thepoliticalfreakshow:

Today, the House Agriculture Committee approved the final version of the 2012 farm bill, complete with its draconian cuts for families struggling to put food on the table. The proposed bill cuts $35 billion from the federal food and nutrition budget, about $16.5 billion of which come from the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program — more commonly known as SNAP or food stamps.

The cuts work by eliminating “categorical eligibility,” which provides assistance to families whose assets or income put them slightly above the technical line for SNAP eligibility. Repealing categorical eligibility means that between two and three million Americans will lose access to food stamps and roughly 280,000 children will drop out of their automatic enrollment in the free lunch program at school. So the House bill has anti-hunger advocates up in arms:

“With the economy being in such bad shape, depriving that many people of nutritional assistance is going to have a devastating effect,” said Eric Olsen, [Feeding Hunger]’s senior vice president of government relations and public policy.

One needs simply to look to the story of Dorothy Moon, a stay-at-home mother in Texas who depends on food stamps to feed her six children while her male partner looks for new work, to understand Olsen’s point. Of course, some in the GOP want to ignore “sob stories” about the plight of people who struggle to put food on the table.

SNAP assistance saved five million American from poverty in 2010 and halved the number of children in poverty in 2011.

truth-has-a-liberal-bias:

Republicans Want Food Stamps Cut in Farm Bill

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WASHINGTON — The 1,000-page “farm bill” being debated in the Senate is somewhat of a misnomer. Four of every five dollars in it - roughly $80 billion a year - goes for grocery bills for one of every seven Americans through food stamps.

…

“This is more than just a financial issue. It is a moral issue,” says Sen. Jeff Sessions, R-Ala., one of several Republicans pushing for cuts in spending for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, commonly known as SNAP. 

…

The Republican-controlled House, which has yet to write its own farm bill, is certain to demand greater food stamp cuts, too. Finding common ground with the Democratic-led Senate could be key to whether Congress can pass a 1,000-page bill that also makes fundamental changes in farm subsidies before the current legislation bill expires at the end of September.

…

The Senate last week rejected an amendment by Rand Paul, R-Ky., that would have saved $322 billion over 10 years by cutting it $45 billion a year and turning spending decisions over to the states. The vote was 65-32 against, with 13 Republicans joining every Democrat in opposing it. […]

justinspoliticalcorner:

The framers of our Constitution met in 1787 because the weak national governance adopted by the Articles of Confederation utterly failed. Their goal, in their own words, was to ensure that the federal government had the power to “legislate in all cases for the general interests of the Union, and also in those to which the States are separately incompetent.” National leaders must have the ability to address national problems, and this is especially true with respect to the national economy. As the Supreme Court explained very early in American history, there is “no sort of trade” that our national leaders cannot regulate, and the the power to regulate something “implies in its nature full power over the thing to be regulated,” so long as Congress does not trample the individual protected elsewhere in the Constitution.

Few living Americans have done more to undermine this vision than Randy Barnett, a Georgetown law professor and one of the leading architects of the lawsuits challenging the Affordable Care Act. In an interview with NPR yesterday, Barnett admitted just how far he’d like to go in reimagining the Constitution if his attack on health reform succeeds.

The “New Deal cases” Barnett objects to rejected the fake constitution that dominated the pre-New Deal era. If Barnett succeeds in restoring this fake constitution, he would usher in a far meaner and less prosperous America:

• Child Labor: One of the seminal cases from this discredited era is Hammer v. Dagenhardt, which struck down a national child labor law. If the New Deal cases Barnett despises were overruled, the longstanding federal protections against exploiting child workers would cease to exist.
• No Minimum Wage: A key New Deal case, United States v. Darby, upheld a national minimum wage and overtime laws. If Darby were overruled, these and other basic labor protections would also cease to exist.
• Whites-Only Lunch Counters: The Court also relied on cases like Darby in upholding basic civil rights protections, including the ban on whites-only lunch counters. Barnett’s fake constitution would almost certainly eliminate most of the legislative progress of the Civil Rights Era.
• The Right to Organize: The pre-New Deal justices also struck down laws ensuring workers’ right to organize into labor unions. Restoring their fake constitution would bring this decision back to life.

In other words, the fake constitution espoused by the anti-health reform case’s chief architect would roll back nearly one hundred years of progress — leaving poor children, minorities, workers and women out in the cold.

h/t: Ian Millhiser at Think Progress Justice

A Republican Party Internet advertisement uses altered audio from U.S. Supreme Court oral arguments to attack President Barack Obama’s health-care law.

In the web ad circulated yesterday, the Republican National Committee excerpts the opening seconds of the March 27 presentation of Obama’s top Supreme Court lawyer, Solicitor General Donald Verrilli, in which he is heard struggling for words and twice stopping to drink water.

“Obamacare,” the ad concludes, in words shown against a photograph of the high court. “It’s a tough sell.”

A review of a transcript and recordings of those moments shows that Verrilli took a sip of water just once, paused for a much briefer period, and completed his thought, rather than stuttering and trailing off as heard in the edited version.

soulofawomanwascreatedbelow:

On Tuesday, the Virginia House of Representatives passed two of the most restrictive abortion bills in the country. By a vote of 66-32, the Republican majority passed House Bill 1, which defines personhood as beginning at conception and effectively bans any woman from having an abortion, even if she is raped. The bill also would restrict contraceptives and an amendment to the bill would allow civil lawsuits against any doctor that performs an abortion. The bill is by far the most restrictive bill passed by any Republican controlled legislature in many years. Republican Rep. Bob Marshall wrote the legislation and Governor Bob McDonnell said he will be signing the bill.

A second bill was also passed that forces women to undergo a transvaginal ultrasound, which is a serious violation of the body(not to mention medically unnecessary), before being able to get an abortion. Of course if House Bill 1 passes the Senate as it is expected to, women won’t be able to get an abortion at all.

While Democrats passionately opposed both bills, their effort to defend women’s rights seems to be futile. The Virginia Senate is poised to pass both bills and since Governor McDonnell is a very conservative Catholic, one has to wonder whether his decision will not come from his own mind or the will of the Bishop’s im the Catholic Church. House Bill 1 not only bans abortion, it would fly in the face of President Obama’s contraception coverage rule, which requires insurance companies to offer contraceptives free of charge. The second bill is also outrageous because it forces women to surrender their bodily rights if they want an abortion, by forcing them to undergo a procedure that violates their bodies and destroys their privacy and personal liberty.

Republicans meanwhile, couldn’t care less about the needs of women or the pleas of the Democrats who defend them. “We hear the same song over there. The very tragic human notes that are often touched upon involve extreme examples,” declared Tom Gilbert, R-Shenandoah. “But in the vast majority of these cases, these are matters of lifestyle convenience.”

These bills are an abomination to the Constitution. They effectively revoke a woman’s right to privacy and strip them of their personal liberty. It makes them slaves to men and forces them to be pregnant against their will. As stated above, House Bill 1 would disallow access to birth control and may even ban it altogether. These bills are the most restrictive in the nation. Even the people of Mississippi refused to ban abortion when they rejected a personhood amendment. But this bill isn’t being voted on by people of Virginia. The state legislature has decided to impose its will on the women of the state whether they like it or not.

We have to stop this from being passed in the Senate, contact McDonnell’s office and let your opinion be known. You can find his contact informationHERE.

REBLOG, REBLOG, REBLOG!

In recent months, Florida and South Carolina have talked about forcing people to “volunteer” for their unemployment insurance benefits, only to be told it was against federal law. Now, Senate Republicans want to change federal law to allow states to pass such laws but to require all long-term unemployed people to “volunteer” 20 hours a week to continue receiving benefits, with an additional bill introduced by North Carolina’s Richard Burr calling for them to spend 20 hours a week looking for work. Those requirements could be added to Republican efforts to allow drug testing requirements and to deny unemployment insurance to people who don’t have high school diplomas

think-progress:

Last night, a Democratic campaign manager in Arkansas arrived home to find his child’s cat murdered, the word ‘LIBERAL’ written on the carcass. 

mikeo56:

Republicans Block Senate From Even Talking About Jobs

Yesterday, an unanimous Senate Republican caucus didn’t just lead a filibuster to kill the American Jobs Act. The Republicans stopped the Senate from even beginning to have a discussion about doing anything at all to create jobs.

Typically, a filibuster happens after the debate has begun. A bill is brought to the floor. Senators debate it. They propose changes to it. They vote on amendments. When the amending is done, a procedural vote is held — which under Senate rules requires a supermajority of 60 votes to succeed — whether or not to end the debate and move to a final vote.

Republican Party is SHIT.

thepoliticalfreakshow:

As States’ Bridges and Road Are Crumbling, GOP Is Refusing To Agree With Infrastructure Investments Contained In The American Jobs Act

President Obama’s plan to kickstart the economy and put the American people back to work includes investing in the nation’s rapidly deteriorating infrastructure, which, as studies have shown, is in need of as much as $2 trillion in immediate investment just to bring it up to date. In the past, Republicans have agreed that infrastructure improvements are needed, but in the context of economic stimulus and in their effort to remain opposed to anything Obama offers, they have chosen to ignore the nation’s infrastructure and jobs crises. Unfortunately, that approach doesn’t mean either crisis will go away.

Republican leadership has continually blocked efforts by Obama and Congressional Democrats to invest in infrastructure improvements, and as a result, bridges and roadways in their states are crumbling. According to the Bureau of Transportation Statistics, about 12 percent of the nation’s bridges are considered “structurally deficient,” the same rating given to the Minneapolis bridge that collapsed in 2007, killing 13 people. Roughly another 12 percent are considered “functionally obsolete.” In four of the five states represented by Republican congressional leadership, the rate of structurally deficient or functionally obsolete bridges outpaces the national average. ThinkProgress compiled a breakdown of the status of roads and bridges in each of those five states and, where applicable, individual congressional districts:

OHIO: 27 percent of the bridges Speaker John Boehner’s home state of Ohio are either “structurally deficient or functionally obsolete,” while one-fourth of its roads are considered poor or mediocre. At the heart of the Midwest, Ohio’s share of the national highway system has 171 highway bridges that are structurally deficient. 10 of those bridges are located inBoehner’s own district. Indeed, Obama singled out the Brent-Spence bridge connecting Ohio and Kentucky as “one of the busiest trucking routes in North America.” A recent Cincinnati Enquirer investigation into the bridge noted that it “is one of only 15 major interstate bridges in the country labeled by the federal government as ‘functionally obsolete’ for failure to meet safety or traffic flow standards.”

KENTUCKY: More than one-third (34 percent) of the bridges in Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell’s home state are structurally deficient or obsolete, including the Brent-Spence Bridge. Of those bridges, 108are located on the national highway system, according to the Bureau of Transportation Statistics. Nearly one in five of Kentucky’s roads are in poor or mediocre condition.

VIRGINIA: In House Majority Leader Eric Cantor’s home state, 26 percent of bridges are considered structurally deficient or obsolete, 104of which are on the national highway system. Nearly one in four of the state’s roads are considered to be in poor or mediocre condition. In Cantor’s congressional district, 11 national highway bridges are considered deficient.

ARIZONA: In Senate Minority Whip Jon Kyl’s home state, 12 percent of the bridges are “structurally deficient or functionally obsolete.” Of those in the national highway system, 25 are structurally deficient. Indeed, a recent report found that the poor rural roads and bridges in Arizona, where 21 percent of roads are considered poor or mediocre, have earned the state the eighth highest rural traffic fatality rate in the nation.

CALIFORNIA: Home to House Majority Whip Kevin McCarthy, California is perhaps most in need of infrastructure improvement. Thirty percent of its bridges are “structurally deficient or fundamentally obsolete.” Though a well-traveled state, California has a whopping 976 bridges on its national highways that are structurally deficient; 24 of those bridges are in McCarthy’s district. California ranks 19th in the nation for percentage of rural bridges that are structurally deficient, and two-thirds of its major roads are in poor or mediocre condition.

Even as roads and bridges in their states fall apart, Republicans remain opposed to Obama’s efforts to invest in improvement projects. When progressives and Democrats pushed for more infrastructure spending in the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, Republicans demanded a bigger emphasis on tax cuts. When House Democrats passed a jobs bill geared toward infrastructure investment in February 2010, Republicans derailed it in the Senate. And unless the GOP undergoes a radical shift in priorities in the next few months, yet another plan that will help solve both America’s infrastructure and jobs crises will die at the hands of Congressional Republicans.

The result, as statistics from these five states show, is that the country continues to watch its infrastructure crumble while leaders in the Republican Party sit idly by, refusing to do anything about it.