Your Weekly #News over Coffee from @CoffeePartyUSA #coffeeparty
Posted to Daily Kos and to Join The Coffee Party Movement's Wall. Any of you who are registered at either location feel free to rec the diary or like the link.
The Coffee Party USA, which has 335,375 supporters on Facebook (up from 334,829 last Friday night), not only produces original content and calls for action, it also highlights news stories about issues important to the movement on its Facebook page.
Join me, the maintainer of coffeepartyusa over the fold for a digest of articles on issues including the U.S. Census, net neutrality, the 9/11 First Responders bill, the whistleblower protection bill, and the repeal of Don't Ask, Don't Tell, among other topics Coffee Party USA thought noteworthy this past week.
The Census and Representation
Politico: Reapportionment data due Tuesday
By ALEX ISENSTADT | 12/20/10 7:04 PM EST
The U.S. Census Bureau’s announcement of what states will gain or lose seats in reapportionment marks the opening of a nationwide redistricting process that will reshape the congressional landscape for the next decade.
While there aren’t expected to be many surprises when the population data is released, there are still a few mysteries about the allotment of congressional districts. Here’s POLITICO’s list of five questions about the looming remap that will be answered Tuesday:
...
How many seats does New York lose?
...
Does Illinois lose a seat?
...
Will California end its streak of gaining seats?
...
Does Texas really gain five seats?
...
Will North Carolina get a 14th seat?
Current Legislation
Newsday: New hope for passage of Zadroga Act
By PAUL LAROCCO
The Zadroga 9/11 health bill, in peril after Senate Republicans blocked a vote on it, got a boost yesterday when its Democratic sponsors said they've now lined up the support needed for passage later this week.
New York Sens. Kirsten Gillibrand and Charles Schumer said they had the Republican votes to get the bill approved and it would reach the Senate floor immediately after debate ends on the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty, perhaps as soon as Tuesday. A spokeswoman for Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) confirmed last night he expects to bring the vote up again before the lame-duck session ends.
"It would be a nice Christmas present," said Joseph Zadroga, whose late son James' case inspired the measure ensuring 10 years of health care for sickened Ground Zero workers. "These first responders are all still suffering out there."
N.Y. Times: Senate Repeals Ban Against Openly Gay Military Personnel
By Carl Hulse
WASHINGTON - The Senate on Saturday struck down the ban on gay men and lesbians serving openly in the military, bringing to a close a 17-year struggle over a policy that forced thousands of Americans from the ranks and caused others to keep secret their sexual orientation.
By a vote of 65 to 31, with eight Republicans joining Democrats, the Senate approved and sent to President Obama a repeal of the Clinton-era law, known as “don’t ask, don’t tell,” a policy critics said amounted to government-sanctioned discrimination that treated gay and lesbian troops as second-class citizens.
Washington Post: Whistleblower protection bill hits sudden stop in Congress
By Joe Davidson
It seemed so close.
After 12 years of working to improve protections for federal employees who blow the whistle on government waste, fraud and abuse, Congress was on the verge of passing legislation to make that happen.
For whistleblowers and their advocates, those 12 years included compromises with opponents and fights with friends, including a late-breaking one this week.
After the Senate approved the Whistleblower Protection Enhancement Act on Friday, using a unanimous consent procedure, the greater protections seemed in sight. The House was poised to consider the bill, and advocates could almost taste victory.
Then Rep. Peter Hoekstra (R-Mich.) put up a roadblock that could derail the bill.
Wikileaks is the excuse.
Federal Budget
NPR: Beyond The Tax Deal: Targeting The Code Itself
Just as President Obama put the final signature on the tax deal passed by Congress this week, he raised an issue that has dogged his predecessors in recent years: how to reform the tax code itself.
Back in the 1990s, there were fewer than a dozen short-term tax provisions - including credits for certain business investments, child credits, education deductions, etc. - that had to be re-approved by Congress every year or so.
By this year, that number had topped 140.
And that has to change, according to two Washington veterans - Mortimer Caplin, who ran the Internal Revenue Service under John F. Kennedy, and David Stockman, budget director for Ronald Reagan.
CNN: Fareed Zakaria: If not now, when?
CNN's Fareed Zakaria calls it mañana economics: that once again, this isn't the time to put our fiscal house in order.
NPR: How We Got From Estate Tax To 'Death Tax'
by Wright Bryan
Don Gonyea speaks with Columbia Law School's Michael Graetz (update at 10 a.m. ET: he's also a professor emeritus and lecturer at Yale law School) about the history of the tax for Morning Edition. Graetz is co-author of the book Death by a Thousand Cuts: The Fight Over Taxing Inherited Wealth.
Graetz tells Don that the estate tax in its current form was passed by Congress in 1916, just three years after the start of the federal income tax. (Update at 1 p.m. ET: While Graetz said "Teddy Roosevelt ... was the one who got it passed by the Congress," it didn't happen while Roosevelt was president. Roosevelt pushed for the tax, but he left office in 1909. We've corrected the language in this paragraph. We thank the commenters who called this to our attention.)
Roosevelt supported the tax as an instrument for enforcing the equality of opportunity in the U.S. by making it more difficult to pass great fortunes from one generation to another. Graetz says that the public accepted the tax as a another progressive-era reform.
Enforcement and Regulation
Huffington Post: The Most Important Free Speech Issue of Our Time
Al Franken
This Tuesday is an important day in the fight to save the Internet.
As a source of innovation, an engine of our economy, and a forum for our political discourse, the Internet can only work if it's a truly level playing field. Small businesses should have the same ability to reach customers as powerful corporations. A blogger should have the same ability to find an audience as a media conglomerate.
This principle is called "net neutrality" -- and it's under attack. Internet service giants like Comcast and Verizon want to offer premium and privileged access to the Internet for corporations who can afford to pay for it.
The good news is that the Federal Communications Commission has the power to issue regulations that protect net neutrality. The bad news is that draft regulations written by FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski don't do that at all. They're worse than nothing.
Reuters: U.S. expected to file Gulf oil spill civil case
By James Vicini
WASHINGTON | Tue Dec 14, 2010 6:13pm EST
The U.S. Justice Department is expected to announce as early as Wednesday its first significant legal action stemming from the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, a federal government source familiar with the matter said.
The source said the action involved the filing of civil lawsuits, rather than criminal charges, stemming from the worst offshore oil spill in U.S. history and that it was expected to be announced at a news conference as early as Wednesday.
Economy
L.A. Times: Number of underwater homeowners declining
About 10.8 million, or 22.5%, of U.S. homes with mortgages were worth less than what was owed at the end of the third quarter, according to CoreLogic. That's down from 11 million, or 23%, in the second quarter.
By Alejandro Lazo, Los Angeles Times
The number of homeowners in the U.S. who owe more on their properties than what those homes are worth has declined steadily for most of 2010, according to statistics released Monday.
But the drop in properties with negative equity has more to do with troubled borrowers losing their homes to foreclosure than an increase in prices.
Foreign Policy
Sky News: Tension Rises As South Korea Fires Weapons
Adam Arnold and Huw Borland, Sky News Online
South Korea has carried out military drills in a disputed area - despite threats of war from the rogue state across the border.
Society and Democracy
Project World Awareness: American Psychosis: What happens to a society that cannot distinguish between reality and illusion?…
Book By Chris Hedges
Review by Rockingjude
If you’re looking for one of those treacly Oprah books-The Secret, and its variants-avoid this one. Those books nourish like potato chips and leave most people more confused, more desperate, more thirsty for fantasies than before. No amount of wishing, earnest yearning, visualizing and New Age mysticism is going to get us out of the morass we’re in. In Empire of Illusion, Chris Hedges takes a sober look down our hall of distorting mirrors.
Vancouver Sun: The erosion of civility threatens our democracy
Following midterm elections in the U.S. that dealt a heavy blow to the Democrats, a humbled President Barack Obama told Americans he still believed there was hope for civility in the country's politics.
In Canada, Liberal House leader David McGuinty expressed a similar sentiment, saying on his appointment in September that his goal was to bring civility back to the Commons.
Their quest to restore some semblance of respect for differing points of view often seems hopeless in the face of shouting matches on U.S. television that pretend to be analysis, venomous campaigns that focus on personalities rather than policies and, in Ottawa, the daily onslaught of insults and invective during question period. Sadly, the abrasiveness in the political realm may reflect a broader culture of intolerance and insensitivity.
TED Talks: Steven Johnson: Where good ideas come from
People often credit their ideas to individual "Eureka!" moments. But Steven Johnson shows how history tells a different story. His fascinating tour takes us from the "liquid networks" of London's coffee houses to Charles Darwin's long, slow hunch to today's high-velocity web.
Associated Press via Philadelphia Inquirer: New alliance aims to restore civility to government
By Beth Fouhy
The first meeting of No Labels drew lawmakers from across the U.S. and the political spectrum.
The Coffee Party USA, which has 335,375 supporters on Facebook (up from 334,829 last Friday night), not only produces original content and calls for action, it also highlights news stories about issues important to the movement on its Facebook page.
Join me, the maintainer of coffeepartyusa over the fold for a digest of articles on issues including the U.S. Census, net neutrality, the 9/11 First Responders bill, the whistleblower protection bill, and the repeal of Don't Ask, Don't Tell, among other topics Coffee Party USA thought noteworthy this past week.
The Census and Representation
Politico: Reapportionment data due Tuesday
By ALEX ISENSTADT | 12/20/10 7:04 PM EST
The U.S. Census Bureau’s announcement of what states will gain or lose seats in reapportionment marks the opening of a nationwide redistricting process that will reshape the congressional landscape for the next decade.
While there aren’t expected to be many surprises when the population data is released, there are still a few mysteries about the allotment of congressional districts. Here’s POLITICO’s list of five questions about the looming remap that will be answered Tuesday:
...
How many seats does New York lose?
...
Does Illinois lose a seat?
...
Will California end its streak of gaining seats?
...
Does Texas really gain five seats?
...
Will North Carolina get a 14th seat?
Current Legislation
Newsday: New hope for passage of Zadroga Act
By PAUL LAROCCO
The Zadroga 9/11 health bill, in peril after Senate Republicans blocked a vote on it, got a boost yesterday when its Democratic sponsors said they've now lined up the support needed for passage later this week.
New York Sens. Kirsten Gillibrand and Charles Schumer said they had the Republican votes to get the bill approved and it would reach the Senate floor immediately after debate ends on the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty, perhaps as soon as Tuesday. A spokeswoman for Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) confirmed last night he expects to bring the vote up again before the lame-duck session ends.
"It would be a nice Christmas present," said Joseph Zadroga, whose late son James' case inspired the measure ensuring 10 years of health care for sickened Ground Zero workers. "These first responders are all still suffering out there."
N.Y. Times: Senate Repeals Ban Against Openly Gay Military Personnel
By Carl Hulse
WASHINGTON - The Senate on Saturday struck down the ban on gay men and lesbians serving openly in the military, bringing to a close a 17-year struggle over a policy that forced thousands of Americans from the ranks and caused others to keep secret their sexual orientation.
By a vote of 65 to 31, with eight Republicans joining Democrats, the Senate approved and sent to President Obama a repeal of the Clinton-era law, known as “don’t ask, don’t tell,” a policy critics said amounted to government-sanctioned discrimination that treated gay and lesbian troops as second-class citizens.
Washington Post: Whistleblower protection bill hits sudden stop in Congress
By Joe Davidson
It seemed so close.
After 12 years of working to improve protections for federal employees who blow the whistle on government waste, fraud and abuse, Congress was on the verge of passing legislation to make that happen.
For whistleblowers and their advocates, those 12 years included compromises with opponents and fights with friends, including a late-breaking one this week.
After the Senate approved the Whistleblower Protection Enhancement Act on Friday, using a unanimous consent procedure, the greater protections seemed in sight. The House was poised to consider the bill, and advocates could almost taste victory.
Then Rep. Peter Hoekstra (R-Mich.) put up a roadblock that could derail the bill.
Wikileaks is the excuse.
Federal Budget
NPR: Beyond The Tax Deal: Targeting The Code Itself
Just as President Obama put the final signature on the tax deal passed by Congress this week, he raised an issue that has dogged his predecessors in recent years: how to reform the tax code itself.
Back in the 1990s, there were fewer than a dozen short-term tax provisions - including credits for certain business investments, child credits, education deductions, etc. - that had to be re-approved by Congress every year or so.
By this year, that number had topped 140.
And that has to change, according to two Washington veterans - Mortimer Caplin, who ran the Internal Revenue Service under John F. Kennedy, and David Stockman, budget director for Ronald Reagan.
CNN: Fareed Zakaria: If not now, when?
CNN's Fareed Zakaria calls it mañana economics: that once again, this isn't the time to put our fiscal house in order.
NPR: How We Got From Estate Tax To 'Death Tax'
by Wright Bryan
Don Gonyea speaks with Columbia Law School's Michael Graetz (update at 10 a.m. ET: he's also a professor emeritus and lecturer at Yale law School) about the history of the tax for Morning Edition. Graetz is co-author of the book Death by a Thousand Cuts: The Fight Over Taxing Inherited Wealth.
Graetz tells Don that the estate tax in its current form was passed by Congress in 1916, just three years after the start of the federal income tax. (Update at 1 p.m. ET: While Graetz said "Teddy Roosevelt ... was the one who got it passed by the Congress," it didn't happen while Roosevelt was president. Roosevelt pushed for the tax, but he left office in 1909. We've corrected the language in this paragraph. We thank the commenters who called this to our attention.)
Roosevelt supported the tax as an instrument for enforcing the equality of opportunity in the U.S. by making it more difficult to pass great fortunes from one generation to another. Graetz says that the public accepted the tax as a another progressive-era reform.
Enforcement and Regulation
Huffington Post: The Most Important Free Speech Issue of Our Time
Al Franken
This Tuesday is an important day in the fight to save the Internet.
As a source of innovation, an engine of our economy, and a forum for our political discourse, the Internet can only work if it's a truly level playing field. Small businesses should have the same ability to reach customers as powerful corporations. A blogger should have the same ability to find an audience as a media conglomerate.
This principle is called "net neutrality" -- and it's under attack. Internet service giants like Comcast and Verizon want to offer premium and privileged access to the Internet for corporations who can afford to pay for it.
The good news is that the Federal Communications Commission has the power to issue regulations that protect net neutrality. The bad news is that draft regulations written by FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski don't do that at all. They're worse than nothing.
Reuters: U.S. expected to file Gulf oil spill civil case
By James Vicini
WASHINGTON | Tue Dec 14, 2010 6:13pm EST
The U.S. Justice Department is expected to announce as early as Wednesday its first significant legal action stemming from the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, a federal government source familiar with the matter said.
The source said the action involved the filing of civil lawsuits, rather than criminal charges, stemming from the worst offshore oil spill in U.S. history and that it was expected to be announced at a news conference as early as Wednesday.
Economy
L.A. Times: Number of underwater homeowners declining
About 10.8 million, or 22.5%, of U.S. homes with mortgages were worth less than what was owed at the end of the third quarter, according to CoreLogic. That's down from 11 million, or 23%, in the second quarter.
By Alejandro Lazo, Los Angeles Times
The number of homeowners in the U.S. who owe more on their properties than what those homes are worth has declined steadily for most of 2010, according to statistics released Monday.
But the drop in properties with negative equity has more to do with troubled borrowers losing their homes to foreclosure than an increase in prices.
Foreign Policy
Sky News: Tension Rises As South Korea Fires Weapons
Adam Arnold and Huw Borland, Sky News Online
South Korea has carried out military drills in a disputed area - despite threats of war from the rogue state across the border.
Society and Democracy
Project World Awareness: American Psychosis: What happens to a society that cannot distinguish between reality and illusion?…
Book By Chris Hedges
Review by Rockingjude
If you’re looking for one of those treacly Oprah books-The Secret, and its variants-avoid this one. Those books nourish like potato chips and leave most people more confused, more desperate, more thirsty for fantasies than before. No amount of wishing, earnest yearning, visualizing and New Age mysticism is going to get us out of the morass we’re in. In Empire of Illusion, Chris Hedges takes a sober look down our hall of distorting mirrors.
Vancouver Sun: The erosion of civility threatens our democracy
Following midterm elections in the U.S. that dealt a heavy blow to the Democrats, a humbled President Barack Obama told Americans he still believed there was hope for civility in the country's politics.
In Canada, Liberal House leader David McGuinty expressed a similar sentiment, saying on his appointment in September that his goal was to bring civility back to the Commons.
Their quest to restore some semblance of respect for differing points of view often seems hopeless in the face of shouting matches on U.S. television that pretend to be analysis, venomous campaigns that focus on personalities rather than policies and, in Ottawa, the daily onslaught of insults and invective during question period. Sadly, the abrasiveness in the political realm may reflect a broader culture of intolerance and insensitivity.
TED Talks: Steven Johnson: Where good ideas come from
Click to viewPeople often credit their ideas to individual "Eureka!" moments. But Steven Johnson shows how history tells a different story. His fascinating tour takes us from the "liquid networks" of London's coffee houses to Charles Darwin's long, slow hunch to today's high-velocity web.
Associated Press via Philadelphia Inquirer: New alliance aims to restore civility to government
By Beth Fouhy
The first meeting of No Labels drew lawmakers from across the U.S. and the political spectrum.