The WAWG Blog

Exxon Aims to Bail on Payments for Valdez Damage – It’s been more than 22 years since the Exxon Valdez dumped 10 million gallons of crude into Alaska’s Prince William Sound, but you don’t have to look very hard to fnd lingering impacts from the spill. You can actually still find oil on the shore there, the fisheries are still struggling, and some bird species haven’t recovered. But now Exxon is saying it won’t pay up, despite an agreement to cover those additional cleanup costs.

Cain Proposes Electric Fence To Kill Illegal Immigrants – On a campaign tour through Tennessee, Cain elaborated on what will be a central portion of his immigration policy: a big electric fence. Cain’s fence, he announced on Saturday, would be electrified and run the entire course of the US-Mexican border with voltage high enough to kill anyone trying to enter illegally.

Cain’s ideal fence would be 20 feet high with barbed wire on the top with a sign saying “It will kill you–Warning.” In a campaign stop in Tennessee, Cain clarified that the sign would be written in both English and Spanish.

In case the big electric fence wasn’t enough, Cain would add some extra (unspecified) “technology” to cut down on illegal immigration. He also suggested adding American troops armed with live ammunition to patrol the border, indicating maybe that “technology” he’s referring to is something akin to drone crafts armed with bombs.

Update: Cain went on NBC’s “Meet the Press” to quickly walk back remarks that he’d build an electric fence designed to kill illegal immigrants as part of his approach to immigration policy. Cain told David Gregory the whole thing was a joke and described it as not a “serious plan.” (Actually, his whole campaign is a joke. – JLV)

Funny, in campaign rallies in Tennessee Cain spoke at length about the fence, providing details of how he thought the fence should look and how it would work. And he prefaced those statements with “we have a crisis of illegal immigration.” Those don’t sound like the words of a man cracking a joke.

It gets worse. Cain may be walking back his electric border fence, insisting it was a joke, but that ignores the fact that Cain’s crowd wasn’t laughing. They were cheering. And that’s a fact that no-one seems willing to acknowledge.

Wall Street Occupies Washington D.C. – In order to engage in these practices that brought the world’s economy to its knees, Wall Street had to make sure that the federal government based in Washington, DC would both de-regulate the financial industry (and provide lax oversight) and that Congress and the Federal Reserve would bail out banks with few strings attached if they were in danger of failing.

The way the financial industry and big banks won this kid glove treatment from the federal government is by occupying Washington — flooding it with campaign contributions, lobbyists, and its own staffers and executives to occupy key positions of power. ThinkProgress has assembled a rundown of three ways Wall Street has occupied Washington (click the link to read about them).

Wisconsin Town Considering Restricting Bikes, Pedestrians on Town Roads – The town of Hull is considering restricting bike and pedestrian use on some of its roads, a measure one advocacy group says is illegal. The ordinance is in response to what town officials say is a growing problem with road safety, but the town hasn’t had a crash involving a bike or pedestrian since 2008.

Federal Air Pollution Protections for Drilling are Woefully Outdated – In the drilling rig-studded Upper Green River Basin of Wyoming, levels of smog-forming ozone reached 123 parts per billion earlier this year—worse than the worst day in Los Angeles all last year.

It’s not just the people of Wyoming who are noticing a problem. A controversial technology called hydraulic fracturing—or fracking—has led to a gas drilling boom from Colorado to Pennsylvania. But federal air pollution protections for drilling are woefully outdated and do not cover most pollution sources. That means that people who live near the gasfields are left with lung-burning smog and cancer-causing benzene.

Bank of America Needs Your $5 – Bank of America received $138 billion in bailout funds from us, paid no federal taxes, claimed a $3 billion profit in 2010 and awarded its CEO a $9.05 million bonus but is hard up enough for cash that they now *must* charge anyone with an account below $6,000 a $5/month charge for the privilege of having an ATM card.

Regards,

Jim

Pizza Magnate Herman Cain Making Delivery To Koch Brothers – Republican presidential hopeful Herman Cain has cast himself as the outsider, the pizza magnate with real-world experience who will bring fresh ideas to the nation’s capital. But Cain’s economic ideas, support and organization have close ties to the billionaire Koch brothers who bankroll right-leaning causes through their group Americans for Prosperity. (Yes, the same Koch brothers who want more taxes on the poor and middle class, and less on the rich. 999 anyone? – JLV)

Cain’s campaign manager and a number of aides have worked for Americans for Prosperity, or AFP, the advocacy group founded with support from billionaire brothers Charles and David Koch, which lobbies for lower taxes and less government regulation and spending. Cain credits a businessman who served on an AFP advisory board with helping devise his “9-9-9” plan to rewrite the nation’s tax code. And his years of speaking at AFP events have given the businessman and radio host a network of loyal grassroots fans.

AFP tapped Cain as the public face of its “Prosperity Expansion Project,” and he traveled the country in 2005 and 2006 speaking to activists who were starting state-based AFP chapters from Wisconsin to Virginia. Through his AFP work he met Mark Block, a longtime Wisconsin Republican operative hired to lead that state’s AFP chapter in 2005 as he rebounded from an earlier campaign scandal that derailed his career.

Block and Cain sometimes traveled together as they built up AFP: Cain was the charismatic speaker preaching the ills of big government; Block was the operative helping with nuts and bolts.

While Cain is quick to promote his career at the helm of the Godfather’s Pizza chain, his ties to AFP aren’t something the candidate appears eager to highlight.

Regards,

Jim

Republican/Libertarian Senator Rand Paul is Blocking Pipeline Safety Legislation – Republican Sen. Rand Paul is single-handedly blocking legislation that would strengthen safety rules of oil and gas pipelines, despite the fact that the bill has industry support simply because he hates government.

In fact, Sen. Paul’s hatred of government runs so deep that his opposition to the bill didn’t change even after a gasoline rupture shook three counties in his home state, Kentucky.

It was after a deadly gas pipeline explosion in a San Francisco suburb last year, and on the heels of other recent explosions and oil pipeline spills, that Congress and the oil and gas industry agreed an overhaul of federal safety regulations was in order.
The bill Sen. Paul opposes would authorize more federal safety inspectors, and pipeline companies would have to confirm that their records on how much pressure their pipelines can tolerate was accurate. The bill would also allow federal regulators to order that automatic shutoff valves be installed on new pipelines to halt leaks sooner. The provisions would expand pipeline inspections to rural areas and would all be paid for by industry fees.

Ideology may serve Sen. Paul well on the campaign trail, but it is doing zero good for his constituents or the rest of America. So far, all the Tea Party has proven is its ability to obstruct bills that have the rare bipartisan support.

Koch Brothers Getting Richer With Secret Sales to Iran – In May 2008, a unit of Koch Industries Inc., one of the world’s largest privately held companies, sent Ludmila Egorova-Farines, its newly hired compliance officer and ethics manager, to investigate the management of a subsidiary in Arles in southern France. In less than a week, she discovered that the company had paid bribes to win contracts.

“I uncovered the practices within a few days,” Egorova-Farines says. “They were not hidden at all.”

She immediately notified her supervisors in the U.S. A week later, Wichita, Kansas-based Koch Industries dispatched an investigative team to look into her findings. By September of that year, the researchers had found evidence of improper payments to secure contracts in six countries dating back to 2002, authorized by the business director of the company’s Koch-Glitsch affiliate in France. “Those activities constitute violations of criminal law,” Koch Industries wrote in a Dec. 8, 2008, letter giving details of its findings. The letter was made public in a civil court ruling in France in September 2010; the document has never before been reported by the media.

Egorova-Farines wasn’t rewarded for bringing the illicit payments to the company’s attention. Her superiors removed her from the inquiry in August 2008 and fired her in June 2009, calling her incompetent, even after Koch’s investigators substantiated her findings.

Internal company documents show that the company made those sales through foreign subsidiaries, thwarting a U.S. trade ban. Koch Industries units have also rigged prices with competitors, lied to regulators and repeatedly run afoul of environmental regulations, resulting in five criminal convictions since 1999 in the U.S. and Canada. From 1999 through 2003, Koch Industries was assessed more than $400 million in fines, penalties and judgments. In December 1999, a civil jury found that Koch Industries had taken oil it didn’t pay for from federal land by mis-measuring the amount of crude it was extracting. Koch paid a $25 million settlement to the U.S.

Phil Dubose, a Koch employee who testified against the company said he and his colleagues were shown by their managers how to steal and cheat — using techniques they called the Koch Method.

Yes, these are the same guys who are funding the Tea Party and trying to dismantle Social Security.

96-Year-Old Woman Denied Voting ID for First Time in Her Life – Dorothy Cooper is 96 years old, and she can only remember one election when she was eligible to vote, but didn’t.

The retired domestic worker was born in a small North Georgia town before women had the right to vote. She began casting ballots in her 20s after moving to Chattanooga for work. She missed voting for John F. Kennedy in 1960 because a move to Nashville prevented her from registering in time.

So when she learned last month at a community meeting that under a new Tennessee state law she would need a photo ID to vote next year, she talked with a volunteer about how to get to a state Driver Service Center to get her free ID. But when she got there Monday with an envelope full of documents, a clerk denied her request.

That morning, Cooper slipped a rent receipt, a copy of her lease, her voter registration card and her birth certificate into a Manila envelope. Typewritten on the birth certificate was her maiden name, Dorothy Alexander.

But since she didn’t have a marriage certificate, the clerk denied Ms. Cooper a free voter ID at the Cherokee Boulevard Driver Service Center.

Republicans May Suppress More Than 5 Million Voters – The Brennan Center for Justice at New York University School of Law has determined that more than 5 million voters may find it significantly more difficult to vote. As one can read in the executive summary at the website for the report:

These new restrictions fall most heavily on young, minority, and low-income voters, as well as on voters with disabilities. This wave of changes may sharply tilt the political terrain for the 2012 election. Based on the Brennan Center’s analysis of the 19 laws and two executive actions that passed in 14 states, it is clear that:

* These new laws could make it significantly harder for more than five million eligible voters to cast ballots in 2012.
* The states that have already cut back on voting rights will provide 171 electoral votes in 2012 – 63 percent of the 270 needed to win the presidency.
* Of the 12 likely battleground states, as assessed by an August Los Angeles Times analysis of Gallup polling, five have already cut back on voting rights (and may pass additional restrictive legislation), and two more are currently considering new restrictions.

State Agency Censored Scientific Study According to Scientist – A long-awaited report on Galveston Bay is being delayed by accusations that Texas’ environmental agency deleted references from a scientific article to climate change, people’s impact on the environment and sea-level rise.

John Anderson, the Maurice Ewing professor of oceanography at Rice University and author of the article, accused the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality of basing its decision to delete certain references on politics rather than science. Anderson wrote to TCEQ Commissioner Buddy Garcia Aug. 30 complaining about the censorship, including as an example the deletion of a section saying the ocean level in Galveston Bay is rising by 3 millimeters a year, compared with the long-term average of 0.5 millimeters.

“The sea level rates presented in this chapter are scientific fact, not speculation,” he wrote to Garcia.

TCEQ also deleted any references to human-caused change in other contexts, including a reference to human activity being responsible for wetlands destruction.

TCEQ spokeswoman Andrea Morrow gave no reason for the deletions in an e-mail response, saying only that the agency disagreed with information in the article.

Republicans in Congress Threaten to Allow Pesticides in Our Waterways – More than 1,000 U.S. waterways are known to be impaired by pesticide pollution — and many more may be polluted. In a nationwide survey, the U.S. Geological Survey found pesticides (or their byproducts) in every stream it sampled.

Pesticides discharged into our waterways can kill or cause severe reproductive and developmental harm and cancer in fish and amphibians. The toxins can also move up the food chain, potentially accumulating in people who eat fish, and can contaminate our drinking-water supplies.

Yet there’s a bill in the Senate right now that would prevent the protection of our waterways under the Clean Water Act from pesticide discharges.

The petrochemical industry and large-scale agribusiness are pushing Congress to undermine the Clean Water Act by exempting pesticide applications from the protections and safeguards of water-quality monitoring and permits. Your U.S. senators need to hear from you now that our waterways must be protected from pesticide discharges.
Please take action to urge your senators to oppose all efforts to prevent the EPA from protecting our waterways from pesticide pollution.

Regards,

Jim

The top ONE% have had their way for three decades. They created the Great Recession and still got richer. They’ve received excessive tax breaks for 30 years and thus have not been repaying what they have taken from the rest of us.

Higher education requires debt that can’t be paid off. The middle class is walking way from their homes because banks are greedy. They are declaring backruptcy after corporate health care denies them coverage. Households require 2 or more wage earners working two or more jobs to meet basic expenses. To make up for what the ONE% has taken, the middle class went into debt that has grown larger than the national debt as a percent of the GDP.

Middle class real wages have stagnated. Infrastructure is failing. Clean energy development lacks funding, and we continue to live in an out-of-date petroleum based economy.

It’s time for the ONE% to pay-it-forward. It’s time for the 99% to out do, out smart, and out vote those who have demolished the middle class and tried to drown our democracy.

They have fear mongering and Noble Lies. We have the ability to think critically and can ignore them. They have monetary wealth. We have us – the people of America – and we’re not taking it anymore.

Republican Redistricting Committee Member Lied About His Involvement in Redrawing His District – In April, during floor debate on the state house redistricting proposal, Republican State Representative and member of the House Committee on Redistricting Aaron Pena emphatically and repeatedly stated that he had no role in drawing the actual lines for the controversial district that was created for him in Hidalgo County.

During last week’s redistricting trial, Ryan Downton, the House Redistricting Committee Counsel, testified in open court that he worked with Representative Pena on the district lines after the first draft of the map was released. He then went on to say that Pena would identify specific neighborhoods that he believed were favorable to him so that Downton would include those in his district.

The incident Downton refers to in which he and Pena worked together to modify the initial configuration of state house district 41 occurred sometime between April 13 and April 19.

Eight days later, on April 27, the state house map was debated on the House floor at which time Pena, in direct contradiction with Downton’s testimony, unequivocally stated he had no role whatsoever in the drawing of the actual lines for his district.

Republican Congressman Refuses to Investigate News Corp Scandal – Earlier this week eight members of the House Oversight Committee urged Committee Chairman Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) to listen to repeated requests that he investigate Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp. (the parent company of Fox News). (1)

Rep. Issa’s response? To go on Murdoch’s Fox News Channel and say that he wasn’t going to do anything. (2)

News Corp. has been implicated in the bribery of foreign law enforcement officials, the hacking of Sept. 11 victims’ phone lines, the cover-up of an Internet hacking scandal in the U.S. and numerous other offenses.

Rep. Issa’s Oversight and Government Reform Committee is charged with protecting the interests of U.S. citizens against the illegal actions of corporations, regardless of their political leanings.

Don’t let Rep. Issa sweep the Murdoch scandal under the rug. Sign this letter urging an investigation.

(1) Jordy Yager, “Dem. Lawmakers Press Issa to Probe News Corp.’s Alleged Hacking,” The Hill, Sept. 12, 2011

(2) Lee Fang, “Issa: We Won’t Investigate News Corp.’s Alleged Hacking Of 9/11 Victims Because We Don’t Want To Pick On The Media,” ThinkProgress, Sept. 14, 2011

Regards,

Jim

Republican Wants to Give Charter Schools a Free Pass – An amendment by Rep. Steve King, Republican of Iowa, to H.R. 2218, the Federal Charter Bill, would have removed a requirement that the performance of low-income and minority students and students with disabilities be used to measure the success of charter schools. In other words, King wanted to let charter schools have access to federal expansion grants even if they could not meet the same standards of performance for student subgroups demanded of all regular public schools under federal law. King’s proposal was deservedly shot down by a vote of 374 to 43.

Four members of the Texas delegation in the U.S. House supported Rep. King’s retrograde idea: Republicans Michael Burgess, Louie Gohmert, Ron Paul, and Ted Poe. Republican Rep. Lamar Smith did not vote. The other 27 members of the Texas delegation—18 Republicans and 9 Democrats—joined forces in opposition to the King attempt to lower quality standards for charter schools receiving federal aid.

The Plan to Kill School Teacher, Fire Fighter, and Police Retirement Pensions – Bill King, a Houston Lawyer and Texans for Public Pension Reform want to end teacher and other public sector worker pensions. Across this state, everyone from school district support personnel, teacher aides, teachers, fire fighters, police, and other state employees rely on a pension to help them in their old age. Most of these workers are not covered by Social Security. The idea is to gradually phase out defined benefit pensions in favor of defined contribution retirement plans, like 401(k)s.

That doesn’t sit well with people like Max Patterson. He’s the executive director of the Texas Association of Employee Retirement Systems. He says 401(k)s were intended to supplement, not replace, traditional pensions.

We’re #1. Thanks Rick! – Under Governor Rick Perry, Texas ranks #1 in several categories among all states, here are a few:

#1 in percentage of uninsured children
#1 in percentage of uninsured population
#1 in percentage of non-elderly uninsured
1st in the amount of carbon dioxide emissions
1st in the amount of Volatile Organic Compounds released into the air
1st in the amount of toxic chemicals released into water
1st in the amount of recognized Cancer causing carcinogens released into the air
1st in the amount of hazardous waste generated

More executions than any other state – Under Rick Perry Texas ranks #50 in several categories, here are just a few:

50th place in percentage of population 25 and older with a High School Diploma
50th place in the per capita State spending on mental health
Least percentage of non-elderly Women with health insurance
Last place in the percentage of pregnant women receiving prenatal care in the first trimester

And Texas ranks 50th in Workers’ Compensation Coverage

Texas’ Decision to Close Physics Programs Jeopardizes Nation’s Future – The Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board (THECB) has to varying degrees cut 60% of the undergraduate physics programs in the state. In 2009, Texas state schools produced 162 B.A./B.S. degrees in physics (and another 38 by its private schools). But Texas produces 50% fewer B.S. physics degrees, per capita, than California. Closing physics programs would therefore seem to be a step in the wrong direction.

The State of Texas is leading the country down an abysmal path. If all the other states were to adopt Texas’ approach, which the State of Florida is already considering, 526 of the roughly 760 physics departments in the US would be shuttered.

College physics programs are the incubators of content-driven K-12 physics teachers that plant the seeds that blossom into future Texas innovators. Physics graduates are direct contributors to economic prosperity. Even at the BS level a physics degree leads to high-paying jobs that fire the engines of innovation. The THECB decision jeopardizes Texas’ overall economic prosperity. And if the Texas model spreads to other states, that nation’s security will surely be put at risk.

Republicans Vote to Gut Worker Protections – The Republican-controlled U.S. House of Representatives voted 238 to 186 to pass the misleadingly named “Protecting Jobs from Government Interference” Act (H.R. 2587). The bill guts worker protections by opening a huge hole in the National Labor Relations Act – a law that has protected American workers for more than 75 years. The bill strips from law the only meaningful remedy available to workers when companies violate their rights, and makes it easier for companies to ship jobs overseas and bust unions.

See how your Representative voted.

Regards,

Jim

Texas Cut Volunteer Fire Dept. Spending By 75% – According to KVUE (Austin ABC News affiliate) the state of Texas, with Rick Perry as governor, cut funding for volunteer fire departments from thirty million a year to just seven million. Volunteers reportedly make up about 80 percent of the firefighters in the state, and about ninety percent of the first responders for wildfires.

It wasn’t only volunteer fire departments that experienced cuts, however. The Texas Forest Service, also was faced with extensive budget cuts. In May it was reported they might lost $34 million in funding.

Yet the Forest Service is very involved in supporting the volunteer fire departments with training, equipment and grants.

This year in Texas, they reportedly have been over 18,000 fires impacting 3.5 million acres. One source says over 1,600 homes have been lost and over 120,000 acres have experienced fire in the recent situation.

Republican Senator Won’t Even Consider Cuts to Military Spending – Senator Jon Kyl (R–AZ) is the leading Republican Senator on the “Super Committee” charged with making deficit reduction recommendations. The committee has met only ONE TIME and already Sen. Kyl is pitching a fit, threatening to take his toys and go home if any cuts to Pentagon spending are considered by the committee.

Spending on war and the military accounts for 50% of all the money Congress spends. If this super committee can’t tackle military spending, there’s no sensible way for them to reduce the deficit.

Sign the open letter to the other 11 Supercommittee members asking them to ignore Kyl.

Republicans Fail Fact Check of CNN/Tea Party Express Debate – Politifact has the initial scorecard on last night’s debate. Here’s some results:

Rick Perry’s claim about Social Security was rated “False.”
Rick Perry’s claim about the stimulus was rated “Pants on Fire.”
Michele Bachmann’s claim about the health care law was rated “Mostly False.”
Rick Perry’s claim about the HPV vaccine was rated “Mostly False.”
Mitt Romney’s claim about the health care law was rated “Mostly False.”
Herman Cain’s claim about Social Security was rated only “Half True.”
Jon Huntsman’s claim about jobs was rated only “Half True.”

The only statements rated “True” or “Mostly True” was when one Republican criticized another.

Tea Party Audience Cheers Letting the Uninsured Die – The audience Monday night’s CNN Tea Party Express Republican primary debate was eager to see the death of a hypothetical man who was in a coma and also did not have health care insurance.

CNN’s Wolf Blitzer posed this question to Republican presidential candidate Ron Paul: “A healthy young, 30-year-old man has a good job, makes a good living but decides, ‘You know what? I’m not going to spend $200 or $300 a month on health insurance because I’m healthy, I don’t need it.’ But something terrible happens, all the sudden he needs it. What’s going to happen if he goes into a coma? Who pays for that?”

“What he should do is whatever he wants to do,” Paul replied. “That’s what freedom is all about, taking your own risks. This whole idea that you have to prepare to take care of everybody…”

“Are you saying society should just let him die?” Blitzer asked.

The audience responded with shouts of “Yes!”

Last week, an audience at the Republican debate erupted in applause at the mention that Gov. Rick Perry had presided over 234 executions In Florida.

Republican Rep Says not Important for Federal Government to Help Pay Teachers – Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA) appeared on Morning Joe Monday, and suggested that saving teachers’ jobs was little more than a second wave of unnecessary stimulus

When the California congressman appeared on the MSNBC and was asked about his thoughts on President Obama’s jobs plan, Issa went on the attack, specifically turning his attention towards teachers.

“There are tougher issues,” he said. “Whether or not the federal government borrows money from overseas sources to keep teachers in XYZ state on the payroll seems to be ‘stimulus II.’ It seems to be something that the state’s have to decide what the right number of teachers are, and fund that, and not have us borrow money from overseas.”

The ‘Big Lies’ About the Economy – Former U.S. Labor Secretary and University of California at Berkeley professor Robert Reich gave the keynote speech at the “Summit for a Fair Economy” held in Minneapolis on Saturday. He discussed the big lies about the economy and what could be done to make the economy work for everyone. Reich shows:

1) Tax cuts to the rich and corporations have never trickled down to the rest of us.

2) Shrinking government kills jobs.

3) The economy grew when the US raised taxes on the rich.

4) If debt is properly used to grow the economy, it becomes a smaller part of the budget because of increased revenue.

5) Social Security is solid for 26 years. It is solid beyond that if the rich would just pay the same percentage in social security taxes as the rest of us do.

6) The poor have no money and taxing them will not provide any measurable income to solve our budget problems.

Republicans Block Fast-Track for Disaster Relief – Republicans blocked an effort Monday by Senate Democrats to quickly pass a $7 billion aid package for victims of recent natural disasters like Hurricane Irene, tornadoes in the Midwest and the South and floods along the Mississippi, Missouri and other rivers. On a 53-to-33 vote, the Senate rejected an effort by Senator Harry Reid, Democrat of Nevada and majority leader, to bring up a bill that Democrats had hoped to use to replenish the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s depleted disaster fund. Democrats needed 60 votes to advance the measure.

Regards,

Jim

In a posting from August 2006, I provided a table on the traits of the authoritarian personalities: Leaders and Followers. This same table was reposted in a December 2010 posting about the Tea Party. In January 2009, my posting included a table comparing the conservative and progressive worldviews based on factors defined in the writings of George Lakoff.

These postings summarize the two visions of America we are facing today: American Democracy and American Authoritarianism.

This posting adds to this comparison of the two visions for America. The first table below is based on a recent article by George Lakoff. The second table is based on the book Zombie Politics and Culture in the Age of Casino Capitalism by Professor Henry Giroux.

The following is based on the book Zombie Politics and Culture in the Age of Casino Capitalism by Professor Henry Giroux.

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

At Secret Billionaires Conference, School Teachers Are Announced as the Next Major Target – Charles and David Koch are co-owners of Koch Industries, an energy and chemical conglomerate inherited from their father that is currently America’s second-largest privately held company. To date, the brothers have spent more than $100 million supporting hard-right political campaigns and institutions. They are key funders of the movement to discredit climate science and sow doubt on the scientific consensus that human activities contribute to global warming.

The Kochs also bankrolled the fledgling tea party by making massive investments in right-wing political advocacy groups such as Americans for Prosperity. More generally, the brothers have dedicated a portion of their vast wealth—and that of their benefactors—to influencing elections across the nation and swaying public opinion on everything from health care and fracking to labor policy and government spending.

The brothers have held their biannual seminars since at least 2003, endeavoring to keep almost everything about them a secret—not just the content but also the identities of attendees and speakers, and even the locations and dates. They’ve succeeded until recently.

On the morning of June 26, Chris Christie, New Jersey’s flamboyant, tough-talking Republican governor, appeared on NBC’s Meet The Press. He then jetted out to Colorado, delivered a keynote speech at Charles and David Koch’s ultra-exclusive seminar at the Ritz-Carlton resort near Vail, and returned home the same night, all without breathing a word about his adventure to his constituents.

David Koch introduced Gov. Christie as “my kind of guy.” Christie went on to explain how he’d convinced the state’s Democratic majority leaders, against the wishes of most of their caucus, to help him slash public-sector pensions and benefits. And he drew a bead on his next major target: public-school teachers and their union. “That’s where we head next,” Christie said. “We need to take on the teachers’ union once and for all, and we need to decide who is determining our children’s future, who is running this place. Them or us? I say it’s us.”

Christie also said, “We’re going to have to reduce Medicare benefits. We’re going to have to reduce Medicaid benefits. We’re going to have to raise the Social Security age. We’re going to have to do these things. We’re going to have to cut all types of other government programs that some people in this room might like.”

Previous Koch seminars have featured “such notable leaders” as Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck, Sens. Jim DeMint (R-S.C.) and Tom Coburn (R-Okla.), and Reps. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) and Mike Pence (R-Ind.). Supreme Court Justices Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas also have attended.

Several GOP governors made it to the Vail seminar in June, among them Florida’s Rick Scott, Virginia’s Robert McDonnell, and White House hopeful Rick Perry of Texas. News of the event slipped out after McDonnell put the trip on his weekend schedule; neither Perry nor Scott initially disclosed the trip to their constituents. A Perry spokesman acknowledged his attendance only after the Austin American-Statesman tracked the tail number of a plane belonging to one of the governor’s top donors from Texas to Colorado. He described the summit as a “private gathering of business leaders.”

(Some of you may remember from the 1960s and 70s that school teachers were a favorite target of the Viet Cong. Education has always been the enemy of tyrants. – JLV)

Regards,

Jim