New York City bans public smoking outdoors

Smoking bothers my eyes and it gives me a headache but this sounds extreme. Too far?

CBS News correspondent Jay Dow reports that New York City is now taking the war against tobacco a step further with a new law that goes into effect tomorrow, banning smoking outdoors - at beaches, boardwalks, parks, and pedestrian plazas.

The ban is not exactly universally popular.

"It's not fair, Ya know. I'm a smoka. That's my choice. I smoke.It's not gonna make me stop," said New Yorker Frank Zieran.

New York City Mayor Mike Bloomberg, a former smoker, pushed for the law that aims to drastically reduce, if not eliminate exposure to second hand smoke.

NOTE FROM JOHN: Yikes, I'm going to disagree with Chris about smoking laws - whodathunk I could make him look like a smoke lover ;-) But I have to say, I'm rather sick and tired of walking down the sidewalk and having to smell the smoke of someone a good 30 feet in front of me. Ditto for the beach, it's disgusting - the smoke wafts a good 30 feet, choking everyone in its path. Or never being able to sit outside at a restaurant or a cafe without the person at the next table huffing and puffing away as if I'm not in the middle of eating two feet away from them when I am. I was sitting outside at a restaurant a few weeks ago for a friend's birthday, the smokers were sitting around the corner, we couldn't even see them, and their smoke was bothering us. Smoking is a nasty habit that I don't necessarily have a problem with if people want to do it in the privacy of their own home. But in public, where I have to breathe it, no way. Your right to smoke stops when you force me to inhale it against my will. Read the rest of this post...

China holding friends of Ai Weiwei

It's crazy, but welcome to communist China.

"Ai is grabbing a lot of attention but people like Wen Tao are not as famous," said Wen's girlfriend Shi Qing. "[They] can do whatever they want [to him] and therefore the danger for him is bigger. I just hope that more people will pay attention to this case. It's related to Ai's. As long as Ai's case is not clear, he [Wen] won't be released."

Wen is one of four missing people who friends believe are being held simply because of their connections to the artist. Chinese authorities have now allowed Ai to see his wife, albeit briefly, and have apparently acknowledged that he is being held under residential surveillance.

Yet his four associates – Wen, driver Zhang Jinsong, accountant Hu Mingfen and designer Liu Zhenggang – have vanished entirely. Family members have repeatedly tried to register them as missing, only to be turned away by police. Supporters believe the authorities hope to extract testimony from the four that can be used against Ai.

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TN Governor signs anti-gay/trans hate bill, repeals civil rights protections, bans further civil rights laws in TN cities

Hate is alive in the Republican party, and sadly, corporate American aided and abetted this tragedy. Read the rest of this post...

Krugman on "movement conservatism" and "wingnut welfare"

As l'Affaire Ryan evolves from "Danger, Will Robinson" to farce, Krugman has begun to evolve in his understanding of something he now actually calls "movement conservatism." Out loud.

And the astonishing willingness of the media to praise Ryan's plan as Shinola when it's clearly something else, has moved Krugman from wondering why people are so easily confused, to beginning to understand, for the second time, that "movement conservatism" is indeed a movement, with operatives, agents, and an institutionalized reward system. (In the leftie world, those institutions, like AEI, are called the "wingnut welfare system" and it takes no brains at all to know that Paul Ryan will never hurt for a paycheck the rest of his life.)

So I found the following paragraph, from this Krugman post, to be enlightening in a "state of the Krugman" sort of way. Ignore the point and note the language.

[M]y take is that the hermetic nature of movement conservatism — its loyalty tests, its closed intellectual world where you get all your alleged facts from Fox News and the Heritage Foundation, the “wingnut welfare” that ensures that defeated politicians always have a cushy job waiting at a think tank somewhere, always made it vulnerable to this kind of spin into policy craziness.

Movement conservatives are known bad actors, guaranteed insincere even when right. Krugman sees this when it comes to politicians, which is the subject of the post. But he's blind to operatives in the media, though he's closing in on them, as this other post shows.

Nevertheless, it's fascinating watching this journey he's taking. At present the state of the Krugman is clear, with patches of still-inexplicable cloudiness.

GP Read the rest of this post...

Obama leaving Ireland early due to volcanic ash cloud

Here we go again. This created quite a few headaches last year so hopefully this is only temporary and minor.

Volcanic ash blowing toward Europe caused a change of travel plans for President Barack Obama and spurred one airline to cancel most of its flights.

The plume, released when an Icelandic volcano began erupting on Saturday, is prompting Obama to leave Ireland early. A senior White House official told NBC News that Air Force One will depart for London tonight, while tomorrow's schedule "will proceed as planned."

Officials say they don't expect the problems caused by the Grimsvotn volcano to be as great as that caused by another Icelandic volcano last year that led to the grounding of almost all air traffic in Europe for several days amid fears that the ash could cause engines to stall. Authorities say systems and procedures have been improved, and the ash is currently not expected to move into continental Europe.

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Americans don't believe Medicare has to be cut to balance budget

Imagine that.

They're not buying it. Most Americans say they don't believe Medicare has to be cut to balance the federal budget, and ditto for Social Security, a new poll shows.

The Associated Press-GfK poll suggests that arguments for overhauling the massive benefit programs to pare government debt have failed to sway the public. The debate is unlikely to be resolved before next year's elections for president and Congress.

Americans worry about the future of the retirement safety net, the poll found, and 3 out of 5 say the two programs are vital to their basic financial security as they age. That helps explain why the Republican Medicare privatization plan flopped, and why President Barack Obama's Medicare cuts to finance his health care law contributed to Democrats losing control of the House in last year's elections.

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Eddie Glaude on Cornel West and "The Obama Deception"

This is a follow-up to an earlier post about the firestorm in the black community about Professor Cornel West's strong criticism of Obama in Chris Hedges article "The Obama Deception: Why Cornel West Went Ballistic".

It's an interview with Prof. Eddie Glaude, also a politically active black academic from Princeton, with Sam Seder of Majority.fm. Glaude has much to add to the issue and the discussion.

It's a fascinating interview. Stay tuned on this one; it isn't going away, and as I intimated in my earlier post, may offer us a way out. Black criticism of Obama is different from any other, and potentially more powerful.



In the interview, Prof. Glaude refers to comments in The Nation by Melissa Harris-Perry. Those comments are here. Like I said, a firestorm.

Notice the use of the term "brother" — Glaude calls Seder "brother Sam" for example. In the original interview Prof. West refers to "brother Paul Krugman" and "brother Joseph Stiglitz" (search for it in the print version). It's very powerful, and reflects both to black unity and progressive unity.

Well, also in that original interview, Obama calls West "brother West" in a striking exchange, at least to my ears. How much of West's sense of betrayal is contained in just that word?

As I said, this isn't going away. West and Glaude have real courage and actual integrity (a word that means "oneness"), and not a lot to lose.

GP Read the rest of this post...

TAKE ACTION: Leave messages on Facebook pages of homophobic companies responsible for repealing gay/trans civil rights in Tennessee

Please visit the Facebook pages of each of the companies who are responsible for the hateful law passed in Tennessee last week that will repeal gay and trans municipal civil rights protections (and protections for every other minority), and ban cities in the state from every passing any civil rights law ever again, for anybody.

Here are the Facebook pages of the board members who have pages on which you can comment:

Nissan

FedEx

AT&T

Xfinity (aka Comcast)

Comcast New England

Comcast Michigan

NBC Universal (Comcast)

Jeff Gordon, Dupont is sponsoring his car, he's promoting them (Dupont doesn't have a page you can comment on)

Caterpillar

KPMG

Whirlpool

And here are their Twitter accounts:

@comcastcares
@NissanNews
@FedExNews
@FedExDelivers
@ATT
@DuPont_News
@pfizer
@CaterpillarInc
@KPMG
@WhirlpoolCorp
@embraeraeronaut
@uhcfeds

Finally, there's Alcoa.  Alcoa is the only company to, early on, publicly state their opposition to the hateful legislation and their desire for the governor to veto the bill.  Clearly Alcoa's role on the board of the chamber is troublesome, but they do deserve our praise for immediately doing the right thing and calling for a veto.  The other companies have refused.  Here is their Facebook page: Alcoa

Each of these organizations is a board member of the Tennessee Chamber of Commerce & Industry.  Each of them is responsible for the chamber's endorsement of, and lobbying for, this religious right hate legislation.  We only have a few days to convince the governor to veto the bill - these companies need to help fix this problem now.

Visit their Facebook pages, click "like" at the top of the page, which will then permit you to leave a comment on their wall.  Feel free to say whatever you like, but I might recommend you link to our open letter, our Facebook action page, and our blog post summarizing the entire issue.

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Critics wondering what happened to Wall Street prosecutions

If the Attorney General's boss is having cocktail parties to raise campaign contributions from Wall Street, is it really a surprise that prosecutions are dead in the water? Bloomberg:

In November 2009, Attorney General Eric Holder vowed before television cameras to prosecute those responsible for the market collapse a year earlier, saying the U.S. would be “relentless” in pursuing corporate criminals.

In the 18 months since, no senior Wall Street executive has been criminally charged, and some lawmakers are questioning whether the U.S. Justice Department has been aggressive enough after declining to bring cases against officials at American International Group Inc. (AIG) and Countrywide Financial Corp.

Prosecutions of three categories of crime that could be linked to the causes of the crisis -- corporate, securities and bank fraud -- declined last fiscal year by 39 percent from 2003, the period after the accounting scandals at Enron Corp. and WorldCom Inc., Justice Department records show.

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Paul Ryan's Medicare-killing budget is the issue in NY House race -- and he's lost Scott Brown

Senator Scott Brown won't support Paul Ryan's plan to destroy Medicare:

GOP Sen. Scott Brown (Mass.) said Monday he won't support Rep. Paul Ryan's (R-Wis.) budget when it comes up for a vote in the Senate.

Brown, a centrist who is running for reelection in 2012, said that Ryan's plan helped jumpstart a necessary debate, but that its Medicare reforms go too far.

Now, the question is whether Senate GOPers even want to vote on Ryan's budget.

Tomorrow could be telling. Remember how Scott Brown's election in January of 2010 upended the political landscape in DC? Tomorrow, the same thing could happen in reverse. There's a special election in the upstate New York district vacated by the shirtless Craig's lister, Chris Lee. This is a heavily GOP district and it should be a slam dunk for the Republican candidate, Assemblywoman Jane Corwin. But, it's not. Recent polls have shown that the Democrat, Kathy Hochul, is ahead. From the Buffalo News:

Democrat Kathleen C. Hochul now holds a six-point edge in the race for Congress in the 26th District, the latest poll in the race found late Sunday.

Conducted by the Democratic firm Public Policy Polling, the poll shows Hochul with 42 percent, Republican Jane L. Corwin with 36 percent and independent Tea Party candidate Jack Davis with 13 percent.

The results closely track those of a Siena Research Institute poll that Saturday showed Hochul up by 4 points.

But unlike the Siena tally, the new poll of 1,106 likely voters shows Hochul with a lead well outside the margin of error of plus or minus 2.9 percent. PPP conducted the poll Saturday and Sunday.

The New York Times also reports on another poll from Siena, which found that Medicare is the big issue (thanks to Paul Ryan) -- and the money pouring in from the GOP to save what should be a very safe GOP seat:

New polls show that the Democratic candidate, Kathy Hochul, who was initially considered a long shot, has surged in the final days of the race and is in a dead heat with the Republican, Jane L. Corwin.

The special election on Tuesday — which has attracted millions in advertising dollars from a group tied to Karl Rove, from the United States Chamber of Commerce and from both national parties — has been upended by the debate over Medicare: Voters in the sprawling Buffalo-area district now call it the single most important issue in their decision on which candidate to support, according to the poll, conducted by Siena College.

Paul Ryan's budget could be the path back to power for the Democrats. We knew the House GOPers would overreach. It's just astounding that they did it so quickly and so dramatically. Read the rest of this post...

Socialists routed in Spanish local elections

Although they lost badly, it's hard to say how much real confidence voters have in the center-right to fix the problems of the Spanish economy. The unemployment numbers are staggering (21% but up to 41% for youth) and there are no easy answers to get out of this mess. It's easy to understand voter discontent because there's a lot of that going around in quite a few countries. The model of recent years simply doesn't work any longer. Al Jazeera:

Spain's ruling Socialist Party has suffered stinging losses in local elections, and now faces a balancing act between voter anger over sky-high unemployment and investor demands for strict austerity measures.

A week of protests by Spaniards fed up with the stagnant economy and the EU's highest jobless rate preceded Sunday's elections, which left the Socialists out of power in most of the country's cities and almost all the 17 autonomous regions.

Pressure could now grow from inside and outside the Socialist party for Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero, the Spanish prime minister, to call for early elections, though he vowed on Sunday night to hang on to the end of his term in March next year.

While the outcome of local elections does not always forecast general elections, the centre-right opposition Popular Party (PP) will try to turn Sunday's momentum into a victory at the national level.

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UK involvement could cost at least $1.5 billion

And remember, they are the side show compared to the US involvement. Where is this money coming from? We can't have politicians screaming about austerity and cuts for the poor and middle class yet not challenge war costs. These interventions really need to stop, including Afghanistan and Iraq.

Britain's involvement in the Libya conflict will cost the taxpayer as much as £1bn if it continues into the autumn as expected, according to expert analysis and data gathered by the Guardian.

Two months after western powers began bombing Libyan targets to protect civilians in Operation Unified Protector, the cost to Britain so far of the dozens of bombs dropped, hundreds of sorties flown and more than 1,000 service personnel deployed is estimated at more than £100m, according to British defence officials.

But defence economists have told the Guardian the costings are conservative. Francis Tusa, editor of the Defence Analysis newsletter, estimates that by the end of April Libyan operations had already cost the UK about £300m and that the bill was increasing by up to £38m a week.

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Another volcano erupts in Iceland, cloud heads towards northern Europe

It doesn't sound as though it is nearly as serious as last year but it may still disrupt some travel plans in the far north of Scotland and Northern Europe. The Guardian:

Paul Mott, forecaster at Meteogroup, said ash from the volcano could potentially reach the UK by Tuesday.

"Both the upper level and lower level winds will be becoming north-westerly through Monday and Tuesday as well, so between Iceland and Scotland there'll be northwesterlies," he said last night.

"So certainly any ash plume could potentially move from Iceland towards northern Scotland. I think that risk does increase through tomorrow night and into Tuesday."

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