Tag Archives: GOP

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Just Dumb

03/02/2013 Nativegrl77

Sequester: “A Fancy Word for a Dumb Idea”

That’s what the President of the AFL-CIO, Richard Trumka, called the sequester — and he’s absolutely right.

Republicans have once again shown that they’ll do almost anything to protect the wealthy and special interests like Big Oil — no matter the cost to the rest of us and to the economy. This time, they have allowed devastating across-the-board spending cuts to kick in.

Just yesterday, the Senate voted on a balanced plan to replace this year’s indiscriminate cuts with a mix of targeted cuts and new revenues from ending loopholes for the very wealthiest Americans and corporate special interests. This plan got 52 votes and should have passed but Republicans blocked it by insisting on a 60-vote margin.

It’s clear that Republicans would rather impose painful spending cuts that will hurt the economy and millions of Americans than end a single tax loophole for the wealthy and special interests like Big Oil and Wall Street.

As a reminder, here’s a list of things Republicans apparently prefer to happen instead of eliminating wasteful giveaways in the tax code:

70,000 kids will get kicked off of Head Start
10,000 teacher jobs will be at risk
7,200 special education teachers, aides, and staff could be cut
Nearly 140,000 fewer children will receive life-saving vaccinations
Up to 373,000 seriously mentally ill adults and seriously emotionally disturbed children could go untreated
2,100 fewer food inspections will take place
Tax returns and refunds will be delayed
The long-term unemployed will see their benefits cut by about 10 percent
Nearly a billion dollars in loans to small businesses cut
It could take several hours to get through security at the airport
More than 100 airports might have to simply close down
Our military leaders have said it would weaken our national security
The Secretary of Homeland Security said the cuts will make it harder to protect the country from a terror attack and that the border will be less secure

Not all these things will happen overnight, but they will happen. And the longer the sequester goes on, the worse things will get. Worse yet, unless a permanent replacement is agreed to, these painful and damaging cuts will continue for nine years.

BOTTOM LINE: Instead of standing by and watching as our economy and millions of Americans are hurt by these irresponsible and devastating cuts, Republicans need to agree to reduce our deficit with the kind of responsible, balanced approach that three-quarters of Americans prefer. Their reckless behavior got us into this mess in 2011 and now it’s time for them to come back to the table and help get us out of it before the worst impacts of these indiscriminate cuts happen.

Evening Brief: Important Stories That You Might’ve Missed

Draft State Department report says the Keystone XL pipeline is environmentally sound.

How sequester cuts to the IRS might raise the deficit.

President Obama: marriage equality should be the law of the land.

Happy 100th Birthday, Big Oil tax breaks!

VIDEO: The GOP constantly pretends we haven’t already cut trillions in spending.

Sean Hannity launches Islamophobic attack on Rep. Keith Ellison (D-MN).

Austerity fail: European unemployment hits record high, again.

Another day, another extreme anti-abortion bill enacted by the GOP.

Don’t worry, the next manufactured crisis is just over three weeks away!

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thinkprogress … VAWA

03/01/2013 Nativegrl77

Evening Brief: Important Stories That You Might’ve Missed

Justice Scalia is worse than you already thought.

Washington doesn’t have to be broken.

Yes, the vast majority of our long-term debt is because of Bush-era policies.

GOP congressman says the debt is just as “immoral” as slavery.

Obama administration calls for marriage equality in upcoming Proposition 8 Supreme Court case.

Shocking but true: top GOP senator wants to give the NRA veto power over judges.

Another day, another extreme anti-abortion law enacted by the GOP.

FACT: low tax states have lower economic growth.

**Violence Against Women Act Finally Passes**

A year and a half after the landmark law expired, House Republicans finally relented and allowed the updated and expanded reauthorization of the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA) to pass. The bill had already passed the Senate with overwhelming, bipartisan majorities not once, but twice.

We say House Republicans allowed it to pass because they’ve done nearly everything in their power to block it from doing so, including:

refusing to even take up the Senate bill last year
passing a watered-down, partisan version that had no chance of passing the Senate
attempting to block a vote on the Senate bill as recently as this week
trying to remove protections for LGBT people and Native Americans from the Senate bill earlier today
voting against the Senate bill en masse today

Last time VAWA was reauthorized, in 2005, just two House Republicans voted against the measure. Sadly, 138 House Republicans voted against VAWA today. Even more shamefully, 27 House Republicans voted against both the Senate bill and the watered-down version Republicans themselves had proposed.

Take a look at these 27 Republicans. Notice a pattern?

BOTTOM LINE: Reauthorizing the Violence Against Women Act is a huge victory for women and their families — a victory that came in spite of the GOP’s best efforts to prevent it.

Climate change and the Arab Spring.

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Grand Theft Election II: Keystone State Stories

02/26/2013 Nativegrl77

By ThinkProgress War Room

GOP Plan to the Steal the White House is Back

Earlier this year, Republicans in several swing states unveiled sore loser plans to allocate their electoral college votes by congressional district or in some other proportional manner rather than the current winner-take-all system in place in 48 states. This would result in votes that would likely go to the Democratic nominee being pushed over into the GOP column. Tellingly, the GOP is not proposing to split the electoral votes of red states.

Had such a plan been in place in every swing state last year, Mitt Romney would most likely be president right now despite having lost the popular vote by nearly 5 MILLION votes.

Fortunately, massive outcry quickly killed this plan in Virginia, Florida, and other states where it reared its head.

Unfortunately, this GOP plan to steal the White House is now back in two key swing states:

Pennsylvania: 13 GOP state senators, including the senate majority leader, have formally introduced their electoral college rigging bill. Republicans need a total of 26 votes to pass the bill. They currently control the chamber and hold 27 seats total. As they also control the state house in Pennsylvania, the GOP could theoretically ram the bill through in as little as 4 days as soon as they have the votes to pass it.Pennsylvania has been at the forefront of recent efforts to rig the electoral college, with Republicans from Gov. Tom Corbett on down first considering this scheme way back in 2011.
Michigan: On Saturday, Republicans gathered for their state convention voted overwhelmingly (1370-132) to back a scheme to divide their state’s electoral votes by congressional district. For his part, Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder (R) has opposed the scheme, saying it’s not the “appropriate time” to consider it. This, however, is cold comfort, as Snyder once said the exact same thing about an anti-union bill that he later signed after it was rammed through the legislature with little debate.

BOTTOM LINE: If the GOP wants to win elections the old fashioned way — by winning more votes — then they should change their unpopular policies instead of trying to change the rules in the middle of the game.

Evening Brief: Important Stories That You Might’ve Missed

The sequester cuts will be painful for the home states of the Congressional GOP leadership.

The virtues of a financial transactions tax.

Shock election result leaves Italy in gridlock.

The GOP’s war on Planned Parenthood marches on.

The sequester will harm border security and our ability to stop a terrorist attack.

The Supreme Court made a good decision on campaign finance.

GOP senator with an “A” rating from the NRA is open to background checks.

POLL: voters prefer military spending cuts to reduce the deficit.

Why Seth MacFarlane and The Onion’s jokes about Quvenzhané Wallis are so gross.

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Are you on the Sequester cut list ?

02/23/2013 Nativegrl77

ThinkProgress War Room

Budgets are statements of values and priorities. What the GOP is preparing to do in less than a week says a lot about their priorities. Instead of closing tax loopholes and making smart spending cuts, the GOP is going to let damaging across the board spending cuts kick in next Friday. These cuts will not only damage the economy, they’ll hurt individual families and communities across the country.

Check out what eliminating just two giveaways to the wealthy and corporation could pay for. For example, we could avoid painful cuts to investments in jobs and education just by ending a giveaway to corporate jet owners”

And we could stop harmful cuts to children and families with disabilities if we just stopped letting the wealthiest Americans get tax breaks for the vacation homes and yachts:

Instead of asking the wealthiest Americans and special interests like Big Oil and Wall Street to pay their fair share, Republicans are insisting that families, including the most vulnerable among us, shoulder the burden of reducing our deficit and debt.

BOTTOM LINE: There’s still a week left to avert the damaging and painful sequester cuts. All Republicans have to do is agree to a balanced approach that replaces the indiscriminate cuts with both new revenues and smarter, targeted spending cuts.

Evening Brief: Important Stories That You Might’ve Missed

Flying will be even more unpleasant thanks to the sequester (if you’re local airport isn’t simply closed).

House Republicans quietly introduce watered-down Violence Against Women Act.

Ted Cruz goes full Joe McCarthy.

5 important stories in Africa that don’t involve Oscar Pistorious.

Maryland is on the verge of repealing the death penalty.

Here’s 5 ways the sequester might make you sick.

New abortion bill in Indiana mandates two transvaginal probes.

Why taxes must go up.

How Republican activists are trying to use the courts to dismantle decades of progressive victories.

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From the Middle Class Out

02/22/2013 Nativegrl77

ThinkProgress War Room

Creating an Economy That Works for Everyone

For the last thirty years, we’ve been experiencing one long, failed experiment in so-called trickle-down economics. In practice, this means that the rich have gotten richer (exponentially so) while the middle class has fallen further and further behind. Trillions of dollars in tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans and corporations, the one goal that binds the GOP together, utterly failed to trickle down, stifled economic growth, and contributed to the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression.

We need a different model — an economy that grows from the middle class out. What does this mean? How does that work? One of our colleagues, Senior Economist Heather Boushey, lays it all out in a new video:

BOTTOM LINE: The wealthy and corporations simply aren’t paying their fair share so in order to reduce our deficit in a smart way and still make investments in the middle class, we need to get rid of hundreds of billions of dollars in wasteful loopholes and giveaways in our tax code.