News Roundup for 2/2/12

Champions of central "local" control

-Headline of the Day-
"Oops: Florida Republican Forgets To Remove ALEC Mission Statement From Boilerplate Anti-Tax Bill."

It used to be that Republicans were always talking about "local control." What they meant was that states didn't need Big Government coming in and telling them what to do. State governments could make up their own minds, thank you very much, and no federal meddling was needed. You couldn't get them to shut up about it.

Now, things are different. Republicans don't talk as much about local control because they put together this thing called ALEC. ALEC is the American Legislative Exchange Council and it's made up of state legislators. What do they do? They write laws -- well, they get lobbyists to write them anyway. And they do it for everyone. Then they can pretend they aren't Big Government goons pushing the states around. They're small government goons doing the pushing. I guess there's some difference.

See, this way you've got local control. Of course, the idea is that all the locals are controlling things exactly the same way across all the states. Every ALEC law is, in practice, one big national law, since the idea is that every state has the same one. Local control! Except it's not so local as it is central.

Yeah, it's a confusing mish-mash of contradicting argument, but that's Republicans for ya.

Anyhoo, this all strikes a lot of people as wrong -- not to mention hypocritical. People in Florida shouldn't be writing Wisconsin's laws and vice versa, for example. So all the ALEC people like to pretend that they came up with these identical laws all on their lonesome. It's all so common sense, they argue, why wouldn't a bunch of people come up with the same thing?

This argument took a little ding when Florida state Rep. Rachel Burgin introduced a bill calling on the feds to reduce corporate tax rates -- and left an ALEC identifier in it. "WHEREAS, it is the mission of the American Legislative Exchange Council to advance Jeffersonian principles of free markets, limited government, yada-yada-yada, wank-wank-wank...," Burgin's bill began, which was kind of letting the cat out of the bag. Someone else wrote this thing and Rachel just copied and pasted it -- apparently without even reading it.

According to the report, "Burgin quickly withdrew the bill hoping that no one had noticed and then re-introduced it 24-hours later, with a new bill number (HM 717), but now without the problematic paragraph."

As you can see, that strategy failed. Wait for this Florida bill to show up in your state, because local control is super-important. (ThinkProgress)


-Cartoon time with Mark Fiore-
Hey kids, ever wonder how to write an attack ad for a shadowy, secretive Super PAC? Yeah, me neither. But Uncle Mark's going to show us anyway! Yay!


Click for animation

Well that's just [adjective]. (MarkFiore.com)


-Bonus HotD-
"Trump endorses Mitt Romney for president."

Meanwhile, there's this from Pew:



Looks like The Donald can expect a thank-you note from Newt. (CBS News)

Stories to Watch: 3/25/11

What do you do when a judge puts a restraining order on your brand-new law limiting collective bargaining? Ignore the judge. Now here's the news...

***
As much as I wish I could say this is shocking, it is not. A Wisconsin history professor, William Cronon, is under attack by the Wisconsin Republican Party for pulling back the curtain and showing who's really behind the heist in Wisconsin, where everything is being taken from the poor and middle class and given to the wealthy and corporations.

Cronon wrote an op-ed for the New York Times -- which I coincidentally wrote about at the time -- and, more importantly, a blog post explaining how a little known group called the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) was behind all the attacks on everyone but the rich in states after state.

Apparently, ALEC likes being little known, so the Wisconsin GOP filed an open records request with the University of Wisconsin. "Tellingly," writes Greg Sargent, "the Wisconsin GOP asked for Cronon-authored emails that contain a range of union-related keywords, such as 'AFSCME,' 'collective bargaining,' 'recall,' etc."

In other words, it's a fishing expedition to see if he used University (i.e., state-owned) email to engage in lobbying or arganization -- a violation of state law.

Is there any evidence that he misused state email? None. Will they find anything? Not according to Cronon. He told Sargent, "It's not there."

Writing from China, The Altlantic's James Fallows has this to say:

The reason this strikes me particularly hard at the moment: I am staying in a country where a lot of recent news concerns how far the government is going in electronic monitoring of email and other messages to prevent any group, notably including academics or students, from organizing in order to protest. I don't like that any better in Madison than I do in Beijing.

So Republicans are trying to punish Cronon for voicing his opinions. Many people are describing this as "McCarthyite" and I can't disagree.

Once again, I'm flabbergasted by the GOP's complete lack of shame.

You can read Cronon's statement on the situation here.

***
Almost immediately after saying she giving up on "whining about a liberal press," noted Facebook troll Sarah Palin puts up a post titled, "Lamestream Media: Reload or White Flag?" In it, she basically plays her worn-out victim card and says she was just kidding -- the whining isn't going to stop.


The situation around the Fukushima Daiichi nuke plant in Japan gets worse.


Steve Martin used to have a bit called "How to be a millionaire and never pay taxes." "First, get a million dollars," it began. Then, when the IRS comes knocking, you tell them, "I forgot."

Punchline update for the 21st century: tell them you're General Electric.


Krugman points out that austerity measures are bringing down economies all over the world, meaning the GOP is putting ideology above all available evidence. It's what they do.


John McCain has a very serious Ghaddafi problem.


Finally, why are Republicans hellbent on getting seriously insane legislation passed now, now, now? Probably because they're running out of time.