B and B

Misleading headline of the day

New York Times headline today:

By Slim Margin, Senate Advances Stimulus Bill

A more accurate description:

Senate Advances Stimulus Bill 61 to 36

"Slim-margin" is of course referring to the Senate rules that allow any 40 Senators to block legislation.  But anywhere else a 61 to 36 margin would be considered decisive -- even perhaps a "landslide".

After 15 years, Congress returns to the job of protecting our public lands

I wasn't able to pay it much attention at the time due to all the excitement surrounding Obama's inauguration and the major concern over our economic downturn, but about ten days ago, the Senate passed a measure that purports to protect large areas of federal lands in numerous states. 

According to at least one news article (from ENN), it provides "the largest expansion of the National Wilderness Preservation System in 15 years."  The one 15 years ago must be the California Desert Protection Act, passed in October 1994 as one of the last acts of the Democratic-controlled Congress.  The Gingrich/DeLay GOP, and their antipathy to the very concept of land that belongs to everyone in the country, took over Congress a few weeks later.

Virtually ever since then, we've had to play defense in public lands protection, including numerous fights over preventing the Bush administration and the Republican-controlled Congress from selling off our lands to developers and other special interests.  It is nice to be on the offensive again.

Ledbetter Fair Pay Act passes Senate

Excellent news.  From The Hill:

The Senate on Thursday flexed its bolstered Democratic majority and passed an equal pay measure that Republicans blocked last year. The bill could be the first measure signed into law by President Obama.

Senators voted 61-36 for the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, after a day of beating back eight GOP amendments by decisive margins.

“We have now overwhelmingly passed a bipartisan bill to correct an injustice that has been prevailing,” said Sen. Barbara Mikulski (D-Md.), who led the floor debate on the bill.

All four female GOP senators crossed over to support the Democratic measure: Kay Bailey Hutchison of Texas; Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins of Maine; and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska. Sen. Arlen Specter (R-Pa.) also approved the legislation.

Every voting Democrat backed the bill.

Yesterday, Congress took a large step towards helping enforce fair pay for women

The Lilly Ledbetter Act and the Paycheck Fairness Act both passed the House resoundingly on Friday.  Unfortunately, the vast, vast majority of Republicans remain adamantly opposed to recognizing the problems with workplace discrimination that these bills are meant to address. 

Also, I've noticed a misleading representation of the Ledbetter Act being passed around, either by lazy journalists (NPR) or by conservative propagandists (CEI).  These people suggest that this act is meant to extend or abolish the status of limitations on filing discrimination lawsuits.  This is completely false.

For an accurate, short description of the Act, see this AP article by Jim Abrams from yesterday:

The Lilly Ledbetter Act would reverse a 2007 Supreme Court ruling that a worker must file claims of wage discrimination within 180 days of the first decision to pay that worker less, even if the person was unaware of the pay disparity.

The 180-day limit, for better or worse, is untouched by the Ledbetter Act.  But it will apply to the time since the issuance of the last discriminatory paycheck, as it had in legal interpretation for decades -- until 2007.

Later in the AP article, Rep. Rob Andrews of New Jersey concisely summarizes the impact of that Supreme Court Ruling and the situation that the Ledbetter Act is meant to rectify:

"It should not become the law of the land that if you are an employer and can hide discrimination for 180 days you can get away with it."

For more on these bills, which now await action in the Senate, see the National Committee on Pay Equity.

New Congress will quickly take up the Ledbetter Fair Pay Restoration Act

One of the first acts to be taken up by the new Congress should be the Lily Ledbetter Fair Pay Restoration Act.  Hopefully this time, thanks to the GOP's numerous defeats in the recent elections, it won't be filibustered to death by the Senate Republicans.

From the NY Times on Monday:

President-elect Barack Obama and Democrats in Congress are planning swift action to overturn a Supreme Court decision that made it much harder for people to challenge discrimination in employment, education, housing and other fields.

...

The decision, involving a woman named Lilly M. Ledbetter, who had accused her employer of sex-based pay discrimination, was issued in May 2007. Since then, courts around the country have gone far beyond the facts of that case and cited it as a reason for rejecting lawsuits claiming discrimination based on race, sex, age and disability.In some cases, after initially ruling for employees, judges have reversed themselves and ruled in favor of employers. The judges said they had to switch because of the Supreme Court decision.

Ledbetter Fair Pay Act still in limbo

While we were traveling last week, we missed this news of a rally in support of the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act.  From Womenstake:

As the rally commenced, one by one the Congresswomen spoke to the crowd and explained why the passage of this Act is integral to closing the wage gap and guaranteeing pay equity. Following Senator Hillary Clinton’s address, Lilly Ledbetter shared her own story and gave a face to the unfortunate reality of pay discrimination. As the rally came to a close, the Congresswomen urged the crowd to contact their Senators and demand that they support this Act and demonstrate their commitment to equality.

Kay Steiger at RH Reality Check has more:

"My struggle today is about timing," Letbetter [sic] said when it was her turn to speak, "at least, on the surface." Women who lack the power to contest pay discrimination in court -- and many do because they discover their pay discrimination long after the legal six-month filing period has expired -- end up earning less over a lifetime. As Ledbetter noted, to this day it affects her pension and social security payments. "The only bill that would fix the problem created by the court is the Paycheck Fairness Act," Ledbetter said.

Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Restoration Act

Here is a bill I've been keeping a close eye on for nearly a year:

Under a measure sponsored by Senator Edward M. Kennedy, Democrat of Massachusetts, the court’s ruling that Ms. [Lilly] Ledbetter [of Alabama] failed to file a timely challenge to pay practices at a Goodyear Tire and Rubber Co. plant in Gadsden would effectively be overturned, though Ms. Ledbetter would not benefit directly.

Ms. Ledbetter, who earned thousands of dollars less than male colleagues doing similar supervisory work, was found by the court to have failed to make her claim within 180 days of the company’s pay policy decision. The sponsors of the bill want to clear up that requirement and straighten out what they see as a flawed ruling.

“Never mind that Ms. Ledbetter didn’t know about the discrimination when it first began,” Mr. Kennedy said. “Never mind that she had no means to learn of the discrimination because Goodyear kept salary information confidential. Never mind that Goodyear’s discrimination against Ms. Ledbetter continued each and every time it gave her a smaller paycheck than it gave her male colleagues.”

The House passed a similar bill last year soon after the court decision, but its backers have encountered resistance in the Senate and from the Bush administration, which argues it could spark a wave of lawsuits. Some Senate Republicans have reservations about the measure, but they intend to be careful in their opposition to avoid being portrayed as backing pay discrimination.

New corporate giveaway under guise of "fixing" the mortgage crisis

I am of mixed opinions of how or even whether to assist people and banks that got involved in the overinflated housing market over the last few years.  But one thing I am clear about is that giving out billions of dollars of taxpayers' money to the housing industry that reaped in mega-profits during those years is profoundly wrong.

Daniel Gross wrote in Slate last Monday (emphasis added):

The proposed tax break [now passed by the Senate] is hard to justify for several reasons. It does nothing for slow and steady companies that keep their heads and simply rack up profits year after year—and pay their taxes accordingly. Rather, it rewards the most reckless participants in the bubble. If you borrowed a ton of money to build spec houses in Miami and reported $2 billion in profits between 2002 and 2007 but gave up all those profits by notching a $2 billion loss this year, the extended carryback has a great deal of value. If you've been building affordable housing in Wichita, Kan., and booked $300 million in profits in those years, and then, through careful management of costs, managed to eke out a $5 million profit this year, it has no value. The big public homebuilders, whose shares rallied on the news of this potential tax break, didn't pay any windfall taxes on the bubble-era earnings. Why should they get an extraordinary post-bubble windfall?

Homebuilders argue that they need relief because their sector, which provides a great deal of domestic employment, is on the ropes, and they're finding it more difficult to raise capital. Which is as it should be. After bubbles pop, those who screwed up really badly fail and get taken over by creditors or opportunistic investors. Those who have sound underlying franchises but merely got a little carried away can survive if they take painful restructuring moves. This is what is known as market capitalism. For all the talk of a credit crunch, capital is still available—it's just not available on the easy terms managers had come to expect during the late Greenspan years. Citigroup, Merrill Lynch, and plenty of other firms tied to the mortgage/finance complex have taken steps to shore up their balance sheets and replenish lost capital. But investors, having been burned, demand more downside protection and better guaranteed returns. Thornburg Mortgage was forced to pay 18 percent interest for an emergency round of capital raising that allowed it to stave off bankruptcy. This is also what is known as market capitalism.

...

The proposal to give new tax breaks to homebuilders and banks is yet another example of the pernicious trend of privatizing profit and socializing losses, which is gnawing away at faith in the system. Dilute the shareholders, not the taxpayers.

Thankfully, the House of Representatives may take a far more sensible route, according to the Washington Post (emphasis added):

On Wednesday, the House Ways and Means Committee approved an $11 billion tax package that rejects help for home builders and offers a $7,500 tax credit to first-time home buyers rather than buyers of foreclosed properties.

Please keep paying attention so that we all do not get swindled in the end.

Republicans for Environmental Protection, all 70 of them, meet in San Antonio

A group called Republicans for Environmental Protection (REP) just had their national conference in our fair town.   Given the nature of GOP policies over the last, say, 27 years, the name sounds oxymoronic, perhaps an intentional obfuscation.  But I've followed this group for many years, and they do appear to be legitimate--pathetically ineffective, perhaps, but legitimate. 

The REP website proclaims that this conference is "Truly... our most exciting conference ever!"

The Express-News reports that at this most exciting conference, the keynote speaker, GOP pollster Whit Ayres, spoke to "crowd of about 70, including about a dozen Texans."

That reveals a lot about the current standing of conservation in the party of Theodore Roosevelt.

REP's website lists the awards they have given out since their founding in 1996.  Amongst these awards in one called the "Environmental Legislator of the Year," presumably limited to Republicans.  Here are the winners:

1996 - Rep. Christopher Shays, CT
1998 - Rep. Sherwood Boehlert, NY (now retired)
2000 - Sen. Jim Jeffords, VT (later become an Independent allied with Democrats; now retired)
2002 - Rep. Nancy Johnson, CT (defeated by a Democrat in 2006
2004 - Rep. Jim Greenwood, PA (now retired)

I guess they gave up after 2004, because I don't see any such award since then.  Rep. Shays is the lone survivor, and he is hanging by a thread.

"Conservation, stewardship, those are very bedrock conservative issues," said David Jenkins, the group's governmental affairs director. "The party has gotten away from that some."

Some, indeed.

Funding the Iraq War

I have plenty of my own opinions on the current situation in Congress regarding funding Bush's Iraq War, but while I try to gather time to express them, at least two others have expressed viewpoints with which I can get behind.

From South Texas Chisme:

Congressional Democrats who voted for the latest war funding bill have been taking quite a beating from anti-war Democrats. I opposed the clusterf**k in Iraq before we invaded and continue to oppose it. However, I'm inclined to give the Congressional Democrats who voted for the war funding bill a break. Even with the support of every Democrat (and a few Republicans), they did not have the votes to overcome a Presidential veto. The stubborn jerk the American people put in the Whitehouse (twice!), the guy who constantly uses the troops for photo ops while opposing active-duty pay raises and veterans benefits, would not hesitate to increase the troops suffering for political gain. Bush has stated that ending the Iraq war would be the next President's job. Bush has never cleaned up one of his own failures. How could anybody assume he'd do anything different now?

And, from McBlogger:

You know, there is something to be said for being as obstinate as Bush and cutting off all funding from the DoD. It's brinksmanship and it's a game the Democrats will likely lose. I like Olbermann's commentary because it fully encapsulates all the anger and frustration I and many others feel. I don't like it because it misplaces that anger and frustration which should rightfully be directed at two places... Connecticut native George Bush who vetoed the bill that placed a deadline on our involvement in Iraq and the Congressional Republicans who let that veto stand.

It is to them that I say 'We're done'. The American people see past your pathetic and cynical attempt to hold the men and women of the US Armed Services hostage to your failed policies and misguided attempts to remake the world. While we would LOVE nothing more than for Congressional Democrats to throw a giant wrench in everything, we know that isn't possible as long as Congressional Republicans feel free to continue enabling the disastrous President Bush.