Bad Deeds for 8-25-2011

 

Republican Congresspersons Charging Their Constituents to Attend Town Hall Meetings – Congressmen like Paul Ryan (R-WI) Ben Quayle (R-AZ) and Chip Cravaack (R-MN), instead of hosting their own constituent town hall meetings, are having events hosted for them by friendly organizations with a fee for attendance. These members of Congress are so desperate to shelter themselves from criticism that they are denying their constituents’ basic democratic access to their elected officials.

The First Amendment states that Americans have the right to “petition the Government for a redress of grievances” and does NOT include the words “only if they are willing and able to pay for that privilege.” What Ryan and his colleagues are doing is an affront to American democracy AND to the First Amendment.

Exercise YOUR First Amendment right and petition Congress now.

UPDATE: In response to Rep. Paul Ryan’s (R-WI) refusal to give his constituents free face time, some of them — many of whom are unemployed — have been protesting outside his district offices for the last several days, to demand a conversation with their elected representative about job creation. Ryan’s staff at his Kenosha office called the police in to block the protesters yesterday and protesters remain active at a sit-in at his Racine office. The chairman of the powerful House Budget Committee, and the architect of the GOP’s plan to end the guarantees of Medicare and Medicaid, Rep. Ryan owes all Americans answers, especially his constituents and especially those who are struggling.

Show your support for the protesters at Rep. Paul Ryan’s district offices by sharing our petition and helping to get more Americans to speak out for their demands to be able to meet with him free of charge!

 

Sen. Scott Brown Aide Caught Using Twitter ‘Sock Puppet’ Account to Mock Opponent – Republican Senator Scott Brown of Massachusetts has a so-called “sock puppet” Twitter account that has been impersonating and mocking his Democratic challenger, Alan Khazei, for nearly a month.

A “sock puppet” is an online persona used for deceptive purposes.

“I promise to devote all my time in office to making gay videos. Shame on Scott Brown for focusing on jobs!” said a July 31 tweet from the fake account.

The Blue Mass Group noticed that Sen. Brown and Mitt Romney aide Eric Fehrnstrom accidentally sent out a tweet from his personal Twitter account that was intended for the fake account on Tuesday. By Wednesday night, Fehrnstrom had admitted to being behind the fake account, but did not apologize.

 

Charles Koch Buying Academic Freedom – Charles Koch has gone on a shopping spree for an invaluable bauble that most of us didn’t even know was for sale: academic freedom. And it’s surprisingly cheap!

For only $1.5 million, Koch bought a big chunk of the economics department of Florida State University a couple of years ago. His donation gives him control of a new “academic” program at this public institution to indoctrinate students in his self-serving political theories.

The billionaire gets to screen all applicants, veto any he deems insufficiently ideological, and sign off on all new hires. Also, the department head must submit yearly reports to Koch about the faculty’s speeches, publications and classes, and he evaluates the faculty based on “objectives” that he sets.

Charles has made similar purchases of academic freedom at two other state universities, Clemson and West Virginia. Also, in a May 20 piece at Alternet.org, investigative researcher Lee Fang reveals that Koch has paid $419,000 to buy into Brown University’s “political theory project,” $3.6 million to establish Troy University’s “center for political economy” and $700,000 for a piece of Utah State’s Huntsman School of Business, which now has the “Charles G. Koch Professor of Political Economy.”

Imagine the screams of outrage we’d hear from the Kochs if a labor union were doing this.

 

Koch Brothers Want to Sell Our National Assets – Some laissez-faire extremists at such Koch-funded corporate fronts as the Cato Institute and Heritage Foundation are presently howling for the government to sell all of America’s gold stored in Fort Knox. Noting that we have billions worth of bullion in the vaults, a fellow from Heritage made this keen observation: “It’s just sort of sitting there.”

Uh, yeah, professor. Like Mount Rushmore, the Grand Canyon, the Lincoln Memorial and other national assets — being there is the point.

Yet these ivory tower ideologues are using the current brouhaha over the budget deficit as an opening to push their loopiest fantasies of selling off all of America’s public properties, facilities, systems and treasures to create a no-government, plutocratic paradise. Just spread our public goods out on tables, like a flea market from hell, and invite the global rich to buy it all.

 

Koch Brothers Want to Privatize Our Highway System; Put Us on the Road to Hell – A fellow from another Koch-funded front, the American Enterprise Institute, observes that the government could raise billions of dollars to retire that pesky deficit simply by selling our interstate highway system. Americans would then have to pay tolls forever to the corporate owners, but hey, he exclaims, remember that tolls “work for the River Styx, why not the Beltway?”

What a perfect metaphor for privatization! In ancient mythology, dead souls must pay a toll to be ferried across the River Styx and enter the depths of hell.

 

Corporations Too Cheap to Pay Their Employees a Living Wage Expect Taxpayers to Make Up the Difference – Walmart is the biggest retailer in the world. It boasts of having 1.2 million Americans on their payroll. Its reported annual profits are around $13 billion. At the Progressive Caucus’ “Speak Out for Good Jobs Now” listening tour held in Minneapolis attended by Rep. Raúl M. Grijalva (D-Ariz.) and Rep. Keith Ellison (D-Minn.) among others, the first audience member to speak was one Girsheila Green, a young mother from Compton, California, who has worked at Walmart for three years. Ms. Green told the crowded church how in her tenure with Walmart, she’s received two raises and is now a manager. She makes nine dollars an hour (one dollar above the laughably-low California minimum wage). She pulled from her pocket three cards she claimed most Walmart employees at her store have: a 10 percent Walmart employee discount card, her employee ID and her EBT card (what used to be called food stamps).She relayed that 80 percent of the workers at her store are on food stamps.

Since Walmart, the largest private employer in the country, generally doesn’t pay its “associates” or “Walmart family members” enough to live on – the giant multi-national corporation is relying on the taxpayers to feed its employees. We, as taxpayers, pay for Walmart’s cost-cutting tactics. Profit? Privatized. Nutrition? Socialized. And Walmart is not the only company doing this.

Regards,

Jim