The Delaware House of Representatives voted 24 to 17 to pass legislation protecting against discrimination on the basis of gender identity on Tuesday. The bill is an amended version of one that was passed by the Senate two weeks ago, meaning the bill now has to be approved by the Senate before heading to Gov. Jack Markell’s (D) desk. If the bill is signed into law, Delaware will become the seventeenth state to legally protect transgender people from discrimination.

The Gender Identity Nondiscrimination Act would make discrimination on the basis of gender identity illegal in employment, housing, public accommodations, public works, contracting, and insurance. It would also make any violence or harassment motivated by gender identity discrimination into a hate crime.

Opponents of the law have attacked the law by calling it the “bathroom bill,” insinuating that transgender people are somehow dangerous, and that this law would allow or encourage anyone to enter any bathroom of their choice for any reason in a predatory manner. The House Amendment to the bill, introduced on Tuesday by Rep. Bryon Short (D), seeks to clarify the definition of gender identity to address such concerns. Whereas the original Senate bill defined gender identity as “gender-related identity, appearance, expression or behavior of a person, regardless of the person’s assigned sex at birth,” the amendment would add a clause stating that “Gender identity may be demonstrated by consistent and uniform assertion of the gender identity or any other evidence that the gender identity is sincerely held as part of a person’s core identity; provided, however, that gender identity shall not be asserted for any improper purpose.”

The amendment also includes a clause that would allow public venues to “provide reasonable accommodations” including “a separate or private place” for transgender people. Rep. Short and Equality Delaware President Mark Purpura clarified that no organizations would be required to provide such accommodations, but merely that they may do so if they wish. None of the provisions in the amendment are binding, or change the main purpose of the Senate bill in a significant way.

Currently, sixteen states and the District of Columbia have nondiscrimination laws in the books that include sexual orientation and gender identity amongst protections for ubiquitous categories such as race and religion. Four other states ban discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation, but do not include gender identity. At least 143 cities and counties also have nondiscrimination laws or ordinances protecting transgender individuals. Unlike the federal Employment Non-Discrimination Act proposed in the US Congress, Delaware’s law introduces protections broadly to areas beyond employment.

The Delaware Senate passed the original version of the law by an 11-7 vote two weeks ago. If the House’s amended version is also approved by the Senate, the bill will head to Gov. Jack Markell, who has said that he will sign the protections into law.

… according to several people familiar with his private remarks at the home of clean-tech entrepreneur Vinod Khosla, Obama expressed concerns about the political pain involved, saying that “dial testing” of his State of the Union speech showed that the favorability ratings “plummeted” when he vowed to act on climate change if Congress refused to do so.

Not exactly “profiles in courage.” Not exactly “the Environmental President.”

This may not come as a big surprise given how Obama’s once soaring rhetoric on the moral urgency of climate action has recently crash landed.

But what makes this particularly feckless is that dial testing is all but meaningless. Compared to using polls to determine political positions — a common if widely criticized practice — using dial tests to do so is like consulting your horoscope.

For those who aren’t political junkies, I recommend this introduction, “What Are Those Squiggly Lines on CNN Telling You?”

Dial-testing relies on hand-held dials that can be turned to register positive and negative reactions in real time. Participants in the focus group — 30 is a typical size — sit together and are instructed to continually adjust the dial to reflect how they react to a word, phrase, or sentence.

Here is a typical expert view of the value of dial group information:

Cliff Zukin, director of the public-policy program at Rutgers University and former head of the American Association for Public Opinion Research, argues that dial-testing is unhelpful and misleading. He points to the fact that the sample of voters is far smaller than even the tiniest poll.

“It has no scientific validity — it’s not a sample of anything that has generalized validity,” he says. What’s more, he argues, it introduces inaccurate numbers that assume a power of their own. “The problem with bad numbers is that people tend to believe their eyes.”

So the President is basing his climate policy decisions on something that has no scientific validity. Awesome. Perhaps next time it’ll be Tarot cards — or denier blogs, which are much the same thing.

Even worse, it’s entirely possible that respondents give a negative dial reaction for something that in fact works.

CNN’s focus group is run by Rita Kirk, who concedes:

… there’s no way to know if they represent participants’ true reactions or what they think they should feel — as Kirk acknowledges, a significant body of research shows negative ads work even though voters, independents especially, claim to hate them.

What’s more, the process of dialing itself changes how the participants experience the debate. “[Participants] say they pay more attention, because they are focusing on the words,” says Kirk.

Assuming team Obama is only interested what independents think, it should be no surprise that many would have an instantaneous negative reaction when Obama says he might act alone. Independents are, by choice, not part of any political party, and they are well known to love pledges of bipartisanship. Obama, of course, has spent more time pushing the benefits of bipartisanship himself than explaining how and why Congress has been obstructionist on climate change.

Indeed, as we have reported, “Team Obama Launched The Inane Strategy Of Downplaying Climate Change Back In March 2009.”

How popular would it be if Obama were to pledge to enforce laws already on the books to reduce carbon pollution and advance clean energy? Stanford public opinion expert Jon Krosnick has found that candidates “may actually enhance turnout as well as attract voters over to their side by discussing climate change.”

Climate action is not only a political winner according to pretty much every poll, it is a moral necessity, something Obama himself made clear just last year.

Perhaps his second inaugural address should have gone like this: “Since the failure to act would betray our children and countless future generations, we will respond to the threat of climate change — if a small group of people listening to this speech like how I’ve phrased the idea.”

Related Posts:

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• Pew Poll: Clean Energy Is A Political Wedge Among Republicans
• Gallup: 65% of Americans Have More Guts Than Obama, Support ‘Imposing Mandatory Controls On CO2 Emissions’
• Poll: Large Majority Of Americans Understand Global Warming Made Several Major Extreme Weather Events Worse

Between 2024 and 2033, the CBO estimates that the federal budget deficits would be cut by $700 billion.

The CBO’s estimate blasts the conservative argument that immigration reform is costly out of the water. The report contradicts the $6 trillion cost estimate used by conservative groups like the Heritage Foundation, who as far back as 2007 have been successful in helping to derail immigration reform efforts.

But these numbers will be harder to push now that the CBO has weighed in. Many Republican senators have praised the CBO. Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA), who is adamantly opposed to the legislation, has said that the CBO is “like God.”

(Credit: Shutterstock)

“When this disease appeared to be unstoppable, history will show that humanity and individual humans rose to the challenge,” Kerry said in a speech to commemorate PEPFAR’s 10th anniversary. “Action was taken. Innovations were discovered. Hope was kindled. And generations were saved.”

PEPFAR was signed into law by former President George W. Bush and remains one of the largest foreign assistance programs in the world. Thanks to many of the global health resources made available through the U.S.-run program, new HIV infections are down nearly 20 percent over the past decade. Last year, United Nations officials noted that they believe eradicating AIDS is “entirely feasible” thanks to the global community’s dedicated efforts against the epidemic.

One of the most important methods of containing the virus’ spread is preventing pediatric AIDS. Thanks to advances in HIV drugs, antiretroviral treatment can now successfully prevent HIV-positive mothers from transmitting the virus to their children in the womb or through their breast milk. According to the State Department, PEPFAR programs helped more than 750,000 pregnant women living with HIV get access to antiretroviral drugs in 2012. That helped avert an estimated 230,000 infant HIV infections last year.

According to a PEPFAR analysis, 13 countries are now at their AIDS “tipping point” — the point at which the annual increase in adults infected with HIV is lower than the annual increase in adults who are receiving antiretroviral treatment. “Where we once saw a situation spiraling out of control, today we see a virtuous cycle beginning to form: more people receiving treatment and fewer people passing on the virus,” Kerry explained.

But, even though the Secretary of State announced new funding for PEPFAR’s programs in sub-Saharan Africa on Tuesday, some AIDS prevention workers have been growing increasingly concerned that the international aid program is going underfunded. The White House has repeatedly proposed cuts to the program in its annual budgets, and PEPFAR is not immune to sequestration. “When the mandated sequestration cut is taken into account, the program is now at its lowest funding level since 2007,” Chris Collins, the Vice President and Director of Public Policy for amfAR: The Foundation for AIDS Research, warned in a recent editorial.

(Credit: AP)

Fears that a pro-marriage equality ruling at the Supreme Court in the next two weeks might provoke a public backlash against LGBT Americans are unfounded, according to a new analysis by a group of political scientists.

The four scholars — Benjamin Bishin, Thomas Hayes, Matthew Incantalupo, and Charles Anthony Smith — wrote up a series of fictitious stories, including one involving a pro-marriage equality court ruling in Oregon, and asked members of the public to rate their “feelings” towards LGBT Americans after hearing the stories on a scale of 0-100. The idea is that if pro-equality rulings provoked public resentment the pace of social change, Americans asked to imagined a world of court-granted equality would direct some of that preemptive resentment towards LGBT Americans.

The study found no such thing. Writing at the political science blog The Monkey Cage, Bishin et al. report that “we find no evidence of backlash in any of the groups that saw a story related to gay marriage or gay rights (of in all of these groups combined).” “In fact,” they write, “the public as a whole appears to have become more favorably disposed toward gays and lesbians.”

These results held among both evangelicals and Americans who were “dissatisfied” with the direction of the country, two of the groups most likely to backlash against a court ruling. They also held both before and after the oral arguments in the recent Supreme Court cases about marriage nationalized the perception of court rulings, suggesting that the fact that the hypothetical took place in Oregon wasn’t enough to dismiss the story as “not threatening” to the country as a whole.

Historical experience backs up the scholars’ finding. Support for marriage equality in Massachusetts and Iowa did not drop off and, according to most polling, continued to increase after each state’s court ruled in favor of equality.

The origins of the backlash theory rest in the abortion debate. Many have argued that Roe v. Wade galvanized the religious right while deflating pro-choice activists. However, the religious right began organizing effectively well before Roe v. Wade, and the significant differences in public support for abortion and marriage equality suggest that, even if the backlash story were true, it wouldn’t apply if the Court decided to make marriage equality the law of the land.

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The ambitious plan, crafted by city officials and community members, provides a long-term vision for reducing the city’s greenhouse gas emissions while building vibrant, prosperous communities.

Specifically, the plan focuses on three areas where Seattle can benefit the most from improvements: transportation and land use, building energy and solid waste.

“We can do something meaningful, not just for the planet, but also to create the city we want to live in, one that is safer to walk and bike and has cleaner air and water,” said city councilman Mike O’Brien.

The plan includes improving and expanding the city’s bus system, building the infrastructure to make it safer to walk or bike around, and building out the region’s light-rail system. These moves would help reduce carbon emissions by 40 percent, according to the Seattle Times.

To curb building energy costs, the plan details the continuation of projects to weatherize homes and to develop a way to rate home energy performance when a house is listed for sale.

Ways to conserve of electricity and water were identified as areas to improve upon and preparing for the possible impacts of climate change on at-risk populations, such as the poor.

The plan also includes strategies to prepare for adverse climate effects that the city could be subject to, such as identifying flood prone areas and creating land use plans that would adapt for rising sea levels.

In addition to the city council’s climate plan, Mayor Mike McGinn announced an energy efficiency initiative that will cut emissions and could save homeowners 35 to 50 percent in energy costs.

Many cities have prioritized plans for climate change in the wake of unprecedented extreme weather and rising average temperatures. On Monday, 45 mayors from cities across the country pledged to take action to prepare and protect their communities from the increasing disasters and disruptions fueled by climate change.

And in the aftermath of Superstorm Sandy, New York City’s mayor, Michael Bloomberg, released an extensive climate resiliency plan last week. PlaNYC includes 250 recommendations to address the reality of climate change and prepare for its impacts.

Credit: Telegraph UK

The country’s lower chamber of parliament today passed a bill that would prohibit gay couples who are legally married in their own country from adopting any children from Russia. The measure passed without a single dissenting vote.

In recent weeks, Russian politicians at all levels of government have advanced an appalling battery of anti-gay legislation. In the Duma, lawmakers unanimously passed a bill banning the teaching of kids about the mere existence of gay people, and in St. Petersberg, city officials imposed stiff fines for any kind of gay pride event or even speaking in defense of gay rights in the city of St. Petersburg. The Russian LGBT community is also still reeling from a horrific attack last month on a young gay man who was tortured, raped, and killed when a group of people he considered to be his friends learned he was gay.

The Atlantic’s Olga Khazn took a look at Russia’s history of homophobia, which predates the country itself, and noted that “in the Soviet Union, homosexuality was a crime punishable by prison and hard labor, and Stalinist anti-gay policies persisted throughout the 60s and 70s.”

But little has changed since the collapse of the Soviet Union. “Measures like the propaganda ban show that many Russians still haven’t shed that view, even decades after the fall of the regime that kept homophobia in place,” writes Khazan. “Only 16 percent of Russians today say homosexuality should be accepted by society, compared with 42 percent in nearby (and also formerly communist) Poland.”

The international community and human rights organizations have been swift to condemn Russia at nearly every turn, but it has done little to dissuade lawmakers from advancing their intolerance. Activists have also begun to put pressure on the International Olympic Committee and FIFA, the governing body of international soccer, both of which awarded Russia the honor of hosting the 2014 winter Olympics and the 2018 World Cup respectively.

Taranto tried, without much success, to tie his grievances to Sen. Claire McCaskill’s (D-MO) attempt to stall the nomination of a Lt. Gen. Susan Helms to be vice commander of the Air Force Space Command. McCaskill is holding up the nomination because Helms once granted clemency to a man in the military accused of sexual assault.

But ultimately, Taranto’s greivances — which are simply against a changing culture that is starting to hold men accountable for treating women like objects — came through in his piece. And they had nothing to do with McCaskill’s, or Helms:

It’s fair to say that Capt. Herrera seems to have a tendency toward sexual recklessness. Perhaps that makes him unsuitable to serve as an officer in the U.S. Air Force. But his accusers acted recklessly too. The presumption that reckless men are criminals while reckless women are victims makes a mockery of any notion that the sexes are equal.

What’s worse, Taranto followed up his op-ed with an appearance on Wall Street Journal’s video channel, where he argued that “female sexual freedom” is responsible for a “war on men,” and that war is embodied in allegations of sexual assault. During that interview, he also said that a woman alleging assault and a man denying it “differed… on whether she consented.” Taranto also cast doubt on the report because someone present “didn’t even hear this going on.”

“What does female sexual freedom mean?” Taranto added, “It means, for this woman, that she had the freedom to get drunk and get in the back seat of a car with this guy.”

The ten Republicans in question have collected about $6.7 million in federal farm money dating back to the 1990s, according to analysis by the Environmental Working Group. Over the years, they’ve also justified cuts to the Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Program (SNAP, formerly known as food stamps) with a variety of smears against recipients and misrepresentations of the program’s nature and performance. Rep. Stephen Fincher’s (R-TN) erroneous biblical argument for cuts that would knock two million Americans off of food aid drew attention last month given that he’s gotten nearly $3.5 million in farm subsidies over the years. But some of his colleagues deserve similar scrutiny for their apparent hypocrisy with regard to the House farm bill.

Rep. Kristi Noem (R-SD), who’s gotten over $500,000 in subsidy payments since 1995, is a particularly interesting case. While Noem is diplomatic in most public statements on food stamps, she endorses a common smear of the program when away from cameras. In a constituent letter obtained by ThinkProgress, Noem wrote that “loopholes and fraud in the current program have lead to federal spending on SNAP to increase [sic] by 270 percent over the past ten years.” Rep. Vicki Hartzler (R-MO) offers to same rationale for the cuts, and has taken $500,000 in farm subsidies as well.

In fact, the jump in food stamp enrollment is due almost entirely to the catastrophic economic collapse and ensuing Great Recession. Even amid that heightened strain on the program’s staff, “SNAP achieved its lowest error rates on record in fiscal year 2011,” according to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. Outright fraud is down to just one percent.

Waste, fraud, and abuse are more common in the farm subsidies programs that have sent over a million taxpayer dollars to the Hartzler and Noem households over the years than in food stamps. Crop insurance alone has a 4.7 percent error rate, compared to 3.8 percent for SNAP.

Other common rationales from this group of would-be SNAP cutters fare no better under scrutiny. Many conservatives believe charities and individuals can better serve the hungry. But as ThinkProgress has noted, food charities say they are already beyond their capacity and cannot step into the breach the House bill would leave. Conservative objections to policies that expand SNAP eligibility to families just above the program’s cutoff level of 130 percent of the poverty line look less righteous when you consider that 8 in 10 hungry American children live in households with income up to 185 percent of the poverty line.

And while Rep. Marlin Stutzman’s (R-IN) suggestion that America’s poor amount to budget fat in need of trimming is a philosophical question, the question of dependency he raised in a 2012 Wall Street Journal op-ed criticizing food stamps has no basis in fact.

ThinkProgress intern Kumar Ramanathan contributed research to this post.

Earlier this month, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) strongly hinted he would filibuster President Obama’s three nominees to the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, the second most powerful court in the country. And Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA) even introduced legislation to strip three seats from this court in order to prevent Obama from filling them. Earlier today, however, Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) indicated he would not go along with such efforts to keep this powerful court in Republican hands. “Elections have consequences” McCain told a group of reporters, after saying he’s “always believed” that the judicial nominees deserve an up-or-down vote unless there are extraordinary circumstances justifying a filibuster.

With the recent confirmation of Judge Sri Srinivasan, the DC Circuit’s active judges are evenly split between Democrats and Republicans. Five of the court’s six senior judges — partially retired judges who hear reduced caseloads — are Republicans, however. So the court is currently dominated by conservatives. Should Obama’s nominees be confirmed, the Democratic active judges will be able to overrule any decision by a conservative panel by agreeing to hear cases “en banc” — a process which allows all fully active judges to weigh in on a case. With Obama’s three nominees, Democratic appointees would enjoy a 7-4 majority on an en banc panel.

In the interim, however, the court’s Republican judges have wielded their dominance to write their own policy preferences into the law. Two George W. Bush appointees struck down clean air regulations that would have prevented “between 13,000 and 34,000 premature deaths, 15,000 non-fatal heart attacks, 19,000 hospital and emergency room visits and 1.8 million days of missed work or school for each year.” Another panel of three conservatives handed down a decision earlier this year that would make much of American labor law completely unenforceable. A third opinion invalidated federal rules requiring employers to inform workers of their rights under federal labor law, and they did so in an opinion that was so broadly reasoned it could potentially invalidate laws requiring everything from fuel efficiency labels on new cars to nutritional labels on food.

On Monday, twenty-two people peacefully obstructed the entrance to the building that houses the State Department’s offices in downtown Chicago. They were then arrested without incident.

Last week in London, several protesters were arrested inside the Parliament building after attempting to disrupt a speech by Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper. Hundreds were arrested in 2011 for trespassing on Parliament Hill in Ottowa.

In February, former NASA climate scientists James Hansen and dozens of leaders of the environmental movement like Michael Brune of the Sierra Club were arrested in front of the White House. Some 1,252 people were arrested in front of the White House in 2011 over 15 days.

All of these people have one thing in common — they are willing to risk arrest in an attempt to stop the U.S. and Canada from building the northern leg of the tar sands-pumping Keystone XL pipeline.

Monday’s protest was particularly significant since most of the activists who walked to the State Department’s Chicago office and got arrested were former Obama campaign staff, donors, and volunteers.

Organized by CREDO Action, Rainforest Action Network, and The Other 98%, the protesters went to State Department offices because that is where the decision process currently rests as the department drafts a Final Environmental Impact Statement for the proposed Keystone XL pipeline. The protest took place in Chicago because that is President Obama’s hometown and where he chose to locate the organization built upon his successful presidential campaign: Organizing for Action (OFA). Many of the 22 that walked to the State Department’s Chicago office and got arrested were former Obama campaign staff, donors, and volunteers.

Elijah Zarlin worked as a Senior National Email Writer on the 2008 Obama campaign for almost a year (it his t-shirt featured above, worn by many protesters on Monday, displaying President Obama’s words on his commitment to climate action) . Following the 2008 Democratic primary campaign, Zarlin told Climate Progress he remembered then-Senator Obama telling campaign staff that if they wanted to do something about climate change, they had to win the general election. “I took that to heart,” he said.

“I never thought I’d be back in Chicago to risk arrest in order to get President Obama to do the right thing on climate change,” said Zarlin, who now works for CREDO. He said he participated in the sit-in because “we haven’t seen leadership and policies to truly make an impact,” despite the president’s “commitment he made to his staff and supporters to fight climate change.” In 2011 he was part of the 1,252 people who were arrested at the White House protesting Keystone.

Becky Bond, CREDO Action’s political director, said that the protest that happened Monday was “a preview of what’s to come if [President Obama's] State Department recommends approval of the pipeline.” More than 62,000 people signed the Pledge of Resistance, which is a commitment to risking arrest “to send a message to the president that he must reject Keystone XL.”

This pledge was announced following the State Department’s release of the Draft Environmental Impact Statement, and prepares for the final statement. After that is released, the Obama Administration has 90 days to decide if the project is in the national interest. If they do, that decision triggers the pledge, which Bond said would be “the biggest burst of civil disobedience in modern American history.” Activists will prepare with trainings on how to approach local disobedience.

The protesters have a sense that the usual avenues of activism are inadequate and more people have shown a willingness to do anything within their means to get the administration to understand the serious climate consequences of allowing a pipeline like this to be constructed.

A recent OFA fact sheet suggests that activists wait until President Obama makes a decision on Keystone:

“If people believe that Keystone XL is the primary fight to be engaged in, there are many groups who have taken a position, and we are happy to make suggestions about who volunteers might work with on that or other issues.

OFA sees climate as a broader issue than just Keystone. Ivan Frishberg, who runs the organization’s climate change campaign said: “Keystone is one decision, and it’s a big one. But it’s not the only one.” But if President Obama decides that the Keystone pipeline is in the national interest, the activists at OFA dedicated to organizing around the President’s agenda and the activists who have put their bodies on the line over Keystone will find themselves in conflict.

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The Associated Press reports that fast and processed food makers have been trying their hardest to make products look “imperfect” in an attempt to convince consumers that they’re just as natural or fresh as a home-cooked meal. For instance, McDonald’s makes the eggs in its “Egg White Delight McMuffin” look sloppy and uneven — unlike the eggs in regular McMuffins, which tend to resemble hockey pucks.

Food makers use these disingenuous tactics knowing that consumers equate “imperfect” with “natural.” As Michele Simon, a public health lawyer, told the Associated Press, “They can’t change the fact that they’re making processed products so they have to use these other tricks to pretend.”

Kraft Foods went so far as to spend two years perfecting a chopping machine that cuts the company’s “Carving Board” line processed turkey portions in uneven slabs, instead of perfect slices, to replicate leftovers from a home-cooked meal.

These foods are not the same as their fresher and more natural counterparts. Fast and processed foods typically contain ingredients meant to preserve them, such as hydrogenated oils, brominated vegetable oils, artificial sweeteners, salt, and sulfites — many of which can lead to negative health consequences including heart disease and cancer.

Food makers have consistently used smokescreens to deceive customers into thinking their products are healthy. Panda Express, Taco Bell, and Burger King have all employed deceptive marketing techniques that make their menu items seem healthier than they actually are. For instance, Burger King’s “game-changing” turkey burger option still weighs in at 530 calories. McDonald’s “McWrap” uses green packaging to play on customers’ perception of healthy foods — even though some versions of that wrap still contain over 600 calories.

(Credit: AP)

Have conservatives learned their lesson from the 47 percent debacle? A new paper from arguably the most influential conservative economist in the country, titled “In Defense Of The One Percent,” suggests no. Even worse, the paper shows how dividing America into Randian producers and naturally subordinate moochers is the only way to resolve a central contradiction in modern conservative economic thinking — meaning that the GOP will be stuck making a losing argument until it conducts a total rethink of its economic philosophy.

Harvard Economics Professor N. Gregory Mankiw, the author of “In Defense,” was the chairman of George W. Bush’s Council of Economic Advisers and counseled Mitt Romney on economic issues in 2006 and 2012. Despite his occasional heresies (Mankiw famously supports a carbon tax to fight global warming), Mankiw is one of the most-respected and most-representative conservative economist active in public life today.

Mankiw’s defense of the one percent proceeds from a fairly conventional script. He argues that structural transformations in the economy, principally caused by the advent of new technology like computers, “have allowed a small number of highly educated and exceptionally talented individuals to command superstar incomes in ways that were not possible a generation ago.” The recent spike in inequality, for Mankiw, is then largely caused by the smart and talented being able to express their talents freely. Much of Mankiw’s paper is devoted to arguing that punishing these talented individuals through more progressive taxation would be unfair because they earned it fair and square.*

This argument doesn’t work if you think, like many Americans, the economic game is rigged in favor of the already-rich. As Mankiw concedes, the evidence that inequality persists over generations — that is, people with rich parents tend to end up rich too — is overwhelming. If this reflected structural disadvantage like unequal access to health care and education, then it would be hard to argue that the best and brightest, rather than richest and whitest, were being rewarded by rising inequality.

Instead of trying to argue away the facts on inequality, Mankiw attempts to reexplain them. He proceeds in part by personal anecdote: “I do not see my children as having significantly better opportunities than I had at their age,” he writes, despite growing up wealthier than their middle-class father. Recognizing this impression to not be enough, Mankiw turns to the somewhat more surprising crutch of genetics. “Parents and children share genes,” which in Mankiw’s telling explains “intergenerational persistence in income even in a world of equal opportunities.” Though he disavows “genetic determinism,” Mankiw nevertheless thinks genetic transmission of things like IQ (a common conservative trope) make it “implausible to interpret generational persistence in income as simply a failure of society to provide equal opportunities.”

Even setting aside the obvious strawmanning here (nobody thinks persistent inequality is only caused by lack of opportunity), Mankiw’s analysis is unpersuasive. It can’t explain, for instance, why the United States has one of the lowest rates of intergenerational mobility in the developed world. Presumably, if genetics overwhelmed the effects of family inequality, more egalitarian distributions of wealth wouldn’t correlate with higher rates of mobility, but evidence from the developed world suggest they do.

But more fundamentally, follow Mankiw’s logic to its conclusion. He believes both that 1) the fact that the rich tend to stay rich, and the middle class tend not to become rich, are consequences of the natural distribution of talents and that 2) the most talented, morally speaking, deserve to keep what they earn.

In essence, Mankiw is arguing that a partly genetically determined upper class deserves most of society’s wealth and deserves to pass it on to their kids. It’s an argument that we’re living in a natural American hierarchy.

Needless to say, this is an unpopular message. Poll after poll after poll of Americans suggests overwhelming, almost consensus belief in the idea that American society should be about opportunities for mobility — the up-by-your bootstraps, Horatio Alger ideal that’s always characterized the American Dream. Both Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan made the idea of equal opportunity central to their economic arguments. Widely read conservative wonk Avik Roy argues that “For many of today’s conservative reformers, equality of opportunity — especially for the poor — is the highest moral and political priority.” Arguing that the middle class (unlike the poor!) already has equal opportunity, and that’s why they’re not getting richer, isn’t exactly a winning campaign strategy for a reeling political organization.

To his credit, Mankiw recognizes that the poor really do face “a variety of socio-economic maladies” that limit their equal opportunity, and hence can’t manifest their genetic talents in the market. However, the logical implication of that position is government policy of some sort, be it either liberal-supported remedies like Obamacare or conservative proposals like school vouchers. Whichever you prefer, that money has to come from somewhere, which means taxes. Given that one wouldn’t want to drive the middle classes down into the lower income levels through confiscatory tax policy, that probably means taxes on the wealthy or super-wealthy.

Since Mankiw and the GOP oppose higher taxes on the rich on moral grounds, however, this creates an insuperable conflict between equality of opportunity and the moral principle, which Mankiw calls “just deserts,” that the rich should keep what they produce. But there’s a tempting way out of this solution, one conservatives have been pursuing for quite some time: the poor really are getting what they deserve. They’re coddled by government programs, but also non-producers who simply don’t deserve help overcoming structural barriers like crumbling schools and inadequate health care.

Or, in one man’s famous words, “My job is is not to worry about those people. I’ll never convince them they should take personal responsibility and care for their lives.”

So until the Republicans resolve the conflict between belief in the moral sanctity of wealth accumulation and equality of opportunity Mankiw’s paper exposes, they’ll never develop a coherent economic message, let alone a winning one.

*Mankiw’s argument for this moral position is entirely deficient. He never explains in any depth why being lucky enough to be born with intelligence or the desire to work hard entitles one to keep your own wealth, a standard criticism in the political philosophy literature. He appeals to shared moral intuitions (including, at one point, those of small children) that people deserve what they get without explaining how and why basic feelings matter, but rejects the contrary intuition that the rich can afford to be taxed more as “unjust.” He also assumes that John Rawls’ famous “veil of ignorance” argument is only about redistribution, when in reality it’s also an argument for a complex series of rights protections that would obviate Mankiw’s absurd claim that Rawls’ position entails forced kidney donation.

Credit: Idaho Business Review

The resolution has no weight in the Legislature, but it does send a message to the Republican members, who make up 81 percent of the Legislature.

One Republican said non-discrimination ordinances could lead to gay men wearing tutus to work, despite the well-established employer power to set office dress codes:

Cornel Rasor, a former Bonner County commissioner and chairman of the Idaho GOP’s resolutions committee, said, “I’d hire a gay guy if I thought he was a good worker. But if he comes into work in a tutu … he’s not producing what I want in my office.”

The resolution, if eventually passed into law, could be considered unconstitutional as it strips away non-discrimination protections for LGBT people.

Currently, Idaho has no state-wide law banning this type of discrimination, leaving their citizens vulnerable to being fired from their job, evicted, or denied service based only on sexual orientation and gender identity.

An attempt in 2012 to amend the Idaho Human Rights Act to ban discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity was quickly dropped after a Senate committee rejected the legislation in front of 250 supporters.

This year, a lawmaker tried to introduce the legislation again but was met with indifference from Senate and House State Affairs committees, who were given a mere “informational” presentation. No bill was considered nor was public testimony taken.

(HT: Towleroad)

(Credit: Shutterstock)

Villanueva’s lawsuit charges that the couple’s treatment amounted to “involuntary servitude.” They reneged on their promise to provide a steady $10-an-hour paycheck, health insurance, and basic needs like food and shelter, instead underpaying her at $2 an hour, locking her in her room, and denying her medication. She also claimed that her employers gave her an illegal passport to America.

Although domestic workers are sometimes forced to work more than they are promised, undocumented immigrants like Villanueva are more at risk to be exploited for their vulnerability and supposed inability to report unsafe working conditions to law enforcement. The Post story indicates that Villanueva returned back to the family after she found the Chilean Consulate closed when she tried to report the abuses that she suffered. Like many undocumented immigrants, she most likely did not go to local law enforcement out of fear of deportation.

In all, 23 percent of domestic workers report being paid less than the minimum wage, and 25 percent of live-in workers say their employers have prevented them from getting an uninterrupted five hours of sleep a night. Fewer than two percent receive retirement benefits.

In 2010, New York became the first state to pass a basic labor bill of rights for domestic workers which includes nannies, caregivers, and home health workers, allowing for the right to overtime pay, a day of rest every seven day, and three paid days of rest each year. But undocumented immigrants who make up a large population of domestic workers are excluded from such guarantees, so it is not surprising that people like Villanueva are subjected to wage theft.

Hawaii recently became the second state to pass such a bill, but it seems that domestic worker rights are hard to come by in other states: California’s version of the bill was vetoed last year.

– by Zach Heffernen

Starting March 1, 2014, through a non-profit called Great March for Climate Action, 1,000 climate hawks will march from Santa Monica, CA, across the United States to Washington, DC. This will be the largest coast-to-coast march in American history. It is aimed at inspiring and motivating the general public and elected officials to act now to address the climate crisis.

While marchers will undergo eight months of heat, wind, mountainous terrain, and insects, it will be an incredibly rewarding, life-changing adventure to promote a cause they are passionate about. Marchers will walk 14-15 miles per day and tent camp nearly every night. Also, educational activities will be conducted along the March as a key component to teach and inspire climate action within local communities. Several people are referring to it as “the adventure of a lifetime” and “an excellent opportunity to travel our beautiful country.”

The founder, Ed Fallon, inspired by other non-violent march leaders such as Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr, decided that organizing a march would be the best way he could stimulate change. “Climate change is not the prevailing issue confronting our society – it is the prevailing crisis!” Fallon exclaims. “This needs to become the defining issue of this century.”

So far, Great March for Climate Action has enjoyed several prestigious endorsements, including but not limited to: 350.org and Bill McKibben, Iowa Representative Bruce Braley, Iowa Senator Rob Hogg, Physicians for Social Responsibility, and the Center for Biological Diversity. More are coming in every week.

The organization will begin taking marcher applications in July 2013. “I anticipate to receive a large influx of applications that first month,” reports Zach Heffernen, Marcher Director. “I recommend submission of the application right away to everyone who is serious about marching.”

Please like our Facebook page and generate additional awareness! For questions or to learn how to volunteer or march, contact me at zach@climatemarch.org or 513-5-WE-WALK (513-593-9255).

Her answer was completely coherent and accurate:

So this is not okay. It needs to be equal pay for equal work. And it’s hard enough already to earn a living and it shouldn’t be harder just because you’re a woman.

Powell is absolutely right to point out that women don’t earn equal pay for equal work. On average they still make 77 cents for every dollar a man makes and among the 600 occupations tracked by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, they make less than men in all but seven. Factors such as what industry or job women choose, whether they take time off or go part-time to have children, their race, and their marital status still can’t explain the gap. Even after stripping those factors away, they make 80 percent of men’s income.

It is in fact tough to make a living, as wages for the average worker have been on a downward trajectory. Wages as a percent of overall economic output fell to an all-time low in December and have continued falling since. Yet at the same time, corporate profits have soared, growing by about 20 percent a year since the end of 2008 and reaching record highs. This means the growing share of families that rely on women’s income face a double whammy.

The question remains as to why a women who earns her money as a singer and actress is also expected to be an expert on economic policy, but when given the time to adequately prepare she was able to discuss the issue as well as anyone else.

Chief Justice John Roberts (Credit: AP)

In 2000, a pharmaceutical company named Solvay obtained a patent for a drug called “AndroGel,” which is used to treat men with low testosterone levels. Shortly thereafter, several of Solvay’s competitors sought to market generic versions of the same drug, claiming that Solvay’s patent for the testosterone replacement gel was invalid. These claims were never resolved, however, due to a settlement agreement where Solvay agreed to pay its competitors millions of dollars if they abandoned their efforts to cut into Solvay’s monopoly until August of 2015. This settlement, according to the Federal Trade Commission, was an agreement by generic drug manufacturers “to share in Solvay’s monopoly profits, abandon their patent challenges, and refrain from launching their low-cost generic products to compete with AndroGel for nine years.”

In other words, the FTC alleged, Solvay got to keep charging monopoly rates for its drug. Its competitors got a cut of the profits. And consumers got the shaft, in the form of higher drug prices.

Thanks to the Supreme Court’s decision yesterday in FTC v. Actavis, an FTC lawsuit challenging this settlement will move forward. Conservative Justices Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas, however, joined an opinion by Chief Justice John Roberts that would have given the Court’s effective blessing to the AndroGel settlement (Justice Samuel Alito was recused from the case).

The legal issue in the case involves a complex question of what happens when federal antitrust law runs headlong into federal patent law. On the one hand, allowing a company to simply pay its competitors not to enter the market would defeat the entire purpose of antitrust law and open the door to monopolies in every marketplace. On the other hand, the whole point of patents is to give inventors a temporary monopoly in order to encourage them to pursue their inventions. Drug companies would have little incentive to create new drugs if their discoveries could be poached immediately after they are created.

Yet, patent law does not allow someone to unilaterally proclaim that they invented a product and then change monopoly prices for it. As Justice Breyer explains in the majority opinion, “a valid patent excludes all except its owner from the use of the protected process or product,” Breyer’s opinion explains, “[b]ut an invalidated patent carries with it no such right.” The whole point of cases like the FTC’s lawsuit is to prevent pharmaceutical companies from giving a wink and a nod to each other’s more doubtful patent claims in order to squeeze more money from consumers.

The dissent, which seems to presume that the patent at issue in this case is valid, rests largely on a desire not to upset “the public policy in favor of settling.”

As it turns out, there is a disinterested study available which shines light on whether the majority or the dissent’s approach will be better for consumers. In 2011, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office conducted a study on the budgetary impact of the Preserve Access to Affordable Generics Act, which would have created a strong legal presumption against settlements such as the one that occurred in this case. The CBO determined that restricting such settlements, where a drug company pays its competitors not to enter the generic drug market, “reduce[s] total expenditures on prescription drugs in the United States, on net, by about $11 billion over the 2012-2021 period.” Federal programs alone would save $4 billion. As CBO explained, restricting arrangements similar to the AndroGel settlement would “accelerate the entry of generic drugs affected by the bill by roughly 17 months, on average,” thus enabling consumers to buy cheaper generic drugs that much sooner.

Admittedly, this bill cast a more skeptical eye on these settlements than Justice Breyer’s opinion does in Actavis. Nevertheless, this CBO report is strong evidence that the conservatives’ approach to these cases would have ultimately led to higher prices for consumers and windfall profits for drug companies.

According to the report:

Same-sex couples are significantly less likely than heterosexual couples to get favorable responses to e-mail inquiries about electronically advertised rental housing. Comparing our gross measures of discrimination, heterosexual couples were favored over gay male couples in 15.9 percent of tests and over lesbian couples in 15.6 percent of tests.

While there is no federal law banning discrimination based on sexual orientation or gender identity in employment, public accommodations, or housing, 20 states and more than 240 localities offer at least some protections against housing discrimination against gay, lesbian, and bisexual people. The study found that the rates of discrimination was very slightly higher in states with legal protections, but at least same-sex couples in those states have some legal recourse in those situations. And since the study only looked at state-level legislative protection and ignored local protections applying to municipalities, that statistic could be misleading.

Even though discrimination based on race in housing has been illegal nationally since the 1968 Fair Housing Act, African-Americans and other racial minorites are still facing discrimination. A recent HUD-Urban Institute study found realtors consistently show white buyers more homes than African-American and Asian-American buyers with similar credit qualifications and housing interests.

While legal protections are an important tool in the fight against discrimination, these studies show that they are only one part of a broader solution.

(HT: The Huffington Post)

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National guidelines for medical professionals already stipulate that doctors must discuss these type of health resources with sexually active teens. But the study’s authors point out their research proves this goal is not being met. “Just like many parents, physicians are not always comfortable discussing sexual health topics,” one of the study’s co-authors, Dr. Laura Duberstein Lindberg of the Guttmacher Institute, explained.

Previous research has found that parents also don’t talk to their teens enough about sexual health topics — and even the parents who may discuss “the birds and the bees” with their kids often fail to provide them with specific information about how to use contraception. Only about 30 percent of parents say they have discussed birth control methods “many times” with their teens.

Some youth may receive this information in their health classes. But, since sex ed standards continue to widely vary across different states, many Americans teens don’t. And the researchers explain that even the kids who learn about prevention methods in school would benefit from having that information reinforced in conversations with their parents and doctors. “The optimal goal is for teens to receive sexual health information from parents, schools, and health care providers because past studies show that information from multiple reliable sources is associated with improved health outcomes for teens,” Lindberg said.

Overall, the study found that girls are more likely to receive information about birth control than boys. That may reflect a pervasive gender imbalance in society’s approach to teen sexuality. Since women bear a disproportionate burden for risky sexual behavior — in addition to potentially becoming pregnant, the negative effects of sexually transmitted infections weigh more heavily on women — they are often assigned more of the blame for those sexual choices. Society’s conception of abstinence has also placed particular emphasis on women remaining pure, and continually slut-shames women for expressing their sexuality.

NSA Director Gen. Keith Alexander (Credit: AP)

The head of the National Security Agency (NSA) on Tuesday admitted that government surveillance programs contributed to but were not fully responsible for preventing terrorist plots.

Since their revelation, the programs — which involve the collection of metadata of every phone call in the United States and monitoring Internet content of foreign nationals outside of the U.S. — have sparked a massive debate over the scope of the programs, their initial secrecy, the manner in which they were revealed, and particularly whether they’re the most effective way to discover potential terrorist attacks before they occur.

To counter these critiques, NSA Director Gen. Keith Alexander told the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence that more than 50 potential terrorist plots were foiled, of which “just over ten” were within the United States, through the use of the controversial data-gathering projects. While promising to bring forward documents detailing those plots to the committee in a later classified hearing, Alexander and his colleagues gave new details about four plots they say were halted through the surveillance. These include a previously disclosed plot to conduct an attack on the New York City subway system and a newly revealed plan to bomb the New York Stock Exchange.

The officials’ testimony gave the clearest picture yet how the NSA’s surveillence operates, but not all of the committee members were willing to accept vague guarantees that the metadata collection was vital in halting these plots. “I don’t think its adequate to say that 702 and 215 authorities ‘contributed to’ our preventing fifty episodes,” Rep. Jim Himes (D-CT) told Alexander, referring to the sections of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) and PATRIOT Act that greenlight the NSA programs under scrutiny. “I think it’s really essential that you grade the importance of that contribution,” he went on, before directly asking how many of the fifty plots would not have been stopped were it not for the NSA’s surveillance.

In response, Gen. Alexander clarified that only the slightly more than ten plots that had a “domestic nexus” would have been able to be targeted using the metadata program Hines asked about. Of the other plots, the ability to view Internet content under the FISA’s ‘contributed’ to 90 percent of the cases, according to Alexander, without providing the grade Himes requested. The general was also unable to pin down just how critical the NSA’s ability to gain access to business records under the PATRIOT Act, such as the metadata gathering from Verizon that set off the whole scandal, to preventing those attacks. “If we now look at those [domestic cases], the vast majority of those had a contribution by business records FISA,” Alexander said.

Himes tried to press further for a clear answer on which plots the data gather was essential to stopping, but was rebuffed by Deputy FBI Director Sean Joyce. “I would just add to Gen. Alexander’s comments and I think you ask an almost impossible question, to say how important each dot was,” Joyce said, claiming that every tool covered during the hearing is essential and vital. “You ask ‘How can you put the value on American life?’ and I can tell you it’s priceless,” Joyce concluded.

(Credit: AP)

In addition to student fees, athletic programs are relying more on money from general university budgets, so taxpayers are also spending millions of dollars a year to cover shortfalls as athletic budgets continue to grow faster than academic budgets. But as Vedder noted, and as this chart from a study by the Delta Cost Project shows, that isn’t happening at the biggest, richest athletic programs, with a few notable exceptions. Rather, it becomes a problem in the bottom half of the Football Bowl Subdivision (formerly Division I-A) and gets worse in the Football Championship Subdivision (formerly Division I-AA) and at non-football Division I schools:

That may make it seem like we’re dealing with two separate problems when we talk about college sports, then: one at the biggest schools, where amateurism and paying college players is the biggest issue, and another at the smaller schools, where rising budgets and increased student subsidies are the biggest problems. But those problems might actually be linked, because as Sports On Earth’s Patrick Hruby has reported, amateurism and tax-exempt statuses of athletic departments have increased costs and inflated budgets at the biggest schools. Small schools don’t have to keep up dollar-for-dollar, but the inflation still trickles down because they operate in the same market when it comes to recruiting, facilities, and coaches. Unlike the large schools, though, they don’t have TV networks and revenue streams to cover the growing costs.

Defenders of the NCAA status quo aren’t wrong when they assert that smaller schools probably can’t afford to operate in a system that compensates players. But is that really a bad thing? Ending the amateurism ruse would separate the athletic departments that can afford to participate in such a system (and despite their claims, most of the biggest schools can) from those that can’t compete in a system that includes schools like Texas, Kentucky, and Ohio State. That reality would let smaller schools exchange the big-budget recruiting trips, the expensive cross-country game travel, and the shiny new facilities of the current system for a model that treats intercollegiate sports like the extracurricular activities NCAA defenders say they are. Because while the big business of college sports is thriving at the top and would continue to do so even if athletes are compensated, treating sports as a business clearly doesn’t make sense in the middle or at the bottom of Division I. Right now, though, there’s more incentive to ask for subsidies than to accept a scaled-back athletic program.

Schools argue that they use sports to attract students, and thus subsidizing sports is a smart use of their resources. But that doesn’t really work. Data show that national championships boost enrollment, but most of these small schools aren’t competing for national titles, and Vedder notes that 72 percent of students in a recent poll said sports had an “extremely unimportant” or “unimportant” role in their school choice. So if Florida Gulf Coast is relying on a lightning-in-a-bottle Sweet 16 run every March to survive as a school, or if Appalachian State needs a once-in-a-lifetime upset to attract students, that’s an indication not that they need sports but that they’re running a misguided operation. And fleecing unwitting students and taxpayers to prop up a bad business model doesn’t make any sense at all.

Photo Credit: AP

The proposal asserts that the funding gap for Detroit’s pension obligations is five times wider than previously thought, at $3.5 billion rather than the $644 million estimated in 2011. Reuters reporter Cate Long dug into the numbers and came up skeptical: “Orr is going to have to show math that demonstrates the pension funds are so massively underfunded,” Long wrote, calling the pensions “reasonably well-funded according to national standards.”

But regardless of the validity of Orr’s numbers, the proposal appears designed to facilitate a bankruptcy filing. Once in bankruptcy court, Orr would no longer need public workers’ unions to sign off on a plan to renege on pension promises. Michael VanOverbeke, a lawyer for the pension fund, explained the basic unfairness of prioritizing investors over retirees: Where bond investments carry “a certain amount of risk,” he told the New York Times, “[p]lanning for retirement and working for employers was not an investment in the market. These are people who are on a fixed income…they can’t go back to work and start all over again.”

Elsewhere, Orr’s report summarizes the barely-functioning state of the Motor City: 40 percent of its street lights are dark, two-thirds of its ambulances are out of service, and 78,000 buildings stand empty. How did Detroit get here? The fundamentals of the city’s economy declined along with the U.S. auto industry, but ill-considered debt schemes and manipulation by big international banks exacerbated the problem. Convicted former mayor Kwame Kilpatrick oversaw huge loans that went bad, including billions of dollars in the interest rate gambles known as “swaps.” But banks were rigging the rates that determine who wins and who loses on interest rate swaps like Detroit’s, as last year’s LIBOR scandal revealed. The city paid nearly half a billion dollars in fees to Wall Street firms for engineering the swaps and other financing schemes that only deepened Detroit’s debt hole.

The combination of local corruption and bank manipulation, which leaves the public holding the bag, is something of a common feature for troubled American cities these days. But the far-reaching powers Orr has to resolve things in Detroit set it apart.

In 2011, Michigan Governor Rick Snyder (R) signed a law expanding the powers of emergency managers like Orr, who can tear up collective bargaining agreements and sell public holdings. But because the state’s constitution protects public employee pensions, Orr will need either union consent or the help of a federal bankruptcy judge to impose the cuts on Detroit’s 30,000 current and former employees.

Republicans and Tea Party conservatives have long peddled themselves as America’s moral compass, citing scripture as they propose regressive laws and policies. But when a growing coalition of North Carolina progressives descended on Raleigh, N.C., Monday to decry the state’s Republican legislature, they drew support from another source of moral authority: progressive faith leaders.

Throngs of demonstrators gathered outside the North Carolina statehouse on Monday, as they have every Monday since April 29th, to engage in the latest chapter in an ongoing showdown between the North Carolinians and their state government in a movement known as Moral Mondays. A clergy-led grassroots movement, Moral Mondays has brought thousands of North Carolinians from all walks of life to the state capitol to pray, protest, and denounce a series of right-wing laws and proposals currently making their way through the state legislature.

The Moral Mondays movement, which is gaining support from five major Christian denominations, was originally spawned as a response to a regressive tax proposal that threatened to cut taxes for North Carolina’s wealthiest 5 percent while also raising taxes on the other 95 percent. But as the movement nears its third month, advocates are expanding their criticisms to include a growing list of extreme bills and laws endorsed by the Republican-dominated state leadership. These proposals, many of which have already passed through the state legislature, would:

– Block the expansion of Medicaid in North Carolina

– Institute discriminatory voter ID laws

– Cut preschool for 30,000 children and move $90 million originally slotted for public education to an expanded school voucher program

– Allow for hydraulic fracking in the state.

– Repeal the Racial Justice Act, a 2009 law that allows death row inmates to appeal their conviction if they prove that racial bias played a role in their sentence.

In addition, many of the advocates are expressing concern about proposed budget cuts to state unemployment benefits, which would deprive 70,000 North Carolinians of much-needed assistance if the law is allowed to take effect on June 30th. Over time, the U.S. Department of Labor estimates that if the government benefits are allowed to expire, as many as 170,000 people in North Carolina could lose extended federal benefits.

Eighty four protestors were arrested for civil disobedience in Monday’s action. This brings the total number of Moral Monday arrests to more than 480, many of whom are clergy who have never before participated in political activism.

“When laws are most harmful to the most vulnerable, clergy who are committed to a biblical vision of peace and justice ought to start paying attention,” said Rev. Franklin Golden, co-pastor of Durham Presbyterian Church in Durham, NC and a clergy member arrested at the protests.

With both the North Carolina House and Senate governed by conservative Republican majorities, participants in Moral Mondays don’t expect to win many immediate legislative victories through their activism. Instead, activists and their supporters are hoping their prayers and protests will pay dividends at the ballot box in 2014.

“We’re going to make sure that the contrast is so clear between meanness and immorality and extreme politics and the politics of love and justice and compassion, that when 2014 comes, the people will be able to make a decision.” Rev. Barber told The American Prospect in an interview.

Observing courts’ increasing tendency to side with corporate interests and narrow individuals’ access to justice, Warren flagged a glaring skew in the professional experience of federal judges, the vast majority of whom have experience either as corporate attorneys or prosecutors. Warren lamented that only three percent of federal appeals court judges have substantial legal experience working for a nonprofit organization, and a similar percentage have worked in some capacity to enforce civil rights, according to an American Constitution Society report. And while President Obama has been responsible for some of the most notable exceptions to this trend, recent accounts show that the federal courts continue to be dominated by the same sorts of professional backgrounds.

I want to be clear — there are some really, really talented judges who come from the private sector. I myself have worked for private clients. And it is of course true that the personal views of an attorney often diverge from those of his or her clients. But I think diversity of experience matters.

She pointed to Judge Edward Chen, a rare judge with recent experience working at an organization that enforces civil rights. She explains:

At his induction ceremony, Judge Chen was quoted as saying that he never considered withdrawing his name from consideration because, as he explained, “I believe that someone should not be disqualified from the bench simply because they once represented the voiceless and unpopular, rather than the wealthy and the powerful.” Judge Chen is right.

But Judge Chen’s nomination process exemplifies why there are not more judges like him. Chen was first nominated in August, 2009. Chen, not just a former ACLU lawyer but also one of the first Asian Pacific American nominees on the court, received the highest possible rating of unanimously well qualified from the American Bar Association, and had experience as a magistrate judge. His nomination was nonetheless subject to relentless obstruction and an “unseemly smear campaign,” with the Senate sending his nomination back to President Obama for three sessions in a row. Obama stood behind his nominee, and, after the vacant court seat had sat empty for more than two years, Chen was eventually confirmed in May 2011. The successful confirmation required not just the commitment of Obama, but also of Chen. Most nominees cannot tolerate the toll on their career imposed by several years of nomination limbo and Senate scrutiny. And the White House does not have the political capital to push through very many Chens, meaning most of his nominees have had similar professional experience to that of his Republican precedessors’. Other nominees, like Rhodes Scholar and award-winning teacher Goodwin Liu, never made it through this obstruction at all.

In her address to the progressive legal community at the American Constitution Society’s national convention, Warren calls for “a new generation of judges, judges whose life experience extends beyond big firms, federal prosecution, and white collar defense.”

While professional diversity has lagged, Obama has made unprecedented progress in contributing to race, gender, and sexual orientation diversity on the federal courts. But combating the corporate chokehold on the ideological leanings of nominees may prove an even more difficult challenge.