After Taking Millions From Natural Gas, Pennsylvania Gov. Threatens To Veto Any Taxes On Industry

By Guest Blogger on Jun 21, 2011 at 7:30 pm

Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Corbett (R)

When it came time to fix his state’s $4 billion budget deficit, Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Corbett (R) steadfastly refused to raise new revenues, even through a tax on natural gas extraction, despite the fact that Pennsylvania is the only major gas producer that does not tax its use.

Instead of taxing fracking, a dangerous technique that fractures the ground to extract natural gas, or closing other tax loopholes, Corbett proposed eliminating $1 billion from the state’s education budget. Corbett’s cuts to education were so drastic that he was was overruled by his own party in the state House, which returned $600 million in funding. To offset the restoration of education funding, state Republicans proposed cuts that would negatively impact low-income Pennsylvanians.

But now, the state Senate has passed an extraction fee on natural gas drilling — the first of its kind in the state. However, Corbett said yesterday that he would veto any fiscal plan that includes a tax or even an impact fee on natural gas extraction, preferring to wait for a study on the matter to be released:

“I think it’s more important to come up with a good policy rather than jamming one through under budget-deadline pressures,” Corbett said.

This veto threat puts him at odds with members of his own party in the legislature and comes despite the fee’s potential to raise more than $310 million over the next two years.

So why has Corbett adamantly opposed taxing the natural gas industry? One reason could be the massive amount of campaign contributions the industry has given the governor. Pennsylvania has no individual campaign finance limits, which has helped the industry donate more than $1,042,116 to Corbett’s campaign for governor and $361,207 to Corbett while he was the state’s attorney general.

Corbett has already repaid the industry by lifting a moratorium on new natural gas drilling on public lands, and by requiring his office’s approval before any regulations against natural gas companies can be enforced. Now, he would rather cut $500 million in education funding and eliminate health care coverage for 100,000 low income Pennsylvanian’s than tax the industry. He even suggested that public universities should pay for themselves by allowing natural gas drilling on their campuses.

Corbett’s support from the natural gas industry was a significant campaign issue, with his Democratic opponent saying, “He will defend their profits and not do anything for taxpayers.” Throughout the campaign, however, Corbett said he was “not beholden to any” of his donors. But now it seems that Corbett would rather side with his donors from natural gas companies than his states’ students, poor, and those who will be impacted by increased gas drilling.

–Sean Savett

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NEWS FLASH

Olbermann debut on Current TV tops CNN in key demo | Politico reports: “‘Countdown’ drew 179,000 viewers in the 25-54 demographic – not enough to beat MSNBC’s 237,000 viewers, but enough to beat CNN’s 89,000.” Prior to last night, Current TV averaged about 30,000 total viewers a night in primetime. Politico concludes that “Current’s big bet on Olbermann is looking sound.”

Justice

Georgia Immigration Law Could Force Taxi Drivers To Check Passengers’ Immigration Status

By Andrea Nill Sanchez on Jun 21, 2011 at 7:00 pm

Yesterday, a federal judge heard arguments in the legal challenge brought against Georgia’s new immigration law by advocacy and civil rights groups. The plaintiffs in the case argue that the law — modeled after Arizona’s immigration legislation — is federally preempted, would promote racial profiling, and violate the Fourth Amendment. Those aren’t the only problems with Georgia’s new immigration policy.

Several taxi companies and more than 2,000 cab drivers have filed their own lawsuit against the law. Their grievance has to do with a specific provision which would make it a misdemeanor to transport fewer than seven undocumented immigrants and a felony to drive any more than that. The cab drivers claim that this would burden them with the responsibility of checking the immigration status of each and every one of their passengers. (Not to mention the potential invasion of privacy that the law would inflict on their customers). The Atlanta Business Chronicle reports:

On Monday, an Atlanta attorney Quinton Washington of the law firm Bell & Washington LLC, WXIA reporter Jeff Hullinger there are unintended consequences of the law that could affect passengers. Washington said if a cab or limo drivers is pulled over for speeding, or for a broken taillight, police have the right to ask for proof of citizenship of passengers. [...]

A concern is that many immigrants use cabs to buy groceries and run other errands, and cab drivers don’t want to be responsible for asking all of them for documentation paperwork.

“It is our hope that the legislature and local law enforcement authorities would not seek to penalize drivers for simply taking people from point A to point B,” stated Washington.

The attorney in the suit also noted that the immigration law doesn’t just raise legal issues for the taxi cab industry, it also carries implications for public transportation workers and other transportation companies. “Right now MARTA could be fined under this,” Washington said. “They don’t have a common carrier exception for buses and MARTA, etc. They only have exceptions for people transporting known undocumented persons if they are going to judicial proceedings and told to do so by the courts.”

Along similar lines, during yesterday’s hearing, the federal judge also questioned whether U.S. citizens should be prosecuted for driving their undocumented immigrant parents to the grocery store. The judge indicated that he will issue his decision on whether to enjoin the law before July 1, when it is scheduled to take effect.

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Yglesias

Don’t Look To The Courts As An Engine Of Social Change

By Matthew Yglesias on Jun 21, 2011 at 6:57 pm

Something that I think most people don’t realize is that for the vast majority of American history, the judicial branch has been a very conservative elite-dominated institution. Most people’s view of the matter is distorted by the historical aberration that occurred roughly between the Brown and Roe decisions, with a lot of good criminal justice decisions in between. Even there, one has to recall that with its landmark civil rights decisions, the Supreme Court was in large part just reversing what the late 19th century Supreme Court did by throwing out the civil rights legislation of the Grant administration.

I think Dahlia Lithwick’s take on the conservative opinion written on the Wal-Mart sex discrimination case illustrates the point:

A lot of critics are saying that this decision has created a new rule: Some companies are simply too big to sue. But that’s only half the story. The other half is that in the court’s eyes, sex discrimination is simply too pervasive to be a problem. [...]

Scalia concludes that (even in advance of a lawsuit) the women could not show that Wal-Mart “operated under a general policy of discrimination.” That’s partly because “Wal-Mart’s announced policy forbid sex discrimination” and partly because he rejects the plaintiffs’ claim that Wal-Mart’s “policy” of allowing discretion by local supervisors over employment matters constitutes a policy at all. As Scalia sees it, in giving local managers so much leeway in making personnel decisions, Wal-Mart actually established “a policy against having uniform employment practices.” It’s not Wal-Mart discriminating against women. It’s just all these men doing it, and God knows men don’t have unconscious biases and prejudices against women.

Imagine that general background social conditions in the United States are such that women will be disadvantaged in any male-run institution that doesn’t make a specific and deliberate effort to lean against that disadvantage. Scalia says, basically, so what? Lithwick is implicitly saying that the courts ought to be a mechanism of justice and progress here, spurring firms to worry that they’ll be at risk unless they take proactive measures to reduce gender discrimination throughout their operations. Scalia’s not interested. And realistically, this is the reaction we should generally expect from the judiciary when it comes to these business liability cases. Fundamentally, fancy lawyers are just as much the social peers of business executives as ordinary politicians are, but fancy lawyers aren’t accountable to voters the way ordinary politicians are.

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Economy

Romney Likens Bank Regulators To ‘Gargoyles’ To Attack Financial Reform

By Pat Garofalo on Jun 21, 2011 at 6:45 pm

Last month, 2012 Republican presidential hopeful Mitt Romney indicated that he is open to repealing at least large swathes of the Dodd-Frank financial reform law, even as the country is still recovering from the effects of the 2008 financial crisis. “The level of over-regulation and burden which has been placed on the financial services sector I think is unnecessary and will cost us jobs down the road,” Romney said.

Upping his attack on financial reform, Romney said yesterday that bank regulators are akin to “gargoyles,” looming over banks and scaring them into not making loans:

Romney said the Democratic-led overhaul has created “uncertainty” that paralyzes Main Street. “Banks are afraid to make loans right now because of the government hanging over them like gargoyles,” Romney, a former Massachusetts governor and business executive, said during the roundtable discussion…“Almost everything the president did had the opposite effect of what was intended,” Romney said. “He said, okay, we’re not going to re-regulate the banking sector. Well, what he caused was the banking sector to pull back, and that’s the very sector that’s got to step forward to help get the economy on its feet again.”

Romney has previously defended Wall Street from criticism, saying that those pushing for stricter regulation were acting “as if Wall Street greed is something new.’’ Late last month, Romney delivered a speech in New York in an attempt “to woo Wall Street donors,” which netted him $1 million.

Contrary to Romney’s assertions, bank profits are booming: Banks made $29 billion in the first quarter of this year, “a 66.5 percent increase from the same period last year and the best quarterly performance since the second quarter of 2007.” And according to the Federal Reserve’s Survey of Senior Loan Officers, “for the last year or so, standards on loans to small firms have been easing.” The problem is that there is still little demand in the economy, so businesses have no customers and aren’t expanding. Banks are also hesitant to lend when the economic recovery is so sluggish

Republicans in Congress have made their contempt for bank regulators well known, gutting their budgets even as the regulators seek to implement the Dodd-Frank law. And it seems Romney is willing to play the same game, acting like the financial crisis simply didn’t occur.

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Alyssa

Closing Credits: del Toro to Cee-Lo

By Alyssa Rosenberg on Jun 21, 2011 at 6:31 pm

-New in government research: the military gives us Pandora for reading.

-If Guillermo del Toro makes Maleficent, can Selma Blair play the title role? I love the idea of Liz Sherman being able to turn into a dragon.

-Ian McShane will hang out with Snow White.

-I will be highly amused if Dan Snyder sues the Hollywood Foreign Press Association for saying mean things about him to Nikki Finke.

-Why haven’t you listened to Rave On Buddy Holly yet? Start with Cee-Lo’s contribution:

Then bop on over to NPR and stream the rest.

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Security

Neoconservatives Fight Back Against Isolationism Wing Of GOP

By Eli Clifton on Jun 21, 2011 at 5:45 pm

John McCain and Lindsey Graham

While House Republicans have spent the past few days threatening to defund the U.S.’s military involvement in the NATO mission over Libya, prominent neoconservative pundits and politicians are taking to the airwaves and oped pages to cajole, bully and threaten the GOP into a return to the aggressive foreign policy of the George W. Bush administration.

Sen. John McCain (R-AZ), an early supporter of the mission in Libya and an opponent of a withdrawal timetable in Afghanistan, picked up a familiar neoconservative talking point and invoked the history of the Great Depression and U.S. resistance to entering World War II. He said:

We cannot repeat the lessons of the 1930s when the United States of America stood by while bad things happened in the world. We are the lead nation in the world and America matters and we must lead, and sometimes that leadership entails sacrifice, sadly.

And both he and Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) have suggested that congressional opposition to the U.S.’s involvement in Libya might embolden Gaddafi.

Indeed the GOP primary field has shown growing ambivalence over the U.S.’ missions in Libya and Afghanistan. And neoconservatives are clearly attempting to reframe the right-wing U.S. foreign policy positon in a manner closer to how the George W. Bush administration operated abroad.

A letter by the Foreign Policy Initiative — i.e. Project for the New American Century (PNAC) 2.0 — warned against GOP support for defunding U.S. operations over Libya and lashed out at the White House for taking an insufficiently aggressive stance against Qaddafi. They wrote:

For the United States and NATO to be defeated by Muammar al-Qaddafi would suggest that American leadership and resolution were now gravely in doubt — a conclusion that would undermine American influence and embolden our nation’s enemies.

The Wall Street Journal’s Bret Stephens did his best to lay out what a more aggressive GOP foreign policy might look like and offered a laundry list of neoconservative policy prescriptions:

The U.S. would be credible if it desisted from pouring more diplomatic wine into the punctured jar that is the Israeli-Palestinian “peace process.” Or if it took serious steps to help overthrow the Assad regime, thereby depriving Iran of its principal ally in the Arab world and its link to Hezbollah in Lebanon. Or if it abandoned its nascent efforts to negotiate with the Taliban and instead published the names of Taliban leaders on the drone-strike list. Or if it dramatically increased the size of the U.S. Navy to counter China’s naval buildup. Or if it desisted from all rhetoric suggesting that it can solve its budget woes by further cutting Pentagon spending.

While neocons are making a full court press to offer an alternative, hawkish foreign policy that stands in contrast to both the positions expressed by House Republicans and the policies pursued by the White House, war weariness appears to be the dominant sentiment in the U.S. While a handful of neoconservative politicians and pundits will continue to beat the war drums, their efforts are starting to smack of desperation.

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Economy

Republicans Call Rule That Would Make Union Elections Fairer An ‘Outrage,’ ‘Misguided,’ And ‘Reckless’

By Pat Garofalo on Jun 21, 2011 at 5:45 pm

Today, the National Labor Relations Board announced a new rule aimed at speeding up the process for union elections, in an attempt to prevent employers from using the various tactics they break out to delay and ultimately undermine unionization drives. According to research by John-Paul Ferguson of Stanford Business School, 35 percent of the time that workers file a petition for a union election, the election does not occur due to the many steps that employers take — including bringing in anti-union consultants — to delay elections for weeks, if not years.

Currently, the average time between workers filing a petition for an election and the election taking place is 58 days, ample time for employers to engage in coercion and intimidation, or to fire pro-union workers (which happens in 25 percent of union drives). But congressional Republicans — who are whipped into an uproar by any step that favors workers over corporations — still screamed bloody murder over the change:

HOUSE LABOR COMMITTEE CHAIRMAN JOHN KLINE (R-MN) “urged the [NLRB] to ‘scrap’ what he called a ‘reckless’ and ‘job-destroying agenda.” “Not only will this misguided proposal to expedite union elections undermine an employer’s lawful right to communicate with his or her employees, it will cripple a worker’s ability to make an informed decision,” he said.

SEN. MIKE ENZI (R-WY): “This is just the latest outrage from a runaway agency.”

As the Center for American Progress’ David Madland wrote, the rule would simply “address the roadblocks that commonly are thrown up when the NLRB attempts to set up an election”:

The proposed rule would address the roadblocks that commonly are thrown up when the NLRB attempts to set up an election. There is currently no limit on employers’ or unions’ ability to demand a pre-election hearing on most any issue, including the eligibility of employees to vote, or the scope of the bargaining unit, which can be used to delay an election. Many of these issues could be resolved after voting, and others are manufactured for purposes of delay and don’t need to be resolved at all, ever. As former NLRB General Counsel Fred Feinstein explains, “The problem has been that a party in any election case has the ability to undermine the expression of employee free choice by manipulating Board procedures to create delay.”

As CAP CEO John Podesta wrote, “The rule won’t fix every barrier facing workers trying to organize, but it’s a common-sense step to help make the union election process more democratic and restore middle-class Americans’ foothold in the economy.” But for Republicans, any step that might aid workers in joining together to collectively bargain is to be treated with the utmost contempt.

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Politics

Nevada GOP Candidate Warns Of Impending Chinese Military Invasion In New Ad

By Guest Blogger on Jun 21, 2011 at 5:35 pm

Nevada state Sen. Mark Amodei (R) didn’t wait long after starting his campaign for his state’s unfilled House seat before dabbling in xenophobia. Amodei, the GOP nominee for Nevada’s second congressional district special election in September, launched his three-day-old campaign with a television ad telling viewers China’s debt holdings will soon allow the country to rise up and destroy U.S. sovereignty.

The commercial, which follows in the footsteps of China-bashing ads run by Citizens Against Government Waste and former Rep. Zack Space, depicts a Chinese news anchor in the near-future discussing the U.S. decline in the face of China’s imperial aspirations. “Their President Obama just kept raising the debt limit, and their independence became a new dependence. As their debt grew, our fortune grew, and that is how our great empire rose again,” she reports.

Running in the background are shots of Obama bowing to Chinese president Hu Jintao and a doctored image of the Chinese army marching with automatic rifles in front of the U.S. Capitol building as it flies the red Chinese flag. At its close, the ad cuts to an image of Amodei as he promises to “never vote to raise Obama’s debt limit and risk our independence.” Watch it:

Hyperbolic claims that U.S. independence is at risk from China’s increased ownership of the public debt is a thinly veiled attempt to play on some Americans’ xenophobia. At the end of the 2010 fiscal year, China owned just 9.5 percent of U.S. debt. But not only does Amodei ignore the facts regarding the national debt, the ad’s leap from the national debt ceiling to Chinese troops marching in front of the Capitol is simply preposterous.

But this fear-mongering may not be enough to save Amodei’s campaign once the debate focuses on his support for the GOP plan to turn Medicare into a voucher system.

– Sarah Bufkin

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