US Politics Mega-thread - Page 196

Congress has quickly and quietly moved to considerably scale back financial disclosure requirements that were mandated by the STOCK Act last year after a report released last month raised security concerns about posting the information online.

The House on Friday cleared a bill by voice vote that would exempt congressional aides and executive branch staffers from a requirement that they post financial disclosures online. The requirement would still apply to the president, vice president, lawmakers and congressional candidates, and positions that require Senate confirmation.

The Senate cleared the legislation, also by unanimous consent, Thursday night.

Open government groups are slamming the bill, charging Congress with overreacting to worries that could be addressed with more modest changes to the law.

The disclosure provision of the STOCK Act — legislation initially drafted to curb congressional insider trading but blossomed into a broader ethics law — had been repeatedly delayed amid concerns over publicizing personal financial information for various government officials in sensitive national security jobs.

During the delay, Congress requested a study to investigate those concerns.

That report from the National Academy of Public Administration, released last month, recommended scaling back the disclosure requirements, arguing that foreign countries and others could use the information to pressure government officials in ways that would compromise national security and law-enforcement efforts.

“Virtually all the cybersecurity, national security and law-enforcement experts interviewed during this study noted that making this information available in this fashion fundamentally transforms the ability (and the likelihood) of others — individuals, organizations, nation-states — to exploit that information for criminal, intelligence and other purposes,” according to the report.

The disclosures will still be publicly available offline but open government advocates were incensed by the move.

“Not only does the change undermine the intent of the original bill to ensure government insiders are not profiting from nonpublic information (if anyone thinks high-level congressional staffers don’t have as much or more insider information than their bosses, they should spend some time on Capitol Hill), but it sets an extraordinarily dangerous precedent suggesting that any risks stem not from information being public but from public information being online,” wrote Lisa Rosenberg of the Sunlight Foundation on the organization’s website.

http://www.politico.com/story/2013/04/stock-act-90000.html?hp=l1

Half of Americans approve of the state of the country for the first time since 2007, a new poll says.

According to a CNN/ORC poll released on Friday, 50 percent of Americans say “things are going well in the country” — but an equal percentage says the opposite.

In January 2007, 57 percent of Americans “felt the country was in good shape,” the poll said, but the number has dipped from there.

The survey comes as the stock market continues to perform well, the poll noted, though unemployment clocks in at 7.6 percent.

The poll of 1,012 adults was conducted April 5-7 and has a margin of error of plus or minus 3 percentage points.

http://www.politico.com/story/2013/04/poll-us-in-best-mood-since-07-89994.html?hp=r3

Should health insurers be legally required to offer infertility treatment for gay couples? Yes, according to a bill (AB 460) filed in the California legislature by assemblyman Tom Ammiano (D-San Francisco). In fact, refusing to do so should be a crime.

Current California law requires group health plans to offer coverage for infertility treatments with the exception of in vitro fertilization (IVF). If such coverage is purchased, benefits must be paid whenever “a demonstrated condition recognized by a licensed physician and surgeon as a cause for infertility” has been diagnosed—or upon “the inability to conceive a pregnancy or to carry a pregnancy to a live birth after a year of regular sexual relations without contraception.” Thus, under current law, diagnosis of a physical reason for the inability to conceive or sire a child is not required. It is enough that a couple tried to get pregnant for a year and failed.

According to the fact sheet supporting AB 460, the trouble is that some insurance companies “are not complying with current law that prohibits discrimination” based on sexual orientation. Instead, they are denying infertility treatment benefits “based on [the policy holder’s] not having an opposite sex married partner in which to have one year of regular sexual relations without conception.” AB 460 would amend the law to add the following language:

"Coverage for the treatment of infertility shall be offered and provided without discrimination on the basis of age, ancestry, color, disability, domestic partner status, gender, gender expression, gender identity, genetic information, marital status, national origin, race, religion, sex, or sexual orientation."

But what does this blanket anti-discrimination language mean in the context of a gay or lesbian individual or couple? AB 460 maintains the existing two-pronged approach to determining infertility for purposes of requiring coverage, that is, either a “demonstrated condition” that causes infertility “or” the “inability to conceive a pregnancy .  .  . after a year or more of regular sexual relations.”

This raises a cogent question: Could AB 460 be construed to require insurance companies to pay for infertility treatments for gay couples simply because their sexual unions cannot produce children? For example, might the law require that insurance pay for an insured lesbian’s artificial insemination, even if she is fecund, based solely on her choice not to have heterosexual intercourse?

It would seem so. There is no requirement that actual infertility be diagnosed. Nor is there a requirement that the gay “infertile” patient seeking coverage for treatment have tried and failed to conceive or sire a child through any heterosexual means, whether natural or artificial. Moreover, the bill would still define infertility as engaging in sexual intimacy without conceiving for one year, regardless of whether the relations were heterosexual or homosexual. Indeed, the bill has been filed precisely because the one-year definition purportedly has been applied in a discriminatory fashion by insurance companies to the detriment of gay individuals and couples who want to have children.

On April 13 2013 09:07 cLAN.Anax wrote:
Guys, I wish I could have found a less biased source for this story, but this has been buzzing around conservative news sites for nearly a week now and I wanted to bring it up for your perusal.



Source: The Weekly Standard. I swear, I scoured all over for a more viable source, but none of the media seems to be covering it. (that worries me too, not that it may be invalid, but that perhaps it is indeed true T_T ) This is the best I could come up with. Another source is Ben Shapiro's opinion column.

It's based on the actual bill, at least. Source of the bill.

Read. Then discuss.

+ Show Spoiler [My opinion.] +

MIAMI -- Carnival Corp. says all maritime interests must assist without question those in trouble at sea, a duty that would not include reimbursing the U.S. government nearly $780,000 for costs associated with the rescue of the crippled Triumph cruise ship.

Carnival released letters Friday replying to an inquiry by U.S. Sen. Jay Rockefeller, a West Virginia Democrat who chairs the Senate Commerce Committee, about the Triumph stranding and the cruise line's overall safety record. Among Rockefeller's questions was whether Carnival would repay the government for Coast Guard costs in the Triumph case as well as $3.4 million to the Coast Guard and Navy from the 2010 stranding of the Carnival Splendor in the Pacific Ocean.

"These costs must ultimately be borne by federal taxpayers," Rockefeller said in his March letter, adding that Carnival appears to pay little or no federal income taxes.

In response, Carnival said its policy is to "honor maritime tradition that holds that the duty to render assistance at sea to those in need is a universal obligation of the entire maritime community." The cruise line noted that its ships frequently participate in rescues at the Coast Guard's request, including 11 times in the past year in Florida and Caribbean waters. It did not make direct reference to repaying any money.

In a statement, Rockefeller called the response "shameful" and that he is considering "all options to hold the industry to higher passenger safety standards."

Those options could include a congressional hearing and legislation, perhaps even a closer look at taxation. Rockefeller's letter asked Carnival whether the money it pays in taxes covers the costs of various federal benefits it receives, a question the cruise line again did not directly answer. It did mention port taxes and fees and other payments and said it paid $16.5 billion in wages to U.S. workers in 2011.

"Every state where our ships call or home port benefits from the dollars spent by cruise lines to buy products and retain services from local businesses," Carnival added.

On April 14 2013 01:18 Rassy wrote:
""honor maritime tradition that holds that the duty to render assistance at sea to those in need is a universal obligation of the entire maritime community." "

They are right about this, this is the law of the sea.
Citizens should not be required to pay for their rescue as long as they didnt get into trouble by making severe mistakes or taking huge risks.
This (unwritten) law goes for all activities at seas but maybe the law should be changed to make an exception for corporations.It is not fair that corporations are able to make taxpayers pay for some of their costs and to me it seems more then fair to make them pay for rescue operations.Cruise prices will go up slightly because carnival then has to get an insurance for these situations but that looks fair to me.Only risk is that cruise companys and others will postpone seeking help up till the verry last minute to avoid these costs but strict safety regulations should be able to keep them "honest"

On April 14 2013 02:04 farvacola wrote:
Anyone with an interest in financial regulation and the housing bubble ought to watch this video of Sen. Elizabeth Warren destroying some bank regulator with perhaps the worst teeth I've ever seen.

On April 14 2013 02:33 farvacola wrote:

It doesn't really matter if she's being overly general with how she goes about describing the two parties, the general principle of placing importance on transparency as it pertains to the public as opposed to banks is what matters

On April 14 2013 02:44 oneofthem wrote:
i think she's genuinely concerned about the people affected.

On April 14 2013 01:39 HellRoxYa wrote:


Alternatively we just value human life as a society and don't give it too much thought.

On April 14 2013 02:44 JonnyBNoHo wrote:

Than that's what she should be discussing. I have no idea what the video was about beyond "big banks" did "illegal things" to "victimize families". What the hell was it about? What kind of illegal activity are we talking about? Missing paperwork or something serious? I assume nothing criminal (otherwise law enforcement would be involved, though maybe - you tell me).