Happy Birthday America!

Musician Keb Mo visited the White House earlier this year and performed a rendition of "America the Beautiful". Enjoy some great scenes of America and the President set to this classic song - in celebration of Independence Day.

The Terrifying Texas GOP Platform

From Forbes by John T. Harvey

. . . I am so distressed by the 2012 platform released by the Texas Republican Party that I find it impossible not to comment. While I am hardly in agreement with everything forwarded by the Democrats (and have taken aim at President Obama on a number of occasions, especially with respect to his desire to balance the federal budget), it is difficult to believe that what the Republicans put together during their convention in Fort Worth was even written in the 21st century. It is anything but pragmatic.

The GOP Platform (available here) has already made headlines with the portion that opposes the “teaching of Higher Order Thinking Skills” and “critical thinking skills.” Although a partial retraction followed, this was in terms of the wording, not the general meaning.

It appears that their fear is that these “focus on behavior modification and have the purpose of challenging the student’s fixed beliefs and undermining parental authority.”

. . . Another disturbing feature of the document is that while they “urge the Legislature to direct expenditures to academics as the first priority,” they also contend that “Since data is (sic) clear that additional money does not translate into educational achievement, and higher education costs are out of control, we support reducing taxpayer funding to all levels of education institutions.”

Not only is the second statement inconsistent with the first (not to mention rather frightening), it isn’t true. The implications of the data are far from clear. In point of fact, economists have found that–not surprisingly–it matters how the money is spent (see here for a survey of the relevant literature). For example, reducing class sizes and adding remedial help appear to be particularly cost effective. Thus, contrary to the Texas GOP’s assertion, there are programs that both add to costs AND increase educational achievement.

. . . The economic policies recommended by the document are equally impractical and ill-considered. Bearing in mind that the fundamental problem faced in an advanced capitalist economy is insufficient demand to generate employment for all those willing to work (see Why Do Recessions Happen?), the following recommendations would operate to make this problem even worse:

• We urge state and federal legislators to reduce spending.
• We urge Congress to adopt balanced budgets by cutting spending and not increasing tax rates.
• We recommend repeal of the Sixteenth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, with the goal of abolishing the I.R.S and replacing it with a national sales tax collected by the States. In the interim we urge the income tax be changed to a flatter, broader, lower tax with only minimal exemptions such as home mortgage interest deductions.
• We favor abolishing the capital gains tax.
• State Tax Reform – We encourage: Abolishing property taxes…Shifting the tax burden to a consumption-based tax

The first two would directly reduce the demand for goods and services, thus causing contraction and unemployment, while the last three would create a much more regressive tax system that shifted the burden onto the sector of the economy that would otherwise generate the highest level of demand per dollar of income: the poor and middle class (the top 20% of Americans spend 62% of their income, as compared to 87% for the rest).

. . . Note, too, that the second point above (regarding balanced budgets) is based on a false premise, i.e., that the federal government is budget constrained (see The Big Danger in Cutting the Deficit). ...The Texas Republican Party Platform also argues that, in contradiction to my last blog post (The Real Job Creators: Consumers), lower business taxes and deregulation will solve our jobs problem. This is false. What we really need is increased demand, which comes via consumers.

. . . This is not to say that there are not portions of the Texas Republican Party Platform that are perfectly reasonable. There are. But, by and large, it reads as if it were written in another age and in ignorance of the social, economic, and scientific evidence of the past half century. Let there be no mistake about it: the Texas Republican Party Platform is terrifying. Were its recommendations implemented, the US would resemble a third-world country with a cheap, uneducated workforce and a massive gap between rich and poor. Unemployment would be rampant, growth stagnant, and answers few and far between thanks to the systematic repression of higher order and critical thinking.

Read the full story @ Forbes.

Read the Texas Democratic platform and its comparison to the Republican platform after the "more" jump:

Supreme Court Affirms 'Citizens United' Unlimited Billionaire Political Payola

The Washington Post

The Supreme Court has struck down a Montana ban on corporate political money, ruling 5 to 4 that the controversial 2010 Citizens United ruling applies to state and local elections.

The court broke in American Tradition Partnership v. Bullock along the same lines as in the original Citizens United case, when the court ruled that corporate money is speech and thus corporations can spend unlimited amounts on elections.

“The question presented in this case is whether the holding of Citizens United applies to the Montana state law,” the majority wrote. “There can be no serious doubt that it does.”

No arguments were heard; it was a summary reversal. “To the extent that there was any doubt from the original Citizens United decision broadly applies to state and local laws, that doubt is now gone,” said Marc Elias, a Democratic campaign lawyer. “To whatever extent that door was open a crack, that door is now closed.”

A 1912 Montana law barred direct corporate contributions to political parties and candidates — a response to the election interference of “copper kings.” Mark Twain wrote of one such mining giant in 1907, Sen. William Clark (D), “He is said to have bought legislatures and judges as other men buy food and raiment. By his example he has so excused and so sweetened corruption that in Montana it no longer has an offensive smell.” The state supreme court upheld that ban late last year in spite of Citizens United, saying Montana’s history of “rough contests for political and economic domination” gave the state a “unique and compelling interests” in limiting corporate influence on elections.

Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Stephen Breyer wanted the Montana case heard, arguing that Citizens United should get new scrutiny in the light of its effect on campaign finance. In his original decision, Justice Anthony Kennedy argued that independent campaign expenditures by corporations “do not give rise to corruption or the appearance of corruption.” Ginsberg argued that the Montana case was an opportunity to reconsider “in light of the huge sums currently deployed to buy candidates’ allegiance.” But today’s ruling shows that the five justices who supported the original ruling have not budged.

Read the full article @ The Washington Post.

Supreme Court Upholds Key Part Of Arizona Anti-Latino Immigratant Law

The Supreme Court today upheld the "papers please" part of Arizona's illegal immigrant law in a 5-3 decision that allows police officers to ask about immigration status during stops.

The "papers please" part of the law, which never went into effect because of court challenges, can be immediately enforced in Arizona. Other parts of the law, including a provision that made it a state crime for illegal immigrants to seek work, will remain blocked, as the justices affirmed the federal government's supremacy over immigration policy.

Justice Anthony Kennedy, the court's swing vote, wrote the opinion, and was joined by Chief Justice John Roberts, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen Breyer and Sonia Sotomayor. Conservative Justices Antonin Scalia, Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas partially dissented, saying the entire law or most of the law should have been upheld.

In the opinion, Justice Kennedy wrote that the federal government's "power to determine immigration policy is well settled." But he also sympathized with Arizona's burden in dealing with illegal immigrants.

"Arizona bears many of the consequences of unlawful im­migration," he wrote. "Hundreds of thousands of deportable aliens are apprehended in Arizona each year."

However, the justices found that Arizona cannot mete out their own state punishments for federal immigration crimes.

"Arizona may have under­standable frustrations with the problems caused by illegal immigration while that process continues, but the State may not pursue policies that undermine federal law," Kennedy writes in the opinion's conclusion.

Police immigration checks are allowed, however, only because state police would simply flag federal authorities, when the identify illegal immigrants.

Since the passage of Arizona's "papers, please" law, likely voters in Arizona have shifted their support to Democratic candidates in a "very substantive way," according to analysis by Public Policy Polling. That shift is largely due to energized (and probably angry) Latino voters, say Tom Jensen, PPP's director:

ACLU Press Release: