The WAWG Blog

Republicans Shut Down TB Hospital Amid Worst TB Outbreak in 20 Years – Welcome to the Sunshine State: Republican-run since 1998, tea party-controlled since 2010, and fast becoming one of the lowest-service states in the nation. Which helps explain how lawmakers shut down its only tuberculosis clinic last month, just as the worst outbreak of the infectious disease in America’s recent history flared up with a vengeance in Jacksonville, Miami, and who knows where else—an outbreak that state and local officials sat on until last month, according to an investigation published by the Palm Beach Post.

Last spring, however, the Republican-dominated Legislature voted to shutter the hospital as a cost-saving measure. The state’s governor, former health care executive Rick Scott, signed the bill in April and even pressed for AG Holley’s closure to be moved up six months; the facility was permanently shuttered on July 2.

What was Scott thinking? According to the Palm Beach Post exposé, AG Holley’s closure came after the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention had warned the governor and his state health office in a report that tuberculosis was making a big comeback in the state.

Hundreds, possibly thousands, of people in Florida could now be carrying the TB strain, which so far has claimed 13 lives and been confirmed to have infected 99 people, including six children, according to the Post—the worst in America in 20 years.

Thanks, Republicans, for saving a few tax dollars!

Romney Invested Millions in Chinese Firm That Profited on US Outsourcing – According to government documents reviewed by Mother Jones, Romney, when he was in charge of Bain, invested heavily in a Chinese manufacturing company that depended on US outsourcing for its profits—and that explicitly stated that such outsourcing was crucial to its success.

This previously unreported deal runs counter to Romney’s tough talk on the campaign trail regarding China. But with this investment, Romney sought to make money off a foreign company that banked on American firms outsourcing manufacturing overseas.

Republican Lawmaker Horrified to Discover that Christianity is Not the Only Religion – One Louisiana Republican is learning the hard way that religious school vouchers can be used to fund education at all sorts of religious schools, even Muslim ones. And while she’s totally in favor of taxpayer money being used to pay for kids to go to Christian schools, she’s willing to put a stop to the entire program if Muslim schools are going to be involved.

Valarie Hodges admitted that when she supported Governor Bobby Jindal’s school voucher program, she only did so because she assumed the religious school vouchers could only be used for Christian schools. Religious freedom means that everyone’s free to follow Valarie Hodges’ religion!

Islam is a religion protected by the constitution, too? No one told Valarie Hodges anything about religions being equal under the law! She can’t support any sort of anything that could learn to families using taxpayer money to educate their kids in Islamic schools. She added Bachmannesquely, “We need to insure that it does not open the door to fund radical Islam schools. There are a thousand Muslim schools that have sprung up recently. I do not support using public funds for teaching Islam anywhere here in Louisiana.”

House Republicans Hold 30 Times More Votes On Repealing Health Care Than On Creating Jobs – A chart from the Nation illustrates the stark disparity between the number of votes that House Republicans have held on repealing the Affordable Care Act versus the number of votes they have held on job-creating measures like the American Jobs Act.

After the House voted to eliminate Obamacare for the 31st time this afternoon, it’s a helpful reminder about how the GOP has pushed aside economic issues despite touting the economy as a central platform issue.

Limbaugh Race-Baits – Mitt Romney never had a chance of winning over the NAACP, according to Rush Limbaugh. That’s not because Romney’s a Republican, or because his policy positions aren’t shared by the organization, but because Mitt Romney is white.

“Obama’s the Preezy,” Limbaugh told his listeners Wednesday, (get it? Cuz Limbaugh thinks that’s how black people talk). “He’s confident they’ll boo Romney, simply ’cause Romney’s white. He’s confident of that.” This is, put simply, the dumbest thing Limbaugh has said since the time the 61-year old radio host revealed he didn’t know how birth control works.

When Ross Perot adressed the convention in 1992, press accounts don’t describe any boos despite Perot referring to the audience as “you people.” Then-Arkansas Governor Bill Clinton was well received. Former Republican Senator Bob Dole (R-Kan.) declined to speak, saying he wanted to talk to audiences he “could relate to.” Both Al Gore and George W. Bush addressed the convention in 2000, and neither were booed.

I wonder how Limbaugh will explain why Vice President Joe Biden, who is also white, was so well received by the NAACP convention Thursday.

—————–
One of the penalties for refusing to participate in politics is that you end up being governed by your inferiors. – Plato

Regards,

Jim

Galveston County Commissioner in More Trouble – Galveston County Commissioner, Republican Ken Clark, who already is facing a state ethics commission investigation and is the target of a special prosecutor’s inquest, now faces a new allegation.

This time the complaint comes from a fellow Republican who claims Clark’s longtime assistant alleges the commissioner instructed her to conduct political activities on county computer and Internet systems and on county time.

Former Justice of the Peace Mark Foster, who is seeking the Precinct 1 county commissioner’s seat, filed a complaint with Galveston County District Attorney Jack Roady on Monday. Foster claims Clark’s former assistant Celia Mabry informed him that she had been told by Clark to conduct opposition research on Foster to benefit Ryan Dennard, Foster’s opponent in the July 31 Republican Party runoff.

Related Items

• Ken Clark the target of special prosecutor
• Clarks campaign spending under review by state
• Commissioner claims firm not conflict of interest

Romney’s Murky World of Offshore Finance – For all Mitt Romney’s touting of his business record, when it comes to his own money the Republican nominee is remarkably shy about disclosing numbers and investments. Romney is into the murky world of offshore finance and loopholes that allow the very wealthy to skirt tax laws. A Vanity Fair article published this week revealed that Mitt Romney has heavily invested in foreign tax havens, raising questions about whether he’s ever avoided paying U.S. taxes. We already knew that he had a Swiss bank account until just last year, and that he still owns a mysterious corporation in Bermuda. The article notes that Romney’s finances are “deeply entangled” with Bain Capital, including investment funds in the Cayman Islands. We don’t know all the details because he won’t follow precedent by releasing his tax returns, raising a lot of questions about his finances that Americans deserve to know the answers to.

Some Republicans Just Won’t Listen – A worker in Florida got an earful from Rep. C.W. Bill Young (R-FL) on Wednesday when he asked the congressman to support a bill that would raise the minimum wage to $10 an hour.

“Jesse Jackson, Jr. is passing a bill around to increase the minimum wage to 10 bucks an hour,” the man tells Young in a video obtained by FLDemocracy. “Do you support that?”

“Probably not,” Young replies.

“Ten bucks, that would give us a living wage,” the constituent points out.

“How about getting a job?” Young snaps.

“I do have one, $8.50 an hour,” the man insists.

“Why do you want that benefit?” Young grumbles. “Get a job.”

“I do have a job, but it’s not enough to get by on,” the man explains as Young turns away.

In 2010, the Florida Republican voted for a cost-of-living pay increase for himself and other members of Congress. He currently makes the default yearly Congressional salary of $174,000.

Fukushima Nuclear Accident was “Manmade” and “Preventable” Says Japanese Report – A Japanese legislative inquiry on Thursday found that last year’s disaster at the Fukushima nuclear power plant was “manmade” and could have been prevented.

A 641-page report by the independent 10-member panel concluded that the facility might have been damaged by the first earthquake on March 11, 2011, even prior to being hit by a tsunami roughly 30 minutes later. The twin calamities led to meltdowns at three of the Daiichi facility’s six reactors.

“It was a profoundly man-made disaster that could and should have been foreseen and prevented,” said Kurokawa, an academic fellow at the National Graduate Institute for Policy Studies in Tokyo. “And its effects could have been mitigated by a more effective human response.”

“The Tepco Fukushima Nuclear Power Plant accident was the result of collusion between the government, the regulators and Tepco [the power company],” the document finds. “They effectively betrayed the nation’s right to be safe from nuclear accidents.”

And just to bring this Fukushima report a little closer to home, there are 23 of G.E.’s flawed Mark I reactors right here in the good old U.S. of A. Add to that the increasing incidence of earthquakes in unexpected places (caused by the injection of fracking waste fluid into the ground), and we’ve got a “no one could have known!” just waiting to happen here.

Louisiana Republicans Concoct Scheme to Cover Their Poor Administration of School Vouchers – Emails between Louisiana Education Superintendent John White, Gov. Bobby Jindal’s spokesman Kyle Plotkin and Jindal’s policy adviser Stafford Palmieri show White devising a scheme to “muddy up a narrative” and to “take some air out of the room” after a news report about the new voucher program that was published before his Senate confirmation hearing in May. In the email exchange, White proposes creating a news story about the “due diligence” process for school voucher approvals to counter the impact of a News-Star article that revealed the state Department of Education had not performed site visits or extensive review of voucher applications.

Texas Republican Leaders Value Political Ideology Over the Well Being of Citizens – Gov. Rick Perry and Texas Republican Lawmakers have shown little interest in participating to expand Medicaid coverage to as many as 2 million low-income Texans. The Supreme Court ruled that states could decide whether to participate in the Medicaid expansion without jeopardizing the money they receive for the traditional Medicaid program.

The traditional program in Texas covers 3.4 million children, pregnant women, disabled adults and poor elderly people; under the Affordable Care Act, it would be extended to everyone whose income falls below 133 percent of the federal poverty level.

“It’s ideology, ” said Bruce Buchanan, a political scientist at the University of Texas at Austin. “It’s stubbornness.”

Taking the money and expanding coverage would be the smart thing to do from a policy standpoint, Rice University political scientist Mark P. Jones said.

The Texas Hospital Association acknowledged political leaders’ concerns with the expansion, but association President and CEO Dr. Dan Stultz urged them to consider it.

“Without the Medicaid expansion, many will remain uninsured, shifting costs to the insured and increasing uncompensated care to health care providers,” he said.

Romney Invested in Medical-Waste Firm That Disposed of Aborted Fetuses, Government Documents Show – Earlier this year, Mitt Romney nearly landed in a politically perilous controversy when the Huffington Post reported that in 1999 the GOP presidential candidate had been part of an investment group that invested $75 million in Stericycle, a medical-waste disposal firm that has been attacked by anti-abortion groups for disposing aborted fetuses collected from family planning clinics. Coming during the heat of the GOP primaries, as Romney tried to sell South Carolina Republicans on his pro-life bona fides, the revelation had the potential to damage the candidate’s reputation among values voters already suspicious of his shifting position on abortion.

But Bain Capital, the private equity firm Romney founded, tamped down the controversy. The company said Romney left the firm in February 1999 to run the troubled 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City and likely had nothing to with the deal. The matter never became a campaign issue. But documents filed by Bain and Stericycle with the Securities and Exchange Commission—and obtained by Mother Jones—list Romney as an active participant in the investment. And this deal helped Stericycle, a company with a poor safety record, grow, while yielding tens of millions of dollars in profits for Romney and his partners. The documents—one of which was signed by Romney—also contradict the official account of Romney’s exit from Bain.

Regards,
Jim

The Terrifying Texas Republican Platform – The Texas Republican Platform wants to eliminate teaching of critical thinking skills, wants to cut funding to all levels of education, and wants to enact economic policies that experts agree would make the economy worse. It reads as if it were written in another age and in ignorance of the social, economic, and scientific evidence of the past half century. Let there be no mistake about it: the Texas Republican Party Platform is terrifying. Were its recommendations implemented, the US would resemble a third-world country with a cheap, uneducated workforce and a massive gap between rich and poor. Unemployment would be rampant, growth stagnant, and answers few and far between thanks to the systematic repression of higher order and critical thinking.

Who said that? Forbes Magazine – the business and investing magazine. Not exactly a liberal publication.

Rush Limbaugh Says Giving Women the Right to Vote Screwed Up The Country – Rush Limbaugh thinks that the country was great until women got the vote.

The segment begins with a caller whipping out his pocket Constitution and arguing that “Obamacare” is really the fault of young people. In his mind, those 18 year olds are the reason we’ve elected “someone this foolish.”

Limbaugh counters with “Nah, I can do one better than that. When women got the vote is when it all went downhill.”

Romney’s Secret Wealth Assets Held Offshore – WASHINGTON — For nearly 15 years, Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney’s financial portfolio has included an offshore company that remained invisible to voters as his political star rose.

Based in Bermuda, Sankaty High Yield Asset Investors Ltd. was not listed on any of Romney’s state or federal financial reports. The company is among several Romney holdings that have not been fully disclosed, including one that recently posted a $1.9 million earning — suggesting he could be wealthier than the nearly $250 million estimated by his campaign.

Sankaty was transferred to a trust owned by Romney’s wife, Ann, one day before he was sworn in as Massachusetts governor in 2003, according to Bermuda records obtained by The Associated Press. The Romneys’ ownership of the offshore firm did not appear on any state or federal financial reports during Romney’s two presidential campaigns. Only the Romneys’ 2010 tax records, released under political pressure earlier this year, confirmed their continuing control of the company.

Alabama Pastors Conference Invites Only ‘White Christians’; Will Include a Cross Burning – A group of pastors in Alabama says that they are not racist even though only “white Christians” were invited to their three-day conference, which will include a cross burning and be attended by Ku Klux Klan (KKK) members.

This Is What Happens When Public Services Go Private – Lifeguard Who Aided Swimmer Was Fired – As lifeguards are paid and trained to do, Tomas Lopez rushed down the beach to rescue a drowning man — and then got fired for it.

The problem: Lopez stepped out of the beach zone his company is paid to patrol, a supervisor said Tuesday.

“I ran out to do the job I was trained to do,” said Lopez. “I didn’t think about it at all.”
At least two other lifeguards have quit in protest.

“What was he supposed to do? Watch a man drown?” asked one.

Lifeguards in Hallandale Beach work for Orlando-based company Jeff Ellis and Associates, which has been providing lifeguard services for the city’s beaches and pools since 2003. This hero made about $8.25 per hour to make sure people don’t drown on the very public, lovely Florida beaches, and they fired him because they were worried about “liability issues.”

Republican Joe Walsh Blasts Double Amputee’s Military Service, Says She’s Not A ‘True Hero’ – Though he never joined the military himself, Rep. Joe Walsh (R-IL) disparaged his Democratic opponent’s military service at a town hall on Sunday, saying that she’s not a “true hero.”

Walsh is running against Tammy Duckworth, a double amputee who lost both her legs in Iraq when insurgents hit her helicopter with an RPG in 2004.

The Tea Party freshman opened the Elk Grove town hall by arguing that Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) was reluctant to discuss his own military service in 2008, which made him a “noble hero.” By contrast, “Now I’m running against a woman who, my God, that’s all she talks about,” Walsh said.

Houston Councilwoman Brown Altered Employees’ Timecards – Houston City Councilwoman Helena Brown subtracted hours from employees’ timecards in apparent violation of federal law, according to records obtained by the Houston Chronicle. The first-term councilwoman shorted an employee by more than three hours in a day in several cases. At least six times, Brown deleted enough hours from employees’ reported workweeks that it cost them overtime by bringing their weekly total under 40 hours.

Texas Ranks Last Healthcare in the U.S. – Texas ranked dead last in the federal government’s latest report card on the delivery of health services, falling short in areas ranging from acute hospital care to home treatment of the chronically ill.

Texas scored 31.61 — less than half of top-ranked Minnesota’s 67.31 — out of a possible 100 points in the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality annual rankings. Rated “weak” or “very weak” in nine of 12 health delivery categories, Texas dropped from 47th place in 2010 to 51st in 2011, behind all other states and Washington, D.C.

Texas Republican-Controlled Legislature Cuts to Texas College Aid Cause Students to Suffer – Lawmakers cut about $1 billion from higher education financial aid last year, part of billions in spending cuts needed to balance the two-year budget without raising taxes. Education leaders worried that as a result, tens of thousands of students would be barred from attending college because of the cost. “These institutions muddled through this last year with the dollars they had, but not a whole lot of people are holding their breath to recoup the money we lost last time or to get new money,” said Dominic Chavez, spokesman for the coordinating board. “Meanwhile, we continue to see increases in the number of needy students. We are already in catch-up mode trying to meet the need of students who qualify.”

Some students eligible for TEXAS Grants end up going to a local community college if they can’t afford a four-year university or taking on heavy work schedules to support themselves. Dr. Tom Melecki, director of UT student financial services, said his office aims to help students avoid either of those options because many who try to work full time end up dropping out. Gov. Rick Perry and legislative leaders recently instructed agencies to prepare budgets for the next two years that would freeze spending or even cut another 10 percent.

Regards,
Jim

Republican Governor Cuts All State Funding for Libraries – No libraries for you, little people of Louisiana! Bobby Jindal just signed a $25 billion dollar budget that cut all state funding for libraries, which wasn’t exactly a huge porkfest to begin with ($900,000). On the other hand, Jindal has cut taxes six times. See what that gets you!

Romney Says the Amount of Education You Get Should Depend on How Much Money You Have – In his stump speech on June 29th, Romney said:

“I want to make sure we keep America a place of opportunity, where everyone has a fair shot, they get as much education as they can afford, with their time they’re able to get it, and if they have a willingness to work hard and the right values, they ought to have a shot at realizing their dreams.”

So, if you have a lot of money, you get a lot of education. And if you don’t have any money, you get zip. And you only get a fair shot at realizing your dreams if you have the “right values.” I wonder who decides that – some value panel? Or maybe the church lady?

This is a man who wants to privatize our K-12 education system, who slashed Massachusetts’ education budget by large margins, increased class sizes to unmanageable levels, attended an exclusive private school, exclusive private colleges, and has the means to send his children to any college they can afford so that they too, can make tons of money by stripping other people of their jobs and futures.

This, from the man who thinks it’s just so easy to go borrow money from Mom and Dad for that startup no one with real money will fund. This, from the man who thinks borrowing from Mom and Dad for college is just as simple as a trip home for dinner.

Texas State Comptroller’s Pants Are on Fire – State Comptroller Susan Combs has been touring the state warning of the dangers of rising Medicaid costs (the “Big Red Monster” as she calls it) and proclaming that we spend too much money on public education, even though Texas ranks near the bottom nationwide in spending per pupil, and lawmakers cut funding by $5.4 billion in the last legislative session. The comptroller was even labeled with a “Pants on Fire” ruling by PolitiFact for trying to perpetuate the myth that the legislature didn’t cut school funding.

Education and health care aren’t the problems. The real need is for leadership in state government to use the Rainy Day Fund in the short term to reverse cuts, and then to fix the ongoing $10 billion hole in the budget from the structural deficit created by lawmakers in 2006. That’s not only our take, it’s the key message of Texas Forward, a coalition of some 50 organizations–including Texas AFT–promoting a balanced approach to state budget decisions.

Texas Forward members know that Medicaid is a lifeline for millions of families with children, elderly parents in nursing homes and family members with a lifelong disability, and quality public education is the key to our state’s future prosperity, preparing our youth for higher education and good jobs.

Texas Forward has prepared a petition telling state officials: “Let’s not drag schools OR healthcare backwards!” You can sign the petition on their Web site.

Republicans Advance Their War on Minorities and the Poor With Public Transportation Cuts – Just as more people are making use of this invaluable public resource, Republicans are going out of their way to slash funding for public transportation, both in terms of new projects and maintenance of existing systems. As a result, nearly 80% of transit systems have had to either reduce services or raise fares since 2010. According to the President of the American Public Transportation Association, William Millar,

“Public transportation systems are currently experiencing decreases in their funding during a time when many are serving increased number of riders. Systems are forced to continue to freeze positions and lay off workers, which makes providing necessary transit service even more difficult.”

Like all things public, Republicans want to attack and dismantle public transportation just as badly as they do all the other services provided by government. Showing off their truly loony side, they have gone so far as to accuse public transportation of being a socialist conspiracy perpetrated by the United Nations as part of a “New World Order.” When they are not using bizarre conspiracy theories to fuel the right-wing populism behind tearing down public transportation, Republicans play on two American traditions to sour the American public on mass transit: disdain for the poor and the cultural meme of independence on the open road.

Conventionally, people associate the need for public transit with urban, poor populations, and Republicans use this stereotypical association in their favor. Like attacks on welfare, they are able to parlay negative attitudes toward helping the “undeserving poor”, tainted with their ever-present racism, into an “us-versus-them” mentality regarding mass transit. Republicans perpetuate the myth that roads pay for themselves while public transit costs the taxpayer money, despite the fact that this has been shown to be untrue. For example, the State Smart Transportation Initiative in Wisconsin calculated that non-users of roads each pay about $779 for them, while non-users of public transit pay $50. Republicans love to divide and conquer, and emphasizing that transportation dollars that go to public transit benefit “only certain populations in big cities” is an effective way to wedge large swaths of Americans from one another.

Mitch McConnell Says People Without Healthcare Are Not the Issue – Like most Republicans, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky) has said that he wants to “repeal and replace” the Affordable Care Act. Like most Republicans, McConnell has been rather vague about what he’d replace it with. On Sunday, McConnell was specific about one thing: the Republican replacement for Obamacare won’t be concerned with providing insurance for 30 million uninsured Americans.

In an interview with Fox News, McConnell pushed the standard GOP boilerplate on health reform — he would support tort reform, allowing insurance companies to sell substandard insurance across state lines and other reforms that would benefit insurance companies without helping patients. When pressed by Chris Matthews on what he’d do to provide universal coverage, McConnell said bluntly that people without health insurance aren’t his concern.

Regards,

Jim

Pennsylvania Republican: House Leader Says Voter ID Laws Are ‘Gonna Allow Governor Romney To Win’ – This weekend, Pennsylvania Republican House Leader Mike Turzai (R-PA) finally admitted what so many have speculated: Voter identification efforts are meant to suppress Democratic votes in this year’s election.

At the Republican State Committee meeting, Turzai took the stage and let slip the truth about why Republicans are so insistent on voter identification efforts — it will win Romney the election. He said, “We are focused on making sure that we meet our obligations that we’ve talked about for years. Pro-Second Amendment? The Castle Doctrine, it’s done. First pro-life legislation – abortion facility regulations – in 22 years, done. Voter ID, which is gonna allow Governor Romney to win the state of Pennsylvania, done.”

Texas Republican Party Platform Urges Repeal of Voter Rights Act – The Republican Party of Texas’ recently adopted 2012 platform contains a plank that wants the Voter Rights Act repealed. It states, “We urge that the Voter Rights Act of 1965 codified and updated in 1973 be repealed and not reauthorized.”

Texas Republican Party Platform Opposes Teaching Thinking Skills – The Republican Party of Texas’ recently adopted 2012 platform contains a plank that opposes the teaching of “critical thinking skills” in schools.

The plank in question, on “Knowledge-Based Education,” reads as follows:
“We oppose the teaching of Higher Order Thinking Skills (HOTS) (values clarification), critical thinking skills and similar programs that are simply a relabeling of Outcome-Based Education (OBE) (mastery learning) which focus on behavior modification and have the purpose of challenging the student’s fixed beliefs and undermining parental authority.”

(Critical thinking, of course, is what allows a person to differentiate between fact and hokum. However, Republicans apparently believe that when elders spout hokum, now that needs to be properly respected. If your parents say the Loch Ness Monster is proof that evolution never happened, you had better not start using your newfound critical thinking skills on picking that apart. – JLV)

Coal Company to Get Cheap Coal From Our Public Land and Sell It Overseas for Huge Profit – The Bureau of Land Management (BLM) plans to give Peabody Energy the rights to 721 million tons of publicly owned Wyoming coal for about $1 a ton,1 just so Peabody can sell it in Asia for $80 a ton, unleashing a massive amount of climate-change causing carbon pollution in the process. Realizing that dirty coal use in the U.S. is in a steep and permanent decline, big coal companies want to build massive coal export terminals in the Pacific Northwest for shipping American coal to Asia, where environmental rules aren’t as strict.

BLM’s coal leasing decisions are supposed to be made “in the best interests of the nation,” but fueling climate change by heavily subsidizing dirty coal that will be sold to China isn’t in anyone’s interests.

Tell the Bureau of Land Management: Stop the dirty coal giveaways and stop subsidizing climate change. Click here to automatically sign the petition.

Arizona Sheriff Joe Arpaio Arrests a 6-year-Old Undocumented Child – Notorious Arizona sheriff Joe Arpaio recently arrested a 6-year-old undocumented child, despite President Obama’s recent revisions to immigration policy, which stops the deportation of undocumented children. The young girl, who was with 15 other immigrants, was arrested on the same day that Obama implemented these major changes to the country’s immigration policy.

Republican Senate Candidate Says He’s Sick and Tired of Hearing Sob Stories About the Poor – During the Q&A portion of a Greater Brookfield Chamber of Commerce event, Wisconsin U.S. Senate candidate Eric Hovde (R) expressed his support for lowering the corporate tax rate, tackling the country’s spending problems and lowering the national debt. Then, pointing to a reporter in the audience, Hovde said he would love to see the press stop covering sob stories about low-income individuals who can’t get benefits and start covering issues like the deficit more frequently.

Regards,

Jim

Based on comments made by Thom Hartmann last week, Roberts has handed the extreme right another rallying cause. Just like Roe v Wade, this decision will be used for decades to rally the right-wing authoritarian base. It will inspire ALEC to write laws that will undermine Obamacare a little at a time as they have done with abortion.

This court has not regained my trust and confidence with this one decision. There are still four justices that want to take us back to at least 1950.

The two deficits, their causes, and solutions summarized below from writings by former Senator Barack Obama and Professor Henry Giroux, author of many books including Zombie Politics and Casino Capitalism, are much more critical to America’s future than the deficit the right-wing authoritarians distracted us with prior to Occupy Wall $treet – the budget deficit.

Deficit Descriptions:

In 2006, then Senator Obama talked about our “empathy deficit:”

…There’s a lot of talk in this country about the federal deficit. But I think we should talk more about our empathy deficit — the ability to put ourselves in someone else’s shoes; to see the world through those who are different from us — the child who’s hungry, the laid-off steelworker, the immigrant woman cleaning your dorm room.

As you go on in life, cultivating this quality of empathy will become harder, not easier. There’s no community service requirement in the real world; no one forcing you to care. You’ll be free to live in neighborhoods with people who are exactly like yourself, and send your kids to the same schools, and narrow your concerns to what’s going on in your own little circle.

…

They will tell you that the Americans who sleep in the streets and beg for food got there because they’re all lazy or weak of spirit. That the inner-city children who are trapped in dilapidated schools can’t learn and won’t learn and so we should just give up on them entirely. That the innocent people being slaughtered and expelled from their homes … are somebody else’s problem to take care of.

…

When we measure our greatness as a nation by how far the stock market rises or falls instead of how many opportunities we’ve opened up for America’s children, we’re displaying a preference for the childish. When we believe that force is the only way to accomplish our ends in the world, when our leaders exaggerate or fudge the truth, we haven’t set aside childish things. When we run our budget into red ink for things that we want instead of things that we need, we’re indicating that we’re not yet full-grown.

…

… Republican and Democrat alike went back to procrastinating about problems that we now have to face. We sent young Americans to fight a war without asking anyone back home to sacrifice their time or their tax cut. We argue about the inconsequential, and caricature our opponents to score cheap political points. Our media returned to covering the sensational and feeding our ever-shortening attention span.

Henry Giroux is concerned about another deficit. He has written extensively about the failure and transformation of education in America and the authoritarian leadership that has made it happen. His most recent article on this matter is available here. Some selected quotes on this deficit and its authoritarian nature are provided:

One of the major consequences of the current education deficit and the pervasive culture of illiteracy that sustains it is what I call the ideology of the big lie – which propagates the myth that the free-market system is the only mechanism to ensure human freedom and safeguard democracy.

The education deficit, along with declining levels of civic literacy, is also part of the American public’s collective refusal to know – a focused resistance on the part of many members of society to deal with knowledge that challenges common sense, or to think reflectively about facts and truths that are unsettling in terms of how they disturb some of our most cherished beliefs, especially those that denounce the sins of big government, legitimize existing levels of economic insecurity, social inequality and reduced or minimal government intervention in the field of welfare legislation.

… The cultural apparatuses of popular education and public pedagogy play a powerful role in framing how issues are perceived, what values and social relations matter and whether any small ruptures will be allowed to unsettle the circles of certainty that now reign as common sense. …

… Most of the stories now told to the American public are about the necessity of neoliberal capitalism, permanent war and the virtues of a never-ending culture of fear. …

… America seems to have moved away from that possibility, that willingness to think through and beyond the systemic production of the given, the pull of conformity, the comforting assurance of certainty and the painless retreat into a world of common sense. …

… The education deficit, a hallmark achievement of neoliberal capitalism, has produced a version of authoritarianism with a soft edge, a kind of popular authoritarianism that spreads its values through gaming, reality TV, celebrity culture, the daily news, talk radio and a host of other media outlets now aggressively engaged in producing subjects, desires and dreams that reflect a world order dominated by corporations and “free markets.” …

Notwithstanding the appeal to formalistic election rituals, democracy as a substantive mode of public address and politics is all but dead in the United States. The forces of authoritarianism are on the march and they seem at this point only to be gaining power politically, economically and educationally.

This new mode of authoritarian governance is distinct from the fascism that emerged in Germany and Italy in the mid part of the twentieth century. As Sheldon Wolin has pointed out, big business in this new mode of authoritarianism is not subordinated to a political regime and the forces of state sovereignty, but now replaces political sovereignty with corporate rule. In addition, the new authoritarianism does not strive “to give the masses a sense of collective power and strength, [but] promotes a sense of weakness, of collective futility [through] a pervasive atmosphere of fear abetted by a corporate economy of ruthless downsizing, withdrawal or reduction of pension and health benefits; a corporate political system that relentlessly threatens to privatize Social Security and the modest health benefits available, especially to the poor.”

… If they [conservatives without conscience] win the 2012 election, they will not only extend the … legacy of militarism abroad, but likely intensify the war at home as well. Political scientist Frances Fox Piven rightly argues that, “We’ve been at war for decades now – not just in Afghanistan or Iraq, but right here at home. Domestically, it’s been a war [a]gainst the poor [and as] devastating as it has been, the war against the poor has gone largely unnoticed until now.”(17) And the war at home now includes more than attacks on the poor, as campaigns are increasingly waged against the rights of women, students, workers, people of color and immigrants, especially Latino Americans. As the social state collapses, the punishing state expands its power and targets larger portions of the population. The war in Afghanistan is now mimicked in the war waged on peaceful student protesters at home. It is evident in the environmental racism that produces massive health problems for African-Americans. The domestic war is even waged on elementary school children, who now live in fear of the police handcuffing them in their classrooms and incarcerating them as if they were adult criminals.(18) It is waged on workers by taking away their pensions, bargaining rights and dignity. The spirit of militarism is also evident in the war waged on the welfare state and any form of social protection that benefits the poor, disabled, sick, elderly, and other groups now considered disposable, including children.

… There is more at work here than carpet bombing the culture with lies, deceptions and euphemisms. Language in this case does more than obfuscate or promote propaganda. It creates framing mechanisms, cultural ecosystems and cultures of cruelty, while closing down the spaces for dialogue, critique and thoughtfulness. …

Anti-public intellectuals rail against public goods and public values; they undermine collective bonds and view social responsibility as a pathology, while touting the virtues of a survival-of-the-fittest notion of individual responsibility. …

… Nothing is said in this pro-market narrative about the massive human suffering caused by a growing inequality in which society’s resources are squandered at the top, while salaries for the middle and working classes stagnate, consumption dries up, social costs are ignored, young people are locked out of jobs and any possibility of social mobility and the state reconfigures its power to punish rather than protect the vast majority of its citizens.

Causation of these deficits:

The growing empathy and education deficits – and for that matter the federal budget deficit – have developed over recent decades under the auspices of right-wing authoritarians and their finely tuned processes and a plan laid out years ago: in The Powell Memo.

Senator Obama’s “commencement speech in 2006 summarized the deficit causes in this way:

… a passage from scriptures that some of you may know: Corinthians 13:11: “When I was a child, I spoke as a child, I felt as a child, I thought as a child. Now that I have become a man, I have put away childish things.”

I bring this up because there’s an assumption in rites of passage like this that growing up is just a function of age; that becoming an adult is an inevitable and natural progression.

But in fact, I know a whole lot of thirty year olds and forty-year olds and fifty year olds who are not yet full-grown. And if you talk to my wife, she’ll tell you that there are times when I do not put aside childish things; when I continually struggle to rise above the selfish or the petty or the small.

… we live in a culture that discourages empathy. A culture that too often tells us our principal goal in life is to be rich, thin, young, famous, safe, and entertained. A culture where those in power too often encourage these selfish impulses.

As summarized by Henry Giroux, the processes destroying our democracy are: “neoliberal capitalism, permanent war and the virtues of a never-ending culture of fear.” His recent article added the following detail:

This type of turbo capitalism with its crushing cultural apparatuses of legitimation does more than destroy the public good; it empties democracy of any substance and renders authoritarian politics and culture an acceptable state of affairs. As the boundaries between markets and democratic values collapse, civil life becomes warlike and the advocates of market fundamentalism rail against state protections while offering an unbridled confirmation of the market as a template for all social relations.

… a powerful new mode of capitalism that not only controls the commanding heights of the economy, but has now also replaced political sovereignty with an aggressive form of corporate governance. The state and elite market forces, perhaps inseparable before, have become today both inseparable and powerfully aligned.

… As public spheres are privatized, commodified and turned over to the crushing forces of turbo capitalism, the opportunities for openness, inclusiveness and dialogue that nurture the very idea and possibility of a discourse about democracy cease to exist.

… And it is precisely this notion of civic agency and critical education that has been under aggressive assault within the new and harsh corporate order of casino capitalism.

The moral coma that appears characteristic of the elite who inhabit the new corporate ethic of casino capitalism has attracted the attention of scientists, whose studies recently reported that “members of the upper class are more likely to behave unethically, to lie during negotiations, to drive illegally and to cheat when competing for a prize.”

Democracy withers, public spheres disappear and the forces of authoritarianism grow when a family, such as the Waltons of Walmart fame, is allowed “to amass a combined wealth of some $90 billion, which is equivalent to the wealth of the entire bottom 30 percent of US society.”

… Antidemocratic forms of power do not stand alone as a mode of force or the force of acting on others; they are also deeply aligned with cultural apparatuses of persuasion, extending their reach through social and digital media, sophisticated technologies, the rise of corporate intellectuals and a university system that Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney continues spinning this spider web of lies unapologetically now produces and sanctions intellectuals aligned with private interests – all of which, as Randy Martin points out, can be identified with a form of casino capitalism that is about “permanent vigilance, activity and intervention.”

… University presidents now make huge salaries sitting on corporate boards, while faculty sell their knowledge to the highest corporate bidder and, in doing so, turn universities into legitimation centers for casino capitalism. …

… The conservative re-education machine appears shameless in its production of lies …. Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney continues spinning this spider web of lies unapologetically ….

… But today, distraction is the primary element being used to suppress democratically purposeful education by pushing critical thought to the margins of society. … Academics who make a claim to producing knowledge and truth in the public interest are increasingly being replaced by academics for hire who move effortlessly among industry, government and academia.

Deficit Solutions:

These destructive processes can be stopped and the former Senator Obama and Professor Giroux have some suggestions. The then Senator Obama said:

… I hope you choose to broaden, and not contract, your ambit of concern. Not because you have an obligation to those who are less fortunate, although you do have that obligation. Not because you have a debt to all of those who helped you get to where you are, although you do have that debt.

It’s because you have an obligation to yourself. Because our individual salvation depends on collective salvation. And because it’s only when you hitch your wagon to something larger than yourself that you will realize your true potential — and become full-grown.

…

Instinctively, they [observers of the Civil Rights Movement] knew that it was safer and smarter to stay at home; to watch the movement from afar. But they also understood that these people in Georgia and Alabama and Mississippi were their brothers and sisters; that what was happening was wrong; and that they had an obligation to make it right. When the buses pulled up for a Freedom Ride down South, they got on. They took a risk. And they changed the world.

…

…Making your mark on the world is hard. If it were easy, everybody would do it. But it’s not. It takes patience, it takes commitment, and it comes with plenty of failure along the way. The real test is not whether you avoid this failure, because you won’t. It’s whether you let it harden or shame you into inaction, or whether you learn from it; whether you choose to persevere.

…

…What America needs right now, more than ever, is a sense of purpose to guide us through the challenges that lie ahead; a maturity that we seem to have lost somewhere along the way; a willingness to engage in a sober, adult conversation about our future.

…

We can meet this challenge if we fix our schools, if we make college affordable, if we train our workers, if we invest more in research and technology. We know what needs to be done. What’s lacking is the political will.

…

Each and every one of these challenges calls for an America that is more purposeful, more grown-up than the America that we have today. An America that reflects the lessons that have helped so many of its people mature in their own lives. An America that’s about not just each of us, but all of us. An America that takes great risks in the face of greater odds. An America that, above all, perseveres.

Professor Giroux had the following suggestions for halting these destructive forces:

… The solution in this case does not lie in promoting piecemeal reforms, such as a greater redistribution of wealth and income, but in dismantling all the institutional, ideological and social formations that make gratuitous inequality and other antidemocratic forces possible at all. …

… Nothing will change politically or economically until new and emerging social movements take seriously the need to develop a language of radical reform and create new public spheres that support the knowledge, skills and critical thought that are necessary features of a democratic formative culture.

Our education deficit is neither reducible to the failure of particular types of teaching nor the descent into madness by the spokespersons for the new authoritarianism. Rather, it is about how matters of knowledge, values and ideology can be struggled over as issues of power and politics. Surviving the current education deficit will depend on progressives using history, memory and knowledge not only to reconnect intellectuals to the everyday needs of ordinary people, but also to jumpstart social movements by making education central to organized politics and the quest for a radical democracy.

There is much to do and learn as we continue to mature.

Corporations That Make Billions Refuse to Pay Houston Janitors a Living Wage – Houston janitors of the SEIU clean the offices of some of the largest corporations in America that are reaping billions in profits, yet these hard-working men and women are paid less than $9,000 a year.

Gilberto Hinojosa, the newly elected chairman of the Texas Democratic Party said, “Honest work should receive honest pay, but Republicans want to repeal the minimum wage to make people work for $2 an hour. Then Republicans want to whine about paying for health care for children of American parents who have jobs. It is shameful.”

“Grotesquely overpaid CEOs and upper management expect the men and women who work hard and play by the rules to be forced to beg for public assistance just to support themselves, much less a family. That is a disgrace not only to the America we love, but also to God,” Hinojosa stressed. “These striking workers are seeking a living wage for their work in cleaning the offices of Texas millionaires and one percenters, who not only refuse to pay a decent wage for honest work but are also enlisting Republican support to protect them from paying their fair share of taxes.”

Chairman Gilberto Hinojosa and The Texas Democratic Party call upon all Texans who support the right to a living wage to make a meaningful stand by signing the petition.

Over 10,000 High Earners Paid No US Taxes – A study from the Internal Revenue Service has found that one out of 189 high earners in the US paid no income tax in 2009. That is, 10,080 households who reported adjusted gross income of at least $200,000 annually — 0.26 percent of high earners — paid no income taxes in the US or to other countries. Overall the IRS found that there were 35,061 households that paid nothing. These are some of the same people who don’t want to pay janitors (see above). It is also further reason to support President Obama’s “Buffett rule,” which would tax high-earners at a rate of 30 percent or higher.

Middle Class Would Face Higher Taxes Under Republican Plan, Analysis Finds – The tax reform plan that House Republicans have advanced would sharply cut taxes for the wealthiest Americans and could leave middle-class households facing much larger tax bills, according to a new analysis set to be released Wednesday.

The report, prepared by Senate Democrats and reviewed by nonpartisan tax experts, marks the first attempt to quantify the trade-offs inherent in the GOP tax package, which would replace the current tax structure with two brackets — 25 percent and 10 percent — and cut the top rate from 35 percent.

Obama For America TV Ad: “Come And Go”

Obama for America TV Ad: “Mosaic”

Romney Hires Alleged Perpetrator of Voter Fraud – Here are a few highlights culled from a recent story in Republic Report and elsewhere:

*The firm Sproul and Associates was investigated for voter fraud in Nevada during their work on behalf of the Bush-Cheney campaign in 2004. Sproul’s registrars allegedly canvassed voters about which candidate they were planning to support. If they were leaning Republican, the group helped them to register. If they leaned Democratic, they ignored them, or later destroyed the form.

*In Oregon as well, the state attorney general opened a criminal investigation into allegations that Sproul’s group (they have since changed their name to “Lincoln Strategies”) was involved in intentionally destroying or discarding voter registration forms signed by Democrats. Portland CBS affiliate KLAS-TV reported that a former employee of Sproul claimed that hundreds, if not thousands, of Democratic registration forms were trashed by the Sproul’s minions.

*Sproul and his operatives were also behind efforts to gather signatures on a petition to place Ralph Nader on the ballot in Arizona in an attempt to siphon votes off from Democrat, John Kerry in 2004.
*During the midterm elections in 2006 Sproul’s “registrars” were kicked out of Wal-Mart in Tennessee, and also the Oregon library system for claiming fraudulently that they were engaged in a “non-partisan voter registration drive, when they were really working for the Republican National Committee.

*In Arizona, according to Salon, Sproul’s minions employed a variety of deceptive tactics– including systematically lying about the bill– to push a ballot initiative to eviscerate the state’s Clean Elections Law. [Salon, 10/21/04]

Sproul’s capers include “tricking Democrats into registering as Republicans, surreptitiously re-registering Democrats and Independents as Republicans, and shredding Democratic registration forms,” according to the Baltimore Chronicle. For which services during the 2004 presidential election campaign, Sproul was paid an astounding $8.3 million by Bush and the Republicans, investigative journalists Mark Crispin Miller and Jared Irmas discovered.

That makes the $71,391 in fees that the consultant has reportedly received so far from Romney for President Inc.

Texas Wrongly Suspending Voters – Texas already has a low voter registration rate, and many of the state’s registered voters are in danger of losing that status. The Houston Chronicle reported that 1.5 million voters are in “suspended” status, which means they will be dropped from registration rolls on Nov. 30. Voters are suspended if they failed to respond to letters seeking to confirm their residence or if they did not receive a letter that was sent.

Some voters may have been dropped from the rolls without knowing it and through no fault of their own. For example, former Harris County Commissioner Sylvia Garcia told the newspaper that she was placed on suspension in 2003 for failing to respond to a letter that she never received.

The Chronicle report cited U.S. Elections Commission data showing that 21 percent of Texans who have received “purge letters” were valid voters who contacted officials and avoided being dropped.

War Contractors Using Slave Labor – U.S. contractors have made billions from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. But now, several – including big names like KBR, formerly part of Halliburton – are being investigated for slave labor. Let the Senate know that our tax dollars were never meant to fund slavery. Tell them to IMMEDIATELY pass the bipartisan End Trafficking in Government Contracting Act and stop taxpayer funded modern slavery.

House Republicans Killing Transportation Jobs – Both the U.S. Senate and House have passed versions of the surface transportation bill—the Senate version of the bill would create or sustain nearly 3 million jobs—and a conference committee of key House and Senate leaders is negotiating final details of the bill right now. But some Republicans in the House want to make it their way or the highway. They want to starve funding for badly needed infrastructure projects and hold hostage family-sustaining jobs.

In the past two and a half years, Congress has settled for nine short-term extensions instead of coming up with a long-term solution to fix our crumbling infrastructure and get ironworkers, crane operators, cement masons and other construction workers—14 percent of whom are currently unemployed—back on the job. For too long, we have watched while politicians pushed policies that have sent jobs overseas while kicking the can down the road on investing in infrastructure projects that would create jobs here.

Tell your elected leaders in Washington to pass the surface transportation bill before the June 30 deadline.

Romney’s Bain Capital invested in companies that moved jobs overseas – Mitt Romney’s financial company, Bain Capital, invested in a series of firms that specialized in relocating jobs done by American workers to new facilities in low-wage countries like China and India.

During the nearly 15 years that Romney was actively involved in running Bain, a private equity firm that he founded, it owned companies that were pioneers in the practice of shipping work from the United States to overseas call centers and factories making computer components, according to filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

Regards,

Jim

Republicans Pass House Bill to Allow Mass Propaganda Campaigns on American Citizens – An amendment legalizing the use of mass propaganda campaigns on American audiences has been inserted into the latest defense authorization bill — and that bill just passed the Republican-controlled House.

The NDAA amendment lifts bans on propaganda that have been around since the 1940s, neutralizing laws put in place to protect the American people from its government’s own “misinformation” campaigns.

“It removes the protection for Americans,” a Pentagon official told Buzzfeed, who broke the story. “There are no checks and balances. No one knows if the information is accurate, partially accurate, or entirely false.”

The amendment would remove all distinction between a hostile foreign audience and American one, turning the massive information operation apparatus within the federal government against its own people. Republican lawmakers like spying on you.

Please click link above to demand that the Senate oppose ending the propaganda ban — it’ll be up for a vote as soon as next week.

Republicans in Florida Pushing Mass Voter Purge – Do you remember the Florida debacle in the 2000 presidential race? At the time, news focused on the recount and the spectacle of the infamous “hanging chad.” But when the dust settled, America learned that the real affront to democracy was the flawed purge of eligible voters from the voting rolls in advance of the election.

The state that ultimately decided the election for George W. Bush by a mere 537 votes, hired a firm to purge ex-felons — who had lost their right to vote according to state law — from the voter file. But the data match was so sloppy that countless eligible voters, mostly African American, were scrubbed from the file and turned away from the polls on Election Day.

Now, under Florida’s Tea Party governor, Rick Scott, it’s happening all over again! Florida has begun a purge of “non-citizens” from the voting rolls and reports are saying that hundreds of eligible voters have already been struck from the rolls.

Florida has already put out an initial list of more than 2,600 people identified as non-U.S. citizens and has indicated it could aim to purge up to 180,000 supposed non-citizens from the rolls … but from all the inaccuracies we’ve seen so far, that could mean a staggering number of eligible voters being wrongfully purged and denied their right to vote.

This process is going forward with no oversight, and is all too reminiscent of the scrub orchestrated in 2000 by

Republican Secretary of State Katherine Harris under then-Gov. Jeb Bush.

Click the link above to sign our petition right now to Gov. Rick Scott telling him to stop the purge and stop disenfranchising eligible voters.

Wisconsin Republican Governor Supporters Attack Teachers – An anonymous group of Wisconsin Republican Gov. Walker supporters has stuffed newspaper delivery chutes at the homes of Janesville residents with a flier that lists the names and salaries of more than 300 teachers in the rural town, directs readers to a website to check if their teacher signed a recall petition and has a tear-off card urging parents to contact their school superintendent and board members to request that their child be assigned to a classroom taught by a “non-radical teacher.”

North Carolina Legislators Introduce Bill Making It Illegal to Use Good Science to Predict Sea-Level Rise From Global Warming – North Carolina’s General Assembly has proposed a bill that would prevent scientists from using modern, scientific models to accurately predict what might happen to sea levels if climate change continues unabated.

Rather than use science to accurately predict what might happen to its valuable coast areas, and thereby educate its citizens about what can be done to prepare for this change, North Carolina’s political leaders would rather just make the truth illegal.

Typically, scientists use an exponential model to predict how much sea levels will rise if global temperatures continue to do the same. They have to use a non-linear model because each time the climate warms even a fraction of a degree, it has a major impact on the ocean’s current volume as well as ice cap melt rates.

Taking these variables into account, most climate experts say that sea levels will rise at least three feet by the end of the century. But this doesn’t sit well with a group of legislators from 20 coastal NC counties whose economies will be most impacted by the swelling seas. So, they’ve introduced Replacement House Bill 819, which makes it illegal for state scientists to use exponential models to predict changes in sea level.

The key language is in section 2, paragraph e, talking about rates of sea level rise: “These rates shall only be determined using historical data, and these data shall be limited to the time period following the year 1900. Rates of seas-level rise may be extrapolated linearly. …”

“It goes on,” writes Scott Huler for Scientific American, “but there’s the core: North Carolina legislators have decided that the way to make exponential increases in sea level rise – caused by those inconvenient feedback loops we keep hearing about from scientists – go away is to make it against the law to extrapolate exponential; we can only extrapolate along a line predicted by previous sea level rises.”

Romney’s Actions on Space Do Not Match His Words – At the CNN Republican Debate on 1/26/2012, Mitt Romney said, “I spent 25 years in business. If I had a business executive come to me and say they wanted to spend a few hundred billion dollars to put a colony on the moon, I’d say, ‘You’re fired,'”

On 1/27/2012, Former NASA Administration Michael Griffin was named to the Romney Space Policy Advisory Group.

On 5/12/2012, Griffin said, “In order to extend human exploration, fly beyond the earth and have a presence in the solar system, the next step in doing that would be to have a permanent base on the moon.”

Question: Will Romney keep his promise by firing Michael Griffin?

Rescuer Arrested For Helping Victim of Police-Horse Trampling in Houston – On Thursday more than 450 people—representing a broad cross-section of Houston—gathered in the city’s Skyline District at a peaceful demonstration calling for the end of poverty-wage jobs in Houston.

The protestors—many of whom clean downtown buildings and make just $9000 annually as janitors—were gathered outside of JP Morgan Chase when police horses trampled multiple protestors. One of the protestors was arrested after she ran out into the street to help a janitor who had been knocked down by one of the horses.

This violent reaction by the police to a group of workers peacefully protesting is an outrage. This is not the way our city—or democracy—is supposed to work. Join us in calling on Houston’s mayor and business community to put an end to economic injustice by intervening on behalf of janitors and working together to create good jobs for Houston.

Regards,

Jim

In a recent article by George Lakoff, the author explains how Republicans won the message war and confirmed Scott Walker as the governor of Wisconsin.

“Where progressives argued policy — the right to collective bargaining and the importance of public education — conservatives argued morality from their perspective, and many working people who shared their moral views voted with them and against their own interests. Why? Because morality is central to identity, and hence trumps policy.”

In other wards, speaking to moral values trumps policy speak and facts …

Lakoff went on to provide the basic solution for progressives:

“What progressives need to do is clear. To people who have mixed values — partly progressive, partly conservative — talk progressive values in progressive language, thus strengthening progressive moral views in their brains. Never move to the right thinking you’ll get more cooperation that way.

“Start telling deep truths out loud all day every day: Democracy is about citizens caring about each other. The Public is necessary for The Private. Pensions are delayed earnings for work already done; eliminating them is theft. Unions protect workers from corporate exploitation — low salaries, no job security, managerial threats, and inhumane working conditions. Public schools are essential to opportunity, and not just financially: they provide the opportunity to make the most of students’ skills and interests. They are also essential to democracy, since democracy requires an educated citizenry at large, as well as trained professionals in every community. Without education of the public, there can be no freedom.”

Would you like to know how to express your progressive moral values and put issues into that higher context? Well, Lakoff and Elisabeth Wehling have written a book on how to do that:

“The Little Blue Book is a guide to how to express your moral views and how to reveal hidden truths that undermine conservative claims. And it explains why this has to be done constantly, not just during election campaigns. It is the cumulative effect that matters, as conservatives well know.

“The Little Blue Book can be ordered as en e-book or paperback at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, iTunes, or at your local bookstore as of June 26.”