Exposing The NeoConfederate Lie

Posted by Ben Cisco on

President Obama took an hour to call out the GOP for hostage taking attempting to nullify the 2012 election:

Nice touch bypassing the Village enablers in favor of actual journalists asking actual questions instead of those running interference for the NeoConfederates. Here are a few excerpts:

“Think about it this way, the American people do not get to demand a ransom for doing their jobs. You don’t get a chance to call your bank and say I’m not going to pay my mortgage this month unless you throw in a new car and an Xbox. If you’re in negotiations around buying somebody’s house, you don’t get to say, well, let’s talk about the price I’m going to pay, and if you don’t give the price then I’m going to burn down your house. That’s not how negotiations work. That’s not how it happens in business. That’s not how it happens in private life.

***

…members of Congress, and the House Republicans in particular, don’t get to demand ransom in exchange for doing their jobs. And two of their very basic jobs are passing a budget and making sure that America’s paying its bills. They don’t also get to say, you know, unless you give me what the voters rejected in the last election, I’m going to cause a recession.

***

…imagine if a Democratic Congress threatened to crash the global economy unless a Republican president agreed to gun background checks or immigration reform. I think it’s fair to say that Republicans would not think that was appropriate.

***

House Republicans decided they wouldn’t appoint people to the committee to try to negotiate, and 19 times they’ve rejected that. So even after all that, the Democrats in the Senate still passed a budget that effectively reflects Republican priorities at Republican budget levels just to keep the government open, and the House Republicans couldn’t do that either.

***

You know, the American people have already fought too hard and too long to come back from one crisis, only to see a handful of more extreme Republicans in the House of Representatives precipitate another one.

***

…I’m not going to do it until the more extreme parts of the Republican Party stop forcing John Boehner to issue threats about our economy. We can’t make extortion routine as part of our democracy. Democracy doesn’t function this way. And this is not just for me; it’s also for my successors in office. Whatever party they’re from, they shouldn’t have to pay a ransom either for Congress doing its basic job. We’ve got to put a stop to it.”

Way to take them to school, Mr. President.

Endgame

Posted by Ben Cisco on

Jim Wright on why President Obama can’t let the NeoConfederates win:

“If we allow extremists to hold us hostage, they will continue to hold us hostage and we open the door to any extremist who disagrees with the majority.

If they are successful, then the very next use of this tactic will be its use to defund any portion of our civilization that the outvoted minority vehemently disagrees with, from abortion to immigration to energy to climate change to gay rights to evolution right on across the political spectrum to oil drilling and nuclear power to gun control to the military to law enforcement.

This doesn’t end.”

Please go read (and point your friends to) the whole piece over at Stonekettle Station.

Portrait Of A Chickenhawk

Posted by Ben Cisco on

Ladies and gentlemen, I give you Congressman Randy Neugebauer (R-TX), draft dodger, chickenhawk, corrupt to the core, Teabagger through and through.

Also, a bully who picks on girls.

Extra asshole points for bravely running away when a male bystander calls him out for giving the park ranger the business over a closure that HE and the rest of his party caused, while drawing a paycheck that SHE isn’t.

A Time To Stand, Pt. II

Posted by Ben Cisco on

President Obama responded to the NeoConfederate shutdown of the US Government:

“Of all the responsibilities the Constitution endows to Congress, two should be fairly simple: Pass a budget, and pay America’s bills. But if the United States Congress does not fulfill its responsibility to pass a budget today, much of the United States government will be forced to shut down tomorrow. And I want to be very clear about what that shutdown would mean, what will remain open and what will not.

With regard to operations that will continue, if you’re on Social Security, you will keep receiving your checks. If you’re on Medicare, your doctor will still see you. Everyone’s mail will still be delivered, and government operations related to national security or public safety will go on.

Our troops will continue to serve with skill, honor and courage. Air traffic controllers, prison guards, those who are with border control — Border Patrol will remain on their posts, but their paychecks will be delayed until the government reopens.

NASA will shut down almost entirely, but Mission Control will remain open to support the astronauts serving on the space station.

I also want to be very clear about what would change. Office buildings would close. Paychecks would be delayed. Vital services that seniors and veterans, women and children, businesses and our economy depend on would be hamstrung. Business owners would see delays in raising capital, seeking infrastructure permits or rebuilding after Hurricane Sandy.

Veterans, who’ve sacrificed for their country, will find their support centers unstaffed.

Tourists will find every one of America’s national parks and monuments, from Yosemite to the Smithsonian to the Statue of Liberty, immediately closed. And of course the communities and small business that rely on these national treasures for their livelihoods will be out of customers and out of luck.

And in keeping with the broad ramifications of a shutdown, I think it’s important that everybody understands the federal government is America’s largest employer. More than 2 million civilian workers and 1.4 million active duty military serve in all 50 states and all around the world.

In the event of a government shutdown, hundreds of thousands of these dedicated public servants who stay on the job will do so without pay. And several hundred thousand more will be immediately and indefinitely furloughed without pay. What, of course, will not be furloughed are the bills that they have to pay: their mortgages, their tuition payments, their car notes. These Americans are our neighbors. Their kids go to our schools. They worship where we do. They serve their country with pride. They are the customers of every business in this country. And they would be hurt greatly, and as a consequence all of us will be hurt greatly, should Congress choose to shut the people’s government down.

So a shutdown will have a very real economic impact on real people, right away. Past — past shutdowns have disrupted the economy significantly. This one would too. It would throw a wrench into the gears of our economy at a time when those gears have gained some traction.

Five years ago right now, our economy was in meltdown. Today our businesses have created 7 1/2 million new jobs over the past three and a half years. The housing market is healing and our deficits are falling fast.

The idea of putting the American people’s hard-earned progress at risk is the height of irresponsibility, and it doesn’t have to happen.

Let me repeat this. It does not have to happen.

All of this is entirely preventable if the House chooses to do what the Senate has already done, and that’s the simple act of funding our government without making extraneous and controversial demands in the process, the same way other Congresses have for more than 200 years.

Unfortunately, right now House Republicans continue to tie funding of the government to ideological demands like limiting a woman’s access to contraception or delaying the Affordable Care Act, all to save face after making some impossible promises to the extreme right wing of their party.

So let me be clear about this. An important part of the Affordable Care Act takes effect tomorrow, no matter what Congress decides to do today. The Affordable Care Act is moving forward. That funding is already in place. You can’t shut it down. This is a law that passed both houses of Congress, a law that bears my signature, a law that the Supreme Court upheld as constitutional, a law that voters chose not to repeal last November — a law that is already providing benefits to millions of Americans in the form of young people staying on their parents’ plan ’till they’re 26, seniors getting cheaper prescription drugs, making sure that insurance companies aren’t imposing lifetime limits when you already have health insurance, providing rebates for consumers when insurance companies are spending too much money on overhead instead of health care. Those things are already happening.

Starting tomorrow, tens of millions of Americans will be able to visit healthcare.gov to shop for affordable health care coverage. So Americans who’ve lived for years in some cases with the fear that one illness could send them into bankruptcy, Americans who’ve been priced out of the market just because they’ve been sick once, they’ll finally be able to afford coverage, quality coverage, many of them for the first time in their lives.

Some of them may be sick as we speak. And this is their best opportunity to get some security and some relief. Tens of thousands of Americans die every single year because they don’t have access to affordable health care.

Despite this, Republicans have said that if we’d lock these Americans out of affordable health care for one more year, if we sacrifice the health care of millions of Americans, then they’ll fund the government for a couple of more months. Does anybody truly believe that we won’t have this fight again in a couple of more months? Even at Christmas?

So here’s the bottom line. I’m always willing to work with anyone of either party to make sure the Affordable Care Act works better, to make sure our government works better. I am always willing to work with anyone to grow our economy faster or to create new jobs faster, to get our fiscal house in order for the long run. I’ve demonstrated this time and time again, oftentimes to the consternation of my own party.

But one faction of one party in one house of Congress in one branch of government doesn’t get to shut down the entire government just to refight the results of an election. Keeping the people’s government open is not a concession to meet. Keeping vital services running and hundreds of thousands of Americans on the job is not something you give to the other side. It’s our basic responsibility. It’s something that we’re doing for our military and our businesses and our economy and all the hard-working people out there — the person working for the Agricultural Department out in some rural community who’s out there helping some farmers make sure that they’re making some modest profit for all the hard work they’re putting in.

They’re the person working for HUD who’s helping somebody buy a house for the first time. They’re somebody in a VA office who’s counseling one of our vets who’s got PTSD.

That’s who we’re here to serve. That’s why we’re supposed to be carrying out these responsibilities. That’s why we should be avoiding the kinds of constant brinksmanship. It’s something that we do in the ordinary process of this extraordinary system of government that we have. You don’t get to extract a ransom for doing your job, for doing what you’re supposed to be doing anyway, or just because there’s a law there that you don’t like.

The American people sent us here to govern. They sent us here to make sure that we’re doing everything we can to make their lives a little bit better — to create new jobs, to restore economic security, to rebuild the prospects of upward mobility. That’s what they expect. And they understand that there are differences between the parties, and we’re going to be having some tough fights around those differences.

And I respect the fact that the other party is not supposed to agree with me a hundred percent of the time, just like I don’t agree with them. But they do also expect that we don’t bring the entire government to a halt or the entire economy to a halt just because of those differences. And that’s what they deserve. They’ve worked too hard for too long to recover from previous crises just to have folks here in Washington manufacture yet another one that they have to dig themselves out of.

So Congress needs to keep our government open. It needs to pay our bills on time and never, ever threaten the full faith and credit of the United States of America. And time’s running out. My hope and expectation is that in the 11th hour once again that Congress will choose to do the right thing and that the House of Representatives in particular will choose the right thing.”

Go get ‘em, Mr. President.

A Time To Stand

Posted by Ben Cisco on

The United States Department of Justice has filed suit against the State of North Carolina. The text of the announcement is below (emphasis mine):

Good afternoon.  I am joined by Acting Assistant Attorney General [Jocelyn] Samuels, along with our three United States Attorneys from North Carolina – Anne Tompkins, Thomas Walker, and Ripley Rand.  We are here to announce that the Justice Department will file suit today against the State of North Carolina to challenge portions of the State’s highly restrictive new voting law.

The North Carolina State Board of Elections and the Board’s Executive Director are also defendants in our suit, which will be filed in the Middle District of North Carolina.

The North Carolina law includes troubling new restrictions, such as provisions that will significantly reduce early voting days; eliminate same-day registration during early voting; impose a restrictive photo identification requirement for in-person voting; and prohibit the counting of otherwise legitimate provisional ballots that are mistakenly cast in the right county, but in the wrong precinct.  The Justice Department expects to show that the clear and intended effects of these changes would contract the electorate and result in unequal access to participation in the political process on account of race.

By restricting access and ease of voter participation, this new law would shrink, rather than expand, access to the franchise.  And it is especially troubling that the law would significantly narrow the early voting window that enabled hundreds of thousands of North Carolinians, including a disproportionately large numbers of minority voters, to cast ballots during the last election cycle.  Allowing limits on voting rights that disproportionately exclude minority voters would be inconsistent with our ideals as a nation.  And it would not be in keeping with the proud tradition of democracy that North Carolinians have built in recent years.

During the last few elections, the state’s own data shows that North Carolina’s voter turnout rates improved significantly and were well above national averages.  In the 2008 and 2012 general elections, African-American voters dramatically increased their participation rates across the state – and more than 70 percent of African Americans who voted in those elections cast ballots during the early voting period.  Just months after North Carolina saw the highest overall turnout in sheer numbers in its history – in November 2012 – and within days of the Supreme Court’s Shelby County decision to strike down key provisions of the Voting Rights Act – the state legislature took aggressive steps to curtail the voting rights of African Americans.  This is an intentional attempt to break a system that was working.  It defies common sense.

In challenging this law, the Justice Department will present evidence of racially discriminatory effect resulting from these changes – based on the state’s own data.  The evidence will also show that the North Carolina General Assembly enacted this legislation despite having evidence before it that these changes would make it harder for many minority voters to participate in the electoral process.  For instance, in 2005, the state legislature made an explicit finding that the failure to count out-of-precinct provisional ballots disproportionately affected African-American voters.  And, during the legislature’s consideration of these changes earlier this year, evidence was presented about how some provisions of the bill would adversely affect minority voters.  Nonetheless, the General Assembly passed new restrictions that would do just that.

So let me be very clear: today’s action is about far more than unwarranted voter restrictions.  It is about our democracy, and who we are as a nation.  I stand here to announce this lawsuit more in sorrow than in anger.  It pains me to see the voting rights of my fellow citizens negatively impacted by actions predicated on a rationale that is tenuous at best – and on concerns that we all know are not, in fact, real.

To other states considering voting restrictions like North Carolina’s, I want to say this: I and my colleagues at every level of the Justice Department will never hesitate to do all that we must to protect the Constitutionally-guaranteed civil rights of all Americans.  I call upon state leaders across the country to pause before they enact measures similar to those at issue in this case.  I ask them to think about their solemn duty as lawmakers.  And I urge them to consider that, whatever role each of us happens to play – for the times we are honored to serve in public office – we occupy positions of public trust, and must be faithful stewards of this democracy.  We must be guided not by short-term partisan goals, but by the historic obligations that have been entrusted to us.  And we must reflect upon our duty to the American people, on our own place in history, and on the imperative to act in a manner that is consistent with the best of America.

Today’s action is not the first that the Justice Department has taken to protect voting rights following the Supreme Court’s flawed decision to strike down a key part of the Voting Rights Act.  And I fear that it will not be our last.  Earlier this summer, the Department filed two lawsuits against the state of Texas regarding laws that had previously been blocked by federal courts under Section 5.  One complaint challenges Congressional and legislative redistricting maps that intentionally discriminated against Latino and African-American citizens.  And a second complaint challenges Texas’s restrictive photo identification requirement as racially discriminatory in both purpose and result.  Each of these complaints asks courts in Texas to subject the State to a preclearance regime similar to the one required by Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act.  These actions prove that – whenever warranted by the facts and the law – the Department will not hesitate to use the tools and legal authorities at our disposal to fight against racial discrimination, to stand against disenfranchisement, and to safeguard the right of every eligible American to cast a ballot.  All of these cases, including that which I announce today, will be hard fought and difficult. But they must be brought.

We also recognize, however, that case-by-case litigation is no substitute for Congressional action on legislation to fill the void left by the Supreme Court’s decision.  President Obama and I remain committed to working with leaders from across the political spectrum to ensure that modern voting protections are adequate to the challenges of the 21st century.  We know from our history that advances in civil and voting rights have been hard-won.  The progress we’ve seen has not been inevitable.  And that’s why we cannot, we must not, and we will not simply stand by as the voices of those disproportionately affected by some of the proposals we’ve seen – including the North Carolina minority communities impacted by the provisions we challenge today – are shut out of the process of self-governance.

In this great country, our progress has always been of our own making.  It’s up to each of us to ensure that engagement in the democratic process will always constitute the birthright – and the solemn responsibility – of every American citizen.

Excellent news.