Justin's Political Corner
When things get bad during the spring tornado season, what organization is at the forefront of the situation, issuing forecasts and crucial tornado warnings that even the private weather companies like AccuWeather and The Weather Channel follow religiously?
The National Weather Service. A government organization.
If the sequester hits on March 1, all 4,600 National Weather Service employees would need to be furloughed for 4 weeks to make up for the 8.2% cut:
Government managers could also face wrenching decisions on which missions and employees are most needed. For the National Weather Service to handle an 8.2 percent cut, all of its approximately 4,600 employees would have to be furloughed for four weeks, said Richard Hirn, general counsel for the National Weather Service Employees Organization. Under that scenario, Hirn saw no way for the agency to maintain around-the-clock operations at its 122 forecasting offices.“It’s just not going to work,” he said.
Heading into an active severe weather season with severely understaffed (or flat out closed) National Weather Service offices is exactly what we DON’T need. NWS offices already get stretched thin when there’s a large tornado outbreak. Cutting them down to bare bones or shutting them down altogether will mean lives lost. All those tornado warnings the much-vaunted private industry takes for granted will disappear.
WASHINGTON — House Republican leaders are ready to move forward on legislation reauthorizing the Violence Against Women Act as soon as next week, a GOP source familiar with the plans told The Huffington Post on Wednesday.
House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) and House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.) still haven’t sorted out whether they plan to take up and amend the VAWA reauthorization bill that passed the Senate or introduce an entirely new bill, said the source. But either way, the Republican leaders are likely to act on some kind of legislation next week, and aides in Cantor’s office have been meeting with committee staff and member offices this week in preparation, the source said.
Cantor spokesman Doug Heye said only that GOP leaders are working on having a VAWA bill ready “in the coming weeks,” and that his office has been in regular contact with GOP staffers on the issue every week for the past several months.
The Senate overwhelmingly passed its VAWA bill last week, authorizing $659 million over five years for various programs targeting domestic violence. The Senate bill includes new protections for LGBT and Native American victims of domestic violence, gives more attention to sexual assault prevention and takes steps to reduce a backlog in processing rape kits.
The news that the House is ready to act comes as a handful of House GOP lawmakers unveiled a separate bill that could provide a path forward on what has become the biggest obstacle to getting VAWA through Congress and to the president’s desk: a provision in the Senate bill that grants new authority to tribal courts to prosecute domestic abusers.
Currently, tribal courts have no authority over non-Native American men on tribal lands who domestically or sexually abuse Native American women, who endure such abuse at two-and-a-half times the rate of other women. The Senate VAWA bill includes a provision that would grant tribal courts the authority to prosecute in those cases, but many House Republicans oppose the provision and argue that tribal courts wouldn’t uphold the constitutional rights of non-Native Americans. This specific issue became so divisive in the last Congress — and both sides were so firm in their positions — that it ultimately led to the failure to reauthorize VAWA for the first time since 1994.
But Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) on Wednesday reintroduced his compromise proposal from last year, the Violence Against Indian Women Act, which would grant tribes the new authority over non-Native American domestic abusers but give those abusers the option to transfer their cases to a federal court if they felt their rights weren’t being upheld. The bill has seven Republican co-sponsors: Reps. Tom Cole (Okla.), Mark Amodei (Nev.), Jeff Denham (Calif.), John Kline (Minn.), Patrick McHenry (N.C.), David Schweikert (Ariz.) and Michael Simpson (Idaho).
Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.), one of the leading proponents of the Senate VAWA bill, told HuffPost earlier this month that she wasn’t sure if she could get behind Issa’s compromise language if it were what passed in the House. But she called his approach “responsible” and noted that, at least in the last Congress, it had the backing of Native American tribes.
“Until I have the language in front of me, and I’m sure it provides protections, I’m not going to commit either way,” Murray said. “But tribes have expressed to me that [Issa] is being fair and rational.”
Meanwhile, during the final days of the last Congress, Cole told HuffPost that he expected the House VAWA bill to include Issa’s proposal in this Congress. He predicted its inclusion would mean VAWA was “a done deal” in the House, and that it would ease certain Republicans’ fears that tribal courts wouldn’t honor the constitutional rights of non-Native Americans who came before their courts. As it is, tribal courts are already bound by the Constitution.
“People seem to have this fantasy that Indians and courts are going to try to make up for what happened to them for hundreds of years of history,” Cole, who is the only registered Native American in Congress, suggested as the reason some GOP lawmakers were so upset by the provision. “That’s just not true. Most tribes want non-tribal members to come in — if you’re gaming, for tourism, commerce. That’s their lifeblood.”
Eliseo Medina, secretary treasurer of the Service Employees International Union and labor’s point man on immigration, has been waiting decades for a moment like this one.
“I think we get it this year,” a smiling Medina told TPM in his office in Washington. “And if we don’t, the discussion won’t be about whether it’s coming afterwards, just what it will look like and when.”
Over his long career, Medina’s witnessed dozens of promising immigration reform efforts, only to see them countered just as often by a restrictionist backlashes — backlashes that sometimes included support from unions. But everything seems to be coming together at the right time in 2013, with a broad coalition of labor, business, religious leaders, Latino groups, and even some prominent Republicans demanding immediate action.
With victory in sight, SEIU is committing the full force of its 2.1 million members to pushing comprehensive reform in 2013, with plans for rallies around the country, education campaigns for members, and an inside game aimed at lobbying lawmakers in Washington towards a final vote. The AFL-CIO, the nation’s largest federation of unions, is on board as well; and the two sometimes rival groups are united around a common set of policy principles after splitting on President George W. Bush’s failed immigration effort. Both organizations identify passing a bill that includes a path to citizenship for the undocumented population as one of their absolute top priorities for the 113th Congress.
“The inequality created by our current immigration system is having a deeper effect on our society then anything we’ve seen in recent history,” Ana Avendaño, director of the AFL-CIO’s director of immigration and community action, told TPM. “We have 11.5 million people who really are not benefitting from the hard fought gains that the labor movement and other social movements have accomplished in this country.”
Under pressure from all sides, immigration reform may be labor’s last, best chance at major legislative gains under Obama. Leaders are counting on a comprehensive reform bill to boost living standards for low-wage workers currently vulnerable to exploitation, spur recruitment in growing industries, and bank goodwill with both union members and the public at large.
But it wasn’t always this way. As recently as the 1990s, the movement’s official position was, as Medina put it, “anti-immigrant or at least anti-undocumented immigrant.” And nobody had a better seat for its long shift in attitude than Medina.
From Hawks To Doves
After legally immigrating from Mexico as a child, he began his career picking crops in California. Starting as a teenager, he became active with Cesar Chavez’s United Farm Workers of America, moving up the ranks over a multi-year strike and boycott campaign against grape growers to unionize their workers.
As part of his efforts to pry concessions from the agricultural industry, Chavez took a hardline position against illegal immigration, which he viewed as an endless source of scab labor. At one point, the UFW deployed members to form a “wet line” along border crossings in order to harass incoming workers. Lou Dobbs, who covered Chavez as a young journalist, would later cite the campaign as a key experience in crafting his populist, anti-immigration worldview.
Medina told TPM that the UFW faced a difficult dynamic in that the vast majority of its members were legal immigrants at the time, creating natural tensions with undocumented workers who they viewed as strikebreakers.
“The growers exploited the misery of one group against the misery of the other,” he said.
As the SEIU encountered similar challenges in many of its fastest growing industries, such as home health-care work, Medina agitated to revise labor’s longtime stance against undocumented workers. The momentum carried over to the AFL-CIO, which adopted a new position in 2000 calling for blanket amnesty for undocumented immigrants and condemning immigration raids against organizing workers.
For supporters of greater restrictions on immigration, like the Center for Immigration Studies’ Mark Krikorian, labor’s defection was a frustrating loss.
“It’s not just that unions are looking for more warm bodies to recruit, they’ve undergone a basic cultural change at the top to become culturally leftist in ways they weren’t before,” Krikorian said. “Americans have pretty much given up on organized labor, so organized labor is giving up on Americans.”
While victory in 2013 is far from certain, labor leaders believe conditions have improved significantly since their disappointing 2007 effort.
For one thing, Republicans acknowledge they’re on defense this time around in a way that was not true during past reform efforts. It was easier for GOP lawmakers to minimize the role of Latino voters in their 2006 midterm losses, which most blamed on Iraq, and their role in Obama’s 2008 blowout, which many dismissed as Bush fatigue. But the 2012 results, in which Obama racked up record margins and turnout among Latinos around the country despite a sagging economy and mediocre approval ratings, are much harder to ignore.
“I think many of the politicians were saying, ‘You know, we keep hearing about this Latino giant and it’s sort of a myth,’” Medina said. “But the reality finally hit home on November 6.”
For another, the same industry groups that backed a bill in 2007 are likely to be less patient with Republicans this time around. Farmers around the country reported huge crop losses in 2012 thanks to immigration crackdowns that pushed away seasonal workers, especially in states like Alabama that passed their own hardline legislation.
Labor will inevitably butt heads with business groups like the Chamber of Commerce over how to deal with these shortages, which unions believe should be addressed by an independent commission instead of a guest worker program that ties workers to one employer. But the increased urgency should help pressure pro-business Republicans into a final deal, even if its provisions don’t perfectly match labor’s demands.
Avendaño and other labor experts caution not to expect a dramatic reversal of fortune in terms of union recruiting once a bill passes. Most of the same factors fueling labor’s decline will remain in place and undocumented workers are plenty engaged in organizing already, not only through unions but through worker advocacy groups like Domestic Workers United.
“We’re not fixing all of the conditions keeping workers from organizing,”Avendaño said. “It’s a step towards restoring the economy and giving workers a more fair shot.”
But according to Ruth Milkman, a sociologist at CUNY who researches labor and immigration, the emphasis on passing a bill does point toward an emerging focus on low wage workers that’s increasingly defining the movement. It’s not just because immigrant-heavy jobs like janitors and nurses assistants are growing the fastest. By stressing their struggles working in typically low wage jobs, the SEIU and AFL-CIO may have a better shot at winning hearts and minds outside the movement than they would by highlighting workers in industries with more generous wages and benefits.
H/T: Benjy Sarlin at TPM
The Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution expressly provides that nearly anyone born in the United States is a citizen, regardless of the immigration status of their parents. Yet, despite the Constitution’s clear command, Rep. Steve King (R-IA) wants to ignore our founding document and prevent the children of undocumented immigrants from becoming citizens:
It’s the first week of the 113th Congress, and one House member is already trying to stop children born in the United States to undocumented parents — whom he calls “anchor babies” — from gaining citizenship.
Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa), an outspoken hardliner on immigration, introduced a bill on Thursday that would “clarify those classes of individuals born in the United States who are nationals and citizens of the United States at birth.” The Supreme Court has consistently held that anyone born in the United States, regardless of their parents’ immigration status, should receive citizenship under the 14th Amendment.
King disagrees, as do 13 co-sponsors on the bill, including Reps. Louie Gohmert (R-Texas), Virginia Foxx (R-N.C.) and Mo Brooks (R-Ala.).
The Constitution is clear that King’s bill is unconstitutional. Under the Fourteenth Amendment, “[a]ll persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.” The word “jurisdiction” refers to people that are subject to American law. Thus foreign diplomats and their families, who are granted broad immunity from U.S. law, are not entitled to citizenship under the 14th Amendment. Likewise, at the time the Fourteenth Amendment was drafted many Native Americans were subject only to tribal law and thus were not “subject to the jurisdiction” of the United States. Undocumented immigrants and their children, by contrast, are not immune to U.S. law. And thus fit squarely within the Fourteenth Amendment’s command.
The Violence Against Women Act first became law in 1994 and has since been routinely reauthorized without controversy. By providing resources for law enforcement to combat spousal abuse, it has protected countless women from domestic violence.
But the 2012 re-authorization, like many initiatives of the just-concluded Congress, fell prey to House Republican resistance — in this case, to expanding the Act to cover more women. In the end, House GOP leaders refused bring to a vote a bill that passed the Senate with a bipartisan supermajority.
“The House Republican leadership’s failure to take up and pass the Senate’s bipartisan and inclusive VAWA bill is inexcusable,” Sen. Patty Murray (D-WA), a Democratic leadership member, told TPM. “This is a bill that passed with 68 votes in the Senate and that extends the bill’s protections to 30 million more women. But this seems to be how House Republican leadership operates. No matter how broad the bipartisan support, no matter who gets hurt in the process, the politics of the right wing of their party always comes first.”
A Republican source familiar with failed last-minute negotiations to save the measure between Vice President Joe Biden and House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-VA) disputed that view. The source blamed Senate Democrats for making a resolution impossible by “constantly shifting the goalposts” and adopting a “my way or the highway approach.”
But Senate Democrats peeled off enough Republicans for the new provisions. In April, they passed the expanded version by a whopping 68-31 vote, winning over 8 Republicans.
The legislation then moved to the House, where Republican leaders faced pressure to act, but had no intention of supporting the added provisions. So they introduced a scaled-back version that omitted them and made it harder for illegal-immigrant victims of domestic violence to obtain legal status under a special category called the U Visa.
Republican leaders deployed their female members to make the case for it, notably Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers (WA), a leadership member, and Rep. Sandy Adams (FL), herself a victim of domestic violence. Over the objections of some advocates for abused victims, but with thesupport of a so-called men’s rights group, House GOP leaders passed their version on a partisan vote, despite a White House veto threat.
And that’s when the legislation stalled, never to recover.
Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) invited the Senate to go to conference to resolve the differences. He also argued that the Senate bill was unconstitutional because it would raise new revenue with visa fees (bills with revenues are supposed to originate in the House, though leaders can dodge that problem if they want to). Republicans also said provisions involving tribal jurisdiction were constitutionally impermissible.
Democrats demanded that the GOP take up the Senate version, comparing its strong bipartisan support with the lack of cross-party appeal for the scaled-back re-authorization, and citing President Obama’s veto threat. Boehner stonewalled. The stalemate deepened.
A bipartisan letter authored by Sens. Patrick Leahy (D-VT) and Lisa Murkowski (R-AK), two key sponsors of VAWA, urging Boehner to accept the Senate bill had no impact. Months later, a large House coalition including 10 Republican members pushed him to accept a Senate-like version — again, to no avail.
In December, there was a glimmer of hope for the measure when Biden, the chief architect of the original VAWA, entered negotiations with Cantor to see if they could resolve the disputes. But that, too, went nowhere.
A top Senate Democratic aide said Cantor refused to budge on the LGBT, undocumented immigrant and especially tribal jurisdiction provisions. A GOP source familiar with the negotiations countered that the vice president showed “good faith” but Senate Democrats kept throwing up “roadblock after roadblock” and showed no interest in compromising.
The 112th Congress ended Wednesday, and the Violence Against Women Act perished with it. The new Congress now has to start all over. A spokesperson said Leahy was disappointed by the failure of VAWA re-authorization and looks forward to soon reintroducing an “inclusive, bipartisan bill covering vulnerable victims.”
h/t: TPM
It’s time to mark your 2013 calendars. Here are some dates and topics we’ve marked on ours! READ and SHARE!
(via thewarroomctv)
WASHINGTON — House Democrats will introduce legislation to ban the production of high-capacity magazines on the first day of the next congressional session, the office of Rep. Diana DeGette (D-Colo.), one of the lawmakers sponsoring the bill, told The Huffington Post.
The Large Capacity Ammunition Feeding Device Act will mirror a failed bill introduced during the 112th Congress. Its authors hope that in the wake of the shooting deaths of 20 first grade students in Newtown, Conn., there will be heightened political urgency to act when it is reintroduced on Jan. 3.
Backed by DeGette and Rep. Carolyn McCarthy (D-N.Y.), the legislation has gained a wave of Democratic co-sponsors since the shooting, which also claimed the lives of 7 adults. But few Republicans have come forward to offer their support. Even more critical to the bill’s political prospects, House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) has not indicated whether he will allow it to come to the floor for a vote.
Still, backers are hopeful, noting that a ban on high-capacity magazines — which have been involved in many of the recent high-profile instances of mass gun violence — would be a smaller concession for gun-rights advocates than a broader assault weapons ban.
The bill Democrats will introduce would limit magazines, belts, drums, feed strips and “similar device[s]” to 10 rounds of ammunition. It would allow people to hold on to the “large capacity ammunition feeding device[s]” that they currently own, but prohibit them from buying others or transferring the ones they have.
The bill would also exempt retired and current law enforcement officials who use those devices for “purposes of law enforcement (whether on or off duty)” as well as contractors who have been licensed to carry the devices for security purposes required by federal law.
H/T: Huffington Post
So some chick is all “Oh maybe Cathy McMorris-Rodgers will be the new Speaker or something because everything I say is not completely laughable fiction.” And then Laura Ingraham is all “I am doing my best not to smirk at your uninformed drivel, fellow television pundit, but everyone knows that some random male source says that the next Speaker of the House will be Paul Ryan, because stud.” But be careful, GOPpies! You come at King Boehner, you’d best … haha, sorry, we are just kidding. That dude is Dead Drunk Walking. So the winner of yesterday’s brain tickler quiz is everybody who answered “a pile of human shit.” Congratulations, everyone in the world!
Paul Ryan, if he is indeed the next Speaker of the House, will be the worst one this country’s ever had. He is worse than the last three GOP Speakers (Gingrich, Hastert, Boehner) we had combined. I’d rather have Pelosi back as Speaker anyday.
H/T: Wonkette.com
With Daniel Inouye’s death, Patrick Leahy (D-VT) would be the President Pro Tempore in the US Senate. #DanielInouye #PatrickLeahy #ProTem
— Justin Gibson (@JGibsonDem) December 17, 2012
Get your fiscal kicks in now, Congress, because as soon as the next term starts Latino groups expect an all-out push for immigration reform. A coalition of labor and activist leaders warned on Wednesday that anything less will lead to a backlash.
Participating groups, which included the SEIU, the Hispanic Federation, the League of United Latin American Citizens, the Labor Council for Latin American Advancement, NALEO Education Fund, Voto Latino, and Mi Famillia Vota, announced plans to grade individual members of the House and Senate on their performance over the next year. Those who didn’t pass muster could face pressure campaigns and focused Latino turnout efforts in the 2014 midterms.
All indications are that the White House plans to put immigration at the top of its legislative agenda in 2013 and a number of Republican leaders have suggested they’re open to hammering out a bill. But there are plenty of obstacles that could derail a deal, including Republican opposition to a path to citizenship for undocumented immigrants, skepticism of a comprehensive bill versus a piecemeal approach, and a potential backlash from the GOP base, especially for House members.
It’s our second resignation of the 113th Congress—and the 113th Congress hasn’t even begun yet. Veteran GOP Rep. Jo Ann Emerson says she will depart the House in February to take a job as head of the National Rural Electric Cooperative Association, a lobbying organization for rural utility companies. Democrats are trying to frame Emerson’s departure as the loss of yet another “moderate” Republican lawmaker, but to call Emerson a “moderate” shows just how far to the right her party has lurched. She’s departed from conservative orthodoxy on a few occasions but has otherwise been a reliable vote for the GOP. And yet, just given trends over the last couple of decades, we’re likely to wind up with a replacement even further to the right.
So what happens next? Emerson’s resignation will trigger a special election, of course, and in Missouri, nominations for specials are handled by a committee of party leaders—there’s no primary. That’ll give Emerson a chance to influence who her successor is, but who might that be?
The Great Mentioner has already kicked into high gear regarding possible replacements for Emerson: Analyst Jeff Smith thinks Lt. Gov. Peter Kinder, former Treasurer and failed 2010 Senate candidate Sarah Steelman, outgoing state Sens. Jason Crowley and Kevin Engler, and state party executive director Lloyd Smith could all make a go of it. Nathan Gonzales offers the same list, adding state Rep. Todd Richardson but also saying that Kinder and Smith look to have the inside track. (Both have ties to the Emerson family: Smith was Emerson’s former chief of staff, and Kinder worked for Emerson’s late husband Bill, whom she succeeded in Congress.) Joshua Miller tosses on a couple more: state Reps. Jason Smith and state Sen.-elect Wayne Wallingford.
And if you were wondering, I wouldn’t hold out much hope for an upset possibility: We haven’t crunched the most recent election results yet, but the 8th District went 60-38 for John McCain in 2008, which means it’s extremely red territory. Emerson did draw a well-funded challenge from Iraq vet Tommy Sowers in 2010, but despite spending $1.6 million, he took less than 29 percent of the vote. If anything, I’d guess the 2012 numbers were worse for Team Blue, so this is really going to be a GOP-only affair. No matter what, though, we’ll be following future developments here closely—because we always do!
Senate Democrats will enter the new year with an expanded majority of 55-45, having gained two seats in the election. They may be emboldened, but Republicans will retain the ability to slow down or halt their agenda with the use of the filibuster, which requires 41 senators.
If Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell continues to wield the filibuster as routinely as he did in President Obama’s first term, Majority Leader Harry Reid will need to pick off at least five Republican senators to advance initiatives.
Susan Collins
The most moderate Republican in the Senate — or as Democrats argue, the only one left — Collins will be Reid’s first target when he needs GOP votes.
During Obama’s first term, the Maine Republican broke with her party more often than any of her remaining colleagues, and now that her state — and the country — has resoundingly re-elected the president, she has plenty of reasons to continue.
Also noteworthy: Collins is up for re-election in 2014, and Democrats will be eagerly watching for any of her votes or positions they can use to paint her as out of touch with her liberal state.
Lisa Murkowski
The Alaska Republican has been less loyal to party’s leaders since she lost her GOP primary race in 2010 but won re-election as a write-in candidate.
Murkowski later broke with the GOP on a series of defining votes, such as the DREAM Act, repealing “don’t ask, don’t tell” and the Paul Ryan budget. This year, she spoke out on her party’sneed to stop alienating women voters and made a public showing of support for Democrats against House and Senate Republican leaders on the Violence Against Women Act.
Dean Heller
Heller, who was appointed to replace Sen. John Ensign (R-NV) last year, held his seat in a close contest. Given his slim margin of victory and the fact that his constituents voted by a significant margin to send Obama back to the White House, Heller will have an incentive not to be seen as an ongoing thorn in the president’s side as he works to build a reputation in the chamber.
Mark Kirk
Even as he projects an image as a relative moderate, Kirk’s votes have been difficult to predict as he has also worked to gain the trust of the conservative movement. The Illinois Republican’s votes for the Ryan budget and for repealing “don’t ask, don’t tell” reflect that dynamic.
But as a Republican from a solidly liberal state, and the first person elected to fill Barack Obama’s old seat, Kirk has motivation not to be seen as a partisan ideologue. He cultivated a relatively moderate voting record as congressmen, and has occasionally been willing to break with his party as senator, making him a winnable vote for Reid.
Lindsey Graham
Graham is a tricky target because he is up for re-election in bright red South Carolina in 2014. But the senator has, in recent years, collaborated with Democrats on major issues like immigration and climate change, and in the wake of Obama’s re-election, is urging his party to soften its opposition on immigration reform in order to win back Hispanics. He has also been vocal about his support for raising tax revenues to reduce the debt.
If Graham gets hounded by a credible primary challenger early next cycle, his desire for cooperation could prove short-lived. But if he fends off an intra-party battle for his seat, the South Carolinian could reignite his bipartisan streak and become a central figure in advancing and molding Obama’s key second term initiatives.
h/t: Sahil Kapur at TPM
