It is Thursday as I write this and I am quite sad to see that the man who is our elected Secretary of State seems to be much more concerned about implementing ALEC designed policy than he is about making voting better for Iowans or making the verification of vote totals more reliable. Schultz is planning on going ahead and implementing rules which are geared at Latino voters. Normally such a change of voting eligibility would go through the legislature, but Schultz knows he has no chance to pass it there, so he must circumvent the normal process. Shame on you, Matt Schultz. Let us hope some common sense court denies his attempt to take the law into his own hands.

Legislature Back To Work Tomorrow
Speaking of ALEC, one of the groups that ALEC owns will be back to business tomorrow. Last year every Republican member of the legislature was owned by ALEC. Let’s see what happens this year. Will we have another year of the House trying to pass ALEC’s pet projects, such turning our public schools systems into “charter” schools where our tax dollars are siphoned off to major corporations? Or perhaps changing the property tax system in such a way as to choke cities and towns? Or maybe passing a good old “Stand Your Ground” law so Iowans can shoot each other and claim it’s legal?

Personally, I can hardly wait to hear the stories of how passing corporate wet dream laws is so good for us.

Taibbi On Bailouts
This is a sobering read. Permanent bailout state? Oh, Boy!

Australia Burning Up
It is summertime in Australia and boy is it hot. Record breaking hot. So hot that already many of the hottest days ever in Australia have been recorded since January 1. So hot that mappers needed a new color to show how hot it is. The old hottest temp was bareley past 50 degrees C. The new hottest temp is now 54 degrees C or just short of 130 degrees Fahrenheit. Wow. And the fires are burning uncontrollably in Australia. Looks to me like real proof of climate change.

This, of course, during the week when it was announced that 2012 was hottest year on record, besting 2011. There is a trend.

Balanced Budget Constitutional Conventions?
Once again our friends on the extreme right have come up with a somewhat covert way to subvert the government. Now from the Goldwater Institute comes a concept of maneuvering state legislatures into holding constitutional conventions in enough states to propose an amendment. The amendment in question is the balanced budget amendment. Read about this proposal here and then we can watch to see if anything comes of it.

Briefly, here is what is billed as the Compact for America is about:
“The Compact for America has set a timetable to convene a single issue constitutional convention this summer using Article V of the US Constitution to railroad the revised Balanced Budget Amendment in to the Constitution.”

Bin Laden Said He Would Bankrupt America, Sounds Good To Republicans.
As we careen toward an absolutely insane standoff on the Debt Ceiling, I was reminded the other day of what Osama Bin Laden was attempting to accomplish on 9/11. His goal was not to bring down America, but to push America’s buttons in such a way that we would bankrupt ourselves. And with the aid of the Republican congresses of the early 2000s, we went abut doing just that. First the huge tax cuts for the wealthy took care of reducing revenues well below spending. Then they went on a spree which included two wars that were not paid for (nor on the budget for that matter) and the Medicare drug program that forced the country to pay the highest prices possible. All this still continues to drive America deeper and deeper into the hole.

Now Republicans stand at the brink of doing something so crazy that no one can even fathom why they would do it. That is they are going to declare that they will refuse to pay bills that they themselves racked up. If they do so the Great Depression will look like the good old days. Are they seriously crazy enough to do this? And I do mean crazy, because this is not the action of a sane person.