Texas Slashes Family Planning Services So It Can
Underfund Women’s Health

post from ThinkProgress on 22 June 2012 03:00:06 PM. © ThinkProgress

In March, the federal government cut off funds to Texas’ Women’s Health Program because the state chose to exclude abortion providers from the program in violation of federal law. But even without federal funds, which made up 90 percent of the funding, Texas Gov. Rick Perry (R) announced the state would fund the Women’s Health Program on its own.

But to pay for the reduced services provided by the program, the governor announced that the state would cut other health services. Perry directed Tom Suehs, executive commissioner of the state’s Health and Human Services department, to cut $40.1 million in department services to make up the missing federal funds.

Cuts will come by reducing dental services, programs for the elderly, and administrative pay. Even with this money freed up, the Women’s Health Program will not be nearly as strong as it was with federal funding.

These cuts come on top of cuts that lawmakers cut $73 million from the state’s family planning services budget in 2011. Even before Texas decided to ban Planned Parenthood from the Women’s Health Program, women’s clinics around the state were already being forced to greatly reduce services or shut their doors entirely.

–Ben Sherman

Read The Full Article:
http://thinkprogress.org/health/2012/06/22/504454/texas-health-spending-cuts/

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Romney Campaign Co-Chair: Romney Would
‘Rescind’ Obama Immigration Directive

post from ThinkProgress on 22 June 2012 03:00:06 PM. © ThinkProgress

A week ago, Obama announced that the Department of Homeland Security was halting deportations for up to 1.4 million young undocumented immigrants. Since that time, Mitt Romney has been repeatedly asked whether, if elected, he would undo Obama’s directive or leave it in place. Romney has steadfastly refused to answer.

But Ray Walser, a co-chair of Mitt Romney’s campaign for issues pertaining to Latin America, finally spilled the beans:

…Mr Walser, told The Daily Telegraph: “My anticipation is that he would probably rescind this directive were he to be elected in November.”
Mr Walser, a senior policy analyst at the Heritage Foundation and veteran US diplomat, said such a decision would be in line with the “very tough” stance taken on illegal migration by Mr Romney so far.

After Walser’s comments to The Daily Telegraph, the reporter followed up with the Romney campaign. It refused to repond to his inquiry. But Walser got back in touch with the reporter and begged not to be quoted: “I’ve now had a little conversation with people from the campaign and they are concerned… They would really prefer that if you’re going to quote the Romney position, you get it from someone other than me.”

Read The Full Article:
http://thinkprogress.org/election/2012/06/22/504821/romney-campaign-co-chair-romn
ey-would-recind-obama-immigration-directive/

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Newly Engaged Couple Responds To Anti-Trans
Detractors

post from ThinkProgress on 22 June 2012 03:00:06 PM. © ThinkProgress

When Dr. Scout proposed to Liz Margolies at last week’s White House Pride reception, it was a celebratory moment for two prominent LGBT activists in love. But after the video went viral, many conservative detractors attacked them because Scout is trans. In separate response videos, the newly engaged couple responds to their detractors. Scout uses humor to diffuse the many anti-trans comments he’s received, offering, “To the blog that was titled, ‘Freak Show,’ we just want to remind you that it’s actually Dr. Freak Show to you.” Margolies reflected on her love for Scout, saying, “We’re just regular people struggling to do good in the world, struggling to raise kids, and struggling to love each other.” Watch both videos:

The couple shared some additional thoughts in an op-ed at The Advocate.

Read The Full Article:
http://thinkprogress.org/lgbt/2012/06/22/504786/newly-engaged-couple-responds-to-
anti-trans-detractors/

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DoD Report: Improve Combat Pay For Lower Ranking
Troops

post from ThinkProgress on 22 June 2012 03:00:06 PM. © ThinkProgress

The current system of combat pay for younger enlisted troops is unfair because while facing the greatest danger in combat deployments, low ranking soldiers receive a much smaller share of the financial benefits given to more senior officers, finds a newly released report by the Department of Defense.

The Quadrennial Review of Military Compensation [PDF] finds that overall pay compares favorably to the private-sector but the military should implement changes in combat and incentive pay. Specifically, the authors identify that establishing differentials in hazardous duty pay would more fairly compensate those soldiers who are exposed to the greatest dangers.

The report recommends that the DoD set “Hostile Fire Pay” at an amount higher than “Imminent Danger Pay” and establish “more than one level of Imminent Danger Pay to recognize different levels of exposure to danger.” Financial burdens on deployed soldiers could be lightened by instituting tax credits to replace the “Combat Zone Tax Exclusion.”

?Even if their tax bill is zero, they are going to get that credit back if it is refundable,? he added. The combat tax credit would be linked to coming under hostile fire, Tom Bush, the study’s director, told the Armed Forces Press Service.

The DoD should establish a “general career incentive pay authority” that isn’t linked to a specific career field but can offer career incentive pay in any field deemed critical, finds the report. President Obama’s letter of instruction to the review panel specifically identified mental health as one of those critical fields.

Statistics released by the Associated Press this month show that an average of one military suicide occurred each day in the first six months of 2012. ?We must continue to fight to eliminate the stigma from those with post-traumatic stress and other mental health issues,? Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta wrote in an internal memo. ?[We] cannot tolerate any actions that belittle, haze, humiliate or ostracize any individual, especially those who require or are responsibly seeking professional services.?

Read The Full Article:
http://thinkprogress.org/security/2012/06/22/504531/dod-report-improve-combat-pay
-for-lower-ranking-troops/

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Midday open thread

post from Daily Kos on 22 June 2012 03:00:05 PM. © Daily Kos

Today's comic by Matt Bors is Stop and Frisk Suspense Stories:

Cartoon by Matt Bors - Stop and Frisk Suspense Stories

What's coming up on Sunday Kos ...

"Let 'em die!" What millions of Americans could lose after the Supreme Court rules, by Joan McCarter
A preview of the SCOTUS' decision on ACA: Conservative judicial activism, by Armando
The ACA Ruling: what the court must decide, by Adam Bonin
About those polls..., by DemFromCT
The Asian-American vote, by Denise Oliver Velez
Gay Republicans, Mitt Romney, Dan Savage and the F word, by Scott Wooledge
Turning the tide on corporate education, by Dante Atkins

Congratulations to our own Adam B, who has been appointed by the Pennsylvania Democratic Party to serve on the Rules Committee at the 2012 Democratic National Convention in Charlotte.
Arkansas court shoots down state's execution law. It's not an end to capital punishment, however. The issue was that legislators inappropriately turned authority over the Department of Corrections.
"451." That would be a new Internet error code if fans of the late sci-fi writer Ray Bradbury have their way. The number is part of his book Fahrenheit 451, about a future in which a police state burns every book it can get its hands on:
Tim Bray, a fan of Bradbury's writing, is recommending to the Internet Engineering Task Force, which governs such choices, that when access to a website is denied for legal reasons the user is given the status code 451.
There are already a host of HTTP status codes, from the common 404 Not Found to 504 Gateway Timeout. The 451 idea follows a blogpost from Terence Eden, who found that his ISP had been ordered to censor the Pirate Bay when he was given an HTTP 403 Forbidden message, meaning that "the server understood the request, but is refusing to fulfil it". In fact, Eden writes on his blog, it was not Pirate Bay that was preventing access but the government, after Britain's high court issued an order to ISPs to block access to the filesharing site in April, so the response was "factually incorrect", and a new code is needed to indicate "censorship".
Truth-telling gets POLITICO reporter suspended: Joe Williams is off the job while his editors review his remarks on MSNBC saying Mitt Romney is only comfortable around white people and his tweets making fun of the candidate, with references to his fortune. Founding editors John Harris and Jim VandeHei wrote a memo to the staff reminding them
that "POLITICO journalists have a clear and inflexible responsibility to cover politics fairly and free of partisan bias."
hahahahahahahahahahahahaha. You mean like this piece of inflexibly responsible coverage?
Twitter to expand character limit. Assuming, that is, you're The New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, BuzzFeed, TMZ, the WWE or other members of media hoi oligoi and not some lowly blogger or mere tweet celebrity.
@BuzzFeedBen Romney is a stock photo now http://t.co/... http://t.co/...
? @babaksiavoshy via web
First solar plant on reservation land approved: Although there are a number of solar projects on American Indian reservations in the pipeline in Maine, Arizona and New Mexico, the Department of the Interior has just given its stamp of approval to first one in Nevada. The 350-megawatt power plant will be built on 2,000 acres of the Moapa reservation outside Las Vegas. It will generate enough electricity to power 100,000 homes.
Heroic Mitt: Myth of the 2002 Olympics gets dunked and debunked.
Americans' confidence in just about everything declines.
Crime pays at Bank of America. The bank has been fined $2.8 million by the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority for overbilling customers by $32.2 million over eight years:
Since this took place over eight years, let?s assume the average amount outstanding of money the bank had that it wasn?t entitled to was half that, or $16 million. This was free money, absolutely no cost of funds. If you assume even a low rate of return, roughly 2% or higher, and factor in that the fine was paid in arrears, and a full year after the practice stopped, the fine wasn?t even a punishment. It?s almost certain to be less than the money Merrill/BofA made from this abuse (alternatively, you could use cost of funds, which has plunged in the wake of the crisis, but was a meaningful positive number prior to when the Fed started implementing ZIRP).
So much for regulatory competence.

Read The Full Article:
http://feeds.dailykos.com/~r/dailykos/index/~3/m4mjmkVzN8E/-Midday-open-thread

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Battleground state Latinos reject Mitt Romney

post from Daily Kos on 22 June 2012 02:55:52 PM. © Daily Kos

Or, put another way, Latinos like President Barack Obama much, much more. And they're liking him better now that he's quit deporting their kids. (Florida trendline is from January.)

While we don't have trendlines from the non-Florida states, we do know that Latino enthusiasm has significantly spiked in the wake of Obama's DREAM decisions.

The survey also asked Latinos how enthusiastic they were about voting in the 2012 election, following similar questions that were asked in our November 2011 benchmark survey with Univision. In November 2011, 47% of Latinos were ?very enthusiastic? about voting in the Presidential election. Today, 60% of Latino voters report they are very enthusiastic about voting in the November 2012 election and an additional 23% are somewhat enthusiastic. When asked to compare their interest and enthusiasm levels in the 2008 and 2012 election, more people now tell us they more enthusiastic about voting in 2012 than 2008, a shift from our previous polling.

As I've noted before, Romney and his Republicans are digging themselves into a deep hole in key battlegrounds by losing Latinos by such dramatic numbers. And no amount of cheesy web videos will change that dynamic. Particularly not when Latinos see this in the news:

ROMNEY CAMPAIGN CO-CHAIR: Romney would "rescind" Obama immigration order http://t.co/... #spillingthebeans
? @thinkprogress

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http://feeds.dailykos.com/~r/dailykos/index/~3/jeUQMb44K6k/-Battleground-state-La
tinos-reject-Mitt-Romney

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The "Big Money" is Buying Gold. Should you Follow
their Lead

post from Jutia Group on 22 June 2012 02:30:00 PM. © Jutia Group

Contrary to popular opinion, emotions and sentiment do not move stocks or commodities prices. The only thing that moves prices is buying/selling pressure resulting from capital flowing in and out of the particular security. In other words, that which controls the most capital in a security controls the price of the security. Therefore, rather than simply just following fundamentals and technical signs, I have … [visit site to read . . . → Read More: The "Big Money" is Buying Gold. Should you Follow their Lead?

Read The Full Article:
http://jutiagroup.com/20120622-the-big-money-is-buying-gold-should-you-follow-the
ir-lead/

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President Obama addresses National Association of
Latino Elected Officials

post from Daily Kos on 22 June 2012 02:26:03 PM. © Daily Kos

"Our patriotism is not based on race, ethnicity or religious belief." -President Barack Obama

A day after Mitt Romney delivered a speech to the National Association of Latino Elected Officials (NALEO)?a speech most notable for what Romney did not say (like whether he would actually abandon his "self deportation" plan or embrace the DREAM Act)?the president of the United States spoke to the same group this afternoon.

The president, not needing to worry about placating a racist wing of his party, was able to lay out clearly what his immigration policies are and will be if reelected. The president was introduced by the Secretary of Labor Hilda Solis, the first Latina to serve in that capacity.

Currently the president holds a wide lead over Romney among Latino voters. WaPo polling shows Obama with a 68-30 lead, along the lines of the president's margin over John McCain in 2008. The president's initiative last week can only help.

After being introduced by Secretary Solis, the president received a warm welcome and in excellent Spanish said it was "a great pleasure to be amongst so many friends." It certainly felt that way based on the reception he received.

The president obliquely referenced Romney as "the person who addressed you yesterday" and then contrasted his view that America is a place "where you can make it if you try no matter if you came on the Mayflower or slave ships or through Ellis Island."

The president said "people do not come here looking for handouts," in contrast to the GOP view that Latinos come to America looking to have "anchor babies" to live on welfare.

The president then expanded his message to connect the aspirations of Latinos to those of average Americans?getting a good job, working hard, having health coverage, saving for retirement, getting a good education for our kids and helping our kids to have better lives than we did. To the president, Latinos are not the "Other" that Republicans want Americans to fear, they are Americans.

The president stressed the importance of being able to obtain affordable health insurance, especially for Latinos, who have the highest rate of being uninsured of any group in the nation. The president stressed that the Affordable Care Act did more to bring the possibility of health care and insurance to all Americans and Latinos than any other measure in the history of the nation. The unstated premise of the president's remark is that Romney, Republicans and the radical Republican Roberts Court want to throw that advance out.

Interestingly, the president devoted the beginning of his speech to non-immigration policy issues that he see as being especially important to Latinos. He stresses that the Republican plan is to basically do nothing but count on the so called "job creators." The president said "prosperity in this country does not come from the top down. It comes from the middle class."

The president then pivoted to the immigration policy issue?and states unequivocally that we need an immigration policy that welcomes people ready to embrace the American Dream of hard work, education and opportunity. The president flatly states our current immigration policy is broken and must be reformed. But not Republican wall building, racial profiling "reform," but reform that was once embraced by Republicans like George Bush and Jeb Bush and 23 Republican senators. Today's Republican Party rejects this approach and the president said he was forced to act and will act with or without the help of Congress.

"We should have passed the DREAM Act long ago and we would have except the Republicans blocked it!" said the president. The president flatly said the Republicans blocked it because of politics. And the president acted to remove the specter of deportation over kids who have worked hard, want to serve their country and want to do more.

But the president insisted we have to do more. "I have said time and again, send me the Dream Act and I will sign it right away." And he said he will work with anyone from any party to address the problem.

We have to give "the DREAM Act kids" a sense of hope. But Romney has promised to veto the Dream Act and, the president says, we should take him at his word. "I believe that would be a tragic mistake," the president said.

The president concluded his remarks by noting that his personal story is the very essence of the American Dream?how his father came to the United States to give him the opportunity to achieve the American Dream. And the story continues, as he fights for the opportunities to be passed along to his own children and to all of American's children.

"Si se puede!" said the president. And he will fight for every American child, white, black, Latino, Asian, of any stripe or creed, for their chance to DREAM the American Dream.

"SI SE PUEDE!" Great speech by the president.

Read The Full Article:
http://feeds.dailykos.com/~r/dailykos/index/~3/1M9e0sJEF9o/-President-Obama-addre
sses-National-Association-of-Latino-Elected-Officials

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Mark Adams Hunger Strike (Occupys Political
Prisoners Update)

Earlier this week I wrote about Occupy's Political Prisoners, specifically Mark Adams (shown in the video to the right) and the NATO 5. There have been new developments in both cases.[...]

Read The Full Article:
http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/firedoglake/fdl/~3/vQpMktalG4A/

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Paging Scott Brown's spokesman: Clean-up on the
royal aisle

Yesterday Scott Brown's widely reported and hilariously ridiculed claim that he is such a man of substance that he regularly has "secret meetings with kings and queens and prime ministers and business leaders and military leaders" immediately brought out his spokesman to clarify that Brown "misspoke when he said kings and queens."

It must have all been in Brown's imagination. Deeply, deeply embedded in his imagination.

Yesterday was the fifth time Brown made this assertion (that has been recorded, anyway).

?Meeting with kings and queens, prime ministers, and business leaders. All they talk about is jobs.? - 11/18/11, Wakefield Chamber of Commerce
?And it's funny. To the queens and kings, prime ministers, all the way to the poorest farmers, all they talk about is jobs.? - 08/15/11, Martha's Vineyard Chamber of Commerce
?And all they talk about folks, from the world leaders, to the business leaders, kings and queens, prime ministers, all the way down to the poorest farmers is jobs. All they want is jobs.? - 08/10/11 Berkshires Chamber of Commerce
?All they talk about is jobs everywhere. Everywhere. Business leaders, queens, kings, all the way down to the poorest farmers.? - 08/15/11 Sandwich Veterans Meeting

Okay, it's crazy enough that he's been talking about his delusions of meetings with royalty for a year now. But to say that the most important thing to all those kings and queens and prime ministers is jobs? Really? That just makes the secret meetings with royalty like 10 times better. They come all the way to America to talk to a junior senator?who isn't even on the Foreign Relations Committee?about job creation, because nothing in the whole wide world matters more than jobs in America.

Delusional or just really, really dumb?