Let no one doubt the Republican platform for 2012 is one of 'Screw The Little Guy'. The Tea Party Has brought such division within the Republican Party that there is no real leadership and one should not mistake their promise to America as a promise, unless it was a promise to destroy America.
The Republicans have attacked non-stop since day one and their targets have included education, the environment, the middle class, unions, healthcare, women’s reproductive rights, and marriage equality. They really haven’t offered anything on a positive note: their goal seems to be to roll back the New Deal, the Great Society, and any other progressive legislation that has come along since 1900, including some signed into law by Republican presidents, effectively aiming at a return to the abuses of the Gilded Age, when rich Republican oligarchs ruled the country.
Remember when we saw all those crazy Tea Partiers in the primaries, Angle, O’Donnell and the others and we thought “Oh boy, here we go!” Well, our fears were justified and in some respects, it is worse than some of us ever imagined. Let’s look at some of the areas of attack. The truly frightening part? This is not an exhaustive list of what the Republicans have been up to:
Women’s Reproductive Rights
There is no doubt that the GOP’s first goal is to deprive women of their reproductive rights. It’s so important that we find Mike Huckabee promising Christian conservatives that his number one priority if he runs for president will be abortion
o Rep. George Lavender, R-Texarkana, has proposed a bill (House Bill 2988) that would prevent any abortion except in cases of rape, incest or the life of the mother.
o In Georgia, a bill (SB 209) sponsored by Sen. Barry Loudermilk, R-Cassville, would close all abortion clinics in the state and require abortions to be performed in hospitals
o South Dakota wants to require “spiritual” counseling (House Bill 1217) at religious centers before allowing an abortion to take place
o The Texas State House of Representatives has passed the Sonogram Bill (HB 15), a measure requiring women to get a sonogram before ending a pregnancy, forcing even victims of rape to have an ultrasound probe inserted into their uteruses at least 24 hours before the procedure.
o Georgia State Representative Bobby Franklin has introduced a bill that would not only make abortion illegal but would make miscarriages illegal.
o South Dakota flirted with a law to make the murder of an abortion doctor legal as self-defense
o When South Dakota was forced to drop the idea of murdering abortion doctors, Nebraska and Iowa picked up the idea
o Indiana (House Bill 1210) wants to force doctors to lie to women about abortion causing breast cancer despite medical evidence to the contrary in order to discourage women from having abortions
o Arguing that it is “morally wrong to take the tax dollars of millions of pro-life Americans and use them to fund organizations that provide and promote abortions,” Rep. Mike Pence, R-Ind, introduced a bill (HR 217) in the U.S. House of Representatives to strip Planned Parenthood of federal funding, despite the many other services Planned Parenthood provides to both men and women, including contraception and STD testing
o Rep. Chris Smith (R-N.J.) introduced a bill in the U.S. House of Representatives, the “No Taxpayer Funding for Abortion Act,” (HR 3) that would limit the rape exemption for abortion to “forcible rape” which would have defined many rapes, for example, statutory rape of a minor, as non-forcible and therefore not covered by federal assistance
o Representative Joe Pitts (R-PA) introduced a bill (HR 358) would allow states to deny insurance coverage for birth control meaning hospitals could deny abortion procedures and transport to a facility that would provide a woman with an abortion even if failure to provide an abortion would mean the death of the woman
Marriage Equality/Anti-Gay Agenda
To demonstrate how serious the GOP is about depriving a segment of Americans of their constitutional rights, conservative activist Alan Caruba called Obama’s DOMA decision an act of “societal suicide” in a column titled, “America’s Gay White House.” So the equality guaranteed by the Constitution is societal suicide?
o The Republican-controlled U.S. House of Representatives wants to defend DOMA (the 1996 Defense of Marriage Act) in court despite the unconstitutionality of the law according to the DOJ’s own review. As Nancy Pelosi has asked John Boehner, how much will that cost?
Birthers/Anti-Obama Legislation
o In Tennessee, state Sen. Mae Beavers has introduced SB 1091, a bill that would require presidential candidates to present a “long-form” birth certificate in order to be on the ballot in that state. Nearly a dozen states have had similar anti-Obama legislation aimed at making President Obama a one-term president, including – unsurprisingly – Arizona – as well as Missouri, Nebraska, Oklahoma, Texas, Connecticut, Indiana, Nebraska, Tennessee, Montana, and Maine. Mae Beavers admits she has no idea what a “long-form” birth certificate even is. She “hasn’t looked into it yet.” Keep in mind, all these proposals will cost the taxpayers money at a time when the GOP claims we’re too poor to even educate our children.
Unions and Collective Bargaining/War on Middle Class
This is more than an attack on unions, teachers, the public sector and collective bargaining and it is far from being the budget/deficit issue Republicans claim. It is, as Noam Chomsky writes, an attack on democracy itself.
o In Georgia a new bill (HB 385) would raise taxes on things like Girl Scout Cookies, groceries and gasoline but would lower tax rates on corporate income, from 6 percent this year to just 4 percent in 2014
o Republicans voted to end a program “that helped low-income families weatherize their homes and permanently reduce their energy bills”
o A Tea Party-led movement is afoot to attack collective bargaining and public sector pay as responsible for our nation’s economic woes even though the problem is clearly Wall Street.
Florida - Only days into this year’s session, House and Senate lawmakers have taken up three bills that would weaken the teacher’s labor organization, restrict the political clout of all public unions, and reduce the benefits of all state workers.
On Thursday, a House committee voted 12-6 along party lines for a bill that prevents public unions from using payroll deductions to collect union dues. The Senate passed a teacher pay bill that, among other things, eliminates tenure for teachers hired after July 1 and ties their pay to student performance. And both chambers are moving bills that restrict the collective bargaining clout of unions.
Union representatives say the bevy of bills shows that the Republican-controlled Legislature is capitalizing on a national anti-union sentiment.
Tennessee - Republicans on the state Senate Education Committee voted Wednesday to strip the Tennessee Education Association of its collective bargaining powers — the first item on the GOP’s aggressive agenda to undermine the teachers’ union.
Before his bill cleared the committee on a 6-3 party-line vote, Sen. Jack Johnson, R-Brentwood, criticized the TEA as a “fierce proponent for mediocrity” and labeled collective bargaining “an albatross” hampering children’s education.
“I believe with all my heart that mandatory collective bargaining stifles teacher input," Johnson said. "Everything must pass through the funnel of the hyper-partisan, politically charged union, whose primary objective is preservation of the union and its power, not the well-being of teachers and students.”
The hearing room at Legislative Plaza was filled to overflowing with dozens of retired teachers and other TEA supporters as well as union opponents, including members of the Tea Party.
“The TEA is invariably in favor of higher taxes and bigger government. They are a political organization,” said Ben Cunningham, a Tea Party activist and anti-tax crusader.
The bill’s supporters, which include the state’s association of school boards, insisted it will foster more collaboration between teachers and administrators. Sen. Rusty Crowe, R-Johnson City, said he looked forward to a “collegial atmosphere of a family working together.”
“It would be totally ridiculous for the school board not to listen to the teachers,” said Sen. Jim Tracy, R-Shelbyville. “Trust me, they’re going to listen to the teachers. It’s time for us to get along. I’m going to vote for this bill because I think it’s the right thing for young people.”
But the TEA said Republicans were retaliating because the union refused their demands to give more campaign contributions to GOP candidates in the last elections.
“That disgusts me,” Sen. Andy Berke, D-Chattanooga, said of the Republicans’ reputed backroom demands for cash. “And then you see these bills coming.”
That caused Crowe to launch into an emotional speech in which he denied any political motivations.
“I’ve got tears in my eyes right now and I hope I get through this,” Crowe said. “I can promise you that’s not part of this. … I know that what we’re trying to do on our side of this is the right thing. We’re not trying to create a situation wherein we hurt. We want us all to work together.”
Republicans also have filed bills to unseat TEA representatives from the teachers’ pension-governing board, and end automatic paycheck withdrawals for membership dues for public employee unions. Another bill would ban labor organizations, including the TEA, from giving to political campaigns.
In state legislatures across the country, newly empowered Republicans are backing similar measures against teachers’ organizations.
Michigan - Michigan Republican Governor Rick Snyder is pushing a bill through that will give ultimate governmental power literally to corporations, thereby using shock doctrine tactics to create a dystopian government. Synder’s bill not only goes after collective bargaining rights, but does in fact seem to represent the Republicans’ final solution to killing democracy by enabling the replacement of elected officials, dissolving entire city’s government and handing them over to corporations. Snyder calls his “budget bill” a “shared sacrifice,” but it gifts corporations with 1.8 billion in tax breaks while hitting citizens with harder taxes, including seniors and other vulnerables, and cutting essential services to an already suffering region. The Michigan House has already passed and the Michigan Senate is about to pass a bill that sounds like it is out of a dystopian leftist novel from the future. If you think Republican governors across the country are using fiscal crisis as a pretext to do stuff they otherwise want to do, this is something I don’t think I would have ever believed Republicans even wanted to do, but this is what they are proposing. This hasn’t gotten much national attention, but please check this out. As was stated by Rachel Maddow.
She described the threat to democracy in Michigan, “Gov. Rick Snyder’s budget in Michigan is expected to cut aid to cities and towns so much that a lot of cities and towns in Michigan are expected to be in dire financial straits. Right now, Gov. Snyder is pushing a bill that would give himself, Gov. Snyder and his administration, the power to declare any town or school district to be in a financial emergency. If a town was declared by the governor and his administration to be in a financial emergency they would get to put somebody in charge of that town, and they want to give that emergency manager that they just put in charge of the town the power to, “reject, modify, or terminate any contracts that the town may have entered in to, including any collective bargaining agreements.”
The bill also has the power to suspend or dismiss elected officials, “This emergency person also gets the power under the bill to suspend or dismiss elected officials. Think about that for a second. Doesn’t matter who you voted for in Michigan. Doesn’t matter who you elected. Your elected local government can be dismissed at will. The emergency person sent in by the Rick Snyder administration could recommend that a school district be absorbed into another school district. That emergency person is also granted power specifically to disincorporate or dissolve entire city governments.”
Maddow said Michigan Republicans want to abolish entire towns, “What year was your town founded? Does it say so like on the town border as you drive into your town? Does it say what year your town was founded? What did your town’s founding fathers and founding mothers have to go through to incorporate your town? Republicans in Michigan want to be able to unilaterally abolish your town and disincorporate it. Regardless of what you as resident of that town think about it. You don’t even have the right to express an opinion about it through your locally elected officials who represent you, because the Republicans in Michigan say they reserve the right to dismiss your measly elected officials and to do what they want instead because they know best.”
What’s worse is that this power to be abolish governments could be handed to corporations, “The version of this bill that passed the Republican controlled Michigan House said it was fine for this emergency power to declare a fiscal emergency invoking all of these extreme powers, it was fine for that power to be held by a corporation. So swaths of Michigan could at the governor’s disposal be handed over to the discretion of a company. You still want your town to exist? Take it up with this board of directors of this corporation that will be overseeing your future now, or rather don’t take it up with them. Frankly, they’re not interested.”
Maddow talked about the power grab behind the fabrication of a fiscal emergency, “The power to overrule and suspend elected government justified by a financial emergency. Oh, and how do you know you’re in a financial emergency, because the governor tells you, you’re in a financial emergency, or a company he hires to do so, does that instead. The Senate version of the bill in Michigan says it has to be humans declaring your fiscal emergency. The House bill says a firm can do that just as well.”
Rachel Maddow concluded, “This is about a lot of things. This is not about a budget. This is using or fabricating crisis to push for an agenda you’d never be able to sell under normal circumstances, and so you have to convince everyone that these are not normal circumstances. These are desperate circumstances and your desperate measures are there for somehow required. What this is has a name. It is called shock doctrine.”
Naomi Klein, author of “The Shock Doctrine” implies that man made crises are used to push the “free market principles” of Milton Friedman et al, which are pushed through while the citizens are reacting to disasters or upheavals. The perpetrators of the shock doctrine require a violent destruction of the existing economic order in order to achieve their means. In the case of the Michigan governor, Snyder positioned himself in a state already reeling from financial crisis, vulnerable and ripe for a takeover.
This is no different than when George W Bush’s administration terrified a nation after 9/11 with lies of weapons of mass destruction and terror alert levels elevating every time Bush’s approval ratings sank or an election was upcoming. Except that in this case, the Republicans waged a fiscal war on America during the eight disastrous Bush years by killing what they termed “big government”" but is really known as governmental oversight of corporations, which allowed Wall Street to play fast and loose with our money while Bush went incompetently to war on “terror” and left the wars off of the budget all together.
Now that they’ve terrorized Americans with a fiscal recession, thereby hitting us in the heart of our security centers, they are not apologizing or attempting to learn from their mistakes because for them, the financial devastation of the majority of Americans is not a mistake, but a means to an end.
And like any good bully or dictator, the time to strike is when you’ve sucker punched your victim and he or she is lying on the ground helpless, barely clinging to life; people will give up all kinds of personal liberties when they’re desperate. So now they are striking at us by deploying Republican governors as missiles of economic warfare around the country; taking away collective bargaining, taking away Medicaid, pushing for state militias ruled by the Republican governor, and now in Michigan, literally giving the government to corporations. All of this will result in a Republican dystopia; a negative utopia often characterized by an authoritarian or totalitarian form of government which entails a repressive and controlled state.
Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder is calling this power grab a “$45 billion cost-cutting budget,” thereby attempting to package an unprecedented power grab as the answer to fiscal woes. Governor Synder suggests these cuts are part of a “shared sacrifice”, as he tries to appeal to the renowned work ethic of heartlanders. Of course, that “shared sacrifice” raises taxes on Michiganders while cutting services and changes the state’s corporate tax structure so only large “C” corporations pay business taxes while all other corporations get off scot-free. This amounts to a 1.8 billion dollar tax break to business. This “shared sacrifice” eliminates tax breaks for seniors and low-income workers and gets kills many other income tax deductions for individuals.
And all of that financial devastation wreaked upon the already suffering citizens is topped by Synder handing government over to the corporations. Synder’s “shared sacrifice” is simply an attempt to package dystopia as utopia – the solution to woes, when it is in fact, the final Republican “solution” to democracy.
The shame Governor Snyder and his fellow Republicans are heaping on this great land is staggeringly breath-taking. The fact that Snyder’s bill will essentially obliterate democracy in Michigan while at the same time putting an already suffering citizenry into the poor house doesn’t seem to bother him one whit; in fact, he says “I hope we all look back and say: ‘This was a defining moment.’” Yes, it is a defining moment, Governor Synder. It is the moment Republicans drove their corporate tankers right through hard-working, devastated Americans and stole their liberties along with their food and shelter.
But Snyder, like his fellow Republican Governor in Wisconsin, has underestimated is the spirit of heartlanders. While Senate Democrats are outnumbered in Michigan 26-12, and hence their attempts to amend Synder’s dystopian bill were roundly ignored, more than 1,000 protesters rallied yesterday at the Capitol and into the rotunda chanting “Kill the bill.” The Republicans may be able to push their dystopia on Michiganders, but they are wrong if they are counting on willing submission to their take-over. Michiganders might be down, but they are never out.
Iowa - On Fox News’ Fox and Friends today Stuart Varney called Republican Congresswoman Marsha Blackburn a hero for trying to get rid of the “ban on incandescent light bulbs.” There are two problems with this statement. The light bulbs aren’t banned, and the phase out was actually a Republican idea that was signed into law by George W. Bush in 2007.
While promoting his own show Varney said, “We have Ambassador John Bolton on the Egypt situation. We’ve got Congresswoman Marsha Blackburn who is trying to get rid of that ban on incandescent light bulbs. She’s our hero.”
In those few seconds, Fox News managed to push the false talking point that incandescent light bulbs are banned, and also portrayed a Republican as a hero for trying to get rid of the “ban.” However, incandescent light bulbs are not banned. The use of the term band creates a false image of big government making the light bulbs illegal to own. The truth is that Energy independence and Security Act of 2007 increased the efficiency standards for light bulbs by 30% from 2012-2014. The new energy standards begin with 100 watt bulbs in 2012, and end with 45 watt bulbs in 2014. There is also a list of exempt bulb types that includes appliance lamps, rough service bulbs, 3-way, colored lamps, and plant lights. In 2020 a second set efficiency raising standards will take effect.
It is not going to be illegal to own incandescent bulbs. No one is going to come to your house and take them away, or put you in jail for owning them. There is no ban. America is simply moving to a more efficient light bulb. You will still be able incandescent bulbs for uses that are exempt from the new standards.
Here’s the real kicker. The Energy Independence and National Security Act was signed into law, not by the “nanny state loving socialist Obama,” but by Republican free market champion George W. Bush. When President Bush signed the bill into law on December 19, 2007, he praised the energy efficiency standards, “The bill also includes revisions to improve energy efficiency in lighting and appliances. It adopts elements of the executive order I signed requiring federal agencies to lead by example in efficiency and renewable energy use.”
This bill came into being as the legislative response to George W. Bush’s Twenty in Ten challenge during his 2007 State of the Union. In the address, Bush called on the United States to improve fuel economy, and increase alternative fuels. His goal was to cut gasoline consumption by 20% in 10 years. All of the current right wing outrage over light bulbs is due to a proposal by their own Republican president. It was their idea. Instead of trying to pass this plan off as Democratic big government, they need to look in the mirror. If they don’t like the new bulbs, they should be blaming themselves, not Obama or the Democrats.
It is typical that Fox News would try to frame Republicans as fighting the heroic fight against big government, without telling their viewers that they themselves created the big government that they are now so outraged about, so the next time you come across a right winger who is moaning about the light bulb ban, let them know that could have all the incandescent bulbs that they wanted if they would not have voted for Republican George W. Bush, the energy efficient light bulb president.
Ohio - Ohio Republican Gov. John Kasich delivered his State of the State address today while thousands of protesters gathered inside and outside the state Capitol chanting, “Kill the Bill!” Laborers, teachers, firefighters and police officers rallied together in a united outcry against Kasich’s bill that is designed to take away collective bargaining rights for the state’s 350,000 public sector employees, referred to as Senate Bill 5. The bill cleared the Senate last week after Senate Republicans, in an act of unprecedented and legally questionable thuggery, kicked a member of their own team off his committee assignment in order to replace him with someone who promised to vote their way.
House Democratic Leader Armond Budish, of Beachwood explained that his party simply doesn’t have the votes to kill the bill.
Business Week reported:
“We’ll do the only thing we can do,” he (Budish) said. “We’ll fight like hell.” Budish’s comments came as he unveiled what House Democrats are calling their “Compact with the Middle Class.” As part of their legislative priorities, they pledged to push back against the collective bargaining legislation.
The AFL-CIO reported:
This morning before the speech, hundreds of members of the Fire Fighters (IAFF) marched to the Statehouse, led by bagpipers and holding signs opposing SB 5. On the statehouse steps, IAFF President Harold Schaitberger led the crowd in a chant “Kill The Bill” (See video above).
“It’s a dark time in Ohio,” Mike Castle, a Columbus firefighter told the Columbus Dispatch. “I voted for the man (Kasich), and it brings tears to my eyes to say that.”
During a rally yesterday Bill Melvin, a union maintenance worker for the state, told the Associated Press Kasich is wrong to blame state workers for Ohio’s fiscal problems. He said his pay was cut by more than half when he moved from the private to the public sector four months ago. He said he took an $18-an-hour pay cut when he switched jobs because of a decline in construction in the area.
The Dick Armey run Freedom Works (who offered “Citizen Lobby Training” during the healthcare debates which Freedom Works was adamantly against) backed Tea Party is planning to turn out to show support for Kasich’s bill, in what can only be proof that the Tea Party is indeed bought and paid for corporate shills rather than the grass roots movement of the people, for there are no people who truly love justice and freedom who can condone unilaterally killing workers’ rights to collectively bargain. While the Tea Party Republicans try to take cover under the guise of fiscal responsibility, the numbers show that the top ten percent are getting much richer, while everyone else’s incomes are practically stagnant.
When we take a look at the reality that pro-profit sectors are raising costs while public sectors are not, we can’t avoid the conclusion that privatizing the public sector will not save money for American tax payers, but it will make corporations very wealthy. The Republicans are actually attempting to kill union rights and pubic sectors all together in order to redistribute Americans’ tax dollars into the hands of private enterprise and they are using budget crisis brought about by their own tax cuts to justify their actions.
You can only stand against the unions if you believe that our tax dollars should go to help these poor, beleaguered über-rich instead of being funneled into the not-for-profit public sector. Of course the private sector wants to do away with unions and kill the public sector; corporations exist to make a profit and they can’t compete with a not for profit entity.
Making the effort to kill the public sector even more heinous is that while the government reinvests our tax dollars into the economy, many private entities hoard the money in offshore accounts, refusing to even pay what little taxes they are required to pay on their profits and this does nothing but depress the economy further. Our public sector workers are an important part of our economic recovery and of efficient, affordable services regulated by the government and accountable to the people.
These are dark days, but the soaring, united spirits of the workers across this country are fighting back in Ohio, as in Wisconsin, Michigan and other states where Republicans are attempting their final coup of our government.
Wisconsin - People were crowded around Fire Station No. 1 in Madison, Wisconsin around 1:30 central time this afternoon, eagerly awaiting the arrival of filmmaker Michael Moore who flew to Madison, Wisconsin to support the Worker’s Rights Rally. Yup, Mike’s in the House.
The uplifting theme of today’s Worker’s Rights Rally in Wisconsin was, “We Are Wisconsin and We Are Winning.” An enthusiastic crowd, undaunted by a week of Governor Walker’s and the Republicans’ attempts to shut them down and shut them out, chanted, sang and marched around the rotunda of the Capitol. And then came the word that a very special guest would be surprising them.
Michael Moore began by reading his statement called America is not broke, “America is not broke. Contrary to what those in power would like you to believe so that you’ll give up your pension, cut your wages and settle for the life your great grandparents had. America is not broke. Not by a long shot. The country is awash in wealth and cash. It’s just that it is not in your hands.”
He then called the great conservative redistribution of America’s wealth a heist, “It has been transferred in the greatest heist in American history from the workers and consumers to the banks and portfolios of the uber-rich. Right now this afternoon just 400 Americans have more wealth than half of all Americans combined. Let me say that again, and please someone in the mainstream media, just repeat this fact once. We’re not greedy. We’ll be happy to hear it just once. 400 obscenely wealthy individuals, 400 little Mubaraks, most of whom benefited in some way from the multi-trillion dollar taxpayer bailout of 2008 now have more cash, stock, and property than the assets of 155 million Americans combined.”
Moore said, “I have nothing more than a high school education, but Gov. Walker back when I was in school every student had to take one semester of economics in order to graduate, and here is what I learned. Money doesn’t grow on trees, unless it’s a palm tree. It grows when we make things. It grows when we have good jobs with good wages that we use to buy the things that we need, and guess what? That creates more jobs.”
He continued, “It grows when we provide an outstanding education system. An educational system that then grows a new generation of entrepreneur, inventors, scientists, thinkers. The people who will come up with the next great idea for this planet, and those ideas create jobs, and the jobs produce tax revenue, but the few who have the most money don‘t want to pay their fair share of the taxes.”
Moore spoke about how the rich tax dodgers crashed our economic system, “They’d rather invest it in a gambling casino known as Wall St. betting for or against the stock market or against your home mortgage, and the entire population suffers because that wealth has been removed from circulation. What’s so cynical about this is that the very people who don’t pay their taxes crashed our economic system. They created the unemployment which has cost us tax revenue and states like Wisconsin have ended up with a so called budget crisis, but Wisconsin is not broke.”
Michael Moore called the Wisconsin budget crisis one of the three biggest lies of the last decade, ” What are three biggest lies of the last decade? Let’s repeat them. Number one Wisconsin is broke. Number two there’s weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, and number three the Packers needs Farve to win the Super Bowl. The nation is not broke, my friends. There’s lots of money to go around, lots, lots. It’s just that those in charge have diverted that wealth into a deep well that sits in their well-guarded estates. They know. They know. They have committed crimes to make this happen.”
Moore did something brilliant. He shifted the narrative. Republicans want the Wisconsin story to be about the budget. Early on Democrats were focused on the issues of liberty and collective bargaining. Moore broadened the message and created a third narrative about how decades of pro-corporate and pro-wealthy economic policies have redistributed the nation’s wealth from the people to a small group of super-rich haves. This is the story that terrifies both conservative politicians and the network of billionaire wealth that owns them.
Wisconsin isn’t only about freedom unions and collective bargaining. At a deeper level, Wisconsin is about the systemic redistribution of wealth that the Republican Party has overseen since 1980. It is about creating an economic caste system where the rich always stay rich and rest of us are destined to serve them. Conservatives have expertly hid their true motives for years with distractions like the culture wars, and sometimes shooting wars like in Iraq. While America was focusing on the terror alert level, George W. Bush was picking up the mantle of Ronald Reagan and redistributing wealth.
If Republicans and their puppet masters are successful in breaking the back of organized labor then millions of Americans will be returned to a form of economic serfdom that was once thought to have been banished decades ago.
Wisconsin is the battle field and unions are our last line of defense, and nothing less than economic liberty, and the American Dream hinge on the outcome.
Immigration
o Texas Department of Agriculture sets up border vigilante website to promote and support (sometimes violent) vigilantism
o In Texas, more than 60 anti-immigration bills have been filed this legislative session including requiring birth certificates to enroll in public schools and allowing police officers to act as immigration agents
Child Labor Laws
o Republican Sen. Mike Lee of Utah said that Congressional laws banning child labor are forbidden by the US Constitution despite the fact that the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938 was unanimously upheld by the Supreme Court in 1941 (United States v. Darby Lumber). (A similar movement is underway in Missouri where State Sen. Jane Cunningham (R) has introduced a bill [S.B. 222] to minimize child labor laws)
Islamophobia
o Islamophobia has become institutionalized in the Republican-controlled U.S. House of Representatives as Rep. Peter King (R – N.Y.), is begins his McCarthy-esque “investigation of radical Islam”
Environment/Health
o Republican-controlled U.S. House of Representatives kills climate committee, the Select Committee on Global Warming
o Oppose energy saving light bulbs citing the evils of government interference. In a case of Republican cannibalism, Republican lawmakers want to repeal a 2007 U.S. law (signed by President George W. Bush which phases out the old incandescent light bulbs in favor of alternative energy-saving bulbs (that use 25%-30% less energy than standard incandescent). With typical ignorance of the facts, Senator Rand Paul (R-KY) blames the Obama Administration
o Senator Rand Paul blames the administration and the Department of Energy for the fact that his toilet doesn’t work, telling Energy Department official Kathleen Hogan that it’s her fault (the EPA says if we replaced our old toilets we “could save nearly 2 billion gallons per day across the country—that’s nearly 11 gallons per toilet in your home every day”
o Republicans in the House (House CR or continuing resolution) voted to cut $1.6 billion from the National Institutes of Health or NIH (5% below the president’s 2011 request and $638 million, or 2%, below current levels), which would do untold damage to cancer research and probably result in cuts to Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s research, and cause job losses.
o The Republicans launch a stealth attack on endangered species, showing they love animals at least as much as the middle class.
o The House Judiciary Committee is looking at the Regulations from the Executive in Need of Scrutiny (REINS) Act (H.R. 10), a bill that would undermine the public protections most crucial to our health, safety, environment and economy
Education
o In Frederick County, Maryland, the Board of County Commissioners voted to end the county’s contribution to Head Start, cutting funding for the program by more than 50 percent. Two of the Republican officials justified their decision by arguing that women should be married and staying at home with their kids, which would make the program unnecessary.
o House Republicans voted to cut Pell Grants, that help middle class kids go to college, by 25%
o Nevada Gov. Brian Sandoval has proposed to cut teacher pay by 12 percent to 20 percent
o Saying that the country is broke and we need to tighten our belts, Senate Republicans vote to cut the Head Start budget by $2 billion, or nearly a quarter of President Obama’s $8.2 billion 2011 budget request (the program’s current funding is $7.2 billion) but voted to continue $4 billion worth of subsidies to Big Oil (Exxon, etc). Exxon’s profits went up 53% in the last quarter of 2010.
The Head Start funding cut will have the following effects:
§ 218,000 children from low income families will lose Head Start/Early Head Start services;
§ 16,000 Head Start/Early Head Start classrooms will close;
§ 55,000 Head Start/Early Head Start teachers and staff will lose their jobs;
§ 150,000 low-income families and their children will lose assistance in paying for child care.
And This is Just the Beginning!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
