Wednesday, July 02, 2014
Teabaggers Choose A Criminal To Run For Atty. General
Republican attorney general nominee Ken Paxton has admitted he violated Texas securities regulations and been forced to pay a fine to the Texas State Securities Board. But that is not the end of Paxton’s legal problems. Ken Paxton’s actions are more than simply violations of the state securities rules—they are felonies under the Texas criminal code (Tex. Civ. Stat. Art. 581-29).
It is only a matter of time before Ken Paxton is prosecuted, convicted of felony securities fraud and facing a sentence of up to 10 years in prison (Tex. Penal Code Sec. 12.34).
More importantly, under Texas law, a convicted felon is ineligible to serve as attorney general (Tex. Elec. Code Sec. 141.001 (a)(4)).
Ken Paxton should do the honorable thing—immediately withdraw from the AG race, admit his felony violations and accept his punishment. But don’t count on that happening.
Ken Paxton has dug in and appears ready to take his party down with him.
Paxton’s Republican Primary opponent, Dan Branch, spent weeks trying to get GOP primary voters—and the press—to focus on Paxton’s corrupt actions. It didn’t work. Paxton beat Branch easily on the strength of overwhelming Tea Party support.
Here are just a few quotes from Branch’s campaign warning about Ken Paxton:
- “How can he be our state’s top law enforcement officer when he has a record of repeatedly violating our laws?” Dan Branch, TribTalk, 5/25/14
- “If Ken Paxton is on the 2014 Republican ticket, his admitted lawbreaking will be a blight on the party.” Branch spokesman, Enrique Marquez, Texas Tribune, 5/21/14
- “I’ve got an opponent who, with the securities law violations and ethics violations, is not only not qualified, but he’s disqualified himself.” Dan Branch, Dallas Morning News, 5/11/14
- “Texans deserve an Attorney General who will protect them, not prey upon them.” Dan Branch Facebook page, 4/21/14
Abbott’s Silence on Paxton Signals Weakness
As the GOP nominee for governor, Greg Abbott is the leader of his party. Abbott could either call on Paxton to resign his candidacy and urge prosecutors to move quickly against him—or somehow explain why Texas voters should elect an admitted criminal who is ineligible to serve as Texas AG.Instead, Abbott has done neither. He has shrunk from the moment, refusing to even comment.
Abbott’s cowardice—and his reliance on the leadership of others—was most obvious last week when information surfaced that Texas House Speaker Joe Straus may be working with the Travis County DA to prosecute Paxton in time for his removal from the ballot. Sources inside the State Capitol have told the Lone Star Project that Straus representatives—and perhaps Straus himself—have met with Travis County prosecutors and urged quick action against Paxton.
The Lone Star Project is currently seeking documents through state open records laws that confirm Straus’ actions.
Tuesday, July 01, 2014
Raising Minimum Wage Would Be Huge Boost To Economy
While the economy is no longer in recession (according to economists), the American economy is still very sluggish -- growing at a far smaller rate than the 3% GDP that signals a healthy economy. The question at this point is how to get the economy moving again -- creating new demand and new jobs.
The Republicans say the way to do it is to cut taxes for corporations. Frankly, that's laughable. No corporation pays anywhere near the top tax rate, regardless of how many billions they make in profit, and many corporations pay no taxes at all. The truth is that corporate America is already sitting on more than a trillion dollars (more than at any time in our past), and it is not increasing demand or creating new jobs. It is just sitting in corporate bank accounts, and that's just what any new tax cuts or subsidies would do.
So what would get the economy moving again -- raising demand and creating new jobs? President Obama and the Democrats want to pass a bill to repair our crumbling transportation infrastructure. That would create some new jobs and pump a bit of money into the economy. But there is something else that the Democrats want to do that would provide a huge boost to the economy -- raising the minimum wage from $7.25 an hour to $10.10 an hour.
I have said this many times on this blog, but I never showed just how big that boost to the economy would be -- so let's do a little math and figure it out.
The current minimum wage of $7.25 an hour comes out to about $15,080 a year (assuming a full-time worker works 52 weeks a year without missing any unpaid work time (like for being sick). A $10.10 an hour minimum wage would raise that yearly salary to about $21,008. That means a minimum wage worker would make an additional $5,928 a year -- and since they are barely subsisting on the current salary, it is very likely they would need to spend all of that new money.
According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, there are at least 1.6 million Americans working for the current minimum wage. Multiplying that 1.6 million times the $5,928 a year raise, we find that just the minimum wage workers would be spending an additional $9,484,800,000, or nearly $9.5 billion.
That's a huge boost in new spending circulating through the economy, and that's only considering those currently making minimum wage. Undoubtably, making of those now making less than that would also get some kind of raise, and those making just above the minimum wage would also have their salaries increased. In other words, that $9.5 billion in new spending would just be a minimum figure -- and the real figure in new spending would probably be substantially higher.
So we have a choice. We can keep the Republicans in power in the House -- and the best that would happen is more tax cuts for rich people and corporations (which would do nothing to get the economy moving or create jobs). Or we can vote a Democratic majority into the House -- and get a higher minimum wage (and probably a transportation bill in addition), pumping billions of new money into the economy (raising demand and creating new jobs).
The second option sounds far superior to me -- and that's why I'll be voting for Democrats this November.
Freedom (Thanks To 10th Circuit Court Of Appeals)
Supremes Say Corporate Rights Trumps Women's Rights
In a 5 to 4 vote, the conservatives on the Supreme Court have made a decision that should shame all Americans. They have decided that the religious rights of a corporation are more important than the rights of women who work for that corporation. They ruled that corporations like Hobby Lobby have the right to make sure the insurance they provide for employees doesn't contain anything that would offend the religious beliefs of the corporation's owners -- in this case many kinds of contraception, such as IUD's, the morning after pill, and some types of birth control pills.
The crazy part of this is that the corporation did not have to pay even a penny for that coverage of contraceptives. The insurance companies had taken that expense on themselves (since contraceptive coverage saved them money). But even though they didn't have to pay for that coverage (since their insurance would cost the same with or without contraceptive coverage), the company decided their religious views were offended and demanded that the insurance they provided for employees should not cover contraceptives for women.
I was not really surprised by this decision by the court's right-wingers. The right-wing in America seems determined to keep women as second-class citizens. They deny women the right to control their own bodies, to be paid equally for equal work, and now the right to have contraception covered by their employer-provided health insurance policy. The sad fact is that these same companies who deny contraception coverage are also the companies that pay poverty wages -- so that at least some women will be unable to pay for their own contraception.
The only good thing about this decision is that it doesn't seem to apply to publicly-owned corporations (but only to companies owned by an individual, a family, or a small group). And Hobby Lobby does say there are some forms of contraception they approve of (sponges, some types of pills, etc.) -- but there is nothing in this ruling that would keep them from deciding in the future that no form of contraception meets with their religious approval (or that could be decided by some other company).
This decision also puts health care rights on a slippery slope. If these companies can deny contraception in their policies, can other companies deny other health benefits based on religious beliefs -- like blood transfusions (or in the case of a company owned by a Christian Scientist, any kind of medical care other than prayer)?
This was a very bad court decision, and like the Citizens United decision, needs to be overturned. Courts have made bad decisions in the past (like the infamous Dred Scott decision) that was overturned by a better court. Hopefully this will happen.
Ruth Bader Ginsburg wrote the minority opinion. Here are some excerpts from her opinion:
Cuban-Americans Shifting Political Preference To Dems
For several elections now, the Republican Party has done very poorly among American Hispanics. In the 2012 election they got less than 30% of the Hispanic vote, and their refusal to mitigate their policies regarding immigration reform and minority rights continues to hamper their efforts to appeal for support among Hispanics.
There has been one bright spot among Hispanic voters for the GOP -- the Cuban-American community. Because of the right-wing hatred for the Castro government in Cuba, and the right-wing support for special immigration rights for Cubans (with Cubans entering the country illegally being allowed to stay and become citizens, while Hispanics from other countries are deported), the Cuban community has traditionally been big supporters of the Republican Party.
However, that is now changing. Many younger Cubans (born and raised in this country) now support an end to the embargo of Cuba, and want the government to normalize relations with Cuba -- and they identify more with other Hispanic-Americans than their elders did. This is causing a significant shift in the political preferences in the Cuban community.
Back in 2002, about 64% of Cuban-American registered voters said they were Republicans (or leaned toward the GOP), while only 22% identified with the Democratic Party. But in the last decade or so there has been a radical change in political preference. Now only 47% identify as Republican, while 44% identify as Democrats (which is a 22 point growth for Democrats, and a 17 point drop for Republicans).
This should worry Republicans (especially in Florida, the state with the largest community of Cuban-Americans), because it means they are losing the only segment of the Hispanic community that they could count on to be reliable Republican voters. And it means their voter percentage among Hispanics (the fastest growing segment of the U.S. population) could be even lower in 2014 than it was in 2012.
The chart above was made from information provided by the Pew Research Center.
Green Party Blames U.S. (And Britain) For Iraq Crisis
This current mess in Iraq is a direct result of actions taken by George Bush, Tony Blair, and sadly, Barack Obama. That is the opinion of the Green Party, and I agree with them. Bush and Blair lied to get the authority to invade and occupy Iraq -- convinced that they could force "democracy" on that country by military means. It was a ridiculous assumption and an utter failure. And President Obama compounded the situation by failing to immediately withdraw from Iraq, supporting the corrupt Maliki government, and now reengaging militarily in Iraq.
Here is the statement released on June 24th by Green Party Shadow Cabinet member Ajamu Baraka (pictured above). It is one of the best commentaries on our involvement in Iraq that I have read.
“The civilized have created the wretched, quite coldly and deliberately, and do not intend to change the status quo; are responsible for their slaughter and enslavement; rain down bombs on defenseless children whenever and wherever they decide that their “vital interests” are menaced, and think nothing of torturing a man to death; these people are not to be taken seriously when they speak of the “sanctity” of human life, or the conscience of civilized world.” (James Baldwin)
The human costs of the adventures of the U.S., EU/NATO and Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) axis of evil over the last decade have been enormous. In an all-too-familiar spectacle last week, the 500,000 human beings – men, women and children – who fled the war torn city of Mosul, joined the millions throughout the Middle East and worldwide whose lives have been turned into a living hell by the policies of a moribund Western elite who still believe that the world is their personal chess board and people and nations are disposable pawns to be used and discarded at will.
When Zbigniew Brzezinski, national security advisor under President Carter, formulated the plan to draw the Soviet Union into becoming more directly involved in Afghanistan by arming a force of anti-communist Islamic fundamentalists who would wage war on the secular and progressive nationalist government in that country, there was no consideration for the consequences of that decision for the people of Afghanistan or even for what would happen to those glorious anti-communist warriors once they were no longer needed. For Carter, Brzezinski, Reagan, the Bushes, Clinton and all of the servants of the capitalist elite, the value attached to the lives of non-Westerners has always had a utilitarian quality that was based on the degree to which they served or were in alignment with Western interests. And even when that was the case, those lives were only considered so long as they advanced the longer term interests of the West.
It is only as a result of the callous manipulations of the elites when they experience “blowback” in the form of a 9/11 attack or the uprising in Iraq that the reality of the “other” is recognized, but then only in the Fanonian sense that it is through the violent expressions of the “others” that the reality of their existence is acknowledged, though not their fundamental humanity.
Unfortunately, for the people of Iraq, the racist, colonialist fantasies of Bush, Rumsfeld and Cheney – who convinced themselves that the dignity of the Iraqi people was so thin that they would welcome foreign invaders as liberators – are once again being conjured with bizarre theories that U.S. airpower will somehow accomplish what thousands of ground forces were unable to do – defeat what is turning out to be a broad-based uprising among Sunnis, that includes the U.S. and GCC supported Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIS) – that has now evolved into a force with a significant degree of autonomy - against what they see as a neocolonial Shia dominated government put in place by U.S. occupation forces.
Republicans, many Democrats, and (once again) some confused segments of the U.S. left are calling for some kind of intervention to block what is being widely reported in the Western media as a foreign invasion by ISIS. While U.S. authorities make plans for some form of direct intervention, the people of Iraq are preparing themselves to once again be on the receiving end of a “humanitarian” war to save them from a situation that the U.S. created itself with the invasion in 2003 and the ill-fated attempt to dislodge al-Assad from the presidency in Syria.
The corporate capitalist airways are filled with the talking heads of empire who are disingenuously framing the rapid deterioration of the Iraqi government as the result of two factors: the decision not to force the Iraqi entity to enter into a status-of-forces agreement that would have allowed 10,000 soldiers to remain in the country; and the ineptitude of the al-Maliki government to properly manage the distorted state and obliterated society that the U.S. bestowed on the new government.
These private spokespersons, many of whom were the very same incompetents who developed and operationalized the criminal invasion in 2003, to a person have not discussed the three elements that really explain the current situation in Iraq – the 2003 invasion, the fact that the U.S. lost the war and was forced to retreat, and the predictable destabilization of Iraq as a consequence of arming Sunni extremists in Syria to overthrow the government of Bashir al-Assad.
On those first two elements, responsibility clearly rests with the war criminals of the Tony Blair and George W. Bush regimes. But on the last issue, the illegal arming and training of an insurgent force to undermine the sovereignty of an established state – that crime rests with President Barack Obama and his administration.
Democrats, including what is referred to as the “progressive” caucus, the Congressional Black Caucus and other caucus groups, along with the unprincipled and opportunist collection of Democratic party hacks at the Center for American Progress, the New American Foundation, Human Rights Watch and the other liberal and mainstream institutions and publications who gave direct or tacit support to the foolish Bush era strategy to destroy Syria, all place the blame for the “debacle” in Iraq on al-Maliki. And while many of these elements opposed the Bush attack on Iraq, the moral basis for their opposition to direct war by the U.S. in Iraq under a Republican president failed them in response to the indirect war waged on Syria by a Democrat president. In both cases, it was war that was unleashed, and in both cases outside the parameters of international law and in opposition to the wishes and interests of the vast majorities of the peoples of those nations.
The delusional declaration that the foreign armies of the U.S. would be greeted as liberators in Iraq has been as devastating as the equally delusional support for a “moderate” opposition that would collaborate with foreign sources to wage war on their fellow citizens. All of this was predicted. Many of us who opposed the arrogant and illegal destabilization plan for Syria did so from the perspective that not only would the plan result in massive loss of life in Syria, but that its effect would inflame the entire region, especially since it was clear that the strategy was to sectarianize the battle in Syria. Even reports and analyses from publications on the right to more moderate and centrist publications like The National Interest recognized that the dangerous and incoherent policies in Syria were going to destabilize the entire region.
And even though for many of us the strategic necessity for opposing the machinations of the U.S., NATO and their GCC client-states in Syria was clear, the confused liberal left faced an ideological and political conundrum: While most opposed the illegal war on Iraq, they nevertheless surrendered to national and racial chauvinism and gave ideological and political support to the illegal war waged against Syria. But now, with the predictable result that the war in Syria has created conditions and a political argument for the militarists in favor of a military return to Iraq, the liberal/left is finding it hard to formulate a coherent let alone morally and politically consistent position on the issue of U.S. military involvement in Iraq.
In light of the fact that policies operationalized over the last six year are responsible for the increased violence and destabilization in the region, the blame Bush position expressed by the defenders’ of Obama’s policy options in Iraq and the ongoing violence and chaos in the Middle-East is unconvincing.
These defenders of Obama are unable to accept that historically when reference is made to the criminal activities associated with the last gasps of empire in the Middle East, Obama’s policies and Obama himself will be linked to the infamous cast of war criminals alongside Tony Blair and George W. Bush – company that he has earned along with a legacy that will forever tarnish his presidency. But he will not be alone, with the blood that is flowing and will flow in Iraq and Syria, the hands of Democratic party operatives and their supporters who collaborated with U.S. power will also be stained with the blood of innocents.
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