January 5, 2016

Tuesday Toon Roundup 1- Y’all Qaeda

January 5, 2016

Police: Child accidentally shoots 2-year-old

A 2-year-old LaGrange girl was at Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta at Egleston hospital Monday night after another youngster accidentally shot her.

The shooting occurred just after 4 p.m. in an apartment at the Wood Glen Apartments, LaGrange police investigators said. Emergency workers gave quick surgical care to the girl’s torso before loading her on a helicopter that took her to the hospital.

Three other children — ages 10, 3 and 1 — also were in the apartment, investigators determined. With them were two adults: the tenant and her friend, the wounded child’s mother.

One of the children found a handgun, fired it and hit the 2-year-old, police said. Officers recovered the weapon inside the apartment.

more
http://www.ajc.com/news/news/breaking-news/police-child-accidentally-shoots-2-year-old-in-lag/npxcS/

Unhappy New Year

January 5, 2016

Ryan, McConnell confirm they have no real agenda in ’16 besides blocking Obama

The only goal of Republicans in Congress the last 7 years has been to stymie Obama, 2016 will be no different
by SEAN ILLING

Since President Obama took office, Congressional Republicans have made it their business to obstruct everything he does. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said it best in 2012: “Our top political priority over the next two years should be to deny President Obama a second term.”

And that’s how they’ve governed in the Obama era. Like political arsonists, they’ve pursued no real positive agenda, choosing instead to undermine the president and stage symbolic protest votes to appease a disillusioned base. This is a big reason why something like 13 percent of the country approves of the job Congress is doing.

For a brief moment, when Paul Ryan was elected Speaker of the House, there was hope that things might change, if only a little. Although Ryan is hardly a moderate, he is nonetheless a serious legislator. His victory, one hoped, was a sign that House Republicans finally saw the light, finally realized that obstructionism wasn’t a viable governing philosophy.

Well, that’s not happening.

There were already rumbles in conservative circles after Ryan agreed to pass $1.1 trillion spending bill earlier this month. To the hardliners on the right, any deal that removed the threat of a government shutdown constituted a gutless compromise, a conservative heresy.

more

http://www.salon.com/2016/01/04/all_they_want_to_do_is_screw_over_the_president_ryan_mcconnell_confirm_they_have_no_real_agenda_in_16_besides_blocking_obama/

January 4, 2016

Why Republicans hate the Affordable Care Act

by JOHN E. MCDONOUGH
THIS WEEK, THE US House of Representatives will take up reconciliation legislation, amended and approved in the US Senate last month, that would drill major, damaging holes in the Affordable Care Act. Though the bill has zero chance of becoming law because of a certain veto by President Obama, it is – by the Democrats’ count – the 61st time the House has voted to repeal all or significant parts of the health reform law.

Why, people often ask me, do Republicans hate the ACA so much?

This past week’s New York Times Upshot article, I believe, provides a major part of the answer. Briefly, “It’s the taxes on the wealthy, stupid.” Specifically, it’s about two new Medicare taxes that went into effect in 2013 only on higher income Americans.

ACA Medicare Part A Payroll Tax: Beginning in 2013, individuals with earnings above $200,000 and married couples making more than $250,000 got an increase in the Medicare part A payroll tax of 2.35 percent, up from 1.45 percent (a 0.9 percent increase), on adjusted income over the threshold. (2016-25 take = $123 billion.)
ACA Unearned Income Tax: This same group also now pays a new 3.8 percent unearned income (capital gains) tax on interest, dividends, annuities, royalties, rents, and gains on the sale of investments over the threshold. (2016-25 take = $222.8 billion.)
It’s a lot of money and it’s a lot of money taken exclusively from the top 5 percent of America’s wealthiest ($345.8 billion between 2016-25).

As the Times article makes clear, these new taxes are so damn big (when combined with higher taxes from the 2012 American Taxpayer Relief Act) that both increases literally reversed the majority of the last 20 years decline in the effective tax rate of America’s 400 wealthiest taxpayers!

more
http://commonwealthmagazine.org/health-care/why-republicans-hate-the-affordable-care-act/

January 4, 2016

Nearly 400 Anti-Abortion Bills Were Introduced Last Year

States passed nearly as many anti-abortion laws over the past five years as in the entire 15 years prior

By Lauren Kelley

State legislatures around the country last year passed dozens of anti-abortion laws, and considered hundreds of others, according to an analysis by a leading reproductive rights research group.

The Guttmacher Institute found that, all told, 17 states enacted 57 anti-abortion laws in 2015. But lawmakers in nearly every state in the nation – all but four – considered passing at least one anti-abortion law last year. A total of 396 anti-abortion laws were considered.

Guttmacher put those numbers into a political context: "Including the 57 abortion restrictions enacted in 2015, states have adopted 288 abortion restrictions just since the 2010 midterm elections swept abortion opponents into power in state capitals across the country.... [S]tates adopted nearly as many abortion restrictions during the last five years (288 enacted 2011–2015) as during the entire previous 15 years (292 enacted 1995–2010)."

Driven in part by the efforts of anti-choice groups like Americans United for Life, which writes model legislation frequently used by lawmakers around the country, trends often emerge in anti-abortion laws: In any given year, a certain type of legislation – often the bills are similarly worded – will suddenly pop up in state legislatures around the country. In 2015, the anti-abortion bills most frequently passed by state lawmakers focused on mandating counseling and waiting periods for individuals seeking abortions, and restricting access to medication abortion (as opposed to surgical abortion) and abortions after the first trimester. In addition, a number of states passed so-called TRAP, or targeted regulation of abortion providers, laws – which make it more difficult for doctors who provide abortions to do their job by subjecting them to onerous and medically unnecessary rules.

Read more: http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/nearly-400-anti-abortion-bills-were-introduced-last-year-20160104

January 4, 2016

Sanders on Clinton: ‘Too late for establishment politics, economics’

MANCHESTER, N.H. —With former President Bill Clinton about 25 miles away in Nashua stumping for his wife, U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders told high school and college students from three dozen states Monday that while he respects Hillary Clinton, it is time for the country to part ways with what he called establishment politics.

“I’ve known Hillary Clinton for 25 years,” Sanders told about 500 students at the 2016 New Hampshire Primary Student Convention, hosted by New England College at the Radisson Hotel in downtown Manchester. He said he has “an enormous amount of respect” for her and considers her a friend.

But, responding to a question posed by a student, he said, “When you look at the major issues facing our country today -- the issue of income and wealth inequality, the issue of a corrupt campaign finance system, the issue of climate change, the issue of Wall Street and the incredible power that Wall Street has over the economic and political life of this country, I think if you look at those issues, what you conclude is that at this moment in our history, it is too late for establishment politics and establishment economics.

“What we need now is leadership that’s going to stand up to the billionaire class, stand up to corporate America and Wall Street, and stand up to the (conservative billionaire) Koch brothers and the fossil fuel industry, stand up to the pharmaceutical industry and say, ‘You guys cannot have it all,’” Sanders said.

“At this moment in history we need proven leadership that’s prepared to stand up to the wealthiest and most powerful people in this country.”

more

http://www.wmur.com/politics/sanders-on-clinton-too-late-for-establishment-politics-economics/37259932

January 4, 2016

Paul Krugman- Academics And Politics

Via Noah Smith, an interesting back-and-forth about the political leanings of professors. Conservatives are outraged at what they see as a sharp leftward movement in the academy:



But what’s really happening here? Did professors move left, or did the meaning of conservatism in America change in a way that drove scholars away? You can guess what I think. But here’s some evidence. First, using the DW-nominate measure — which uses roll-call votes over time to identify a left-right spectrum, and doesn’t impose any constraint of symmetry between the parties — what we’ve seen over the past generation is a sharp rightward (up in the figure) move by Republicans, with no comparable move by Democrats, especially in the North:



So self-identifying as a Republican now means associating yourself with a party that has moved sharply to the right since 1995. If you like, being a Republican used to mean supporting a party that nominated George H.W. Bush, but now it means supporting a party where a majority of primary voters support Donald Trump or Ted Cruz. Being a Democrat used to mean supporting a party that nominated Bill Clinton; it now means supporting a party likely to nominate, um, Hillary Clinton. And views of conservatism/liberalism have probably moved with that change in the parties.

Furthermore, if your image is one of colleges being taken over by Marxist literary theorists, you should know that the political leanings of hard scientists are if anything more pronounced than those of academics in general. From Pew:



more

http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2016/01/04/academics-and-politics/?_r=0

January 4, 2016

Monday Toon Roundup

GOP














Loons






The Issue




Police




Cosby

January 4, 2016

Krugman: Elections Have Consequences

You have to be seriously geeky to get excited when the Internal Revenue Service releases a new batch of statistics. Well, I’m a big geek; like quite a few other people who work on policy issues, I was eagerly awaiting the I.R.S.’s tax tables for 2013, which were released last week.

And what these tables show is that elections really do have consequences.

You might think that this is obvious. But on the left, in particular, there are some people who, disappointed by the limits of what President Obama has accomplished, minimize the differences between the parties. Whoever the next president is, they assert — or at least, whoever it is if it’s not Bernie Sanders — things will remain pretty much the same, with the wealthy continuing to dominate the scene. And it’s true that if you were expecting Mr. Obama to preside over a complete transformation of America’s political and economic scene, what he’s actually achieved can seem like a big letdown.

But the truth is that Mr. Obama’s election in 2008 and re-election in 2012 had some real, quantifiable consequences. Which brings me to those I.R.S. tables.

more

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/04/opinion/elections-have-consequences.html?_r=0

January 3, 2016

What’s at Stake This Election Year? Ending the Vicious Cycle of Wealth and Power

By Robert Reich

What’s at stake this election year? Let me put as directly as I can.

America has succumbed to a vicious cycle in which great wealth translates into political power, which generates even more wealth, and even more power.

This spiral is most apparent is declining tax rates on corporations and on top personal incomes (much in the form of wider tax loopholes), along with a profusion of government bailouts and subsidies (to Wall Street bankers, hedge-fund partners, oil companies, casino tycoons, and giant agribusiness owners, among others).

The vicious cycle of wealth and power is less apparent, but even more significant, in economic rules that now favor the wealthy.

Billionaires like Donald Trump can use bankruptcy to escape debts but average people can’t get relief from burdensome mortgage or student debt payments.

Giant corporations can amass market power without facing antitrust lawsuits (think Internet cable companies, Monsanto, Big Pharma, consolidations of health insurers and of health care corporations, Dow and DuPont, and the growing dominance of Amazon, Apple, and Google, for example).

But average workers have lost the market power that came from joining together in unions.

more

http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/whats_at_stake_this_election_year_end_vicious_cycle_of_wealth_20160103

And yes, he does get to Bernie...