Rachel Maddow's Blog, page 3378

Pluto's ever growing family

Pluto's two newest moons now have official names: Kerberos and Styx, after the three-headed guard dog of the underworld and the river that separates the underworld from Earth, respectively. Previous known as P4 and P5, Kerberos and Styx were the winning names of a contest launched by the SETI Institute. Fun fact: the top winning name was actually Vulcan (thanks to a campaign launched by William Shatner), however the name is already in use and the Roman god is not closely associated with Pluto. Despite our love of science fiction, we astronomers like to be self-consistent whenever possible.

After the jump, a nice graphic to put Pluto and its moons in perspective...

(via Space.com)

Following legislative ambush, N.C. Senate approves abortion restrictions

FMSKT113/Flickr

Last night, Republicans in North Carolina's state Senate quickly moved to amend a Sharia law proposal with sweeping new limits on reproductive rights in the state, and this morning, they used their majority to pass the bill.

Senators voted 29-12 to approve House Bill 695, which now returns to the House for a final vote on the changes.

Shouts of "shame, shame, shame" rained down on the Senate after the vote. Lt. Gov. Dan Forest, who oversees the Senate, ordered police to clear people from the gallery before senators adjourned.

The legislative gallery was standing-room only, filled with proponents of reproductive rights, with several hundred more activists rallying outside the building. The GOP majority didn't seem to care.

The proposal now heads to the state House, where Republicans are also in the majority, and where the bill's prospects are generally considered quite good. Whether North Carolina Gov. Pat McCrory (R) would sign the bill, however, is less clear -- as a candidate, McCrory vowed to leave the state's existing abortion laws alone.

Then again, McCrory said a lot of things as a candidate and whether he would keep this promise is unclear.

One thing the governor won't be able to say is that the legislation leaves the status quo in place. If approved, H.B. 695 would, among other things, close all but one of North Carolina's 36 abortion clinics under new licensing standards.

"This is an atrocious, shameful bill," Sen. Earline Parmon (D) told the Charlotte Observer. "It's about dictating to women about very personal medical decisions that should be left to a woman and her doctor. This is going to cause more back-alley abortions whether you want to admit it or not."

Wednesday's campaign round-up

Today's installment of campaign-related news items that won't necessarily generate a post of their own, but may be of interest to political observers:

* In what may well be the most ridiculous attack video ever released by a sitting U.S. senator, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell's (R-Ky.) team unveiled this remarkable thing yesterday, hoping to argue that Alison Lundergan Grimes (D-Ky.) isn't ready for "prime time." The same video originally misspelled "McConnell."

Watch on YouTube

* On a related note, the Senate Conservatives Fund's Matt Hoskins argued yesterday that McConnell is "the least electable Republican senator running for reelection in 2014." Hoskins, the head of the far-right political action committee, added, "He could lose this race and cost Republicans the majority. He needs to consider whether it might be time to hang it up."

* In Virginia, E.W. Jackson, the right-wing culture warrior running for lieutenant governor, accused his Democratic rival, Ralph Northam, of "running on divisive social issues." No, seriously, that's what he said.

* Ben Nesselhuf, the chairman of the South Dakota Democratic Party, resigned unexpectedly yesterday, announcing that he'll manage the race to defeat Rep. Steve King (R) in Iowa next year.

* In Texas, Gov. Rick Perry (R) has already served three four-year terms, and it's not yet clear whether he'll seek another. Yesterday, Perry sent out an email saying he plans to announce his "exciting future plans" at an event in San Antonio on Monday.

* New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg (I) hopes to reward Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) for his leadership on gun policy with a fundraiser for the senator at the mayor's home later this month.

* Stuff like this is done in complete secrecy, and it's legal: "The leadership PACs of six top Senate Republicans gave a total of $105,000 in May to a dark money group named the American Future Fund. That same month, according to The Center for Public Integrity, American Future Fund began spending hundreds of thousands of dollars defending Sen. Kelly Ayotte (R-NH) against attacks ads financed by the gun control group Mayors Against Illegal Guns."

* And in Hawaii, where a heated Democratic U.S. Senate primary is taking shape between appointed incumbent Sen. Brian Schatz and Rep. Colleen Hanabusa, competing polls were released this week. One found Schatz with a narrow lead, while the other, sponsored by EMILY's List, showed Hanabusa up by 11 points.

Koch brothers push GOP officials to sign anti-climate pledge

Getty Images

Charles and David Koch

The Republican Party is certainly fond of its pledges. Grover Norquist, of course, has his infamous anti-tax pledge that has interfered with federal policymaking in recent decades, and in 2011, GOP presidential candidates were pushed to endorse an anti-gay pledge from the National Organization for Marriage.

But as it turns out, there's another pledge that's taken root in Republican politics that's received far less attention. The New Yorker's Jane Mayer reports this week on the "No Climate Tax Pledge" pushed by Charles and David Koch.

Starting in 2008, a year after the Supreme Court ruled that the Environmental Protection Agency could regulate greenhouse gasses as a form of pollution, accelerating possible Congressional action on climate change, the Koch-funded nonprofit group, Americans for Prosperity, devised the "No Climate Tax" pledge. It has been, according to the study, a component of a remarkably successful campaign to prevent lawmakers from addressing climate change. Two successive efforts to control greenhouse-gas emissions by implementing cap-and-trade energy bills died in the Senate, the latter of which was specifically targeted by A.F.P.'s pledge.

By now, [411] current office holders nationwide have signed the pledge. Signatories include the entire Republican leadership in the House of Representatives, a third of the members of the House of Representatives as a whole, and a quarter of U.S. senators.

The pledge, uncovered as part of a two-year study by the Investigative Reporting Workshop at American University, forces policymakers to oppose any legislation relating to climate change unless it is accompanied by an equivalent amount of tax cuts."

And what, pray tell, do tax cuts have to do with the climate crisis and effects of global warming? Nothing in particular, but the Koch brothers hope to make it impossible to pass any bills related to carbon emissions, and by demanding tax cuts, they're effectively eliminating any credible policy options -- as Mayer explained, "Since most solutions to the problem of greenhouse-gas emissions require costs to the polluters and the public, the pledge essentially commits those who sign to it to vote against nearly any meaningful bill regarding global warning, and acts as yet another roadblock to action."

When President Obama unveiled his fairly ambitious new climate agenda last week, some hoped it would spur broader action in Washington. There's still room for a comprehensive climate policy that may be more effective than the administration using the Clean Air Act to limit emissions, but it would require Congress to work towards a sensible, consensus remedy. Republicans don't like the White House policy? Fine, it's time policymakers sat down with environmentalists and industries to work on an alternative.

Of course, Congress can't do much of anything with a radicalized House majority, and climate legislation appears completely out of the question -- the Koch brothers have a pledge to ensure failure, no matter the consequences.

This is why we can't have nice things.

Ahead on the 7/2 Maddow show

Tonight's guests include:

State Sen. Chap Peterson, (D) Virginia, calling on Gov. McDonnell to resign

State Sen. Wendy Davis, (D) Texas, filibustered an anti-abortion bill during the Senate special session last week

Video preview up shortly!

Tuesday's Mini-Report

Today's edition of quick hits:

* Egypt: "Egyptian President Mohammed Morsi demanded Tuesday that the country's armed forces withdraw a 48-hour ultimatum for him to share power with his political opponents, and said he would not be dictated to."

* Edward Snowden has reportedly sought asylum in at least 21 countries, but most of the applications have been deemed invalid. Venezuela and Bolivia may be his only options at this point.

* Korean peninsula: "North Korea's top diplomat said Tuesday that the U.S. must accept its offer for dialogue without preconditions if it wants to ease tensions on the divided Korean Peninsula. He drew a quick rebuttal from his South Korean counterpart, who said the international community has made clear that Pyongyang must give up its nuclear ambitions if it wants better relations."

* Tanzania: "President Obama and his predecessor, George W. Bush, laid a wreath at the U.S. Embassy here at a solemn memorial for victims of a 1998 terrorist bombing that killed dozens."

* Brad Plumer takes a closer look at Obama's $7 billion plan to bring electricity to Africa.

* I'm awfully glad Obama didn't let Detroit go bankrupt: "The nation's automakers continued to make gains in June, reporting the strongest performance in six years as the improving economy supported a continued uptick in sales."

* Trade deal: "Negotiations on a $5 trillion trade deal between the United States and the European Union are expected to forge ahead despite outrage in Europe over the U.S. government's bugging of offices."

* Sequester: "Expect fewer patriotic displays this July 4, thanks to federal budget cuts. Around the country, military bases are extinguishing fireworks displays and towns are canceling appearances by military bands due to sequestration's $85 billion in across-the-board spending reductions."

* Last week, the president unveiled a major new initiative to combat the climate crisis, and the combined coverage of all five major Sunday shows was zero minutes and zero seconds. Wow.

Anything to add? Consider this an open thread.

'It costs too much to get my money'

Associated Press

Imagine you get a new job, work hard, and look forward to pay day, only to discover that you won't actually get a paycheck. Instead, your employer has decided to give you a prepaid debit card, which has your compensation on it.

Why might this be a problem? Because it puts you in a position in which you actually have to pay money to receive your own money.

A growing number of American workers are confronting a frustrating predicament on payday: to get their wages, they must first pay a fee.

For these largely hourly workers, paper paychecks and even direct deposit have been replaced by prepaid cards issued by their employers. Employees can use these cards, which work like debit cards, at an A.T.M. to withdraw their pay.

But in the overwhelming majority of cases, using the card involves a fee. And those fees can quickly add up: one provider, for example, charges $1.75 to make a withdrawal from most A.T.M.'s, $2.95 for a paper statement and $6 to replace a card. Some users even have to pay $7 inactivity fees for not using their cards.

For many middle- and upper-class workers -- who tend to receive checks or are compensated through direct deposit -- banks waive fees so long as you have a certain minimum balance. But for those who are struggling to get by, and rely on every penny from hourly wages, this effectively serves a penalty for being part of the working poor.

The NYT talked to a young woman who works at a Taco Bell in St. Louis who said simply, "It costs too much to get my money."

My first instinct was to question how this is legal, but it is. Indeed, the payroll-card market is hardly regulated at all.

Worse, it's becoming increasingly common for workers at fast-food chains, drug-store chains, restaurants, retail positions in shopping malls, and Wal-Mart.

The corporations find it cheaper and easier to use the cards rather than print/mail checks or deposit compensation directly, and while some employers offer workers a choice, employees are strongly encouraged to take the cards (burdensome paperwork is required for the alternatives). The New York Times report noted a calculator on Visa's site estimates that a company with 500 workers could save $21,000 a year by switching from checks to payroll cards, so many are doing exactly that.

I'd love to see Congress take up an issue like this, but given lawmakers' inability to tackle the basics, consumer protections in areas like these are probably many years away.

The war on voting in a post-VRA world

Capitolshots Photography/Flickr

North Carolina's state capitol

In North Carolina, thanks to Republican gains in the 2010 state elections, the congressional district lines already drawn in such a comically gerrymandered way, the state's delegation bears little resemblance to the actual wishes of voters. In 2012, for example, a majority of North Carolinians voted for Democratic congressional candidates, and yet, only 4 of the state's 13 members of the U.S. House are Democrats.

But as the Los Angeles Times reports today, that's apparently not quite good enough for GOP state policymakers. In a story Rachel has covered on the show, now that the district lines have been gerrymandered to ensure a Republican advantage regardless of voters' wishes, the next step is to restrict voters' access to their own democracy.

The GOP chairman of the state Senate rules committee, Sen. Tom Apodaca, said he would move quickly to pass a voter ID law that Republicans say would bolster the integrity of the balloting process. GOP leaders also began engineering an end to the state's early voting, Sunday voting and same-day registration provisions, all popular with black voters. Civil rights groups say the moves are designed to restrict poll access by blacks, who vote reliably Democratic.

Up until about a week ago, this would ordinarily be the point at which voting-rights advocates, civil rights activists, and anyone concerned with voter access and election fairness would say, "Whew, it's a good thing the Voting Rights Act still exists. There's no way these North Carolina's measures will pass muster."

But all of that changed rather abruptly when five justices on the U.S. Supreme Court gutting the Voting Rights Act and gave GOP policymakers in North Carolina and elsewhere a green light to start restricting Americans' access to the ballot box. It is open season on voting rights and Republicans throughout the South are seizing the opportunity.

Originally, GOP lawmakers in North Carolina held back on pursuing voter-ID laws, knowing how racially discriminatory they are. But thanks to the Supreme Court, they no longer care.

What's especially interesting to me as how thin the pretense is. At least on the surface, Republicans say they need to impose the harshest voting restrictions since Jim Crow to prevent "voter fraud." In reality, such fraud is practically non-existent, but it nevertheless serves as a convenient pretense. But how does ending Sunday voting prevent fraud? Why eliminate early-voting opportunities and make longer voting lines, neither of which relate to fraud at all?

Of course, questions like these only matter if there's a real debate, and with Republicans controlling North Carolina's legislature and governor's office, whether the pretense makes sense or not is apparently irrelevant.

Congress picks up where it left off

Once the 112th Congress wrapped up, it was easy to speculate as to whether it was the worst in American history. (I've made the case that it was.) The list of reasons in support of the thesis isn't short, but one of the starting points is a simple fact: the last Congress passed fewer bills than any since the U.S. House Clerk's office started keeping track in the mid-1940s.

Mark Murray noted yesterday that the current, 113th Congress is on track to be even worse.

When it comes to productivity, only 15 legislative items have become law under the current Congress. That's fewer than the 23 items that became law at this same point in the 112th Congress, which passed a historically low number of bills that were signed into law. These numbers might not be surprising given the legislative stalemates so far this year -- on the sequester, the farm bill, and student loans. Even the biggest legislative triumph so far of the 113th Congress, the Senate passing immigration reform by a 68-32 vote, appears to have hit a brick wall in the House of Representatives for now.

Yes, we're only half-way through the calendar year -- or, roughly one-fourth of the way through the current Congress -- but federal lawmakers are already behind the last Congress' pace, and it was the worst in modern times.

It's also not surprising. The Republican-led House is heavily invested in "message" votes -- like repealing the Affordable Care Act and sweeping restrictions on reproductive rights -- that are intended to make far-right activists feel good. When it comes to actual governing -- say, approving a farm bill or keeping student-loan interest rates low -- the House falters.

Jonathan Bernstein added, "Yes, there's divided government. But political scientists have found that divided government isn't necessarily an impediment to legislative productivity. No, the problem is actually pretty simple. It's not, overall, a dysfunctional Congress; it's a dysfunctional House. Sure, the Senate has plenty of inefficiencies, but it's the House now which really just can't do much of anything."

Standards have fallen so low that if this Congress manages to pass immigration reform and keeps the government's lights on without deliberately harming the country, many of us -- including me -- would be quite impressed. It'd be awfully nice if lawmakers could tackle the Voting Rights Act too, but I'm reluctant to get greedy.

But even this low bar may prove difficult to clear, since House Republicans remain anti-immigrant and still intend to hold the nation's debt limit hostage this fall in exchange for a debt-reduction agreement on which they refuse to compromise.

To be sure, it will be difficult for this Congress to be as truly wretched as the last, but it's well on its way, isn't it?

Virginia Dem calls for McDonnell's resignation

Associated Press

Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell (R) has been the subject of quite a few news stories lately, but all of the developments have been discouraging -- the growing scandal surrounding the governor's ties to Star Scientific's Jonnie R. Williams Sr. isn't just humiliating for McDonnell, it also raises the prospect of criminal charges.

This morning, the story reached a new level, with a Democratic lawmaker calling for the governor's ouster.

An elected Virginia Democrat is publicly calling on Gov. Bob McDonnell to resign as a gift controversy mushrooms around the Republican.

Fairfax City Sen. John Chapman "Chap" Petersen makes the appeal in a letter sent today to McDonnell that urges the governor to return gifts he has received or step down. He is the first sitting member of the General Assembly to take that step.

Citing media reports about the growing gift issue, Petersen urges McDonnell to "come clean" about gifts received from Jonnie Williams Sr., the head of troubled health supplement maker Star Scientific Inc.

Maddow Blog has obtained a copy of the Petersen letter, which is online here (pdf). "If you or your family has received gifts of the type alleged, then you should disclose that fully and immediately," the letter reads. "If those gifts are retail consumer items which you have retained for personal use, then you should return them immediately to the donor or sell them and donate the money to the Literary Fund. That is the only method by which the public can regain trust in your Office. Without that trust, there is no purpose in continuing to serve."

A spokesperson for the governor called the letter "blatantly political," which doesn't seem like much of a response.

But wait, it gets worse.

The Washington Post published this report yesterday:

Virginia Gov. Robert F. McDonnell repeatedly used state assets for personal and political purposes, including directing state employees to work at private and political events, according to new allegations from McDonnell's former chef.

The allegations come in court documents filed Monday as Todd Schneider defends himself against charges that he embezzled food from the governor's mansion while working as the executive chef from 2010 to 2012.

It coincided with this item from the Virginian Pilot:

Catering costs and a wedding dress aren't the only expenses Gov. Bob McDonnell's family apparently avoided in connection with the June 2011 nuptials of his daughter Cailin: They also received some free limousine service.

A political donor from Virginia Beach invited to the ceremony provided the use of his 19-passenger Hummer stretch limo, which was used to take members of the wedding party from the church to the reception site at Virginia's executive mansion on the state capitol grounds.

In case anyone's forgotten, Virginia is the only state in the nation in which governors cannot seek re-election, and McDonnell's term of office is winding down anyway. He had national ambitions for the 2016 cycle, which appear laughable now.