light of freedom into the Islamic world.”
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Moments ago, in a sharp reversal of policy, the Obama administration announced that it believes that Section 3 of the 1996 Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) — which prohibits the federal government from recognizing same-sex marriages — is unconstitutional and will ask the Justice Department to stop defending the law. In a press release announcing the change, U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder also argues that laws regarding sexual orientation should be subject to a higher level of review:
Section 3 of DOMA has now been challenged in the Second Circuit, however, which has no established or binding standard for how laws concerning sexual orientation should be treated. In these cases, the Administration faces for the first time the question of whether laws regarding sexual orientation are subject to the more permissive standard of review or whether a more rigorous standard, under which laws targeting minority groups with a history of discrimination are viewed with suspicion by the courts, should apply.
After careful consideration, including a review of my recommendation, the President has concluded that given a number of factors, including a documented history of discrimination, classifications based on sexual orientation should be subject to a more heightened standard of scrutiny. The President has also concluded that Section 3 of DOMA, as applied to legally married same-sex couples, fails to meet that standard and is therefore unconstitutional. Given that conclusion, the President has instructed the Department not to defend the statute in such cases. I fully concur with the President’s determination.
Consequently, the Department will not defend the constitutionality of Section 3 of DOMA as applied to same-sex married couples in the two cases filed in the Second Circuit. We will, however, remain parties to the cases and continue to represent the interests of the United States throughout the litigation.
Back in July, a Federal District Court in Boston ruled that Section 3 of DOMA is unconstitutional because it interferes with the traditional state right to define marriage and forces the state to “violate the equal protection rights of its citizens.” The decision was composed of two separate challenges, one brought by the state of Massachusetts and the other by Gay and Lesbian Advocates and Defenders (GLAD) “on behalf of eight married couples and three surviving spouses from Massachusetts” who have been denied federal benefits available to heterosexual married couples. In November 2010, plaintiffs also filed two “new lawsuits challenging the constitutionality of Section 3 of DOMA in jurisdictions without precedent on whether sexual-orientation classifications are subject to rational basis review or whether they must satisfy some form of heightened scrutiny.”
The Obama administration announced its intention to defend DOMA in October of 2010 and in January filed a brief arguing that “DOMA is rationally related to legitimate governmental interests.” The government maintained that Congress enacted the law during an era of upheaval to maintain “uniformity on the federal level” and allow states the flexibility to expand the definition of marriage as they see fit.
Today’s decision is consistent with President Obama’s opposition to DOMA during the presidential campaign. “I support the full and unqualified repeal of the federal Defense of Marriage Act. While some say we should repeal only part of the law, I believe we should get rid of that statute altogether,” Obama said in November of 2007.
Unlike previous challenges, the new lawsuits were filed in districts covered by the appeals court in New York — one of the only circuits with no modern precedent saying how to evaluate claims that a law discriminates against gay people. That means that the administration, for the first time, may be required to take a clear stand on politically explosive questions like whether gay men and lesbians have been unfairly stigmatized, are politically powerful, and can choose to change their sexual orientation.
Yesterday, USA Today and Gallup released a new poll that found that a whopping 61 percent of Americans oppose efforts like those of Gov. Scott Walker (R-WI) to strip public sector unions of collective bargaining rights. The poll also found that only a third of Americans support such a policy, indicating that Walker is pandering to the far-right of the American electorate and is hardly representative of mainstream political thought in this country.
This morning, during a debate about the situation in Wisconsin and collective bargaining rights in general, the Fox News show Fox & Friends referenced the USA Today/Gallup poll. With incredible brazenness, the Fox hosts actually reversed the results of the poll in order to claim that two-thirds of Americans supported Wisconsin-style laws rather than opposed them.
During the discussion, Fox host Brian Kilmeade asked pro-labor guest Robert Zimmerman if President Obama was taking a “big risk” by opposing Walker’s law. Zimmerman responded by saying that Obama was speaking “for the mainstream of our country, and the mainstream of Republican governors who are not siding with Governor Walker.” Kilmeade responded by saying, “I think Gallup, a relatively mainstream poll, has a differing view. And here’s the question that was posed. Do you favor or disfavor of taking away collective bargaining when it comes to salaries for government workers. 66 percent in favor, 33 percent opposed, 9 percent up in the air.” Watch it:
Needless to say, it is hardly “fair and balanced,” as Fox News likes to deem itself, to take the results of a poll and simply reverse them when they do not go your way.
It’s worth pointing out that, Jim Glassman, the Bush Center director who appeared on the show to argue against collective bargaining, said right after the poll was shown that “many” states actually don’t have collective bargaining. The truth is that only five states do not have collective bargaining for public employees — Texas, Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina, and Virginia. Those states rank 45th, 48th, 49th, 38th, and 34th, in average SAT scores, respectively. Wisconsin is 3rd.
Jeffrey Cox is a deputy attorney general for the state of Indiana, and he has some strong views about the protests in Wisconsin. In response to a Mother Jones tweet this weekend reporting that riot police might be used to clear protestors from the capitol building in Madison, Cox tweeted back: “Use live ammunition”:
Cox remained steadfast in his position that the protestors should be killed when confronted on Twitter by Mother Jones’ Adam Weinstein, writing that “against thugs physically threatening legally-elected state legislators & governor? You’re damn right I advocate deadly force.” (There have been no reports that the protestors have physically threatened any elected officials).
Mother Jones contacted the Office of the Indiana Attorney General, and a spokesman told the magazine that Cox’s statements were “inflammatory” and that there would be “an immediate review” Cox’s online statements. “We do not condone any comments that would threaten or imply violence or intimidation toward anyone,” he added.
That review might take a while. On his blog, Cox has a long record of inflammatory rhetoric. Mother Jones notes that he has compared former Labor Secretary Robert Reich and members of SEIU to “brownshirts,” and wrote that his Afghanistan policy is “KILL! KILL! ANNIHILATE!”
Meanwhile, the Atlanta Journal Constitution’s Jay Bookman reports that right-wingers posting on the Free Republic website have been calling for armed counterprotests in Atlanta today. In response to a pro-labor SEIU rally, one Free Republic user anounces that counterprotesters carrying arms will attend “with the usual accoutrements.” Reviewing the comments section, Bookman writes, “A couple of posters advised against bringing firearms to the rally, but that point of view did not seem to carry the day.”
Yesterday, Judge Gladys Kessler became the third federal judge to uphold the landmark Affordable Care Act. In a scholarly 64 page opinion, Kessler emphasizes that, no matter how skilled the law’s opponents may be in crafting talking points, political rhetoric does not have the power to rewrite the Constitution:
It is pure semantics to argue that an individual who makes a choice to forgo health insurance is not “acting,” especially given the serious economic and health-related consequences to every individual of that choice. Making a choice is an affirmative action, whether one decides to do something or not do something. They are two sides of the same coin. To pretend otherwise is to ignore reality. [...]
The crux of Plaintiffs’ arguments is that § 1501 is an unprecedented attempt by Congress to regulate individual behavior, and therefore threatens individuals’ freedom of choice. Appealing as this emotionally charged argument may sound, the ACA is not as unprecedented as Plaintiffs claim: as already discussed, Congress’s broad power to regulate individual behavior under the Commerce Clause is well established.
Kessler’s opinion also contrasts sharply with Judge Roger Vinson’s recent opinion striking down the same law. Vinson relies heavily on law review articles by right-wing scholars and discusses a number of older, discredited decisions at length. Kessler, however, takes the much more orthodox approach of actually following binding Supreme Court decisions that require her to uphold the law. Kessler’s opinion also differs from Vinson’s in that it is not riddled with easily disprovable factual and legal errors.
Igor Volsky has more coverage at The Wonk Room.
Federal agencies are bracing for a government shutdown, preparing contingency plans to operate at reduced capacity should funding run out on March 4. Agencies would cease most operations, keeping on only employees engaged in military or law enforcement duties, or providing medical care.
To avoid a shutdown, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) announced Tuesday he will introduce “a clean Continuing Resolution” next week “to keep the federal government running for 30 days at current funding levels.” The bill will include $41 billion in budget cuts, setting up a showdown with House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) who promised to oppose any funding measure without additional cuts.
Libyan dictator Muammar Qaddafi said yesterday that he would rather “die as a martyr” than relinquish the reins of power in the face of massive protests. While Qaddafi’s grip on the capital Tripoli has tightened, vowing to track down and kill demonstrators “house by house,” the eastern half of Libya “was slipping beyond his control.” A Guardian reporter in Libya says there is a “mass defection of the military here.”
Tens of thousands of demonstrators in Manama’s Pearl Square in Bahrain yesterday waved red-and-white Bahraini flags “in the largest demonstration since a Shiite-led campaign against the government began eight days ago.” “A ribbon of cheering protesters filled the eastbound lanes of an almost two-mile stretch of highway, streaming into the square to reiterate calls for changes.”
Home prices went down for the fifth straight month, indicating that real estate values are headed for a double dip decline. “My intuition rates the probability of another 15%, 20%, even 25% real home price decline as substantial,” said Yale University economics professor Robert Shiller. “That is not a forecast, but it is a substantial risk.”
Clashes over state budget problems have spread to Indiana and Ohio, where public workers and Democratic politicians battled proposed cuts to public employee unions. In Ohio, protesters gathered at the capitol to oppose a GOP bill that would restrict collective bargaining rights, and in Indiana, Democratic lawmakers left the state to avoid a vote on anti-union legislation.
Former White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel was elected mayor of Chicago yesterday with a 55 percent majority, realizing “his lifelong dream.” In a statement released after all other five candidates conceded, President Obama said “as a Chicagoan and a friend, I couldn’t be prouder.”
And finally: “Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas has passed a unique anniversary” yesterday — five years without asking a single question during the court’s oral arguments. “The other eight justices ask on average 133 questions per hourlong session,” but Thomas has remained silent — the only Justice to have done so for so long in recent history.
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As ThinkProgress has reported, the global conglomerate Koch Industries not only helped elect Gov. Scott Walker (R-WI), but is the leading force orchestrating his union-busting campaign. Koch gave Walker over $43,000 in direct donations and its allies aired millions of dollars worth of attack ads against his Democratic opponent. Then, Koch political operatives pressured Walker to crush labor unions as one of his first priorities. Tim Phillips, a former lobbying partner to Jack Abramoff and current president of Americans for Prosperity, a front financed by David Koch, told the New York Times that Koch operatives “had worked behind the scenes to try to encourage a union showdown.” A Koch-financed front group, the American Legislative Exchange Council, has prepped Wisconsin GOP lawmakers with anti-labor legislative ideas.
Today, the Koch group Americans for Prosperity announced that it will air an ad smearing the protesters in Madison and calling on the state to support Walker’s power grab. As we noted on Friday, Koch has demanded that collective bargaining rights be curtailed for both private and public sector unions, a step beyond Walker’s already extreme move. The ad disparages the pro-labor protesters for allegedly bringing in “out of state political protesters.” In fact, the small pro-Walker demonstration orchestrated by Koch operatives last Saturday included a number of out of state conservative activists, including Herman Cain (from Georgia), Jim Hoft (from Missouri), and Phillips (from Virginia). Watch the ad:
AFP NARRATOR: Democratic legislators don’t even have the guts to show up for their jobs, hiding out in other states. President Obama backs the union bosses and floods the state with out of state political protesters. Governor Walker has the courage to do what’s right for Wisconsin. Stand with Walker.
Watch it:
Last year, at a Koch-organized fundraising meeting in Colorado attended by fellow right-wing billionaires like Steve Schwarzman and Phil Anschutz, attendees discussed strategies for taking down the labor movement. As MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow has explained, the right’s national anti-union campaign has little to do with budget deficits. Instead, it is about defunding the progressive movement and weakening Democrats in the longterm.
Moreover, Koch’s political activism on behalf of Walker is also a strategy for increasing its profit margin. Koch Industries has a large set of businesses within Wisconsin, including a network of oil pipelines, paper plants, and coal companies. The Walker administration is signaling a very Koch-friendly approach in targeting environmental regulations and going on record with fierce opposition to clean energy policies.
To take full advantage of such a friendly local government, Koch Industries quietly expanded its lobbying operation in the state. Koch has a new government affairs office in Madison, and according to reporter Judith Davidoff, recently registered seven full time lobbyists to work with the Republican-led government in Wisconsin.
Last week, Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) appeared on Tuscon, AZ, morning radio show Wake Up! Tuscon to discuss a variety of national issues, including the upcoming debate over the federal budget deficit.
At one point, the host asked McCain about the future solvency of the Social Security program. The host asked if there’s a simple solution to future shortfalls like saying that “everyone that’s under 50, you get to retire at 67.” McCain replied by saying that the program could be changed by increasing the eligibility for benefits by “a month every year or so” or by lifting the payroll tax cap. He went on to malign the program, saying that the system is “basically…already” bankrupt and that it’s a “Ponzi scheme that Bernie Madoff would be proud of”:
HOST: Is it a simple thing like saying like everyone that’s under 50, you get to retire at 67 –
MCCAIN: Yeah, and for example, increase the age eligibility by a month every year or so, I mean, uh, lift the cap. Right now there’s a certain amount you pay into Social Security, and then after that it’s not taxed. There’s a number of things you can do to that are pretty simple and are pretty gradual keep the system from going bankrupt which basically it already is, because we’ve already spent the money that’s in the Social Security trust fund. It’s a Ponzi scheme that Bernie Madoff would be proud of.
Listen to it:
By calling Social Security a Ponzi scheme, McCain appears to be aligning himself with other radical conservatives who have long sought to gut or privatize the popular public program. Last year, former House Majority Leader and FreedomWorks chairman Dick Armey called Social Security a “pay-as-you-go Ponzi scheme“; a month later, Texas Gov. Rick Perry (R) also compared the program to a Ponzi scheme. And Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI) campaigned by making the same comparison in his television commercials.
All of these radical conservatives are wrong to make such a comparison between a criminal enterprise and one of America’s most successful social programs. A Ponzi scheme involves fraudulently manipulating investors’ money without being able to pay them back; meanwhile, Social Security is a program that has successfully managed Americans’ money since its inception and has guaranteed them safe retirements.
And while McCain’s suggestion of lifting the payroll tax income cap has merit — it would essentially eliminate any shortfall in the program’s funding for the near future — his proposal to raise the Social Security retirement age does not. Raising the retirement age would force the “nearly half of workers over the age of 58 work at jobs that are either physically demanding or involve difficult work conditions” to work longer with fewer years of retirement, hurting their health and well-being.
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