The Federal Emergency Management Agency, better known as FEMA, helps provide food, water, shelter, electric power, and other critical services in the immediate aftermath of a disaster. “This form of discretionary federal aid would be subject to cuts under the Ryan budget,” the CBPP report points out.

While the Ryan budget is characteristically vague about what exactly would be cut from FEMA, its plan to reduce non-entitlement spending to 3.5 percent of GDP in the next 40 years would assuredly include a drastic downsizing of the department.

“If [discretionary federal aid] were scaled back substantially, states and localities would need to bear a larger share of the costs of disaster response and recovery, or attempt to make do with less during difficult times,” as CBPP warns.

This presents a two-pronged problem: First, overburdened local authorities are far less prepared than FEMA for the wide range of disasters that can strike a community. Second, most states — especially some of the most disaster-prone, such as California and Mississippi — are in the midst of serious budget crises as it is. In short, the Ryan plan’s effect on disaster relief would itself be disastrous.

The CBPP report warns that “Federal discretionary funds also help states, cities, and other local governments hire police officers,” and that “Big cuts in funds to hire police officers would shift more of the cost of hiring these officers to state and local budgets.” Given Mitt Romney’s stated opposition to states hiring more police officers and firefighters, it’s safe to assume that, while first responders are in Republicans’ prayers, they aren’t in Republicans’ budgets.

Seven years ago this week, Hurricane Katrina and a lackluster response from FEMA led to one of the worst disasters in American history. Now, as climate change leads to more extreme weather than the country has ever seen, only the party that believed disgraced Bush FEMA director Michael Brown did “a heck of a job” could think it prudent to decimate the budget for disaster relief. But as Paul Ryan takes the stage in Tampa to accept the vice presidential nomination on Wednesday, remember: This is what passes as “serious” in the modern Republican party.

Every time you have an occasion to take something from the federal government and send it back to the states, that’s the right direction. And if you can go even further and send it back to the private sector, that’s even better. [...] We cannot — we cannot afford to do those things without jeopardizing the future for our kids. It is simply immoral, in my view, for us to continue to rack up larger and larger debts and pass them on to our kids, knowing full well that we’ll all be dead and gone before it’s paid off. It makes no sense at all.

One day after he was named official flag-bearer of the Republican revolution, Mitt Romney confronted the limits of his small government rhetoric Friday in the storm-ravaged Louisiana Bayou.

As Hurricane Isaac petered out and headed off northwards, Romney jetted in from his nomination convention in Florida to visit the desperate residents of Lafitte, a small flood-damaged community just inland from New Orleans.

There, with the world’s media looking on, he met 22-year-old mother-of-two Ashley Vegas, whose home was destroyed by a 12-foot (four-meter) wall of water, and whose bare feet contrasted oddly with Romney’s suede loafers.

His advice for the suddenly homeless family? Seek a bailout from the US federal government’s disaster agency FEMA by calling its 211 emergency hotline.

Vegas was thankful for the lifeline, open to many in Louisiana since Romney’s opponent President Barack Obama declared a federal emergency there earlier this week, freeing up government rescue funds for beleaguered communities.

“I think he’s a very good man,” Vegas volunteered. “He’s here to help everybody and do what he can.”

Asked by reporters whether she was a Republican or a Democrat, the young woman giggled and said: “My mom would know.”

The FEMA gambit might be the best option for flooded families in Lafitte, but the idea clashed with the message of Romney’s campaign so far, which has focused on celebrating private enterprise and decrying government hand-outs.

Labels: assholes, hypocrisy, Mitt Romney, Republican lies

The Republican Party's convention site is creating an awkward reality at odds with the conservative media mythology that is at the center of the convention's theme.

In recent days, Fox News has praised Republicans for adopting "We Built It" as a theme for its upcoming convention. "We Built It" is based on the Fox-fueled distortion of President Obama's remarks tying the success of businesses to "this unbelievable American System" that includes government spending on infrastructure and education.

However, the selection of the Republican convention site actually proves President Obama's point about the role of government assistance. The construction of the Tampa Bay Times Forum was majority financed by the public; the arena is owned by local government; and the Republican convention has received tens of millions in government funds to help with costs and security.   

Republican Convention Site: Publicly Financed, Publicly Owned

Republicans will host their 2012 convention at the Tampa Bay Times Forum, an indoor arena that is publicly owned and whose construction was majority financed by the public.

The Forum was built in 1996 by the Tampa Bay Sports Authority, which was created as a public agency in 1965 for the purpose of "planning, developing and maintaining a comprehensive complex of sports and recreational facilities" in the area. According to the Authority's 2011 financial statements, the Forum is actually owned by Hillsborough County, which then leases it back to the Authority. This step was taken specifically to avoid the inclusion of the arena on the county's tax rolls.

Reports on the actual cost of construction are inconsistent, ranging from $139 million to $162 million [Tampa Tribune, 8/17/97, via Nexis]. But the Forum was reportedly majority-financed using more than $80 million in city and county bonds backed in part by taxes, with additional funding from the Tampa Bay Lightning professional hockey team. 

Labels: assholes, double standards, Republican clown car, Republican lies

The aide said that guys like me were ''in what we call the reality-based community,'' which he defined as people who ''believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality.'' I nodded and murmured something about enlightenment principles and empiricism. He cut me off. ''That's not the way the world really works anymore,'' he continued. ''We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality -- judiciously, as you will -- we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out. We're history's actors . . . and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.''

The Janesville congressman said he had forgotten that his office sent letters — with his signature — to the Energy and Labor departments asking for money from the stimulus program on behalf of two companies in his home state.

“They should have been handled differently, and I take responsibility for that,” Ryan, R-Janesville, said in a written statement released only after he again denied requesting stimulus funds Thursday in an Ohio television interview.

Ryan’s denial in an interview with WCPO, Channel 9, Cincinnati, contradicted letters he wrote in 2009 to Energy Secretary Steven Chu and Labor Secretary Hilda Solis seeking stimulus grant money for two Wisconsin energy conservation companies. One of them, the nonprofit Wisconsin Energy Conservation Corp., later received $20.3 million from the Energy Department to help homes and businesses improve energy efficiency, according to federal records.

“After having these letters called to my attention I checked into them, and they were treated as constituent service requests in the same way matters involving Social Security or Veterans Affairs are handled,” Ryan said in a statement late Thursday. “This is why I didn’t recall the letters earlier.”

The congressman’s denial came as new audio surfaced of Ryan telling a Boston radio station two years ago that he “did not ask for stimulus money” in response to a caller’s question about the recovery program. “I’m not one who votes for something and then writes to the government to ask them to send us money,” Ryan said. The exchange was first reported Thursday by The Boston Globe.

But a year earlier in his request to Chu for funds for the Wisconsin Energy Conservation Corp. Ryan said the stimulus cash would help his state create thousands of new jobs, save energy and reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

Labels: assholes, liars, Paul Ryan, Republican lies

A German corporation (AG or GmbH) is subject to corporation tax in Germany. From 2001 until 2007, distributed and retained income was taxed at a uniform rate of 25 percent. Since 2008, profits are subject to a corporation tax rate of 15 percent. In addition, corporations have to pay a so called solidarity surcharge which is calculated with 5.5 percent on corporation tax. Based on a corporation tax rate of 15 percent, solidarity surcharge amounts to effectively 0.825 percent. Corporations are also subject to trade tax which amounts to an average rate of 14 percent. The overall tax burden for corporations in Germany therefore amounts to around 30 percent.

If you listen to Gov. Chris Christie, this is all about taxes. His economic program boils down to this single piece of dogma: Cut taxes, especially on the rich, and the economy will boom. Raise taxes, and you will kill jobs.

The Roche case shows that this formula is simplistic nonsense, and that there is much more to it. Note, first, that Roche had already moved its top executives and its sales and marketing operations to San Francisco, which has higher taxes than New Jersey. The work it now does in Nutley will move to Switzerland and Germany, two more places where taxes are higher than here.

These facts are not likely to penetrate the governor's conviction that lower taxes are the holy grail. President George W. Bush promised his tax cuts would create a jobs boom, and the strategy failed miserably, leaving behind only a mountain of debt.

Now Mitt Romney promises more of the same. This stuff is baked into the GOP's DNA.

The reality is that many other factors are at play when a company selects a spot to invest. An educated workforce counts. A modern transportation system. The pharmaceutical companies that have left New Jersey often go to high-tax states, like California and Massachusetts, where they can form partnerships with elite research universities. Companies also look at quality of life, and good public schools for their kids, both major draws for high-tax New Jersey.

If it were all about taxes, then Mississippi's economy would be booming.

Labels: Chris Christie, New Jersey, Republican lies, unemployment

America's newest veterans are filing for disability benefits at a historic rate, claiming to be the most medically and mentally troubled generation of former troops the nation has ever seen.

A staggering 45 percent of the 1.6 million veterans from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are now seeking compensation for injuries they say are service-related. That is more than double the estimate of 21 percent who filed such claims after the Gulf War in the early 1990s, top government officials told The Associated Press.

What's more, these new veterans are claiming eight to nine ailments on average, and the most recent ones over the last year are claiming 11 to 14. By comparison, Vietnam veterans are currently receiving compensation for fewer than four, on average, and those from World War II and Korea, just two.

It's unclear how much worse off these new veterans are than their predecessors. Many factors are driving the dramatic increase in claims — the weak economy, more troops surviving wounds, and more awareness of problems such as concussions and PTSD. Almost one-third have been granted disability so far.

Government officials and some veterans' advocates say that veterans who might have been able to work with certain disabilities may be more inclined to seek benefits now because they lost jobs or can't find any. Aggressive outreach and advocacy efforts also have brought more veterans into the system, which must evaluate each claim to see if it is war-related. Payments range from $127 a month for a 10 percent disability to $2,769 for a full one.

As the nation commemorates the more than 6,400 troops who died in post-9/11 wars, the problems of those who survived also draw attention. These new veterans are seeking a level of help the government did not anticipate, and for which there is no special fund set aside to pay.

A Soldier's Lament
based on Martin Niemöller First they came for the "welfare queens", and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a "welfare queen". Then they came for the immigrants, and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a trade immigrants. Then they came for the unemployed, and I didn't speak out because I wasn't unemployed. Then they came for me and there was no one left to speak out for me.

Labels: hypocrisy, Republican lies, Veterans

>George Romney released 12 years of income tax returns when he ran for president in 1968. George Romney’s son, Mitt, plans to release just two, so his campaign’s looking outside the family for precedent.

Eric Fehrnstrom, a Romney spokesman, told The Huffington Post: “John Kerry released two years.” In a CNBC interview with Larry Kudlow on Tuesday night, Mr. Romney said: “John Kerry released two years of taxes…I’ve released one already, put the estimate out for the next year. We’ll have two years of taxes.”

There’s a slight problem with this claim: It’s not accurate.

As the Huffington Post notes, Mr. Kerry made a habit of releasing tax returns to the Massachusetts press during his senate campaigns. In 1996 and 1997, for instance, The Boston Globe ran stories on Mr. Kerry’s returns. During his 2004 presidential campaign, it looks as though Mr. Kerry released tax returns for the years 1999 to 2003.

Whatever the precise number (a Washington Post editorial from January of this year said “John F. Kerry released 10 years’ worth of tax returns”), it was more than two. The Romney campaign, however, has yet to acknowledge this fact. They refused to answer direct questions about whether they will continue using the two-year figure.

Labels: Mitt Romney, Mitt Romney Is A Sleazy Liar, Republican lies

I don’t know how to be any clearer about this, but here goes. It is now beyond doubt that Mitt Romney will be resting his case against Obama on two core claims.

The Romney campaign is triumphantly circulating a quote that Romney gave to Fox News today. Asked about the Dem criticism of his Bain years, Romney replied:

“This is a president who lost more jobs during his tenure than any president since Hoover. This is 2 million jobs that he lost as President. And by the way, when he was overseeing General Motors and Chrysler, how many factories did he close? How many dealerships? How many thousands upon thousands of Americans had to be let go in an effort to try and save those businesses? That’s what we did in our business. And I’m very happy in my former life; we helped create over 100,000 new jobs. By the way, we created more jobs in Massachusetts than this president’s created in the entire country.
So if the President wants to talk about jobs, and I hope he does, we’ll be comparing my record with his record and he comes up very, very short.”

It’s obviously too much to expect Fox to challenge these claims. But Romney has made this assertion about 100,000 new jobs in various other settings, too. As Steve Benen noted, his Super PAC is also making a very similar claim in ads. And as far as I can tell, only two lonely fact checking operations — one at the Post, the other at FactCheck.org — have scrutinized it. They have found that the assertion is at best unsubstantiated and that there may have been more layoffs than jobs created by Bain; there’s no way to tell for sure. When will reporters push Romney on this?

Labels: Mitt Romney, Republican lies, what liberal media

The Benton Harbor, Michigan based Whirlpool corporation, which recently received a $19 million dollar stimulus grant from the Dept. of Energy to develop smart grid capable appliances, moved forward with plans to close it’s Evansville, Indiana refrigerator plant and build a new plant in Mexico.

Whirlpool closed the plant in June, eliminating 1,100 full-time jobs. They did this all the while the company is collecting public subsidies while eliminating jobs.

After buying the Maytag brand in 2006 Whirlpool shut down the manufacturing headquarters which at its peak Maytag had 4,000 workers in Newton, Iowa a town of 16,000 people 30 miles east of Des Moines. Newton is a great case study on what happens when the company town packs up and leaves. The devastating effects are quickly dominoed throughout the town and surrounding towns. Those 4,000 plus workers were supporting the other local businesses. When Maytag left, people had to leave to find work. When people left we have ghost towns that are popping up all over the United States. Towns that used to thrive, towns that people used to be proud to call home now sit mostly vacant. Is this the ‘new modern economy’ America will build it’s future around?

Taxes? That’s for poor people…

Whirpool, the world’s largest appliance maker, has been a major tax dodger. The company had negative income tax rates over the past three years, and reported a $64 million income tax benefit last year. It expects similar results this year:

Meanwhile sales at the appliance maker rose 7 percent to $18.4 billion last year after dropping during the housing slump of the previous two years. In the year-earlier quarter, the company attributed a rise in revenue to increased productivity.

Whirlpool had negative effective income tax rates in 2010, 2009 and 2008. Last year, the company reported an income tax benefit of $64 million and an effective tax rate of negative 10.9 percent, according to company filings. The company expects a similar tax benefit in 2011.

Labels: 2012 election, Herman Cain, hypocrisy, Mitt Romney, Republican lies

Labels: belaboring the obvious, Republican lies, social Darwinism, Social Security

JUNE 3--The Twitter user who first floated the rumor that a lewd photo scandal was brewing for Representative Anthony Weiner is not your typical conservative avenger, an investigation by The Smoking Gun has determined.

Mike Stack, a 39-year-old New Jersey resident, is known as “goatsred” in the Twitterverse, where he has helped lead a months-long assault on the New York City politician. Stack was joined at the hip in this pursuit by “patriotusa76,” who gave his name as “Dan Wolfe” and was the online avenger who happened last Friday night to discover the notorious tweet emanating from Weiner’s account.

As TSG reported yesterday, “Dan Wolfe” has conveniently evaporated in the wake of “Weinergate.” In fact, today Wolfe's entire Twitter page was deleted.

But Stack, the other Twitter Twin, remains online. An examination of his background has discovered:

* Stack, who aggressively pushed the story about Weiner’s underpants shot, has worked as a moderator on a pornography web site, and been a regular commenter on several other X-rated sites. Stack describes himself as a “Pervert” on one site, where his avatar, captioned “Antichrist,” is a drawing of President Barack Obama as Jesus Christ.

* New Jersey court records show that Stack was convicted of drunk driving in February 2008. He was previously arrested for domestic assault in July 2004 following a drunken fight that left his girlfriend with bruises on her arm (that case, though, ended with a dismissal in April 2005). Stack is pictured above in a mug shot taken by the Readington Township Police Department following his 2004 collar.

* Stack has twice declared bankruptcy during the past 14 years. His most recent Chapter 7 case ended in July 2008, around the time Stack lost his Hunterdon County home to foreclosure. At the time of that filing, Stack reported working as a warehouseman for Johnson & Johnson.

* The Internal Revenue Service last year filed a $5907 federal tax lien against Stack.

“The past is the past,” Stack said in an interview today. Describing himself as a “private person,” he added, “there’s no reason my records need to be public.”

Stack also contended that while he sent out the May 5 tweet first hinting that a “big time” Congressman was about to be ensnared in a sex scandal, he claimed that Wolfe actually provided him that information. Wolfe, Stack said, told him that he had heard the rumor from a source who worked for a well-known conservative web site.

After Stack sent out the initial tweet, Wolfe quickly ran with the rumor, attributing it--“via@goatsred”--to his online buddy. In retweets, Wolfe immediately attached Weiner’s name to the rumor, wondering “@RepWeiner are you this Congressman?” Stack did not have an explanation as to why Wolfe sought to launder the rumor through him. He also vehemently denied that he was Wolfe.

While Stack’s rap sheet and financial calamities may be of interest to “Weinergate” followers, his affiliation with porn sites might raise the eyebrows of the conservative coterie with which he is affiliated.

Labels: faux moral outrage, manufactured scandals, Republican lies

Today, and not a moment too soon, the non-profit Citizens For Tax Justice (CTJ) has put out their findings revealing that twelve of the nations largest Fortune 500 companies, while making $170 billion in profits during the period of The Great Recession, paid an effective tax rate of negative 1.5%.

Yes, you read that correctly.

Not only have these twelve companies paid zero in taxes for the years 2008-2010, they actually received tax subsidies that added $62.4 billion to their bottom lines.

The companies were chosen by the CTJ to represent a range of industries, including manufacturing, energy, services, transportation and high tech and include – in alphabetical order – American Electric Power, Boeing, Dupont, Exxon Mobil, FedEx, General Electric, Honeywell International, IBM, United Technologies, Verizon Communications, Wells Fargo and Yahoo.

Here are the bullet points presented by the report:

• From 2008 through 2010, these 12 companies reported $171 billion in pretax U.S. profits. But as a group, their federal income taxes were negative: –$2.5 billion.

• All but two of the dozen companies enjoyed at least one no-tax year over the 2008-10 period, despite reporting substantial pretax U.S. profits in those no-tax years.

• Eight of the twelve companies reported net tax benefits over the full three-year period.

According to the study, not a single one of these companies paid an amount even close to the 35% statutory tax rate.

In fact, the tax rate paid by Exxon Mobile, when spread over the full three years, was only 14.2% – a full 60% below the 35% rate that corporations are supposed to be paying. And if we take a look at what Exxon paid over just the past two years, it totals a mere 0.4% on their pre-tax profits of $9.9 billion.

And get this – Exxon Mobile paid the most in taxes of any of the twelve companies on the list.

Here is my favorite part – had just these twelve companies paid at the actual 35% tax rate the GOP is telling us they are chaffing under, the sum would have added a full 12% to the totals the United States of America’s treasury received through corporate taxes.

We sure could use that money.

Labels: corporatism, greed, Republican lies, utter horseshit

Labels: House Republicans, Republican lies, wingnuttia

New Jersey’s public-sector unions routinely pressure the State Legislature to give them what they fail to win in contract talks. Most government workers pay nothing for health insurance. Concessions by school employees would have prevented any cuts in school programs last year.

Statements like those are at the core of Gov. Chris Christie’s campaign to cut state spending by getting tougher on unions. They are not, however, accurate.

In fact, on the occasions when the Legislature granted the unions new benefits, it was for pensions, which were not subject to collective bargaining — and it has not happened in eight years. In reality, state employees have paid 1.5 percent of their salaries toward health insurance since 2007, in addition to co-payments and deductibles, and since last spring, many local government workers, including teachers, do as well. The few dozen school districts where employees agreed to concessions last year still saw layoffs and cuts in academic programs.

“Clearly there has been a pattern of the governor playing fast and loose with the details,” said Brigid Harrison, a political science professor at Montclair State University. “But so far, he’s been adept at getting the public to believe what he says.”

Mr. Christie, a Republican who took office in January 2010, would hardly be the first politician to indulge in hyperbole or gloss over facts. But his misstatements, exaggerations and carefully constructed claims belie the national image he has built as a blunt talker who gives straight answers to hard questions, especially about budgets and labor relations. Candor is central to Mr. Christie’s appeal, and a review of his public statements over the past year shows some of them do not hold up to scrutiny.

[snip]

Misstatements have been central to Mr. Christie’s worst public stumbles — about how the state managed to miss out on a $400 million education grant last year, for example, and whether he was in touch enough while he was in Florida during the blizzard in December — and his rare admissions that he was wrong. But Peter J. Woolley, a politics professor and polling director at Fairleigh Dickinson University, said there had been no sign, so far, that these issues had much effect on the governor’s political standing.

“People prefer directness to detail,” Professor Woolley said. “People know it’s not unusual for politicians to take the shortcut in public debate, that they’re not academics who are going to qualify everything.”

Labels: Chris Christie, mainstream media, Republican lies

When it comes to improving public understanding of tax policy, nothing has been more troubling than the deeply flawed coverage of the Wisconsin state employees' fight over collective bargaining.

Economic nonsense is being reported as fact in most of the news reports on the Wisconsin dispute, the product of a breakdown of skepticism among journalists multiplied by their lack of understanding of basic economic principles.

Gov. Scott Walker says he wants state workers covered by collective bargaining agreements to "contribute more" to their pension and health insurance plans.

Accepting Gov. Walker' s assertions as fact, and failing to check, created the impression that somehow the workers are getting something extra, a gift from taxpayers. They are not.

Out of every dollar that funds Wisconsin' s pension and health insurance plans for state workers, 100 cents comes from the state workers.

How can that be? Because the "contributions" consist of money that employees chose to take as deferred wages – as pensions when they retire – rather than take immediately in cash. The same is true with the health care plan. If this were not so a serious crime would be taking place, the gift of public funds rather than payment for services.

Thus, state workers are not being asked to simply "contribute more" to Wisconsin' s retirement system (or as the argument goes, "pay their fair share" of retirement costs as do employees in Wisconsin' s private sector who still have pensions and health insurance). They are being asked to accept a cut in their salaries so that the state of Wisconsin can use the money to fill the hole left by tax cuts and reduced audits of corporations in Wisconsin.

The labor agreements show that the pension plan money is part of the total negotiated compensation. The key phrase, in those agreements I read (emphasis added), is: "The Employer shall contribute on behalf of the employee." This shows that this is just divvying up the total compensation package, so much for cash wages, so much for paid vacations, so much for retirement, etc.

The collective bargaining agreements for prosecutors, cops and scientists are all on-line.

Labels: Republican lies, truth, Wisconsin 2011

Labels: American Idiots, Michele Bachmann, Republican lies, utter horseshit

Labels: Republican lies, Social Security

Texas faces a budget crisis of truly daunting proportions, with lawmakers likely to cut sacrosanct programs such as education for the first time in memory and to lay off hundreds if not thousands of state workers and public university employees.

Texas' GOP leaders, their eyes on the Nov. 2 election, have played down the problem's size, even as the hole in the next two-year cycle has grown in recent weeks to as much as $24 billion to $25 billion. That's about 25 percent of current spending.

The gap is now proportionately larger than the deficit California recently closed with cuts and fee increases, its fourth dose of budget misery since September 2008.

Against the backdrop of the acrimonious campaign between Republican Gov. Rick Perry and Democratic challenger Bill White, Texas' top elected and budget officials have guarded even more tightly than usual against leaks of information. But bad numbers continue to dribble out in legislative testimony and agency reports.

The bottom line: Public schools, college students and government employees, not just poor and needy Texans, might very well lose money, grants, benefits and even livelihoods during and after next year's legislative session.

"They'll have to cut," said former Rep. Talmadge Heflin, R-Houston, the House's budget chief during the last budget meltdown, in 2003. "When you look at the big numbers, I just don't think there's any way that you make it match without making some reduction in education, both higher [education] and public education," or grades K-12.

Even in the budget crises of the late 1980s, 1991 and 2003, Texas never cut state funding of public schools.

But declines in revenues, property values and federal Medicaid help have added between $3 billion and $4 billion this month to a late-August guess that the two-year shortfall could top $20 billion.

Ongoing expenses, including property tax cuts passed four years ago, cost between $95 billion and $100 billion in state funds, now that a federal flow of stimulus cash is winding down.

Dale Craymer, president of the business-backed Texas Taxpayers and Research Association, said next year very well could bring unprecedented retrenchments, including layoffs or furloughs.

"This budget's not going to be solved with a single magic bullet," said Craymer, a top budget adviser to former Govs. Ann Richard and George W. Bush. "It's going to be solved by a number of very hard decisions that cause a lot of pain in a lot of different areas. So furloughs may indeed be part of the solution," though even far-ranging layoffs of state employees wouldn't close the budget gap by themselves, he said.

[snip]

The options are few when it comes to finding $25 billion in the state's budget. Texas already ranks 50th nationally in per-capita state spending, so big cuts will have to come from essential services.

Teachers and welfare workers are paid mostly from local and federal money, so cutting those positions won't net much savings. To give you an idea how difficult this could be, we took an imaginary whack at state government and programs.

You could eliminate

state government functions

to save ...

•$2.4 billion (22 entire state government agencies, including the offices of the attorney general and comptroller)

•$437 million (state judiciary)

•$875 million (oversight of environmental regulations, water control and parks)

•$587 million (business and economic development programs)

•$312 million (31 regulatory agencies, including those overseeing insurance, racing and utilities)

•$354 million (the Legislature: budget planning, legal advice and staff)

And you could ...

•Fire half the prison, parole and probation officers to save $1.4 billion.

•Eliminate college financial aid/scholarships to save $1.2 billion.

•Spend half of the state's rainy day fund to raise $4.5 billion.

•Eliminate all grants for Temporary Assistance for Needy Families to save $131 million.

But after all that, you'd have saved just $12.2 billion, barely half of what probably will be needed.

Labels: Republican lies, Texas

Labels: Republican lies, supply-side economics, taxes

Labels: Bret Schundler, Chris Christie, hypocrisy, incompetence, Republican lies

If there is an aspect of the human condition that is unaddressed by the platform of the Republican Party of Iowa, adopted last month at the state convention in Des Moines, you’d have to look awfully hard to find it. Its 387 enumerated planks and principles range widely over politics, culture, and economics, from sweeping statements of belief (“America is good”) to the fine nuances of agricultural policy (“We support the definition of manure as natural fertilizer”) and touching on the mythical “North American Union” (against) and the gold standard (for). Even so, it’s a little startling to come upon section 7.19, which calls for “the reintroduction and ratification of the original 13th Amendment, not the 13th amendment in today’s Constitution.” Since the existing 13th Amendment bans slavery, while the “original” one was about something else entirely, the wording might give the impression that Iowa Republicans wish to reverse emancipation, which is not at all the case, according to state GOP Communications Director Danielle Plogmann. Like many aspects of Republican politics this year, it’s actually about embarrassing President Obama. But you have to wonder whether the delegates knew what they were getting into. In making common cause with “Thirteenthers,” as those who seek to restore the long-lost amendment are known, the party has ventured beyond the far fringes of conspiracy theory, into a mysterious lost land without lawyers or taxes. Maybe they knew what they were doing after all.


Return with us now to the tumultuous years leading up to the War of 1812, when fear of “foreign influence”—by England or France, depending on whether you were a Republican or Federalist—was a dominating issue in American politics. Jerome Bonaparte, the younger brother of Napoleon, had recently spent several years in the United States, where he married Elizabeth Patterson, the beautiful, ambitious daughter of a wealthy Baltimore merchant. In 1810, Jerome was on the throne of Westphalia, while Elizabeth was in America with their son, Jerome Napoleon. (The couple would never see each other again.) According to historian Michael Vorenberg of Brown University, having a nephew of the emperor of France growing up on American soil might have made the pro-British Federalists uneasy, or, just as likely, suggested to them a way to tie the Republicans to the French Legion of Honor, the Trilateral Commission of its day. Desiring to get out in front of the issue—or possibly seeking to score points against the Federalists, who had their own embarrassing ties to the British aristocracy—Republican Sen. Philip Reed of Maryland introduced an amendment meant to strengthen the existing “emoluments clause” in Article I, Section 9, of the Constitution.

This clause reads:

“No Title of Nobility shall be granted by the United States: And no Person holding any Office of Profit or Trust under them, shall, without the Consent of the Congress, accept of any present, Emolument, Office, or Title, of any kind whatever, from any King, Prince, or foreign State.”

Reed’s proposed amendment extended the ban from office-holders to “any citizen of the United States” and made the penalty loss of citizenship:

“If any citizen of the United States shall accept, claim, receive or retain any title of nobility or honour, or shall, without the consent of Congress accept and retain any present, pension, office or emolument of any kind whatever, from any emperor, king, prince or foreign power, such person shall cease to be a citizen of the United States and shall be incapable of holding any office of trust or profit under them, or either of them.”


[snip]

In the world of the Thirteenthers, though, it’s all a conspiracy, and the leading suspects are those shady characters who put “esquire” after their names. To quote the Web site Constitutional Concepts, “This Amendment was for the specific purpose of banning participation in government operations by attorneys and bankers who claimed the Title of Nobility of ‘Esquire.’ These people had joined the International Bar Association or the International Bankers Association and owed their allegiance to the King of England.” In other words—well, we’re not sure how to explain it any better, but Constitutional Concepts CEO Jim Barrus says in an e-mail that enforcement of the 13th Amendment would strike a blow against “the elected politicians who have grand plans of ruling every facet of America,” and would essentially delegitimize virtually every act of the federal government since 1819. Who wouldn’t want that?

[snip]

There are, of course, other implications of Thirteenthism, such as ensuring that the United States never again suffers the humiliation of having a president win the Nobel Peace Prize. That was just what the Iowa Republicans had in mind, according to Plogmann, who wrote in an e-mail that the plank “was meant to make a statement about the delegates’ opinion about Mr. Obama receiving the prize.” (Presumably they didn’t mind if, in the process, they were also making a statement about any American scientist or writer unlucky enough to win a Nobel.) Unfortunately for them, the Department of Justice looked into whether Obama needed Congressional approval to accept the Nobel under the existing emoluments clause, and based on the meaning of “foreign state” (which would not cover the Nobel Prize Committee) concluded that he did not.

Labels: American Idiots, morons, Republican lies, Teh Stoopid