Bad Deeds for 7-26-2011

 

Republican Lawmaker Admits He’s Extorting Congress to Rewrite Constitution – Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT) told MSNBC’s Chris Matthews Monday that he is giving Congress ten days to pass a constitutional amendment that would make raising taxes nearly impossible. And if he doesn’t get what he wants, he will do everything in his power to force the U.S. to default on its debts.

“Okay, in ten days you want to change the United States Constitution by two-thirds vote in both houses?” Matthews asked. “That’s what you’re demanding.”

“Yes,” Lee admitted. “If possible we can’t change the Constitution just in Congress but we can submit it to the states. Let the states fight it out.”

“You want the Democratic Senate, by a two-thirds vote, to pass a constitutional amendment or you want the house to come down?” Matthews pressed.

“Yes. That’s exactly what I’m saying and I’ve been saying this for six months,” Lee said.

 

Fiscal Conservative Bachmann Paid Fox News Makeup Artist $4,700 – Republican presidential candidate Michele Bachmann likes to call herself a fiscal conservative but some voters may question that after seeing her latest campaign expenditures.

Campaign finance filings indicate that during a two-week period in the month of June, Bachmann spent nearly $4,700 with just one makeup artist.

Payments of $1,715, $250, and $2,704 were disbursed to Tamara Robertson, a Maryland-based stylist. According to her LinkedIn profile, Robertson works as a makeup artist for Fox News.

 

Accused Norway Mass Murder Wanted to Start a European Tea Party – Anders Behring Breivik, who has confessed to the mass murder in Norway, has called for the formation of a “cultural Euro-Tea Party” referring to the grass-roots right wing organisation in the US supported by Sarah Palin. Breivik, who police have described as a Christian Fundamentalist, also claims to have written an 1100 page book entitled “2083”, which espouses his ultra right wing political philosophy and the need to protect western Europe from the threat of Islam.

 

Arkansas Student With Highest GPA Won’t Be Named Validictorian Because She’s Black – Kymberly Wimberly, 18, got only a single B in her 4 years at McGehee Secondary School, and loaded up on Honors and Advanced Placement classes. She had the highest G.P.A. and says the school’s refusal to let her be sole valedictorian was part of a pattern of discrimination against black students.

Wimberly says that despite earning the highest G.P.A. of the Class of 2011, and being informed of it by a school counselor, “school administrators and personnel treated two other white students as heir[s] apparent to the valedictorian and salutatorian spots.”

Wimberly’s mother is the school’s “certified media specialist.” She says in the federal discrimination complaint that after her daughter had been told she would be valedictorian, the mother heard “in the copy room that same day, other school personnel expressed concern that Wimberly’s status as valedictorian might cause a ‘big mess.'”

McGehee Secondary School is predominantly white, and 46 percent African-American, according to the complaint. Bratton says that the day after she heard the “big mess” comment, McGehee Principal Darrell Thompson, a defendant, told her “that he decided to name a white student as co-valedictorian,” although the white student had a lower G.P.A.

 

4,000 Workers and Construction Projects Getting the Shaft Because of Tea Party Attacks on the FAA – The Federal Aviation Administration’s operating authority expired at midnight Friday and the agency partially shut down. While air traffic controllers are still on the job and air travel continues more or less normally, nearly 4,000 other FAA employees are currently furloughed without pay. Additionally, nearly 87,000 construction jobs are affected as FAA-funded airport construction projects are forced to shut down. This includes projects from $10,000 to tens of millions of dollars, scattered across the country.

All of which is probably fine with House Republicans, since the whole purpose of this exercise was to make things more difficult for workers, anyway. By trying to make union representation elections operate by undemocratic rules, they put people out of work instead—maybe that’s a job well done in their eyes.

The FAA is also unable to collect taxes on airline tickets bought, depriving the government of $200 million a week in revenue. But the great little coda to this story is that consumers aren’t seeing savings:

[I]nstead of passing along the savings, the airlines are pocketing the money while customers pay the same amount as before.

American, United, Continental, Delta, US Airways, Southwest, AirTran and JetBlue all raised fares, although details sometimes differed. Most of the increases were around 7.5 percent.

It’s like the Republican dream: Not only is the government not collecting revenue, that same revenue is going straight to corporations, for no reason. Why would they ever agree to end this shutdown?

Tell your members of Congress the FAA needs to get up and running immediately. Republican House leaders’ hostage-taking needs to stop.

Regards,

Jim