Bad Deeds for 9-10-2011

Ann Coulter Says Kindergarten Teachers Are Useless and Overpaid – On Wednesday morning’s “Fox & Friends,” Coulter said Teamsters Union president James Hoffa used to represent truck drivers and pipefitters. She said, “Now he’s representing public school teachers? Kindergarten teachers? Cafeteria workers? Fighting for every last bit of their government pension? What a pathetic downfall!”

Coulter went on: “… He’s not even representing men who have actual jobs. He’s representing a bunch of useless public sector workers.”

Co-host Gretchen Carlson gave Coulter a chance to walk her comments back, saying “I don’t want to say that teachers are useless.”

“No?” Coulter shot back. “I will. They are government workers. Let’s turn it over to private [schools], to vouchers, to charter schools. No, they fight for every last dime. They get summers off. They’re off at two [o’clock] and they make more money than most of those pipefitters who no longer have jobs.”

Texas Taxpayers Foot The Bill For Perry’s Presidential Run – Perry has brought on Texas law enforcement to help out with his security, scouting out the sites that events will be held at ahead of time, providing extra enforcement while he’s in attendance. The costs for those additional hours are of course being passed on to the state budget, and paid for with the state’s gas tax and vehicle registration fees.

How much are these extra security costing the state? Well, conveniently enough, no one knows. Records of the governor’s security costs have been kept under wraps for years, with the Department of Safety declaring that releasing the info could jeopardize Perry’s safety.

Presumably, they don’t just mean because Texans would be so angry to see how much money it is that he might get hurt.

Those records will be concealed even longer, despite numerous attempts to get them released, thanks to a bill passed in the special session that states they must be kept closed another 18 months. Which just happens to be until after the 2012 election has ended.

The Republican Plan to Kill the Post Office – Currently the Post Office is undergoing severe financial hardship and may well go bankrupt. Like most, I assumed that was because the Internet had reduced demand for postal service, but was quite surprised to learn that has little to do with it. The USPS is in trouble because Republicans passed a law in 2006 that sabotaged the USPS by requiring the Postal Service to pay for employee health care 75 years into the future. That costs the service 5.5 billion dollars per year.

No other company is forced to pay employees’ total health care costs in advance before the employees are even born. The changes needed to fix this mess are accounting changes that cost nothing, and Americans don’t pay a penny in taxes for postal service.

To finish the job, Republican Darrell Issa has introduced a bill he calls the Postal Reform Act, but it’s really the Postal Death Act. Watch the video.

The Republican War on Voting – In a systematic campaign orchestrated by the American Legislative Exchange Council – and funded in part by David and Charles Koch, the billionaire brothers who bankrolled the Tea Party – 38 states introduced legislation this year designed to impede voters at every step of the electoral process.

All told, a dozen states have approved new obstacles to voting. Kansas and Alabama now require would-be voters to provide proof of citizenship before registering. Florida and Texas made it harder for groups like the League of Women Voters to register new voters. Maine repealed Election Day voter registration, which had been on the books since 1973. Five states – Florida, Georgia, Ohio, Tennessee and West Virginia – cut short their early voting periods. Florida and Iowa barred all ex-felons from the polls, disenfranchising thousands of previously eligible voters. And six states controlled by Republican governors and legislatures – Alabama, Kansas, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas and Wisconsin – will require voters to produce a government-issued ID before casting ballots. More than 10 percent of U.S. citizens lack such identification, and the numbers are even higher among constituencies that traditionally lean Democratic – including 18 percent of young voters and 25 percent of African-Americans.

Regards,

Jim