E.J. Dionne Jr. – Don’t spin the Civil War

After the war, in one of the great efforts of spin control in our history, both Davis and Stephens, despite their own words, insisted that the war was not about slavery after all but about state sovereignty. By then, of course, slavery was "a dead and discredited institution," McPherson wrote, and to "concede that the Confederacy had broken up the United States and launched a war that killed 620,000 Americans in a vain attempt to keep 4 million people in slavery would not confer honor on their lost cause."

Why does getting the story right matter? [T]here is to this day too much evasion of how integral race, racism and racial conflict are to our national story. We can take pride in our struggles to overcome the legacies of slavery and segregation. But we should not sanitize how contested and bloody the road to justice has been.

E.J. Dionne Jr. – Don’t spin the Civil War

ThinkProgress » Gov. Scott Walker Chose Top Donor’s 26-Year-Old Dropout Son Over PhD And Engineer

On Monday, ThinkProgress noted that Gov. Scott Walker (R-WI) was using state funds to pay more than $81,500 a year to Brian Deschane, a 26-year-old son of a major campaign donor with no college degree and two drunken-driving convictions. The job involved overseeing state environmental and regulatory issues and managing dozens of Commerce Department employees.

Yesterday, after the media reported on the hiring, Walker abruptly reversed course and removed Deschane from his position. Despite calling Deschane a “natural fit” just last week, Walker spokesman Cullen Werwise said Tuesday that the Governor decided “to move in another direction” after learning of the details of the appointment.

Yet, Deschane will still serve in the Administration, returning to his previous job where he made $64,000 a year.

ThinkProgress » Gov. Scott Walker Chose Top Donor’s 26-Year-Old Dropout Son Over PhD And Engineer

Cal Thomas: Spreading Wealth the Right Way  

There is a kind of wealth spreading, however, that ought to meet the political litmus test of conservative Republicans, liberal Democrats and radical Independents. At a time of high unemployment, … it is disheartening to see so many CEOs having recovered enough from their personal recession to pay themselves salaries and benefits that would have shamed the super-rich in America’s Gilded Age.

USA Today reported last week in a story on CEO compensation that "three-quarters of CEOs got raises — and, in many cases, the increases were substantial." Employee pay, on the other hand, effectively stalled. Median CEO pay, reported the newspaper, increased 27 percent last year, meaning the average CEO received $9 million in 2010. Even in a struggling economy, I wager most people could get by on $9 million a year. …

If I were a CEO being paid such astronomical amounts and people were being laid off, or struggling in a recession, at least in part due to the lack of pay increases, I would feel morally obligated to take less money. I would ask the chief financial officer of my company to share some of my wealth with loyal employees so that they could continue caring for their families.

One doesn’t have to be a liberal who believes in income redistribution to see the unfairness in disproportionate pay. Think of the kudos and favorable press coverage that would come to a corporate chief who shared his wealth, rather than lay off employees. …

Five CEOs saw a slight decline in compensation, according to the USA Today/GovernanceMetrics international data, but they still earned more than most lottery winners receive.

President Obama has spoken of some of these CEOs as not "needing" the money they get. Again, that is a subjective judgment. What he should be doing is shaming those companies that lay off workers while paying their top management such exorbitant salaries and benefits. Stockholders ought to demand that no competent worker should be laid off if a CEO earns above a certain amount of money. Stockholders also have a moral responsibility beyond the dividends they receive.

Making money is a noble American objective, making a living is a nobler one. Corporations ought to have enough decency and compassion to make sure no worker is let go solely to increase the bottom line or pad the boss’s pockets with more money than he (or she) can ever hope to spend in a lifetime.

Cal Thomas

ThinkProgress » Bank Of America Paid Nothing In Federal Income Taxes Last Year And Got Almost $1 Billion From Taxpayers

[S]ome of the country’s biggest corporations are getting away without being asked to pay anything at all. In 2009, mega corporations like Boeing and General Electric managed to avoid paying a penny in federal taxes — while also netting enormous benefits in tax benefits and subsidies.

Now, with many companies releasing their financial reports for 2010, it appears that Bank of America — the nation’s largest bank — has gone a second year in a row paying absolutely no federal corporate income taxes. In fact, not only did the company use its losses to avoid paying taxes last year, but it actually reported a tax benefit of almost a billion dollars …

ThinkProgress » Bank Of America Paid Nothing In Federal Income Taxes Last Year And Got Almost $1 Billion From Taxpayers

ThinkProgress » After Paying Zero Income Taxes, GE Plans To Ask Its Union Workers To Make Wage And Benefits Concessions

Last week, the New York Times reported that, despite making $14.2 billion in profits, General Electric, the largest corporation in the United States, paid zero U.S. taxes in 2010 and actually received tax credits of $3.2 billion dollars. The article noted that GE’s tax avoidance team is comprised of “former officials not just from the Treasury, but also from the I.R.S. and virtually all the tax-writing committees in Congress.”

After not paying any taxes and making huge profits, ThinkProgress has learned that General Electric is expected to ask its nearly 15,000 unionized employees in the United States to make major concessions.

ThinkProgress » After Paying Zero Income Taxes, GE Plans To Ask Its Union Workers To Make Wage And Benefits Concessions

Reminds me of the definition of chutzpah: killing both parents and asking for mercy as an orphan. Rob the public and the workers.

ThinkProgress » REPORT: From Poll Taxes To Voter ID Laws: A Short History of Conservative Voter Suppression

The Bush administration’s five-year national “war on voter fraud” resulted in only 86 convictions of illegal voting out of more than 196 million votes cast. Instead conservatives are employing an old tactic: using the specter of false voting to restrict the voting rights of minorities and the poor.

ThinkProgress » REPORT: From Poll Taxes To Voter ID Laws: A Short History of Conservative Voter Suppression

ABQJOURNAL OPINION/LETTERS: LETTERS TO THE EDITOR

Hardly a Call To Man Ramparts
        THE MARCH 16 front page Journal story states that Secretary of State Dianna Duran found 117 people who were registered to vote who were foreign nationals when they applied for their licenses, and 37 had voted between 2003 and 2010.
        A scandal in the making? Hardly. Consider this: 3.8 percent, or 36,122, of registered voters in New Mexico were "New Americans" — naturalized citizens or the U.S.-born children of immigrants who were raised during the current era of immigration from Latin America and Asia that began in 1965 — according to an analysis of 2006 Census Bureau data.
        Now I don’t know how many were naturalized between 2003 and 2010, but I personally have attended two very inspiring naturalization ceremonies over the last three years where more than 500 were naturalized. And, unlike many citizens born in the United States, they register to vote and take their duty to vote seriously.
        RICHARD P. MASON
        Rio Rancho

ABQJOURNAL OPINION/LETTERS: LETTERS TO THE EDITOR

The same people who are certain that *Democrats* are stealing elections seem unconcerned by the fact that voting machine makers support Conservatives. And let’s not even re-live Republican shenanigans of 2000 – I hate seeing red-faced Scalia’s spittle-soaked disdain.

ThinkProgress » Birther Donald Trump: I’m ‘Really Concerned’ That ‘Obama Was Not Born In This Country’

[The Donald] wants Obama to present a Certificate of Live Birth, but here it is, widely available on the internet, as it has been for nearly three years.

Moreover, Trump’s argument isn’t even internally coherent. First he questions why no doctors or nurses in Hawaii remember Obama’s birth, noting “this is the president of the United States!” (It’s unclear if Trump believes Obama was born the president):

TRUMP: Hey look, you have no doctors that remember. You have no nurses — this is the president of the United States! — that remember. That ad that was placed in the Houston paper — that was placed in the paper days after he was born. So he could have come into the country.

But just moments later, Trump doubts the governor of Hawaii Neil Abercrombie’s recollection of Obama’s birth, noting it was over 50 years ago. Abercrombie has said, “I knew his mom and dad. I was here when he was born.” Trump called for the governor to be “be investigated” for lying about the memory:

TRUMP: You know what I get a kick out of? The governor of Hawaii says, oh I remember when Obama was born. I doubt it! I think this guy should be investigated. He remembers when Obama was born? Give me a break! He’s just trying to do something for his party.

Trump seems to be leading yet another resurgence of the myth that “refuses to die” on the right — talk radio host Rush Limbaugh has been increasingly focusing on the issue, and praised Trump for providing a “valuable service” by questioning it; on Friday, Fox News host Sean Hannity refused to believe that Obama had released his birth certificate; and potential 2012 candidates like Michele Bachmann and Mike Huckabee have been hitting the issue as well lately.

ThinkProgress » Birther Donald Trump: I’m ‘Really Concerned’ That ‘Obama Was Not Born In This Country’

I do hope The Donald continues his campaign. I’d love a Trump-Palin ticket as the last gasp of the Loony Right.

BTW: I was born in Hawai’i while it was still a Territory of the United States. And, no, you can’t see my fucking birth certificate.