Archive for the ‘congress’ Category

Rep. Jackie Speier outs obscene Marine Facebook page

Wednesday, May 8, 2013 by:Carolyn Lochhead
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Woman with black eye who burned the bacon once

Woman with black eye who burned the bacon once

Amid the sudden uproar over sexual assaults in the military following a Pentagon report Tuesday that 26,000 members of the military were assaulted last year, Rep. Jackie Speier, D-San Mateo, released portions of a Facebook page, “F’N Wook,” denigrating women in the Marine Corps.

In a letter to Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel, Marine Corps Commandant James Amos and deputy inspector general Lynne Halbrooks, Speier said she is confident that “you would also be horrified by the culture of misogyny and sexual harrassment depicted on the website.”

The photos, most of them too obscene to print, are available here in Speier’s letter. Scroll down, they’re at the end. And here’s the site itself. Have at it. Update: link is no longer working. Page apparently taken down.

A whistleblower called the page to Speier’s attention Tuesday.

Speier has been working for two years, with no results, to call attention to military rapes. She has done 25 speeches on the topic on the House floor. She has introduced three pieces of legislation to address the issue, but the House Armed Services Committee, chaired by Rep. Buck McKeon, R-Santa Clarita (Los Angeles County) has refused to hold a hearing.

Speier said there are many similar pages such as “Just the Tip, of the Spear,” “U Suckers Missed Christmas -USMC,” and “POG Boot F..ks.”

The “F’N Wook” page and others like it “promote the idea that women are inferior and only useful as sexual objects and sandwich makers,” Speier said in her letter.

“There are too many examples to recount them all here, but a few of the attached pictures and memes should give you an indication of the tone of the site,” Speier wrote. “You’ll find pictures captioned, ‘This is my rape face;’ ‘She burned my bacon only once,’ above a woman with a black eye; ‘I can bang even when I’m not on my back!’ for a picture of a woman holding a gun….”

Speier asked for a review of the pages and demanded “planned actions or responses” by May 31.

These are the bills Speier has introduced according to her office:

The STOP Act (HR 1593) will take all cases of rape and sexual assault outside of the chain of command by creating an independent office within the military to handle the reporting, investigation, and prosecution of these crimes. The bipartisan bill has 122 cosponors.

The Military Judicial Reform Act (HR 1079) is a bipartisan bill that will strip commanders of the authority to overturn convictions or lessen sentences handed down by judge or jury at a military court martial.

The Protect Our Military Trainees Act (HR 430) is a bipartisan bill that requires the military justice system to acknowledge the power imbalance between trainer and trainee and strictly penalizes any instructor who engages in sexual acts with a trainee during the time of instruction and for 30 days afterward.

When was Tailhook?

marine

Barbara Boxer pushes forward on “planetary emergency”

Thursday, February 14, 2013 by:Carolyn Lochhead
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Sens. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., and Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., formally introduced their fee-and-dividend climate bill Thursday,as you learned here Wednesday.

The press conference featured several environmental activists who were arrested at the White House Wednesday, part of a push for a big climate rally in Washington Sunday. Also on Thursday the Government Accountability Office added climate change to its “high risk” fiscal issues that threaten big costs to taxpayers.

Bill McKibbon, founder of 350.org, is predicting 20,000 demonstrators on the mall Sunday. Many are arriving from San Francisco, pressuring President Obama to nix the Keystone pipeline as comrade Garofoli has been documenting.

The fee-and-dividend idea is a clever twist on a carbon tax, putting a price on carbon at its source and rebating most of the money back to U.S. residents. Modeled on Alaska’s “permanent fund” that rebates oil royalties to Alaska residents, the idea has been promoted by McKibbon and NASA climate scientist James Hansen. The Boxer/Sanders bill is not quite so clean, as it uses a big chunk of money to invest in green technologies, but the idea is the same.

The fee-and-dividend idea offers a way around the political and distributional obstacles of a carbon tax. A price on carbon is widely considered essential to reducing greenhouse gas emissions, and is much simpler and more transparent than the cap-and-trade legislation Boxer sponsored in 2009. A carbon tax has potential appeal to conservatives, at least conservative economists, as a market based approach to reducing climate pollution, as well as to tax reform. A carbon tax is a consumption tax, which economists generally prefer to taxes on work, savings and investment.

D.C. think tanks have been working overtime on the idea. That includes the conservative American Enterprise Institute. Former Rep. Bob Inglis, a South Carolina Republican, is crusading for the idea, at a new think tank, the Energy and Enterprise Initiative, at George Mason University.

Alex Bozmoski, director of strategy and operations for Inglis’s Energy & Enterprise Initiative, said it is “refreshing that Democrats are moving past cap-and-trade” but criticized the Boxer/Sanders bill as loaded with new renewable energy spending and “bloated government, and that is a fatal flaw for conservatives.” A better idea, he said, would be to offset the new revenue from the carbon fee with dollar-for-dollar cuts in other taxes and leave it to the market, incentivized by the carbon tax, to figure out how to cut emissions.

Sanders scored big by getting Boxer’s buy in. Boxer said she will push the bill through the Environment and Public Works Committee, which she chairs, holding hearings by spring and a markup in summer.

Boxer also said Republicans will not be able to stop the EPA from imposing new CO2 regulations on existing power plants because the Supreme Court has ruled that the agency must act on greenhouse gas emissions under the Clean Air Act.

Boxer cited climate scientists who briefed the committee Wednesday warning that major American cities such as San Francisco, New Orleans, Boston and Atlantic City will be under water this century if emissions continue on their current course. Among other things. Boxer called the situation a planetary emergency.

Sen. Barbara Boxer throws weight behind carbon fee

Senate Judiciary chair rejects Dianne Feinstein’s assault weapons ban

Wednesday, January 30, 2013 by:Carolyn Lochhead
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The Democratic chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee did not endorse colleague Dianne Feinstein’s assault weapons ban at a packed Capitol Hill hearing on guns Wednesday in the wake of the Newtown, Conn., shooting.

Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., called for “common sense reform,” that closes loopholes in current gun laws and enforces background checks. Buthe did not endorse Feinstein’s tougher ban. “I know gun store owners in Vermont,” Leahy said. “They follow the law and conduct background checks…why should we not try to plug the loopholes in the law that allow (criminals and the mentally ill) to buy guns without background checks?”

The rebuffed California Democrat plans to hold her own hearing in her Judiciary subcommittee on her legislation, which is strongly opposed by the National Rifle Association. Senate majority leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., has also refused to back a ban on military-style weapons and high-capacity clips. Reid’s position reflects the political fact that a whole bevy of conservative Democrats do not support Feinstein’s ban.

Former Arizona Rep. Gabriel Giffords opened the hearing. As a House Democrat from a gun friendly district, Giffords opposed stricter gun laws, but since being shot in the head by a crazed gunman while holding an event in her district has reversed her position. Giffords, accompanied by her husband, gave a halting and brief but extremely forceful opening statement.

“Speaking is difficult but I need to say something important,” Giffords said. “Too many children are dying
We must do something. It will be hard, but the time is now. You must act. Be courageous, Americans are counting on you.”

Her husband Mark Kelly gave equally forceful testimony, noting both he and Giffords are gun owners. He said the Arizona gunman who shot his wife in 15 seconds emptied his magazine of 33 bullets, “and there were 33 wounds,” including a fatal shot to a young child. Kelly said one of the most important things to do is close the gun show loophole and require all sellers to require a background check. “I can’t think of something that would make our country safer than doing just that,” Kelly said.

David Kopel, an adjunct Professor of constitutional law at Denver University, said universal background checks “are only enforceable with universal gun registration,” which in other countries has left gun ownership “in serious peril.”

Kopel said teachers should be allowed to be armed, as they are in Utah. “Armed defense in schools is the immediate and best choice,” he said.

Gayle Trotter, an attorney and senior fellow at the conservative Independent Women’s Forum, said guns “make women safer,” because they “reverse the balance of power in a violent confrontation” between a male attacker and a weaker female. “An armed woman does not need superior strength” in a hand-to-hand struggle, Trotter said.

Obama embraces gay, lesbian bi-nationals on immigration

Tuesday, January 29, 2013 by:Carolyn Lochhead
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As expected, President Obama endorsed inclusion of bi-national same sex couples in his own immigration framework announced in Las Vegas Tuesday, in contrast to Monday’s bipartisan Senate framework which omitted mention of gays and lesbians.

Obama did not mention bi-nationals in his Las Vegas speech but they were included in the written fact sheet, endorsing reform that “treats same-sex families as families by giving U.S. citizens and lawful permanent residents the ability to seek a visa on the basis of a permanent relationship with a same-sex partner.”

Currently, married gay and lesbian couples, of whom one partner is a U.S. citizen and the other a foreigner, are banned under the 1996 Defense of Marriage Act from the spousal immigration preference given to straight couples. DOMA is currently before the Supreme Court. If the court overturns DOMA, the issue should be moot for gay and lesbian couples married any of the nine states (and D.C.) that permit it.

Gay rights activists worry that in the long, tough negotiations ahead, the interests of the small number of gay and lesbian couples of whom one member is a foreigner (est. 28,500) could be ditched to woo GOP votes. (How many depends first on how deeply Senate Republicans splinter on immigration, and second, on whether House Speaker John Boehner would allow an immigration bill to come to the floor that would need Democrats to pass.)

Sen. John McCain, the Arizona Republican who joined the bipartisan Senate Gang of Eight for comprehensive immigration reform, on Tuesday morning dismissed the issue as less important than broader immigration issues. “It’s something that, frankly, is not of paramount importance at this time,” McCain said. “We’ll have to look at it … to gauge how the majority of Congress feels. … We need to get broad consensus on our proposal to start with.”

Boehner spokesman Brendan Buck warned against Obama’s leftward tilt: “There are a lot of ideas about how best to fix our broken immigration system. Any solution should be a bipartisan one, and we hope the President is careful not to drag the debate to the left and ultimately disrupt the difficult work that is ahead in the House and Senate.”

Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-NY, a chieftain of the Gang of Eight, praised Obama for leaving “space” to Congress to work out the details: “He is using the bully pulpit to focus the nation’s attention on the urgency of immigration reform and set goals for action on this issue. But he is also giving lawmakers on both sides the space to form a bipartisan coalition.”

New effort to increase visas for tech workers as high as 300,000

Tuesday, January 29, 2013 by:Carolyn Lochhead
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The tech industry, one of the most powerful players in the immigration debate, threw down its marker Tuesday with a bipartisan stand-alone bill to increase H-1B visas for skilled workers from 65,000 to 115,000 with an escalator that could bring total visas to 300,000 a year.

Silicon Valley has been chafing under H-1B caps since the last comprehensive bill collapsed in 2006. Industry leaders have long argued that a green card should be stapled to every diploma earned by a foreign student in math or engineering, on the grounds that the U.S. is losing talented people educated in its own universities. Despite support from California House Democrats Anna Eshoo (Palo Alto) and Zoe Lofgren (San Jose), the effort has been stymied by stiff resistance from some U.S. tech workers and bipartisan opponents in Congress who say the industry just wants cheap labor.

The bill would also “allow dual intent for foreign students at U.S. colleges and universities to provide the certainty they need to ensure their future in the United States.” And it would exempt from the employment-based green card cap dependents of employment-based visa holders, U.S. STEM (science, technology, engineering, math) advanced degree holders, “persons with extraordinary ability” and “outstanding professors and researchers.”

This year’s model of an H1b visa increase is called I-Squared, or the Immigration Innovation Act, sponsored by Sens. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah), Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.), Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) and Chris Coons (D-Del.).

The authors say the bill is critical to U.S. competitiveness in the global economy. In addition to increasing H-1B visas to 115,000 a year, the bill would create an automatic escalator “so that the cap can adjust – up or down – to the demands of the economy” with a total ceiling of 300,000.

Depending on how quickly the annual cap is reached, mini-escalators are included that would provide as many as 20,000 additional visas immediately. Additional sponsors include Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.), Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.), Dean Heller (R-Nev.), John Hoeven (R-N.D.), Jeanne Shaheen (D-N.H.), and Mark Warner (D-Va,).

Whether 2013 will be a replay of the immigration failure of 2006, we shall know by summer. The various factions are suiting up for well-worn roles. Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., will be pushing for expanded temporary slots for the farm workers who are essential to California’s produce industry. The bigger bipartisan Senate framework introduced Monday by the Gang of Eight has placeholders for both tech and farm workers. Florida Republican Marco Rubio is one of the Gang and also a sponsor of the separate tech worker bill, giving it added juice.

Pew just released a new estimate on the total U.S. immigrant population, tallying a record 40.4 million in 2011, or 13 percent of the population, based on an analysis of Census data by the Pew Hispanic Center, a project of the Pew Research Center.

UPDATE: Obama gave a plug to the tech side in Las Vegas Tuesday: “Right now, there are brilliant students from all over the world sitting in classrooms at our top universities. They’re earning degrees in the fields of the future, like engineering and computer science. But once they finish school, once they earn that diploma, there’s a good chance they’ll have to leave our country. Think about that.

“We’re giving them all the skills they need to figure that out, but then we’re going to turn around and tell them to start that business and create those jobs in China or India or Mexico or someplace else. That’s not how you grow new industries in America. That’s how you give new industries to our competitors. ”

Barbara Boxer sees carbon tax in the mix

Tuesday, January 22, 2013 by:Carolyn Lochhead
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Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif.

Sen. Barbara Boxer said she had a one word answer for why President Obama promised to act on climate change in his second inaugural address: “Sandy.”

Boxer called Hurricane Sandy a turning point in public opinion on global warming, and said Washington will act to curb CO2 emissions not via legislation but through the Environmental Protection Agency.

“My view is they have no choice but to act,” Boxer said, referring to a Supreme Court ruling that affirmed that greenhouse gasses are pollutants under the Clean Air Act. “The EPA has huge authority here.”

Boxer, a California Democrat who as chair of the Environment and Public Works Committee tried and failed to get a cap and trade bill through the Senate during President Obama’s first term, said former President George W. Bush “wasted eight years” arguing in court that CO2 is not a pollutant. She said she would block “as long as I have a breath” any effort by House Republicans to reverse the high court ruling through legislation.

She also opened the possibility of replacing the gasoline tax with a carbon tax at the source as part of a broader tax reform. The 18.4 cent gasoline tax is a kind of mini carbon tax, but the last time it was raised was in the Clinton administration. Boxer, along with both parties in Congress, has refused to raise the gasoline tax despite an urgent need for highway funds because the gas tax is extremely unpopular.

“There may be a way to do away with the gas tax at the pump if we do a carbon tax,” Boxer said. She conceded the unpopularity of a carbon tax in Congress but said it is “in the mix.” She argued that the gas tax is raising less money each year as fuel efficiency standards rise, noting that her plug-in hybrid gets 150 miles per gallon.

She said Obama “knows he’s going to be judged by history,” because someday “people are going to say they had a window to act” on CO2 emissions. The EPA is currently considering imposing CO2 emissions standards on existing electrical generation plants, which she said account for 35 percent of the nation’s CO2 emissions.

As for China, which has surpassed the United States in CO2 emissions, Boxer said pollution is so bad now that “you cannot see in China.” She recalled a 2011 trip she made there, where an official remarked that it was a beautiful day. “No it was not,” Boxer said. She argued that China will be forced to reduce its air pollution, and doing so will also reduce CO2 emissions.

She also said the United States should lead, rather than waiting for China. “We can’t say we won’t do anything until China does,” Boxer said. That would be like saying, “We won’t protect women until China does,” she argued, “Or we won’t have free speech until China does.”

She said she has no idea whom Obama will nominate as EPA administrator, now that Lisa Jackson is leaving. She also put in a plug for Los Angeles Mayor Anthony Villaraigosa as Secretary of Transportation.

With President Obama barely sworn in, EMILY’s List plans a female president for 2016

Tuesday, January 22, 2013 by:jana.kasperka@chron.com (Jana Kasperkevic)
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EMILY’s List 2013 Inauguration Brunch (EMILY’s List photo)

Before President Barack Obama was officially sworn in for his second term as President of the United States of America, a group of pro-choice women who had worked for his re-election gathered for the EMILY’s List 2013 Inaugural Brunch.

The activists enjoyed their 2012 victories: having re-elected a Democratic president, having elected a Senate with twenty women, 16 new pro-choice Democratic women in Congress, the first open gay senator, the first Asian-American woman senator and the first two congresswomen who have served in combat.

“This is what history looks like,” EMILY’s List President Stephanie Schriock said.

But that’s not enough, she added.

“We have fought so hard. We have so much. We have come so far. And I am so proud — not just as the president of EMILY’s List, but as a woman, and as an American. Now, make no mistake: We’re not done,” Schriock said just moments later.

Both House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi of San Francisco and Schriock issued a rallying cry to women across the nation for 2014 and 2016.

The message was clear: This is our time.

That means the speaker’s gavel back in Pelosi’s hands in two years — and a woman as president in 2016.

Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi speaking at EMILY’s List 2013 Presidential Inauguration brunch on Sunday Jan. 21, 2013. (EMILY’s List photo)

According to Pelosi, the only reason that she – a woman – was able to rise to the leadership position is because there were multiple women now serving in Congress.

“Well, reason we are successful is we are not just asking women for their vote, we are asking them to serve. We are asking them to give women a seat at the table,” she said.

Pelosi urged women lawmakers to take control of the full congressional agenda, saying “every issue is our issue,” including economy, national security and immigration.

“We have 2014 coming up next, and we hope to elect many more women to the Congress,” Pelosi said. As far as female candidates are concerned, “you ain’t seen nothin’ yet,” insisted the California Democrat.

“We are ready to take the next step, ready to be the springboard for the next generation of Democratic women leaders, ready to elect more Democratic governors in 2014, ready to help Nancy Pelosi get her gavel back,” Schriock said in her keynote speech.

While Pelosi kept focus on 2014 and reclaiming of the majority, at the core of the event was the desire to see viable female candidate in the 2016 presidential election.

EMILY’s List premiered a new video featuring newly elected and re-elected female lawmakers. They joined in a common cause, and delivered the messaged about 2016 that Schriock hopes women across the nation will heed:

“Now is the time.
“The voters in U.S. are ready.
“Oh yeah, we are ready.
“For a woman president.
“It’s time for a female president.
“It’s about time.”


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Bay Area Dems meet with Joe Biden on guns

Monday, January 14, 2013 by:Carolyn Lochhead
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Rep. Jackie Speier, D-San Mateo, said Vice President Joe Biden, head of the White House task force on gun violence, told a group of Democrats in a meeting Monday that the administration has identified 19 actions it can take independently of Congress to restrict guns.

But Rep. Mike Thompson, D-Napa, who heads a separate task force convened by House minority leader Nancy Pelosi, said “meaningful progress” on reducing gun violence “cannot be made by just one branch of government.” Speier is a vice chair on the Thompson task force.

Over the weekend the president of the National Rifle Association predicted that Obama would not be able to get an assault weapons ban through Congress.

Biden has delivered recommendations to the White House and could make them public later this week. The Thompson task force expects to make its recommendations in early February.

Speier herself was shot when she was accompanying the late Rep. Leo Ryan, a south San Francisco Democrat, on a fact-finding mission to Jonestown in 1978.

Speier was a legal aide to Ryan and 28 years old. She was shot five times.

President Obama said at a press conference Monday that his is committed to a ban on assault weapons and high capacity magazines.

Speier implied that some of the executive actions could include import controls.

Rep. Mike Thompson and other Dems meet with Biden gun task force

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