The Bill Goes to the Senate, but Voters Will Have a Chance to Defeat it at the Polls in November
by Glynn Wilson
The Republican controlled House of Representatives in Alabama voted 65-22 this week to pass a bill dubbed “The Goodyear Bill” that is being billed by Republicans and the mainstream media as “Gov. Robert Bentley’s jobs plan,” another amendment to be tacked onto an already overburdened constitution that would authorize new and expanding corporations to keep the income taxes of their employees rather than paying them to the state.
No where in the Republican rhetoric or the news coverage does anybody address the fact that the state can’t afford to give away more tax money to corporations which already pay no corporate taxes, because the state is already too broke to continue funding many state agencies and programs. They state can’t afford to continue maintaining some roads. There is all kinds of hand-wringing going on over continued funding for the state retirement system.
While Governor Bentley pledged to raise no taxes yet continue fully funding law enforcement in his State of the State Address, it has become obvious that the state does not have the money to continue paying for an already over-crowded prison system.
The bill now moves over to the 35-member Senate. It will need 21 votes to pass. If approved there and signed by the governor, opponents would have a chance to raise a campaign to stop its approval at the polls. The voters would have a shot at defeating it in a referendum vote during the general election in November.
This is for my friends in the Occupy movement who say they might support Mitt Romney for president. Are you nuts? This guy is in the 1% of the 1%.
So you don’t think President Barack Obama has done everything right, everything you want. At least he’s trying. This guy would take us back to more tax cuts for the rich and deregulation of the oil industry and the big Wall Street banks.
According to some analysts, Romney’s opponents have been able to weaken his support by touting the fact that he is part of the greedy 1%. Romney has faced multiple charges of being a lackey for corporations and the wealthy, who only seeks to help them gain even more wealth. Romney personified that image on TeeVee for everyone to see in the video above.
Disgraced former U.S. Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich, who managed to get enough dingbat evangelical Christian Republicans to vote for him to win the South Carolina Primary, went down to Florida and launched the biggest moonbat idea of the 2012 presidential race so far: A Lunar colony that could petition to be the 51st state in the United States when it reaches 13,000 residents.
Don’t believe it? What planet have you been living on lately? It’s all over every news channel. Here are a couple of sample videos (science analysis below).
Massachusetts Mormon Mitt Romney released his tax returns on Monday, finally, showing he is a billionaire who only paid 13.9 percent in taxes on $42.5 million in income last year, all of it earned not from labor but from paper, interest on investments. At the same time, he was campaigning for the Republican presidential nomination in Florida making crazy, false statements to get media attention, saying America is in decline and blaming it on President Barack Obama, because he is “a failure.”
A look at the facts below shows otherwise.
Meanwhile, President Obama went on national television to make his annual State of the Union Address before Congress, and made a number of factual statements about the situation and his record. Here is our analysis of some key points.
The key quote?
“Anyone who tells you that America is in decline or that our influence has waned, doesn’t know what they’re talking about,” the president said, and the facts show he is right on this, not the Republicans.
Consumer confidence is on the rise in the United States, according to the latest Gallup poll on the subject, as President Barack Obama will deliver his State of the Union address to the nation on Tuesday night to deliver a strong economic message sympathetic to a middle class that feels squeezed by stagnant wages at a time of record corporate profits.
The President is expected to make the argument for higher taxes on the wealthy, to propose ways to make college more affordable, to offer new steps on tackling the housing crisis and outline ways to help bring back domestic manufacturing and expand hiring.
With unemployment on the way down and good news from the U.S. automobile industry and the retail sector after a successful holiday season, the general public perception is that the overall U.S. economy is getting better, according to Gallup.
“This seems like good news for the nation’s businesses as well as for U.S. economic confidence in the week ending Jan. 22, improved from the prior week and the best since the week ending May 22, 2011,” Gallup concludes in its analysis.
In an explosive interview, according to The Hill newspaper, Newt Gingrich’s second wife, Marianne Gingrich, says the former House Speaker wanted an “open marriage,” but that she refused, according to an exclusive interview by ABC News (see video above).
Her revelation comes as Gingrich is closing in on front-runner Mitt Romney in the South Carolina Republican primary, with Texas Governor Rick Perry bowing out of the race. While experts say Gingrich had a chance to pick up some conservative support and make a showing in the Southern state, the interview with his ex-wife could damage his campaign, especially with conservative evangelical voters.
Gingrich was apparently carrying on a sexual affair at the time with congressional aide Callista Gingrich, who became his third wife. It is hard to see conservative Southern Christians supporting a candidate for president with such low moral standards, but then, they seemed to forgive George W. Bush and other Republicans in the past. Stay tuned.
The polls in South Carolina are tightening and Mitt Romney’s attacks against Newt Gingrich are getting more desperate and more dishonest. We’ve seen this play out before. The last time Mitt Romney ran for president, he ran equally dishonest and desperate attacks against John McCain and Mike Huckabee when he fell behind in the polls.
To remind voters of Mitt Romney’s history of launching desperate and dishonest attacks against his rivals, Newt 2012 released a new web ad, “Desperate.”
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.
