A retired U.S. Army colonel on Wednesday offered up his burial plot in the Idaho State Veterans Cemetery to a veteran barred by state marriage laws and military rules from interring her ashes and those of her dead lesbian spouse.

The push by U.S. Navy veteran Madelynn Taylor and a woman she married out-of-state comes as four Idaho lesbian couples are challenging the state's constitutional ban on same-sex marriage and a broader debate over gay nuptials nationwide.

Taylor told a Boise TV station the state military cemetery denied the pair burial as they did not have the Idaho marriage license required under its rules. Her longtime lesbian partner, Jean Mixner, died in 2012.

"I am happy to give my fellow veteran that small peace of mind," retired U.S. Army Colonel Barry Johnson, a 27-year veteran, wrote in an open letter published on Wednesday in the Idaho Statesman newspaper. "And I do it to honor all the great Americans I've served with along the way - gay, straight, whatever."

It was unclear if the cemetery would allow the transfer. The Idaho Division of Veterans Services said the cemetery's policy remains unchanged.

"I don't see where the ashes of a couple of old lesbians are going to hurt anybody," she said.

Idaho's Republican Governor C.L. "Butch" Otter said in a statement that voters in the state spoke in 2006 by approving a constitutional amendment defining marriage as between a man and a woman.

The jobs report crushed expectations, coming in at 288,000. Expectations were for 218,000. Last month's figure was revised upward to 203,000 from 192,000.

Private payrolls hit 273,000, also well above the 215,000 estimate and up from the revised 202,000.

The unemployment rate fell to 6.3%, the lowest print in more than five years.

The labor force participation rate fell to 62.8% from 63.2%.

The number of long-term unemployed dropped by 287,000 to 3.5 million

A labor official said fewer people were entering the work force:


BLS says labor force decline was probably "due mostly to fewer people entering the labor force than usual" -- not more people leaving

In a secret ballot vote held Wednesday evening at the Conference offices in New York, J Street failed to come close to winning the two-thirds majority of participating members needed to win admission to the umbrella group.

Some 22 member organizations voted against accepting J Street, 17 supported it and three abstained. Put another way, J Street won just half the 34 votes it needed. There are 51 organizations in the Conference, each with one vote, no matter its size.

In a statement issued shortly after the vote, J Street said it was disappointed and added that it is a “sad day” for the organization.

“In many ways the vote illustrates one of the key reasons that J Street was created in the first place and why we continue to grow: a large segment of the American Jewish community feels that it does not have a home or a voice within its traditional structures,” the statement added.

J Street President Jeremy Ben-Ami told the Forward after the vote that the structure of the Conference of Presidents is “unrepresentative of the breadth of the views” of the Jewish community. Ben-Ami argued that the vote rejecting his group’s membership “calls into question the premise of the Conference” as an umbrella organization representing the community.

He turned down the notion that the vote should be viewed as a rejection of J Street by the community, saying that it was “a handful of old guard institutions voted against us,” he said. Ben-Ami added that J Street will consider its next moves and will “look at all options.”
An analysis of the vote, which remains secret even after the meeting, indicates that J Street enjoyed the support of liberal groups, Reform and Conservative organizations and several major players, including the Anti-Defamation League and the Jewish Council for Public Affairs. The majority voting against it were right-wing and Orthodox organizations, as well as several smaller groups with no clear ideological leaning.

Bucky wrote:so sick of white guys saying what Sterling said "wasn't all that bad" and people should "stop being so sensitive".

My story is nearly identical to Tal Fortgang. Jewish grandparents immigrating without to pennies to rub together. And they did fine for themselves, and for my parents, and ultimately, for me.

Guess what? I have privilege. Because I'm white.

The house in the suburbs that my grandparents moved into after WWII? They could move in there because they were white. Most of the planned suburbs had covenants preventing selling to African-Americans. That allowed my grandparents to send my parents to better schools, to live in safer neighborhoods, to have a better quality of life.

When my parents went to college, they could go to ones that they wanted to because they were white.

When my father got a job, he got paid what he did because he was a white man. His paycheck - the food on our table and the roof over our heads - was tied to the fact that he was a white man. If he was a woman, he would have been paid far less, if he was hired at all. If he was black, he would have been paid far less, if he was hired at all.

Being a white man with property is still the best way to get in the door.

So yeah, Mr. Fortgang is privileged. And yeah, he needs to learn to check it.

Because there are a whole hell of a lot of people who didn't start the game with Reading Railroad and a hotel on St. Charles.

SK790 wrote:The "white privilege" douche from Princeton is basically being helped out by several right-leaning groups who try to groom conservative leaders and pundits.

Last month, Standard & Poor’s cut New Jersey’s credit rating, harshly criticizing Christie’s budgeting practices in the process. On Thursday, Fitch Ratings cut the state’s rating after the Christie administration disclosed an $807 million budget gap, just two months before the end of the fiscal year.

And Moody’s took note, too: The service warned balancing the state’s budget amid the revenue shortfall would be “a challenge.” Moody’s said the only likely solutions will be cuts to large year-end projects or tapping the state’s rainy day fund. Moody’s gave New Jersey’s credit rating a negative outlook in December.

If his potential 2016 rivals use the downgrades to attack Christie’s fiscal management, he can lay part of the blame at Congress’s feet. In advance of the fiscal cliff, when George W. Bush-era tax cuts were set to expire in early 2013, wealthy Americans moved to avoid big tax penalties by taking capital gains and other income early.

That meant states around the country took in millions, if not billions, of dollars in the last fiscal year that was otherwise expected to show up this year. That is, people cashed in their stock in 2012 to pay lower rates on their 2013 taxes, rather than waiting until 2013 to pay higher rates on their 2014 taxes.

But part of the blame for the debt downgrades lies with the Christie administration and the legislators who voted for his budget. When budget analysts saw a shortfall coming last fall, they revised revenue projections downward by $250 million and cut costs by almost $700 million.

Still, they assumed a 5.3 percent year-over-year revenue growth rate, even though the shortfall suggested growth was nowhere near that strong. Slower economic growth in the first three quarters of the fiscal year cut revenue growth as well. And the fact that New Jersey reaped a $525 million tax revenue windfall last April, after those wealthy taxpayers moved up their income, should have been a big clue, state Sen. Paul Sarlo (D) told the Newark Star-Ledger, that less revenue would come in this year.

In its report downgrading New Jersey’s credit rating, Fitch cited the “scale and belatedness” of the $807 million shortfall — a gap that represents about 2.5 percent of the state’s total budget. Fitch also criticized New Jersey’s “overly optimistic revenue forecasts” and its “repeated reliance on one-time solutions to achieve budgetary balance.”