Texas GOP opposes critical thinking

Proudly ignorant?

One of our eagle-eyed readers emailed us to point out this unbelievable passage in the RPT 2012 platform, as adopted at their recent statewide conference.

"Knowledge-Based Education – We oppose the teaching of Higher Order Thinking Skills (HOTS) (values clarification), critical thinking skills and similar programs that are simply a relabeling of Outcome-Based Education (OBE) (mastery learning) which focus on behavior modification and have the purpose of challenging the student’s fixed beliefs and undermining parental authority."

What this really means is that the GOP is doubling down on learn-by-rote fact recitation – of the kind spearheaded by the worst of the pro-testing advocates, and locally by IDEA Public Schools, which has committed to the anti-analytical direct learning model (aka "press button A, B or C.")

Read the rest of this post...

Another liberal tech company doing work for conservatives

Updated below
NationBuilder is an online campaigning tool kit, providing clients with the ability to do online advocacy, email supporters, raise money and integrate social media.

NationBuilder was founded by a group of progressive and Democratic technologists with campaign and grassroots non-profit organizing experience in the Netroots. It's not particularly different from other online tool kits like Blue State Digital, Salsa or Action Kit, with the notable exception that it is dramatically cheaper, with pricing starting at $19 per month for smaller campaigns and non-profits.

Online tools can be quite expensive, beyond the reach of many state level campaigns, or even congressional candidates. NationBuilder has, in my estimation, been successful at making online organizing tools more accessible to people with less money to spend.

All of this is preface to another disappointing development: NationBuilder has announced a deal to be the "exclusive software provider for the Republican State Leadership Committee."

Excuse me?

The RSLC helps elect Republican state legislators, the very people who are going around the country passing things like bans on marriage equality, racist laws targeting immigrants for deportation, and rolling back reproductive rights and environmental protections. These reactionaries think passing legislation banning Sharia law is a good use of time. And NationBuilder is going to provide the technology to help more of these people get into office.

Have no fear, despite being started by progressives and made popular in large part from progressive and Democratic business, NationBuilder is only a technology platform.

[Co-founder Joe] Green said he has no misgivings about providing technical assistance to candidates with whom he likely disagrees vehemently.

“Our ultimate goal is simply to level the playing field and let the people decide based on the strength of the arguments, not based on who has the biggest TV ad budgets,” Green said. “We’re proving that political software can and will be nonpartisan.”

I'm sure Green and his business partners won't mind, then, if Democratic campaigns and progressive organizations fire NationBuilder today.

Much of the controversy around Change.org revolved around their construction of an open campaign platform, staffing themselves with many notable progressive campaigners, accepting the mantle (both earned and perceived) as being a progressive piece of infrastructure, and then deployed a defense of "But we're an open platform!" when criticized for working with union busters.

In fairness, NationBuilder has been more open about a willingness to work with the Tea Party from its earliest days. But its founders' backgrounds in Democratic electoral politics and the activist-progressive film and organizing group, Brave New Films, have lead to many grassroots progressive organizations to embrace the tools. Again, NationBuilder has said they're non-partisan, but there's a bit of a difference between being an open platform and inking a contract to provide tools to just about any Republican state legislative candidate in the country.

It isn't openness when what you mean is you'll work for anyone who gives you a big check. That's what Lanny Davis does with his lobbying services and I don't think it'd be accurate to call him an open platform.

Technology can be used to do anything. At its most basic level, programming may be fundamentally non-ideological. But once code enters the world, it is used for specific ends. The people who sell technology can decide whether they want their code to be used for good or ill. They have a choice. And NationBuilder is choosing to work for people who want to put women in jail for getting abortions and deport any brown person with a Hispanic-sounding name. That anyone can pay to use NationBuilder's tools is no defense. It's an excuse and a sad one at that.

I think it's time for progressive activists and organizations to start putting out clear expectations about the behavior of companies who want our business. Clearly there is a problem with ostensibly left-leaning technology firms and their willingness to do work with conservative activists.

My recommendation is to deny business to technologists who are working with conservatives to turn America back to the late 1800s. If you are a client of NationBuilder, fire them. If you are considering hiring them, don't. Make your decision public and make sure that even if NationBuilder isn't going to change, other technologists will know that progressives won't work with the people whose code is being used to attack the human and civil rights of women, gays, immigrants, people of color, and workers.

Update 6/29:
I've received feedback on this post, both in the comments and offline, and I think it was inaccurate for me to describe NationBuilder as a "liberal tech company." They are non-partisan and honest about that fact. I noted this in the post, but the headline and lede do not make that clear.

That said, the criticism of any company for objectionable business practices is fair, especially one which derives a significant portion of its revenues from progressive organizations and campaigns. NationBuilder should be treated exactly the same way as any other business which works to help get reactionary Republicans elected. Recent examples would be Waffle House, Koch Industries, and Coors Brewing Company, though online progressive groups regularly run campaigns pressuring businesses which support conservative work, as we saw with tremendous campaigns against ALEC's corporate donors.

In short: There's no reason to give technology companies that progressives use any different treatment from any other companies who are doing objectionable things. Read the rest of this post...

Video: Henri, Le Chat Noir, visits the vet

A story that our Sushi can relate to these days. He refused to look at me when I took him to the hospital for his radio-iodine treatment. Sushi stayed at the hospital for two weeks (due to the radioactivity) and for the most part is now doing well. Our cat-girl, Nasdaq, mourned him for two weeks, but then was upset when suddenly he showed up again. For the first time in 14 years, she attacked and bullied Sushi, who is generally the bully of the house. Ahhh, cats.

Sushi the patient.

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Where next for John Roberts and the Supreme Court?

The upholding of the individual mandate is not just a defeat for movement conservatives, the fact that it was Chief Justice Roberts and not Jusice Kennedy who defied them may be a rather bigger "tell."

The Supreme Court has been handing down 5-4 decisions for quite a while. When O'Connor retired, the right thought that they would finally have the reliable partisan vote in their favor that would allow them to overturn Roe vs Wade, gut the civil rights act and a dozen other projects they could never achieve through Congress. Instead the court shifted to the right, but not nearly as much as the GOP wanted, and Kennedy became the swing vote in a series of 5-4 decisions.

Roberts did vote for Citizens United, but he isn't a Scalia or a Renquist. Faced with the choice of delivering for the extreme right, Roberts decided to keep his reputation intact.

That vote is going to have consequences. There are no shades of agreement for movement conservatives, you are either with them 100% or a vile traitor and enemy. Expect the right to denounce Robert's vote as craven, giving in to pressure from the left, then give him the Fox News treatment till they have safely driven him out of their fold. Read the rest of this post...

Republicans say they're moving to Canada due to health care decision

Really doesn't need a comment.

One of the readers has found that this might be a joke, by Colbert viewers. I was wondering when I read the one I posted as to whether it was a joke, but there were so many, and I trusted Buzzfeed.... It's still funny either way. Read the rest of this post...

The "radical" Supreme Court dissent that John Roberts would not sign

This is the start of the other Supreme Court ACA discussion — analysis of the dissent signed by four of the Republican justices.

First, a section of the dissent (pdf; my emphasis and paragraphing throughout):

Major provisions of the Affordable Care Act—i.e., the insurance regulations and taxes, the reductions in federal reimbursements to hospitals and other Medicare spending reductions, the exchanges and their federal subsidies, and the employer responsibility assessment—cannot remain once the Individual Mandate and Medicaid Expansion are invalid.

That result follows from the undoubted inability of the other major provisions to operate as Congress intended without the Individual Mandate and Medicaid Expansion. Absent the invalid portions, the other major provisions could impose enormous risks of unexpected burdens on patients, the health-care community, and the federal budget. That consequence would be in absolute conflict with the ACA’s design of “shared responsibility,” and would pose a threat to the Nation that Congress did not intend.

Now, early comment by Scott Lemieux at Lawyers, Guns and Money:

The Radicalism (And Hackery) of the Health Care Cases Dissenters

As mentioned below, the four dissenters to today’s health care ruling [pdf] issued an unusual jointly signed opinions of quite remarkable radicalism.

It would have radically re-shaped the constitutional order by not merely ruling the individual mandate as beyond the power of the federal government to regulate interstate commerce, but taken the even more radical step of limiting the federal government’s spending powers by preventing it from expanding Medicaid.

Taken together, this would constitute a radical transformation of the American constitutional order. And because of these defects, the dissenters would have ruled the PPACA “invalid in its entirety.” ...

The argument is that the mandate and the Medicaid expansion are not valid regulations of interstate commerce, but that they are also so essential to a broader regulatory scheme that the entire act must fall. As long as McCulloch v. Maryland remains good law, this argument is transparently wrong.

For legal freaks, this is McCulloch v. Maryland. It establishes Congress's right to make laws that are necessary to exercising its expressed (explicit) powers, creating the notion of implicit powers.

The ACA dissent ties that in knots. By definition (per McCullough), if the mandate is essential to the broader regulatory scheme, it cannot be invalid. You'd have to reverse McCollough to get to that conclusion.

This is why the Republican judges are "radical" — because their "law" isn't at all grounded in actual law, but in bench-legislated outcomes wrapped in fog. Imagine where we'd be with Rule of Law, already in shreds, if Roberts had signed on to that!

This is also why I call them the "Republican judges" — because they are nakedly so.

By the way, I've heard that the dissent refers to the majority opinion as "the dissent" (Updated: Discussed here.). If true, it means that when the present dissent was written, it was indeed the majority. [UPDATE: I'm not alone. Thanks to twitter friend @jordanadambanks for this link.]

Was Roberts voting to restore the appearance of legitimacy to the court that bears his name? I do have my thoughts.

There's much more in the Lemieux piece. Please do click over; there a second half, and a second point, I haven't touched. Plus great praise for Ginsberg.

Let this start the discussion — that dissent deserves all the attention it gets.

[UPDATE: Some phrase tweaks for clarity.]

GP

To follow or send links: @Gaius_Publius Read the rest of this post...

GOP congressman compares Supreme Court decision to September 11 attacks

I remember the day vividly.  It was a beautiful clear morning, and I awoke to the news that Mohammad Atta had just outlawed pre-existed conditions. Read the rest of this post...

Romney Web site: "As president, Mitt will nominate judges in the mold of Chief Justice Roberts" - oops

Get that Etch-a-Sketch!

Click image for readable version.

In all seriousness, this is what happens when you don't believe in anything and simply make stuff up. It ends up biting you in the behind because, in the end, Mitt Romney has no idea who Justice Roberts is, what makes him tick, or how he comes down on the decisions. He just said this because like the words "Ronald Reagan," Justice Roberts used to be something good conservatives claimed to like. Read the rest of this post...

AffordableCareCat.com

Source: AffordableCareCat.com

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Best right-wing tweet of the day

Yet somehow, I feel fine.



And another:

Promise? Read the rest of this post...

Video: Romney in 2006 said health care mandate is "essential"

Oh my, yet another example of Mitt Romney taking all sides of an issue depending on who he is speaking with at the moment. He has no core beliefs other than raking in dollars for himself.

What is also exposed here is that the Republicans have shifted so far to the right, they don't even agree on the "conservative" beliefs of a few years ago. Obama himself would have fit in perfectly with the GOP of a few years ago but the Republicans continue to out-extreme themselves year after year.

More from the NY Times:

In crafting the Affordable Care Act, President Obama and his Democratic allies argued that the individual mandate — originally an idea put forth by conservatives — was a key part of broadening the financial risks for insurance companies and lowering the costs for the insured.

In the video released Wednesday night, Mr. Romney appears to share that view, at least as it relates to the Massachusetts plan.

The individual mandate, he said, “is essential for bringing the health care costs down for everyone and getting everyone the health insurance they need.”

Read the rest of this post...

ObamaCare upheld, 5-4 - John Roberts sides with majority upholding law

Upholding ACA: Roberts, Ginsburg, Breyer, Sotomayor, Kagan
Dissent: Scalia, Kennedy, Thomas, Alito

Tweet of the day:

“@neeratanden: Just a reminder to my conservative friends: If you call the mandate a tax increase, then Mitt Romney increased taxes in Mass as Gov.”

This is cute.

So Romney is calling the individual mandate a tax increase. Thing is - as CNN just noted (doh!) - a friend points out that the individual mandate in Massachusetts - which Romney personally championed and signed into law - is structured exactly the same way as the similar requirement in the Affordable Care Act. The Massachusetts penalties are administered through the tax code, labeled “tax penalties,” and are about the same as the fines imposed by the ACA. The penalty is owed on the “individual’s personal income tax return” in Massachusetts, and it's payable to the state Department of Revenue. Justice Roberts concluded that the individual responsibility requirement in Obamacare was a tax because it was payable to the IRS and was collected “in the same manner as taxes.” This logic applies identically in Massachusetts, where the subsidies are structured similarly. Oh Mitt...

It's really amazing how well the GOP lies.  Just watched another guy on CNN talk about how "even Pelosi said she didn't have time to read it."  No she didn't.  I googled it when I heard this lie the other day.  What Pelosi actually said was that people would truly see how good the law was when it's implemented and it helps them.

Hey a southern Republican is on TV opposing the law.  Now there's a surprise.

The anti-healthcare laws are already on TV.  Just saw one with some "doctor" claiming the law hasn't worked.  Uh, most of it hasn't even been implemented yet, you liar.  Really ticks me off that the GOP keeps using the "it's been around for two years and what has it done?" when the law has yet to be implemented.  Also, the liar on TV just said, and I paraphrase: "what if the law doesn't let me keep my patients?"  What if?  That's your best argument?  Amazing.

BTW, Mitch McConnell is a liar.  My premiums have not gone up.  They went down 10% this year for the first time ever.  That's because BCBS had to comply with health care reform's requirement to spend 80% of their income on actual services.  So my rates went down.  McConnell is a liar to say that the law has forced premiums up.

As for his other claims of inaction by the law, uh duh - most of the law doesn't go into effect for two more years.

These guys are such liars.  The media has to hold him accountable for this.  You do not get to outright lie about something and have the media simply report is as he-said-she-said.
Here's the text of the Supreme Court's health care reform decision

Democrats need to renew their effort - with new blood - to defend the law. Republicans are coming out with $9m in ads tomorrow in battleground states opposing the law. The larger GOP argument is going to be that you need to elect Republicans to Congress and the White House to repeal health care reform. This decision gives that added momentum. It's time for Democrats, and the White House, to start really defending this law and explaining to people some of the good things it actually does.

More from SCOTUSblog:

In Plain English: The Affordable Care Act, including its individual mandate that virtually all Americans buy health insurance, is constitutional. There were not five votes to uphold it on the ground that Congress could use its power to regulate commerce between the states to require everyone to buy health insurance. However, five Justices agreed that the penalty that someone must pay if he refuses to buy insurance is a kind of tax that Congress can impose using its taxing power. That is all that matters. Because the mandate survives, the Court did not need to decide what other parts of the statute were constitutional, except for a provision that required states to comply with new eligibility requirements for Medicaid or risk losing their funding. On that question, the Court held that the provision is constitutional as long as states would only lose new funds if they didn't comply with the new requirements, rather than all of their funding.

Can't wait to hear Scalia's dissent. He's going to have an aneurism. As someone mentioned in the comments, this may explain Scalia's wacky meltdown over Obama's immigration policy. He was ticked off about this decision.

SCOTUSblog:

you can't refuse to pay the tax... The only effect of not complying with the mandate is that you pay the tax.

The Court holds that the mandate violates the Commerce Clause, but that doesn't matter b/c there are five votes for the mandate to be constitutional under the taxing power.

More from SCOTUSblog:

The money quote from the section on the mandate: Our precedent demonstrates that Congress had the power to impose the exaction in Section 5000A under the taxing power, and that Section 5000A need not be read to do more than impose a tax. This is sufficient to sustain it.

ENTIRE LAW HAS BEEN UPHELD, PER CNN. SCOTUSblog says "Chief Justice Roberts voted to save the ACA."

SCOTUSblog:

"The bottom line: the entire ACA is upheld, with the exception that the federal government's power to terminate states' Medicaid funds is narrowly read."

\
Stay tuned. SCOTUSblog is saying the mandate may have survived as a tax.

Yes, confirmed, the mandate does survive as a tax. Still not clear if legislative action is needed.

The news problem here is that the court hands out paper copies of the decision and everyone is trying to read it now to figure out what it does. A bit of a silly way to do this.

SCOTUSblog says the Medicaid provision is "limited but not invalidated." Read the rest of this post...

"Breaking with Democrats" — two stories

Breaking with Democrats when they stand in the way of progressive issues and values is a big theme of mine. For example, one of my Four Rules for managing an effective progressive coalition deals specifically with that issue.

And I know that others, for example, Ring of Fire's Mike Papantonio, are thinking along these lines. (By the way, you can listen to yours truly and Mr. Papantonio discuss this very topic on an upcoming RoF broadcast.)

Now come two stories on this very subject — progressives confronting Democrats when Democrats behave badly. Which is all too often.

■ One story deals with the international side — Ari Melber and Robert Naiman in The Nation.

■ The other deals with domestic affairs — Politico on how the Democratic Party is going "AWOL on the class war."

Let's look at them together; they add to each other well.

On the foreign front, here's Ari Melber at The Nation: "Breaking with Democrats, Some Activists Target Obama's Kill List" (my emphasis):

President Obama's use of drones to target alleged terrorists on a government "kill list" has attracted some new scrutiny after a major New York Times report, though politicians in both parties have spoken out more against the leaks in the article than the program itself.

While some Democratic leaders and progressive groups have been fairly muted on the issue, one Washington group, Just Foreign Policy, has stepped into the vacuum to organize against the drone program.

This is an excellent six-question interview with Mr. Naiman. It's very much about organizing to the left of Obama on foreign policy issues like drone strikes. Please do read it; I found it fascinating.

Here's a bit of Naiman on primarying Obama:

I think it is a great shame that no one of stature was willing to primary Obama from the left including on the war issue. I called for this publicly and worked privately to lobby people I thought might be willing to do it. But you can't do it without a plausible candidate, and no plausible candidate stepped forward. There are a lot of obstacles to doing this, and one of them is finding a plausible candidate who is willing to do it, and if you can't do that, it is a moot point.

On the domestic front, here's Politico: "Dems go AWOL in class war". A sample (and believe me, this is just a taste):

Labor unions hoped to turn the Wisconsin recall election into a rallying cause for their ailing movement. But a Democratic president couldn’t be dragged off the sidelines for the fight.

Anti-Wall Street activists were itching to see JP Morgan CEO Jamie Dimon bashed like a piñata at a congressional hearing just two weeks after his firm blew $2 billion in risky speculation. But Democratic senators greeted him with flowers, not fury [note: all but Jeff Merkley].

And, as President Barack Obama attempts to make Mitt Romney’s history as a wealthy buyout artist a centerpiece of his 2012 message, he is second-guessed and hushed by some of the leading voices in his own party.

What the hell ever happened to populism in the Democratic Party?

The recent convergence of setbacks on the left has activists and historians alike pondering anew how the modern Democratic Party has severed its connection to its own history — a tradition that many liberals wrongly imagined was about to spring back to life in the Obama years.

Don't focus on the difficulty of this fight. Focus on this:

■ You're not alone. People of some stature are actively working on these things. (Read the rest of the interview for more.)

■ Ari Melber got this piece, with that headline, into The Nation. In other words, The Nation is starting to host the Progressive-and-Democrats conversation in public. That's an excellent step forward, and Melber is a terrific ball-carrier. (If you watch his recent appearances on MSNBC, you know what I mean.)

■ Politico is pointing out publicly that national Dems are bad allies in the class war. That's not nothing. It's high profile and they're definitely going to hear back from Team O. But that ball is being pushed downfield (even if Politico has evil intentions in doing it). That works to our advantage.

The world doesn't end in November 2012; it starts. There's a train wreck coming in December — the Grand Bargain Lame Duck Express.

Let's see if we can't get that stopped. You who care, you're not working alone.

GP

To follow or send links: @Gaius_Publius
  Read the rest of this post...

Wash Post editorial blasts Scalia's partisanship

GOP Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia is the judicial equivalent of a House Republican.< Scalia is to the court what Fox News is to, well, news. He is a caricature of justice. He epitomizes elitism. He's what I'd call "intellectual trash" - you've heard of "new money," Scalia is "new intellect." Smart, but seemingly incapable of managing the burden that comes with both intellect and power. Here's a part of the Post's editorial:

This gratuitous outburst, regarding a matter that might someday come before the court as a legal case, followed Justice Scalia’s performance during oral arguments on health care, which included a wisecrack about striking down the “Cornhusker Kickback” — even though that infamous dollop of Medicaid money for Nebraska, allegedly inserted in return for the vote of that state’s senator, was no longer in the statute. He sneered that asking the justices to read the entire 2,700-page Affordable Care Act would violate the Eighth Amendment prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment. He launched into a muddled riff on an old Jack Benny comedy routine that became so protracted and distracting that Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr., amused at first, eventually had to declare, “That’s enough frivolity for a while.”

The Supreme Court decision on health care reform should come out shortly after 10am Eastern. Stay tuned. Read the rest of this post...

Barclays fined for manipulating Libor rates

As The Guardian has detailed, 2012 has been a bumpy year for Barclays bank. Barclays CEO (American) Bob Diamond had been as much of a wallflower as JPMorgan's Jamie Dimon. Never happy with staying in the background and focusing on business, Diamond has rarely been able to control himself. He just has to be the center of attention or he will seemingly burst.

The Lehman collapse must have been the best of times for Diamond, as he received a sweet deal on that purchase including plenty of government help. In what was shaping up to be a dream year for Diamond, his 2011 payout of $27 million was halted after shareholder complaints. And now, Diamond has agreed to forgo his 2012 bonus following the latest scandal where his bank has admitted to manipulating markets. Suddenly, there is talk about the end of Diamond's career. His golden touch is no longer so golden, as if it ever really was golden.

So what about the market manipulation? Diamond's team involved in the manipulation talked about being quiet though they left a long and detailed history of emails and chats where they openly discussed "favors" for each other. Regulators continue investigations of similar abuse with numerous other global banks.

Requests came in such as: "We need a really low 3m fix, it could potentially cost a fortune. Would really appreciate any help."

And: "Your annoying colleague again ... Would love to get a high one month. Also if poss a low three month ... if poss ... thanks."

Traders made their requests in person, via email and through electronic "chats" over an instant messaging system.

On a few occasions, some traders even made entries in electronic calendars to remind themselves what requests to make of Barclays' Libor submitters the next day.

The outstanding issue now is whether the banks will be deterred from such actions in the future. Are these fines enough to change behavior or are they a nuisance, but still cheaper than actually following the law? To date, most of the settlements with the banking industry have been favorable to the bankers. This may be an expensive fine and it may end up costing Diamond his job, but Barclays will be just fine. That's how it always works out. Read the rest of this post...