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The latest push to extend New Yorks short statute of limitations on child sex-abuse cases fizzled in Albany at the hands of Senate Republicans last week, when Senate Majority Leader John Flanagan refused to let the Senate vote on a bill that the Assembly overwhelmingly approved and that Gov. Andrew Cuomo supported.

State lawmakers ended their 2017 session on Wednesday with no Senate vote on the Child Victims Act or any alternatives that had been proposed, including one that the New York State Catholic Conference supported. The conference had opposed the bill the Assembly passed, arguing it would open the Catholic Church to lawsuits for abuse claims from decades ago, but it endorsed another pending bill that would have removed entirely the statute of limitations on prosecution.

None of the four Republicans senators representing Orange, Ulster and Sullivan counties would state their positions on the Child Victims Act when asked last week. James Seward and George Amedore, each of whom represents parts of Ulster County, didnt respond at all to the Times Herald-Records question. Spokesmen for John Bonacic and Bill Larkin each emailed statements that took no stance on the bill.

Advocates have pushed for 11 years to extend or eliminate the states statute of limitations on criminal charges and lawsuits involving sexual abuse of children. Under current law, the victims of such acts must seek criminal charges or sue before they turn 23 much too early, advocates say, for many traumatized abuse survivors to come forward. The bill that the Assembly passed would give victims until age 28 to seek prosecution and until age 50 to sue culpable institutions. It also would have given previously time-barred victims one year to bring cases.

Larkins spokesman said last week that Larkin was reviewing the reform proposals and hoped for an agreement before the session ended.

The senator is committed to working with his colleagues to protect children from sexual predators and hold abusers accountable and would like to see the State Legislature reach an agreement on this issue prior to the end of this years legislative session, spokesman Brian Maher said. He didnt respond when asked if Larkin would vote for or against the bill that the Assembly approved in a 139-7 vote on June 7.

Cuomo declared his support for the bill after the Assembly approved it. Advocates and Democrats had implored the Senates Republican leaders to bring the legislation to the floor before the session ended. The Times Herald-Record reported on the bills uncertain status and on a Saugerties man involved with the reform effort on Monday.

Bonacics spokesman, Conor Gillis, sent the Times Herald-Record a statement that touted past legislation but took no position on the Child Victims Act. He said only that Bonacic would review the bill if it came to the floor.

The statement read: The Senate has consistently passed legislation to protect New Yorkers from sexual predators, going as far back as 2006 when the Senate passed Megans Law, legislation ensuring that sexual predators register with the State and provide parents and members of the community with this information. The Senate has passed legislation to toughen criminal penalties on sexual predators, while also passing legislation restricting where sex offenders can go, explicitly barring them from entering school grounds. With that being said, should any version of the Child Victims Act come to the floor, Senator Bonacic will carefully review the details before he votes.

Chris McKenna

Lawmakers replenish campaign cash in Albany

After the conclusion of the 2017 legislative session in Albany on Wednesday, the New York Public Interest Research Group distributed its latest list of campaign fundraisers that state lawmakers held this year in the capital while debating funding and legislation their donors are so keenly interested in.

Here are the events that senators and Assembly members representing Orange, Ulster and Sullivan counties held and the minimum donation to get in the door (some had more than one):

Sen. John Bonacic, R-Mount Hope: $750, Fort Orange Club, Feb. 13

Sen. Bill Larkin, R-Cornwall-on-Hudson: $500, Fort Orange Club, Feb. 13 and June 14

Sen. George Amedore, R-Rotterdam, $500, The University Club, Feb. 28; $250, Angelos 677 Prime, June 7

Sen. James Seward, R-Milford, $800, Fort Orange Club, March 13; $250, The Albany Room, June 13

Assemblyman Karl Brabenec, R-Deerpark, $250, Pinto & Hobbs Tavern, March 20

Assemblyman Kevin Cahill, D-Kingston, $500, Renaissance Hotel, March 21

Assemblywoman Aileen Gunther, D-Forestburgh, $300, The Albany Room, March 28

Assemblyman James Skoufis, D-Woodbury, $250, City Beer Hall, June 14

Chris McKenna

Mass. congressman endorses Ryan in NY-19

Patrick Ryan, one of eight Democrats whove decided to run for Congress against Republican Rep. John Faso in 2018, has racked up his second endorsement despite the congressional race not being until November next year.

Rep. Seth Moulton of Massachusetts announced the endorsement of Ryan and seven other Democratic veterans on Wednesday, saying that the Democratic Party needs a new generation of leadership, and that its time to stop rehashing 2016 and deliver a vision for America that addresses the real challenges facing Americans in all parts of our country.

Ryan, 35, of Brooklyn, grew up in Kingston. Hes a graduate of Kingston High School and the United States Military Academy at West Point. He went on to serve two combat tours in Iraq, rising to the rank of captain. He began two start-up technology businesses and currently works for Dataminr, a New York City start-up company that analyzes data from social media.

Ryan and Moulton, whos in his second term, already shared a connection. Ryan said he began considering a run for Congress through a network of military veterans that included Moulton, a Marine Corps veteran and Democrat who represents Massachusetts sixth congressional district.

Both Moulton and Ryan were also recruited to run for Congress through the Boston-based group New Politics, which works to recruit those with public service backgrounds to run for office.

James Nani

Legislature OKs ward system for school boards

State lawmakers passed a bill last week that would enable school districts to create wards for the election of school board members, an idea that supporters in the Pine Bush School District and in Sullivan County have promoted since 2015 as a way to limit the ability of voting blocs to control boards.

The bill, approved in the last week of the 2017 legislative session, was sponsored by Assemblywoman Aileen Gunther, D-Forestburgh, and Sen. Bill Larkin, R-Cornwall-on-Hudson. It glided through the Assembly in a 140-2 vote on Monday and cleared the Senate in a 62-1 vote the next day.

Adopting a ward system would require a referendum. If approved by voters, a district could be divided into three to nine wards.

The legislation mistakenly required elections for all board seats in the same year. The sponsors, who say they meant to have staggered elections, plan to introduce an amendment to retroactively change the wording. The bill must be sent to Gov. Andrew Cuomo to sign or veto.

Amanda Spadaro and Chris McKenna

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The Fray: Senate Republicans snub child sex-abuse bill as session ends - Times Herald-Record

By Mallory E. SoRelle and Alexis N. Walker By Mallory E. SoRelle and Alexis N. Walker June 23

After President Trump declared his intention to leave the Paris climate agreement, three Democratic state governors announced that their states would continue to pursue efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Meanwhile, Republicans in Congress vowed to enact federal laws to preempt state and local immigration policies at odds with the GOP agenda. This contradicts conventional wisdom, which holds that Republicans promote states rights while Democrats want more policymaking power concentrated at the federal level.

[This explains why there are so few Republican women in Congress]

Is this apartisan reversal on states rights? Our research suggests not. Rather, both parties have historically promoted or preempted states rights depending on their partys political goals for a given issue.

Both Democrats and Republicans care about states rights

The United States has a federal system, which means that state and federal governments divide and share power to make and enforce laws. As the chartbelow shows, the federal government has a long history of enacting laws that preempt, or limit, states and localities policymaking powers.

But federal preemption jumped sharply in the 1970s and again over the past decade. About 6 percent of federal laws enacted between 2000 and 2009 preempt state and local powers, compared with about 3.5 percent during the previous decade.

Federal preemptions by decade

How we did our research

To learn more about how the parties at the national level approach states rights, we surveyed every federal law enacted between 1990 and 2012 that preempted state power in some way. As the figure below shows, we found that both parties have contributed relatively equally to the dramatic increase in federal preemption.

Preemption statutes enacted, by party control of House and presidency, 1990-2012

Over about the past 20 years, Republicans in Congress and in the White House have been just as willing to limit state power as have Democrats. For example, Presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush each signed 64 preemption statutes into law during their respective eight years in office. Similarly, between 1990 and 2012, no matter which party controlled the House of Representatives, roughly the same average number of preemption policies became law each year.

Parties preempt states rights in different ways

However, exactly how they limit state authority varies, in keeping with the parties different political goals.

The parties enact different types of preemptions. Republicans are more likely to impose what are known as ceiling preemptions. These laws cap the amount of regulation states can enact on a particular issue. For example, a ceiling preemption might prohibit states from setting new or more stringent emissions standards for a particular industry.

Democrats, by contrast, are much more likely to limit state power by setting floor preemptions, or minimum standards that states must meet but can exceed if they want to. For example, such a law might set a federal emission standard for a particular industry but allow states to enact tougher emissions standards.

[Yes, Mitch McConnells secretive lawmaking really is unusual in these 4 ways]

As shown in the chartsbelow, we find that when Democrats controlled the House between 1990 and 2012, 57 percent of preemption laws enacted were floors. By contrast, when Republicans controlled the House, 33 percent of laws enacted with preemption statutes were floors; the remaining 67 percent were ceilings limiting state regulatory power.

Floor vs. ceiling preemptions as enacted by party control of House, 1990-2012

You can see this illustrated in the partisan gap between floor and ceiling preemptions in public health and consumer safety. When Democrats controlled the House, 75 percent of preemptions were floors, compared with36 percent of those passed under Republican majorities. That means that Democrats in Congress used preemptions to create a base level of health and safety regulation across the states while Republicans did so to limit state authority to regulate in this area.

For example, the Card Act of 2009, enactedunder Democratic control, created new credit card rules to protect consumers but left states able to add still more regulations. By contrast, a Republican-led 2001 amendment to the Consumer Product Safety Act introduced federal regulations for electric bicycles that explicitly overrode more stringent state laws.

States rights in the Trump era

States responses to Trump and the current Republican agenda are entirely consistent with these patterns, as the parties stands on states rights vary with the issue at hand.

For instance, the Trump administration is trying to remove tough environmental regulations and state and national Democratic leaders are resisting by turning to state power. Just a few years ago, when Democrats controlled the House, Democratic Party leaders in Congress passed federal bills that forced states to set minimum environmental protection standards, for example, by regulating the use of lead pipes that carry drinking water.

But in the ongoing debate over the federal Medicaid program that funds health care forlow-income and disabled people, the tables are turned. Many Republicans want to shift toward block grants, which would let each state decide how to run and fund its Medicaid program. Predictably, Democrats are opposed; they want enough federal control to ensure that current benefits are protected.

The sides flip once more on immigration. Congressional Republicans want to preempt state power to prevent Democratic cities from becoming sanctuary cities. Meanwhile, congressional Democrats are fighting to protect state and local rights to resist Trump administration policies against sanctuary cities.

[Bartels: The wave of right-wing populist sentiment is a myth]

In sum, neither party holds a principled position on whether to preempt or protect states rights. Instead, both parties use federal power to limit state authority or to promote it depending on their partys policy goals. Expect to see such strategic partisan use of federalism continue as the parties go to battle over Trumps and the GOPs agenda.

Mallory E. SoRelle is an assistant professor of government and law at Lafayette College, specializing in the study of American politics and public policy. Follow her on Twitter @SoRelleM.

Alexis N. Walker is an assistant professor of political science at Saint Martins University, with a focus on American politics and organized labor.

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Both Democrats and Republicans care about 'states' rights' when it suits them - Washington Post

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British Columbia Premier Christy Clark, left, and NDP leader John Horgan, right, look on as B.C. Lieutenant Governor Judith Guichon gives the Speech from Throne in Victoria, Thursday, June 22, 2017.

A UBC economist says its entirely possible the money is there to pay for more than $1.5-billion in new spending pledged in the BC Liberal Throne Speech.

The Liberals raised eyebrows on Thursday by reversing course on a number of policies they had previously campaigned against, borrowing big ticket platform planks like $1-billion for child care or scrapping bridge tolls from the NDP.

In the wake of the speech, Finance Minister Mike de Jong justified the new spending with reference to an improved economic forecast.

READ MORE: Power hangs in the balance following Throne Speech at the B.C. Legislature

LISTEN: Economist Kevin Milligan explains why the government may have more money to spend than the February budget accounted for

2017Global News, a division of Corus Entertainment Inc.

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Credible case BC Liberals can pay for Throne Speech promises: UBC economist - Globalnews.ca

We have become obsessed with prescience. Or rather, a kind of reverse-prescience that sees old books (from Orwells Nineteen Eighty-Four to Margaret Atwoods The Handmaids Tale to Arendts The Origins of Totalitarianism and Radioheads OK Computer) invested with a new vitality. These works, and their authors, are hailed for their farsightedness and acute judiciousness, for their ability to speak to our troubled times. But more often than not, its a case of too little, way too late.

Reading the Stalinist parable Nineteen Eighty-Four to make sense of Trumpism feels about as useful as scanning the instructions on a bottle of bear spray while your torsos already half-digested by a savage Kodiak. Still, we laud the old works and the old masters for their seeming ability to forecast the present, even if they do so in hazy, generalizing terms. The esteemed quality of prescience thus reveals itself as conservative, keeping us fixed on the past, lost in our fantasies of foregone foresight. Damn, if only we could have seen it coming back then.

Few pop-cultural objects carry this burden of prescience like RoboCop, Paul Verhoevens sci-fi satire/Detroit dystopia/Christian allegory, which turns 30 this summer. Set in a near-future Motor City beset by corporate greed, with slums being rebuilt as privatized skyscraper communities and public services seized by profiteering private contractors, much of RoboCops critical legacy hinges on its seemingly spooky ability to predict the future: from the militarization of American police forces, to the collapse (and rebirth) of Detroit, to the way in which politics has become increasingly beholden to private money.

Never mind that all these things were already happening when RoboCop was released theatrically at the ass-end of the Reagan administration. What matters is how the film is regarded as effectively anticipating whats happening now. Problem is: claims of the films prescience arent just overstated. Theyre fundamentally incorrect. And if were to believe as many seem to that RoboCops near future is meant to be our present, then we must reckon with one of its greatest oversights: its depiction of business-suited capitalists as crass, corporatist, unfeeling heels. What RoboCop got wrong was its depiction of the bad guys of those greedy corporate profiteers looking to razz Detroits crumbling ghettos, quarterback private police militias and trap the hearts and minds of good, honest, working men inside hulking robotic exoskeletons.

***

On the commentary track bundled with Criterions now out-of-print 1998 home video release of RoboCop, producer Jon Davison summed up the movies message. He called it fascism for liberals. As Davison puts it: The picture is extremely violent, but it has a nice, tongue-in-cheek, were-just-kiddin quality. Indeed, RoboCop, like many of Dutch expat Paul Verhoevens other films (The Fourth Man, Starship Troopers, Basic Instinct, Showgirls, even the recent Elle) function through this sort of deeply embedded irony; this were-just-kiddin quality. The sex, the violence, the way they flirt with ideological reprehensibility Verhoevens films are calibrated to invite reaction, even disgust. And yet thats never the end in itself.

When a heavy artillery urban pacification tank shoots up a boardroom meeting early in RoboCop, in one of the films most legendarily over-the-top sequences, the joke isnt the display of gore itself, but rather the reaction. When the scowling CEO of Omni Consumer Products (referred to with mock-affection as The Old Man, and played by Dan OHerlihy) witnesses the wanton display of machine-on-man violence and mutters to sniveling underling Dick Jones (Ronny Cox), Im very disappointed in you, thats the joke a critique of the corporate worlds utter disdain for human life, packaged in a parody of Reagan-era paternalist condescension. This, presumably, is what Davison is talking about. RoboCop offers visions of violence, of top-down, totalitarian corporate control, and the crumbling of the American Dream itself that proves fundamentally comforting in its cheekiness and ironic distance. Yes, the world it depicts is bad. But we know its bad. And thats good.

Yet this idea fascism for liberals runs even deeper into the movies DNA. What its capitalist parody doesnt anticipate is the current entanglements of corporatism and politics. While the ascent of celebrity capitalist Donald Trump may play like something out of a direct-to-video RoboCop sequel, the film fails to address the more pressing threat of smiling, do-gooder philanthrocapitalists: guys like Michael Bloomberg or Mark Zuckerberg who increasingly set the agendas of American (and global) politics, while retaining the image of selfless saviors. These are the people who, increasingly, represent the corporatization of everyday life, albeit in a way that RoboCop-style corporate villainy cant account for.

When Donald Trump announced that America would be backing out of the Paris Climate Agreement, ex-NYC mayor Michael Bloomberg promised to pick up the tab with his private money. Likewise, before Amazons Jeff Bezos announced he was buying the Whole Foods supermarket chain last week a move that boosted Bezoss stock while sapping that of competitors like Wal-Mart and Target he canvassed Twitter for ideas on charities to which he could donate money. This is the face of modern consumerist capitalism: lead with a benign-seeming charitable gesture, follow through with a massive, bottom line-boosting buyout.

The fundamental weakness of 80s-era, RoboCop-ian businessman bad guys is their conspicuousness. They are vulgar and cruel, they divulge their scheming master plans in Bond villain-style monologues, and mainline cocaine and throw their henchmen out of moving vehicles. They are obviously (too obviously, maybe) villainous. They are unabashedly wolfish and competitive. This is not meant as a dig at RoboCop itself, which is a perfect film. Rather, its a critique of the automated reaction to praising the film for its farsightedness in a way that seems blinkered and myopic, even from the perspective of today.

Because today, things are altogether different. The billionaire super-capitalists seeking to monopolize the experience of daily life tend to appear not as smirking super-villains with spindly fingers steepled together as if it say Im scheming. Rather, theyre the good guys. They donate money to charity (while exploiting tax loopholes), they care about the environment and schools and LGBTQ rights and the health and wellbeing of the Democratic Party. Some even want to go to Mars. They orbit around politics without seeming overtly political. (The obvious exception in this glad-handing rogues gallery is Bloomberg, though his move from mayor of Americas largest city back to private citizen and super-rich guy tends to be regarded as just that, a return or a retirement from political life.) And this seeming isolation from the sphere of politics is their greatest strength.

***

In 1831, French bureaucrats dispatched Alexis de Tocqueville to America to study the national prison system. He skipped the prisons, surveying instead the whole broad expanse of American society. The resulting study, Democracy in America, is an exhaustive account of life and liberty and the then-fledgling republic.

One thing that struck de Tocqueville was the cleaving of church and state. Unlike France, where the Bourbon Restoration had reinstated privileges of nobility granted to the clergy that had been largely stripped during the Revolution, and where the Catholic Church was state religion, Americas deep religiosity existed outside (or alongside) the political realm. In America, de Tocqueville observed, the clergy never hold public office and are not politically active. While the power of religion seems diminished without an alliance with political power, it is actually stronger. Where the political sphere is constantly in a state of flux and is always changing according to public opinion, religion provides a stabler common morality.

De Tocquevilles observations on the American clergys power were explicitly translated to the political-social realm by economist Friedrich Hayek and other so-called Austrian School economists. As Linsey McGoey writes in her 2015 critique of philanthropy No Such Thing as a Free Gift, these economists grasped the that in order to wield lasting power it was important to make sure their efforts appeared as non-political as possible. Unfailingly, whenever confronted with a choice between overt political engagement and more surreptitious political lobbying, Hayek would recommend the second strategy. This sense of standing outside the muck and mire of politics itself, of living above the fray, grants billionaire corporatists inordinate power in the public imagination (to wit: during his presidential campaign, Donald Trump successfully spun his lack of experience in politics into a virtue, and similarly framed his inordinate wealth as a mark of his incorruptibility).

Capitalism, or even just gauzier ideas of business and the market, provide their own contemporary common morality (or they appear to, anyway). This is the ultimate liberal fantasy: that all we need to solve massive social problems is more money, that the way to fight against billionaires is with different kind of billionaires. And this is not even to say that Bloomberg, Zuckerberg, Bezos, Bill Gates, Carlos Slim et al. are necessarily bad or evil. But this altruism and aloofness is the essence of their menace. They use wealth, power and influence that results in a net negative of the democratic experiment. While appearing benevolent, they set the agenda, all without the consultation of the broader public (save for the occasional Twitter poll). They consolidate their power and restrict possibilities, delimiting democracy and wrangling into a plutocracy of smirking good Samaritans. This is the sort of stuff that never frighten liberals, who are happy to see their vested interests fortified in the hands of those who think just like them.

And this, perhaps, is why I reserve a certain fondness for director Fred Dekkers often-mocked 1993 sequel RoboCop 3. There, the films namesake robotic constable functions not as a metalloid Christ cleansing the temple of American industry from conspicuously chicanerous capitalists, but as a hero of the disenfranchised. Hes an android golem, fighting on behalf of a ragtag revolutionary army of down-and-out Detroiters and pensionless public servants against the encroachment of corporate control (both domestic and foreign) and the steamrolling of Old Detroit.

Despite the films arch-cartoonishness and family-friendly feel (it pares back the blood and gore for scenes of Robo battling Japanese ninja androids and whooshing around in a jetpack), RoboCop 3 has little in the way of the originals beloved tongue-in-cheek, were-just-kiddin quality. Its fueled by a more intersectional, revolutionary energy, in which everyday people band together to defend their retirement funds and stand up for their communities. Its the sort of story that might actually trouble institutional liberals and do-gooder philanthrocapitalists, one in which a legitimate #Resistance rises up and asserts itself, with or without the help of a reprogrammed robotic police officer. Its a message that, one might hope, will one day too be trumped up and over-hyped as acute and totally visionary.

Or maybe the better hope is to forgo the backward-looking fetish for prescience altogether, to turn away from Oceania and Gilead and Delta City and cast a caustic eye on the present, to ferret out the culture that will seem ahead of its time well down the line, and to see whats coming right now.

Read more:
Fascism for liberals: RoboCop at 30 and the problem with prescience - Salon

A new poll shows most voters are growing tired of the allegations of collusion with Russian officials made against the Trump administration.

According to the most recent Harvard-Harris Poll, 56 percent of voters said they want Congress and the media to move on from the Russian investigation. Sixty-two percent of respondents said they believe the investigations will lead to the end of the Russia inquiry. Thirty-eight percent said they believe Trump will eventually be impeached.

Additionally, 64 percent of the voters in the poll said they believe the investigations into Russia and President Trump are hurting the country.

The survey was conducted June 19-21 and included responses from 2,237 American adults who say they vote. When asked which political affiliation they usually identify with, 35 percent of respondents said Democrat, 30 percent said independent, 29 percent said Republican, and 6 percent said other.

Interestingly, the poll also shows 52 percent of respondents said they have a favorable view of Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), who scored the highest of all the political figures asked about. Mike Pence finished second, with 47 percent of voters saying they have a favorable view of the vice president. Trump finished third (45 percent) and his 2016 opponent Hillary Clinton finished fourth (39 percent).

The poll represents a remarkable shift from just one month ago, when Harvard-Harris found 75 percent of voters supported former FBI Director Robert Muellers investigation into the possibility Trumps campaign team may have colluded with the Russian government to win the election.

After a rocky May, Trumps approval ratings have steadily improved as Democrats have been unable to show any evidence of their claims about Trump and Russia. The Real Clear Politics average of polls which includes polls that survey all Americans, not just voters showed Trumps approval rating throughout most of May and early June to be below 40 percent, bottoming out at 38.6 on June 13. Since then, Trumps average approval rating has consistently risen. Its currently sitting at 40.6 percent.

Excerpt from:
Poll reveals Americans are changing their minds about Russia liberals won't be happy - TheBlaze.com