The WAWG Blog

Republicans Are Opposing Responsible Natural Gas Operations – Hydraulic fracturing (fracking) is a means of natural gas extraction employed in deep natural gas well drilling. Once a well is drilled, millions of gallons of water, sand and proprietary chemicals are injected, under high pressure, into a well. The pressure fractures the shale and props open fissures that enable natural gas to flow more freely out of the well. Horizontal fracking differs in that it uses a mixture of 596 chemicals, many of them proprietary, and millions of gallons of water per frack. This water then becomes contaminated.

In 2005, the Bush/ Cheney Energy Bill exempted natural gas drilling from the Safe Drinking Water Act. It exempts companies from disclosing the chemicals used during hydraulic fracturing. Essentially, the provision took the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) off the job. It is now commonly referred to as the Halliburton Loophole.

The FRAC Act (Fracturing Responsibility and Awareness to Chemical Act) is a House bill intended to repeal the Halliburton Loophole and to require the natural gas industry to disclose the chemicals they use. The bill has 58 co-sponsors and none of them are Republicans. Please support the FRAC Act by signing the petitions at the link above.

Top Republican Says Raise Social Security Retirement Age to 70 – A Republican-held Congress might look to raise the retirement age to 70, House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio) suggested Monday. Boehner, the top Republican lawmaker in the House, said raising the retirement age by five years, indexing benefits to the rate of inflation and means-testing benefits would make the massive entitlement program more solvent.

(Those Republican suggestions are all things that would negatively affect middle-class and working-class Americans. They would not be felt by the rich. There is a cap on the Social Security tax so that once you make a little over $100,000, you pay no more tax. Raise or eliminate that cap, and Social Security funding is fixed. But Republicans don’t want to burden the rich, but they don’t mind sticking it to the rest of us. – JLV)

Republicans Choose Tax Cuts for Billionaires Over Jobs Bill – Senate Republicans by a 41 to 57 margin on Thursday again filibustered the Democratic $112 billion jobs bill. As it turns out, most of the roughly $35 billion still needed to pay for it could largely come from a single source: the estate tax. The estate tax is only paid by the super rich. In 2009, only 1 in 500 American estates paid estate taxes. But thanks to the same Republican obstructionism, Republicans have chosen a one-year windfall for a handful of billionaires over millions of Americans in the throes of financial crisis.

Already scaled back from its original $200 billion price tag, the $112 billion jobs package includes tax cuts, critically needed aid to states and the extension of unemployment benefits. On Sunday, Maine Republican Olympia Snowe wrote to Harry Reid suggesting Democrats cut further by offering a stand-alone unemployment insurance bill. For a Republican Party which had no problem with deficit spending during the Bush years.

Of course, as they made crystal clear with the perpetual effort to kill the estate tax, Republicans’ commitment to the rich trumps everything else.

Republicans Bash “Saint” – As confirmation hearings opened Monday afternoon, Republicans on the Senate Judiciary Committee took the unusual approach of attacking Kagan because she admired the late justice Thurgood Marshall, for whom she clerked more than two decades ago.

It was, to say the least, a curious strategy to go after Marshall, the iconic civil rights lawyer who successfully argued Brown vs. Board of Education. Did Republicans think it would help their cause to criticize the first African American on the Supreme Court, a revered figure who has been celebrated with an airport, a postage stamp and a Broadway show? The guy is a saint — literally. Marshall this spring was added to the Episcopal Church’s list of “Holy Women and Holy Men,” which the Episcopal Diocese of New York says “is akin to being granted sainthood.”

With Kagan’s confirmation hearings expected to last most of the week, Republicans may still have time to make cases against Nelson Mandela, Mother Teresa and Gandhi.

The lack of a coherent attack on the nominee became apparent when Texas Senator John Cornyn began his opening statement with a quotation that he said he received in an e-mail: “Liberty is not a cruise ship full of pampered passengers. Liberty is a man of war, and we’re all the crew.”
“I don’t know why I thought of that,” Cornyn told the perplexed audience.

Conservative George Will Blames the Poor for Not Finding Jobs – George Will apparently doesn’t think that those receiving unemployment benefits spend their checks because he claims that another extension would not stimulate the economy. Another typical mean spirited Republican basically telling unemployed Americans “let them eat cake”. I’m sure George thinks that once you cut those benefits off all of those lazy unemployed people will finally have to get off of their butts and magically find those non-existent jobs out there.

I assume George won’t have to worry about actually being around any of those tiresome whiners from his perch at his $1.9 million mansion in Chevy Chase, Md. since they probably keep that type of ‘riff-raff’ out of his neighborhood.

Dell Tried to Cover Up Faulty Computers – Dell Computer sold millions of computers riddled with faulty electrical components that were leaking chemicals and causing malfunctions from 2003 to 2005 to major companies and small businesses.

Documents recently unsealed in a three-year-old lawsuit against Dell show that the company’s employees were actually aware that the computers were likely to break. Still, the employees tried to play down the problem to customers and allowed customers to rely on trouble-prone machines, putting their businesses at risk.

Dell employees went out of their way to conceal these problems. In one e-mail exchange between Dell customer support employees, a Dell worker states, “We need to avoid all language indicating the boards were bad or had ‘issues’ per our discussion this morning.”

In other documents about how to handle questions around the faulty OptiPlex systems, Dell salespeople were told, “Don’t bring this to customer’s attention proactively” and “Emphasize uncertainty.”

“They were fixing bad computers with bad computers and were misleading customers at the same time,” said Ira Winkler, a former computer analyst for the National Security Agency and a technology consultant.

You Can Help Record Bad Deeds – For too long, our politics has been poisoned with misinformation, lies and double-speak. The most powerful way to combat these tactics is to drag them into the light of public scrutiny.

The Accountability Project is a volunteer platform to document Republican candidates and their public statements at local events, as well as their campaign tactics. The Accountability Project allows you to submit videos, recordings, and other items for publication online, so that candidates see that there’s a cost to their dishonesty.

If you have a video camera of any kind, or even a cell phone that records video, you can document Republican candidate public events, including speeches, forums, and public meetings to share.
You can submit copies of candidate mailers, emails, and attack ads.

You can also report upcoming public events in your area, so that other volunteers can document them.

Regards,

Jim

Former Rick Perry Chief of Staff Led Effort to Get Green Party on Ballot to Siphon Votes From Democrats – A witness testified under oath that a top member of Rick Perry’s inner circle paid him about $12,000 to convince Green Party of Texas leaders to participate in an elaborate ballot petition scam. Mike Toomey, a former Rick Perry Chief of Staff, paid Garrett Mize, a 22-year-old University of Texas student, from his personal checking account, to present a formal proposal to Green Party leaders. The proposal suggests using out-of-state funds to gather signatures needed to field candidates in the upcoming Texas election. The memo notes that, “many of the donors will be people that simply do not want to see the Democratic Party win.” The proposal by Mize can be seen here.

The morning testimony left it unclear what happened after the original plan proposed by Mize fell apart. A second plan was formulated just two weeks before the deadline to turn in ballot petitions. This second plan funneled $532,500 in corporate money to pay for the effort to gather signatures for the Green Party in order to qualify candidates for the Texas ballot. Documents and testimony in the coming days should reveal whether Toomey masterminded this plan as well.

Gov. Rick Perry Broke His Promise That He Would Not Accept a Nearly $35,000 Pay Increase – In 2007, Texas lawmakers included raises for eight top officials, including the governor, in the budget bill for fiscal years 2008 and 2009, according to a Dallas Morning News article published June 7, 2007. Rick Perry signed the legislation into law June 15, 2007, according to information from the Legislature’s Web site. In the law, the governor’s annual salary was set to jump 30 percent, from $115,345 to $150,000 — an increase of $34,655.

Robert Black, then a spokesman for the governor, was quoted in the June 2007 Morning News article saying Perry would not accept the pay raise when it kicked in that September, the start of the state’s fiscal year: “He hasn’t taken a pay raise and doesn’t think it’s necessary.”

Perry’s take-home state pay — meaning wages subject to federal income taxes — increased from $103,320 in 2006 to $111,361 in 2007 and $135,925 in 2008, according to his tax returns for those years, which he has made public. Bob Martin, a Houston accountant who studied Perry’s tax returns at the request of an Associated Press reporter, told Politifact the amount of taxes that were withheld from Perry’s pay in 2008 indicated that his gross salary was $150,000. He speculated that the difference between Perry’s taxable wages and his gross salary could be explained by pre-tax deductions such as retirement contributions; such deductions would be on Perry’s W-2 form. Politifact found no sign of Perry making his W-2s public.

Perry’s spokeswoman told Politifact he’s made charitable donations exceeding the additional dollars that came his way in the raise. But that’s not the same as not accepting the raise in the first place. That money was taken from the state treasury that Perry says he is protecting.

Texas Rep. Louie Gohmert Warns Of Baby Terrorists – Speaking on the House floor last night, Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-TX) continued his assault on common sense by making the generally nonsensical claim that terrorists were recruiting pregnant women in order for them to have U.S.-born children who would, several decades from now, attack the United States and “destroy our way of life.” Gohmert made the comments while discussing border security and Arizona’s controversial new immigration law.

Fox Business’ Solution to Financial Crisis: Tax the Poor More – A recent report from the Congressional Budget Office shows that the gap between the richest one percent of earners in the US and the middle class has more than tripled since 1979.

But that didn’t stop Fox Business host Cheryl Casone from using the report as the basis of her proposed solution to the US’s mushrooming budget deficit: Increase taxes on the poor.

In a discussion on the CBO report (PDF), which showed that 40 percent of income tax filers ended up paying no federal income tax in 2007, Casone argued that fixing this “imbalance” would solve the federal debt problem.
(Yeah, just take some from the people who don’t have hardly anything. – JLV)

US Supreme Court Hands Major Victory to Big Tobacco – The US Supreme Court gave a substantial victory to major tobacco firms Monday, rebuffing an appeal that would have allowed the government to pocket 280 billion dollars of their profits. The decision not to hear the case dealt a potentially fatal blow to long-running government efforts to penalize tobacco firms for 50 years of allegedly deceptive practices aimed at getting people hooked on smoking.

Former president Bill Clinton’s administration launched the original suit in 1999, seeking 280 billion dollars in allegedly ill-gotten gains and another 10 billion dollars to fund an expanded anti-smoking campaign.

Supreme Court Weakens Key Anti-Corruption Law – The US Supreme Court Thursday set aside part of Enron boss Jeffrey Skilling’s fraud conviction, saying it was “flawed” and unconstitutional.

“Because the indictment alleged three objects of the conspiracy, honest-services wire fraud, money-or-property wire fraud, and securities fraud,” Skilling’s conviction “is flawed,” the ruling said.

Also, the US Supreme Court on Thursday set aside the corporate fraud conviction of Anglo-Canadian media mogul Conrad Black and sent the case back to a lower court. Black, 64, who once headed the world’s third-largest media empire, was convicted in July 2007 of stealing millions of dollars from the sales of newspapers being off-loaded by Hollinger International.

Oil Company Guilty in Deaths of 1,600 Ducks – An Alberta judge found Syncrude Canada Ltd., the biggest producer in Canada’s oil sands, guilty on Friday of charges stemming from the deaths of 1,600 ducks that landed on a toxic tailings pond in northern Alberta in 2008. Syncrude faces a maximum fine of $769,000 in the case, which heightened international concern about the environmental impact of developing the oil sands, the largest crude-oil source outside the Middle East.

Orcas and Dolphins Going Blind and Insane in Captivity – Orcas and dolphins may swim up to 100 miles a day in the ocean, but in captivity, most are kept in 60-foot tanks. The chlorine and other harsh chemicals used to keep the tanks clean causes some dolphins to go blind and even makes their skin peel off. Captive marine mammals often develop ulcers from the stress of being gawked at for long periods of time each day. And because dolphins navigate by echolocation–bouncing sonar waves off other objects to determine shape, density, distance, and location–the reverberations from their own sonar bouncing off the tank walls drives some dolphins insane.

BP ‘Burning Sea Turtles Alive’ -A rare and endangered species of sea turtle is being burned alive in BP’s controlled burns of the oil swirling around the Gulf of Mexico, and a boat captain tasked with saving them says the company has blocked rescue efforts. Mike Ellis, a boat captain involved in a three-week effort to rescue as many sea turtles from unfolding disaster as possible, says BP effectively shut down the operation by preventing boats from coming out to rescue the turtles.

“They ran us out of there and then they shut us down, they would not let us get back in there,” Ellis said in an interview with conservation biologist Catherine Craig.

Regards,

Jim

This blog tracks where we are going by documenting the characteristic categories of the minority right-wing authoritarians (RWA) in the United States. The RWAs are part of our political system and are currently represented by the Tea Party, Sarah Palin, and the minority party in our Senate. They are also characterized as being born-again evangelicals and some of them have been referred to as the “extreme right of the extreme right.” The RWAs are also represented by a privateering group of civilian mercenaries hired by our government to replace our military and used both nationally and internationally to provide unaccountable, freelance “security.”

Now the presence of RWAs in our own military has to be added to that list. Their existence is exemplified by the words of General McChrystal as reported by Rolling Stone magazine. Frank Schaeffer detailed this growing characteristic of our military leaders in a recent Huffington Post article. Here are some related quotes from Schaeffer’s article:

The real reason that Rolling Stone was able to quote so many highly placed military people’s disdain for members of the Obama administration is because the military sees itself as more moral and better — and certainly more conservative — than the types who serve in civilian roles today, especially within a Democratic administration.

Perhaps more importantly, the evangelical Christians — now a force for reactionary Far Right politics — created an alliance between themselves, the Republican party, and the military beginning in the 1970s — something that’s been well documented by political scientist Andrew Bacevich — and this strategy has borne “fruit” in the current era, where the ties between the three groups — weak a generation ago — are now very strong.

America needs to understand that we have a professional military that increasingly looks on the culture it serves as morally inferior. And speaking as the father of a Marine who had plenty of neighbors who went shopping as my son went to war, I understand this feeling!

What you saw now between the White House and the general being fired is the tip of an iceberg.
New recruits are increasingly second generation military. This is especially so in the officer class, a nation within a nation. We now have a military “class.” And face it they [the military] don’t trust or like the people outside that class who tell them what to do but with no skin in the game.

Our system was set up to have a civilian led military of mostly civilian non-professionals serving for a time then returning to civilian life. We now have a civilian leadership with no military experience in charge of a mercenary professional force with few personal (let alone empathetic) ties to our leaders.

And that force is no longer protecting America only but rather projecting imperial overreach that will lead to more and more loss of American lives for no reason. Expect more trouble.

So, not only has our government contracted with freelance, unaccountable mercenaries like Blackwater (Xe), it has cultivated a “mercenary professional force” in our military which has little respect for those who prefer everything ‘me’ to serving others.

Combine the public and private RWA mercenaries with the RWAs of the Christian right and the RWAs of Tea party right, and you have a potent cocktail for wars against the many imagined internal and external enemies of the RWAs.

Have you forgotten about the gun and ammunition shortages around the country since the 2008 election?

What Recession? – The world’s millionaires and billionaires — now totaling 10 million — saw their overall wealth jump 18.9 percent last year, to $39 trillion. At the end of 2009, these “ultra-high net worth individuals” held 35.5 percent of the total $39 trillion of the world’s wealth, or an estimated $13.8 trillion, even though this group represented less than 1 percent of the 10 million people classified as being rich. The most millionaires could be found in the United States, where their ranks rose 16.5 percent, to 2.87 million, last year.

So, how are you doing? But please don’t ask the mega-rich to kick in a little more to fund infrastructure improvements or clean energy research that could put more people to work. They say they just can’t afford any more taxes.

Republican Candidates Hold Fundraisers With BP Lobbyist And Joe Barton – On Thursday, Dan Meyer, a lobbyist for BP — the besieged oil company responsible for the biggest environmental disaster in U.S. history — will co-host a luncheon at Hotel George in Washington D.C. for the benefit of Colorado GOP congressional candidate Cory Gardner. An official with the Dubernstein Group, Meyer serves on a BP account that has brought in $100,000 in lobbying fees during the first quarter of 2010. He’s not the only Republican official hosting the $1,000-a-plate affair (Meyer formerly served as the chief of staff for Newt Gingrich as well as chief congressional liaison in the Bush White House). Rep. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.) and Rep. Erik Paulsen (R-Minn.) are participating as well.

Another fundraiser is being held in honor of Rep. Cliff Stearns (R-Fla.), who is putting together a June 30 lunch fundraiser “With Special Guest, Congressman Joe Barton.” Barton of course was a political toxin last week after he apologized to BP for the “shakedown” they endured at the hands of the Obama administration.

Republican National Committee Staffer Fired in Sex Scandal Was Paid $100,000 to Keep Quiet – The former chief of staff to the Republican National Committee received more than $100,000 in a “severance payment” after he was fired for his role relating to the discovery that the party had signed off on $2,000 in reimbursements for a sex-themed Beverly Hills club.

RNC insiders say the money was approved as “hush money” to keep the former staffer, Kenneth McKay, from divulging details of GOP Chairman Michael Steele’s leadership practices.

Regards,
Jim

More Than 100 U.S. House Republicans Feel Sorry for BP – 100-plus other House members of the Republican Study Committee labeled the $20 billion trust fund for repairing the damage caused by BP a “Chicago-style shakedown” only a day before Joe Barton said the same thing and apologized to BP. And Michele Bachmann labeled the $20 billion for gulf victims a “redistribution-of-wealth fund” and even said it was unconstitutional. But after Barton said publicly that the fund was a shakedown, and the public reacted, Republicans are trying to get us to believe it was just a comment by Barton alone. But he was just stating what over 100 House Republicans had signed on to one day earlier. After the public reaction to Barton’s statement, Bachmann said, “No one said that this fund was a bad idea.” Hypocrites!

Republicans Lie About Contributions From Oil Companies – Republicans are spreading the lie that President Obama received large contribution from BP during the 2008 presidential campaign. But, the truth is that the money came exclusively from BP employees — not the corporation itself. In an email exchange with Media Matters for America, a spokesman for the Center for Responsive Politics confirmed that “the $71,051 that Obama received during the 2008 election cycle was entirely from BP employees. … Obama did not accept contributions from political action committees, so none of this money is from BP’s PAC.”

Texas Can’t Afford To Buy New Far-Right Textbooks, But Rick Perry Still Resists Federal Aid – The right-wing Texas State Board of Education decided to re-write science to make it more to their liking. So new textbooks have to be ordered, but under Rick Perry, there’s a budget shortfall of of at least $11 billion in 2011. And Perry wouldn’t accept federal stimulus funds for education, so what’s a right-wing, bumbling, incompetent hypocrite to do?

The lack of textbook funding underscores Texas Gov. Rick Perry’s (R) constant compulsion to oppose federal funding that could help his state. At the beginning of June, he refused to let Texas compete for Race to the Top funding for education reform because he falsely claimed the program would weaken the state’s school standards. That allegation was even refuted by a fellow Republican governor, Sonny Perdue of Georgia. A Houston Chronicle editorial from earlier this week lamented Perry’s stubborn “grandstanding” while noting why Texas needs additional, federal education funding: “Of the 50 states, we’re No. 49 in the percentage of adults who’ve completed high school; and it’s estimated that a third of our Texas high school freshmen don’t make it to graduation.”

Regards,

Jim

Rick Perry is Wrecking Education in Texas – As Perry plays partisan politics with our public schools, our students and educators are left without the resources they need for a quality education:

· Texas ranks 45th in the country in per student expenditures ($7,818 per student, about $2,000 below the national average), and Texas schools have a higher debt than any other state in the country, even California. (Source: Austin American-Statesman)

· Texas teachers are paid worse than $6,000 below the national average. Half of all new teachers in Texas quit within five years. (Source: Washington Post)

· Rick Perry and Republicans waste hundreds of millions on a failed “merit pay” system that allowed the Houston ISD superintendent to get a $67,250 bonus, an amount 35 times the average teacher bonus. (Source: Houston Chronicle via Burnt Orange Report)

· Rick Perry pushes failed voucher schemes and giving $100 million a year to private companies to administer standardized-tests – despite the fact that Texas’ incredibly high drop-out rate is directly related to our failed standardized-test system. (Source: Rice University’s Center for Education)

· Under Rick Perry, we have a public school system driven by “test and punish,” resulting in more dropouts. The Bush School of Government and Public Service at Texas A&M University recently released a report stating that Texas loses as much as $9.6 billion a year in earned income because of our dropout crisis. (Source: Bush School of Government and Public Service at Texas A&M University)

· During President’s Day Weekend in 2004, Rick Perry took a junket to the Bahamas to discuss school finance with school voucher kingpin Dr. James Leininger and political extremist Grover Norquist. When public interest groups complained about the unseemliness of the governor vacationing with deep-pocketed donors, spokesman Robert Black described the cruise as a “working trip” paid for by “campaign funds” and devoted to a discussion of “public school finance.” That is, during a luxury retreat in the Bahamas, the governor discussed “public school finance” with a group of wealthy right-wing activists who have done everything in their power to undermine, or even abolish, public education. But we should be reassured by the knowledge that foxes paid for the chicken feed. (Source: Austin Chronicle)

And Lt. Governor David Dewhurst Makes the Education Mess Worse: – Dewhurst had championed a 2007 bill that created a public school athlete steroid testing program at a cost of $6 million over two years. The program only produced 11 positive tests from a pool of 29,000 student-athletes tested in that time. This year, the Texas Education Agency recommended cutting the current $1 million cost of the steroid program among its recommended $135.5 million in proposed cuts. But state leaders left in $750,000 for that program as they cut $1.2 billion from the current two-year budget.

Regards,

Jim

Limbaugh’s Solution to Childhood Hunger: Kids Should ‘Dumpster Dive’ – Responding to an article Wednesday at AOL.com that reports 16 million children will go hungry this summer once free or subsidized school lunches are no longer available, Limbaugh suggested:

“Try your house.” It’s a thing called the refrigerator. You probably already know about it. Try looking there. There are also things in what’s called the kitchen of your house called cupboards. And in those cupboards, most likely you’re going to find Ding-Dongs, Twinkies, Lays ridgy potato chips, all kinds of dips and maybe a can of corn that you don’t want, but it will be there. If that doesn’t work, try a Happy Meal at McDonald’s….

There’s another place if none of these options work to find food; there’s always the neighborhood dumpster. Now, you might find competition with homeless people there, but there are videos that have been produced to show you how to healthfully dine and how to dumpster dive and survive until school kicks back up in August.

Limbaugh suggested that the problem of childhood hunger is an artificial creation from people who believe that “rotten” parents “let their kids go hungry.”

Republican Congressional Candidate is Not a Fan of Facts – Tea Party-backed Republican candidate Bill Randall, who is vying to capture North Carolina’s 13th district U.S. House seat, is a big fan of truthiness (facts don’t matter, it’s how you feel that makes something true):

“Personally, and this is purely speculative on my part and not based on any fact, but personally I feel there is a possibility that there was some sort of collusion,” Randall said at a press conference Tuesday. “I don’t know how or why, but in that situation, if you have someone from a company violating a safety process and the government signing off on it, excuse me, maybe they wanted it to leak.”

Republican Texas Congressman Joe Barton Apologizes to BP for Making Them Set Up a Trust Fund to Pay for the Damages They Caused – BP CEO Tony Hayward appeared before a House Energy panel Thursday and Rep. Joe Barton (R-TX) called the $20 billion trust fund a “shakedown” and apologized to the oil company.

“I’m speaking totally for myself and I’m not speaking for the Republican Party and I’m not speaking for anybody in the House of Representatives but myself, but I’m ashamed of what happened in the White House yesterday. I think it’s a tragedy of the first proportion that a private corporation can be subjected to what I would characterize as a shakedown. In this case, a $20 billion shakedown with the Attorney General of the United States who is legitimately conducting a criminal investigation and has every right to do so to protect the interests of the American people participating in what amounts to a $20 billion slush fund that’s unprecedented in our nation’s history that’s got no legal standing and what I think sets a terrible precedent for the future,” said Barton.

“I’m only speaking for myself. I’m not speaking for anybody else, but I apologize. I do not want to live in a country where any time a citizen or a corporation does something that is legitimately wrong and is subject to some sort of political pressure that is, again, in my words, amounts to a shakedown. So I apologize,” he said.

Barton blatantly shows his bias against Americans and the worst environmental disaster to hit this country and for his own craven interests. Frankly, I think Nancy Pelosi should make him apologize to Americans on the House floor since he was also the chief architect of the Cheney Oil Act that deregulated oil industry, waived EIRs and allowed this travesty to happen.

Here’s his contact information if you’d like to share your opinion of his groveling in front of BP.

Conservatives Are Dangerously Misleading the Country About the Economy – Bush left us with a $1.4 trillion deficit, and the unemployed and poor are paying for that. Part of the problem is that conservatives have been successful at misleading the public into thinking this huge deficit was the result of Obama’s stimulus when it wasn’t. (The public also conflates the stimulus with the Bush banker bailouts.)

With the election looming this misperception puts the heat on Democrats who didn’t get the Cheney message that “Reagan proved deficits don’t matter.” They are putting themselves in the role of taking the candy away — and hurting the unemployed and poor, while risking tipping the economy back into recession. They think this will help them in the election. Republicans are barely able to keep their snickering to themselves.

Outside of the DC bubble it is clear that the Republican strategy is to cause economic pain, and then run against Democrats for causing economic pain. And this is exactly what they are doing. (Similar to the strategy of blocking everything the Congress does, and then running a campaign of “Democrats aren’t getting anything done so vote for us.”)

Regards,

Jim

Mr. Barton,

You’re ashamed of BP suffering through a meeting with the President and having to honor their promise to pay “all legitimate claims?”

As a homegrown Texan, I’m ashamed of your apology to BP. What could have made you do this? Are you running short of campaign funds? Did BP meet with you while they were in town to call in one of your IOUs?

Your late, forced apology was phony and pathetic.

Any politician who puts corporations before their constituency, deserves to be fired.

I’m not eligible to vote against you, but I will send money to your opponent.

BP Gambled on Shortcuts: Profit First, Safety Last – In a letter to BP CEO Tony Hayward, Reps. Henry Waxman, D-Calif., and Bart Stupak, D-Mich., noted at least five questionable decisions BP made in the days leading up to the explosion. “The common feature of these five decisions is that they posed a trade-off between cost and well safety,” said Waxman and Stupak.

“Time after time, it appears that BP made decisions that increased the risk of a blowout to save the company time or expense,” the lawmakers wrote in the 14-page letter to Hayward. “If this is what happened, BP’s carelessness and complacency have inflicted a heavy toll on the Gulf, its inhabitants, and the workers on the rig.”

As an example of shortcuts, BP apparently rejected advice of a subcontractor in preparing for a cementing job to close up the well. BP rejected the recommendation to use 21 “centralizers” to make sure the casing ran down the center of the well bore. Instead, BP used only six centralizers.

In an e-mail on April 16, a BP official involved in the decision explained: “It will take 10 hours to install them. I do not like this.” Later that day, another official recognized the risks of proceeding with insufficient centralizers but commented: “who cares, it’s done, end of story, will probably be fine.”

BP History: Don’t Worry, People Will Forget About It – In the hours after a 2005 refinery explosion in Texas City, Texas that left 15 people dead, a BP executive suggested a holiday weekend and the national furor over Terry Schiavo’s last days would eclipse the tragedy. With the oil company now battling to save an image tarnished by the worst oil spill in U.S. history, the lawyer who found that e-mail among a mountain of BP documents says nothing appears to have changed.

“Their strategy is the same every time … And it’s always, first, damage control,” Brent Coon told CNN. “And with damage control, they accentuate the positive, downplay the negative, tell everybody they’re sorry, they’re gonna fix it, they’re gonna do better, and not to worry.”

Alberta, Canada Getting Messed Up by Oil Exploration Like the Gulf of Mexico – We thought that since you were feeling absolutely dejected watching BP’s underwater gusher spoiling the ecology and economy of the Gulf of Mexico, well, we would try to cheer you up by reminding you how the otherwise environmentally conscious Canadians are degrading their own natural splendor and national soul with oil spillage and seepage on purpose. Bitumen — A.K.A. tar sand — is barely oil. It’s oil-soaked dirt, but in a world that is constantly scraping the bottom of the fossil fuel barrel, tar sand is oil enough to warrant a mad frenzy to extract. And that’s exactly what is happening in the Canadian northwest.

Northern Alberta is rich — very rich — in bitumen. Fort McMurray is the small town at the epicenter of a boom in tar sand extraction, and it’s a messy, ecologically unsound adventure.

Traditionally, the only way to get oil from the dirt has been to cook it. So, every day, massive excavators rip apart the Boreal forest (also known as the lungs of Canada) to get at the soggy oil sand below, and then millions of gallons of pristine Athabascan water are intentionally spoiled in order to boil the oil out of the dirt (or is it the dirt out of the oil?). It’s a very messy, destructive process, which has contaminated rivers and lakes for miles in every direction.

National Rifle Association Get Exemption From Campaign Finance Law – Democrats on Monday touted a major breakthrough in campaign finance reform legislation that could drastically alter the shape and course of the 2010 elections. But in the process of securing the necessary concessions, the party confirmed the widespread assumption that special interests can literally write legislation if they have enough clout.

Facing the distinct possibility that months of collaboration on the DISCLOSE Act would fail, House Democrats granted the National Rifle Association a nearly exclusive exemption from the stringent new standards that they were applying for campaign finance disclosure. Almost all other companies and organizations would be required under the bill to include identification on the ads they sponsor and to provide shareholders with information on those political expenditures. According to House Democrats, the Humane Society and the AARP would qualify for the exemption as well. But other major, politically active institutions like the AFL-CIO, the Chamber of Commerce, and MoveOn.org would not.

A leadership aide told the Huffington Post that there are anywhere between 40-50 Democrats in the House who will refuse to buck the gun lobby on legislation it cares about. Another aide said there are roughly 260 members of the entire House (Republicans and Democrats alike) who will back the NRA’s interests if called upon.

Wealth And Inequality In America: If You Aren’t in the Top 1%, Then You’re Getting a Bum Deal – The rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer. It’s more true now than at any time since the Gilded Age. Normalized to 1979, the top 1% have seen their share of America’s income more than double. The bottom 90% have seen their portion shrink. 90% of Americans should be very upset.

Regards,

Jim

Rand Paul Says He Certified; Maybe He Meant to Say “Certifiable” – The national panel that approves doctors as board certified said U.S. Senate Republican candidate Rand Paul isn’t on the list, even though he has campaigned as holding the endorsement. Paul, a Republican from Bowling Green and an ophthalmologist, says he’s certified by the National Board of Ophthalmology. But, Lori Boukas, a spokeswoman for the American Board of Medical Specialties, said the organization considers certifications valid only if they are done by the two dozen groups that have its approval and that of the AMA. The American Board of Ophthalmology said Paul hasn’t been certified since Dec. 31, 2005.

The American Board of Medical Specialties, which works with the American Medical Association, doesn’t recognize certification by a group Paul founded in 1991 and heads. Paul, along with his wife and in-laws, incorporated their own National Board of Ophthalmology in 1999, with Paul as the “owner/president” of the organization. Asked what standards the group uses, Paul’s wife, Kelly, who is listed as its vice president, declined to comment. “I’m not involved in that,” Kelly Paul said. “I’m not officially talking about that today.”

Republican Candidate Suggests Landmines at US-Mexico Border – The Republican nominee for a New Mexico congressional seat suggested during a radio interview that the United States could place land mines along the Mexican border to secure the international boundary. In the May 18 interview with KNMX radio in Las Vegas, N.M., Mullins says the U.S. could mine the border, install barbed wire and post signs directing would-be border jumpers to cross legally at designated checkpoints. He explained Monday it was a suggestion he’d heard while campaigning. (So that makes this OK? – JLV)

BP Phone Operator: ‘We’re just a diversion to keep them from getting to corporate’ – A contracted operator with BP said calls from concerned citizens are falling on deaf ears. She’s one of 100 operators at the BP Call Center in West Houston. They answer phones from the hotline number designated for the Vessel of Opportunity Program and for cleanup ideas.

“We take all your information and then we have nothing to give them, nothing to give them.” She said calls about the oil disaster are non-stop and that operators are just warm bodies on the other end of the phone. “We’re a diversion to stop them from really getting to the corporate office, to the big people.”

Bumper Stickers for Sale at the Texas Republican Convention – I can see racism, fear, and superstition from my house.

Photo-Op at the Texas Republican Convention Will Make You Look Smarter by Comparison

Regards,

Jim