Good morning! Here’s your daily digest of money-in-politics news and the headlines of the day, compiled by BillMoyers.com’s John Light. (You can sign up to receive Morning Reads daily in your inbox!)
Blow to transparency in Wisconsin –> Wisconsin Republicans in the state Senate approved a suite of laws making it far easier for corporations to influence politics there, dismantling the state’s nonpartisan Government Accountability Board (they were upset with its investigation of possible coordination between Scott Walker and campaign finance groups) and getting rid of rules requiring donors to disclose their employers. Shawn Johnson reports for Wisconsin Public Radio.
AND: Good government groups were not just concerned about the content of the legislation, they were outraged at how the process unfolded. “It is the most abusive and disrespectful process I’ve ever witnessed,” Jay Heck, director of Common Cause in Wisconsin, told the Wisconsin State Journal. “It’s almost like: ‘Too bad, public. Too bad, media. We’ve got the votes.’”
Keystone –> President Obama announced Friday that his administration would reject TransCanada’s application to build the Keystone pipeline, a major victory for the environmental movement. At Grist, Ben Adler tells the inside story of how a coalition put pressure on Obama to reject Keystone. In an email to supporters, Bill McKibben, co-founder of 350.org, one of the groups leading the charge against the pipeline, wrote, “This is huge. A head of state has never rejected a major fossil fuel project because of its climate impacts before. The President’s decision sets the standard for what climate action looks like: standing up to the fossil fuel industry, and keeping fossil fuels in the ground.”
AND: David Roberts writes that Beltway insider types are palpably disgusted with the Keystone debate: “They all have versions of the same question: why this?” In a column at Vox, he reminds said insiders why the climate movement is correct to fight supply-side battles against fossil fuels.
Meanwhile… –> From the World Bank: “Rapid, Climate-Informed Development Needed to Keep Climate Change from Pushing More than 100 Million People into Poverty by 2030.”
Here’s a twist –> The Supreme Court is hearing a case that, if the plaintiff prevails, could be devastating to organized labor. Friedrichs v. California Teachers Association (CTA) hinges on whether non-union members can be asked to pay unions fees if those unions engage in collective bargaining on their behalf. Josh Eidelson writes for Bloomberg Businessweek that “Unions’ best hope of winning rests with an unlikely ally: Antonin Scalia.”
Déjà vu? –> A case that looks suspiciously similar to Hobby Lobby has made its way to the Supreme Court. Justices will hear another challenge to Obamacare’s contraceptive mandate, and this time decide “whether religiously affiliated organizations such as universities, hospitals and charities can be free from playing any role in providing their employees with contraceptive coverage.” More from Robert Barnes at The Washington Post.
Why so many prosecutions? –> At Salon, Elias Asquith interviews The New York Times’ Charlie Savage about Savage’s new book, Power Wars: Inside Obama’s Post-9/11 Presidency. During the Obama years, the American government has prosecuted more leakers than the past three presidencies combined, Savage says. This has to do with changes in how technology can be used to monitor government employees, “and how metadata can make it much easier now to see who is talking to a reporter, who also had access to the information.”
One more impediment to immigration reform –> The government can’t seem to get the official forms digitized. A decade into an initiative to get rid of the paperwork, writes Jerry Markon at The Washington Post, “all that officials have to show for the effort is a single form that’s now available for online applications and a single type of fee that immigrants pay electronically. The 94 other forms can be filed only with paper.”
Quietly seeking change –> At Buzzfeed, Chris Geidner writes about “the most ambitious effort yet to abolish the death penalty” that you’ve never heard of. Its goal is to gett a case in front of the Supreme Court and arguing that the death penalty is cruel and unusual punishment. The strategy hinges on winning over Justice Anthony Kennedy.
Crime and punishment –> On Sunday’s Last Week Tonight with John Oliver, Oliver took a look at how incredibly hard we make it for ex-felons to reintegrate into society: “Depending on where you live, a felony conviction can cut you off from everything from voting, to a drivers license, to one Florida county’s home weatherization program.”
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