Sunday, March 14, 2010
Health Care: Further actions this week that supposedly will lead to passage within a week to ten days. Yet, while the Democrats are projecting confidence, they admit that they don’t yet have the votes.
Democratic leaders scrambled Sunday to pull together enough support in the House for a make-or-break decision on health-care reform later this week, expressing optimism that a package will soon be signed into law by President Obama despite a lack of firm votes for passage.
The rosy predictions of success, combined with the difficult realities of mustering votes, underscore the gamble that the White House and congressional Democrats are poised to make in an attempt to push Obama's health-care plans across the finish line. The urgency of the effort illustrates growing agreement among Democratic leaders that passing the legislation is key to limiting damage to the party during this year's perilous midterm elections.
But House Minority Leader John A. Boehner (R-Ohio) pledged to do "everything we can to make it difficult for them, if not impossible, to pass the bill." He also joined other Republicans Sunday in warning that Democrats would pay for the legislation by losing even more seats than expected in November.
The most optimistic talk on Sunday came from the White House. Obama senior adviser David Axelrod predicted that Democrats "will have the votes to pass this," and press secretary Robert Gibbs declared that "this is the climactic week for health-care reform."
But Rep. James E. Clyburn (S.C.), the Democrats' chief head-counter in the House, cautioned that the party has not yet found the 216 votes needed to win approval of the health-care bill passed by the Senate in December.
"We don't have them as of this morning, but we've been working this thing all weekend," Clyburn said on NBC's "Meet the Press." "I'm also very confident that we'll get this done." http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/03/14/AR2010031402793_pf.html
Those Unsuccessful Massachusetts Tax Cuts: Few jobs created and many simply took the money and ‘ran.’ Kudos to the Boston Globe for a [rare] sterling news section.
Over the past 16 years, Massachusetts has given away hundreds of millions of dollars in state and local tax breaks for more than 1,300 development projects under its Economic Development Incentive Program, which aims to encourage companies to invest here and create jobs. Often the incentives work and new jobs result. But far too often taxpayers have not come close to getting their money’s worth, a Globe review has found.
Hundreds of the projects delivered fewer jobs than promised, and some companies actually slashed employment. Many firms won subsidies for projects they were set to build without state assistance; in some cases, incentives that were approved long after the projects were underway or complete. And many got generous packages though they agreed to create only a handful of low-paying jobs.
A review of state records found that more than 40 percent of the companies that received tax breaks pledged to create 10 full-time jobs or fewer, including nearly four dozen that promised only to add one full-time job. Often, the companies planned to pay new workers little more than minimum wage.
Among the tiny projects singled out for subsidies were a pizzeria in Ware, a liquor store in Plymouth, an auto body shop in Fall River, a video store in Somerville, a laundromat in Brockton, a self-storage facility in Somerset, and a hair salon in New Bedford.
“It’s one thing to use this program to attract a state-of-the-art pharmaceutical facility,’’ said Michael Widmer, president of the nonprofit Massachusetts Taxpayers Foundation. “It’s quite another to reward pizza parlors and hair salons.’’
Other projects that sounded great on paper, such as the Nortel expansion plan, have fallen far short of what was promised. A Fall River rubber parts maker pledged to create 20 jobs, but cut 36 instead. A manufacturer in Orange promised to add five full-time jobs, but cut a half-dozen or more instead. But even when jobs are cut, the state often takes years to end a tax break, if it takes any action at all. And officials could not name a case in which they asked a company to repay subsidies already pocketed.
“Oversight is practically nonexistent,’’ said Neil Cohen, Massachusetts’ deputy inspector general, whose office has been critical of the program in the past. “The state must ensure that it is getting something for what amounts to an investment.” http://www.boston.com/business/articles/2010/03/14/jobs_program_lost_its_way__and_tax_money/
Saving the Public Sector: Boston Libraries One of the victims of the conservative bankrupting of the country is the de-funding of all matters public. The libraries, though, do have their champions.
The Friends of the Boston Public Library staged a read-in yesterday at a branch in Roxbury and announced a plan to try to avert library closings by asking voters next year to approve a tax increase to fund the city’s libraries.
The organization’s president, David J. Vieira, told a crowd of about 50 supporters at the Egleston Square library that if city and state officials cannot fully fund Boston’s 26 neighborhood library branches by the end of April, he will launch a Proposition 2 1/2 override initiative with hopes of putting it on next year’s municipal ballot.
If passed by Boston voters, such an initiative would allow the city to override the state-imposed cap on property tax increases, which is currently set at 2.5 percent.
“I think we’ve been mainlining on outside resources for too long,’’ said Vieira, who represents Friends groups citywide. “We’ve got to fund our own resources here. We have to look to the citizens, we have to look to our neighbors, we have to look to ourselves.’’
The Friends are nonprofit groups formed to help city libraries by providing private-sector resources and volunteers.
Amy E. Ryan, president of the Boston Public Library, announced last month that the city may have to close as many as 10 branches because of a $3.6 million budget shortfall for the fiscal year beginning July 1. Ryan said she wanted to focus resources on the remaining branches to make them better, with more books, computers, and services. http://www.boston.com/news/local/massachusetts/articles/2010/03/14/supporters_not_ready_to_close_book_on_libraries/
IRS: Refocusing on the Wealthy After years of being directed to diligently scrutinize the returns of those filing the Earned Income Tax Credit, the IRS is directed to chase the big money. A not insignificant symbol of shifting values.
The Internal Revenue Service is intensifying its scrutiny of wealthy Americans.
The federal agency increased its audits of taxpayers who earned $1 million to $5 million by 33 percent last year compared with 2008, new I.R.S. figures show.
The numbers, released late Thursday in the agency’s 2009 annual data book, also show that the I.R.S. increased its audits by 16 percent for those earning $5 million to $10 million last year. Audits of those who made at least $10 million rose by 8.5 percent, according to the data.
The figures are the strongest evidence yet that the agency is honoring a vow by the I.R.S. commissioner, Douglas H. Shulman, to increase scrutiny of wealthy taxpayers.
Taxpayers who earned at least $1 million a year made up 0.25 percent of the more than 144 million individual federal returns filed last year, the data showed, but affluent Americans account for a far greater share of the underpayments in federal income tax returns. http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/13/business/13tax.html?sq=Lynnley%20Browning&st=cse&scp=2&pagewanted=print
Texas Textbooks: “Progress” being made towards revamping in a conservative direction
After three days of turbulent meetings, the Texas Board of Education on Friday approved a social studies curriculum that will put a conservative stamp on history and economics textbooks, stressing the superiority of American capitalism, questioning the Founding Fathers’ commitment to a purely secular government and presenting Republican political philosophies in a more positive light.
The vote was 10 to 5 along party lines, with all the Republicans on the board voting for it.
The board, whose members are elected, has influence beyond Texas because the state is one of the largest buyers of textbooks. In the digital age, however, that influence has diminished as technological advances have made it possible for publishers to tailor books to individual states.
In recent years, board members have been locked in an ideological battle between a bloc of conservatives who question Darwin’s theory of evolution and believe the Founding Fathers were guided by Christian principles, and a handful of Democrats and moderate Republicans who have fought to preserve the teaching of Darwinism and the separation of church and state.
…The conservative members maintain that they are trying to correct what they see as a liberal bias among the teachers who proposed the curriculum. To that end, they made dozens of minor changes aimed at calling into question, among other things, concepts like the separation of church and state and the secular nature of the American Revolution.
“I reject the notion by the left of a constitutional separation of church and state,” said David Bradley, a conservative from Beaumont who works in real estate. “I have $1,000 for the charity of your choice if you can find it in the Constitution.”
They also included a plank to ensure that students learn about “the conservative resurgence of the 1980s and 1990s, including Phyllis Schlafly, the Contract With America, the Heritage Foundation, the Moral Majority and the National Rifle Association.”
Dr. McLeroy, a dentist by training, pushed through a change to the teaching of the civil rights movement to ensure that students study the violent philosophy of the Black Panthers in addition to the nonviolent approach of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. He also made sure that textbooks would mention the votes in Congress on civil rights legislation, which Republicans supported. http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/13/education/13texas.html?sq=James%20%20C%20McKinley&st=cse&scp=1&pagewanted=print
Mrs Clarence (Virginia) Thomas Starts a Tea Party… and welcomes corporate funding, courtesy of the Citizens United case.
As Virginia Thomas tells it in her soft-spoken, Midwestern cadence, the story of her involvement in the "tea party" movement is the tale of an average citizen in action.
"I am an ordinary citizen from Omaha, Neb., who just may have the chance to preserve liberty along with you and other people like you," she said at a recent panel discussion with tea party leaders in Washington. Thomas went on to count herself among those energized into action by President Obama's "hard-left agenda."
But Thomas is no ordinary activist.
She is the wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, and she has launched a tea-party-linked group that could test the traditional notions of political impartiality for the court.
In January, Virginia Thomas created Liberty Central Inc., a nonprofit lobbying group whose website will organize activism around a set of conservative "core principles," she said.
The group plans to issue score cards for Congress members and be involved in the November election, although Thomas would not specify how. She said it would accept donations from various sources -- including corporations -- as allowed under campaign finance rules recently loosened by the Supreme Court. http://www.latimes.com/news/nation-and-world/la-na-thomas14-2010mar14,0,3190750,full.story
Health Bill: Scott Brown Masters the GOP Talking Points: The new senator claims that the Democratic plan will "completely transform America's health care system," creating "federally controlled health care” through a “bitter" and "destructive" process. Furthermore, the legislation "raises taxes by a half trillion dollars and costs a trillion dollars or more to implement" and will thus "leave America trillions of dollars deeper in debt." As per all such scripts, that’s all false- b.s. straight from the Frank Luntz playbook.
Iraq Elections: From here? Much disagreement as to whether these elections will lead to a political stand-off with many months needed to form a government, or whether it was further proof that stability is in evidence and the U.S. troop withdrawal can continue on schedule. On balance, caution, if not nervousness.
With results still trickling in slowly from Iraq’s parliamentary elections last week and no clear winners likely to emerge anytime soon, public frustration here seems to be growing. American officials have privately expressed concern that even a fair election might be made to appear unfair.
Political officials continue to make public accusations of election fraud, including the alleged stuffing of ballot boxes and forgery.
In the absence of final results, months of careful preparation could be threatened. Both the United States and the United Nations spent millions of dollars to ensure that the election was viewed as transparent and credible. “One way to reassure someone who fears the results are being rigged is to get results out there,” said a Western observer working on election issues.
The many checks put in place by Iraq’s Independent High Electoral Commission are laudable, said the official, who added, “but if taken too far it will backfire and erode public confidence by further delays.” http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/15/world/middleeast/15iraq.html?ref=global-home&pagewanted=print
Control of Iraq's parliament hangs in the balance as the latest election results show the coalitions of Nouri al-Maliki, the prime minister, and his chief rival, Iyad Allawi, leading in important but geographically distinct regions.
If the preliminary results from last week's elections hold when final tallies come in later this month, the vote could split largely between al-Maliki's State of Law and Allawi's Iraqiya coalitions.
The Independent High Electoral Commission (IHEC) announced on Sunday that State of Law was leading in predominantly Shia Muslim Basra, while Iraqiya was dominating in the heavily Sunni Muslim province of Anbar in the west and in Kirkuk in the north. http://english.aljazeera.net/news/middleeast/2010/03/20103141826791678.html
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