Saturday, April 16, 2011

The Billionaires' Tea Party


The Billionaires' Tea Party - Trailer
The Tea Party movement has taken American politics by storm.

But is this truly a populist uprising or one of the greatest feats of propaganda ever seen?

Australian filmmaker Taki Oldham sets out answer this question, finding that behind the movement’s rhetoric of ‘freedom’ versus ‘socialism’ lies a highly co-ordinated network of shadow groups, funded by the likes of billionaire ideologues Charles and David Koch. The video is a NEW DOCUMENTARY tracing how the billionaire Koch brothers are funding the TEA Party movement to create a privatized America.

Are the Tea Party protestors really just pawns in a plan to replace government with a privatized corporate government America? Watch the video and decide for yourself.

Friday, April 15, 2011

New TDP Ad On The GOP Price Tag

The Texas Democratic Party released a new video with the following statement: "When it comes to the state budget, Republican politics are running roughshod over Texans’ priorities. Watch our new video and get the Democratic take on what’s most important."

President Obama's Deficit Speech



President Obama's speech, as prepared for delivery:

"What we've been debating here in Washington for the last few weeks will affect your lives in ways that are potentially profound. This debate over budgets and deficits is about more than just numbers on a page, more than just cutting and spending. Its about the kind of future we want. It's about the kind of country we believe in. And that's what I want to talk about today.

"From our first days as a nation, we have put our faith in free markets and free enterprise as the engine of America's wealth and prosperity. More than citizens of any other country, we are rugged individualists, a self-reliant people with a healthy skepticism of too much government.

"But there has always been another thread running throughout our history – a belief that we are all connected; and that there are some things we can only do together, as a nation. We believe, in the words of our first Republican president, Abraham Lincoln, that through government, we should do together what we cannot do as well for ourselves. And so we've built a strong military to keep us secure, and public schools and universities to educate our citizens. We've laid down railroads and highways to facilitate travel and commerce. We've supported the work of scientists and researchers whose discoveries have saved lives, unleashed repeated technological revolutions, and led to countless new jobs and entire industries. Each of us has benefited from these investments, and we are a more prosperous country as a result.

Friday, April 8, 2011

House Considers Accounting Maneuver To Slightly Ease School Funding Crisis

The Texas Democratic Party released new video details on HB 1, the state budget bill passed by the Texas House on Sunday.

HB 1 codifies a draconian $164.5 billion 2011-13 budget that cuts $23 billion from 2009-13 spending levels. HB 1 slashes public school spending by nearly $8 billion and cuts Medicaid spending by more than $4 billion.

The deficit was created when 2006 legislative session lawmakers cut state revenue by giving deep business tax cuts.

Upon passage of the HB 1 Rep. Joaquin Castro, D-San Antonio released a statement that says in part, "Eighty thousand kids are not going to get their scholarships and grant money because of this bill. Forty-three thousand people are going to get kicked out of nursing homes or denied nursing home entrance because of this bill..."

Lawmakers in the Texas Senate have been working on their own version of the budget, but the Senate version cuts only $13 billion from current spending levels to mitigate the cuts to public education and Medicaid. Senate budget-writers propose adding $10 billion state-related revenue through new and increased fees.

Thursday morning State Rep. Rob Orr, R-Burleson, introduced two bills to the House Appropriations Committee that could add several million dollars to the public schools budget over the next two years. These bills providing for some accounting maneuvers to more easily shift money around a couple of state agencies responsible for public school funding:

HB 2646 proposes allowing the School Land Board to transfer at least half of the net revenue it collects from a land trust it oversees to the Available School Fund (ASF), an endowment that puts money directly into public schools in Texas. Orr said that pot of money has risen to more than $2.5 billion in market value and contains more than $1 billion in cash. If that trend continues, the fund could supply the state with an additional $500 million in the next biennium.

HB 2646 requires companion legislation (HJR 109) to put a constitutional amendment on the November 8, 2011 ballot that would allow the General Land Office to distribute revenue directly to the ASF.

The School Land Board (SLB) was established in 1939 by the 46th Legislature to manage the sale and leasing of public lands that fund the Permanent School Fund. The Permanent School Fund (PSF) was established in the state Constitution of 1876, the current charter of Texas law, to fund public eduction using revenues generated from Texas' land and mineral resources. The SLB’s responsibilities include approving land sales, trades and exchanges, and the purchase of land for the PSF. In addition to this, the SLB issues permits, leases and easements for uses of state-owned submerged land. The SLB is just one of nine boards and councils chaired by the Commissioner of the General Land Office. As chairman of nine boards or councils, the Land Commissioner oversees matters that range from state lands and coastal issues to veterans affairs.

The General Land Office of Texas (GLO) manages state lands and mineral right properties, including oil and gas production leases on more than 20 million acres of state land. State lands and mineral right properties include the beaches, bays, estuaries and other submerged lands out to 10.3 miles in the Gulf of Mexico, institutional acreage, grazing lands in West Texas and timber lands in East Texas. Revenue and royalties are distributed to school districts on a per-pupil basis, helping to offset local school property taxes.

The Available School Fund is made up of the money set aside by the state from current or annual revenues for the support of the public school system. There are two major revenue sources for the fund: earnings from the Permanent School Fund managed by the School Land Board and 25 percent of fuel tax receipts. The fund does not receive annual appropriations by the legislature from other general state revenue sources.

Tuesday, April 5, 2011

Texas Republicans In Dust-Up Over Redistricting

Politico: A bitter, behind-the-scenes fight has broken out among Texas Republicans over redistricting, pitting Rep. Lamar Smith against longtime colleague Rep. Joe Barton.

The dispute is over the makeup of four new congressional districts for the Lone Star State, and centers on the racial balance — including the controversial issue of “bleaching,” or including more white voters in a district — of the new political map for Texas.

GOP Rep. Lamar Smith has taken the position that Hispanic population growth in Texas means that two of Texas' four new U.S. House districts should be majority-minority. Smith has been working with Dem Rep. Henry Cuellar to create a map that includes the new majority-minority districts. This has infuriated fellow Republican Rep. Joe Barton, who insists that at least three if not all four of the new district be drawn (gerrymandered) to favor non-minority Republicans.

Politico's sources indicate Gov. Perry's alleged plan is to skip Department of Justice pre-clearance and go directly to federal court, perhaps hoping for a friendly conservative panel backed by a conservative-leaning Supreme Court. The piece also reports that proposed maps have been circulated among Republicans, but of course, no one's sharing any copies.
Read more at Politico »

For full details on the 2010 Texas Census and redistricting for Texas and Collin Co. read: Redistricting : U.S. Census Bureau Releases 2010 County Level Counts

Monday, April 4, 2011

President Obama Announces Reelection Bid

It's official: President Barack Obama today announced he will run for reelection in 2012.

The President's 2012 campaign used his 2008 campaign's contact lists to distribute an email and a text message to his 2008 supporters with his announcement. (announcement video left)

By filing papers with the Federal Election Commission, the president can begin fundraising for his 2012 operation.

House Passes A Budget

Update April 4, 2011 @ 1:02am

House Bill 1, the draconian $164.5 billion 2011-13 budget that cuts $23 billion from 2009-13 spending levels, passed the Texas House Sunday on a preliminary vote of 98 to 49 along party lines. Two Republicans, Aaron Pena and David Simpson, voted against the bill.

House Bill 1 cuts public school spending by nearly $8 billion and cuts Medicaid spending by more than $4 billion. Rep. Joaquin Castro, D-San Antonio released a statement that says in part, "Eighty thousand kids are not going to get their scholarships and grant money because of this bill. Forty-three thousand people are going to get kicked out of nursing homes or denied nursing home entrance because of this bill..." The Center for Public Policy Priorities projects that as many as 189,000+ public education related jobs will be eliminated in Texas. Almost 14,000 public education jobs may be eliminated in Collin Co. Medicaid cuts to nursing homes and other health care providers will most likely result in many nursing home closures.

House Bill 1 taps none of the remaining $6 billion in the state's Rainy Day Fund, but it does include $100 million in new fees. Republicans on the House floor made some adjustments to the version of the bill that passed out of the Appropriations Committee last week. Conservatives stripped family planning funds to fund autism and mental health services for kids. For details on other adjustments made to House Bill 1 on the House floor read this article in the Texas Tribune.

Lawmakers in the Texas Senate have been working on their own version of the budget, but the Senate version cuts about $13 billion to mitigate the cuts to public education and Medicaid. Senate budget-writers propose adding $10 billion state-related revenue through new and increased fees. The spending gap will be major point of contention with House and Senate appointees meet to hammer out the differences in conference committee.

Sunday, April 3, 2011

The TRUE Story Of The Original Tea Party

The policies advocated by Tea Party Republicans are modern analogs of the British Government's 18th century policies that precipitated the Boston Tea Party. Tax policies that penalize the citizenry while rewarding the corporations like the East India Company were at the root of the Boston Tea Party.

The Koch brothers and other conservative billionaires who head multinational corporations, who fund the the Tea Party movement, today play the part of the East India Company. Thom Hartmann gives the actual history of the original tea party in this video: a movement against the collusion of big business and the political party controlling Parliament in the 1700's.

Thirty new GOP Texas state lawmakers took office this year, promising their constituents they'd cut the fat out of government.

The current $27 billion deficit in the Texas budget is is caused by the Texas legislature giving corporate business massive tax breaks over the last ten years.

Saturday, April 2, 2011

Fixing The Tax Revenue Problem Instead Of Cutting Teachers

Texas will have a persistent $10 billion hole in its budget for years to come unless legislators address it this session, the state’s chief revenue estimator told Senators in Senate Finance Committee meeting on January 31, 2011.

Pressed by Democratic senators on the Finance Committee, John Heleman said the state will have a $10 billion structural deficit in future budgets largely because the business tax has underperformed and the 2006 property tax swap has cost more than expected.

The revised business tax was supposed to bring in $6 billion per year. Instead, it it is generating $4 billion. The cost of the property tax relief is also running about $1 billion per year above expectations.

“That gap is not closing up,” said Heleman, chief revenue estimator for Comptroller Susan Combs.

Republican state leaders have attributed the state’s budget woes to the recession and have dismissed calls to raise taxes to deal with the current budget shortfall, estimated at $15 billion to $27 billion, saying they can cut their way out of that hole.

But the structural deficit means legislators will have to come back in 2013 and beyond to deal with at least another $10 billion hole.

G.O.P. lawmakers in Austin have taken a vow of no new taxes, which is a vow to not fix the business tax revenue problem created by law makers in the 2006 legislative session.

Last week the Texas House began debate on a $164.5 billion budget bill that strips $23 billion from two-year 2011-13 state budget. The budget bill makes the kinds of spending cuts that many Conservative Tea Party lawmakers championed in their 2010 campaigns. Republican lawmakers say voters gave them a huge majority and clear marching orders last November: reduce spending, shrink state government, don't raise taxes. Shrinking state government, as it turns out, includes firing hundreds of thousands of teachers and state employees, taking billions of dollars out of the public school system and weaken the state's safety net for low-income Texans and the elderly.

Some Democratic lawmakers are, however, advocating fixing the business tax revenue side of the equation as stated in the follow press release from State Representative Yvonne Davis.

House GOP Budget Converts Medicare, Medicaid To Private Insurance Vouchers

Washington (CNN) -- House Budget Chairman Paul Ryan, R-Wisconsin, will unveil a highly anticipated 2012 Republican budget next week that proposes dramatic changes to political lightning rods: entitlements.

The plan, to be released Tuesday, calls for a controversial overhaul of Medicare, the health care program for seniors, and imposes deep cuts in Medicaid, which provides health benefits to low-income Americans, according to House Republican sources with knowledge of the proposal.

Starting 10 years from now, in 2021, Americans would no longer enroll in the Medicare program, but instead receive vouchers for private insurance, according to the GOP sources.

Read more »

The New Republic - Medicaid in the Cross Hairs:

The assault on Medicaid is about to begin. GOP sources have told Politico's Jonathan Allen that House Republicans will propose $1 trillion in cuts from the program. Exactly what form those cuts will take is not entirely clear. But a trillion dollars over ten years is serious money and Capitol Hill sources are saying it will likely come from two dramatic changes: Eliminating the Medicaid expansion that takes place under the Affordable Care Act and then converting the entire program into a system of block grants....

[R]olling back the Affordable Care Act's Medicaid expansion would mean taking health insurance away from about 15 million people. That's the official, Congressional Budget Office projection of how many people will get coverage under Medicaid once the Act is fully in place.

As for turning Medicaid into a block grant, here's a quick refresher on what that entails. Right now, Medicaid is an entitlement program. That means the federal government, in partnership with the states, must enroll everybody who meets the program's guidelines. In other words, if millions of additional people become eligible because, say, they lost their job-based insurance in the recession, than the feds and the states have to provide them with coverage and find some way to pay for it. And it can't be spotty coverage, either. By law, Medicaid coverage must be comprehensive.

At least, that's the way it works now. If the law changes and Medicaid becomes a block grant, then every year the federal government would simply give the states a lump sum, set by a fixed formula, and let the states make the most of it.

The GOP likes to trumpet block grant programs as providing maximum flexibility for states. What this would actually do is take away states' ability to provide healthcare in economic downturns, like the one we're still in the middle of. Republican governors would be fine with that, they'd take the flexibility and make out like bandits, just like Gov. Rick Perry, who has advocated that Texas drop out of Medicare. Who will hurt the most are the primary beneficiaries of the program, the elderly and the disabled, including millions of children.

From Jobsanger Blog: "Exposing 10 Republican Economic Lies"

LIE -- Social Security is going broke because of the influx of the "baby boomers" and soon won't be able to meet its obligations, and future generations will not have any Social Security at all.

TRUTH -- Social Security is not in any immediate danger. The program has the funds to pay full benefits to all its recipients through 2037, and even after that date it could pay 75-80% far into the future -- and that is if nothing is done. One small tweak, raising the cap on income on which the FICA tax is paid, would make the program able to pay full benefits to all recipients for many, many more decades. There is NO REASON to cut benefits or raise the retirement age.

LIE -- The budget can be balanced by cutting programs that help ordinary Americans (like Medicare, Medicaid, Head Start, Planned Parenthood, the EPA, unemployment insurance, etc.).

TRUTH -- All of these programs could be abolished and the budget would still not be balanced. But the budget could be balanced by stopping both unnecessary wars, cutting the Defense Department budget, eliminating corporate subsidies, and making the rich and the corporations pay their fair share of taxes.

The Republicans have to tell these lies because, as I said, no one would ever vote for them if they told the truth. But we as citizens do not have to believe those lies. Their misguided and wrong-headed policies have caused the worst economic disaster this country has experienced since the Great Depression (which was also caused by the same Republican policies).

It is time to stand up and tell them no more, and a good time to do that will be at the ballot box in 2012. We must boot them from power, and then put pressure of the far too-timid Democrats to do the right thing. Then we must hope our grandchildren don't fall for the same lies in another 70-80 years.