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Each morning, Bill Scher and Terrance Heath serve up what progressives need to effect change on the kitchen-table issues families face: jobs, health care, green energy, financial reform, affordable education and retirement security.

MORNING MESSAGE: Media Letting Romney Get Away With Lies

OurFuture.org's Dave Johnson: "The Romney campaign got away with running an ad last November that claimed President Obama had said something he did not say … so they felt empowered to take it to the next step. They doubled down on the deception. The Romney campaign is running an ad that edits together different pieces of a campaign speech by President Obama, even taking out words, to make it sound as if he said something that he did not say … They edited sentences to change President Obama saying that business owners did not build the roads and bridges that help them be successful, into sounding like he is saying business owners think they're so smart, but they didn't build their businesses! … They got away with that, too, and now at least one other campaign is doing the same thing. The Scott Brown Massachusetts Senate campaign is now using a similarly fabricated quote in an ad … Flat-out fabrication, flat-out deceit. And flat-out sure the media won't call them on it."

GOP Tax Plan: Cut Taxes For Rich, Raise Taxes On Poor

Senate GOP tax plan literally cuts taxes for wealthy, raises taxes on poor. NYT: "Republicans say the tax breaks for lower-income families [in the Recovery Act] were always supposed to be temporary. But President Obama had made them a priority in 2009 and demanded their extension in 2010 as a price for extending the Bush-era tax cuts for two years … That sets up a potentially tricky issue for Republicans. They have said they do not want taxes to go up on anyone while the economy struggles to gain altitude, but … the Republican plan would extend tax cuts for 2.7 million affluent families while allowing tax breaks to expire for 13 million on the bottom of the income spectrum."

Austerity agenda also favors wealthy over poor, reports HuffPost: "In the United States, budget cuts have forced states to reduce education, public transportation, affordable housing and other social services. In Europe, welfare cuts have driven some severely disabled individuals to fear for their lives. But the austerity game also has winners. Cutting or eliminating government programs that benefit the less advantaged has long been an ideological goal of conservatives. Doing so also generates a tidy windfall for the corporate class, as government services are privatized and savings from austerity pay for tax cuts for the wealthiest citizens."

Geithner slams GOP tax plan on PBS' Charlie Rose: "It would hurt our credibility. It would leave us with no capacity to address these long-term fiscal problems."

Minimum wage hike is a "no-brainer" says Dean Baker: "The counter-argument against raising the minimum wage is that it would actually hurt the people we are trying to help by reducing employment. There is little basis for this claim … Most recent research finds that it has no impact on employment … The dollars and cents might mean, for example, that a typical low wage worker ends up working 2 percent fewer hours in a year, but they take home 20 percent more pay for each hour that they work. This nets out to an increase in pay of 18 percent, a deal that most workers would likely consider pretty good."

GOP Brings Back "Drill Baby Drill"

"White House threatens to veto GOP drilling bill" reports The Hill: "The House will vote as soon as Tuesday on the bill that requires Interior Department oil-and-gas leasing off the Atlantic and Pacific coasts, which remain off-limits for at least the next five years under the Obama administration’s plans. The bill also calls for a more aggressive schedule of lease sales in Arctic waters off Alaska’s coast than the Obama administration plan, which is far more cautious about Arctic development by waiting to hold new lease sales there until 2016 and 2017."

Enviros target "Flat Earth Five" in House. W. Post: "The League of Conservation Voters, which has endorsed both Democrats and Republicans in the past, aims to unseat Reps. Ann Marie Buerkle (N.Y.), Dan Benishek (Mich.) and three other yet-to-be-named House Republicans … by attacking their global warming stance and ties to the fossil fuel industry."

Breakfast Sides

Charter schools hurting traditional public school enrollment. NYT: "Because school financing is often allocated on a per-pupil basis, plummeting enrollment can mean fewer teachers will be needed. But it can also affect the depth of a district’s curriculum, jeopardizing programs in foreign languages, music or art … The number of students fell about 5 percent in traditional public school districts between 2005 and 2010; by comparison, the number of students in all-charter districts soared by close to 60 percent…"

"Justice Department investigating Pennsylvania voter ID law" reports CNN: "Pennsylvania is the first state outside of the areas covered by Section 5 of the Civil Rights Act designed to protect minorities in states with historic racial discrimination in voting, to be investigated. "

Libor investigation expands to traders. WSJ: "The emerging details about traders suggest to investigators a widespread conspiracy that continued for several years and cascaded around the world."

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