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Romney Claims Waivers He Used To Support Will ‘Gut Welfare Reform’

Former GOP Governor: Romney Is Afraid To Stand Up To His Right-Wing Base

Tea Party Group Jokes About Beating Obama To Death

NEWS FLASH

BREAKING: Supreme Court Will Allow Mentally Retarded Man To Die | CBS News’ Charlie Kaye reports that the Supreme Court will not halt the execution of Marvin Wilson, a man with an IQ of 61 scheduled to be executed at 6pm Texas time (7pm ET) tonight. The Court’s inaction comes despite the fact that executing the mentally retarded is unconstitutional.

Update

The Supreme Court’s order, which consists of only two sentences of boilerplate, is available here.

Justice

Biotechnology Firm Amgen Becomes The 31st Company To Dump ALEC

By Ian Millhiser posted from ThinkProgress Justice on Aug 7, 2012 at 5:47 pm

Amgen, a biotechnology firm with approximately 17,000 employees, joined 30 other companies today that have broken ties with the right-wing American Legislative Exchange Council. ALEC provides “model” legislation, often drafted by industry lobbyists, to state lawmakers with the intention of having those model bills be enacted into law. Although ALEC recently eliminated a task force that pushed voter suppression laws and the so-called “Stand Your Ground” laws that played a significant role in the aftermath of the Trayvon Martin shooting, the conservative group remains committed to other priorities such as repealing minimum wage laws, eliminating capital gains and estate taxes, and blocking safeguards that protect children from eating rat poison.

Other companies that have broken ties with ALEC in the wake of a progressive campaign exposing its connection to Stand Your Ground and voter suppression laws include Coca-Cola, Pepsi, Kraft, McDonalds, Wendy’s, Blue Cross Blue Shield, Procter & Gamble, Amazon.com, Wal-Mart, Johnson & Johnson, Dell Computers, Best Buy, General Motors and Walgreens.

Economy

America’s 10 Largest Corporations Paid 9 Percent Average Tax Rate Last Year

By Travis Waldron posted from ThinkProgress Economy on Aug 7, 2012 at 5:00 pm

America’s 10 most profitable corporations paid an average corporate income tax rate of just 9 percent in 2011, according to a study from financial site NerdWallet reported by the Huffington Post. The 10 companies include Wall Street banks like Wells Fargo and JP Morgan Chase, oil companies like ExxonMobil and Chevron, and tech companies like Apple, IBM, and Microsoft.

The two companies with the lowest tax rates were both oil companies. ExxonMobil paid $1.5 billion in taxes on $73.3 billion in earnings, a tax rate of 2 percent. Chevron’s tax rate was just 4 percent. None of the companies paid anywhere near the 35 percent top corporate tax rate, providing more evidence to debunk claims that America’s corporate tax rate is stunting economic growth and job creation (Despite the high marginal rate, American corporations pay one of the lowest effective corporate tax rates in the world).

The study also calculated the overall amount the companies owed in both domestic and foreign taxes. This includes deferred taxes that will, theoretically, be paid in the future, once the companies bring foreign profits back to the United States. Apple, for instance, avoided $2.4 billion in American taxes last year by utilizing offshore tax havens.

If Republicans have their way, however, those deferred taxes may never be paid. Switching to a territorial tax system, a policy leading Republicans have considered, would allow corporations to repatriate foreign profits back to the United States nearly free of taxation, costing the country billions of dollars and thousands of jobs.

Health

How Obamacare Is Helping Vulnerable Pregnant Women Across The Country

By Tara Culp-Ressler posted from ThinkProgress Health on Aug 7, 2012 at 4:16 pm

The passage of the Affordable Care Act has marked significant benefits for women, including ensuring increased access to contraceptive services and putting an end to discriminatory insurance practices that charge women higher rates simply based on their gender. And there is yet another important way that Obamacare is helping to advance women’s health under a new program called the Pregnancy Assistance Fund (PAF).

PAF helps fund programs across the country that provide services for pregnant teens and young adults, such as increased sexual education and parenting classes. As RH Reality Check reports, Shauna Humphreys runs one organization working with young Native American mothers in Oklahoma that benefits from PAF grants to bolster their critical services:

Vastly more robust than the program Humphreys ran prior to receiving a 3-year PAF grant at $900,000 per year, [her organization] is staffed with six caseworkers who visit clients’ homes monthly to deliver parenting and life skills training. Caseworkers also serve as a general support network for young women who are experiencing domestic violence.

“These young women need this level of support. They typically don’t have anyone helping them to meet their personal goals,” said Humphries, herself a mother of twins. “I can’t imagine being pregnant in high school and trying to figure out my life after having a child.”

The United States has a higher rate of teen pregnancy than any other developed country in the world. Although the teenage pregnancy rate has been steadily dropping throughout the country, it still remains high in some states that are failing to provide adequate preventative care, such as comprehensive sex education, for teenagers and young adults. Teen pregnancy is correlated with increased education and income gaps.

Of course, if Republicans succeed in repealing the health care law — which they have already spent up to 89 hours and $51 million dollars trying to do — PAF will cease to exist along with the rest of the important provisions of the law that work to expand access to health services to millions of Americans. Stories like Humphreys’ underscore the point, however, that the battle over health care reform is more than a purely political issue when it directly impacts American people struggling to gain access to the care they need.

Election

Cheney Calls Conspiracy Theorist Ed Klein’s New Anti-Obama Book ‘Enlightening’

By Ben Armbruster posted from ThinkProgress Election on Aug 7, 2012 at 3:25 pm

Ed Klein

In an interview with Sean Hannity that aired last night on Fox News, former vice president Dick Cheney praised a new book attacking President Obama called The Amateur by discredited right-wing author Ed Klein, a conspiracy theorist who has promoted claims that Obama is Muslim, wasn’t born in the U.S. and that Bill Clinton raped his wife Hillary. But Cheney appears to believe that all this makes for a good scholar:

HANNITY: You’ve had time to now really study Barack Obama for four years. What do you think you know about him now or believe about him now that you didn’t believe four years ago in terms of his ideology, philosophy, governing philosophy? [...]

CHENEY: One of the things that’s been most enlightening for me is to read this new book that’s out that is — deals with this whole question of competence, and written by Ed Klein, used to be with the “New York Times.” It’s called “The Amateur.”

And it goes into great detail in a whole number of different areas in terms of his philosophy, and why he believes what he did, and how he got there, and how he’s managed or failed to manage in the White House.

Media Matters has the clip:

As Media Matters has noted, The Amateur is filled with falsehoods, distortions “lazy research, bad writing, bizarre generalizations…and gossip forwarded by anonymous sources.” New York Times literary critic Janet Maslin said the book “adds little to the record about Mr. Obama’s past” and that Klein “has no capacity for explaining specifics” of his criticisms of Obama. The intro to her review reads:

“The Amateur” by Edward Klein is a book about an inept, arrogant ideologue who maintains an absurdly high opinion of his own talents even as he blatantly fails to achieve his goals. Oh, and President Obama is in this book too.

And as recently as last May, Klein was still promoting the conspiracy theory that Obama is a Muslim. But aside from his new thinly-sourced book, Klein has a history of advancing false allegations about Obama as fact, so much so that conservative writers like Peggy Noonan, Kathleen Parker and even John Podhoretz won’t take him seriously.

Politics

Herman Cain Hopes Gas Prices Increase To Help Romney Win Presidency

By Scott Keyes on Aug 7, 2012 at 2:31 pm

Former presidential candidate and prominent Mitt Romney backer Herman Cain is hoping that gas prices increase significantly before November, regardless of the impact on consumers, in order to help defeat President Obama.

Guest-hosting the Neal Boortz radio show on Tuesday, Cain fielded a question from a caller named Mark who asked if it was wrong to want gas prices to hit $4 per gallon “so people would realize that we need a Republican in the presidency.” Cain agreed, saying that it’s “not wrong” to want gas prices to go up because it will “wake people up.” He went on to say that lower gas prices recently are sometimes “manipulated” by oil-producing countries that “want Barack obama to win.”

MARK: Is it wrong that since gas prices have been going up like 30 cents in the last month, month and a half. That for a while I’ve been hoping that gas would hit $4 so people would realize that we need a Republican in the presidency so that on November 7th, gas will be slashed to like $2 a gallon?

CAIN: That’s not wrong at all. If it hits $4 a gallon nationally, that would be a huge wakeup call for a lot of people who, quite frankly Mark, aren’t paying attention. And the other reason that I would agree with you that it was not wrong in order to wake people up in that manner because sometimes you don’t wake them up until it hits their checkbook or their pocketbook is the fact that some of the times when gas prices go down it’s manipulated. It’s manipulated by the oil-producing countries. There are some countries that are really really big as far as oil production that want Barack Obama to win.

Listen to it:

It is unlikely that Cain will get his $4-per-gallon-by-November wish. Though gas prices have increased slightly over the past month, largely due to refinery outages and climate-related closures, they are still down 30 cents per gallon in the past four months.

Alyssa

The Koch Brothers Go After Zach Galifianakis and ‘The Campaign’

By Alyssa Rosenberg posted from ThinkProgress Alyssa on Aug 7, 2012 at 1:23 pm

In The Campaign, out this weekend, Will Ferrell plays an incumbent Congressman who’s running what’s supposed to be an uncontested race, when a pair of wealth brothers by the name of Motch put up a genial dummy, played by Zach Galifianakis, to run against him. Unsurprisingly, Galifianakis confirmed that the brothers, played in the movie by Dan Aykroyd and John Lithgow, are meant to be a stand-in for the real-life industrialists and right-wing political funders Charles and David Koch, and mentioned in a recent interview that he found the pair “creepy.”

Other public figures might consider the movie, and Galifianakis’ uneasiness about their influence to be a tribute to their effectiveness. But the Kochs don’t seem to be taking it that way. Phillip Ellender, Koch Industries’ president for government affairs, issued a statement on the brothers’ behalf, saying:

Last we checked, the movie is a comedy. Maybe more to the point is that it’s laughable to take political guidance or moral instruction from a guy who makes obscene gestures with a monkey on a bus in Bangkok…We disagree with his uninformed characterization of Koch and our beliefs. His comments, which appear to be based on false attacks made by our political opponents, demonstrate a lack of understanding of our longstanding support of individual freedom, freedom of expression, and constitutional rights.

While the Koch brothers have become a staple of political coverage, it’s taken longer for them to become fixtures in popular culture, and Ellender’s response suggests they’re not enjoying the attention. This summer, they’ve made an appearance by name in Aaron Sorkin’s HBO drama The Newsroom, when anchor Will McAvoy (Jeff Daniels) attacked guests on his show who were members of Tea Party groups for not being aware of who their funders were. His coverage earned a rebuke from network owner Leona Lansing (a scenery-munching Jane Fonda), who cautioned Will’s producer against further coverage of the Kochs less they pull their brands’ advertisements from the company. declared “I got where I am by knowing who to fear,” she said. “They drop Brinks trucks on people they disagree with.” It was a weirdly sinister portrayal, in contrast to the lighter satire The Campaign is expected to offer up.

But as long as the Koch brothers are making heavy investments in political campaigns and grass-roots organizing, they’re probably going to keep popping up in movies and television, at least until someone gets the idea of painting casino magnate Sheldon Adelson as a malevolent power behind the throne, which will probably take Adelson deciding to support someone more credible than Newt Gingrich. Until then, Charles and David Koch might as well enjoy the spectacle of liberals fearing them, and the debate over which one of them Aykroyd and Lithgow are each meant to be.

Justice

Louisiana School Forces Students to Take Pregnancy Tests, Kicks Out Girls Who Refuse Or Test Positive

By Tara Culp-Ressler posted from ThinkProgress Justice on Aug 7, 2012 at 12:22 pm

One Louisiana school is dealing with the state’s high rates of teen pregnancy by taking an “out of sight, out of mind” approach. No pregnant students are welcome at Delhi Charter School in Delhi, Louisiana — a policy that the institution enforces by requiring students who are “suspected” of being pregnant to submit to a mandatory pregnancy test.

If students are pregnant, they are no longer allowed to attend classes on the school’s campus and will be forced to either switch to another school or begin a home school program. If a student refuses to take the test, she is “treated as a pregnant student” and also kicked out of Delhi Charter School, according to the student handbook:

If an administrator or teacher suspects a student is pregnant, a parent conference will be held. The school reserves the right to require any female student to take a pregnancy test to confirm whether or not the suspected student is in fact pregnant. The school further reserves the right to refer the suspected student to a physician of its choice. If the test indicates that the student is pregnant, the student will not be permitted to attend classes on the campus of Delhi Charter School.

If a student is determined to be pregnant and wishes to continue to attend Delhi Charter School, the student will be required to pursue a course of home study that will be provided by the school…Any student who is suspected of being pregnant and who refuses to submit to a pregnancy test shall be treated as a pregnant student and will be offered home study opportunities. If home study opportunities are not acceptable, the student will be counseled to seek other educational opportunities.

The American Civil Liberties Union points out that Dehli Charter School’s discriminatory policy for pregnant students is “in blatant violation of federal law and the U.S. Constitution.” On Monday, the ACLU of Louisiana and the ACLU Women’s Rights Project sent a letter to the school asking it to suspend its policy, on the grounds that New Delhi Charter School’s unfair treatment of its pregnant students violates the following laws:

  • Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972, for excluding students from educational programs based on sex.
  • The Equal Protection Clause of the U.S. Constitution, for treating female students differently than their male peers, as well as stereotyping “suspected” pregnant studies on the basis of their gender.
  • The Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment that recognizes the right to procreate as well as the right to decide whether to terminate a pregnancy, for targeting students in a way that appears to stigmatize pregnancy.

Aside from its unconstitutional premise, the charter school’s policy toward pregnant students is also furthering a serious education gap between teen mothers and the young women who do not have unplanned pregnancies. Thirty percent of all teen girls who drop out of high school cite pregnancy as the main reason. And a full 70 percent of teenage girls who give birth end up leaving school — although if New Delhi Charter School had its way, that statistic might be closer to 100 percent.

Justice

NRA Sent Paranoid Fundraising Letter Three Days After Aurora Shooting

By Ian Millhiser posted from ThinkProgress Justice on Aug 7, 2012 at 11:25 am

Three days after a gunman massacred twelve people during a screening of the latest Batman film, the nation’s largest gun lobby mailed a nationwide fundraising letter warning of an implausible government conspiracy to seize firearms:

“The future of your Second Amendment rights will be at stake,” the letter said. “And nothing less than the future of our country and our freedom will be at stake.” . . .

The solicitation letter says that Obama’s re-election would result in the “confiscation of our firearms” and potentially a “ban on semi-automatic weapons.” The suspect in the Aurora, Colorado killings, 24-year-old James Holmes, had four semi-automatic weapons at the theater, police said.

For the record, gun rights have actually expanded under President Obama. The most significant guns legislation he signed was a law allowing people to carry guns in national parks. And Obama has stubbornly refused to support new gun regulations even in the wake of three mass shootings — Tucson, Aurora and the recent Sikh temple shooting — that occurred on his watch.

These facts have done nothing to temper the NRA’s rhetoric, however. Indeed, NRA head Wayne LaPierre claimed last year that Obama’s entire record of keeping his distance from the guns issue is “all part of a massive Obama conspiracy to deceive voters and hide his true intentions to destroy the Second Amendment in our country.”

Politics

Republicans Blasted Obama Administration For Warning About Right-Wing Domestic Terrorism

By Annie-Rose Strasser on Aug 7, 2012 at 10:25 am

Homeland Security Sec. Napolitano

The gunman in the shooting at a Sikh temple over the weekend has been labeled a potential domestic terrorist — defined as one who incites politically-motivated violence against his or her own country. In Wade Michael Page’s case, that political motivation was likely white supremacy, a growing problem in the United States.

But when, in 2009, the Department of Homeland Security reported that white supremacy is the US’s biggest threat for domestic terror, it was met with harsh criticism. Conservatives blasted the department for defining terror threats too broadly, instead of focusing on potential Islamic terrorists. Then-House Minority Leader Rep. John Boehner (R-OH) was one of those who berated DHS, saying that they weren’t focusing on the real threats the US faces:

[T]he Secretary of Homeland Security owes the American people an explanation for why she has abandoned using the term ‘terrorist’ to describe those, such as al Qaeda, who are plotting overseas to kill innocent Americans, while her own Department is using the same term to describe American citizens who disagree with the direction Washington Democrats are taking our nation. Everyone agrees that the Department should be focused on protecting America, but using such broad-based generalizations about the American people is simply outrageous.

The report was titled “Rightwing Extremism: Current Economic and Political Climate Fueling Resurgence in Radicalization and Recruitment,” and it named white supremacists, radical anti-abortionists, and a few “disgruntled veterans” as most susceptible to recruitment by extremist groups, or to harboring resentment that may lead to domestic terrorism. DHS stressed that, during recessions, these threats go up, and law enforcement should be on the lookout for such extremism:

DHS/I&A has concluded that white supremacist lone wolves pose the most significant domestic terrorist threat because of their low profile and autonomy—separate from any formalized group—which hampers warning efforts..[...]

Returning veterans possess combat skills and experience that are attractive to rightwing extremists. DHS/I&A is concerned that rightwing extremists will attempt to recruit and radicalize returning veterans in order to boost their violent capabilities.

The report’s findings were congruous with previous studies that indicate right wing extremism is responsible for more instances of violence every year (with the exception of 2001, when the September 11th attacks happened) in the United States than Islamic extremist. It also tracks with the rise of hate groups in the US since 2000.

Sec. Janet Napolitano ended up withdrawing the report and apologizing to veterans who felt they’d been called out, stressing that the threat was limited to a very small number of veterans.

Page, the Sikh temple shooter, was one of these veterans. According to Oak Creek, Wisconsin law enforcement, he served in the army from 1992 to 1998. He was administratively discharged in 1998, and had a known “patterns of misconduct.” After leaving the service, he was arrested twice, once for a DUI and once for criminal mischief — both in the 1990s.

The gunman had also been tracked by the Southern Poverty Law Center for around a decade because of his ties to white supremacy groups. While he apparently “popped up” on the FBI’s radar about six years ago, it seems they had no active investigation.

Economy

Romney Claims Waivers He Used To Support Will ‘Gut Welfare Reform’

By Travis Waldron posted from ThinkProgress Economy on Aug 7, 2012 at 9:32 am

Mitt Romney’s campaign launched a full-on attack on Tuesday accusing President Obama of gutting welfare reform. In a new ad, policy memo, and press release, Romney claims that the administration’s decision to offer waivers to states that develop innovative ways to meet the law’s work requirements is actually an attempt to “remove work participation rate requirements all together.”

“Under Obama’s plan, you wouldn’t have to work and wouldn’t have to train for a job,” the ad’s narrator says. “They just send you your welfare check.”

The ad is blatantly false — the administration’s plan specifically maintains the work requirement, but allows states to experiment with other methods of transitioning recipients from welfare to work. This is a policy that the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities says will make Temporary Assistance for Needy Families a more effective program.

But the ad is also disingenuous, as it fails to mention that as governor of Massachusetts, Romney explicitly supported the same waiver program he is now criticizing. Romney was one of 29 Republican governors to sign a 2005 letter from the Republican Governor’s Association to congressional leadership touting the benefits a waiver program would bring their states:

The Senate bill provides states with with the flexibility to manage their TANF programs and effectively serve their low-income populations. Increased waiver authority, allowable work activities, availability of partial work credit and the ability to coordinate state programs are all important aspects of moving recipients from welfare to work.

As ThinkProgress has noted, Republican governors in both Utah and Nevada still support the waiver program. Both, incidentally, have endorsed Romney. And while Romney touts TANF’s success in a release accompanying the ad — welfare “reduced the number of people receiving monthly cash benefits from 12.2 million to 4.2 million,” it says — the program’s “success” hasn’t been because its recipients are finding jobs. In fact, TANF has failed to reach the people who need it most, especially compared to the programs that came before it.

As the directive from the Department of Health and Human Services states, the waiver program is aimed at helping more recipients transition to work. “HHS is encouraging states to consider new, more effective ways to meet the goals of TANF, particularly helping parents successfully prepare for, find, and retain employment,” the directive says. “The Secretary is only interested in approving waivers if the state can explain in a compelling fashion why the proposed approach may be a more efficient or effective means to promote employment entry, retention, advancement, or access to jobs that offer opportunities for earnings and advancement that will allow participants to avoid dependence on government benefits.”

And states will still be subject to federal evaluation and basic work requirements that “focus on measurable outcomes” and furthering TANF’s purpose. Failing to do so, HHS states, could result in “termination of the waiver project.”

Update

The Huffington Post’s Arthur Delaney notes:

The proposal Romney supported may have provided for even broader welfare waivers than HHS is currently offering. While the health department today is willing to let states tinker with things like the definition of work activities and the calculation of participation rates, the 2005 bill would have waived “any requirement applicable to the program” — not just work requirements, but maybe even time limits for cash assistance, too.

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Politics

Morning Briefing: Fears Of Violent Attacks By Right Wing Extremists On The Rise

By ThinkProgress on Aug 7, 2012 at 9:01 am

– New details emerge about Sikh temple shooter Wade Michael Page’s white supremacist ties.

– Factcheckers calling Harry Reid a liar for claiming he heard that Romney “paid no taxes” for ten years are on shaky ground.

– A chart of marijuana use by age might surprise you:

– Afghan women speak out against gendered violence in the country.

– And finally, noted political expert Ted Nugent thinks “Obama represents everything bad about humanity and Romney pretty much all that is good. It is really that stark.”

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