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Alabama’s GOP Governor Calls On Romney To Release More Tax Returns: ‘Release Everything To The American People’

By Judd Legum on Jul 14, 2012 at 4:47 pm

In a series of interviews yesterday, Mitt Romney mainatined he would only release tax returns dating back two years. Romney told CNN, “that’s all that’s necessary for people to understand something about my finances.”

Robert Bently, the Republican Governor of Alabama, isn’t satisfied. The AP has the story:

Pressure was building on Romney from within his own party to be more forthcoming with his finances, a day after he declared he would not release past income tax returns beyond his 2010 tax records and, before the November election, his 2011 taxes.

On the sidelines of the National Governors Association meeting in Williamsburg, Alabama’s Republican governor, Robert Bentley, called on Romney to release all the documents requested of him.

“If you have things to hide, then maybe you’re doing things wrong,” Bentley said. “I think you ought to be willing to release everything to the American people.“

Ana Navarro, a prominent Republican strategist, has also called on Romney to release more tax returns, telling Politico “I wish he’d hurry up and release more tax returns so this distraction would go away.”

Romney’s father, George Romney, released 12 years of tax returns when he ran for President in the 1960s. Romney provided John McCain with 23 years of tax returns when he was being considered for the Vice Presidential nomination in 2008.

Update

ABC News has the video:

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Politics

Republican Congressman: States Can Ban Birth Control, But Not Foie Gras

By Zack Beauchamp on Jul 14, 2012 at 4:14 pm

Steve King.

Californians have recently voted to enact laws banning the sale and production of both eggs from cruelly housed hens and foie gras, a delicacy created by force-feeding ducks. While this may seem within the legal bounds of a state’s ability to regulate local commerce, one Congressman is up in arms about it: Steve King (R, IA). King, despite being one of the most outspoken proponents of states’ rights in Congress, is so convinced that California’s laws violate the Commerce Clause that he pushed through legislation overturning the animal rights acts and similar statutes in other states:

Rep. Steve King, an Iowa Republican who represents the country’s leading egg-producing state, said he introduced the amendment because the California law and others like it “scrambles and creates a patchwork quilt of state regulations.”

“If California wants to regulate eggs that come into the state, fine,” King said. “But don’t be telling the states that are producing a product that’s already approved by the USDA or the FDA how to produce that product.”

He said that the California requirement violates the commerce clause of the Constitution, which gives the federal government jurisdiction over interstate commerce issues.

King believes the entire Affordable Care Act – not simply the mandate, but the whole law – is an unconstitutional use of federal power under the Commerce Clause. This means that, according to King, any federal regulation of the insurance industry is unconstitutional. King also thinks states can ban contraception. These radical beliefs aren’t a surprise: King adheres to an extreme interpretation of the Tenth Amendment which aims to gut federal power.

So King appears to to think federal regulation of farming is constitutional, but regulation of the health care industry is not. A state ban on birth control is fine, but banning foie gras isn’t.

Of course, King has a perfectly good reason for going against his principles: saving his own skin. King is in the midst of a bruising reelection battle as a consequence of redistricting. The largest industry spending on his behalf is big agribusiness, which isn’t thrilled about California’s laws. King’s home state of Iowa has no standards for ethical caging of egg-producing hens, a fact which was linked to a significant salmonella outbreak in 2010.

King’s bill is so broadly worded that it might also overturn state safety standards for other agricultural products, including fruit, milk, and vegetables. It is currently attached as an amendment to the House Farm Bill, which would also take food stamps away from millions of needy Americans.

Climate Progress

Will The Epic Drought ‘Darken Obama Reelection Prospects’?

By Joe Romm on Jul 14, 2012 at 3:44 pm

I’m bringing back the question of the week. This one is inspired by a Christian Science Monitor story, and this  stunning map  of US drought conditions:

The story, “Drought threatens to darken Obama reelection prospects,” opines in its sub-hed:

With nearly two-thirds of the US enduring drought conditions, food prices are expected to jump ahead of the November election. That could add to voter anxieties about the economy.

Certainly one of the biggest impacts of warming-driven drought and extreme weather is food insecurity (see “Climate Story of the Year: Warming-Driven Drought and Extreme Weather Emerge as Key Threat to Global Food Security” and links below).

And this drought is (almost) as brutal as it gets:

The PDSI [Palmer Drought Severity Index] in the Great Plains during the Dust Bowl apparently spiked very briefly to -6, but otherwise rarely exceeded -3 for the decade (see here). Nearly half the country is now -3 or worse.

If you want to see how these drought indices stack up against the historical record since 1895, click here. For the nation as a whole, the PDSI is in the lowest 1%. Over much of the Midwest is just about the worst drought ever.

The Monitor story explains the impact of the current drought on crops:

Read more

NEWS FLASH

Iowa Republican Suspends State Senate Campaign, Appoints Herself Senator Of Alternative Form Of Government | A Republican state Senate candidate in Iowa has suspended her campaign and appointed herself a senator of an alternative form of American government. “I have been honored to be Iowa’s Republican Candidate for The Office of State Senator in District 34,” Randi Johnson writes in a letter to supporters. “I have become aware of the existence of the Original Republic for The United States of America,” she continues. “In order to affect the most good on behalf of The People of Iowa’s 34 th District and in keeping with my conscience, I have accepted the position of U.S. Senator in The Republic of The United States of America.” The libertarian group Johnson is a part of claims the “United States Corporation” was unlawfully “formed in 1871 without the American people’s consent.”

Health

Aetna Shareholders ‘Dismayed’ Over Insurer’s Donations To Anti-Obamacare Campaigns

By Igor Volsky on Jul 14, 2012 at 12:18 pm

A group of Aetna shareholders is challenging the health insurer for donating to the American Action Network and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce — two organizations dedicated to undermining Obamacare.

Aetna donated over $7 million to the two groups during the Democrats’ effort to enact health care reform, though the contributions did not become public until this year, when the company accidentally “made the disclosure in a year-end regulatory filing with the National Association of Insurance Commissioners.”

In a latter to Aetna on Monday, the shareholders claim that the company did not comply with disclosure policies or inform its investors about the donations:

“We believe Aetna is not in compliance with its corporate political and lobbying disclosure policy, a policy which we negotiated and expected would be met in spirit and in letter,” read the Monday letter to Aetna CEO and President Mark Bertolini from Mercy Investment Services Inc. and the Sisters of Charity of Saint Elizabeth, two Catholic groups with investments in Aetna. [...]

But in their recent complaint to Aetna, the Catholic investors point to a 2007 letter of agreement in which Aetna promised shareholders that it would disclose all expenditures for lobbying and political purposes, as well as trade association payments and grass-roots spending. The Aetna policy followed a 2006 shareholder resolution calling for the company to disclose its political spending.

“We, investors, withdrew the resolution in good faith expecting that the resolution establishing oversight and transparency would be followed, revised as best practices evolved and in place for reference by the members of the committee preparing the annual reports,” read the letter. In an interview, Sister Valerie Heinonen, one of the letter’s authors, said investors were “dismayed” that the agreed-on policy had not been followed.

Aetna maintains that it intended the funds to be use for educational purposes, yet both the American Action Network and the Chamber are still fighting reform. Just days after the Supreme Court’s decision upholding the constitutionality of the law, AAN announced a $1.2 million advertising campaign urging Republicans to repeal the Affordable Care Act.

Related Posts

Climate Progress

Smoking Causes Cancer. Carbon Pollution Causes Extreme Weather.

By Climate Guest Blogger on Jul 14, 2012 at 10:30 am

by Dan Lashof, via NRDC’s Switchboard

We dump billions of tons of carbon pollution into the atmosphere each year. As a result, the concentration of carbon dioxide has increased by 40%. Excess carbon dioxide traps excess heat in the atmosphere. Excess heat causes extreme heat waves, droughts, and storms.

And that’s what we have been seeing. In June alone, 170 all-time high temperature records were broken or tied in the United States, and more than 24,000 daily high temperature records have been broke so far this year. If the climate weren’t changing, we would expect to see about the same number of record highs and record lows set each year due to random fluctuations. That’s what we were seeing fifty years ago, but during the last decade there were twice as many record highs as record lows. So far this year the ratio has been 10 to 1.

This year’s extreme weather follows last year’s. The last twelve months were the hottest on record for the United States. Texas saw its hottest and driest summer on record in 2011 by a wide margin, and research published this week shows that carbon pollution dramatically increased the probability of such extreme heat and drought.

Faced with similar information about the carcinogens in cigarette smoke, the mechanism by which these carcinogens cause genetic mutations, and the statistical relationship between smoking and cancer, the Surgeon General says that smoking causes cancer. Of course that doesn’t mean that every individual case of cancer experienced by a smoker can be definitively attributed to smoking. But the Surgeon General does not feel compelled to say that every time she says that smoking causes cancer. And journalists don’t feel compelled to include that caveat every time they write an article about the health toll of smoking.

The Surgeon General’s warning hasn’t always been this clear. In 1966, when cigarette packages were first required to carry a warning, the package said “Cigarette Smoking May be Hazardous to Your Health.” A few years ago a similarly tepid warning may have been appropriate for carbon pollution. Not anymore.

The data are in. It’s time for scientists and journalists to just say it: Carbon pollution causes extreme weather.

Dan Lashof is the director of the National Resources Defense Council’s climate and clean air program. This piece was originally published at NRDC’s Switchboard and was reprinted with permission.

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