Bad Deeds for 6-21-2010

More Than 100 U.S. House Republicans Feel Sorry for BP – 100-plus other House members of the Republican Study Committee labeled the $20 billion trust fund for repairing the damage caused by BP a “Chicago-style shakedown” only a day before Joe Barton said the same thing and apologized to BP. And Michele Bachmann labeled the $20 billion for gulf victims a “redistribution-of-wealth fund” and even said it was unconstitutional. But after Barton said publicly that the fund was a shakedown, and the public reacted, Republicans are trying to get us to believe it was just a comment by Barton alone. But he was just stating what over 100 House Republicans had signed on to one day earlier. After the public reaction to Barton’s statement, Bachmann said, “No one said that this fund was a bad idea.” Hypocrites!

Republicans Lie About Contributions From Oil Companies – Republicans are spreading the lie that President Obama received large contribution from BP during the 2008 presidential campaign. But, the truth is that the money came exclusively from BP employees — not the corporation itself. In an email exchange with Media Matters for America, a spokesman for the Center for Responsive Politics confirmed that “the $71,051 that Obama received during the 2008 election cycle was entirely from BP employees. … Obama did not accept contributions from political action committees, so none of this money is from BP’s PAC.”

Texas Can’t Afford To Buy New Far-Right Textbooks, But Rick Perry Still Resists Federal Aid – The right-wing Texas State Board of Education decided to re-write science to make it more to their liking. So new textbooks have to be ordered, but under Rick Perry, there’s a budget shortfall of of at least $11 billion in 2011. And Perry wouldn’t accept federal stimulus funds for education, so what’s a right-wing, bumbling, incompetent hypocrite to do?

The lack of textbook funding underscores Texas Gov. Rick Perry’s (R) constant compulsion to oppose federal funding that could help his state. At the beginning of June, he refused to let Texas compete for Race to the Top funding for education reform because he falsely claimed the program would weaken the state’s school standards. That allegation was even refuted by a fellow Republican governor, Sonny Perdue of Georgia. A Houston Chronicle editorial from earlier this week lamented Perry’s stubborn “grandstanding” while noting why Texas needs additional, federal education funding: “Of the 50 states, we’re No. 49 in the percentage of adults who’ve completed high school; and it’s estimated that a third of our Texas high school freshmen don’t make it to graduation.”

Regards,

Jim