Help Save The American Prospect

post from The American Prospect on 30 April 2012 02:53:15 PM. © The American Prospect

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John Boehner: 'We will' resolve the student loan
interest rate fight

post from Daily Kos on 30 April 2012 02:39:13 PM. © Daily Kos

Speaker John Boehner
This is a turn-around from a few weeks ago when student loan interest rates weren't a priority for Republicans. House Speaker John Boehner says that, one way or another, Congress will extend lowered interest rates for student loans.

?Democrats and Republicans have been working together to get this resolved and I believe that we will,? the Speaker said. [...]
Boehner signaled that he?s willing to work with Reid, once Congress returns next week, to negotiate on an offset for the $6 billion cost of keeping the Stafford loan rate at 3.4 percent, as it has been for five years. (Doing so would mean $1,000 in the pockets of about 7.4 million students.)

What a difference a few weeks and the presidential bully pulpit makes, since just a few weeks ago House Republicans were opposed to extending lowered interest rates on student loans at all. President Obama's focus on the issue the last few weeks, and the huge response he got from it, convinced Republicans that they'd be on the wrong side of public opinion to continue stonewalling on it (well, all but 30 diehard tea partiers).

So now it's back to the old fight (since this isn't tax breaks for rich people) of how to pay for it. Just like with the payroll tax cut extension. This time around, the Republicans gut a public health fund, drawing a veto threat, and Democrats have offered a pay-for that Republicans haven't objected to in the past. That's closing a loophole that allows certain high-income businessowners to avoid paying Medicare payroll taxes.

?We didn?t propose something that would be rejected out of hand,? Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) told reporters in the Capitol last week. ?They proposed something that they know we have rejected over and over again.?
?We didn?t propose the Buffett Rule in the Senate, we didn?t propose [ending] the oil and gas [subsidies],? Schumer said. ?It [payroll tax loophole] was on the table for a long time ? during the payroll tax discussions. They didn?t take it off the table. It?s a reasonable thing.?

Which, of course, Republicans deny. Even though their leader, Rep. Paul Ryan, bases his whole "revenue neutral" scheme of giving tax cuts to the rich on the premise of closing loopholes, these are loopholes that suddenly the Republicans love, and closing them would?you guessed it?increase taxes on those job-creatin' small businesses.

Watching how fast Republican leadership came round to the idea that they absolutely have to go along with keeping student loan interest rates low means that Democrats do have the advantage in this fight. As usual. How it's paid for is going to come down to who can hold their breath longer. As usual. This time, everything is stacked in favor of the Democrats holding out the longest. They just have to do it.

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resolve-the-student-loan-interest-rate-fight-

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Blame Canada

post from Docudharma - Front Page on 30 April 2012 02:34:47 PM. © Docudharma - Front Page

[...]

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Texas federal judge grants injunction to Planned
Parenthood

post from Daily Kos on 30 April 2012 02:34:25 PM. © Daily Kos

Bad for Rick Perry, good for Texas womenThis is potentially good news out of Texas:

A federal judge in Austin ruled today that state officials cannot exclude Planned Parenthood from a health care and contraception program for low-income women, a state health official says. [...]
[Judge] Yeakel granted Planned Parenthood?s request for a temporary injunction to allow it to continue serving women, and being reimbursed, under the program, according to Stephanie Goodman, a spokeswoman for the Texas Health and Human Services Commission. Yeakel will have to hold a hearing before the injunction could become permanent.
Under state rules adopted in February, Planned Parenthood would have been excluded from participating in the program tomorrow.

That would be the Women?s Health Program, which provides health care to 130,000 low-income women in Texas, whom Gov. Rick Perry thinks should take a backseat to his agenda to screw over Planned Parenthood to prove how super pro-lifey he is. Planned Parenthood filed suit earlier this month after a court ruled that Gov. Perry's arbitrary new rule prohibiting Medicaid recipients from going to Planned Parenthood for basic health care is totally okay because, um, well, because that's why so shut up and freedom.

The new policy blatantly violates federal law and jeopardized all federal funding for the state's Medicaid program, as Perry and his fellow anti-woman Republicans knew full well because Health and Human Services spelled it out for them in really small words:

Medicaid law is very clear; a state may not restrict patients? choice of providers of services like mammograms and other cancer screenings, if those providers are qualified to deliver care covered by Medicaid.

But since screwing over Planned Parenthood is far more important than ensuring funding of the state's health care programs for low-income women, Perry and state health officials blew off the warning from the federal government and said they'll use Republican magic fairy dust to somehow make up the $35 million difference.

But apparently, they're fresh out of fairy dust, because now state officials are singing a different tune:

According to Tom Suehs, executive director of the Texas Health and Human Services Commission, state law bans abortion providers and their affiliates - specifically Planned Parenthood - from participating in the program.
?If plaintiffs obtain an injunction forbidding state officials to exclude Planned Parenthood from the Medicaid Women?s Health Program or any similar successor programs, state law will require the commission to cease operating the program upon termination of federal funding,? Suehs told Yeakel in an affidavit.

So those earlier assurances that the state will find a way to keep the program going turned out to be, shockingly, bullshit. Rick Perry will stick it to Planned Parenthood no matter what, even if it means losing federal funding and screwing over 130,000 poor women in Texas.

So why is the court's decision today to bar the state from barring Planned Parenthood only potentially good news? Because the state is almost certain to appeal this decision, and Texas courts have a funny way of deciding that screwing over women is totally constitutional. But for today, at least, there are 130,000 women in Texas who just might get to have health care after all.

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rants-injunction-to-Planned-Parenthood

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How Will Mitt Govern

post from The American Prospect on 30 April 2012 02:24:20 PM. © The American Prospect

Now that Mitt Romney is the presumptive Republican nominee, The Washington Post ombudsman, Patrick Pexton, believes that the paper should focus more on how he?ll govern, rather than how he?ll campaign. For guidance to the former question, he writes that we should look to his tenure as governor:

To me, the best predictor of Romney as president is not as the former Bain Capital chief executive, but as the former governor of Massachusetts. [?]
As governor, Romney cut spending, and, as promised, didn?t raise income taxes, but he did close tax ?loopholes? on corporations ? and he dramatically raised state fees, such as tuition at state universities. He also won unprecedented powers to cut state aid to cities and towns, and then he angered mayors by assigning his lieutenant governor and underlings to meet and explain the plan to municipal leaders.

At most, Romney?s tenure as governor can give us a sense of his method; how he governs, how he approaches the press, and how he?ll try to fulfill the promises of his campaign. But Massachusetts can?t tell us much about the substance of a Romney administration; for that, we?ll have to look toward his message, his interviews, and his rhetoric on the trail. The short story is that Romney has transformed himself into an avatar for the right-wing, and insofar that he has an approach for government, it will be to his stated ends: drastically lower taxes on the wealthy, a sharp reduction in social services, and a belligerent foreign policy.

You can think of a Romney administration as being like Bush?s, except turned to eleven.

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New York Times Columnists Support the Nuns, Tell
Bishops to Back Off

post from Firedoglake on 30 April 2012 02:20:33 PM. © Firedoglake

This weekend, two prominent New York columnists used their Sunday columns to send a united message to New York's Cardinal Timonthy Dolan and the Catholic hierarchy: lay off the nuns unless you want to read a lot of stories about predator priests and the[...]

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http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/firedoglake/fdl/~3/x4E6fC-DC6c/

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This Should Be Good News for Texas Planned
Parenthood (But Isn't)

post from The American Prospect on 30 April 2012 02:05:02 PM. © The American Prospect

A judge today ruled that the state of Texas cannot exclude Planned Parenthood from its Women's Health Program, which offers basic reproductive health care for poor women.

It's seemingly good news for the organization; last session, conservative lawmakers barred Planned Parenthood from the federal program because of its ties to abortion. (For the record, in Texas the program only serves women who aren't pregnant and public dollars do not fund abortion services.) Because of the decision, the state has lost federal support for the program, a big loss since the feds paid 90 percent of the program costs. Since then, Governor Rick Perry has promised to find funding for the program?a challenge given the state's serious budget troubles?and officials have outlined a plan for a state-run version. But even there's money, without Planned Parenthood clinics, there's simply a capactiy shortage.

So Planned Parenthood might actually get its way, and become part of the program, the state could get more funding and Texas' ranking as the state with the third highest rate of cervical cancer would at least not get any worse. Good news right?

Nope. Turns out, if Planned Parenthood wins its lawsuit, state officials will simply end the program entirely. That's bad news for the 130,000 who rely on it for services. From the Austin American-Statesman:

The ruling by U.S. District Judge Lee Yeakel was a victory for Planned Parenthood that may prove short-lived. State officials have warned that they would have to cancel the Women?s Health Program if Planned Parenthood prevailed in its lawsuit.
According to Tom Suehs, executive director of the Texas Health and Human Services Commission, state law bans abortion providers and their affiliates - specifically Planned Parenthood - from participating in the program.
?If plaintiffs obtain an injunction forbidding state officials to exclude Planned Parenthood from the Medicaid Women?s Health Program or any similar successor programs, state law will require the commission to cease operating the program upon termination of federal funding,? Suehs told Yeakel in an affidavit.
?The commission will not introduce a similar successor program unless otherwise directed by the Legislature,? Suehs added.

So there you have it. Planned Parenthood clinics are already shutting down for lack of funds. If it does successfully get funding, well, state shut down the program entirely. It's a lose-lose for the organization. Which coincidentally, makes it a lose-lose for low-income women.

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http://prospect.org/article/should-be-good-news-texas-planned-parenthood-isnt

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Is Your City Still Wasting Money on Inefficient
Streetlights

At The Atlantic's Cities Blog, Nate Berg points out that streetlights drain a huge amount of a community's budget, but thanks to new technologies, cities like San Diego can slash their energy bills & carbon footprints:

Under the leadership of a program called CleanTECH San Diego, cities in the area have been able to streamline what would otherwise be a cumbersome process to make the switch from old bulbs to new. And with grant money from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, 13 cities in the region have kicked off projects to replace about 55,000 streetlights, which will save an estimated $3 million annually.

The largest among those cities is San Diego, which will be replacing about 90 percent of its streetlights, roughly 35,000. The city is replacing its old low-pressure sodium lights ? a common streetlight ? with induction bulbs that use about 40 percent less energy. 16,500 have already been converted, and officials expect the transition to be finished by next spring.

Before the conversion, the city had been paying about $4.7 million a year to light its streets. When all 35,000 lights are replaced, that cost will drop to about $2.8 million a year, according to Tom Blair, deputy environmental services director for the City of San Diego.

And it's not just energy costs that will go down. The old sodium bulbs typically had to be replaced every 3 or 4 years, while the new induction bulbs can last more than a decade. Blair says a set of induction bulbs were installed in downtown San Diego about 12 years ago and have yet to need replacement. "That?s a significant savings," Blair says.

"It was kind of a no-brainer," says Marty Turock, a program manager at CleanTECH San Diego. "Virtually every city, at least within San Diego County, recognized that doing the street lighting retrofits was one of the biggest impacts and one of the biggest payback energy efficiency projects they could take on."

Another leader - Ann Arbor, MI, projected to save $100,000 a year by installing new LED streetlights with motion detectors (unlike older streetlight bulbs that need a few minutes to power up to full intensity, LEDs can fire up instantly).

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http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/TheGreenMiles/~3/FHvHcu-vHMs/is-your-city-still-wa
sting-money-on.html

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Is Obama-Romney Kerry-Bush in reverse

Jonathan Chait at New York Mag:

The parallels between this year?s presidential election and the one we had eight years ago are striking. Incumbent president with middling approval ratings faces rich guy from Massachusetts with a reputation for flip-flopping. Hilarity ensues. By ?hilarity? I mean, specifically, that people get extremely worked up about a series of procedural controversies, and then the two parties trade places on them the next time around.

Yes, but. John Kerry was, in my view, a weak candidate. I don't think he exuded much strength or personality, and came off as a bit of a patrician as well. Romney has far more personality than Kerry, on "strength" the jury is still out, though Romney has done a pretty good job selling himself as an elitist. So perhaps the comparison is valid.

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http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Americablog/~3/ijeQIfeGZPo/is-obama-romney-kerry-b
ush-in-reverse.html

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Tea Partiers Who Opposed Bank Bailout Take
Campaign Donations From Bailed-Out Banks

Tea Party-backed candidates swept into Washington in 2010 on a wave of opposition to bank bailouts. Now that they’re in Washington, however, their campaigns are drowning in campaign cash provided by the very banks that benefited from the Troubled Asset Relief Program.

The 10 freshmen Republicans on the House Financial Services Committee who have Tea Party backing have taken more than $100,000 from the political action committees affiliated with JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America, Citigroup, Wells Fargo, and Goldman Sachs — the nation’s five largest banks — Bloomberg reports:

Yet the anti-bailout fervor that drove the messaging of Republican candidates during the campaign cycle of 2009 and 2010 has dissipated, and those same lawmakers are now collecting money from the firms bailed out by President George W. Bush?s $700 billion Troubled Asset Relief Program. [...]
The political action committees of those institutions have distributed $169,499 through March 31 to the campaign coffers of the 10 freshman Tea Party-backed lawmakers on the House Financial Services Committee, according to an analysis of campaign finance disclosure records.

The Tea Party hasn’t succeeded in ending “too big too fail” because they haven’t tried. Though the five biggest banks are now bigger than they were before the financial crisis, the Tea Party members haven’t proposed a single piece of legislation to limit their size. Instead, they’ve focused on repealing financial reform and blocking efforts to protect consumers from Wall Street’s predatory practices.

Multiple Democrats have proposed legislation to cap the size of large banks, while others have proposed new ways to unwind large banks without taxpayer-funded bailouts should they collapse. The efforts have drawn no support from the Tea Party. “No more bailouts,” Tea Party Express’ web site proclaims. The candidates it and other Tea Party organizations backed in 2010, however, apparently no longer feel the same way.

Read The Full Article:
http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2012/04/30/473772/tea-party-bailouts/

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