American politics 2016: Lawyers, Guns, and D-Money

feel like people in NC can't complain much when a non-blue dog dem has a serious shot to win governor

well this is different: tying your attacks on minimum-wage increases to food truck popularity:

A higher minimum wage is no way to solve the problem of poverty

Contains the bit:

Big Brother can mandate a $15 hourly minimum wage, but Big Brother cannot mandate that firms hire workers. As minimum wages have risen, cashiers have vanished from drug stores and food trucks have replaced restaurants. Few would have thought 10 years ago (when the national minimum wage was $5.15) that food trucks would line the streets in the D.C. downtown area and people would line up for their lunch...

Food trucks have existed since forever and most of the current crop charge as much as a restaurant, if not more.

also assume that food truck quality was pretty piss poor 10 years ago and the only ones lining up to them for lunch were construction workers

the DC food truck trick is to offer you $7 entrees that are only 2/3 of a full meal. in the heat of the moment you just add on a $4 side to avoid afternoon stomach grumbles.

Update on the anti-LGBT bill HB1523 in Mississippi: the state Senate voted 31/17 to pass it with amendments, so it'll be going back to the House. @EWagsterPettus and @arielle_amara have been livetweeting the proceedings, if you want more details, and @aclu_ms and @chase_strangio are also useful for context.

*@chasestrangio, rather

Summary here: http://www.buzzfeed.com/dominicholden/mississippi-scheduled-for-final-vote-on-anti-lgbt-religious

is there even one incident ever, anywhere, of anyone being assaulted by a transgender person in a public bathroom?

Not as far as I know, but that doesn't mean we can't be convenient scapegoats!

The idea that letting trans women use women's restrooms would lead to sexual assaults is, and I do not use this term loosely, blood libel.

Blood libel doesn't merit opposition with evidence, it merits condemnation.

is there even one incident ever, anywhere, of anyone being assaulted by a transgender person in a public bathroom?

See, if I was a smart piece of shit GOPer, I'd say it was to protect the transgendered person.

trans women get assaulted and murdered outside of restrooms in awful numbers, telling them they should be using the men's room is basically violent.

i don't think anyone could possibly buy that forcing a trans woman into a male bathroom would be for her protection

Yeah, that's right.

I was trying to turn it around backwards and wound up going 360°.

@ggreenwald
Arab-American family of 5 going on vacation - 3 young kids in tow - removed from @United plane for "safety reasons"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ctIMBz-42qk

not sure where else to put it, but andrew sullivan is joining new york magazine as a contributing editor

try Damage ContrLOLz

‏@chrislhayes
How Habitat for Humanity used federal dollars to push poor people out of Bed Stuy

https://www.propublica.org/article/habitat-for-humanity-brooklyn-bedford-stuyvesant-poor-lose-homes

Check out this shit in Kansas re voting:

http://cjonline.com/news/2016-04-01/kansas-county-elections-head-used-political-ties-kris-kobach-then-curbed-voting

crazy, and if he gets into legal trouble, maybe the Kansas legislature will bail him out with some changes to the judiciary

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/02/us/outraged-by-kansas-justices-rulings-gop-seeks-to-reshape-court.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&clickSource=story-heading&module=first-column-region®ion=top-news&WT.nav=top-news

The federal body is supposed to have two Republican and two Democratic commissioners but has only one Democrat now because of a vacancy.

i'm sure the vacany is totally organic and not part of a concerted campaign by the gop to keep it that way.

Andrew Bacevich on the transformation of POTUS into unchecked warlord

"Collaborating with a president they roundly despise — implicitly concurring in Obama’s questionable claim that “existing statutes [already] provide me with the authority I need” to make war on ISIS — the GOP-controlled Congress thereby transformed the post-9/11 AUMF into what has now become, in effect, a writ of permanent and limitless armed conflict. In Iraq and Syria, for instance, what began as a limited but open-ended campaign of air strikes authorized by President Obama in August 2014 has expanded to include an ever-larger contingent of U.S. trainers and advisers for the Iraqi military, special operations forces conducting raids in both Iraq and Syria, the first new all-U.S. forward fire base in Iraq, and at least 5,000 U.S. military personnel now on the ground, a number that continues to grow incrementally.

"Remember Barack Obama campaigning back in 2008 and solemnly pledging to end the Iraq War? What he neglected to mention at the time was that he was retaining the prerogative to plunge the country into another Iraq War on his own ticket. So has he now done, with members of Congress passively assenting and the country essentially a prisoner of war."

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/andrew-bacevich/writing-a-blank-check-on-war_b_9616466.html

funny how elastic the definition of war can be

Mississippi's bill protecting citizens' sacred freedom to discriminate against LGBT people passes into law: http://www.advocate.com/religion/2016/4/05/mississippi-governor-signs-sweeping-anti-lgbt-religious-liberty-law

PayPal abandons plans to open facility in Charlotte because of LGBT law

(an office opening that the governor was crowing about days before signing the NC anti-trans bill)

that's right: http://www.sfgate.com/news/us/article/San-Francisco-poised-to-vote-on-full-paid-leave-7228281.php

\o/ Seattle next let's go

ased on Tuesday by the Office of Congressional Ethics listed a half-dozen possible violations of House rules by Representative Alan Grayson of Florida. Credit Loren Elliott for The New York Times

WASHINGTON — Representative Alan Grayson, Democrat of Florida, may have improperly used his House office and staff to handle personal financial matters involving a family-run hedge fund as well as political activities related to his bid for the United States Senate, the Office of Congressional Ethics concluded in a 986-page investigation released Tuesday.

The report, which found as many as a half dozen violations of House rules, provoked an angry response from Mr. Grayson, who accused the quasi-independent agency of conspiring with his Democratic opponent for the Senate seat.

“I didn’t do anything wrong,” Mr. Grayson said repeatedly in a telephone news conference after the report was released.

The exchange came on the same day that the House Ethics Committee — the only entity that has formal powers to sanction a House lawmaker — announced that it was still studying the case and that, at least for now, it would not create a formal investigative panel to examine possible misconduct charges against Mr. Grayson.

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/06/us/politics/alan-grayson-florida.html?ref=politics

Did video of Rick Scott getting berated at Starbucks get posted?

Thank you (really) big government Treasury Department for new rules that have led Pfizer to give up for now on corporate inversion plan that would shift their headquarters to Ireland to avoid taxes

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/business/wp/2016/04/06/pfizer-and-allergan-call-off-their-merger-after-u-s-move-to-block-inversions/

xpost Didn't see it here, out do love the idea of people yelling at politicians, forcing them to face the targets of their shit policies in an up close and personal way. I've always wondered what I'd say if I bumped into one of these jackasses but don't think I'd be as brave as that woman.

for everyone's benefit:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mXYzgTLoQjY

agree that she is remarkably well composed and articulate, I would probably be stumbling over my words out of nervousness

also love the "I'm not talking to you"

hero

xp it is awesome.

my governor, ladies and gents. He probably bought a tea no sugar.

lol

Glorious, although one has to assume Rick Scott's sense of shame is deeply buried if it exists at all, given all he's done to gut public services.

as suspected:
http://www.sfgate.com/news/crime/article/Report-4-credible-sex-abuse-allegations-7234198.php

Bruce Springsteen cancels Greensboro, NC show over anti-LGBT bathroom law: https://www.facebook.com/notes/bruce-springsteen/a-statement-from-bruce-springsteen-on-north-carolina/10153539447566824

awesome

Taibbi: Bernie or no Bernie, Paul Krugman is wrong about the banks

Krugman would likely argue that all those little things like laundering money for narco-terrorists, monkeying with world interest rates, and systematic cheating in the currency markets had nothing to do with the crash.

He would technically be correct in this. But the entire argument for breaking up the banks, which incidentally didn't originate in the Senate with Bernie Sanders or even Elizabeth Warren but with Ohio's Sherrod Brown and then-Delaware Sen. Ted Kaufman, was conceived with the idea that leaving over-large banks intact invited not only the potential for future bailouts, but future regulatory problems.

As MIT economist Simon Johnson pointed out in 2010, these institutions have become so big that they can confront and defy the government. Moreover the failure to punish the banks for the great mortgage frauds of the crisis years left all of these companies with the knowledge that the authorities were afraid to aggressively enforce the law, for fear of disrupting a fragile economy.

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/why-the-banks-should-be-broken-up-20160408

or to take comfort in knowing that the extent of the shit they did was so deep and all encompassing that prosecuting and getting convictions is both insanely expensive and not a slam dunk, which prosecutors dont want to be a part of.

can I just
http://iowastartingline.com/2016/04/08/iowa-gops-3rd-district-platform-is-totally-bonkers-especially-on-gay-rights/

impressive

"leave no repression behind"

Wow that's some comprehensive evil

I assumed ALEC just drafts shit like this and the states just do a universal draft and replace with their own state name but I guess not