Taxes are on the minds of many this week as April 15th approaches. They're also on the minds of many conservative governors -- in states such as Louisiana, Ohio, Oklahoma, and Nebraska -- who have seen their radical tax proposals to further enrich corporations and the wealthy run into major resistance from voters, businesses, and even conservative lawmakers. Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal, who this week withdrew his regressive plan that would have eliminated the state income tax while raising the sales tax, has seen his standing drop sharply in the polls. In the run up to Tax Day, increasing attention is being focused on how tax breaks for the wealthy and corporations increase burdens on the middle class.
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For-profit charter school companies and their allies were hoping to push so-called "parent trigger" bills this year in over a dozen states -- bills which purport to "empower" parents of poor-performing schools by allowing them to vote to turn over their neighborhood schools to private companies. But in state after state, parents themselves have been pushing back.
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Not content that parents with jobs have had to work increasingly long hours over the last thirty years, some conservative lawmakers would like to send their children to work, too.
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Recent laws in Nebraska and Oklahoma highlight how a number of right-wing state leaders are attacking women's reproductive freedom. These bills range from replacing the viability standard established by the U.S. Supreme Court, to forcing women to watch an ultrasound as their doctors explain the status of the fetus, to precluding women from suing their doctors if the latter misinforms women of the well-being of their fetuses.
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Right-wing legislators often disassociate gay rights from civil rights,
yet their actions demonstrate that hate against one group can inevitably
lead to the same toward another. Take Oklahoma, where several
right-wing lawmakers were livid following President Barack Obama's signing
of the Matthew Shepard and James Byrd, Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act
in October, extending federal hate crimes protections to the gay and
lesbian community.
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In a significant decision last month, an Oklahoma County District Court ruled that a 2008 anti-choice law violated the state constitution. The law in question (SB 1878)
was more burdensome than any prior bill regulating pre-abortion
ultrasounds passed in the country, requiring women to undergo an
ultrasound and listen to a doctor describe fetal characteristics before
consenting to the procedure. Opponents argued
that the law invades a woman's right to privacy and violates doctors'
freedom of speech.
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This was the first session after the Senate switched to a Republican
majority, giving the party control of the entire Legislature for the
first time in the state's history. With conservative members firmly in charge,
they began the session promising to remake government. Progressives
had good reason to worry that draconian measures were on the way.
While there were some bad laws passed this year, a combination of
compromise and gubernatorial vetoes meant that conservative gains were
evolutionary, not revolutionary.
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As we noted in the Dispatch a couple weeks ago, despite a dearth of recent successes and mounting fiscal crises in most states, rightwing voter ID legislation designed to suppress voter turnout continues to be pressed around the country. So far this year at least 17 states have seen bills introduced to institute or enhance ID requirements for voting or registration (AL, CO, GA, IN, MD, MN, MS, MO, NY, OK, RI, SC, TN, TX, UT, VA, WY). It appears we now know enough to predict the landscape of the voter ID battles in this legislative session.
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Direct democracy through popular intiatives and referenda began a
century ago as a grassroots, progressive reform aimed at circumventing
corrupt legislatures and increasing civic involvement. The long history of this reform
indicates that in the whole this experiment in direct popular
participation in the legislative process has been successful as an
avenue for passing populist policies that maintains the favor of
the public over time. However, throughout this history there have
also been attempts, sometimes successful, to manipulate the process and
the electorate into passing legislation that would not garner majority
support had voters possessed an accurate conception of its content and
effect.
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By one estimate, the federal government spent over $367 billion in 2005 aloneon subsidizing Americans' retirement savings and tax breaks to build upother assets like buying a home. Unfortunately, those subsidies gooverwhelmingly to those Americans who already have high-incomes; almostnone of it goes to the poorest Americans who need the most helpbuilding the financial assets that can lead to long-term economicopportunities and security.
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The
Oklahoma State Legislature adjourned late Friday, May 23, a week
earlier than constitutionally-mandated. Lawmakers closed the session
with an agreement on a $7.1 billion state budget for the next fiscal
year. Overall the short 16 week session led to a mix bag of results.
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Since the federal Help America Vote Act (HAVA) established the
requirement that first time voters present some form of identification
before voting in a federal election, voter identification requirements
of all sorts have been enacted across the country. Currently
26 states have laws that are more restrictive than the HAVA mandate,
and 21 states require ID from voters every time they vote. These laws have been passed by arguing they are necessary to prevent voter fraud, even though all evidence suggests that such fraud is extremely rare and poses no threat to the integrity of our voting systems. Instead, these fraud arguments have merely been a partisan tool, used for decades, to suppress turnout
among new groups entering the electorate in large numbers and
threatening the power of those currently in charge, whether they be
minorities, immigrants or students.
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With only 10 dissenting votes, the New Jersey Legislature has made the state's hate crimes and anti-bullying laws two of the strongest in the country. S2975 is notable for its unequivocal inclusion of transgender people in the state's hate crimes law, becoming the 12th state to do so, and for stronger anti-bullying measures in its safe schools law.
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The effects of the sub-prime lending disaster are
still
being felt as the stock market has been rocked in
recent weeks and many families find themselves locked out of the
mortgage market. As we
highlighted
in the past, the subprime mortgage market was largely aimed at
economically-strapped families trying to find some way to afford
homes. For low-income renters who never had the money to
even be in the game, rising rents have increasingly priced them
out of their homes.
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With new right-wing dominance of the state legislature, the Oklahoma session
was dominated by tax giveaways to business, extreme social legislation,
threats to consumer rights and one of the most anti-immigrant laws in the
country.
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Since the Bush administration first recognized the genocide in Darfur, over 250,000 men,
women, and children have died. This number does not count the countless
women and children that have been raped or attacked as a result of the
Sudanese government's campaign to kill and drive out Darfur's ethnic
African populations. The violence and genocide is now spilling over
into Chad and the Central African Republic. Yet, even with such
horrifying statistics, the situation deteriorates day by day.
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This past week, Illinois Governor Blagojevich signed
the first law in the nation that establishes the goal of
universally-available public preschool for all 3- and 4-year olds in
that state.
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Diving into the world of campaign finance and investigating the funders of the takings initiatives quickly reveals a number of organizations involved: Americans for Limited Government, America at Its Best, the Fund for Democracy, and Montanans in Action. What is odd, though, is that with more digging, they all appear to be funded and controlled by the same individual: New York Developer Howard Rich.
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