Report: Home Schooling Is a Scam. Also, Water is Wet.

For pity's fucking sake.  People in Kentucky have been screaming this fact for literally decades.  Everybody knows home schooling is a fraud.  Always has been, always will be.

From the Herald:

While acknowledging there’s quality education in many home schools, state public school officials worry that some families “who claim to be home schooling” are actually trying to hide truancy.

Eighty-two percent of state pupil personnel directors — those responsible for enforcing attendance laws — told researchers with the Kentucky Office of Education Accountability, they have observed families they believe are taking advantage of flexibility in home school laws to avoid legal consequences of truancy, Deborah Nelson, an analyst for the OEA told state lawmakers Tuesday.
 
Attendance verification was just one of the multiple issues with home schooling accountability that made an OEA report.
 
In Kentucky, parents are required to tell local districts annually if their children are being home schooled and they must maintain attendance and grade reports, but the OEA report said there is little guidance in how they should be monitored.
 
Home school parents have to teach the same subjects as public schools and to hold classes for the same duration of time as the public school term, but the teaching is not monitored, the report said.
 
And those charged with enforcing attendance are confused about the criteria they should use to monitor whether parents are providing adequate information to districts because there is no legal guidance or minimum standards, Nelson said. They often don’t know what to do if they are concerned about the quality of a home school, she added.

State officials have done nothing to establish and enforce regulations to ensure home schooling actually educates children for one simple reason: freakazoid political power.  The vast majority of homeschoolers in Kentucky are xianist fanatics who don't want public school to interfere with the pure religious bullshit they indoctrinate in their children. So they forced the legislature to keep home schooling entirely unregulated.

That's not in this report, of course. 

How the Free Market Kills People

This is capitalism without regulation, without universal health care, without anti-monopoly and anti-price-gouging laws and heavy enforcement.  This is killing poor people for profit.

Did you know there is an actual vaccine against HIV and has been for six fucking years?  But unless you can afford $20,000 a year for it, you're fucked.

Erik Loomis at LGM:

Well, this is infuriating.

On July 3, 1981, this newspaper wrote about a “rare cancer” killing gay men in New York and California. Though few knew it, what followed would be a generation-defining battle: for attention, for legitimacy, for our very lives. Today, after 37 years, we finally have a proven pathway to ending the AIDS epidemic in this country.

The only catch? Poor policy and pharmaceutical price-gouging have blocked the way, making critical drugs a luxury rather than an imperative.

The solution comes in a pill: Taken daily, Truvada, the brand name for a type of pre-exposure prophylaxis, or PrEP, is up to 99 percent effective at preventing H.I.V. infection. Used as directed, it’s one of the most effective methods of preventing a viral infection ever discovered, as good as the polio vaccine, the miracle of modern medicine. When you combine PrEP’s effectiveness with the discovery that people living with H.I.V. cannot transmit the virus to others once they become undetectable, we could be on the verge of a swift end to the epidemic.

Truvada was approved by the Food and Drug Administration in 2012. But over six years later, the United States is failing miserably in expanding its use. Less than 10 percent of the 1.2 million Americans who might benefit from PrEP are actually getting it. The major reason is quite clear: pricing. With a list price over $20,000 a year, Truvada, the only PrEP drug available in the United States, is simply too expensive to become the public health tool it should be.

Gilead Sciences, the company that makes Truvada, maintains a monopoly on the drug domestically. In other countries, a one-month supply of generic Truvada costs less than $6, but Gilead charges Americans, on average, more than $1,600, a markup from the generic of 25,000 percent.

Infuriatingly, American taxpayers and private charities — not Gilead — paid for almost all of the clinical research used to develop Truvada as PrEP. Yet the price stays out of reach for millions, and will for at least several more years.

The disparities in PrEP access are astounding: Its use in black and Hispanic populations is a small fraction of that among whites. In the South, where a majority of H.I.V. infections occur, use is half what it is in the Northeast. Women use PrEP at drastically lower rates than men, and while there’s no national data on PrEP and transgender Americans, it’s almost certainly underused. The issue of PrEP access has become an issue of privilege.

But hey, what is more important in New Gilded Age health care than very rich people making even more money? Actually, I know the answer–it’s taxpayers funding the research that rich people make even more profit from and terrible racial and gendered disparities.

Guns and Abortion

Maryellen Stewart‏ @Maryellen

A little louder for the folks in the back.

 

Inaccurately attributed to Gloria Steinem, who merely posted it on her own account.

The Orange Loser's Real Accomplishments

Down with Tyranny has them:

1- Protecting Wall Street profits that siphon billions of dollars from retirement savers. 

SNIP

2- Letting employers hide fatal injuries that happen on their watch. 

SNIP

3- Allowing potentially billions of taxpayer dollars to go to private contractors who violate health and safety protections or fail to pay workers. 

SNIP

4- Undermining important regulations that protect workers and consumers.

SNIP

5- Allowing employers to penalize employees who don’t want to reveal their private medical information. 

SNIP

6- Gutting the strength of labor organizing by forcing unions to represent and protect non-dues-paying workers. 

SNIP

7- Cutting pay for construction workers on federally funded infrastructure projects. 

SNIP

8- Putting the brakes on overtime pay for the middle class. 

SNIP

9- Slashing the budget for the Department of Labor, hindering its ability to enforce wage theft and worker safety laws or provide job training programs. 

SNIP

10- Declining to raise the minimum wage and lift pay for low-wage workers. 

SNIP

Read the whole thing for the infuriating details.

The Orange Loser Authorizes Yet More Lubeless Fucking of the White Working Class

You're getting just exactly what you voted for, motherfuckers.  Don't you ever let us hear you whining about it. 

 

Charlie Pierce:

Those nice white "forgotten people" will now be free to have their pensions swindled out from underneath them by sharpies whose bonuses depend on how much money they can steal. They will find themselves paying usurious interest rates on their credit cards because of a clause written in Swedish, in .00009 point type, on the back of their monthly statement. And then, when it all comes crashing down again, they'll have to look for somebody to blame, and it won't be them, and it won't be the charlatan they elevated to the White House. And someone else will run for president, and give them the proper scapegoat, and Tom Brokaw will ask all the wrong questions of all the wrong people again.

It's morning in America.

The Resistance: Federal Agencies Still Tweeting

Wonkette:

Members of the resistance have created alternative twitter accounts while agencies like NASA and the National Park Service are under occupation and being censored. It’s GLORIOUS!

You know what happens when you piss off people who love both their jobs and the environment? You get resistance. By Tuesday afternoon, a rogue “AltUSNatParkService” Twitter account had been started by NPS employees, outside the official NPS Twitter channel. The rogue Tweeters made it very clear it was Park Service workers posting on their own time, and therefore not breaking any rules, so there. The channel description:

The Unofficial “Resistance” team of U.S. National Park Service. Not taxpayer subsidised! Come for rugged scenery, fossil beds, 89 million acres of landscape

A sampling of their Tweets:

In addition, the account has been tweeting climate data, proof of climate change, statements by scientific organizations, and even a “shoutout to the anonymous crews at @BadIandsNPS continuing the great work of the original before Trump’s (tiny) hand came down.” Free of the constraints of a government account, they got a little uppity, urging people to call their representatives to demand the gag orders be lifted and directing readers to the NPS website on climate change and how the Parks Service will work to preserve cultural resources, with the warning “Pls download before it is removed.”

 And there are more:

 Rogue POTUS Staff ‏@RoguePOTUSStaff Jan 26

Here's a few... @alt_fda @AltNatParkSer @altUSEPA @RogueNASA @Alt_NIH @altNOAA @AlternativeNWS @AltForestServ @AltNatParkSer @altusda

Yes, working class white, repugs are fucking you with a barbed dildo

But they're really sticking it to the niggers and the spics and the ragheads, and making liberals cry, so it's all worth it, right?

Charlie Pierce:

All the bustle and noise has been on the Senate side for a couple of weeks, what with the brawl over nominations at all. But the real mischief is going on over in the House of Representatives. That's where all those white working people who have had major publications and networks buying them cookies for the past two months are getting sold down the river in one quick hurry. As I think I've said before, I empathize, but I do not sympathize. Not a lick.

They're going to be the ones that suffer when regulations get rolled back. It's their water and air that is going to get fouled when the regulations against mountaintop mining get eviscerated, which was debated on the House floor just Wednesday afternoon. It's their streams that will run green and purple. It's their landscapes that will get gouged and ruined.

SNIP

But the real whopper came in a press conference in the Rayburn building in which Congressman Steve King and Congressman Joe Wilson—now there's a pair to draw to—announced that they would be filing a bill to enact a national right-to-work law. Of course, this has been a corporate and conservative dream shot ever since the National Labor Relations Act was passed in 1935.

Needless to say, the enactment of this kind of law—which experience shows lowers wages precipitously, and which severely drains the ability of unions to lobby for themselves—would not do much for the president*'s image as a hero of the working class.

Of Course the ManBaby Hates Regulations

Regarding the manbaby with the nuclear codes, this knee-jerk response to all government regulation as bad is just exactly what toddlers do.

They don't like rules that stop them from running out into traffic or exploring a neighbor's unattended pool or jumping off the roof to see if they can fly.  They don't like rules that make them eat their vegetables and wear heavy coats in cold weather and go to school.

But when they grow up they realize that those rules they hated actually kept them safe and healthy and educated.

Unless they are repugs and trumpians who never grow out of the infantile resentment of rules made to keep them safe and healthy and educated.

 

Zandar:

That's the big one, folks.  This legislation would allow corporate lobbyists the final say on which regulations they should be subject to.  In other words, the EPA, the Consumer Financial Protection Agency, SEC, FDA and FCC?  The regulation they'd make would be rendered toothless.  They wouldn't be watchdog agencies to protect Americans, they'd be government industry groups designed to protect corporations.

The Bush administration made this the default before the Obama administration used these regulatory agencies for their intended purpose.  Now the GOP is changing their intended purpose by law to be nothing more than government industry advocacy groups, wholly subject to Congress.

Hopefully Senate Dems can block this with a filibuster, but I can think of a couple of Senate Dems would would be more than happy to destroy the EPA or the CFPA or to defang the FCC or FDA.  Don't count on them saving us from this.

We'll see where this legislation goes, but expect the shock and awe portion of the Trump regime in earnest in a couple weeks.  Things will move quickly after his inauguration, and America will be inundated by a deluge of GOP garbage like this.  I'm betting a healthy chunk of it will become law.

RFK Shredded Trump's Economic Plan 50 Years Ago

Yeah, the Orange Menace is going to create 25 million jobs (sic) by eliminating the food and work safety regulations that keep us alive and turning the Treasury over to his billionaire friends so we can beat Somalia on the Galtian Paradise scale.

Think Progress:

Donald Trump is running on the erroneous belief that ending regulations, particularly environmental ones, is the key to faster economic growth. Sen. Robert F. Kennedy (D-NY), who was assassinated June 6, 1968, explained just how misguided that view was just weeks before he was killed.

U.S. economic growth has emerged as a major issue in the presidential campaign. Donald Trump has many untenable ideas, as the Washington Post explained in an April piece headlined, “There is math, there is fantasy math, and then there’s Donald Trump’s economic math.”

That article quoted an economist at the Tax Foundation (who helped model Trump’s tax plan) saying, “It’s not consistent with historical experience. It’s more consistent with a world where we’re hiring butlers for our vacation homes on Ganymede” [Jupiter’s largest moon].”

I wanted to zero in on one of Donald Trump’s fictional strategies for boosting economic growth: As he explained last month to CNBC, “we’re going to be getting rid of a tremendous amount of regulations.”

In particular, when Fox News’ Chris Wallace pressed Trump in March on how he’d cut the federal budget, Trump answered “Department of Environmental Protection [sic]. We are going to get rid of it in almost every form.”

In reality, slashing regulations, particularly regulations from the Environmental Protection Agency, would be very counterproductive, as a 2015 Office of Management and Budget (OMB) report to Congress made clear. The OMB found that ten years’ worth of major Federal regulations provided annual benefits to the nation (in 2001 dollars) of between $216 billion and $812 billion, while the estimated annual costs were only between $57 billion and $85 billion.

Of that, EPA regulations delivered the majority of benefits ($132.5 to $652 billion) but only about half the costs ($31 to $37.5 billion).

Of course, lots of those benefits were things like reduced health care costs because the air got cleaner — and those benefits don’t show up in our primary measure of economic growth, GDP. Indeed, reducing sickness and death actually lowers GDP.

Who can doubt that our wildly unsustainable global economic system is now the biggest of Ponzi schemes — where the economy appears to grow faster the more we burn fossil fuels and destroy a livable climate?

Robert F. Kennedy explained why GDP is a useless measure of economic well-being back in the 1960s.

Robert Kennedy was one of the few national politicians ever to challenge our monomaniacal pursuit of GDP to the exclusion of true economic well-being. In Detroit on May 5, 1967 he pointed out: “Let us be clear at the outset that we will find neither national purpose nor personal satisfaction in a mere continuation of economic progress, in an endless amassing of worldly goods.”

 

Weeks before he was killed, he spoke on this subject at the University of Kansas, March 18, 1968 — in what President Obama called “one of the most beautiful of his speeches.”

Here are the key lines:

Too much and for too long, we seemed to have surrendered personal excellence and community values in the mere accumulation of material things. Our Gross National Product, now, is over $800 billion dollars a year, but that Gross National Product — if we judge the United States of America by that — that Gross National Product counts air pollution and cigarette advertising, and ambulances to clear our highways of carnage.

It counts special locks for our doors and the jails for the people who break them. It counts the destruction of the redwood and the loss of our natural wonder in chaotic sprawl.

It counts napalm and counts nuclear warheads and armored cars for the police to fight the riots in our cities. It counts Whitman’s rifle and Speck’s knife, and the television programs which glorify violence in order to sell toys to our children.

Yet the gross national product does not allow for the health of our children, the quality of their education or the joy of their play. It does not include the beauty of our poetry or the strength of our marriages, the intelligence of our public debate or the integrity of our public officials.

It measures neither our wit nor our courage, neither our wisdom nor our learning, neither our compassion nor our devotion to our country, it measures everything in short, except that which makes life worthwhile.

And it can tell us everything about America except why we are proud that we are Americans.

When you take this view of economic well-being, a President Trump could well bring this country greatest depression we have ever known.

Bevin Attacks Fake Problem By Making Real Problem Worse

So Governor Pants-Shitter asks his overworked, underpaid, about-to-lose-their-pensions state workers to do his fucking job for him and find instances of "red tape" that he can then use to eliminate yet more state jobs and brag about saving money that he is actually wasting.

I'll just annotate this little missive with what I imagine a state employee might like to say to Kentucky's only guv:

Fellow Public Servant of Kentucky,

Stop right there, motherfucker.  You are not, never have been and never will be a "public servant." You're a freakazoid billionaire greedhead who thinks "public service" is getting serviced with public money.

This morning we are announcing a new initiative aimed at cutting red tape in government, and I am asking for your help.

There is no red tape in government.  That's a conservative shibboleth that the wingnuts have been bellowing since progressives first started making government work for people who weren't obscenely rich shitheels.

There are currently more than 4,500 administrative regulations in Kentucky. For decades, they have been put in place by state agencies to address problems, shortcomings, isolated issues or other matters state leaders deemed appropriate to regulate. 

Just 4,500?  When we need at least 10 times that number?  Every minute in this state, some private business is fucking over a Kentucky customer, resident, public building, public land, public waterway, public airspace or public investment.  And getting away with it because 4,500 regulations is not nearly enough to stop the raping.

Of those 4,500 regulations, approximately 15 percent have not been reviewed since 1974. They simply stay on the books, year after year, and regulators are required to enforce them.  This must change. 

What must change is adding more regulations to cover the countless attacks on the public purse and the public good by companies getting away with murder because they are so UNregulated.  

While some regulations are very necessary and protect the public safety, others can stifle economic growth, impose unnecessary costs on businesses and impede private sector investment. Our new Red Tape Reduction Initiative is an effort to review every regulation currently on the books. The goal is to eliminate those regulations deemed unnecessary or duplicative, simplify those considered too complex and judge each for intent and effectiveness. 

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA  oh fuck stop you're killing me.  Because killing me and all my public-spirited friends for the profit of your billionaire friends is the one and only goal of eliminating regulations.

As a state employee, you have firsthand knowledge of regulations that are unnecessary, outdated, poorly written or too complex. This is your chance to help us identify those regulations and then help us do something about them.

What state employees have is heart attacks and strokes and stress-caused early death from trying desperately to hold this state together despite not having the regulations they need to do their jobs.

A website has been established, redtapereduction.com , where you can suggest regulations that should be reviewed. Periodic updates will also be available on the progress of this initiative.

Why don't you hang from a rope until there is a single "update" on this fake-ass "initiative?"

Thank you in advance for your thoughtful response to this request.  I look forward to hearing from you.

No, you look forward to ignoring what I say and continuing to drag Kentucky down the Brownback Path to Haiti-dom.

With gratitude for your service,

Matt Bevin

Governor

No, no - fuck YOU very much.

KY Senate Repugs Out to Kill Remaining Coal Miners

Literally kill them. This isn't reducing paperwork.  This is taking oxygen tanks and fire-resistant clothes away from firefighters.  Safety inspections are the only thing standing between miners and death.

John Cheves at the Herald:

On Wednesday, the 40th anniversary of the Scotia coal mine explosions in Letcher County that killed 26 people, a Senate committee passed two bills to roll back the state’s mine-safety laws.

Senate Bill 297 would end state safety inspections of coal mines, leaving the task to federal inspectors. Senate Bill 224 would end mandatory state safety training for mine foremen, giving coal companies the option of offering their own training for foremen to save money.

The votes came 40 years to the hour after an explosion caused by the build-up of coal dust and methane rocked the Scotia mine near the Oven Fork community. Two days after the blast, a second explosion occurred. The death toll was 26 miners and mine inspectors; faulty equipment and inadequate ventilation were blamed.

SNIP

Only one lawmaker, Sen. Ray Jones, D-Pikeville, voted against Girdler’s bill. Jones said the language would leave state mine safety analysts without legal authority to issue citations, shut down a mine or file a report with their superiors if they witnessed dangerous problems while in a mine. State mine inspectors tend to be more knowledgeable and thorough than their federal counterparts, Jones said.

Mine safety analysts should not have to remain passive, simply offering recommendations, in the face of serious violations, Jones said.

“There would be no enforcement mechanism,” Jones said. “I think this bill may go a little bit too far on the safety issue.”

 Jones isn't the only state senator representing coal miners, just the only one willing to stand up to the industry and the repug nihilists.

Read more here: http://www.kentucky.com/news/politics-government/article65006967.html#storylink=cpy

Read more here: http://www.kentucky.com/news/politics-government/article65006967.html#storylink=cpy

Regulations

Commenter Robyn Ryan at Wonkette:

Matt Bevin Is Killing His Own Children and Yours

Because that's what celebrating the failure of actions to reduce climate warming does: it guarantees that young people are going to be living on a planet that no longer supports human civilization.

From the Herald:

FRANKFORT, Ky (Feb. 9, 2016) - Today, Governor Matt Bevin made the following statement applauding the Supreme Court decision to freeze the Obama Administration's Clean Power Plan regulations:

“Today's Supreme Court ruling is a huge win in the fight against Obama's disastrous Clean Power Plan. The Court's decision to freeze these illegal climate regulations is a victory in our efforts to save our coal jobs and protect Kentucky families from skyrocketing energy prices. We will continue to challenge these regulations as the litigations continue in court.”

Kentucky is among a coalition of states challenging the EPA rules. On January 21st, the Kentucky Energy and Environment Cabinet joined with other states and stakeholders to submit comments to the EPA regarding the Federal Plan Requirements for Greenhouse Gas Emissions and implementation of the Clean Power Plan. 

Not to mention that Governor Lying Coward is still refusing to establish a working relationship with the truth.  Climate regulations are not illegal, the rotting carcass of Big Coal will never create jobs, conservatards have been predicting skyrocketing energy prices for thirty years and it ain't happened yet.  Bought gas lately?  

How many dead people in a "hoped to?"

From TPM, re the damn-near-successful effort by the repug governor of Michigan to permanently poison the mostly black and poor residents of Flint: 

Genesee County sheriff's Capt. Casey Tafoya has said volunteers and police hoped to get (clean water and water filters) to 500 to 600 houses a day in a city of about 99,000 residents with an estimated 30,000 households.

Let's see:  30,000 households divided by 600 houses visited per day is 50 days.  A healthy, strong person can live without water for no more than THREE days.  Somebody better tell the Flint funeral homes to ramp up for big business.

Matt Bevin Doesn't Know What the Fuck He's Doing, Part Four

To a certain extent, the Secretary of an executive Cabinet does not have to be an expert in the areas his cabinet oversees.  She's got professional staff for that. As long as she takes their advice seriously, she'll be fine.

But Public Protection is a different kettle of fish.

The Public Protection Cabinet and its employees touch the lives of many Kentucky citizens. If your money is deposited into a state bank or other financial institution, if you have ever watched a horse race, purchased an insurance policy or played a bingo game sponsored by a local charitable group, you have benefited from our work. If you have ever appealed a property tax assessment or applied for a building permit, you have dealt with one of our agencies.

Public Protection does exactly what it says. It protects people.  All people. With government regulation. From fraudulent businesses. So of course Bevin appointed a businessman to run it.

Jack Brammer at the Herald:

Gov. Matt Bevin continued making appointments Monday to his new administration, naming former Barren County Judge-Executive David A. Dickerson to be secretary of the Public Protection Cabinet and former Lexmark official Daniel Bork to be commissioner of the Department of Revenue.

Dickerson was Barren County’s chief official from 1994 to 1999. He most recently was corporate officer for his family business, Dickerson Lumber Company.

Destroying a government agency's ability to do its job protecting the people is easy: just slash its budget to nothing.  Keep an eye on the budget Bevin sends to the legislature the first week of January.  That will reveal his real plans.

Congratulations again, Kentucky voters, for electing someone who hates government to run your, you know, government.

Read more here: http://www.kentucky.com/news/politics-government/article49758490.html#storylink=cpy

The "Improved" TPP Only Increases Corporate Power to Enslave All of Us

Think it's bad now? If Congress OK's this fascist power grab, corporations will be able to veto minimum wage, Social Security, affordable health care, clean water regulations and anything else - like the right to vote - that they can imagine hurts their profits by a single fucking penny.

Wave bye-bye to democracy, y'all; Exxon-Mobil will own your ass.

Apologies to Charlie Pierce for lifting his entire column, but This. Is. It. The hill we die on.  Compared to TPP, the Keystone XL pipeline is an overturned trash can.

​There probably is no more (occasionally overly) judicious voice on the world economy than Jeffrey Sachs. He has taken a look at the soft spots in the monstrous Trans-Pacific Partnership and he has found them to be bad enough to vote down the bill as a whole.​

The third is a set of regulations governing investor rights, intellectual property, and regulations in key service sectors, including financial services, telecommunications, e-commerce, and pharmaceuticals. These chapters are a mix of the good, the bad, and the ugly. Their common denominator is that they enshrine the power of corporate capital above all other parts of society, including labor and even governments. The fourth is a set of standards on labor and the environment that purport to advance the cause of social fairness and environmental sustainability. But the agreements are thin, unenforceable, and generally unimaginative. For example, climate change is not even mentioned, much less addressed boldly and creatively.

That sounds really bad. But, according to Sachs, there is worse to come.​​

The most egregious parts of the agreement are the exorbitant investor powers implicit in the Investor-State Dispute Settlement system as well as the unjustified expansion of copyright and patent coverage. We've seen this show before. Corporations are already using ISDS provisions in existing trade and investment agreements to harass governments in order to frustrate regulations and judicial decisions that negatively impact the companies' interests. The system proposed in the TPP is a dangerous and unnecessary grant of power to investors and a blow to the judicial systems of all the signatory countries. And, as in earlier trade agreements, the United States has pushed through overly strong intellectual property rights that strengthen the aggressive pricing practices of big pharma and unnecessarily extend the copyright protections far beyond their social usefulness.

​From the start, this thing has reeked of being an investment protection act. This thought has occurred to Senator Professor Warren as well.​

Because of how costly these awards can be, ISDS creates enormous pressure on governments to avoid actions that might offend corporate interests. Corporations have brought ISDS cases against countries that have raised their minimum wage, attempted to cut smoking rates, or prohibited dumping toxic chemicals. Just last month, a foreign corporation successfully challenged Canada's decision to deny a blasting permit because of concerns about the environmental impact on nearby fishing grounds, and now the company could get up to $300 million from Canadian taxpayers. Will Canada's environmental regulators hesitate before they say no to the next foreign corporation that wants to dump, blast, or drill?

​ The president's devotion to this deal is surpassed in its everlasting mystery to his implacable demand that Congress fast-track a measure that contains uncounted numbers of land mines for ordinary people and the countries in which they live. Sachs seems curious about this as well.

Perhaps most disappointing is the lack of creativity in the development, labor, and environmental chapters. Yes, they rhetorically defend global economic development, labor standards, and environmental sustainability, but they do so without specific enforcement powers. Why is it that companies can force arbitration tribunals to defend their investor rights, but workers have no such power? Why is climate change not even considered in the draft, despite the fact that it represents the most important environmental threat of the 21st century, and may have strong implications for future trade rules?

​ Outside of his education policies, the headlong rush into the TPP is going to be one of the only acts of his presidency with which the president justifies the criticisms levelled at him from the left. That's not a bad batting average, but this is an awful exception to the rule.​

It's Not About Jobs: The Real Danger of TPP is Global Corporatocracy

Eric Loomis at LGM:

One of the biggest concerns about the Trans-Pacific Partnership and other trade agreements are the Investor State Dispute Settlement courts that have no accountability to anyone, can overturn national laws that improve labor and environmental conditions, and are utterly opaque. Here is a very useful run-down of the ISDS and the TPP:

In short, ISDS gives corporations the power to sue national governments for lost future profits related to public interest legislation, most commonly focused on the protection of the environment.

SNIP

Since we still don’t have the final text, we don’t know, but while there do seem to be some cosmetic changes that maybe could change these courts a bit to fight against dubious corporate suits, the reality is that these trade courts still give unaccountable judges authority to reject a nation’s climate change legislation if it hurts an energy company’s profit or repeal a minimum wage law if a corporation disagrees. Certainly creating courts that citizens have no ability to access is tremendously undemocratic and is a major problem with the modern trade framework. If these courts gave workers the ability to sue corporations or nations that undermined their rights or if citizens could seek redress for pollution and disease they experienced because some company parked a factory in their backyard, that might be a different story. But as constituted, the ISDS courts a prime reason to fight against trade deals like the TPP.

But environmental legislation is just the tip of the iceberg.  TPP would let corporations force countries to abandon any and all regulations, including those protecting clean air, clean water, safe food and everything else that defines civilization. 

Jim Hightower has been yelling about this for years.

Make Guns As Uncool As Smoking

Smokes aren't in the Constitution - although neither is the word "gun" - but social opproprium is a powerful force.  I am old enough to remember when people smoked unrestricted everywhere - planes, offices, schools - and anyone who dared suggest the smoker put it out was ignored as a rude freak.

It wasn't that long ago that no one would bet against Big Tobacco prevailing against even the hint of regulation.

But anti-tobacco advocates kept working, starting with local ordinances and then statewide anti-smoking laws, mostly in northern blue states.  Never happen in tobacco country, I scoffed.  And then Lexington, KY - burley tobacco capitol of the universe - banned smoking in restaurants and suddenly it was game over.

The tipping point won't be another gun massacre - we've proven we don't give a shit about those.  The tipping point will be the Surgeon General declaring guns a national health crisis.

Michael Maiello at TPM:

“Sorry, I can’t bring my kids to your place if there are unsecured guns in the house.”

“Thanks for coming over. Do you mind leaving your shoes in the hallways and your pistol off my property?”

“I can’t stay over if you keep a gun in the bedroom, especially if we’ve been drinking. Guns make things less safe when the lights go out.”

It’s surprisingly easy to imagine a society where gun ownership is looked down upon, if not scorned outright. This already happened with smoking, at least partly as a result of a public education campaign aimed at young people, and it happened when polite society finally came down against people flying the Confederate flag after the Charleston church shootings this year. Sometimes, when legislative action is difficult or downright impossible, a cultural approach works to curtail dangerous behaviors.

In short, we can make gun ownership uncool.

SNIP

Like cigarettes, guns are big business. Smith & Wesson has a $1 billion market capitalization and a CEO who made $1.9 million last year, Sturm, Ruger & Co. has a $1.1 billion market cap and a CEO who made more than $1.1 million in the latest fiscal year. The National Rifle Association boasts 4.5 million members and regularly takes in contributions approaching $100 million a year, in addition to its program revenues. In short, guns are part of the establishment and people who spend money on them are no more iconoclasts than people who fork over money to Phillip Morris on a daily basis.

Like the tobacco industry, the gun industry has obfuscated about the safety dangers of its products. It has sold a fantasy of self- and home-protection that is out of touch with reality. And like tobacco companies, the industry aggressively markets to young people. A presentation by Smith & Wesson from March 2015 says that two thirds of new shooters are 18-34 years old, that a quarter of first time purchases by a second gun within a year, and that 60 percent of new shooters are buying for personal defense or security.

Of course. when Smith & Wesson presents, it talks about marketing to younger adults. In many parts of the country (including New Mexico, where I grew up and was first told a rifle was “mine” before I was 10) kids take ownership of guns well before they can drive. Keystone Sporting Arms still advertises its Crickett .22 caliber weapon as “My First Rifle” even after a five-year-old Kentucky boy killed his two-year-old sister with the single shot rifle he had received as a birthday present. They also offer a youth-rifle called the “Chipmunk,” named for what kids are supposed to shoot with it.

The defense angle (whether self or society) is particularly vulnerable to clever media rebuke. There are the scores of dead children who have managed to get hold of the weapons kept by relatives. There are the sad tales of Oscar Pistorius and George Zimmerman. There was the well-intentioned gun owner who, during the heat of the shooting of Gabrielle Giffords, nearly shot an innocent bystander. There is probably no end of military and police veterans, highly trained and skilled with firearms, who will testify how even the most practiced shooter is vulnerable to involuntary behaviors during the height of a threat.

The gun industry has also made itself vulnerable to outright ridicule by opposing the most common sense reforms. The NRA opposes biometric trigger locks, for example, that would render weapons useless to anyone but authorized users because it fears it will lead to a ban on existing guns without such locks. The industry also opposes requiring gun owners to carry liability insurance. PSAs on such issues are unlikely to sway the current generation of gun enthusiasts but, as with smoking, it might be possible to get young people thinking early and viewing both the industry and culture of gun ownership more skeptically.

On the legislative front it seems America has made its choice and there is little chance for legal reform in the near future except at the margins deemed acceptable by the gun industry and a current generation of gun owners who believe that "things happen" is an appropriate reaction to gun deaths. When lawmakers can't lead, a social solution is certainly worth a shot.

This Culture of Crime Will Be Stopped Only With the Death Penalty

Erik Loomis at Lawyers, Guns and Money:

Corporations simply cannot be trusted to self-regulate. It will never work because all the incentive is there for them to cheat. They want to profit and if the government isn’t watching, they will cut corners to do so. The auto industry has shown this for decades. Only sticks will work. You have to punish corporations–and specifically corporate executives with massive fines and jail time if you want corporations to obey the law and take safety and pollution seriously. One estimate has the Volkswagen emissions leading to approximately 106 deaths in the United States. VW will be punished for this, but if we want to stop other companies and other industries from similar evasion of regulations, we simply have to beef up our regulatory powers and funding for regulatory agencies significantly. Otherwise, other versions of this will happen again and again.

Massie Brags About Vote To Make Sure You Die Gruesomely

Because that's what the REINS Act does:  mandates the removal of all federal regulations preventing e coli in hamburgers, and exploding car gas tanks, and collapsing construction equipment, and falling elevators, and typhoid-infused drinking water, and flesh-eating bacteria in hospitals, and electrical fires in office buildings and failing brakes in 18-wheelers barrelling down on school buses and ever other kind of horrific "accident" that repugs don't give a flying fuck that kills or maims you.

“Excessive regulation stifles economic growth, hurts small businesses, and raises consumer prices,” said Congressman Massie. “It is vital that Congress act to reduce our regulatory burden, which raises consumer prices, reduces wages, and costs jobs," Massie was quoted in a press release.

The motherfucking liar is lying about fucking his mother. Again.

Down with Tyranny:

Only two "Democrats"-- both right-wing Blue Dogs, Henry Cuellar and Collin Peterson-- voted for the Republicans' REIN Act (HR 427) Tuesday afternoon. Todd Young (R-IN) was the chief sponsor, but the enthusiasm among Republicans was huge-- 171 cosponsors. It passed 243-165.

Ted Lieu, an active duty Air Force Reserve officer was in California on official business and couldn't vote. But he explained to his constituents why he opposes the bill, which he termed:

a radical, potentially unconstitutional House Republican-authored bill that guts the ability of federal agencies to establish rules protecting food safety, clear air, clean water and other crucial common-sense safeguards. The Reins Act is strongly opposed by a broad range of consumer, health, environmental, labor, scientific, and public interest groups.

 They don't call 'em "e. coli republicans" for nothing.