Bad Deeds for 8-4-2010

 

Republican Plan: Bigger Tax Cuts For the [Mega] Rich – After opposing, stalling, stonewalling and filibustering almost every recession-related bill for the past year, Republican lawmakers have finally proposed a jobs plan of their own: a bigger, more expensive version of George W. Bush’s tax cuts for the rich.

The Economic Freedom Act of 2010 — introduced by Reps. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) and Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah) — proposes deep tax cuts favoring the wealthiest in America, a reduction in regulatory oversight and the elimination of a federal tax on the estates of millionaires, which will allow wealthy investors to escape taxes entirely on a significant portion of their income.

House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) said in a conference call on Tuesday that the GOP’s proposal will not only fail to stimulate job growth, but will triple the deficit by 2015 and devastate an already-shrinking American middle class.

“The tax cuts they want to give, as usual under Republican policies, will give 62 percent of the tax cuts to the top 1 percent of Americans,” Hoyer said. “Or said another way, an average $467 tax cut to working Americans in the middle of the income levels, and to the top 1 percent earners, an average of $157,000 tax cut, and to Goldman Sachs, $2.6 billion in tax cuts. When you analyze that, you know what is happening is the same old Bush policies of advantaging the wealthy at the expense of the middle income working people and tax cuts which did not, as they were advertised to, grow the economy and grow jobs. In fact, they did just the opposite.”

Michael Linden, associate director for tax and budget policy at the Center for American Progress Action Fund, said the Republican proposal is “unaffordable on a level we’ve never seen before.” This is almost five times bigger than Bush tax cuts were,” Linden said. “It really represents a doubling down on Bush’s economic agenda. Where he skewed his tax policy heavily to the rich, this would skew it even further, even to the exclusion of the middle class. $7 trillion in additional debt and deficit over next ten years would be calamitous,” Linden added. “I think it’s hard to understate the radicalism of this plan.”

 

Republican Extremists and Tea-Partiers Run Over a Decent Long-Time Republican – Republican Rep. Bob Inglis, who has a 93 percent lifetime rating from the American Conservative Union, received the wrath of the tea party and lost his primary. In the weeks since, Inglis has criticized Republican House leaders for acquiescing to a poisonous, tea party-driven “demagoguery” that he believes will undermine the GOP’s long-term credibility. And he’s freely recounting his frustrating interactions with tea party types, while noting that Republican leaders are pushing rhetoric tainted with racism, that conservative activists are dabbling in anti-Semitic conspiracy theory nonsense, and that Sarah Palin celebrates ignorance. Read the whole article if you have time.

 

Republican Candidate’s Crazy Talk: Bike-Sharing Program May Threaten Our Personal Freedoms – Republican gubernatorial candidate Dan Maes is warning voters that Denver Mayor John Hickenlooper’s policies, particularly his efforts to boost bike riding, are “converting Denver into a United Nations community.” The Democrat’s B-Cycle program places a network of about 400 red bikes for rent at stations around the city. It is funded by private donors and grants.

“This is all very well-disguised, but it will be exposed,” Maes told about 50 supporters who showed up at a campaign rally last week in Centennial. Maes said in a later interview that he once thought the mayor’s efforts to promote cycling and other environmental initiatives were harmless and well-meaning. Now he realizes “that’s exactly the attitude they want you to have.”

“This is bigger than it looks like on the surface, and it could threaten our personal freedoms,” Maes said. Maes acknowledged that some might find his theories “kooky.” Really?

 

FOX’s Six Tricks: How to Spot Their Next Deception – To arm yourself for the next fake scandal, ideally go to MediaMatters.com, Bill Press’s new book Toxic Talk, or numerous clips on Jon Stewart/Steven Colbert/Rachel Maddow. Otherwise, here’s a brief guide to the six parlor tricks that Fox News incessantly uses to mislead the credulous:

• Rhetorical Questions – Examples: “Is the NAACP racist?”, asked Bill O’Reilly last month, leading some viewers to an obvious – though false – answer. “Will the [New Start treaty] leave the U.S. Defenseless until it’s too late?”, wondered anchor Megyn Kelly. Rinse. Repeat. Every day.
• Creating reality by repeated slogans – Fox’s anchors and hosts reiterate certain loaded phrases to see if they’ll catch on and reframe the political conversation. Examples: “death taxes”, “death panels” and “climate-gate.” But all of these are fakes.
• Conclusory lies delivered with certainty – To rational minds, facts lead to conclusions – at Fox News, conclusions lead to ‘facts.’ The key is that they are said so quickly and confidentially – think of Limbaugh’s theatrical and deep-throated delivery — that they sound self-evident. Example: Last week Fox hosts authoritatively said that the public opposes both Wall Street Reregulation and a comprehensive immigration reform bill – but all polls show the opposite.
• Highlight out-of-context aberrations and ignore all contrary data – Example: Did you know that Ted Williams always struck out? I can prove it with a tape only showing his strikeouts, not those hits that produced a lifetime .344 batting average.
• McCarthyism and causation – Example: Liberals are evil because in 1969 the Weathermen issued a manifesto suggesting revolution in America, said Glenn Beck on two shows last week. Without serious explanation, this 40 year-old report was somehow linked to Obama and his appointees.
• When in doubt, race-bait – This is not to accuse Fox of racism, which is a losing line of argument since, in America today, it appears to be worse to call someone a racist than to be one. Examples: Sotomayor, ACORN, Van Jones, two weirdos in Philly that call themselves the New Black Panther Party, Sherrod.

When it comes to being “fair and balanced,” Fox ‘News’ reminds me of a spokesman of the magician’s trade association who, explaining the popularity of his members, said “some people want a fraud they can really believe in.”

 

Corn Byproduct Fructose Fuels Cancer Cell Growth – Pancreatic tumor cells use fructose to divide and proliferate, U.S. researchers said on Monday in a study that challenges the common wisdom that all sugars are the same. Americans take in large amounts of fructose, mainly in high fructose corn syrup, a mix of fructose and glucose that is used in soft drinks, bread and a range of other foods. U.S. consumption of high fructose corn syrup went up 1,000 percent between 1970 and 1990, researchers reported in 2004 in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition.

Politicians, regulators, health experts and the industry have debated whether high fructose corn syrup and other ingredients have been helping make Americans fatter and less healthy. The American Beverage Association, whose members include Coca-Cola and Kraft Foods have strongly, and successfully, opposed efforts to tax soda.

The industry has also argued that sugar is sugar. Heaney said his team found otherwise. They grew pancreatic cancer cells in lab dishes and fed them both glucose and fructose. Tumor cells thrive on sugar but they used the fructose to proliferate. “Importantly, fructose and glucose metabolism are quite different,” Heaney’s team wrote.

Regards,

Jim