Politics Plus

I’m getting as much done early as I can, because I expect a very busy day.  Sometime this afternoon my interim prosthetic leg will arrive.  I will use it for about six months, shrink out of it, and have a new cup made.  Today I will take my first baby steps on two feet.  I also expect visits from PT and OT.  OT plans to help me use the shower.  I’ll just have to suffer through that. 

Short Takes:

From Daily Kos: According to the Center for Disease Control (CDC), in 2014 there was a huge increase in sexually transmitted diseases in the United States.

The CDC estimates that nearly 20 million new STD infections happen each year in the U.S., with the majority affecting 15 to 24-year-olds.

Reports of gonorrhea and syphilis also increased in 2014. There was a 2.8% increase in chlamydia since 2013, and reports of syphilis, which has three stages, increased for the most infectious stages of the disease by 15.1%.

One of the reasons for this rise in STDs is the war being waged on public health in this country over the last couple of decades.

The increase in STDs is in many ways a result of cuts in funding to public health clinics, Gail Bolan, director of CDC’s Division of STD Prevention, told NBC.

“Most recently, there have been significant erosions of state and local STD control programs,” Bolan said. “Most people don’t recognize that the direct clinical care of individuals with sexually transmitted diseases is supported by state and local funds and federal funds.”

This leads to men and women not getting tested and treated early, before further infections occur. As the CDC report notes, it’s not particularly economic to cut our public health and then have to pay it out on the other end.

This is a direct result of the Republican sequester.  Thanks, Republicans!

From The New Yorker:  In an announcement on Monday morning, Pfizer, the big drug company, whose headquarters are on East 42nd Street, in Manhattan, said that it is merging with one of its competitors, Allergan PLC. Ian Read, a Scottish-born accountant who is Pfizer’s chairman and chief executive, said that the proposed deal, which is valued at a hundred and sixty billion dollars, would “create a leading global pharmaceutical company with the strength to research, discover and deliver more medicines and therapies to more people around the world.”

On Wall Street and in the world of big pharma, that statement will raise chuckles. It is widely acknowledged that the primary impetus for the deal is a financial one. In merging with Allergan, which is based in Dublin, Pfizer intends to move its corporate residency to Ireland, where the corporate tax rate is just 12.5 per cent, compared to thirty-five per cent for a company of its size in the United States. Over the next few years, the merger could save Pfizer billions of dollars in taxes and deprive the U.S. Treasury of the same amount.

Tax-driven deals of this nature are known as “inversions,” and they are becoming increasingly common. Burger King, Liberty Global, and Medtronic are among the U.S. corporations to have carried out mergers that moved their headquarters abroad. Last year, Treasury Secretary Jacob Lew said that inversions were “wrong,” and that he would try and restrict them. Only last week, the Treasury Department issued some new administrative guidelines in this area. Without actual legislation, though, there isn’t very much the Obama Administration can do to prevent these exercises in corporate tax-dodging, and Republicans on Capitol Hill have displayed little eagerness to coöperate in a crackdown.

It’s simple. If a company wants to do business in our marketplace, they should have to pay taxes here. To make this happen we must flush the Republican Party.

From NY Times: For more than a year, a rare coalition of liberal groups and libertarian-minded conservatives has joined the Obama administration in pushing for the most significant liberalization of America’s criminal justice laws since the beginning of the drug war. That effort has had perhaps no ally more important than Koch Industries, the conglomerate owned by a pair of brothers who are well-known conservative billionaires.

Now, as Congress works to turn those goals into legislation, that joint effort is facing its most significant test — over a House bill that Koch Industries says would make the criminal justice system fairer, but that the Justice Department says would make it significantly harder to prosecute corporate polluters, producers of tainted food and other white-collar criminals.

The tension among the unlikely allies emerged over the last week as the House Judiciary Committee, with bipartisan support, approved a package of bills intended to simplify the criminal code and reduce unnecessarily severe sentences.

This makes it crystal clear that Republicans really don’t give a damn about sentencing reform. They’re just using it to mask protecting big corporate criminals from responsibility for their crimes.

Cartoon:

Yesterday I finally got to take my first shower since 9/5.  I can’t tell you what a relief it is not to smell something rancid and know it’s me.  Because it involves a nurse leaving this unit with me, it’s hard to schedule, but I’m hoping to get a couple a week.  Fantasy football players, don’t forget to have your lineups set early this week, as there are two games on Thanksgiving Day.

Religious Ecstasy:

Short Takes:

From Daily Kos: In 2014, Americans donated an estimated $350 billion to charities. A generous country we are, but how much of those funds actually benefit those in need? You might not want to know. There are good charities. There are bad charities. And there are the worst charities.

America’s “worst” charities have gained their titles by how much they raise in donations for their cause—and how little of that money goes towards the same cause. As these deceptive organizations ask you for your financial support, many lie about where or to whom that money is alloted, sometimes paying themselves “multiple salaries” and “consulting fees.” One cancer charity paid the company president’s son nearly $18 million over eight years, to solicit donations. The Tampa Bay Times reports:

Some nonprofits are little more than fronts for fundraising companies, which bankroll their startup costs, lock them into exclusive contracts at exorbitant rates and even drive the charities into debt.

How Republican!!  Click through for the list. I’m amazed that Susan G Komen for the Cure isn’t on the list. Considering all they have spent lobbying to prevent women form getting breast cancer screenings and other women’s healthcare from Planned Parenthood, they should be on it.

From NY Times: Donald J. Trump said on Sunday he was in favor of the actions of his supporters who reportedly punched and kicked a protester from the Black Lives Matter movement who interrupted Mr. Trump’s campaign rally the previous day in Birmingham, Ala.

“Maybe he should have been roughed up, because it was absolutely disgusting what he was doing,” Mr. Trump said in an interview with “Fox and Friends” on Sunday. “This was not handled the way Bernie Sanders handled his problem, I will tell you.”

To support violence against a protestor is typical rabid Republican response.  But Hairball is a typical Republican.

The Squatch beat me to John Oliver, so you only get two short takes.

Cartoon:

Considering yesterday’s cartoon, this is why.

Yesterday I was cleared to take a real human shower, with assistance and supervision.  The drive in shower is in another unit, presenting scheduling difficulties, but I’m hoping to take one today.  Today is a holy day in the Church of the Ellipsoid Orb.  My Broncos’ service is with the Bears.  I will not be able to see it, because the damn SeaChickewns are playing at the same time.  My the Holy Orb bless your team, unless they shit in the woods.

Short Takes:

From The New Yorker: Just days after withdrawing from the 2016 Presidential race, Louisiana governor Bobby Jindal said that he would return the seventy dollars raised by his campaign.

Speaking to reporters in Baton Rouge, Jindal said he was proud that his campaign war chest “came entirely from small donors.”

Dang, Andy!! Booby Butthead actually raised THAT MUCH?!!?

From Daily Kos: Since William Rehnquist joined the Supreme Court, it has made several rulings that have knocked the U.S. Constitution out of whack. Retired Justice John Paul Stevens, who deliberated on most of those rulings, has written six amendments to fix the damage and tune-up the Constitution. Stevens published his proposed amendments last year in the book “Six Amendments: How and Why We Should Change the Constitution.” The amendments are terse, surgical fixes, which seem to fit the Constitution’s style of saying much with few words. The book gives a good history and description of each problem. Here is a brief rundown with the text of each amendment:

1. The “Anti-Commandeering” Rule: In 1997, by a 5-4 vote, the Supreme Court, created an “anti-commandeering” rule, which bans Congress from ordering state officials to carry out federal duties. The case was brought by two county sheriffs, who did not want to do background checks for firearm sales as ordered by the Brady Act. The new rule led to holes in the database that would allow persons prone to violence, like the killer in the 2007 Virginia Tech mass shooting, to get firearms. Stevens notes that the “anti-commandeering” rule could also cripple other Congressional acts, from routine administration of federal programs to emergency responses to national catastrophes or acts of terror. His fix adds four words (in bold below) to the Constitution’s Supremacy Clause:

This Constitution, and the Laws of the United States which shall be made in Pursuance thereof; and all Treaties made, or which shall be made, under the Authority of the United States, shall be the supreme Law of the Land; and the Judges and other public officials in every State shall be bound thereby, any Thing in the Constitution or Laws of any State to the Contrary notwithstanding.

I agree with virtually everything Justice Srevens has to say. I have shared one of six of his proposed Constitutional amendments. Click through for the other five.

From NY Times: Outside her two-story tract home in this working-class town, Debbie Alberts, a part-time food service worker, has torn out most of the lawn. She has given up daily showers and cut her family’s water use nearly in half, to just 178 gallons per person each day.

A little more than 100 miles west, a resident of the fashionable Los Angeles hills has been labeled “the Wet Prince of Bel Air” after drinking up more than 30,000 gallons of water each day — the equivalent of 400 toilet flushes each hour with two showers running constantly, with enough water left over to keep the lawn perfectly green.

Only one of them has been fined for excessive water use: Ms. Alberts.

Four years into the worst drought in California’s recorded history, the contrast between the strict enforcement on Californians struggling to conserve and the unchecked profligacy in places like Bel Air has unleashed anger and indignation — among both the recipients of the fines, who feel helpless to avoid them, and other Californians who see the biggest water hogs getting off scot-free.

What an Outrage! This injustice could not be more Californicated!!

Cartoon: