ProPublica describes what the state of Ohio is doing to protect the public from radioactive waste fracking creates. Long story short: they ain't doing much -- rather than have their weak proposals debated in public, Ohio legislators slipped them into a massive 4,000 page-plus budget bill, just like they all do when they want to hide something. The good news is that, after public pressure, they got cold feet and stripped them out -- they put them back in and passed the bill, of course, but that only instructs us that we need to keep the pressure on longer. (As an aside, some of Ohio's gas drillers are real pricks.)
Gordon Lafer instructs us how a private school chain called Rocketship actually hurts the poor children it's supposed to serve. Key quotation: "It appears the question [Rocketship] aims to answer is not simply, 'How can we do better by poor kids?' but rather, 'How can we educate poor kids while generating a 15 percent rate of return for investors?'" And Rocketship fails at even its stripped-down, no-gym-or-art curriculum -- while making its bosses a pile of money, almost like that's the idea.
The Center for Effective Government tells us "What We Could Invest In If We Ended Special Corporate Tax Breaks." Long story short: a lot -- just six of the 55 expired corporate tax breaks total over $300 billion over 10 years, whereas we just cut food stamps by $50 billion over 10 years. Something else you may not know: cutting Meals on Wheels by nearly $40 million added nearly $500 million to Medicaid costs, since those seniors getting Meals on Wheels now needed full nursing home care to get fed. Sounds dumb, doesn't it? But the politicians who come up with this stuff aim for dumb. I'm convinced of it.
Finally, the front-runner but for how long? in Georgia's U.S. Senate Republican primary, David Perdue, suggested to the Macon Telegraph that he would be open to increasing revenue as part of a deficit-reduction plan. Furthermore, he did not deny that "increasing revenue" could include tax hikes (versus, you know, tax hikes disguised as "fees" and whatnot), and even said his business background taught him that "I was never able to turn around a company just by cutting spending. You had to figure out a way to get revenue growing." His spokeshack later tried to walk all that back, but his explanation shouldn't convince anyone who can read. I suppose we'll see about this race, which has approximately ten bazillion candidates, none of whom were exactly running away with it.
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