Francis Dunnery:
Corbett won’t appeal
Pennsylvania’s governor ended his fight Wednesday to stop same-sex marriage in the state, allowing a growing number of couples to proceed with their wedding plans with greater peace of mind.
A federal judge on Tuesday struck down the state’s same-sex marriage ban, and Gov. Tom Corbett announced Wednesday that he would halt his court fight because “the case is extremely unlikely to succeed on appeal.”
The governor’s decision means that same-sex marriage will remain legal in Pennsylvania, without the threat that a higher court will reinstate the ban.
U.S. District Court Judge John Jones III struck down a 1996 state law banning recognition of gay marriage, calling it unconstitutional. One widow, 11 couples and one couple’s teenage daughters had sued. Their lawyers said it is extremely unlikely that another party would be allowed to appeal it.
Corbett’s decision goes against the Republican governor’s personal beliefs. He opposes same-sex marriage and supported thus-far unsuccessful efforts to amend the state constitution to ban gay marriage. In October, he took heat for comparing the marriage of same-sex couples to the marriage of a brother and sister.
[…] Corbett, who is seeking re-election this year facing poor public approval ratings, has sought in recent months to move to the political center and away from staunchly conservative positions on several hot-button issues.
Everybody hates Comcast
We asked ACSI to provide us with customer satisfaction scores for every company in every industry that they cover and it turns out that Comcast and TWC have the lowest customer satisfaction ratings of any of them.
In fact, Comcast and TWC’s Internet service businesses were the only two businesses in the United States to score below a 60 on the ACSI’s 100-point scale. What’s most amazing is that both Comcast and TWC have even lower customer satisfaction ratings than United Airlines, which has a notoriously bad reputation in an industry that, due in part to government security requirements, is known for delivering a miserable experience.”
Other notable companies that had higher customer satisfaction scores than Comcast and TWC included Bank of America, perennially unpopular wireless carrier Sprint, health insurance giant Aetna and the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power. It’s unfortunate that ACSI didn’t ask how people felt about Skeletor, Gargamel and Cobra Commander, because we get the feeling that Comcast and TWC would have had lower ratings than them as well.
The buck stops with Obama
For years, I’ve had readers tell me I “have a problem” with Obama. Yeah, the problem I have is that I don’t think he’s very good at his job:
Mr. Geithner says he wanted to do what was right: consolidate the banking and securities regulators and plug holes in the system. But the president’s advisers seem to compete to see who can bow more quickly to what they perceive as the political realities of the moment.
What Mr. Geithner instead demonstrates in his book is that the White House misread the politics to focus on killing bold action. For example, Senator Blanche Lincoln, Democrat of Arkansas, facing attacks from a primary challenger that she was too friendly to the banks, proposed strict restrictions on tough derivatives. Mr. Geithner and the Obama administration scoffed at her plan, without recognizing that the politics were friendly to a more aggressive tack than they thought possible.
Another Democrat, Senator Russ Feingold of Wisconsin, was holding out on financial reform from the left. Instead of seeking to placate him with progressive proposals, the White House and the congressional leaders scrambled to secure the vote of Scott Brown, the suddenly elected Republican from Massachusetts. Mr. Brown could have scuttled financial reform, but instead he was eager to embrace it, a sign of where the politics of the moment really were.
Presidents aren’t all powerful and cannot change things by force of will. But Mr. Obama could have set an initial reform agenda with sweep. Some advocated it in his administration. President Obama had immense political capital in 2009 and majorities in Congress. The inevitably compromised legislative process would have chipped away at a larger mountain. Instead it reduced a hill to a hillock.
Go read it all, it’s good.
My city
Aren’t they sweet
This is a new GOP agriculture bill:
And in a surprising twist, the bill language specifies that only rural areas are to benefit in the future from funding requested by the administration this year to continue a modest summer demonstration program to help children from low-income households — both urban and rural — during those months when school meals are not available.
Since 2010, the program has operated from an initial appropriation of $85 million, and the goal has been to test alternative approaches to distribute aid when schools are not in session. The White House asked for an additional $30 million to continue the effort, but the House bill provides $27 million for what’s described as an entirely new pilot program focused on rural areas only.
Democrats were surprised to see urban children were excluded. And the GOP had some trouble explaining the history itself. But a spokeswoman confirmed that the intent of the bill is a pilot project in “rural areas” only.
Read more: http://www.politico.com/story/2014/05/house-gop-agriculture-budget-white-house-106831.html#ixzz32MnGPEXk
FBI director can’t find good programmers because of zero tolerance drug policy
Apparently, the federal government’s continued war on marijuana is making it very difficult for FBI to go after real criminals. FBI Director James B. Comey says he is having trouble recruiting qualified programmers to deal with cybercrime because of the governments strict anti-marijuana rule:
Congress has authorized the FBI to add 2,000 personnel to its rolls this year, and many of those new recruits will be assigned to tackle cyber crimes, a growing priority for the agency. And that’s a problem, Mr. Comey told the White Collar Crime Institute, an annual conference held at the New York City Bar Association in Manhattan. A lot of the nation’s top computer programmers and hacking gurus are also fond of marijuana.
“I have to hire a great work force to compete with those cyber criminals and some of those kids want to smoke weed on the way to the interview,” Mr. Comey said.
The issue has gotten so bad Comey is thinking about making the agency’s restriction a bit less draconian. Currently, you can’t apply if you smoked pot less than three years ago.
Supposedly, the reason we are spending billions of dollars locking people in cages for consuming this plant is that it’s so horrible for a person, it is worth taking away that person’s freedoms just to stop them from using it.
Yet here is one of America’s top law enforcement officials basically acknowledging that you can use marijuana and still be a very successful and productive member of society. In fact he admits his problem is there are so many productive cannabis consumers he has trouble finding many successful tech workers who don’t occasionally use it.
Same old, same old
If Michelle Obama wanted kids to get canned vegetables, the Republicans would insist on fresh. It’s just the way they roll, the assholes:
Congressional Republicans are moving to waive a federal rule – championed by Bay Area lawmakers and first lady Michelle Obama – requiring that children who receive school lunches be served at least one helping of fresh fruit or vegetable each day, whether they want it or not.
Some schools say the rules are too rigid, and that children are rejecting the food and dumping millions of dollars of produce in the trash each day. On Tuesday, a House Appropriations subcommittee approved a GOP bill that would waive the rules for districts that are losing money on the federal school-lunch program, and a similar proposal is pending in the Senate.
[…] The first lady is fighting back, along with nutrition advocates, the produce industry and Democrats who say it might be hard to wean kids off junk fare, but that it’s important to keep trying.
[…] Some food advocates charged that Republicans are simply looking for a way to attack the first lady and taint one of the big legislative accomplishments of the Obama administration.
To protect and serve
If you’re like me, you’re disgusted at how little is being done to stop police brutality. This story makes me sick:
The Juvenile Justice Information Exchange reports that Javier Payne suffered cuts to his face, his chest, and a punctured lung from being shoved into the window of the Hookah Shop. Paramedics had to hold Payne’s chest closed as he was rushed to the hospital — though they did not arrive on scene immediately because police called it in with a protocol used for drunks, not for a pediatric emergency.
Payne was arrested that night with another teenager on charges of resisting arrest, obstructing government administration, and assault. While it’s not clear what the circumstances surrounding the arrest were, police often use these kinds of charges to discredit or obscure accusations of brutality. The report filed by the officers made no mention of the window smashing.
After hours of surgery, Payne’s mother was allowed to see her son. “Mommy, Mommy,” he said. “The cop, he pushed my head through the window while I was handcuffed, Mommy, he pushed my head through the window.”
Uh oh
It’s never a good thing when you wake up to the gas company digging up the street in front of your house.