Bad Deeds for 10-12-2010

 

Rick Perry Using Taxpayer Resources and Time to Conduct His Political Campaign – A leak from the governor’s office revealed that Rick Perry has been hiding a secret schedule from Texans and using state employees to work on his political campaign. Just one day of the secret schedule showed state employees briefing Rick Perry on an issue just a few hours before Perry held a campaign announcement and endorsement event on that same issue. As this illegal use of state resources for political purposes was revealed, campaign finance records showed that 11 state employees, whose salaries are paid for by Texas taxpayers, also work for Perry’s political campaign.

Perry’s keeping the rest of those schedules hidden because he wants to keep his public corruption hidden too.

The political machine Rick Perry has built inside the governor’s office helped him raise $17 million in campaign contributions from his gubernatorial appointees. Perry’s machine funneled at least $50 million in taxpayer dollars to companies connected to his top campaign donors.

On Friday, after four different explanations from Perry’s office for why a secret schedule was being hidden from Texas taxpayers, it was finally clear just how Perry’s political campaign and the governor’s office work hand in hand.

Add your name to the petition for a criminal investigation into Rick Perry’s corruption — including the secret political schedule he’s been hiding from Texans.

California Shooter Says He Saw Glenn Beck as ‘Schoolteacher’

The 45-year-old “highway shooter” who engaged in a 12-minute shootout with California Highway Patrol officers earlier this year now says Fox News host Glenn Beck has been an inspiration for his activity. In an interview, the suspect shooter, Byron Williams, details what he saw as an elaborate global conspiracy and says to look to specific broadcasts of Beck’s show for information on the conspiracy he describes. The conspiracy theory that drove him over the edge: an intricate plot involving Barack Obama, philanthropist George Soros, a Brazilian oil company, and the BP disaster. Williams also points to other media figures — right-wing propagandist David Horowitz, and Internet conspiracist and repeated Fox News guest Alex Jones — as key sources of information to inspire his ‘revolution.’ Beck, in particular, he says, is “like a schoolteacher on TV.”

 

Foreign Funds Being Used to Help Elect Republicans – It’s not the Tea Partiers, as fun as they are. It’s not the debate over whether or not Christine O’Donnell is a witch. It’s not even the passage of landmark legislation like health care and financial reform, with all their historic implications.

It’s that with the Citizens United decision, the flood of multinational corporation money have been unleashed. And when I say multinational, I’m not even talking about American-based companies who sell goods and operate factories overseas, I’m talking about foreign corporations through and through.
The U.S. Chamber of Commerce is raising money from foreign companies and using it to run attack ads here against Democratic candidates.

The Republicans have blocked any action to keep this foreign corporate money out of our elections, and if we allow this to stand we will be so awash in foreign money in our elections that we will never get our democracy back. Check this story out (click the link), and tell every Democrat you know: make this an issue. This is a very big deal, and Republicans should be made to answer why they are okay with foreign corporations being allowed to do attack ads in our elections.

 

If You Like the Recession, You’d Love “Speaker Boehner” – The private sector job market is slowly stumbling out of the economic ditch into which it was steered by the policies of the Bush Administration. Sixty-four thousand private sector jobs were created by the economy last month — well short of what is necessary to allow the job market to achieve lift-off velocities and long-term sustained growth — but a least a positive number.

But that growth was entirely offset by the loss of 159,000 government jobs. Some of them were temporary census jobs. But the bulk — including the loss of 26,000 teachers — came from layoffs caused by the fiscal crunch of state and local governments. State and local governments cut jobs at the fastest rate in almost 30 years. The loss in jobs would have been even more massive if Democrats in Congress had not passed a bill to aid state and local government before they adjourned for the August recess. That bill was passed over virtually unanimous Republican opposition.

The cause of the reduction in employment last month was layoffs by state and local governments. Much of the fiscal pressure on state and local government came from the end of funding from the original federal stimulus bill which was opposed by most Republicans. Of course the Republicans also worked long and hard to stall the additional $22 billion aid package for state and local governments that finally passed Congress in August. And they assured that the package proposed by Democrats was cut in half before it could get the 60 votes needed to get out of the Senate. In fact, cutting government spending before the private sector has achieved sustained job growth is a recipe for economic disaster.

Pretty much everyone acknowledges that the deregulation of the financial sector was mainly responsible for the reckless behavior of the big Wall Street banks that threw the economy into free fall and cost eight million Americans their jobs late in 2008. Republican proposals to allow Wall Street and other big corporations to resume their orgy of recklessness and greed are a recipe for another major financial collapse — not long-term economic growth. The reason we needed — and still need — such a large amount of stimulus is that the Bush economic policy had driven us into the deepest economic ditch since the Great Depression. We need a lot of economic firepower to get us out of that ditch — more than has been necessary in 60 years.

So to escape a period of long-term economic stagnation, we need a major shot of additional stimulus now. But we will never get it — at least in the near term — if Republicans take control of one of the houses of Congress. Every one of the major Republican prescriptions for economic growth has demonstrated itself to be ineffective — or downright poisonous — in the real world of today’s real economy. Tax breaks for the rich are mainly about giving more money to the Republicans’ major constituency — the wealthiest of our citizens.

Instead we will get Republican prescriptions for the economy that are not just worthless — but toxic. We will get policies that will endanger our children’s futures and our competitive position in the world.

 

Republican Senate Nominee Vows Silence on Personal Background – Republican Senate nominee Joe Miller said Monday he will not be answering any more questions about his personal background for the rest of the campaign. “We’ve drawn a line in the sand. You can ask me about background, you can ask me about personal issues — I’m not going to answer,” Miller said.

It followed the Alaska Dispatch quoting an anonymous source Sunday night saying that Miller used borough equipment in the unsuccessful 2008 attempt to oust state Republican Party Chairman Randy Ruedrich.

In March 2008, Miller was the Interior regional chair of the Republican Party and, along with then-Gov. Sarah Palin, attempted to have Ruedrich replaced as party chair at the annual GOP convention.Several Alaska news organizations, including the Daily News, have been asking for borough records about Miller’s employment since summer, including information related to any disciplinary action Miller faced while employed there. The Dispatch filed a lawsuit Monday seeking their release.

 

FedEx Express Avoids Unions by Classifying Their Truck Drivers as Pilots – When you’re walking down the street and see a FedEx truck driving by, does it LOOK like a 747 taxiing for take-off? Nope! But in a move that makes it nearly impossible for its workers to form unions, FedEx Express is classifying all of its truck drivers as “pilots.” How did this happen? Back in 1996, the company used its money and behind-the-scenes influence to score a special deal from Congress – an unfair advantage that no other express delivery firm gets. A bill that would close the FedEx anti-worker loophole has already passed the House three separate times. Now, the Senate needs to finish the job.

FedEx Express – which holds a seat on the board of the anti-worker U.S. Chamber of Commerce – has a long history of anti-labor practices. And like many of the Chamber’s other board members, FedEx loves to lobby Congress for special sweetheart deals that only the very biggest businesses can get, while claiming to stand for “fairness,” “free enterprise,” and even, laughably, “small business.”

FedEx is desperate to keep the status quo. The company is spending millions, running misleading ads and lobbying on-the-fence senators. FedEx even had the audacity to call ending the loophole a “bailout!”

Regards,

Jim