17 thoughts on “Monday Open Thread”

1. We probably could've guessed, but it looks like Ted Cruz is Asshole Father of the Year. 

   Thanks, Republicans!

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   1. Even as a kid, I never believed that part where Cindy Lou Who kissed the grinch …

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      1. That was the film, Dio. It didn't happen in the book.

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2. "Tort reform" is the phrase used by Republicans to trigger their followers' "hate the courts" mode. This is one of those million-dollar phrases most likely designed by Frank Luntz to aid Republicans in their attacks on government.

   How it translates to their followers is thus:

   "Scumbag lawyers (except ours), go judge shopping (ok when we do it), find a technicality (good one, not a bad one) to kill a law that was going to Ruin the Republic!"

   How it works in real life, at the hands of Conservative operatives, is thus:

   Speaking at Brandeis University last Thursday, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg offered a warning thatLochner may not be as much of a relic of the past as it is often presented in legal textbooks.

   I was reminded of Lochner reading some decisions of the Court concerning workers, consumers, credit card holders who signed agreements saying “if you have a dispute with us, you can bring it only in arbitration — not in court — and you cannot use the class action device. You must sue for your individual claim, which might be 30 dollars, and that’s it.” And that has also been described as tied to liberty of contract.

   The cases Justice Ginsburg refers to concern a common practice where companies refuse to do business with consumers — or threaten not to hire a worker — unless the worker or consumer agrees to sign away their right to bring any disputes against the company in a real court, and instead submit to a private arbitrator.

   In 1925, Congress enacted the Federal Arbitration Act which, as Ginsburg explained in a recent dissent, was intended to allow “merchants with relatively equal bargaining power” to agree to resolve disputes through arbitration instead of potentially costly litigation. Yet, beginning in the 1980s, the Court started reading this law expansively to allow businesses to force their workers and customers to submit to arbitration before the company would agree to do business with them.

   In many of these cases, the Court reached conclusions that are difficult to square with the Federal Arbitration Act’s text. The Court’s 5-4 decision in Circuit City v. Adams, for example, held employers could require workers engaged in foreign or interstate commerce to sign arbitration agreements even though the arbitration act explicitly exempts “workers engaged in foreign or interstate commerce.” Similarly, the Court’s 5-4 decision in AT&T Mobility v. Concepcion permitted companies to tack bans on class action lawsuits onto arbitration agreements, even though the Federal Arbitration Act is silent on the subject of class actions.

   As research by the Economic Policy Institute demonstrates, the growth of arbitration clauses hasdrastically diminished the ability of workers to assert their rights when those rights are violated by their employer. Private arbitrators are more likely to side with employers over workers, and when they do side with workers they typically award far less in damages than federal judges.

   Arbitration is one more way corporations are able to game the system in their favor and it's used in consumer cases, fraud cases, employment disputes, housing disputes and more…..and it's just another way Republicans continue to rig the system even as they lose election after election and seemingly go off the rhetorical deep end. The deep end is where the ideas come from, then gain currency, then get implemented with bipartisan glee.

    

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   1. Hope RBG lives to be a healthy 100 +.

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      1. And speaking of the Notorious RBG, she may be getting company on the bench. The Donald said yesterday that he'd be open to appointing more Supreme Court justices to overturn the Obergefell decision and allow same sex marriage to return to being a state decision…….

          

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3. Cruz probably pissed off more target voters than he shamed into going to caucus for him. Especially since people know how consistently they've voted and caucused so it must be completely obvious to pretty much everyone in Iowa now that his team just made this stuff up.

   http://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/ted-cruzs-iowa-mailers-are-more-fraudulent-than-everyone-thinks

    

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4. To file under "D'uh". The Donald says horrible stuff on purpose to excite his crowds and get attention. Shocking I know. 

   http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/donald-trump-presidential-campaign_us_56acef96e4b0010e80ea4d6e?utm_hp_ref=politics

    

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5. The Centennial State's newspaper of record, the Denver Post, is reporting today that Jack Graham, the latest GOP candidate in the US Senate, was a registered Dem until 13 months ago!

   Perhaps he should have remained a Dem and taken Bennet on in a primary – since no one else is.

   Graham’s benefactor, Dick Wadhams, tried to spin this by saying he was a Dem by family tradition coming from San Francisco. (A San Francisco Dem no less! Can you say Nancy Pelosi?) And Dickie resorted to the famous fallback position…..even Reagan was a Democrat once upon a time…..

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   1. Party registration is not a meaningful indicator of beliefs/positions.
      I am a registered member of the Party of Hate® because there will be an interesting US Senate primary. The Democrats are so boring right now.
      I usually change my registration, on average, about twice a year.

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   2. When hasn't DickWad been a Colorado Democrat's best friend ???

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6. At least it's not your effed-up, Alec-driven State …

   http://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/01/opinion/nevadas-solar-bait-and-switch.html?smprod=nytcore-iphone&smid=nytcore-iphone-share

   … yet.

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   1. You may freely remove the part of an URL that follows the ? (including the ?)

      For example: http://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/01/opinion/nevadas-solar-bait-and-switch.html

      Good coding is as important as good grammar.

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      1. Thanks, Yogi! …

         … and, my heartfelt apologies to anyone else whose day was ruined by my ungrammatical coding.

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7. An example of why you should be a registered member of the Party of Hate®.

   http://blogs.denverpost.com/thespot/2016/02/01/new-republican-nominee-for-senate-was-a-democrat-in-2014/

   Jack Graham, new Republican candidate for Senate, was a Democrat 13 months ago

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8. Not that the world is going to die if my "insights" aren't published here, but I have a couple of similar comments I made in response to a thread in this topic that seem to have gone to the ether (I didn't get prompted to verify my humanity).  I was able to poop on the caucus thread, though, so I'm happy.  Just want to make sure there isn't an issue.

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9. 

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