Category Archives: ALEC

Joe Donnelly on Obama exec order

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So…Joe Donnelly was on the local radio station getting free air time, er I mean, informing the public…

…when he was laying into President Obama for the executive order to force the minimum wage to $10.10 for federal workers.

Donnelly casually mentions that George W. Bush did this (and so did several other presidents, including Reagan and Clinton, who were neck and neck with executive orders). More here on Mike Pence (now Indiana’s governor) who thinks executive orders are just fine for George W. Bush.

Donnelly stated that President Obama “should have tried to work with us…and he jumped the gun…”

bwahahahahahaha

Um, he has tried to work with Congress.  Members of Congress have had a secret agreement to deliberately thwart Obama and block nominees, legislation, etc.

They have blocked raising the minimum wage for as long as I can remember.  While they complain that they need an automatic pay raise every year, Congress looks the other way while people go hungry, lose their homes, go without medical care, and live under constant stress of deciding whether to pay the light bill, mortgage, heat bill, or put food on the table.

You might remember Donnelly phrased cutting food stamps as “savings” when on the radio just before Thanksgiving….absolutely callous while ignoring waste and fraud and bloated budgets in other areas, such as Defense spending.

 

The mother of the dying child speaks out

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Ken Previtti (Reclaim Reform) has a follow up to the mother whose child was in hospice and the state of Florida was demanding he be tested.   Keep the kleenex handy.

Godspeed to her and her family.

Heartless creeps.

Charter Schools Gravy Train

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(hat tip to scathing purple musings)  Forbes, of all places, has this article up that pretty much summarizes all that is wrong with charter school profiteers.

As mentioned here before, the article notes that Bill Clinton allowed them to proliferate by giving them tax credits and not only that, but green cards for foreign investors.  Yep.

As I’m reading about the for-profit scheme and how the author notes that they have not been that profitable…I’m thinking of the “classes” being given to kids via video or online “learning”…so they don’t have to pay a teacher at all.  Or–they have one teacher to answer questions or grade tests for however many kids they can squeeze in….I don’t even know the answer to that and I’m not going to even try to guess.   They don’t really care, anyway, if the child is getting a good education…as long as it looks something like an education, they’re just fine with that…

Lastly, I’m even more impressed with public schools after reading this–the author notes that charter schools can pick and choose their students, so they should be showing better test scores than public…less than a third do that.

So…even with the students that are autistic or mentally challenged, the public schools still outdid the charters.  Here’s to the dedicated and beleaguered public school teachers….::clink::

U of Illinois faculty on strike ** edited

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Fred Klonsky has a picture blog up on the U of Illinois at Chicago faculty strike.  I hope he’ll provide more details as it goes…

**edited:  Fred wrote about it last week.  Link.

People don’t understand that faculty are not making the big $$$.  When I graduated in 2000, the new hires (assistant professors) were making a whopping $25,000.  This while the university was funneling money into athletics.

Video segments of Kochs Exposed

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Here are snippets of the documentary on the grip the Kochs have on policy.  It’s truly heartening what happened in Wake County, a southern area, and how they were not willing to go backward.

Also, this documentary leaves out the Gates Foundation and Eli Broad and the Walton family’s influence on destroying public education…just wanted to note that important piece of this pie.

 

 

Kochs Exposed: one of the most important films…

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…you will ever see is here.

It is just mindboggling how the Koch brothers have their tentacles in every aspect of society: union busting, voting rights, livable wages, social security, corporate taxes, healthcare, etc….

Not only that, but equally troubling is how easily Congress and politicians can be bought.

They are more than willing to endorse the racist ideas of the Kochs by a stealth way of re-segregating schools, interfering with one’s right to vote, and dumping toxins in poor and black neighborhoods.  The only thing missing from this documentary is how BP is right there with Koch and will most likely accept the petcoke byproduct of tar sands at the Whiting, Indiana refineries.  Indiana always seems to get lost in the concerns of pollution.

Another troubling aspect of this documentary is how Ed Shultz is featured as being against the Kochs, but he is for XL pipeline….which the Kochs are behind!  One can only wonder how much the Kochs have paid to MSNBC or to Shultz (which I would find it hard to believe, but Kochs seem to go on the belief that everyone has a price…and they only need to find out what that price tag is…)  since Ed has changed his tune, and the Kochs are known for greasing palms to buy people’s silence or worse, it’s not without merit to question if they have paid somebody off to get Ed to promote the pipeline.

I’m glad, however, to say that some of us care about the environment and our health and our children’s health and are resistant to this dirty money…

 

Corporate Welfare

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So…when the corporations, and their toadies in Congress, are spewing forth the lie that corporations pay too much in taxes, inhibiting job growth, you can cite this.

S&P 500 members citing effective tax rates of 0% in past twelve months, ranked by market value (in billions):

Verizon: $146.4

MetLife: $53.9

Eaton: $32.7

Regeneron Pharmaceuticals: $29.6

Public Storage: $29.5

Ventas: $19.3

Avalonbay Communities: $17.4

Agilent Technologies: $16.9

Vornado Realty Trust: $16.8

Boston Properites: $16.7

Seagate Technology: $15.9

Broadcom: $15.7

News Corp.: $9.8

Lam Research: $8.8

Kimco Realty: $8.6

Waters: $8.5

Macerich: $8.3

Plum Creek Timber: $8.4

PulteGroup: $6.4

Apartment Investment & Management: $4.3

Perkin Elmer: $4.2

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Story here on paying a living wage…why can Costco pay a living wage and be successful..? Because the owners are not looking to be super-rich like the Waltons…

More evidence why we need media diversity

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Protestors in Venezuela were blocked on twitter from posting images of the protests.

PBS, which is supposed to be free from corporate influence, is now under fire for airing an anti-Pension series sponsored by John Arnold.   David Sirota’s article on it here.

In recent years, Arnold has been using massive contributions to politicians, Super PACs, ballot initiative efforts, think tanks and local front groups to finance a nationwide political campaign aimed at slashing public employees’ retirement benefits. His foundation which backs his efforts employs top Republican political operatives, including the former chief of staff to GOP House Majority Leader Dick Armey (TX). According to its own promotional materials, the Arnold Foundation is pushing lawmakers in states across the country “to stop promising a (retirement) benefit” to public employees.

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…both PBS’s “Pension Peril” correspondent and the AP reporter did not mention that according to budget data, pension shortfalls in Illinois are far smaller than the amount the state is spending on expensive taxpayer subsidies to corporations. 

[…]

The state is just choosing to spend that money on huge subsidies to corporations like Sears and Google rather than paying its bills or making its required pension payments.

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See…the money is there…but it’s going into the pockets of the 1%, see?  Note the $4 billion per year in subsidies in New York!  OMG talk about greedy, greedy, greedy!

And here we have the smoking gun of executives knowing who was funding it and refusing to disclose it:

“We were sitting in a meeting talking about another issue and (PBS officials) were drawing examples of how they were working with other campaigns, and one of their executives said they’ve got a series called pension peril coming up talking about the threat of pensions at the state and local level,” said the source. “I asked who was funding that project, and the executive said that at this point they are not disclosing who their funders are, and everybody sitting around the room kind of paused.”

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Link to Jane Meyer’s article in the New Yorker here.

In 1997, he [David Koch] began serving as a trustee of Boston’s public-broadcasting operation, WGBH, and in 2006 he joined the board of New York’s public-television outlet, WNET. Recent news reports have suggested that the Koch brothers are considering buying eight daily newspapers owned by the Tribune Company, one of the country’s largest media empires, raising concerns that its publications—which include the Chicago Tribune and the Los Angeles Times—might slant news coverage to serve the interests of their new owners, either through executive mandates or through self-censorship. Clarence Page, a liberal Tribune columnist, recently said that the Kochs appeared intent on using a media company “as a vehicle for their political voice.”

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$50 for Christmas bonus?  Are you kidding me?  So much for trickle down economics, eh?

Meyer’s piece brings up the ABC News story on Disney hiring pedophiles being cancelled…because Disney owns ABC.  If I recall correctly, the reporter of the story was asked if he was crazy for investigating it….

Even more depressing is the upcoming PBS pieces by Chitester on the “evils of the welfare system”  I can hardly wait.  What a bully this guy is…pick on the ones who are least likely to fight back.  Creep.