Oh Lord!

The State of Indiana is pursuing several bills which deal the issue of abortion, unions and education. Indiana now has some of the strictest anti-abortions laws in the country.

ABORTION
Highlights of the Indiana abortion policies that are in effect include:

• Women must be informed that human physical life begins at fertilization.
• Indiana will opt-out of abortion coverage in any state health exchange required under the new federal health law passed by Congress in 2010.
• Pain-capable children beginning at 20-weeks gestational age will enjoy enhanced protections.
• All abortions on girls under the age of 14 must be reported to child protective services within three days of the abortion in order to facilitate prompt investigation into child sexual abuse.
• Women must be informed that abortion may increase the risk of infertility, infection, or hemorrhaging.
• Doctors who do abortions in Indiana must have local hospital admitting privileges, provide medical licensing numbers, and provide emergency contact information to women having abortions.
• Women considering abortion must be informed about Indiana’s safe haven law that allows for mothers who decide to carry their children to term but are unable to care for their children to leave them with safe haven providers such as local police without criminal repercussions.

Ken Falk, an ACLU attorney representing Planned Parenthood, said the new anti-abortion law, which cuts public funding for Planned Parenthood, makes Indiana the first state to deny Medicaid funds for general health services such as breast exams and pap smears.

UNIONS
Indiana has right-to-work legislation which is presently before Indiana's House of Representatives. If it passes the House, where Republicans hold a 60-40 majority, it will go to the Senate, where Senate Republicans outnumber Democrats 37-13.

If the right-to-work proposal is approved, Indiana would be the first state in the industrial heartland of the United States to adopt such a law. It is in force in 22 other states, mostly in the South and West.

Indiana is home to numerous manufacturing plants for the auto industry that produce vehicles or components, including non-union and union-represented facilities.

Under the proposal, employees at unionized private workplaces would not be required to pay union dues. Supporters say the move would attract jobs to Indiana. Critics call it union busting.

EDUCATION

Legislators in Indiana have proposed a bill which would allow the reciting of the Lord's Prayer at the beginning of the school day.

Three Republican state senators in Indiana have a plan to fix public education in the state: Have someone recite the Lord’s Prayer at the beginning of every school day.

Really. It’s Senate Bill No. 25 (PDF):

In order that each student recognize the importance of spiritual development in establishing character and becoming a good citizen, the governing body of a school corporation or the equivalent authority of a charter school may require the recitation of the Lord’s Prayer at the beginning of each school day. The prayer may be recited by a teacher, a student, or the class of students.

In case you’re unfamiliar with what they’re talking about, this is the kind of Christian prayer the senators believe schools need:

Our Father, which art in heaven,
Hallowed be thy Name.
Thy Kingdom come.
Thy will be done in earth,
As it is in heaven.
Give us this day our daily bread.
And forgive us our trespasses,
As we forgive them that trespass against us.
And lead us not into temptation,
But deliver us from evil.
For thine is the kingdom,
The power, and the glory,
For ever and ever.
Amen.

That’s Matthew 6:9-13.

The Lord's prayer? Really, who's Lord are we talking about. Is this legislation referring to the Lord of the Christians? What about the Lord of the Jews? Maybe the Lord of the Muslims? Do Buddhists or Hindu's have a Lord? Could it be the Lord of the Flies? Or possibly the Lord of the Rings?

The Newtster is at it Again!

In the news last week, Newt Gingrich said that he believed that kids from poor neighborhoods should work janitorial jobs at school in order to learn a work ethic. The REASON? Gingrich wants to relax our "truly stupid" child labor laws. He wants to do away with union workers, fire janitors and employ children at slave labor wages. Newt has a way of putting his thoughts into succinct statements.

“It is tragic what we do in the poorest neighborhoods, entrapping children in, first of all, child [labor] laws, which are truly stupid,”

"You say to somebody, you shouldn’t go to work before you’re what, 14, 16 years of age, fine. You’re totally poor. You’re in a school that is failing with a teacher that is failing. I’ve tried for years to have a very simple model. Most of these schools ought to get rid of the unionized janitors, have one master janitor and pay local students to take care of the school. The kids would actually do work, they would have cash, they would have pride in the schools, they’d begin the process of rising."

But not to worry, even Gingrich has his limits. When speaking to WNYM radio host Curtis Sliwa, he clarified, “Kids shouldn’t work in coal mines; kids shouldn’t work in heavy industry,” but he still supports having poor school kids scrub toilets in public schools.

Is this a new way of thinking for Gingrich? Absolutely not! In 1994, Newt proposed bringing back orphanages for children on welfare.

In 1994, during the early days of the public debate on welfare reform, Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich ignited a media firestorm by suggesting that orphanages are better for poor children than life with a mother on Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC).

As part of his push for welfare reform, Gingrich proposed that states end aid to poor single mothers and their children be sent to orphanages that would be built with the saved money.

Responding to criticism of the plan by then-first lady Hillary Clinton, Gingrich cites a 1938 Hollywood film and said, “I’d ask her to go to Blockbuster and rent the Mickey Rooney movie about ‘Boys Town.’”

Newt's statements are bold, direct and false. Recently he added a proposal about the food stamp program.

In a speech in Iowa last month, for instance, Gingrich took on the federal Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program — or food stamps, as it used to be called. The former U.S. House speaker, whom one would assume would know better, said that “people take their food stamp money and use it to go to Hawaii” on vacations. He also said “they give food stamps now to millionaires.”

PolitiFact.com, the fact-checkers at the Tamp Bay Times, looked into Gingrich’s charges and found them false, giving him the “Pants on Fire” rating of its truth meter for being so wrong.

The political pundits seem to agree that with Newt's success in the GOP primary race, Newt will continue to make outrageous, absurd and misinformed statements.

A different view has been espoused by Louis King, president and CEO of Summit Academy OIC, an educational and vocational training center focused on getting jobs for the jobless and under-employed. King believes that, “the best example for kids is to see their parents working” in order to have parents serve as role models. In other words, put their parents to work.

“You can’t have it both ways,” he adds. “You can’t demand people take care of themselves and at the same time not afford equal lending, good education and access to jobs. That is the hypocrisy of both the left and the right.”

Jobs for adults, he repeats, not putting children to work, is the path away from poverty to prosperity. “If I can put one or two people to work feeding their families, that is better than feeding 300 people one time.”

Is Your State Giving Corporate Welfare?

David Cay Johnston, a Reuters columnist, expresses his opinion about some employers being allowed to keep state income taxes, particularly in Illinois in "Paying taxes your employer keeps."

Hard earned income taken as a state tax is being given to some employers, not the state of IL

Painful as it feels to have a lot of hard-earned income taken from your paycheck for taxes, a new Illinois law does something Americans may find surprising. It lets some employers pocket taxes for 10 years.

You read that right — in Illinois the state income taxes withheld from your paycheck may be kept by your employer under a law that took effect in May. Continental Corporation, the big German tire maker; Motorola Mobility, the cell phone maker; and Navistar, the maker of diesel trucks for industry and the military, are in on the deal. State officials say a fourth company is negotiating a similar arrangement.

Chrysler and Mitsubishi arranged deals with the state in the depths of the Great Recession in 2009; Ford got one in 2007, since revised to let it keep half of its Illinois workers’ state income taxes. (See chart below.)

Instead of paying for police, teachers, roads and other state and local services that grease the wheels of commerce, Illinois workers at these companies will subsidize their employers with the state income taxes they pay.

Diverting taxes from public purposes to private gain

The deal to let employers keep half or all of their workers’ state income taxes represents a dramatic expansion of a little-known trend in the law: diverting taxes from public purposes to private gain.

Throughout the United States, big box retailers like Wal-Mart, Lowe’s and Cabela’s, and in some cases entire shopping malls, often negotiate deals to keep sales taxes that customers pay at the cash register, using the money to finance construction of their stores. This gives them a huge advantage over retailers without such subsidies, while reducing revenue to local governments, which in turn creates pressure for higher taxes.

The pipeline industry

COMPETITION BETWEEN STATES

The pipeline industry, a collection of legal monopolies with rates that are regulated, gets to include the federal corporate income tax in the rates charged customers even though nearly all pipelines are exempt from the federal corporate income tax because they are organized as master limited partnerships. Evidence in one federal court case showed that collecting this tax, plus state income taxes, and then pocketing the taxes increased ultimate net after-tax profits by 75 percent.

The Illinois deal shows how competition between the states, and with other countries, helps big corporations wring subsidies from state governments even as the states are being forced to fire teachers and other public workers because of a weak economy that has cost jobs and tax revenue.

Why would the state let companies do this? Most big companies pay little or no state corporate income tax, because companies arrange to take expenses in higher tax states and profits in states with little or no corporate income tax. So the only way to finance incentives without the state writing a check is to let the companies pocket their workers’ state income tax.

Corporate Socialism

The Illinois deal also shows how government, rather than the market, picks winners and losers. While America promotes the dream of a free market and competition, this sort of corporate socialism has been around since before the founding of the republic and has played a key role in the rise of many industries, including railroads, aircraft, as well as computer hardware and software.

Warren Ribley, director of the Illinois Department of Commerce and Economic Opportunity, said “it’s a fair question” as to whether taxpayers should be subsidizing businesses. He said elected leaders and the public should debate the issue.

“In the meantime,” Ribley said, “I am out there competing every single day with states and countries across the entire globe and I have got to have the tools and I have to use the tools provided by the General Assembly,” as the Illinois legislature is formally known.

State Representative Jack Franks, a Democrat from the northern end of Illinois, said the deals “are fundamentally unfair” to taxpayers and other companies.

“Our current governor had the genius idea of giving to Motorola and Navistar and others, he said to retain their business here, yet he is allowing Navistar to fire up to 25 percent of their workforce and still get millions from the state” by holding onto the income taxes of employees.

Money diverted from state needs to private corporate coffers

OTHERS LIKELY TO FOLLOW

The Illinois law lets companies retain all of the income taxes withheld from the paychecks of workers whose hiring expands the payroll and half of the taxes for existing workers whose jobs are retained.

For Continental the deal means $22 million over 10 years diverted to its coffers from the state income taxes withheld from worker paychecks to help pay for a $224 million expansion of its Mount Vernon tire plant in southern Illinois. The deal will retain 2,500 jobs and create 400 more rather than prompt the plant to move to Mexico, Brazil or another state.

The hourly tire workers, under a two-tier pay scale that means lower wages for new hires, make either $19.35 an hour or $16.31 an hour. For a year that is pay of just under $34,000 to $40,000.

Based on a 3 percent average Illinois state income tax rate for people in that income range, and assuming Continental’s 2,500 hourly workers remain at the higher wage rate and 400 new workers are hired at the lower wage rate, the annual diversion of their income taxes would be as much as $1.9 million of the average $2.2 million annual benefit from the deal. Taxes paid by supervisors and managers, and expected higher wages in future years, account for the other $300,000 per year or so for the next decade.

Failure to create or retain jobs

Navistar is getting the deal even though its application shows it plans to reduce its workforce of 3,100 to about 2,200.

Ribley said companies that got earlier deals in which they avoided the state corporate income tax and then failed to create or retain jobs as promised have actually paid back the benefits.

The three companies that got the deal are not named in the law enacted in May, but the language of Public Act 97-2 defines them by describing the industry, employment level and other specifics that show how the law was tailored to benefit just them.

Here’s a prediction: other states soon will also authorize diverting income taxes withheld from worker paychecks to their employers, if some have not done so already — unless, of course, voters speak up on behalf of competitive markets and against this sort of corporate socialism.

WATCH:

The message to employers from the State of Illinois is to hold out for corporate welfare. The message to the voter from the state of finances in Illinois is to fight against corporate socialism.

Facts, Fiction and Intellect

In her New York Times' column, Maureen Dowd comments on the intellectual acumen of some Republican Tea Party members and candidates for President. Dowd finds a correlation with what is happening in Republican politics today with the message from the movie, “The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance.” THE MESSAGE

Jimmy Stewart is the young attorney who comes West to Shinbone and ends up as a U.S. senator after gaining fame for killing the sadistic outlaw Liberty Valance, played by Lee Marvin. John Wayne is the rancher, a fast-draw Cyrano who hides behind a building and actually shoots Marvin because he knows Stewart is hopeless in a duel. He does it even though they’re in love with the same waitress, who chooses the lawyer because he teaches her to read.

A lifetime later, on the verge of becoming a vice presidential candidate, Stewart confesses the truth to a Shinbone newspaperman, who refuses to print it. “When the legend becomes fact,” the editor says, “print the legend.”

RICK PERRY

Perry conceded that he “struggled” with college, and told the 13,000 young people in Lynchburg that in high school, he had graduated “in the top 10 of my graduating class — of 13.”

Our education system is going to hell. Average SAT scores are falling, and America is slipping down the list of nations for college completion. And Rick Perry stands up with a smirk to talk to students about how you can get C’s, D’s and F’s and still run for president.

Perry told the students, “God uses broken people to reach a broken world.” What does that even mean?

MICHELE BACHMANN

Another “Don’t Know Much About History” Tea Party heroine, Michele Bachmann, seems rather proud of not knowing anything, simply repeating nutty, inflammatory medical claims that somebody in the crowd tells her.

SARAH PALIN

Sarah Palin, who got outraged at a “gotcha” question about what newspapers and magazines she read, is the mother of stupid conservatism.

THE STUPID PARTY

The Republicans are now the “How great is it to be stupid?” party. In perpetrating the idea that there’s no intellectual requirement for the office of the presidency, the right wing of the party offers a Farrelly Brothers “Dumb and Dumber” primary in which evolution is avant-garde.

THE LINEUP

So we’re choosing between the over intellectualized professor and blockheads boasting about their vacuity?

Ronald Reagan vs GOP Tea Party

Bill Maher, comedian, TV host, political commentator, was on the Jay Leno show on September 9th, after the Republican Presidential Debate and President Obama's speech on the job situation. When discussing why Presidential hopeful Jon Huntsman's political stance does not fit into today's Republican ideology, Maher suggested that "at some point, the left moved to the center and the right right got on a short bus to crazytown!

If you think that Maher is extreme in his analysis, just look to Senator Lindsay Graham, a Republican from South Carolina, who recently observed: “Ronald Reagan would have a hard time getting elected as a Republican” in today’s party." To emphasize the obvious, Sally Kohn, in her article Forgetting Reagan, states that "by today’s Tea Party standards, the Republican icon would have been a Leninist-Marxist-socialist America hater." Kohn lists at least 5 ways Reagan would have been in hot water with the Tea Party.

At least by Tea Party standards, Reagan was kind of liberal—a fact that seemed to escape the GOP candidates claiming his mantle. Here are the top five ways the real Reagan would have landed in hot water with Republicans beholden to the Tea Party.

1. Reagan Gave Amnesty to Undocumented Immigrants

When the debate last night turned to immigration, John Huntsman said that if “President Reagan was here he would speak to the American people and he would lay out in hopeful, optimistic terms” how to get to positive immigration reform. It was a fitting homage from the race’s only moderate.

After all, when conservatives today complain that a stringent legalization program requiring all sorts of hurdles and fines in exchange for citizenship is equivalent to amnesty, they forget they’re swiping at The Gipper’s record. It was Ronald Reagan who passed the law making any immigrant who had entered the country before 1982 eligible for real amnesty—no fines included. The bill helped millions of new Americans gain authorized residency in the United States.

In his farewell address as president, Reagan envisioned America as a city on a hill: “And if there had to be city walls,” he said. “The walls had doors and the doors were open to anyone with the will and the heart to get here.” Strong words from the idol of those who now want to build even taller, electrified walls.

2. Reagan Shored Up Social Security

Last Rick Perry reprised his attack on Social Security, calling the program that has kept millions of seniors out of poverty a “monstrous lie.” But if Perry is going to keep insisting that Social Security is a Ponzi scheme, that would make Ronald Reagan its Bernie Madoff.

After boasting of his plans to privatize Social Security so that “those who can make better provisions for themselves” be allowed to do so, Reagan bailed out the program to the tune of $165 billion. In fact, Republicans can thank Reagan that they even have a Social Security to rail against.

3. Reagan Was a Union Leader

Before running for office, Reagan was a union leader. He ran the Screen Actors Guild and boasted of being the first head to lead it in a strike. Once in the White House, Reagan said, “Collective bargaining … has played a major role in America’s economic miracle. Unions represent some of the freest institutions in this land. There are few finer examples of participatory democracy to be found anywhere.” True, Reagan is famous for busting the Professional Air Traffic Controllers Organization (Patco) union, but he supported the right of government workers to form unions and bargain collectively—and extended these rights to public-sector workers when he was governor of California. And not only did Reagan win Patco’s endorsement for his 1980 presidential campaign; The New York Times reported that in pre-strike negotiations with the air traffic controllers, Reagan “directed his negotiators to go beyond his legal authority to offer controllers a pay raise before their strike—the first time a president had ever offered so much to a federal employees’ union.”

4. Reagan Opposed Weaponization

In his memoirs, Reagan wrote that he dreamed of “a world free of nuclear weapons.” During his presidency, conservatives within his own party accused him of “appeasing” the Soviets in signing a nuclear non-proliferation treaty with Mikhail Gorbachev. Following the negotiations, Paul Wyerich, a leader of the New Right, wrote, “Reagan is a weakened president, weakened in spirit as well as clout.” Yes, Reagan redeemed himself with conservatives by presiding over the greatest military buildup in U.S. history and, in so doing, increased the nation’s deficit by from $700 billion to $3 trillion—more than any president since George Washington combined. But by refusing to send more troops into Beirut in 1983 when Hezbollah murdered 243 U.S. service members, critiquing Israel’s preventative strike on an Iraqi nuclear reactor, and seeking to draw down the weapons cache worldwide, Reagan never quite fit the image of a right-wing hawk.

5. Reagan Raised Taxes

All of the candidates in last night’s debate pushed the conservative Kool Aid that tax cuts will save America’s economy. For kicks, Mitt Romney went a step further, endorsing tax cuts for the rich while complaining that poor people who don’t pay taxes aren’t doing their fair share to support the troops.

But when he was governor of California, Reagan “signed into law the largest tax increase in the history of any state” until that point in an effort to balance the budget (How would that sound to todays’ GOP candidates, all of whom indicated they would not raise taxes by a single dollar even if it were offset with $10 in spending cuts). Once president, Reagan raised taxes seven out of eight of his years in office—including four times in just two years.

Basically, Reagan was a giant disappointment for arch-conservatives. He did little to tighten restrictions against abortion as president and actually passed pro-choice legislation as governor of California. He grew the size of the federal government tremendously, adding 60,000 new government jobs (versus, for instance, Bill Clinton, who shrank government payrolls by 373,000). As governor of California, Reagan supported and ultimately expanded Medi-Cal, which is the nation’s largest Medicaid program. Both as governor and president, he was one of the most proactive presidents in restricting smog emissions and protecting wilderness. And after his press secretary was shot during an assassination attempt against him, the president came out in support of stricter gun-control laws.

Sally Kohn notes, "The GOP candidates may have been standing in the Reagan Library, but they were a million miles away from Reagan’s legacy."

A Common Sense Budget: The People's Budget

Reps. Maxine Waters, Mazie Hirono (podium) and Raul Grijalva introducing The People's Budget at the Capitol

Politicians like to support their theory's with poll results. If you look at the polls, the public's message is clear: protect Medicare and Social Security, spend less on the military, and raise taxes on the wealthy. And while we're at it, let's tax the Wall Street speculators who wrecked our economy.

If you listen to the pundits and TV commentators, the federal budget problem has a simple solution: cuts, cuts, and more cuts. They cheer politicians for making "tough choices," which usually entails taking money away from schools, stiffing public workers, and telling the poor and the elderly they need to make do with even less. Tough choices, indeed — but for whom?

Main Stream Media does not reflect Main Street.

But if you look at the newspapers or your TV screen, those ideas are rarely, if ever, part of the budget debate. Is there no one in Washington who is sticking up for what the majority of the public wants?

But wait.

The Congressional Progressive Caucus, which includes 74 House Democrats and Sen. Bernie Sanders, released an alternative budget blueprint back in April. This "People's Budget" would achieve a better balance by taxing the wealthy, reining in runaway military spending, and protecting the New Deal social safety net — just what people tell pollsters that they want

So why is it that the People's Budget isn't being discussed?

There's a good chance you've never heard about this part of the budget debate, though there's been a mountain of media coverage of the budget mess — thousands of articles and television programs. If you've paid attention to any of it, you're probably well acquainted with Rep. Paul Ryan. The Wisconsin Republican has "jet black hair and a touch of Eagle Scout to him," according to one magazine profile. The New York Times told readers about his "piercing blue eyes." It's not just his looks that impress the media. His budget plan, which pairs yet more big tax breaks for the rich with spending cuts for everyone else, is constantly touted as being "bold" and "serious."

And the People's Budget? Well, it's not even mentioned. There were no hard news stories about in the big papers. Washington Post columnist Dana Milbank wrote about the press conference unveiling the People's Budget only to mock it— right down to poking fun at one lawmaker's tie.

Here's a general overview of the People's Budget:

• Reduces unemployment—and thus the deficit—through extensive investment in infrastructure, clean energy, transportation and education;
  
• Ends almost all the Bush tax cuts, creates new tax brackets for millionaires and new fees on Wall Street;
  
• Full American military withdrawal from Iraq and Afghanistan, along with other reductions in military spending;
  
• Ends subsidies for non-renewable energy;
  
• Lowers health care costs through a public option and negotiating Rx payments with pharmaceutical companies;
  
• Raises the taxable maximum on Social Security.

That is a very quick summary, and full details can be read here. The Economic Policy Institute has a full analysis here. At the press conference introducing the budget, economist Jeffrey Sachs praised it as the "only budget that makes sense" and "a lot more serious than everything else on the table." He's also previously written about The People's Budget on the Huffington Post.

Partisan Politics

The budget debate is locked up in a partisan stalemate. That makes it as good a time as any to tell the people about the People's Budget. Most newspapers and TV networks aren't doing that. And when you look at who stands to gain — and who stands to lose — it's no mystery why corporate-owned media are keeping us in the dark.

The budget mess is covered daily by the media. It is time to let the public know about the People's Budget.

For a discussion and analysis of the People's Budget, WATCH:

Lipstick and Jewelry

Is it a show of solidarity or a photo opportunity?

You couldn't miss it, the big Star of David hanging around Sarah Palin's neck as she toured the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island on Wednesday.

NBC New York asked Palin about the significance just as she boarded her bus outside Fox Newschannel to head off to Boston.

"Today is the 44th anniversary of Jerusalem being reunited," she said. "We want to call attention to that."

The pendant is in every photo she took with fans and supporters and can be seen in every sound-bite captured by television crews.

This is not the first time that Palin, a non-Jew, has donned a large Star of David. Of course wearing a Star of David on a chain generally marks the wearer as Jewish. But with Palin, there are other reasons.

So what was the most decidedly not-Jewish Palin doing wearing one in Israel? Not appealing to American Jews -- that's for sure. Most American Jews, being Democrats, can't stand her. And one visit to Israel, a nation many American Jews have mixed feelings toward, anyway, isn't going to change that.

Rather, by wearing the Star of David, Palin was reaching out to American evangelical Christians -- and also being one herself. [emphasis added]

According to David Brog, the (Jewish) executive director of Christians United for Israel, "it is increasingly common" for evangelical Christian supporters of Israel -- who follow a fairly common Israel-centric strain of American biblical interpretation -- to wear Stars of David as symbols of solidarity with the Jewish state

Of course, the last few times Palin wore her large Jewish Star was when the TV cameras were rolling.

View more videos at: http://nbcnewyork.com.

Misinformer of the Year Award

Media Matters has announced that Sarah Palin is the winner of the award for Misinformer of the Year. Palin's misinformation put her ahead of the competition for this prestigious award.

This year, Palin stood out for her sheer ability to dominate our national conversation and draw the attention of the entire news media to her factually challenged claims and vicious attacks. She has blurred the line completely between media figure and political activist.

From spreading lies about "death panels" to cropping Obama's comments about "American exceptionalism," from her comfortable perch at Fox News to her self-promoting books and reality show, Palin has truly broken new ground in misinformation.

WATCH: Misinformer of the Year video

Why Rahm was Wrong!

Unprecedented? Hardly!

Watch a compilation prepared by ThinkProgress:

On Thursday, May 27, Rep. George Miller (D-CA) responded to the myth that this catastrophe was unprecedented and thus unforeseeable:

Every time we have a catastrophic event like this involving British Petroleum or other parts of the oil and gas industry, we’re told that this is an unpredictable cascade of unforeseeable errors, that this is unprecedented, that nobody could have foreseen this. This is sort of like the bankers on Wall Street. Nobody could have foreseen the risks that they engineered themselves, so nobody’s responsible. I don’t believe this was some “black swan” or “perfect storm” event. There wasn’t something that could not have been foreseen. And I don’t think this is something you can promise will never happen again.

Always remember that BP is working for its own self interest, and not for you.

If You Want Change, Change Congress

Professor Lawrence Lessig has known Barack Obama for 20 years, and supported all his campaigns. In this video produced for The Nation and FixCongressFirst.org, Lessig describes his concern over President Obama's limited approach to truly "changing Washington," and his view that Congress is a deeply broken institution that needs reform.

Find out Professor Lessig's solutions and ideas in this video companion to his cover story for the February 4, 2010 issue of The Nation magazine, "How To Get Our Democracy Back."

Read the story at http://www.thenation.com/doc/20100222/lessig

A Fake 'Reality' Show

It takes a bit of time to wrap your head around this new show. A new web show called "BUMP+ follows three fictional women who are pregnant. The twist is that viewers who are following the lives of these women, get to decide whether they should have an abortion or not.

A new web show called "BUMP+" is stirring up controversy and conversation about abortion. It's a "fake" reality show in which three actresses portray women facing unintended pregnancies. These characters, entirely fictional, have agreed to appear on a reality TV show and let the public weigh in on what they should do about their pregnancies: keep it, terminate it, adoption? The creators of the web series say they will pick what happens to "contestants'" pregnancies based on viewer response.

It's not exactly what we pro-choicers have always dreamed about: a decision left up to a woman, her doctor, and a vast and anonymous internet audience. When feminists say we want more realistic portrayals of abortion in the movies and on TV, we don't mean reality-show realistic. My body, everybody's choice?

Sarah Selzter at AlterNet asks, "Is it a smart way to spark discussion about abortion, or tone deaf and callous?"

A One Man Filibuster

 

The Senate rules on political nominees is antiquated. Sen. Richard Shelby has placed a "hold" on every single pending Obama nominee. That's 70 nominees that are waiting to be confirmed by the Senate. This  means that none can proceed on a vote for nomination without securing 60 votes to break a filibuster. 

 

And he can do that. One Senator can hold up the entire process for whatever reason...or for that matter for no reason.  So why is Sen. Shelby doing this?

According to Paul Waldman at The American Prospect this is extortion.  Sen. Shelby is doing this "until the Democrats give in to his blackmail and fork over a few billion dollars in defense pork for Alabama."

Republicans' audacity about these kinds of things has changed the standards of what we consider audacious. You might remember how, back when George W. Bush was president and Democrats were filibustering a few truly abominable judicial nominees, Republicans considered eliminating the filibuster on judicial nominations but keeping it on everything else. This idea was considered so radical it was termed the "nuclear option," in that it would incinerate the Senate and vaporize any hope of cross-partisan comity for all time. But now this kind of stuff barely raises an eyebrow, particularly among a press corps that has gotten used to the idea that Republicans play hardball, Democrats don't do anything about it because they're wimps, and therefore the latest outrage is barely worth taking note of.

 Politico sees it as a political concern regarding Shelby's state of Alabama.

Alabama Republican Sen. Richard Shelby has placed a unilateral hold on all of President Barack Obama’s executive branch nominees in an apparent protest over home state concerns.

Shelby is frustrated over the Pentagon’s bidding process for air-to-air refueling tankers, which could lead to the creation of jobs in Mobile, Ala. And spokesman Jonathan Graffeo said in a statement the senator is also “deeply concerned” that the administration “will not release” funds already appropriated for a Terrorist Explosive Device Analytical Center to be built in Alabama.

Emptywheel at Firedoglake states that this is about whether "federal money that may benefit Alabama gets released."

The key issue is that Shelby wants the Air Force to tweak an RFP for refueling tankers so that Airbus (partnered with Northrup Grumman) would win the bid again over Boeing. The contract had been awarded in 2008, but the GAO found that the Air Force had erred in calculating the award. After the Air Force wrote a new RFP in preparation to rebid the contract, Airbus calculated that it would not win the new bid, and started complaining. Now, Airbus is threatening to withdraw from the competition unless the specs in the RFP are revised.

Essentially, then, Shelby’s threat is primarily about gaming this bidding process to make sure Airbus–and not Boeing–wins the contract (there’s a smaller program he’s complaining about, too, but this is the truly huge potential bounty for his state).

Dave Johnson at Campaign  for America's Future thinks Shelby's action emphasizes the need for jobs.

$100 billion contract to build air to air tankers -- that's a lot of jobs and lots of them in Alabama.

This shows why we need a national industrial policy. The country has no policy to promote jobs and manufacturing so members of Congress are forced to do things like this to try to keep manufacturing in their district or state - competing with every other district or state. And in this case, even fighting to lose the contract for an American company!

Senator Shelby is fighting for jobs in his state, because the country is not.

Jonathon Chait at the New Republic writes about the Senate dysfunction and the decay of the process because this is basically about demanding pork for his state.

The “hold” is a now similar tool to what the filibuster was forty years ago. It’s a sparingly-used weapon meant to signal an unusually intense preference. A Congressional scholar reports that putting a blanket hold on all the president’s nominees has never been done before. But there’s no rule that says you can’t. It’s just not done, until it is.

Shelby is using his blanket hold to demand pork for his state. It’s a telling sign of the decay of the process, another indication of the power parochial interests have to block rational policymaking. But what’s to keep the minority party form simply blocking all the president’s nominees, from day one? Sure, they might catch some heat. But the president would eventually catch even more heat as his undermanned administration slid into dysfunction. And politics is a zero-sum game.

The problem is that no matter what the reason Sen. Shelby has for placing  a unilateral hold Obama's executive branch nominees, the rules that exist in the Senate allow for this kind of uncompromising behavior.  It is time to change the rules.

Control Issues

A southern California elementary school had pulled all copies of Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary after a parent complained about a child stumbling across definitions for "oral sex."

Now the Menifee Union School District is forming a committee to review whether dictionaries containing the definitions for sexual terms should be permanently banned from the district's classrooms, a district official said Friday.

Free-speech and anti-censorship experts called the ban an overreaction.

"If a public school were to remove every book because it contains one word deemed objectionable to some parent, then there would be no books at all in our public libraries," said Peter Scheer, executive director of the California First Amendment Coalition, of which The Press-Enterprise is a member. "I think common sense seems to be lacking in this school."

Whether banning a dictionary would actually violate free-speech laws is a complicated legal question, Scheer said. But the decision to remove the reference books "certainly offends free-speech principles and values that all public schools should hold dear," he said.

Via Think Progress about Texas curriculum and textbooks standards.

For months, the Texas State Board of Education has been hearing from “experts” about the direction of the state’s social studies curriculum and textbook standards. The advice to the 15-member board — which is composed of 10 Republicans — has included more references to Christianity, fewer mentions of civil rights leaders, George Wasington, and Abraham Lincoln.

On Thursday and Friday last week, the State Board of Education took up these recommendations in a lengthy, heated debate. Some highlights of what the Republican-leaning board ended up deciding, and the debates that went on:

— On a 7-6 vote, the board decided to add “causes and key organizations and individuals of the conservative resurgence of the 1980s and 1990s, including Phyllis Schafly, the Contract with America, the Heritage Foundation, the Moral Majority, and the National Rifle Association” to the curriculum.

– The Republican majority voted against requiring Texas textbooks and teachers to cover the Democratic late senator Edward Kennedy, the first Hispanic Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor, and leading Hispanic civil rights groups such as LULAC and MALDEF. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Thurgood Marshall, the country’s first African-American Supreme Court justice, will be taught.

– Republican Don McLeroy lost a battle to “remove hip-hop and insert country music in its place from a proposed set of examples of cultural movements.” Republican Patricia Hardy said that while she disliked hip hop music, pretending it wasn’t around was “crazy.” “These people are multimillionaires, and believe me, there are not enough black people to buy that,” she said. “There are white people buying this. It has had a profound effect.” Country music was added as a separate measure.

– “McLeroy was successful with another of his noteworthy amendments: to include documents that supported Cold War-era Sen. Joseph McCarthy and his contention that the U.S. government was infiltrated with Communists in the 1950s.”

– “Republican board member Cynthia Dunbar unsuccessfully tried to strike the names of Scopes monkey trial attorney Clarence Darrow and Pan-Africanist Marcus Garvey from the standards. Asked by another member about her opposition to Garvey, Dunbar explained, according to the Texas Tribune: “My concern is that he was born in Jamaica and was deported.”

– The board “included a requirement for students in U.S. history classes to differentiate between legal and illegal immigration.”

Unable to reach to reach complete agreement last week, the board unanimously decided to “suspend debate on the standards until March, when they will take up other social studies subjects such as government and geography.”

This debate is important not only because it will dictate how the state’s 4.7 million schoolchildren are taught social studies, but also because Texas “is one of the nation’s biggest buyers of textbooks.” Publishers are often “reluctant to produce different versions of the same material,” and therefore create books in line with Texas’ standards. “Publishers will do whatever it takes to get on the Texas list,” one industry executive told the Washington Monthly.

The Dallas Morning News has the story about a banned children's author.

What do the authors of the children's book Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See? and a 2008 book called Ethical Marxism: The Categorical Imperative of Liberation have in common?

Both are named Bill Martin and, for now, neither is being added to Texas schoolbooks.

In its haste to sort out the state's social studies curriculum standards this month, the State Board of Education tossed children's author Martin, who died in 2004, from a proposal for the third-grade section. Board member Pat Hardy, R-Weatherford, who made the motion, cited books he had written for adults that contain "very strong critiques of capitalism and the American system."

Trouble is, the Bill Martin Jr. who wrote the Brown Bear series never wrote anything political, unless you count a book that taught kids how to say the Pledge of Allegiance, his friends said. The book on Marxism was written by Bill Martin, a philosophy professor at DePaul University in Chicago.

It seems that the problem is significant.

For some, however, the mix-up is an indicator of a larger problem with the way the elected board members have approached the update of state curriculum standards. [...]

The social studies standards update, which started last spring when groups of educators met to suggest revisions, has brought criticism from the right and the left about politicizing the process. As trustees worked their way through a draft this month, political ideas like imperialism, communism and free enterprise were at the heart of some of the changes.

When the issue of children's school books becomes political or religious, then free speech and civil rights certainly become victims.

The Blame Game

There have been many progressive voices in and out of the blogosphere complaining about the Obama Administration as it relates to health care , the bank bailout, Afghanistan or the election in Massachusetts.

Bernard Avishai at TPM believes that the Massachussets voters, particularly the "undecideds" saw Coakley as being completely insincere.

I wish I had a bluefish dinner for every time Coakley referred to the health package as "not perfect." It all came out so forced and fake.

But his real gripe seems to be against the 'real' progressives and the Democratic party.

And we can look no further than Howard Dean, and MSNBC, and Arianna Huffington, and, yes, some columnists at the Times and bloggers here at TPM — you know, real progressives — who have lambasted Obama again and again since last March over arguable need-to-haves like the "public option," as if nobody else was listening. They've been thinking: "Oh, if only we ran things, how much more subtle would the legislation be," as if 41 senators add up to subtle. Meanwhile the undecideds are thinking: "Hell, if his own people think he's a sell-out and jerk, why should we support this?"

Kevin Drum at Mother Jones sees discontent with Obama from the left as being 'inevitable.'

The frustration on the left with Obama — and with healthcare reform specifically — was almost inevitable. During the campaign, a lot of people chose to see in him what they wanted to see, pushing to the back of their minds not just the obvious signs that Obama has always been a cautious, practical politician, but also the obvious compromises and pressures that are forced onto any president. It was a recipe for disappointment. The striking thing to me, though, is how fast the left has turned on him.

Did the mere image of Obama become the 'Hope" that he was selling. It wasn't only the right that labeled him a 'liberal.' It was also the left that really wished and hoped that Obama would become the 'liberal' President they were waiting for. In reality he was and is not as progressive as the right labels him to be and as the left wishes he would be.

Given the reality of the Obama presidency, Drum still feels we need to give President Obama a chance.

I've got all sorts of complaints about Obama. He's been weaker on civil liberties than I'd like. His approach to bank regulation has been far too friendly to financial interests. I'm not thrilled with his escalation in Afghanistan. He hasn't moved as quickly on gay rights as I hoped. And he hasn't used the bully pulpit nearly as effectively as I think he's capable of. He could afford to attack obstructionism and conservative retrenchment far more directly than he has.

Still, none of that comes within light years of providing a reason to turn on him. The national security community has tremendous influence; the financial lobby has a stranglehold on Congress; Obama told us explicitly during the campaign that he planned to escalate in Afghanistan; his caution on gay rights is quite likely smart politically; and he certainly gave us fair warning about his dedication to reaching across the aisle and trying to work with Republicans. The fact that they've spent his entire first year in a raging temper tantrum is hardly his fault. Given the cards he was dealt, he hasn't done badly. I think Andrew Sullivan — writing in his Dr. Jekyll persona — gets it about right here.

Obama is a liberal pragmatist in politics and a traditional conservative in his understanding of the presidency. Once you grasp this, his first year makes much more sense.

He has marshalled conservative constitutional norms - against the radical claims of Bush and Cheney with respect to the presidency - in defense of a liberal restoration of the importance of government. This has made for a frustrating year for those who want instant results - because he has often deferred to Congress; or those who want short-term tactical political coups - because he prefers strategy to tactics. But for anyone taking the long view, it is hard to see where Obama has really gone wrong. [...]

Did Obama make a mistake by sticking with his campaign pledge to reform and expand health insurance in such a perilous economic time? My view is: no. He crafted a compromise bill that would provide insurance to 30 million people, reduce the deficit, and bring the drug and insurance companies along. Such a result enraged the left, and sent the right into a tizzy of fury - but it will endure as the biggest social reform since Lyndon Johnson if it survives the Massachusetts special election. Did he err by allowing the Congress to take the lead? Well: the Clintons tried dictating to Congress and look how that turned out. No president has succeeded in this area before, in good times and bad. Obama got his reform in a year of economic crisis. The further you remove yourself from this, the more impressive the achievement is.

One interesting comment left by Anonymous to Drum's analysis of who's to blame, is also relevant in this discussion.

Mr. Drum reminds me of the Queen Alice in Wonderland: he gets everything reversed.

The problem isn't the Left, who have been totally ignored by the Obama administration and the Democratic leadership . . . the problem is the "centrists", who are little more than political whores always with their finger up in the air tracking the latest poll and focus group study results: the American people, completely disgusted with the behavior and failures of "centrist" Democrats, shouted a resounding "NO!!!!" to Obama and the DLC.

If the Democrats want to win, they have to earn a win. That means real change. That means principle. That means doing a U-turn from the "Turn Right" sign they have been following, and GO LEFT.

1. Mr. Obama has, for the most part, embraced or expanded Bush policies. He's a Democrat with a black skin and a white Wall Street soul.

2. Polls have shown, time and time again that Americans don't want this freak of a health care bill, which that mandates people are forced to buy products from the same insurance companies that are responsible for the miserable state of America's health care, they want a single payer system similar to other developed countries which has proven far superior to the present American system.

3. The American people don't want to escalate the war in Afghanistan, Somalia and Yemen.

4. The American people don't to bail out Wall Street and billionaire bankers.

5. The American people don't want political hacks like Rahm Emanuel and Wall Street crooks like Larry Summers and Bob Rubin controlling Obama administration policy.

6. The American people voted for real change, and they're sick of getting empty promises and Madison Avenue pabulum.

Where does the truth lie in all this analysis? Probably somewhere in between.

Prof. Robert P. Watson, Coordinator of American Studies, Lynn University, has put together two lists of accomplishments of President Obama that the media has not reported on. The first is a list of 90 accomplishments of Obama in the first six months of his presidency. The second is a list of 159 accomplishments in President Obama's first year.

Yes, Obama is a " liberal pragmatist in politics". It is true that Coakley ran her race for the MA Senate seat without fire in her belly. The Democrats bear some blame in not getting the Blue Dogs in line. The Blue Dogs should stop calling themselves Democrats and just become the Republicans they vote with. President Obama bears blame in not taking into consideration the progressive viewpoint on health care and the economy. The progressives bear some blame for not organizing and screaming as loud or louder than the right wing-nut pundits and birthers.

Now that the 'Blame Game' has been played. What will the next step be in order to piece this mess together?