California will remain mired with deficits until the housing problems are fixed.

Wrong!

Only by the voters giving the legislature the power to tax to pay for the spending the voters mandate can California get out of the hole the anti-tax free lunch tooth fairy economic policy the voters have made Constitutionally necessary.

It affects property tax collection

Wrong!

California property taxes are disconnected from property value, and rising property values will not increase property tax revenue, and in fact will only make the fairness of California’s tax system even worse where the poor and young pay much higher tax rates than the old and wealthy who are granted by the California Constitution near freedom from paying taxes.

Jerry Brown is putting the $2 in cuts, $1 in taxes to the voters and telling them the alternative is $3 in cuts. Will the California voters vote for $3 in cuts for the poor and needy? If the voters want to screw the people in the worst economic bind, with the underwater homeowners being well off in comparison, what does that say about California citizens?

” The trades in question were probably legal because of loopholes allowed in implementation by this executive branch. ”

A situation forced by voters electing a dictatorial Republican Congress which opposes Dodd-Frank and blocks any Obama appointees who would implement Dodd-Frank.

I know you think Obama should declare himself dictator, but you will then condemn a future Republican president using Obama declaring himself dictator to declare himself dictator and undo everything done by Obama, but also LBJ, Truman, FDR, and even Lincoln.

How the hell did you allow the Republicans to veto Diamond for the Fed – clearly your support for killing Diamond for the Fed signals the progressives supported killing Dodd-Frank in the 2010 elections.

Just like Lincoln who left slavery up to the States.

I hope you consider Lincoln the Worst Republican President ever so we can appreciate your understanding of history.

Lincoln left slavery to the States.

Slavery was ended when Georgia became the 27th State to ratify the 13th Amendment freeing the slaves in the four slave States, and that amendment took effect on December 18th, 1865.

Any slave owner in a rebel State could have retained his slaves by moving with his slaves to one of the four slave States not in rebellion, so Lincoln was only freeing slaves as part of economic sanctions on rebelling citizens when US Army took control of territory as part of occupying martial law.

In Lincoln’s inaugural address, Lincoln supported a pending Constitutional amendment that would prohibit a future Constitutional amendment to end slavery.

So, Obama is no different on gay marriage than Lincoln was on slavery.

Anyone condemning Obama on gay marriage needs to equally condemn Lincoln for not only doing nothing to end slavery, but for actively supporting continuing slavery.

We didn’t elect Obama to be dictator only to have him not nationalize the oil industry and prohibit fracking and drilling for oil.

Obama does not understand the Constitution when he caves to Congress on the policy direction. Congress is anti-democratic and does not represent the will of the voters who refuse to vote because those elected represent all the voters instead of just the winning extreme on the left or right.

The left and right agree that Congress can not be trusted to write the laws, the dictator is the only one to make law, uh the president is the only one to make law – Congress is just a figurehead.

It is obviously outrageous that a Democratic president reflect the evolving views on marriage of the American people, because Democratic presidents are required to radically leftist out of touch and out of step with the American people extremists to unify the right wing factions behind the Republican candidate that no conservative can ever support – conservatives didn’t even support Reagan because he was too leftist, but he was the lesser evil.

Both the left and right agree than no only must Obama demand gay marriage, he must declare he is gay and announce his divorce so he can marry Rahm Emanual, and also call for a constitutional amendment to ban heterosexual marriage and mandate gay marriage.

Politics demand a clear choice between the two sides with no middle ground acceptable.

The right must be the advocates of mandating heterosexual marriage and the constitutional banning of homosexual marriage, and the left must be advocates of mandating homosexual marriage and the constitutional banning of homosexual marriage.

Obama is unacceptably occupying the middle where the American people are, evolving on gay marriage, and that will not drive voters to vote for the lesser of two evils: Romney who was opposed to gay marriage before he wasn’t outraged by it before he became cynically outraged.

This requires students react by sitting out the election so Republicans take control and then cut taxes for those with good incomes while slashing benefits without incomes and forcing the unemployed and working poor to pay income taxes to fund subsidies to corporations.

It is obviously illegitimate for Democrats to show the contrast between Democratic policies and Republican policies in the starkest terms. Clearly the Democrats are more to blame for the problems than Republicans because Obama is responsible for the decline of unions since 1980, the gay bashing laws of the 90s, the debt rising from 35% of GDP in 1980 to the near 100% today, Obama caused the debt burden to double in the 80s. Obama is to blame for everything bad over the past three decades, and both the left and right are unified in blaming Obama and Democrats.

You are disappointed that Obama didn’t stage a military coup and disband Congress?

What laws have Republicans supported to promote a clean energy future? When environmental and clean energy policy failed to pass the Senate because the Republicans elected 41 Republicans plus found allies in Democrats to block House passed laws, where was the progressive defeat the anti-progress Republicans in 2010?

Why does the left join with the right to attack and defeat Obama and the Democrats who support him? Why doesn’t the left focus on the obstacle to progress, the right wing extremists elected to Congress and State legislatures who do everything they can to pillage and plunder the natural, human, and built capital of the nation. The built capital, the roads, bridges, water and sewer, the railroads, the air services have all been pillaged and plundered over the past three decades. The natural capital is being pillaged and plundered at faster rates with forested mountains and streams replaced with barren wasteland and polluted water, and the coastal wetlands and fisheries pillaged and plundered with the loss of hundreds of square miles of land and of fish harvests. And people are not mortgaged for life like property, instead of being invested in by the public and private sector to create wealth for the person and society.

Focus your anger and frustration usefully where it belongs, on the right wing who are really out of touch with America, but who leverage the anger the left has with Democrats into electing Republicans to get the win-win of liberals defeating Democrats and the conservatives electing Republicans.

Blocking trains carrying nuclear waste accomplished nothing. Rather making it clear in their voting for the legislators, Germans made it clear they wanted a green economy, an economy based on a price on carbon, promoting solar and wind power, energy efficiency, and closure of nuclear power plants to prevent another Chernobyl or Fuchishima.

Why aren’t these Canadians forcing Canada to put a price on carbon, including a price on carbon shipped through Canada, reaping a carbon price on American coal which will ultimately harm Canadians?

The problem with efforts to stop this or that carbon source is it is as effective as the conservatives efforts to stop poverty and sickness by eliminating welfare and Medicaid. Gee, stop providing food stamps, medical care, and coal and oil, and magically poverty, sickness, and coal plants and oil burning vehicles will disappear. Wow! Why didn’t anyone think of that sooner?

We the People decide through the process of elections who will represent our values. To attack Buffett for doing as the market we create by our voting Republican and for pollution at any cost to give us the free lunch of cheap energy no matter the pollution or the unemployment is absurd.

Let’s represent our values in a price on pollution that is high enough to make it more profitable to have high speed trains moving people and cargo faster and cheaper than trucks and planes. Note that flowers are flown into the US for Mothers Day and the like, but then trucked around the nation, including from the east to the west coast. The highway system is cheaper than air because of the subsidies, and faster than rail because of the lack of subsidies to match those for trucking.

The left attacks liberals like Obama, just like the right attacks liberals like Obama, so we end up with Republicans and conservatives governing, because the left and right agree that Obama and the Democrats who support him need to be defeated, because Americans don’t vote their values, they vote against those who are doing what American want based on who they elect.

Read the law: 21 USC Sec. 811

The complications created by the law make it next to impossible to do as you claim, and would certainly result in a conservative religious attack campaign to defeat Obama which would be followed by Mitt Romney reversing the ruling and probably beginning a wholesale prosecution of anyone involved in any pot advocacy.

Why don’t you defeat anyone running for Congress who won’t pledge to legalize pot? Become the Grove Norquist of pot, forcing every candidate running for Congress to sign the legal pot pledge, and for everyone who refuses, call on the Tea Party to defeat him for his jack boot world government authoritarianism. After all, pot is a schedule 1 substance because of the UN dictates, so what could be a better reason to get the Tea Party to defeat anyone who won’t pledge to legalize pot?

The time was those two years the democrats controlled the white house and both houses of congress.

So, why did the Democrats in Congress need Obama’s permission to simply pass all the gay rights legislation?

What banks did Congress need Obama to cut deals with to get the banks to back off their pressure on Congress to not support gay rights?

Which insurance company lobbyists did Obama need to cut deals with to get them to back off their opposition to gay rights?

Would Obama spending lots of political capital in 2009-10 created jobs? Started on the path to long term budget control like health reform? Resolved the mortgage crisis? Dealt with the reckless banking practices? Increased the number of Democrats in the House and Senate in the 2010 elections?

Why not focus all your anger on the conservatives who use gay bashing as their top voter turn out and money raiser?

Look at what happened when Clinton tried to advance gay rights in his first two years:
– lost the House
– lost the Senate
– compromised on DADT
– compromised on DOMA
– impeachment
Yep, gay rights advocates really had the backs of Clinton and the Democrats in Congress, didn’t they?

Democrats need to try to insert language requiring approval of a Quebec Hydro DC power line through the center of NH along with the XL Pipeline – that will force Kelly Ayote and other Republicans to oppose an energy transmission line in NH while forcing one other landowners in other States.

The conservatives opposed to eminent domain have taken to using Nixon’s EIS to block taking private land for private corporate profit.

The XL Pipeline was a case of landowners getting the support of conservatives fighting eminent domain who then made it an environmental battle. Here in NH conservatives are passing laws to make eminent domain impossible for both power lines and pipelines, which would kill the XL Pipeline if those laws were in place in the States it goes through.

To think the Obama administration was picking a fight with Republicans on the XL Pipeline on environmental principles is nuts. The XL Pipeline is too small an impact either environmentally or in political terms to matter.

If you care about climate, then make Congress 70-80% Democratic.

Let’s see, Scalia was happy to take a scapula to campaign finance laws spread over a century, arguing that any problems created as a result are easily fixed by Congress, yet on ACA and its amending law, both should be invalidated because Congress needs to start from scratch instead of simply invalidating just the penalty tax.

The mandate has lots of exceptions and only in a limited number of cases does a penalty apply, and the failure to buy insurance is not a crime of any sort, and only a civil crime for failing to pay the penalty tax.

The Court does not need to consider the implications of invalidating the penalty for not complying with the mandate any more than it took into account of the implications of invalidating part of campaign finance:

CONGRESS IS BEST ABLE TO FIX THE LAW – SCOTUS SHOULD NOT LEGISLATE.

Just strike the “mandate” and tell Congress to fix the problems that creates.

In other words, the rich in the US can’t find enough quick bucks to be made in building pipelines from Cushing to export refineries in the Gulf for instant capital gains speculative pillage and plunder, so we must depend on foreign capitalists who are investing in long term returns in buy, build, and hold-to-operate capitalism.

Pipelines inside the US built by US corporations are nearly totally unregulated at the Federal level, the regulation on building and operate limited only to
- acting as utilities serving all equally
- and in a few cases needing to justify a need, like justifying the need to build added natgas pipelines to the NJ refineries shutdown for lack of natgas to cut costs below import gasoline costs, or to provide gas for heating in New England to reduce dependency on heating oil imports or to power cogen electric generators.

The EPA has no say in any utility lines until after they cause environmental harm – only State environmental laws apply.

The fight between the EPA and Texas is the EPA is requiring Texas to regulate past construction which has resulted in environmental harm, and Texas is fighting to be allowed to pollute and harm not just Texas and Texans, but everyone down stream of its pollution. To be in compliance with clean air/water Federal law, Texas needs to regulate its infrastructure which can most cheaply be done before construction starts.

The counter message to the XL Pipeline has been really bungled.

Progressives should come out strongly for it by arguing the Chinese auto drivers deserve cheaper gas, and to further the development of a stronger and larger Chinese middle class who depend on cheap gasoline, anything to promote increased US gasoline and oil exports must be supported, starting with the XL pipeline.

And if you post the US gasoline price map with the pipeline drawn in, you can see how the pipeline will drain the flood of cheap gasoline from the upper West centered on Cushing.

Every claim of “religious liberty” and “war on religion” needs to be accompanied by the utter hypocrisy of those making the claim.

Not a single person claiming Obama is engaged in a “war on religion” would call for freeing Warren Jeffs because he is imprisoned in a liberal war on religion, a war on religion that was started by that radical leftist President Lincoln, that forced Mitt Romney’s great grandfather to flee the USA, the land of religious liberty, to Mexico to avoid imprisonment for practicing his religious faith, and that dictated church doctrine to the Mormon church.

This isn’t an imagined “war on religion”, but a long history of an actual “war on a religion: Mormonism” in the USA.

If just one of the Sunday taking heads would ask about the war on Mormons in response to claims of a “war on religion” or on the denial of Warren Jeffs religious liberty, I’m sure the conservative blogosphere and the Republican Congressional spokesmen will explode with anger over any comparison between restricting women’s health care by Catholic/Christian religious doctrine and restricting Mormon marriage doctrine based on Catholic/Christian religious doctrine.

But such an explosion of anger would be very useful for advancing the debate over the conservative agenda which is constantly justified on moral value proposition. And if it immerses Mitt Romney in the middle of a “war on religion” controversy, all the better because either Republicans need to back off from their religious based attacks or the Republicans will fracture as their hypocrisy is paraded in the open.

wait, Romney is a very well lubricated weather vane that changes direction in the slightest breeze.

He isn’t trusted by the Republican radicals because he won’t call the Girl Scouts agents of PP turning girls gay and pregnant needing abortions, he won’t claim Obama is a Muslim born in Kenya, and he won’t claim Obama went too far by prohibiting plural marriage in his attack on Mormons in clear violation of the First Amendment religious liberty.

just say “the trickle down is a yellow liquid that isn’t anything like gold” instead of “pissed on”.

This was the topic on Diane Rehm while the bill was being actively considered. One guest read the Federal description of rape to make the case this law was requiring a doctor to rape a woman.

Surprisingly, women called in to object to it being called rape, and then tried to defend this medically unnecessary procedure as something women should be forced to undergo to be “fully informed”.

A woman called in to explain she found it painful for her regular post cancer exam, basically calling those claiming it wasn’t invasive liars.

After that very calm and cool discussion as Diane keeps (nearly) every show, it is hard to see how anyone could support the law.

The “Respect for Rights of Conscience Act” is Sen. Roy Blunt’s bill that would expand the religious exemptions notably

Would it free Warren Jeffs from prison where he sits like Mitt Romney’s great grandfather would have been if he hadn’t fled the USA to practice his Mormon faith? Warren Jeffs is being persecuted for his religious beliefs because religious liberty has limits. Until the Mormon church changed church doctrine, Mormons were not allowed to vote if they claimed to be Mormons because Congress punished the belief that plural marriage was sanctified by God in the Mormon religion.