Rmoney: Education Only For People With Time and Money

Tweet

Wonkette Excerpt:
While in Virginia on Friday, Romney said that while America may be “the land of opportunity for every single person,” when it comes down to it there is not quiiiiiiite enough opportunity to go around, and education is great, but a person should really only get “as much education as they can afford and with their time they’re able to get,” which is a weird, as well as an evil, sentence.

In Rmoney's America, if you're poor and without an education, you'll be stuck in your station of life forever. At the same time, you're an "elitist snob" if you try to level the playing field so anyone, regardless of race, class or creed, who wants an education can have one.

More from Think Progress

Watch it:

Walker's Correction For Bid-Rigging Still Leaves a Loophole

Tweet

CBS Excerpt:
Walker told members of the Wisconsin Economic Development Corporation board that from now on WEDC will ask companies if they are submitting or intend to submit a bid for state work before offering them incentives.

"I think that's a good step to have that internal control," Walker said.

Baloney!

They don't say it, but they leave the door open to give tax credits and other favors to businesses AFTER their bid wins the state contract. As if winning a government contract isn't enough incentive to create some jobs.

Bid-Rigging For State Contracts Coming Soon To Wisconsin

Tweet

Walker appointee Paul Jadin told The Associated Press his legal team advised him that the offer to Skyward Inc. was allowed because the year-old WEDC isn't bound by procurement laws that forbid bid-rigging. Others in state government think bid-rigging for contracts is either unethical or downright illegal.

Fox 11 Excerpt:
Jadin said he will be talking with Walker about pursuing legislation next year that would allow WEDC to make such contingency offers. He said his agency is still getting a "better handle on what areas we are clearly a state entity and what areas we are clearly private. That's evolving a bit yet."

The public half of the sham operation WEDC is subject to open records and other state administrative laws while the private half wants to legalize bid-rigging for state government contracts. They need to figure out how to keep things separate and hidden because apparently, that's how the private sector works.

Fox 11 Excerpt:
When Gov. Scott Walker found out about the offer the day after he won his recall election on June 5, he said it raised a red flag and he alerted his legal staff. Walker's office then contacted the state Department of Administration, which was in charge of...

When Scott Walker found out about it ...hee, hee, hee ...yeah right. Just like when Walker "found out about" the secret email system to conduct campaign fundraising by some of his closest associates in his MKE county office. Walker makes sure he surrounds himself with willing pawns and wrongdoers, but he's always the innocent victim.

Excuses, Fearmongering and Sour Grapes Are Only Certainty In GOP's Response To Health Care Reform

Tweet

As a supporter of Medicare For All or a genuine public option at the minimum, I'm still only lukewarm to Obama's health care reform act despite the law being affirmed by the highest court in the land. I also suspect more fall-out from the court’s mixed decision, most notably in its weakening of the law’s Medicaid provisions in the name of states’ rights.

But if I were the republican governor of a state, I'd certainly proceed with the framework of state-run health care exchanges, knowing that the exchanges are a requirement in practically every proposal for health care reform written over the past 30 years.

Gov. Scott Walker however says Wisconsin will not proceed with implementing the Affordable Care Act because the SCOTUS decision he claims, creates uncertainty.

Channel 3000 Excerpt:
In the meantime, Walker says the state will not proceed with setting up a health care exchange as is required.[...]

He said the decision creates uncertainty for Wisconsin businesses and that's bad for job growth. Walker has also said businesses will be bullish about adding jobs since he won a June 5 recall election.

Bad for job growth but businesses remain bullish about adding jobs? Which is it?

But tell that to four (Minnesota, Michigan, Illinois and even Tea Party Mitch Daniels Indiana) of the six midwestern states that have all outjobbed Wisconsin in 2011 while instituting that "uncertainty" by building the framework for the state health care exchanges in the new health care law. Add to that the fact that two (California and New York) of the top three states in the country that have had significant increases in employment from May, 2011 to May, 2012 have implemented the ACA almost in it's entirety. While three states with dismal job growth, North Carolina, Alaska and New Mexico have literally banned the ACA. Beginning this week, New Mexico has finally initiated a task force to develop a proposal for creating a state health insurance exchange. So how can the decision be bad for job growth?

Even more ridiculous is to say the decision is bad for Wisconsin. But we'll have to go in circles here for just a moment to tackle that one.

Walker's belligerent failure to implement the law has the same impact on the state as if SCOTUS struck it down. So the decision can't be bad for job growth or create "uncertainty" for Wisconsin businesses if he refuses to implement it. Without implementing the Affordable Care Act, it's business as usual for the GOP and the state of Wisconsin. With the recalls behind us, the state should be gushing in certainty ...and jobs according to Scott Walker.

Conversely, he could have claimed Obama's health care reform was bad for job growth given the poor state employment results of the past year, but only if he had implemented it. He missed that opportunity by fighting it every step of the way. But this is where the rubber meets the road. The GOP's (and Walker's) biggest fear is not that Obama's health care reform fails - but if it would succeed. The idea of course is to never give it a chance.

So using Walker's fearmongering and certainty logic, only states that implemented the federal health care law have "uncertainty," yet those same states have experienced some of the most significant job growth over the past year AND if Walker was right, that should have translated into businesses and workers fleeing those states for Wisconsin.

But we know that's not happening and Walker is playing politics as usual and fabricating more uncertainty by hedging on not implementing the health care plan, with the intention to blame the health care law for all that fails in the state by not implementing it. That's full circle insanity.

Mitt Romney also found himself in a similar foot-in-mouth position earlier this week by saying if the nation’s highest court overturned what he derides as Obamacare, “then the first 3 1/2 years of this president’s term will have been wasted on something that has not helped the American people.”

Boston.Com Excerpt:
Yet the court, with the vote of conservative Chief Justice John Roberts, today upheld the law’s constitutionality.

Accepting Romney’s logic, that would mean that the bulk of Obama’s first term in office was spent on something that helped the American people.

Roberts is not someone Romney can dismiss, either. On his campaign website, he pledges to nominate Supreme Court justices “in the mold of Chief Justice Roberts,” as well as other court conservatives.

Epic backfire.

ADDITIONAL:

Political Environment - Who Does J.B. Van Hollen think he Is? The Party Boss?

Think Progress - Sen. Ron Johnson thinks freedom means having the freedom to deny health care to cancer patients.

Democurmudgeon - Tea Party Losers Whine, have Temper Tantrum, call for Armed Revolution.

Crooks and Liars - Republicans Biggest Fear: That Health Care Reform Would Succeed

The Confederacy Shall Rise Again!

Tweet

Saw this first noted at the Motley Cow. Think Progress detailed the five most regressive policies of the Texan 2012 Republican Platform. Here's just two of them...

Think Progress Excerpt:
The party opposes almost all forms of taxation: The Texas GOP supports “repeal of the Sixteenth Amendment,” which instituted a national income tax, and instead favors a wildly regressive national sales tax that would hit low- and middle-income Americans hardest. It also favors making the Bush tax cuts permanent and repealing the capital gains tax and the estate tax, the latter of which it claims is “immoral and should be abolished forever.” On the state level, it supports abolishing property and business taxes, and property taxes on inventory, and opposes efforts to institute a state income tax, an Internet sales tax, professional licensing fees, and taxes on real estate transactions. Instead, it supports “shifting the tax burden to a consumption-based tax.”

Not to mention what an income blind consumption based tax will do for demand - like kill it. But they want to kill demand because you'll be willing to work for literally pennies an hour just to survive when they also kill the minimum wage. Just sweethearts all around.

They're starting right where they left off in 1859. They want their confederacy back and you know something? We can laugh about it for the moment but they're winning the messaging battle right now. Put it this way. When we say "We The People," we mean a government of the people, by the people and for the people. When they say "We The People" they mean "no government." Corporations are people.

Think Progress Excerpt:
It opposes multicultural education and “critical thinking”: “We believe the current teaching of a multicultural curriculum is divisive,” the platform says, adding that it supports teaching “common American identity and loyalty instead of political correctness that nurtures alienation among racial and ethnic groups.” In Arizona, where Republicans banned multicultural programs, students in those programs actually out-performed their peers. Texas Republicans also believe “controversial theories” such evolution and climate change — which aren’t controversial at all — “should be taught as challengeable scientific theories subject to change as new data is produced.” There’s more: the GOP also opposes the teaching of “critical thinking skills” because they “focus on behavior modification and have the purpose of challenging the student’s fixed beliefs and undermining parental authority.”

These neanderthals want to keep people segregated and divided - they think it's more peaceful that way. They want to challenge science - but not beliefs or authority? Well, not THEIR beliefs or authority anyways - only yours. Who needs Anders Behring Breivik when we have Scott Walker, Paul Ryan and Ron Johnson?

WMC: Full Time Excuses, But No Jobs

Tweet

For more than a decade the Wisconsin Manufacturing and Commerce (WMC) cartel said Wisconsin was a tax hell. Fix that they said and businesses will flourish and jobs will be plentiful in the state of Wisconsin. Then they came out and said they need more “certainty,” tax certainty, policy certainty, regulation certainty, venture capital certainty, currency certainty, pro-growth certainty, incentive certainty blah, blah, blah. Fix that and everything will be all peachy and rosy again. Then they said once the clouds of the recalls are lifted, the “job creators” will be set to go on a jobs explosion like not seen in a generation …blah, blah, blah and another blah.

Just two weeks after the recall was over and the job creators favored and endorsed Scott Walker won the right to finish his term as governor, the WMC wasted no time to tamp down that one-month old campaign speculation of a jobs explosion. Sorry they basically said, it's not gonna happen anytime soon because there's a "workforce skills gap" in the state. That was just a minor inconvenience they forgot to tell us about in their jobs explosion campaign for re-election. Oh well, they never said anything about actually hiring anyone.

According to this article posted in the Janesville Gazette, they claimed it’ll be at least another year before the state will see any significant job growth. Now this week yet another article titled, Knowledge can help solve state’s workforce paradox continues with the skills gap excuse for no jobs. Notice the WMC and Walker enabler Gazette did not use the word “education” – now it’s "knowledge." Well, maybe because Scott Walker just cut $800 million a year from knowledge Doh! …ah, I mean education. You get the picture. It’s one excuse after another excuse after another and another. If excuses were jobs at the WMC, we’d be at full 100% employment.

I attempted to link directly to WMC Web Pages for all of their tax hell and certainty talking points, but after receiving a couple “Error 404” messages using archived url’s from previous stories, I figure why bother with WMC-sourced information when they'd deny everything anyways.

It's always about more for them and less for everybody else.

ADDITIONAL:

JS Online - Why is Walker begging for jobs in Chicago when Wisconsin is in the midst of the greatest job explosion not seen in a generation? Besides, don't they know we have a workforce skills gap in the state?

Crony Collectivism, Bid-Rigging. Walker just Another Crooked Politician.

Tweet

JS Online Excerpt:
Madison - Wisconsin's quasi-private economic development agency offered tax breaks to a Stevens Point company contingent upon it winning a state contract in late March, nearly three months before the offer was rescinded after Gov. Scott Walker's administration said it was inappropriate.

"Quasi-private economic development agency?" Ya' gotta love it. For lack of a better description, Walker pulled out just in time.

In the state budget passed last year, the state put aside $15 million to create a statewide information system. Skyward lobbied against it, arguing that multiple operators should be allowed instead of just one. The company threatened to leave the state if it didn't win the contract.

That is incredible. Just to skim the surface here, Skyward obviously held a tremendous advantage over competitors by bidding on a state government contract that came loaded with tax credit incentives no one else was offered and to top it off, Skyward threatened to leave the state if they didn't win the contract??

What's not to like?

Talk Radio Fascists Want To Pistol Whip Nuns

Tweet

What was Paul Ryan trying to accomplish when he declared that his government budget novel was based on his understanding of Catholicism? My best guess is he thought that framing it under the umbrella of his religion would shut down all the talk that his budget philosophy is far more closely aligned with Ayn Rand's vision for a future society. He also likely thought Catholics would come to his defense and shield him from further criticism. But people aren't stupid and it looks like it's beginning to back-fire.

Maybe if Ryan would have admitted that his budget proposal is not based in reality or Catholicism but on his own remedy to replace American society with the fairy tale dystopia in Ayn Rand's novel "Atlas Shrugged," the nuns would not be trying to correct his misguided understanding of Catholicism. Ahh well, that direction would have helped fortify support among his real cult followers, but he probably figured they are already there for him anyways, and the truth is - they are.

As can be expected, Ryan's sleeper cells are coming out of the woodwork after the nuns just like they chased down Newt Gingrich after Gingrich dissed Ryan's budget as just more right-wing social engineering. Remember that one? How dare anyone in the public view muster the courage to stand up to their hero and offer an alternative budget on top? No way are they going to allow that to stick. So now it only figures that rightwing talk radio nutbags would paint those courageous nuns as radical communists and even suggest they should be pistol whipped!! That's right.

On Friday, Iowa conservative radio show “Mickelson in the Morning,” host Jan Mickelson had on Rep. Tom Latham (R-IA) to talk about the Nuns on the Bus tour and the Ryan budget. Objecting to the tour, Mickelson asked Latham whether he had any power to pull over the bus and “pistol whip” the nuns...

Faith In Public Life Excerpt:
MICKELSON: There’s a bus full of nuns headed towards Washington to lobby against the Ryan plan. Do you guys, do you have any power to pull the Nuns on the Bus over and pistol whip them?

LATHAM: It’s always fun to be on your show [Laughs]

Yeah sure ...it's all in fun. But what kind of a scumbag would think about pulling over a bus full of nuns and start pistol whipping them simply for voicing their opinions and beliefs ...and then laugh off the suggestion? Nazi slimeballs - that's who. Oh wait! I can't call them Nazis because they'll send their right-wing media dogs after me and paint me as divisive and childishly ignorant and come down on me with Godwin's law. Sigh.

The Democurmudgeon Blog also noted that Wisconsin trash talker Vicki McKenna badmouthed the nuns calling them a "bunch of radical communist nuns..."

I'd bet they think they're playing nice and just having some fun.