Anthony Weiner Seeks Treatment, Requests Leave Of Absence As Top Democrats Call For Resignation
June 12, 2011 No Comment
WASHINGTON — House Democratic leadership issued a deafening rebuke of Rep. Anthony Weiner (D-N.Y.) midday Saturday, calling on the embattled New York Democrat to resign from his post amid growing controversy over his lewd online activity. In successive statements, Democratic National Committee Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-Fla.), Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee Chair Steve Israel (D-N.Y.) and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) urged Weiner to conduct his rehabilitation outside the confines of public office. Rep. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.) the ranking member of the Budget Committee and former DCCC head, followed with the same request 45 minutes later. “Congressman Weiner has the love of his family, the confidence of his constituents, and the recognition that he needs help,” said Pelosi, whose word carries the most weight of the group. “I urge Congressman Weiner to seek that help without the pressures of being a Member of Congress.” Shortly after the calls for resignation were delivered, reports emerged that Weiner was, indeed, checking into a treatment center — though where and for what precisely (depression? addiction?) wasn’t immediately clear. Weiner’s office put out a statement confirming those reports and announcing that he had requested a “short leave of absence from the House of Representatives so that he can get evaluated and map out a course of treatment to make himself well.” Earlier reports suggested that Weiner had no immediate intention of resigning. “Congressman Weiner takes the views of his colleagues very seriously and has determined that he needs this time to get healthy and make the best decision possible for himself, his family and his constituents,” the statement from his office continued. The latest chapter in an increasingly lurid saga came as Weiner had been declining private and, occasionally, public pleas for him to step down. The congressman’s defenders noted that his lewd interactions over Twitter and Facebook — while personally embarrassing -– neither constituted a breach of law nor interfered (at the time) with his ability to conduct his job. According to several well-placed Democratic sources on the Hill, the situation changed on Friday night, when it was reported that police were investigating direct online communications between Weiner and a 17-year-old girl. The nature of those conversations wasn’t known. The congressman’s office insisted that they were “neither explicit nor indecent.” But House members were clearly bothered by the newest revelations. And with lawmakers returning to Washington D.C. after a recess, the decision was made to have a coordinated call for Weiner’s resignation. “The pressure was building,” said one top Democratic aide, “with the Sunday shows tomorrow and members coming back on Monday… the [17-year-old] story was the last straw.” Another aide said that leadership alerted Weiner, before the fact, that they would be calling for his resignation. The concern now, among some Democrats, is that the party may have waited too long. Rather than come out quickly with calls for Weiner to resign, they allowed his saga to distract from their efforts to keep The Republican Party’s Medicare reform plan in the news. “They should have thrown this guy to the sharks days ago,” said one top operative who consults with House members. On the flip side is a vocal and not entirely insignificant number of Democrats who believe that the party should let Weiner ride his personal storm. Pointing to the current, elected, status of Sen. David Vitter (R-La.) they note, correctly, that the best recipe for surviving a scandal is perseverance and time. Unfortunately for those like-minded Democrats, official party leadership appears to have little willingness to walk that route. One aide suggested that if Weiner refused to step down, even in light of the Saturday statements, Pelosi would remove him from his committees. “Anthony’s inappropriate behavior has become an insurmountable distraction to the House and our work for the American people,” said Israel in a statement. “With a heavy heart, I call on Anthony to resign. I pray for his family and hope that Anthony will take time to get the help he needs without the distractions and added pressures of Washington, DC.”
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enlarge The Republican Party, Tim Pawlenty often lectures, “should be the party of Sam’s Club, not just the country club.” If so, the GOP White House hopeful miserably failed his own Sam’s Club test this week. Unveiling his economic plan draining $7.8 trillion from the U.S. Treasury in order to give millionaires a 41% tax cut , Tim Pawlenty made George W. Bush look like Karl Marx. To be sure, the ” Better Plan ” from the man who calls himself “T-Paw” was greeted with sidesplitting laughter . His claim to that he could achieve to 5% economic growth over ten straight years – a feat never performed in modern American history, was righty mocked across the political spectrum as ” fantasy “, ” magical “, ” wishful thinking ” and ” fuzzy math .” His demand for a constitutional amendment requiring a balanced budget and capping federal spending at 18% of GDP would have made lawbreakers out of Ronald Reagan as well as the 235 House Republicans and 40 GOP Senators who just voted for the Ryan budget plan . Perhaps most comical is Pawlenty’s insistence that “If you can find a good or service on the internet, then the federal government probably doesn’t need to be doing it.” But the most jaw-dropping aspect of Tim Pawlenty’s economic hallucination is the unprecedented upward income redistribution it would produce. Reviewing an analysis by the Tax Policy Center , Bloomberg explained that “the top 0.1 percent of U.S. taxpayers would save an average of $1.4 million in taxes under the economic plan of Republican presidential candidate Tim Pawlenty,” while “almost half of the benefits would flow to taxpayers in the top 1 percent of income distribution, or those earning more than $593,011 in 2013.” As Citizens for Tax Justice concluded, the 400 richest Americans – whose incomes doubled and tax rates were halved over the past decade – would enjoy a 73% reduction in their tax bills. And it turns out, the merely well-off and the fabulously rich would join the unimaginably wealthy in reaping the T-Paw Payday for the gilded class : Taxpayers with incomes in excess of $1 million would enjoy an average cut in personal income taxes of $288,822, a 41.4 percent cut. Taxpayers with incomes in excess of $10 million would enjoy an average cut in personal income taxes of $2.4 million, a 46.3 percent cut. The cost of the personal income tax cuts just for taxpayers with incomes in excess of $1 million would be $141.8 billion. Pawlenty’s windfall for the wealthy would make George Bush and Paul Ryan blush. While the corporate tax rate would be slashed from 35% to 15%, Pawlenty would create two tax brackets of 10% for those earning up to $50,000 and 25% above. (As with the Paul Ryan plan, the loopholes Tim Pawlenty would close remain unnamed.) At a time of when the federal tax burden is at a 60 year low and income inequality at an 80 year high , Pawlenty insists “we should eliminate altogether the capital gains tax, interest income tax, dividends tax, and the death tax.” (It is worth noting that less than one-quarter of one percent of U.S. families pay the estate tax , while George W. Bush’s last round of capital gains and dividend tax cuts in 2003 delivered 70% of their savings to “top 2 percent of taxpayers, those making more than $200,000.”) All told, Tim Pawlenty’s budget-busting blueprint would cost a staggering $7.8 trillio n over the next 10 years. In comparison, the Bush tax cuts of 2001 and 2003 emptied the Treasury of $2.5 trillion over their first decade, and if made permanent, would drain roughly $4 trillion more. As the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities explained, the savings from Paul Ryan’s draconian budget cuts ( three quarters of which are extracted from the poor and elderly ) endorsed by 98% of Republicans on Capitol Hill are almost completely offset by his $4.2 trillion in tax cuts. It’s with good reason that ThinkProgress concluded: Pawlenty’s plan wins the triple crown: it’s more radical than Ryan, costs three times more than the Bush tax cuts, and still means a tax increase on the middle class. Unveiling his absolutely fabulous plan for the fabulously rich, the former Governor and friend of Morgan Stanley used his humble roots as cover: “I come from a working class background. I didn’t grow up with wealth. But I’ve never resented those who have it.” In contrast, President Obama, Pawlenty charged, is “a champion practitioner of class warfare.” And with that, the would-be Sam’s Club Republican Tim Pawlenty gave away the game. After all, the side decrying the class war is usually the one winning it. (This piece also appears at Perrspectives .)
Continue reading …Albert Gaxiola on trial in the Flores family murders: A special kind of depravity
June 12, 2011 No Comment
enlarge [Albert Gaxiola, left, in the courtroom, with his attorney, Steve West] The case of Shawna Forde and her killer Minutemen — who in 2009 broke into a home in rural Arizona and killed a 9-year-old girl and her father — is really, as you’d imagine, a story featuring a cast of depraved characters, led of course by Forde, who was convicted in February and now sits on Arizona’s death row. Likewise, the gunman in the case, Jason Bush — a onetime Aryan Nations member and general nutcase — is now awaiting execution . But if the case prosecutors presented holds up — and the evidence, frankly, is powerfully damning — there was a special level of depravity reached by Albert Gaxiola, the third defendant in the case, whose trial I have been covering this week under the auspices of the Investigative Fund of the Nation Institute. That’s because Gaxiola had been a longtime friend of the Flores family and was adored by their two little girls, Brisenia and Alexandra — and yet he evidently not only set them up for murder, he accompanied the gang of killers inside as they ransacked the home and Brisenia lay dying on a couch. I knew some of this from having talked with people in Arivaca in February . But it all came out in court this week, when the mother and only survivor of the home invasion, Gina Gonzalez, testified to that effect. Dave Ricker, the Green Valley News reporter who really has owned this story since it happened, has the details : After hearing a recording of a 9-1-1 emergency center call made by the surviving victim in the fatal home invasion the jury heard Gonzalez relive for the third time from the witness stand the night she was wounded and her husband and daughter were shot to death before her eyes. After she had been shot, Gonzalez decided to play dead in hopes of surviving. “I laid on the floor very scared,” she said. “I heard Junior taking his last breaths.” Eventually, the tall male, Jason Bush, who was doing the shooting of the victims, addressed Brisenia, who by now had awakened. Bush asked her about the location of her older sister. “He was telling her that nothing was going to happen to her and that everything was going to be okay,” Gonzalez related. “She was crying a lot. She was scared.” Brisenia told the Bush that her sister was staying with her grandmother’s house. Brisenia was asked if the body on the floor in front of the love seat was her sister. “At first she said yes. Then she tips over and looks and says ‘that’s my mom; why did you shoot my mom?’” Gonzalez said. At that point, Bush paused to reload his weapon as Brisenia watched. “I could hear him put the bullets in the gun,” Gonzalez said. “She was begging him not to shoot her.” What followed were two more blasts from his gun in the direction of her daughter. “He shot her. I saw her fly back. He shot her twice,” Gonzalez said. By that time the female intruder told her compatriots that they had to leave, but they paused first to search the Flores home for money and drugs. After they left, Gonzalez did what any mother would do. “I sat up and grabbed Brisenia. I was telling her not to die on me,” she testified. “She was shaking really hard.” Gonzalez was able to get to a portable phone on an ottoman close by, thus she call 9-1-1. “I asked them what I should do,” she recalled. At that point, Gonzalez notice that the female leader of the home invasion crew, Shawna Forde, re-entered the home with a big smile on her face. “I’m panicking; I’m freaking out; a million things are going through my head,” she said. Gonzalez decided to try to get to her husband’s gun in the kitchen, as she made her way to the kitchen her leg snapped. Eventually, she retrieved the gun and used it to exchange gunshots with the tall male shooter, who had reentered her home, wounding him in the leg. As you can imagine, this was truly gut-wrenching testimony in a week full of such moments. One of the more damning pieces of evidence was the fact that Gaxiola’s DNA turned up all over an AK-47 the perpetrators idiotically left behind at the scene, sitting on top of the kitchen stove. Defense attorneys, as you can imagine, tried their damnedest to cast doubt on that particular piece of evidence, and spent the better part of Friday afternoon in that attempt. Whether they succeeded or not remains to be seen, but it was a highly technical bit of arguing and did not sound terribly convincing — especially considering that the kitchen is where, as it happens, Gina Gonzalez happened to earlier testify she thought she had heard a voice like Albert’s speaking while the house was being ransacked. We also had a brief flurry of concern yesterday involving one of the potential witnesses in the case, Laine Lawless — an extremist nutcase who was involved in the post-murder logistics between Forde and Gaxiola. Lawless had previously tried to enter the courtroom in disguise, even though she had been barred. One of yesterday’s witnesses bore an unfortunate resemblance to Lawless and some of the deputies were concerned that she was about to try the same stunt — but it was, of course, a false alarm. Be sure and read Ricker’s complete coverage of the case, as well as that of my friend and colleague Terri Greene Sterling, who was also in court this week. Unfortunately, I have to return home this week and will be relying on my colleagues, including the superb Kim Smith of the Arizona Daily Star (who also has a good wrapup of this week’s trial ), to keep you updated. Coming up: We’ll hear from the dubious Oin Oakstar again, and we’ll probably learn more about that Border Patrol uniform they found in Gaxiola’s home. (Gonzalez testified that the “Mexican” man she saw poke his head in the door briefly — the one she thought looked like Gaxiola — was wearing a Border Patrol uniform.)
Continue reading …Good News: Connecticut Becomes First State in the Nation to Mandate Paid Sick Leave
June 12, 2011 No Comment
enlarge Credit: National Partnership for Women and Families Let’s work to make this happen nationwide. From Civil Rights.org In a victory for workers and labor advocates, the Connecticut legislature recently became the first in the nation to pass a statewide mandate for paid sick days. Eighty percent of low-wage workers in the United States do not have any paid sick days, according to the National Partnership for Women & Families . S.B. 913 will require employers with fifty or more employees to provide paid sick leave when workers are ill or need to care for their families. With the implementation of this bill, workers in Connecticut will no longer have to decide between feeding their families and staying home from work due to illness. The really good news about this is that it applies to PART-TIME employees, as well. Too many companies avoid paying benefits to their employees by insisting on a part-time work force. You should have heard the whining and moaning from Connecticut Republican legislators about how this bill was a…wait for it….”job killer.” You know what hurts a business? I stop shopping at stores when I see an obviously sick employee running a cash register. I can shop at home and not catch something. Shopping does not have to cost me days of being ill myself, let alone facing the misery of passing something on to my three kids. There is national legislation on this, called The Healthy Families Act, that would enable all workers in the United States to earn up to seven paid sick days a year. Just one more reason we need to kick out the Republicans in the House and remove Blue Dogs from the Senate.
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WASHINGTON — Republican presidential hopeful Newt Gingrich’s campaign manager, senior strategists and key aides in early delegate-selection states all resigned on Thursday, a mass exodus that leaves his hopes of winning the Republican nomination in tatters. Rick Tyler, Gingrich’s spokesman, said he, campaign manager Rob Johnson and senior strategists had resigned, along with aides in the early primary and caucus states of Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina. Other officials said Gingrich was informed that his entire high command was quitting in a meeting earlier in the day. They cited differences over the direction of the campaign. “We had a different vision for victory,” Tyler told The Associated Press. “And since we couldn’t resolve that difference, I didn’t feel I could be useful in serving him.” He said Gingrich was not allowing enough time to campaign in key states. Scott Rials, a longtime aide who joined the departure, said, “I think the world of him, but at the end of the day we just could not see a clear path to win, and there was a question of commitment.” The upheaval in the campaign is likely to lead to a shakeup in the race for the party’s presidential nomination, as well, as rivals reach out for disaffected staff, and possibly for donors who have been aligned with the former Georgia congressman. Gingrich has long been viewed, by even his closest allies, as a fountain of policy ideas but a man who is unable to avoid speaking in ways that spark unwelcome controversy. The presidential candidate himself wrote in a post on Facebook, “I am committed to running the substantive, solutions-oriented campaign I set out to run earlier this spring. The campaign begins anew Sunday in Los Angeles.” The Des Moines Register reports: Newt Gingrich’s entire team of paid Iowa campaign staff, as well as his national spokesman and senior aides in New Hampshire and South Carolina, have resigned en masse, a staffer told The Des Moines Register. Meanwhile, Georgia Democrats are out with a statement looking to capitalize on the shake-up: Campaign staffers of Newt Gingrich’s flailing presidential bid walked off the job en masse today, demonstrating the power of organized labor and teamwork while serving in a hostile work environment. … “After three grueling weeks on the campaign trail, Gingrich needed a vacation and his entire staff needed to quit the campaign entirely,” concluded Gray. “I don’t know which is worse- his work ethic or his people skills.” Even before the sudden departures, Gingrich’s campaign was off to a notably rocky start. Within days of formally announcing he would run, he was assailed by conservatives for criticizing a plan to remake Medicare that Republicans pushed through the House. He called the author of the plan, Rep. Paul Ryan, to apologize but did not back off his objections. Within days, he had dropped from sight, embarking on a cruise to the Greek Isles with his wife, Callista, while rivals for the Republican nomination kept up their campaign appearances. He returned to the United States earlier in the week to confront a rebellion that had been brewing for some time among the senior echelon of his campaign.
Continue reading …Another bad day for Anthony Weiner: Nancy Pelosi and other top House Democrats told him to resign today, reports Politico . Weiner has insisted he would not do so, but the shift from Pelosi, Steve Israel, and Debbie Wasserman Schultz will ratchet up the pressure significantly. They released statements within minutes…
Continue reading …America has a complicated relationship with sports—a constant source for entertainment, but also a whole lot of stuff to make you scratch your head and say, “Huh?” Bleacher Report compiles eight such head-scratchers from fans. A sampling: Baseball’s designated hitter: “A pitcher who doesn’t have to hit. A batter…
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From Julian Bond, Chairman Emeritus, NAACP and Advisory Board member, American Foundation for Equal Rights , group behind the Federal Court Constitutional challenge of California’s Proposition 8: This Sunday, we celebrate the 44th anniversary of Loving v. Virginia, the Supreme Court’s decision that that struck down laws that forbade African Americans and whites from marrying. The Loving decision was… Broadcasting platform : YouTube Source : Pam’s House Blend Discovery Date : 09/06/2011 23:00 Number of articles : 4
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Click here to view this media A day after his campaign staff resigned en masse , Republican presidential candidate Newt Gingrich attempted to change the subject. “I am a candidate for president of the United States because I think we are in the early stages of the Obama depression,” he told reporters Friday. “I’m prepared to go out and to campaign very intensely but I want a campaign on ideas and on solutions and I want to do it in a way that brings Americans together into a large movement,” ABC News quoted the former House Speaker as saying.
Continue reading …Click here to view this media A day after his campaign staff resigned en masse , Republican presidential candidate Newt Gingrich attempted to change the subject. “I am a candidate for president of the United States because I think we are in the early stages of the Obama depression,” he told reporters Friday. “I’m prepared to go out and to campaign very intensely but I want a campaign on ideas and on solutions and I want to do it in a way that brings Americans together into a large movement,” ABC News quoted the former House Speaker as saying.
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