yallerdawg
yallerdawg's JournalTaxed Enough Already?
Our new super-majority Republican legislature is nearing the end of the 2015 session.
We are halfway to across-the-board 5-9% cuts in Alabama government.
The 5% cut to the state Medicaid program would include a loss of 2 to 1 Federal match, so a loss of around $100,000,000 to Alabama Medicaid.
They are saying we have to make them fix it - but all they are getting is, "Taxes are too high!"
Rep. Steve Clouse, R-Ozark, sponsor of the budget bill, said he was still hopeful the Legislature would approve tax increases to offset the most severe cuts.
The budget plan would spend $1.64 billion from the General Fund, a reduction of $204 million, 11 percent, from this year.
"People are going to die because of this budget," Todd said.
http://www.al.com/news/index.ssf/2015/05/alabama_house_debates_budget_t.html
New Pew poll.
Hillary stands strong!
Though wide majorities of Democrats across all demographic groups view Clinton positively, her favorability rating is lower among younger Millennials (ages 18-25), who were too young to vote in Clinton’s 2008 race. About two-thirds (65%) of younger Millennial Democrats view Clinton favorably. That compares with 79% of older Millennial Democrats (those ages 26-34). Among older Democratic age cohorts, 82% of Gen Xers, 76% of Boomers and 79% of Silents view Clinton favorably.
As was the case in August 2007, liberal Democrats view Clinton more favorably (81%) than do conservative and moderate Democrats (74%). Unlike eight years ago, there are virtually no gender differences in views of Clinton among Democrats: 78% of Democratic women and 75% of Democratic men view her favorably.
http://www.people-press.org/2015/05/19/republicans-early-views-of-gop-field-more-positive-than-in-2012-2008-campaigns
Senate Democrats Have a Plan
A coalition of Senate Democrats who’ve long opposed new trade agreements, led by Sherrod Brown of Ohio, say they are planning to throw up procedural roadblocks and offer amendments that would expand worker protections and undermine GOP support for the fast-track measure. While they can’t win the battle, Brown and his allies hope their resistance will stoke popular sentiment against the bill and encourage Democrats to vote against it in the House, where Republican leaders warn they still need about 20 more votes for approval.
“The handwriting’s on the wall,” Brown said of the prospects of beating the bill in the Senate. But, he said: “There’s real opportunity in the House to defeat it.”
“We’re going to work as hard as we can to defeat this legislation,” added Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) in an interview Thursday. “Time is on our side. The longer we keep it on the floor, the more the American people understand what a disastrous agreement this is, the better it is for us.”
More plan at: http://www.politico.com/story/2015/05/trade-bill-democrats-117978.html?hp=b1_l2
Senate to Begin Debate on Trade Bill This Week
Facts at: http://www.politico.com/story/2015/05/senate-reversal-debate-on-trade-bill-117963.html
“It’s been years, decades even, since we’ve had a real debate over U.S. trade policy on the Senate floor,” Senate Finance Committee Chairman Orrin Hatch said. “And I’m quite certain that we’ve got a spirited debate ahead of all us.”
From Senate Sideline, Elizabeth Warren Is Face of Attack on Trade Bill
Keepin' it real?
She does not sit on the committee where the trade package was written. She has never taken part in negotiations over its legislative language. When Democrats held a news conference after the measure failed on a procedural vote Tuesday, she was not there, nor did she speak on the floor after it passed on Thursday, as many of her colleagues did.
Yet it is Ms. Warren who has become the national face of opposition to Mr. Obama on the trade package. She was the focus of the president’s ire last week when he attacked fellow Democrats as wrongheaded after his efforts to woo his party on the issue went nowhere.
“The truth of the matter is that Elizabeth is, you know, a politician like everybody else,” the president said in widely quoted remarks.
More at link: http://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/16/us/politics/elizabeth-warren-emerges-as-trade-bills-detractor-in-chief.html?_r=0
Get your "True Detective" on!
by Tess Lynch, "grantland.com"
Season 1 didn’t set out to drive you to subreddits looking for answers; that was a result of meditating on a meticulously thought-out story delivered in increments, when so much of what we watch is available in binge format. It was so rich that it took on a life of its own, an online vitality that created a second story of viewer interaction and hypothesizing. We created our own companion piece, a collaborative effort of web trawls and deep-reads of sci-fi we’d never encountered before, and the way it sparked our imaginations was a testament to how much trust we’d placed in Pizzolatto himself to guide us toward our final destination (or entrust him to let others take the wheel). As Molly Lambert pointed out in her summary of the first season and its finale, this was a story about a journey, not a set of questions with corresponding and satisfying answers. What conclusions it offered couldn’t possibly satisfy the curiosity it had implanted in our collective consciousness, but it was never really about answers in the first place. One thing’s for sure: If next season is anything like the last, it’ll all be about the kicks we get on the way there, and the ones we scribble while we’re on the road.
From digging deeper in a huffpo post.
More and more and more at: http://grantland.com/hollywood-prospectus/true-detective-season-2-what-is-the-secret-occult-history-of-the-u-s-transportation-system/
President Obama's perspective
That other candidate - April 2015
President Obama on TPP
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