As we’ve seen repeatedly in public polling over the past year, no potential source for reducing the deficit is more popular than new tax revenue from wealthy Americans and large businesses, according to the Anzalone Liszt Research national polling summary.
The CNN/ORC poll found that 63 percent of Americans, including 62 percent of independent voters, believe that higher taxes for businesses and wealthy Americans should be part of the Congressional Super Committee’s proposal.
And while Republican Congressman John Fleming might say otherwise, families earning $250,000 a year or more clearly fall into the public’s definition of “wealthy,” as 60 percent of respondents in the NBC/WSJ poll felt that raising this group’s taxes was acceptable to reduce the deficit.
“Such findings demonstrate that support for President Obama’s recent tax reform proposals extend far beyond the Democratic base, as they earn strong backing from independents as well,” the public opinion survey experts say. “Just in case that data doesn’t demonstrate just how out of step with the public Republicans are in their opposition to raising taxes for the wealthy and big corporations, here is some more evidence.”
A federal judge with close ties to former president George W. Bush failed Wednesday to strike down Alabama’s strict new immigration law, even though the Obama Justice Department argued that it violated the Constitution and usurped the federal government’s authority to set immigration policy.
U.S. District Judge Sharon Lovelace Blackburn, who dated Bush in 1972 when he was in Montgomery avoiding service in Vietnam, was appointed to the court in 1991 by then-President George H.W. Bush. In Wednesday’s ruling, she upheld some provisions of the law, while withholding a final ruling on others, including the one concerning church objections to feeding and transporting those in the country without a green card.
The ruling appears to be politically crafted to give the churches what they want, big business what they want, and to grant police unlimited power to target and even profile Latin Americans. The unions are also screwed by this ruling, since they wanted the provision to hold companies accountable, and trial lawyers will not be able to sue companies for hiring illegal immigrants.
Republican Caucus Keeps Scott Beason Atop Rules Committee?
by Glynn Wilson
The leading tea party Republican in Alabama’s legislature will keep his job as head of the rules committee in spite of racially charged remarks recorded by the FBI and played during the infamous “bingo trial,” in which federal prosecutors left over from the Bush administration tried to jail a bunch of Democrats for allegedly taking bribes to promote legal gambling laws.
The prosecutions failed since most of the defendants were freed by the jury, but Gardendale Republican Scott Beason got famous during the trial for his racially charged remarks.
In one tape played during the trial, Beason and two other Republican legislators were talking about economic development in Greene County and the customers at one of its largest employers, Greenetrack casino in Eutaw, according to AP, when one Republican said: “That’s y’all’s Indians.”
“They’re aborigines, but they’re not Indians,” Beason said in reply.
In light of the recent extreme reactions from the Republican fringe on the death penalty, the uninsured and gays in the military, Keith Olbermann and political blogger Craig Crawford explore whether Republican candidates have reached a tipping point with independent voters.
Rick Santorum’s bewildering defense that he didn’t hear the audience booing a gay U.S. soldier at Thursday’s debate in Orlando is a recent example.
“Independent voters like to see presidential candidates stand up to their own party’s real partisan wings,” Crawford says.
Elections are won and lost on the votes of main stream, independent voters. Will President Obama end up being the safe choice in 2012?
“These guys on Wall Street, they don’t render any services at all,” protester Paul Akers says. “They don’t help the economy any except their own employees, their own little family.”
“Wall Street has taken so much money from the American people and haven’t given anything back, and it’s absolutely absurd,” says Jim Brown, operating engineer.
The Mandevilla that used to be by the mailbox has now adapted to the iron security door I rescued from the streets of post-Katrina New Orleans, where the roses used to be. These will be the last summer blooms we see here in the foothills of the Appalachians.
While the first day of fall fell on Sept. 23 this year, the cool nights will be here soon, and this baby will have to move inside for the winter.
The Mandevilla is a genus of plants belonging to the family Apocynaceae, the Periwinkle family. It consists of about 100 species, mostly tropical and subtropical flowering vines. It is native to Central and South America and many come originally from the Serra dos Órgãos forests in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. The genus was named after Henry Mandeville (1773-1861), a British diplomat and gardener.
During the Bush years, we specialized in covering the politicization of the U.S. justice system as much as any news organization. Our archives are about the most comprehensive for anyone researching the prosecution of former Alabama Gov. Don Siegelman, and the original case against Richard Scrushy, which Glynn Wilson covered for The New York Times.
