2015 American Politics Thread: The 114th Congress Is in the House!

[n a case that could help demystify how the FBI deems somebody a terrorist threat, the American Civil Liberties Union argued in federal court Wednesday that the government has failed to comply with an earlier court order to tell people how they wound up on the "no-fly" list.

The case revolves around several Muslim Americans who say they were included on the list unfairly and denied a constitutional right to find out why. The government argues that explaining the process in open court would endanger national security

Bowen argued that the government had no obligation to tell people why they were placed on the list.

"Government is not required in name of due process to put its national security at risk," he said. "The plaintiffs' interest must necessarily give way."....The FBI's Terrorist Screening Center, which operates the list, won't reveal the evidence against those on the list, allow them to question witnesses or challenge the findings in court.

http://www.latimes.com/nation/la-na-ff-1210-no-fly-list-20151210-story.html

https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/plum-line/wp/2015/12/10/denying-guns-to-terror-suspects-could-violate-fundamental-rights-a-top-democrat-pushes-back/

Here's another one of the "compromises" they are trying to work out on Capital Hill, where Dems always give more than they get

http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2015/12/tell-congress-today-keep-crude-oil.html

Sen. Barbara Boxer (Calif.), top Democrat on the Environment and Public Works Committee, shrugged off environmentalist fears about trading conservation and renewables' benefits for oil exports. There is "division" among green groups over whether to cut a deal, she said in a brief interview. "I've heard environmentalists say this is a great opportunity; others say it's not," she said.

Any deal would also likely include some type of aid for refineries in the Northeast that have benefited from cheap domestic crude that cannot be exported currently. Sen. Tom Carper (D-Del.) said he said he is in discussions for an approach "to make whole American refineries that in many cases would simply go out of business" should exports be permitted.

House Minority Whip Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) told reporters that oil exports were not objectionable enough to sink a possible deal on their own.

Ending the 1970s-era ban on exports, the year's top priority for the American Petroleum Institute, is "not where we want to go," Hoyer said. "But on the other hand, if there were substantial agreements by the Republicans on some things that we thought were very important, that might be something" to consider during the budget talks.
Among the perps are some of the solar companies, who would get a small benefit for themselves from a Democratic "compromise."

Paul Ryan, Secret Muslim: http://theslot.jezebel.com/wow-paul-ryan-really-should-have-known-better-1747571663

why would anyone want to work in politics

the sweet digs

http://www.vanityfair.com/news/2015/12/house-republicans-bill-to-ruin-john-boehners-retirement?mbid=social_facebook

nelson_laugh.wav

still wondering how this will turn out...negotiations ongoing

Making the Earned Income Tax Credit and Child Tax Credit permanent has been a priority for Democrats in negotiations. While the Child Tax Credit is in the extenders package, Pelosi wants it to be indexed, meaning its benefits will rise with inflation -- something Republicans haven’t been responsive on.

Another sticking point is the sheer size of the tax extenders package, which could cost upwards of $700 billion over the next decade. Republicans are also pushing hard to include a measure that would lift a 40-year-old ban on crude oil exports to the tax deal.

“Lifting the ban on oil and all the money that that means for the oil industry, while they can’t index for children, it’s just, it’s too big,” Pelosi said. “It’s unfair, and it does not have the support of House Democrats.”

While the White House doesn't want Congress touching crude oil exports, it is involved in negotiations to ensure anti-environmental riders are stripped and that other priorities for Democrats are met in exchange. The administration hasn't threatened a veto of the extenders bill if oil exports are attached. Republicans in the House have enough votes to attach it to the extenders bill even without Democratic support. The president would likely sign the bill despite House Democrats' opposition.

“I made it clear, don’t count on our votes for that,” Pelosi said. “We will not be accomplices.”

Still, Pelosi indicated she wouldn't stand in the way of the tax deal as long as Republicans bring it to the floor separately from the omnibus bill, adding she didn't want to have anything to do with the tax bill.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/nancy-pelosi-tax-extenders_566b0239e4b0f290e522eecd

god this bowe bergdahl thing.

Some army general apparently ignored the advice given him by a committee of inquiry to confine the charges against bergdahl to misdemeanors. Hard to see how this reflects well on his judgment.

Koch brothers ...


The political operation created by the billionaire conservative mega-donors Charles and David Koch is quietly investing millions of dollars in programs to win over an unlikely demographic target for their brand of small-government conservatism ― poor people.

The outreach includes everything from turkey giveaways, GED training and English-language instruction for Hispanic immigrants to community holiday meals and healthy living classes for predominantly African American groups to vocational training and couponing classes for the under-employed. The strategy, according to sources familiar with it and documents reviewed by POLITICO, calls for presenting a more compassionate side of the brothers’ politics to new audiences, while fighting the perception that their groups are merely fronts for rich Republicans seeking to game the political process for personal gain.

The efforts include a healthy dose of proselytizing about free enterprise and how it can do more than government to lift people out of poverty.

“We want people to know that they can earn their own success. They don’t need the government to give it to them,” Koch network official Jennifer Stefano told activists and donors during an August rally in Columbus, Ohio, at which she introduced one such project, Bridge to Wellbeing

http://www.politico.com/story/2015/12/charles-david-koch-poverty-charity-216631#ixzz3uOt7lrEa

there was a little TPM thing about that politico article, yesterday:

The reporter also got one of the Kochs' top lieutenants to concede that one additional benefit of the plan is to help secure Koch Inc's tax status with the IRS as a nominally educational and charitable organization ...

“Sometimes, we have not been as good at explaining the virtues of economic freedom and individual liberty to people who are struggling,” said Americans for Prosperity’s president Tim Phillips. He also conceded that AFP Foundation’s Bridge to Wellbeing initiative helps satisfy an Internal Revenue Service requirement that the group focus its spending on educational or charitable purposes, not political or policy advocacy. “Part of it is we are a social welfare organization. And, so, yes, we do try to help folks live more prosperous lives. That’s not related to direct policy.”

May they succeed at feeding poor people, and fail at converting them into conservatives.

Here's a political bombshell. Shrewd move too.

That's some modern day Nixon Goes to China plotting.

Also don't ever change, Fla: Florida senators defend maps as ‘free of political taint’

the Cuban Immigrant Work Opportunity Act of 2015

My congressman too!

At first I was like oh, he wants Cuba to be considered a peer, trade normalized, so people would no longer be refugees

But no, it's no refugees AND lock out Cubans

what is your take on it?

He's right. Thanks to the Cold War, Cubans have been the beneficiaries of the most generous refugee policy in the country's history. And there's an awful lot of fraud (the Sun Sentinel wrote a multi part story a few months ago you should look up). With the Cold War gone, the policy's up for revision.

actually, he's only looking at eliminating the no-questions-asked access to welfare. They can still apply for residency after 366 days.

That seems reasonable, but combining it with hardening the relationship with Cuba seems counterproductive?

https://twitter.com/CNBCnow/status/676960982690832385

No real surprise here...

The child-tax credit, earned-income tax credit and a college-tuition credit would all get extended indefinitely at their current levels, without the indexing to inflation some Democrats had sought.

.... Republicans hailed the deal as an important step toward the overhaul of the tax code that they've been trying to work toward since they won the House majority in the 2010 election. By making many of these breaks permanent now, Republicans wouldn't need to change them if they want to keep them or could use the revenue from repealing them later to lower tax rates.

Democrats, including House Minority Whip Steny Hoyer of Maryland, warned that the bill would hurt the country's finances by adding to the budget deficit.

"Tax cuts, like everything else, have a cost," Mr. Hoyer said. "And if we fail to pay for them, we will once again increase deficits and debt, which in turn will be used as the catalyst for another round of cuts to the very programs I believe are vital to our economy and to our people

http://www.nasdaq.com/article/us-bill-would-revive-dozens-of-tax-breaks-20151216-00440#ixzz3uUfAaX1L

The measure, poised to pass the House and Senate as soon as this week, would break Congress' habit of extending lapsed tax breaks retroactively and then setting the next expiration date just weeks or months ahead.

But there are plenty of winners, including large manufacturers, small businesses, restaurants and labor unions, which would all get tax breaks they have been seeking for years. Lawmakers plan to combine the tax bill with a $1.15 trillion spending bill, creating a giant end-of-year fiscal deal that will create certainty for businesses and taxpayers--as long as it doesn't collapse under its own weight.

I've read a welter of confusing material about this omnibus bill. The NYT this morning said labor unions are pissed at the delay of some of those Obamacare taxes.

I saw a shorthand summary that read - Dems got the spending budget bill they wanted, and Republicans got the tax bill they wanted

Actually seems almost reasonable, since the deficit is pretend.

yeah, but in a few years everyone will suddenly get concerned about it again as old white guys in revolutionary war uniforms stand beneath traffic lights by shuttered blockbuster video stores begging the true patriots to force the government to tighten the nation's collective belt, and then somehow the only way out of it will be to implement spending cuts to try to match the tax cuts. it's the circle of life

Republicans apparently dropped most of their environmental riders in exchange for Dems agreeing to the oil industry/Republican request drop 40 year ban on oil exports, plus a few other little things

The deal would lift the ban, a priority for Republicans and the oil industry, and at the same time adopt environmental and renewable measures that Democrats sought. These include extending and then phasing down wind and solar-tax credits; reauthorizing for three years a conservation fund; and excluding any measures that block major Obama administration environmental regulations

http://www.nasdaq.com/article/deal-to-lift-oilexport-ban-comes-with-environmental-concessions-20151216-00548#ixzz3uVRFh1Fm

Republican strategy: propose lots and lots of extreme things, drop a few of them, and then say they compromised

any decent country wd stop this particular thing

http://fortune.com/2015/12/12/dow-dupont-corporate-research-america/

please feel free to ask me questions about that particular cluster on 77

any decent country wd stop this particular thing

http://fortune.com/2015/12/12/dow-dupont-corporate-research-america/

― skateboards are the new combover (Dr Morbius), Wednesday, December 16, 2015 3:07 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

It's not impossible that this country will. It happens from time to time with mergers.

short version would be that there will be three companies, the stockholders who demand year-over-year profit gains in businesses that are cyclical or rely on long-term research pipelines (you don't have the best returns this year, they cut your budget on a project that could be groundbreaking but takes 5 - 10 years) will be appeased as the risk will be shunted into one of the three companies

afaik both current companies have problems that aren't R&D-related in that they have several unrelated fields under the same umbrella, and any one of the fields in their portfolio faring poorly during the year means they punish everyone

but yeah, large corporate R&D in the chemical and material science field from publicly held companies is getting screwed in the market at large

thx; didn't catch on in 77!

I will say no more, corporate overlords, etc etc

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/18/business/shkreli-fraud-charges.html?action=click&contentCollection=Books&module=MostPopularFB&version=Full®ion=Marginalia&src=me&pgtype=article

Martin Shkreli, a pharmaceutical entrepreneur and former hedge fund manager who has been widely criticized for drug price gouging, was arrested Thursday morning by the federal authorities.

The investigation, in which Mr. Shkreli has been charged with securities fraud, is related to his time as a hedge fund manager and running the biopharmaceutical company Retrophin — not the price-gouging controversy that has swirled around him

@Reuters
BREAKING: San Bernardino shooters did not post support for jihad on social media: FBI

@ggreenwald
Reminder that believing whatever the government claims, laundered by the media, is bad for your intellectual health

yeah it wasn't social media it was just private messaging (why does anyone think this matters)

because if it was on public social media rather than in private messages, it would be much more likely to be discovered when processing her visa paperwork

i thought the claim was that she pledged allegiance to ISIS on social media while the attack was ongoing, which would be long after her visa paperwork was approved

handling assault weapons and your iPhone simultaneously is pretty adroit

Oh, was it? I honestly have not been closely following the details of all of this due to fatigue.

yeah I get that. I'm just generally not interested in the particulars of the backgrounds of these types of attacks, feeding into mythical "if only" scenarios. There's no real way to 100% predict and prevent these kind of attacks. There's basic things that can be done to minimize them (limiting availability of weapons, primarily) but I feel like any retroactive fingerpointing is largely pointless.

xxp

Monday's LA Times:

"San Bernardino shooter Tashfeen Malik sent at least two private messages on Facebook to a small group of Pakistani friends in 2012 and 2014, pledging her support for Islamic jihad and saying she hoped to join the fight one day, two top federal law enforcement officials said Monday.

The new details indicate U.S. law enforcement and intelligence agencies missed warnings on social media that Malik was a potential threat before she entered the United States on a K-1 fiancee visa in July 2014."

we should've drone bombed her for thought crime

if we are going to start targeting people based on Facebook posts a whole lot of people are going to jail

kind of amazing we have the NSA and PRISM and vast overreach of our privacy and yet Homeland Security forgot to look at Facebook, perhaps the single largest public database of information

adam i feel like these two impulses of yours: targeting ppl based on fb posts is wrong and why isn't the NSA better at targeting ppl based on fb posts, are mutually exclusive complaints.