FEMINISM! What? Yeah.

PLEASE COME OUT TOMORROW IF YOU CAN! We need people to testify in Austin against these bills. It could not be more important! 

And even if you don’t live in Texas, signal boost in case your followers do! 

In case you missed it, the Texas State Senate passed a bill yesterday that requires all physicians performing abortions to have admitting privileges at a hospital no more than 30 miles from the clinic, requires all facilities where abortions are performed to be licensed as “surgical ambulatory centers,” and requires doctors to adhere to the outdated (and no longer used) FDA guidelines for RU-486 (the “abortion pill”) including that both parts of the medicine be administered by a physician. 

The House Committee on State Affairs is hearing two bills tomorrow (one which would ban abortions after 20 weeks and another that is the same omnibus bill that just passed in the Senate) starting at 4 PM in Austin, Texas. WE NEED TO HAVE AS MANY WITNESSES AS POSSIBLE. 

Here’s what you do: show up at the capitol whenever you can (when you get off work, etc) and register as a witness who wants to testify. Then, when they call your name, speak for 3 minutes. 

You can tell your story, you can tell someone else’s story, you can read an article, you can talk about statistics, you can talk about why you are pro-choice, you can do whatever you want. We need you to come out NOW. 

These bills would reduce the number of abortion clinics in Texas to FIVE. That’s right, FIVE. This will significantly reduce access to abortion in our state, all under the guise of looking out for women’s health. 

HELL NO. We NEED everyone and anyone in Texas who can come out and speak up against these bills TOMORROW starting at 4. It’s in the Reagan Building, room 140, on the Capitol complex. 

If you have any questions, email me. If you are planning to testify, please email Heather Busby (who runs NARALTX) so she can add you to our spreadsheet. 

LET’S KILL THESE DAMN BILLS. 

The Republican-led Senate tabled all of the amendments to SB 5 offered by Democrats, including a measure to exempt drug-induced abortions from the requirement that abortions be performed at surgical facilities, a proposal to push the effective date of the surgical facility requirements from 2014 to 2015 to allow existing clinics more time to comply with the regulations, and a provision to exempt abortion facilities located more than 50 miles from another facility that primarily serve rural communities. The Senate also rejected proposals by Democrats to increase financing for women’s health services, expand Medicaid coverage to poor adults and reduce unwanted pregnancies by offering evidence-based sexual education in public schools.

It seemed like Texas might make it through the 83rd legislature without passing any further restrictions on abortion access, until Governor Perry added abortion to the call for a special session. Lawmakers wasted no time filing bills that died in calendars during the first 140 days. 

The most egregious of the bills has already made it out of Senator Jane Nelson’s committee and onto the Senate’s calendar. Senate Bill 5, by Senator Hegar, combines the goals of five separate pieces of abortion-focused legislation under the guise of ensuring women’s health and preserving Texas’ dedication to protecting life.

The bill does four important things:

Citing “substantial medical evidence,” SB 5 first bans abortions after 20 weeks of pregnancy on the assertion that a fetus at that point can feel pain. Clearly, this “substantial evidence” does not refer to the Journal of the American Medical Association’s article disputing these claims about fetal pain. Neither does the law itself take into account the reasons women wait to have an abortion.  Abortions are expensive. Mandatory 24 hour waiting periods, like the one in Texas, require women to make two separate trips to the clinic. It is’t surprising that almost 60% of women say they had to wait to have an abortion in order to “raise money” and “make arrangements” for the procedure. A 20 week ban would make it harder for the women in Texas who already have it hard enough. But, Hegar’s bill isn’t really worried about them.

The bill includes a failed measure by Senator Dan Patrick, which targets the use of Mifeprex (RU-486, also known as the “abortion pill”) by requiring physicians to follow the original FDA guidelines, now thirteen years out of date. Since then, providers have adopted evidence-based standards of care that are better for patients and physicians. SB 5 would deny the results of multiple studies that led to these new standards of care, limiting the women who have access to this outpatient procedure to those 49 days into their pregnancies or less. It would also require a physician to administer both doses, putting a much larger burden on women. 

The bill also requires the physician performing the procedure to have admitting privileges at a hospital within 30 miles of the clinic. The necessity of these admitting privileges is based on the risk of complication following a “surgical procedure.” Again, Hegar’s bill ignores quite a few important facts. Abortion is one of the safest medical procedures for women, and it is significantly safer than giving birth. Still, Hegar and the other supporters of SB 5 wring their hands about women’s safety and ignore the added burden this places on those professionals who provide abortions in Texas.

SB 5 doesn’t only increase standards for physician providers. It also requires that all facilities providing abortions get licensed as ambulatory surgical centers. Despite the fact that abortion as a procedure is incredibly safe, these legislators are claiming that women’s health is at stake unless abortion providers meet completely unnecessary technical standards for their facilities. (Which, by the way, could reduce the number of abortion providers in the state to five.)  In 2008, 92% of counties in Texas had no abortion provider whatsoever. These restrictions would reduce women’s access even further. 

Legislators such as Hegar think that placing themselves in the middle of women’s private decisions about their bodies qualifies as an “emergency” issue for our state.  And unfortunately, this is exactly the kind of legislation that could pass under the far smaller scope of a special session.

If you would like to personally let Representative Catherynn Brown of New Mexico know how you feel about this bill, here is her contact information:

Capitol Phone: (505) 986-4248 

Office Phone: (575) 302-2746 

E-mail: cath@cathrynnbrown.com

Personal E-mail: brown55@windstream.net 

Twitter: @CathrynnBrown

sinidentidades:

Washington is engaged in an all-consuming debate about how to resolve the “fiscal cliff” — which we like to call, for reasons that will soon be explained, “the austerity crisis.” But what is that and why does it matter? We at Wonkblog put together a FAQ to sort it out. And we’ll keep updating this FAQ as the debate rages on.

What is the fiscal cliff?

• What is the fiscal cliff in one sentence?
• If it’s not a cliff, then what is it?

What’s in it?

• Taxes
• Spending
• Debt Ceiling

What matters most in it?

What happens if we go over?

• Recession
• Deficit reduction
• Tax increases 

How has Washington tried to solve the fiscal cliff in the past?

• 2010 tax deal
• Simpson/Bowles and the Gang of Six
• Obama/Boehner
• Supercommittee

What do the parties agree on?

• What do they disagree on?

How can we solve it?

• Just go over
• Just go over and then make a deal
• Extend
• Trigger
• Small deal
• Grand bargain

sinidentidades:

Twinkie-maker Hostess continues to screw over its workers. The company is in the process of complete liquidation and 18,000 unionized workers are set to lose their jobs. More troubling – they could lose their pensions.

According to a report by the Wall Street Journal , Hostess’ CEO, Gregory Rayburn, essentially admitted that his company stole employee pension money and put it toward CEO and senior executive pay (aka “operations”). While this isn’t technically illegal, it’s another sleazy theft by Hostess executives - who’ve paid themselves handsomely while running their company into the ground. Just last month, a judge agreed to let Hostess executives suck another $1.8 million out of the bankrupt company to pay bonuses to CEOs.  

If there’s no way to recover the money for the Hostess pension plans for workers, then the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corp. will have to foot the bill to make sure workers get at least some of the retirement money they paid in.

Hostess shows us clearly what Bain-style predatory capitalism is all about: big bucks for the very few rich executives, layoffs and poverty for the workers and their communities.

And don’t mourn the loss of Hostess brands – they’ll be back, as the company is currently negotiating with over 100 potential buyers right now to bring Twinkies, Wonder Bread, and Ding Dongs back into the marketplace.  

The Hostess story has nothing to do with unions, and everything to do with the Enron-ization and Bain-ization of the American economy.  

In classic Enron style, back in 2005 Hostess sent out a letter saying they’d just had a very, very profitable quarter.  Their stock jumped up. The CEO, Charles Sullivan, and many of the senior executives sold chunks of their stock.   The CEO and senior executives were making out big, and the workers were making a decent living. 

At that time, one of the hostess workers – Mike Hummel, blogging asbluebarnstormer over at Daily Kos – noted that he was making $48,000 a year, a bit over the US median household income, and had insurance and a pension.  

Then, a few weeks later in 2005, came the letter saying that, oops, all of that profit had really been just an accounting error – the company was actually in trouble.  Although the CEO and the top guys had all made a nice killing selling the stock when it was high, and paying a maximum income tax on it of 15 percent because they used the Capital Gains loophole that Mitt Romney used to become a multimillionaire, they now wanted the workers to take a big pay cut. 

Hummel notes that the “oops” letter became the justification for asking the workers to take a pay cut, which they agreed to, and his pay dropped from $48,000 a year in 2005 to $38,000 a year last year.  But every year, $3 an hour of his compensation showed up in the worker’s pension fund instead of his paycheck.  Year after year.  With 18,000-plus workers, it was millions and millions of dollars.  Dollars that the workers had paid in, at the rate of $3 per hour.  

Then came the Bain-style takedown.  In order to strip the company down to its individual brands and sell them off, piece by piece, the company needed to bust the union.  The union said, “No,” so the company went to bankruptcy court – a method Bain and other vulture capitalists often use to kill off unions. 

In the meantime, the CEO and senior executives were paying themselves handsome salaries and big bonuses.  And where was that money coming from?  

On August 12 of 2011, the employees got a letter that said that the company was going to “temporarily suspend payments” to its pension funds.  That would be the $3 per hour that this worker had negotiated as part of his compensation – instead of paying it to him by putting it into his pension fund now, the company said they were going to put it in later. 

As the letter said, “I want to be clear that this temporary suspension of payments to the pension fund will not affect your pension benefits.”  

Workers believed management, and kept on working.  

But, it turned out, as we learned from that interview in today’s Wall Street Journal, that the senior management wasn’t just “borrowing” the pension funds – they were using them to fund ongoing operations.  Including big paychecks to the fatcats. 

Hostess CEO Gregory Rayburn wanted to make it clear that he wasn’t around when that particular thing happened. “Whatever the circumstances were, whatever those decisions were, I wasn’t there,” Rayburn told the Wall Street Journal .  After all, Rayburn isn’t a baker – he’s a bankster.  He’s the owner of Kobi Partners, a company that tells corporations how to “restructure.” Think Mitt Romney. And he’s going to make out very well on all this – the bankruptcy court just okayed $1.8 million in Christmas bonuses for the new fatcats at Hostess. 

Ironically, if you borrow money to pay for your education, you can’t get rid of that debt through bankruptcy – one of the “reforms” of the bankruptcy law during the Bush era.  But if you’re a CEO or a buyout bankster and you borrow money from your employees’ trust fund to be able to cover your own paycheck and million-dollar bonuses, and then take your company into bankruptcy, neither you nor the company have to pay those employees back even a single penny. Part of their pension is picked up by federally-run pension insurance, and the rest is just lost. 

sinidentidades:

San Antonio police are investigating what appears to be a shooting that occurred at the Santikos Mayan Palace 14 movie theater in Texas at approximately 9:20 p.m. Sunday. One female witness told local news station KSAT that she heard “multiple shots” fired, as people ran for the exits. At least two people may have been injured, a number not yet confirmed by authorities. According to local scanner traffic at the time, the shooter may be among the victims. Both the theater and the parking lot have been put on lockdown.

sinidentidades:

Texas landowner secures temporary restraining order against Keystone XL

A Texas landowner in Nacogdoches County secured a temporary restraining order on Tuesday against the southern leg of the Keystone XL pipeline by arguing that tar sands is not actually a type of oil.

Judge Jack Sinz granted the order without first notifying TransCanada, the company behind the ambitious pipeline that aims to transport Canadian tar sands to the Texas gulf coast for further refinement. In his ruling, Judge Sinz noted that the order was granted immediately because construction had already begun on the plaintiff’s property and any delay could potentially result in further damages. A hearing on the matter is set for Wednesday, December 19.

“You can’t argue the science,” 64-year-old Michael Bishop, the plaintiff in the case, told Raw Story on Tuesday. “That’s number one. TransCanada has defrauded the American people into thinking this is crude oil coming in from Canada and is going to be the savior of America. It’s just beyond me. This has been totally misrepresented. The people have been misled. Landowners have been coerced and bullied into thinking the company has the power of eminent domain.”

Bishop, who’s representing himself in the case, has filed several lawsuits in an effort to stop TransCanada’s pipeline, but unlike other land owners who’ve sued over abuse of eminent domain — or protesters who’ve taken to physically blocking construction or simply living in east Texas trees — Bishop has a different strategy.

“He believes that TransCanada has defrauded the people of Texas and of the United States in misrepresenting this as a crude oil pipeline, when it’s not,” Christine Wilson, consultant for Public Citizen Texas, told Raw Story. “He feels that he has a good case. He’s asked for a jury trial for his ultimate permanent injunction case. He intends to prove that diluted bitumen is not crude oil.”