Missouri Republican Candidate for US Senate: “Legitimate Rape” Victims Don’t Get Pregnant.

Posted: August 19, 2012 | Author: | Filed under: 2012 elections, U.S. Politics, Violence against women, Voter Ignorance, War on Women, Women's Rights | Tags: , , , , , , , | 41 Comments

Todd Akin

Where does the Tea Party find these freakazoids? Missouri Representative Todd Akin is the Republican nominee for the U.S. Senate, running against current Senator Claire McCaskill. This insane, anti-science knuckle-dragger claims that if a rape is “legitimate,” a woman’s body can magically prevent pregnancy. And he claims he got his information from doctors!

Today Akin appeared on a local St. Louis TV show, The Jaco Report. The host, Chris Jaco asked him if there were any circumstances under which Akin believes abortion would be acceptable. In response Akin went into a bizarre dissertation about how Americans’ believe in the value of life is what makes this country great. For example, look at the firefighters who rescued people on 9/11 and didn’t even ask for their IDs. And then there are the American soldiers who were willing to rescue wounded people–even if they were only Iraqis.

Finally, Jaco broke in and pressed Akin on the abortion question. Akin said he thought abortion should be allowed in the case of a tubal pregnancy where the child could not survive, if the woman’s life were in danger. But not in cases of rape:

“First of all, from what I understand from doctors [pregnancy from rape] is really rare,” Akin told KTVI-TV in an interview posted Sunday. “If it’s a legitimate rape, the female body has ways to try to shut that whole thing down.”

Akin said that even in the worst-case scenario — when the supposed natural protections against unwanted pregnancy fail — abortion should still not be a legal option for the rape victim.

“Let’s assume that maybe that didn’t work, or something,” Akin said. “I think there should be some punishment, but the punishment ought to be on the rapist and not attacking the child.”

Here’s the video:

According to TPM,

A 1996 study by the American Journal of Obstetricians and Gynecologists found “rape-related pregnancy occurs with significant frequency” and is “a cause of many unwanted pregnancies” — an estimated “32,101 pregnancies result from rape each year.”

Naturally, this isn’t the only strange idea Akin has about rape and women’s behavior. TPM learned that in 1991, Akin opposed a law against marital rape because “it might be misused ‘in a real messy divorce as a tool and a legal weapon to beat up on the husband,’ according to a May 1 article that year in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.”

Eventually, Akin was apparently pressured into voting for the bill. Akin also thinks the morning after pill is a “form of abortion,” and wants it banned.

Right now Akin is leading McCaskill by several points in the Missouri Senate race.

Falling from the Middle with You

Posted: July 24, 2012 | Author: | Filed under: 2012 presidential campaign, Economy, income inequality, Voter Ignorance, We are so F'd | 20 Comments

I spend a lot of time writing on US income issues partly because it’s one of those economist things and a lot because I know that so many of us have been struggling since the turn of the century.  Our country’s economic growth has been extremely paltry since 2001. Also, what US growth has occurred has benefited very large corporations and extremely wealthy individuals.  Compounding the issue of low growth is the fact that these very large corporations and extremely wealthy individuals don’t keep their money, their jobs, and their investments in the USA any more.  All of this has led to a very sad situation for the backbone of the historical US economy; the middle class.

Economix blog at the NYT is going to have a series of articles examining the recent fall from grace that we’ve experienced since our economy has morphed into something that focuses its policies on enabling these rich people and huge corporations to abandon our country and our citizens. This first article sums up the problem.  We’ve been progressively giving up Keynesian economics and replacing it with “Supply Side” economics that continues to show opposite results of what’s promised.  Yet, our policy makers scream for more of the same punishment! Our last Keynesian-policy embracing President was probably Richard Nixon. Since then, elements of Supply Side economics have provided terrible results like huge deficits, income inequality, and  the return of financial panics.

First, economic growth in this country has been relatively slow in recent years, which means the total bounty that the American economy produces, to be shared by all of its citizens, has not been growing very rapidly. Even before the financial crisis began in 2008, economic growth in the decade that started in 2001 was on pace to be slower than growth in any decade since World War II.

Then of course came a deep recession that caused the economy to shrink.

In addition to the slow growth in overall size of the pie, the share that has been going to anyone but the richest Americans has been declining. The top-earning 1 percent of households now bring home about 20 percent of total income, up from less than 10 percent 40 years ago. The top-earning 1/10,000th of households — each earning at least $7.8 million a year, many of them working in finance — bring home almost 5 percent of income, up from 1 percent 40 years ago.

In the simplest terms, the relatively meager gains the American economy has produced in recent years have largely flowed to a small segment of the most affluent households, leaving middle-class and poor households with slow-growing living standards.

One of the major things that’s upsetting to me is the absolute denial by the current extremists that have taken over the Republican party is acknowledgement that their policies have caused disaster.  I can’t imagine any one voting for Romney who is pushing these failed policies to the extreme.  Republicans actually think just talking about this problem and the middle class in general is instigating class warfare.  It’s like if we don’t coddle the extremely rich all the time they will throw a hissy fit and the economy will collapse.  This is a proverbial crock of crap and at this point, who cares?  Huge corporations and extremely rich folks like Equity Capital managers don’t create the majority of jobs.  Those come from middle-to-large businesses that operate consistently within the boundaries of our nation.

Speaking on the Senate floor, Kyl claimed that the president’s usage of the phrase “middle class” is “misguided and wrong and even dangerous.” Calling for an end to rhetoric about classes, Kyl blasted Obama for “incessantly” talking about class, “particularly the middle class”:

KYL: Most prominently, we have a president who talks incessantly about class, particularly the middle class. Maybe you’ve noticed that. He defines class strictly by your income. In the president’s narrative, someone who makes $199,000 a year is a member of one class and someone who makes $200,000 belongs to another class. Does that make sense? Indeed, each day the president’s out on the campaign trail championing himself as the great protector of what he calls the middle class and pitting these Americans against their fellow citizens by arguing that the wealthiest class is victimizing them through the tax code.

Again, we can’t talk about our issues as ordinary Americans because no one wants to hear the servants complaining, I guess. We can’t complain when they take national wealth, jobs, and investments out of the country while being subsidized by our tax dollars. Again, I have to argue that Mitt Shady represents everything that’s created this horrible situation. He’s like the poster child for our modern, self-destructive policies.

Phillip Longman characterizes this as a “Hole in our Bucket”.  We’ve blown up just about everything that helps the middle class build wealth recently.  One of the first things that disappeared in the Carter years and Reagan years was our traditional approach to usary laws.  You can read about the history at the link.  However, here’s the impact of that alone.

This short history of usury laws puts into perspective just how bizarre the credit markets of the United States have become over the last forty years. Usury law is, in the words of one financial historian, “the oldest continuous form of commercial regulation,” dating back to the earliest recorded civilizations. Yet starting in the late 1970s, some powerful people decided we could live without it.

First to go were state usury laws governing credit cards. Before 1978, thirty-seven states had usury laws that capped fees and interest rates on credit cards, usually at less than 18 percent. But in 1978 the Supreme Court, in a fateful decision, ruled that usury caps applied only in the state where the banks had their corporate headquarters, instead of in the states where their customers actually lived. Banks quickly set up their corporate headquarters in states that had no usury laws, like South Dakota and Delaware, and thus were completely free to charge whatever interest rates and fees they wanted. Meanwhile, states eager to hold on to the banks headquartered within their borders promptly eliminated their usury laws as well.

Later, in 1996, the Supreme Court handed usurers another stunning victory. In Smiley v. Citibank it ruled that credit card fees, too, would be regulated by the banks’ home states. You might think that market forces would set some limits on how high credit card fees and interest can go—after all, there are only so many creditworthy borrowers, and much competition for their business. But with shrewd use of “securitized” debt instruments and hidden fees, banks and other lenders found they could make more money from those who could not afford credit cards than from those who could.

And this was only the beginning. By the early 2000s, thanks to the combination of deregulation and “financial engineering” on Wall Street, middle- and lower-class neighborhoods across America were being flooded with what could be called financial crack. In the years between 2000 and 2003 alone, the number of payday lenders more than doubled, to over 20,000. Nationwide, the number of payday lender franchisees rivaled that of Starbucks and McDonald’s combined.

If you read this article you will become very aware that the finance industry has created laws and removed laws that has created a situation that has transferred the benefits of traditional savings and borrowing vehicles of the middle class to themselves. This has happened in concert with the decrease in real incomes resulting from corporations moving away from US job sources and huge wealth portfolios disappearing to offshore havens. All this has been enabled by policies that started during the Carter years, went full blast during the Reagan years, continued through the Clinton years, went on steroids during the Bush years, and have basically stayed in place during the Obama years. Most of us have a sense that things have changed.  It’s been a bit like boiling the frog by raising the temperature slowly.  Forty years of policy that favors the global multinational companies and the finance industry coupled with favorable tax treatment for rich individuals has created the hole.  We no longer are assured that good university degrees give us good paying jobs.  We are no longer seeing our 401(k)s and other investment vehicles provide safe, reliable returns and we no longer are assured decent pension or retirement plans.  We also are subject to gaming when we borrow money.  Plus, we have no way to get out from under any of this that blows up on us because bankruptcy laws have also been changed to benefit our creditors.  It’s the perfect storm of reckless policy.  It’s been bought and paid for by lobbyists for the Finance Industries who have been on the leading edge of profiteering too. Top this off with the high cost of health insurance and the ever volatile commodity prices and you’ve got a recipe to kill off the livelihoods of the majority of your population.

Probably the main reason that Romney refuses to share his agenda, his taxes, and anything specific and only touts lies is that he really wants a continuation of this agenda.  His accident of birth has put him in the best of places to be the modern day version of a Pirate of the Caribbean.  Mitt Shady is a privateer. All he does is pound away at the President and try to use rhetorical flourishes that bring back the myth of Reagan.

At Mr. Romney’s pancake breakfast stop, more than a thousand people braved the stormy weather, lining up hours in advance with their umbrellas and waterproof trash bags for protection. Thunder clapped periodically, but when Mr. Romney finally took the stage, the rain slowed to a light spit and the sun crested, prompting him to reflect on the improving weather.

“But it looks like the sun is coming out, and I think that’s a metaphor for the country,” he said. “The sun is coming out, guys! Three and a half years of dark clouds are about to part. It’s about to get a little warmer around this country, a little brighter.”

Whatever this passage indicates about Romney’s rhetorical powers, it really is a pretty accurate reflection of his economic message: relentlessly unspecific, focused on framing the election as an up-or-down referendum on how people feel about Life Under Obama, and implicitly offering himself as a non-ideological Mr. Fix-It whose reassuring presence will make the clouds part. Romney does, of course, have a specific economic agenda, much of it encompassed by his endorsement of the Ryan Budget and his various pledges to reflect his party’s hostility to regulation, progressive taxation, workers’ rights and fiscal or monetary stimulus. But what he seems determined to convey is that there’s a great big confidence fairy in the sky who will make the economy boom at the very sight of his rugged visage and fine posture. And while his weather forecast at the pancake breakfast may not truly be a “metaphor for the country,” it’s definitely the metaphor for his campaign message.

We’re going to have a bottomless bucket if this man is elected and we continue sending Republicans and Democrats to Washington that promote policies that screw over the middle class.  The only politician I know right now that really gets this is Elizabeth Warren. President Obama has been cribbing from her play book.  We can only hope that he actually means it.  We should know that Romney is the poison and not the antidote to what ails us. His vagueness, dodges, and overall shadiness should force every one to buy a clue.

Disenfranchising the Weakest Among Us from their basic Constitutional Rights

Posted: July 18, 2012 | Author: | Filed under: abortion rights, Voter Ignorance, War on Women | Tags: , | 22 Comments

There are elements in the Republican’s Tea Party movement and in many of their supporters that are so obviously misogynistic, xenophobic, and racist that it is difficult to stomach their political discourse.  I continue to find the Tea Party movement to contain some of the most unhinged individuals we’ve see influence American governance in some time. Here’s the latest example from Tennessee.

Conservatives and Tea Party activists in Tennessee have recently pushed several Republican Party county organizations to pass resolutions criticizing the state’s Republican governor for, among other things, employing Muslims, gay people, and Democrats.

“The action or actions of the Republican elected Governor of the Great State of Tennessee and his administration have demonstrated a consistent lack of conservative values,” a resolution passed by the Stewart County Republican Party reads in part, according to a copy obtained by The Tennessean. (The Tennessean obtained two of the resolutions.)

We’ve known for some times that the right wing would like to completely remove basic rights from women and minorities.  They are striking at not only our immigration laws, our rights to use birth control and abortion, but our basic right to vote and participate in our Democracy.

I’ve read several things just this week that I find terribly disturbing.  The first is that many folks expect that the Supreme Court will strike down the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

It’ll be tough to top the drama of the Supreme Court season that just ended. Or so it would seem. When the justices reconvene in October, they’re likely to consider some of the most contentious social issues dividing the country. And judging from snippets in past opinions, that could mean an upheaval in U.S. civil rights law.

The court has already announced that it will hear a challenge to affirmative action in higher education. In that case, a white student rejected by the University of Texas is arguing that the school doesn’t need to choose students based on racial preferences because it already achieves diversity by guaranteeing admission to state residents in the top 10 percent of their high school class.

Affirmative action was upheld nine years ago, but the composition of the court has changed since then. Five members are now openly skeptical of racial preferences. As Chief Justice John Roberts put it in a 2007 case involving integration at the K-12 level: “The way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race.”

The justices could also deal a blow to minorities if they take up a challenge to the 1965 Voting Rights Act brought by Shelby County, Ala. Officials there say a provision in that law requiring jurisdictions in 16 mostly southern states to get federal clearance before changing their voting rules—so as not to disenfranchise blacks and other minorities—unfairly targets jurisdictions for racial crimes of the past.

“I expect the Voting Rights Act to go down,’’ says Kermit Roosevelt, who clerked for former Supreme Court Justice David Souter and now teaches constitutional law at the University of Pennsylvania Law School. “The court has foreshadowed that result, and Roberts seems to want it.” In a 2009 challenge to the landmark law, the justices granted some local governments more leeway in changing their election procedures, and Roberts in particular hinted he’d be sympathetic to striking down the so-called preclearance provision, saying that it raises “serious constitutional questions.”

The approach of the right wing has been to whittle away at basic rights by forcing appointment of extremist judges to the benches on Republican Presidents and blocking appointments to the bench by Democrats.  It also has been using each red state to create serpentine regulations that basically make exercising rights nearly impossible.  Many are set up to create challenges in the courts to long standing precedent like Roe v Wade or Brown v Board.Witness the Mississippi law to shut down the state’s sole abortion clinic by tailor fitting a regulation to that one specific clinic to drive it out of business.   It may be working according to news released today.

The clinic argues that the law will effectively ban abortion in the state and endanger women’s health by limiting access to the procedure. It argued that the law is unconstitutional and would close the clinic “by imposing medically unjustified requirements on physicians who perform abortions.” Lawyers also cite statements from Mississippi officials who said the law was intended to close the clinic.

A denial of admitting privileges could bolster the clinic’s arguments that the law is unconstitutional, a lawyer for the state has suggested. But a final ruling could come only after a trial, and the loser could appeal.

The state argues that the law is intended to enhance the safety of patients. The state’s lawyers have argued that Jordan should disregard statements about trying to close the clinic, a claim he greeted with skepticism in court.

More administrative steps would have to follow before the clinic could be shut. Sharlot said the clinic would have 10 calendar days to respond to any findings. The state’s lawyers have said that a facility not complying with a law would get at least 30 days before an administrative hearing. If a license is revoked at a hearing, the clinic would get 30 days to appeal that decision. Health department officials have said it could take as long as 10 months to close the clinic if it failed to comply.

This is the same shenanigans with Voter ID laws.  Use incremental laws that “sound” reasonable to many low information, Fox-propaganda-challenged citizens that have devastating results on the weakest and the poorest among us.  Then, keep it up and take any legal challenge as far as you can to whittle away at long standing precedent.  The extremists are well aware of the dog whistles scattered throughout these laws and media blitzkriegs.  Also, they frequently cloak their real purpose in some high minded rhetoric.  They want to stop nonexistent voter fraud in the Voter ID case.  It’s making sure ignorant little women are truly informed in the case of exercising abortion rights.  Neither of these are real problems.

Here is a study worth reading.

The Challenge of Obtaining Voter Identification Publications

By Keesha Gaskins and Sundeep Iyer
– 07/17/12

Ten states now have unprecedented restrictive voter ID laws. Alabama, Georgia, Indiana, Kansas, Mississippi, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, and Wisconsin all require citizens to produce specific types of government-issued photo identification before they can cast a vote that will count. Legal precedent requires these states to provide free photo ID to eligible voters who do not have one. Unfortunately, these free IDs are not equally accessible to all voters. This report is the first comprehensive assessment of the difficulties that eligible voters face in obtaining free photo ID.

Download the Report (PDF)

Here’s some basic data found in the study and reported in the executive summary.

The 11 percent of eligible voters who lack the required photo ID must travel to a designated government office to obtain one. Yet many citizens will have trouble making this trip. In the 10 states with restrictive voter ID laws:

  • Nearly 500,000 eligible voters do not have access to a vehicle and live more than 10 miles from the nearest state ID-issuing office open more than two days a week. Many of them live in rural areas with dwindling public transportation options.
  • More than 10 million eligible voters live more than 10 miles from their nearest state ID-issuing office open more than two days a week.
  • 1.2 million eligible black voters and 500,000 eligible Hispanic voters live more than 10 miles from their nearest ID-issuing office open more than two days a week. People of color are more likely to be disenfranchised by these laws since they are less likely to have photo ID than the general population.
  • Many ID-issuing offices maintain limited business hours. For example, the office in Sauk City, Wisconsin is open only on the fifth Wednesday of any month. But only four months in 2012 — February, May, August, and October — have five Wednesdays. In other states — Alabama, Georgia, Mississippi, and Texas — many part-time ID-issuing offices are in the rural regions with the highest concentrations of people of color and people in poverty.

More than 1 million eligible voters in these states fall below the federal poverty line and live more than 10 miles from their nearest ID-issuing office open more than two days a week. These voters may be particularly affected by the significant costs of the documentation required to obtain a photo ID. Birth certificates can cost between $8 and $25. Marriage licenses, required for married women whose birth certificates include a maiden name, can cost between $8 and $20. By comparison, the notorious poll tax — outlawed during the civil rights era — cost $10.64 in current dollars.

The result is plain: Voter ID laws will make it harder for hundreds of thousands of poor Americans to vote. They place a serious burden on a core constitutional right that should be universally available to every American citizen.

This November, restrictive voter ID states will provide 127 electoral votes — nearly half of the 270 needed to win the presidency. Therefore, the ability of eligible citizens without photo ID to obtain one could have a major influence on the outcome of the 2012 election.

This is disturbing beyond words.  We’ve already heard personal stories from friends here with disabilities of their struggles to obtain these kinds of ID cards.  Right wingers laugh this off with careless disregard for the very things that make our country precious.  It is obvious that winning their agendas by any means necessary is at the heart of all of these kinds of laws.  Every one should be highly concerned about all these laws aimed at whittling away at our basic rights.  This strategy is being used to usurp more of them everyday.  Most of them are aimed at women, racial and religious minorities, and the GLBT community.  What makes this worse is the amount of money being poured into creating these awful laws by religious institutions like the LDS Church and the Catholic Bishops and business sponsored organizations like ALEC.   Tax exempt churches were instrumental in funding efforts to defeat the ERA and push anti-marriage equality and family planning defunding at all levels of government.  Removing votes from voters unaligned with their causes is just one more way to relieve the vulnerable among us of basic rights.

We should be fighting this tooth and nail.

Tuesday Reads: Moose, Black Bears, a Laudable FBI Sting, and Various Slimy Politicians

Posted: June 26, 2012 | Author: | Filed under: 2012 presidential campaign, Barack Obama, children, Mitt Romney, U.S. Politics, Voter Ignorance | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 45 Comments

Good Morning!!

I just had to share this news about wildlife encroaching on Boston’s western suburbs: Black bear and moose sighted in Needham and Wellesley

It was a wild Monday in the suburbs west of Boston, with reports of a black bear ambling down by the Charles River in Needham and sightings of a 600-pound moose racing through backyards and across streets in Wellesley.

Isn’t that exciting?

The suburban sightings follow a rash of similar wildlife reports across the state – coyotes, of course, and more recently, black bears. One particularly adventurous bear spent weeks roaming Cape Cod, romping through cranberry bogs and backyards and spawning bear-themed T-shirts before being tranquilized in Wellfleet.

A bear was spotted in a few yards around Norwood Saturday night, according to local police. And State Environmental Police investigated reports of a black bear in the woods along Route 109 in Dedham Sunday morning. Officers did not locate the bear, and officials speculated it had moved on.

According to the article, the bear population in Massachusetts has increased since it was estimated at 3,000 in 2005 and bears have started to move into the eastern part of the state. It’s mating season now, so the bears are out searching for mates and looking to establish their own territories.

As for the moose:

While authorities combed Wellesley backyards Monday afternoon, people puttered around in their cars hollering out the latest updates on the moose’s location from the police scanners. Groups on foot swapped backyard-sighting stories, and shared pictures on cell phones. They gathered with cameras at the ready to watch as authorities blocked off a home on Lexington Road to search its woody backyard for the wild interloper.

Police searched for hours but were unable to locate the moose.

An FBI Sting Operation Worth Applauding

On Friday, Saturday, and Sunday, the FBI broke up prostitution rings across the U.S., freeing 79 underage prostitutes and arresting 105 pimps “as part of the…Innocence Lost National Initiative entitled ‘Operation Cross Country VI.'”

Reuters:

Seventy-nine teenagers held against their will and forced into prostitution were rescued at hotels, truck stops and storefronts in a three-day sweep of sex-trafficking rings across the United States, law enforcement officials said on Monday.

The FBI said 104 alleged pimps were arrested during sting operations in 57 U.S. cities including Atlanta, Sacramento, and Toledo, Ohio. The operation lasted between Thursday and Saturday and involved state and local authorities as well as the FBI.

The teenagers, aged from 13 to 17 years old, were being held in custody until they could be placed with child welfare organizations. They were all U.S. citizens and included 77 girls and two boys, the FBI said.

One of the minors recovered in the sweep reported being involved in prostitution from the age of 11, according to Kevin Perkins, acting executive assistant director of the FBI’s Criminal, Cyber, Response and Services Branch.

He said the cases were not “one-off” incidents, but evidence of “criminal enterprises” that lure minors in, often through social media, hold them against their will through threats to them or their families, and then traffic them through different U.S. cities.

CNN has more from Perkins:

“Many times the children that are taken in in these types of criminal activities are children that are dissaffected, they are from broken homes, they may be on the street themselves — they are really looking for a meal, they are looking for shelter, they are looking for someone to take care of them, and that’s really the first approach that’s made,” said Perkins.

“Once the child has been taken out of harm’s way, then really the story just begins at that point,” said Perkins. “That’s where the real work starts, where we have to call upon the community, various social welfare agencies, our own office of victim assistance has to work with each child on an individual basis to see what their requirements are.

“This is a very difficult task. These children are very damaged — very harmed, and they need a great deal of help — it’s really taxing the social welfare agencies and it’s something that, going forward, we need to pay particular attention to.”

Unfortunately many of these children may still end up back on the streets. Still, it’s a worthwhile effort, IMHO.

Mitt Romney Updates

ABC News The Note managed to get some details about Romney’s ultra-secret weekend millionaire/billionare donor retreat in Park City, Utah.

Chateaux at Silver Lake

FRIDAY AFTERNOON: As attendees entered the Chateaux at Silver Lake, the host hotel, throughout the sunny afternoon, they were handed a Vineyard Vines tan canvas tote bag with navy piping and the words “Believe in America” stitched on the side. Inside the bag was a blue baseball hat with “Romney” written over a circular American flag and a thick white binder, detailing the weekend’s schedule from policy discussions to social events, along with a list of Romney’s upcoming events and Romney for president pins.

In addition to the Romney swag, there was also a typed note from Romney’s National Finance Chairman Spencer Zwick addressed to the attendees by their first names. “Welcome to the first Romney Victory Leadership Retreat! We are very glad you were able to join us for this special weekend. Thank you for the continued support and leadership. On to victory!,” the card read.
Some were even personalized with a handwritten note from Zwick expressing appreciation to the donor and his or her family, signed with his initials “SZ.”

Golf carts whipped attendees around the complex and to discussions on healthcare, Israel, the state of the race, and the financial services industry that were conducted both Friday and Saturday.

There’s lots more at the link.

Despite the complaints of corporate Democrats like Cory Booker and Ed Rendell, the Obama campaign has continued to hammer Mitt Romney over his history as a corporate raider. And over the weekend, there were three in-depth articles on Romney’s time at Bain Capital. Today James Downie highlighted those pieces at the WaPo: Mitt Romney, Bain Capital and a ‘profit-first’ presidency

The first, from Friday’s Post, described how Romney’s Bain was an early supporter of companies that outsourced American jobs. “While Bain was not the largest player in the outsourcing field,” The Post reported, “the private equity firm was involved early on, at a time when the departure of jobs from the United States was beginning to accelerate and new companies were emerging as handmaidens to this outflow of employment.” That outsourcing damaged American job creation was no matter; Bain made its profit.

The second, in Saturday’s New York Times, outlined how, again and again, Romney’s Bain reaped revenue from companies even as they were failing. “At least seven [of the 40 U.S.-based companies that Bain held a majority stake in while Romney was active at Bain] eventually filed for bankruptcy while Bain remained involved, or shortly afterward . . . In some instances, hundreds of employees lost their jobs. In most of those cases, however, records and interviews suggest that Bain and its executives still found a way to make money.” In several of the bankruptcies, companies made their situation worse by borrowing more to return money to Bain and its investors. And even when both outside investors and the companies themselves failed to do well, “lucrative fees helped insulate Bain and its executives.” Again, Bain made its profit.

The third, and perhaps most damning article, came from Sunday’s Boston Globe, depicting Romney’s work with disgraced junk-bond king Michael Milken. In 1988, Romney was searching for money to finance a heavily-leveraged buyout of two small department store chains. “At the time of the deal, it was widely known that Milken and his company were under federal investigation” for insider trading and stock manipulation. Despite this, Romney and his partners, after personally meeting with Milken, went ahead with the deal. With financing from Milken’s shady business, Romney and Bain were able to make a $10 billion investment, not long before Milken was sentenced to 22 months in prison. Bain eventually profited to the tune of $175 million (although the merged department stores later went bankrupt, shortly after dumping its Bain-appointed chief executive). Sure, an important chunk of the financing may have come from questionable sources, but Bain made its profit.

I included the Boston Globe article in my Sunday morning roundup. If you haven’t read it yet, please do.

Meanwhile, the Romney campaign has been taking the John Kerry approach–ignoring the attacks on Romney’s primary claim to presidential qualifications, just as Kerry long ignored the attacks on him by the “Swift Boat Veterans for Truth.” That didn’t work out so well for Kerry.

Today, President Obama mocked Romney’s response to the outsourcing story at a campaign event in New Hampshire.

The president noted that Romney’s campaign had pushed back against the Post’s scoop by complaining it didn’t sufficiently distinguish between “outsourcing” and “offshoring,” only the latter of which expressly involves shipping jobs overseas.

“You cannot make this stuff up!” Obama said. “What Gov. Romney and his advisers don’t seem to understand is this: If you’re a worker whose job went overseas, you don’t need somebody trying to explain to you the difference between outsourcing and offshoring, you need someone who’s going to wake up every day and fight for American jobs and investment here in the United States.”

Pennsylvania’s Voter ID Law

Pennsylvania is one of the many Republican-controlled states that have instituted voter ID laws. Usually the claim is that these laws will prevent the massive amount of voter fraud that Republicans claim is happening (of course, there’s no evidence whatsoever for this claim). But recently a Pennsylvania Republican state legislator actually told the truth.

House Majority Leader Mike Turzai (R-Allegheny) suggested that the House’s end game in passing the Voter ID law was to benefit the GOP politically.

“We are focused on making sure that we meet our obligations that we’ve talked about for years,” said Turzai in a speech to committee members Saturday. He mentioned the law among a laundry list of accomplishments made by the GOP-run legislature.

“Pro-Second Amendment? The Castle Doctrine, it’s done. First pro-life legislation – abortion facility regulations – in 22 years, done. Voter ID, which is gonna allow Governor Romney to win the state of Pennsylvania, done.”

The statement drew a loud round of applause from the audience. It also struck a nerve among critics, who called it an admission that they passed the bill to make it harder for Democrats to vote — and not to prevent voter fraud as the legislators claimed.

The Pennsylvania voter ID law is particularly complex and strict in its requirements. Most onerous is the requirement that the ID must include a specific date of expiration.

As this article in The Nation explains, most employment and student ID’s do not have expiration dates listed. Even the Republican Secretary of State Carol Aichele did not know that her employee ID would not be accepted for voting!

Back in April, Pennsylvania Secretary of State Carol Aichele visited the editorial board of the Erie Times-News newspaper to speak with them about the new photo voter ID bill Governor Tom Corbett had just signed into law….Aichele’s Erie visit was part of a state tour to educate voters about what they’d need for compliance with law and for the ability to exercise their right to vote. One of the IDs acceptable for voting is a state employee photo identification card. However, the law also says that IDs must have a current expiration date for voter eligibility, and the state employee cards do not. Aichele seemed to overlook this paradox in her education drive.

“Pennsylvania Secretary of State Carol Aichele showed her state photo ID, which is not acceptable for voting because it doesn’t have an expiration date,” wrote the editorial board after she showed hers to them. It must have been humiliating for the secretary who was promoting the new law to find that her own example didn’t hold muster. It’s bad enough mandating that voters have ID cards, but to add the additional restriction that the ID needs an expiration date makes it even more obtrusive. The editorial says that 10 percent of Pennsylvanians, or 88,000, do not have a valid photo ID—though that number is contested and is thought to be much larger.

The law will make voting difficult for many senior citizens.

Take the example of Henrietta Kay Dickerson, 75, of Pittsburgh, a black woman who was born in Louisiana. She came to Pennsylvania as an infant and grew up her whole life in Pittsburgh’s Hill District, the historical black neighborhood immortalized in the plays of August Wilson. In May last year her state ID expired. She went to the state’s department of transportation where she was refused a free voter ID card, even after she paid the $13.50 fee, according to her account in the lawsuit filed by the American Civil Liberties Union and the Advancement Project against the state, which says the law violates voting rights granted by the Pennsylvania Constitution.

Pennsylvania’s many college students could also have difficulties if they don’t research the law’s requirements and follow them exactly. Most college IDs do not have dates of expiration.

I’m going to end here, because this post is getting way too long! I’ll turn the floor over to you now–what are your reading recommendations for today?

Jindal and the Dumbing of Louisiana: Tax Payer-funded christofascist “madrasas”

Posted: June 19, 2012 | Author: | Filed under: New Orleans, public education, religion, religious extremists, Republican politics, Voter Ignorance | Tags: , , | 12 Comments

Last month, Hurricane Bobby Jindal and the right wing Republicans that have overtaken the state since Katrina have taken a drastic step to subsidize religious indoctrination in Louisiana.  This can only spell disaster for a state that needs jobs in a modern world. Louisiana has become a stew pot for extreme right wing social engineering. Here’s some of the “Shocking Christian school textbooks” that will be paid for with your tax payer dollars and mine care of the Governor who kidnapped and assaulted a young woman in the name of exorcism.

This 2012-2013 school year, thanks to a bill pushed through by governor Bobby Jindal, thousands of students in Louisiana will receive state voucher money, transferred from public school funding, to attend private religious schools, some of which teach from a Christian curriculum that suggests the Loch Ness Monster disproves evolution and states that the alleged creature, which has never been demonstrated to even exist, has been tracked by submarine and is probably a plesiosaur. The curriculum also claims that a Japanese fishing boat caught a dinosaur. On the list of schools approved to receive funding through the new voucher funding, that critics warn could eventually cut public school funding in half, are schools that teach from the Christian fundamentalist A Beka Book, Bob Jones University Press, and Accelerated Christian Education curriculum.

The Accelerated Christian Education curriculum is nothing more than hogwash and religious indoctrination.

So, what’s in the ACE curriculum? An August 29, 2009 story in the Times Educational Supplement, a British publication for teachers, provides an excerpt from an Accelerated Christian Education science textbook:

“Are dinosaurs alive today? Scientists are becoming more convinced of their existence. Have you heard of the `Loch Ness Monster’ in Scotland?

Direct Evidence Ignored.

`Nessie,’ for short has been recorded on sonar from a small submarine, described by eyewitnesses, and photographed by others. Nessie appears to be a plesiosaur. Could a fish have developed into a dinosaur? As astonishing as it may seem, many evolutionists theorize that fish evolved into amphibians and amphibians into reptiles. This gradual change from fish to reptiles has no scientific basis. No transitional fossils have been or ever will be discovered because God created each type of fish, amphibian, and reptile as separate, unique animals. Any similarities that exist among them are due to the fact that one Master Craftsmen fashioned them all.”

Extract from Biology 1099, Accelerated Christian Education Inc. (1995)

Is the text still in use today? The answer is yes, according to U.K. critic Jonny Scaramanga, who was raised on the ACE curriculum and now runs a blog titled “Leaving Fundamentalism: Examining Christian Fundamentalism in The UK”. In a popular post titled Top 5 Lies Taught By Accelerated Christian Education, Scaramanga states, “I called ACE [Accelerated Christian Education] on May 3rd, 2012, and was told that all of these PACEs are still in print and the content has not changed. These lies are still being taught in over fifty British schools today.” In the post, Scaramanga provides more detail on what ACE’s curriculum Science PACE 1099  has to say about the Loch Ness Monster: Some scientists speculate that Noah took small or baby dinosaurs on the Ark…. are dinosaurs still alive today? With some recent photographs and testimonies of those who claimed to have seen one, scientists are becoming more convinced of their existence… Among the other claims taught in ACE science curriculum, according to Scaramanga, are the following (the last three ACE curriculum claims are detailed in a subsequent post by Scaramanga titled, 5 Even Worse Lies from Accelerated Christian Education), – Science Proves Homosexuality is a Learned Behavior – The Second Law of Thermodynamics Disproves Evolution – No Transitional Fossils Exist – Humans and Dinosaurs Co-Existed – Evolution Has Been Disproved – A Japanese Whaling Boat Found a Dinosaur – Solar Fusion is a Myth.

This is nothing more than a political calculation for the ever ambitious Bobby Jindal.  However, this massive transfer of public wealth to religious fanatics will spell disaster for Louisiana’s public schools and students.

While other states often try to hedge about the impact voucher programs have on public education funding, Louisiana has made no attempt to hide that its new program directly defunds public education. Because Louisiana is a solidly conservative – and solidly anti-union – state, pro-voucher advocates faced fairly little political pressure to support public schools, and had no real political incentive for hiding the fact that these vouchers steal money from public education.

Just how much money are we talking about? According to David Kirshner, professor of educational theory, policy and practice at Louisiana State University, “Students who leave can carry…the totality of their public school funding to their new private or charter school.” This means that for each voucher student who leaves the public system, the state will now subtract the cost of tuition or up to that student’s per capita expenditures – an average of about $8,800 – from public education funding. If all 380,000 students that will be eligible for vouchers in 2013 get them, that could mean a net loss of $3.3 billion to Louisiana’s public schools for that academic year. Every mini-voucher’s cost – $1,300 or less – will also be deducted from public education spending.

No other state in the nation has implemented a voucher program that penalizes public education to this degree and with this much transparency.

There’s no doubt about the eventual effect withdrawing so much funding will have on public education in Louisiana. It’s a mechanism, Kirshner tells AlterNet, to bring about the “inevitable degradation of the public system.” Of course, the likelihood that all eligible students will flee their public schools in one fell swoop is small — but the program nevertheless clears a pathway for steadily defunding public schools in just a few years time. As funding dries up, these schools will have fewer and fewer resources – and fewer staff – to help students succeed on standardized tests. This, in turn, will lead to more schools being designated as “low-scoring” over time — and the number of students eligible for vouchers will inevitably grow, as well.

The scary thing is that this directly subsidizes religious institutions. Most of these are not your benign Jesuit institutes of higher ed, either.

Though specific data is not available on the number of private religious academies in Louisiana, it seems reasonable to assume that the state’s percentage of religious schools meets or surpasses the national average, given Lousiana’s status as a Bible belt state. And if this year’s small-scale program is any indication of where Louisiana’s vouchers will most likely be used, religion is a key component: based on their names alone, it is clear that most of the participating schools are Christian academies. (Though there are a number of excellent secular private schools in the state, few if any slots at these schools are awarded to voucher students in practice.)

Even leaving First Amendment concerns aside, the dominance of Christian school options raises many questions about how this shift to religious academies will affect the quality of Louisiana education. “Smaller, less prestigious” and often struggling religious schools are more likely to have spots open for voucher students, Stephanie Simon reports for Reuters. She writes,

The school willing to accept the most voucher students — 314 — is New Living Word in Ruston, which has a top-ranked basketball team but no library. Students spend most of the day watching TVs in bare-bones classrooms. Each lesson consists of an instructional DVD that intersperses Biblical verses with subjects such chemistry or composition.

The Upperroom Bible Church Academy in New Orleans, a bunker-like building with no windows or playground, also has plenty of slots open. It seeks to bring in 214 voucher students, worth up to $1.8 million in state funding.

At Eternity Christian Academy in Westlake, pastor-turned-principal Marie Carrier hopes to secure extra space to enroll 135 voucher students, though she now has room for just a few dozen. Her first- through eighth-grade students sit in cubicles for much of the day and move at their own pace through Christian workbooks, such as a beginning science text that explains “what God made” on each of the six days of creation. They are not exposed to the theory of evolution.

If this is what vouchers have in store for the education of Louisiana’s primary and secondary students, it’s not unreasonable to fear that the quality of education in the state will deteriorate quickly.

Worse yet, there are no real checks in the system to hold sub-par private schools – including religious institutions – accountable for the quality of education students receive. As LSU education professor David Kirshner tells AlterNet, Louisiana’s voucher program “does not require that private and charter schools that accept public funds be subject to the same scrutiny of standardized testing that was used to indict the public schools in the first place. So what we have in Louisiana can in no way can be counted as a push from worse to better. Rather it is only a push from public to private.”

And in the low-quality schools Stephanie Simon describes, the program may very well be a push from better to worse.

Much of the ACE curriculum, as an example, is filled with racial, gender, and political bias.  Here’s some quotes.

“For many years, the four racial groups were separated politically and socially by law. This policy of racial separation is called ‘apartheid’. South Africa’s apartheid policy encouraged whites, Blacks, Coloureds, and Asians to develop their own independent ways of life. Separate living area and schools made it possible for each group to maintain and pass on their culture and heritage to their children.

“For many years, Blacks were not allowed to vote in national elections and had no voice in the national government. Reporters and broadcasters from all parts of the world stirred up feelings against the white South African government. These factors contributed to unrest within South Africa. In addition, there are at least ten separate, distinct tribal groups in the nation. Because these tribes are not a cohesive group but are often in conflict with each other, much of the violence in South Africa has been between different groups of Blacks. In spite of apartheid and the unrest in recent years, South Africa is the most developed country in Africa, and Blacks in South Africa earn more money and have higher standards of living than Blacks in other African countries.”

…

“Men on the left cannot walk in wisdom.”

…

“True science will never contradict the Bible because God created both the universe and Scripture…If a scientific theory contradicts the Bible, then the theory is wrong and must be discarded.

Remember, our tax payer dollars are being used to indoctrinate children with this nonsense.  Bobby Jindal is basically funding the US version of “madrasas” that are producing extremists that will work to bring down our democracy and secular laws.

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