the Senate CONGRESS 3/3 snow day the House

03/03/2014 Nativegrl77

The Senate will convene at 2:00pm on Monday, March 3, 2014.

Following any Leader remarks, the Senate will be in a period of morning business until 5:00pm with Senators permitted to speak therein for up to 10 minutes each.

At 5:00pm, the Senate will proceed to Executive Session to consider Executive Calendar #659, the nomination of Debo P. Adegbile, of New York, to be an Assistant Attorney General with up to 30 minutes of debate equally divided and controlled in the usual form.

At 5:30pm, there will be a roll call vote on the motion to invoke cloture on the Adegbile nomination.

During Thursday’s session of the Senate, cloture was filed on the following items in the following order. The number of post-cloture debate hours for each nominee is in parenthesis.

– Executive Calendar #659, Debo Adegbile to be Assistant Attorney General (8 equally-divided hours);

– Executive Calendar #568, Pedro A. Delgado Hernandez to be U.S. District Judge for the District of Puerto Rico (2 equally-divided hours);

– Executive Calendar #569, Pamela Reeves to be U.S. District Judge for the Eastern District of Tennessee (2 equally-divided hours);

– Executive Calendar #565, Timothy Brooks to be U.S. District Judge for the Western District of Arkansas (2 equally-divided hours);

– Executive Calendar #571, Vince Chhabria to be U.S. District Judge for the Northern District of California (2 equally-divided hours);

– Executive Calendar #636, Rose Gottemoeller to be Under Secretary of State for Arms Control and International Security (8 equally-divided hours); and

– Motion to proceed to Legislative Calendar #309, S.1086, the Child Care and Development Block Grant.

As a reminder, when cloture is filed sequentially on several items, the Senate will consider one motion at a time. If cloture is invoked on the Adegbile nomination, there would be up to 8 hours for debate equally divided prior to a vote on confirmation of the nomination. If cloture is not invoked or upon disposition of the nomination, the Senate would immediately proceed to the cloture vote on the Hernandez nomination. If cloture is invoked on the Hernandez nomination, there would be up to 2 hours for debate prior to a vote on confirmation of the nomination. Upon disposition of the Gottemoeller nomination, the next vote will be on cloture on the motion to proceed to S.1086, the Child Care and Development Block Grant Act. We hope to vitiate the cloture motion and adopt the motion to proceed by consent and begin legislating on the bill.

The previous order with respect to Executive Calendar #659, the nomination of Debo Adegbile to be Assistant Attorney General and the subsequent nominations on which cloture was filed on Thursday, February 27^th was modified. The details are below.

On Wednesday, March 5^th, following any Leader remarks, the time until 11:45am will be equally divided and controlled between Senators Leahy and Grassley or their designees. At 11:45am, there will be up to 3 roll call votes:

– Motion to invoke cloture on the Adegbile nomination

– If cloture is invoked, all but 4 minutes of post-cloture time will be yielded back and the Senate will immediately vote on confirmation of the Adegbile nomination

– Following disposition of the Adegbile nomination or if cloture is not invoked on the Adegbile nomination, the Senate will vote on the motion to invoke cloture on Executive Calendar #568, Pedro A. Delgado Hernandez to be U.S. District Judge for the District of Puerto Rico.

We expect cloture to be invoked on the Hernandez nomination. We expect to recess following the cloture vote for the weekly caucus meetings. There will be up to 2 hours of post-cloture debate time on the nomination; we may reach a consent to count the time during the recess so that a vote on confirmation of the nomination occurs at 2:15 or alternatively, the confirmation vote will be a little later Wednesday afternoon. Upon disposition of the Hernandez nomination, the Senate will process the following cloture motions:

– Executive Calendar #569, Pamela Reeves to be U.S. District Judge for the Eastern District of Tennessee (2 equally-divided hours);

– Executive Calendar #565, Timothy Brooks to be U.S. District Judge for the Western District of Arkansas (2 equally-divided hours);

– Executive Calendar #571, Vince Chhabria to be U.S. District Judge for the Northern District of California (2 equally-divided hours);

– Executive Calendar #636, Rose Gottemoeller to be Under Secretary of State for Arms Control and International Security (8 equally-divided hours); and

– Motion to proceed to Legislative Calendar #309, S.1086, the Child Care and Development Block Grant.

As a reminder, when cloture is filed sequentially on several items, the Senate will consider one motion at a time. If cloture is not invoked or upon disposition of the nomination, the Senate would immediately proceed to the cloture vote on the next nomination listed. If cloture is invoked on a nomination, the corresponding amount of debate time will occur prior to a vote on confirmation of the nomination.

Upon disposition of the Gottemoeller nomination, the next vote will be on cloture on the motion to proceed to S.1086, the Child Care and Development Block Grant Act. We hope to vitiate the cloture motion and adopt the motion to proceed by consent and begin legislating on the bill.

WRAP UP

No Roll Call Votes

Legislative items

Completed the Rule 14 process of the following items in order to place the bills on the Legislative Calendar:

– S.2066, Prohibit Intentional Discrimination by IRS Employee (Cruz)

– S.2067, Prohibit Treasury from assigning tax status to organizations based on political beliefs and activities (Cruz)

– S.2062, the Constitutional Check and Balance Act (Paul) and

– H.R.3865, the Stop Targeting of Political Beliefs by the IRS Act (Republican request)

Executive items

Permitted the Intelligence Committee to have until Thursday, March 6, 2014 to report PN1243, the nomination of John P. Carlin, to be Assistant Attorney General for National Security.

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Last Floor Action:2/28
1:30:46 P.M. – The House adjourned pursuant to a previous special order.

The next meeting is scheduled for 12:00 p.m. on March 3, 2014.

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My Brother’s Keeper

02/28/2014 Nativegrl77

By CAP Action War Room

Obama Launches New Initiative For Young Black Men

President Obama announced a new initiative at the White House today called “My Brother’s Keeper,” which asks business and civic leaders to look for and invest in ways to empower young black men. The New York Times reports that several high-profile foundations have committed $200 million over the next five years to the effort, focusing especially on “early-childhood development, educational opportunities, school readiness and discipline, parenting, and the criminal justice system.”

The initiative is likely the start of a lifelong cause for the President and the First Lady, according to several of his closest advisers. “I’m sure their commitment to this initiative will be a lifelong commitment,” said Valerie Jarrett, one of Obama’s closest friends from Chicago. Arne Duncan, the Secretary of Education, agreed: “This is core to who they are individually and core to who they are together.”

Yet another aide recalled a story from Father’s Day 2013 when Obama was presented with a Father’s Day card from a group of Chicago teenagers visiting the White House.

“I never signed a Father’s Day card before,” one explained as Obama opened the card. “I’ve never signed a Father’s Day card, either,” Obama replied.

Over at ThinkProgress, Bryce Covert goes into detail about why this initiative is so important. Here are just a few of the reasons:

1. Black students experience an educational achievement gap that grows.

A combination of a lack of high-quality preschool and other factors means that an achievement gap between black children and white children starts when they are as young as nine months old. But it gets bigger and bigger:

CREDIT: The Hamilton Project at the Brookings Institution

2. A huge number of black teenagers are unemployed.

The unemployment rate among black teenagers is 38 percent — down from nearly 50 percent at the peak of the recession, but still far above the 7 percent rate for entire population.

3. Even those who are employed make less.

Jobs that are over-represented by black men earn more than $13,000 less per year than jobs that are under-represented by black men.

CREDIT: Economic Policy Institute

For other ideas how the president and Congress can help young black men, check out this piece from Vanessa Cardenas, one of our Center for American Progress colleagues, HERE.

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Group Health drops Abortion coverage … We need a vote on RPA

02/28/2014 Nativegrl77

PETITION STATEMENT

At least one Washington state insurance plan has dropped abortion coverage, denying a woman the freedom and privacy to make her own pregnancy decisions. Without the Reproductive Parity Act, we could lose access to safe medical care. Please allow a Senate vote on the RPA and protect all of a woman’s legal pregnancy options!

Sign the petition!

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There could be slaves in the supply chain of your chocolate, smartphone and sushi

02/28/2014 Nativegrl77 1 Comment

By Tim Fernholz @timfernholz October 19, 2013

Forced labor is a reality, and you might be using products made by workers who had no choice in the matter.

The first edition of Global Slavery Index from the Walk Free Foundation, an anti-slavery NGO, estimates that there are 30 million slaves in the world—and more than half of them are in prominent emerging markets like India, China, and Russia.

Modern slavery, as the index defines it, includes all kinds of forced labor, ranging from hereditary bondage in Mauritania, which has the largest slave population per capita in the world, to forced sexual exploitation, including the arranged marriage of minors. Most of the countries where slaves make up a significant slice of the population have a cultural tradition of bonded labor, like Haiti’s restavek system of indentured servitude for children (which can be an innocent way for families to help each other out, the report says, but is often abused).

But the largest form of forced labor is in private industry, where about two-thirds of people working in slave conditions—usually forced or bonded labor—are found. That’s why this new effort to measure global slavery exists: It’s part of a campaign funded by the chairman of one of the world’s largest miners, Andrew Forrest of Fortescue Metals Group, who wants companies to eliminate slavery from their supply chains. As global trade has led firms to source materials and labor from ever more far-flung locales, it has become easier for them to turn a blind eye to who makes their products. Here are just a few examples:

This summer, an Australian man imprisoned in China reported that prisoners were making headphones for global airlines like Qantas and British Airways. Some 300,000 sets of the disposable headphones were made by uncompensated prisoners who were forced to work without pay and regularly beaten. The index says that there are about 3 million slaves in China, in state-run forced labor camps, at private industrial firms making electronics and designer bags, and in the brick-making industry.
Companies like Apple, Boeing and Intel—among thousands of others—have been under pressure to document that the tin, tantalum, tungsten, and gold they use aren’t being mined by slaves in the Democratic Republic of Congo, where a civil war has led armed groups seeking funding to force civilians to work. The US Securities and Exchange Commission adopted a rule forcing American firms to trace the minerals they use to their origins, and while business lobbies have sued to overturn it, industry leaders have begun planning to file the first required reports in May 2014.
In the Asian seafood industry, migrant workers may become forced laborers who harvest and prepare mackerel, shrimp and squid bound for markets around the world.
Côte d’Ivoire is the world’s leading supplier of cocoa—some 40% of the global supply—and much of it is grown and harvested by some children engaged in forced labor. In 2010, Côte d’Ivoire said 30,000 children worked on cocoa farms, although Walk Free’s index estimates as many as 600,000 to 800,000. While this has been widely reported on since 2000, and the global response has been strong, compared to that of other allegations of forced labor, the problem has not really been solved. As of 2012, 97% of the country’s farmers have not participated in industry-sponsored campaigns against forced child labor. Mondelēz International, the world’s largest chocolate producer, which owns brands such as Milka, Toblerone and Cadbury, has struggled for years to take forced labor out of its supply chain. It committed $400 million to a program aimed at creating a sustainable cocoa economy last year, but its efforts have been ineffective so far.

Many of the countries in the map above are not party to international human trafficking treaties or simply don’t enforce them. Many of the companies that use labor in those places have weak supply-chain policies in place. The goal of Forrest’s group, inspired by Bill Gates’ data-centric philanthropy, is to make slavery easy to quantify, and thereby pressure international companies not to put up with it.

qz.com

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Drought and its Effects on Your Family

02/28/2014 Nativegrl77

Photo: flickr/kecko

With no sign of rain, 17 rural communities in California providing water to 40,000 people are in danger of running out within 60 to 120 days. Thinking that drought isn’t having an impact on your family? Consider your food supply, drinking water and the fuel to the spread of fire.