New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg has cut a new ad for a Human Rights Campaign initiative that is seeking to push the state to pass marriage equality legislation.
This is good news for civil rights. If New York passes marriage equality then the rest of the nation will follow. It is appalling that the Right wants to not only deny equal rights to a sector of America, but they also want to criminalize gays for being gay. That’s like making it illegal for a black person to be black.
“The most important thing is to prevent a tax hike in the middle of a recession,” Stewart added. “This should be done for as long as possible, but a 2-year freeze at the current rate, if that’s what it takes to prevent a Democrat tax hike, would certainly be preferable to an immediate tax hike on every taxpaying American.”
Don Stewart is Senator Mitch McConnell’s (R) communications director. First of all, the Bush tax cuts were forced down our throats when the Republicans used the reconciliation process to override a possible Democratic filibuster. (Dems won’t do the same to the Republicans because they have no balls.) These were cuts that were not paid for and added billions to our national debt. Secondly, letting the tax cuts expire under the current Democratic plan will only affect people who make over 250,000 dollars per year.
It is time that we speak up and stop letting them get away with lying to the middle class Americans.
The search for a legislative way forward on energy will continue Tuesday when Democrats reconvene to strategize ahead of a Wednesday energy meeting at the White House. Presenters from last Thursday’s Democratic caucus meeting, including Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.) who laid out her CLEAR Act in a well-conceived video, will field questions from colleagues. Cantwell’s video, presented at a caucus meeting to decide what direction to take on energy legislation, describes the energy bill she is sponsoring with Susan Collins (R-Me.).
The CLEAR Act would spur green energy investment while avoiding regional disparities, according to a new study by the Institute for Policy Integrity at New York University School of Law. The legislation would cap national greenhouse gas emissions, auctioning off all allowances for emissions and then refunding 75 percent of federal revenues to taxpayers, using the other 25 percent to invest in green technologies.
I had high hopes for the Kerry-Lieberman-Graham climate change bill, but Senator Lindsey Graham (R-SC), the coward, decided that it was just way too liberal and took his ball and went home crying all the way about faulty climate science when everyone knows that big oil hired scientists to diss the real science and muddy the once clear waters of global warming truth. My heart sunk when the effort collapsed without GOP support. But the guys on the hill have to realize that any progressive measure will collapse if it depends on any GOP support at all to pass.
Now that my favorite Senator, Maria Cantwell (D-WA) has introduced legislation that would get the job done without cap-and-trade which was a faulty idea to begin with, my hopes are soaring again that we will begin to take real steps toward a clean energy future, instead of just giving it lip service like we have done for the past four decades. Cantwell’s plan limits carbon emissions. Cap-and-trade did not, and allowed big polluters to pay to keep on polluting.
Congress is currently working to re-authorize a big transportation funding bill, but Republicans have imperiled the process by proposing to stop using revenue from the fuel tax to pay for mass transit, instead restricting it to just highway spending. As an alternative, the GOP wants to make a one-time $40 billion allotment for mass transit. […]
Air sampling by NOAA over Colorado Finds 4% Methane Leakage, More Than Double Industry Claims Natural-gas operations could release far more methane into the atmosphere than previously thought. [Source: Nature] How much methane leaks during the entire lifecycle of unconventional gas has emerged as a key question in the fracking debate. Natural gas is mostly […]
After defeating multiple amendments designed to derail the bill — including one that would require a referendum — the Washington state House of Representative has passed marriage equality with a vote of 55-43. The bill now goes to Gov. Chris Gregoire (D), who has promised to sign it. Opponents of marriage equality have already promised to challenge […]
A bill that would require all New Mexico voters to present certain forms of photo identification or be barred from voting died in committee today. The legislation was voted down along party lines — three Democrats opposed, two Republicans supported — in the House Consumer and Public Affairs Committee. Though this was the fourth time […]
It’ll be very interesting to see the result of a lawsuit currently brewing in federal court that is trying to shut down ReDigi (a judge backed the service, but an appeal seems likely), a service that will let you resell music you purchased from iTunes after taking quite comprehensive efforts to keep owners from having […]
Headline Worthy
Re: Michael Bloomberg Cuts Ad Supporting Marriage Equality (VIDEO)
This is good news for civil rights. If New York passes marriage equality then the rest of the nation will follow. It is appalling that the Right wants to not only deny equal rights to a sector of America, but they also want to criminalize gays for being gay. That’s like making it illegal for a black person to be black.
Watch the ad: