Bad Deeds for 8-13-2008

Sucker Fish Go to Aquarium to See Bottom-Feeder – Last night at the Aquarium Restaurant, Karl Rove was the guest of honor at a fundraiser for State Rep. John Davis (R-Clear Lake). (Who would pay to see Karl Rove unless he was behind bars? – JLV) Davis has appropriately been called “used furniture” by Texas Monthly Magazine. Davis is one of the state’s more ethically-challenged State Reps. Davis spent campaign cash on a pair of $1,500 boots and he failed to itemize over $48,000 in American Express card purchases (and got hammered by the Texas Ethics Commission for failing to do so).

John Davis has cast a lot of votes against schools, children, and education. For starters, he voted for tuition deregulation and then had the audacity to say that 44% increases in college tuition costs are “not unreasonable”. As a result of Davis’ vote (combined with the votes of many other Republicans), it has become very difficult for middle class families to afford to send their kids to college because tuition costs are skyrocketing. Davis voted to slash funding for the Children’s Health Insurance Program, and help create the “permanent wall” that kept kids off CHIP. Of course, after Sherrie Matula held Davis accountable for this vote in 2006, he quickly changed his tune and became “for” CHIP after he was “against” CHIP. Of course, by then it was too late and thousands of Texas children had suffered as a result of his vote. Davis has also voted time and time again against everything for teachers, teacher retirement, childhood immunization programs, and anti-discrimination measures to help school children. John Davis even put the interests of one of his big financial supporters, Houston Home builder Bob Perry, above middle class students who want a college education when it came time to cast votes on the Appropriations Bill on the House floor! And for a State Representative that actually has to breathe the air in Houston, Davis is solidly against clean air. He’s time and again voted against improving the air quality in his own district.

Sherrie Matula (D-Houston) is the candidate running against Davis. Sherrie is a longtime public school educator and science education consultant who served two terms on the Board of Trustees of Clear Creek Independent School District. She’s served on the board of the Texas State Teachers Association, and has a very impressive resume. She will bring to the Texas House of Representatives a wide array of knowledge and experience, especially on education issues. She will work hard on lowering college tuition, electricity rates and homeowners insurance.

Let’s show John Davis and Karl Rove we are tired of their brand of politics. Donate to Sherrie Matula’s campaign .

McCain Supports Tax Breaks For Big Oil — But Not For Wind Power – The recent farm bill also contained a measure extending a tax break for developing wind power, which McCain specifically opposed.

McCain’s Touts Renewable Energy, But His Energy Plan Offers Little to Support It – A McCain ad shows pictures of wind-driven turbines while the narrator says: “Renewable energy to transform our economy, create jobs and energy independence, that’s John McCain.” But, in fact, his energy plan doesn’t specify any new federal spending for renewable energy and says only that he’d “rationalize” existing tax credits to provide incentives. In the past, however, he’s opposed extending such tax credits when paid for by tax increases elsewhere.

McCain Lies About Obama’s Tax Proposals Again, and Again, and Again – McCain has released new ads with multiple false and misleading claims about Obama’s tax proposals:

• A TV spot claims Obama once voted for a tax increase “on people making just $42,000 a year.” That’s true for a single taxpayer, who would have seen a tax increase of $15 for the year – if the measure had been enacted. But the ad shows a woman with two children, and as a single mother, she would not have been affected unless she made more than $62,150. The increase that Obama once supported as part of a Democratic budget bill is not part of his current tax plan anyway.
• A Spanish-language radio ad claims the measure Obama supported would have raised taxes on “families” making $42,000, which is simply false. Even a single mother with one child would have been able to make $58,650 without being affected. A family of four with income up to $90,000 would not have been affected.
• The TV ad claims in a graphic that Obama would “raise taxes on middle class.” In fact, Obama’s plan promises cuts for middle-income taxpayers and would increase rates only for persons with family incomes above $250,000 or with individual incomes above $200,000.
• The radio ad claims Obama would increase taxes “on the sale of your home.” In fact, home-sale profits of up to $500,000 per couple would continue to be exempt from capital gains taxes. Very few sales would see an increase under Obama’s proposal to raise the capital gains rate.
• A second radio ad, in English, says, “Obama has a history of raising taxes” on middle-class Americans. But that’s false. It refers to a vote that did not actually result in a tax increase and could not have done so.

These ads continue what’s become a pattern of misrepresentation by the McCain campaign about his opponent’s tax proposals.

Update, Aug. 12: The tax falsehoods continued with the release of a McCain Web ad Aug. 11 claiming that the “perks” of joining the Obama “fan club” include “a tax increase for everyone earning more than $42,000 a year.”

(Do we want another president that will lie to us over and over? Does McCain want to win an election more than he values his integrity? When it comes to leadership, aren’t these things most important? – JLV)

Most U.S. Corporations Don’t Pay Income Tax – The Government Accountability Office is set to release a report that says most U.S. corporations pay no federal income taxes. And most foreign companies that do business in the United States aren’t paying corporate taxes. The study says about two-thirds of American corporations paid zero income taxes to Uncle Sam between 1998 and 2005. An even higher percentage of foreign corporations avoided federal corporate taxes. At the same time, said the GAO, the firms had trillions of dollars in sales.

Republican Rep. To Environmentalists: Jesus Already Saved The Planet – Congresswoman Michele Bachmann, the Christian Right champion from Minnesota says we don’t need pesky environmentalists like Nancy Pelosi around, because Jesus already saved the planet!

“[Pelosi] is committed to her global warming fanaticism to the point where she has said that she’s just trying to save the planet,” Bachmann told the right-wing news site OneNewsNow. “We all know that someone did that over 2,000 years ago, they saved the planet — we didn’t need Nancy Pelosi to do that.”

Other recent Bachmannisms include the claim that there isn’t actually any wildlife in the areas of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge where she wants more drilling, and the allegation that Democrats want high gas prices so as to force people to move into “inner cities” and “the urban core.”

Contractors Reap 85 Billion Dollars From Iraq War – The US government paid out 85 billion dollars in four years to contractors providing services to various government agencies in support of the Iraq war and reconstruction, a survey showed Tuesday. The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) report said the administration of US President George W. Bush awarded 85-billion-dollars in contracts between 2003 and 2007, or over 21 billion dollars annually. Large contracts awarded to the Halliburton energy services firm, which was once led by Vice President Dick Cheney, and KBR – a Halliburton subsidiary and the biggest US military contractor in Iraq – have been criticized and come under scrutiny from Democrats.

Congress has also been investigating the role of private security contractors who have been involved in the shooting deaths of Iraqi civilians, including employees of the private US security firm Blackwater USA. A hefty chunk of US government spending was allotted to private security contractors who received between six and 10 billion dollars of the contracting pie between 2003 and 2007 for their services.

Mukasey: No Prosecutions in Justice Hiring Scandal – Former Justice Department officials will not face prosecution for letting improper political considerations drive hirings of prosecutors, immigration judges and other career government lawyers, Attorney General Michael Mukasey said Tuesday. He told delegates to the American Bar Association annual meeting, “not every wrong, or even every violation of the law, is a crime. In this instance, the two joint reports found only violations of the civil service laws.” (Huh? I thought that the definition of a crime is violating the law. – JLV)

Bush Administration Puts Endangered Species In More Danger – The White House on Aug. 11 proposed a sweeping regulatory overhaul of the ESA, virtually eliminating the independent scientific evaluation of the environmental impact of federal actions. The current law mandates any project that may impact an endangered species and requires approval by a federal agency — for example, a new highway planned by the Department of Transportation that could damage the habitat of a listed red wolf — to undergo an independent review by scientists at the Fish and Wildlife Service or the National Marine Fisheries Service. The proposed new rules would allow the agency in charge of the project — in this example, the Department of Transportation — to decide whether a review would be necessary.

Green groups point out that there is little reason to think that federal agencies whose brief doesn’t include the environment would go through the bureaucratic trouble of requesting such reviews for their projects. The result would be a drastic cut-back of the independent, scientific assessments — thousands of which are done each year — that are the backbone of the ESA. “It gives those agencies carte blanche to do what they want,” says Karla Raettig, the legislative representative for wildlife conservation at the National Wildlife Federation.

Bad Deeds Family Tree – If you’ve ever thought “Hey, I could really use a chart to keep track of who in the Bush Administration could face criminal charges, and for what”, you’re in luck.

Regards,

Jim