Daily Kos

In the year 2025, if man is still alive, we will see the 100-year anniversary of what is still known as the Scopes Monkey Trial. From the looks of things, America's most aggressively stupid people will still be going strong even then:

The Louisiana House Education Committee killed a measure to repeal a 1981 creationism law on Wednesday, even though the Supreme Court had ruled it was unconstitutional.

An amendment to Senate Bill 205, an education bill to expand foreign language immersion programs, would have repealed the Balanced Treatment for Creation-Science and Evolution-Science Act. But the committee voted to remove the amendment.

Apparently the thinking is that a future Supreme Court might someday be stacked with enough anti-basic-science nutcases to reverse the decision and let Louisiana mandate schools teach "God Did That"-ism again so, hey, might as well keep the unconstitutional law in our back pocket just in case. The even sadder thing is that they're not necessarily wrong. Give Scalia another 10 years or so and he'll be writing decisions demanding we bring back witch burnings.

Reposted from Comics by Hunter

Well, this will go well. Really, if there's one thing all of America can agree on it's that we should take the industries most directly responsible for the dessication of the American industrial landscape, the gutting of previously healthy American institutions, and the half-assed faceplanting of the entire global economy and ask those chaps their advice on running the country:

After Mitt Romney’s 2012 train wreck, you might think the private equity industry would want to stay far, far away from electoral politics.

But at the outset of the 2014 cycle, something like the opposite has happened. In a handful of top Senate and gubernatorial races, private equity executives have already lined up to run and vowed not to repeat the mistakes of the Romney debacle.

Why stop with just the private equity firms? I'm sure someone, somewhere has come up with a national parks-based derivatives scheme by now. Oh—maybe we'll sell off the Grand Canyon in exchange for future stakes in a million much smaller holes throughout the country? Or maybe we'll sell it off in exchange for the existential idea of a hole—oh, that's much better. Then we don't have to worry about where we'll put the new hole, but we can still use the paperwork to fund a series of hole-backed hedge bets.

In Romney’s home state of Massachusetts, former private equity executive Gabriel Gomez nabbed the Republican nomination for Secretary of State John Kerry’s old Senate seat. Halfway across the country in Illinois, former GTCR chairman Bruce Rauner is the frontrunner for governor on the Republican side. In Minnesota, a leading GOP gubernatorial candidate is Scott Honour, a former senior executive at the Gores Group private equity fund – while Twin Cities financier Mike McFadden, not a PE guy but a veteran of Lazard’s mergers-and-acquisitions branch, is also gearing up to run for Senate.

All right, I think I see the problem here. The problem is that all these people still have too much damn money. They screwed up the country, but we bailed them out with a pile of free money, and now they're all running for office using all that extra cash we gave them instead of deciding which gutter bugs look the most edible. We really, really didn't think this through.

Anyway, it seems the lesson learned from the "Romney debacle" is that industry insiders looking to become the new crop of GOP candidates need to be more aggressive in blowing sunshine and roses up voter's investment-holes:

Geoffrey Rehnert, who helped found Bain Capital and criticized Romney’s response to Democratic attacks in 2012, said the first step to improving on Romney’s performance is telling a more accurate and appealing story about exactly what private equity companies do.

I think at this point most people know what private equity companies do—really, we're not dumb. The question is whether the behavior is helpful or just parasitical. In Bain's case, the emphasis seemed to be on the parasite side of things, and in fact the vast growth of the financial industry since the deregulation boom of the last decades has seemingly done little to nothing for the non-financial-sector portions of the nation. On the contrary; from wage stagnation to labor offshoring to a seemingly infinite number of new tax-dodging schemes, the growth of the sector seems cleanly correlated to a wider industrial and class-based deterioration. (This is especially evident in the way short-term profits are vacuumed out of otherwise-healthy companies so that they may instead be placed into a full gamut of newly invented casinos.)

Feel free to argue the point, by all means, but I'm not certain the American disillusionment with the financial class was merely a problem of awkward Romney salesmanship. We'll see. In the end it will come down to the records of each candidate, as it should, but it doesn't seem like the equity wags who have made their money by treating people fairly are the ones currently most keen on running for office under the Republican party banner. Because, well, duh.

Arkansas Sen. Mark Pryor must not like his job. His 2014 re-election campaign has begun, and McClatchy reports that his first ad highlights his opposition to President Obama's proposal to expand background checks for firearms purchases:

“Nothing in the Obama plan would have prevented tragedies like Newtown, Aurora, Tuscon or even Johanesboro," he says looking into the camera. "I’m Mark Pryor. And I approve this message because no one from New York or Washington tells me what to do. I listen to Arkansas.”

There's just one problem. Well, there's also the little matter of siding with the gun manufacturers in opposing a law that undoubtedly would save lives, but Pryor has another little problem:

New PPP polls in Arkansas, Georgia, and Tennessee find that even in dark red states there's strong, bipartisan support for expanded background checks. And as we've found elsewhere, voters are unhappy with their Senators who voted against them.

In Georgia there's 71/22 support for them, in Tennessee it's 67/26, and in Arkansas it's 60/31. Female voters that the Republican Party really needs to reach out to if it's going to be successful moving forward are even more supportive of background checks. They favor them 81/12 in Georgia, 73/21 in Tennessee, and 67/25 in Arkansas.

Pryor is touting his opposition to a proposed law that has overwhelming support in his state. And this wasn't the first poll to reveal such support. In fact, yet another previous poll revealed that:

Arkansas voters are also more likely to vote for their U.S. Senator by a 31-point margin if their Senator votes in favor of requiring background checks at gun shows. A strong majority (56%) say they would be more likely to vote for their Senator if he voted in favor of this requirement, while just 25% say they would be less likely to vote for him.

But Pryor may think that he'll gain traction by running against New York, whose mayor is helping push for increased gun safety laws.

McClatchy:

"Mark Pryor had no problem listening to New Yorkers when he scooped up over a quarter of a million dollars for his campaigns from New York donors," said John Feinblatt, Mayors chairman and Bloomberg's chief policy advisor. "It's time for Senator Pryor to stop the hypocrisy and explain why he voted against a background check bill that 84 percent of Arkansans support."

Indeed.

Reposted from Daily Kos Labor by Laura Clawson Guys, this is not okay. Connecticut is the one state in the country that has passed a paid sick leave law, but such laws are spreading in major cities. Yet Connecticut's Senate has passed a bill that would weaken the state's sick leave law, and the House is considering it. According to Family Values at Work, the business-backed S.B. 1007 would:

(1) Cut out workers in every job in the manufacturing industry at all facilities. [...] A manufacturer with administrative and production facilities in separate locations is now required to provide paid sick days at the administrative facility, but not the production one. This bill would exempt manufacturers entirely as long as their business falls under NAICS’s manufacturing categories, regardless of the activities they conduct at different facilities. The result: some workers who currently earn paid sick days would lose that protection. Workers who serve particular functions (clerical, administrative, etc.) in one industry would be treated differently than workers with the same job responsibilities in another industry. [...]

(2) (2) Give incentive to become a “small employer for a week” to evade the law and prohibit workers from earning sick time. The current law requires that service workers earn paid sick days if the business they work for employs at least 50 people in Connecticut during any quarter of the previous year. This bill proposes to substitute a single, specific week – the first week in October – as the time period for determining an employer’s size. An employer who employs more than 50 people most of the year could slash their staff for one week in October and claim not to meet the threshold. The potential for employer abuse is enormous.

(3) Add to scheduling instability. Under current law, employees accrue one hour of sick leave for every 40 hours worked per calendar year. Under this bill, they would accrue one hour of paid sick leave for every 40 hours they are scheduled to work in a week during the 365-day year their employer designates. [...] It would encourage employers to post schedules at the very last minute and to utilize unscheduled work arrangements; employees of the most abusive employers with the worst scheduling practices would have the most to lose and the least ability to earn sick days, regardless of the number of hours they actually work, letting “bad apple” employers reap the benefits.

(4) Make people use more time than they need, hurting themselves and their co-workers. Current law permits workers to use leave in one-hour increments, the same rate at which they may accrue such leave. This bill would give employers the power to force workers to take more time than they need by allowing employers to require workers to take an entire shift.

Connecticut's law should be a model for the country, not something to be walked back, dragging the United States even further behind most of the rest of the world.

(Via ThinkProgress)

What's coming up on Sunday Kos ...

• Read This: The Culture novels of Iain Banks, by Mark Sumner
• The 'Moral Monday' movement in North Carolina, by Denise Oliver-Velez
• Book review: Jeffrey Toobin's 'The Oath,' by Susan Gardner
• You want to know how Fox News misleads its viewers? Here's how, by Laura Clawson
• Forget Mark Sanford: Here is a special election with real lessons for 2014, by Steve Singiser

Gabriel Gomez is not a particularly forthcoming Senate candidate. For example, he refuses to say whether he believes employers should be able to dictate health care choices for the women who work for them. He won't release his 2005 taxes, the ones that show that tax scam problem, and he won't answer questions about it, either.

He also won't release his list of clients from the nine years he's worked at private equity firm Advent International, as the Senate candidate disclosure form requires.

"Gabriel Gomez's refusal to disclose the names of his clients is more than just a potential ethics violation–it suggests that he has something to hide, and it's time for Gomez to finally come clean with the people of Massachusetts by disclosing the names of his clients," Walsh will say.

Gomez's client list became an issue for the Republican earlier this week when a progressive-leaning government watchdog group, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, filed an ethics complaint against Gomez for failing to release those details.

It does make one wonder. The issues surrounding Gomez, and the issues he refuses to talk about, open Gomez up to questions about just what else might be out there, not to mention how responsive he'd be to his constituents as senator. He sure doesn't care about transparency as a candidate.

 Please contribute $3 to Ed Markey.

Every week Daily Kos diarists write dozens of environmentally related posts. Many don't get the readership they deserve. Helping improve the odds is the motivation behind the Green Diary Rescue. In the past seven years, there have been 228 of these spotlighting more than 12,801 eco-diaries. Below are categorized links and excerpts to 93 that appeared in the past seven days. That's four more than the previous record in the 13 weeks since the GDR was resurrected, and it makes for lots of good reading during the spare moments of your weekend. [Disclaimer: Inclusion of a diary in the rescue does not necessarily indicate my agreement with or endorsement of it.]

Green Diary of the Week

WATCH: The "Obama Pipeline"?—by Van Jones: "But if President Obama approves a pipeline equal to more than seven new coal-fired power plants? And does so just months after promising to act AGAINST climate change? Now THAT'S a scandal. President Obama said in his second inaugural address that failing to act on climate change would "betray future generations." Now, it looks like he will do exactly that by approving the Keystone XL pipeline."

••• ••• •••

Chevron touts big oil profits [= past] while cyclists generate people power [= future]—by citisven: "Well, there couldn't be a better symbolism of yesterday's shareholder meeting at Chevron's San Ramon headquarters than today's headliner in the business section of the San Jose Mercury News: a bunch of inspired cyclists biking the math of climate change to their doors topping Chevron CEO John Watson's bragging about record oil profits that was going on inside. [...]

First I thought he was talking about the $1.9 trillion a year in fossil fuel subsidies, which would be the only sensible thing to cut when you're talking about trying to reduce carbon emissions. But no, in John Watson's alternate universe it's solar and other renewable subsidies we should get rid off to bring down CO2 levels. Really, in this guy's carbon bubble we should stop wasting our money on that lazy old sun, the very source of all the fossil fuel it took millions of years to form that will be gone if Chevron follows through on its current business plan to suck it out of the earth and burn it as quickly as possible.[...] As mighty freewayblogger pointed out the other day, Chevron should just change its name to 450.org."

••• ••• •••

My 3-Minute Video In a Borrowed Lab Coat Explaining How We Can Stop Keystone XL—by Raul Grijalva: "I'll make this short and sweet. I don't make many videos. I'm not naturally a ham and I prefer to talk to people directly. But if this is the best way to get people on board, I'm going to share it. I think it explains what's going on more clearly than any essay ever could. I hope you watch it and sign the petition at the link. As it says in part, "Efforts already under way are saving Americans money at the pump and creating new engineering and manufacturing jobs. Approving Keystone would put many of these advances in jeopardy. It would mean a return to the dirty economy of the past rather than a step toward the clean economy of the future." That's a message I think President Obama needs to hear right away."

June already. Still trying to wrap my head around that...

• The recently retired super-blogger Dave Dayen, arguing for restoration of the cuts that were made to adult dental far in California's Medi-Cal program:
  

  This is not a particularly expensive program to restore; somewhere between $75 million and $130 million annually will get you there. Factoring in the savings in uncompensated care, the total cost is much lower. And the public health impact is astonishing. Research shows that chronic dental disease adversely impacts quality of life and makes it hard to secure employment; your smile, after all, is your first impression. Attend any free health clinic around the state and you’ll see most of the treatment going toward dental care. Sen. Rod Wright used a hearing last week to talk about people in his district waiting three days in line in at one of these clinics. “I had three people who were there who got tired of waiting and violated their parole so that they could go back to prison to get tooth and dental care,” Wright said. Similarly, state Senate President Pro Tem Darrell Steinberg’s visit to a free dental fair last year fueled his passion over the issue, which he made a priority.

  If this were a case of crazy, big-spending liberals wanting to give away the state’s hard-earned surplus, that would be one thing. But last week, the Senate Budget Committee voted unanimously to restore adult dental care to Medi-Cal, with the entire Republican delegation on the committee agreeing. California has the most polarized legislature in America, and there isn’t a close second. You can count the number of unanimous votes in the state over the last decade on one finger.

  This is true. And yet, Gov. Brown seems set on preserving a more austere record.
• Drivers in Oklahoma City took shelter from the recent tornadoes and storms by breaking into a convenience store. Hope everyone stays safe.
• This is heartbreaking. I remember visiting Grindelwald as a boy, and it's just one more tragic consequence of climate change.
• Megyn Kelly of Fox News stands up to Erick Erickson on his atrocious misogyny:
  

  Comparing Erickson to the people who used pseudo-science to argue against interracial marriage a half-century ago, Kelly asked, “Why are we supposed to take your word for it, Erick Erickson’s science, instead of all these experts?”:

  KELLY: In this country in the ’50s and ’60s there were huge numbers of people that believed that the children of interracial marriages were biologically inferior and that is why it was illegal for blacks and whites to marry in some states in the country up until 1967. And they said it was science and fact if you were the child of a black father and white mother or vice versa you were inferior and not set up for success. Tell that to Barack Obama.

  Apparently, there's only so much even a Fox News host can take.
• Rep. Louie Gohmert is now blaming both Sen. John McCain and President Obama for the incident at Benghazi. You know, in other eras of history, leaders had nicknames. Alexander the Great, Aethelred the Unready...so why not "Gohmert the Conspiratorially Insane"? Has a ring to it.
• Once a Howard Dean fan, always a Howard Dean fan. Here's the former DNC Chair expressing his opinion of the National Review:
  

  “National Review is just silly,” he began. “Who is going to take them seriously? It's a right-wing conservative nutcase. Let’s just be blunt about the National Review, right? They claimed last week that I said that the death of four Americans in Benghazi was a joke. What I said was that the investigation was a joke. This is crap. Who gives a damn? This is why I don’t read editorial pages 'cause I don’t give a damn what these people think.”

  Basically, yes.

Reposted from Daily Kos Labor by Laura Clawson Peabody Energy, the largest coal company in the world, decided a few years back that it was inconvenient to pay its retiree health care obligations. So it spun off a new company, Patriot Coal, giving Patriot Coal 13 percent of Peabody's coal and 40 percent of its health care costs, in the form of thousands of retired coal miners with the black lung and other costly conditions they got working for Peabody. Then, as if that wasn't enough, Patriot went ahead and acquired another spin-off company with serious health care liabilities. Then it decided to declare bankruptcy, because after all, it had a lot of debt and not much in the way of assets.

And now a judge has said Patriot Coal can just dump its retiree health benefit obligations, because screw it, those miners didn't deserve such good benefits anyway and what else is Patriot going to do? It's not like there's a guarantee anyone can make Peabody pay up for its obvious ploy to save itself those retiree health care costs, whereas union contracts are, to bankruptcy Judge Kathy Surratt-States, so much toilet paper. The health benefits being jettisoned were going to people like Alana Green:

"You take a car and go underground, like a trolley," said Green. "The mines are very damp and cold and wet, with a low ceiling. The only lamp you have is on your head, and if you turn that out, you can't even see the hand in front of your face. In the wintertime, you go down in the dark and come back in dark."

Green, a grandmother of six, will be 59 years old next month. She suffers from Lyme disease, and her time in the coal mines has left her with black lung and chronic back problems, she told HuffPost.

The Patriot case is about retiree health benefits, but maneuvers like this are also a way pensions have become so rare—companies have devised a staggering array of ways to get out of their pension obligations, with spinning off a company designed to fail being one of those ways. This is why pensions have become so rare. Companies have methodically shed them, and in many cases, workers didn't have unions to fight for them and draw attention to what was happening. Then by the time the companies came for the strongest contracts, people who'd lost their pensions years before were willing to sit by, going, "I don't have a pension, so why should they?"

Yes, I'm a little pissed today. Continue reading below the fold for more of the war on workers.

This week's source material from the National Review:

Below the fold, we'll find out whether Republicans have given up their war on women. The answer won't surprise you.

This week in the war on voting is a joint project of Joan McCarter and Meteor Blades

• A case of a Republican doing the right thing:

Virginia Gov. Robert F. McDonnell said Wednesday that he is waiving the waiting period and automatically restoring the voting rights of non-violent felons who have completed their sentences and satisfied certain conditions.

The decision by McDonnell, a former prosecutor who has supported restoring voting rights, underscores a long-held position. McDonnell (R) has granted the right to vote to more ex-felons than any of his predecessors at a time when other Republican across the country have adopted more strict voting requirements, including photo IDs and shortened early voting periods.

“When someone commits a crime, they must be justly punished,” the governor said during remarks in Richmond. “However, once these individuals have served their time and fully paid for the offenses they committed, they should be afforded a clear and fair opportunity to resume their lives as productive members of our society.

Some reform-minded Virginians have unsuccessfully sought to create a process to restore rights that don't require the governor's doing so on an individual basis.

Virginia is only one of two states that continues to impose a lifelong denial of voting rights to felons unless the governor restores them. While McDonnell's willingness to restore more felons to full citizenship than his predecessors is encouraging, this ought to be an automatic process. Florida is worse. Two years ago, Gov. Rick Scott reversed a reform that loosened the re-enfranchisement process. Now a released prisoner must wait seven years before receiving a clemency hearing in which the right to vote, sit on a jury or run for public office can be granted. And it's no sure thing.

Thirty-nine states automatically restore voting rights to felons when they are released. Two states, Maine and Vermont, allow prisoners to vote, something Canada has done since 2002. This approach deserves approval nationwide in the States because it separates voting from criminal activity and it is one aspect of maintaining a societal connection between those who are incarcerated and other citizens. But it will long time before that is widely adopted.

More war on voting news can be read below the fold.