Money in Politics

Money in Politics in 2013: The Crucial Stories You May Have Missed

 

by Paul Blumenthal

 

The year after a presidential election, fewer people focus on campaign finance issues, but 2013 was well worth your attention. There were financial scandals, a new Supreme Court case, laws rewritten and the anticipation of more money than ever before. Below are 10 of the biggest campaign finance stories of the year.

10. Big money took over North Carolina. Gov. Pat McCrory (R) won election in late 2012 with huge support from the political network funded by wealthy conservative activist Art Pope and immediately announced that Pope would be his budget director. In the ensuing year, the state enacted highly divisive right-wing legislation along the lines long proposed by Pope’s outside network of think tanks and political organizations. North Carolina became example number one of how a single donor can influence the political direction of an entire state in the post-Citizens United world.

9. Get ready for the most expensive midterm election ever. More than $815 million has been raised or spent on the 2014 midterm elections and 2013 special elections already. Spending by independent groups like super PACs and “dark money” nonprofits is ahead of the 2012 pace, when these groups laid out nearly $1 billion.

Next year’s Kentucky Senate race, pitting Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R) against both a tea party primary challenger and a very well-financed Democratic candidate, is also well ahead of the fundraising pace set by the two most expensive Senate campaigns in history. The 2012 Massachusetts race cost candidates Scott Brown and Elizabeth Warren a combined $82 million, and the 2000 New York race between Hillary Clinton and Rick Lazio topped $70 million. The Kentucky candidates have raised nearly $20 million and that’s just through September 2013.

8. Are Democrats winning the super PAC war? Just one year after conservative independent groups outspent liberal groups 2.5 to 1, the spending pattern has reversed. Liberal independent groups doled out $16.5 million in 2013, compared to $9 million from conservative groups, and liberal super PACs outraised their conservative counterparts 2 to 1 in the first half of the year.

These numbers, however, are somewhat deceiving. Most of the money was spent in special elections that were highly favorable to Democrats, so major conservative groups sat out those contests. The financial comparison also does not account for “issue” advertising that masks an electoral purpose. Conservative groups have already spent millions on this form of independent spending that doesn’t have to be disclosed to the Federal Election Commission.

7. OFA turned into a dark money nonprofit. Following another successful electoral campaign, the Obama for America machinery, with its troves of data desired by practically every Democratic candidate in the country, sought a new home. The group transformed itself into the 501(c)(4) nonprofit Organizing for Action, the exact type of dark money group that the president had lambasted during his 2012 reelection.

It may have become a bit trite, even if true, to mock the president for his repeated hypocrisy on the issue, but the transformation of his campaign organization into a nonprofit relying on voluntary disclosure — the group does disclose its donors, but only as it sees fit – solidified that hypocrisy for many advocates of openness and campaign finance reform.

6. Obama bundlers were nominated to be ambassadors. Again, after promising to change the culture of Washington, President Barack Obama continued the tried and true practice of nominating his biggest campaign fundraisers to jobs as overseas diplomats. According to the Center for Public Integrity, Obama has nominated 23 campaign bundlers for ambassadorships since January.

The American Foreign Service Association, which represents active and retired Foreign Service officers, has called for an end to this practice: “Now is the time to end the spoils system and the de facto ‘three-year rental’ of ambassadorships. The United States is alone in this practice; no other major democracy routinely appoints non-diplomats to serve as envoys to other countries.”

5. California officials tore back the curtain on dark money in their state. The state’s investigation into an $11 million contribution to a ballot campaign committee late in 2012 revealed the inner workings of the dark-money nonprofit network connected to the billionaire Koch brothers. Due to poorly redacted documents released during the investigation, many of the original donors were uncovered, including the owners of the Gap clothing brand, investor Charles Schwab, casino billionaire Sheldon Adelson and real estate developer Eli Broad, who had publicly supported the ballot initiative even as his money funded the opposition.

The success of the inquiry propelled Ann Ravel, then head of the California Fair Political Practices Commission, into the vice chairmanship of the FEC.

4. The Republican Party faces civil strife. This tea party vs. big business battle is apparently a real thing. The US Chamber of Commerce plans to dump $50 million into supporting primary candidates from the GOP’s establishment wing — even if those candidates don’t differ much on policy from the tea partiers they oppose.

The key contests to watch are the Senate primary races in Kentucky, Mississippi, Nebraska, South Carolina and West Virginia and the House primaries in Michigan’s 3rd and 11th districts and Idaho’s 2nd District.

3. The Supreme Court debates maybe the next Citizens United. In October, the justices heard arguments on another potentially groundbreaking campaign finance case, McCutcheon v. FEC — this time challenging the aggregate contribution limits that restrict overall giving by an individual donor.

Following the 2010 Citizens United decision, which upended politics by freeing independent groups to spend unlimited sums of money, including corporate and union funds, campaign finance cases have been watched very closely. Some observers have even worried that the Supreme Court could use the McCutcheon case to roll back all contribution limits, although legal experts consider this unlikely.

A ruling in favor of plaintiff Shaun McCutcheon would free the wealthiest donors to give millions more to candidates and political parties than they give now. An end to aggregate limits could also allow a political party’s multiple committees to evade ordinary contribution limits by shifting money amongst each other. The Huffington Post has previously written about the dozens of donors who broke the aggregate limits in 2012 and showed how Mitt Romney’s presidential campaign used state party committees to evade those limits.

2. IRS scandal led to proposed clearer rules for nonprofits. If you think the public relations rollout for Obamacare has been bad, remember how the Internal Revenue Service slowly admitted that it had improperly targeted conservative groups for heightened review. After repeatedly denying any such misdeed, IRS official Lois Lerner apologized for doing precisely that in response to a planted question at a meeting of nonprofit tax lawyers. Months of howling by conservatives and hours of congressional testimony ensued until it was revealed that the IRS had targeted not just conservative groups but also liberal groups and other nonpolitical organizations.

The scandal did bring about greater scrutiny of the agency’s oversight of political groups, particularly dark money nonprofits that aren’t required to disclose their donors. These groups have proliferated over the last several years following the Supreme Court’s rulings in FEC v. Wisconsin Right to Life and the Citizens United case. In November, the IRS proposed new regulations for political activity by such nonprofits. The draft regulations, which were criticized from all sides, will take months, if not years, to wend their way through the regulatory process. Nonetheless, they mark a step toward greater transparency for political spending by nonprofits and, potentially, less abuse of the nonprofit tax code to hide donors’ identities.

1. States raised contribution limits. After the Citizens United ruling, proposals were put forward across the country to increase disclosure, rein in rampant independent spending and pass constitutional amendments to reverse the decision. The most popular idea — among politicians, at least — was to increase the amount of money they can raise to even the playing field.

Nine states — Alabama, Arizona, Connecticut, Florida, Maryland, Michigan, Minnesota, North Carolina and Wyoming – increased their campaign contribution limits in 2013. The feat was accomplished by state legislatures run both by Republicans and by Democrats.

Minnesota state Rep. Ryan Winkler (D) told The Huffington Post earlier this year, “Increasing the money flowing directly through candidates from individuals is a better system. It might not be a perfect world, but we have to live in the world that the Supreme Court created for us and do the best we can.”

The multiple bills to raise contribution limits highlight the gulf between the public, which sees far too much money in politics and supports the reversal of Citizens United, and the lawmakers, who simply want as much money as the independent groups empowered by that decision. Expect even more states to adopt hike their limits in the coming years.

NAFTA

Report: NAFTA Turns 20

 

by Dave Johnson

The report compares the promises with which NAFTA was sold with the results we can measure 20 years later.

NAFTA was not just a “trade” agreement. Trade agreements focus on cutting tariffs and easing quotas and barriers to goods moving across borders. The report points out that NAFTA was much more, giving corporations special rights, incentivizing offshoring and limiting regulation. As the report puts it:

“NAFTA created new privileges and protections for foreign investors that incentivized the offshoring of investment and jobs by eliminating many of the risks normally associated with moving production to low-wage countries. NAFTA allowed foreign investors to directly challenge before foreign tribunals domestic policies and actions, demanding government compensation for policies that they claimed undermined their expected future profits. NAFTA also contained chapters that required the three countries to limit regulation of services, such as trucking and banking; extend medicine patent monopolies; limit food and product safety standards and border inspection; and waive domestic procurement preferences, such as Buy American.”

Some of the effects of NAFTA that are highlighted in the report include:

• a $181 billion US trade deficit with NAFTA partners Mexico and Canada,
• one million net US jobs lost because of NAFTA,
• a doubling of immigration from Mexico,
• larger agricultural trade deficits with Mexico and Canada,
• more than $360 million paid to corporations after “investor-state” tribunal attacks on, and rollbacks of, domestic public interest policies.

The data also show how post-NAFTA trade and investment trends have contributed to:

• middle-class pay cuts, which in turn contributed to growing income inequality,
• US trade deficit growth that is 45 percent higher with Mexico and Canada than with countries not party to a US Free Trade Agreement,
• US manufacturing and services exports to Canada and Mexico growing at less than half the pre-NAFTA rate.

The report lists and details many, many more such outcomes.

“NAFTA’s actual outcomes prove how damaging this type of agreement is for most people, that it should be renegotiated and why we cannot have any more such deals that include job-offshoring incentives, requirements we import food that doesn’t meet our safety standards or new rights for firms to get taxpayer compensation before foreign tribunals over laws they don’t like,” said Lori Wallach, director of Public Citizen’s Global Trade Watch.

The report also points out that the public “gets it” that NAFTA hurt the country.

“According to a 2012 Angus Reid Public Opinion poll, 53 percent of Americans believe the United States should “do whatever is necessary” to “renegotiate” or “leave” NAFTA, while only 15 percent believe the United States should “continue to be a member of NAFTA.”

See the report here:
http://www.citizen.org/documents/NAFTA-at-20.pdf

Solar flares

The sun ushered out 2013 and welcomed 2014 with two mid-level flares on Dec. 31, 2013 and Jan. 1, 2014. Solar flares are powerful bursts of radiation. Harmful radiation from a flare cannot pass through Earth's atmosphere to physically affect humans on the ground, however -- when intense enough -- they can disturb the atmosphere in the layer where GPS and communications signals travel. This disrupts the radio signals for as long as the flare is ongoing, anywhere from minutes to hours.

The first flare  was categorized as an M6.4 and it peaked at 4:58 p.m EST on Dec. 31. The second was categorized as an M9.9 and peaked at 1:52 p.m. EST on Jan. 1. Both flares emerged from the same active region on the sun, AR1936.

Americanized Labor

Americanized Labor Policy Is Spreading in Europe

By EDUARDO PORTER

In 2008, 1.9 million Portuguese workers in the private sector were covered by collective bargaining agreements. Last year, the number was down to 300,000.

Spain has eased restrictions on collective layoffs and unfair dismissal, and softened limits on extending temporary work, allowing workers to be kept on fixed-term contracts for up to four years. Ireland and Portugal have frozen the minimum wage, while Greece has cut it by nearly a fourth. This is what is known in Europe as “internal devaluation.”
      

Tethered to the euro and thus unable to devalue their currency to help make their goods less expensive in export markets, many European countries — especially those along the Continent’s southern rim that have been hammered by the financial crisis — have been furiously dismantling workplace protections in a bid to reduce the cost of labor.

      

The rationale — forcefully articulated by the German government of Angela Merkel, the European Commission and somewhat less enthusiastically by the International Monetary Fund — is that this is the only strategy available to restore competitiveness, increase employment and recover solvency.

These policy moves are radically changing the nature of Europe’s society.

      

“The speed of change has certainly been very fast,” said Raymond Torres, the chief economist of the International Labor Organization in Geneva. “As far as I can tell, these are the most significant changes since World War II.”

      

While most of the debate over Europe’s response to the financial crisis has focused on the budget austerity enveloping the Continent, the comparatively unheralded erosion of worker protection is likely to have at least as big and lasting an impact on Europe’s social contract.

      

“It has a disastrous effect on social cohesion and a tremendous effect on inequality,” argued Jean-Paul Fitoussi, an economics professor at the Institut d’Études Politiques de Paris. “Well-being has fallen all across Europe. One symptom is the rise of extremist political parties.”

      

Europe’s strategy offers a test of the role played by labor market institutions — from unions to the minimum wage — in moderating the soaring income inequality that has become one of the hallmarks of our era.

      

Inequality across much of Europe has widened, but it is still quite modest when compared with the vast income gap in the United States.

      

The question is whether relative equity can hold as workplace institutions that for decades protected European employees’ standard of living give way to a more lightly regulated, American-style approach, where the government hardly interferes in the job market and organized labor has little say.

The evidence so far suggests the answer is no. The drop in unionization in Portugal “is going to blow the wage distribution apart,” David Card, a labor economist at the University of California, Berkeley, said.

      

Perhaps the most compelling evidence that Europe’s tentative new path will lead to deepening inequality comes from the country that adopted the strategy earliest and came out at the other end a paragon of success: Germany.

      

The overhaul of the labor market started after German unification in the early 1990s, when factories in the less-productive Eastern part of the country found they could not compete at the pay scales provided in the West, and defected en masse from the sector agreements negotiated between industry associations and large unions. West German firms soon took up the strategy. The share of workers covered by collective labor agreements fell.

      

In the early 2000s — when a hobbled Germany won the moniker “sick man of Europe” — efforts to improve competitiveness and employment further eroded worker protections, fueling a boom in low-paid, short-term “mini-jobs” that today account for more than a fifth of German employment.

      

Today, Germany is seen as a shining example of the virtues of such reform efforts. It is an exporting powerhouse with an unemployment rate, according to the European statistical agency Eurostat, of 5.2 percent: the envy of the Western world. But on closer inspection it becomes apparent that not all Germans have benefited from Germany’s success.

      

In 1991, the richest 10 percent of Germans took in 26 percent of the nation’s income before taxes and transfers, according to a report by Kai Daniel Schmid and Ulrike Stein of the Macroeconomic Policy Institute in Düsseldorf, which is closely linked to the German Confederation of Trade Unions. By 2010 they took in 31 percent.

      

Over the same period, the slice of the nation’s income taken by the bottom half of the population fell to 17 percent, from 22 percent.

      

As Professor Card has noted, the widening of the wage gap among German men from 1996 through 2009 roughly matches that in the United States during the 1980s — one of the periods of fastest-growing income inequality since the Gilded Age.

      

And though inequality in Germany has abated somewhat over the last two years as the number of part-time, low-wage jobs has stabilized, it remains much higher than a decade ago.

      

Whether Germany’s strategy will be of any use to distressed European countries today is hotly debated. German exports did take off, but domestic demand sagged, a direct consequence, critics say, of lower pay. So it took a long time for the efforts to produce jobs.

 

What’s more, the German rebound relied on a fast-growing global economy that was hungry for its exports. The world is very different today. “Demand from Asia was much more important than mini-jobs,” Mr. Torres of the I.L.O. argues.

 

But there is another issue at play. Even if the strategy were to eventually increase employment, what else will it do to Europe?

      

Andrew Watt, an economist who heads the Macroeconomic Policy Institute in Germany, worries that the push for labor market deregulation will cascade from one weak country to the next, as all engage in a futile race to create jobs by gaining market share from one another in a world of insufficient demand. “Whichever country is weakest at the time is forced into major cutbacks. First Germany, now Spain, next France,” he said.

      

“I am concerned about the longer-run costs,” Mr. Watt added. “It is hard to rebuild collective bargaining and welfare-state structures once they have been destroyed.”

      

Lowell Turner, who heads the Worker Institute at Cornell University, argues that there has always been a tension between the European Union’s economic project — centered on creating a vast single market — and the Continent’s deep-rooted commitment to social equity. The crisis put a thumb on the scales. “For a year or two governments protected their workers,” he said. But “the balance has tipped away from social Europe.”

      

There are signs of change, though. German elections earlier this year forced the Christian Democratic Union of Chancellor Merkel into a governing coalition with the Social Democratic Party. Part of the deal to form a government included introducing Germany’s first minimum wage, at 8.5 euros an hour, or about $11.50.

      

Lifting German wages at the bottom end should help other European countries to some extent, expanding German demand for their products. It is perhaps overly optimistic, though, to assume Berlin would welcome similar policies among its poorer, weaker neighbors.

      

Rather, labor markets in Southern Europe seem destined to increasingly follow the American way. “This is a way to, indeed, make Europe very much more like the U.S.,” Mr. Watt said. “With respect, that is not what most Europeans want.”

Stunning

Stunning new report undermines central GOP Obamacare claim

By George Zornick

A crucial GOP line of attack against the Affordable Care Act (ACA) is that millions of people will supposedly lose coverage thanks to shifting requirements on the health insurance exchanges — a flagrant violation of President Obama’s infamous “if you like your plan, you can keep it” proclamation. The truth has always been more complicated, of course. Republicans are constantly blurring the line between people who lose a plan and people who lose coverage. That is, many people might lose a particular insurance plan but immediately be presented with other options.

Now, a new report from the minority staff of the House Committee on Energy and Commerce has destroyed the foundation of that particular GOP claim. It projects that only 10,000 people will lose coverage because of the ACA and be unable to regain it — or in other words, 0.2 percent of the oft-cited 5 million cancellations statistic.

The report starts with an assumption that 4.7 million will receive cancellation notices about their 2013 plan. (Notably it doesn’t endorse that figure, just takes it on for the sake of argument.) But of those, who will get a new plan?

• According to the report, half of the 4.7 million will have the option to renew their 2013 plans, thanks to an administrative fix this year.
• Of the remaining 2.35 million individuals, 1.4 million should be eligible for tax credits through the marketplaces or Medicaid, according to the report.
• Of the remaining 950,000 individuals, fewer than 10,000 people in 18 counties will lack access to an affordable catastrophic plan.

“This new report shows that people will get the health insurance coverage they need, contrary to the dire predictions of Republicans,” said Rep. Henry Waxman (D-Calif.), the ranking committee member. “Millions of American families are already benefiting from the law.”

The report is somewhat speculative, of course, since there is no central repository of data on the individual health insurance market. But the methods are clear, and the onus is now on Republicans to explain why it isn’t true.

As we’ve noted, Republicans have had an awful hard time finding people who completely lost coverage because of the ACA. (Think of the man who starred in Americans for Prosperity ads last week and whose story still hasn’t been fully explained.) Perhaps it’s because there just aren’t that many of them.

Of course, there’s no doubt that for those 10,000 people, the health-care law left them worse off than before. And by no means is the rocky political ride over for Democrats — back-end problems still present a serious threat to implementation. But as is sadly too often the case, the arguments made by Republicans simply lack a firm factual basis — and deserve much more scrutiny that they’ve received in many sectors of the mainstream press.

Unemployment

1.3 Million People Lost Unemployment Benefits. It Could Get Ugly

By Joshua Green

When Congress reconvenes on Jan. 6, one of the first issues it will take up is whether to renew an emergency federal unemployment program that expired on Dec. 28, cutting off 1.3 million jobless workers. Enacted in 2008 at the start of the recession, it provided up to 47 weeks of benefits for those still looking for work when their state unemployment benefits ran out. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid says he’ll try to pass a temporary extension, but most Republicans have balked at the $25 billion-a-year cost. If the program isn’t revived, the impact could be significant—not just for the 1.3 million people losing a vital lifeline but on the broader economy.

How will these workers fare? One place to look for answers is North Carolina. Last February, at the behest of the business community, Republican Governor Pat McCrory signed a bill cutting the amount and duration of state jobless benefits, even though North Carolina’s unemployment rate ranked among the highest in the country. The state had exhausted its unemployment trust fund, paid for by business taxes, and had borrowed $2.5 billion from the federal government to pay jobless claims. “We’re going to pay down that debt, make the system solvent, and provide an economic climate that allows businesses, large and small, to put people back to work,” McCrory said at the time. When the new law took effect on July 1, the maximum weekly benefit fell from $535 to $350 and its duration fell to between 12 and 20 weeks (depending on the state’s unemployment rate) from 26 weeks—the standard in most other states.

That was only half the blow. Reducing state benefits violated the terms of the federal program—which is intended to supplement, not replace, state aid—so workers in North Carolina were also disqualified from receiving federal benefits. In essence, the state’s experience over the last six months is a harbinger of what may be in store for the rest of the country. “This doesn’t have to be a thought experiment, because you can just look at what’s happened in North Carolina,” says Aaron Chatterji, an economist at Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business. “The 1.3 million people losing their benefits are going to be in the same position as the 170,000 people here who have lost theirs.”

At first glance, the effect appears to be positive. North Carolina’s unemployment rate dropped dramatically, from 8.8 percent to 7.4 percent between July and November. By comparison, the national unemployment rate fell by 0.6 percent over the same period. A closer look, however, suggests that North Carolina’s unemployment numbers have fallen not because the long-term jobless have found work but because they’ve quit looking altogether. As a result, the state no longer counts them as unemployed.

“The decline in the unemployment rate gives you a very limited view of what’s going on in our labor market,” says John Quinterno, founder of South by North Strategies, an economic research firm in Chapel Hill, N.C. “Year over year, the number of employed people in North Carolina ticked up by 6,082, while the unemployed fell by 101,901. That means the labor force contracted by 95,009. So the improvement has not necessarily been driven by more people going to work and is actually being driven to a large degree by people leaving the labor force.” In October the state’s labor force participation rate hit a 37-year low. One benefit of unemployment insurance is that “it has an anchoring effect,” says Quinterno, “because you have to be looking for work” to qualify for benefits.

Though the job market hasn’t fully recovered from the recession, many Republicans believe extending jobless benefits saps workers’ motivation to seek employment or accept positions they deem less than ideal. “I do support unemployment benefits for the 26 weeks that they’re paid for,” Kentucky Senator Rand Paul said on Fox News on Dec. 8. “Beyond that, you do a disservice to these workers. When you allow people to be on unemployment insurance for 99 weeks, you’re causing them to become part of this perpetual unemployed group.”

Economic research has shown that some job seekers do become less selective about the jobs they’re willing to take once their unemployment insurance expires—the so-called “employment effect.” There’s evidence this may be occurring in North Carolina. A Dec. 20 note from JPMorgan Chase’s chief U.S. economist, Michael Feroli, pointed out that the state’s employment growth has outpaced national growth since July. Yet he also noted that labor force participation has fallen much faster than it has nationally. “In this case,” he concluded, “it would appear both channels are operative but the participation effect may be more important.”

It’s hard to draw firm conclusions from limited data. But if the expiration of jobless benefits is prompting large numbers of North Carolinians to give up looking for work, it would augur poorly for the state’s economy and the country’s, too. Working-age Americans who can’t find gainful employment represent lost economic value and unmet U.S. growth potential. While some may settle for part-time work, others will try to qualify for disability. Long stretches of unemployment reduce the likelihood of finding a job, as skills and connections atrophy.

As people cycle in and out of the unemployment system this year, an additional 3.6 million workers will lose access to benefits if federal insurance isn’t restored, according to a December report by the White House Council of Economic Advisers. That’s a lot of misery and squandered economic potential. It’s also why “the Tar Heel test tube,” as Feroli has dubbed it, is worth paying attention to. Says Chatterji, “The statistics are so dramatic.”

Blocks Implementation

Justice Sotomayor Blocks Implementation Of Obamacare's Contraception Mandate

By JESSE J. HOLLAND

The Supreme Court has thrown a hitch into President Barack Obama's new health care law by blocking a requirement that some religion-affiliated organizations provide health insurance that includes birth control.

Justice Sonia Sotomayor late Tuesday night decided to block implementation of the contraceptive coverage requirement, only hours before the law's insurance coverage went into effect on New Year's Day.

Her decision, which came after federal court filings by Catholic-affiliated groups from around the nation in hopes of delaying the requirements, throws a part of the president's signature law into temporary disarray. At least one federal appeals court agreed with Sotomayor, issuing its own stay against part of the Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare.

The White House on Wednesday issued a statement saying that the administration is confident that its rules "strike the balance of providing women with free contraceptive coverage while preventing non-profit religious organizations with religious objections to contraceptive coverage from having to contract, arrange, pay, or refer for such coverage."

Sotomayor acted on a request from an organization of Catholic nuns in Denver, the Little Sisters of the Poor Home for the Aged. Its request for an emergency stay had been denied earlier in the day by a federal appeals court.

The government is "temporarily enjoined from enforcing against applicants the contraceptive coverage requirements imposed by the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act," Sotomayor said in the order.

Sotomayor, who was in New York Tuesday night to lead the final 60-second countdown and push the ceremonial button to signal the descent of the Times Square New Year's Eve ball, gave government officials until 10 a.m. EST Friday to respond to her order. A decision on whether to make the temporary injunction permanent or dissolve it likely won't be made before then.

"The government has lots of ways to deliver contraceptives to people," said Mark Rienzi, a lawyer for the nuns. "It doesn't need to force nuns to participate."

Under the health care law, most health insurance plans have to cover all FDA-approved contraceptives as preventive care for women. That means the coverage is provided free of charge.
Churches and other houses of worship are exempt from the birth control requirement, but affiliated institutions that serve the general public are not. That includes charitable organizations, universities and hospitals.

The requirement prompted an outcry from religious groups, which led the administration to try to craft a compromise. Under that compromise, insurers or health plan administrators must provide birth control coverage, and the religious institution itself is not responsible.

But the administration's compromise did not satisfy some critics, who called it a fig leaf.
The nuns would have to sign a form authorizing their insurance company to provide contraceptive coverage, which would still violate their beliefs, Rienzi said.

"Without an emergency injunction, Mother Provincial Loraine Marie Maguire has to decide between two courses of action: (a) sign and submit a self-certification form, thereby violating her religious beliefs; or (b) refuse to sign the form and pay ruinous fines," Rienzi said.

The Little Sisters operate homes for the elderly poor in the United States and around the world. They were joined in their lawsuit by religious health benefit providers, Christian Brothers Services and Christian Brothers Employee Benefits Trust.

Sotomayor's decision to delay the contraceptive portion of the law was joined by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, which also issued an emergency stay for Catholic-affiliated groups challenging the contraceptive provision, including the Archdiocese of Washington, D.C., and Catholic University.

But one judge on the three-judge panel that made the decision, Judge David S. Tatel, said he would have denied their motion.

"Because I believe that appellants are unlikely to prevail on their claim that the challenged provision imposes a 'substantial burden' under the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, I would deny their application for an injunction pending appeal," Tatel said.

The archdiocese praised the appeals court's action in a statement.

"This action by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit is in line with the rulings of courts all across the country which have held that the HHS mandate imposes a substantial and impermissible burden on the free exercise of religion," the archdiocese said. "These decisions also vindicate the pledge of the U.S. Catholic bishops to stand united in resolute defense of the first and most sacred freedom — religious liberty."

The Supreme Court already has decided to rule on whether businesses may use religious objections to escape a requirement to cover birth control for employees. That case, which involves Hobby Lobby Inc., an Oklahoma City-based arts and crafts chain with 13,000 full-time employees, is expected to be argued in March and decided by summer.

Reforms

Five Much-Needed Reforms That Could Make Our Politics Matter Again

 

by John Nichols

“We have frequently printed the word Democracy. Yet I cannot too often repeat, that it is a word the real gist of which still sleeps, quite unawakened,” wrote Walt Whitman in Democratic Vistas. “It is a great word, whose history, I suppose, remains unwritten, because that history has yet to be enacted.”
Whitman penned his essay on the American experiment in 1871. And there has been much progress since. Yet, there is much history yet to be enacted.

So why not make 2014 historic?

Why not assert a progressive politics that is more vital and determined than what has been known to this point?

Why not stop reacting and start asserting a real reform agenda?

Here are five steps in that direction:

1. Demand a Right to Vote for all Americans.
The last decade has seen a steady assault on voting rights in the United States, with restrictive voter ID laws, changes in early-voting and same-day registration rules and, in 2013, a US Supreme Court ruling that Congressman John Lewis (D-GA) said “stuck a dagger into the heart of the Voting Rights Act of 1965.” The Department of Justice and key members of the House and Senate have taken steps to counter the assault at the federal level, and state-based efforts such as North Carolina’s “Moral Monday” movement are pushing back. These efforts are vital.

But voting rights are too precious to be left to chance. They need to be defined and defended permanently. That’s why Congressmen Keith Ellison (D-MN) and Mark Pocan (D-WI) have proposed a constitutional amendment to explicitly guarantee that every American has a right to vote and a right to have that vote counted. “The right to vote is too important to be left unprotected,” says Pocan.

Groups such as Color of Change and FairVote agree. They’re campaigning to get cosponsors for the proposal by Ellison and Pocan. So far, 20 members have joined their effort. In 2014, it’s important to pressure sitting members of Congress to sign on, and to make candidates for Congress take a stand on whether they believe Americans have a right to vote.

2. Get More States on Record for Real Reform of Elections.
Sixteen states have formally petitioned Congress to enact a constitutional amendment to overturn the US Supreme Court’s Citizens United ruling — which frees corporations to spend as much as they choose to influence elections, and which continued a process of striking down federal, state and local campaign-finance reforms. These states have formally recognized that votes should define the electoral process, not dollars. Groups such as Free Speech for People, Move to Amend, Public Citizen, Common Cause and People for the American Way have made tremendous progress at the local and state levels — working with limited resources and shamefully scant media coverage.

They’ve won support from Democrats, Republicans and independents in state legislatures across the country, and they’ve organized and won statewide and local referendum votes. “In just three years since the Supreme Court’s Citizens United ruling, we have come one third of the way to amending the US Constitution to reclaim our democracy and to ensure that people, not corporations, shall govern in America,” says John Bonifaz, co-founder and executive director of Free Speech For People.

But there is still much work to do. The real “critical mass” moment will not come until current numbers double and the movement is in range of the number of states that would be required to approve an amendment: 38. Roughly 100 House members have sponsored or cosponsored amendment proposals, as have key senators such as Vermont independent Bernie Sanders and Ohio Democrat Sherrod Brown. Getting more states to formally demand action will cause more congressional buy-in for this necessary reform.

“Amending our country’s constitution should be difficult,” says Marge Baker, executive vice president of People For the American Way. “But this isn’t the first time Americans have encountered a serious problem that needs a serious solution. Citizens United and other cases that paved the way for big money to flood our elections have given us one of those moments. As more states and elected officials go on record in support of an amendment, the clearer it becomes that the American people will not stand to have their voices overpowered by wealthy special interests.”

3. Vote for a Raise
Senator Bernie Sanders is right when he says of the current federal minimum wage of $7.25 an hour, “Most people understand that is a starvation wage. Individuals can’t live on it, families can’t live on it.” Working with the ranking Democrat on the House Education and Workforce Committee, California Democrat George Miller, and Senate Education, Health, Labor and Pensions Committee chair Tom Harkin (D-IA), Sanders is pushing for Congress to raise the federal minimum wage to $10.10 an hour and index future increases to the rate of inflation. That’s a good start, but it’s a tall order in the face of determined opposition in the Republican-controlled US House.

But the circumstances of millions of American workers can be improved even if Congress fails to act in 2014. In November 2013, New Jersey voters hiked that state’s minimum wage to $9 an hour and indexed future increases to the inflation rate. And in Sea-Tac, Washington, voters took the local minimum wage to $15 an hour. With the election of Kshama Sawant, a socialist who ran on the $15 wage issue, to the Seattle city council, there is now a major push in that city for a major wage hike. If Seattle votes on a $15-an-hour wage referendum this fall, it will be as part of a pattern of critical state and local initiatives — from Alaska to Arkansas to New Mexico to South Dakota — that are designed to allow Americans to vote themselves a raise.

4. Vote for Equal Rights
The Equal Rights Amendment struggle of the 1970s and early 1980s was an intense, inspiring and heartbreaking fight to finally guarantee equal rights for women. A massive right-wing pushback prevented the project from succeeding at the time — although it opened up debates that would lead to significant progress on a number of legislative fronts. In recent years, there has been something of an ERA renaissance. Three years ago, on the 100th Anniversary of International Women’s Day, then-Congresswoman Tammy Baldwin (D-WI) proposed legislation to eliminate the congressionally imposed deadline for ratification of the Equal Rights Amendment. And in February 2013, the New Mexico state House of Representatives formally asked Congress to lift the deadline for ERA ratification. At the same time, new versions of the amendment have been introduced.

Beyond Washington, 21 state constitutions embrace ERA-like equal rights provisions, and the state of Oregon is likely to see a test in 2014. Late in December, the group VoteERA.org won approval to start gathering 116,284 valid signatures to place a state ERA proposal on the November ballot. “Shouldn’t women be explicitly equal in every Constitution?” Leanne Littrell DiLorenzo, the president of VoteERA.org, told reporters. “To me, the answer is an absolute ‘Yes, of course.’”

5. Work to Make Every Election Matter.
America has woefully low voter turnout, as compared with other major democracies around the world. Restrictive laws get some of the blame. So, too, does a money-drenched process that makes elections a spectator sport. But there is also the reality that this country’s electoral systems have too many structural flaws that make it hard to vote. That needs to change. The Brennan Center has a “How to Fix the Voting System” plan that it’s pushing in states across the country: 1. Modernize Voter Registration, 2. Expand Early Voting, 3. Improve Polling Place Resource Management, 4. Simplify Ballots and Voting Machines. And Brennan Center Democracy Program director Wendy Weiser notes that, amid all the frustrating talk about restrictions and suppression in 2013, “many states expanded voting access. In 2014, there is a real opportunity to find common ground and enact vital fixes to modernize our outdated election system.”

Common Cause and other groups are working in states across the country to end the absurd practice of gerrymandering local, state and federal election districts — which makes too many elections for too many important offices uncompetitive. The Working Families Party in New York and Connecticut, the Vermont Progressive Party and other third-party and independent groupings are drawing the rough outlines of multi-party and ideologically diverse politics from New England to the Northwest. And Fair Vote: The Center for Voting and Democracy is pushing for a wide range of reforms, while noting successes in communities that have adopted more democratic models for voting. For instance, FairVote notes, “Minneapolis uses ranked choice voting, so voters were able to express not only which candidate was their favorite, but also which second-choice and third-choice candidates they thought should win if their first choice did not qualify for an instant runoff. Ranked choice voting meant that candidates competed seriously but also positively, and Minneapolis ultimately elected a candidate who reflected a broad consensus — Betsy Hodges skipped spending money on television ads in favor of grassroots campaigning. She broke from the field by earning more than a third of first-choice rankings and more than 60% among voters who expressed a preference for either her or her strongest opponent. Altogether, she was the first, second or third choice of two-thirds of the voters.”

The Minneapolis election results provided an example of what happens when democracy is awakened. Americans need to explore this country’s democratic vistas in 2014, breaking beyond narrow partisan and ideological lines of division to develop the vibrant politics that realizes the promise Whitman imagined when he wrote that he considered the American experiment “far less important for what it has done, or what it is, than for results to come.”

A very sad start.....

 

On the first day of the New Year, I received some terrible news. A very good friend had passed away. He was a friend from Italy who had moved to the US to find a better life. He with a fellow Italian bought and opened a café and worked very hard for a number of years to build the business into a success. He just turned 41, just got married, just bought a condo, and now he is gone.

My friend was doing what he loved, surfing. He was out with his partner surfing and enjoying a morning off from work, it was rare for both to be off at the same time. While surfing, my friend had a rupture in the brain, an aneurism. He fell unconscious and was pulled from the water quickly, rushed to a hospital but never woke. His parents flew from Italy to be with him, they arrived on New Years day morning.

The doctors said there was no brain activity and that the damage was extensive. His parents decided to stop the life support and he died shortly after.

All his friends and all the people who met him were lucky to have met such a wonderful person. It is hard and shocking to think that someone so full of life can be gone so fast. We are all very sad to not have the chance to see his smile again.

 

Ciao my friend…

Happy New Year