Bad Deeds for 1-23-2012

 

The Very Well-to-Do Mitt Romney Wants to Give Himself a Tax Break – Mitt Romney pays a tax rate lower than most middle-class Americans. Even though Mitt is worth as much as $250 million, Republican candidate Mitt Romney believes his effective tax rate—the share of his income he pays in federal taxes—is as he put it, “probably closer to the 15 percent rate than anything…” But, under Mitt’s own tax plan, he’d pay only half of what he’d pay otherwise. Under his plan, Romney in 2013 would see his taxes cut by nearly half of what they would be if you use current law as a baseline.

 

Tennessee Tea Party Demands That the History of Slavery Be Removed From History Textbooks – The Tea Party of Tennessee wants to remove from history textbooks any incidents of slavery and genocide linked to the founders of the U.S. for fear those references would tarnish the image of the Founding Fathers. Regarding education, the material they distributed said, “Neglect and outright ill will have distorted the teaching of the history and character of the United States. We seek to compel the teaching of students in Tennessee the truth regarding the history of our nation and the nature of its government.” The material calls for lawmakers to amend state laws governing school curriculums, and for textbook selection criteria to say that “No portrayal of minority experience in the history which actually occurred shall obscure the experience or contributions of the Founding Fathers, or the majority of citizens, including those who reached positions of leadership.”

 

What Republicans Did in One Year of Being in Charge of the U.S. House of Representatives – [All the wrong things.]

Held 3 votes to roll back workers’ rights
Held 3 votes to end Medicare as we know it
Held 4 votes to restrict women’s access to health care
Held 7 votes to keep unnecessary subsidies for oil companies
Held 10 anti-Consumer votes
Held 14 votes to repeal patient health care protections
Held 191 anti-environment votes

And introduced zero comprehensive jobs bills

 

House Republicans Included Almost 40 Anti-Environment Riders on the Omnibus Spending Bill – In one of their sneakiest moves yet, House Republicans included almost 40 anti-environment riders on the omnibus spending bill and the payroll tax cut extension. The good news is that most of the riders were cut from the spending bill. However, three survived: a provision to block funding to enforce new light bulb efficiency standard, a provision to exempt an aspect of Arctic drilling from Clean Air Act standards, and a provision that exempts the logging industry from Clean Water Act pollution limits.

There is more bad news. The spending bill also includes reduced funding for the DOE, the Department of the Interior and the EPA. The DOE received $1.5 billion less than fiscal year 2011 levels, but $1 billion more than the original House version and $200 million more than the Senate version. The Section 1705 loan guarantee program for renewable energy projects lost its remaining $181 million, and research and development funds for developing fossil fuels decreases by $51 million. Funding for EPA’s clean air and climate research program is reduced by $14 million. The EPA’s regulatory development office is reduced by $12 million, and the EPA’s air regulatory programs are reduced by $14 million.

 

Businessman Uses His Money to Control the Content of Public Higher Education – North Carolina businessman Art Pope — a confidant of the Koch Brothers – is trying to control the content of public education. In Pope’s world, the MO appears to be… Step 1: Persuade your politician friends to gut university budgets. Step 2: Give generously to the institutions that your friends recently gutted, so they can establish new programs aligned with your business interests.

At the same time that Pope’s network has been fighting to get university budgets cut, Pope has offered to fund academic programs in subjects that he deems worthwhile, like Western civilization and free-market economics. Some faculty members have seen Pope’s offers as attempts to buy academic control. Bill Race, the former chairman of the classics department at U.N.C.-Chapel Hill, said, “The Pope machine is narrow-minded and mean-spirited and poisoned the university.”

“It’s sad and blatant,” Cat Warren, an English professor at North Carolina State University, in Raleigh, who has been critical of Pope, says. “This is an organization that succeeds in getting higher education defunded, and then uses those cutbacks as a way to increase its leverage and influence over course content.”

Regards,

Jim