"...followed by a brisk mauling."

burntbythesun:

And I’m definitely voting for him because he plans to:

+ Oppose retroactive immunity for individuals or companies that have violated federal law.

+ Abolish the right of federal agencies to spy on US citizens without a warrant, based upon a showing of good cause.

+ Eliminate the obligation of third parties to hand over documents concerning other persons to federal agencies without a court-issued warrant.

+ Abolish “sneak and peak” provisions enabled by the Act; searches should only be conducted with a warrant delivered prior to the search, not subsequently (absent exigent circumstances).

+ End indefinite detention of foreign and U.S. citizens; everyone has the right to charges, legal representation, habeas corpus, and a fair trial.

+ Eliminate militarism and empire-building: The US will never again engage in an illegal war of aggression.

+ Moral leadership: We will no longer support regimes that abuse human rights and suppress democracy.

+ Economic rationality: We will close down all overseas military bases that are not demonstrably critical to our security, along with at least a 50% reduction in the Pentagon budget. (The U.S. military budget is now larger than the military budgets in all other nations combined.)  This money will be allocated to domestic priorities, including reducing the accumulated debt and interest burden. As Martin Luther King said, every dollar spent on a missile is a dollar taken from a child’s education, or the food budget of a poor family.

+ The Anderson Administration would adopt the same principles towards Israel that it would to any and every country – namely, to withdraw diplomatic and financial support if that country is in flagrant violation of international law or abuses human rights.

+ Legalize industrial hemp. [Hemp’s remarkable advantages are hard to beat: it thrives without herbicides, it reinvigorates the soil, it requires less water than cotton, it matures in three to four months, and it can yield four times as much paper per acre as trees.  Hemp can be used to create building materials that are twice as strong as wood and concrete, textile fiber that is stronger than cotton, better oil and paint than petroleum, clean-burning diesel fuel, and biodegradable plastics.  In addition, it can produce more digestible protein per acre than any other food source.  These advantages are in tune with the environmental and health preferences of today’s North American public.  The growing curiosity of consumers, the interest shown by farmers and processors, and Canada’s excellent growing conditions for industrial hemp allow optimistic views for its future.]

+ Empty Guantanamo Bay of its inmates, and close it down. 

+ Try terrorist suspects in civilian courts.

+ Put Bush and Obama-era torturers on trial.

+ Take back international leadership in the research, development and commercialization of low-carbon energy technologies. 

+ End taxpayer subsidies of fossil energy and shift them to a revenue-neutral public investment in research and commercialization of energy efficiency and renewable energy technologies.  Among these subsidies is the multi-billion-dollar research effort to scrub carbon from coal burning and bury it underground. If the coal industry wants to remain part of America’s energy future, it can pay for this research on its own. 

+ Require the gas industry to clean up the production of shale gas, to protect groundwater and water quality, and to reveal the contents of its “fracking” agents. Natural gas has the potential to help us make the transition to a clean energy economy, but fracking has unacceptable environmental costs.

+ Launch an economy-wide initiative to make the United States the most energy-efficient industrial economy in the world within 20 years. 

+ Insist that the world’s top 20 industrial nations fulfill their commitment to end fossil energy subsidies and exert US leadership to make the G-20 the Green-20, in which the major economies implement aggressive clean energy goals for government operations.

+ Reform national transportation policy to stop favoring highways over mass transit and other options for clean mobility.

+ Improve education and job training programs, including training for green-collar jobs, to build the workforce we need for a clean energy economy. 

+ End public subsidies for nuclear energy, an industry that has never existed without taxpayer support.  While nuclear power generation does not produce carbon emissions, it should not be a high priority until the industry solves the problem of wastes, until power plants are better protected from terrorist attack, and until the international community creates a reliable way to prevent the proliferation of nuclear weapons.

+ Promote economy-wide collaboration in the transition to a clean energy economy by engaging industry, state and local leaders, economists, the national laboratories and other stakeholders to create a national policy and investment roadmap with clear goals and milestones.

+ Put the United States on course for a zero-net-carbon economy by mid-century.  Rocky believes that because the damages and costs of climate change grow larger with each passing year, America’s plan for reductions must be front-end-loaded.

+ Insist on full funding and scientific integrity in the national climate change science program, as well as U.S. support for the ongoing research of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

+ Champion a market-based approach to reducing the nation’s greenhouse gas emissions, but support and defend the authority of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to regulate greenhouse gas emissions if market mechanisms are not promptly put in place by Congress or prove insufficient.

+ Fully use the authorities past Congresses have granted the President to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from government operations and to aggressive goals for government use of low-carbon materials and resources. Fight for sufficient funding by Congress to make the U.S. government, including the Department of Defense, leaders in the transition to a low-carbon economy.

+ Direct appropriate federal agencies to modify their grant and loan programs to support low-carbon development and climate adaptation measures by state and local governments and the private sector.

+ Push for greater economy-wide transparency on climate risks. For example, President Anderson will push for state insurance regulators to require that property-casualty insurance companies annually assess and report their climate-related risks – an exercise similar the Security and Exchange Commission’s guidance that publicly traded companies do the same.

+ Reinstate FEMA’s Project Impact, a program under the Clinton Administration that helped communities create public-private partnerships to prevent and respond to natural disasters.

+ Institute policies to make carbon “visible”, including carbon-impact statements for federally funded projects and carbon-impact analysis of federal agency budget requests.

+ Make the reduction of America’s carbon debt as high a priority as reducing its financial debt; and deliver a “State of the Nation’s Ecosystems” address to a joint session of Congress each Earth Day.

+ Direct the EPA and Energy Information Administration to count the carbon impact of America’s imports when they calculate U.S. greenhouse gas emissions.

+ Direct America’s National Laboratories to increase their collaboration with U.S. industry in the development of critical carbon-cutting technologies, including advanced batteries, utility-scale energy storage, cellulosic ethanol and low-wind-speed turbines

+ Make the United States a constructive and proactive leader in the effort to negotiate an effective and enforceable international treaty that reduces the world’s greenhouse gas emissions, conserves the world’s forests, and transfers clean energy technologies to developing nations.

+ Direct the Environmental Protection Agency and the Department of Transportation to develop guidelines for designs and materials that reduce the carbon footprints and increase the resilience of America’s infrastructure, particularly as it is repaired and modernized in the years ahead.

+ We must end the bizarre reliance in the United States on for-profit insurance companies for essential health care.  We should adopt a health care system like Taiwan’s single-payer system (the most efficient in the world) or Canada’s single-payer system (which is consistently Canada’s most popular social program).  Single-payer National Health Insurance systems provide excellent, timely basic health care, in a manner very similar to Medicare in the U.S.  In those systems, the medical providers are private, but the bills are paid by one government-run insurance program toward which every citizen contributes.  Those systems are far less expensive and more efficient because there is relatively little paperwork; there is no need for marketing; there are no underwriting personnel whose jobs are to deny claims; and there is no profit for shareholders.  The single payer insurance program has the market power to negotiate for lower prices.  Examples of National Health Insurance programs are found in Canada, Australia, Taiwan and South Korea.  (In 2005, health expenditures in Canada were 10.1% of GDP; in Taiwan, 6.2%; and in the U.S., 16.5%.)

+ Anderson proposes boosting the minimum wage to no less than $10.00 an hour, with future increases to be tied to the rising cost of living, as a vital step to ensure that low wage earners can better bridge the gap between income and expenses.  Raising the minimum wage would be a small step to restoring dignity for millions of workers, enabling many ordinary Americans to become part of the economic recovery, rather than its collateral damage.  According to the Economic Policy Institute, every dollar increase in wages for a worker on the bottom rung of the pay scale creates more than $3,500 in new spending after one year, actively greasing the wheels of the economy overall.

(via rockyanderson2012)

stfusexists:

propaganda-for-life:

prolongedeyecontact:

Just when abortion rights supporters thought they had beaten a controversial bill they believe would legalize the killing of abortion providers, it has cropped up again—this time in a more expansive form that has drawn the concern of law enforcement officials.

Last week, South Dakota’s legislature shelved a bill, introduced by Republican state Rep. Phil Jensen, which would have allowed the use of the “justifiable homicide” defense for killings intended to prevent harm to a fetus. Now a nearly identical bill is being considered in neighboring Nebraska, where on Wednesday the state legislature held a hearing on the measure.

The legislation, LB 232, was introduced by state Sen. Mark Christensen, a devout Christian and die-hard abortion foe who is opposed to the prodedure even in the case of rape. Unlike its South Dakota counterpart, which would have allowed only a pregnant woman, her husband, her parents, or her children to commit “justifiable homicide” in defense of her fetus, the Nebraska bill would apply to any third party.

“In short, this bill authorizes and protects vigilantes, and that’s something that’s unprecedented in our society,” Melissa Grant of Planned Parenthood of the Heartland told the Nebraska legislature’s judiciary committee on Wednesday. Specifically, she warned, it could be used to target Planned Parenthood’s patients and personnel. Also testifying in oppostion to the bill was David Baker, the deputy chief executive officer of the Omaha police department, who said, “We share the same fears…that this could be used to incite violence against abortion providers.”

Baker’s concern is well-grounded: Abortion providers are frequent targets of violent attacks. Eight doctors have been murdered by anti-abortion extremists since 1993, and another 17 have been victims of murder attempts. Some of the perpetrators of those crimes, including Scott Roeder, the murderer of Wichita, Kansas, abortion provider Dr. George Tiller, have attempted to use the justifiable homicide defense at their trials. Several of the witnesses at Wednesday’s hearing cited Tiller’s murder as a case where a law like the one Christensen introduced could have come into play.

For his part, Christensen insisted that his measure is not intended to target abortion providers. Like Jensen, Christensen claimed that his bill is merely meant to allow pregnant women to defend their unborn children without fear of prosecution. “LB 232,” he said, “is really nothing more than an attempt to make sure a pregnant woman is not unnecessarily charged with a crime for using force to protect her unborn child from someone who means to bring harm to her unborn children.” 

But, as other lawmakers pointed out during the hearing, Christensen’s bill, as currently written, would not only apply to pregnant women but to anyone who attempted to prevent harm to a fetus. “I think it opens the door to something unintended,” said state Sen. Steve Lathrop. “I don’t think you came in here intending to make those who provide abortions a target of the use of force,” he told Christensen, “but I think it may unintentionally do that or at least provide somebody with an argument that they were justified in that.”

Not everyone is sure that the law’s potential use in a case of abortion-related murder was unintentional. “If they wanted it narrow, they should have drafted it that way, and they did not,” Alan Peterson, a lobbyist with the ACLU of Nebraska who testified at the hearing, told Mother Jones. “So I have reasonable suspicion that the intent was at least to create a possible broad defense for attacks on abortion providers.”

“I don’t know how anyone knows my intent,” Christensen fired back in an interview with Mother Jones.

Christensen and proponents of his bill, including the anti-abortion groups Americans United for Life and Family First, argue that concerns that the measure would legalize violence against abortion providers are overblown. They say that since abortions are legal in Nebraska, the killing of an abortion doctor would not be permissible under Christensen’s law. (Proponents of South Dakota’s bill made a similar case.) But Peterson disputed this interpretation. He said the existing self-defense statute that Christensen’s bill would amend is “not limited to situations where something is going on that’s unlawful. It says the person who claims the defense believes that there’s something unlawful. That’s a subjective standard.” A standard, he added, that might allow the killer of an abortion provider to use Christensen’s law, if passed, to get away with murder.

Christensen, who was first elected to the state legislature in 2006, has a history of advancing eyebrow-raising legislation. “Controversial bills don’t bother me at all,” he once said. Recently, he has pushed a measure that would allow teachers and other school officials to carry concealed weapons on school grounds. And in January, he introduced a birther-style bill that would require presidential and vice presidential candidates to provide a “certified copy” of their “original long-form” birth certificates in order to be listed on the ballot in Nebraska. He’s also floated a bill, similar to one introduced by Jensen in South Dakota, which would prohibit Nebraska’s courts from basing their rulings on foreign law—a measure that’s part of a quixotic nationwide right-wing campaign to ban Sharia law.

Christensen said that he was unaware that a justifiable homicide bill similar to his had been introduced in South Dakota, though it recently caused a national outcry after the possible implications of the legislation were reported by Mother Jones. Following Wednesday’s hearing, where lawmakers and others highlighted the potential dangers of his bill, Christensen said that he’s prepared to revise the legislation and “narrow it down to just protecting mother and unborn child.” Then “it’ll be noncontroversial and we’ll be ready to go.”

He added, “I do not believe in killing people for undue reason.”

[THIS IS NOT FUCKING OKAY, DOUCHEFUCKS. IT WILL NEVER BE OKAY. NEVER. YOU’RE NOT PROLIFE. IT’S BAD ENOUGH ANTICHOICE TERRORISTS ARE NEVER ACTUALLY CALLED TERRORISTS, BUT NOW YOU HAVE TO GIVE THEM CARTE BLANCHE WITH DOCTORS’ LIVES? GET.OFF.MY.PLANET.]

Okay, this is really fucking disgusting. A law defending murderers? WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU PEOPLE? HOW IS THIS “PRO-LIFE”?

Ashamed to share a last name with this reprehensible human being.