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Sarah Palin's robo-calls to VA may have been illegal.
This is an important story because somehow Sarah Palin's organization got their hands on Virginia voting records they weren't supposed to have. Another organization was planning to mail out flyers to people telling them about their neighbor's voting habits. Again they aren't supposed to have that info. The only people who are supposed to have access to that info are party chairs and such. The head of the State Board of Elections is conducting an internal investigation to find out who leaked the voter info.
Very, VERY light.
The conventional wisdom is that a very light turnout is very bad for Deeds, but let's face it, he is expected to lose in a landslide. The election is going to get called in McDonnell's favor by 7:15pm.
IMO a very light turnout is bad news for McDONNELL, because Republican voters might assume that McDonnell's got it in the bag and they don't need to vote.
I was LOLing at the talk show guy claiming that the light turnout this year just means the teabaggers want to hold their anger in for 2010 and unleash it then when it counts. That tells me the teabagger/conservative crowd is kinda worried about the light turnout, too.
White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel has been telling Democratic members of the House Financial Services Committee that he supports amending the Investor Protection Act of 2009 -- a bill designed to beef up protection for investors -- in order to exempt small businesses from a requirement in the Sarbanes-Oxley Act that mandates audits of internal controls. The Sarbanes-Oxley Act was enacted in 2002 in the wake of accounting scandals at Enron and Worldcom that rocked investors and damaged confidence in the markets.
"This has enormous significance to individual investors," former Securities and Exchange Commission Chairman Arthur Levitt told the Huffington Post. "This is something the Republicans could never have accomplished, and what a bitter irony it is that the Democrats...are emasculating the best piece of legislation of the past 20 years."
Emanuel is said to support an amendment proposed by Rep. Carolyn Maloney (D-N.Y.) that would exempt firms with a market capitalization of less than $75 million from the reporting requirement. Firms under that limit had not yet been subject to the reporting requirement, although they were told they'd have to comply by 2010. Maloney's amendment would further delay implementation. Slightly more than half of all publicly-traded companies would be affected.
Another amendment, offered by freshman Rep. John Adler, a Democrat from New Jersey, would raise that limit to $700 million, exempting four out of five publicly-traded companies.
Last week, the bill's sponsor, Rep. Paul Kanjorski, (D-Penn.), thought he had fought off both amendments. Then the White House intervened. Final roll call votes are scheduled for Wednesday.
The White House position, according to those familiar with Emanuel's argument, is that small businesses should not be the focus of onerous regulations because they aren't the ones causing the problems. And if the Maloney amendment passes, it would allow Democrats to say they're champions of small business.
But these are still public companies, notes Lynn E. Turner, former chief accountant for the SEC from 1998 to 2001. They're not mom-and-pop shops. And if they've decided to go public in order to attract more money, they've agreed to certain costs. The transparency that comes with regular audits of internal controls should be one of them, he says.
"Democrats like to talk a lot about how the deregulatory Bush Administration caused the financial crisis. I'm frankly having a hard time understanding why some of those same Democrats are lending their support to legislation that would weaken protections against accounting fraud even more than Christopher Cox's SEC was willing to do," said Barbara Roper, director of investor protection at the Consumer Federation of America, in a reference to the much-maligned former SEC chairman under the previous administration. "And [the Obama administration] wonder[s] why people question their credibility as financial reformers?"
"It's the freshman members of Congress, fearful for reelection, that are pandering to interests that want to overturn this legislation," Levitt said. "It makes a mockery of what the Democratic Party has always stood for -- individual investors."
The amendments and the ensuing fight were first reported by the Huffington Post last week.
Roper and others say the amendments increase the chances of financial fraud. Current SEC Chairman Mary Schapiro wrote Kanjorski last week, expressing concern about Adler's amendment.
Gary Gensler, the current chairman of another federal market regulator, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, praised Sarbanes-Oxley in May during his swearing-in ceremony, referring to his role in its passage as a key Senate aide as being "one of the proudest moments of my career in government service." Sarbanes-Oxley brought "sweeping reforms of corporate responsibility, accounting and securities laws," he said at the time.
In response to a request for comment from the White House, an aide to Emanuel said: "The administration is working with Congress to pass landmark financial regulatory reform legislation that will protect consumers and prevent the kind of irresponsibility that caused the recession of the past two years."
Adler defended his amendment last week. His spokeswoman said the provision protects small businesses from "cost prohibitive regulations." Under Adler's definition, "small businesses" can be worth up to $700 million.
Levitt said the portion of Sarbanes-Oxley under attack "is the absolute touchstone of what individual investors care about -- this is the holy grail." In 2002, the bill passed the Senate by a 99-0 vote; it passed the House 423-3.
Kanjorski's spokeswoman released the following statement when reached for comment: "The legislative process is fluid. The Congressman is committed to having a strong investor protection bill, and to working closely with the Administration and Members on the Committee on the legislation."
That fluidity has consumer and investor advocates like Roper nervous. "Why are we having to waste our time defending reforms adopted in the wake of the last financial crisis when we should be focused on the reforms needed to address the current financial crisis?"
Read more at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/11/02/white-...
Read more at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/11/02/white-...
The report provides specific policy recommendations for the use of police in schools so that police officers deployed to schools are given the tools necessary for maintaining safe school environments while respecting the rights of students and the overall school climate.
“It is essential that the work of police on school campuses be guided by formal standards and policies,” said Catherine Y. Kim, staff attorney with the ACLU Racial Justice Program and co-author of the study. “As the number of police officers on school campuses across the country continues to grow, there is a real risk that without concrete guidelines, student behavior will be unnecessarily criminalized and school environments will become increasingly toxic.”
The study – or white paper – identifies six key policy guidelines that should govern the use of police in schools, including distinguishing between disciplinary misconduct to be handled by school officials and criminal offenses to be handled by law enforcement, and the promotion of non-punitive approaches to student behavior.
According to the ACLU’s white paper, the number of children arrested or referred to court for minor disciplinary infractions is on the rise. In South Carolina, for example, the single most common offense resulting in a juvenile court referral during the 2007-08 school year was “disturbing schools.”
During the same year in Florida, 15 percent of all delinquency referrals stemmed from school-related conduct, with 40 percent involving “disorderly conduct” or “misdemeanor assault and battery.”
Last year in Birmingham, Alabama, 19 percent of juvenile arrests resulting in court referral were for school misconduct and, among those, 33 percent were for fights, 29 percent were for disorderly conduct and 21 percent were for trespassing or harassment.
Studies have shown that improper school-based arrests dramatically increase the likelihood of students dropping out of school and reduce students’ chances of succeeding academically.
Children of color and students with disabilities are disproportionately represented among those students arrested or referred to court, exacerbating the disturbing national trend known as the “school-to-prison-pipeline,” wherein children are over-aggressively pushed out of public schools and into the juvenile and criminal justice systems.
ACLU Report Says Guidelines Needed for Police in Schools
"Asked about a possible Senate delay until 2010 on the legislation, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said, “I don’t think anybody has a clock ticking.” "
"“We’re not going to be bound by any timelines,” Reid told reporters in Washington today after a closed-door meeting of all Senate Democrats."
read the whole thing: http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087...
Few will be changed by this, if only those who see him as a fake really go to see this.
Get your vaccines!...then you won't have to worry about it anymore.
by Black Kos [Unsubscribe]
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Tue Nov 03, 2009 at 12:22:14 PM PST
Commentary, Deoliver47, Black Kos Editor
Guided by the Voices of the Ancestors.
I get enraged when some people say to me, when I’m attempting to discuss race, systemic racism and white privilege, "Oh, you people always bring up slavery... that was over a hundred years ago...ancient history..get over it!"
Yes. We bring it up ‘cause it is "up close and personal". Those of us who live in families where there are pictures on the mantel, or tales oft told round the table at family gatherings can call out their names and recite their stories. Every one of us who looks in the mirror at brown or beige or tan skin, who inherited it from a woman raped, knows of what I speak.
* Black Kos's diary :: ::
*
This is not ancient history. It is the basis for why we still live in a country where many black people still live in poverty, die earlier, have higher infant mortality, and go to prison in record numbers for longer periods of time. The hand of slavery is still upon us.
My mom spoke often of "Great Aunt Annie", who she knew during her childhood. Annie escaped at age 14 from a vicious mistress in Loudoun County via a barge owned by a freeman of color, and then headed overland, sleeping in the woods. Sometimes "good white people" would let her sleep on the porch with their dog, to stay warm. She made it all the way to Canada, but returned to settle in New Jersey , because Canada was too cold.
Those of us who don’t know individual stories know that not so far back in our family tree we find an ancestor enslaved, whether in the South or the North. Slavery built America. Slaves built my home city of New York. The TransAtlantic Slave Trade destroyed Africa. Scholars are still debating how many Africans were enslaved and died during the centuries of the trade. Current figures range from a "conservative" 10 million to estimates of 55 million. But there were those who survived the Middle passage, the Maafa, and wound up on our shores, who survived to bear live children, who survived hard labor and whippings and rape to die buried in unmarked graves... we call out their names, and pray for guidance.
I remember being told when I first started doing genealogy that I could "forget about" tracing the black side of my family . Slaves were recorded in the census with no names. They were just a number (age) and a color (black or mulatto) and a gender. That turned out not to be true; yes you have to work harder at it, but since we were "property", we were taxed, documented, sold and accounted for. I am grateful to AfriGeneas, the internet's largest black genealogy site, for providing me the support and the encouragement to "tear down the brick wall" of slavery and shine a light on my past, and the past of thousands of other searchers. They are building an extensive Slave Data Collection with information provided by families; Black, White and Native American.
A rich resource I uncovered during my enslavement period researches were the actual stories of over 2,300 former slaves. They named their kin, some named their enslavers, and I’ve been busy tracing their descendants, to provide them with a better understanding of those upon whose shoulders they stand.
I ask you to take but a few moments of time and listen to the voices of those who were enslaved. Listen as if they are sitting across from you. Telling you how it was. Telling you in their own voices.
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2009/11/3/798896/...
LA Clippers owner agrees to pay $2.725 million
African-Americans Hit Especially Hard By Weakened Economy
The problem is that you get a free credit report (minus the credit score) using this site. Then, you are automatically charged $14.95 per month to get their reporting service, which is nothing more than an alert whenever someone searches your credit history.
This is all in addition to the fact that every American is already entitled to a free annual credit report, which you can get at annualcreditreport.com.
There is no reason to get these services, and nothing can truly be benefited by checking your credit score daily. In fact, once every four months is usually enough, or less.
So, the federal government has started their own, counter-commercials. According to their own band of singing fellas:
“Other sites may turn your head; they say they’re free, don’t be misled. Once you’re in their tangled web, they’ll sell you something else instead.”
Government Launching Attack On “Free” Credit Report Sites
Lobbyists Quit in Record Numbers
Now, if only the health care, banking, and climate bill lobbyists would just leave.
Fifty-seven percent say Obama has been a better president than George W. Bush; only a third say Bush’s track record was better.
“Compared to Obama, Bush does fairly well among southerners and rural voters. But even in those categories, a majority still says Obama has done a better job than Bush,” says Holland.
Obama’s numbers have generally been far worse among southerners: A recent Research 2000 poll for Daily Kos found that Obama’s favorability rating in the south is a meager 28%. Another recent survey found that a majority of southerners either don’t believe Obama was born in the United States or are not sure.
CNN Poll: Majority Of Southerners Says Obama Has Done Better Job Than Bush
by BAR managing editor Bruce A. Dixon
This Halloween a couple of persistent spooks haunt Congressional Democrats and the White House on the health care front.
The first is the overwhelming public sentiment in favor of a government-run, everybody in nobody out Medicare For All type health care system. The proper name for this kind of setup, single payer, is rarely mentioned or acknowledged directly, except in tandem with exculpatory phrases like “...but it's politically impossible...” or “...I'm in favor of it but we don't have the votes...” or dismissed with in favor of some “...uniquely American solution...”
The fact is, single payer is so popular that Congressional Democrats have taken to describing their so-called public option to voters in terms that make it hard to tell the difference between it and a real single payer system. This deliberate falsehood has been perpetrated by some Democrats in the progressive caucus from the beginning of the current congress, and it continues to this day.
Single payer partisans were the first to call it. Back in May Kip Sullivan of Physicians for a National Health Care Plan detailed the differences between the real public option and the one described in glowing terms by progressive legislators. He called it a “bait and switch” job. And when Howard Dean declared on Democracy Now that the public option is best thought of as Medicare, Harvard's David Himmelstein labeled him a liar. That kind of deception works fine as long as there are multiple versions of the Democratic health care bill, each well over a thousand pages long in dense legalese, studded with hundreds of cryptic references to other legislation. It holds up as long as most people don't know the effective date at which the uninsured will begin to be covered under the president's plan is 2013. It's good enough as corporate media stick to the script and mention few or none of these things, and the day of reckoning is months or years away. Lies are good and useful things, until you get caught.
Thanks to the relentless work of single payer forces, including some members of the Congress, the web of deception around the public option is unraveling. The day the Senate version of the health care bill was finalized even Rachel Maddow got around to posing many but not all of the same deal-breaking questions Kip Sullivan, PNHP and others single payer activists were asking five months ago, questions that the public option's sponsors couldn't answer then, and can't answer now.
How can the public option “compete” with private insurers to lower their costs when it will be limited to only a few million people?
How can the public option “compete” with private insurers when its pool will be disproportionately poor and sick?
Why must we wait until 2013 for the Democratic plan to cover the uninsured?
The behavior of some leading Democrats on single payer is positively schizophrenic, poo-pooing, downplaying and dismissing single payer while they describe their incredibly complicated some-of-you-in and most-of-you-out versions of the public option and the “robust” public option as Medicare For All in everything but name and unique American-ness. There are, of course other questions Maddow and company could ask whose answers, or non-answers would be even more damning. But these are a good start.
The second scary trick looming ahead of Democrats is of course the 2010 election cycle. When the truth comes out, and voters eventually see the gap between what they want, what Democratic leaders are claiming for their versions of the public option, and what they seem likely to get, it's easy to envision a lot of very unhappy Democratic voters, and not so easy to predict what they might do. Many of them won't vote Republican in any case, but might stay home in numbers big enough to tip the balance in some congressinal districts.
The foundation of the president's plan, and the plans of Democratic leaders isn't single payer, it isn't Medicare For All, and it's not even any kind of public option, robust or otherwise. The foundation of of their health care reform remains bailing out the private insurance companies, guaranteeing them a lucrative market by forcing Americans to buy their policies, some of them with taxpayer subsidies and funds squeezed from existing Medicare, Medicaid and other care for those at high risk and low incomes.
Democrats can lie about or suppress discussion on these things for a little while to come. But the truth will come out, much of it well before the 2010 elections. The standard alibi of blue dog Democrats has always been that they can't support any “robust public option,” let alone single payer because their districts are sooooo conservative. But this doesn't hold water. Many blue dog districts are among the highest in proportions of the uninsured, and rife with bankruptcies, caused in large part by unpayable medical bills. These blue dogs have been shielded from progressive challengers in primary elections by none other than Rahm Emanuel for two or three terms now, and they expect that protection again for standing with private insurers against the voters of their districts.
2010 is beginning to look a lot more like Clinton's first mid-term election, in which Democrats lost dozens of seats and the political initiative passed to Republicans for the next 14 years.
If Democrats refuse to pass a health care bill that is very close to Medicare For All, they are storing up trouble for the near future. They only thing, increasingly, that congressional Democrats have to recommend them is that they aren't Republicans. Whether that will be enough to re-elect them in 2010 is anybody's guess.
Private insurance companies have a business model to protect. They are making a killing. 120 killings a day, in fact, and 45,000 a year. Single payer activists, whose aim is to take private insurance companies out of the health care equation, aim to raise the price of doing business for private insurers to unacceptable levels with tactics that have begun to include nonviolent civil disobedience in and around the offices of insurers, who are the only real death panels.
Congress and the White House are continually bombarded with letters, phone calls, faxes and emails demanding the consideration of Medicare For All, HR 676, simple and effective single payer legislation introduced by Congressmen Conyers and Kucinich, and sponsored by 90 of their colleagues in this congress. The initiative in the struggle for universal health care remains where it always has been, in the streets and in the public and private meetings of single payer advocates. The harder they press, the more divided congressional Democrats become, between those who adamantly oppose single payer AND the imaginary public option, and the faction that keeps telling us their “robust public option” is so much like single payer that we'll hardly know the difference.
If you want to become involved in the fight for universal, everybody in, nobody out health care, go to www.mobilizeforhealthcare.org and sign up to be included in the flow of information and connected with like minded activists in your city or town. It's time to demand what most people voted for last year. Health care for everybody. Now.
I can only hope that the Palins and Levi Johnston fade into permanent obscurity.
This is what Sarah Palin needs to do:
A) Stop fighting with a teenage boy
B) Draw up some papers for Levi to relinquish his parental rights in exchange for a payoff. That's the only way she's going to get rid of him.
C) Stop fighting with a 19 year old child.
* Per CNN, voters in Virginia did not see their state's gubernatorial race as an opportunity to voice opposition to Barack Obama. A 55 percent majority of voters said that the President was not a factor in their vote, and an additional 18 percent indicated their vote in Virginia was one of support in the President. Just 24 percent of voters indicated that their vote was one of opposition to President Obama. The numbers out of New Jersey are not terribly different, with 60 percent saying that Barack Obama played no role in their gubernatorial vote, 19 percent saying that their vote was one in support of the President, and 20 percent saying that their vote was in opposition to President Obama.
Concludes CNN, this is not a referendum on Barack Obama.
* Chuck Todd reports that Barack Obama's approval rating among Virginia voters stands at 51 percent (just under the 52.6 percent of the vote he received in the state last November) and 57 percent in New Jersey (almost exactly the same as the 57.1 percent of the vote he earned in that state last November). In other words, exit polling indicates President Obama has not really lost supporters over the past year.
http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2009/11/3/800...
I'm betting on less than half of the turnout from last year in this election. There's a lot of people who think-incorrectly-the mission was accomplished with Obama's election. Personally, I'm starting to wonder if that sentiment ("we're done, we got our candidate elected!") will carry over to VA's GOP next year.
And THAT kind of sentiment should worry YOU because if blacks only vote for blacks, the GOP paid you for nothing because Bob McDonnell isn't black therefore blacks wouldn't be voting for him anyway, right? The last time I recall a black person running as a Republican was back in the 90s.
Now as far as turnout, I will predict it will be about 46%. Everyone was saying that the turnout was very, VERY light. I don't know if that's good for McDonnell (b/c everyone is expecting Deeds to lose in a landslide). What it suggests is that a lot of people stayed home and didn't vote. Who didn't vote remains to be seen. Right now, the returns are showing a 65-70% advantage to McDonnell, but the returns are coming in very red, rural counties.
If they haven't called this election by 9pm, McDonnell might be in trouble. I expect the final result to be 56-44 in favor of McDonnell, but there's always the chance this could be a repeat of 2005.
Whatever percentage above the 3-6% of the black vote McD gets is because we went out and worked for it.
Winsome Sears against Bobby Scott, 2004 (I believe). Got trounced. There's one already in for next year, and another may be coming.
That's 10-15 years ago. If the GOP wants more black votes, they need to start running more black candidates. Are they up to it? I don't think so.
The AP has called the race. What I want to know is, ok, sure, but the State Board of Elections is reporting very few results from the urban areas of Virginia so although I'm 99% sure McDonnell won, how can they call the race when they haven't gotten any urban results yet?
Maybe Fake Virginia doesn't count again, eh?
8:00. Not bad.
I'm just glad it's finally over. I started working on this campaign a week after my daughter was born...and she's crawling/trying to talk now.
and, that's the best I can do for you about McDonnell.
That's enough for me.
AWWWWWW!! :>) Just how is the "little one"? :>)
God bless her!! :>)
WELLLLL! I guess she's "takin' ova!!" :>)
Watch out!! :>)