Turkey

I haven’t been following the situation in Turkey very closely so I’m not sure which side I agree with, but I know Erdogan has gone too far in a few ways:

• the initial protests were peaceful and yet the crackdown was violent, much more than necessary. Erdogan has never really apologized for this.
• he has widened the crackdown further than what is reasonable:

 taking aim not just at the demonstrators themselves, but also at the medics who treat their injuries, the business owners who shelter them and the foreign news media flocking here to cover a growing political crisis threatening to paralyze the government of Prıme Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

• his language has been eerily similar to that of Assad in Syria:

Mr. Erdogan then singled out BBC, CNN and Reuters, saying, “for days, you fabricated news.”

“You portrayed Turkey differently to the world,” he continued. “You are left alone with your lies. This nation is not the one that you misrepresented to the world.”

…

Mr. Erdogan said Sunday that even the owners of luxury hotels near Taksim Square who had provided refuge to protesters fleeing the chaos of the police raid were linked to terrorism.

“We know very well the ones that sheltered in their hotels those who cooperated with terror,” he said at the rally. “Will they not be held accountable? If we do not hold them accountable, then the nation will hold us accountable.”

…

By Sunday, Mr. Erdogan sought to thoroughly delegitimize any opposition to his governance, linking the effort to save the park to a recent terrorist attack in Reyhanli, in southern Turkey, which was connected to the Syrian civil war and killed dozens.

“I wonder what these foreigners who came to Taksim Square from all corners of the world were doing,” he said. “We have seen the same plots in Reyhanli.”

His opponents are foreigners and terrorists. This is dangerous language aimed at dehumanizing the opposition and could easily lead to more violence.

What’s the problem with secrecy?

In one of my first posts (with a couple follow-ups), I noted that one of the reasons I was a liberal was that I distrust governments and big business but think I have slightly more influence on government. One of the reasons I have more influence with the government is that its operations are open (in theory at least) while corporate meetings are not–I can’t influence something I don’t know about. And this is why  the leaks by Bradley Manning and Edward Snowden are important, they have shown things that the US government is doing secretly. And we have discovered two things: the government has done things that the public might not support; the government has kept things secret that don’t need to be secret. And these are both reasons why government secrecy is anathema to a democracy–I can’t intelligently decide who to vote for if I don’t know what they’re doing.

Trust us

I’m sorry, but I don’t trust you (they also track credit cards):

It was revealed late Wednesday that the National Security Agency has been collecting the phone records of hundreds of millions of US phone customers. The leaked document first reported by the Guardian newspaper gave the NSA authority to collect from all of Verizon’s land and mobile customers, but intelligence experts said the program swept up the records of other phone companies too. Another secret program revealed Thursday scours the Internet usage of foreign nationals overseas who use any of nine US-based internet providers such as Microsoft and Google.

In his first comments since the programs were publicly revealed this week, Obama said safeguards are in place.

Government secrecy is anathema to a democracy and this isn’t good enough:

Obama said he came into office with a ‘‘healthy skepticism’’ of the program and increased some of the ‘‘safeguards’’ on the programs. He said Congress and federal judges have oversight on the program, and a judge would have to approve monitoring of the content of a call and it’s not a ‘‘program run amok.’’

Notice the sleight of hand here:

Senior administration officials defended the programs as critical tools and said the intelligence they yield is among the most valuable data the US collects. Clapper said the Internet program, known as PRISM, can’t be used to intentionally target any Americans or anyone in the U.S, and that  data accidentally collected about Americans is kept to a minimum.

Let’s see:

Analysts who use the system from a Web portal at Fort Meade, Md., key in “selectors,” or search terms, that are designed to produce at least 51 percent confidence in a target’s “foreignness.” That is not a very stringent test. Training materials obtained by The Post instruct new analysts to make quarterly reports of any accidental collection of U.S. content, but add that “it’s nothing to worry about.”

Even when the system works just as advertised, with no American singled out for targeting, the NSA routinely collects a great deal of American content. That is described as “incidental,” and it is inherent in contact chaining, one of the basic tools of the trade. To collect on a suspected spy or foreign terrorist means, at minimum, that everyone in the suspect’s inbox or outbox is swept in. Intelligence analysts are typically taught to chain through contacts two “hops” out from their target, which increases “incidental collection” exponentially. The same math explains the aphorism, from the John Guare play, that no one is more than “six degrees of separation” from any other person.

In other words, every search collects data about Americans and it’s not a big deal.

Tea Party

Tea Party groups were unfairly targeted by the IRS and are now complaining loudly to Congress:

The House Ways and Means Committee invited a collection of groups to speak about their experiences as details continue to emerge about how and why IRS officials in a Cincinnati, Ohio, field office began targeting conservative groups for extra scrutiny.

“This was not an accident. This is a willful act of intimidation intended to discourage a point of view,” said Becky Gerritson, president of a Tea Party group in Wetumpka, Alabama.

She tearfully described how she and her husband had to seek legal counsel when confronted with questionnaires about their donors, communications with legislators and their voter education activities.

“I’m not interested in scoring political points. I want to protect and preserve the America I grew up in,” Gerritson said.

Hmmm:

In Alabama, the Wetumpka Tea Party organized a day of training for its members and other Tea Party activists across the region in the run-up to the 2012 election. The training was held under the auspices of the Adopt-a-State program, a nationwide effort that encouraged Tea Party groups in safely red or blue states to support Tea Party groups in battleground states working to get out the vote for Republicans.

Adopt-a-State was a key component of Code Red USA, a get-out-the-vote initiative organized by a conservative political action committee. The goal of Code Red USA was made clear in one of its fund-raising videos, which told supporters: “On Nov. 6, 2012, Code Red USA authorizes the defeat of President Barack Obama.”

and here are others:

When CVFC, the veterans’ group, first applied for I.R.S. recognition in early 2010, it stated that it did not plan to spend any money on politics. The group, whose full name in its application was CVFC 501(c)(4), listed an address shared with a political organization called Combat Veterans for Congress PAC. CVFC told the I.R.S. that it planned to e-mail veterans about ways in which they “may engage in government” and provide “social welfare programs to assist combat veterans to get involved in government.”

But later in 2010, as it awaited an I.R.S. ruling, the organization spent close to $8,000 on radio ads backing Michael Crimmins, a Republican and a former Marine, for a House seat in San Diego, according to Federal Election Commission records.

The spending is not detailed in the group’s tax return for 2010, raising questions about whether it properly accounted for the expense to the I.R.S. The group also checked off a box marked “No” when asked if it had engaged in direct or indirect political activities on behalf of a candidate for political office.

…

Tom Zawistowski, president of the Ohio Liberty Coalition, another Tea Party group that has complained about the scrutiny it received from the I.R.S., sent out regular e-mails to members about Romney campaign events and organized protests around the state to “demand the truth about Benghazi” when Mr. Obama visited before the 2012 election. The coalition also canvassed neighborhoods, handing out Romney campaign “door hangers,” Mr. Zawistowski said.

The I.R.S. usually considers such activities to be partisan. But when Mr. Zawistowski consulted his group’s lawyers, he said, he came away understanding that the I.R.S. was most concerned with radio or television advertising. He said he believed that other activities, like distributing literature for the Romney campaign, would not raise concerns.

“It’s not political activity,” he said.

Zawistowski also ran for political office, but he probably doesn’t think that’s political either.

Bombs not bikes

This is hilarious (I’m not going to link directly to the video). This is a private program run with no government money, but it’s socialism.  She says “We now look at a city whose best neighborhoods are absolutely begrimed, is the word, by these blazing blue Citi Bank bikes — all of the finest, most picturesque parts of the city.”, but doesn’t seem to mind how ugly many of the roads are … and they are paid for by the government–Socialism.

My favorite quote is “The bike lobby is an all-powerful enterprise”. The system in Boston, Hubway, is doing better than expected so far, but it’s only a matter of time until the bike lobby takes over complete control of Boston. You have been warned.

Also, see here.

War is peaches

Via here, I hear that the latest spin is that the IRS is going to let conservatives die through the implementation of Obamacare. Interesting. So, here’s the reasoning: Obamacare will, through the IRS, allow some people to die so we have to stop the expansion of Medicaid, such as in Texas, paid for by Obamacare. This will mean that … a lot of people will die from a lack of insurance–we need to let a bunch of people die so that some people don’t die. This is 1984 doublethink but without any rhyme or reason and without awareness (ok, I guess that’s the point in 1984).

Today is Friday, so I can’t end on this type of note. Here’s a picture of the latest Soyuz rocket being brought to the launchpad, I really like their look (Credit: NASA/Bill Ingalls):

Let her die

The highest court in El Salvador has ruled on the Beatriz case:

Her fetus, which has anencephaly, a severe birth defect in which parts of the brain and skull are missing, has almost no chance of surviving after birth, leading her doctors to urge an abortion to protect Beatriz’s health before it deteriorates further.

But in a 4-to-1 ruling, the court cited the country’s legal “absolute impediment to authorize the practice of abortion,” and ruled that “the rights of the mother cannot be privileged over those” of the fetus.

The court recognized that Beatriz has lupus, but it said that her disease was currently under control and that the threat to her life “is not actual or imminent, but rather eventual.”

It ordered that her health continue to be closely monitored, saying that if complications arose that put her right to life in imminent danger doctors “could proceed with interventions.”

Translated, the court has said that she can’t have an abortion now because her health isn’t in imminent danger, but she might be able to later if her health worsens. Of course at that point she will be more likely to die, but if she does die that’s the way it goes–a fetus that is most likely going to die is more important than this mother’s health (she already has one baby). This is what ‘pro-life’ supporters in the US want (Republicans, like Paul Ryan, also believe life begins at conception which would mean no exceptions if abortion is banned). And El Salvador shows that the Catholic Church and other pro-life people are ok with punishing women:

In 1998, the government passed a new Penal Code banning all abortions without exceptions. This was a shift from an earlier law which allowed abortions in cases of threats to the health or life of the woman, as well as in cases of rape, incest, or severe foetal abnormality. The abortion laws were further solidified in 1999 with a constitutional amendment defining a human being from the moment of conception. While the number of illegal abortions performed every year is unknown, attempts to self-abort are the second highest cause of maternal mortality in the country. In addition to the risk of death as a result of unsafe abortion procedures, El Salvador’s absolute ban on abortion has led to the arbitrary imprisonment of women suffering from miscarriages and complications in their pregnancies. Women are currently in prison for having abortions, some serving sentences of up to 30 years. Under current Salvadoran law, anyone who performs an abortion with the woman’s consent, or a woman who self-induces or consents to someone else inducing her abortion, can be imprisoned for up to eight years. Healthcare professionals are obliged to maintain patient confidentiality, but also to report any crimes to the police, including that of abortion. A note from the Attorney General’s Office is displayed in the maternity department of public hospitals, reminding staff of this and putting them under pressure to make reports. However, many women who miscarry or experience emergency obstetric complications, if the foetus is deemed to have been viable, are charged with aggravated homicide, for which they can be imprisoned for up to 50 years, and consequently spend decades behind bars. In June 2012, the Citizens for the Decriminalisation of Abortion (CFDA) pointed out that El Salvador’s stringent anti-abortion legislation has imprisoned 628 women since a law was enacted in 1998. Twenty-four of these women were indicted for “aggravated murder”, after an abortion, miscarriage or stillbirth. Morena Herrera, president of CFDA, maintains that the majority of women who have been charged are extremely vulnerable for being poor, young and with low levels of education. These women, who are more likely to suffer from obstetric complications, are regularly reported to the police following a miscarriage, stillbirth or premature labour. Significantly, not one such report has been made to the police by a private clinic or hospital.

Doctors can get up to 8 years in jail. Take special note of that last bit–this law doesn’t affect the rich.

No more Bachmann and anti-packing

So, Michelle Bachmann is going to retire. I don’t really care why, I’m just glad she’s going away. That doesn’t mean the craziness will go away (also see here):

That appeals court, known as the D.C. Circuit, often represents the last word on financial regulations, labor rights and environmental protections. With the confirmation last week of Obama’s first successful nominee to the court, Sri Srinivasan, the D.C. Circuit is now evenly balanced, 4 to 4, with appointees from Republican and Democratic presidents.

Enter Grassley with a bill he calls the Court Efficiency Act.

“The legislation is very straightforward,” Grassley said at a Senate Judiciary hearing last month. “It would add a seat to the 2nd and the 11th Circuit. At the same time, it would reduce the number of authorized judgeships for the D.C. Circuit from 11 to eight.”

Grassley says the D.C. Circuit doesn’t have enough work to do, so he wants to cut one seat altogether and send two others to busier appeals courts in New York and Georgia. He’s supported by seven other Republicans on the Judiciary Committee.

Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, a fan of the move, last week accused Obama of packing the court.

“I certainly hope that neither the White House nor my Democratic colleagues will instead decide to play politics and seek without any legitimate justification to pack the D.C. Circuit with unneeded judges, simply in order to advance a partisan agenda,” Lee said.

So, if President Obama doesn’t agree to reduce the size of the court so that Republicans regain some control then that’s partisan. Gotcha. I assume that Grassley would be willing to allow Obama to appoint 2 new judges and then move the two judges who have been at the court longest–after all, they have the most experience and so would be more help to the other courts. No?

Loans

This is an interesting bit:

Earlier this month, when Congress was consumed by a hearing on the attack against Americans in Benghazi, Warren took to the Senate floor to introduce the bill, a dramatic cut in the federal interest rate for student loans. Under Warren’s bill, the current rate of 3.4 percent, set to double to 6.8 percent on July 1, would drop for a year to 0.75 percent, to match the short-term rate afforded to big banks by the Federal Reserve.

The issue hit Warren’s sweet spots: what she describes as the built-in advantages enjoyed by big banks, the middle class struggle to repay debts, the universities that bolster the Massachusetts economy, and the college students whose passion helped transform Warren’s Senate campaign into a national cause.

“If the Federal Reserve can float trillions of dollars to large financial institutions at low interest rates to grow the economy, surely they can float the Department of Education the money to fund our students, keep us competitive, and help grow our middle class,” she said.

…

A pair of scholars from Brookings disagreed, labeling Warren’s proposal a “cheap political gimmick” in an online essay, noting that student borrowers have higher rates of default and are offered generous forgiveness policies not granted to big banks.

“This logic just fails,” said Beth Akers, a fellow at the Brown Center for Education Policy at the Brookings Institution, who co-wrote the piece. “Students are fundamentally different as borrowers from these large financial institutions at the discount window.”

And students didn’t crash the world economy. If they had they would have been due an infusion of hundreds of billions of dollars, right Beth?

Who needs checks and balances?

From here and here, this article tells us how the IRS scandal happened:

The IRS Exempt Organizations division, the watchdog for about 1.5 million nonprofits, has always had to deal with controversial groups. For decades, the division periodically listed red flags that would merit an application being sent to the IRS’s Washington, D.C., headquarters for review, said Owens, the former division head.

…

Because this list was public, lawyers and nonprofits knew which cases would automatically be reviewed.

“We had a core of experts in tax law,” recalled Milton Cerny, who worked for the IRS, mainly in Exempt Organizations, from 1960 to 1987. “We had developed a broad group of tax experts to deal with these issues.”

In the 1980s, the division issued many more “revenue rulings” than issued in recent years, said Cerny, then head of the rulings process. These revenue rulings set precedents for the division. Revenue rulings along with regulations are basically the binding IRS rules for nonprofits.

…

Other checks and balances had existed too. Not only were certain kinds of applications publicly flagged, there was another mechanism called “post-review,” Owens said. Headquarters in Washington would pull a random sample every month from the different field offices, to see how applications were being reviewed. There was also a surprise “saturation review,” once a year, for each of the offices, where everything from a certain time period needed to be sent to Washington for another look.

…

The system began to change in the mid-1990s. The IRS was having trouble hiring people for low-level positions in field offices like New York or Atlanta — the kinds of workers that typically reviewed applications by nonprofits, Owens said.

The answer to this was simple: Cincinnati.

The city had a history of being able to hire people at low federal grades, which in 1995 paid between $19,704 and $38,814 a year — almost the same as those federal grades paid in New York City or Chicago. (Adjusted for inflation, that’s between $30,064 and $59,222 now.)

…

But by 1998, after hearings in which Republican Senator Trent Lott accused the IRS of “Gestapo-like” tactics, a new law mandated the agency’s restructuring. In the years that followed, the agency aimed to streamline. For most of the ‘90s, the IRS had more than 100,000 employees. That number would drop every year, to slightly less than 90,000 by 2012.

…

In 2003, the saturation reviews and post reviews ended, and the public list of criteria that would get an application referred to headquarters disappeared, Owens said. Instead, agents in Cincinnati could ask to have cases reviewed, if they wanted. But they didn’t very often.

“No one really knows what kinds of cases are being sent to Washington, if any,” Owens said. “It’s all opaque now. It’s gone dark.”

By the end of 2004, the Continuing Professional Education articles stopped.

So the problems came about because the number of workers at the IRS were cut (which meant both that the workers had to do more and there was less oversight) and they didn’t pay well enough to get good workers. Also, note that the changes were pushed by Republicans and signed off by the Clinton administration and were mostly done in the Bush II administration. Thanks guys. Also also, notice that this meant that the IRS was tougher on the small money groups than the big ones:

Over the last two years, government watchdog groups filed more than a dozen complaints with the Internal Revenue Service seeking inquiries into whether large nonprofit organizations like those founded by the Republican political operative Karl Rove and former Obama administration aides had violated their tax-exempt status by spending tens of millions of dollars on political advertising.

The I.R.S. never responded.

During the same period, the agency singled out dozens of Tea Party-inspired groups that had applied for I.R.S. recognition, officials acknowledged on Friday, subjecting them to rounds of detailed questioning about their political activities. None of those groups were big spenders on political advertising; most were local Tea Party organizations with shoestring budgets.

They also didn’t go after groups that were very likely breaking the spirit of the law:

A dark money nonprofit group that has run more than $1 million in ads in the Ohio race for U.S. Senate told the IRS last year it did not plan to spend any money to influence elections when it applied for recognition of its tax-exempt status.

David Dayen puts it together here:

According to data from the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse at Syracuse University, IRS audits of the largest and richest corporations have steadily declined since 2005, down 22 percent in the ensuing four years and even more from 2011-2013. In the same period, the agency accelerated its scrutiny of small and midsize corporations. Since 2000, the IRS has been more likely to audit the working poor, individuals and families making under $25,000 a year, than those making over $100,000 annually. The middle class received disproportionately more audits throughout the past decade as well. An IRS unit formed in 2009 called the Global High Wealth Industry Group, designed to give special attention to tax compliance of high-wealth individuals, performed exactly two audits in 2010 and 11 in 2011.

…

Congress knows full well that defunding the IRS will lead to these outcomes, and that gives a definable benefit to the rich and powerful, who know how to slip through the cracks of the tax code. “For a big corporation wanting to play fast and loose, this is manna from heaven,” David Cay Johnston said. “They’re the ones this is helping: the political donor class. It’s a subtle way of taking care of your friends.”

The problem is that neither of these explanations helps the Republican party, so you’re not going to hear this at the Republican investigation.

Cut the deficits now! Now I tell ya!

The US budget deficit is falling at the fastest rate since the end of WWII:

If the current laws that govern federal taxes and spending do not change, the budget deficit will shrink this year to $642 billion, CBO estimates, the smallest shortfall since 2008. Relative to the size of the economy, the deficit this year—at 4.0 percent of gross domestic product (GDP)—will be less than half as large as the shortfall in 2009, which was 10.1 percent of GDP.

Because revenues, under current law, are projected to rise more rapidly than spending in the next two years, deficits in CBO’s baseline projections continue to shrink, falling to 2.1 percent of GDP by 2015. However, budget shortfalls are projected to increase later in the coming decade, reaching 3.5 percent of GDP in 2023, because of the pressures of an aging population, rising health care costs, an expansion of federal subsidies for health insurance, and growing interest payments on federal debt. By comparison, the deficit averaged 3.1 percent of GDP over the past 40 years and 2.4 percent in the 40 years before fiscal year 2008, when the most recent recession began. During the next 10 years, both revenues and outlays are projected to be above their 40-year averages as a percentage of GDP (see figure below).

The Republican response? We need to cut more:

The lawmakers said the gap between revenue and spending is closing, but not by nearly enough, so they are sticking to their goal of balancing the federal budget within a decade.

On Tuesday the Congressional Budget Office said strong tax and other revenues caused it to slash its fiscal 2013 deficit forecast by more than $200 billion – to $642 billion, the smallest gap since 2008.

CBO said the brighter picture could push a deadline for raising the debt limit – necessary to avoid default on U.S. debt or a partial government shutdown – into November, from previous estimates of late July or early August.

When Republicans agreed to extend U.S. borrowing capacity in February, they had anticipated a summer deadline for raising the limit – over which they would demand cuts to Social Security and Medicare.

“It may change the amount and the size of the debt ceiling but it doesn’t change the reality of the debt ceiling,” said Representative James Lankford, a member of the House Republican leadership and the Budget Committee.

Gee, it’s almost as if they want to cut social spending and are using the deficit as an excuse –now that the deficit is falling, they’ll find another reason to cut (kind of how George W Bush argued for a tax cut because there was a surplus and then when the surplus went away argued for it because there was a recession).

Scandals!!!!!!!!

The Boston Globe details the three BIG scandals affecting President Obama. The three are:

Benghazi: this is a completely Republican generated scandal. Something bad happened and they used that to imply things (there have been so many different implications, it’s near impossible to list them all). Kevin Drum has a nice roundup here.

IRS investigation of Tea Party groups: the IRS should not be political, so this is bad. On the other hand, I really want the IRS to strongly investigate all these new (and existing) 501 (c) organizations that are abusing the system to put unlimited anonymous donations into the political system. All of them should be investigated.

Gathering of AP phone calls by the Justice Department: welcome to the club guys. Many of us liberals, and a few libertarian Republicans, have been complaining about this type of thing since the PATRIOT act was passed. We were in favor of a press shield law. How about Republicans:

The legislation has broad support from journalism organizations and is a compromise worked out by senators, the intelligence community and the Obama administration.

“After years of debate and countless cases of reporters being held in contempt, fined and even jailed for honoring their professional commitment not to publicly reveal their sources, the time has come to enact a balanced federal shield law,” said the committee chairman, Patrick Leahy, D-Vt.

Conservative Republicans and some in the intelligence community believe it can harm attempts to track down leakers of classified national security information.

The ranking Republican on the committee, Sen. Jeff Sessions of Alabama, said the bill “goes beyond protection for journalists. It’s granting journalists a power that is not provided to other people” who possess important information.

It’s good to see that Republicans have come around, it certainly couldn’t be that they’re just trying to hurt Obama.

Update: For example, how many investigations of this were there?

More gay marriage

Rhode Island passed a bill to allow same-sex marriage on May 2, Delaware followed suit last week, and now Minnesota will probably follow today. The change really is incredible, here are the dates:

5/17/2004: gay marriage is legal in Massachusetts

11/12/2008: legal in Connecticut

4/27/2009: legal in Iowa

9/1/2009: legal in Vermont

12/18/2009: legal in District of Columbia

1/1/2010: legal in New Hampshire

7/24/2011: legal in New York

12/6/2012: legal in Washington

12/29/2012 legal in Maine

1/1/2013: legal in Maryland

7/1/2013: will become legal in Delaware

8/1/2013: will become legal in Rhode Island

8/1/2013: will become legal in Minnesota (officially this hasn’t passed, but the governor is supposed to sign it today at 5pm)

There are 56 jurisdictions in the US (the states, DC, Puerto Rico, American Samoa, US Virgin Islands, Northern Marianas, and Guam. According to Wikipedia, 30 have constitutional amendments outlawing gay marriage and 9 have statutes outlawing it, so that limits future progress (although Minnesota was one of the 9 that had a statute and California is likely to have gay marriage soon even though they have a constitutional amendment outlawing it). Still there are only 23 states where polls show less than 50% support for gay marriage, only 11 have less than 40% support, and support is rising very quickly (only 33% supported it in 2006).

What Catholics protest

So let’s see what the Catholics are protesting now:

The controversy over Prime Minister Enda Kenny of Ireland, who supports narrow abortion rights legislation in his country, speaking at Boston College’s commencement took a dramatic turn Friday when the head of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Boston declared that he will not attend the ceremony.

The announcement from Cardinal Sean P. O’Malley upped the ante in a ­debate that earlier in the week had pitted BC against the Catholic Action League of Massachusetts, a group that opposes abortion rights and had strongly criticized the university for inviting Kenny.

And they’re really upset about this law:

The Catholic Church has pointedly left the threat of excommunication hanging over Irish lawmakers who vote against the church’s teachings on abortion in an upcoming parliamentary vote in the country.

The new law is a reaction to this case:

“The doctor told us the cervix was fully dilated, amniotic fluid was leaking and unfortunately the baby wouldn’t survive.” The doctor, he says, said it should be over in a few hours. There followed three days, he says, of the foetal heartbeat being checked several times a day.

“Savita was really in agony. She was very upset, but she accepted she was losing the baby. When the consultant came on the ward rounds on Monday morning Savita asked if they could not save the baby could they induce to end the pregnancy. The consultant said, ‘As long as there is a foetal heartbeat we can’t do anything’.

“Again on Tuesday morning, the ward rounds and the same discussion. The consultant said it was the law, that this is a Catholic country. Savita [a Hindu] said: ‘I am neither Irish nor Catholic’ but they said there was nothing they could do.

“That evening she developed shakes and shivering and she was vomiting. She went to use the toilet and she collapsed. There were big alarms and a doctor took bloods and started her on antibiotics.

“The next morning I said she was so sick and asked again that they just end it, but they said they couldn’t.”

She died. The new bill allows for abortion if the woman’s life is in danger, including from suicide:

Under the draft legislation, when the threat is not from suicide, two doctors must jointly certify that there is a “real and substantial risk” of the loss of the pregnant woman’s life, and that they believe abortion is the only way to avert that risk.

One of the doctors must be an obstetrician or gynecologist, and at least one of the two should consult with the woman’s own doctor where possible.

When the risk to the pregnant woman’s life is from suicide, the assessment must be made by an obstetrician or gynecologist, along with two psychiatrists.

A doctor is also allowed to terminate a pregnancy in the case of a medical emergency if there is an immediate threat to the pregnant woman’s life, the draft states.

The procedure must be carried out by a registered medical practitioner at an appropriate location. The final decision on whether to carry out the abortion will always be made by the pregnant woman, it adds.

This article doesn’t explicitly state it, but it is a very strict bill:

The new bill, which will have to be passed in both houses of the Irish parliament, will not include cases concerning rape, incest or fatal foetal abnormalities.

Notice that last one–abortions are not allowed if the fetus will not survive. This is the law that the Catholic Church thinks is so terrible that people who support it should be excommunicated. It really is difficult to not conclude that the Catholic Church doesn’t care about women. After all, how many times have you heard of these types of protests because of other issues, the death penalty or lack of compassion for the poor for example?

Obamacare

It seems that Republicans want to put Obamacare front and center in the election of 2014. Republicans will try to make this work in two ways: cut money for implementation and play up any problems that come up (and there will be problems). As Greg Sargent notes, articles like this are basically saying what Republicans want to be said–when problems arise Democrats (well, anybody) should talk about them to make the law better, but if newspapers interpret this as saying the Democrats are against Obamacare then the cause is lost. As Kevin Drum notes, the way to get around this is to start playing up the benefits of Obamacare as much and as soon as possible. If they do, then it will be Republicans that will have to answer difficult questions such as: what will you do to control medical spending?; what will you do so everyone has access to healthcare? Democrats and supporters need to play up all the problems with the current system. Played right, this is a big win for Democrats.

Bangladesh and accidents

Talking about the collapse of a building in Bangladesh that killed more than 5oo garment workers, we get this:

Finance Minister Abul Maal Abdul Muhith …

During a visit to New Delhi, Muhith said the disaster would not harm Bangladesh’s garment industry, which is India’s biggest source of export income.

‘‘The present difficulties . . . well, I don’t think it is really serious — it’s an accident,’’ he said. ‘‘And the steps that we have taken in order to make sure that it doesn’t happen, they are quite elaborate and I believe that it will be appreciated by all.’’

The government made similar promises after a garment factory fire five months ago that killed 112, saying it would inspect factories for safety and pull the licenses of those that failed. That plan has yet to be implemented.

Asked if he was worried that foreign retailers might pull orders from his country, Muhith said he wasn’t: ‘‘These are individual cases of . . .  accidents. It happens everywhere.’’

To put this in perspective:

Wages aside, working conditions in Bangladesh’s rag trade are notoriously brutal and unsafe. The country is now the world’s second-largest apparel supplier, behind only China. Yet many garment factories fall short of Bangladesh’s own building codes. Two years ago, 29 people were killed and 100 injured in a fire at a factory manufacturing clothes for Gap Inc. A fire in November in a textile factory producing goods for Walmart and Sears Holdings Corp. killed 112 people. Managers in that blaze told workers to stay put when fire alarms went off.

In one sense I think Muhith is right, as long as Bangladesh is cheap garment factories will flock there unless something fundamental changes.

As an aside, it seems that Muhith is a soul-mate of Rand Paul. Here he is talking about the West Virginia mining accident:

We had a mining accident that was very tragic,” he said. “Then we come in, and it’s always someone’s fault. Maybe sometimes accidents happen.”

and here he is talking about the oil spill in the Gulf:

“What I don’t like from the president’s administration is this sort of, ‘I’ll put my boot heel on the throat of BP,’ ” Mr. Paul said, echoing a remark made by Interior Secretary Ken Salazar early on. “I think that sounds really un-American in his criticism of business. I’ve heard nothing from BP about not paying for the spill. And I think it’s part of this sort of blame-game society in the sense that it’s always got to be someone’s fault instead of the fact that sometimes accidents happen.”

Really, why does everyone blame the company when these types of things happen?

All of New England now allows same-sex marriage

Same-sex marriage was signed into law today in Rhode Island, so there are now 10 states and DC where it is legal–that includes all of New England. Add in New York, Maryland, and DC and you might notice that most of the northeast allows it and it’s allowed almost nowhere else (just Iowa and Washington). Internationally, there are now 12 countries that allow same-sex marriage or have voted it in (Argentina, Belgium, Canada, Denmark, Iceland, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Portugal, Spain, South Africa, and Sweden) and it is pending in other countries. It’s all pretty remarkable how fast this is moving considering that it was only in 2001 that the Netherlands became the first country to allow them and only in 2004 that Massachusetts became the first state.

What the future holds

Here are two worrisome bits of information I found today:

via here, the C)2 level at Mauna Loa is poised to break 400 ppm for the first time in modern history. Here’s a chart for the levels since 1958 (from here, Credit: Dr. Pieter Tans, NOAA/ESRL (www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/ccgg/trends/) and Dr. Ralph Keeling, Scripps Institution of Oceanography (scrippsco2.ucsd.edu/).):

or, if you want a longer time frame (you might notice that sharp uptick at the end there):

And then there’s this:

When asked to agree or disagree with the following statement: In the next few years, an armed revolution might be necessary in order to protect our liberties.

In total, 29% agree, 47% disagree, 18% neither agree or disagree, 5% are unsure, 1% refused to answer. For Republicans, the percents are: 44% agree, 31% disagree, 20% neither agree or disagree, 4% are unsure, 1% refused to answer.

That’s … interesting. And unfortunately it seems we may be living in interesting times.

What exactly is the American Community Survey for?

Via here and here, it seems Republicans have decided that the American Community Survey is too intrusive (the bill is here):

This week, the U.S. House voted 232-190, mostly along party lines, to prohibit the Census Bureau from using federal funds to conduct the survey. All four of the House members from East Tennessee voted in favor of the legislation.

…

The Census Bureau introduced the survey in 2005 to replace the “long form” questionnaire that had been used in the census count taken every 10 years. The idea was that the ongoing survey would provide statistical data on a regular basis, instead of the once-a-decade figures generated under the previous questionnaire.

But Duncan and others argue the survey is so detailed that it amounts to an invasion of privacy.

Duncan said he can’t think of any reason why the government needs to know how Americans get to work, how many bedrooms are in their homes or whether or not they have hot and cold running water — all questions that are posed on the survey.

“It’s just ridiculous how detailed these questions get,” Duncan said. “It seems to me there’s just almost no privacy anymore, and it just keeps getting worse and worse.”

Yes, it’s a mystery why they ask these questions. It’s not like the Census Bureau has a site explaining why questions are included … oh wait they do. Yeah, but is there really a reason to ask how Americans get to work?

Meeting Federal Needs

Basic knowledge about commuting patterns and the characteristics of commuter travel come from responses to these questions. The commuting data are essential for planning highway improvements and developing public transportation services, as well as for designing programs  to ease traffic problems during peak periods, conserve energy, reduce pollution, and estimate and project the demand for alternative-fueled vehicles. These data are required to develop standards for reducing work-related vehicle trips and increasing passenger occupancy during peak periods of travel.

The Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) plans to use county-level data in computing gross commuting flows to develop place-of-residence earnings estimates from place of work estimates by industry. In addition, BEA also plans to use these data for state personal income estimates for determining federal fund allocations.

Community Benefits

Transportation

These data form the database used by state departments of transportation and the more than 350 metropolitan planning organizations responsible for comprehensive transportation planning activities.

Metropolitan planning organizations use these data to manage traffic congestion and develop strategies to mitigate congestion, such as carpooling programs and flexible work schedules.

Public transit agencies use these data to plan for transit investments, identify areas needing better transit service, determine the most efficient routes, and plan for services for disabled persons.

Emergency Preparedness

Police and fire departments use data about where people work to plan emergency services in areas of high concentrations of employment.

Employment

Data are used to identify patterns of discrimination in hiring among minorities and other population groups within labor markets.

Banking

Financial institutions use data about commuting patterns and occupation to define market areas for describing lending practices and the effects of bank mergers.

Well, perhaps but there couldn’t possibly be a reason to know whether we have hot and cold running water.

Complete plumbing facilities are defined as hot and cold running water, a flush toilet, and a bathtub or shower. These data are essential components used by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development in the development of Fair Market Rents for all areas of the country. Federal agencies use this item to identify areas eligible for public assistance programs and rehabilitation loans. Public health officials use this item to locate areas in danger of ground water contamination and waterborne diseases.

Ok, but to be fair to Representative Duncan, I actually had to go to the Census Bureau’s web site to find this out. And that sounds like work. I should also note that Duncan didn’t say something as stupid as Rep. Webster:

“This is a program that intrudes on people’s lives, just like the Environmental Protection Agency or the bank regulators,” said Daniel Webster, a first-term Republican congressman from Florida who sponsored the relevant legislation.

“We’re spending $70 per person to fill this out. That’s just not cost effective,” he continued, “especially since in the end this is not a scientific survey. It’s a random survey.”

Really, he seems to think that making a survey random means it’s not scientific. He also stated the ACS is unconstitutional, here’s the Census Bureaus’s response to an earlier such question.

Not to be outdone, the Senate has introduced a bill to make filling out the ACS voluntary.

You can read more about this here, here, and here.

Regulation

I haven’t talked about the explosion in West, Texas given what’s been happening in Boston, but it’s also a big deal. It’s too early to know what happened there, but there are indications that it had expanded be much bigger than allowed and had slipped through regulatory cracks:

The CSB looks at, among other things, whether regulatory agencies failed in preventing accidents. And the plant falls under the purview of an alphabet soup of regulatory agencies: the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration (PHMSA), the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA),the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (TCEQ), the Texas Department of State Health Services (DSHS), and the Office of Texas State Chemist.

The same type of thing happened at New England Compounding Center:

A report issued by Republicans states that the FDA failed to act on years of complaints about problematic drugs and practices at the New England Compounding Center (NECC).

The pharmacy produced tainted preservative-free methylprednisolone acetate injections which were used to manage pain. They sickened more than 700 Americans, killing 53 others. Illnesses include fungal meningitis, abscesses and secondary fungal infections in some patients who had already been diagnosed with meningitis.

In both cases, it seems, no agency was in charge of directly regulating the company as it expanded faster than it should have. This again shows the need for simple regulations.