Still time for the WV Republican clown caucus to roll back child labor laws and declare coal a vegetable suitable for school lunches.
— John Cole (@Johngcole) February 11, 2015
Clearly a joke, right?
Someone on the @wvhouse I&L committee is concerned about protecting WV businesses from EPA's overreach on child labor laws. Seriously. EPA.
— Kenwardjr (@Kenwardjr) February 12, 2015
Oh, fer fuck’s sake.
@Kenwardjr The EPA stole my bike.
— John Cole (@Johngcole) February 12, 2015
The EPA is the new right-wing bogeyman. Wait until they find out about the Department of Labor.
trollhattan
Lemme guess, the EPA is somehow keeping 14YOs out of the mines and for good measure, they can’t buy their own smokes, also, too. Bad EPA, go to your CRATE EPA.
Karen in GA
They’ll probably love the Department of Labor — but only until they find out it’s not a Republican Congressional task force to ban abortion.
Suzanne
These crazy people have committed and will commit many sins, but complete lack of funniness has got to be one of the bigger ones.
? Martin
And that third agency, whose name I can’t remember.
trollhattan
@Karen in GA:
“Rimshot!”
burnspbesq
@? Martin:
OSHA?
I mean, who the fcuk needs a safe workplace?
? Martin
@burnspbesq: I think we’re going to have to wait until the 2016 primaries to see if he’s remembered.
Redshift
@burnspbesq: Obviously, the free market will create safe workplaces. If businesses have unsafe conditions, people just won’t work there. Problem solved, right? /randpaul
Schlemazel
@Redshift:
yeah, this was what I was going to say. Those people really are stupid and far too many of them have had to struggle far too little because mom n pops took advantage of all the great things unions and the government did to that made jr’s life so easy. Now jr believe he hit a double when he was born on second base & he wants to make sure nobody else reaches 1st.
Villago Delenda Est
These fucking stupids deserve to die slow, agonizing deaths from toxics and pollution.
Unfortunately, the rest of us, who have working synapses, do not.
shelley
How exactly do they define ‘over-reach’ in child labor laws? Not allowing the little ones to quit school at 12 years so they can work on the factory floors?
opiejeanne
@Schlemazel: as do Mom and Pops.
Villago Delenda Est
@? Martin:
OSHA…the Obama Shiite Homeland Administration
SFAW
Hey John –
It will be interesting if the WV House latches onto your “tire rims and anthrax” post – they’ll probably get on the “Michelle Obama ain’t gonna tell us how to feed our’n kids healthy-like, OK?” bandwagon.
Punchy
Fer fuck’s sake, now the gov’t regulates yer birth canals?
bago
Serf’s up!
Villago Delenda Est
@Punchy: “Now”? They’ve been desperately trying to reinstate it ever since Roe v. Wade took it off the table. Or, if you will, out of the stirrups.
NonyNony
@Punchy: It’s the only kind of regulation that conservatives actually love.
Mike J
@shelley:
Usually what they bring up is the federal government making it illegal for children who live on farms to do chores like feedin’ the chickens and sloppin’ the hogs, and runnin’ the baler what ripped off uncle Jimmy’s arm last harvest.
schrodinger's cat
Republicans want to build a bridge to the 19th century or before. This is what they want to bring back: No vote for women, boom and bust economics with no safety net, Jim Crow laws, gold standard, criminalization of contraception, child labor and on and on the list goes.
boatboy_srq
@shelley: See, it’s really a swipe at the Department of Education: no need for high school when you can find a job straight out of middle school. Plus they can hate on teachers some more, and the evolution/ID debate is effectively ended because you need high school biology classes to get that far. EPA is jus the latest boogeyman.
@Villago Delenda Est: I’d agree except they soak up Medicare/Medicaid/SSD funds doing it. Then again, that’s one reason to be for block grants.
Roger Moore
I thought they were the old right-wing bogeyman. There are so many bogeymen under the Republicans’ beds it’s amazing their noses don’t touch the ceiling when they sleep.
Villago Delenda Est
@schrodinger’s cat:
Ever the optimist. No, they want to repeal the Emancipation Proclamation.
Michelle Bachmann once said that the Renaissance was “a mistake”.
I shit you not.
Roger Moore
@NonyNony:
Yep. The Republicans want to shrink the government until it’s small enough to probe a woman’s vagina.
raven
The news conference with the Jackie Robinson West’s attorney is very interesting. Unlike other people he wants to know the facts before he makes a judgement. What a concept.
Villago Delenda Est
@raven: Sorry, that is not part of the narrative here.
Sort of like Brian William’s undying devotion to getting the facts of his own life straight.
trollhattan
Here’s a thing that happened.
How very useful of her, and how long before she disappears back into whatever tasteful cave serves as her dwelling.
raven
@Villago Delenda Est: I do not now, nor do I ever, adhere to “topics”!
SatanicPanic
@trollhattan: ohhh man
Villago Delenda Est
@raven: Oh, I meant that the narrative, in this case, is we will not wait for the facts to reach a judgement on what these blahs in Chicago did with a little league team.
You are of course, as is the inalienable right of all members of the BJ commentariat, free to swerve violently off the nominal topic at any time. Why, if we didn’t have this generous structure, BiP would be banished to the realm of wind and ghosts, to much rejoicing.
Villago Delenda Est
@trollhattan: I swear, people like Rosanne Barr are bound and fucking determined to make it seem that Reinhard Heydrich was not such a bad guy after all.
raven
@Villago Delenda Est: Aha, not I gotcha! Maybe he was just being a good lawyer but he said this has nothing to do with race.
muddy
@raven: Only football!
srv
John, this is just more evidence that we live in a solipsist universe and you are actually George Orr in Ursula LeGuin’s Lathe of Heaven.
We would have single payer if you would just dream it. I’m expecting it tomorrow.
shortstop
@Suzanne: This, man. This.
Botsplainer
Finally got the stale smoke smell out of my office. A new client came in. He’s on disability and has COPD.
His clothes so reeked of smoke that he made my eyes water. When he left, I opened the window. Later (like 15-20 minutes later) I could bring people from the other side of the building into the office – they could still smell the stale smoke.
I’ve only had three that bad my entire career.
Villago Delenda Est
@srv: Well, we’d have cute puppies and kittens who stay cute puppies and kittens forever, too.
Also, too, we’d all get high on life, and America, and never turn to chemical means to get high.
schrodinger's cat
@Botsplainer: How are things on the domestic front?
Botsplainer
@schrodinger’s cat:
Much, much better. There are still flareups, but I think things will be fine, especially when we actually get the house sold, which I’ve gotten her to agree with in principle.
The house causes about 95% of our issues – it is too far from anything either of us enjoy and requires a ton of maintenance, not counting deferred upgrades. I figure that selling it (quickly, I want it gone quickly) will save us about $700 a month, even with us moving into some toney hipster apartment downtown – and that is just in direct housing costs and doesn’t count direct commuting costs. I’ve released the perfect and trendy single bedroom loft I’d paid a deposit and been approved on (that hurt a bit), and am engaging a dumpster for the weekend after this one. I’ve called a realtor friend and advised that we can price to move quickly.
The numbers on renting vs. owning are shocking. I can pick up a rental that costs more than our current mortgage and still do better, plus, will live the lifestyle that we actually enjoy, without the timesucks of maintenance or commuting. I figure we can go up to about a $2500 monthly rental before it actually evens out. I can easily find $1600 rentals that will knock your socks off in this market.
schrodinger's cat
@Botsplainer: Good luck!
opiejeanne
@Botsplainer: can I ask where you are?
rikyrah
How Black Middle-Class Kids Become Poor Adults
Once they’ve grown up, African American children are more likely than their white counterparts to backslide into a lower economic group.
GILLIAN B. WHITE
JAN 19 2015, 7:40 AM ET
When it comes to financial stability, black Americans are often in much more precarious financial situations than white Americans. Their unemployment rate is higher, and so is the level of poverty within the black community. In 2013, the poverty rate among white Americans was 9.6 percent, among black Americans it was 27.2 percent. And the gap between the wealth of white families and black families has widened to its highest levels since 1989, according to a 2014 study by Pew Research Center.
The facts of this rift aren’t new, or all that surprising. But perhaps what’s most unsettling about the current economic climate in black America is that when black families attain middle-class status, the likelihood that their children will remain there, or do better, isn’t high.
“Even black Americans who make it to the middle class are likely to see their kids fall down the ladder,” writes Richard Reeves, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution. In a recent blog post Reeves says that seven out of 10 black children who are born to families with income that falls in the middle quintile of the income spectrum will find themselves with income that’s one to two quintiles below their parents’ during their own adulthood.
A 2014 study from the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago, which looked at factors like parental income, education, and family structure, shows a similar pattern: Many black Americans not only fail to move up, but show an increased likelihood of backsliding. According to the study, “In recent decades, blacks have experienced substantially less upward intergenerational mobility and substantially more downward intergenerational mobility than whites.”
The greater probability of slipping back applies to blacks across income groups. According to the Fed study, about 60 percent of black children whose parents had income that fell into the top 50 percent of the distribution saw their own income fall into the bottom half during adulthood. This type of downward slide was common for only 36 percent of white children.
theatlantic.com/business/archive/2015/01/how-black-middle-class-kids-become-black-lower-class-adults…
Buddy H
This just in:
James Franco Cast in Stephen King Hulu TV Series ’11/22/63′
rikyrah
Sen. Warren: GOPers Will Concoct A Crisis To Dismantle Social Security
ByDANIEL STRAUSS
Published FEBRUARY 12, 2015, 10:13 AM EST
Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) issued a stark warning to supporters: Republicans are willing to create a crisis pitting “America’s seniors against America’s disabled” in order to gut Social Security.
“We’ve known for years that Social Security Disability Insurance is set to run low in 2016, and most people assumed that another bipartisan reallocation was coming,” Warren wrote in an email to supporters on Wednesday evening. “But now, thanks to the Republican ideological war on our most important national safety net, disabled Americans could suddenly face a 20% cut in their Social Security checks next year.”
House Republicans quietly passed a rule change last month that would block Congress from being able to make routine tax revenue transfers between the Social Security retirement and disability funds, commonly referred to as reallocation, unless the program’s overall solvency is improved.
Like Warren, other liberal Democrats, like Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-OH), have vowed to strongly resist Republicans’ move.
“They want to dramatically slice Social Security, so we negotiate and compromise a small cut in Social Security,” Brown said in an interview with TPM. “No, that’s not the way you negotiate.”
Republicans’ claim that this is about budget balancing is nonsense, Warren said.
“Republicans want to pretend this fight is all about dollars and cents. But at the end of the day, this is about a lot more than accounting: It’s about our values,” Warren said.
talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/elizabeth-warren-social-security-disability-insurance?utm_content=buf…
Scamp Dog
@Botsplainer: I’m curious about your location, too. I’m a bit surprised by the rental being cheaper–or did you have “too much house” (more than you needed)? Things got noticeably cheaper for me after buying, even though the condo is bigger than the apartment. Although I think a good part of that is that I got lucky and bought near the bottom of the real estate crash. The other big benefit is that the mortgage doesn’t go up periodically, the way rent does.
Mnemosyne (iPhone)
@raven:
I put a link in the Little League thread that has the full statement from them. It’s really an intra-region dispute — some of the other teams in the region are claiming they didn’t sign off on the boundary map that JRW submitted.
Botsplainer
@opiejeanne:
Sure! The People’s Democratic Republic of Louisville. Its a happenin’ sort of foodie city.
Plus, the area has possibly one of the most reliably progressive Congressmen in Washington, John Yarmuth. He just announced that he’s blowing off Netanyahu’s speech. As a secularized Jewish guy, it makes him stand out.
Schlemazel
@raven:
I feel the it is not about race either. If they broke the rules by putting together a team with players outside their boundaries then they should forfeit. That the happen to be a team of all African-American kids just makes it that much sadder. What really makes this case unusual, as I said this morning, is that usually teams cheat by dragging a couple of 16 year old player along.
Buddy H
@Botsplainer: We went through hell selling our last house. The realtor was a laid-back guy who wasn’t particularly ambitious at this point in his life. He was more interested in seeing live music; his real estate career was an annoyance apparently.
We had a parade of obnoxious people walk through. One woman rejected the house outright because she didn’t like the bathroom color. Another man took a look at the furnace, then grabbed a large pipe and shook it to test its strength.
Some people expressed interest, but then when I asked our realtor about it, he admitted he hadn’t called them back. Horrible.
We finally found a new realtor who was more aggressive; she would even call people who had rejected the house to see if they’d changed their minds. She was 100% into selling houses.
Some realtors say the house should be stripped of all furniture and personal belongings, but I disagree. Seeing empty rooms makes a house look cheaper, just a hollow box. I think furnishings (even if they aren’t to the the taste of a potential buyer) make the place look like a real home.
A few years ago, a reporter (I’ll call her that) for our local paper invited readers to share realtor horror stories on her blog. The response was a flood of horror stories. The top realtor in town threatened to pull all his advertising. The publisher issued an apology.
Mnemosyne (iPhone)
@Schlemazel:
It sounds a little complicated, though — take a look at the thread below. The region’s administrator signed off on the map, but other teams are claiming they didn’t agree to it. IOW, there is at least one actual LL official involved. It’s not just the team’s actions.
Botsplainer
@Scamp Dog:
Way too much exurban house (bought for school district – not my idea, ahem), and the kids are now gone. We use maybe 900 square feet of it. The rest is a warehouse for stuff I don’t care about – used furniture, old clothes, books I’ve already read…
A sale and relocation saves me 300-500 commuting hours a year. Her career will change soon, too – she could lose her commute as well.
Plus, her travel schedule this year will be insane. I have no desire to be shunted out there to the hinterlands to wait for her trips to end, being alone.
catclub
@shelley: The smart people over at LGM talk about Lochnerism.
I already know more about it than I would like. I hope it is not the future.
Schlemazel
@Botsplainer:
Back in the 60s my brother was found to have scoliosis & the hospital that they wanted to do the surgery at was under control of the county welfare office (Gillette Childrens, which no longer is under their control). My dad filled out all the paper work & then nothing. Weeks went by & nobody could tell him what was going on. He was discussing this with some pols at the precinct caucus. There was a guy there who worked second shift & said he was very familiar with the welfare office & would be glad to help. Since he had his days free he would go down to the offices, find out who was sitting on the papers & tell them he was going to sit there all day until the guy moved them along. He smoked White Owl cigars & had a bad habit of sucking loudly through his teeth. Not amazingly, the papers got approved by everyone that needed to bless them in a week. With the clean air laws you could not do that today.
a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)
@Botsplainer: We discovered the difference also. We have a rental for $200 lower than what you mentioned “will knock your socks” that’s on a 1/2 acre lot on a cul de sac 20 minutes from downtown or anywhere else you need to get in 20 minutes. All single family residences and the only commercial establishments are temples and a community center/gym. There was also a country club with an easy gold course but a dandy dining room, which closed ~ 15 years ago. The cart paths are walking trails now.
Did I mention we really like it?
Schlemazel
@Mnemosyne (iPhone):
I don’t see a link, sorry. It seems like LL moved awfully quickly if that is the case.
Citizen_X
@Villago Delenda Est:
What, like there’s some other place that he’s presently reporting from?
Hal
Who knows? One of those rocks could have sliced right through the officers jugular. I’m sure there was no other option than to shoot him dead since the stun gun did not work. Don’t call for back up and surround him, don’t wait for him to calm down, or just tackle and cuff the guy. Meh. Just open fire.
nypost.com/2015/02/12/homeless-man-throwing-rocks-shot-dead-by-police/
Botsplainer
@Scamp Dog:
The other thing I’ll point out is that the repair costs are what drive me up a wall. I know for a fact that in the next 5 years, I’ll be replacing the HVAC, the water heater, the water softener, the pump and aerator on septic and having to completely rework the front walk (which is basically an extended, narrow deck).
That comes to about $14,000.00, excluding the walk, which is about $3,000.00 worth of deck work that I’ve managed to keep going.
Exterior needs paint – $6,000.00.
Parking pad isn’t great and has some sections that need repair. Total resurface? Last quote $7,000.00, 3 years ago.
One bathroom really needs an upgrade. $3,000.00.
Flooring throughout after kids spilled nail polish, paint, etc.? $6,000.00.
Just cleaning the gutters is a $350.00 job, and the roof pitch is too steep for me to attempt it.
That doesn’t count the expense for when those goddamned pine beetles start toppling big ass, $2,500.00 to remove pines, and at least 3 are in bad shape.
Last roof we did was $14,000.00. We get a big hailstorm that takes out skylights, our deductible is nearly $4,000.00.
I’m so done with exterior maintenance.
trollhattan
@Citizen_X:
The ghosts decided they don’t particularly want to hang with him, so it’s just wind now.
Southern Beale
Seems like it was just last presidential election when Newt Gingrich was seriously talking about child labor laws like they were a A Bad Thing.
Your “modern” GOP, and by “modern” I do mean pre-19th century.
Keith G
Kottke has a tre cool post up about the how it came about that Franklin was the first Black character in Peanuts.
rikyrah
House conservatives push McConnell to gut filibuster
By Cristina Marcos – 02/12/15 01:22 PM EST
A growing number of House GOP conservatives are pressuring Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) on Thursday to invoke the “nuclear option” and change the chamber’s rules to pass a bill defunding President Obama’s executive actions on immigration.
Reps. Raúl Labrador (R-Idaho) and Tim Huelskamp (R-Kan.) said McConnell should change Senate rules, so the House-passed Department of Homeland Security (DHS) funding bill, which includes language to revoke Obama’s immigration-related actions, can bypass a Democratic filibuster in the upper chamber.
Rep. Mick Mulvaney (R-S.C.) also endorsed the idea at a Thursday news conference. He said there’s a “way to change the rules to allow us to move forward” and “take away the ability to filibuster.”
Rep. Mo Brooks (R-Ala.) was the first House Republican to advocate such a rules change Wednesday evening, arguing that now-Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) had established a precedent during his time in the majority.
Republican senators, however, immediately sought to quash the idea.
thehill.com/homenews/house/232635-house-conservatives-push-mcconnell-to-gut-filibuster
trollhattan
@Southern Beale:
Ooh, I remember that. Newton wanted poor kids allowed to do school janitorial work in order to teach them that work is a Good Thing and to break out of their trap of having been born to a family of Poors, who themselves would not be able to teach Worth Ethic 101.
They’d still be Takers (paid with tax dollars, duh) but would at least have some calluses.
Iowa Old Lady
@rikyrah: Since they spent the entire last 6 years filibustering, this is rich.
Patrick
@Iowa Old Lady:
And beyond stupid since Obama will simply veto it.
Pogonip
@Citizen_X: You heartless liberal, don’t you realize there are people in Ukraine who don’t even HAVE wind and ghosts?
Roger Moore
@Patrick:
It’s not quite as stupid as that. One of the things the Democrats are doing by filibustering is taking time off the Senate calendar. Every day they spend trying to get this through the Senate is one day they can’t spend on some other mischief. That’s why I’m happy to see the Senate Democrats actively blocking it instead of counting on Obama’s veto.
Mnemosyne (iPhone)
@Schlemazel:
Sorry, I didn’t realize how far down the original thread was. Here’s the link again:
tinyurl.com/ox5cw2b
Assuming that the LL’s narrative is correct, there was corruption by their own official, not just the team. I think the reason JRW lawyered up is that it sounds like it could be an honest dispute over who agreed to what when and LL may have overreacted.
Violet
@Keith G: Cool post. Thanks.
NonyNony
@Roger Moore:
I would actually adore it if the idiot Republicans in the House – who clearly do not understand how the government works at even an 8th grade level – got the angry rubes to gut the filibuster while Obama was in office.
My prediction has always been that they GOP would gut the filibuster the next time they controlled the House, Oval Office and 50% of the Senate and the Democrats tried to stop them from doing something odious. If they could get rid of it WITHOUT having to go through the pain of a Republican-controlled government, I’d be all for it.
(The filibuster needs to die die die die die. It’s something that manages to make the Senate even less democratic than it already is and it needs to die.)
catclub
@Roger Moore:
yep, one less day where balanced budget amendments are offered.
Roger Moore
@NonyNony:
I more or less approve of the way the Democrats are using the Senate rules right now. They aren’t just mindlessly blocking a bill; they have quite specific objections to it and are trying to get it amended to eliminate their objections. That’s how legislatures are actually supposed to work, and it’s substantially different from the way the Republicans were using it, which was to enforce a supermajority requirement that was never intended to be part of the rules.
Patrick
@Roger Moore:
I think it is great what the Dems is doing. It is payback time. I just think it is stupid (beyond stupid) by the GOP to get rid of the filibuster. The Dems are likely to control the WH and senate after 2016. After that is just a matter of time before they also take over the House. By giving up the filibuster they will give Hillary Clinton so much more room to govern than Obama ever had.
Just One More Canuck
@Buddy H: if a house is empty when you look at it, I think “grow-op”
bmoak
FYI, the most recent issue of Consumer Reports has a lot of tips about selling your house and preparing your house for sale. Might want to give it a look.
Violet
@Buddy H:
If a realtor says that they don’t know their own business. The large majority of people looking at houses have no imagination when it comes to how to furnish a room. An empty room looks smaller and without furniture people can’t even imagine that a sofa or bed or table might fit into it.
Removing personal items like family photos or weird items that attract attention away from the buyer imagining the home as their own is a good idea, however. People don’t like to see the home as yours; they want to see it as theirs. Furnished but not too personal.
Mnemosyne (iPhone)
@Botsplainer:
Your wife may be one of those people who thinks house=security, which might be why she’s reluctant to sell. You might be able to get her to agree to rent for a few years while the career and empty nest stuff settles down and then look into buying a small house or condo more suitable to your newly kid-free life.
trollhattan
@Violet:
An in-law stages (expensive) houses for basically that lived-in look but you know–lived in by beautiful people and not riff-raff. It works because the house looks much larger furnished with that ideal smattering of splendid things, but of course the actual occupants have to skedaddle to show it. Typical clients have multiple houses, so no big whoop.
Violet
@trollhattan: I knew a woman who serially lived in expensive homes that were being shown but weren’t occupied by the owners. Her “job” was to make sure the house looked “occupied but not too occupied.” A current magazine here. Clearly watered and tended-to plants there. Clothes in the closet. Etc. Plus bake cookies before any showing. She got to live in these magnificent homes for free. Kind of amazing.
Violet
@Botsplainer: I don’t know how old your kids are but your wife may also be thinking of (hoping for) grandchildren in the next few years and if you don’t have a guest room the kids and grandkids won’t be able to visit. If the house is the one in which you raised your family, it may have a deeper meaning for your wife than just a roof over her head and a commute.
Those are issues you guys have to negotiate and decide for sure that selling the house is the right thing.
WereBear
@Keith G: Awesome! Shared.
ruemara
@rikyrah: ha. so fucking true and painful. It’s like NOW they’re understanding this is a problem. Thanks for messing up people’s lives.
Villago Delenda Est
@NonyNony: The filibuster isn’t really the problem, except in the deceitful way was practiced in the previous six year…a silent way of doing it.
If you’re willing to start reading the phone book on the Senate floor to stop some legislation, by all means, do so. It just means that people can tune in on CSPAN2 and see you doing it. Own your convictions, don’t hide them behind rules that allow you to evade your responsibilities.
The Rethugs don’t want to do that, mainly because the shit they object to is popular, and they don’t want to be seen publically shitting on the floor of the Senate to stop it in their petulance.
kindness
I saw that post earlier in the day, snickered a little and went away. Looking at it another time though, we all have to admit…
John makes a great troll when it suits him. Funny too.
jonas
I don’t get it. You’d think the people of WV, of all people, would preserve a memory of what life was like before labor and environmental regulations. I mean, it was their people who friggin’ died for these laws to be passed. I dunno — what are we supposed to do? If they want to drink poisoned water and and work in mines that blow up and cave in, who are we to tell ’em they can’t? They vote for these assholes, after all.
brantl
Cole, did you think that the reactionary right wouldn’t realize that with the climate change coming on (that they are denying tooth and nail), that the EPA’s role in government wouldn’t justifiably swell? It will, and this is their pre-emptive paranoid strike. In their delusions, this is how we are going to end up in the work camps. They are sure the EPA will do it.