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Prison inmates are doing manual labor in Racine Wisconsin because Republican Governor Scott Walker took collective bargaining rights from public workers in his state to bust the unions. Michael Shure and Jayar Jackson discuss.

Alice Rivlin:
The debt ceiling is an artificial crisis; our real problem is committing to a long-term deficit reduction plan that cuts spending, raises revenues and addresses our expanding entitlement programs. More: http://goo.gl/wpd5p

One of the few pleasures, perverse though it be, of watching the debt-ceiling idiocy unfold has been the spectacle of the very powers who helped create the American far right—helped elect it, and contributed mightily to its ideology—pleading with the congressional Tea Party acolytes to support legislation (John Boehner’s latest effort in particular) to raise the debt ceiling. From Grover Norquist to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce to the guys who write those deranged Wall Street Journal editorials, the right wing’s powers-that-be have spent the past few days imploring the Tea Party congressmen, as one might a slow-witted and recalcitrant child, to realize that refusing to raise the debt ceiling, particularly now that all tax increases have been taken off the table, is a really, really bad idea.

“Boehner’s plan is the only way to bring spending down by the same amount the debt ceiling increases—without raising taxes,” Norquist, author and enforcer of the no-tax pledge, told Politico’s “Arena” column on Wednesday. (Actually, the same is true of Harry Reid’s plan, but no matter.) “It is a tremendous win for the forces of limited government.”

A similar caution was sounded by the Chamber, which contributed mightily (in dollars) to the Republicans’ congressional victory last fall. In a letter to Congress, as reported in Wednesday’s Wall Street Journal, Chamber Executive Vice President Bruce Josten told legislators that their vote on the Boehner plan would be one of the votes that the Chamber will use to rank members of Congress as pro- or anti-business. Nothing subtle about that. (more…)

One consequence of Republican victories last November has been an onslaught of state legislation to require voters to show photo identification at polling places. This push builds on GOP efforts over the past decade to tighten ID requirements; at least 18 states have enacted more stringent rules since 2003, including, most recently, South Carolina, Tennessee, and Texas.

Last week, 16 U.S. senators signed a letter to U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder calling on the Justice Department to investigate whether the new ID requirements comply with federal law. Representative Marcia Fudge of Ohio, a Democrat, is gathering signatures on a similar letter from House members and held a press conference Wednesday on Capitol Hill with civil-rights leaders, including the Reverend Jesse Jackson, to draw attention to her effort.

Research shows that voter fraud is very rare, so these laws are best understood as an underhanded form of partisan warfare. The roughly 11 percent of citizens, or 20 million Americans, who lack government ID are mostly nonwhite, young, or aged—groups that tend to vote Democratic. It is no exaggeration to say that new voter-ID laws could tip next year’s presidential election since such rules have been enacted or are pending in swing states like Wisconsin and Ohio, where electoral margins are often razor thin.

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Last night the Chicago Sun-Times broke the story that Tea Party freshman Rep. Joe Walsh (R-IL), who has spent months lecturing President Obama and Democrats on fiscal responsibility, owes $117,437 in child support to his ex-wife and three children. Laura Walsh has asked a judge to suspend his driver’s license until he pays his child support. Despite loaning his own campaign $35,000 — and paying himself back at least $14,200 for the loans — Walsh claims he failed to make the payments because he “had no money.”

The tax-bashing congressman campaigned on a pledge to reject the Washington “status quo” and has bragged about his own frugality, claiming he even sleeps in his congressional office to save money. Walsh, who’s been described as “the biggest media hound in the freshman class,” has been a prominent voice in the debt ceiling showdown in recent weeks, making television appearances almost every day to denounce President Obama’s “reckless spending,” which he says has “bankrupted this country.”

“I won’t place one more dollar of debt upon the backs of my kids and grandkids unless we structurally reform the way this town spends money!” Walsh says in one video. But today, when confronted in a CNN interview about his failure to support his own children, Walsh not only refused to acknowledge his hypocrisy but insisted that being a deadbeat dad meant he understood the plight of average Americans:

I know that story just broke, and it’s interesting that it just broke right now as I’m out there trying my best to fight this President and fight the Democrats and solve this debt crisis. But look, I’m the most openly vetted candidate in the world. I have had financial troubles and I talked about them throughout the campaign. This is where real America is.

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By the time you read this, the U.S. government may be in default of its debts, starting on Aug. 2. That’s because Congress will have failed to raise the debt ceiling – the maximum amount of the difference between all U.S. government income and all U.S. government spending ever since the government started – by that date.

It’s sort of like you maxing out on your credit card, and your bank won’t raise the credit limit. Except in this case, it’s Congress – over the years – maxing out on the credit card, and this particular Congress refusing for political reasons to raise the limit.

But what does that mean for you and me? We’ve been casting around for explanations of the practical effect and there seem to be precious few. But here’s what we’ve been able to cull from President Obama versus the Republican Radical Right – his bitterest foes, who refuse to believe there’s a problem at all.

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A friend who’s been watching the absurd machinations in Congress asked me “what happens if we don’t solve the budget crisis and we run out of money to pay the nation’s bills?”

It was only then I realized how effective Republicans lies have been. That we’re calling it a “budget crisis” and worrying that if we don’t “solve” it we can’t pay our nation’s bills is testament to how successful Republicans have been distorting the truth.

The federal budget deficit has no economic relationship to the debt limit. Republicans have linked the two, and the Administration has played along, but they are entirely separate. Republicans are using what would otherwise be a routine, legally technical vote to raise the debt limit as a means of holding the nation hostage to their own political goal of shrinking the size of the federal government.

In economic terms, we will not “run out of money” next week. We’re still the richest nation in the world, and the Federal Reserve has unlimited capacity to print money. (more…)

Republican minority leader admits that he handed out tobacco industry bribes on the floor of the House of Representatives in order to secure subsidies for an industry that kills 443,000 Americans every year.