Daily Kos

At The Nation, Mychal Denzel Smith asks What More Will It Take to Arrest Darren Wilson?

At this point, I need someone to answer this question for me like I’m stupid: What else is needed to arrest Darren Wilson? I’m not asking what a prosecutor would need to for a murder conviction, or even what a grand jury would need to bring formal charges. What else is needed for police to say, “Darren Wilson, you shot and killed someone, you are under arrest”? What more? At least six witnesses have given near-identical accounts of what happened to Michael Brown. A shot was fired, Brown ran, Wilson kept firing, Brown put his hands in the air, and Wilson kept shooting. The autopsy shows Brown was hit six times. He was unarmed. What more do you need to make an arrest? And I’m not of the belief that arrest, a trial or even imprisonment constitute real justice. That punishment model does not create a more just world. But currently, it’s what we have. If under this system, the value of black life is such that an 18-year-old can be shot and killed in cold blood and the police can’t even place the person responsible in handcuffs—a month and counting later—I find it difficult to maintain faith that we’ll one day move to model of justice that respects black humanity. Our lives are too expendable.

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Blast from the Past. At Daily Kos on this date in 2005—Brown has resigned. It means little:

So Brown has quit as FEMA chief. Yeay. I'd rather see him criminally indicted. But this is a start. It's important to root out the incompetents who aggravated this disaster -- the people running the show and those who nominated and approved of them (like Bush and Lieberman). There must be accountability for the disaster, and that accountability must transcend political lines. D or R, we shouldn't care. What's important is to ensure that those at fault suffer the consequences. But we can't allow this disaster to be framed in the context of a few incompetents and political hacks. Because ultimately, the federal (non) response to New Orleans went exactly according to the conservative playbook. And that's the biggest point in this whole mess. Conservatives believe government shouldn't exist to help people. That everyone should be left to the wolves. New Orleans demonstrated to us in vivid color what Republicanism is made of. New Orleans was, in reality, a crowning acheivement of conservatism. That is, until political pressure forced the federal government to lend a hand and those lucky duckies in the gulf coast began receiving "handouts". While fingering the responsible is important, Democrats need to use New Orleans to draw clear distinctions between the governing philosophies of the Republicans and that of the Democrats. Democrats would've taken care of Katrina victims from the get go. That would've been our first impulse, our first instinct. Republicans had to be shamed into helping people.

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Tweet of the Day

With existential war fever spreading thru halls of power &infecting Congress is aggressive MSM journalism mute & MIA? http://t.co/...
— @Thomas_Drake1

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On today's classic Kagro in the Morning show, it's the September 11, 2013 show, though you wouldn't know it was last year from the issues we discussed. 9/11 remembrances, which for Republicans means Benghazi. Greg Dworkin rounded up elections in CO & NYC, the President's speech, and polling on Syria. Joan McCarter joined us on the health care rollout (including the Trader Joe's story), the House Republicans' repeal charade & the issues they'll hold hostage to get it, the NSA goes nutso, and Scott Brown's new gig (at Evil, Inc., apparently). Also: NSA Dir. Alexander's wacko Star Trek playroom; "How the cult of shareholder value wrecked American business."

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High Impact Posts. Top Comments

Reposted from Daily Kos Economics by Roosevelt Institute

By Rachel Goldfarb, originally published on Next New Deal

Click here to subscribe to Roosevelt First, our weekday morning email featuring the Daily Digest.

Bright Future Chicago Pushes for Universal Preschool (Chicago Tonight)

Roosevelt Institute Fellow Saqib Bhatti explains one way that universal preschool could be funded: Chicago could pursue legal claims against banks for bad interest rate swap deals.

Jerry Brown Signs Bill Requiring Employers to Give Paid Sick Leave (The Sacramento Bee)

California is the second state to enact state-wide paid sick leave, but David Siders reports that labor groups aren't in full support of the new law because it excludes home health care workers.

Asset Limits Are a Barrier to Economic Security and Mobility (CAP)

Rebecca Vallas and Joe Valenti explain how asset limits on social safety net programs prevent low-income families from building necessary economic stability, and lay out a plan for reform.

The Federal Reserve's Too Cozy Relations With Banks (WSJ)

Stephen Haber and Ross Levine suggest ways to limit banks' influence with the Federal Reserve, including requiring ex-Fed officials to agree to a waiting period before taking jobs in financial services.

Student Debt Collections Are Leaving the Elderly in Poverty (Bloomberg Businessweek)

Federal student debt among the elderly has increased sixfold since 2005, and a law meant to keep garnishments from putting retirees in poverty is in dire need of an update, reports Natalie Kitroeff.

Who Needs a Smoke-Filled Room? (NYT)

Thomas Edsall lays out an example of the complicated structures that allow tax-exempt "social welfare" organizations to spend millions of dollars on political campaigns with little accountability.

These Charts Are Good News if Your Employer Pays for Health Insurance (TNR)

Jonathan Cohn says that the slowed premium increases for employer-sponsored insurance this year are another sign that the Affordable Care Act is keeping health care costs down.

Reposted from Daily Kos Labor by Laura Clawson Rhode Island Treasurer Gina Raimondo took 42 percent of the vote in a three-way Democratic gubernatorial primary Tuesday, highlighting one good measure of a politician's status as a Wall Street darling: when Very Serious People say you're a national star after you win a primary in a small state. And, of course, Raimondo's big new star status is all about the fact that, though she runs as a Democrat, she attacks workers like a Republican. That's what she's being celebrated for; for instance, according to a New York Times piece in the news, not opinion, section:

Analysts were already predicting that if she won in November, Ms. Raimondo could go on to become a national star in the party, showing fellow Democrats that responsible policy is not necessarily bad politics, although organized labor may choose to differ.

Let's unpack that, shall we? Of course there's the anointing of Raimondo as a star on the basis of a stint as state treasurer and a victory in a three-way primary, both in a small state. There's the implication that for Democrats, "responsible policy" (we'll come back to that) is usually seen as bad politics. There's the straightforward statement that unions are opposed to "responsible policy." That's quite a lot before we even get to the crux of the matter: Raimondo's signature "responsible policy" of turning Rhode Island's public pension funds over to high-risk, high-fee hedge funds while cutting worker pensions. According to Matt Taibbi:

... part of Raimondo's strategy for saving money involved handing more than $1 billion – 14 percent of the state fund – to hedge funds, including a trio of well-known New York-based funds: Dan Loeb's Third Point Capital was given $66 million, Ken Garschina's Mason Capital got $64 million and $70 million went to Paul Singer's Elliott Management. The funds now stood collectively to be paid tens of millions in fees every single year by the already overburdened taxpayers of her ostensibly flat-broke state. Felicitously, Loeb, Garschina and Singer serve on the board of the Manhattan Institute, a prominent conservative think tank with a history of supporting benefit-slashing reforms. The institute named Raimondo its 2011 "Urban Innovator" of the year.

The state's workers, in other words, were being forced to subsidize their own political disenfranchisement, coughing up at least $200 million to members of a group that had supported anti-labor laws. Later, when Edward Siedle, a former SEC lawyer, asked Raimondo in a column for Forbes.com how much the state was paying in fees to these hedge funds, she first claimed she didn't know. Raimondo later told the Providence Journal she was contractually obliged to defer to hedge funds on the release of "proprietary" information, which immediately prompted a letter in protest from a series of freaked-out interest groups. Under pressure, the state later released some fee information, but the information was originally kept hidden, even from the workers themselves.

This, not any actual evidence that voters are thrilled with Gina Raimondo, is why she's getting the star treatment from the traditional media, why she's raising buckets of money from Wall Street. Meanwhile, as Taibbi reminds us, hedge funds underperform indexed funds, and sure enough, under Raimondo, Rhode Island's pension fund has underperformed, with a rate of return that "significantly trails the median rate of return for pension systems of similar size across the country" and, combined with the high fees, has cost the state $372 million. But since that was achieved not just by handing a lot of money to Wall Street but by cutting retirees' cost of living adjustments, Raimondo will continue to be a Wall Street darling, and when you're a Wall Street darling, you're also a traditional media darling—as the New York Times shows so clearly.

Reposted from Daily Kos Elections by Jeff Singer

Today we have interactive state legislative district maps for Maine and Nebraska, thanks to the presidential election results by district calculated by the team at Daily Kos Elections. Each legislative chamber is mapped out and color-coded according to the presidential winner and the party that holds each district, along with some info on each legislator. You can find links to all the previously released maps here, which you may want to bookmark.

Districts in solid blue were carried by Obama and are represented by a Democrat, while those in solid red were won by Mitt Romney and are held by a Republican. Lighter red districts voted for Obama and a Republican legislator while those in lighter blue went for Romney and a Democratic legislator. Note that the map displays use only the two-party vote to give you a more equivalent comparison between presidential and legislative results, but this post and Daily Kos Elections numbers include totals for third-party candidates, though the differences are minor.

Maine State Senate

Redistricting in Maine was the product of bipartisan compromise thanks to a two-thirds approval requirement and the new maps take effect for the first time in 2014. Obama carried 31 of the state's 35 districts, but with a high rate of ticket splitting Republicans hold all four Romney districts plus an additional 11 seats won by Obama. Overall Democrats have a 20 to 15 majority, including an independent who caucuses with them whose district is in green. Obama won the median district 56 to 42 which was two percent more Republican than statewide. All senators serve two-year terms and are term limited to eight years total.

Maine State House of Representatives

The lower House is in a similar position with Obama carrying 128 districts and Romney just 28. However Democrats hold two Romney seats and Republicans 37 won by Obama for an overall Democratic majority of 93 to 58 including four independents who caucus with the Democrats. Three districts are newly created through redistricting and colored gray. The median seat went for Obama 55 to 43 which was three points more Republican than the state.

Head below the fold for Nebraska.

Reposted from Daily Kos Elections by Jeff Singer

Leading Off:

• WI-Gov: Republican politicians love to compare themselves to Ronald Reagan, and Democrat Mary Burke's new spot contrasts Dutch with Republican Gov. Scott Walker. This time of course, it's not the type of comparison Walker would like. Burke describes Reagan as using tax cuts to help working families, while Walker's tax cuts hurt them. Of course it's another matter of how accurate her description of Reagan's record is, but this is a very interesting tactic to see from a Democrat.

Walker himself has a spot where he stands in a hole in the ground. He accuses Burke (without mentioning her by name) of leaving the state in a hole financially. Walker then describes his tenure as getting Wisconsin out of the hole, as the governor climbs up a ladder.

So it's not entirely Big Telecom against the rest of the world; it's Big Telecom and the network technology and equipment makers who supply them against the rest of the world. More than two dozen such companies, including Cisco Systems, Intel, and International Business Machines, have weighed in against net neutrality, as their big customers would wish.

Regulating internet providers more like public utility companies could hurt the Internet and the U.S. economy, more than two dozen network technology and equipment makers have told U.S. Commerce Secretary Penny Pritzker. […]

On Tuesday, 33 telecom network and tech makers, who are members of the Telecommunications Industry Association and the National Cable and Telecommunications Association and who depend on ISPs for business, spoke out against the reclassification idea as well.

"A sudden shift from the existing light-touch approach—which has been an unqualified success and the basis for billions of dollars in investments—to the prescriptive regime of Title II would be extremely disruptive to the broadband marketplace," they wrote, referring to the legal authority the FCC would use to reclassify ISPs.

Little surprise that the companies who are dependent on the ISPs agree with the ISPs. It's particularly interesting that they're trying to engage Commerce in this fight, since the decision lies with the Federal Communications Commission and not Commerce, and because President Obama said that his and the administration's position is that "you don't want to start getting a differentiation in how accessible the Internet is to different users. You want to leave it open so the next Google and the next Facebook can succeed." These companies clearly see Commerce as a lever. At the same time, though, dozens of tech companies and other internet-based businesses have weighed in on the other side, the side of preserving their livelihood by preserving an open internet.

It's also interesting that these companies are specifically against reclassification of broadband as a public utility. Clearly, the argument for reclassification is getting enough traction that Big Telecom is very afraid. So let's keep it up. If you haven't already done it, please, take a moment to sign and send a personal comment to FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler urging him to do the right thing.

Bob Beauprez, the Republican Party's nominee for the governorship of Colorado, made clear last week that he wants the state to grab national parks, forests and other public lands from federal control. In his first debate with Democratic incumbent John Hickenlooper Friday, he said "This is a fight we have to wage." Claire Moser of the Public Lands Project at the Center for American Progress writes:

In a video taken by American Bridge, Beauprez, who is challenging incumbent Governor John Hickenlooper (D), claimed that all public land in the state was “supposed to be Colorado’s” and that “if this were private land and the federal government was a tenant, we would cancel their lease.” [...]

Although most Western voters deeply value their public lands, Beauprez is one of several candidates supporting such proposals this election season. As ThinkProgress reported last week, there are a number of right-wing politicians across the country who have been advancing proposals to transfer of control of public lands to states, or to sell them off to the highest bidder for drilling, mining and logging.

Such ideas are not new. Nor are they constitutional. In the 1970s, Colorado was one of several Western states where right-wing politicians backed the so-called Sagebrush Rebellion, an effort by big polluters funded initially by beer baron Joseph Coors to get states to take over federal lands with the notion of eventually selling millions of acres to private buyers. The effort didn't succeed, but it has continued to echo over the decades in campaigns like the Orwellian-named Wise Use Movement. One of the leading proponents of note was James G. Watt, first head of the rightist Mountain States Legal Foundation—also funded by Coors. He later served as the crooked Secretary of Interior under Ronald Reagan, who said during his 1980 presidential campaign: "I am a Sagebrush Rebel."

Partly as a result of Watt's terrible but short tenure at Interior, the Sagebrush Rebellion weakened but was reincarnated as Wise Use. That group's founder, timber-industry spokesman Ron Arnold, said (obviously without having consulted a PR adviser): "Our goal is to destroy, to eradicate the environmental movement. We want to be able to exploit the environment for private gain, absolutely."

In April this year, some 50 political leaders from nine states, including the House speakers in Idaho and Utah, met in Salt Lake City to discuss how they might go about gaining state control over federal lands rich in coal, oil, gas, oil shale and minerals. So Beauprez is not alone in his quest.

Although the federal government has long provided compensation to the states for the relatively unspoiled land it holds, it pays large amounts to states and localities for lost property taxes and royalties for the resources extracted from those lands. So cheaply does it charge companies for extracting minerals and fossil fuels from public land that it amounts to subsidies.

While there are certainly legitimate complaints to be made about certain aspects of federal management of public lands, the latest version of the Sagebrush Rebellion, as spouted by Beauprez and others of like mind, has nothing to do with wise use or civic responsibility, but rather a twisted view of states' rights and a big $mile for extractive industries.

Following a long, rambling, condescending speech by an older white gentleman who pretty much explained that "After 16 years as a committee man, I supported African-American candidates ..." [You want a cookie to go with that?] and "They come to my home, they come to my Christmas parties" [He wants Mega-Bonus points for letting the darkies in his house!] and that he too, was—in effect—raised a "poor black child" [yes, just like in "The Jerk"] by a single mother, on food stamps, who wasn't from this country and he truly understood the challenges that others faced. And so on and so forth.

Because, y'know, ain't all black people on food stamps? And growing up in fatherless broken homes?

In response a young man wearing a black "Peacekeeper" t-shirt took the mike, proclaiming his name was "Mike Brown from Ground Zero." He proceeded to drop some knowledge and true science.

We Got the Power, They Don't!

More below the fold.

Reposted from Daily Kos Elections by Jeff Singer On behalf of the Democratic Governor's Association, Global Strategy Group surveyed the Illinois' gubernatorial race and they found something no one's found in a very long time: Democratic Gov. Pat Quinn is in the lead. GSG gives Quinn a small 43-40 edge over Republican businessman Bruce Rauner, with Libertarian Chad Grimm taking 5. No cross-tabs were provided here. The only other time Quinn led Rauner in a publicly released poll was in November of 2013. Since then Quinn has trailed by as much as double digits: Even Democratic pollsters Garin-Hart-Yang and the Mellman Group have shown Quinn trailing by a small amount.

Quinn's campaign has relentlessly been portraying Rauner as heartless plutocrat, and Rauner has provided the Democrats with plenty of ammunition. In August, news broke that Rauner had his company stash funds in the Cayman Islands to avoid American taxes. In the last week we've also learned that not long ago, Rauner wanted to eliminate the state minimum wage. The fact that Rauner once paid $100,000 to join a wine club did not exactly help his image either.

We took a look at GSG's track record. Here are their 2010 polls: We've included the last poll they released for any race from October on.

• HI-01: Global Strategy Group: Hanabusa (D) 48-44; actual: Hanabusa (D) 50-44; error +2 R

• IA-Gov: Global Strategy Group: Branstad (R) 46-40; actual: Branstad (R) 53-43; error +4 D

• WV-Sen: Global Strategy Group: Manchin (D) 48-43; actual: Manchin (D); 53-43; error +5 R

And here is 2012:

• CA-09: Global Strategy Group: McNerney (D) 47-38; actual: McNerney (D) 56-44; +3 R

• FL-10: Global Strategy Group: Webster (R) 43-41; actual: Webster (R) 52-48; +2 D

• IN-Sen: Global Strategy Group: Donnelly (D) 43-36; actual: Donnelly (D) 50-44; +1 D

• MN-08: Global Strategy Group: Cravaack (R) 42-42; actual: Nolan (D) 54-46; +8 R

• NH-01: Global Strategy Group: Shea-Porter (D) 46-43; actual: Shea-Porter (D) 50-46; +1 R

• NY-18: Global Strategy Group: Hayworth (R) 44-42; actual: Maloney (D) 52-48; +6 R

• NY-21: Global Strategy Group: Owens (D) 47-40; actual: Owens (D) 50-48; +5 D

• UT-04: Global Strategy Group: Matheson (D) 48-41; actual: Matheson (D) 49-49; +7 D

Between the two cycles, GSG's average error was 0.5 percent in the Republican's direction. They underestimated the winner's margin by an average of 4 points. Overall, an incredibly good record.

This is just one poll, and we'll need to see more before we can start to conclude that the tide is turning. Internal polls should always be taken with a grain of salt, and it's always good to be cautious when one poll shows an unusual result. Quinn is still unpopular and Republicans can very well win here. Still, Quinn's team can't be complaining about this survey.

Missouri has joined Utah and South Dakota to require women to wait 72 hours before getting an abortion. Democratic Gov. Jay Nixon had vetoed the legislation, but both Republican-controlled houses of the state legislature overrode him Wednesday night. In his veto message in July, Nixon had decried the bill’s failure to make an exception for rape and incest victims:

“This extreme and disrespectful measure would unnecessarily prolong the suffering of rape and incest victims and jeopardize the health and wellbeing of women,” Gov. Nixon said. “By failing to include an exception for rape and incest, House Bill 1307 demonstrates a callous disregard for women who find themselves in horrific circumstances and would make Missouri one of just two states in the nation to take such an extreme step. Lengthening the already extensive waiting period serves no demonstrable purpose other than to create emotional and financial hardships for women who have undoubtedly already spent considerable time wrestling with perhaps the most difficult decision they may ever have to make.”

That's all true. And huzzah to him for using his authority to try to block the bill from becoming law. But including exceptions for rape and incest would not make this imposition on women's control over their own bodies deserving of approval. Here's Teddy Wilson writing at RH Reality Check:

Laura McQuade, president and CEO of Planned Parenthood Advocates of Kansas and Mid-Missouri, said that the bill is further intrusion of politicians into Missourians’ personal lives.

“We all want women to have the information and support they need to make a carefully considered decision about a pregnancy—this law won’t do that,” McQuade said in a statement. “It will block access to safe, legal abortion and target women who already have the least access to medical care.”

Missouri's laws on abortion are already rotten. A woman must make two visits to an abortion provider. First to let it be known that she wants an abortion and then a return trip after waiting 24 hours to have the procedure. Since Missouri is one of the six states with one abortion clinic—the others are Arkansas, Mississippi, North Dakota, South Dakota and Wyoming—the average woman must travel a hundred miles to obtain this legal procedure in St. Louis. One in 10 women has to go 300 miles to do so.

For many then, the waiting period means the expense of an overnight stay. Make that three overnight stays, when the new law takes effect next month. There is the expense of travel, of a hotel, of child care, of taking time off work. For an affluent woman, that's just a hassle. For a poor woman, the costs can be an insurmountable obstacle or at least delay her in getting an abortion as she gathers the money needed to make it happen. Later abortions increase the risk of complications.

Adding insult to injury, the state already mandates that women undergo biased counseling before they obtain an abortion. Included in that "counseling" is the message that "the life of each human being begins at conception. Abortion will terminate the life of a separate, unique, living human being." The new law requires that, in addition to the fact-challenged brochure now provided each woman seeking an abortion, the state Department of Health and Senior Services must create a video containing the same bogus material.

All part of the forced-birthers' relentless assault in state after state on women's inherent right to make their own decisions about their pregnancies.

Reposted from Comics by Barbara Morrill

(Click for larger image)

Colorado Republican Cory Gardner is doing his damnedest to shake his anti-choice past and support for a personhood amendment that would elevate a fertilized egg to being a legal person. That amendment would have the end effect of banning many forms of birth control. His opposition to basic women's health care extends beyond that, though. He's opposed to the provision of Obamacare that allows women to get birth control without insurance copays. Recognizing just how radical, just how misogynistic that might sound to Colorado voters, Gardner is now trying to position himself as a champion of birth control by saying he thinks birth control pills should be sold over the counter.

Gardner's not alone in this. In North Carolina, Republican Senate candidate Thom Tillis has taken the same position. Sens. Kelly Ayotte (R-NH) and Mitch McConnell (R-KY) introduced legislation pushing the FDA to study the issue. Here's what's wrong with their position, summed up by the leading authority on reproductive health and rights, the Guttmacher Institute.

Making birth control pills available over the counter, if done right, would meaningfully improve access for some groups of women. However, such a change is no substitute for public and private insurance coverage of contraceptives—let alone justification for rolling back coverage of all contraceptive methods and related services for the millions of women who currently have it.

The problem is that these Republicans are pushing for over-the-counter pills as a substitute for the contraception mandate in the law. They're still pushing for full repeal of the law, and at the least an end to the mandate. They argue that OTC pills would end the need for it, and would solve any problem for women. Clearly, they aren't too familiar with women.

That's because the pill isn't the only birth control out there. Guttmacher points out that the average woman will use four different methods of contraception in her reproductive lifetime. Not only do many women choose other methods, plenty of women can't use the pill. The most effective methods besides the pill are the most expensive ones—like the IUD or implant. These devices are expensive and on top of that, require a trained healthcare provider to insert. That can run $500 to $900. Not having that covered by insurance is a big problem for a lot of women. And even for the pill as far as costs go, under Obamacare the out-of-pocket cost for a woman is $0. That won't be matched on a drugstore shelf.

Putting the pill on the drugstore shelf is a good idea. It would greatly increase access to the pill to the uninsured and would be a great convenience. Plenty of developed nations have made it available without a prescription for years, without serious health consequences. But it is no substitute at all for what we have now—full coverage of prescription birth control in the law.