Lamar Alexander Signs On To Internet Tax Law

And you thought Republicans hated taxes? Hah!

CNET has learned that two Republican senators are preparing to introduce new legislation that would allow states to force Amazon.com and other out-of-state online retailers to collect sales taxes.

Sens. Mike Enzi of Wyoming and Lamar Alexander of Tennessee are currently putting the final touches on their bill, which is backed by Wal-Mart Stores, Best Buy, Home Depot, and other companies that are currently required to collect sales taxes. It’s a bipartisan concept: a related effort was embraced by Democrats including Sen. Dick Durbin of Illinois a few months ago.

I’ve long felt that the internet tax exemption was going to be history sooner rather than later. It was just a matter of time.

I’m just curious if this will kill the tax exemption for other out of state retail sales, too? I thought the reasoning behind the internet sales exemption was that any retailer lacking a bricks and mortar location in a particular state didn’t have to charge sales tax. That’s why if you travel out of state and buy from a store and have your items shipped home, you don’t have to pay that particular state’s sales tax. (Of course, you’re supposed to voluntarily pay that tax in your home state but really, does anyone do that?)

Am I understanding this incorrectly?

Anyway, I know a bunch of people are going to whine about this because a lot of folks have had a free ride for a long time. But I never really understood the logic behind these sales tax exemptions in the first place.

Alexander Admits He’s Out Of Touch With Modern GOP

As if we needed any more proof that “moderate” Republicans are an endangered species, Tennessee’s own Sen. Lamar Alexander is stepping down from his post as chairman of the Senate Republican Conference because, as the Los Angeles Times reports,

In remarks on the floor on Tuesday, he suggested he said he was stepping down after four years in the post because his was out of sync with the hyper-partisanship and high-intensity media environment that has infiltrated, and some say hobbled, the Senate.

“Stepping down from leadership will liberate me to spend more time working to work for results on the issues I care the most about,” he said. “I want to do more to make the Senate a more effective place to address serious issues.”

Lamar Alexander is one of those Republicans who likes to present himself as the elder statesman-type, the sober voice of reason with a pragmatic approach. That’s all very well and good but as his party has rushed headlong off a cliff, he’s kept silent. I feel for the guy, I really do, but I don’t know how you can be effective in the Republican leadership while everyone around you is a blithering idiot and you’re too chicken-shit to speak up.

I’m thinking of the recent healthcare debate, when Alexander’s colleagues were on television spreading outright lies about a “government takeover of healthcare,” “socialized medicine,” “death panels” and whatnot. It would have been nice if Lamar and the other sober, reasonable moderate Republicans in the Senate had told their more foamy-mouthed colleagues to zip it so we could have real discussion about healthcare policy, an adult conversation — something this country has desperately needed. But no, the grown-ups didn’t step up, the children shouted over everyone else, and the upshot is that a couple years later we had a Republican presidential debate where the audience shouted “let him die!” in answer to a question about the uninsured.

From the Times:

Alexander is known as a lawmaker with strong bipartisan relationships and a measured demeanor. In his remarks, he pushed back against those who view his willingness to work with Democrats as a compromise of conservative principles.

“I’m a very Republican Republican. I grew up in the mountain of Tennessee and still live in a congressional district that’s never elected a Democrat to Congress since Abraham Lincoln was president of the United States,” he said. “If I could get a 100% Republican solution to any of our legislative issues I would do it in a minute. But I know that Senate usually requires 60 votes for a solution on serious issues, and we simply can’t get that with only Republican votes.”

Alexander said he planned to be more aggressive on key issues, not less. He said the problem was not incivility in the Senate, but a media culture that doesn’t support good governing.

“But if you will notice carefully, most of the people you hear shouting at one another on television and radio or on internet have never been elected to anything,” he said. “It would help if we in the Senate knew each other better across party line. But to suggest that we should be more timid in debating the biggest issue before the American people would ignored the function of the Senate and would ignore our history.”

That’s an interesting statement for Alexander to make. I would think being a member of the Republican Party leadership would put him in the perfect position to address this problem. Then again, maybe he’s afraid that Rush Limbaugh will say something mean about him on the radio. Or perhaps, freed of his leadership mantle, he thinks he’s better poised to help his party dial back the crazy. We will see.

On another note, here’s a shout-out to Democrat Tim McGraw, who at one time talked about running for the U.S. Senate. Granted, now might not be the best time but hey, it’s worth talking about. Can’t remember where I saw this but recently there was a discussion about why Republicans have no problem electing their entertainers to office, but Democrats rarely do. Think about it: there’s Ronald Reagan, Fred Thompson, Arnold Schwarzenegger, ex-Love Boat star Fred Grandy, Sonny Bono, Clint Eastwood … but where are the Democrats? There’s Jerry Springer, Al Franken, John Hall, and who else?

Cut A Deal, Dammit

I'm Getting That Sinking Feeling Again

Hey, GOP: my retirement savings is too high a price to pay for your political aspirations. Just sayin’.

Seriously, my bank account hasn’t even recovered from the last time you assholes destroyed the economy in 2007, and now you want to burn it down again? Just so one of your nutters can win the White House in 2012? How crazy is that?

I’m sick of Republicans’ craven political aspirations destroying my standard of living. Hey, we’re not all like Eric Cantor, investing in an ETF that shorts U.S. Treasury bonds.

Frankly, I’m pissed off. I called Sen. Corker’s office and asked what he was doing to solve this problem. The Clueless Intern™ told me last week Corker made a speech urging his colleagues to come to the bargaining table. Ooooh, was it one of those speeches I see on C-SPAN to an empty Senate chamber? Excuse me for being underwhelmed.

I then called Sen. Alexander’s office and asked his Clueless Intern™ what he was doing about this issue because I’m tired of seeing my retirement savings flushed down the toilet of political ambition. She told me Sen. Alexander hadn’t made any public statements yet as he was waiting to see a final deal.

This isn’t entirely true. He’s said plenty about the need to tie the vote to debt reduction, and he’s happy to show up at debt ceiling photo ops with his fellow Republicans.

But Mama always said to judge a man but what he does, not what he says. And both Corker and Alexander voted to increase the debt ceiling when there was a Republican in the White House, not just once but multiple times. In fact, there really wasn’t much fuss made about it save the last time, when Alexander voted no, hardly a ballsy move on his part since the measure required a simple majority and it easily passed, 53-42. So just to recap:

• September 2007, Corker votes yea, Alexander no.
• March 2006, both Corker and Alexander vote yes.
• November 2004, Alexander and Sen. Bill Frist vote yes.
• May 2003 Alexander and Sen. Bill Frist vote yes.

Neither Alexander or Corker were in the Senate in June 2002, but Republicans Bill Frist and Fred Thompson voted yes. Republicans also voted for our unfunded wars and unfunded Medicare Part D benefit, which are two of the major reasons we have these debts to begin with. So they’re perfectly happy to run up a bill on the Chinese credit card but when the bill comes in the mail they won’t pay it. Instead they’d rather see people like me lose their retirement savings when the nation goes bankrupt to score a political point? And they think we won’t notice?

No. Cut a damn deal. Call your Senators and tell them to cut a damn deal. I’m sick of this crap. If the nation defaults over GOP refusal to negotiate and the economy tanks before it’s had a chance to recover from the last implosion, it will be devastating. And no, it will not be good news for Republicans.

>Loose Lips & Peer Pressure

>[UPDATE] 2:

This is a nice start but what about the rest of us? What about all of the folks who are targeted by other kinds of hate speech — the Muslims, the gays, the Hispanics, the African Americans, etc. etc. etc.? Still, I’m encouraged that a Republican is at least thinking along these lines.

Adding …. The more I think about this idea, the more pissed off I get. It’s like how in Tennessee you can take a gun anywhere except the state house. If legislators and “government officials” don’t want guns near them, why are they so quick to make sure the rest of us have to come in constant contact with them. What makes you guys so special?

————————

[UPDATE]:

What the hell were you thinking, local edition.

Go read it … excellent reminder that “passion” on local issues can easily be turned into intimidation, too.

————————

The Tucson shootings have prompted me to revisit this column by Rick Perlstein, which I linked to back in September.

Perlstein was responding to the Koran-burnings a couple of right-wing pastors were planning. He observed:

The problem is that elite media gatekeepers have abandoned their moral mandate to stigmatize uncivil discourse. Instead, too many outlets reward it. In fact, it is an ironic token of the ideological confusions of our age that they do so in the service of upholding what they understand to be a cornerstone of civility: the notion that every public question must be framed in terms of two equal and opposite positions, the “liberal” one and the “conservative” one, each to be afforded equal dignity, respect — and (the more crucial currency) equal space. This has made the most mainstream of media outlets comically easy marks for those actively working to push public discourse to extremes.

At the time I agreed with Perlstein, and noted just because people are going on about FEMA camps and Koran-burning pastors, that doesn’t mean the media has to cover it ad nauseum. But now I’m not so sure.

Perlstein, a historian, revealed that back in the early ‘60s there were anti-JFK rallies promoting fear and lies about Communist infiltration of America; some of these rivaled today’s Tea Party rallies in numbers. As Perlstein pointed out, the national media thought better of reporting on this “fringe” in the interest of “civil discourse.” But let’s remember what happened to JFK, shall we? It’s not as though not covering the anti-JFK fringe kept a lid on violent acts and prevented tragedy.

Conversely, today we have “pastor” Fred Phelps presiding over a group of about 90 people who are primarily members of his own extended family, spreading their hate all across the national news media. But Phelps is universally reviled. Both right and left find his protests of funerals repulsive and the Southern Baptist Convention has condemned Phelps and his “church.” Sunlight is the best disinfectant, or so the saying goes, and perhaps making the nation aware of the fringe factor is actually the first step to confronting it.

The second step, of course, is what Perlstein called “stigmatizing uncivil discourse.” Ed at Gin And Tacos wrote this morning:

[...] We need people in general, and Republicans in particular, to take a more active role in condemning this kind of rhetoric – before something terrible happens, not when the body count starts rising.

There is a very simple, useful question that we do not often enough ask in the United States, especially where politics are concerned. The GOP, in the last several years, has avoided it altogether. We need to make a concerted effort to stop excusing or encouraging insane behavior and ideas with one question: “What in the hell is wrong with you?”

No one asks that anymore, which is odd given how often the need to do so arises.

That’s precisely the type of question which has shoved Fred Phelps and his cult of merry hatemongers off to the fringe and completely deflated his anti-gay message. You’re going to protest a soldier’s funeral? What the hell is wrong with you! You’re going to protest Elizabeth Edwards’ funeral? What the hell is wrong with you!

As I stated yesterday, our problem is not violent rhetoric, it is our violent culture from which this rhetoric springs. But when violent rhetoric does enter the discourse, why does the Right always go on the defensive? The Left, after all, is the group that held a Rally To Restore Sanity two and a half months ago — which was derisively mocked (and misrepresented) by Righties like the folks at Fox & Friends. Ironically the mere concept of a “Million Moderate March” completely confused the mainstream media. So, you know, it’s not like anyone is listening to us on the Left. The Right needs to quit its reflexive wagon-circling and call out its own when they do things like bring an assault rifle to a presidential event.

At one time I had hoped my own Senator Lamar Alexander would be that person. He’s an elder statesmen of the Republican Party, a man who has served his country in a variety of capacities and has a long, distinguished career in public service. I begged him during the whole “death panels” brouhaha to come forward and tell everyone to calm down and quit the lies and misrepresentation so we could have a real conversation about healthcare. Sadly, I got crickets.

So yesterday Sen. Alexander told CNN’s Candy Crowley that we need to stop talking about Sarah Palin’s “cross-hairs” ad and remember that, unlike the Tea Party, Jared Loughner had “The Communist Manifesto” and “Mein Kampf” on his reading list. The implication being, of course, that such books are on liberals’ reading lists (and he ignored more benign books on Loughner’s reading list like “Aesop’s Fables” and “Alice’s Adventures In Wonderland.”).

So I’m calling out Sen. Lamar Alexander: what the hell is wrong with you? If you won’t step up and condemn this stuff, who will?

>Tennessee Republicrites Visit Spring Hill

>File this one under “taking credit where it’s not due”: Senators Bob Corker, Lamar Alexander and Congressman Marsha Blackburn all went to Spring Hill today Friday to take credit for what the Democrats did:

The irony of the Republican lawmakers’ presence wasn’t lost on the workers who attended the ceremony; they booed Tennessee Republican Bob Corker, and one UAW official made clear from the stage that the union still remembered which politicians had voted to rescue Wall Street but opposed an auto industry bailout.

U.S. Sen. Bob Corker
Then: “This administration has decided they know better than our courts and our free market process how to deal with these companies….This is a major power grab.” – March 30, 2009.

Now: “At the end of the day we all have to feel good about what we did,” said Corker, who did attempt to negotiate the failed 2008 aid package. “I contributed to strengthening the auto industry in this country.”

U.S. Sen. Lamar Alexander
Then: “This is not the right direction: taxpayer money down the drain, and Washington politicians trying to run auto companies. The sooner the politicians get out of the way, the sooner auto jobs and taxpayer dollars will be secure.” – March 30, 2009.

Now: “The center of the auto industry is still moving to Tennessee and the mid-South,” Alexander told WSMV-TV.

U.S. Rep. Marsha Blackburn
Then: “I certainly can’t think of the last time the federal government stepping into an industry caused that industry to be more successful, or more efficient. ” – December 2008.

Now: Blackburn attended, but no quotes from her have been reported. She has been busy with other issues, including a bill to overturn the upcoming ban on incandescent light bulbs.

Bob Corker, of course, voted yes on the bank bailout, no on the auto bailout. Lamar Alexander voted yes on the bank bailout, and missed the auto bailout vote because of surgery, but said he would have voted no. Corker tried to negotiate an alternate auto deal because, as he said at the time, the Big Three Bailout wouldn’t help the industry one bit:

“I mean you couldn’t make it almost more ineffective and more complicated,” said Corker about the White House plan.

Oops. Looks like you were way wrong on that one, buckaroo! And look who shows up expecting chocolates and roses when GM is back in the black and rehiring laid-off workers one year later?

File this one under assholes.

(h/t, ThinkProgress.)

>One Thing We Liberals Could Do Better

>Liberals are always asking how can we make our voices heard, why aren’t we out rallying in the streets like, say, the Tea Partiers (lack of major corporate money and backing by a major cable news network are to blame there, IMHO), why don’t Democrats in Congress pander to their base the way Republicans do, etc. etc.

There’s obvious disagreement over how we can best utilize our time and organizing skills (and many folks disagreed with me when I said this was not helpful.)

One thing we could definitely do better is engage our elected representatives when they are back home during things like the August recess. We could fill up the town hall meetings with liberals and challenge people like Lamar Alexander when they spout obvious bullshit like this:

“Finally, part of the way this bill is paid for is through almost $10 billion of permanent tax increases on multinational corporations that would have the effect of driving jobs overseas. Just one more action by the Democratic majority and this administration in the middle of a recession, at a time of near 10 percent unemployment for the nation, that makes it harder to create new jobs in the United States.”

Well look who finally woke up and realized jobs are going overseas! Where ya been, buckaroo? Jobs have been going overseas for years. During the entire time you’ve been in the U.S. Senate. All of your sucking up to corporations hasn’t stemmed the tide of greedy, cheap-labor loving corporations and all of your votes for NAFTA and CAFTA and every other free trade legislation has only sped up the exodus. Thanks for playing.

Corporate tax rates are the lowest in U.S. history. Meanwhile Republicans already nixed a bill that would aid sick 9/11 emergency responders because it was paid for by closing a corporate tax loophole that allows U.S. corporations to operate offshore, tax-free.

Umm … Senator, I think keeping crap like that and all of the other corporate tax loopholes on the books does more to ship jobs overseas than keeping teachers employed so the American workforce is educated. Just sayin’.

We’re losing ground to the rest of the world, fast. Today MoveOn is holding rallies across the country to protest corporate influence in our government. Yes, there’s a rally planned for Nashville.

But I’ve also heard (though I have found nothing confirming this) that there is going to be a town hall meeting where Senator Alexander will address the teacher aid bill. I don’t know where it is or when it is. Maybe it doesn’t exist. Anyone else hear this? Regardless, I’d rather MoveOn send people to an event like this (if it is indeed happening, or another event of its kind) than gathering on a street corner for yet another rally that will once again be ignored by the media. Again, just sayin’.

Anyway, we need to find a better way to present our issues.

>Oil Spills Rarely Happen & Other Fairy Tales

>I can no longer remember the name of the first wingnut Republican to claim oil spills are rare, for some reason I’m thinking David Vitter of Louisiana or perhaps Haley Barbour of Mississippi but regardless we’ve heard it from several folks by now. And I have to say, it’s one of the stupidest right wing talking points to come out of the collective Republican gob since Saddam’s mythic WMD’s. I mean yeah, if oil spills are so rare, then why do oil companies make chemical dispersants by the truckload?

Anyway, today we learn of yet another oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico:

A second leak, discovered at the Ocean Saratoga rig, is leaking oil into the Gulf of Mexico. Initial reports claim the the volume of crude oil being released is much less than that of the Deepwater Horizon, but a 10 mile long oil slick has been detected by satellite. The site is visible in satellite images gathered by Skytruth.org, which first reported the leak on its website May 15.

The Ocean Saratoga site, owned by Taylor Energy, is located approximately ten miles off the coast of southern Louisiana. Official figures released report only 14 gallons of oil per day being emitted into the Gulf of Mexico to account for the massive oil slick.

Reports admit that small amounts have been leaking daily since Hurricane Ivan hit in 2004 causing an undersea mudslide that destroyed the rig. Taylor Energy says they have been working since that time to stop the leak.

I’m sorry, there’s been a leaking oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico for six years? WTF?

Meanwhile out West in Utah, Chevron’s weekend oil spill looks to be another environmental disaster:

SALT LAKE CITY — Emergency workers believe they have stopped a 21,000-gallon oil leak from reaching the environmentally sensitive Great Salt Lake, one of the West’s most important inland water bodies for migratory birds that use it as a place to rest, eat and breed.

But the spill has taken a toll on wildlife at area creeks and ponds, coating about 300 birds with oil and possibly threatening an endangered fish.

Lovely. This reminds me of how after the Kingston coal sludge disaster, we started hearing about all those other leaky coal ash ponds.

Another story which hasn’t received much national attention is the Pennsylvania natural gas well which blew last week, courtesy of the former Enron Corp. That spewed 35,000 gallons of toxic chemicals into the air after a blowout preventer failed. Here’s the best part:

Though the industry says blowouts are rare, another natural gas well, in West Virginia, blew up on Monday, burning seven workers.

Well, if “the industry” says it, it must be true! Just don’t pay attention to that other eco-disaster happening in another part of the country. Look, shiny-sparkly Lindsay Lohan thingie over there!

Folks, we’re doing it wrong. We’re fouling our nest. Fossil fuels are a dirty, nasty business. Pipelines and oil rigs leak. Tankers leak. Oil spills happen all the time, and when we aren’t polluting our food supply pulling this stuff out of the ground or transporting it, we’re polluting our air and water when we actually use the stuff.

And speaking of stupidity coming from Republican gobs, the best one yet came from my own Senator Lamar Alexander, writing in the Wall Street Journal on Friday. Lamar has continued to perpetuate the myth that nuclear energy is somehow safe and clean and even affordable. Right after dissing wind energy because “windmills generate electricity—not transportation fuel” he writes:

If we need more green electricity, build nuclear plants. The 100 commercial nuclear plants we already have produce 70% of our pollution-free, carbon-free electricity. Yet the U.S. has just broken ground on our first new reactor in 30 years, while China starts one every three months and France is 80% nuclear. We wouldn’t mothball our nuclear Navy if we were going to war. We shouldn’t mothball our nuclear plants if we want low-cost, reliable green energy.

Without even getting into how environmentally damaging mining uranium fuel is (I talked about it last year), let me remind Lamar Alexander of one very simple fact: what we are dealing with in Kington, TN, the Gulf of Mexico, Utah, Pennsylvania and hundreds of other places I haven’t even mentioned is a failure of our technology. Accidents happen. Blowout preventers fail. Coal sludge ponds fail. Pipelines break. Anything made by human hands can and most assuredly will fail.

Imagine if any of the accidents I mentioned in this post had been radioactive? Whatever can go wrong, will go wrong. You can count on it. You can take that piece of wisdom to the bank. You want to do that with radioactive fuel? Spent nuclear waste? A nuclear reactor? You, sir, are an idiot.

But fine, you want your nukes? Sure, as soon as you repeal the Price Anderson Act which places a liability cap on nuclear power accidents. If there’s another Chernobyl or Three Mile Island, then by God let the utility responsible pay for it, not the taxpayers. Just as everyone is crying for BP to clean up the oil spill, let’s make sure we don’t socialize the losses of a nuclear accident. I’m sure as a fiscal conservative you would support that, right?

>Oh Great Diviner Pat Robertson, What Is God Trying To Tell Us Now?

>First we had a coal sludge pond disaster in Tennessee, then we had a coal mining disaster in West Virginia, followed by an oil spill disaster in the Gulf of Mexico and now we have a fucking nuclear power plant leak. For reals, y’all:

LACEY TOWNSHIP, N.J. — Radioactive water that leaked from the nation’s oldest nuclear power plant has now reached a major underground aquifer that supplies drinking water to much of southern New Jersey, the state’s environmental chief said Friday.

The state Department of Environmental Protection has ordered the Oyster Creek Nuclear Generating Station to halt the spread of contaminated water underground, even as it said there was no imminent threat to drinking water supplies.

The department launched a new investigation Friday into the April 2009 spill and said the actions of plant owner Exelon Corp. have not been sufficient to contain water contaminated with tritium.

Tritium is found naturally in tiny amounts and is a product of nuclear fission. It has been linked to cancer if ingested, inhaled or absorbed through the skin in large amounts.

Yeeeearrrgh, as if the real housewives of New Jersey aren’t toxic enough. I’m sure the snooze media will ignore this story because they haven’t thoroughly flogged to death the other two stories they are covering this week. But let me just say: Holy crap.

Plus, there was this accident last year and it’s already contaminated the water table?

Quick, let’s Google “Solar Power Accident” and see what we get.

I’ll wait.

Oh, and Lamar Alexander? You still think 100 of these contamination factories is a good idea? ‘Cause I’m thinking, not just No but HELL NO.

>Don’t Hate The Player, Hate The Game

>Well okay, hate the player. Massey Energy and Don Blankenship are certainly deserving of our scorn. But while our hearts go out to the families of the West Virginia coal miners who lost their lives, and our anger is turned on Massey Energy, which appears to have bought every politician which has stood in its way, we all need to look in the mirror, too.

Coal produces 54% of our electricity in this country. Every time you flip a light switch or crank up the air conditioning or purchase another appliance, think about where we get the juice to power that equipment. Think about what you are doing to keep the Massey Energies of this country in business.

Look, folks: coal ain’t cheap, regardless of what TVA’s Tom Kilgore and the folks at Big Coal would have you believe. It just looks cheap because when they’re crunching the numbers, they only count part of the cost. They don’t factor in the cost of cleaning up all those leaky coal sludge ponds, and the environmental and health costs associated not just with coal burning but also things like mountaintop removal mining.

(And while we’re talking about this, good for Senator Lamar Alexander, who last year introduced a bill that would basically ban mountaintop removal mining. This is so huge and significant and Lamar deserves a flood of phone calls thanking him for taking this step. And every other senator needs a phone call asking them to support the Cardin-Alexander Appalachian Restoration Act.)

However, it’s not enough. We need to do more, and we need to do it faster. West Virginia, Kentucky and other Appalachian states need to transition their economies away from the coal mines which have forced people to choose between poverty and poison. And some choice that’s been: these states are still among the country’s poorest. People need jobs but they shouldn’t have to choose between poisoning their communities and risking their lives just to put food on the table.

Hate the player all you want, folks. But the problem is the game.

There are things we all can do to cut our coal consumption. At the Beale household we swapped out leaky old windows. When we remodeled our house we purchased energy-miser appliances. I close our blinds in the summer to keep the sun out, which does an amazing job of keeping the house cool. We changed our light bulbs to CFL’s. We signed up for TVA’s Green Power Switch program. And lastly, we put up a solar array on our roof, so NES actually pays me. I am sure we still use some coal, but not as much as we used to.

If you need some ideas on simple things that can save you lots of money in utility bills, as well as the true cost of coal, check out the film “Kilowatt Ours.”

We aren’t perfect at the Beale household. Our house is old and there are energy leaks all over the place, especially around old door frames. We use way more electricity than we should. But it’s a start.

>At Long Last Bipartisanship?

>While our illustrious news media wallows in the glow of bipartisanship they say passage of the Senate jobs bill represents, I counter it highlights how bad partisan gridlock in Washington truly is.

First, from the Los Angeles Times:

More notable, perhaps, than the bill itself was the fact that 13 Republicans crossed party lines to vote for it. The $15-billion bill passed by a 70-28 tally.

The bill would grant employers a “holiday” on their 6.2% Social Security payroll contribution for every new employee hired through the rest of the year, as long as that employee has been out of work for at least 60 days. It would also make it easier for businesses to write off equipment purchases and would extend federal highway and mass-transit funding programs.

This is a tax cut bill. Since when are we doing double back-flips over the fact that 13 Republicans voted for tax cuts?

Hey, Republicans: I thought you people hated taxes! That’s all we ever hear every time you folks open your mouths: “tax cuts tax cuts tax cuts.” Okay, the Democrats gave you your damn tax cuts. And only 13 of you voted for it? What the hell is wrong with you?

Even worse:

Eight Republicans who Monday didn’t support a procedural motion to proceed with the jobs bill switched sides Wednesday to support it, including Sens. Lamar Alexander (Tenn.) Thad Cochran (Miss.), Orrin Hatch (Utah), and Richard Burr (R-N.C.). Hatch was a co-author, along with Schumer, of the payroll tax provision in the bill.

Yes that’s right, our own Sen. Lamar Alexander ended up voting for a bill he tried to block two days ago. Holy flip-flop!

And our grand wanker of the day prize goes to Orrin Hatch, a co-author of the bill, who tried to filibuster it on Monday, then voted for it on Wednesday. Yes that’s right, Orrin Hatch tried to filibuster his own tax cuts which he ended up voting for anyway.

This is the glorious “bipartisanship” we’re celebrating?

Feh.