Failed former junior senator from Pennsylvania by way of Virginia, turned presidential hopeful, Rick Santorum speaks to a crowd at The Armory in Janesville, Wisconsin on March 27th during a campaign stop.

In this speech, he had been blasting Barack Obama for all things real and imagined. Then where this clip begins Santorum continues "We know the candidate Barack Obama...what he was like. The anti-war, government nig... (insert stumble here)."

Oh my.

Maybe he meant to say "Blah people" again? Then Santorum awkwardly attempts to continue with some other thought bubble that hatched in his head. (The original video of the speech is available here. The remarks in question take place at about 34:50.)

Meanwhile, Santorum's campaign staff are searching desperately for a word that starts with "nig" that sounds plausible:

“Oh, come on!” Santorum spokesman Hogan Gidley told Raw Story when asked for comment. “Give me a break. That’s unbelievable. What does it say about those that are running with this story that that’s where their mind goes. You know, I’m not going to dignify that with [a response].”

“That is absolutely ridiculous.”

EDITOR'S NOTE: The other slip here was to call the man who killed Osama "anti-war." Obama anti-war?! Rick must be thinking of some other blah person.

Activists take on Corbett's cuts in February

Working America, an affiliate organization of the AFL-CIO, is taking action against Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Corbett (R) and his cuts to public education. Corbett has significantly reduced the education budget, while giving away money to his corporate cronies:

Corbett and his allies sold the cuts as “fiscal responsibility” and “shared sacrifice” – tough decisions he needed to make to balance the budget. But the sacrifice is very much felt on one side: $860 million cut from public education last year, and deep cuts to everything from services for the disabled to unemployment insurance.

Meanwhile, with whom are students, teachers, the disabled, and the working poor “sharing” these sacrifices? The Delaware tax loophole, which allows Pennsylvania corporations to pay taxes in nearby Delaware, caused the Commonwealth to lose $493 million – money that could be invested in schools support the most vulnerable. That loophole has remained untouched by the Corbett Administration, as have other corporate giveaways.

Working America gathered stories of the pain Corbett's cuts have caused, including stories like this one from LaTonya Greene, mother and waitress:

This state budget has crushed education in PA, and we can’t afford for that to happen again this year. My six year-old son was in full-day kindergarten last school year, and he learned a lot. My daughter is in kindergarten now, but it was cut to half-day due to the budget cuts. She’s not learning, and I’m afraid she may have to repeat it.

My two year-old son entered an early childhood education program in September, but because of state budget cuts, it closed in November. To make things worse, some after-school programs here have been cut as well.

The government claims the state broke, but many corporations and gas companies here are getting richer, and not paying taxes. This is being done at the expense of our children’s education.

We need to make sure that our politicians know that we value education and want to see it funded in the state budget. Our elected officials need to put our kids over corporate profits, and finally require corporations to pay their fair share of taxes.

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In the immediate aftermath of Hurricane Katrina members of the media noticed there was widespread devastation in the South. Watching it on television, as a person of Southern heritage, to me it was clear: “Some of that was like that before the storm.” And it was. And it still is years later. Now since the Southern states have primaries for the next few weeks – combined with Mitt Romney doing his best Rand McNally material at campaign stops – the South is in the spotlight once again.

However, in this election cycle there are no real Southern candidates. Newt Gingrich represented Georgia but was born in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania (and retains that accent). To contrast that, both the Democratic National Convention and the Republican National Convention events are being held in southern states (North Carolina and Florida).

Here’s what the nation ignores unless there’s a disaster (or an election which could also qualify as a disaster): Of the bottom 10 poorest states in the union – nine of them are Southern states east of Texas. Mississippi is the poorest state of all. Child poverty. Unemployment. Under-employment. Lack of education. Lack of resources. The nation’s highest obesity rates are found south of the Mason-Dixon line.

Despite the conservative bona fides, the South isn’t pulling herself up by her bootstraps … mainly because she can’t see her toes she’s about to lose to diabetes. These are deeply and consistently Republican voters – but being poor and Republican is like being a cow and pro-leather. The South is a parable as to why that is: Their prejudices are being exploited to prod them into being against their own best interests.

In the South there’s been a long (and storied) resentment of outsiders coming in and telling them how to run their lives. But without fail, when the economy is bad anywhere – historically the first group to be blamed are the noobs. Hence why a new wave of anti-immigrant legislation has been pouring out of the southern region of the U.S.

Last year, Alabama passed HB 56 or Hammon-Beason Alabama Taxpayer and Citizen Protection Act which led to a mass exodus of labor in the state. There were reports of crops rotting in the fields and an estimated cost to the state in the billions. Now the governor of Mississippi has endorsed a similar plan. Capitalizing politicians will say these heavy-handed laws are to keep out illegal immigrants but in practice it’s anyone who looks vaguely foreign being forced to show their paperwork.

Not exactly the land of the free. And sure not Southern hospitality.

Are immigrants, as these laws imply, parasites on the system? It’s actually the poorest (and yes, Southern) states that are the ones not carrying their own weight. For every dollar Alabamans pay in federal taxes, they receive $1.66 in federal money. In Louisiana it’s $1.78 per dollar. Mississippi gets $2.02 per dollar they give the dreaded federal gubmint.

There’s a way to help this region get off the federal dole: Welcome immigrants.

California has a huge immigrant population (both legal and illegal) and while certainly not void of any problems, the state still boasts of having the 8th largest economy in the world. And grumble as you will about Californians, for every dollar they pay in federal taxes – the rest of the country receives nearly a quarter of it.

Southern conservatives can bemoan “paying for someone else’s birth control” but in this way the New England states are paying for “someone else’s” (namely the South’s) Lipitor.

Welcome immigrants. When you welcome immigrants - you welcome tourists, you welcome tax revenue and then, counter-intuitively, the South can be more self-reliant. That’s a conservative principle in a “severely” right-leaning culture.

The best thing the South can do to save herself is welcome the world. Be a place immigrants move to. Let smart people from other countries call themselves Alabamians. Let hard working people everywhere call Mississippi home. Welcome the world to the South.

Basically enact the opposite of HB 56.

Hopefully the Justice Department can effectively block this stuff and disappoint the ALEC-stacked state legislatures, because it's obviously aimed at suppressing Democratic voter turnout:

(Reuters) - The Obama administration on Monday blocked a new law in Texas requiring voters to show photo identification before they can cast a ballot, citing a concern that it could harm Hispanic voters who lacked such documents.

The law, which was approved in May 2011, required voters to show government-issued photo identification, such as a driver's license, military identification card, birth certificate with a photo, current U.S. passport, or concealed handgun permit.

The Justice Department said that data from Texas showed that almost 11 percent of Hispanic voters, or more than 300,000, did not have a driver's license or state-issued identification card, and that plans to mitigate those concerns were incomplete.

And in the meantime, a Wisconsin county judge has issued a permanent injunction against the state's new photo ID law:

Dane County Circuit Judge Richard Niess has issued a permanent injunction against Wisconsin's new photo ID law. In doing so, Niess became the second judge in less than a week to strike the new law, but the first one did so on a temporary basis.

Four lawsuits have been filed against the law requiring people to present a valid government-issued photo identification card in order to receive a ballot. Monday's ruling was in response to the suit the League of Women Voters of Wisconsin filed. It contends the provision violates Wisconsin's constitutional protections for voters.

[...] Voters had to follow the law during February's primary and no major problems were reported. Election officials were making preparations for Wisconsin's April 3 presidential primary when a much bigger turnout is expected.

The Supreme Court turned away a challenge to the Indiana voter ID law:

The 65 page PDF file, Crawford v. Marion County Election Board, the main opinion said " Valid neutral justifications for a nondiscriminatory law, such as SEA 483, should not be disregarded simply because partisan interests may have provided one motivation for the votes of individual legislators."

JUSTICE SCALIA, joined by JUSTICE THOMAS and JUSTICE ALITO, was of the view that petitioners’ premise that the voter-identification law might have imposed a special burden on some voters is irrelevant. The law should be upheld because its overall burden is minimal and justified.

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Earlier this week it happened again. We don't know all the details, but what we do know is this. A young man named T.J. Lane walked into high school—here in my home state of Ohio—approached a table full of kids and started shooting.

By the time the smoke cleared, three kids were dead. Three tragedies of unfulfilled dreams, unrealized potential, and abrogated Constitutional rights to "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness," their "general welfare" not protected by the state. More accurately, sacrificed on the altar of the arms industry's puffery and profit-driven deceit.

Like with any tragedy such as this, there were many handmaidens. Certainly, chief among them was the violence this young man bore witness to regularly, in a household reportedly filled with it. His parents, both charged with domestic abuse and other violent behavior in the past, seemingly helped nurture a disturbed and dangerous kid.

But it's also been reported that the killer's grandfather—from whom Lane accessed the gun used—had so many weapons lying around that he couldn't figure out a gun was missing until afterwards. Read that sentence again.

Teaching a child that violence solves everything and giving him access to an arsenal. That should make his family criminally liable—although, current Ohio law will not allow that to happen.

Perhaps, if Ohio state lawmakers hadn't been so busy letting fetuses testify or extending concealed-carry permits to drinking establishments (shots and shooting! Two pastimes that go hand-in-hand like crack cocaine and boating!), they could've found some time to work on that one.

Because, make no mistake, it's a love affair with guns by an obsessive and loud minority and the resulting lax regulation, which are key reasons these things just don't happen on a regular basis in any other Western country. While TJ Lane had easy pickings among a bevy of unaccounted-for weapons, the state of Virginia—under its culturally-Ragtime-Era governor—was removing a law that limited buyers to one handgun purchase per month.

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Conservatives really wanted a fight about religious freedom. It appeared to be an easy win: Make an ObamaCare mandate that insurers cover birth control into a war on religion. The GOP, void of any ideas Obama hasn’t contaminated by agreeing with, finds itself in an election year frantically looking for a bold battle cry. That sweet hot button issue that can excite their party and (hopefully) win them the White House (or maybe the Senate).

Their old standbys have fallen flat: Iran, abortion, climate change, child labor laws, and even gay marriage don’t have the sparkle they once had for the Grand Old Party.

Republicans can’t seem to get excited about Mitt Romney as their ‘80s-teen-movie-smug-rich-guy-stock-character nominee. Worse yet, he’s Mormon, which makes evangelical leaders grumble. So having a common enemy is the best way to bring everyone together for the proverbial good fight: Freedom.

“It’s important for us to win this issue,” Speaker John Boehner told reporters last week. “Our government for 220 years has respected the religious views of the American people and for all of this time there’s been an exception for those churches and other groups to protect the religious beliefs that they believe in. And that’s being violated here.”

Is Boehner coming out against anti-Sharia laws?! Or is he just conveniently forgetting the government isn’t always so deferential to the pious? Mormons had to forsake polygamy to gain statehood, for one. In 1862 the then-General Ulysses S. Grant expelled Jews from his district of Tennessee, Mississippi and Kentucky. And there were plenty of states where you couldn’t hold public office if you didn’t swear to believe in God (as opposed to Allah, Buddha or a flying plate of spaghetti) until the Torcaso v. Watkins decision in 1961.

This whole charade of religious freedom collapsed under the girth of Rush Limbaugh. He pivoted what was supposed to be a church and state issue into snickering about young women having sex. For three days Limbaugh railed on law student, Sandra Fluke, who testified for congressional Democrats, calling her a prostitute and a slut for speaking in public about the need for birth control coverage. So the GOP was trying to take the high (read: holy) road and there was their mouthpiece driving them all off a cliff demanding Ms. Fluke post sex videos on the Internet.

Now here’s the thing: Even Rick Santorum who (oddly) thinks birth control leads to more teen pregnancies – who has previously said states should have the right to ban contraception – now tells Piers Morgan, “It should be available.” This was tempered with the now irrelevant point about religious freedom. But even the way-out, cringe-inducing, extremist-in-a-sweater-vest has to confess birth control should be available.

Affordability is accessibility. If it’s out of your price range – it’s out of your grasp. It doesn’t matter if the pill is offered over-the-counter or in vending machines – if you can’t afford it – you can’t have it. Fluke’s testimony was not about the legality or morality of contraception – it was about students not being about to shell out over $1,000 a year for a medication in addition to purchasing medical insurance.

If Republicans admit they think birth control should be available – that means they believe it should be within price range.

The conservative talking point on health care reform was summed up by Rep. Virginia Foxx: “There are no Americans who don't have healthcare," adding, "Everybody in this country has access to healthcare." In other words: Everyone has access to cake!

We don’t say everyone accused of a crime has access to a lawyer without providing one. We don’t say everyone has access to police protection but charge more than anyone can pay. We don’t say every child has access to education but require an outrageous tuition. Access is not abstract … unless you’re a Republican lawmaker.

No, when you’re a Republican “access” gets muddied with whatever sham controversy they hope will help them. This week it’s basic health care services for women.

It's a good day for labor across the country as three anti-worker bills appear to have died in the legislatures of Arizona, Colorado and Pennsylvania. Arizona's was the worst, as it was a full-out assault on collective bargaining rights for state workers. It stalled in the state senate:

State Arizona Republicans acknowledged they don’t have enough votes to pass the bill. The collective bargaining bills were written with the help of the Goldwater Institute. The group flew in union-busting Governor Scott Walker from Wisconsin for an event late last year. The bills would have taken away the rights of unions to negotiate at the bargaining table.

The Professional Fire Fighters of Arizona are working with other public employee groups to engage elected officials to rally support and it has made a huge difference in this legislative session.

Unions are still fighting a dues deduction bill. The bill would ban government employees from having dues automatically deducted from their paychecks. The measure would also affect health insurance and deferred compensation deductions.

There is also an on-going push in Arizona to pay younger people less than the minimum wage.

Colorado Republicans failed in an attempt to make the state a right-to-work (for less) state:

Sources from the Colorado AFL-CIO have confirmed that Colorado Senate Bill 100 (Right to Work) has died in the Senate Business, Labor and Technology Committee.

SB 100 was sponsored by Tea Party State Senator Tim Neville.

Colorado voters previously defeated “Right-to-Work” in its 2008 form, Amendment 47. This round of “Right-to-Work” push was led by an adviser to the Independence Institute, Jeff Crank from Americans for Prosperity, The National Right to Work Committee, the Associated Builders & Contractors and Tony Gagliardi from the NFIB. The Colorado AFL-CIO alleges that “not one real worker or real business owner showed-up to back these extremists and it made them look pathetic.”

The bill died in a 4-2 vote.

Finally, Pennsylvania Republicans failed to weaken the state's prevailing wage statute:

An effort by Pennsylvania House Republicans to weaken the state’s prevailing wage law failed when, despite having the majority, they could not get enough votes. House Republicans claimed that raising the project cost threshold that triggers the prevailing wage from the current, 1961-established level of $25,000 would save local governments money. There is little evidence that this is true, however. In fact, many experts argue that raising the threshold would truly only guarantee that work would be done by under-trained, frequently non-union contractors, resulting in higher long-term costs.

The House GOP was stopped in its tracks by (gasp!) pro-labor Republicans, including roughly a dozen from the Philadelphia suburbs who refused to go along with party leadership because they believe the desired threshold of $185,000 is too high. Democrats, who opposed the bill, claimed it was an attack on PA workers.

These are all good signs that when we fight back, we can win, even in places where governors and legislatures are hostile to working families.

In Pennsylvania, cash-strapped Westmoreland County is leasing out their watershed - to a fracking operation:

Fracking began at Beaver Run in 2008 — one year, incidentally, after the municipal authority upheld a fishing ban in the reservoir due to public health concerns.

CNX says it has plans for up to 30 shale gas wells at the reservoir from five different drilling sites. Both CNX and the water authority have groundwater monitoring wells around the reservoir. As an extra precaution, CNX is drilling five well casings instead of the state-mandated two.

So far, the company has a good record at the site, without any violations from state regulators.

Still, many residents like Walter wonder how drilling was permitted in a reservoir watershed where virtually all other activities are banned. Others are angry they weren't informed about the gas development and feel excluded from a public decision.

When Joe Evans, a medical engineer and member of Citizens for the Preservation of Rural Murrysville, saw aerial maps of the reservoir in 2009, he was stunned.

"I was shocked that a process that I was finding to be dangerous was allowed to take place on a reservoir property, where even hiking and fishing from the banks is prohibited for fear of pollution," he said.

Brien Palmer, a business technology consultant and fellow member of the citizens group, said he's not opposed to gas drilling but questions the judgment of the water utility. "The fact that they would drill near a drinking water source first, and not as a last resort, is astonishing," he said. "I'm just not sure what I can say to someone who can't see the absurdity of fracking in a drinking well basin."

Daniel Jonczak, an electrical engineer who lives two miles from the Beaver Run Reservoir, says that he, too, is a far cry from an anti-drilling activist. He grew up in the 1970s, when Westmoreland County's streams flowed orange from acid mine drainage. So extreme was the damage, Jonczak laments, that local creeks were given names like coal tar run. Gas was always seen as less polluting.

Yet the decision to lease Beaver Run Reservoir has him extremely worried.

"Are we really sure what's going on with MAWC [Municipal Authority of Westmoreland County] and the water supplied to half of Westmoreland County?" asked Jonczak. "The chance of a spill is just too huge. I don't think they were aware of the risks."

An education expert says Gov. Tom Corbett's use of scare tactics to justify the Pennsylvania public schools budget is a textbook example of applying Naomi Klein's "Shock Doctrine" to education policy:

The citizenry is repeatedly told that the only way out of this budget crisis is to cut spending and that individual citizens (taxpayers) should not take on any of the burden. In fact, the propaganda leveled at the taxpayers also paints them as helpless victims that have been milked by greedy public-sector unions. In turn, the general public becomes very supportive of any promise to lift their burden and somewhat celebratory in watching their neighbors (public sector employees) lose, at a minimum, basic benefits.

However, what if the "financial crisis" was not real?

Now, I'm not saying that states and local governments aren't actually in debt; however, what if the proposed solutions (that are being accepted without any critical analysis because of the Shock Doctrine effect) end up (as stated above) costing more money than the proposed cuts? For example, in my home state of Pennsylvania, newly elected governor Tom Corbett has proposed cutting 586 million dollars from K-12 public schools to help cover a projected $4 billion deficit. And of course, with a hefty dose of "greedy teacher" rhetoric from right wing radio, he has been able to convince a large population in Pennsylvania to actively support these cuts in the name of helping the "financial crisis."

But one only need look at Corbett's proposed plans for public education to actually find out that Corbett is indeed using the Shock Doctrine to dupe the citizenry into supporting deep cuts to public schools. For example, State Department of Education spokesman Steve Weitzman was quoted as saying, "The presumption of steady, unbroken revenue increases year after year no longer is feasible. The day of reckoning has come." Sounds shocking, right? What exactly does he mean by the day of reckoning?

Well, it has nothing to do with actually spending less on education. Yes, the Corbett administration plans on cutting $589 million from public school appropriations. And these cuts are devastating local school budgets and turning neighbor against neighbor in local communities. However, between maintaining the worthless PSSA system (NCLB) and implementing a set of new initiatives, the Corbett administration may end up actually spending close to one billion dollars.

The Corbett administration supports funding a voucher system that has been demonstrated not to raise achievement test scores and ends up costing taxpayers more money. Voucher programs are not funded by some magical pot of money. Taxpayers pay for them!

Corbett also wants to develop a grading system for public schools that has the ability to wreak chaos on property values. The governor plans to implement the Keystone exams (exit exams) that national research has shown add nothing to a child's education, and in the state of California is estimated to cost over $500 million dollars a year to administer.

Additionally, Corbett wants to create a merit pay system for teachers that will narrow the curriculum, end teacher collaboration and cost taxpayers even more money.

As Diane Ravitch recently pointed out, "when the Vanderbilt study of merit pay was published, the U.S. Department of Education immediately released nearly $500 million for -- what else -- more merit-pay programs, and promised that another $500 million would be forthcoming. Data mean nothing when your mind is made up."

Therefore, Corbett's plans for public schools will end up costing taxpayers more than the initial $589 million cut.

Communities need to speak up and recognize the "shock." Local schools are making significant cuts to programs that benefit children and the communities they serve. But why should they if the Corbett administration plans on actually spending more for its own politically-driven initiatives that are specifically designed to dismantle the public school system? I guess the "day of reckoning" is really facing the fact that the Corbett administration is using the "financial crisis" as a way to push a market-driven reform strategy that will destroy local community-schools (Shock Doctrine).

These days the news cycle is compressed and chaotic. About the time I think it's safe to look at something longer than 5 minutes, something else blows up. Rest assured, it's all intentional.

Just for the heck of it, I decided to look at the top news in six key states: Ohio, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Kansas, Florida, Wisconsin and Arizona. Here are some samples of the headlines:

• Michigan - Emergency manager bill headed to Michigan governor

  LANSING, Mich. Emergency financial managers appointed by the state to run struggling cities and schools would have broad new powers under legislation approved by the Michigan House.

  The main bill in the package was approved Tuesday by a 62-48 vote in the Republican-led chamber. The Senate has passed the bill, which now goes to Gov. Rick Snyder for signature.

  Managers who are appointed would have the power to terminate union contracts held by school teachers and local government employees. Local elected officials would lose some of their powers.

• Ohio - Gov. Kasich Proposed Budget Cuts

  From the sidebar:

  • Libraries will see a 5 percent cut.
  • A 25 percent cut per year in the Local Government Fund for two years.
  • An 11.5 percent cut in K-12 education for fiscal year 2012 and a 4.9 percent cut for fiscal year 2013. That includes elimination of one-time federal stimulus money.
  • Closing seven regional Taxpayer Service Centers, including one in Youngstown, and eliminating 99 jobs. That’s a savings of $1 million over the two years, not including the staff reductions.
  • A 6 percent cut in fiscal year 2012 for the state’s seven business incubators, including the one in Youngstown, and the elimination of all funding for the incubators in 2013 to save a total of $15.9 million over two years. The state is expected to fund the incubators through the new JobsOhio program in 2013, however.

• Pennsylvania - Corbett, Legislature sued over adultBasic expiration
  

  Gov. Tom Corbett and other state officials have been named as defendants in a lawsuit for allowing the expiration of adultBasic, a state health insurance program for the working poor.

  [...]

  The complaint alleges that the state government is violating the law ­-- specifically, the Pennsylvania Tobacco Settlement Act and the state constitution -- by allowing adultBasic funding to drop to zero. That's because the state law, according to the complaint, requires that a portion of the annual tobacco settlement money go to adultBasic.

  The governor on Monday reiterated that the state was trying to save money.

  "I would remind everybody, including those people who have filed the lawsuit against whoever they have filed the lawsuit, that this was a program that was not sufficiently funded," Mr. Corbett.

• Kansas - Kan. governor details budget cuts
  

  Gov. Sam Brownback is cutting $56.5 million from the current Kansas budget, taking the biggest chunk from aid to the state's 289 public school districts.

• Florida - Florida governor's budget will hurt schools: Moody's
  

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