Hedge funder/ASSHOLE @andykessler accuses homeless shelter volunteers of being the real cause of homelessness

http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2013/07/09/2271841/wsj-homeless-people/


According to a hedge fund manager writing in the Wall Street Journal, homelessness isn't caused by deep-seated inequities in society, but rather by people like his teenage son who volunteer at homeless shelters.

Andy Kessler, who founded the billion-dollar Palo Alto investment firm Velocity Capital Management, penned an op-ed Monday in which he mocked young people for volunteering, arguing that they were delusional for thinking their efforts would make a difference. Instead, Kessler contended, they should try to make as much money as possible and trust that economic growth will help the world more than volunteering.

To illustrate his argument, Kessler points to his 16-year-old son, who has been volunteering at a homeless shelter. Though his son wants to do good, Kessler writes that it's volunteers like him who are keeping homeless people on the streets "because someone is feeding, clothing and, in effect, bathing them." The answer, instead, is old-fashioned trickle-down economics:

My 16-year-old son volunteers with an organization that feeds the homeless and fills kits with personal-hygiene supplies for them. It's a worthwhile project, and I tell him so—but he doesn't like it when our conversation on the way to his minimum-wage job turns to why these homeless folks aren't also working. Perhaps, I suggest, because someone is feeding, clothing and, in effect, bathing them? [...]

Given the massive wealth created in the U.S. economy over the past 30-plus years, it's understandable that the mantra of the guilty generation is sustainability and recycling. But obsessing over carbon footprints and LEED certifications and free-range strawberries and charging for plastic bags will not help the world nearly as much as good old-fashioned economic growth. Gen-G will wise up to the reality that the way to improve lives is to get to work. If Woodstockers figured this out, so will they—as soon as they get over their guilt.

It's highly unlikely that Kessler, an extraordinarily wealthy man who managed a hedge fund for years, has ever known what it's like to go hungry or sleep on the streets, where random acts of violence are all too common.

In reality, his claim that homeless shelters cause homelessness mixes up the direction of causality. People are not poor because of charity anymore than people get headaches because Tylenol exists. Indeed, the causes of homeless are vast. As the National Coalition for the Homeless explains, the rise in foreclosures, a lack of well-paying jobs and affordable housing, as well as the decline in public assistance are all factors that contribute to homelessness in the United States. Others can include domestic violence, medical emergencies, and mental illness. Not included as a cause of homelessness is because people volunteer at shelters.

Even if we consider his solution to homelessness — take the effort you spent volunteering and use it to line your own pockets instead — at face value, it completely falls apart when considering economic evidence over the past 40 years. Median household income has actually declined, even as CEO pay has shot up exponentially. Combine that with the fact that the cost of living has increased rapidly and the result is massive income inequality in the United States. Kessler may imagine a trickle-down world where unbridled economic growth is a salve that we can use to cure all our problems, but it bears no resemblance to the world we actually live in.

REST http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2013/07/09/2271841/wsj-homeless-people/

Sen. Harry Reid ready to go nuclear on executive branch nominations

HERE http://www.politico.com/story/2013/07/harry-reid-executive-branch-nominations-93907.html

@GOP campaign against obamacare is about making it harder for uninsured to gain coverage under law

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/plum-line/wp/2013/07/09/sabotage-governing/

It's not unusual to hear dirty hippie liberal blogger types (and the occasional lefty Nobel Prize winner) point out that today's GOP has effectively abdicated the role of functional opposition party, instead opting for a kind of post-policy nihilism in which sabotaging the Obama agenda has become its only guiding governing light.

But when you hear this sort of argument coming from Chuck Todd, the mild-mannered, well respected Beltway insider, it should prompt folks to take notice.

That's essentially what Todd, along with Mark Murray and the rest of MSNBC's First Read crew, argued this morning. It's worth quoting at length:

Here's a thought exercise on this summer morning: Imagine that after the controversial Medicare prescription-drug legislation was passed into law in 2003, Democrats did everything they could to thwart one of George W. Bush's top domestic achievements. They launched Senate filibusters to block essential HHS appointees from administering the law; they warned the sports and entertainment industries from participating in any public service announcements to help seniors understand how the law works; and, after taking control of the House of Representatives in 2007, they used the power of the purse to prohibit any more federal funds from being used to implement the law. As it turns out, none of that happened. And despite Democratic warnings that the law would be a bust — we remember the 2004 Dem presidential candidates campaigning against it — the Medicare prescription-drug law has been, for the most part, a pretty big success.

But that thought exercise has become a reality 10 years later as Republicans have worked to thwart/stymie/sabotage — pick your word — the implementation of President Obama's health-care and financial-reform laws.

Recently, the top-two Senate Republicans — Mitch McConnell and John Cornyn — wrote a letter to the NFL and other major sports leagues warning them not to participate in any campaign to promote implementation of Obamacare. The Koch Brothers-backed Americans for Prosperity is in unchartered waters running TV ads to help prevent the law from being implemented, while the Obama political arm is also on the air promoting implementation. And Senate Republicans have vowed to filibuster any nominee (no matter how qualified) to run the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau under the financial-reform law. [...]

And this all raises the question: What's the line between fighting for your ideology and ensuring that the government that pays your salaries actually works — or even attempts to work? At some point, governing has to take place, but when does that begin? We know what opponents will say in response to this: These are bad laws, and we have to do whatever it takes to stop them. But at what point does an election have a governing consequence?

For more on that effort by top Republicans to warn the NFL off of participating in any campaign to promote Obamacare, see Jonathan Bernstein's piece.

This from MSNBC's First Read crew is very well said. But I'd take it further; it goes well beyond Obamacare implementation and the relentless blockading of Obama nominees for the explicit purpose of preventing democratically-created agencies from functioning. We've slowly crossed over into something a bit different. It's now become accepted as normal that Republicans will threaten explicitly to allow harm to the country to get what they want, and will allow untold numbers of Americans to be hurt rather than even enter into negotiations over the sort of compromises that lie at the heart of basic governing.

Sam Stein's big piece today details the very real toll the sequester cuts are taking on real people across the country, and crucially, it explains that the sequester was deliberately designed to threaten harm in order to compel lawmakers to act to reduce the deficit. But Republicans will not consider replacing those cuts with anything other than 100 percent in cuts elsewhere, which is to say, they will only consider replacing them with 100 percent of what they want. Meanwhile, Republicans are drawing up a list of spending cuts they will demand in exchange for raising the debt limit, even though John Boehner has openly admitted that default would do untold damage to the U.S. economy. Indeed, even if default doesn't end up happening, the threat of it risks damaging the economy, yet Republicans still insist they will use it as leverage to get what they want, anyway.

As Todd and the First Read crew hint at, the GOP campaign against Obamacare is straying into this mode of governing. Indeed, on Meet the Press this weekend, Todd made this even more explicit, accusing Republicans of "trying to sabotage the law." The current GOP campaign isn't just about opposing the Affordable Care Act or arguing for its repeal. It's about making it harder for uninsured Americans to gain access to coverage under a law passed and signed by a democratically elected Congress and President, and upheld by the Supreme Court, in service of the political goal of making it a greater liability for Democrats in the 2014 elections (the law, after all, isn't going to get repealed).

This is not typical opposition, and its good to hear this stated outright by someone as respected inside the Beltway as Chuck Todd. The only mystery is why more journalists aren't willing to point it out. After all, Republicans are making this basic reality harder and harder to ignore.

REST http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/plum-line/wp/2013/07/09/sabotage-governing/

@gop No, Republicans, ‘Missing’ White Voters Won’t Save You

http://thinkprogress.org/election/2013/07/09/2266841/trende-republicans-white-voters-missing/

As GOP House members continue their Kamikaze mission to scuttle the immigration reform bill, many political observers are wondering why. After all, isn't it obvious that Republicans need more minority, particularly Hispanic support, and that therefore their self-interest should lead them to support a reasonable bill? Karl Rove thinks so.

But lots and lots of Republicans dissent from that analysis, preferring to put their faith in a group they're much more comfortable with: white voters. The most influential empirical analysis supporting this view was recently published by Sean Trende in a four part series on RealClearPolitics. Trende's analysis is built around the idea of "missing white voters."

What he means by this is that, given the estimated number of white voters in 2008 (derived from exit polls) and the natural increase in white eligible voters between 2008 and 2012 there should have been far more white voters than there actually were (again, estimated from the exit polls). He labels the difference between his projected and actual numbers of white voters as "missing" white voters. He goes on to say that "[i]f these white voters had decided to vote, the racial breakdown of the electorate would have been 73.6 percent white, 12.5 percent black, 9.5 percent Hispanic and 2.4 percent Asian — almost identical to the 2008 numbers." Get it? The only real demographic change of importance between 2008 and 2012 was all those white voters who didn't show up.

What's wrong with this analysis? Plenty. Start with Trende's projected natural increase in white voters—around 1.5 million voters, based on an assumed 55 percent turnout rate of additional white eligible voters. This implies that Trende was using an estimate of around 2.7 million additional eligible whites between 2008 and 2012. That's wrong: Census data show an increase of only 1.5 million white eligibles. At Trende's assumed 55 percent turnout rate, that translates into only 825,000 additional white voters from "natural increase."

That's one problem. But the most serious problem comes from how he handles his "missing" white voters relative to minority "missing" voters. That's because, by the very same logic he uses to designate large numbers of white voters as missing, there are also large numbers of minority voters who are missing. This is both because minority voters experienced natural increase (much more so than whites actually) and because turnout was low in 2012 compared to 2008. This trend affected all voters, minorities as well as whites.

In 2012, turnout declined by 3.4 percentage points according to Michael McDonald's US Elections Project. Plugging in his figures on votes cast and using Census data on eligible voters plus exit poll data on shares of votes by race, we calculate that turnout went down by about equal amounts among white and minority voters (3.4 and 3.2 percentage points, respectively).

Not surprisingly then, Trende's own data show a substantial number of missing minority voters — 2.3 million compared to 6.1 million whites. There are more missing white voters despite the roughly equal declines in turnout simply because they are a larger group and more voters are knocked out of the voting pool for any given decline in turnout.

So what starts out looking like a mysterious epidemic of "missing" white voters becomes mostly a reflection of the simple fact that 2012 was a low turnout election. This unremarkable outcome is then hyped by Trende as the big demographic development of 2012 by doing something that is really quite misleading. He adds back in all the missing white voters to the 2012 electorate while leaving out all the missing minority voters. That is where he gets his claim that "[i]f these white voters had decided to vote, the racial breakdown of the electorate would have been 73.6 percent white, 12.5 percent black, 9.5 percent Hispanic and 2.4 percent Asian — almost identical to the 2008 numbers."

This really can't be done. If you're going to add one type of missing voter back in you should add them all back in; you can't—or shouldn't—assume a higher turnout election that would somehow only affect whites. And what happens if you play with the net up and add all the "missing" voters back in? You get 72.4 percent white, 12.8 percent black, 9.6 percent Hispanic, 2.4 percent Asian and 2.8 percent other race—in other words, 72 percent white and 28 percent minority, identical to the actual 2012 exit poll results.

So: GOP phone home! Your missing white voters have been found, and it turns out they weren't really missing. They were simply sitting out a relatively low turnout election along with a large number of their minority counterparts. They may be back next time if it's a higher turnout election — but then again so will a lot of minority voters. Bottom line: your demographic dilemma remains the same. The mix of voters is changing fast to your disadvantage and there is no cavalry of white voters waiting in the wings to rescue you.

rest http://thinkprogress.org/election/2013/07/09/2266841/trende-republicans-white-voters-missing/

@gop Right Realizes It Can’t Kill Immigration Reform Without An Excuse

http://tpmdc.talkingpointsmemo.com/2013/07/conservatives-immigration-reform-excuse.php

While Republicans settle on a least-bad immigration strategy, it's dawned on reform opponents and their conservative allies that if the effort dies in the House, they'll need to bring a plausible excuse to the public — that is, if they hope to sidestep at least some of the blame for the debacle.

And they think they've found one.

Specifically, they hope to draw a connection between the White House's recent health care reform implementation decisions and border security measures in the Senate's immigration bill to claim their opposition to comprehensive reform stems not from substantive objections but from a sense that the Obama administration will ignore parts of an immigration law it doesn't like.

"If you look at this Obamacare debacle that they have right now, this administration is actually deciding when and where to actually enforce the law. And that's what some of us in the House are concerned about," Rep. Raul Labrador (R-ID), who until recently was a leading immigration reform negotiator in the House, said Sunday on Meet the Press. "If you give to this administration the authority to decide when they're going to enforce the law, how they're going to enforce the law … I can tell you that Janet Napolitano has already said that the border is secure. So what's going to happen is that we're going to give legalization to 11 million people, and Janet Napolitano's going to come to Congress and tell us that the border's already secure, and nothing else needs to happen."

Labrador is referring to the Obama administration's decision to delay the health care law's employer mandate by one year — a move intended to smooth Obamacare implementation, but that in itself reflects the fact that Republicans will block legislative Affordable Care Act fixes, and that administrative actions are the only way to make sure the law rolls out as smoothly as possible.

Meanwhile, the Senate's bill is now idling in the House, and with no legislative deadline forcing Speaker John Boehner to hold a vote on it, there's a real chance it could die quietly as members gear up for midterm elections next year. Labrador says this outcome would really reflect Republicans' lack of faith that Obama will enforce its strict border security provisions, rather than their objection to its promise of amnesty for current immigrants.

Rep. Phil Roe (R-TN) delivered a similar argument to the conservative National Review, which has opposed comprehensive immigration reform.

The Washington Examiner — no friend of the reform effort either — sums it all up "Immigration reform is dead and Obamacare implementation killed it."

rest http://tpmdc.talkingpointsmemo.com/2013/07/conservatives-immigration-reform-excuse.php

the @gop is in a demographic death spiral @speakerboehner

http://thinkprogress.org/immigration/2013/06/16/2165161/lindsey-graham-warns-gop-it-doesnt-matter-who-we-run-in-2016-if-immigration-reform-fails/

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) — one of the Republican co-sponsors of an immigration reform bill that would provide a pathway to citizenship for the nation's 11.1 million undocumented immigrations — told fellow Republicans that the GOP will fail to exist if reform does not become law.

"If we don't pass immigration reform , if we don't get it off the table in a reasonable, practical way, it doesn't matter who you run in 2016," Graham warned during on appearance Sunday on NBC's Meet The Press. "We're in a demographic death spiral as a party, and the only way we can get back in good graces with the Hispanic community, in my view, is pass comprehensive immigration reform. If you don't do that, it really doesn't matter who will run, in my view." Watch it:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XndzcPGj_Mk&feature=player_embedded

Mitt Romney received just 27 percent of the Hispanic vote during the 2012 presidential election, down from Sen. John McCain's (R-AZ) 31 percent in 2008 and George W. Bush's 44 percent in 2004. And while several GOP-sponsored autopsy reports have urged the party to adopt a more welcoming tone toward immigrants, conservatives are still comparing immigrants to bankrobbers, while voting to deport DREAM-eligible immigrants.

During a separate appearance on ABC's This Week, Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL), who also helped draft the Senate's immigration reform measure and may run for president in 2016, would not commit to voting for his own bill.

rest at http://thinkprogress.org/immigration/2013/06/16/2165161/lindsey-graham-warns-gop-it-doesnt-matter-who-we-run-in-2016-if-immigration-reform-fails/

Snowden's previous support under a Republican president of same policies he's decrying should raise questions

http://www.addictinginfo.org/2013/07/06/have-we-all-been-fooled-by-edward-snowden/

Have We All Been Fooled By Edward Snowden?

At this point, the Edward Snowden saga seems to be running out of steam. The latest is that Venezuela and Nicaragua (out of at least 27 countries he asked) have offered him asylum so the story is almost at an end for now. The U.S. government will probably keep trying to extradite him so that they can prosecute but that may be years in coming. IF he  manages to find asylum in the first place.

Through this whole business, I've remained of two minds about Snowden's tale. While I am certain that what he has reported is true, I'm unsure of motivation. With what I have just read, though, I think I'm getting a clearer picture. One I will try to paint for you.

Snowden used to post on a website called Ars Technica: it's a site for professional techies ("alpha geeks" is what the site says). He frequented the Internet Relay Chat rooms quite a lot, shooting the breeze with whoever happened by. This began when he was stationed in Geneva in 2007: an IT guy for the CIA in a foreign land, he probably enjoyed this little bit of home. His posts – under user name TheTrueHOOHA – from that time show someone who is decidedly unworldly: he complained about almost everything in Switzerland, from the price of food to the women. Over the years, he changed from an insulated, opinionated American into an opinionated, snarky ex-pat. One of the biggest changes in his opinions is what he thought of leakers. Back then, he was not a fan. In January of 2009, the following exchange took place in the chat room:

SNOWDEN: HOLY SHIThttp://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/11/washington/11iran.html?_r=1&hp

SNOWDEN: WTF NYTIMES

SNOWDEN: Are they TRYING to start a war? Jesus christ they're like wikileaks

User19: they're just reporting, dude.

SNOWDEN: They're reporting classified shit

User19: shrugs

User19: meh

SNOWDEN: moreover, who the fuck are the anonymous sources telling them this?

SNOWDEN: those people should be shot in the balls.

Well, he's sure done a switch since then, eh? I bet he would rather that his balls remain unshot now. He went so far as to wish the NYT would go bankrupt. He also had no problem with Bush's warrantless wiretapping program, saying:

SNOWDEN: these are the same people who blew the whole "we could listen to osama's cell phone" thing the same people who screwed us on wiretapping over and over and over again [sic] Thank god they're going out of business.

User19: the NYT?

SNOWDEN: Hopefully they'll finally go bankrupt this year.yeah.

He was gung-ho for it when Bush was president. Which brings up an interesting point: his opinion of such programs abruptly changed when Barack Obama took office. In the chat room, which Ars Technica calls "Officially unofficial" – the online equivalent to "the back room occupied by drinkers who feel the front (of the bar) is just too stuffy for them," Snowden felt free to speak his mind even if everyone in the room would disagree with him. And he could be ugly about it.

Snowden revealed that he was a Ron Paul supporter and championed a return to the gold standard along with short selling stocks. Social issues also reveal a Libertarian bent when it came to personal freedoms. He also bought into Obama conspiracy theories such as the one that said Obama was going to devalue U.S. currency, leading to higher unemployment, something he saw as a "correction" and "a necessary part of capitalism."

His disdain of President Obama and his policies was apparent and he bitched about them with "increasing frequency." But there are two issues where, I believe, where Snowden's true colors shine very clearly. This is one:

SNOWDEN: save money? cut this social security bullshit

User11: hahahayes

User18: Yeah! Fuck old people!

User11: social security is bullshit

User11: let's just toss old people out in the street

User18: Old people could move in with [User11].

User11: NOOO

User11: they smell funny

SNOWDEN: Somehow, our society managed to make it hundreds of years without social security just fine

SNOWDEN: you fucking retards

SNOWDEN: Magically the world changed after the new deal, and old people became made of glass

SNOWDEN: yeah, that makes sense

User11: wow

User11: you are just so fucking stupid

SNOWDEN: yeah, [User11]. and you're quite a gem

User19: and magically, life expectancy has doubled in the last 100 years.funny how that works.

SNOWDEN: [User19], you don't think modern medicine has something to do with that? no? it's social security? wow. I guess I missed that.

User11: hurr wait a second, life expectancy has shot up in recent times along with the dissolution of the communal family unit in exchange for the nuclear family

User11: gee i guess we might need to create a safety net for the sudden glut of helpless elderly????

SNOWDEN: they wouldn't be fucking helpless if you weren't sending them fucking checks to sit on their ass and lay in hospitals all day

User11: you are so goddamned stupd*pid

User11: PUT OLD PEOPLE TO WORK IN THE FIELDS

SNOWDEN: my grandmother is eighty fucking three this year, and you know what? she still supports herself working as a goddamned hairdresser

 

"Fuck old people"? An objectivist view if ever there was one. The other issue is the Second Amendment:

User: the restrictions were made to appease the conservatives to get another bill passed. fucking cons.

SNOWDEN: See, that's why I'm goddamned glad for the second amendment. Me and all my lunatic, gun-toting NRA compatriots would be on the steps of Congress before the C-Span feed finished.

Very interesting. Snowden is a gun nut as well as an Obama hater. He also has been an outspoken advocate of the very thing he has become famous for revealing, cheering the security state network and insisting that it needed funding, even in the face of draconian budget cuts. He was particularly upset by Obama's choice for the head of the CIA:

SNOWDEN: Obama just appointed a fucking POLITICIAN to run the CIA!

User11: yes unlike every other director of CIA ever

User11: oh wait, no

SNOWDEN: I am so angry right now. This is completely unbelievable.

Ars Technica has opened a new forum thread called  Edward Snowden—NSA Leaker and Arsian (does anyone know what 'arsian' means?) where users who remember interactions with Snowden are not very complimentary. One wrote, "He was kind of dick." Posts like this make a good argument for his dickishness:

"The fact that you're posting on a gaming forum makes me cry. I hope someone tosses you in a burlap sack and beats you with reeds. You're a filthy little ragamuffin who lacks any semblance of taste. You loved Halo and own an Xbox. You pre-ordered "Mary-Kate and Ashley: Sweet 16 Licensed To Drive." You are the sole reason I write these posts. I hope you're killed by a drunk driver on Halloween."

This new information has me pondering exactly who this guy is: is he the concerned whistle-blower? Or did he have an ulterior motive to spill what he did? His background isn't really CIA or NSA material, so say a few people I've spoken to who actually have worked for a government contractor. So why was he hired? And why did he pick now to speak out? This has never smelled right to me, which is why I have withheld judgement. But these new revelations create even more questions. Is this whole thing a ruse to make the President look bad? If so, who is funding it – who is paying for all his travel and hotels? Or is Edward Snowden, a man who has completely destroyed his own life, just stupid? I still don't know but this new information gives me a lot to think about. How about you?

rest http://www.addictinginfo.org/2013/07/06/have-we-all-been-fooled-by-edward-snowden/

@GOP Colorado recall candidate discovered to have written 'erotic romance' novels

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2013/07/05/1221027/-GOP-Colorado-recall-candidate-discovered-to-have-written-erotic-romance-novels#

attribution: None Specified

Is that a gun in your pocket, or the beginning of a Republican romance novel?

See, here's the problem. People think that "Republican candidate put forth to represent moralizing godbotherers" and "person who writes erotic near-porn fiction novels" are contradictory things. I assure you they are most certainly not, because consistency among godbotherers is a nonexistent thing:

A Colorado Springs author vying to represent the GOP in a fall recall election of Democratic Senate President John Morse has drawn ire from some constituents for her hot-and-heavy prose.

For much of the past decade, Jaxine Bubis has written novels under the pseudonym "Jaxine Daniels," and in one of her pieces describes herself as a "grammy who writes erotic romance."

First off, Colorado Springs is the source for paranoid godbothering, it is their prime source of industry, which makes this just a tiny bit hilarious. Also funny is that the whole thing plays out not against the predictable backdrop of godbothering, but the current maniacal obsession among various sections of the state GOP with making sure everybody in the state gets to shoot everybody else or get shot trying:

Bubis' writings came to light in an e-mail blast from Paul Paradis, a well known Colorado Springs gunshop owner. Paradis helped spearhead organizers to gather enough signatures to spark a recall of Morse, who represents Senate District 11 in El Paso County.

"I was absolutely aghast," he said. "This is a person supported by the Christian right and conservative lawmakers. They just wanted to jump for the most conservative person in the room and that's stupid."

Stop implying that writing disturbing porn-based fiction isn't conservative! Good God, man, you do not want to start a "staunch conservative who has written incredibly creepy porn" war with me, I will break out Bill O'Reilly paragraphs that will put permanent stains on your cortex. Paridis is a supporter of the other GOP candidate, who he is "old friends" with, but all parties agree that the important thing is that we get this all ironed out so that Colorado Springs religious conservatives can go back to reading their porn and their gun shop owners can get on with the more important work of making sure people want to murder people in Colorado don't have to reload after the first 15 shots because Jesus and/or Freedom demands that.

rest http://www.dailykos.com/story/2013/07/05/1221027/-GOP-Colorado-recall-candidate-discovered-to-have-written-erotic-romance-novels#

.@WholeFoods ACLU Charges: Whole Foods English-Only is Really a “No Spanish” Policy

source http://www.hispanicallyspeakingnews.com/latino-daily-news/details/aclu-charges-whole-foods-english-only-is-really-a-no-spanish-policy/25637/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+HSN-Global-Feed+%28HSN+Global+RSS+Feed%29#When:15:40:47Z

The American Civil Liberties Union of New Mexico has filed charges against Whole Food Markets for allegedly discriminating against its Spanish-speaking employees.

The charges, filed with the NM Human Rights Bureau, stem from an incident at an Albuquerque Whole Foods store last month.  Two employees, Lupe Gonzalez and Bryan Baldizan, were reprimanded and suspended for speaking Spanish and challenging the English-only policy.

Gonzalez has been with Whole Foods for 13-years and Baldizan for 18-months.

The grocery chain had an English-only policy in place nationwide at the time which allows Spanish to be spoken only to converse with a Spanish-speaking customer.  Once the incident and policy became public knowledge Latino organizations were in an uproar especially in NM where Spanish was once the native language.  The Austin, Texas based retailer then revised its English-only policy. The new rules ask employees who can speak English to "please speak with them in English, unless requested otherwise by the customer."

Gonzalez and Baldizan claim they are still being prevented from speaking Spanish.  The ACLU maintains that the English-only rule is actually a "No Spanish" policy and when enforced only applied to the Spanish-speaking employees and not for example to the Asian employees at the store. 

"It is illegal for employers to single out Spanish speaking employees for unfair treatment," said ACLU of New Mexico Executive Director Peter Simonson. "Discriminating against an employee for speaking Spanish, a language that has been widely spoken here for nearly five-hundred years, is an affront to our state's history, culture and values."

image: all you need to know about @marcorubio

from https://www.facebook.com/pages/I-Acknowledge-Class-Warfare-Exists/196601040368145

@KochFoundations Koch brothers push @GOP officials to sign anti-climate pledge

http://maddowblog.msnbc.com/_news/2013/07/03/19268215-koch-brothers-push-gop-officials-to-sign-anti-climate-pledge

The Republican Party is certainly fond of its pledges. Grover Norquist, of course, has his infamous anti-tax pledge that has interfered with federal policymaking in recent decades, and in 2011, GOP presidential candidates were pushed to endorse an anti-gay pledge from the National Organization for Marriage.

But as it turns out, there's another pledge that's taken root in Republican politics that's received far less attention. The New Yorker's Jane Mayer reports this week on the "No Climate Tax Pledge" pushed by Charles and David Koch.

Starting in 2008, a year after the Supreme Court ruled that the Environmental Protection Agency could regulate greenhouse gasses as a form of pollution, accelerating possible Congressional action on climate change, the Koch-funded nonprofit group, Americans for Prosperity, devised the "No Climate Tax" pledge. It has been, according to the study, a component of a remarkably successful campaign to prevent lawmakers from addressing climate change. Two successive efforts to control greenhouse-gas emissions by implementing cap-and-trade energy bills died in the Senate, the latter of which was specifically targeted by A.F.P.'s pledge.

By now, [411] current office holders nationwide have signed the pledge. Signatories include the entire Republican leadership in the House of Representatives, a third of the members of the House of Representatives as a whole, and a quarter of U.S. senators.

The pledge, uncovered as part of a two-year study by the Investigative Reporting Workshop at American University, forces policymakers to oppose any legislation relating to climate change unless it is accompanied by an equivalent amount of tax cuts."

And what, pray tell, do tax cuts have to do with the climate crisis and effects of global warming? Nothing in particular, but the Koch brothers hope to make it impossible to pass any bills related to carbon emissions, and by demanding tax cuts, they're effectively eliminating any credible policy options -- as Mayer explained, "Since most solutions to the problem of greenhouse-gas emissions require costs to the polluters and the public, the pledge essentially commits those who sign to it to vote against nearly any meaningful bill regarding global warning, and acts as yet another roadblock to action."

When President Obama unveiled his fairly ambitious new climate agenda last week, some hoped it would spur broader action in Washington. There's still room for a comprehensive climate policy that may be more effective than the administration using the Clean Air Act to limit emissions, but it would require Congress to work towards a sensible, consensus remedy. Republicans don't like the White House policy? Fine, it's time policymakers sat down with environmentalists and industries to work on an alternative.

Of course, Congress can't do much of anything with a radicalized House majority, and climate legislation appears completely out of the question -- the Koch brothers have a pledge to ensure failure, no matter the consequences.

This is why we can't have nice things.

rest http://maddowblog.msnbc.com/_news/2013/07/03/19268215-koch-brothers-push-gop-officials-to-sign-anti-climate-pledge

8 Foods We Eat In The U.S. That Are Banned In Other Countries

here http://www.buzzfeed.com/ashleyperez/8-foods-we-eat-in-the-us-that-are-banned-in-other-countries

@gop real priority: legally dubious restrictions on reproductive rights - @marcorubio

http://maddowblog.msnbc.com/_news/2013/07/03/19267567-rubio-readies-20-week-abortion-bill?lite

Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) is in an awkward political position. On the one hand, he's an ambitious far-right Republican with national aspirations, who has generally enjoyed the fawning support of his party's base. On the other, Rubio helped write the comprehensive immigration reform bill that right-wing activists have decided they hate, and they aren't inclined to forgive him.

Indeed, at a recent Tea Party rally on Capitol Hill, activists were heard booing whenever Rubio's name came up. These are, of course, the same activists who helped elect the Floridian in 2010, and who Rubio will need when he seeks national office.

What to do? Rubio seems to think he has a solution: if the GOP's far-right base is unhappy with him sponsoring something they hate, he'll balance that out by sponsoring something else they love.

Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) will introduce a bill in the Senate banning abortions 20 weeks after conception, the Weekly Standard reported Tuesday.

According to the Weekly Standard report, Rubio will announce his sponsorship of the measure after Congress returns from the July 4 recess.

If this sounds familiar, a 20-week ban was recently championed by Rubio's Republican allies in the House, who approved Rep. Trent Franks' (R-Ariz.) bill two weeks ago.

Would Rubio's 20-week ban pass the Senate? No. Could it get President Obama's signature? No. So why bother? Because Rubio seems to think he has some ground to make up on the right, and the way to do that is by pushing legally dubious restrictions on women's reproductive rights.

Taken together, it's hard not to notice what the Republican Party and its activist base consider truly important in 2013. Look no further than Texas and North Carolina and Alabama and Kansas and Indiana and South Dakota and Mississippi and the U.S. House and soon the U.S. Senate.

Remember when Republicans spent 2010 running around the country asking, "Where are the jobs?" They got elected, shifted their attention to the culture war, and haven't asked the question since.

rest http://maddowblog.msnbc.com/_news/2013/07/03/19267567-rubio-readies-20-week-abortion-bill?lite

No jobs. @marcorubio Plans To Introduce Texas-Style Abortion Ban In The Senate @gop

http://thinkprogress.org/health/2013/07/03/2252631/rubio-texas-style-abortion-ban-senate/

Senator Marco Rubio (R-FL) is planning to introduce a bill in the Senate that would ban abortion after 20 weeks, the Weekly Standard reported on Wednesday. The bill is meant to mirror anti-abortion legislation passed last month by the House of Representatives.

Under the plan reportedly being proposed by Rubio, a woman would be unable to get an abortion beyond 20 weeks gestation. And though the bill does include exceptions in cases of rape, incest, and if the life of the mother is at risk, it doesn't appear to make exceptions if a woman's health is at stake.

The foundation for this legislation is a scientifically disputed idea that fetuses can feel pain after 20 weeks. It is the same motivation that has driven such bans at the state level. Most recently, Texas has taken the national spotlight for its proposed 20-week ban, and eight other states have passed 'fetal pain' laws.

If Rubio really does move this bill forward, it would be more for the purposes of political showmanship than real policy-making. The bill doesn't stand a chance of passing through the Democratically-controlled Senate. Additionally, there is a serious question about the constitutionality of a 20-week ban. Three of those eight states that have passed such bans had to put their laws on hold, since courts have contested their constitutionality.

Plus, when it comes down to it, a 20-week ban isn't exactly the most logical place for an anti-abortion Senator to focus his energy if he is serious about the issue. Abortion after 20 weeks is extremely rare — it accounts for just 1.5 percent of all abortions, and most of the women who wait until 20 weeks to get the procedure do so because they discover a fetal abnormality that puts the fetus's life or health at risk. Other women are forced to delay until then because they face extreme financial hardship and need to save money for the procedure.

rest http://thinkprogress.org/health/2013/07/03/2252631/rubio-texas-style-abortion-ban-senate/

LeVar Burton need to have specific strategies to avoid mistreatment if stopped by the police

here http://youtu.be/M-ckDJ3xTaE