March 2, 2015

Private police carry guns and make arrests, and their ranks are swelling

Michael Youlen stopped a driver in a Manassas, Virginia, apartment complex on a recent night and wrote the man a ticket for driving on a suspended license. With a badge on his chest and a gun on his hip, Youlen gave the driver a stern warning to stay off the road.

The stop was routine police work, except for one fact: Youlen is not a Manassas officer. The citation came courtesy of the private force he created that, until recently, he called the "Manassas Junction Police Department."

He is its chief and sole officer.

He is a force of one.

And he is not alone. Like more and more Virginians, Youlen gained his police powers using a little-known provision of state law that allows private citizens to petition the courts for the authority to carry a gun, display a badge and make arrests. The number of "special conservators of the peace" — or SCOPs, as they are known — has doubled in Virginia over the past decade to roughly 750, according to state records.

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/chi-private-police-20150301-story.html#page=1

Right wingers dream come true.....

March 2, 2015

Republicans say they have a plan if the Supreme Court rules against Obamacare. They don't.

by Ezra Klein

On Sunday night, three Senate Republicans — Lamar Alexander, John Barrasso and Orrin Hatch — published a Washington Post op-ed promising that if the Supreme Court rules against Obamacare and rips subsidies out of federal exchanges, "Republicans have a plan to protect Americans harmed by the administration’s actions."

The problem is they don't have a plan. And Republicans spent the last week showing that even if they did have a plan, there's no way the House would pass it.

Let's start with GOP plan, such as it exists, or doesn't. "First and most important," the three senators write, "we would provide financial assistance to help Americans keep the coverage they picked for a transitional period."

How long is this transitional period? What happens when it runs out? They don't say.

Next, they promise to "give states the freedom and flexibility to create better, more competitive health insurance markets offering more options and different choices."

There's nothing wrong with this idea, but to a great extent, it already exists. Section 1332 of the Affordable Care Act permits states to design replacements for Obamacare so long as their new system covers as many people with insurance of similar quality. So far, no state has tried. (To be clear, the waivers begin in 2017, but as of yet, no state seems to be seriously preparing to use them. Though that may change!)

more

http://www.vox.com/2015/3/1/8131269/republicans-obamacare-supreme-court


And...that's it. Seriously. There are no more ideas to be found; no more detail to be had. This isn't a plan. It's the barest possible sketch of some nascent ideas that could, one day, be used as the basis for a plan.

March 2, 2015

Monday Toon Roundup 2- The Rest

Bibi







1%





Economy





Security





Putin

March 2, 2015

Monday Toon Roundup 1-Deny, Deny, Deny

March 2, 2015

It's Deja Vu all over again with the republican asshats

Now...what country DOES have DEMONSTRATED ties to Al Q? Hmmmmm......



Any why don't the republican asshats ever make that connection? Hmmmmmm.....

March 1, 2015

Court rules that Courtney Love is not as famous as Marlon Brando

Courtney Love has failed to get a libel suit against her dismissed by claiming that her fame meant her remarks about fashion designer Dawn Simorangkir were in the public interest.

Simorangkir has been seeking redress from Love since the singer accused the designer of theft and prostitution – first on Twitter six years ago and later during an interview on Howard Stern's radio show in 2013.


image:
Love's lawyers argued that the singer's comments "were made in connection with an issue of public interest, which she identifies as being derived from the media coverage of the prior litigation between the parties, coupled with the 'celebrity' status of each of them". As a precedent, they cited a case that involved Marlon Brando, in which it was ruled that stories about the actor's housekeeper being included in his will were in the public interest due to the level of Brando's celebrity.

But according to The Hollywood Reporter, a California court has ruled that Love is nowhere near as famous as Brando. "Nothing in the record in this case suggests that defendant has the public interest or following that Brando had; the only evidence in the record is her self-serving and factually shallow claim, coupled with a profession of celebrity by one of her lawyers," the court said in its ruling. "Nor is there is any socially important implication in this case akin to that presented by Brando’s gift to his housekeeper to the exclusion of his heirs at law."

Read more at http://www.nme.com/news/courtney-love/83184#QJ4KhBjMsxIkH2ib.99

March 1, 2015

Wisconsin high school unveils $662,000 locker room renovations

It's been said that a town with money is a little like a mule with a spinning wheel: No one knows how he got it, and danged if he knows how to use it.

But when Arrowhead High School in Hartland, Wisc., came into a $275,000 donation, the school knew exactly what it wanted to build.

The donor eventually provided a total of $361,224 to totally renovate the boys and girls basketball locker rooms, as well as the boys and girls team rooms, a media room and football storage space and 25 percent of the money needed to revamp the heating and ventilation system.

The school provided $224,226 to complete the girls and boys toilet and shower room renovations, as well as the remaining money needed for the heating and ventilation repairs, some $56,500.

more
http://www.si.com/extra-mustard/2015/02/27/wisconsin-high-school-locker-rooms-662000-renovations

One might hope that their library and science labs are in such great shape…..

on edit, they also have been turning their football field into a palace….

http://www.cudahynow.com/blogs/communityblogs/101621188.html

March 1, 2015

In South Sudan, a chance to be children again

Pibor, South Sudan - In the relative cool shade provided by two giant water-starved trees in the unforgiving South Sudanese bush sits patiently a large dishevelled group of children. Sitting in front of them are an earnest group of adults.

On approaching this group you could be forgiven for thinking this was a field trip undertaken by a local school. It's not until you get a little closer that you notice that most of these children are carrying high velocity automatic weapons.

A little unnerving seeing such weapons in such tiny hands.

The warring Cobra faction, after months of delicate negotiations, were in the process of handing over 300 war-weary child soldiers to the care of UNICEF.

With a few suspicious frowns, but mostly in good spirits, the boys laid down their automatic weapons under the watchful eyes of the SPLA (Sudanese Peoples Army), local police, UNICEF and the Guvnor of Pibor.

When asked what they wanted to do as soon as they had freedom, the most common answer was, overwhelmingly: "I want to go to school and learn everything I can."

more
http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/inpictures/2015/02/south-sudan-child-soldiers-150217131933638.html

I hope they get that chance.

March 1, 2015

Why Elizabeth Warren is declaring war on an obscure trade policy

Populist crusader Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren has picked her next big fight, and this one could create real problems for the Obama Administration.

Her beef is with a piece of the massive Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal that the Obama Administration is promoting. It's called investor-state dispute settlement, and it gives a foreign corporation the power to fight a government outside of the normal judicial system.

"The name may sound mild, but don't be fooled," Warren wrote in a Washington Post op-ed. "Agreeing to ISDS in this enormous new treaty would tilt the playing field in the United States further in favor of big multinational corporations. Worse, it would undermine U.S. sovereignty."

This is a big deal, not least because TPP is huge; its members account for 40 percent of the world's economy. Add in the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership being negotiated with European countries — which also has investor-state dispute settlement provisions — and you have a majority of the global economy. That means the ISDS provisions in these trade agreements could affect a sizable share of the world's corporations.
more
http://www.vox.com/2015/2/28/8124057/investor-state-dispute-settlement-elizabeth-warren

March 1, 2015

Americans are making a big mistake about health care

Updated by Matthew Yglesias

If you want to understand the politics of health care in the United States, you really need to understand this finding from a recent Economist/YouGov poll that shows why it's so difficult for wonky ideas — of either a left-wing or right-wing slant — to gain much toehold with the American people.
(poll shows most people don't think their health care is subsidized)
The way people in the policy community see it, this is totally backwards. Almost everyone who has health insurance in the United States gets help from the government to afford it. For the elderly, that's Medicare. For the disabled and the poor, that's Medicaid. For full-time workers it's the tax subsidy for employer-provided health insurance.

Some of what you see in this poll is a simple misunderstanding — older Americans either don't know what Medicare is or mistakenly believe they have "paid for" their benefits with earlier taxes.

But Americans who get insurance from their jobs are also benefitting from a massive government program. A program whose existence is hidden from sight but is nonetheless quite real and substantial.

more

http://www.vox.com/2015/3/1/8125785/insurance-subsidy-poll