John Boehner observed that there aren't a lot of "females" in his conference... then told his bros that the scene was way better at Smith Point and peaced out. Joe Barton believes that the minimum wage has "outlived its usefulness," probably because people no longer need to eat food. And Bill de Blasio named a former Giuliani police commissioner as the next head of the NYPD. Fears that de Blasio would turn New York into some kind of urban hellscape where the Zuccotti Park protesters are given pensions, the squeegee men unionize and Dan Smith will no longer teach you guitar have not panned out. This is HUFFPOST HILL for Thursday, December 5th, 2013:
*BUDGET NEGOTIATIONS HIT A SNAG* - Sam Stein: "Negotiations over a budget framework to fund the government through the next two fiscal years are progressing better than initially expected, Democratic and Republican sources on the Hill told The Huffington Post on Thursday...As things currently stand, Budget Committee Chairs Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.) and Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wisc.) are putting together a package that would fund the government during the next year at roughly $1 trillion, according to multiple aides. But with that number have come potentially tough concessions. Murray and Ryan's proposal won't actually alleviate the full tally of sequester cuts, which will total roughly $109 billion this coming fiscal year. Finding the funds to pay for partial relief -- which negotiators have determined will be split evenly between defense and non-defense accounts -- has proven difficult. Negotiations over pay-fors have centered on broadband spectrum auctions, increasing TSA fees, reforming the postal service (including counting the savings from going from 6-day-a-week delivery to 5-day-a-week delivery), and reforming pensions for federal workers. According to multiple Senate sources, Murray has pushed Ryan to drop consideration of pension cuts or, at the very least, reduce the overall amount (Ryan's House budget counted $120 billion in those cuts over a ten-year period). But cuts of some significance (no one would offer a number) remain in the mix." [HuffPost]
*NELSON MANDELA DEAD: LED SOUTH AFRICA OUT OF APARTHEID* - Times: "Nelson Mandela, South Africa’s first black president and an enduring icon of the struggle against racial oppression, died on Thursday, the government announced, leaving the nation without its moral center at a time of growing dissatisfaction with the country’s leaders. 'Our nation has lost its greatest son,' President Jacob Zuma said in a televised address on Thursday night, adding that Mr. Mandela had died at 8:50 p.m. local time. '...Mr. Mandela spent 27 years in prison after being convicted of treason by the white minority government, only to forge a peaceful end to white rule by negotiating with his captors after his release in 1990. He led the African National Congress, long a banned liberation movement, to a resounding electoral victory in 1994, the first fully democratic election in the country’s history...*Yet Mr. Mandela’s death comes during a period of deep unease and painful self-examination for South Africa. In the past year and a half, the country has faced perhaps its most serious unrest since the end of apartheid*, provoked by a wave of wildcat strikes by angry miners, a deadly response on the part of the police, a messy leadership struggle within the A.N.C. and the deepening fissures between South Africa’s rulers and its impoverished masses. Scandals over corruption involving senior members of the party have fed a broader perception that Mr. Mandela’s near saintly legacy from the years of struggle has been eroded by a more recent scramble for self-enrichment among a newer elite." [NYT]
A friendly reminder of that time Ronald Reagan and congressional Republicans vigorously opposed sanctions against South Africa's apartheid government (Dick Cheney called him a terrorist).
*DAILY DELANEY DOWNER* - From our ongoing series PASTED: Emails from Poor People: "A few weeks ago, I went in to my local family services office to reapply for food stamps and Medicaid. The worker I was assigned to was condescending and she accused me of lying about my income and the value of the small mobile home lot I own. I am 100% disabled and my Social Security disability is my main source of income. I live on $1,153.00 a month, which barely covers my bills. Another worker had added an extra 0 when she entered the value of my lot into the computer and this worker wouldn't change it unless I hired an appraiser, which I can't afford to do. This woman was so verbally abusive I ended up leaving in tears without completing the interview. It's taken three months to muster the courage to go back. *I suggest you get someone to go through the process of applying for these benefits and then you'll know that nobody in their right mind would go through this if they didn't absolutely need it*." [Hang in there!]
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*JOHN BOEHNER UPSET HIS COLLEAGUES DON'T KNOW HOW TO TREAT A LADY* - John Boehner's rules for treating women with respect: 1. Wear your nicest pastel baseball hat and/or pleated khaki shorts. 2. Ashtrays -- and he means the right ashtrays -- make nice gifts. 3. Drinking wine? Nothing less than a 2005 Barolo. 4. Don't say [DEL: dumb things :DEL] anything about rape and/or the biological process of reproduction. Elise Foley: "House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) said Thursday that he believes Republicans are making progress toward appealing to women voters, but they still have work to do. '*[We're] trying to get them to be a little more sensitive,' Boehner said of fellow Republicans at a press conference. 'You know, you look around the Congress, there are a lot more females in the Democratic caucus than there are in the Republican conference. And some of our members just aren't as sensitive as they ought to be.'* Some Republican members are receiving training from the National Republican Congressional Committee on how to run against female candidates in an effort to stop the GOP's trend of poor performance among women voters. Then-Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney lost to President Barack Obama among women voters in 2012, and the party was harmed in congressional races by several candidates' missteps on women's issues. One of the biggest examples was failed Senate candidate Todd Akin, who drew criticism from outside and inside the party for saying victims of 'legitimate rape' rarely get pregnant." [HuffPost]
*DEMOCRATIC THIRD WAY MEMBERS AT ODDS OVER EDITORIAL* - Luke Johnson: "Rep. Joseph Crowley (D-N.Y.), an honorary co-chair of centrist think tank Third Way, became the latest Democrat to reject an op-ed by the group's leaders trashing the economic populism championed by Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.). 'Congressman Crowley has worked with Third Way on a range of issues, such as immigration reform and the Affordable Care Act, but on this matter they strongly disagree,' Crowley spokeswoman Courtney Gidner wrote Thursday in an email to The Huffington Post. 'The Congressman has and will continue to fight to protect Social Security and Medicare.'... Four progressive groups -- Progressive Change Campaign Committee, Social Security Works, Democracy For America and Progressives United -- *have called on Crowley and Reps. Jared Polis (D-Colo.) and Jim Clyburn (D-S.C.) to resign as Third Way co-chairs and denounce the op-ed, which was published Monday in the Wall Street Journal*...Clyburn declined to comment. Rep. Allyson Schwartz (D-Pa.), another honorary co-chair of Third Way, rejected the editorial on Wednesday after progressive pressure, though she declined to cut ties with the group. While none of the three congressmen face particularly challenging elections in 2014, Schwartz is running for governor against Republican incumbent Tom Corbett." [HuffPost]
*Jared Polis'* response is revealing. He's pretty sure he's got you liberals tucked safely in his back pocket, and that you'll look past the corporate/inequality stuff and be grateful for his social policy leadership. "I like Elizabeth Warren. I like Third Way. I hope they can learn to get along better," he said in a statement to HuffPost.
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*HALFTIME IN AMERICA UPDATE: RAND PAUL PROPOSES 'ECONOMIC FREEDOM ZONES' IN DETROIT* - So is that, like, Hamsterdam but for cheeseburgers? Jon Ward: "Rand Paul traveled to Detroit Thursday to pitch his new idea to the city: a bailout with its own money. Paul, a Republican Kentucky senator and likely 2016 presidential candidate, is unveiling his plan to lower tax rates in areas across the country with unemployment rates at least 1.5 times higher than the national average. Benefits to these "economic freedom zones" would include "child education tax credits" for parents that would increase school choice; suspending Environmental Protection Agency "non-attainment designations" that regulate industry emissions; and suspending Davis-Bacon wage requirements that privilege union shops in contract bids. Paul said in a conference call with reporters Thursday morning that the bill he'll introduce in the Senate on Monday would seek to make economically depressed areas attractive to business and investors. The plan would lower corporate and personal income rates to 5 percent, eliminate capital gains taxes, lower the payroll tax, and lower the capital threshold for foreign investors to come into the country on an EB5 visa from $500,000 to $50,000." *Did Rand Paul plagiarize this from Naomi Klein's Shock Doctrine? We didn't realize it was in the how-to section.* [HuffPost]
*OBAMA'S VISION FOR HIGH-SPEED RAIL -- THE UNICORN OF I-95 ELITES -- STALLING* - Hey, at least Amtrak's WiFi has gotten better? Sam Stein: "In an auditorium inside the Eisenhower Executive Office Building on a mid-April day in 2009, President Barack Obama, Vice President Joe Biden and Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood unveiled an ambitious plan to revamp America's rail infrastructure. Public funds would be used to develop a system of high-speed passenger rail lines in 10 regions throughout the country, fundamentally revamping the way Americans conceive of travel...*More than four-and-a-half years later, even the biggest boosters of the president's vision for high-speed rail admit that it hasn't turned out as planned*. Political pushback combined with the absence of a steady revenue stream has allowed for only modest gains. Moreover, for every two steps forward it seems there is one step back. In late November, a judge for the Sacramento Superior Court blocked the state of California from accessing $8.6 billion in bonds for a bullet train project. The most promising high-speed-rail project in the country suddenly had the potential to turn, in the words of Joe Nation, a public finance professor at Stanford University, 'into a real nightmare.'" [HuffPost]
*CARBON PRICING ALREADY BEING IMPLEMENTED BY MAJOR CORPORATIONS* - Except for Koch industries, where the company's "Get Fit" health incentives include running around in a Danny Taggart costume spraying a bottle of aerosol in each hand. Kate Sheppard: "*Many U.S. companies are already including a price on carbon emissions in their business planning. That includes oil companies such as ExxonMobil and ConocoPhillips, and major coal-burning utilities*. Efforts to put a federal price on carbon stalled out in Congress in 2010. Major polluters deserve most of the credit for tanking that legislation, and for keeping it from coming up again. But other countries have moved ahead with a putting a price on planet-warming greenhouse gas emissions, and the Environmental Protection Agency has started issuing new regulations on emissions. So, in effect, emitting carbon is starting to get more expensive for all those companies that have been polluting for free for all these years. And the companies recognize it, as the CDP (formerly known as the Carbon Disclosure Project), a London-based nonprofit that works with corporations to get them to voluntarily disclose their emissions, concluded in a new report issued Thursday. More than 1,000 companies that operate in North America disclose their emissions to the CDP each year, and the CDP puts that information online and issues reports about trends it sees in those disclosures. This latest report found that at least 29 companies reported that they use a price on carbon internally in their business planning and decisions." [HuffPost]
*HELL, WHY EVEN HAVE A MINIMUM WAGE: JOE BARTON* - From the guy that apologized to BP after the Gulf oil spill comes his next hit that you're sure to love. National Journal: "Progressives are starting to worry that President Obama may be more talk than walk when it comes to raising the minimum wage. Again, on Wednesday, the president said, 'It's well past the time to raise a minimum wage that, in real terms right now, is below where it was when Harry Truman was in office.'...Republican lawmakers likely won't see this as justification to raise the minimum wage. 'I have this intense concern that this president is chewing up the Constitution by the excessive use of what he believes is presidential authority,' said Rep. David Schweikert, R-Ariz. *It's particularly unpalatable for Republicans, as the majority of them oppose to raising the minimum wage at all*. 'I think it's outlived its usefulness,' said Rep. Joe Barton of Texas. 'It may have been of some value back in the Great Depression. I would vote to repeal the minimum wage.'" [National Journal]
*BECAUSE YOU'VE READ THIS FAR* - Here are some birds being jerks to cats.
*DE BLASIO APPOINTS FORMER NYPD CHIEF AND STOP-AND-FRISK INNOVATOR* - It's like New York is getting it's very own Obama! Saki Knafo: "Bill de Blasio, the Democratic mayor-elect who surged to the top of polls this summer while promising to reform the aggressive policing strategy known as stop-and-frisk, has selected a police commissioner who embraced that strategy in the past. William Bratton, who presided over dramatic crime reductions as police commissioner of New York City between 1994 and 1996, and Los Angeles between 2002 and 2009, will once again take over the New York City Police Department. De Blasio's transition team made the announcement in a press release Thursday morning. 'Bill Bratton is a proven crime-fighter,' de Blasio said in the statement. 'He knows what it takes to keep a city safe, and make communities full partners in the mission.' Bratton became an international celebrity during his first term as New York’s top cop under Mayor Rudy Giuliani. During his 27 months at the helm of the department, he oversaw an extraordinary 33-percent drop in the violent crime rate. He also helped innovate the aggressive style of policing that grew under current Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly and which relies on the use of stop-and-frisk, a strategy that has led to hundreds of thousands of arrests of mostly black and Latino New Yorkers, often on minor marijuana charges." [HuffPost]
*COMFORT FOOD*
- Tony Sirico and Steve Schirripa from "The Sopranos" play Bert and Ernie. [http://bit.ly/1bkmDp8]
- 2013 saw a lot of highlights for women in media, but also a lot of low points. A LOT of low points. [http://bit.ly/1cdolFy]
- The World Cup draw is Friday. That means something, apparently. Allow this webpage to explain. [http://bit.ly/1kfYTDA]
- An oral history of the BlackBerry. The section about Brickbreaker is a real tearjerker. [http://buswk.co/1hzMLAw]
- A "Star Wars" take on "Bohemian Rhapsody. [http://bit.ly/18bQH7i]
- Historical events that happened around the same time. [http://bit.ly/1gaLlMs]
- Benedict Cumberbatch reads, nay, recites R. Kelly's "Genius." [http://ti.me/19k0sLG]
*TWITTERAMA*
@stefanjbecket: Everyone should aspire to be noteworthy enough to have prewritten obits in the can at numerous news organizations.
@NikkiFinke: R.I.P. Nelson Mandela, subject of Weinstein Co’s Idris Elba-starrer 'Mandela: Long Walk To Freedom' which opened Nov 29 and has awards buzz.
@sambiddle: AVOID DOING THIS —> RT @FastCompany: Nelson Mandela "was a master of social media before the term existed." f-st.co/AnfuV7Y
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