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February 12, 2015 06:43 AM UTC

Thursday Open Thread

  • 27 Comments
  • by: Colorado Pols

"Vote: the instrument and symbol of a freeman's power to make a fool of himself and a wreck of his country."

–Ambrose Bierce

Comments

27 thoughts on “Thursday Open Thread

  1. Wackadoodles taking on the more pressing issue of our time….yoga pants.

    A Brief History of the GOP War on Yoga and Its Pants

    Let Montana state Representative David Moore, a Republican from Missoula, explain the need for greater modesty. After a pack of naked bicyclists pedaled through his hometown, Moore decided the state needed to strengthen its indecent exposure laws.

    The proposal would expand indecent exposure law to include any nipple exposure, including men’s, and any garment that “gives the appearance or simulates” a person’s buttocks, genitals, pelvic area or female nipple.

    The Republican from Missoula said tight-fitting beige clothing could be considered indecent exposure under his proposal.

    “Yoga pants should be illegal in public anyway,” Moore said after the hearing.'

    1. Another example of how the last thing these people care about is jobs, and economic well being of their constituents judging by the legislation they give top priority.

      1. And as usual with these kinds of regulations, you don't want most outlaws to wear yoga pants. Only law-abiding citizens should wear yoga pants. Law enforcement officers need the fullest authority to enforce restrictions on yoga pants; because they're so dangerous, I suspect that the use of yoga pants as "less lethal" weapons will become more common among law enforcement in the near future.

    2. What's this Montana guy got against the First Amendment?

      From the vanguard of such constitutional protection:

      PORTLAND Oregon (Reuters) – Thousands of bicyclists, many of them stark naked, poured into the streets of Portland, Oregon on Saturday night for the 11th annual World Naked Bike Ride, a protest that promotes bike riding as an alternative to driving cars…

      "This is a party, but it's also a protest," said Carl Larson, a ride spokesman. "It is about oil dependence, cycling vulnerability and body" image.

  2. …and @Pontifex laying the wood to those who think Armegeddon will solve all of our ills:

     

    Pope Francis: A Christian Who Doesn't Protect Creation Doesn't Care About The Work Of God

     

    “A Christian who does not protect creation, who does not let it grow, is a Christian who does not care about the work of God; that work that was born from the love of God for us,” Francis continued. “And this is the first response to the first creation: protect creation, make it grow.”

    “Even for us there is a responsibility to nurture the Earth, to nurture creation, to keep it and make it grow according to its laws,” he said. “We are the lords of creation, not its masters.”

    That conclusion, and his focus on protecting creation, as he calls it, has angered some conservative Catholics in the U.S., who see it as further evidence that Francis is pushing a liberal agenda that slights traditional Catholic talking points on issues like abortion and gay marriage.

    Gawd, I'm loving me some Papa Francis today!

     

    1. …and while the Repubs are gnashing their teeth over the 'War on Coal', (which is a geological war, not a political one – the shallow, cheap coal is all but gone), this is happening:

      #1 US Coal Company Peabody (BTU) Lost Over $700 Million in 2014
      #2 US Coal Company Arch Coal (ACI) Lost Over $500 Million in 2014
      #3 US Coal Company Alpha Natural Resources (ANR) Lost Over $800 Million in 2014

      #4 Alpha Natural Resources reported their 4th Quarter and year-end (unaudited) results this morning. Net loss was $874 million dollars.

      In spite of our gains in green energy in Colorado, we are still heavily coal-centric in our generation.  Even with nearly every geologist and economist agreeing that a coal-future will be a folly for lots of reasons (economic and environmental), our Colorado PUC is still bent on giving the blessing to Xcel Energy to retrofit old coal plants and dramatically extend their life.  It is absolute madness.  Let's start treating the legacy fleet for what it is: a stranded asset that is going to put a noose around the energy consumers neck if we don't dump them.

      It's way past time to move on…we didn't leave the Stone Age because we ran out of stones.  Fortunately for the Stone Age, they didn't have a body politic who couldn't go to work without their knee pads.

       

  3. Trickle Down Economics still the ideal for Republicans

    Ohio Gov. John Kasich (R) wants to mimic a tax cut experiment that has already brought fiscal calamity and public service cuts to a state 600 miles west of his.

    Kasich describes his $696 million tax cut as a helping hand to small businesses. But the design of the cut would put the bulk of that benefit into the hands of just a few high-income business entities with a handful of employees while providing just a few hundred dollars each to the vast majority of the people who would benefit, according to an analysis by the Cleveland Plain Dealer. For nine out of every 10 companies that would benefit from the Kasich cut, the total yearly savings would be $364 or even less.

    For the remaining 10 percent of companies affected, savings could be as high as $8,000 a year, a number that Kasich administration officials acknowledge is far too low to create even a single job per company. Instead of pitching the cut as a direct job creator, the officials are marketing it as an “every little bit helps” move for hardworking entrepreneurs.

     

    The problem with such a move is that it doesn’t effectively target actual small-scale business enterprises that hire people and generate economic activity. The kinds of small businesses thatpoliticians usually talk about would also benefit from the move, but the way the cut is designed means it would also be available to many business entities that are organized under small business sections of the tax code, but which do not operate as traditional commercial enterprises. Savvy individuals can structure their personal revenue streams under the business tax code using what are called “pass-through entities,” and then take advantage of preferential tax treatment like what Kasich is proposing.

    And though it's quite obvious the books are never balanced when using this failed theory, they are always able to squeeze the poor and the Middle Class in some way or another while making sure the greatest among us remain that way.

    1. Thanks for that post, Zap.

      That drum must be beaten increasingly until every working person in the United States understands what is at stake and who is on their side. I wonder what our resident conservatives think of the idea of a net asset tax? It was heavily supported by that lil' ol' populist, Huey Long.

      Part of the justification for the concept I found at Wiki…

      those who benefit the most "owe the most back to the society that permits the capitalist system to exist."

      I think Robin Hood may have said that, too.

       

    2. And also while convincing middle class voters that this benefits them by allowing them to "keep more of your own money". Never mind their policies make for less of our own money in the first place and we are mostly "enjoying" the tax cut you get because you're earning less to pay on while a tiny elite pays a lower percentage on their ever more enormous piece of the pie.

      And Dems mainly let them get away with it for fear of looking like radicals who want to "punish" the rich. Evidently the rich think they're being punished if the gap between them and the peasants doesn't keep growing and the peasants have enough to enjoy decent lives too. And Dems play along, hoping to show everyone they aren't commies by accepting all sorts of discredited cuts and austerity so they can say.. see, we're almost as responsible as the Republicans (whose polices haven't ever worked but we bow to their messaging hegemony because we're cowards who can only hope you'll forgive us for being Dems and vote for us once in a while). 

  4. NY Times: Unauthorized Immigrants’ Access to Driver’s Licenses Is at Risk

    While the Colorado Republicans do not have the votes to repeal the license program, they were able to gut its funding in a joint budget committee vote last month. They rejected a request from the D.M.V. to use about $166,000 in fees it collected from applicants to continue paying for the five offices and several staff members who run the program for thousands of immigrant applicants. The measure will stand unless lawmakers amend the budget, which could happen: On Thursday, Jessie Ulibarri, a Democratic senator, plans to introduce a measure that would restore funding to the program.

    State Senator Kevin Grantham, a Republican member of the budget committee who voted against releasing additional funds for the license program, said he worried about the message the program sent. “We are endorsing them being here illegally by giving them a state-sanctioned license, which is a privilege,” he said. “That is not what our resources should be used for.”

    Tanya Broder, a senior lawyer at the National Immigration Law Center, which favors licenses for noncitizens, said it was not surprising to see resistance even in states where licenses have been issued. “There will be many steps forward, and a step or two back,” she said.

    What is surprising is that it happened in Colorado, a swing state where Latinos make up about 14 percent of eligible voters and are starting to be elected in larger numbers to the State Legislature.

  5. Privatize the Post Office even more! Uh…

    A federal jury Wednesday awarded nearly $15 million to seven Commerce City warehouse workers who accused a trucking company of segregating workers by race, calling blacks "lazy, stupid Africans" and punishing those who complained…

    The company handles and transports mail for the Postal Service and private vendors, including United Parcel Service and FedEx.

  6. Drill, drill, drill. Kill, kill, kill.

    Officials have confirmed that the first gray wolf seen around the Grand Canyon in 70 years was killed in December by a hunter in southern Utah after he mistook it for coyote.

    The three-year-old female, named “Echo” through a contest held with hundreds of schoolchildren, was the first gray wolf to be spotted in the region since the 1940s. After being collared in Wyoming in early January 2014, the wolf had ventured at least 750 miles into the new territory — further evidence that gray wolf populations are coming back from the brink of extinction after decades of reckless killings.

    The Endagered Species Act is probably what R's refer to when they say regulation is holding us all back. Or maybe they just need to see "papers, please" for any being they don't like in their 'hood.

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