Bad Deeds for 4-21-2009

 

Republican Women’s Newsletter Spreads False Information – The Spirit of Freedom Republican Women’s Club (Ft. Bend County, TX) newsletter contains the following misinformation:

Scariest Quote of the Day….
Nancy Pelosi wants a Windfall Tax on Retirement Income. …
She quotes…” We need to work toward the goal of equalizing income, (didn’t Marx say something like this?), in our country and at the same time limiting the amount the rich can invest.” (I am not rich, are you?)

When asked how these new tax dollars would be spent, she replied: “We need to raise the standard of living of our poor, unemployed and minorities. For example, we have an estimated 12 million illegal immigrants in our country who need our help along with millions of unemployed minorities. Stock market windfall profits taxes could go a long way to guarantee these people the standard of living they would like to have as ‘Americans’.”

However, Nancy Pelosi never said any such thing.

You can send a polite note to the newsletter editor asking for a public retraction and an apology:

Spirit of Freedom Republican Women
Lifted Lamp Newsletter
1934 Crisfield Dr.
Sugar Land, TX 77479
E-mail: lisa@rickert.com
Source:

 

A Look Back at Bush’s Economic Missteps – George Bush made some economic calls that don’t look smart today. Here are eight of them.

1. The Return to Deficits
2. Iraq Cost a Lot
3. Tax Cuts for the Rich
4. Financial Regulation Not Enforced
5. Telling Us to Go Shopping
6. Energy Policy (for the oil companies, but not for the country)
7. A State of Denial (Just tell me what I want to hear)
8. The Muddled Bailout (just give out the money)

 

Pat Robertson urges his callers to crash Homeland Security hotline – Pat Robertson, on The 700 Club yesterday, got in on the collective right-wing teeth-gnashing over that Department of Homeland Security bulletin on the threat posed by right-wing extremists in America. You know, the controversy that’s been demonstrated to be a lot of hot air — not to mention a terribly revealing one about how mainstream right-wingers see themselves.

Ladies and gentlemen, I want you to do something about it. If that doesn’t get you excited, I don’t know what would. And I want you to call a number. This is the Department of Homeland Security. [Reads phone number]

 

Texas Governor Rick Perry Pals Around With Domestic Terrorists – Texas Governor Rick Perry’s comments suggesting that Texas could secede from the union, made at a Tea Party protest on last Wednesday, have been widely discussed in the media. However, what has not been fully vetted is the Governor’s relationship with extreme secessionist groups.

On April 9, 2009, Governor Perry appeared at a press conference in support of HCR 50, which states:

“The 81st Legislature of the State of Texas hereby claim sovereignty under the Tenth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States.”

“That this serve[s] as notice and demand to the federal government, as our agent, to cease and desist, effective immediately, mandates that are beyond the scope of these constitutionally delegated powers.”

The press conference was also attended by members of the Texas Nationalist Movement, a secessionist group led by Daniel Miller, who was formerly president of a violent anti-government organization called the Republic of Texas.

A video of the press conference can be found on YouTube and prominently displayed on the Texas Nationalist Movement website. Photographs of members attending the press conference also appear on their site.

The Texas Nationalist Movement has a long violent history from bomb threats, to kidnapping, to planning attacks using biological weapons. Some examples:

In 1997, Richard McLaren, former president of the Republic of Texas, kidnapped his neighbors leading to a week-long standoff between the police and “antigovernment separatists.” The standoff ended when McLaren and his four followers surrendered. “After the surrender, a sixth Republic member [was] killed in a gun battle with police, while a seventh elude[d] authorities for four months before being captured.”

During the standoff, McLaren told the New York Times: “We are at war with the United Nations and all foreign entities. We are not at war with the American people, but we are at war with the Federal agencies which have no jurisdiction here.” Another Republic of Texas member, who identified himself as Lieut. Richard Keys of the Republic of Texas Defense Forces, said the hostages “were prisoners of war, held under provisions of the Geneva Convention.”

Prior to the standoff in 1997, the New York Times reported that the Republic of Texas demanded “$92 trillion in ‘war reparations’ from the Federal Government, and it has ‘ordered’ Gov. George W. Bush and all state legislators to vacate the Capitol building in Austin, none of which seems likely to happen any time soon….The members have passed at least $3 million of worthless but official-looking Republic of Texas checks, and they are simply ignoring state-ordered fines and orders to cease and desist…This month state officials shut two public buildings in Austin because of a bomb threat that they said was linked to the group.”

In 1998, according to SPLC, “Leaders of the so-called Republic of Texas, an antigovernment separatist group whose leader ha[d] been sentenced to serve 111 years in prison, tried to purchase a four-story building and compound to serve as the group’s ‘capital,’ officials [said]. An IRS spokesman [said] Jacques Jaikaran, who face[d] up to three years in prison and $75,000 in fines on a tax evasion conviction, tried to arrange the purchase of a building near Houston that feature[d] machine-gun turrets, a bomb shelter and an operating room.”

Also in 1998, the Republic of Texas plotted to assassinate President Clinton using biological weapons. According to the SPLC, “Officials [said] the men planned to use a cactus thorn coated with a toxin like anthrax and fired by a modified butane lighter to carry out the murders. One man [was] acquitted of the charges, but Jack Abbot Grebe, Jr., and Johnnie Wise – a 72-year-old man who attended meetings of the separatist Republic of Texas group – eventually [were] sentenced to more than 24 years in prison.”

In addition, “according to an affidavit, Wise and Grebe told an FBI informant that they planned to modify a cigarette lighter so it would expel air instead of propane in order to fire a cactus needle tipped with anthrax, botulism or the AIDS virus.”

In 2000, members of the group planned an attack on the Houston Federal building. The SPLC reported, “Federal agents arrest[ed] Mark Wayne McCool, the one-time leader of the Texas Militia and Combined Action Program, as he allegedly [made] plans to attack the Houston federal building. McCool, who was arrested after buying powerful C-4 plastic explosives and an automatic weapon from an undercover FBI agent, earlier plotted to attack the federal building with a member of his own group and a member of the antigovernment Republic of Texas, but those two men eventually abandoned the plot. McCool, however, remained convinced the un [sic] had stored a cache of military materiel [sic] in the building. In the end, he [pled] guilty to federal charges that [brought] him just six months in jail.”

Regards,

Jim