That, at least, is what the plaintiff's attorneys in the federal case challenging the Constitutional validity of California's Proposition 8 (the Mormon Church-pushed amendment to California Constitution removing a previously existing right to marriage equality) think has happened after a Supreme Court decision this week.  On Monday, the US Supreme Court handed down a 5-4 decision recognizing the right of  Hastings College of the Law, a public law school in San Francisco, to refuse to grant official recognition the Christian Legal Society because they exclude gay students.  The New York Times reports:

Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, writing for the majority, said it was constitutionally permissible for public institutions of higher education to require recognized student groups to accept all students who wished to participate in them.

So what does this have to do with the right of same sex couples to marry, and what does this have to do with the challenge to Proposition 8?  The lawyers challenging Prop 8 argue that the Court held gays and lesbians not just merely a behavioral but an identity class.  They explained in a letter to US District Judge Vaughn Walker,

If the Republican party were a teenager named Chris Crocker, and if big banks were Britney Spears, the Republican response to financial reform would be very close to this video.  You see, with the death of Sen. Robert Byrd (may he rest in peace), Democrats in the Senate are now one vote shy of the 60 needed to put the conference financial reform bill through.  Well, not just because of Sen. Byrd's death, but also because Republicans who supported the Senate version are now balking.  What are they balking at?  Ah, yes.  The $19 billion fee on banks that was inserted in conference to pay for financial reform.

The CBO estimated that the financial reform bill will cost $22 billion over 10 years.  So how does the conference bill pay for it?

Part of that will be paid for by the Securities and Exchange Commission. The remainder, between $15 billion and $19 billion, be paid for by a tax on the financial industry. The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation will assess financial institutions with assets exceeding $50 billion and hedge funds with assets exceeding $10 billion over five years to cover the costs.

I thought it might be nice to post a slideshow of photos I took at the San Francisco LGBT Pride celebrations this weekend.  Most of the pictures are from Sunday, but the first few are from Friday evening's trans march.

This year's theme was "40 and Fabulous", celebrating 40 years of Pride celebrations in San Francisco.  It was a colorful celebration, if a little long.



While you celebrate this year, though, keep in your thoughts and prayers the victims of a fatal shooting that took place Saturday night at the Pink Saturday celebrations.

The last time any president did this much in office, booze was illegal.

That was the conclusion of Rachel Maddow in her excellent segment last night highlighting the accomplishments of President Obama in a short 18 months in office.  Taegan Goodard of CQ Politics wrote,

Now that Democrats have agreed on a Wall Street reform bill, President Obama is set to have an incredible year of accomplishments. He's already signed major health care reforms into law and is more than likely to have energy/climate change legislation on his desk later this year. Not since FDR has a president done so much to transform the country.

This is not hyperbole.  This is not an overstatement.  This is not the president's friends trying to prop him up.  This is the absolute honest truth.  Barack Obama's presidency is not going to be historic.  It is not going to be transformational.  It already is a historic, transformational presidency.  And as a proud progressive, we have much to celebrate in that.

A couple of days ago, I promised to provide some information on the high risk health insurance pools being set up in each state under the new healthcare law.  I am going to continue to keep an eye out and gather more information as time goes by, so please keep an eye on my blog as more information emerges.  Today I have provided a way for you to find the people you need to contact easily and quickly and hopefully to avoid the hassle of running around.

Not all the details for every state have emerged yet - I will continue to post more information as they come out, so please keep an eye on my blog.  The deadline for states to submit their proposals was June 1 according to the Request for Proposals (RFP), and the contracts will be awarded by the Secretary of Health and Human Services on July 1 (thus that's the date the pools can start operating) to states that have chosen to run their federal pools.  In cases of states that have not, HHS will administer.  You can find a list of states with existing high risk pools and their contact information here, but keep in mind that the existing program may be completely separate from the program they set up under the federal plan.

Earlier, I laid out the facts of "proxy access" and its current status in House-Senate negotiations on financial reform, and I called out the reactionary group PCCC for focusing their fire on the White House without knowing all the facts and instead of devoting resources to persuade Congress.

News is now breaking that House and the Senate conferees have reached a deal that essentially protects shareholder access to corporate ballots to challenge insider Board candidates, rejects Chris Dodd's ill-founded attempt to impose a 5% ownership threshold, and gives SEC the ability to exempt small publicly held companies.

After some more back-and-forth discussion Thursday night, House and Senate negotiators agreed to go back to where they started, leaving it to the SEC to decide what ownership requirements shareholders must meet to gain proxy access.

Maybe the ironically named "Progressive Change Campaign Committee" can now stop it's knee-jerk freak-out? Nah, who am I kidding?

Some interesting things are going on in the gay rights movement of late.  Just like a lot of self-proclaimed 'progressive' groups have made it a mission to bash the President - who in my judgment is the best friend progressives have ever had in the White House - some gay rights advocates have jumped on the same bandwagon.  I see long-time gay rights blogger David Badash's article, Obama's Gay Rights Come With An Expiration Date in that light.

Let's first delve into what precisely is happening here.  Badash is incorrect on several fronts.  While he correctly points to Virginia's regressive Republican governor rescinding protections for gay Virginians that were put in place by Executive Orders of the former Democratic governor, Badash fails to understand the basic nature of the issues at hand here.  These are not - I repeat, not - mere executive orders.   These are regulations, and at least in one case, regulations implementing a law.

Not much has changed in the progressive blogosphere.  The propensity to demonize President Obama is alive and well.  We find today a piece from the PCCC urgently telling people to tell the White House to stop protecting CEOs!(1)  What's the problem?  Well, it seems to be that based on anonymous reports, reactionaries have reached the conclusion that White House is fighting proxy access rules generally agreed to by both the House and the Senate in financial reform.

WHAT IS PROXY ACCESS AND HOW DOES IT WORK?

Well, before we get into why we should or shouldn't be charging at the President and the White House with pitch forks and torches, let's understand the issue first.  What is proxy access?  Simply put, it's the access to the corporate ballot to elect the Board of a publicly held corporation.  Currently, the Board nominates candidates for a corporation's board, those candidates have ballot access, and those ballots are mailed to shareholders to either vote or designate a proxy to vote for them.  This is all done at the expense of the corporation.  So do shareholders wanting to nominate different candidates have any avenue whatsoever right now?  Yes, they do, but barely.  Prof. Lucian Bebchuck, a Harvard Law professor, explains:

As I said in my last post, the high risk pools provided for in the new healthcare law go into effect on July 1.  That's eight days from today.  When I wrote extensively about the new law during the debate earlier this year, I received many requests for information as to how exactly those high risk pools would work, who would administer them, and what the specific criteria are, and how one can take advantage of it should it be necessary. Today, I embark on an effort to provide as much information on this front as possible.

Structure and Administration: First of all, the structure works this way, as reported in a study published by the National Institute for Health Reform:

Program structure. HHS has indicated that states may operate a new high-risk pool either alone or alongside an existing pool—build upon other existing coverage programs for high-risk individuals or contract with a current carrier of last resort or other carrier to provide subsidized coverage. If a state does nothing, HHS will administer the coverage program in that state. As of May 21, 2010, 29 states and the District of Columbia had signaled an interest in operating their own programs, while 19 states declined to participate. Rhode Island and Utah were still deciding [as of May 21, 2010].

The President set the first regulations implementing the landmark health reform law yesterday.  He issued a stern warning to the corporate Republican leadership: We are not going back.  in September, any of the benefits of the new law start kicking in.  Let me summarize them in short:

• No more pre-existing condition exclusion for children.  This was perhaps the cruelest practice of the insurance industry - refusing to cover children who were sick (either form birth or through another avenue).  The White House estimates 51,000 children will gain coverage due to this change in the law.
• Lifetime limits go away.  Nearly 100 million Americans are now enrolled in plans that impose lifetime benefit caps.
• Annual coverage limits are to be no lower than $750,000 this year, $2 million in 2012, and are completely eliminated in 2014.
• Insurance companies are no longer able to drop your coverage when you get sick, nor can they drop you unintentional mistakes in applications.  Only intentional falsification of your application now negate your policy.
• Guaranteed choice of primary care doctors and pediatricians.

Update: Video of the speech is now available, please see the end of this post.

President Obama, for the second year in a row, issued a statement on LGBT Pride month (see 2009 statement here). The address finished just about two hours ago, and I will make a video available on this blog as soon as possible (which should be any minute now). The President reiterated his promise to change the course of our nation when it comes to equality for the LGBT community. But being a policy person, what was far more impressive to me was the list of concrete accomplishments and plans the President rolled out:

With Judy Sheppard present, the President signed into law last year a federal hate crimes law that adds sexual orientation and gender identity to federal hate crimes protection.  Watch the President's address at the signing ceremony:

I'll start my comeback to blogging with an apology for my nearly 2 and a half month absence. Personal reasons are mostly to blame for my hiatus, and I haven't had much chance to pay attention to too many policy issues in the past two months.

The financial reform legislation in Congress I had planned on covering in detail, and had started to back in April, is very close now to becoming law. Economic and health care issues, including the the financial reform bill, will be front and center on my upcoming coverage. The economic impact of the Gulf oil spill by BP will also have in-depth coverage on this blog. I will also be covering in some detail LGBT issues, including today's address by the President on LGBT pride month.

This is an election year, so elections news is probably something you can expect here. But this blog will not be election/politics central. It will be policy centric, because not only am I a policy wonk, I believe that we elect people to make good policy, whatever their political ramifications.