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Many Republicans in Congress have sought to avoid enacting common-sense reforms to gun policy, instead choosing to buckle to the NRA and its gun manufacturer backers. On MSNBC today, Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-TN) dismissed universal background checks, saying that he thinks video games are “a bigger problem” than guns because they “affect people”:

CHUCK TODD: Can you envision a way of supporting the universal background checks bill?

LAMAR ALEXANDER: Chuck, I’m going to wait and see on all these bills. I think video games is a bigger problems than guns, because video games affect people.

Watch it:

For the record, violent video games are very popular overseas as well. In the United Kingdom, the Call of Duty series was the top-selling game last year. But their gun murder rate is extremely low, with only 39 such killings in 2009.

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Some on the right like to claim that the poor do not pay taxes. A new report from the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy (ITEP) shows why this is a myth. ITEP looked all the taxes that people in states pay — income, property, sales, and other forms — and found that almost every state asks poor and middle income families to pay more of their income in taxes than the very rich.

Here’s a chart of the top 10 worst states. Note that in Washington State, the poor actually pay six times as much of their incomes in taxes as the top 1 percent :

Among the states studied, Oregon and Vermont were deemed to have the most progressive tax systems.

Last week, the SenateAi??Health Education, Labor, and Pensions committee held a hearing on the state of mental health care in America, an important topic in light of the recent spate of mass shootings.

During the hearing, Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) asked Dr. Thomas Insel, who heads the National Institute of Mental Health, about how funding constraints are harming our battle against mental illness. Insel explained how the lack of funding harms research:

INSEL: It’s always frustrating because there’s, of course, never enough funding to support all of the best ideas that come in. We try to support about 20 percent of them. So about 1 in 5 grants gets funded. I hope I’m smartAi??enoughAi??to pick the best 20 percent. I’m afraid I’m not. And if I could do 30 percent I’d have a probably much better hit rate. It’s just hard to know often. That’s always the challenge. You never have the funding you have to do all of the science, some of which is spectacular, just sitting there in front of you.

Watch it (relevant section around 3:22):

The “National Association of State Mental Health Program Directors (NASMHPD) estimates states cut at least $4.35 billion in funding for mental health agencies from fiscal year 2009 through 2012”

Rep. John Barrow (D-GA)

As a bipartisan group of Senators gears up for an immigration overhaul that includes a path to citizenship, some right-wing lawmakers have started to dismiss such reforms. In an interview with a local news station, Blue Dog conservative congressman John Barrow (D-GA) failed to endorse a path to citizenship and suggested that if we secure the border and then deny jobs and benefits to immigrants, the “problem will take care of itself”:

BARROW: My policy is we need to secure the border, we need to secure the jobs, and we need to secure the benefits. If we do that, the problem will take care of itself.

Watch it:

The congressman did go on to advocate for some sort of agricultural exception, meaning that there would be room for immigrants to work to pick our fruit but not have access to other jobs or even basic benefits.

There is no evidence that an enforcement-only approach would actually resolve the immigration issue. Between 40-45 percent of undocumented immigrants did not even cross the U.S. border — rather, they overstayed their visas.

It is also unclear how denying immigrants jobs and benefits will benefit the country, when immigration is economically beneficial. A Center for American Progress report from 2010 found that comprehensive immigration reform could grow the economy by as much as $1.5 trillion over ten years.

Sen. Colbeck

Last month, Michigan passed an anti-union so-called “right to work” law that will undermine collective bargaining rights by allowing workers to accept unionAi??representationAi??without paying union dues.

Electablog has obtained audio from an Americans for Prosperity event where Republican SenatorAi??Patrick Colbeck proudly boasts that right-wing billionaire Dick DeVos bankrolled the push for this anti-union law:

COLBECK: Various bills from the legislatorai??i??s perspective are kinda broken into two ingredients: air cover and ground cover. Air cover is financial backing and making sure that weai??i??ve got contributions so that theyai??i??ve got enough money to go off and get this group out.

So, air cover is critical andAi??I gotta tell ya, Dick DeVos and Ron Weiser are unsung heroes on this great work, that they were critical on the air cover element and getting us across ai??i?? and they also opened up doors, frankly, with rarefied air that even Mike didnai??i??t have access to and even I definitely didnai??i??t have access to.

“Itai??i??s amazing what Republican politicians will say to Tea Party activists when they think no one is listening,” said Progress Michigan executive director Zack Pohl in a statement. “This just confirms what weai??i??ve long suspected, that Gov. Snyderai??i??s so-called Right to Work bill was bought-and-paid for by billionaire CEO Dick DeVos. Itai??i??s time for politicians like Snyder and Colbeck to start protecting middle class families, not the special interests.”

Listen to the audio here.

In upcoming budget negotiations, both progressive and conservative lawmakers have vowed to look at waste and unneeded spending in the Department of Defense (DOD). A new report from the Inspector General of the DOD finds one possible case of startling waste.

The report finds that the Defense Department may have paid up to $100,000 to six different defense contractors who then proceeded to use the funds to lobby for earmarks. That means that the government was essentially paying corporations to lobby for more government money.

The Inspector General does not suspect that these payments were intentional, and recommendsAi??Director of Defense Procurement and Acquisition Policy issue new guidelines to avoid this improper spending in the future.

However this case illustrates the need for tighter oversight over the massive military budget, which makes up the largest share of the discretionary spending of the federal government.

Chris Christie (R-NJ) has often been portrayed as a moderate by the mainstream press. But today, Christie proved again that he’s an ally of the super-rich and Big Business by vetoing a popular hike to the minimum wage.

This minimum wage increase would’ve brought the wage to $8.50 and then tie it to the consumer price index for the future. Christie said he wanted instead to raise the wage by only 25 cents this year, and then 50 cents the next year and 25 cents more three years from now.

A recent Quinnipac poll found that 82 percent of New Jerseyans support simply raising the wage to $8.50, showing that the governor is siding with the far-right in his veto.

The school system is one of America’s last public treasures, but corporate interests represented by private schools, charter schools, and virtual schools are launching a new push to help privatize them.

Dubbed “School Choice Week,” a coalition of these schools is launching 3,500 events this week to advocate for school vouchers, the expansion of charter schools, and other policies that would help privatize education.

The kick-off event for the group featured a concert and rally hosted by the Jonas Brothers in Phoenix, Arizona. Organizers described their push for school vouchers as equivalent to the battle for civil rights and woman’s suffrage:

Just as whistle-stop tours were used to promote civil rights like womenai??i??s suffrage to the end of racial segregation, the National School Choice Week ai???Specialai??i?? will draw attention to the great civil rights fight of the 21st century: school choice for all Americans regardless of their race, income, zip code or learning ability.

But it should be noted that this coalition doesn’t consist just of grassroots activists like the civil rights movement did. On its website, you can see that it has support from the New Jersey Business and Industry Association and a number of virtual schools that would profit from greater access to public dollars.

And it’s also important to remember a key study released late last year that found that the proliferation of charter schools has actually increased racial segregation, a blow to civil rights.

It is commonly believed that corporations have too much influence in the government and use it to extract special loopholes and subsidies. A new report from a right-leaning government watchdog group shows that this influence may be even greater than most Americans realize.

The Government Accountability Institute found that for every dollar corporations spent lobbying in 2004, they received a $220 return on investment in the form of tax giveaways, subsidies, and other forms of governmentAi??largess. That’s a 22,000 percent return on investment from lobbying dollars.

If youai??i??re sick of money in politics,Ai??click here to join PCCCai??i??s Take Back Democracy campaign.

UPDATE: Watch GAI’s Peter Schweitzer talk about his report on Fox News

Watch the latest video at video.foxnews.com

The NRA has been claiming that it supports tougher background checks, a claim that the media has been uncritically reporting — even as the organization killed a series of background check bills in Virginia.

But on Twitter late last night, the NRA made clear that it does not support Obama’s universal background check proposal:

By taking this extreme position, the NRA disagrees with 92 percent of Americans, who said in a CBS/New York Times poll that they support universal background checks. Tellingly, in its much-touted poll of its members, the NRA did not ask them if they support this proposal.

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