Posts That Write Themselves

Headline: Wisconsin GOP bought recall signatures with booze

... because you would have to be drunk to sign on with the GOP.

The Kyle Rule

WASHINGTON – The Pulitzer Prize-winning fact-checker PolitiFact took on the Republican claim that reducing tax rates has always produced higher federal revenues, rating it "false."

To be fair the GOP never meant this central tenant of their public policy to be factual.

Theft

Last Friday all but four Republicans in the House of Representatives voted for Paul Ryan’s budget proposal to privatize medical insurance for seniors, retirees, and people too sick or too old to qualify for private insurance.

So the GOP majority in the House of Representatives just voted to abolish Medicare because according to them, we can't afford it. Yet in the same breath they voted for even more tax breaks for the well to do and the corporations. So basically they're taking the money we've been paying into Medicare and giving it to rich people in the form of tax breaks. In GOP world the super rich get an extra private jet and the poor, the middle class, and the elderly get to pay for it.

Tax Cuts Ubber Alles

Gov Scott Walker (R-WI) of union busting fame, has proposed a budget that would provide $83.3 million in tax cuts “primarily for businesses and investors” and would make up for lost revenue by eliminating tax credits and exemptions that primarily benefit the poor and even some in the middle class. In addition to eliminating these tax credits, Walker also has proposed a spate of new fee increases. The “bulk of the fee increases are for tuition at University of Wisconsin campuses, totaling more than $105 million over two years.”

Wisconsin’s Legislative Fiscal Bureau — the state’s equivalent of the Congressional Budget Office — finds that this would amount to a $49.9 million tax increase on people who receive these credits over the next two years:

Low and middle income people would lose tax credits worth about $49.4 million over two years, the new Legislative Fiscal Bureau report said.

Those affected most by Walker’s proposal would include low-income families who qualify for the earned income tax credit program, and low-income homeowners who receive tax rebates under the homestead tax credit.

We would say this guy is a reverse Robin Hood, robbing from the poor to give to the rich, but we don't want to act as if this isn't the MO of the entire Republican party. It strikes us further that cutting education shows they don't give a rip about investing in the future of this country. All in all it's a recipe for a third world banana republic.

Bad Faith

According to The Wisconsin State Journal economists allege that Governor Scott Walker's budget crisis is a fabrication invented out of whole cloth and predicated on a series of tax breaks for corporations and the wealthy.

No Republican should be allowed to say we can't afford this or that. They've spent the last 30 years deliberately destroying the tax base though tax cuts and outsourcing and now they're crying crocodile tears. It's like pouring out the pitcher and then saying we'll have to go thirsty because there's just not enough water to go around. The only way to restore this country is to rebuild the tax base and bring back the middle class. The only way to do that is to get Republicans out of government.

Pivot Please

Think Progress: On several occasions, Trump has implied that Obama’s grandparents essentially lied about his citizenship “for social reasons.” The other “smart people” who agree with him include conservative blogger Tom Maguire who claims the birth announcement was planted to win a potential custody battle involving “a black Kenyan baby sought by the black Kenyan father and his African family.” Yet, this is the first time the person interviewing Trump has actually bothered to point out that the birth information printed in the Honolulu Advertiser always came directly from the state health department (via the local hospital), not grandparents or relatives. It’s also worth noting that since Obama’s mother was a U.S. citizen, he was automatically conferred citizenship and all of its “assets” no matter where he was born. Unless his grandparents somehow knew that baby Obama would one day want to run for president, there wouldn’t really be a reason for his family to fabricate a convoluted lie regarding his birthplace.

White House senior adviser David Plouffe dismissed Donald Trump’s birther beliefs today, noting that “there may be a small part of the country that believes these things, but mainstream Americans think it’s a side show.” In fact, more than half of GOP primary voters believe Obama was not born in the U.S., compared to 11 percent of the general public.

This is all well and good, however both TP and the White House need to conclude that people who disregard facts to make unfounded accusations are untrustworthy and of low character.

The Base

A new poll out of Mississippi finds that in a bastion of America's south, many Republican voters have tightly held onto the old, hateful views of race as a dividing line in society. A full 46 percent of Mississippi Republicans said they believe interracial marriage should be illegal, according to the left-leaning survey group Public Policy Polling. Only 40 percent said they thought it should remain legal, with the rest unsure.

Of course 24% of the GOP also believes Obama just might be the anti-Christ.

If the Dems were any good at messaging the GOP would consist only of this 46%. And it would be branded as the Confederate Flag Party. The base of the GOP is deeply racist. Thus, anybody else who votes GOP is voting with a deeply racist base. Somebody should poll the GOP base on their views of slavery...