Think Progress

Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen: ‘I’m disappointed and was blindsided’ by McCollum’s immigration bill.

Earlier this week, Florida Attorney General and gubernatorial candidate Bill McCollum (R) unveiled a proposed immigration bill which many argue is “even tougher” than Arizona’s controversial immigration law, SB-1070. While McCollum likely believes his support of the bill will win him some votes, he has also sparked a backlash amongst several notable Latino members of the Florida Republican Party. Most notably, Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-FL). The Cuban-American U.S. congresswoman and co-chair of McCollum’s Statewide Hispanic Leadership Team was in disbelief and doesn’t think the anti-immigrant legislation will solve the state’s problems. The Miami Herald reports:

U.S. Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen of Miami, a co-chair of the team, said Thursday afternoon that she last spoke to the state attorney general on Tuesday — one day before he called a news conference in Orlando to unveil the bill with Republican legislators.

“I’m disappointed and was blindsided by Bill’s decision to promote this, and I encourage the candidates to focus on plans that will improve Florida’s economy, bring jobs to our state and jump-start our tourism,” Ros-Lehtinen said. “I fail to see how promotion of this issue will accomplish that, and I was taken aback.”

The Cuban-American congresswoman added: “Bill McCollum doesn’t owe me an explanation…but I would have liked to have known beforehand because I would have cautioned him to focus on other issues. Obsessing about this issue in the gubernatorial campaign means other issues are getting short shrift.”

When asked about McCollum’s latest move, a spokesperson for Senate candidate Marco Rubio (R-FL) simply stated, “He believes the best approach is for the federal government to deal with border security and immigration, and he hopes state efforts like Arizona are a wake-up call for Congress to get its act together.” Former Gov. Jeb Bush (R-FL) similarly distanced himself from McCollum’s proposal, stating that though he still supports McCollum, he “personally disagree[s] with him having to go that far.” The Wonk Room has more fallout from McCollum’s bill.

White supremacist seeks election to a California school board.

Joining other neo-Nazis who are attempting to go mainstream, retired school teacher and self-professed white supremacist Dan Schruender is seeking election to the Rialto Unified School Board in San Bernardino County, California. While announcing his campaign last Tuesday on his Aryan Nations blog, Schruender claimed that he “would not let his ideology affect his policy-making if he were elected to a district” of more than 27,500 students that is 75 percent Latino and 15 percent African-American. Schruender has previously admitted to dropping “racist fliers” around the neighborhood:

In April, Schruender, who at the time identified himself as Dan Collins, said he delivers racist fliers to Rialto neighborhoods to let people know that the white race is not “going to go out with a whimper.”

Some of the fliers invited residents to honor Adolf Hitler’s birthday. Others used racial epithets to describe blacks and Latinos while saying “happy Easter to all you … from your friends at the Aryan Nations.”

Schruender insists that the Aryan Nations group is not behind his candidacy, blaming any controversy over his candidacy on the “hatchet job” of “the Jew Media.” That post along with his other recent blog posts, including ones titled “WHITE children being DEPORTED – despite being BORN on US soil” and “Smurfs: Aryan Puppets or Harmless Cartoon Toys,” suggest a continued commitment to white supremacy efforts. His opponent, John Kazalunas, bluntly reminded voters of the need to scrutinize the candidates, adding “if anybody votes for [Schruender], they’re crazy.”

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Deficit fraud Rubio plans to balance the budget with earmarks and pipe dreams.

Florida’s Republican Senate candidate Marco Rubio has already made it abundantly clear that he is not serious about addressing the country’s long-term structural deficit. He is in favor of permanently extending the Bush tax cuts for the rich — at a cost of $830 billion over ten years — while simultaneously proposing a slew of new budget busting tax cuts for the wealthy and corporations. But just in case we needed some more evidence of Rubio’s deficit peacockery, he was happy to provide it during an interview last night with Fox Business’ David Asman. Rubio said that his plan for addressing the nation’s fiscal situation amounts to a constitutional amendment requiring a federal balanced budget, banning earmarks, unspecified entitlement reform, and putting “term limits” on federal agencies — excluding defense, of course:

RUBIO: The second thing we have to do is spending constraints. That means a constitutionally balanced budget, that means banning the practice of earmarks, and ultimately that means entitlement reform. [...]

ASMAN: Might you also have to go even farther than Ronald Reagan did and reversing thing like the department — when Jimmy Carter started the Department of Education, he said it would improve our test scores and make schools more efficient. In fact, we’ve had just the opposite. When he created the Department of Energy, that was to get us off of a dependence on foreign oil. Well guess what, we’re a lot more dependent on foreign oil. What about getting rid of two departments like these?

RUBIO: Well, here’s what I think. I think every non-defense department, every non-defense discretionary spending program should be sunsetted every 10 years. Every 10 years, those programs should sunset and we should require that they be reauthorized by Congress. That means they’re going to have to justify their existence. Look at it this way, it’s like term limits on agencies.

Watch it:

Rubio’s plan for reforming entitlements is shockingly non-specific, but in the past he has been sympathetic to simply slicing benefits for younger Americans. Earmarks, meanwhile, constitute less than one percent of federal discretionary spending, so eliminating them entirely does essentially nothing to the structural deficit. As The Wonk Room explains, the rest of Rubio’s plan is not only politically ridiculous, but even conservatives think it would be economically destructive.

Right-wing conspiracists plan to greet Obama’s Gulf Coast trip with birther billboard.

State officials in Hawaii report that inquiries to see President Obama’s birth certificate have fallen dramatically since the state passed a law earlier this year allowing it to ignore repeated requests. Republican state Rep. Gene Ward, who believes Obama was born in Hawaii, expressed hope that “eventually, it will go away.” The New York Daily News recently asked, “Could the ‘birther’ movement be fading away?” If the far right-wing conspiracy theorists have anything to say about it, the answer is no. As President Obama and his family head to the Gulf Coast this weekend, the birther publication World Net Daily plans to greet him with its trademark billboard:

A recent CNN poll found that only 42 percent of Americans have absolutely no doubts that Obama was born in the U.S., while 29 percent say he “probably” was. Eleven percent claim Obama was definitely not born in the U.S. and another 16 percent say the president was probably not born in the country.

Health insurers are lobbying to weaken regulations, despite record profits.

With the economy in recession and a growing number of Americans going without health insurance coverage, the big health insurers are still posting impressive profits. Wellpoint, the nation’s largest insurer by membership, “reported a 4% increase in profit for the second quarter that helped generate earnings of $1.6 billion since the beginning of the year – a 26% increase over the same period in 2009,″ and Aetna said its “second-quarter profits rose 42 percent, with a net income of $491 million, compared with $346.6 million for the same quarter last year.” Earlier this week, Health Care for American Now! (HCAN) released a report which found that CEOs from the 10 largest for-profit health insurance companies “collected pay of $228.1 million, up from $85.5 million in 2008.” As a group, insurance CEOs saw a “167 percent raise,” while “Americans saw their averages wages increase by about 2 percent.” Insurers are spending less on health care and seeing higher profits:

These numbers contradict insurers’ claim that stringent regulations would jeopardize the industry and, as the Wonk Room argues, should embolden regulators to impose tough consumer protections.

Right-wing columnist calls Prop. 8 judge a ‘false god,’ compares same-sex marriage to slavery.

Last week, U.S. District Court Judge Vaughn Walker struck down California’s Proposition 8, which prohibited same-sex couples from marrying in the state. Today, Walker lifted the stay on his decision, announcing that it will go into effect next week unless the appeals court issues a stay. Though the Republican response has been muted, some GOP lawmakers and a number of right-wing activists have been condemning both last week’s ruling and Judge Walker himself. Today, nationally-syndicated conservative Washington Examiner columnist Cal Thomas took the attacks to an entirely new level:

The decision by a single, openly gay federal judge to strike down the will of 7 million Californians, tradition dating back millennia (not to mention biblical commands, which the judge decided, in his capacity as a false god, to also invalidate) is judicial vigilantism equal to Roe v. Wade. [...]

Most great powers unravel from within before invading armies (or in America’s case, terrorists) conquer them. A preacher might develop a good sermon on how nations fare when they mock God.

No less a theological thinker than Abraham Lincoln concluded that our Civil War might have been God’s judgment for America’s tolerance of slavery. If that were so, why should “the Almighty,” as Lincoln frequently referred to God, stay His hand in the face of our celebration of same-sex marriage?

Despite Thomas’ outrageous remarks, polling from late July shows that a majority of Californians would vote to allow gay and lesbian couples to marry. Additionally, a CNN poll released yesterday finds that a majority of Americans believe that “gays and lesbians should have a constitutional right to be married and have their marriage recognized by law as valid.” As Judge Walker wrote in his decision, “Proposition 8 fails to advance any rational basis in singling out gay men and lesbians for denial of a marriage license. Indeed, the evidence shows Proposition 8 does nothing more than enshrine in the California Constitution the notion that opposite-sex couples are superior to same-sex couples.” Today, Walker lifted the stay on his ruling, permitting same-sex marriages to resume in California. The decision will go into effect August 18th, allowing time for the Ninth Circuit Court to hear an appeal. (HT Andrew Sullivan)

– Charlie Eisenhood

GOP candidate calls for internment camps for ‘people that snuck into the country.’

Speaking at a rally sponsored by Glenn Beck’s 9/12 Project, GOP state house candidate in Florida, Marg Baker, endorsed building concentration camps for undocumented immigrants:

We can follow what happened back in the 40s or 50s. I was just a little girl in Miami, and they built camps for the people that snuck into the country, because they were illegal. They put them in the camps, and they shipped them back. We can do that.

Watch it:

It’s not clear just what camps Baker is referring to, but in the 1940s, the United States did indeed build a series of concentration camps detaining thousands of Japanese-Americans. Years later, President Ronald Reagan signed an official apology for America’s brief experiment with concentration camps. Baker should pay heed to Reagan’s example.

Beck attacks CAP for proposing small education cuts, but he wants to ‘get rid of’ the entire Education Department.

Yesterday, Fox News’ Glenn Beck seemingly stumbled upon a Center for American Progress report from April that recommends programs that can be cut or reformed within the Department of Education in order to save taxpayers money and ensure that tax dollars are used in a way that can benefit the most students in the most efficient way possible. Considering that Beck fancies himself a crusader against wasteful government spending, you’d think this is the kind of effort he’d endorse. Instead, Beck went on a tirade, ludicrously claiming that CAP is advocating we “just get rid of American history, the Constitution, and education on finance”:

This is great. George Soros, his think tank that runs the entire country now, the Center for American Progress. They have something called Education Transformation: Doing What Works in Education Reform. We have to watch what we’re spending, I think we all agree on that right? We all have to look at what we’re spending. Here’s what’s in the report. Programs recommended for elimination. Small, niche programs, low-impact programs such as The Academies for American History and Civics, which provide workshops on American history. That must go.

And We the People, this little niche program is an earmark grant to the Center for Civic Education to instruct students on the U.S. Constitution and the Bill of Rights. Why would we need that “niche program”? And Excellence in Economic Education, which teaches financial literacy. Wow. So if we can just get rid of American history, the Constitution, and education on finance we’d be fixed.

Watch it:

This is pretty rich coming from a guy who has advocated eliminating the entire Department of Education, including all of the programs he’s now saying are vital. “All right, today, we’ve decided we’re going to get rid of the Department of Education. I don’t know why this is such a ridiculous idea,” Beck said on April 14. Meanwhile, as The Wonk Room explains, the recommendations for program elimination had nothing to do with the subject matter of the program, but with the fact that they’re small, not streamlined with the rest of the Education Department, and are not achieving their goals.