Tweet du Jour

A new, large study finds that children who did not get childhood vaccines were more likely to be diagnosed with autism than kids who did get their recommended vaccinations. - @NBCNewsHealth https://t.co/FOeN8ZncYq

— NBC News (@NBCNews) March 25, 2019

Constitution? What Constitution? (Update)

From His Wannabe Majesty, Donald the First:

Trump told "Axios on HBO" that he has run the idea of ending birthright citizenship by his counsel and plans to proceed with the highly controversial move, which certainly will face legal challenges.

"It was always told to me that you needed a constitutional amendment. Guess what? You don't," Trump said, declaring he can do it by executive order.

When told that's very much in dispute, Trump replied: "You can definitely do it with an Act of Congress. But now they're saying I can do it just with an executive order."

"We're the only country in the world where a person comes in and has a baby, and the baby is essentially a citizen of the United States ... with all of those benefits," Trump continued. "It's ridiculous. It's ridiculous. And it has to end." (More than 30 countries, most in the Western Hemisphere, provide birthright citizenship.)

"It's in the process. It'll happen ... with an executive order."

"They're saying" again. He must mean the voices in his head.

And joining the chorus, first Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-Ol' Dixie):

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) on Tuesday said that he will introduce legislation to end birthright citizenship after President Trump suggested he wanted to do so through an executive order.

"Finally, a president willing to take on this absurd policy of birthright citizenship. I’ve always supported comprehensive immigration reform — and at the same time — the elimination of birthright citizenship," Graham said in a string of tweets.

He added that he plans "to introduce legislation along the same lines as the proposed executive order" from Trump. Congress is out of session until Nov. 13.

And of course, VP Mike Pence has to jump in:

But Vice President Pence said "we all cherish" the 14th Amendment but appeared to suggest that the administration had an opening if Trump issues an executive order.

"The Supreme Court of the United States has never ruled on whether or not the language of the 14th Amendment subject to the jurisdiction thereof applies specifically to people who are in the country illegally,” Pence said at a Politico event on Tuesday.

Pence is, as usual, playiing word games. while he's correct that the Supreme Court has not ruled specifically on the issue of children born to residents who are not legally in the country, the Court ruled quite definitely on the issue of birthright citizenship in United States v. Wong Kim Ark (1898), which doesn't really leave much wiggle room. (It's also interesting to note how much that decision made use of English Common Law and the Napoleonic Code,, for those who get all worked up about our courts even acknowledging foreign law.) The wording of the Amendment itself is quite plain, and the phrase "subject to the jurisdiction thereof" is quite thoroughly explored in Wong Kim Ark.

In the final analysis, this is going nowhere, but, like most observers, I think it's pretty obvious that this is another of Trump's attempts to get the deplorables to the polls.

Update: Via Digby, this analysis by Ian Milhauser goes into more depth:

Donald Trump, in an interview with Axios, said that he plans to sign an executive order stripping many Americans of their citizenship. Though it is unclear how far Trump wants to go, or whether he would attempt to retroactively strip many existing citizens of their citizenship, Trump apparently wants to target the children of undocumented immigrants.

“We’re the only country in the world where a person comes in and has a baby, and the baby is essentially a citizen of the United States for 85 years with all of those benefits,” Trump falsely claimed. “It’s ridiculous. It’s ridiculous. And it has to end.”

Trump’s plan is unconstitutional. It’s not even arguably constitutional. It is so obviously unconstitutional that it was rejected by a notoriously racist Supreme Court more than a century ago. The few scholars who think that Trump can actually do this are considered radicals even within conservative legal circles.

By the way, that bull-pucky about being the only country in the world with birthright citizenship is, as might be expected, just that: bull-pucky. There are at least 30 other countries who recognize that right.

Well, That Didn't Take Long

Now that Rape-a-holic Kavanaugh is on the throne -- excuse me, I mean Supreme Court -- the government is jumping right in to give Tony Perkins another wet dream:

The Justice Department today told the U.S. Supreme Court that businesses can discriminate against workers based on their gender identity without violating federal law.

Solicitor General Noel Francisco told the high court that a civil rights law banning sex discrimination on the job doesn’t cover transgender bias. That approach already has created a rift within the Trump administration, contradicting the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission’s view of the law it’s tasked with enforcing.

This was, you understand, the EEOC's view under the Obama administration. They just haven't gotten around to changing their minds yet.

If the Court decides to take this case, it will be interesting to see what logical gyrations they undertake to find that Title VII does not protect against anti-LGBT bias. The Sixth Circuit was quite definite:

With its ruling in the funeral home case, the Sixth Circuit last year became the first federal appeals court in the country to conclude that transgender bias is sex discrimination under Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act. It previously recognized transgender discrimination as a form of prohibited sex stereotyping.

The court said Harris Funeral Homes violated the law by firing Stephens after she told owner Thomas Rost she was transitioning to a woman.

“It is analytically impossible to fire an employee based on that employee’s status as a transgender person without being motivated, at least in part, by the employee’s sex,” Judge Karen Nelson Moore wrote for the Sixth Circuit.

The court rejected the company’s claim that Stephens overstepped a funeral home dress code requiring her to wear clothing corresponding to her birth gender and that allowing her to continue to work at the funeral home would distract mourners. It also said the company wasn’t protected by a federal religious freedom law, even though Rost said allowing Stephens to continue working would conflict with his Christian beliefs.

“You’re talking about someone with the same bundle of experience and qualifications coming back in the form of a woman,” Nevins said. “That sounds like not only a viable sex discrimination case but a slam dunk case.”

I wonder if they can come up with a decision as badly reasoned as Citizens United or Hobby Lobby.

Via Joe.My.God.

But of Course

We don't need no stinkin' science:

The Environmental Protection Agency plans to dissolve its Office of the Science Advisor, a senior post that was created to counsel the E.P.A. administrator on the scientific research underpinning health and environmental regulations, according to a person familiar with the agency’s plans. The person spoke anonymously because the decision had not yet been made public.

The science adviser works across the agency to ensure that the highest quality science is integrated into the agency’s policies and decisions, according to the E.P.A.’s website. The move is the latest among several steps taken by the Trump administration that appear to have diminished the role of scientific research in policymaking while the administration pursues an agenda of rolling back regulations.

Of course, it's all in the interests of efficiency.

By the way, the acting administrator of the EPA, now that that crook Scott Pruitt has left, is Andrew Wheeler, a former coal lobbyist. Big surprise. Not.

Via Joe.My.God.

Today's Must-Read: Preserving Whiteness

Via Digby, from Jamelle Bouie, writing in Slate:

Under the Trump administration, even naturalized citizens are now a target. The government agency that oversees immigration applications is hiring lawyers and immigration officers to review cases of immigrants suspected of obtaining citizenship through fake identities or other false information on their applications. Cases would be referred to the Department of Justice, where offenders could lose their citizenship or legal status.

“We finally have a process in place to get to the bottom of all these bad cases and start denaturalizing people who should not have been naturalized in the first place,” L. Francis Cissna, director of the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, said in an interview with the Associated Press last month. “What we’re looking at, when you boil it all down, is potentially a few thousand cases.”

Strangely enough, the "bad cases" all seem to involve naturalized citizens who are not white.

That's just part of it: The military is discharging immigrant recruits who enlisted under a promise of a path to citizenship:

Some immigrant U.S. Army reservists and recruits who enlisted in the military with a promised path to citizenship are being abruptly discharged, the Associated Press has learned.

The AP was unable to quantify how many men and women who enlisted through the special recruitment program have been booted from the Army, but immigration attorneys say they know of more than 40 who have been discharged or whose status has become questionable, jeopardizing their futures. . . .

Some of the service members say they were not told why they were being discharged. Others who pressed for answers said the Army informed them they’d been labeled as security risks because they have relatives abroad or because the Defense Department had not completed background checks on them.

Tom Sullivan has more on this at Hullabaloo.

Add in voter suppression at the state level (for non-white voters) and Trump's very public disdain for immigrants from everywhere but Europe, and you have the racist Republican party working overtime to preserve a white majority.

OMG! Common Sense Out of Washington

From a Democrat, of course:

Senator Kirsten Gillibrand, D-N.Y., is proposing legislation aimed at putting an end to current payday lending practices by giving some banking services a new home: the U.S. Post Office.

The legislation, called the Postal Banking Act, would make retail banking services available at all U.S. Postal Service locations. That amounts to 30,000 post offices nationwide.

Services would include small-dollar loans for consumers that offer low fees and low interest rates.

Those transactions would compete with payday loans, a short-term advance that typically comes due with your next paycheck.

Since Mick "I only talk to people who give me money" Mulvaney doesn't want to do anything about payday lenders, it's good to see Gillibrand stepping in. Just in case you weren't aware:

The terms for payday loans are often unfavorable, said Alex Horowitz, senior research officer for the consumer finance project at Pew Charitable Trusts, an independent research organization.

About 12 million individuals use payday loans annually, according to Horowitz. The average loan is $375 for a period of five months, which accrues about $520 in fees, he said.

"These loans are extraordinarily expensive with annual percentage rates near 400 percent," Horowitz said.

That's worse than taking a cash advance on your credit card.

This won't go anywhere -- the major banks, co-owners of most of Congress, will see it as competition, which they don't like, currency exchanges won't like it, and the Republicans are trying to kill off the USPS anyway.

But it's nice someone's making the effort.

Via Joe.My.God. More reporting at the link.

Today in Disgusting People

A perennial front-runner for this category who's decided to step down -- uh, "spend more time with his family" now that he's done what the Kochs, et al., put him in office for. At least, most of it. Anne Laurie has a good summation at Balloon Juice. She draws in part on this article by Paul Waldman, but I have one caveat, where Waldman refers to Paul Krugman's analysis:

But as Paul Krugman observed, Ryan failed at both his pretend goal and his real goal. He will leave office after setting the deficit on a path to exceed $1 trillion in 2020, and yet, he failed to repeal the Affordable Care Act and didn’t even bother to wage an assault on Medicare, almost certainly because he knew how disastrous it would be for his party.

I wouldn't call the books closed on that yet -- he's got eight months left, a little more, before he steps down, and he has a tactic that worked on the "tax reform" bill -- introduce a massive bill, call for a vote within a day or two, no hearings, no debate. And he has his majority until January. I would guess he'll try to gut Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and the AFA in December. He hasn't give up:

Paul Ryan Vows To Make Boomers Pay For Retiring By 'Fixing Entitlements' https://t.co/NCpRzEBuR6

— #TheResistance (@SocialPowerOne1) April 15, 2018

And just to point up what a piece of shit Ryan -- and the whole "libertarian" wing of the GOP -- is, there's this:

… [I]t’s worth revisiting now, as Ryan prepares his exit from politics, the thrust of the argument that the tale advanced—that, in general, the 20 million children in this country who receive free lunches have parents who clearly don’t care about them and that in providing food to those children, the government enables bad parenting. That sweeping judgment is impossible unless one considers poverty and economic hardship themselves personal failings. For about a decade now, Ryan has demonstrated that he believes precisely this—that those who have trouble making their way in the world are personally defective, that those immiserated by circumstance have willingly surrendered their lives to dysfunction, and that the best remedy society can offer to those who lack is to deprive them, in cuts to already meager social programs, of even more.

Never a reference to the fact that the GOP's backers, our corporate overlords, have shipped those parents' jobs to China and Vietnam.

There's more, and none of it is complimentary. But then, to be honest, I don't see how it could be.

Today's Must-Read: Conservative Economics vs. Reality

From Tom Sullivan at Hullabaloo:

This month, Washington Monthly looked at a libertarian economist Alex Tabarrok of George Mason University's Mercatus Center. Tabarrok went looking for the effects of federal regulation on "economic dynamism" expecting to find support for the conservative dogma that government regulation harms the economy. He found none. What is remarkable is he published the paper anyway.

He goes on. His comments on conservative ideas of how to control health-care costs are particularly revealing.

The bottom line is that conservatives don't understand economics -- but those of us who actually thought about it have known that since Reagan and his "trickle-down" economics. As I observed to a friend at the time, the real driving force behind that idea is that they -- those in control of the wealth -- can stop the trickle whenever they want to.

Which leads inevitably to the conclusion that conservatives -- especially the libertarian branch -- are ideologically opposed to the American system.

Sidebar: This ties in to my conviction that morality -- real morality, not the tribal taboos espoused by the "religious" right -- is part and parcel of our psychological make-up as social animals: we take care of each other because it benefits the group and us as individuals. Which is why I've been known to classify libertarianism as morally bankrupt. (See Paul Ryan.)

Today's Must-Read: The VA on the Ropes

For some reason I'm particularly sensitive to the plight of the Veterans Administration. Maybe it's because of the number of homeless veterans I see on the streets of Chicago. Best estimate is that there are just shy of 40,000 homeless veterans (as of January, 2016, there were 39,471 homeless veterans in the U.S., down significantly from 2010; last year, that number went up slightly.)

The fact that there are any homeless veterans in this country -- or homeless people at all -- really, really pisses me off.

At any rate, here's an interesting article at RawStory about what the VA is having to deal with. The author, however, makes what I think is one mistaken assumption:

The VA has long been in crisis. Nevertheless, it has pioneered evidence-based medicine and, overall, gets better outcomes at lower costs than many private health care providers.

As someone who has studied government budgets and the organization of government agencies, I believe Admiral Jackson, like his predecessor, will have to address three major problems if the VA is to be effective in meeting the needs of the millions of veterans who depend on it for their care.

This assumes that anyone in this regime (I can't really call it an "administration"), or any Republican in Congress, wants the VA to be effective. The goal here is privatization, because that always works so well -- for the owners of the companies that are getting the contracts. Actually providing the services mandated is not a consideration.

(I may have mentioned that I firmly believe there are some things that should not be subject to the profit motive -- schools, roads and bridges, prisons: add the medical care for veterans to that list.

At any rate, read it. There's some good information there.

March for Our Lives

This happened yesterday, in all fifty states and several foreign countries. Here are a few highlights:

First, Cameron Kasky:

Cameron Kasky began his address by telling the hundreds of thousands gathered “welcome to the revolution.” Stating that he’s been asked if he believes that “any change is going to come” following the tragic Marjory Stoneman Douglas shooting, he told the crowd to “look around” because “we are the change.”

“We must educate ourselves and start conversations that keep our country moving forward, and we will,” Kasky exclaimed to cheers. “We hereby promise to fix the broken system we’ve been forced into and create a better world for the generations to come. Don’t worry, we’ve got this.”

Next, Emma Gonzalez:

Parkland shooting survivor Emma Gonzalez has become a powerful activist, and when she took the stage to speak at today’s March for Our Lives in D.C., the crowd was moved by her stunning speech, which lasted 6 minutes and 23 seconds, the length of the Parkland shooting.

“Six minutes and about twenty seconds. In a little over six minutes, 17 of our friends were taken from us, 15 were injured, and everyone, absolutely everyone, was forever altered,” she began. She them stopped speaking and stared into the crowd, tears streaming down her face.

She ended the silence with, “Since the time that I came out here, it has been six minutes and twenty seconds. The shooter has ceased shooting and will soon abandon his rifle, blend in with the students as they escape and walk free for an hour before arrest. Fight for your life before it’s somebody else’s job.”

In a day of extraordinary moments, this is still remarkable: Emma Gonzalez stands for nearly six minutes in silence, angry, heartbroken, determined, after reading out the names of her murdered classmates. #MarchForOurLives pic.twitter.com/53yUEsm0sv

— Evan McMurry (@evanmcmurry) March 24, 2018

Here's a report from Newsweek via Towleroad focusing on Pennridge High School in Pennsylvania, with some good background:

When the survivors of the Parkland, Florida, massacre began channeling their grief into a call for change, 18-year-old Sean Jenkins, a student at a Pennsylvania high school, knew this school shooting would be different.

The Pennridge High School senior and his classmates are among a new generation of student activists making their voices heard in the fight for gun control. On Saturday, thousands of teenagers from across the U.S.—Pennridge kids included—will descend on Washington, D.C., for the March for Our Lives, led by the survivors of the Parkland shooting and calling for an end to gun violence.

Seeing students in Florida move the gun control needle was inspiring, Jenkins told Newsweek. “Even though we’re just students and most of us can’t even vote yet, the Parkland kids showed us and thousands around the country that we can make a real difference if we fight for it.”

I'll update as necessary. Feel free to add your own updates in the comments.

Nice To Have It Right Out in the Open

See, the Republicans know how to get the economy going:

Andrew Biggs is a Republican member of PROMESA, a board created in 2016 to chaperone Puerto Rico’s finances in the wake of the island’s bankruptcy problems. Yet, when speaking about the recovery efforts, he compared those U.S. citizens to “drunks” who have “hit rock bottom.”

The Intercept reported Tuesday that, while speaking at an American Enterprise Institute event on the island and disaster relief, Biggs claimed fair treatment of workers is what is stopping Puerto Rico from recovery. He specifically cited minimum wage laws, labor rules surrounding just-cause termination, paid sick days for staff, paternity leave and overtime. Even a planned Christmas bonus is stopping Puerto Rico from greatness, according to Biggs.

“The reality is, the government doesn’t want to do these things,” he said of labor laws. “If you let them not do them, they won’t do them.” If the island were to be given additional aid from Congress, Biggs argued that it should come with strings attached demanding they kill their progressive labor laws.

See? If we just get rid of those pesky liberal labor laws and workplace safety rules and all that junk -- maybe just bring our labor laws into line with those of, say, China, why, jobs will just flow back into America.

And given that his audience was the American Enterprise Institute, which is about as corporate friendly as you can get, this comment is no surprise:

Toward the end of the panel, AEI resident fellow Desmond Lachman said, “One doesn’t want a good crisis to go to waste.” He explained “other countries” have sought support from the International Monetary Fund when they hit “rock bottom” after a natural disaster.

Right, the IMF -- remember how they helped Greece out? And that wasn't even a natural disaster. That one came directly from people like the members of the American Enterprise Institute. (I seem to remember that would-be dictators, along with muzzling the press, go after labor unions -- the organizations that are the origin of those pesky labor laws.)

Oh, and by the way -- Puerto Rico isn't a separate country: it's a U.S. territory. So many people, especially on the right, seem to forget that. Maybe because Puerto Ricans tend to be brown and speak Spanish.

Another WTF? Moment

Courtesy of Sen. Ron Johnson of Wisconsin:

In a rare town hall type of meeting, a student asked Johnson if he thought healthcare was a right. His reply was jaw-dropping in its cruelty, ignorance and hypocrisy:

Wisconsin's junior senator did not hesitate: "I think it's probably more of a privilege."

He continued:

"Do you consider food a right? Do you consider clothing a right? Do you consider shelter a right? What we have as rights is life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Past that point, we have the right to freedom. Past that point is a limited resource that we have to use our opportunities given to us to afford those things."

Johnson then referred to comments made by Sen. Rand Paul more than six years ago when Paul compared the "right to health care" to slavery.

He said the task of public officials is to create an environment that grows the economy so that more people can enjoy the "privilege" of food, shelter and health care.

Spoken like a true "I've got mine, screw you" Republican.

There's a sort of sick humor in watching Republicans fall back on the "grow the economy" mantra, since they have proven repeatedly over the last thirty-five years that they have no idea how to go about it. (Hint: tax cuts for the rich don't do it -- they just tuck the money away in offshore accounts. And austerity doesn't do it -- taking money out of a consumer-driven economy is beyond stupid.)

And as to whether food, clothing, and shelter are rights -- isn't that what "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness" are all about?

Here he is in action:

President Bannon Lays Out His Agenda

C'mon -- we all know who's running the White House. This report on Bannon's speech at CPAC is, for some, an eye-opener, I'm sure:

Steve Bannon — President Trump’s chief White House advisor — just made a very revealing statement while addressing right-wing activists.

The overall theme of Bannon’s speech was “deconstruction of the administrative state,” when taking into account the policies he is pursuing. He also told the audience that Trump’s cabinet appointees “were selected for a reason, and that is deconstruction.”

Bannon’s remarks help give context to President Trump appointing ideological enemies of certain federal agencies to then lead those same agencies. Oklahoma Attorney General Scott Pruitt was recently confirmed as EPA administrator despite suing the EPA 14 times over environmental regulations, usually on behalf of oil companies. On his own LinkedIn, Pruitt describes himself as a “leading advocate against the EPA’s activist agenda.”

The statement also explains why Trump appointed former Goldman Sachs executives Steve Mnuchin to head the U.S. Treasury and Jay Clayton to lead the Securities and Exchange Commission. Mnuchin is an avowed opponent of financial regulations, and pledged to repeal them as Treasury chief. Housing and Urban Development Secretary Ben Carson has called for the defunding of public housing, and former Texas Governor Rick Perry, who now heads the Department of Energy, couldn’t even remember its name while calling it for it to be abolished during a presidential debate.

Betsy DeVos was appointed Secretary of Education without having any experience in public schools, and stating that she wanted to force public schools to teach Christian dogma. Even Secretary of State Rex Tillerson is purging the State Department of longtime staff, including senior-level officials, suggesting American foreign policy may soon take a “deconstruction” approach.

This should really come as no surprise -- Bannon has described himself as a avowed Leninist who wants to do away with the government, and he has the perfect puppet in Trump, who will go along with it as long as he's free to fill his pockets and watch TV. And being, as they are, sociopaths with no concern for anyone but themselves, they don't care about the consequences for the rest of us.

Via commenter David L. Caster at Joe.My.God., in the comment thread on a story about AG Jefferson Beauregard Sessons III reversing DOJ's move toward eliminating private prisons, which itself is worth a read.

Today's Must-Read

In a lot of ways, I'm going to miss Harry Reid.

"I have personally been on the ballot in Nevada for 26 elections and I have never seen anything like the reaction to the election completed last Tuesday. The election of Donald Trump has emboldened the forces of hate and bigotry in America.

“White nationalists, Vladimir Putin and ISIS are celebrating Donald Trump’s victory, while innocent, law-abiding Americans are wracked with fear – especially African Americans, Hispanic Americans, Muslim Americans, LGBT Americans and Asian Americans. Watching white nationalists celebrate while innocent Americans cry tears of fear does not feel like America.

“I have heard more stories in the past 48 hours of Americans living in fear of their own government and their fellow Americans than I can remember hearing in five decades in politics. Hispanic Americans who fear their families will be torn apart, African Americans being heckled on the street, Muslim Americans afraid to wear a headscarf, gay and lesbian couples having slurs hurled at them and feeling afraid to walk down the street holding hands. American children waking up in the middle of the night crying, terrified that Trump will take their parents away. Young girls unable to understand why a man who brags about sexually assaulting women has been elected president.

“I have a large family. I have one daughter and twelve granddaughters. The texts, emails and phone calls I have received from them have been filled with fear – fear for themselves, fear for their Hispanic and African American friends, for their Muslim and Jewish friends, for their LBGT friends, for their Asian friends. I’ve felt their tears and I’ve felt their fear.

“We as a nation must find a way to move forward without consigning those who Trump has threatened to the shadows. Their fear is entirely rational, because Donald Trump has talked openly about doing terrible things to them. Every news piece that breathlessly obsesses over inauguration preparations compounds their fear by normalizing a man who has threatened to tear families apart, who has bragged about sexually assaulting women and who has directed crowds of thousands to intimidate reporters and assault African Americans. Their fear is legitimate and we must refuse to let it fall through the cracks between the fluff pieces.

“If this is going to be a time of healing, we must first put the responsibility for healing where it belongs: at the feet of Donald Trump, a sexual predator who lost the popular vote and fueled his campaign with bigotry and hate. Winning the electoral college does not absolve Trump of the grave sins he committed against millions of Americans. Donald Trump may not possess the capacity to assuage those fears, but he owes it to this nation to try.

“If Trump wants to roll back the tide of hate he unleashed, he has a tremendous amount of work to do and he must begin immediately."

I don't really need to add anything.

Via Digby.

Today's Must-Read: "Trade Deals"

From Tom Sullivan at Hullabaloo. The meat:

Something I read somewhere the other day highlighted that in a way that stuck with me. Essentially, these are deals written solely from the perspective of corporations. They are treaties of, by, and for corporations. The needs, concerns, and fate of the average citizen in the global economy are not even an afterthought. Politicians and business magnates sell the deals to voters simmering like frogs in increasingly weakened democracies as a kind of transnational trickle-down. In the long run, this deal will be great for you. Trust us. "You're gonna love it. Believe me."

He's got back-up, too. Basically, corporations and their henchmen are sitting at the negotiating table writing these treaties, with the acquiescence, if not active agreement, of our so-called representatives. One of the key factors is that they give the corporations the right to sue countries through a special court:

In one critique of the TPP, Johnson wrote:

Corporations get a special channel of their own for enforcement of rules written by their representatives at the negotiating table. Labor, environment and other stakeholders don’t get that in TPP. This is how TPP will increase corporate power over governments and working people.

In effect, these "trade deals" subordinate nations to corporations.

I might note that it is not only Republicans pushing for this. The Obama administration has been leading the charge.

Read the whole thing.

Another "Christian Counseling" Horror Story

Although this one could have been much worse:

Alex Jacobsen, 26, was suffering from mental exhaustion and anxiety. He hadn’t slept for days despite being in a faith-based treatment program. He felt hopeless and when he spotted a box knife he grabbed it and held it against his neck pressing harder as it cut through his skin.

This all happened 10 days after he stopped taking his medication, which was when he entered himself into the faith-based program, the Des Moines Register reports. He said he trusted his recovery to them and to God and he almost died from it.

They took away his meds and substituted Bible study. These are not, by the way, qualified medical professionals:

Jacobsen’s father said that he called Rev. Hanges to ask if his son could put a hold on starting the program so he could go to his scheduled evaluation for outpatient treatment at University of Iowa Hospitals. He also said he warned Rev. Hanges about the prescription drugs his son was taking and inquired about the pastor’s training. The pastor assured the father that his mentally ill son could make his own choices and would make the right decision. He also clarified that he is certified online as a faith-based Christian counselor by the International Institute of Faith-Based Counseling in Texas.

(Emphasis added.)

In other words he's not qualified as a therapist or counselor. If he were, he might have spotted the danger signs:

Medical professionals who treated him after the suicide attempt told the family that he could have died from suddenly halting the use of his medication. The Society for the Study of Addiction lists insomnia, anxiety, fatigue, psychosis and suicidal thoughts as symptoms of withdrawal. All of which Jacobsen had.

I've heard enough stories about gay teens consigned to this sort of torture, and winding up dead, that this is no real surprise. What's most appalling is that these outfits are not regulated -- in Iowa, at least, there are no state minimum requirements that they have to meet, and most other places they get a pass for being "religious organizations." As one of the commenters noted;

Yet the Governor of Iowa fully backs this system and refuses to require any sort of licensing or registration for these "clinics. Yet Iowa requires 18 months of study and licensing, with yearly continuing education to cut someone's hair.

I think it's about time that religious scam artists in this country got a little bit less of a free ride. Or at least was held to some sort of accountability for the damage they do.

Today's Must-Read

This, from Betty Cracker at Balloon Juice, quoting President Obama:

You hear a lot about government overreach. Oh, Obama, he’s for big government. Listen, it’s not government overreach to say our government’s responsible for making sure that you can wash your hands in your own sink, or shower in your own home, or cook for your family. These are the most basic services. There’s no more basic element sustaining human life than water. It’s not too much to expect for all Americans that their water is going to be safe.

BC draws the right conclusions. Click through and read the whole thing.

Today's Must-Read

Let's just privatize everything! (I have to admit, I've made the comment more than once that I'm expecting to hear any day now that the mayor is selling off the Chicago Park District to Disney. I'm only half joking.)

But, on a more fundamental level, the push to privatize municipal water systems has been pretty much ignored by the press. Granted, the press in this country has given into a fascination with shiny things, but someone, somewhere, should be dealing with some real issues, right? Well, some are:

City leaders and a group of organizers here have been fighting state efforts to take over our city's water system for several years. City of Asheville v State of North Carolina, et al. goes before the state Supreme Court next month. The originator of the bill (an ALEC board member before he lost his state House seat) insisted transferring control to a regional authority was not the first step towards privatization. You know, we just didn't believe him. The water situation in Flint, Michigan is sure to come up in oral arguments on May 17.

This is just one effort; there are others throughout the country. What's really sobering is just who is involved:

[Congresswoman Gwen Moore (D-WI)] is not happy about the International Finance Corporation, a branch of the World Bank, promoting water privatization and profiting from it. She wrote a letter to Dr. Jim Young Kim, President of the World Bank Group:

The letter, addressed to World Bank President Jim Yong Kim, describes the failure of a World Bank-backed water privatization project in Manila, Philippines—the “success story” the IFC uses in marketing around the world—as the foundation of her concern. In Manila, the IFC advised the government to contract with two private corporations to manage the city’s water system, which it did in 1997 in a concession deal that favored one corporation, Manila Water Company, with less debt and better infrastructure. The IFC subsequently took part ownership in MWC only.

Since taking over, MWC has raised rates nearly 850 percent, and has even brought the Manila regulator—and the Philippines Department of Finance—into arbitration in an attempt to hike the cost of water even higher.

As part owner of MWC, the IFC is now in direct opposition to the government’s efforts to keep water affordable for its people. And while the IFC has stood by MWC, it has made $43 million from its initial investment.

Yes, those wonderful people who destroyed the economy of Greece are now investing in private water management companies while they push local governments into selling their water systems to those very companies.

This is, as I noted above, a trend -- charter schools/school vouchers, municipal water systems, city parking (in Chicago, you now pay for parking 24/7 -- you used to be able to park on streets free on Sundays and overnight -- but they do make it really easy to pay), you name it, it's being privatized, or someone's trying to.

Of course, these efforts are all being touted as leading to greater efficiency and lower costs, but that's patently ridiculous. I mean, you start by introducing another layer in the cost structure and introducing the idea that, for example, city services should be profitable. For someone. Like the World Bank. And frankly, anyone who thinks that non-government corporations are necessarily more efficient than government-run services has never worked in the private sector.

Maybe I'm old-fashioned, but it just seems to be that some things should not be subject to the profit motive -- like the things we're paying taxes for.

In an emailed statement, Moore connected the issue to U.S. water issues:

“Yes, we’ve just now started shedding light on this local and national issue in the United States, but there are global implications to think about as well,” Moore added, pointing to the World Bank’s investments in private water companies. “It has become clear that there are those in positions of great power who are all too willing to prioritize profits over public safety.”

The people of Flint would agree. As I've said for years, we are dealing with the kind of people who would sell you the air you breathe if they could control how it gets to your nose. And if you cannot afford to buy their air, well, you should have worked harder, planned better, and saved more.

Capitalism is not a human-oriented system. It is a commodity-oriented system; people are just consumers. When you stop to think about it, it's pretty immoral.

Did I Mention Complicit Judges?

I'm sure I must have, in the context of police misbehavior that gets less than a slap on the wrist. Here's a sterling case in point:

U.S. District Court Judge John W. Lungstrum dismissed every one of the Hartes’s claims. Lungstrum found that sending a SWAT team into a home first thing in the morning based on no more than a positive field test and spotting a suspect at a gardening store was not a violation of the Fourth Amendment. He found that the police had probable cause for the search, and that the way the search was conducted did not constitute excessive force. He found that the Hartes had not been defamed by the raid or by the publicity surrounding it. He also ruled that the police were under no obligation to know that drug testing field kits are inaccurate, nor were they obligated to wait for the more accurate lab tests before conducting the SWAT raid. The only way they’d have a claim would be if they could show that the police lied about the results, deliberately manipulated the tests or showed a reckless disregard for the truth — and he ruled that the Hartes had failed to do so.

Read the whole story, if you haven't run across it someplace yet, but keep in mind that 1) shopping in a garden center makes you a suspect for drug-related offenses; 2) the field test kits used in this case return a 70% false positive rate; and 3) your 4th Amendment rights are worthless.

Read the whole thing.

Just In Case

you were thinking that my "Question of the Day" from yesterday was a little alarmist in assuming that the country is being run by an oligarchy, I just want to reassure you -- it's much worse than that:

In 2008, there were financial bailouts for megabanks and foreclosures for homeowners. There was vulture capitalist Paul Singer seizing an Argentine naval vessel in a dispute over debt in 2012. There was the European Central Bank bringing Greece to heel this summer after voters in January elected Alexis Tsipras to end the “vicious cycle of austerity.” Coming Soon: TPP. There are probably other cases as well. If it was not clear already who is really running the planet, here is another clue.

In Portugal's elections earlier this month, Socialists, Communists, and the Left Bloc had won enough seats to form a coalition government, displacing the center-right Forward Portugal Alliance (PAF). And then?

Elections in Portugal this week offered the latest sign that when an individual European nation’s voters challenge eurozone austerity policies, the monetary union -- and the international creditors it represents -- takes precedence. Portugal’s president, Anibal Cavaco Silva, fueled an ongoing debate about the future of European democracy on Thursday when he reappointed an outgoing center-right prime minister despite election results that gave three left-leaning political parties the majority of seats in parliament.

Silva asked incumbent Prime Minister Pedro Passos Coelho to remain and to form a new government. Opposition Socialists threaten to bring down his government with an immediate vote of no confidence.

If you're reading this blog, you're probably too well aware of what's going on in this country to think "It can't happen here," especially if you look at what the Republicans in office have been doing to "reform" the tax code and "save" Social Security ever since Reagan.

And we've got our "liberal" media flogging the ideology -- even once-respectable journalists are on board:

On Fox News Sunday, Chris Wallace asked [Bob] Woodward what he expects from Paul Ryan. Well, since Bob spent hours interviewing him three years ago, he just thinks the world of the Budget Munster. Woodward thinks he's

a real Conservative, the 'big ideas person.' He vibrates reasonableness, he is calm, he has a possible path for doing deals with Obama in the last year.

Since we are on Fox 'News,' no one asks exactly what these big ideas are and who will suffer the most as a result of his bold plans.

Woodward truly thinks that Ryan wants to 'fix the government' by reforming entitlement spending. Fixing the government by hurting the poor is hardly considered a solution for millions of Americans who will suffer from his bold ideas.

As I recall from the last time Ryan came up with an economic policy, those "big ideas" were a little short on details and amounted to yet another giveaway to those who already own everything.

And I don't even want to start with the policy outlines (such as they are) from the candidates for the Republican nomination. Just as a sample, take Ben Carson's plan for Medicare and Medicaid, which is more or less incoherent. The idea of "medical savings accounts" being adequate to cover health-care costs is ludicrous, especially at the level Carson is proposing. Once again, short on details, and let's face it, the devil's in the details. One detail that pertains to today's topic: who administers these savings accounts? Do you really want Bank of America or Wells Fargo handling your health-care money, when they did such a good job with mortgages?

The rest of the news seems to be 90% on the 2016 election, which is just over a year away and I'm already sick of hearing about it. I think campaigning for national office should be limited to law by no more than thirty days -- and the US should adopt mandatory voting.

Then maybe we could do something about the oligarchs. But, given the example of Portugal, I wonder if it's even possible any more.