Bad Deeds for 1-23-2011

Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas Failed to Report His Wife’s Income from a Conservative Think Tank – Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas failed to report his wife’s income from a conservative think tank on financial disclosure forms for at least five years, the watchdog group Common Cause said Friday.

Between 2003 and 2007, Virginia Thomas, a longtime conservative activist, earned $686,589 from the Heritage Foundation, according to a Common Cause review of the foundation’s IRS records. Thomas failed to note the income in his Supreme Court financial disclosure forms for those years, instead checking a box labeled “none” where “spousal noninvestment income” would be disclosed.

Federal judges are bound by law to disclose the source of spousal income, according to Stephen Gillers, a professor at NYU School of Law.

The allegation comes days after Common Cause filed a letter requesting that the Justice Department investigate whether Justices Thomas and Antonin Scalia should have disqualified themselves from hearing a campaign finance case after they reportedly attended a private meeting sponsored by Charles and David Koch, billionaire philanthropists who fund conservative causes.

In the case, Citizens United vs. Federal Election Commission, the court ruled that corporate and union funds could be spent directly on election advertising.

The Koch brothers have been key supporters of the group Americans for Prosperity, which spent heavily in the 2010 midterm election and claims a nonprofit tax status that allows it to avoid disclosing its donors.

Clarence Thomas has been the lone justice to argue that laws requiring public disclosure of large political contributions are unconstitutional.

House Republicans Plan Cuts to Energy Star, Weatherization, and Advanced Energy Research – The Republican Study Committee has released their Spending Reduction Act of 2011. Here are a few of their proposed cuts:

Energy Star Program: $52 million a year.
Intercity and High Speed Rail Grants: $2.5 billion a year.
DOE Weatherization Grants to States: $530 million a year.
Amtrak Subsidies: $1.565 billion a year. (There are no cuts to highway subsidies, of course.)
Technology Innovation Program: $70 million a year. (Wait, I thought support for innovation was “post-partisan”!)
Applied Research at Department of Energy: $1.27 billion a year.
New Starts Transit: $2 billion a year.
FreedomCAR and Fuel Partnership: $200 million a year.
Subsidy for Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority: $150 million a year.

There are no cuts to fossil-fuel or corn-ethanol subsidies. There are no cuts to America’s bloated military budget, which was somewhere north of $660 billion in 2010, more than the rest of the world’s defense spending combined. And there are no cuts to the sprawling, opaque Department of Homeland Security, which costs more than $50 billion a year. In maintaining global empire and expanding the security state, every dollar is sacred.

Professor Receives Death Threats After Glenn Beck Targets Her – A 78-year-old CUNY professor, Frances Fox Piven, has found herself not only the target of criticism from conservative radio and TV talk show host Glenn Beck, but also the recipient of what amount to death threats.

On his News Channel program, which more than 2 million people watch, and on one of his Web sites, The Blaze, Beck has turned Piven into the ‘primary character’ of his ‘warnings about a progressive take-down of America,’ according to the January 21st New York Times. Piven, says Beck, is the author of a plan that will ‘â€œintentionally collapse our economic system.”‘

Piven has received threats via e-mail and anonymous comments on The Blaze have called for her death: ‘â€œSomebody tell Frances I have 5000 roundas ready and Iâ€™ll give My life to take Our freedom back”‘ and “ONE SHOT…ONE KILL” (spelling and grammar have not been edited).

Cell Phone Companies Trying to Fool You About 4G Ntworks – You’ve seen the 4G advertisements from T-Mobile, Sprint and Verizon, bragging about a much-better wireless network with blazing fast speeds.

Here’s the secret the carriers don’t advertise: 4G is a myth. Like the unicorn, it hasn’t been spotted anywhere in the wild just yet — and won’t be any time in the near future.