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Javier E

Koch Brothers' Budget of $889 Million for 2016 Is on Par With Both Parties' Spending - ... - 0 views

  • The political network overseen by the conservative billionaires Charles G. and David H. Koch plans to spend close to $900 million on the 2016 campaign, an unparalleled effort by coordinated outside groups to shape a presidential election that is already on track to be the most expensive in history.
  • In the last presidential election, the Republican National Committee and the party’s two congressional campaign committees spent a total of $657 million.
  • The $889 million spending goal for 2016 would put it on track to spend nearly as much as the campaigns of each party’s presidential nominee.
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  • Now the Kochs’ network will embark on its largest drive ever to influence legislation and campaigns across the country, leveraging Republican control of Congress and the party’s dominance of state capitols to push for deregulation, tax cuts and smaller government.
  • “It’s no wonder the candidates show up when the Koch brothers call,” said David Axelrod, a former senior adviser to Mr. Obama. “That’s exponentially more money than any party organization will spend. In many ways, they have superseded the party.”
  • While almost no Republican Party leaders were invited to the Koch event, it has become a coveted invitation for the party’s rising stars, for whom the gathered billionaires and multimillionaires are a potential source of financing for campaigns and super PACs
  • At least five potential presidential candidates were invited this year, and four attended, including Gov. Scott Walker of Wisconsin. On Sunday evening, three of them — Senators Marco Rubio of Florida, Rand Paul of Kentucky and Ted Cruz of Texas
  • The Kochs are longtime opponents of campaign disclosure laws. Unlike the parties, their network is constructed chiefly of nonprofit groups that are not required to reveal donors.
  • As the three senators addressed the audience of rich donors — effectively an audition for the 2016 primary — they dismissed a question about whether the wealthy had too much influence in politics. At times they seemed to be addressing an audience of two: the Kochs themselves, now among the country’s most influential conservative power brokers.
  • Mr. Cruz gave an impassioned defense of his hosts as job creators and the victims of unfair attacks by Democrats, while Mr. Rubio suggested that only liberals supported campaign finance restrictions, so as to empower what he said were their allies in Hollywood and the news media.
johnsonma23

Obama announces groundbreaking US-China climate agreement | MSNBC - 0 views

  • Tuesday that the two nations – which together account for over one third of all greenhouse gas pollution – have reached a groundbreaking deal to reduce carbon emissions and tackle the growing crisis of global climate change.
  • The U.S. would double its pace of carbon reduction from 1.2% a year through 2020 to 2.3-2.8% a year afterward, ultimately cutting its total greenhouse gas emissions by 26% to 28% from 2005 levels by 2025.
  • “This is a major milestone,” President Obama said at a joint press conference with Chinese President Xi Jinping. “This is an ambitious goal, but this is an achievable goal.”
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  • “We have a special responsibility to lead the world effort to combat global climate change,” Obama added. “We hope to encourage all major economies to be ambitious.”
  • The new actions are likely to reinvigorate the domestic debate over environmental regulations, which have come under attack by Republicans in the wake of their electoral victories in last Tuesday’s midterm elections.
  • Our economy can’t take the president’s ideological war on coal,” Kentucky Sen. Mitch McConnell
  • This unrealistic plan, that the president would dump on his successor, would ensure higher utility rates and far fewer jobs.”
Javier E

In A Major Reversal, Rand Paul Pushes For Higher Defense Spending - 0 views

  • Republican presidential hopeful Rand Paul filed an amendment to the Senate budget on Wednesday calling for a significant boost to defense spending, a reversal for the libertarian senator who has previously called for across-the-board cuts to domestic and military spending.
  • The amendment, filed without public notice and first reported by Time, is the latest of several moves by the Kentucky senator seemingly aimed at placating the GOP's ascendant hawkish wing ahead of a reported campaign announcement next month.
  • One of Paul's signature issues has been a non-interventionist foreign policy and less U.S. military involvement around the world, a philosophy that was gaining traction among some Republicans before the emergence of the Islamic State threat. His budgets in prior years have called for reducing spending on defense.
rachelramirez

Transgender Bathroom Bills Are a Statewide Trend | Al Jazeera America - 0 views

  • The growing trend of transgender ‘bathroom bully’ bills
  • When she was a senior in high school, she worked to help craft California’s School Success and Opportunity Act, a 2013 law — the first of its kind in the nation — that requires the state’s public schools to allow trans students to use the bathrooms and play on the sports teams that correspond with their gender identities.
  • Nevada Assemblywoman Victoria Dooling, a Republican, proposed a bill on March 19 that would require kids at public schools to use the restrooms and showers that correspond to their biological sex at birth.
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  • Opponents of the Kentucky legislation call it the “bathroom bully” bill because they say it would open the door for children to judge each other based on perceived gender identity.
  • Lawmakers in Florida proposed a bill in February that applies to any sex-segregated public facility, not just in public schools, and calls for a $1,000 fine for violators and a potential prison term of up to a year.
  • A bill introduced in the Texas legislature in February would bar someone from entering a locker room or bathroom meant for women if that person has a Y chromosome. Violating the law would be a felony, and attendants who repeatedly allow trans people to enter could be charged with a felony and do jail time, according to the bill’s text.
  • Gender identity and expression is included in Title IX of the Education Amendments Act, a 1972 law that protects all public school students from gender discrimination.
zachcutler

5 takeaways from Super Saturday vote - CNNPolitics.com - 0 views

  • The voters delivered a mixed verdict on Super Saturday to the presidential front-runners.
  • On the Democratic side of the aisle, Hillary Clinton took Louisiana but Bernie Sanders came out on top in both Nebraska and Kansas.
  • Trump remains the Republican presidential front-runner, but he didn't clean up on Saturday.
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  • rump also took criticism from conservatives for skipping a scheduled appearance at the Conservative Political Action Conference, the largest annual gathering of right-wing activists.
  • Cruz has defeated Trump in more state contests than any other competitor, and in regions as diverse as the South, Midwest and New England.
  • Despite his strong showing on Saturday, Cruz still faces major hurdles in overcoming Trump in the delegate race.
  • After Saturday, Clinton still won't be able to shut Sanders out of the race for the Democratic presidential nomination, even though she pulled in another win Saturday and leads the delegate count.
  • Sanders's campaign tends to do better in states with large populations of white voters, while the former secretary of state has had more success in states where greater numbers of African-Americans participate.
  • "We got decimated," Sanders said on ABC's "This Week" of South Carolina, where Clinton beat him 74% to 26% last month.
  • While Trump and Cruz both claimed victories Saturday, Rubio and Kasich, the governor of Ohio, played only a minor role in the four states that participated.
  • Rubio's campaign pointed to upcoming states on the electoral calendar, particularly the fact that there are only two states left that hold caucuses. His team believes he will do better in primaries, though so far he has only won one content -- in Minnesota -- which was a caucus.
sgardner35

This Is Trump Country - The New York Times - 0 views

  • In December, the unemployment rate was 8 percent, among the highest in Massachusetts. Its median income is about half that of the state as a whole. Even its city motto lacks gusto: “We’ll try.”
  • Bruno Teixeira, 68, voted for Mr. Trump on Tuesday. He used to work as a foreman at a factory that dyed and finished cloth. “I was fortunate that I could say I retired,” he said. “I never thought I would, I thought it was going to be pulled out from under me, like it was for a lot of my colleagues.” Mr. Teixeira’s father came to the United States from Portugal, his mother from England. He said he liked Mr. Trump’s views on immigration, as well as his straightforward talk.“He has something to say, he says it,” Mr. Teixeira said. “That’s what I like about the man.”
  • Much of this county northeast of Nashville, along the border with Kentucky, is farmland, though there are also jobs in manufacturing. The county is among the state’s biggest producers of tobacco, and it also produces hardwood lumber. Shelta Shrum, 59, spent two decades working at a boot factory, where she was a clerical worker. Not long after she retired, the factory was shuttered. The jobs, she said, went to Mexico. “We knew it was going to happen,” Ms. Shrum said, “and it was something we dreaded every day.” Ms. Shrum, who edits the newsletter for the local historical society, said Mr. Trump was speaking up about the kinds of things people talk about every day. “We’re rural, and we’re not always politically correct,” she said. “We call it like we see it. And he’s doing that for us, very loudly.”
katyshannon

Obama optimism over climate pact tempered by GOP opposition - Yahoo News - 0 views

  • WASHINGTON (AP) — President Barack Obama and Secretary of State John Kerry hailed the newly passed international climate change agreement as a major achievement that could help turn the tide on global warming, but got a quick reminder that Republicans will fight it all the way.
  • Obama said the climate agreement made Saturday night by almost 200 nations "can be a turning point for the world" and credited his administration for playing a key role. He and Kerry predicted it would prompt widespread spending on clean energy and help stem carbon pollution blamed for global warming.
  • The immediate reaction of leading Republican critics was a stark reminder of the conflict that lies ahead.
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  • Obama said the agreement is not perfect, but sets a framework that will contain periodic reviews and assessments to ensure that countries meet their commitments to curb carbon emissions.
  • Kerry said from Paris: "I have news for Senator Inhofe. The United States of America has already reduced its emissions more than any other country in the world."
  • And Republican Sen. James Inhofe of Oklahoma said that Americans can expect the administration to cite the agreement as an excuse for establishing emission targets for every sector of the U.S. economy.
  • Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky said Obama is "making promises he can't keep" and should remember that the agreement "is subject to being shredded in 13 months." McConnell noted that the presidential election is next year and the agreement could be reversed if the GOP wins the White House.
  • In an interview taped for CBS' "Face the Nation," Kerry called the climate pact "a breakaway agreement" that will change how countries make decisions and "spur massive investment."
  • He acknowledged that a Republican president could undo the agreement, but said there is already plenty of evidence that climate change is having a damaging and expensive impact with more intense
  • storms, wildfires and melting glaciers.
  • Several Democratic lawmakers applauded Obama's efforts.
  • House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi hailed it as a "monumental moment" and praised Obama for his leadership on the issue.
katyshannon

Donald Trump Just Posted His Most Massive Lead Yet - 1 views

  • Donald Trump began his Monday facing a spate of unflattering headlines, with Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.) having officially snatched the top position in Iowa from the real estate tycoon. Then came the midday release of a national poll from Monmouth University, which showed Trump posting his most massive lead since entering the 2016 contest in June.
  • Trump crushes the Republican field with 41% support, the poll finds, with Cruz, Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida and retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson far behind. Cruz garners 14% of Republican voters, while Rubio claims 10% and Carson wins 9%.
  • Further behind are Ohio Gov. John Kasich and former frontrunner Jeb Bush at 3%, while New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, businesswoman Carly Fiorina, former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee and Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky earn 2% each. Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina sits at 1%.
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  • Most disconcertingly for the GOP establishment, the latest poll finds a hefty portion of its electorate, even beyond current Trump supporters, coming around to the idea of Trump as their standard-bearer. Two-thirds of GOP voters said they'd be either enthusiastic or satisfied if he captured the party's nod, while 65% said the brash billionaire had the right temperament to serve as president.
  • Trump's favorability rating stands at 61% — the best among the field and a nine-point jump from his 52% favorable rating in the October Monmouth poll. Only 29% of Republicans view Trump unfavorably, compared to 33% two months ago
  • The finding comes amid signs that Trump's call last week for a "total and complete" ban on Muslims entering the United States is resonating with GOP voters. A Bloomberg Politics poll found that two in three Republicans back the ban, although an NBC News/Wall Street Journal survey showed the Republican electorate more divided. 
  • What's clear, though, is that after briefly surrendering his national polling lead to Carson, Trump is back on top. Of the 12 national polls conducted since November, Trump has led in all of t hem.
katyshannon

The CDC Gives U.S. Schools Low Marks In Sex Ed : NPR Ed : NPR - 0 views

  • Fewer than one-fifth of middle schools — and half of high schools — are teaching all of the sex education topics recommended by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, a new study reveals.
  • The CDC report found that, for every age group, the least likely topics to be taught were how to get and use condoms.
  • The results, from the 2013-14 school year, did not surprise Stephanie Zaza, the director of the CDC's Division of Adolescent and School Health, who oversaw the survey administration. "As far back as I can recall," she says of the low rates of compliance, "it's been pretty flat."
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  • As part of its biennial school health profile, the CDC asked all states to survey school health educators on what they teach to students when it comes to sex. Ultimately, 44 states had enough respondents to be included in the data, which also looked at certain large urban school districts and U.S. territories.
  • The survey listed 16 recommended topics as critical to sexual health, falling under four broad subject areas: HIV prevention, STD prevention, pregnancy prevention and information on sexuality.
  • The findings offer a glimpse inside thousands of classrooms to reveal that what gets taught about sex — often decided at the district level — varies widely nationwide.
  • For example, the study found that Kentucky had the lowest rate of the states surveyed for teaching middle schoolers the full range of recommended material, at just under 4 percent. North Carolina had the highest rate for middle schoolers, with over 45 percent.
  • In high school, the gap is even wider. In New Jersey, 9 out of 10 high school students receive the full list of recommended topics. Arizona was lowest in the survey, with fewer than 1 in 5 students.
  • Zaza says there's a variety of reasons why sex education is sometimes put on the back burner, including a lack of time or qualified staff, or restrictive policies.
  • Young people are a high-risk population when it comes to sexual health: Nearly half of high school students say they have had sex, and half of all new sexually transmitted infections occur in people ages 24 and younger.
johnsonma23

Alabama chief justice orders halt to same-sex marriage | MSNBC - 0 views

  • Alabama chief justice orders halt to same-sex marriage
  • The chief justice of Alabama’s Supreme Court on Wednesday ordered probate judges to stop issuing marriage licenses to same-sex couples, defying a six-month-old Supreme Court decision that made marriage equality the law of the land.
  • U.S. Supreme Court’s June decision only struck down the four same-sex marriage bans that were specifically challenged in the landmark case of Obergefell v. Hodges. That lawsuit was a consolidated challenge to bans in Kentucky, Michigan, Ohio and Tennessee — not Alabama.
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  • Alabama probate judges have a ministerial duty not to issue any marriage license contrary to the Alabama Sanctity of Marriage Amendment or the Alabama Marriage Protection Act remain in full force and effect,”
  • U.S. Supreme Court denied the state’s request for a longer stay, which should have cleared the way for gay and lesbian couples to begin marrying in the state. But Moore sent out a letter ordering probate judges to continue denying same-sex couples marriage licenses.
  • rdered all probate judges to stop issuing marriage licenses to same-sex couples.
  • Granade issued yet another order requiring all probate judges to no longer enforce the state’s same-sex marriage ban
  • Given those two federal orders, Stoll said, there’s no way the Alabama Supreme Court’s March order still stands, regardless of Moore’s belief that it would need to be “reversed by orderly and proper proceedings
zachcutler

Republican debate: 6 takeaways - CNNPolitics.com - 0 views

  • Donald Trump and Texas Sen. Ted Cruz dropped their buddy-buddy act
  • The two stole the show the Fox Business Network debate in North Charleston,
  • "I guess the bromance is over," Trump told CNN's Dan
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  • Cruz was ready to attack Trump over the real estate mogul's assertion that Cruz's Canadian birth (to a U.S. citizen mother) makes him vulnerable to accusations he is ineligible for the presidency,
  • As Cruz rebutted Trump for raising the issue -- effectively winning the moment -- Trump essentially held his hands up and said he's not the one who's concerned.
  • And he succeeded in keeping the question alive -- a loss, in and of itself, for Cruz. Trump asked: "If you become the nominee, who the hell knows if you can even serve in office?"
  • Trump and Cruz were at the center of the night's most memorable exchanges, but Florida Sen. Marco Rubio and New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie traded blows as well.
  • That Christie was even a target suggests he has a leg up on the two other governors in the race -- Ohio Gov.
  • Kasich, meanwhile, got the most engagement of the night from 89-year-old former Democratic Rep. John Dingell,
  • No, Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul didn't change his mind and show up for Thursday's 6 p.m. undercard round. But skipping the debate worked for him.
  • "If you're designated as someone who is not in contention, that is very disruptive to a campaign that is about three weeks out,
qkirkpatrick

Donald Trump's fascist inclinations do not bother his fans - LA Times - 0 views

  • ut as I watched Trump propose a plan to halt the entry of all Muslims into the country and receive hearty cheers of approval from a campaign crowd, it no longer seemed especially amusing. Instead, it struck me that this may be what fascism looks like in a world where politics has been subsumed by the entertainment business. Trump is Don Rickles with the political inclinations of Francisco Franco.
  • most of his competitors for the Republican presidential nomination condemned his idea to ban Muslims, calling it out of step with American values (with the significant exceptions of Texas Sen. Ted Cruz and Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul). Bush said Trump is “unhinged.” New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie branded his idea “ridiculous.” South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham said the scheme was “downright dangerous.” Ohio Gov. John Kasich called it yet another example of Trump’s unfitness for high office.
  • Singling people out for surveillance and exclusion because of their religion certainly reeks of fascism.
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  • Fox News holds far more sway with Trump supporters than do Republican politicians and conservative intellectuals. My prediction (in this year when all predictions are a fool’s game) is that Trump will not be hurt and might actually gain if he becomes a target at next week’s GOP debate in Las Vegas
  • The share of the electorate Trump has corralled is filled with frightened and angry people. They do not mind a little fascism if it is being sold by a man who embodies their mood — a man who assures them their enemies can be crushed, as long as no one gets too picky about collateral damage and the Constitution.
Javier E

Stolen Elections, Voting Dogs And Other Fantastic Fables From The GOP Voter Fraud Mytho... - 0 views

  • Numerous studies have found that voter fraud is far from a major issue in the U.S., and in-person fraud of the sort Trump and Kobach like to talk about — things like non-citizens showing up to vote or people returning to vote multiple times under different names — is vanishingly rare. A 2007 study by NYU’s Brennan Center for Justice memorably found that an individual American is more likely to get struck by lightning than to commit in-person voter fraud.
  • as of last summer, 68 percent of Republicans thought millions of illegal immigrants had voted in 2016, and almost three quarters said voter fraud happens “somewhat” or “very often.” The same survey found that nearly half of Republicans believed Trump had won the popular vote.
  • The idea that Nixon gracefully and expeditiously chose not to fight the outcome is a myth, the historian David Greenberg demonstrated back in 2000. Nixon did, however, eventually give in — but in the process, he turned the notion that the Democrats had stolen the election into an article of faith among Republicans, especially conservative ones.
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  • or decades, complaints about “voter fraud” have been a core component of Republican right-wing folklore — and one of their most useful election-year tools, particularly in places where winning the white vote isn’t enough to win elections.
  • the extent to which blocking voting opportunities for Democratic constituencies had become baked into conservative Republican culture became evident when Jimmy Carter proposed a package of electoral reforms in March of 1977. These included national same-day registration.
  • Ultimately, that year Barr reported that his workers had “discouraged or successfully challenged 50,000 illegally registered voters.” This claim was baldly fantastical. Meanwhile, in Arizona, future Supreme Court Chief Justice William Rehnquist ran Operation Eagle Eye in Phoenix’s Maricopa County. Federal judge Charles Hardy later recalled that Eagle Eye workers in Democratic-majority precincts challenged “every black or Mexican voter,” demanding that they read a passage from the Constitution
  • Barr expanded Operation Eagle Eye to help Senator Barry Goldwater’s bid for the presidency in 1964. The RNC sent 1.8 million letters to registered voters nationwide — a practice called voter caging. If a letter couldn’t be delivered for any reason, it would represent a reason to challenge the voter as illegitimate.
  • One document from state-level GOP operations obtained by the Democratic National Committee instructed workers to stall lines in Democratic precincts. In another document, a state ballot security office in Louisiana explained that “all sheriffs in the state of Louisiana, except one, are sympathetic with Senator Goldwater’s election. We should take full advantage of this situation.”
  • Unsurprisingly, the effort did less to restore confidence than it did to stoke paranoia. In Houston, the Austin American newspaper looked for the more than a thousand “fictitious” or ineligible registrations claimed by the GOP county chairman. It found nothing but some simple clerical errors. In Long Beach, California, another newspaper investigation found that seven of eight people on a list of ineligible voters “were just as eligible as can be.” In Oshkosh, Wisconsin, annoyed voters called the police on the Eagle Eyes. In Miami, a circuit court judge enjoined Citizens for Goldwater for “illegal mass challenging without cause, conducted in such a manner as to obstruct the orderly conduct of the election.
  • The effect was immediate. In 1961, the Republican National Committee launched a “ballot security program,” explained in a pamphlet published by its Women’s Division. Party workers were advised to place poll watchers outside the polls with cameras.
  • As historian Greg Downs recently wrote for TPM, the entire system of voter registration had been designed, back in the nineteenth century, to dampen democratic participation by immigrants and black Southerners that threatened native-born white dominance. A century later, conservatives went to the mat to preserve it.
  • At first, legislators from both parties enthusiastically endorsed same-day registration. Then, conservatives convinced the Republican Party establishment that, as the conservative newspaper Human Events put it, it would represent “Euthenasia for the GOP,” because “the bulk of these extra votes would go to the Democratic Party.” It pointed to a political scientist who said national turnout would go up 10 percent under the plan, but made it clear that the wrong people would be voting: most of the increase would come from “blacks and other traditionally Democratic voter groups.” The Heritage Foundation argued the reforms would “allow eight million illegal aliens in the U.S.” to vote
  • Weyrich made the dubious nature of the New Right’s definition of “free elections” more explicit. Speaking at an Evangelical gathering in 1980 alongside Reagan, he warned Christians against the “good government syndrome.
  • “I don’t want everyone to vote,” he said. “Elections are not won by a majority of the people… As a matter of fact, our leverage in the election quite candidly goes up as the voting population goes down. We have no responsibility, moral or otherwise, to turn out our opposition. It’s important to turn out those who are with us.”
  • The DNC and the New Jersey Democratic Party sued, and finally, as part of a settlement designed to stanch voter intimidation, the RNC entered a consent decree agreeing not to run any ballot-security efforts specifically targeting districts for their racial makeup.
  • The state Republican Party sent 125,000 postcards to recipients in Democratic areas who turned out to be 97 percent black, falsely claiming that a voter who had moved within 30 days of the election couldn’t vote, and noting that giving false information to an election official was punishable by up to five years in jail.
  • Both the 1986 and 1990 incidents led to new consent decrees. Neither dampened Republican enthusiasm to use fraud allegations as a political tool. In fact, by this time, it had become one of the conservative movement’s go-to responses to all kinds of perceived threats.
  • So too were ongoing Republican efforts to fight the liberalization of voter registration. In 1988, Kentucky’s Mitch McConnell — having been first elected to the Senate in a close vote in 1984 — argued in the American Bar Association Journal against a bill that would require mail-in registration systems nationwide. Liberal registration systems might be fine in places like North Dakota and Minnesota, he wrote, but “for other states like mine, and regions where one party dominates and people are poor, election fraud is a constant curse.”
  • Taking a page from Reagan and Weyrich, McConnell wrote that “relatively low voter turnout is a sign of a content democracy,” an observation that was, he argued, “heresy to some, blasphemy to others, and worst of all, politically incorrect.” Motor Voter could “foster election fraud and thus debase the entire political process,” he wrote. And anyway, “We should ask ourselves: How easy should voting be? Is it too much to ask that people have a passing interest in the political process, 10, 20, or 30 days prior to an election and that they go down to the courthouse, or the library, to register?”
  • Rep. Spencer Bachus of Alabama was more explicit, alleging that the Motor Voter bill would register “millions of welfare recipients, illegal aliens, and taxpayer funded entitlement recipients.”
  • In 1992, George H.W. Bush vetoed Motor Voter, calling it an “open invitation to fraud and corruption.” But it passed the next year, essentially on a party line vote, and Bill Clinton signed it into law.
  • Motor Voter was responsible for tens of millions of new voter registrations. But its roll-out wasn’t smooth. Many states resisted implementing parts of it, particularly the part about letting people sign up to vote at the offices where they received government benefits. In 1994, McConnell pushed to remove WIC offices from the list of places where voter registration must be offered. This had nothing to do with his original opposition to Motor Voter, he insisted. He was just concerned that “WIC workers will have to spend valuable time and money on an activity that is totally unrelated to the mission of the WIC program.”
  • Between 1999 and 2000, the Jeb Bush administration carried out a voter purge with a sloppy vengeance. It contracted with a private company, DBT, to produce “scrub lists” of ineligible voters. In her recounting of this episode, the New Yorker’s Jane Mayer notes that DBT received an award for “innovative excellence” in 1999 by a conservative group called the Voting Integrity Project, which had been pushing states to purge their rolls. DBT’s lists ended up including almost 1 percent of Florida’s electorate and nearly 3 percent of its black voters. But they were enormously messy.
  • voters were identified as candidates for the purge just because “their name, gender, birthdate and race matched — or nearly matched — one of the tens of millions of ex-felons in the United States.” DBT proposed refining its lists using address histories or financial records, but the state declined to take it up on the offer.
  • Similar purges went down across the country. A report drawn up by the House Judiciary Committee’s Democratic staff after the 2000 election found that “voters in the majority of states reported being improperly excluded or purged from voting rolls.”
  • As Joshua A. Douglas, a University of Kentucky law professor, tells the story, Bond took the stage at an Election Night rally, pounding the podium and screaming “this is an outrage!” He blamed Ashcroft’s loss on votes cast by dead people and dogs. Specifically, Bond spoke frequently of a Springer Spaniel named Ritzy Mekler. As it turned out, someone had indeed registered Ritzy, but the dog never cast a vote. Later investigations found only six definitively illegitimate votes out of the more than 2 million cast in all of Missouri that year.
  • But the post-election chaos in Florida that year was, of course, of a whole different order, and would refocus the GOP for more than a decade on the potency of a handful of votes
  • Today, though, Griffin is happily serving as lieutenant governor of Arkansas. Gonzales avoided criminal charges and now serves as dean of Belmont University in Tennessee. Hans von Spakovsky and one of the conservative activists Bradley Schlozman had hired as a DOJ attorney, J. Christian Adams, reprised their Bush-era roles by becoming members of Trump’s voter fraud commission last year. Few of the other people responsible for spreading the voter fraud myth faced any consequences at all.
  • for Republicans, one clear lesson from 2000 was that any move to keep potential Democratic voters away from the polls might win them an election.
  • Ultimately, the federal ID requirement wasn’t terribly onerous, but Minnite writes that it was significant; it “embedded a party tactic into federal law and signaled approval for a new partisan movement in the states to encumber voters with unnecessary identification requirements.”
  • In the next presidential election year, 2004, talk of voter fraud was everywhere. Conservative activists targeted the community group ACORN in multiple states where it was registering voters. (In several cases, the organization’s employees turned out to have forged the registration forms — but not in the hope of casting illegitimate votes. Instead, they were trying to hit a quota set by the organization that required volunteers to collect a certain number of registrations.) In Washington State, after a super-close gubernatorial election, Republican Dino Rossi refused to concede until nearly six months after his opponent was sworn in, claiming there was illegal voting. And back in Florida, the Bush campaign got caught with caging lists made up of mostly African-American voters that it planned to use to challenge people at the polls.
  • Rove was convinced that some U.S. attorneys weren’t doing enough to make hay over voter fraud charges. Between 2005 and 2006, the administration fired nine U.S. attorneys. It would become one of the major scandals of the Bush presidency.
  • One of the fired attorneys, David C. Iglesias of New Mexico, later explained that he’d been asked to resign after declining to file corruption charges against local Democrats. Another, John McKay of Washington, said he suspected his firing had to do with his decision not to call a grand jury to investigate voter fraud in the governor’s race in 2004, which Rossi lost by just a few hundred votes. The Washington Post reported that five of the 12 U.S. attorneys the administration dismissed or considered for dismissal in 2006 oversaw districts that Rove and his deputies saw as “trouble spots for voter fraud,” including New Mexico, Nevada, Washington State, Kansas City and Milwaukee
  • Gonzales and the Justice Department later acknowledged that they had fired U.S. Attorney Bud Cummings in Arkansas to make way for Tim Griffin, a former Rove aid who had been involved with the caging in Florida in 2004. Griffin ended up stepping down from the post in 2007 after the scandal broke, and Gonzales lost his own job later that summer.
  • Given the astoundingly slim final official margin of 537 votes, it was easy for observers to rightfully attribute the outcome to any number of efforts to skew the vote or accidents of history: If Republicans hadn’t convinced state officials to count overseas absentee ballots that didn’t comply with state laws, or if the state hadn’t disenfranchised thousands of people falsely judged to be felons, or if Ralph Nader hadn’t run, or if Palm Beach County hadn’t used weirdly designed ballots, everything might have been different.
  • This past January, a judge allowed the 1982 consent decree that banned the RNC from racially motivated voter security operations to expire. In June, the Supreme Court ruled that Ohio could purge occasional voters from its voter rolls if they don’t return a mailed address-confirmation form.
Javier E

Opinion | Libertarians in the Age of Trump - The New York Times - 0 views

  • The teenage nerd enters conservatism through either Atlas Shrugged or Lord of the Rings, and between Tolkienists like myself and the Randians a great gulf is often fixed.
  • even if libertarianism seems an insufficient philosophy of human flourishing, its defense of individuals and markets can be a crucial practical corrective to all manner of liberal and conservative mistakes
  • Just a little while ago journalists were talking about a “libertarian moment” in American politics, with Rand Paul as its avatar
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  • So what exactly happened to his moment?
  • One answer is that the libertarian spirit was overextended and vulnerable to a backlash. Confident free-traders underestimated how much outsourcing had cost the Western working class. Entitlement reformers overestimated the political practicality of their proposals. Cultural laissez-faire weakened social solidarity, with opioid-driven disintegration the starkest symptom of decay. And the rise of ISIS transmuted the post-Iraq anti-interventionist impulse into a “raise the drawbridge” style of politics, with the libertarian aspect drained away.
  • n this account Trumpism, with its tariffs and walls and family-separating cruelties, is simply a rejection of the politics of liberty, an anti-libertarian moment.
  • there’s also a different story, in which Trump didn’t as much defeat Rand Paul’s worldview as co-opt its more effective messages, while exploiting libertarianism’s tendency to devolve into purely interest-based appeals.
  • On foreign policy, for instance, Trump ran as hard against the Iraq War and neoconservatism as the Kentucky senator or his father. Trump’s skepticism about international institutions and U.S. intelligence agencies is also in tune with common libertarian assumptions (and paranoias).
  • Meanwhile, on economic policy, you could argue that Trump has debased libertarianism rather than disavowing it, following many prior Republicans in using the rhetoric of capitalism to champion favored business interests rather than free markets.
  • Wandering and arguing at FreedomFest offered grist for both understandings of how libertarianism relates, or doesn’t, to Trumpism.
  • Amash’s approach is intellectually admirable; Paul’s is probably more in tune with what a lot of self-described libertarian voters currently want. Which leaves libertarianism in much the same difficult position as other forms of conservatism under Trump.
  • His ascent has a lot to teach ideological purists about the political limits of their theories, the need to temper dogma with more contingent wisdom.
millerco

Another Republican Call to Arms, but Who Will Answer? - The New York Times - 0 views

  • George W. Bush. John McCain. Bob Corker. And now Jeff Flake of Arizona, who delivered a stinging indictment of President Trump and his own party on the Senate floor on Tuesday afternoon as he announced that he would not seek another term.
  • His stirring call to arms came minutes after Mr. Trump concluded a private session with Senate Republicans meant to unite them over their shared agenda.
  • The four men represent a new type of freedom caucus, one whose members are free to speak their minds about the president and how they see his words and actions diminishing the United States and its standing in the world without fear of the political backlash from hard-right conservatives.
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  • But who — if anyone — will follow?
  • Well aware of the mercurial nature of the president, most congressional Republicans are loath to do or say anything that could upset Mr. Trump and risk provoking an early-morning Twitter tirade from the White House when they are trying to delicately piece together a complex tax agreement.
  • One can practically sense Republicans tiptoeing around the Capitol, taking extra care not to awaken the president to their presence in a way that could draw a scolding or rebuke.
  • They are equally wary of raising the ire of hard-right activists who already had Mr. Flake in their sights, contributing to his decision. Those activists celebrated Mr. Flake’s decision, claiming a Republican scalp.
  • While Mr. McCain, who is being treated for brain cancer and has spoken bitingly of Mr. Trump in recent weeks, glowingly praised his home-state colleague for his “integrity and honor and decency,” he did not use the Senate floor to second Mr. Flake’s worrisome message of a government and nation at risk. Mr. Flake is popular with his colleagues, and his fellow Republicans quickly noted how sorry they were to hear of his decision. But none joined him publicly in urging Republicans to stand up more defiantly to the president.
  • Senator Mitch McConnell, Republican of Kentucky and the majority leader, credited Mr. Flake as a “team player” and man of high principle after Mr. Flake’s speech. But Mr. McConnell quickly turned the Senate floor back to a minor debate over a budget point of order.
krystalxu

How Japan Copied American Culture and Made it Better | Travel | Smithsonian - 0 views

  • The American presence in Japan now extends far beyond the fast-food franchises, chain stores and pop-culture offerings that are ubiquitous the world over.
  • some very rarefied versions of America to be found in today’s Japan.
  • In Japan, the ability to perfectly imitate—and even improve upon—the cocktails, cuisine and couture of foreign cultures isn’t limited to American products; there are spectacular French chefs and masterful Neapolitan pizzaioli who are actually Japanese.
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  • Bourbon
  • But the best examples of Japanese Americana don’t just replicate our culture.
  • It’s easy to dismiss Japanese re-creations of foreign cultures as faddish and derivative
  • Nearly every bottle is bourbon, though there is a smattering of rye and sour mash. I can see bottles from the 1800s next to obscure export bottlings of Jim Beam next to standard-issue Jack Daniel’s.
  • I finally got to visit in 1984. I fell in love with America then. I’ve been back a hundred times since. I now own a house in Lexington, and I’ve even been named a colonel in Kentucky.”
  • can you be nostalgic for a time and place you never knew? These two Japanese bourbon temples represent a bold act of imagination.
  • I ask why no one in America stocks anything really old.
  • “The idea that this was a drink whose past you’d want to discover through old bottles, that’s a very new idea.”
  • I imagine Tatsumi 25 years ago roaring across the small roads of the American South and discovering bottles that only he knew to treasure.
  • dreamlands for high-fidelity obsessives
  • They offer a kind of jazz experience based on pure appreciation of the act of listening.
  • “Imported records were really expensive. Jazz kissa were the only places in the city where fans could listen to the music they loved.”
anonymous

How Trump's Tariffs May Pose a Threat to Allies and Economic Growth - The New York Times - 1 views

  • How Trump’s Tariffs May Pose a Threat to Allies and Economic Growth
  • President Trump kicked off March by stunning members of his own White House, and leaders across the world, with a vow to impose across-the-board tariffs on steel and aluminum.
  • Tread lightly, the world warns
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  • Within a week of making the announcement, which could provoke a cycle of retaliation between trade partners, President Trump continued to defend the move even as his own White House worked to soften its effects.
  • After the European Union threatened countertariffs on goods like Harley-Davidson motorcycles, Kentucky bourbon and bluejeans, Mr. Trump said he was prepared to escalate the fight by imposing higher taxes on European cars. (China, in the meantime, has been fairly cautious in weighing in.)
  • A potential threat to the economy
anonymous

1 in 14 women still smokes while pregnant, CDC says - CNN - 0 views

  • 7.2% of women who gave birth in 2016 smoked cigarettes while pregnant, CDC says
  • About one in 14 pregnant women who gave birth in the United States in 2016 smoked cigarettes during her pregnancy, according to a report released Wednesday.The findings, gathered by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's National Center for Health Statistics, revealed that 7.2% of all expectant mothers smoked -- but that the percentage of pregnant smokers varied widely from state to state.
  • In 2011, about 10% of women in the US reported smoking during their last three months of pregnancy, and of those women who smoked, 55% quit during pregnancy, according to data from the CDC's Pregnancy Risk Assessment and Monitoring System.Smoking while pregnant puts a baby at risk for certain birth defects. It also can cause a baby to be born too early or to have low birth weight and can raise the risk of stillbirth or sudden infant death syndrome, according to the CDC.
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  • "Women in West Virginia smoked during pregnancy more than five times as often as women in the states with the lowest prevalence,"
  • The researchers also found that prevalence of smoking during pregnancy varied by age and race. The prevalence was highest among women 20 to 24 at 10.7%, followed by women 15 to 19 at 8.5% and 25 to 29 at 8.2%.
  • The prevalence also was highest among non-Hispanic American Indian or Alaska Native women at 16.7%, followed by non-Hispanic white women at 10.5%, non-Hispanic black women at 6%, Hispanic women at 1.8% and non-Hispanic Asian women at 0.6%.
  • "We still have a serious issue with infant mortality -- prematurity and infant mortality are clearly linked to cigarette smoking, as is low birth weight -- and when you begin to explain these things to patients, it really does appear to make a difference to them," he said.Brown pointed out that some of the states in the new CDC report with the highest prevalence of smoking during pregnancy also tend to have high rates of infant mortality. A CDC data brief released in January showed that, between 2013 and 2015, West Virginia and Kentucky had infant mortality rates higher than the overall national rate.
millerco

Senate Leaders Reach Budget Deal to Raise Spending Over Two Years - The New York Times - 0 views

  • Senate leaders struck a far-reaching bipartisan agreement on Wednesday that would add hundreds of billions of dollars to military and domestic programs over the next two years while raising the federal debt limit, moving to end the cycle of fiscal showdowns that have roiled the Capitol.
  • The accord between Senators Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the majority leader, and Chuck Schumer of New York, his Democratic counterpart, would raise strict caps on military and domestic spending that were imposed in 2011 as part of a deal with President Barack Obama that was once seen as a key triumph for Republicans in Congress.
  • The deal would raise the spending caps by about $300 billion over two years.
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  • The limit on military spending would be increased by $80 billion in the current fiscal year and $85 billion in the next year, which begins Oct. 1.
  • The limit on nondefense spending would increase by $63 billion this year and $68 billion next year.
  • The budget agreement, coming a day after President Trump threatened to shut down the government, would effectively negate Mr. Trump’s demands to broadly reorder government with deep cuts to nondefense programs like environmental protection, foreign aid and health research that were to offset large increases in military spending.
  • Mr. Trump is to release his second budget request on Monday, but the deal — championed by the top congressional leaders from his own party — amounts to an unequivocal rebuke of many of the budgetary demands he has put forth.
  • The deal would give Mr. Trump military bragging rights. “The bottom line is that, thanks to President Trump, we can now have the strongest military we have ever had,” the White House press secretary, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, said on Wednesday.
  • At least for now, it could put an end to the fiscal crises that Mr. Trump has at times seemed to welcome.
Javier E

New Data Shows Republicans' Health Care Self-Own Is Taking Its Toll - Talking Points Memo - 0 views

  • the Trump administration’s health care agenda is whacking red states hardest
  • By the end of the Trump administration’s first year in power, the uninsured rate in non-expansion states was more than twice the rate in states that accepted federal funding to expand Medicaid under Obamacare.
  • The analysts found that “the uninsured rate among adults who identify as Republicans jumped from 7.9 percent in 2016 to 13.9 percent in the first quarter of 2018. The uninsured rate among those who identify as Democrats, on the other hand, held steady at 9.1 percent over that same time period
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  • Southern states, which are largely Republican-controlled, also showed a marked increase in their uninsured rates — from 16 percent in 2016 to over 20 percent in early 2018. These states had a higher uninsured rate than states in the Northeast, Midwest, and West.
  • Going forward, the health care gap between Democrats and Republicans is set to widen further.
  • Four states with GOP governors — Kentucky, Indiana, Arkansas, and New Hampshire — have already won federal permission to impose work requirements and other restrictions on their Medicaid programs, policies predicted to strip hundreds of thousands of people of their coverage and drive the uninsured rate higher in those states. Many more states have submitted requests to HHS for permission to implement similar rules.
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