The WAWG Blog

Texas Republicans Want to Protect Big Insurance Companies and TWIA, But Not People – The Texas Legislature is considering passing two House bills that would give big insurance companies immunity for deceptive practices against you as a policyholder, are Rep. John Smithee’s (R-Amarillo) HB272 and Rep. Larry Taylor’s (R-Friendswood) HB2818. These misguided bills, although specific to the Texas Windstorm Insurance Association, would severely harm all insurance policyholders’ ability to hold some insurance companies accountable.

HB 272
HB2818

The Senate also filed several bills stripping you of the same constitutional right, as the policyholder, of a trial by jury. Some bills even go further to charge you higher premiums if you refuse binding arbitration.

SB 1123
SB 1432
SB 1740
SB 1842
SB 1889

Two bills that would increase transparency and accountability at TWIA were filed by Rep. Armando Walle (D-Houston) and Sen. Rodney Ellis (D-Houston). Both bills required open public access to TWIA board meetings, annual review of TWIA practices to ensure compliance with the law and posting of salary and bonuses of TWIA employees, vendors and contractors. Coastal residents traveled to Austin to testify in favor of both bills.

HB 3613
SB 1797

Here are news stories related to these bills:

Houston Chronicle: Insurers’ group dropped ball on fraud, Texas officials say

The Daily News Galveston: Eiland not on board with proposed TWIA bills

Houston Chronicle: Windstorm insurer replaces general manager

Austin Statesman: Windstorm agency ‘hazardous to public’

Texas Tribune: TWIA Calls Emergency Meeting on Oversight

KHOU News Station, Houston: State politicians profits from insurance agency he ‘watchdogs’

KHOU News State, Houston: Internal memos reveal controversy brewing for hurricane insurance

Beaumont Enterprise: Windstorm association seeks state immunity

Houston Chronicle: TWIA policyholders ‘losers of the year

Regards,

Jim

RE: Most Republican Senators voted yesterday to pass the Paul Ryan Budget Plan for the wealthy.

Tonight, I sent the following note to Texas Senator Cornyn, who voted for the plan:

Transferring more wealth to the top 2 percent by taking it from the middle class is absolutely shameful. Voting for the Ryan wealth transfer plan for fear of angering the extreme right is spineless. Unless you are part of the extreme right, then your vote was totally self serving and shows you have no conscience.

This is only my part of a longer email that was prepared by an on-line service and sent to Cornyn’s office for filtering by his staff.

Texas: Where the US of A is heading – Republican/Corporate single-party control.

Saturday Sneak Attack Would Hand Neighborhood Schools Over to Private Operators – State Rep. Mike Villarreal, Democrat of San Antonio, made a shockingly bad surprise amendment on Saturday afternoon to SB 738, a bill he’s sponsoring in the House that came over from the Senate in harmless form. In the guise of empowering parents, this bill as amended on second reading by Rep. Villarreal now would empower the state to hand over control of neighborhood public school to private operators. This last-minute surprise attack on local community control of schools needs to be stopped on third reading of SB 738 Monday. Please call Monday morning at 888-836-8368, ask for Rep. Villarreal, and tell him to pull down SB 738, this “parent trigger” bill. He may not be your representative, but his bad idea threatens community control of neighborhood schools in every major urban area of the state.

Though portrayed as a measure to deal with low-performing schools, Villarreal’s bill as amended would target even schools rated exemplary, if they happen to be in a district rated low-performing overall. This legislation invites abuses like those seen in California under a similar “parent trigger” law, where charter operators have run signature-gathering drives under the pretense of an “improve your neighborhood school” petition when in fact the fine print contains a call for total takeover of the school by a specific charter operator, with no further parent say in school operations.

With the Villarreal amendment attached, it would take only one more tweak to turn SB 738 into a “parent trigger” voucher bill like the one being pushed by the right-wing American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) in state after state across the nation. To see what we’re talking about, check out the model “Parent Trigger Act” on ALEC’s Web site.

One More Try at Gutting Class-Size Caps, Pay Standards, Contract Rights—Stop Them Again!
On Monday, 5-23-2011, some Texas legislators will try once more—for the umpteenth time this session—to gut class-size caps, cut teacher pay, and eliminate contract protections. It’s an all-out attack on educational quality standards. Let’s foil them again!

Please call the state capitol Monday morning at 888-836-8368. Ask for your state rep and urge a NO vote on any amendments, to SB 1581 or any other bill, that will raise class sizes, cut teacher pay, or remove contract safeguards.

Your Rights to Protest Permits to Polluters to Foul our air, Water, and Land Are in Jeopardy – The version of the bill to reauthorize the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (TCEQ). House Bill 2694, passed by the House is pro-polluter and includes amendments that would limit your rights as citizens to contest permits to polluters for air emissions, wastewater discharges, hazardous waste disposal, and other pollution. The Senate had passed a clean version of the bill.

Tell your House member that Texans need a “clean” TCEQ sunset bill that maintains your right to protect your health and property from pollution!

U.S. Senate Filibusters Liu – Yesterday, the Senate voted against giving Goodwin Liu, nominated to an important seat on the federal courts, the up-or-down vote that he deserves. Liu is highly qualified to serve on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit to which President Obama nominated him more than a year ago. The seat he is nominated to fill has been declared a “judicial emergency.” But, senators chose to play political games and prioritize partisan tactics over their duty to “advise and consent” on the president’s nominees. And in the meantime, the seat to which Liu has been nominated will remain empty and judges in the Ninth Circuit will continue to be overwhelmed with cases. The greatest injustice of this vote is to Americans who depend on the federal courts to enforce their rights and settle disputes. Courtrooms without judges are simply incapable of dispensing justice. Cornyn voted against allowing a confirmation vote on Liu; Hutchison was absent.

Call both of your senators at 202-224-3121.

Regards,

Jim

We Could Have Had Jobs for Every American, But Republicans Chose Gifts to the Rich – In December, Republicans demanded – and won – an extension of Republican tax cuts for the rich, costing $858 billion over two years. That same $858 billion could create jobs for all 14.5 million unemployed Americans, each paying nearly $30,000 per year!

Thirty years of trickle-down economics have failed. Corporations are making record profits and sitting on record amounts of cash. But rather than create jobs here in the U.S., they are shipping our jobs overseas.

The rich don’t need more tax breaks. But 14.5 million unemployed Americans desperately need jobs. But the new Tea Party Republican Congress wants to slash jobs to give even more tax cuts to the rich. They won’t create jobs unless we build a powerful nationwide grassroots movement to demand them.

Florida Republicans Take Money From the Unemployed and Give to Businesses – A bill that would establish some of the deepest and most far-reaching cuts in unemployment benefits in the nation is heading for the desk of Florida Gov. Rick Scott. At the same time, the legislature is also providing a further reduction in business taxes. Which would be great if those businesses were using the money to hire more people to work. But the businesses seem more interested in making sure the benefits are being cut off than putting people back to work.

Sen. Nancy Detert, R-Venice, suggested her bill was a take-it-or-leave-it offer for the House, Gov. Rick Scott and the business lobbyists, all of whom have been pushing her to cap benefits at no more than 20 weeks. Detert said her proposal already was the “gift of the year” for Florida’s business community. “Pigs get fed, hogs get slaughtered,” Detert said. “Learn to like it or get nothing.”

Although in this case, I would think it’s the hogs getting fed.

Koch Brothers Now Buying Academic Support – In 2008 the Charles G. Koch (a prime funder of the Tea Party) Charitable Foundation had an agreement with Florida State University where the foundation agreed to provide millions of dollars of funds for the school’s economics department in exchange for granting Koch the ability to directly approve faculty hired with those funds.

The agreement also provides that an advisory committee appointed by Koch decides which candidates will be considered and provides that should Koch not be happy with the faculty’s choice or, more alarmingly, if the hires don’t meet “objectives” set by Koch, the foundation will withdraw funding entirely.

As if that were not chilling enough for academic freedom, Koch wanted the ability to review work done by the economics faculty, to determine which candidates qualify to receive funding and which professors find themselves on a tenure track.

Toxic Chemicals Pervasive in Baby Products – A new peer-reviewed study finds that 80% of tested baby products contain toxic or inadequately tested flame retardants. Many of these same chemicals are found in our children’s bodies and are widely dispersed throughout the environment and in our food.

How do we protect our kids from such dangers? It starts with passing strong legislation to reform our outdated and pathetically weak toxic chemicals law.

Please take action today to urge your Senators to support the Safe Chemicals Act of 2011 introduced by Senator Frank Lautenberg (D-NJ).

Newt Gingrich Has a $500,000 Tiffany’s Habit – Fiscal conservative as he may say he is, Republican Newt Gingrich seems to have a little weakness for the bling, and it has cost him big. In 2005 and 2006, the former House speaker turned presidential candidate carried as much as $500,000 in debt to Tiffany and Company jewelers, according to financial disclosures filed with the Clerk of the House of Representatives. Republicans are always claiming that the government should be run like a family budget. No word on if there are proposed cuts to the family’s health care and retirement plans.

Regards,

Jim

The following is condensed from a ten-page, detailed article on the Koch (pronounced Coke) brothers, which appeared in the New Yorker magazine. It shows how much of the senseless noise we hear today is quietly funded and controlled by two brothers who want to re-make America into their own profitable vision. The article shows how the Kochs have convinced everyday people to spread their distortions and lies; even when it results in a lower quality of life for those very people spreading the Koch message.

Covert Operations
The billionaire brothers who are waging a war against Obama.
by Jane Mayer

Over the July 4th, 2010, weekend, the advocacy wing of the Americans for Prosperity Foundation—an organization that David Koch started, in 2004—held a summit called Texas Defending the American Dream took place in a hotel ballroom in Austin. Five hundred people attended the summit, which served, in part, as a training session for Tea Party activists in Texas. An advertisement cast the event as a populist uprising against vested corporate power. “Today, the voices of average Americans are being drowned out by lobbyists and special interests,” it said. “But you can do something about it.” The pitch made no mention of its corporate funders. The White House has expressed frustration that such sponsors have largely eluded public notice. David Axelrod, Obama’s senior adviser, said, “What they don’t say is that, in part, this is a grassroots citizens’ movement brought to you by a bunch of oil billionaires.”

At the lectern in Austin, Peggy Venable—a longtime political operative who draws a salary from Americans for Prosperity, and who has worked for Koch-funded political groups since 1994—spoke less warily. “We love what the Tea Parties are doing, because that’s how we’re going to take back America!” she declared, as the crowd cheered. She explained that the role of Americans for Prosperity was to help “educate” Tea Party activists on policy details, and to give them “next-step training” after their rallies, so that their political energy could be channelled “more effectively.” And she noted that Americans for Prosperity had provided Tea Party activists with lists of elected officials to target. She said of the Kochs, “They’re certainly our people. David’s the chairman of our board. I’ve certainly met with them, and I’m very appreciative of what they do.”

The anti-government fervor infusing the 2010 elections represents a political triumph for the Kochs. By giving money to “educate,” fund, and organize Tea Party protesters, they have helped turn their private agenda into a mass movement. Bruce Bartlett, a conservative economist and a historian, who once worked at the National Center for Policy Analysis, a Dallas-based think tank that the Kochs fund, said, “The problem with the whole libertarian movement is that it’s been all chiefs and no Indians. There haven’t been any actual people, like voters, who give a crap about it. So the problem for the Kochs has been trying to create a movement.” With the emergence of the Tea Party, he said, “everyone suddenly sees that for the first time there are Indians out there—people who can provide real ideological power.” The Kochs, he said, are “trying to shape and control and channel the populist uprising into their own policies.”

A Republican campaign consultant who has done research on behalf of Charles and David Koch said of the Tea Party, “The Koch brothers gave the money that founded it. It’s like they put the seeds in the ground. Then the rainstorm comes, and the frogs come out of the mud—and they’re our candidates!”

The Republican campaign consultant said of the family’s political activities, “To call them under the radar is an understatement. They are underground!” Another former Koch adviser said, “They’re smart. This right-wing, redneck stuff works for them. They see this as a way to get things done without getting dirty themselves.” Rob Stein, a Democratic political strategist who has studied the conservative movement’s finances, said that the Kochs are “at the epicenter of the anti-Obama movement. But it’s not just about Obama. They would have done the same to Hillary Clinton. They did the same with Bill Clinton. They are out to destroy progressivism.”

Oddly enough, the fiercely capitalist Koch family owes part of its fortune to Joseph Stalin. In 1927, Fred Koch invented a more efficient process for converting oil into gasoline, but, according to family lore, America’s major oil companies regarded him as a threat and shut him out of the industry. Unable to succeed at home, Koch found work in the Soviet Union. In the nineteen-thirties, his company trained Bolshevik engineers and helped Stalin’s regime set up fifteen modern oil refineries. Over time, however, Stalin brutally purged several of Koch’s Soviet colleagues. Koch was deeply affected by the experience, and regretted his collaboration. He returned to the U.S. In the headquarters of his company, Rock Island Oil & Refining, in Wichita, he kept photographs aimed at proving that some of those Soviet refineries had been destroyed in the Second World War. Gus diZerega, a former friend of Charles Koch, recalled, “As the Soviets became a stronger military power, Fred felt a certain amount of guilt at having helped build them up. I think it bothered him a lot.”

In 1958, Fred Koch became one of the original members of the John Birch Society, the arch-conservative group known, in part, for a highly skeptical view of governance and for spreading fears of a Communist takeover. Members considered President Dwight D. Eisenhower to be a Communist agent. In a self-published broadside, Koch claimed that “the Communists have infiltrated both the Democrat and Republican Parties.” He wrote admiringly of Benito Mussolini’s suppression of Communists in Italy, and disparagingly of the American civil-rights movement. “The colored man looms large in the Communist plan to take over America,” he warned. Welfare was a secret plot to attract rural blacks to cities, where they would foment “a vicious race war.” In a 1963 speech that prefigures the Tea Party’s talk of a secret socialist plot, Koch predicted that Communists would “infiltrate the highest offices of government in the U.S. until the President is a Communist, unknown to the rest of us.”

As their fortunes grew, Charles and David Koch became the primary underwriters of hard-line libertarian politics in America. Charles’s goal, as Doherty described it, was to tear the government “out at the root.” The brothers’ first major public step came in 1979, when Charles persuaded David, then thirty-nine, to run for public office. They had become supporters of the Libertarian Party, and were backing its Presidential candidate, Ed Clark, who was running against Ronald Reagan from the right. Frustrated by the legal limits on campaign donations, they contrived to place David on the ticket, in the Vice-Presidential slot; upon becoming a candidate, he could lavish as much of his personal fortune as he wished on the campaign. The ticket’s slogan was “The Libertarian Party has only one source of funds: You.” In fact, its primary source of funds was David Koch, who spent more than two million dollars on the effort.
Many of the ideas propounded in the 1980 campaign presaged the Tea Party movement. Ed Clark told The Nation that libertarians were getting ready to stage “a very big tea party,” because people were “sick to death” of taxes. The Libertarian Party platform called for the abolition of the F.B.I. and the C.I.A., as well as of federal regulatory agencies, such as the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Department of Energy. The Party wanted to end Social Security, minimum-wage laws, gun control, and all personal and corporate income taxes.

The Kochs have given millions of dollars to nonprofit groups that criticize environmental regulation and support lower taxes for industry. Gus diZerega, the former friend, suggested that the Kochs’ youthful idealism about libertarianism had largely devolved into a rationale for corporate self-interest. He said of Charles, “Perhaps he has confused making money with freedom.”

In 1977, the Kochs provided the funds to launch the nation’s first libertarian think tank, the Cato Institute. According to the Center for Public Integrity, between 1986 and 1993 the Koch family gave eleven million dollars to the institute. In the mid-eighties, the Kochs provided millions of dollars to George Mason University, in Arlington, Virginia, to set up another think tank. Now known as the Mercatus Center. The Wall Street Journal noted that fourteen of the twenty-three regulations that President George W. Bush placed on a “hit list” had been suggested first by Mercatus scholars.

In 1989, the Senate Select Committee on Indian Affairs investigated their business and released a scathing report accusing Koch Oil of “a widespread and sophisticated scheme to steal crude oil from Indians and others through fraudulent mismeasuring.” The Kochs admitted that they had improperly taken thirty-one million dollars’ worth of crude oil, but said that it had been accidental. Charles Koch told committee investigators that oil measurement is “a very uncertain art.”
To defend its reputation, Koch Industries hired Robert Strauss, then a premier Washington lobbyist; the company soon opened an office in the city. A grand jury was convened to investigate the allegations, but it eventually disbanded, without issuing criminal charges. According to the Senate report, after the committee hearings Koch operatives delved into the personal lives of committee staffers, even questioning an ex-wife. Senate investigators were upset by the Kochs’ tactics. Kenneth Ballen, the counsel to the Senate committee, said, “These people have amassed such unaccountable power!”

The Kochs continued to disperse their money, creating slippery organizations with generic-sounding names, and this made it difficult to ascertain the extent of their influence in Washington. When the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette investigated the Koch-funded Citizens for the Environment (which was actually against, not for the environment), it discovered that the “citizens” group had “no citizen membership of its own.”

During the 2000 election campaign, Koch Industries spent some nine hundred thousand dollars to support the candidacies of George W. Bush and other Republicans. During the Bush years, Koch Industries and other fossil-fuel companies enjoyed remarkable prosperity. The 2005 energy bill, which Hillary Clinton dubbed the Dick Cheney Lobbyist Energy Bill, offered enormous subsidies and tax breaks for energy companies. The Kochs have cast themselves as deficit hawks, but, according to a study by Media Matters, their companies have benefitted from nearly a hundred million dollars in government contracts since 2000.

In 2004, David Koch and Fink started a new group, Americans for Prosperity, and they hired Tim Phillips to run it. Phillips was a political veteran who had worked with Ralph Reed, the evangelical leader and Republican activist, co-founding Century Strategies, a campaign-consulting company that became notorious for its ties to the disgraced lobbyist Jack Abramoff.

The influence of Koch money even reaches into the Smithsonian Institution. The David H. Koch Hall of Human Origins, at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History, is a multimedia exploration of the theory that mankind evolved in response to climate change. Joseph Romm, a physicist who runs the Web site ClimateProgress.org, is infuriated by the Smithsonian’s presentation. “The whole exhibit whitewashes the modern climate issue,” he said. “I think the Kochs wanted to be seen as some sort of high-minded company, associated with the greatest natural-history and science museum in the country. But the truth is, the exhibit is underwritten by big-time polluters, who are underground funders of action to stop efforts to deal with this threat to humanity.”

The Kochs have long depended on the public’s not knowing all the details about them. They have been content to operate what David Koch has called “the largest company that you’ve never heard of.” It is time for us to change that by educating others about the Kochs.

FOX News broadcasts rightwing extremist slander, incitement to violence, political propaganda, and outright lies – to promote its rightwing political agenda. Here are some examples:

1. Slander

– FOX ran at least 52 segments falsely accusing President Obama of lying about his birthplace, citizenship, and eligibility for President.

– FOX was the first network to broadcast a lying Andrew Breitbart video that falsely accused Shirley Sherrod, a highly-respected black civil rights leader, of discriminating against a white farm couple – leaving out the part where she actually fought for them. FOX’s slander forced Sherrod to quit her job in the Obama administration.

– FOX falsely accused Van Jones, a highly-respected black environmentalist, of being a 9/11 conspiracy theorist. FOX’s slander forced Jones to quit his job in the Obama administration.

2. Incitement to violence

– In 2010, Byron Williams drove to San Francisco to “start a revolution by traveling to San Francisco and killing people of importance at the Tides Foundation and the ACLU.” California police chased his speeding truck and got into a 12-minute shootout with Williams in which two policemen were wounded. Before the attack, Glenn Beck slandered Tides 29 times, falsely saying it works to “warp your children’s brains and make sure they know how evil capitalism is.” In jailhouse interviews, Williams confessed he views Beck as a “schoolteacher” who “blew my mind.” He said Beck “give[s] you every ounce of evidence you could possibly need” to commit violence.

– In 2009, neo-Nazi Richard Poplawski murdered three Pittsburgh policemen who responded to a domestic dispute. Poplawski’s hatred of government was inspired by numerous right-wing broadcasters including Glenn Beck, whose video he posted on white supremacist website Stormfront.

– In 2008, rightwinger Jim David Adkisson opened fire in the Unitarian Universalist Church in Knoxville, TN during a children’s performance of Annie Jr., killing two and wounding seven. Adkisson believed all Democrats and liberals should be murdered and believed the church was “liberal.” Police found liberal-smearing books by Bill O’Reilly and Sean Hannity at his home.

– On August 6, 2009, Glenn Beck outrageously “joked” about giving Speaker Pelosi a glass of wine with poison, inciting his audience to carry out his “joke.”

3. Republican partisanship

FOX supports the Republican Party, Republican candidates, and Republican groups like the Tea Party nearly every hour of every day.

The “Tea Party” that first appeared after President Obama’s inauguration in 2009 was tiny and scattered until FOX gave it extensive coverage and promotion that April. Glenn Beck then allied his “9-12 Project” with the Tea Party and led the joint “Taxpayer March on Washington” that September, which was heavily covered and promoted by FOX. Afterwards, FOX even ran full-page newspaper ads attacking other networks for not covering 9/12.

In April 2010, Rupert Murdoch declared “I don’t think we should be supporting the Tea Party or any other party,” and promised to investigate.

But just four months later, Murdoch’s News Corp. donated $1 million to the Republican Governors’ Association and another $1 million to the Chamber of Commerce, which was spending heavily to elect Republicans nationwide.

Apart from cash contributions, FOX funds numerous Republican politicians by hiring them as “FOX News Contributors.” In 2011, FOX funded four Republicans who were talking about 2012 Presidential runs: Newt Gingrich, Mike Huckabee, Sarah Palin, and Rick Santorum.

In addition, FOX hosts appear as keynote speakers at Republican fundraising events.

No impartial news organization funds a political party and its candidates, or allows its employees to do so.

4. Lies

To promote its partisan agenda, FOX News regularly twists and distorts the truth. Sometimes these distortions are so willful and blatant that they can accurately be called “lies.”

Many of these lies use carefully-chosen text, images, and videos rather than spoken words. Click the images to enlarge.

– In September 2006, Rep. Mark Foley (R-FL) was accused of sexting underage male Congressional pages. The scandal threatened Republican control of the House that November. To save the Republicans, FOX News falsely labeled Foley as a Democrat.

– In March 2007, Vice President Dick Cheney’s Chief of Staff Scooter Libby was convicted on four of five counts of perjury, obstruction of justice, and making false statements to FBI investigators in the outing of covert CIA agent Valerie Plame. FOX News reported Libby was found “not guilty of lying to FBI investigators,” despite his conviction on one of those two counts.

– In March 2011, Wisconsin citizens held large peaceful protests against Republican Gov. Scott Walker’s union-busting legislation. FOX News tried to slander the protesters as violent by showing videos of protesters in a shoving match. But those were clearly not Wisconsin protesters, because there were palm trees in the background.

Please sign the pledge to boycott Fox News advertisers.

Regards,

Jim

Big Oil Makes an Investment in Congress and It Pays Off – The CEOs from the five major oil companies — which together booked $36 billion in profits in the first quarter of 2011 alone — went to the Senate last Thursday to try to justify the $4 billion in tax giveaways they’re receiving this year. These companies don’t need and don’t deserve taxpayer money — especially with a budget deficit to close and gas prices at or near record highs. These CEOs are so out-of-touch that one of the CEOs went so far as to say that cutting oil giveaways would be “un-American.”

Even worse is the fact that when the Senate tries to strip these oil company giveaways, it’s likely that a minority of senators will block a vote from happening. And even if the Senate manages to pass a bill eliminating the giveaways, there’s little chance it will be brought up for a vote in the House.

Here’s why: These five companies are expert manipulators of the money-for-influence game in Washington that the President is working to change. It’s simple math — they spent more than $145 million last year on nearly 800 lobbyists whose job is to defeat bills like this one. The $4 billion they’ll likely get to keep as a result represents a 2,700% return on their investment.

Why Keep 500 Texas Teachers When We Can Have Race Cars? – At a time when Texas is dealing with a record budget deficit by slashing essential services and possibly laying off 97,000 teachers, state lawmakers have committed taxpayers to funding Formula One auto racing at a steep price: $25 million a year for the next 10 years. Bloomberg points out that for $25 million a year, “the state could pay more than 500 teachers an average salary of $48,000.”

The motorsport franchise left the U.S. four years ago because of low attendance, but the effort to bring it back — and base it in Texas — has been spearheaded by B.J. “Red” McCombs, the co-founder of conservative media conglomerate Clear Channel Communications. Despite being consistently ranked as one of Forbes 400 richest Americans — with a net worth last estimated at $1.4 billion — McCombs has gotten state Comptroller Susan Combs to agree to build a racing track in Austin at taxpayer expense. Austin’s city government may also invest an additional $4 million a year in tax revenue to facilitate the plan. Red McCombs is the guy who left Minnesota after selling the Minnesota Vikings, in part because the state wasn’t going to build him a better stadium for his team to play in. So if this racing thing doesn’t make him enough money, he has shown that he will leave taxpayers holding the bag.

Richard Viktorin, an accountant with Audits in the Public Interest, says his Austin-based group opposes government support for the races because they are a gross misuse of state funds. “It’s off-balance-sheet financing for a rich man’s sport.”

Republicans Wants To Dismantle Consumer Financial Protection – Last July, President Barack Obama signed the Dodd–Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act into law, the most sweeping overhaul of the financial regulatory system since the Great Depression.

Dodd-Frank introduces a number of reforms aimed at Wall Street. And, unsurprisingly, big banks and other financial institutions aren’t very happy about it. Wall Street unleashed an army of lobbyists onto Capitol Hill in an attempt to convince congress to dismantle Dodd-Frank as much as possible, and they’ve found a captive audience in the Republican Party.

This is bad news for consumers. The Dodd-Frank legislation created the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), the first financial regulator with the express mission of catering to consumers, not big banks and other financial institutions. When it opens in July, the CFPB will advocate on behalf of consumers against unfair and illegal practices by these financial giants. They’ll be tackling issues like confusing financial contracts, credit report errors, unfair overdraft fees, high-cost prepaid cards and costly payday loans. Consumers will finally have a powerful advocate working on their behalf – something big banks and financial institutions are considerably afraid of.

But it’s also bad news for the future stability of the global economy. If the reforms in Dodd-Frank are eroded to the extent that big banks and other financial institutions want, the economic climate that brought on the recent financial crisis could very well happen again. The findings of the Financial Crisis Inquiry Committee concluded that the crisis was an “’avoidable’ disaster caused by widespread failures in government regulation, corporate mismanagement and heedless risk-taking by Wall Street”.

Indeed, the repeals Wall Street want would push regulations back to where they were before the financial crisis. Watering down Dodd-Frank would be, in the words of Senate Banking Committee leader Tim Johnson (D-SD), “dangerous and irresponsible”.

U.S. Chamber of Commerce Attacks President Obama’s Corporate Disclosure Order – President Obama recently introduced an executive order that will force corporations with government contracts to disclose any campaign contributions over $5,000.

Disclosure like this is essential to ending corruption and making sure that the companies that get contracts are those who deserve them, not just those who can pay for them with campaign contributions.

The public has the right to know who their taxes are paying for government contracts and to feel confident that campaign contributions didn’t play a part, but the U.S. Chamber of Commerce (and their Republican supporters) are throwing everything they have against the order.

Tell President Obama that he has your support in standing up to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and ending the corruption surrounding government contracts.

Regards,

Jim

Newt Gingrich is the Ayman al-Zawahiri of the Republican Party. Both are double high authoritarians and neither has the support of the majority of their respective political parties.

America doesn’t need authoritarian Newt as our president.

Boehner’s Policies Are “Anti-Life” According to Catholic Professors – But Mr. Boehner is coming in for a dose of harsh criticism for his policies that violate basic teachings of the Catholic church.

More than 75 professors at Catholic University and other prominent Catholic colleges have written a pointed letter to Mr. Boehner saying that the Republican-supported budget he shepherded through the House of Representatives will hurt the poor, elderly and vulnerable, and therefore he has failed to uphold basic Catholic moral teaching.

“Mr. Speaker, your voting record is at variance from one of the Church’s most ancient moral teachings,” the letter says. “From the apostles to the present, the Magisterium of the Church has insisted that those in power are morally obliged to preference the needs of the poor. Your record in support of legislation to address the desperate needs of the poor is among the worst in Congress. This fundamental concern should have great urgency for Catholic policy makers. Yet, even now, you work in opposition to it.”

The letter writers go on to criticize Mr. Boehner’s support for a budget that cut support for Medicare, Medicaid and the Women, Infants and Children nutrition program, while granting tax cuts to the wealthy and corporations. The Catholic professors call Boehner’s policies “anti-life.”

As if to say that they are not speaking out of turn, the professors point out that the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops also recently issued a similar letter expressing the hierarchy’s concerns about budget cuts in programs that aid the poor.

The letter is signed by professors at Xavier University, from which Mr. Boehner graduated, and the University of Dayton, both in Mr. Boehner’s home state of Ohio, as well as at universities such as Fordham, Marquette, Notre Dame and Santa Clara.

Republicans Vote to Keep the Terror Gap Open – Less than 24 hours after two terror suspects were arrested trying to purchase guns and grenades in New York City, Congress failed to pass a measure to close the Terror Gap.

The Terror Gap is a loophole in our background check system that permits suspects on the FBI’s terrorist watch list to legally obtain guns and explosives. Suspects on the watch list cannot board an airplane, but they can pass a background check and purchase guns and explosives.

Thankfully, the NYC plotters were already under surveillance by the NYPD, but as details emerged, the House Judiciary Committee voted to keep the Terror Gap open and leave America vulnerable. The vote was 21 Republicans voting to keep the Terror Gap open, and 11 Democrats voting to close it.

Republican Plan Will Double What Most Seniors Pay for Health Care – Republicans in Congress want to end Medicare as we know it and give tax cuts to millionaires and big corporations that ship jobs overseas. Every American, not just the rich ones, should have quality health care when they reach retirement age. If the Republican spending plan passes, seniors will have to pay over $12,500 for life-saving medicine and treatments in the first year alone. That’s nearly double what most seniors pay under the current system.

Mike Hukabee’s Advisor Tell Him Crazy Stuff – I don’t like to repeat Republican/Conservative crazy talk. But every once in a while, there is something so crazy that there seems to be no other way to expose it other than to just put it out there. The rantings of one of Mike Hukabee’s closest advisors is one example:

Mike Huckabee has joked that he “answers” to “two Janets.” One is his wife, Janet Huckabee. The other is Janet Porter, the onetime co-chair of Huckabee’s Faith and Values Coalition. And Porter, the former governor has said, is his “prophetic voice.” But that voice has said some weird things over the years: Porter has maintained that Obama represents an “inhumane, sick, and sinister evil,” and she has warned that Democrats want to throw Christians in jail merely for practicing their faith. She’s attributed Haiti’s high poverty rate to the fact that the country is “dedicated to Satan,” and she suggested that gay marriage caused Noah’s Flood. And there’s this: In a 2009 column for conservative news site WorldNetDaily, Porter asserted that President Barack Obama is a Soviet secret agent, groomed since birth to destroy the United States from within. She also publicly suggested that former Health and Human Services Secretary Tommy Thompson might be the anti-Christ.

Huckabee’s greatest asset has always been his ability to speak two languages—one to his base, and one to everyone else. But that may not last if he decides to run again. His most recent appearance on the normally friendly confines of The Daily Show was dominated by a discussion of his admiration for discredited amateur historian David Barton, whom Huckabee says Americans should be “forced at gunpoint” to listen to.

After Approving Comcast Buyout of NBC, Republican FCC Commissioner Becomes Comcast Lobbyist – Meredith Attwell Baker, one of the two Republican Commissioners at the Federal Communications Commission, plans to step down—and right into a top lobbying job at Comcast-NBC.

The news comes after the hugely controversial merger of Comcast and NBC earlier this year. At the time, Baker objected to FCC attempts to impose conditions on the deal. Four months after approving the massive transaction, Attwell Baker will take a top DC lobbying job for the new Comcast-NBC entity, according to reports.

Poluttion From Just One Electric Power Company Can Cause 34,000 Premature Deaths – American Electric Power (AEP) is America’s #1 polluter. They burn more coal than any other utility and rank as the biggest emitter of most major air pollution categories.

But, instead of working to clean up its act, AEP is spending millions of dollars to lobby to keep the air you’re breathing right now more polluted and more deadly. AEP has drafted and is circulating an outrageous 56-page draft bill that would halt implementation of America’s clean air laws for the single largest source of air pollution: the oldest, dirtiest coal-fired power plants.

If this bill were to become law, it would cause up to 34,000 premature deaths from air pollution in the first 2 years alone. That’s one death every 30 minutes! All to protect AEP’s $1.2 billion in annual profits.

That’s why the Environmental Defense Fund has launched our “What’s Your Number” campaign to ask AEP one simple question: How many lives are your polluter profits worth? Are 34,000 premature and preventable deaths okay with you? How about your customers — is this okay with them?

Regards,

Jim

The Republican Plan to Mess With Texas Teachers

THE PLAN:

• Craft a budget that would lead to the layoffs of thousands of teachers and school employees.
• Cram more kids into classrooms by permanently getting rid of the 22:1 class-size law.
• Giving districts the ability to cut teacher pay in addition to (not instead of) laying off teachers.
• Gut teacher contract rights and timely notice of proposed non-renewal, shifting the notice date to the last day of instruction, so teachers must wait five extra, anxious weeks before they know if they are employed for the coming year.

What? You don’t like the plan? Call now to urge your lawmaker to stop HB 400.

Call and tell your State Rep. to Vote “No” on HB 400

We’ll automatically connect you to your state representative’s office and provide you with talking points to nix this plan.

You can also send your rep. an online letter here.

Republicans Don’t Want to Make Banks Pay for Mortgage Fraud They Committed – House Financial Services Chairman Spencer Bachus (R-AL) explained in December that, in his view, Washington’s role is “to serve the banks.” The rest of the Republicans on his committee have embraced that mantra wholeheartedly, trying to roll back key parts of the Dodd-Frank financial reform law while collecting big donations from the financial services industry.

To that end, Republicans are riding to the aid of the country’s biggest mortgage servicers, which are currently negotiating a settlement with a bi-partisan group of attorneys general over abuses that came to light during the foreclosure fraud scandal (including the widespread use of “robo-signers“).

The AGs have suggested having the banks pay a penalty by reducing loan principal for troubled homeowners by a certain amount (potentially $20 billion). But Republicans in both the House and the Senate, as well as eight Republican attorneys general, have sided with the banks against homeowners, saying that the banks should not be forced to pay for their past misdeeds.

Welfare for Big Oil Companies – As Americans continue to struggle with outrageous, unstable gas prices, big oil continues to benefit from them. Last week, the five biggest oil companies reported a massive $30 billion in first-quarter profits, a 38% increase from last year.

Despite these astronomical profits, on Thursday, House Republicans voted unanimously to block consideration of a Democratic proposal to end some of the tax breaks and subsidies we give to big oil every year.

As recently as this March, House Republicans – while simultaneously pleading poverty and fighting for crippling budget cuts elsewhere – voted unanimously against repealing these oil subsidies, at a total cost to us of 45 billion over 10 years.
It’s outrageous that our government continues to reward these oil giants with an additional $4 billion a year of our money in tax credits and subsidies.

Tell Congress: End oil subsidies.

John Cornyn Holds America Hostage; Expects Democrats to Come to the Rescue – Senate Republicans shouldn’t lift a finger to raise the nation’s debt limit, argued Sen. John Cornyn on Tuesday. The Texas Republican, who is in charge of the GOP’s political strategy for 2012, made the case that his Republican colleagues should leave it to Democrats to do the politically unpalatable, yet economically crucial, deed.

Republicans in both chambers have said they will not vote to raise the debt ceiling unless Democrats agree to major spending concessions, including cuts to entitlements. Vice President Joe Biden is meeting with leaders from both parties to discuss a deal on raising the debt limit.

But even if major spending cuts are made in connection with the debt limit increase, Cornyn said it may not be politically palatable for Republicans to vote to raise the debt ceiling.

Cornyn said he thinks the Senate will eventually vote to raise the debt ceiling, but he is willing to let Democrats do it alone so they will be attacked for allowing the government to go further into debt.

“There’s not going to be a default on the debt. We’ll just let our Democratic friends vote to raise the debt limit in the Senate,” he said.

That’s right: Political advantage in the next election is more important to Republicans than the economic survival of America.

Regards,

Jim