THE BURNED OVER DISTRICT

The Senate’s Republican leadership rhetorically took Sen. Ted Cruz to the woodshed Sunday for calling Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell a liar last week on the chamber’s floor.

Cruz was unbowed, firing back soon after leaving the Senate floor and accusing Senate Republican leaders of marching in lockstep with Senate Democrats on such things as funding the Affordable Care Act, funding Planned Parenthood and refusing to tie an Iran nuclear deal to Iran’s recognition of Israel’s right to exist.

“They operate as a team, expanding Washington and undermining the liberty of the people,” the Texas Republican said of Senate Democratic and Republican leaders.

“We’ve just seen something extraordinary on the Senate floor. The American people elected a Republican majority believing that a Republican majority would be somehow different from a Democratic majority in the United States Senate. Unfortunately, the way the current Senate operates, there is one party, the Washington party.”

The admonishment of the 2016 Republican presidential candidate came as a prelude to a series of votes that advanced language to revive the Export-Import Bank, moved the chamber closer towards passing a highway funding bill, and once again rejected a measure to repeal the Affordable Care Act.

The Senate opened the rare Sunday session in a highly unusual manner: with a warning.

“The chair reminds all senators of the following paragraph from Rule 19 of the Standing Rules of the Senate … ‘No senator in debate shall directly or indirectly by any form of words impute to another senator or to other senators any conduct or motive unworthy or unbecoming a senator,’” Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, the chamber’s president pro tempore, sternly read.

// posted by montag @ 1:16 PM 0 Comments

You're Outa Here from Relarion Ink on Vimeo.

This 2009 film was based on Fats Waller's stride classic "The Minor Drag." It was directed by New York animator George Griffin, produced by jazz singer/lyricist (and 2011 Grammy nominee) Lorraine Feather. The short was accepted to 37 festivals worldwide and won several awards, including Best Music Video at the South Beach International Animation Festival.

// posted by montag @ 7:22 PM 0 Comments

These troubles have become all too common on the Northeast Corridor, the nation’s busiest rail sector, which stretches from Washington to Boston and carries about 750,000 riders each day on Amtrak and several commuter rail lines. The corridor’s ridership has doubled in the last 30 years even as its old and overloaded infrastructure of tracks, power lines, bridges and tunnels has begun to wear out. And with Amtrak and local transit agencies struggling to secure funding, many fear the disruptions will continue to worsen in the years ahead.

These troubles have become all too common on the Northeast Corridor, the nation’s busiest rail sector, which stretches from Washington to Boston and carries about 750,000 riders each day on Amtrak and several commuter rail lines. The corridor’s ridership has doubled in the last 30 years even as its old and overloaded infrastructure of tracks, power lines, bridges and tunnels has begun to wear out. And with Amtrak and local transit agencies struggling to secure funding, many fear the disruptions will continue to worsen in the years ahead.

On Friday, Representative Mario Diaz-Balart, a Republican from Miami and chairman of a House subcommittee on transportation, said Amtrak’s operations were vital, especially in the Northeast Corridor. He said the House measure fully funded Amtrak’s safety and operational needs, although it would trim capital grants and other funding. Mr. Diaz-Balart argued that Amtrak had a “slew of internal financial issues that no level of congressional funding can fix.”

“Amtrak’s leadership must reflect and determine how they can better manage their current funding to avoid these types of delays in the future,” he said in a statement.

Amtrak also depends on money from states, and its relationship with Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey, soured last week. On Friday, Mr. Christie accused Amtrak of “abject neglect” of its infrastructure. He said he had asked New Jersey’s attorney general to determine how the state could make sure that the nearly $100 million it pays Amtrak each year was being used properly.

// posted by montag @ 1:59 PM 0 Comments

In a radio interview that will be broadcast this weekend, Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey made clear his reasoning for blocking the construction of a new tunnel and other infrastructure in 2010 that was intended to increase passenger service capacity between his state and Manhattan. He said it was a regional project that would have left New Jersey taxpayers to bear the brunt of its cost.

The governor, a Republican candidate for president, added that if he were to make it to the White House, he would push for an equitable solution.

“If I am president of the United States, I call a meeting between the president, my secretary of transportation, the governor of New York and the governor of New Jersey and say, ‘Listen, if we are all in this even Steven, if we are all going to put in an equal share, then let’s go build these tunnels under the Hudson River,’ ” Mr. Christie said in an interview with the radio talk show host Larry Kudlow, which will be broadcast on Saturday on WABC-AM.

“Then, everyone has an incentive to have the project run right, to run efficiently because everybody is on the hook,” Mr. Christie added.

The governor’s comments — and his hypothetical phrasing — has attracted the attention of his critics, who say his statements emphasize how little he has done to help improve transportation.

“This is not a hypothetical issue, this is a real issue, and he could be doing something about it,” said Martin Robins, the founding director of the Alan M. Voorhees Transportation Center at Rutgers University, who was the director of the tunnel project during the mid-1990s. “The question is, what has he done, what will he do in the next 18 months as the governor of New Jersey?”

// posted by montag @ 1:48 PM 0 Comments

Mr. Muhammad was one of dozens of detainees who have died in military detention in Pakistan in the past year and a half, amid accounts of torture, starvation and extrajudicial execution from former detainees, relatives and human rights monitors. The accusations come at a time when the country’s generals, armed with extensive new legal and judicial powers, have escalated their war against the Pakistani Taliban by sweeping into their strongholds and detaining hundreds of people.

Critics warn that those gains may be coming at the cost of human rights, potentially weakening Pakistan’s fragile democracy and, ultimately, undermining its counterterrorism effort.

“People live in abject fear of speaking out about what the military is doing,” said Mustafa Qadri of Amnesty International, which received reports of more than 100 deaths in military custody in 2014.

At issue is a network of 43 secretive internment centers dotting Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Province and the tribal belt. Little is known about the centers, formally established in 2011 and given greater powers by a tough antiterrorism law passed last year. Most are based in existing jails and military bases and operate far from public view. The total number of detainees has not been made public.

Relatives of missing people have filed 2,100 cases with the Peshawar High Court, seeking news of their fates.

In many instances, the first news comes when a body is sent home...

“The military took care to make the deaths seem to occur in the course of counterinsurgency operations, from natural causes, or as the result of personal vendettas,” said the document, first cited by The Washington Post.

// posted by montag @ 1:30 PM 0 Comments

Nine days after Kindra Darnell Chapman, an 18-year-old black woman, was found dead in a police holding cell in Homewood, Alabama, the district attorney’s office released preliminary findings that the death was a suicide. Despite that development, activists and Chapman’s family continued Thursday to question the circumstances of her death.

At 6:22 p.m. on July 14, Chapman was arrested in Homewood, an affluent suburb of Birmingham, for allegedly stealing a cellphone. She was charged with first-degree robbery, a felony offense, and placed in a holding cell by Homewood police officers. According to local news site AL.com, the police last saw her alive at 6:30 p.m.

According to AL.com, police said she was found unresponsive, hanging by a bedsheet in a holding cell, at 7:50 p.m. Officers took her to a local hospital, where she was pronounced dead.

According to the press release, his office has received reports from Homewood police officers and video from the night of Chapman’s death and has interviewed someone who was in custody at the jail when she died. He said there is no evidence on any of the videos that she was injured as she was transported or booked into the jail. He said video of her in the jail cell appears to show her agitated and attempting to “damage the contents of the cell.” According to him, the video later showed her taking her own life.

On Tuesday, Black Lives Matter staged a protest with about a dozen people outside the jail. Local activist and group member Mercutio Southall Sr. and five other activists were arrested and briefly detained. He said the holding cell where he was detained — one of two that he saw in the jail — had two cameras trained on it and was less than 5 feet from the processing office and along a heavily trafficked hallway leading to the department’s back door.

“We were never in there for three minutes without an officer passing by,” he said.

According to him, another activist in the cell, Mark Myles, was using his cellphone, and officers immediately showed up and took it away. While Southall was waiting in the holding cell, he said he could hear protesters in the processing office shouting “no justice, no peace.”

“We heard them. How could the officers not have heard [Chapman]? So how could they not hear the girl hanging herself, but we heard them? How could they not see the girl hanging herself?” he said.

According to Falls’ statement, Chapman was left alone in her cell while officers transported inmates from the jail to the Homewood Municipal Court for hearings.

Southall also questioned why — and even if — there was a sheet in her holding cell.

“The holding cell in Homewood — I am speaking from experience — it’s a cage with a metal bench. There’s no sheets. There’s no nothing.”

// posted by montag @ 1:35 PM 0 Comments

Decked out in full Renaissance Faire regalia, a New York man has joined hundreds of patriots who have appointed themselves defenders of U.S. military recruitment centers, reports the Times Herald-Record.

Holding the flag of the Knights Templar and wearing a 10-pound steel helmet, Jeffersonville resident Joseph Frye says he wants to protect personnel at the military centers following the shooting at a Chattanooga recruitment office that claimed five lives.
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“Service members should be protected,” Frye said. “They volunteered to protect us, so I’m just trying to put heat on the issue.”

Accompanied by his wife, the former Marine also brought along a bow and a quiver full of arrows, saying he doesn’t have a permit to carry a handgun.

This may come as a small relief to military officials who have asked armed civilian “guards” to stay away from the centers.

Thursday, in Lancaster, Ohio, one man guarding a recruitment center accidentally fired off a round into the asphalt of the parking lot while showing off his AR-15 assault weapon to a passerby.

// posted by montag @ 1:14 PM 0 Comments

The armed civilians who have been guarding a military recruitment center here are gone, ordered off the property after one of them accidentally discharged his rifle on Thursday.

No one was injured.

U.S. Properties Group Portfolio Four LLC, the owner of the shopping center near the River Valley Mall that includes the multi-branch military recruitment center, ordered the armed volunteers to leave just hours after the shot was fired.

Christopher A. Reed, 28, of Lancaster, was charged with discharging a firearm in the city limits, and was issued a summons to appear in Fairfield County Municipal Court on Tuesday, according to the police incident report.

Reed told police that he was holding his rifle outside the recruitment center when someone asked if he could take a look at it. Reed agreed, and while he was trying to clear the ammunition from the weapon, he accidentally fired one shot into the asphalt pavement.

// posted by montag @ 10:30 PM 0 Comments

After a storied career that spanned the 1989 invasion of Panama, the 1991 Persian Gulf War, Bosnia, and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the United States’ fleet of Humvees is entering its twilight, and they are being sold to the highest bidder by the dozen. The vehicle is an icon of the U.S. military that replaced the Jeep and spawned a gas-guzzling commercial cousin that symbolized American ego and extravagance.

But now the Army wants a tougher, yet nimble vehicle, light enough so that a helicopter could fly it around, but resilient enough to withstand bomb blasts.

In one of the most important — and lucrative — contracts awarded by the Army in years, three major defense firms are competing for the $30 billion prize to build 55,000 vehicles, called the Joint Light Tactical Vehicle, which would debut as one of the military’s most high-profile vehicles in a generation.

Wars are often measured by the box-score statistics: battles won and lost, us-vs.-them casualties, cities sacked, shorelines held. But they are also defined by their arsenals — just as the rumble of a Sherman tank was the soundtrack of World War II, so, too, was the riff of Huey chopper blades in Vietnam.

And now comes a new entrant to the symphonic cacophony of the Next War — the mad-scientist mating of a Jeep with a tank. After a decade in development, the Pentagon is about to unveil the JLTV, designed for front-line combat as well as ferrying supplies behind the wire...

It is supposed to be as mobile as an unarmored Humvee, an able off-roader but also powerful enough to withstand the same blasts as the MRAP — all while hauling plenty of cargo.

The bidding has attracted three defense giants for the contract, which is expected to be awarded this summer: AM General, which built the Humvee; Oshkosh, which built the MRAP; and Lockheed Martin, the world’s largest defense contractor.

Though known primarily for its aerospace business — Lockheed makes the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter — the Bethesda, Md.-based company was drawn to the competition because it “was viewed as a particularly challenging engineering proposition,” said Scott Greene, vice president of the ground vehicles division. The goal, he said, is to “bring the properties of the different vehicles and combine those attributes into a much smaller package.”

// posted by montag @ 2:18 PM 0 Comments

Sandra Bland, the black woman found hanging dead in a Texas jail days after a traffic stop, smoked or possibly swallowed a large amount of marijuana while in custody, according to her family's attorney.

Waller County District Attorney Elton Mathis made the disclosure in a text message to attorney Cannon Lambert, who has called the state's autopsy on the Chicago-area woman defective, Lambert said.

"Looking at the autopsy results and toxicology, it appears she swallowed a large quantity of marijuana or smoked it in the jail," Mathis said in a text message to Lambert that the attorney disclosed to Reuters.

Reuters could not immediately verify the authenticity of the text. Repeated calls to Mathis' office were not returned.

"This will of course be very relevant in any future criminal or civil litigation," the text message from Mathis to Lambert said.

// posted by montag @ 1:41 PM 0 Comments

Liberal members of Congress in both the House and the Senate will introduce legislation Wednesday that would raise the federal minimum wage to $15 an hour, an in an effort to boost labor movement organizing around this issue and push the Democratic Party to the left on wage inequality.

Both versions of the bill will be co-sponsored by members of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, the legislative branch’s liberal vanguard. The Senate bill will be sponsored by presidential candidate Sen. Bernie Sanders, an independent from Vermont and the caucus’s only member in the chamber, while Keith Ellison, D-Minn., and Raúl Grijalva, D-Ariz., are among the sponsors of the House bill.

The $15 wage bill is the most ambitious Congressional proposal yet for a wage increase, and it would more than double the current federal minimum wage of $7.25 per hour. President Barack Obama called for an increase to $9 in his 2013 State of the Union Address, a figure he later bumped up to $10.10.

A bill that would raise the federal minimum wage to $10.10 per hour has languished in the House for years. The odds are not in favor of legislation calling for an even bigger increase, but the $15 wage proposal gives progressive organizations and their allies in Congress a totem around which to rally. The bill is a direct challenge to other Democratic officials who have yet to support a significant wage increase — particularly Hillary Clinton, the frontrunner in the party’s 2016 presidential primary.

Grijalva announced the new legislation during an appearance at Netroots Nation, an annual liberal conference held last weekend in Phoenix. Ellison was also there; when asked about the Progressive Caucus' role in the coming election cycle, he said he felt it was his job to clarify what economic populism looks like, so that public figures would be forced to accept or reject it on its own terms.

// posted by montag @ 1:11 PM 0 Comments

An antiabortion group on Tuesday released a second video apparently showing an official at Planned Parenthood discussing the method and price of providing fetal tissue left over from abortions for medical research.

The edited video from the Center for Medical Progress claims to show excerpts of a conversation with Mary Gatter, medical director of Planned Parenthood of Los Angeles, in what appears to be a booth at a restaurant. The woman can be seen talking with unseen activists posing as medical company representatives about the price of the tissue, while also stating that “we’re not in this for the money.”

“At this time, Planned Parenthood cannot confirm the authenticity of this tape, and nobody can tell exactly what was discussed because of the extremely heavy editing, the agenda of the activists who produced it, and the fact that the original footage has not been made available,” Eric Ferrero, VP of Communications for Planned Parenthood of America, said in an emailed statement.

“At this time, Planned Parenthood cannot confirm the authenticity of this tape, and nobody can tell exactly what was discussed because of the extremely heavy editing, the agenda of the activists who produced it, and the fact that the original footage has not been made available,” Eric Ferrero, VP of Communications for Planned Parenthood of America, said in an emailed statement

// posted by montag @ 2:06 PM 0 Comments

Around 3 million more children in the U.S. are living in poverty than at the beginning of the Great Recession — a worrying statistic that mutes much of the fanfare of the nation's economic turnaround, according to a report released Tuesday on child welfare.

Twenty-two percent of U.S. children were living in poverty in 2013 compared with 18 percent in 2008, according to the Kids Count Data Book, an annual report that ranks states by the well-being of their children. It equates to an increase of 2.9 million children, according to census data from those years.

Poverty rates have nearly doubled among African-Americans and American Indians since 2008, and hardship is most severe in the South and Southwest, the report found.

The report, based on data from the U.S. Census Bureau's American Community Survey, defines children in poverty as those under the age of 18, living in families with annual incomes below $23,624. In all, some 16,087,000 children are deemed to be living in poverty in America.

The problems facing children in the U.S. extend beyond — and in some cases drive — increasing poverty rates. More children were raised in single-parent homes in 2013 than in 2008, and fewer lived with parents with secure employment, according to the report. Children living in single parent households are 23 percent less likely to be raised by a parent with a degree beyond high school, the study showed.

Foundation President Patrick McCarthy said that particularly troubling is an increase in the share of kids living in poor communities, regardless of their own families' economic standing. The report says 1 in 7 children live in those areas, marked by poor schools and a lack of a safe place to play.

"They're more likely to fall down the economic ladder, less likely to be employed and more likely to get in trouble," McCarthy said.

McCarthy likened child poverty to a “particularly pernicious form of cancer,” and he prescribed a cocktail of economic policies and fixes to tackle it.

Tax credits and additional support such as food stamps could give low-income families a much-needed boost, and job training could provide help for those struggling to get an economic foothold, according to the report. Businesses, the report added, should implement more family-friendly policies, and a massive infrastructure repair campaign could create countless jobs.

“None of them is a magic bullet. When you put them all together, you start to put the children on a path to success,” McCarthy said.

// posted by montag @ 1:35 PM 0 Comments

John Kasich enters the race for the Republican presidential nomination with what should be a dream resume. Popular governor of a critical swing state. State and federal budget balancer. National security expertise. Friend to Democrats. Regular-guy appeal.

And yet the governor of Ohio started his bid Tuesday so far behind that he could end up not qualifying for the first candidate debate – which will be held in his home state Aug. 6.

Kasich, 63, becomes the 16th well-known Republican to formally enter the race. He has to catch up with rivals who already have set up slick organizations in key states and raised tens of millions of dollars.

Before a cheering crowd at Ohio State University, his alma mater, Kasich vowed to fight for the middle class, citing its disillusionment with the American dream. He cited the struggles of African-Americans and of middle-aged workers facing sudden layoffs. He’s felt the pain, he said.

He’s lived through recessions and seen terrorist attacks, and “I have become stronger for them and America has become stronger for them,” Kasich said in his trademark conversation tone. America will succeed, he said, “by staying together with our eyes on the horizon.”

Kasich insists he’s unfazed by the uphill challenge.

He’s had a string of political triumphs, notably two elections as governor of one of the nation’s most prized battleground states, the last time in a landslide. Kasich plans to stress that record.

// posted by montag @ 1:03 PM 0 Comments

After more than a half-century defined by mistrust and rancor, the United States officially reopened its six-story embassy in the Cuban capital on Monday, the culmination of many months of negotiations to overcome decades of historical enmity and to restore diplomatic relations between the two nations.

More than two years of effort went into restoring relations between Cuba and the United States, both public and private, yet most observers say they believe it will be many more years before mutual wariness fades.

A litany of questions have yet to be answered, including: Will the American trade embargo that has crippled Cuba’s economy be lifted, and if so, when? Will the Cuban government improve its human rights record and incorporate outsiders into the political spectrum? How much, and how fast, will the lives of ordinary Cubans, who earn $20 a month on average, improve?

But for now, the reopening of the embassy on the Malecón waterfront in Havana, previously used as an interests section, a limited diplomatic outpost, stands as the most concrete symbol yet of the thaw set in motion last year when President Obama ordered the full restoration of diplomatic ties between the countries.

If Cubans are expecting bells and canapés to celebrate the nuptials, they will be sorely disappointed. The official celebration to inaugurate the American Embassy will not take place until later in the summer, when Secretary of State John Kerry plans to visit, to formally raise the flag and install the new signage.

In Washington, however, shouts of “Viva Cuba” rang out on Monday as Cuba’s foreign minister, Bruno Rodríguez, raised his country’s flag outside the newly reopened Cuban embassy.

In Havana, a line had already formed at 6 a.m. along the side of the American Embassy, a large building. Families clutched sheaths of paper as they awaited interviews and appointments with officials now operating under the auspices of an embassy.

Beyond the edge of the tidy line, hundreds more gathered in a small park awaiting their turn, and dozens more formed a separate line beyond that. For the first time in decades, American Embassy personnel were managing the order of entrants, taking names, calling names, answering questions.

Those waiting were a medley of people. Many had relatives in America they planned to visit or live with. Almost all had made appointments months — some said years — earlier to facilitate their visas, and, they said, just happened to arrive on the building’s first day as an official embassy.

// posted by montag @ 1:19 PM 0 Comments

"No, not at all."

That was reality TV star Donald Trump's response to ABC's Martha Raddatz Sunday morning when she asked him whether he owed John McCain an apology for suggesting that the Arizona Senator wasn't a war hero because he had been captured during the Vietnam War.

If you were expecting anything else from Trump, you haven't been paying much attention to his presidential campaign. Or his life. Trump's appeal in the 2016 race appears to be built on saying things and acting in ways that other politicians would never dream of doing. Trump, to his credit, appears to grasp that fact.

"I will say what I want to say, and maybe that’s why I’m leading in the polls because people are tired of hearing politicians and pollsters telling the politicians exactly what to say," Trump told Raddatz.

The fact is that apologizing after a comment judged as ill-advised (at best) by most politicians is exact opposite of the Trump brand. The sort of people who misspeak and then try to clean up their messes are the very people that Trump derides -- and that he believes the public can't stand either.

// posted by montag @ 2:06 PM 0 Comments

There is no national requirement that aspiring police officers be screened for hate group membership, a fact brought to light by a recent incident involving Florida police officers who were reportedly linked to the Ku Klux Klan, according to a confidential FBI report.

On Saturday, Florida’s Fruitland Park Police Chief Terry Isaacs was given a confidential FBI report containing allegations that a deputy chief and a former police officer had links to the KKK, according to the Orlando Sentinel.

The report led to the resignation of Deputy Chief David Borst and the dismissal of officer George Hunnewell. Isaacs would not confirm the report specified the group as the KKK, describing it instead as a “subversive organization” because he was unauthorized to release details.

“It's unfortunately a very widespread phenomenon across the United States,” said Michael Novick, of the Los Angeles chapter of Anti-Racist Action (ARA). “You’d think there would be laws against this stuff, but there aren’t. There’s no law against being in the KKK and being an officer — though clearly it indicates a bias.”

Hiring is a decision left to each local police department, and in Florida there is no state-mandated screening process, Gretl Plessinger, a spokeswoman for the Florida Department of Law Enforcement, said.

Although the KKK is considered a hate group by the U.S. government, it is not illegal to be a member of the group, and most police departments do not screen for such membership anyway, said Heidi Beirich, director of the Southern Poverty Law Center’s Intelligence Project, which tracks hate groups.

“I’m not sure what the exact remedy is,” Beirich said. “Of course they have to be fair to all races, but this brings up First Amendment issues.”

The center counted nearly 1,000 hate groups — defined as groups that have beliefs or practices that attack or malign an entire class of people — in the U.S. in 2013. Florida and California are the states with the greatest number of hate groups.

Some arms of the government, including the military, do prohibit hate group members from joining, she said.

But for police forces, there are currently no national screening standards for officers that would prevent their hiring because of membership in a hate group, Beirich said. Such a screening process would have to be mandated through city, county or state-level legislation.

// posted by montag @ 1:28 PM 0 Comments

Only about a fifth of the 1,000 or so fund-raisers and their spouses who rallied around Mitt Romney, the Republican nominee in 2012, have given money to any of the 2016 candidates, according to a New York Times review of fund-raising records reported by the candidates last week.

Those who remain uncommitted — hundreds of volunteer “bundlers” who could collect contributions from their friends and business associates — represent a huge pool of untapped campaign cash, potentially hundreds of millions of dollars, that could remake the primary campaign.

Some of the bundlers and donors said they had held back, in part, because the field was the strongest they had seen in years, with several viable contenders representing the party’s different generational and ideological segments.

Unlike in 2012, when Mr. Romney dominated fund-raising even as he fought off a series of insurgencies by more populist candidates, the affections of many donors in 2016 are divided among three or four candidates. Others are quietly weighing the impact of Donald J. Trump, who has jumped to the lead in some national polls despite raising almost no money from the party’s establishment.

“I haven’t committed to anyone at this point, and I’m not on the verge of committing to anyone,” said Paul E. Singer, a hedge fund manager who is among the most sought-after Republican bundlers in the country, at an investment conference last week. “I think there are a number of candidates that are smart, solid, good potential leaders, leaders and potential leaders.”

The slow recruitment of major donors and bundlers is also a function, several donors and Republican leaders said, of the candidates’ early emphasis on raising money for “super PACs,” which tend to be funded by a much smaller pool of extremely wealthy donors.

Candidates cannot solicit the unlimited checks that fuel super PACs, and several White House aspirants delayed entering the race this year and spent the winter and spring securing commitments from mega-donors. One result: Vast amounts of money are already flowing into the Republican race, but mostly to super PACs, not candidates. Super PACs and outside groups backing individual Republican candidates have raised about $230 million, while the candidates took in just $64 million through the end of June.

// posted by montag @ 1:35 PM 0 Comments

The United Nations Security Council (UNSC) has scheduled a vote for Monday morning on a resolution endorsing the historic nuclear deal — the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, or JCPOA — and the speed with which that vote has come up, so close after the deal’s signing, is rankling some in the U.S. Congress.

U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Samantha Power circulated a draft resolution in support of the JCPOA to the 15- council members Wednesday, including the other permanent members of the UNSC (China, Russia, France, and the U.K.)

Some U.S. lawmakers questioned the timing of a UNSC vote before the Monday date was set.

“We are deeply concerned that your administration plans to enable the United Nations Security Council to vote on the agreement before the United States Congress can do the same,” said a statement to Obama released by Sens. Ben Cardin, D-Md., and Bob Corker, R-Tenn., members of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. “We urge you to postpone the vote at the United Nations until after Congress considers this agreement."

U.S. lawmakers voted in May to tie any final agreement to a subsequent Congressional review, a bill that Obama reluctantly signed after it became apparent that it was unlikely to successfully conduct the agreement without a review form Congress that many legislators demanded.

Under that legislation, Congress can register its opposition to the Iran deal, which would prevent Obama from lifting a number of sanctions that are key to making the deal work.

But the chief U.S. negotiator in the Iran talks, Wendy Sherman, rejected the idea Thursday that the U.S. should delay the U.N. vote or that it undermines Congressional review.

"It would have been a little difficult when all of the [countries negotiating with Iran] wanted to go to the United Nations to get an endorsement of this, since it is a product of the United Nations process, for us to say, ‘Well, excuse me, the world, you should wait for the United States Congress.’”

Sherman added that the council resolution allows the "time and space" for U.S. Congressional review before the measure takes effect.

// posted by montag @ 1:15 PM 0 Comments

There is a good chance you have never heard of the Smith. The river lies far from Yellowstone’s Technicolor excesses, in north-central Montana, where the tourist maps don’t point. It gathers itself in the Castle Mountains and flows north for 120 miles between the Big and Little Belt mountains, accumulating miles and grandeur as it cuts through limestone canyons and flows over brown trout and past black bears rooting in high meadows. A few miles south of Great Falls it merges with the Missouri River.

The Smith is not the easiest river to float, which is one of its attractions. Between the boat launch at Camp Baker and the take-out at Eden Bridge, 59 river-miles downstream, there is no public entry or exit. You must surrender your outside life for the four or five days it takes to float down the Smith and give in to the river’s moods and its rhythms.

Yet the river is so beloved that each winter for more than two decades the state of Montana has held a lottery to decide which boaters — accompanied by beer, steaks, fly rods, more beer and good friends — will be lucky enough to float this coveted stretch of river that is Smith River State Park. The question “Did you get your application in?” marks the hope for spring in Montana the way Groundhog Day does in Punxsutawney. This year a record 8,096 people, most of them Montanans, applied for just 1,175 permits. The Smith is the only river in the state that has such limits placed upon it, because of its popularity and the limited floating season before its summer flow drops to a trickle.

There is trouble on the Smith, however. A mining company has proposed a copper mine high in the Smith’s watershed, not far from its major tributary. The mine’s backers say the project would be a good neighbor, offering tax revenue and jobs. Opponents point to the state’s devastating legacy of hard rock mining — a legacy that includes dark touchstones like areas around the mining town of Butte and the downstream Clark Fork River, both now Superfund sites.

They ask why Montanans should gamble with something so precious as the Smith.

// posted by montag @ 2:01 PM 0 Comments

A federal investigation that initially focused on Mr. Grimm’s campaign fund-raising turned into a 20-count indictment related to his running of a restaurant in Manhattan, Healthalicious. Prosecutors said he underreported wages and revenue to the government and filed false tax documents as a result.

“I was wrong, absolutely wrong, to pay them off the books,” Mr. Grimm said at the proceeding, just before he was sentenced by Judge Pamela K. Chen of Federal District Court in Brooklyn.

“All my life I have scraped and I have clawed and I have killed myself to better myself,” he said, adding that he was afraid of failure. “A Marine is taught not to fail.”

“Give me the opportunity to redeem myself.”

Prosecutors had requested a sentence of 24 to 30 months, while defense lawyers argued for no prison time. Judge Chen, who said that federal sentencing guidelines called for a term of 18 to 24 months, described the crime as “sustained fraud.”

“That this type of crime is common does not lessen its significance,” the judge said. “Your moral compass, Mr. Grimm, needs some reorientation.”

// posted by montag @ 1:52 PM 0 Comments

The Republican free-for-all is about to become a 17-candidate scrum.

Never in modern times has a major political party had so many prominent candidates vying at once for its presidential nomination. The 2016 field is all but set, as Ohio Gov. John Kasich will formally join the race Tuesday morning and former Virginia Gov. Jim Gilmore plans an early August announcement.

So far, familiarity and intrigue with some new players have boosted a handful of candidates to the top. Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush is the brother and son of presidents. Real estate mogul Donald Trump is classic Internet click bait. Sens. Marco Rubio of Florida, Ted Cruz of Texas and Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker are younger upstarts whose success in swing states rates them close looks from insiders.

// posted by montag @ 12:58 PM 0 Comments

Jones, who will turn 48 next week, is one of tens of thousands of inmates who received harsh mandatory minimum sentences for drug offenses during the crack-cocaine epidemic, and whose cases are drawing new attention.

President Obama is visiting a federal prison in Oklahoma Thursday to promote his plan to overhaul the criminal justice system, saying Wednesday, “this huge spike in incarcerations is also driven by nonviolent drug offenses where the sentencing is completely out of proportion with the crime.”

Because of her role as a middle woman between a cocaine buyer and supplier, Jones was accused of being part of a “drug conspiracy” and should have known that the powder would be converted to crack — triggering a greater penalty.

Her sentence was then made even more severe with a punishment tool introduced at the height of the drug war that allowed judges in certain cases to “enhance” sentences — or make them longer.

Jones was hit with a barrage of “enhancements.”

Her license for a concealed weapon amounted to carrying a gun “in furtherance of a drug conspiracy.”

Enhancement.

When she was convicted on one count of seven, prosecutors said her testimony in her defense had been false and therefore an “obstruction of justice.”

Enhancement.

Although she was neither the supplier nor the buyer, prosecutors described her as a leader in a drug ring.

Enhancement.

By the end, Jones’s sentencing had so many that the federal judge had only one punishment option. With no possibility of parole in the federal system, she was, in effect, sentenced to die in prison.

// posted by montag @ 1:54 PM 0 Comments

With the highway fund set to hit empty on July 31, the House on Wednesday passed another modest squirt into the tank, an $8 billion, five-month transportation patch, by a vote of 312 to 119. It did so with a promise that by Dec. 18, Congress will pass — and President Obama will sign — a major overhaul of the international business tax code that will yield a windfall to fund a long-term transportation bill.

But that approach has one important doubter, Senator Mitch McConnell, a Kentucky Republican and the majority leader, who thinks the prospects of such largess are about as likely as winning the lottery.

Highway funding, which once routinely had bipartisan support, has now become yet another source of division, this time within the Republican Party that controls Congress. House Republicans — bolstered, oddly enough, by the White House and a top Senate Democrat, Chuck Schumer of New York — are adamant that by keeping the pressure on, the highway trust fund could be the ticket to a long-sought rewrite of the corporate tax code.

Mr. McConnell wants to be done with the highway bill before it gets pulled into the maw of presidential politics. He is trying to cobble together enough spending cuts and tax-law enforcement provisions to fashion a highway bill that will, at the very least, get the trust fund through the end of 2016.

Democrats — and some Republicans — say the answer has been staring Congress in the face for years: Raise the federal gas tax, which has become a less effective source for financing the nation’s crumbling roads, bridges and other infrastructure because cars and trucks have become more fuel efficient and drivers are buying less gas.

“There’s no excuse to keep torturing people,” said Representative Earl Blumenauer, Democrat of Oregon who is pushing a 15-cent-per-gallon fuel tax increase. “This is a fool’s errand. We ought to step up.”

// posted by montag @ 1:30 PM 0 Comments

Martial law, basically. I try not to listen to all these conspiracy-theory-type people. All they’re worried about is their beer and their guns.

// posted by montag @ 12:52 PM 0 Comments

Jade Helm 15, an eight-week military exercise that has generated paranoia for months fueled by conservative bloggers and Internet postings, begins Wednesday in Texas and six other states: Arizona, Florida, Louisiana, Mississippi, New Mexico and Utah...

On the orders of Gov. Greg Abbott, the Texas State Guard will monitor Jade Helm 15 from Camp Mabry in Austin, the state capital. So will at least one national group of unofficial monitors and protesters that calls itself Counter Jade Helm. It plans to have teams of volunteers follow Army vehicles and post their locations to its website. Army planners and local elected officials have been busy answering questions from apprehensive residents and holding briefings for the Sheriffs’ Association of Texas, the San Angelo Tea Party and county commissioners...

Much of the paranoia over Jade Helm 15 is the outgrowth of an anti-Obama sentiment that is widespread in Texas and parts of the Southwest.

“It stems from an absolute distrust with the Obama administration,” said Judge Stephen C. Floyd of Tom Green County, its top elected official. “I share a lot of their distrust of the Obama administration and their rule-making, but I have a great deal of confidence in the U.S. military.”

According to some right-wing bloggers and activists, the exercise is part of a secret plot by the Obama administration to impose martial law, confiscate firearms, invade red-state Texas or prepare for instituting “total population control.” A report on Infowars, a website operated by Alex Jones, a libertarian-leaning talk radio host from Texas, suggested Helm was an acronym for Homeland Eradication of Local Militants.

// posted by montag @ 1:35 PM 0 Comments

Merkel and her hardline finance minister, Wolfgang Schaeuble, drove a tough bargain at recent marathon negotiations, in line with Berlin's stated goal of defending the cause of fiscal rectitude.

But German commentators of all political stripes said they feared that Berlin's "bad cop" stance in Brussels had brought back "ugly German" stereotypes of rigid, brutal rule-enforcers.

"The German government destroyed seven decades of post-war diplomacy on a single weekend," news website Spiegel Online said.

"There is a fine line between saving and punishing Greece. This night the line has disappeared," tweeted Mathias Mueller von Blumencron of the conservative standard-bearer Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung as the details of the German-brokered austerity-for-aid deal emerged Sunday.

"Merkel managed to revive the image of the ugly, hard-hearted and stingy German that had just begun to fade," the center-left daily Sueddeutsche Zeitung wrote. "Every cent of aid to Greece that the Germans tried to save will have to be spent two and three times over in the coming years to polish that image again."...

Spiegel called the package that was finally hammered out a "catalogue of cruelties" that read like a "plan to humiliate Greece."

During the negotiations, two German comedians captured the mood, creating an Internet sensation with a viciously satirical video called "Our precious German euros.”

The pair mimic loud-mouthed wealthy Germans having a phone conversation in which they simply quote headlines from the powerful pro-Grexit daily Bild.

"I think we Germans should be asked if we want to keep paying!" shouts one. "Sell your islands, you broke Greeks... and the Acropolis too!" screams the other.

The sketch, which has already been viewed more than one million times on YouTube, ends with the tagline: "This summer, we Germans have a historic opportunity — not to behave like assholes for once."

// posted by montag @ 1:12 PM 0 Comments

A review of the 109-page text of the agreement, which includes five annexes, showed that the United States preserved – and in some cases extended – the nuclear restrictions it sketched out with Iran in early April in Lausanne, Switzerland.

Yet, it left open areas that are sure to raise fierce objections in Congress. It preserves Iran’s ability to produce as much nuclear fuel as it wishes after year 15 of the agreement, and allows it to conduct research on advanced centrifuges after the eighth year. Moreover, the Iranians won the eventual lifting of an embargo on the import and export of conventional arms and ballistic missiles – a step the departing chairman of the Joint Chiefs of staff, Gen. Martin E. Dempsey, warned about just last week.

American officials said the core of the agreement, secured in 18 consecutive days of talks here, lies in the restrictions on the amount of nuclear fuel that Iran can keep for the next 15 years. The current stockpile of low enriched uranium will be reduced by 98 percent, most likely by shipping much of it to Russia. That limit, combined with a two-thirds reduction in the number of its centrifuges, would extend to a year the amount of time it would take Iran to make enough material for a single bomb should it abandon the accord and race for a weapon — what officials call “breakout time.” By comparison, analysts say Iran now has a breakout time of two to three months.

// posted by montag @ 1:37 PM 0 Comments

But it wasn’t supposed to be that way, said Carmen Green, a Coatesville councilwoman who served her first term in the late 1990s when the city was soliciting offers from companies for its water system. At that time, Coatesville was experiencing a decreasing tax base resulting from high unemployment and poverty, and officials hoped the sale would generate substantial revenue.

The winning offer came from PAWC, a subsidiary of American Water, the largest investor-traded water company in America. PAWC offered Coatesville $38 million up front in exchange for the city’s water and wastewater assets, which were then owned by the City of Coatesville Authority. At first, Green said she opposed the sale.

“I was just very fearful of the water rates [increasing] and what that would do,” she said. “But as time went on and we began to explore the options, some of it made a lot of sense to me.”

As part of the deal, PAWC promised to modernize water and sewer infrastructure. Officials also hoped to invest money from the sale in a trust fund that would generate enough interest to support roughly 20 percent of the city’s annual expenses and limit tax increases. In the end, Green came around to the deal — but she says she had no inkling how much it would eventually cost Coatesville’s poor.

“We had no idea they would be seeking such a high rate increase. There’s no way that we knew that’s what their intentions were.”...

The supposedly untouchable Coatesville trust fund dwindled over the decade following the water deal with PAWC, as city officials pulled out money for what they saw as emergency needs. The first withdrawal came after a protracted legal fight between the city and the owner of a plot of land that officials wanted to seize for a new municipally owned golf course, which they believed would bring in revenue from out-of-town golfers. But the eminent-domain battle made current officials unpopular, and many were voted out of office by 2005. Carmen Green, who stepped down from the City Council in 2004, chalked up the expensive fight to bad timing and bad press...

By February 2010, after an epidemic of mysterious arsons in Coatesville left many homeless and resulted in millions of dollars in property damage, the City Council fired its city manager and named Wayne “Ted” Reed to the post. Reed had served as the executive director of the city’s water authority at the time of its sale to PAWC and then worked for the corporation as a business-development manager and manager of Coatesville customer accounts until he was selected to be city manager. Two months after Reed’s appointment, PAWC petitioned for the Pennsylvania Public Utility Commission to allow a 229 percent rate increase in wastewater bills for the eight townships served by Coatesville’s Regional Wastewater Plant, owned by PAWC.

Reed says the City Council was not concerned about his ties to the company and, in fact, selected him because its members hoped his connections could help Coatesville negotiate lower rates. After fielding complaints from parties concerned about high increases, the utility commission approved a 216 percent increase in wastewater rates for Coatesville residents, to be phased in over four years. Households in smaller townships served by the plant saw hikes of 197 percent, because they are charged as bulk customers rather than as individuals, as in Coatesville.

// posted by montag @ 1:57 PM 0 Comments

Leads all-out war on workers, but fails to generate jobs and higher wages: In recent months, Walker has intensified the assault on workers, the poor and most vulnerable with punitive new laws and provisions of his new two-year $73 billion state budget. Since taking office, Walker has been staging this relentless war on worker rights and wages, despite already-declining household incomes—especially sharp in Wisconsin-- and the shrinkage of union power.

• Walker’s attacks on union rights build upon his 2011 “Act 10” which simultaneously abolished almost all collective bargaining rights of public employees to union representation and drove down the take-home pay of public employees by over 10%. These attacks on public employees clearly carried a sub-text of white antagonism toward African-Americans and Latinos, argue professors Hannah Walker and Dylan Bennett because of minority workers’ concentration in the public sector and the economic anxieties of whites.

• This spring, Walker’s signed a new anti-union “right-to-work” bill—contradicting previous promise to labor leaders and the public—that will surely further weaken the already-limited bargaining power of private-sector unions. The aim of this bill, with deeply racist roots, is to drive union membership in Wisconsin to Southern-style microscopic levels.

• Walker’s new state budget severely weakens “prevailing wage” protections for construction workers on public projects, outright elimination of the living wage concept which had been central to setting the state’s minimum wage, and the erosion of tenure and layoff protections for UW faculty.

• Walker’s anti-worker attacks and lavish corporate subsidies handed out by his newly-privatized and scandal-wracked Wisconsin Economic Development Corporation have failed to produce the family-sustaining jobs long promised by Walker. WEDC has been involved in providing funds for major firms shipping family-supporting jobs to offshore sites, along with aiding major Walker donors.

• He also has attacked the ‘living wage’ concept in state law. The new budget eliminates entirely a requirement that the governor consider what constitutes a “living wage” in working to establish an appropriate minimum wage for Wisconsin. Wisconsin’s minimum wage in the Walker years has been stuck at the $7.25 federal-set level, while 29 states and numerous cities have enacted far higher minimums ranging as high as $15 an hour...

Undermining Wisconsin’s prized public education system. Public education in Wisconsin has ranked as among the best in nation, where it is widely viewed as a foundation of a democratic society. However, since in office, Walker has sliced funding for K-12 schools while consistently boosting funding and loosening standards for privatized voucher schools. He has also widened his attack by orchestrating a “hostile takeover” of powers held by the democratically elected Milwaukee Public School board, by usurping and transferring them to neo-liberal County Executive Chris Abele. He has also lowered the standards for teachers, with the new state budget eliminating qualification requirements for hiring teachers.

Walker hasn't stopped there, however. He's taken his anti-union agenda to the state university system, where he has tried to recast it as a narrow pathway serving ould-be employers and not a center of academic inquiry. He's tried to replace a century-long university mission of the search for truth and public service with a narrow, pro-corporate new vision of “providing state workforce needs.” While Walker initially claimed that he and his staff had no role in this proposal, media investigations showed the direct intervention of his staff in pushing the new budget language.

Walker also is imposing $250 million in budget cuts on the highly-esteemed University of Wisconsin system, ranked 19th best in the world. Other provisions call for virtually eliminating tenure and strengthening university administrators’ power over faculty, which is pandering to the long-held right-wing gripe that universities are hotbeds of liberal thought. Among the already-emerging results are older faculty seeking to flee UW and promising young professors steering clear of UW because there is no guarantee of tenure.

// posted by montag @ 1:20 PM 0 Comments