My Dearest Legislators

Posted: 03-24-2011 9:07 PM
by: captaincarebear

My Dearest Legislators,

I’d like to invite you to spend some time in my world for a little while. It’s really quite fascinating and I’m sure you’d love it if you just got to spend a few moments with me. Meet little Emerald. She has repeated the second grade twice. I’ve waited two years for her to get tested for some sort of intervention help but she is on the “waiting list” due to budget cuts. After six months of trying hundreds of strategies I finally got her to spell the word cat without help. She was very proud of that accomplishment and gave me tons of hugs and smiles. I call her mom weekly and visit her at her job cutting fruit at a local grocery store. After at least a half a dozen conferences, the latest in March I asked mom, “Why after eight months of school has she never turned in any homework?” Mom’s answer was, “We’ve been busy.” Oh I’m sorry mom; I didn’t mean to intrude on how you choose to raise your precious angel. I won’t bother you again.

My salary is now dependent on Emerald.

And I’d love for you to meet Ronald. In the months we have been together, I have never once seen him smile, not even once. When he’s not on his medication which is quite frequent, he has psychotic episodes where he tries to stab other children with scissors or threatens to kill himself. He doesn’t like class work because he’d rather be at home playing on the computer. He does love science experiments however. So I try to do them frequently. I had to put them on hold last month because I was mandated to “teach to the test” and do all the SAT prep, Test Ready, and any FCAT resources the school could get their hands on. That made Ronald mad. He told me that the books were boring and he wished he were dead. He refused to even make one pencil mark. On the real test, he scribbled any bubbles just to be done. He didn’t actually read it, even though he can read because he wanted to control the situation. Ronald is eight years old.

My salary is now dependent on Ronald.

Oh and Danny, how I love Danny. Danny was in a head on collision the day before FCAT. It left his brain swollen, his body semi-paralyzed and he was put in an induced coma to try to save his life. I visited him in the hospital, held his mom’s hand and cried with her. Many of his friends came by to just see if their dear friend would make it. The next day, the class sat stunned while the FCAT was being passed out. Gigi was crying, Kassie was inconsolable. Their hearts were aching. They certainly were not at their best that day.

My salary is now dependent on Danny and his friends. (And yes, a year later he made an almost full recovery; thanks for asking.)

Then there’s Monica. She arrived from Guatemala just last week. She’s never spoken English in her life. She only knows her aunt and uncle who she came to live with when her mom died last month. Their English is not much better. They are well meaning, hard working people that will give lots of love and support to Monica but they are limited in what they can do to help her succeed in school. I hope that in a year or two she may actually learn English. But we don’t have time for that now. She has to take her FCAT even though she’s never seen the English language on the printed page.

My salary is now dependent on Monica.

I’d love to let you spend some time with even more of my students. I have had hundreds of students over the years with stories similar to the above. I could tell you true stories of self mutilation, drug addicted parents, parents who prostitute their children for money, illiterate parents, parents that have told me they hate their kids, kids with schizophrenia, autism, mental challenges, blindness, kids’ on oxygen just to be able to walk to the bathroom, various psychotic illnesses, I’ve had them all and I’ve done my best to be their teacher. But now, how am I thanked for taking on the task of helping to raise the most challenging in society? I’m not thanked. I’m criticized, I’m degraded. I’m made to feel as if I am the problem, not the solution. And now, even though many of these obstacles are insurmountable, I must be the scapegoat for when they are not completely successful in life. Thanks a bunch. So tell me, who on earth would put up with this when my job is eliminated for insufficient progress? Hey, maybe you can do it. Maybe you can deal with these issues day after day. Maybe you can “show me” just how it should be done. And no, I won’t say thank you, or reward you with a decent salary or anything like that. I’ll just sick the community on you so you can be “public enemy number one” when you try like heck to get these kids to pass a once a year test. Would you do that for me? Would you spend some time in my world? Wait until there’s no one left who will deal with “these” kids. Then what? What do you say then? Mission accomplished? Ok, if that’s what you want. I guess I should just be grateful for this latest slap in the face. I’ll just be quiet now and go sit in my hole. Legislators know best. So have a nice day.

http://forums.thedailyshow.com/?page=ThreadView&thread_id=38470&pg=2#post-275096

This Is What An Onslaught Of Protests Worldwide Looks Like

GOP Trust Admits Wisconsin was about politics, not budget

Fri Mar 18, 2011 at 10:57 AM EDT

The following text is from an email sent out by GOP Trust. In the email, they admit their fight against Public Sector Unions is all about politics, and not about the budget. (We've removed the links because they included code that could identify the person who sent us the email.)- MM



Thanks to You

We are Taking Back America

Thank you GOP Trust Supporter:

This morning we delivered a massive blow to Obama's radical agenda. Governor Walker just signed a heroic piece of legislation into law in Wisconsin that will send shockwaves from Madison to Washington, DC.

The brave leaders in Wisconsin were able to take on Big Labor because of your overwhelming support. Our ads provided the much needed counterpunch to the dirty smear machine launched by Obama and the Democrats.

Make no mistake this is the first battle of the 2012 presidential race. The Left and their hired muscle in the unions are raising tons of money on this and we need to fight back or we will walk into 2012 way behind.

If we can break the unions' back in 2011, the Democrats will be on life support to begin 2012.

Thank you for your efforts! This is a great victory but...OUR WORK IS NOT DONE YET!!

We must respond to the unions with strength and resolve.

* SEIU has planned 10 Wisconsin rallies on Saturday and 6 more on Sunday

* The Unions have launched a national campaign to recall 8 conservative Wisconsin senators.

* Big Labor and the Democrats are preparing legal challenges and organizing their biggest rally yet at the Wisconsin State Capitol.

* Big Labor organized a huge march yesterday in-front of the Indiana Capitol.

GO HERE TO TAKE THIS FIGHT NATION WIDE!
Help us produce more powerful ads to win this fight!

This battle to reign in the unions is popping up all over the country and we need to come together and remain focused to support the brave leaders taking on this fight.

* Ohio - The State House is just days away from a vote to limit collective bargaining.

* Florida- The legislature is debating legislation to limit teacher tenure and restore commonsense to education.

* Idaho The Governor is ready to sign similar legislation reforming teacher tenure.

* Iowa - The House of Representatives is currently debating legislation to curb collective bargaining rights for government employees.

* Michigan - The Michigan legislature has approved separate measures to give the state the power to break union contracts.

* Indiana - The Senate passed a bill to limit public school teachers' collective bargaining rights and is considering other measures that curb organized labor influence.

* New Hampshire - The House passed a right-to-work bill that prohibits public sector workers from being required to join labor unions.

* Kansas - The House passed legislation outlawing employee payroll deductions for union dues and political action committees.

* Tennessee - The Senate Education Committee just passed a bill that would end teachers' rights to working conditions through collective bargaining.

* 9 Other States - have introduced legislation to limit on public worker collective bargaining: Alaska, Arizona, Colorado, Nebraska, Nevada, Oklahoma, New Hampshire, New Mexico and Washington.

We must get our ads running in these states. If you have not seen it yet, please watch our TV ad now.

As Obama said, "elections have consequences." It is our time to take back our country and restore fiscal discipline.

The best investment of 2011 is to crush the Democrat Party's base. We are so close to stripping the Democrats of their power base, WE CANNOT LET UP NOW

GO HERE TO TAKE THIS FIGHT TO EVERY STATE!
Help us produce more powerful ads to win this fight!

Their spinsters are already painting this as a David vs. Goliath battle, as ironically illustrated by multimillionaire Michael Moore's "this is war.... we're going to throw your___ in jail" rant on the Rachel Maddow Show.

The far-left is trying to hijack the narrative here and paint the unions as a counterweight to corporate power, when in reality they have become MORE powerful than corporations under the current administration.

Unions are not the little guy anymore and haven't been for a long time, no matter how politically expedient it may be for them to portray themselves as such.

Now we, the American people, are the little guy and it's time for honest, hard-working Americans who don't have an army of union thugs to back them up to fight back.

The GOP Trust has shifted gears and is fully prepared to take this aggressive campaign nationwide. We will win this war for the future of our great country.

Help us bring victories to every state taking on Big Labor
Together we can do it!

Thank you again for your tremendous support.

Yours for America,

Scott Wheeler
www.GOPTrust.com

http://media.causes.com/ribbon/1041963

Indiana prosecutor told Wisconsin governor to stage ‘false flag’ operation

By Eric W. Dolan
March 24, 2011 @ 7:32 pm

An Indiana prosecutor and Republican activist has resigned after emails show he suggested Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker stage a fake attack on himself to discredit unions protesting his budget repair bill.

The Republican governor signed a bill on March 11 that eliminates most union rights for public employees.

In an email from February 19, Indiana deputy prosecutor Carlos F. Lam told Walker the situation presented "a good opportunity for what’s called a ‘false flag’ operation."

The Wisconsin Center for Investigative Journalism ^[1] discovered the email among tens of thousands released to the public last week following a lawsuit by the Isthmus and the Associated Press.

"If you could employ an associate who pretends to be sympathetic to the unions' cause to physically attack you (or even use a firearm against you), you could discredit the unions," Lam said in his email.

"Currently, the media is painting the union protest as a democratic uprising and failing to mention the role of the DNC and umbrella union organizations in the protest," he continued. "Employing a false flag operation would assist in undercutting any support that the media may be creating in favor of the unions."

Lam resigned from his position after the Wisconsin Center for Investigative Journalism published an article about his email.

On February 22, an alternative paper in Buffalo, New York managed to trick Walker into taking a call from their editor posing as tea party tycoon David Koch.

When the editor posing as Koch suggested planting some troublemakers in the protests, Walker responded that "we thought about that," but said it was not necessary "because sooner or later the media stops finding ’em interesting."

"My only fear would be is if there was a ruckus caused is that that would scare the public into thinking maybe the governor has gotta settle to avoid all these problems," he said.

Walker had promised to lay off 1,500 state workers if the bill to curb collective bargaining rights for public employees didn't pass.

In mid-February, 14 Democratic state senators left Wisconsin to stall a vote on the bill. There are 19 Republican senators, but the Senate needs a minimum of 20 members to be present to debate and vote on any bills that spend money.

While the 14 Democratic senators remained in Illinois, Republican state senators removed all references to spending from the bill and passed the proposal to limit public employees' collective bargaining rights.

Wisconsin citizens upset withWalker's attack on public employees' collective bargaining rights have launched a boycott campaign ^[2] aimed at his campaign contributors.

URL to article: http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2011/03/24/indiana-prosecutor-told-wisconsin-governor-to-stage-false-flag-operation/

URLs in this post:

[1] Wisconsin Center for Investigative Journalism: http://www.wisconsinwatch.org/2011/03/24/email-to-walker-suggested-faking-attack-on-governor/

[2] have launched a boycott campaign: http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2011/03/15/boycott-targets-contributers-to-wisconsin-gov-scott-walker/

http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2011/03/24/indiana-prosecutor-told-wisconsin-governor-to-stage-false-flag-operation/

G.E.’s Strategies Let It Avoid Taxes Altogether

By DAVID KOCIENIEWSKI
Published: March 24, 2011
General Electric, the nation’s largest corporation, had a very good year in 2010.

The company reported worldwide profits of $14.2 billion, and said $5.1 billion of the total came from its operations in the United States.

Its American tax bill? None. In fact, G.E. claimed a tax benefit of $3.2 billion.

That may be hard to fathom for the millions of American business owners and households now preparing their own returns, but low taxes are nothing new for G.E. The company has been cutting the percentage of its American profits paid to the Internal Revenue Service for years, resulting in a far lower rate than at most multinational companies.

Its extraordinary success is based on an aggressive strategy that mixes fierce lobbying for tax breaks and innovative accounting that enables it to concentrate its profits offshore. G.E.’s giant tax department, led by a bespectacled, bow-tied former Treasury official named John Samuels, is often referred to as the world’s best tax law firm. Indeed, the company’s slogan “Imagination at Work” fits this department well. The team includes former officials not just from the Treasury, but also from the I.R.S. and virtually all the tax-writing committees in Congress.

While General Electric is one of the most skilled at reducing its tax burden, many other companies have become better at this as well. Although the top corporate tax rate in the United States is 35 percent, one of the highest in the world, companies have been increasingly using a maze of shelters, tax credits and subsidies to pay far less.

In a regulatory filing just a week before the Japanese disaster put a spotlight on the company’s nuclear reactor business, G.E. reported that its tax burden was 7.4 percent of its American profits, about a third of the average reported by other American multinationals. Even those figures are overstated, because they include taxes that will be paid only if the company brings its overseas profits back to the United States. With those profits still offshore, G.E. is effectively getting money back.

Such strategies, as well as changes in tax laws that encouraged some businesses and professionals to file as individuals, have pushed down the corporate share of the nation’s tax receipts — from 30 percent of all federal revenue in the mid-1950s to 6.6 percent in 2009.

Yet many companies say the current level is so high it hobbles them in competing with foreign rivals. Even as the government faces a mounting budget deficit, the talk in Washington is about lower rates. President Obama has said he is considering an overhaul of the corporate tax system, with an eye to lowering the top rate, ending some tax subsidies and loopholes and generating the same amount of revenue. He has designated G.E.’s chief executive, Jeffrey R. Immelt, as his liaison to the business community and as the chairman of the President’s Council on Jobs and Competitiveness, and it is expected to discuss corporate taxes.

“He understands what it takes for America to compete in the global economy,” Mr. Obama said of Mr. Immelt, on his appointment in January, after touring a G.E. factory in upstate New York that makes turbines and generators for sale around the world.

A review of company filings and Congressional records shows that one of the most striking advantages of General Electric is its ability to lobby for, win and take advantage of tax breaks.

Over the last decade, G.E. has spent tens of millions of dollars to push for changes in tax law, from more generous depreciation schedules on jet engines to “green energy” credits for its wind turbines. But the most lucrative of these measures allows G.E. to operate a vast leasing and lending business abroad with profits that face little foreign taxes and no American taxes as long as the money remains overseas.

Company officials say that these measures are necessary for G.E. to compete against global rivals and that they are acting as responsible citizens. “G.E. is committed to acting with integrity in relation to our tax obligations,” said Anne Eisele, a spokeswoman. “We are committed to complying with tax rules and paying all legally obliged taxes. At the same time, we have a responsibility to our shareholders to legally minimize our costs.”

The assortment of tax breaks G.E. has won in Washington has provided a significant short-term gain for the company’s executives and shareholders. While the financial crisis led G.E. to post a loss in the United States in 2009, regulatory filings show that in the last five years, G.E. has accumulated $26 billion in American profits, and received a net tax benefit from the I.R.S. of $4.1 billion.

But critics say the use of so many shelters amounts to corporate welfare, allowing G.E. not just to avoid taxes on profitable overseas lending but also to amass tax credits and write-offs that can be used to reduce taxes on billions of dollars of profit from domestic manufacturing. They say that the assertive tax avoidance of multinationals like G.E. not only shortchanges the Treasury, but also harms the economy by discouraging investment and hiring in the United States.

“In a rational system, a corporation’s tax department would be there to make sure a company complied with the law,” said Len Burman, a former Treasury official who now is a scholar at the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center. “But in our system, there are corporations that view their tax departments as a profit center, and the effects on public policy can be negative.”

The shelters are so crucial to G.E.’s bottom line that when Congress threatened to let the most lucrative one expire in 2008, the company came out in full force. G.E. officials worked with dozens of financial companies to send letters to Congress and hired a bevy of outside lobbyists.

The head of its tax team, Mr. Samuels, met with Representative Charles B. Rangel, then chairman of the Ways and Means Committee, which would decide the fate of the tax break. As he sat with the committee’s staff members outside Mr. Rangel’s office, Mr. Samuels dropped to his knee and pretended to beg for the provision to be extended — a flourish made in jest, he said through a spokeswoman.

That day, Mr. Rangel reversed his opposition to the tax break, according to other Democrats on the committee.

The following month, Mr. Rangel and Mr. Immelt stood together at St. Nicholas Park in Harlem as G.E. announced that its foundation had awarded $30 million to New York City schools, including $11 million to benefit various schools in Mr. Rangel’s district. Joel I. Klein, then the schools chancellor, and Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, who presided, said it was the largest gift ever to the city’s schools.

G.E. officials say the donation was granted solely on the merit of the project. “The foundation goes to great lengths to ensure grant decisions are not influenced by company government relations or lobbying priorities,” Ms. Eisele said.

Mr. Rangel, who was censured by Congress last year for soliciting donations from corporations and executives with business before his committee, said this month that the donation was unrelated to his official actions.

Defying Reagan’s Legacy

General Electric has been a household name for generations, with light bulbs, electric fans, refrigerators and other appliances in millions of American homes. But today the consumer appliance division accounts for less than 6 percent of revenue, while lending accounts for more than 30 percent. Industrial, commercial and medical equipment like power plant turbines and jet engines account for about 50 percent. Its industrial work includes everything from wind farms to nuclear energy projects like the troubled plant in Japan, built in the 1970s.

Because its lending division, GE Capital, has provided more than half of the company’s profit in some recent years, many Wall Street analysts view G.E. not as a manufacturer but as an unregulated lender that also makes dishwashers and M.R.I. machines.

As it has evolved, the company has used, and in some cases pioneered, aggressive strategies to lower its tax bill. In the mid-1980s, President Ronald Reagan overhauled the tax system after learning that G.E. — a company for which he had once worked as a commercial pitchman — was among dozens of corporations that had used accounting gamesmanship to avoid paying any taxes.

“I didn’t realize things had gotten that far out of line,” Mr. Reagan told the Treasury secretary, Donald T. Regan, according to Mr. Regan’s 1988 memoir. The president supported a change that closed loopholes and forced G.E. to pay a far higher effective rate, up to 32.5 percent.

That pendulum began to swing back in the late 1990s. G.E. and other financial services firms won a change in tax law that would allow multinationals to avoid taxes on some kinds of banking and insurance income. The change meant that if G.E. financed the sale of a jet engine or generator in Ireland, for example, the company would no longer have to pay American tax on the interest income as long as the profits remained offshore.

Known as active financing, the tax break proved to be beneficial for investment banks, brokerage firms, auto and farm equipment companies, and lenders like GE Capital. This tax break allowed G.E. to avoid taxes on lending income from abroad, and also permitted the company to amass tax credits, write-offs and depreciation. Those benefits are then used to offset taxes on its American manufacturing profits.

G.E. subsequently ramped up its lending business.

As the company expanded abroad, the portion of its profits booked in low-tax countries such as Ireland and Singapore grew far faster. From 1996 through 1998, its profits and revenue in the United States were in sync — 73 percent of the company’s total. Over the last three years, though, 46 percent of the company’s revenue was in the United States, but just 18 percent of its profits.

Martin A. Sullivan, a tax economist for the trade publication Tax Analysts, said that booking such a large percentage of its profits in low-tax countries has “allowed G.E. to bring its U.S. effective tax rate to rock-bottom levels.”

G.E. officials say the disparity between American revenue and American profit is the result of ordinary business factors, such as investment in overseas markets and heavy lending losses in the United States recently. The company also says the nation’s workers benefit when G.E. profits overseas.

“We believe that winning in markets outside the United States increases U.S. exports and jobs,” Mr. Samuels said through a spokeswoman. “If U.S. companies aren’t competitive outside of their home market, it will mean fewer, not more, jobs in the United States, as the business will go to a non-U.S. competitor.”

The company does not specify how much of its global tax savings derive from active financing, but called it “significant” in its annual report. Stock analysts estimate the tax benefit to G.E. to be hundreds of millions of dollars a year.

“Cracking down on offshore profit-shifting by financial companies like G.E. was one of the important achievements of President Reagan’s 1986 Tax Reform Act,” said Robert S. McIntyre, director of the liberal group Citizens for Tax Justice, who played a key role in those changes. “The fact that Congress was snookered into undermining that reform at the behest of companies like G.E. is an insult not just to Reagan, but to all the ordinary American taxpayers who have to foot the bill for G.E.’s rampant tax sheltering.”

A Full-Court Press

Minimizing taxes is so important at G.E. that Mr. Samuels has placed tax strategists in decision-making positions in many major manufacturing facilities and businesses around the globe. Mr. Samuels, a graduate of Vanderbilt University and the University of Chicago Law School, declined to be interviewed for this article. Company officials acknowledged that the tax department had expanded since he joined the company in 1988, and said it now had 975 employees.

At a tax symposium in 2007, a G.E. tax official said the department’s “mission statement” consisted of 19 rules and urged employees to divide their time evenly between ensuring compliance with the law and “looking to exploit opportunities to reduce tax.”

Transforming the most creative strategies of the tax team into law is another extensive operation. G.E. spends heavily on lobbying: more than $200 million over the last decade, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. Records filed with election officials show a significant portion of that money was devoted to tax legislation. G.E. has even turned setbacks into successes with Congressional help. After the World Trade Organization forced the United States to halt $5 billion a year in export subsidies to G.E. and other manufacturers, the company’s lawyers and lobbyists became deeply involved in rewriting a portion of the corporate tax code, according to news reports after the 2002 decision and a Congressional staff member.

By the time the measure — the American Jobs Creation Act — was signed into law by President George W. Bush in 2004, it contained more than $13 billion a year in tax breaks for corporations, many very beneficial to G.E. One provision allowed companies to defer taxes on overseas profits from leasing planes to airlines. It was so generous — and so tailored to G.E. and a handful of other companies — that staff members on the House Ways and Means Committee publicly complained that G.E. would reap “an overwhelming percentage” of the estimated $100 million in annual tax savings.

According to its 2007 regulatory filing, the company saved more than $1 billion in American taxes because of that law in the three years after it was enacted.

By 2008, however, concern over the growing cost of overseas tax loopholes put G.E. and other corporations on the defensive. With Democrats in control of both houses of Congress, momentum was building to let the active financing exception expire. Mr. Rangel of the Ways and Means Committee indicated that he favored letting it end and directing the new revenue — an estimated $4 billion a year — to other priorities.

G.E. pushed back. In addition to the $18 million allocated to its in-house lobbying department, the company spent more than $3 million in 2008 on lobbying firms assigned to the task.

Mr. Rangel dropped his opposition to the tax break. Representative Joseph Crowley, Democrat of New York, said he had helped sway Mr. Rangel by arguing that the tax break would help Citigroup, a major employer in Mr. Crowley’s district.

G.E. officials say that neither Mr. Samuels nor any lobbyists working on behalf of the company discussed the possibility of a charitable donation with Mr. Rangel. The only contact had come in late 2007, a company spokesman said, when Mr. Immelt called to inform Mr. Rangel that the foundation was giving money to schools in his district.

But in 2008, when Mr. Rangel was criticized for using Congressional stationery to solicit donations for a City College of New York school being built in his honor, Mr. Rangel said he had appealed to G.E. executives to make the $30 million donation to New York City schools.

G.E. had nothing to do with the City College project, he said at a July 2008 press conference in Washington. “And I didn’t send them any letter,” Mr. Rangel said, adding that he “leaned on them to help us out in the city of New York as they have throughout the country. But my point there was that I do know that the C.E.O. there is connected with the foundation.”

In an interview this month, Mr. Rangel offered a different version of events — saying he didn’t remember ever discussing it with Mr. Immelt and was unaware of the foundation’s donation until the mayor’s office called him in June, before the announcement and after Mr. Rangel had dropped his opposition to the tax break.

Asked to explain the discrepancies between his two accounts, Mr. Rangel replied, “I have no idea.”

Value to Americans?

While G.E.’s declining tax rates have bolstered profits and helped the company continue paying dividends to shareholders during the economic downturn, some tax experts question what taxpayers are getting in return. Since 2002, the company has eliminated a fifth of its work force in the United States while increasing overseas employment. In that time, G.E.’s accumulated offshore profits have risen to $92 billion from $15 billion.

“That G.E. can almost set its own tax rate shows how very much we need reform,” said Representative Lloyd Doggett, Democrat of Texas, who has proposed closing many corporate tax shelters. “Our tax system should encourage job creation and investment in America and end these tax incentives for exporting jobs and dodging responsibility for the cost of securing our country.”

As the Obama administration and leaders in Congress consider proposals to revamp the corporate tax code, G.E. is well prepared to defend its interests. The company spent $4.1 million on outside lobbyists last year, including four boutique firms that specialize in tax policy.

“We are a diverse company, so there are a lot of issues that the government considers, that Congress considers, that affect our shareholders,” said Gary Sheffer, a G.E. spokesman. “So we want to be sure our voice is heard."

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/25/business/economy/25tax.html?_r=1&hp

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Buried Provision In House GOP Bill Would Cut Off Food Stamps To Entire Families If One Member Strikes

All around the country, right-wing legislators are asking middle class Americans to pay for budget deficits caused mainly by a recession caused by Wall Street; they are attacking workers’ collective bargaining rights, which has provoked a huge Main Street Movement to fight back.

Now, a group of House Republicans is launching a new stealth attack against union workers. GOP Reps. Jim Jordan (OH), Tim Scott (SC), Scott Garrett (NJ), Dan Burton (IN), and Louie Gohmert (TX) have introduced H.R. 1135, which states that it is designed to “provide information on total spending on means-tested welfare programs, to provide additional work requirements, and to provide an overall spending limit on means-tested welfare programs.”

Much of the bill is based upon verifying that those who receive food stamps benefits are meeting the federal requirements for doing so. However, one section buried deep within the bill adds a startling new requirement. The bill, if passed, would actually cut off all food stamp benefits to any family where one adult member is engaging in a strike against an employer:

The bill also includes a provision that would exempt households from losing eligibility, “if the household was eligible immediately prior to such strike, however, such family unit shall not receive an increased allotment as the result of a decrease in the income of the striking member or members of the household.”

Yet removing entire families from eligibility while a single adult family member is striking would have a chilling effect on workers who are considering going on strike for better wages, benefits, or working conditions — something that is especially alarming in light of the fact that unions are one of the fundamental building blocks of the middle class that allow people to earn wages that keep them off food stamps.

With a record 42 million Americans on food stamps during these poor economic times, it appears that the right is simply looking for more ways to hurt working class Americans.

By Zaid Jilani
Sourced from ThinkProgress

Posted at March 24, 2011, 8:14 am

Appeals court reinstates suit against US gov’t. warrantless wiretapping program

By Stephen C. Webster
Tuesday, March 22nd, 2011 -- 12:19 pm

The Bush Administration's contention that Americans couldn't challenge its warrantless wiretapping law because no one could prove they were spied upon was thrown out by an appeals court Monday afternoon, allowing a challenge of the program's constitutionality to proceed.

In a unanimous decision, judges on the Second Circuit Court of Appeals found that the surveillance program could be challenged on the grounds that its existence caused an assortment of journalists, attorneys and human rights groups to fear their privileged communications may be intercepted.

An earlier lawsuit filed by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), which sought to challenge the FISA Amendments Act, was thrown out by a lower court judge who accepted the government's argument that if one cannot prove one was the target of electronic surveillance, one cannot sue over it.

It was that argument in particular which was roundly rejected on Monday afternoon, in a ruling that effectively reinstated the ACLU's challenge to the FISA Amendments Act.

That challenge was originally filed on behalf of a series of journalists and activists who claimed their livelihoods were affected by the existence of the wiretapping program.

Although a lower court rejected their claims, the plaintiffs were able to show on appeal that the laws forced them to take "costly and burdensome steps" to prevent the interception of their communications.

"The appeals court have overturned that decision, finding that our plaintiffs have standing because they've been injured by the law," ACLU attorney Jameel Jaffer explained. "They have had to take costly and burdensome steps to prevent their privileged communications from being intercepted and the costs were enough to give the plaintiffs standing."

Their next step is to challenge the constitutional standing of the FISA Amendments Act.

"Our argument is that this statute, the FISA Amendments Act, gives the government sweeping power to wiretap without adequate oversight procedures," Jaffer added.

Groups party to the suit included Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, along with journalists Naomi Klein and Christopher Hedges.

"Americans shouldn't have to accept as a fact of life that the government may be monitoring their international emails and phone calls and they can do nothing about it," the ACLU said in an advisory.

The wiretapping program, revealed in 2005, caused public outcry for appearing to contradict not only standing law, but also President George W. Bush's own words from a speech in which he told Americans warrants were required for wiretapping. Opponents argued that US privacy guarantees meant the intelligence agencies should seek court warrants from the FISA court to conduct such spying inside the country.

The FISA court was set up after the administration of Republican President Richard M. Nixon, as a response to his use of wiretapping capabilities to spy on his political opponents.

President Obama, as a candidate, vowed to "filibuster" the FISA Amendments Act, but instead voted for it after securing the Democratic nomination to the presidency. He's since vowed to conduct a full review of the nation's wiretapping program, but had not done so at time of this writing.

The Obama Justice Department has upheld the Bush administration's arguments in defense of the program.

Read the court's full decision here (PDF).

http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2011/03/22/appeals-court-reinstates-suit-against-bushs-warrantless-wiretapping-program/

Stop Federal Funding Of Fox News

Posted by Mark on March 21, 2011 at 1:44 pm.

A few weeks ago video pimp and propagandist, James O’Keefe, released a heavily edited and deliberately deceptive video that purported to expose an institutional bias at National Public Radio. It was quickly debunked and denounced as a fraud by analysts across the political spectrum, including those at Glenn Beck’s web site, The Blaze.

Nevertheless, partisans in Congress and agenda-driven conservatives in the press continue to behave as if the video were legitimate. The House of Representatives, on a party-line vote, passed a resolution to defund NPR – a purely symbolic gesture as the Senate is not likely to concur.

The latest attack comes from former NPR correspondent, and confessed bigot, Juan Williams, in an op-ed for The Hill. After first conceding that “NPR is an important platform for journalism,” Williams joins his conservative comrades in calling for federal defunding of NPR. But he also reveals his self-serving and vengeful motivation by slandering NPR in saying that…

“They’re willing to do anything in service of any liberal with money. This includes firing me and skewing the editorial content of their programming.”

Nowhere in the article did Williams support his contention that “liberal money” was behind either his termination or any of its reporting. This is nothing more than a personal vendetta on Williams’ part. He is merely using the funding debate to strike his own blows against a former employer for whom he obviously bears a deep resentment.

However, if the right wants to introduce the issue of federal funding of the media into the public debate, they should be prepared to see their own Fox gored. Fox News has been the beneficiary of government largess for years and it is time stop it and make Fox pay its own way. As far back as 1999, there have been reports documenting how News Corp, Fox’s parent company, exploited loopholes in tax laws that permitted them to avoid levies that all other citizens have to pay. From The Economist:

“…News Corporation and its subsidiaries paid only A$325m ($238m) in corporate taxes worldwide. In the same period, its consolidated pre-tax profits were A$5.4 billion. So News Corporation has paid an effective tax rate of only around 6%. By comparison, Disney, one of the world’s other media empires, paid 31%. Basic corporate-tax rates in Australia, America and Britain, the three main countries in which News Corporation operates, are 36%, 35% and 30% respectively.”

The article goes on to describe how News Corp used a complex network of accounting dodges including as many as 60 shell companies that were incorporated in such tax havens as the Cayman Islands, Bermuda, the Netherlands Antilles and the British Virgin Islands. More recently, an investigation by the New York Times revealed that…

“By taking advantage of a provision in the law that allows expanding companies like Mr. Murdoch’s to defer taxes to future years, the News Corporation paid no federal taxes in two of the last four years, and in the other two it paid only a fraction of what it otherwise would have owed. During that time, Securities and Exchange Commission records show, the News Corporation’s domestic pretax profits topped $9.4 billion.”

When giant, prosperous, multinational corporations weasel out of their tax obligations, ordinary citizens are the ones who are forced to make up the shortfall. That is effectively a tax subsidy for the corporations funded by you and me and all of the indignant Tea Partiers who claim to oppose special interest favors for the elite.

What’s more, federal bailouts to corporations like General Motors and Citigroup provided them with billions of taxpayer dollars, some of which are eventually spent on advertising that appears on Fox News, in the Wall Street Journal, and other Murdoch assets. Additionally, financial institutions that receive bailout funds use some that money to acquire shares of News Corp and to finance and insure News Corp activities including billion dollar motion picture projects like Avatar and capitalizing mergers and expansions.

USUncut is mounting a campaign to expose this sort of corporate welfare. They should add News Corp/Fox News to their list. But why aren’t there more voices objecting to these handouts? Why aren’t Democrats in Congress drafting legislation to prohibit bailout and stimulus funds from being used to enrich partisan political operations like Fox News by funneling cash into their accounts disguised as advertising expenditures. Every time you see a commercial on the Fox News Channel for a Chevy Tahoe or a Citibank Visa you are watching your tax dollars flow into the pockets of Rupert Murdoch and his wealthy associates.

The right wants to defund NPR despite the fact that they have utterly failed to demonstrate any journalistic bias on the part of NPR. On the other hand, Fox News has been documented to be brazenly one-sided over and over again, yet they receive hundreds of millions of dollars in taxpayer financed subsidies. Well, no more.

Stand Up! Fight Back! It is time to end the federal funding of Fox News NOW!

http://www.newscorpse.com/ncWP/?p=4087

Shot in the Back for a Misunderstanding

By LIZ POTOCSNAK
Monday, March 14, 2011Last Update: 7:51 AM PT

NASHVILLE (CN) - Unable to speak Spanish, a police officer shot a man repeatedly in the back at point-blank range after the man asked the officer if he could be of any help, the now wheelchair-bound man claims in Federal Court.
Jose Calderon Pacheco sued the City of Springfield and its Police Department, Police Chief Mike Wilhoit and Officer Will Johnson, who allegedly shot him repeatedly in what appears to have been a simple misunderstanding.
Calderon, who speaks little or no English, says he got out of his truck sometime before midnight a year ago today after seeing a police car pull in behind him. "Upon noticing the police car, plaintiff exited his vehicle and inquired of the officer if he could be of any assistance," according to the complaint.
Calderon, now 32, says he "could not understand and/or respond to" Officer Johnson because his native language is Spanish.
"Johnson then proceeded to attempt to place plaintiff under arrest and to do a 'pat down' of him," according to the complaint.
It continues: "Plaintiff tried to inquire of the officer as to why he was being arrested and to state that he had done nothing wrong. Nonetheless, Johnson continued with a forceful arrest. Becoming fearful, plaintiff attempted to run away. He was pursued by Johnson, who physically accosted him, picking him up by the neck. Subsequently, he discharged pepper spray in the plaintiff's face.
"Defendant Johnson then pulled his baton from its holster and began striking the plaintiff in numerous places on his body."
Another police car arrived, with "one or more SPD officers."
Calderon says "he ran towards his back yard to escape further injury from defendant Johnson," who continued beating him with the police stick.
"The officer then pulled his pistol form its holster, aimed at the plaintiff and commanded him to lift his arms.
"Plaintiff complied, lifting his arms as instructed, yet defendant Johnson opened fire and shot the plaintiff directly in the right hand. The force of the bullet to the right hand spun the plaintiff around so that he landed on the ground face down.
"Plaintiff, wounded in the right hand from the gunshot, was on his stomach on the ground, bleeding from his right hand, in a submissive position.
"Within a few seconds, defendant Johnson then proceeded to shoot the plaintiff multiple times in the back at point blank range."
Calderon says that "None of the other defendant officers, John Does 1-5 attempted to render any first aid to plaintiff. Eventually, the Emergency Medical Service was contacted."
Calderon, who says he will be wheelchair-bound for life, claims Johnson's assault was "committed maliciously and sadistically."
He also accuses the Springfield Police Department of being "deliberately indifferent in the training of employees in regard to the ... management of non-English speaking individuals."
He seeks punitive damages for reckless violations of his civil rights.
He is represented by Richard Summers of Atlanta, Ga.

http://www.courthousenews.com/2011/03/14/34874.htm