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Thursday, August 19, 2004
The GOP's Quest to Kill Progressive Taxation
Majority Parties - August 29th
On Sunday, August 29, hundreds of house parties will take place around the country, all with one goal in mind: restoring a Democratic majority in the U.S. House of Representatives. Have a great time attending or hosting a Party for the New Majority and YOU will help put an end to a decade of Republican abuse! In addition, Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi will hold a conference call for all of the parties that night!
Check out the parties in your area, or sign up to host one at:
http://www.majorityparties.com
John Kerry needs a Democratic House to reverse the damage done by the radical right that has dominated Congress for 10 LONG years. Otherwise, Tom DeLay and his gang will block President Kerry at every turn. We CAN'T let that happen.
By raising money for Democratic House candidates around the country, we CAN achieve victory. Help make the difference. Sign up today!
Got Milk? Not for long!
The GOP's Quest to Kill Progressive Taxation
So the country is still more than a million jobs short of when Bush took office, about 6 million short of a comparable employment picture (since 140,000 have been entering the labor pool each month), 4 million more are uninsured, wages are down, tuition is up, it just became official that the Bush tax cuts shift the burden to the middle class - and what is the GOP's loftiest ambition?
To kill progressive taxation, long considered a cornerstone of fair and equitable government by generations of Democrats and (the majority of) Republicans alike:
"A once-quiet campaign by several top Republicans to abolish the IRS and replace the federal income tax with a European-style national sales tax has burst into the open, leading President Bush to withhold his blessing of the controversial proposal.
"Yet the plan has strong backing within the GOP hierarchy, including House Speaker Dennis Hastert of Illinois, who has become its most visible advocate and said he has plans to push the idea strongly in the next Congress.
"The speaker said that if Bush is re-elected and the GOP keeps control of the House and Senate, there is a 'potential' Congress could adopt the plan during the next four years."
The DCCC's Press department provided the following analysis:
"According to Bruce Bartlett, a conservative economist who served in the Reagan and first Bush Administrations, 'trying to eliminate the IRS by adopting a national retail sales tax is a very dumb idea.' Bartlett notes that the plan co-sponsored by DeLay 'deceptively calculates the rate as if the tax is part of the purchase price.'
"'Calculating the rate the normal way people are accustomed to with state and local sales taxes would require a 30 percent tax rate, not 23 percent. When Congress's Joint Committee on Taxation scored the Linder proposal 4 years ago, it estimated that it would actually require a tax-inclusive rate of 36 percent, not 23 percent, to equal current federal revenues. Calculating the rate in a normal, tax-exclusive manner would mean a 57 percent rate.'
"The price of milk in Lake Villa, Illinois is $3.89. So according to Bruce Bartlett, a Republican economist, the tax increase co-sponsored by DeLay would raise the price of that gallon of milk to $6.10 - $2.21 in federal taxes!"
This agenda was best described by Allan Sloan, Newsweek's Wall Street editor, who identified their central aim to...
"...create a new class of landed aristocrats who could inherit billions tax-free, invest the money, watch it compound tax-free and hand it down tax-free to their heirs."
Nice platform.
EPA For Sale
With a Majority Leader who has described the EPA as "the Gestapo of government," one should probably keep one's hopes for sane environmental protection low. But a new series of articles from the Washington Post is documenting a disturbing trend of donations to the GOP trumping any and all concerns for the public good. The first article discusses the reliance on "voluntary" measures for fighting even the most potent diseases:
"Tuberculosis had sneaked up again, reappearing with alarming frequency across the United States. The government began writing rules to protect 5 million people whose jobs put them in special danger. Hospitals and homeless shelters, prisons and drug treatment centers -- all would be required to test their employees for TB, hand out breathing masks and quarantine those with the disease. These steps, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration predicted, could prevent 25,000 infections a year and 135 deaths.
"By the time President Bush moved into the White House, the tuberculosis rules, first envisioned in 1993, were nearly complete. But the new administration did nothing on the issue for the next three years.
"Then, on the last day of 2003, in an action so obscure it was not mentioned in any major newspaper in the country, the administration canceled the rules. Voluntary measures, federal officials said, were effective enough to make regulation unnecessary."
The second article discusses the "Data Quality Act," a nice Orwellian legislative nugget allowing industries to file challenges to legislation that the GOP might call "frivolous," and which "has become a potent tool for companies seeking to beat back regulation."
"Things were not looking good a few years ago for the makers of atrazine, America's second-leading weedkiller. The company was seeking approval from the Environmental Protection Agency to keep the highly profitable product on the market. But scientists were finding it was disrupting hormones in wildlife -- in some cases turning frogs into bizarre creatures bearing both male and female sex organs.
"Last October, concerns about the herbicide led the European Union to ban atrazine, starting in 2005. Yet that same month, after 10 years of contentious scientific review, the EPA decided to permit ongoing use in the United States with no new restrictions.
Herbicide approvals are complicated, and there is no one reason that atrazine passed regulatory muster in this country. But close observers give significant credit to a single sentence that was added to the EPA's final scientific assessment last year.
"Hormone disruption, it read, cannot be considered a 'legitimate regulatory endpoint at this time' -- that is, it is not an acceptable reason to restrict a chemical's use -- because the government had not settled on an officially accepted test for measuring such disruption."
The New York Times also takes a stab at the GOP's assault on public safety, and the Boston Globe details how Democrats in Congress are fighting back.
Turncoat Alexander Flails for Survival
Talk about "frivolous." In a classic GOP strategy of needless delay (exercised consistently in Tom DeLay's case in Texas), the Republicans and their new turncoat Rodney Alexander are filing for a series of judge and court changes reflecting a desperate attempt to retain Alexander on the Louisiana ballot. The gist of the case is simple. On August 4th Alexander filed as a Democrat. On August 6th he filed as a Republican. Louisiana law bars candidates from amending their original filing, and there could be no clearer case than this.
While the GOP is busy making busy work for the judicial system, allow us to pass along this bizarre tale from Roll Call, when Alexander's wife showed up at the office and began rummaging through the trash:
"Although he could not remember exactly what she said, Smoot [Alexander's just resigned Chief Chief of Staff] said Mrs. Alexander excoriated the three aides - Smoot, Nell Wilson and Traci Vincent - accusing them of being disloyal and saying they drove her husband to switch parties.
"Then, Smoot said, Mrs. Alexander, who has a doctorate in mathematics, followed the aides into the hallway yelling, 'Good riddance. Praise the Lord!' before issuing one final silent but universally satisfying _expression: the finger!
"'Yes, I can confirm it. She flipped us the bird,' Smoot said, still weary with shock from his boss's party-switch."
And as we've received many messages hoping that Alexander's courageous staff was taken care of after resigning en masse following Alexander's switch, allow us to pass this along as well:
"All six staffers who quit last week are now being cared for temporarily by another Nancy - House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.). Perhaps they are bonding about being kept in the dark as Alexander was deciding to become a Republican.
"Pelosi, who sources say was touched by the Democratic aides' courage to quit their jobs on principle without knowing what they would do next for work, has put all six on her payroll as they look for jobs.
"Smoot said he and the others were 'extremely touched' by Pelosi's support. He said he felt personally hurt by the secretive way in which Alexander went about switching parties, behind the backs of his staff. That is why he decided to resign immediately, Smoot said."
We'll keep you updated on this developing story…
Races to Watch: Romero Rising in NM-01
Richard Romero, working to unseat faux-moderate rubberstamp Heather Wilson, is running one of the strongest challenger campaigns in the country. Wilson's middle-of-the-road district has forced her to adopt moderate rhetoric, but her record tells a different story - starting with the fact that she voted with Tom DeLay 93% of the time through April. Beyond that, let's look at what President Bush had to say on his visit to campaign for her:
"This tax cut that I campaigned on and fought for, that Pete and Heather and Joe supported, was the right thing for America at this point in our history."
"And she is going to take a leadership role in helping to provide prescription drug coverage within the Medicare system, so our seniors do not go without. It's an important initiative, and thank goodness she's willing to lend her talent to get this job done. She's close to the Speaker on this issue, and when you're close to the Speaker on this issue, you have a good chance to make a significant difference for the elderly of not only New Mexico, and the United States of America."
"…we need an energy bill. One passed the House, and I want to thank Heather for her leadership."
You already know about the fiscally disastrous effects of those tax cuts and their role in the current $445 billion deficit. As for the other two bills Wilson is credited for, let's turn to Brian M. Riedl of the ultra-conservative Heritage Foundation:
"The Medicare and energy bills, although experiencing different fates, share one common denominator: little reform at huge cost, while loaded with special-interest spending."
Well, that's a notch in her belt! Bush couldn't have done it without her. Unfortunately for Wilson, Romero's campaign is geared up and ready to hold her accountable for every betrayal of her constituents. As Crosswinds Weekly described this week:
"This time out, Romero's drive to unseat Wilson seems plainly calculated to broaden her base of detractors by linking her inextricably to Bush and by leaving no Wilson misstep unexamined.
"When the congresswoman voted against screening air cargo on passenger airlines, Romero was on her case. When she initially reacted with indifference to the shocking Abu Ghraib prison abuses and voted against an investigation, not even New Mexico editorial writers could beat Romero to the punch in taking her to task. And when she subsequently tested the political winds and saw the wisdom of an abrupt about-face on the Abu Ghraib horrors, her Democrat rival was among the first to rub her nose in it. Nor has her bobbing-and-weaving on efforts to get to the bottom of the circumstances surrounding 9/11 gone unchallenged by Romero. First, he likes to note, Wilson sided with Bush in opposing an independent inquiry into the Sept. 11 attacks.
"More recently, Romero has found political fodder in the fact that Wilson's initial reactions to the independent 9/11 commission's report were at best lukewarm, if not indifferent. Perhaps more damning, he likes to point out that, as a former member of the House intelligence committee, Wilson seemed downright miffed at the commission's charge that congressional oversight of U.S. intelligence agencies has been sorely remiss.
Wasn't it Wilson, he asks, who said after the report was released, 'I'm not sure our oversight over intelligence is any more dysfunctional than oversight in other areas,' The congresswoman could be right, of course. But if she is, it's a damning commentary on this Republican Congress' responsibility to superintend executive branch agencies."
Get ready for a tough fight…
Races to Watch: Into the Great Wide Open in PA-8
When GOP Rep. Jim Greenwood suddenly announced his retirement last month, it launched a flurry of activity in Washington. Greenwood, entrenched in the district after six terms as a moderate, was presiding over a Democratic-leaning constituency that had been thought out of reach due to his name recognition and favorable perception. All of the sudden it was a whole new ballgame for Democrats, as Republicans watched yet another of their dwindling moderate ranks jump ship. His Democratic challenger before retiring, Ginny Schrader, redoubled her efforts and has been running an excellent charge to claim the seat for the Democratic Party - something self-evident at a recent rally in Doylestown, PA:
"They were there for one reason - to rally around Virginia Schrader and her race for the 8th Congressional District. More than 100 Democrats, wearing their red "Ginny" stickers and John Kerry T-shirts, crowded into a room of the Bucks County Courthouse in Doylestown to support Schrader.
"'I will be the voice for the hard working families who are working harder and harder but can't get ahead,' Schrader, a 60-year-old lawyer, told the crowd.
A lot of her opponent's stands are out of step with the district, particularly his stance on abortion, and this is exactly the message she needs to get across:
"'This is a moderate district, whether you're a Republican, Democrat or an Independent. He could not be an independent voice. I can...'
"The candidate emphasized that if Fitzpatrick wins, he would go to Washington as a freshman representative and fall right in line with the right-wing agenda. Those sentiments were echoed by Robert T. Matsui, a California congressman and Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee chairman.
"'If elected, Mr. Fitzpatrick would be one more rubberstamp for Tom DeLay's special interest agenda, which has sent jobs overseas, failed our schools, and created a sham prescription drug plan that does nothing to lower costs for seniors,' Matsui said in a prepared statement released to the news media Thursday evening.
We've been hearing this attitude from a lot of people in Pennsylvania, so if you're in Pennsylvania and have some excess political energy, check out challenger Murphy (08), and open-seaters Schrader (08), Schwartz (13) and Driscoll (15). All of these races are key, and if we can sweep Pennsylvania it will be a big step towards taking the majority. Pay them a visit and see if you can help. Otherwise, volunteer with us and we'll find something you can do towards throwing Tom DeLay back into the minority!
News From the Blog
If you're not keeping an eye on the blog, you're missing a lot. Here are just a few stories from the last week:
TX-32: Breaking News... Sessions Busted!
Open House Part II: HOW DOES THE DCCC SUPPORT CANDIDATES?
(Second in a series of postings by DCCC Executive Director Jim Bonham explaining the internal functions of the DCCC.)
MI-08: "Traveling Circus"
Cheney So Subtle
Amateur Lawyers?
Dionne: Those Twins!
Posted at 11:49 am by blogswarm
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