GOP: Increasing Taxes for the Poor and Cutting Them for the Affluent

While a few national level Republicans - mostly disingenuous would be GOP presidential candidates - are feigning concern over growth wealth disparity, at the state level, GOP controlled legislatures are showing the real GOP agenda: raising taxes on the poor while cutting them for the wealthy.  It's the same old reverse Robin Hood scheme that has defined the GOP for some time now. If Hillary Clinton is looking for ways to slam whoever her GOP challenger may be, perhaps mapping out and exposing these efforts can be a part of it.  The New York Times as details on the GOP's sick agenda.  Here are excerpts:

A number of Republican-led states are considering tax changes that in many cases would have the effect of cutting taxes on the rich and raising them on the poor.

Conservatives are known for hating taxes but particularly hate income taxes, which they say have a greater dampening effect on growth. Of the 10 or so Republican governors who have proposed tax increases, nearly all have called for increases in consumption taxes, which hit the poor and middle class harder than the rich.

Favorite targets for the new taxes include gas, e-cigarettes, and goods and services in general. . . . At the same time, some of those governors — most notably Mr. LePage, Nikki R. Haley of South Carolina and John R. Kasich of Ohio — have proposed significant cuts to their state income tax.

A new report suggests that these states could be creating financial problems down the road. The strategy of shifting from income taxes to consumption taxes has caused huge budget shortfalls in Kansas and, more recently, North Carolina, which announced a budget shortfall of nearly half a billion dollars.

Taxing the top fifth of earners at the same rate as the middle class would bring in $200.5 billion to state and local coffers, the report says. Taxing just the top 1 percent at the same rate as the middle class would bring in $88.5 billion, 10 times the amount needed to restore five years’ worth of cuts to higher education. The report also breaks it down state by state, saying that Texas and Florida, at the top of the list, would raise about $40 billion each if they taxed the top 20 percent at the middle-class rate, while Kansas and North Carolina would raise about $2 billion each.

“If more money’s flowing to the top, and the top folks are taxed at lower rates, inevitably that’s a problem for state budgets.”

Religion as an Evil: Egypt's Anus Inspector

Ridiculous cretin "Dr." Louis

One has to wonder at times why the Abrahamic religions are so obsessed with sex and the suppression of what modern science and medical knowledge have found to be normal sexual activities and sexual orientations.  An obsession with homosexuality is found across conservative Judaism, Christianity and Islam.  And none of these "godly folk" will face the fact that (i) the Old Testament was written by ignorant goat herders and (ii) nowadays, Mohammed would have been likely committed to an insane asylum.  Islam, however, seems hell bent on winning the prize for the most bizarrely obsessed with all things gays. As BuzzFeed is reporting, in Egypt the police medical examiners actually inspect the anus of anyone suspected of homosexuality.  This reality makes the bitter old queens in dresses at the Vatican almost look rational.  Here are highlights on this sick, bizarre practice:

When asked to explain what Cairo’s medical inspectors look for when they examine someone who’s been arrested for homosexuality, Dr. Maged Louis picked up a pen and started sketching an oval with sharp points on both ends. 

“The shape of the hole will change,” he said. The anus “won’t be normal any more and will look like the female vagina.”

More than 150 people have been arrested on charges of homosexuality since President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi took power just under two years ago, the largest roundup of alleged LGBT people in more than a decade in Egypt. Anal exams are a routine part of the investigation in such cases, and Louis has a role in overseeing all of them. He is the deputy director of the Justice Ministry’s Forensic Medical Authority, as well as the chief of forensic medicine for the Cairo police district.

“First we make them take the prostrate position — the position that Muslims take when they pray,” he said in an interview with BuzzFeed News. The tests are intended not just to determine whether someone has ever had anal sex, but also to detect “chronic homosexuals,” because the letter of Egyptian law only criminalizes men who engage in “habitual debauchery.” Louis said that he believed that in addition to their elongation, the anuses of “chronic homosexuals” also don’t clench when touched or don’t contract as tightly.  “A normal man’s anus can’t take more than one joint of the small finger,” he said. 

International human rights and medical experts dismissed Louis’s checklist as having “no medical basis” and being “categorically not true.” Most of those interviewed by BuzzFeed News couldn’t contain their shock before all of the criteria were listed.

“I think you heard my laugh — I think that says it all,” said Dr. Joel Palefsky, a professor at the University of California San Francisco specializing in anal cancer who is president of the International Anal Neoplasia Society. “We run a clinic where we do anal examinations of thousands of patients … Never in my 20 years of doing this have I seen an anus that looks like a vagina.”

The idea that inspectors are intentionally fabricating evidence because of their own homophobia isn’t what makes these exams so disturbing — though that does sometimes happen, according to defendants’ accounts. It’s that beliefs about homosexuality are leading doctors — some of whom have done extensive (and horrific) research into perfecting diagnostic techniques — to believe that what they are doing is science.

This insane drivel sounds like something the Nazis dreamed up about the Jews and skull size, etc.   I'm not sure where Dr. Louis got his supposed medical degree, but it needs to be revoked immediately.   The larger issue, of course, is why the USA continues to give billions of dollars to such retrograde regimes and why anyone gives any deference to the practitioners of such batshitery.

Has Vladimir Putin Stolen $200 Billion from the Russian People

A friend gave me a copy of the 1971 movie "Nicholas and Alexandra" for Christmas since he knows that I am a history nerd with an emphasis in Russian history.  The tax away from the film is that Nicholas and Alexandra were inept and totally over their heads in ruling Russia as autocrats.  That said, they tried to do what they thought best for Russia and, compared to their Bolshevik successors ruled with a kind and gentle hand.  Indeed, Wikipedia gives a taste of what Bolshevik rule brought:

During the Red Terror, the Cheka carried out at least 250,000 summary executions of "enemies of the people" with estimates reaching above a million.Some 300,000–500,000 Cossacks were killed or deported during de-cossackization, out of a population of around three million. . . . . The industrial production value descended to one seventh of the value of 1913, and agriculture to one third.

Now, Russia has another would be Tsar: Vladimir Putin.  While Putin hasn't inflicted the mass murders of his secret police predecessors, Putin is robing the Russian people on a scale that would have shocked the old imperial establishment.  One hedge fund manager estimates that Putin has stolen $200 billion from the Russian people.   Business Insider has details.  Here are some highlights:

Hedge fund manager Bill Browder, once the largest foreign investor in Russia, estimates Russian President Vladimir Putin's wealth at $200 billion — which would make him by far the richest man in the world.

When asked to estimate his net worth by Fareed Zakaria of CNN, Browder said: "I believe that it is $200 billion.

"After 14 years in power of Russia, and the amount of money that the country has made, and the amount of money that hasn't been spent on schools and roads and hospitals and so on — all that money is in property, Swiss bank accounts, shares, [and] hedge funds managed for Putin and his cronies."

Putin, a former KGB lieutenant colonel, became Russian prime minister in August 1999 and president in May 2000.   Browder notes that the "first eight or 10 years about reign over Russia was about stealing as much money that he could."

Putin consolidated power while making his friends and himself absurdly rich from state coffers.

"Soon after taking over, [Putin] made it clear that he intended to remove the Yeltsin-era elite and to put a new elite in its place—mostly from St. Petersburg, equally corrupt, but loyal exclusively to him," Anne Applebaum in wrote recently in The New York Review of Books.

A full transcript of Browder's statements can be found here.  The Russian people need to overthrow Putin and seize the stolen wealth as soon as possible.

Monday Morning Male Beauty

Why Hillary Doesn't Want to Be Seen As Obama's Third Term

As the GOP presidential candidate clown car lurches along and Jeb Bush feels he need not discuss the disasters his idiot brother brought to the country, presumed Democrat nominee, Hillary Clinton, is doing a rapid tap dance to avoid being seen as a vehicle for a third Obama term.  True, given her skin color, in the eyes of the most vociferous racists in the GOP base, in some ways she can't usher in a third Obama term, but the insane, spittle flecked reaction of the GOP base to anything tied to Obama cannot help bust cause Hillary concern with such a label.  A piece in Slate looks at the situation.  Here are excerpts:

A third Obama term. The vice president isn’t the only one who feels this way. This, of course, is what Republicans have been saying Hillary Clinton’s presidency would be for months. Biden didn’t introduce this idea, but it’s one thing for Republicans to say it, it’s another thing for the vice president to bolt it onto the eventual Democratic nominee.  

This is a standard attack. Indeed, Democrats are raising money today playing on the idea that Jeb Bush is a third George W. Bush term. The big obvious difference in 2016 is that Obama is much more popular right now than George Bush was at the end of his presidency. Bush’s approval rating was 28 percent in the 2008 election night exit poll. Right now Barack Obama’s approval rating is 47 percent in the Gallup poll, almost 20 points higher. If the economy continues to improve, that number could climb higher still and you could imagine Hillary Clinton saying, If by third term you mean another 59 months of continuous job growth and falling unemployment, then yes I’ll be a third term.

He [David Axlerod] wrote to Sen. Obama in 2008: “When incumbents step down, voters rarely opt for a replica of what they have, even when that outgoing leader is popular. They almost always choose change over the status quo.” This is a different formulation of what President Obama was talking about recently when he said voters wanted “that new car smell.” Clinton is associated with the status quo even more because she has the Obama years and the Clinton years attached to her.

Given this view, simple distinctions between Obama and Clinton on policy or positioning won’t be enough to break the third-term lock. . . .  She is probably, for example, a better deal-maker and would work harder at connecting with Republicans, but that’s hardly a vast distinction that makes voter sit up. Gender is an obvious distinction, but that’s not the basis for a presidential platform.

Perhaps this is one of the reasons Clinton is working so hard to come up with a message that is so unique and powerful it looks new. Amy Chozick of the New York Times reports that Clinton has consulted more than 200 experts in her effort to craft an economic message. She’s not just trying to come up with a policy that creates distance, but one that achieves escape velocity.

If the public doesn’t think there’s any big difference between what she’s offering and what President Obama would offer in a third term, Clinton’s efforts will look like Third Term Monte, a sleight of hand confidence game.

Arkansas' New Unconstitutional Anti-Gay Law

Arkansas is out to prove that Virginia and Alabama are not the only states controlled by GOP legislatures that ignore the fact that federal law - and U.S. Supreme Court rulings - ALWAYS trump state law.  How else to explain Arkansas' passage of a bill that bars localities from enacting anti-discrimination laws that protect gays from being fired or refused accommodations simply because they are gay?  The law is much like the one passed in Colorado in 1992 which led to the ruling in Romer v. Evans which struck down the animus motivated Colorado measure.   Frankly, it is all part and parcel with the Christofascists' increasing belief that they are above the laws that govern the rest of us and/or that they are entitled to special rights.  A piece in The Daily Beast looks at the work of the Arkansas Christofascists and their political whores in the Arkansas GOP.  Here are excerpts:

Social conservatives are losing the moral battle on LGBT equality—but they’re not giving up without a fight.

More specifically, they’re starting to look like cornered animals, lashing out with everything they’ve got. We’ve already seen Alabama Chief Justice Roy Moore pull a Governor Wallace and order probate judges to disobey a federal court order. And this week, Kansas Governor Sam Brownback abruptly stripped LGBT state employees of nondiscrimination protection.

The latest entry in conservative anti-gay desperation? Arkansas, which just banned any city in the Natural State from protecting its LGBT residents from discrimination. (The legislature passed the bill Friday, and Gov. Asa Hutchinson has announced that he will neither veto nor sign the bill, but allow it to become law without his signature.)

Not only can you now be fired from your job for being gay, turned away from a hotel because you’re gay, and barred from visiting your sick spouse in the hospital because you’re gay—now, even if the enlightened city of Fayetteville (whose nondiscrimination ordinance sparked the effort) wanted to help you, they can’t.

If Arkansas’ new bill sounds familiar, it’s because it is. Back in 1992, Colorado did something very similar. Outraged that liberal enclaves Aspen and Boulder had passed measures protecting gays from discrimination, the state’s citizens passed Amendment 2, prohibiting any state or municipal agency from protecting gays from discrimination.

You may also remember that this is unconstitutional. In the 1996 case of Romer v. Evans, the Supreme Court held that Amendment 2 was unconstitutional, since there was no basis for it other than animus against gay people.

Well aware that Amendment-2-style actions are unconstitutional, the Arkansas bill cleverly bans local governments from extending civil rights protection to “any class not covered in state law.” Paraphrasing Mayor Quimby here, “that could be any protected class that we don’t like.” Not just homosexuals.

The trouble for Arkansas is that there’s now a huge legislative record that shows that, drafting notwithstanding, this bill is about LGBT people. All the statements, pro and con, show that. 

Even in Romer itself, the Court noted various anti-gay statements on the part of Amendment 2’s backers, which comprised some of the evidence that Amendment 2 was motivated by anti-gay animus.

Nor would the case for “uniformity” really fly either. Arkansas, like all states, has all kinds of laws that vary from place to place.

Like the Brownback Rollback [in Kansas], Arkansas’s “Don’t Save Gays” law is an act of desperation. It plays to the hard right base, and if it’s ultimately a losing battle, that resonates with conservative evangelicals’ martyr complex, and their widely-held apocalyptic belief that America is going to hell in a big gay handbasket.

Sunday Morning Male Beauty

Reasons to Be Optimistic for Marriage Equality at SCOTUS

As noted earlier in the week, Clarence Thomas and Antonin Scalia, the Supreme Court's most vociferous homophobes, whined when the Court refused to extend the stay that had put same sex marriages on hold.  Meanwhile, an editorial in the Mobile Press Register similarly whines and shows that the column's author is an idiot given his lack of understanding of what the issues were before the Court in Windsor (only Sec. 3 of DOMA was under challenge).  Candidly, the Court's action makes perfect sense given its past refusals to take appeals from Court of Appeals rulings that struck down state marriage bans. And, as a column in The Advocate lays out, this week's action may signal how the Court will rule come June.  Here are excerpts:

It's impossible to predict exactly how the Supreme Court will rule on the marriage equality cases currently before it, but it's getting easier and easier to make a confident guess. Just ask Clarence Thomas.

Earlier this week, the court denied a request for a stay in Alabama, and Justice Clarence Thomas's dissent telegraphed a few key signals about the court's momentum toward equality. In addition, several recent court decisions all seem to indicate that the court already has a consensus that state bans on same-sex marriage are unconstitutional.


Here are the key reasons Thomas lays out for why the court is unwilling to delay marriage equality, even though Thomas opposes that conclusion:

1. Weak Case from Antigay States . . . . Thomas indicates the other justices seem confident that Alabama would not be able to show that marriages would cause any harm.

2. Court's Approach Has Evolved . . . . the court has turned down stay requests, allowing marriage to begin immediately in several states. Cases that saw stays denied by the high court include the Florida case, Armstrong v. Brenner; the South Carolina case Wilson v. Condon; and the Kansas case Moser v. Marie.


3. Court Declined to Hear Cases in Which Bans Were Overturned. . . . Although it's only briefly mentioned in the dissent, the Supreme Court's refusal to hear pro-equality rulings is also worthy of note. Late in 2014, several states sent marriage cases to the Supreme Court, with the expectation that the justices would hear the cases. But the justices declined, effectively affirming the pro-equality rulings from lower courts. . . . . In his dissent, Thomas notes that he would have wanted to review the pro-equality rulings, but was unable to muster enough support from his colleagues.
 
4. ...But Accepted Cases in Which Bans Were Upheld.  In fact, the Supreme Court only accepted subsequent marriage equality petitions after a lower court upheld marriage bans, creating what is known as a "circuit split." . . . .  Clearly, that means that something has changed in the several months between the court's granting of the Utah stay and denying a stay in Alabama. It's impossible to say what happened, but it seems that a consensus may have emerged at the court behind the scenes, that a pro-equality ruling is inevitable.

5. Marriage Equality Is Becoming the Status Quo. Usually the Supreme Court defers to status quo, upholding existing laws until they are fully reviewed. Going slow, maintaining consistency, and avoiding rapid changes in the law are high priorities for the court. The fact that the court allowed marriage to begin in Alabama, as well as several other states, could mean that the justices expect marriage equality to be the new status quo. . . . Advocates who want to see the freedom to marry secured nationwide certainly hope Thomas's prediction is correct.

Ultimately Thomas seems as though he's readying to concede defeat.

Jeb Bush Won't Talk About His Brother's Misguided Wars

Much like was the case with Mitt Romney, Jeb Bush's quest for the White House has a strong sense of entitlement to it.  He's a Bush, and therefore, he should have what he wants.  Never mind the disasters his idiot brother and his evil Vice President brought down on the country.  Or the financial meltdown that the anything goes policies of the GOP helped rain down on America and much of the world.  Yet, like a petulant child, Jeb pouts and says  "I won't talk about the past."  If he will not talk about the past, how do we know he won't make the same mistakes as were made in the past?  A piece in Huffington Post looks at Jeb Bush's refusal to talk about the fool's errands that were launched by his brother.  Here are highlights:

Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush (R) has no interest in "re-litigating" the costly wars in Iraq and Afghanistan which began under his brother's administration.

"I won't talk about the past," Bush said at a Friday press conference when asked how he would have handled the conflicts differently, according to The Washington Post. "I'll talk about the future. If I'm in the process of considering the possibility of running, it's not about re-litigating anything in the past. It's about trying to create a set of ideas and principles that will help us move forward."

The governor, who is almost certain to jump into the 2016 race, said that instead he would focus on a positive vision for the country that revolved around the future. He will elaborate on that vision when he delivers what his aides are describing as a major foreign policy address in Chicago next week.

It's unlikely Bush will be able to avoid the subject for long. Democrats are already pointing to his brother's legacy, which has left U.S. forces in the Middle East more than a decade after their initial deployment. Both the Iraq and Afghanistan wars remain unpopular -- with a 2013 poll finding majorities that said the campaigns were not worth the tremendous sacrifice. Some Republicans, too, are likely to criticize Bush over the matter. Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.), another would-be presidential candidate with libertarian leanings, has spoken out against false pretenses used to justify the war.

In my view, Jeb is a spoiled, arrogant ass.

LGBT Youth - Coming Out is Worth the Risk

Since coming out, I've gone through an ugly divorce and been forced out of a Virginia Beach based law firm for being gay.  But despite these negatives, coming out was the best thing I ever did for my own emotional/psychological well being.  Thirteen plus years later, I cannot imagine ever going back in the closet.  The living in fear of discovery, the self-hate arising from an inability to "pray the gay away," and the inability to simply be one's self is so toxic.   A new study finds that for LGBT youth, coming out is an overall positive despite some of the negatives that may go with it: bullying being perhaps the biggest negative.  A piece in Think Progress looks at the study findings.  Here are excerpts:

A new study published in the American Journal of Orthopsychiatry finds that LGBT young people benefit greatly from coming out in school, even in cases where they experience bullying. Indeed, the study found that the positive effects of coming out actually seemed to counteract some of the consequences of bullying that LGBT students might experience in school.

Research has consistently shown that anti-LGBT victimization in schools is associated with negative adjustment for students, but being out is associated with positive adjustment for LGBT students. Students who were out in this study demonstrated lower levels of depression and higher levels of satisfaction and self-esteem, effects that carried into young adulthood. Though it was previously assumed that being out increased the amount of victimization, the current study found that LGBT students experienced bullying whether they were out or not.

That’s because students who feel the need to hide their identity are already exposed to a toxic environment, and hiding, itself, contributes to depression. The study found that among the young people it studied, “attempts to hide their LGBT identities during adolescence were, on average, unsuccessful. The result appears to be more victimization and, ultimately, higher depression.”

In other words, coming out is worth the risk in most cases. Bullying and victimization that an out student might experience specifically because of their LGBT identity can certainly compromise the positive benefits of coming out, but overall, being out will still result in a net positive adjustment over hiding.

Previous studies have similarly found positive results when individuals come out, both for their mental health and overall happiness, provided they don’t face hostility for doing so. . . . Coming out early could thus set young people on a course to be more successful over the rest of their lives.

Admittedly, coming out and living out and proud is not always easy.  One definitely has to develop an attitude of "if you don't like me, it's your loss."  I've also found that if one is confident and self-assured, it goes a long way to deter would be bullies and those who might otherwise reject you.