March 29, 2015

Mike Pence: There’s an Internet conspiracy to make Indiana seem like anti-gay bigots

Indiana Gov. Mike Pence (R) on Sunday insisted that people on the Internet had conspired to create a “misunderstanding” that a so-called “religious freedom” law was about denying services to LGBT people. But at the same time, he repeatedly refused to answer if it effectively gave Christians a legal defense for discriminating against same-sex couples.

“I understand that there’s been a tremendous amount of misinformation and misunderstanding around this bill, and I’m just determined — and I appreciate the time on your program — I’m just determined to clarify this,” Pence told ABC’s George Stephanopolous.

“So this is a yes or no question,” the ABC host noted. “Is Advance America right when they say a florist in Indiana can now refuse to serve a gay couple without fear of punishment?”

Pence, however said that the purpose of the bill that he signed was to “empower” religious people.

And this was a pattern that would be repeated over the next 20 minutes: Stephanopolous asking if the bill allowed anti-LGBT discrimination, followed by Pence dodging the question.

more
http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2015/03/mike-pence-theres-an-internet-conspiracy-to-make-indiana-seem-like-anti-gay-bigots/

March 28, 2015

Charles Barkley Wants NCAA To Pull Final Four From Indiana Over Anti-Gay Bill

Source: TPM

Former NBA star Charles Barkley on Friday called for the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) to yank its March Madness Final Four tournament out of Indiana over a new law that protects business owners from being required to serve same-sex couples because of religious objections.

"Discrimination in any form is unacceptable to me,” Barkley said in a statement released through his agent, as quoted by USA Today. “As long as anti-gay legislation exists in any state, I strongly believe big events such as the Final Four and Super Bowl should not be held in those states’ cities.”

Indiana Gov. Mike Pence (R) signed the "religious freedom" bill into law Thursday.

The NCAA has said that it will go forward with plans to hold the Final Four in Indianapolis, although it is "especially concerned" about the possible effects of the law on its student-athletes and employees.

###

Read more: http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/charles-barkley-ncaa-indiana-anti-gay-law

March 28, 2015

Indiana Officials Scramble To Contain Fallout From New Anti-Gay Bill

Source: ASSOCIATED PRESS

INDIANAPOLIS (AP) — The heat over Indiana's new religious objections law spread Friday across social media and to the White House as many local officials and business groups around the state tried to jump in and stem the fallout.

Use of the hashtag #boycottindiana spread across Twitter, spurred on by activists such as "Star Trek" actor George Takei, who argued that the measure opens the door to legalized discrimination against gay people. Apple CEO Tim Cook also tweeted his objections, saying he was "deeply disappointed" in the Indiana law.

Supporters of the bill that Republican Gov. Mike Pence signed Thursday say discrimination claims are overblown. They maintain courts haven't allowed that to happen under similar laws covering the federal government and in 19 other states. The measure, which takes effect in July, prohibits state and local laws that "substantially burden" the ability of people — including businesses and associations — to follow their religious beliefs.

Some national gay-rights groups say lawmakers in Indiana and about a dozen other states proposed such bills this year as a way to essentially grant a state-sanctioned waiver for discrimination as the nation's highest court prepares to mull the gay marriage question.

-snip-

Read more: http://talkingpointsmemo.com/news/indiana-religious-freedom-bill-fallout

March 28, 2015

Ted Cruz doesn’t have a prayer: Why the Texas senator will never sniff the White House

Cruz embodies everything that is wrong with modern politics. Even the American public can see through the charade

MATTHEW ROZSA, THE DAILY DOT

Despite what he wants you to think, Ted Cruz is not the great anti-politician of our time. In fact, he may be our most potent symbol of everything that is wrong with modern politics.

This would be hard to believe if you’ve been listening to him, of course. He desperately wants to be thought of as the one principled man in Washington—at least if your values hew closely to those of the Tea Party—but that posturing has alienated much of the party establishment. Ted Cruz attributes that development to them being “squishes,” while the rest of the world suspects it’s because Cruz is the kind of guy who goes around calling his co-workers names like “squishes.”

Of course, being a showboat is forgivable in American politics; if it wasn’t, Bill Clinton wouldn’t still be as popular as he is today. The bigger problem with Cruz is that the thematic basis for his showboating—that he won’t sell out like the rest of the Washington phonies—is a whole lot of bunk, like the rest of his campaign. After all, Googling ”Ted Cruz lies” pulls back an astonishing 7,890,000 results, and on Twitter, the two phrases are basically synonymous.

We can start with the lies, which have been lovingly chronicled by pundits like George Zornick of the Nation. “Politicians lie. It’s almost non-controversial,” Zornick notes, before adding that “elected officials are advocates who want to show themselves and their causes in the best possible light. Nobody tells the whole truth.” The Cruz-ian fibs that he lists include such claims as the federal government threatening to shut down churches and hospitals which don’t alter their religious beliefs, ISIS crucifying Christians in Iraq, and crime rates rising in areas with stricter gun control laws.

more
http://www.salon.com/2015/03/28/ted_cruz_doesnt_have_a_prayer_why_the_texas_senator_will_never_sniff_the_white_house_partner/

March 28, 2015

The economy is a Democrat: Why recent history shows the value of a progressive president

When Dems control the White House, the middle class wins. And under Republicans? Not so much...

SEAN MCELWEE

At the core of the debate between liberals and conservatives is a dispute over whose policies are better for economic growth, and particularly for the middle class. A new study by Bryan Dettrey and Harvey D. Palmer suggests one way to test this question — by examining how economic growth differs under Republican and Democratic presidencies. Their finding might not be too surprising: Under Republicans, growth boosts the stock market, while under Democrats, it reduces unemployment.

The two academics examine how economic growth is distributed over time. Their data are expansive, covering the 60-year period from January 1951 to December 2010. They find that once economic growth increases above 1 percent a year — and it does so over most of the period they studied — “the average level of unemployment is significantly higher under Republican administrations.”



As the above charts (from their paper) show, with either a one- or two-year lag, Democrats reduce unemployment dramatically during periods of GDP growth compared to Republicans. Some of this effect has to do with inflation rates (as a I note below), but the authors note another key difference: They argue that Republican policies (for instance, massive tax cuts for the rich and cuts to capital gains) incentivize corporations to use money to compensate CEOs or distribute to shareholders, rather than invest in workers and jobs.

more
http://www.salon.com/2015/03/28/the_economy_is_a_democrat_why_recent_history_shows_the_value_of_a_progressive_president/

March 28, 2015

Ted Cruz’s religious horror: Why he’s really running for High Priest of America

Read Cruz's words and watch his stagecraft -- and you see this is the deeply fundamentalist vision he's propagating

JARRET RUMINSKI

-snip- 2 paragraphs

Cruz’s White House run is disturbing, and not just because it involves Ted Cruz. Rather, he embodies the modern conservative propensity toward a fundamentalist American civil religion and its attendant, overly simplistic myths. As the English political activist George Monbiot observed during the dawn of the second President Bush’s Iraq War, to America’s conservative subculture “the United States is no longer just a nation. It is now a religion… It is not just that the Americans are God’s chosen people; America itself is now perceived as a divine project.” American civil religion hinges on what Ted Cruz defined in his Liberty University speech as “the promise of America,” embodied in “the American exceptionalism that has made this nation a clarion voice for freedom in the world, a shining city on a hill.” The religion of America is a civil religion that casts the United States as a divine world power shaped by a series of comforting myths that, in the eyes of fervent believers like Cruz, make it the ultimate political Promised Land.

The term “civil religion” goes back to the writings of French philosopher Jean Jacques Rousseau, who ruminated on the tensions that arise when church and state become separate entities. In American discourse, the term is most closely associated with sociologist Robert Bellah. In 1967, Bellah characterized civil religion as “a set of beliefs, symbols, and rituals” that was “neither sectarian nor in any specific sense Christian” but nonetheless constituted a shared experience of being American that was inspired by Christian notions of redemption and spiritual fulfillment. Civil religion casts America as a beacon of secular and sacred hope in a fallen modern world. In this context, Bellah wrote, “Europe is Egypt” and America was the Promised Land to which ”God has led his people to establish a new sort of social order that shall be a light unto all the nations.” And if this concept seems open-ended and ripe for abuse, that’s because it is.

In his book “God and War: American Civil Religion Since 1945,” historian Raymond Haberski Jr. observes that civil religion is a “strange beast” that can be appropriated by anyone for any purpose. “As a hybrid of nationalism and traditional religion, civil religion has an ideological flexibility that is intoxicating because it is so evocative, elastic, and deceptively complex,” Haberski writes. Moreover, civil religion is “not a set of laws but a collection of myths” such as the idea that America is “the last best hope for mankind,” and these myths can’t be empirically confirmed. Myths are indeed the key elements in American civil religion. Religious scholar Richard T. Hughes identifies six core myths that Americans live by: the myth of the Chosen Nation, of Nature’s Nation, of the Christian Nation, of Manifest Destiny, of the Capitalist Nation and of the Innocent Nation. These myths have been sources of American strength and unity. But they’ve also been abused by those who would “absolutize the righteousness of the United States,” confuse the ideals of the American creed “with the realities of the present moment” and stifle all dissent. Enter Ted Cruz.

Cruz packed his Liberty University speech with simplistic — and often historically inaccurate — myths that so often define American conservatives’ approach to civil religion. Of course, civil religion isn’t the sole property of the right. As sociologist Philip Gorski notes, Barack Obama has always filled his rhetoric with “the promise of America.” However, just as they are wont to do with Christianity, conservatives boil civil religion in a steaming pot of moral absolutes, anti-intellectualism and redemptionist history until all nuance and context is burned away, leaving a distilled political elixir of fundamentalist dogma that absolves America of any of the human faults that plague other nations.

Cruz had the myth of the Chosen Nation down pat when he claimed that America is “an indispensable nation, a unique nation in the history of the world.” As for the myth of Nature’s Nation, he evoked America as the cultivated political garden of God Himself that, “from the dawn of this country, at every stage… has enjoyed God’s providential blessing.” The myth of the Christian Nation? Cruz parroted the now standard (but historically bogus) right-wing claim that the U.S. “was founded upon” the idea that rights come from a very specific “God Almighty.” Cruz’s reference to the myth of Manifest Destiny was more veiled, but he name-dropped key historical figures such as Patrick Henry, Thomas Jefferson, Franklin Delano Roosevelt (no doubt for good bipartisan measure) and, of course, Ronald Reagan to reiterate his point that God has blessed every step in America’s development. The myth of the Capitalist Nation came via his railing against standard conservative government bogeymen like “regulators,” “tax collectors” and Obamacare that despoil the purity of the Free Market. Finally, Cruz touted the myth of the Innocent Nation when he claimed that political change will only come from “lovers of liberty” who realize that “God isn’t done with America yet.” Bless their liberty-loving souls.

-snip- 3 paragraphs

Full article
http://www.salon.com/2015/03/28/ted_cruzs_religious_horror_why_hes_really_running_for_high_priest_of_america/

full article
http://www.salon.com/2015/03/28/ted_cruzs_religious_horror_why_hes_really_running_for_high_priest_of_america/

March 27, 2015

SF Mayor Bans Taxpayer-Funded Travel To Indiana Because Of Anti-Gay Law

Source: TPM

San Francisco Mayor Edwin Lee (D) has decided to ban city-funded trips to Indiana in response to Indiana's new anti-gay law.

Lee's announcement follows Pence signing legislation into law that allows businesses in the state to not serve gay people because of religious objections.

"We stand united as San Franciscans to condemn Indiana's new discriminatory law, and will work together to protect the civil rights of all Americans including lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender adults," Lee said in a statement, according to the Indianapolis Star on Friday. "San Francisco taxpayers will not subsidize legally sanctioned-discrimination against lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people by the state of Indiana."

There's been a visible backlash against Indiana since the law was signed. Major companies like Yelp and Salesforce have promised to scale back business in the state in protest of the law. Pence, in a radio interview after he signed the law, was pressed on if there was any justification for the law. He couldn't come up with any recent examples.

###


Read more: http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/edwin-lee-san-francisco-religious-freedom-law

March 27, 2015

Feds Charge Ole Miss Student With Hanging Noose On Meredith Statue

Source: TPM

The Justice Department on Friday brought federal civil rights charges against a University of Mississippi student who allegedly hung a noose on a statue of James Meredith, Ole Miss' first black student.

Charging documents identified the suspect in the Feb. 14, 2014 incident as Graeme Phillip Harris, a student at Ole Miss, according to a DOJ press release.

Harris was charged with one count of conspiracy to violate civil rights and one count of using threat of force to intimidate black students because of their race. He was accused of hanging a rope and a flag sporting the Confederate battle emblem around the neck of the Meredith statue.

Last winter, police had said they were close to bringing criminal charges against three freshmen students suspected of taking part in the racially charged vandalism. The university's Sigma Phi Epsilon fraternity chapter also expelled three of its members suspected to have been involved in the incident, leading the fraternity's national organization to suspend that local chapter.

Read more: http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/graeme-phillip-harris-indicted-civil-rights-noose-ole-miss

March 27, 2015

Senate Dems Hand Hillary Clinton Two Slam-Dunk Wedge Issues For 2016

WASHINGTON — In the haze of the budget "vote-a-rama" that lasted into the early hours of Friday morning, Democrats passed two progressive amendments through the Republican-led Senate, both of which may serve as valuable "wedge" issues for Hillary Clinton to exploit in the 2016 presidential election.

Both measures are popular with Americans and unite Democrats. Both were opposed by all four Republican senators considering a presidential run: Sens. Rand Paul (KY), Ted Cruz (TX), Marco Rubio (FL) and Lindsey Graham (SC).

The first, offered by Sen. Patty Murray (D-WA) and called the Healthy Families Act, would let workers earn up to seven days of paid sick leave and mark the first expansion of such federal requirements in more than two decades.

It passed by a filibuster-proof majority of 61-39, winning over numerous blue or swing state Republicans facing reelection in 2016: Sens. Kelly Ayotte (NH), Richard Burr (NC), Mark Kirk (IL), Rob Portman (OH) and Pat Toomey (PA).

-snip-

The second, offered by Sen. Brian Schatz (D-HI), would ensure Social Security and veterans benefits for legally married same-sex couples even if they lived in a state that outlawed gay marriage. It passed by a vote of 57-43, winning 11 Republicans including Ayotte, Burr, Kirk and Portman. The vote reflected the surge in support for gay rights across the nation in recent years.

more
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/dc/senate-democrats-hand-hillary-clinton-two-wedge-issues

March 27, 2015

Michigan Tea Partiers want to scrap teaching standards — ... pretty much anyone can teach scripture

Source: RawStory

Michigan Tea Partiers want to scrap teaching standards — because pretty much anyone can teach scripture

Tea Party conservative lawmakers in Michigan are looking to eliminate hiring standards for public school teachers – and a Facebook post may reveal their motivation.

State Rep. Gary Glenn (R-Larkin Township) introduced legislation Wednesday that literally strikes out all current criteria for hiring qualified teachers and allows school board members to hire anyone whose “education and experience” they believe would benefit students, reported Eclectablog.

House Bill 4394 would also promote the operation of cyber schools taught by anyone school boards wish to hire and that would be exempt from state requirements on student attendance.

Another conservative lawmaker, state Rep. Todd Courser, posted a Facebook rant earlier this week against “top down soviet style” education standards.

-snip-

Read more: http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2015/03/michigan-tea-partiers-want-to-scrap-teaching-standards-because-pretty-much-anyone-can-teach-scripture/