Bad Deeds for 9-23-2010

Republicans Doing Voter Suppression in Wisconsin – According to the statements made on recordings of a meeting of Wisconsin Tea Party leaders, Here’s the plans between the Republican Party of Wisconsin Chair and the state director of Americans for Prosperity-Wisconsin, in their own words:

1. The Republican Party of Wisconsin will use its “Voter Vault” state-wide voter file to compile a list of minority and student voters in targeted Wisconsin communities.
2. Americans for Prosperity will use this list to send mail to these voters indicating the voter must call and confirm their registration information, and telling them if they do not call the number provided they could be removed from the voter lists.
3. The Tea Party organizations will recruit and place individuals as official poll workers in selected municipalities in order to be able to make the challenges as official poll workers.
4. On Election Day, these organizations will then “make use” of any postcards that are returned as undeliverable to challenge voters at the polls, utilizing law enforcement, as well as attorneys trained and provided by the RPW, to support their challenges.

Republicans’ “Pledge to America” is Laughable According to Republican Blog “Red State” – The Republican Blog “Red State” says the following about the House Republicans’ “Pledge to America”:

It is a “grand illusion of an agenda that will never happen, is best spoken of today, and then never again as if it did not happen. It is best forgotten.”

“The entirety of this Promise is laughable.”

“This document proves the GOP is more focused on the acquisition of power than the advocacy of long term sound public policy.”

Republican ‘Pledge To America’ Director Lobbied For AIG, Exxon, Pfizer, Chamber – The Republican Party’s 21-page blueprint, “Pledge to America,” was put together with oversight by a House staffer who, up till April 2010, served as a lobbyist for some of the nation’s most powerful oil, pharmaceutical, and insurance companies.

In a draft version of The Pledge that was being passed around to reporters before the official release, the document properties list “Wild, Brian” as the “Author.” Wild is on House Minority Leader John Boehner’s payroll. Until early this year, Wild was a fairly active lobbyist on behalf of the firm the Nickles Group, the lobbying shop set up by the former Republican Senator from Oklahoma, Don Nickles. During his five years at the firm, Wild, among others, was paid $740,000 in lobbying contracts from AIG, the former insurance company at the heart of the financial collapse; $800,000 from energy giant Andarko Petroleum; more than $1.1 million from Comcast, more than $1.3 million from Exxon Mobil; and $625,000 from the pharmaceutical company Pfizer Inc. There are many, many, more.

400 Richest Americans Got Richer This Year, As Most Americans’ Net Worth Tanked – The richest Americans got even richer this year, according to the new Forbes 400 list, even as the country’s total net worth tanked during the second quarter.

The top 400, all of whom are worth at least $1 billion, saw their combined wealth increase 8 percent this year, to the dizzying total of $1.37 trillion, according to analysis from CNN.

Meanwhile, according to data released last week by the Federal Reserve, the net worth of American households and non-profits in the second quarter of this year plunged 2.8 percent, or $1.52 trillion, from the previous quarter, to settle at $53.5 trillion.

Charles and David Koch, the manufacturing and energy titans and Tea Party movement bankrollers, profiled by Jane Mayer in The New Yorker last month, tied for fifth place with $21.5 billion apiece.

Republicans Use Funky Definition of Small Business to Fool You – The “small” businesses that Republican lawmakers say will suffer if the Bush-era tax cuts for the wealthy expire are not so small after all. According to the Republican tax logic, a small number of owners is the sole criterion for a “small business.” Such businesses, which according to the Joint Committee on Taxation accounted for 94 percent of all U.S. businesses in 2007, include partnerships, sole proprietorships and S corporations, a designation that allows owners to report profits and losses on their personal tax return, rather than on the company’s.

The report found that businesses with billions of dollars in annual revenue fall under the small business category. Bechtel, a global engineering and construction company that is considered a “small business” under this logic, took in $31 billion last year. Ferrellgas, a propane company, earned $2 billion in revenue last year. Other names include auditing firm PricewaterhouseCoopers, which brought in $26 billion. Also on the list are the collection of “small businesses” owned by the billionaire Koch Brothers, who this year tied for fifth on the Forbes list of wealthiest Americans, and who bankroll the Tea Party.

Bloomberg first reported this unusual tax logic on Monday. The Republican “small business” designation, the report said, would apply even to individuals with no employees at all. It could include actors, athletes and authors — even President Obama.

Republican Control May Cause Reduction in Proposed NASA Budget – House Republicans have begun calling for a return to 2008 spending levels and other Republicans have urged a spending freeze next year. Both arguments would become more powerful if Republicans take control of one or both chambers in the upcoming election. Lawmakers have been debating the space agency’s future for most of the year, after President Barack Obama proposed giving the agency an extra $6 billion over five years and changing its priorities. NASA advocates worry that disputes could jeopardize the $6 billion over five years — including $278 million more in 2011 — that Obama has proposed.

Republicans Refuse to Include Increased Funding for NASA in Continuing Resolution – Democratic Sen. Bill Nelson said Tuesday that increased funding for NASA would have to wait until the lame-duck session after the Nov. 2 elections. Nelson, D-Fla., had hoped to insert language into the continuing resolution, or CR, that Congress must pass to keep the government running after the end of the current fiscal year on Sept. 30. “For us to be able to change the CR right now I don’t think is realistic,” Nelson said. Republicans have been demanding a “clean” CR, without extra funding or policy changes. Democrats will need at least one GOP vote to move the CR through the Senate.”

The CR will NOT contain any new money or new language guiding NASA. Without an enacted authorization/policy bill, signed by the President, things will continue JUST as they have been, with the Constellation funding restricted, impounded, whatever you want to call it, but held back from the contractors, just as it has been for the past six months. That means even longer delays in ending the uncertainty, more unnecessary layoffs and disruption of lives and careers.

Republicans Lying About Health Care, Bigger Than Ever – The 60 Plus Association, a front group for the insurance companies, is running a deceptive $5 million television ad campaign to attack Democratic candidates who stood up for consumers by supporting the Affordable Care Act.

Most of what these ads say is simply not true. Health Care for America Now (HCAN) yesterday sent a letter to 83 television stations serving 16 congressional districts and called on them to immediately stop airing these outrageous ads, sponsored by a fake grassroots organization that appears to have no real members but definitely has lots of corporate funding.

Media Matters already had compiled a catalog of the 60 Plus Association’s advertising misrepresentations and falsehoods going back to the middle of the health care fight last year. Now the highly regarded and nonpartisan FactCheck.org has a new analysis showing that these ads are propaganda -smears based on lies and distortions. Americans United for Change summarized the many falsehoods in memos sent to reporters in these districts yesterday. MoveOn.org, HCAN and others are organizing grassroots pressure on the stations to take the ads down.

The goal of these ads is to scare seniors into voting for Republican candidates who will side with insurance company lobbyists over consumers. It’s time to fight back by spreading the truth to voters.

Someone in Republican Senator’s Office Wants All Gay People Dead – Sen. Saxby Chambliss has confirmed that an online comment declaring “all faggots must die” originated from his Senate office.

Also, a comment that was left on the Instant Tea website on Tuesday, below a post about Sen. John Cornyn and Rep. Pete Sessions receiving awards from the Log Cabin Republicans. The comment posted by someone calling himself “BillyBob” said: “the only thing a disgusting faggot has a right to is a six foot hole in the ground.”

Texas Republican Lawmakers Are Far Right, Democrats Closer to Center – A study conducted by the James Baker Institute for Public Policy at Rice University shows the degree of congruence between the ideological pattern of a representative’s voting behavior in the Texas House of Representatives and the partisan-ideological orientation of their legislative district. The graph plots the 150 members of the Texas House during the 2009 legislative session on two dimensions. The first dimension (Y-axis) is the representative’s Liberal-Conservative Score based on their voting record in the House, ranging in theoretical value from -1.0 (extreme liberal) to 1.0 (extreme conservative). Democratic representatives are identified by a blue dot and Republicans a red dot. Click on link above to see chart.

Note that Republican representatives are tightly grouped (they tow the line), have an average score on the vertical axis of around +0.7 (extreme Conservative), and the least Conservative score is around +0.25. None of them are centrists.

Democratic representatives are more distributed along the y-axis (independent thinkers), have an average score on the vertical axis of around -0.25 (slightly Liberal), and some of them have Conservative scores. About 14 of the Democrats are centrists with scores near the origin (0.0).

Asking the Wrong Questions – It is a favorite trick of the Republicans to get people embroiled in what should be a non-issue because it distracts us from asking the right questions about real issues. An example:

Why do we care if the president is a Muslim or not? I am reminded of what Colin Powell said when falsehoods about Obama’s religion circulated during the 2008 campaign:

“But the really right answer is, “What if he is?” Is there something wrong with being a Muslim in this country? The answer’s no, that’s not America. Is there something wrong with some seven-year-old Muslim-American kid believing that he or she could be president?…

“I feel strongly about this particular point because of a picture I saw in a magazine. It was a photo essay about troops who are serving in Iraq and Afghanistan. And one picture at the tail end of this photo essay was of a mother in Arlington Cemetery, and she had her head on the headstone of her son’s grave. And as the picture focused in, you could see the writing on the headstone. And it gave his awards–Purple Heart, Bronze Star–showed that he died in Iraq, gave his date of birth, date of death. He was 20 years old. And then, at the very top of the headstone, it didn’t have a Christian cross, it didn’t have the Star of David, it had crescent and a star of the Islamic faith. And his name was Kareem Rashad Sultan Khan, and he was an American.

“He was born in New Jersey. He was 14 years old at the time of 9/11, and he waited until he can go serve his country, and he gave his life.”

Powell was right. Lots of our fellow citizens are Muslims. Some are heroes; others are villains; most pursue utterly unremarkable lives. Muslims are, in short, much like all of us. And they are every bit as American as Baptists, Catholics, Jews, Mormons, or (dare I say it?) atheists.

From the Start, Bush Team Focused on War with Iraq – Former president George W. Bush’s advisers focused on toppling Saddam Hussein’s regime as soon as he took office and discussed how to justify a war in Iraq shortly after invading Afghanistan in 2001, newly declassified papers showed Wednesday.

The Very Retro Notion That We are Undisputedly Still No. 1 is Extremely Dangerous – When one departs Beijing’s South Station, a giant space-age building, and boards the bullet train to Tianjin. It takes just 25 minutes to make the 75-mile trip. In Tianjin, one arrives at another ultramodern train station — where, unlike New York City’s Pennsylvania Station, all the escalators actually work. From there, you drive to the Tianjin Meijiang Convention Center, a building so gigantic and well appointed that if it were in Washington, D.C., it would be a tourist site. Your hosts inform you: “It was built in nine months.”

Studying China’s ability to invest for the future doesn’t make me feel we have the wrong system. It makes me feel that we are abusing our right system. Too many of our poll-driven, toxically partisan, cable-TV-addicted, money-corrupted political class are more interested in what keeps them in power than what would again make America powerful, more interested in defeating each other than saving the country.

For democracy to be effective and deliver the policies and infrastructure our societies need requires the political center to be focused, united and energized. That means electing candidates who will do what is right for the country not just for their ideological wing or whoever comes with the biggest bag of money. Instead, we have an evil tide of Know-Nothingness that is sweeping the country and potentially handing congressional power over to a group of dimwits, determined to ruin the American system.

Regards,

Jim