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News of US politics

Boycotts Hitting ALEC Behind Stand Your Ground Gun Laws

Seth Anderson3 Comments

Silent Witness to Spring
Silent Witness to Spring

Good to see that the America-hating folks at American Legislative Exchange Council are getting a little press. For far too long, ALEC has been able to operate in secret, manipulating the legislative process with their mounds of corporate-donated cash.

Two of America’s best-known companies, Coca-Cola and PepsiCo, have dropped their memberships in the American Legislative Exchange Council, a low-profile conservative organization behind the national proliferation of “stand your ground” gun laws.

ALEC promotes business-friendly legislation in state capitols and drafts model bills for state legislatures to adopt. They range from little-noticed pro-business bills to more controversial measures, including voter-identification laws and stand your ground laws based on the Florida statute. About two-dozen states now have such laws. Florida’s stand your ground law has been cited in the slaying of Trayvon Martin, an unarmed teen who was shot and killed by neighborhood watch volunteer George Zimmerman on Feb. 26.

…

Until recently, ALEC was best known for its volumes of pro-business legislation: bills to weaken labor unions, as in Wisconsin, to privatize government operations and to reduce regulation.

But this new anti-ALEC campaign comes at a time when some investors have already been pushing for more transparency on corporate political activities.

Tim Smith is a vice president with Walden Asset Management, which does what it calls socially responsible investing. He says corporate boards and top management are paying closer attention now.

“They’re scrutinizing their trade association memberships, their relationships with controversial institutes,” said Smith. “And certainly I think that companies are scrutinizing their ALEC relationship more carefully, too.”

But certainly not every corporation: On Wednesday, another well-known company, Kraft Foods, said it was keeping its membership in ALEC.

A spokeswoman for Kraft said its only concerns at ALEC are business related and have nothing to do with stand your ground or voter ID laws.

(click here to continue reading Boycotts Hitting Group Behind ‘Stand Your Ground’ Gun Laws : NPR.)

Publicly traded companies should be very wary of donating to such partisan organizations – shareholders might not be sanguine. Non-profits such as Susan G Komen For the Cure of Republican Women ought to tread carefully as well. In these days of social media, it won’t take much to bring a firestorm of bad publicity. Of course, some of ALEC’s core corporate sponsors don’t give a shit about such things. Corporations like the Charles Koch Foundation, Richard Mellon Scaife’s Allegheny Foundation, the Coors family Castle Rock Foundation. But I’d be surprised if Johnson & Johnson, FedEx, Visa, Amazon.com, GlaxoSmithKline, Bayer, State Farm Insurance, Walgreens and others wouldn’t get a little nervous if a campaign against them got organized.

Coke Truck
Coke Truck

Coca-Cola’s retraction came in the Examiner’s “Secrets” blog. Blogger Paul Bedard’s interpretation of the facts comes with a strong ideological bias, but the facts are clear: The good guys won.

By contrast, Wal-Mart told the Examiner:

Our membership in any organization does not affirm our agreement with each policy created by the broader group. Wal-Mart has a long history of supporting voter rights, and we continue to be a strong proponent of this issue. In fact, Wal-Mart was an active supporter in 2006 of the renewal of the Voting Rights Act of… One of Wal-Mart’s basic beliefs is respect for the individual, and Wal-Mart will continue to stand with all Americans in ensuring our right to vote. Not good enough. If you support people who are attacking the right to vote, financially and with your reputation, then you are supporting injustice.

Attention Sellers: This could affect your bottom line in a big way. There’s a large majority in this country that feels disenfranchised from the political process — and is. They’ve been, in the crude words of bar patrons everywhere, “screwed, blued, and tattooed.” They’ve lost their jobs, or their wages have stagnated, while organizations like ALEC strip them of organizing rights and the chance for a job at a living wage.

They’ve also been disenfranchised by voter laws like the ones ALEC supports, and by a money-driven, corporate political process. But that disenfranchised majority has enormous economic power — and it’s learning how to use it. One of our most effective tools for responding to the power of corporate money is by cutting off the source of that money.

(click here to continue reading Good Guys Win: With ALEC, Things Go Better Without Coke | Crooks and Liars.)

Union
Union

Some other things ALEC is busy passing: banning living wages, privatizing schools, privatizing prisons, crippling collective bargaining.

The American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) is the most powerful corporate front group you’ve never heard of. The organization, funded mostly by large corporations, writes model legislation and then sends these bills to state legislators across the country. It has successfully passed scores of laws on various issues.

ALEC has come under scrutiny lately for writing and helping to pass “Stand Your Ground” laws, which allow for an expansive definition of self defense that lets individuals use deadly force if they feel threatened. It is a law like this in Florida which may allow Trayvon Martin’s killer to go free. The National Rifle Association, which is partly funded by the gun industry, worked closely with ALEC to pass the law. (It also sponsors ALEC’s conferences.)

But ALEC’s “Stand Your Ground” is far from the only deadly law that this corporate front group has pushed. ALEC’s network of laws have endangered every area of American life, from the air we breathe to the water we drink to the education our children receive in our schools. Here are five despicable laws that ALEC has helped pass in states nationwide:

(click here to continue reading The Top Five Most Despicable Laws Passed By Corporate Front Group ALEC.)

Dixie Motel
Dixie Motel

The Department of Justice overturned at least a couple of ALEC’s voter ID laws, including in Texas:

The Department of Justice has blocked the Texas voter ID law. Of the 8 states where American Legislative Exchange Council’s (ALEC) inspired voter ID laws were enacted, two have now been struck down for discrimination under the historic 1965 Voting Rights Act.

Under the act, 16 states that have a history of discrimination must get federal approval before changing voting laws. Texas changed their law in May of 2011 to require the following ID: driver’s license, a military identification card, a birth certificate with a photo, a current U.S. passport, or a concealed handgun permit.

The Obama administration’s Department of Justice blocked Texas’ voter ID law because even conservative data showed it discriminated against Hispanics:

“Even using the data most favorable to the state, Hispanics disproportionately lack either a driver’s license or a personal identification card,” wrote Thomas Perez, head of the Justice Department’s civil rights division, in a letter to Keith Ingram, director of elections for the Texas Secretary of State. So what made the voter ID laws such a priority?

Republicans pushed ALEC inspired voter ID laws in over 33 states and passed them in states like South Carolina (whose voter ID law was also struck down by the DOJ for discrimination), Kansas, Alabama, Rhode Island, Tennessee and Wisconsin. This legislation is meant to give Republicans a much needed edge, allowing military ID and concealed handgun permits to suffice for ID, while cutting out student IDs in some states. In fact, the NRA was the corporate co-chair of ALEC Public Safety and Elections in 2011.

 

(click here to continue reading Another ALEC Law Bites the Dust: DOJ Kills Texas Voter ID Law.)

Muted Voice of Angry Fear

Muted Voice of Angry Fear

Governor Christie, the GOP Angry Man in NJ, is a fan of ALEC:

New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie denies any connection with the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), but a Star-Ledger investigation finds plenty of evidence to the contrary, particularly when it comes to Christie’s union-busting, privatizing education agenda.

First off: At least three bills, one executive order and one agency rule accomplish the same goals set out by ALEC using the same specific policies. In eight passages contained in those documents, New Jersey initiatives and ALEC proposals line up almost word for word. Two other Republican bills not pushed by the governor’s office are nearly identical to ALEC models. This includes policies on teacher tenure, pay, and hiring and firing; easing training requirements for charter school teachers; waivers of environmental regulations that businesses don’t like; and more.

Beyond the similar legislation and executive actions: […] Christie’s then-chief of staff and former health commissioner were involved in an ALEC policy seminar in Trenton in December. Legislative liaisons inside the governor’s office have mined ALEC for advice on budgetary matters, Medicaid changes and privatizing government services, according to e-mail records, beginning in the earliest days of Christie’s governorship and as recently as December.

(click here to continue reading Daily Kos: New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie denies connection to ALEC while pushing its agenda.)

Benjamins
Benjamins

One last point, so I don’t have to look this up again. Here are the corporations who I will think twice about doing business with because they are sponsors of the radical GOP agenda, and I don’t want to give them my money (and I won’t own any stock from these corporations either):

  • Allergan
  • Altria
  • Amazon.com
  • American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity
  • American Electric Power
  • American Federation for Children
  • AT&T
  • Atmos Energy
  • Bayer
  • BlueCross Blue Shield of Lousiana
  • BlueCross BlueShield Association
  • BNSF
  • BP
  • CashAmerica
  • CenturyLink
  • Chesapeake Energy
  • Chevron
  • Cleco
  • CN
  • ConocoPhillips
  • Cox
  • CSX
  • Dow
  • Encana
  • Energy Transfer
  • Entergy
  • ExxonMobil
  • EZCorp
  • FedEx
  • Franklin Center for Government and Public Integrity
  • Freepont-McMoran Copper & Gold
  • Genesee & Wyoming Inc.
  • Gulf States Toyota
  • Harris Deville & Associates
  • HP
  • International Paper
  • Intuit
  • Jacobs Entertainment
  • Johnson & Johnson
  • Kansas City Southern
  • Koch Industries
  • Kraft Foods
  • Lilly
  • LouisDreyfus Commodities
  • Louisiana Chemical Association
  • Louisiana Railroads Association
  • Louisiana Realtors
  • Louisiana Seafood
  • LouisianaTravel.com
  • Lumina Foundation
  • McMoran Exploration
  • Merck
  • National Rifle Association
  • NetChoice
  • Norfolk Southern
  • Peabody
  • Pfizer
  • PhRMA
  • QEP Resources
  • RestoringFreedom.org
  • Reynolds American
  • Sanofi
  • Shell
  • Society of Louisiana CPAs
  • Southern Strategy Group
  • Spectra Energy
  • State Farm
  • State Policy Network
  • StateNet
  • Takeda Pharmaceutical
  • The Capitol Group
  • TimeWarner
  • TogetherRX Access
  • Union Pacific
  • UnitedHealthcare
  • UPS
  • USAA
  • Visa
  • Walgreens
  • Walmart
  • Walton Family Foundation
  • WellPoint

Mitt Romney Is Not a Moderate

Seth Anderson0 comment

Why Worry Now?
Why Worry Now?

Paul Waldman makes a good point: is there any evidence that Mitt Romney actually is a moderate? Not really, just lazy reporters who repeat what Romney’s primary opponents and other frenemies say about him. Show some proof if you want to assert he’s a moderate…

Time’s Alex Altman writes, “A very conservative party is on the verge of nominating a relative moderate whom nobody is very excited about, largely because none of his rivals managed to cobble together a professional operation.” I beg you, Alex, and every other reporter covering the campaign: If you’re going to assert that Mitt Romney is a “relative moderate,” you have to give us some evidence for that assertion. Because without mind-reading, we have to way to know whether it’s true.

What we do know is that when he ran in two races in the extremely liberal state of Massachusetts, Mitt Romney was a moderate. Then when he ran in two races to be the Republican nominee for president, Mitt Romney was and is extremely conservative. There is simply no reason—none—to believe, let alone to assert as though it were an undisputed fact, that the first incarnation of Romney was the “real” one and the current incarnation of Romney is the fake one.

Every single issue position that might mark Mitt Romney as a “relative moderate” is something he has cast off, whether it’s being pro-choice, or pro-gay rights, or not hating on immigrants

(click here to continue reading Why Do Reporters Think Mitt Romney Is a Moderate?.)

 

We Are The Presidential Candidates Who Say Ni!

swanksalot0 comment

 

Screenshot from the iPad App: Monty Python: The Holy Book of Days about The Holy Grail
itunes.apple.com/us/app/monty-python-holy-book-days/id503…

Referring to this, if you hadn’t heard:

Santorum was speaking at a rally in Janesville, Wisconsin, still locked in the ferocious nomination battle with Mitt Romney and still desperate to become the true conservative standard-bearer of the Republican party.

“We know the candidate Barack Obama, what he was like – the anti-war government nig …” he seems to say, then suddenly stopping, and changing tack to add: “America was a source for division around the world, that what we were doing was wrong.“

It is hard to think of exactly what word Santorum was about to use. What word beginning with “nig-” comes naturally after government? It has been suggested he was trying to say “-nik”, as in peacenik or beatnik. That is possible. Or perhaps, it was some non-specific verbal tic: a random vowel-consonent flub.

Here, Santorum has previous form. In Iowa, he stumbled when discussing conservative opposition to welfare programmes:

“I don’t want to make black people’s lives better by giving them somebody else’s money; I want to give them the opportunity to go out and earn the money.”

In the face of later outrage at singling out black Americans, he insisted that he had not said “black”, but instead vocalised “bleugh”, as his mind became confused over his own train of thought. Believe that? Judge for yourself here.

www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2012/mar/30/r…

 

A Doctor on Transvaginal Ultrasounds

Seth Anderson1 Comment

Artemis of Ephesus: Vatican Museum, 1993
Artemis of Ephesus: Vatican Museum, 1993

Not all doctors are ok with conservative legislatures mandating medical procedures, such as this anonymous doctor who advises civil disobedience:

I do not feel that it is reactionary or even inaccurate to describe an unwanted, non-indicated transvaginal ultrasound as “rape”. If I insert ANY object into ANY orifice without informed consent, it is rape. And coercion of any kind negates consent, informed or otherwise.

…

 

It’s time for a little old-fashioned civil disobedience. Here are a few steps we can take as physicians to protect our patients from legislation such as this.

 

1) Just don’t comply. No matter how much our autonomy as physicians has been eroded, we still have control of what our hands do and do not do with a transvaginal ultrasound wand. If this legislation is completely ignored by the people who are supposed to implement it, it will soon be worth less than the paper it is written on.

2) Reinforce patient autonomy. It does not matter what a politician says. A woman is in charge of determining what does and what does not go into her body. If she WANTS a transvaginal ultrasound, fine. If it’s medically indicated, fine… have that discussion with her. We have informed consent for a reason. If she has to be forced to get a transvaginal ultrasound through coercion or overly impassioned argument or implied threats of withdrawal of care, that is NOT FINE. Our position is to recommend medically-indicated tests and treatments that have a favorable benefit-to-harm ratio… and it is up to the patient to decide what she will and will not allow. Period. Politicians do not have any role in this process. NO ONE has a role in this process but the patient and her physician. If anyone tries to get in the way of that, it is our duty to run interference.

3) If you are forced to document a non-indicated transvaginal ultrasound because of this legislation, document that the patient refused the procedure or that it was not medically indicated. (Because both of those are true.) Hell, document that you attempted but the patient kicked you in the nose, if you have to.

4) If you are forced to enter an image of the ultrasound itself into the patient chart, ultrasound the bedsheets and enter that picture with a comment of “poor acoustic window”. If you’re really gutsy, enter a comment of “poor acoustic window…plus, I’m not a rapist.” (I was going to propose repeatedly entering a single identical image in affected patient’s charts nationwide, as a recognizable visual protest…but I don’t have an ultrasound image that I own to the point that I could offer it for that purpose.)

5) Do anything else you can think of to protect your patients and the integrity of the medical profession. IN THAT ORDER. We already know how vulnerable patients can be; we invisibly protect them on a daily basis from all kinds of dangers inside and outside of the hospital. Their safety is our responsibility, and we practically kill ourselves to ensure it at all costs. But it’s also our responsibility to guard the practice of medicine from people who would hijack our tools of healing for their own political or monetary gain.

(click here to continue reading Guest Post: A Doctor on Transvaginal Ultrasounds – Whatever.)

A Glimpse into the Brokered Convention

Seth Anderson0 comment

Pumpkin Head
Pumpkin Head

Charles Pierce on the GOP clown show:

You have to give the Republican party credit. Faced with a down economy and a vulnerable incumbent, the GOP has managed to put together not only an incredibly mediocre field of candidates, but also a nominating process that seems to have been designed by angry ferrets on crystal meth. It is an altogether remarkable parlay.

Take, for example, the events over the weekend in Missouri. A while back, Rick Santorum won a non-binding primary in that state and the problem with non-binding primaries is that they’re not, well, binding. Consequently, the parceling out of delegates — which is, after all, the point of the entire exercise — was left to local Republican caucuses. And, while all politics is indeed local, it does not necessarily follow that all politics is sane. I know from following the Republican presidential candidates that the soul of America is in its small towns full of white people where reason and good old common sense prevail. And, when it doesn’t, well, hell, just call in the law.…

An off-duty police officer, hired as security, eventually filed a trespassing complaint against the Paul supporters and notified on-duty police in the area municipality of St. Peters, who, along with police from other jurisdictions, arrested two Paul supporters and ended the caucuses early. A joint-jurisdictional police helicopter arrived on the scene. Kipers said about 10 officers arrived in total. “Two people were arrested for trespassing after receiving numerous warnings to leave the school property,” the St. Peters police said in a press release. “Both subjects were transported to St. Peters Justice Center where they were booked for Trespassing and released on a summons.”

(click here to continue reading Missouri: A Glimpse into the Brokered Convention – Esquire.)

Santorum’s bad porn science

Seth Anderson0 comment

Peepshow
Peepshow

Unsurprisingly, Rick Santorum’s understanding of science is just as piss-poor as his understanding about living in the 21st century, C.E.

There were lots of things to poke fun at in Rick Santorum’s anti-porn pledge, but the element perhaps most deserving of mockery has been widely ignored: his claim that “a wealth of research is now available demonstrating that pornography causes profound brain changes in both children and adults, resulting in widespread negative consequences.”

You want to know what’s profound? How scientifically inaccurate that statement is.

Pornography surely changes the brain in some ways — but so does everything. “Watching the NCAA playoffs is going to change your brain, eating chocolate — any time you have any kind of experience, it’s going to change your brain,” says Rory C. Reid, a research psychologist at the Neuropsychiatric Institute at UCLA. “The real question is, ‘Are those changes substantial enough that there’s going to be some observable effect?’”

As to Santorum’s claim that such damning research exists, Reid says: “Well, if there is, I’d sure like to see it!” He continues, “There’s not a single study to my knowledge that has even demonstrated half of that [claim].” Allow me to put into perspective Reid’s expertise: He not only specializes in neuropsychology but he’s also one of the world’s top experts on hypersexual behavior. If any such evidence existed, let alone “a wealth of research,” he would have seen it.

Still, he humored me by logging onto PubMed, a database maintained by the National Institutes of Health, and doing a search for any studies involving neuroimaging and pornography. Plenty of related research showed up, but none reliably demonstrate “profound” brain changes. The problem with much of the research in this arena is that it’s limited to (in nerd-speak) cross-sectional and quantitative data — it doesn’t establish a cause and effect.

In order to reliably demonstrate such a brain-damaging impact, researchers would have to engage in the sort of study that no review board would approve — especially when it comes to the impact on children. “You would have to get a group of children that had never looked at porn and then divide them into two groups,” Reid explains. They would all undergo brain scans and then half would have to be repetitively exposed to pornography before another round of brain scans. In addition to then showing “that there had been changes in the brain that would be detrimental, you’d also have to correlate that with behavioral outcomes,” he says. (That’s not even mentioning the issue of how to define pornographic material. As David Ley, a psychologist and author of “The Myth of Sex Addiction,” says, “The Supreme Court couldn’t answer that, but Santorum can?”)

(click here to continue reading Santorum’s bad porn science – Salon.com.)

I've Missed You
I’ve Missed You

Mitt Romney could’ve avoided epic Illinois battle

Seth Anderson0 comment

I'm With Stupid
Stupidity On the Right

Speaking of the Illinois primary, Mitt Romney’s vaunted organization made a major error:

the Illinois GOP awards all of its 54 delegates by congressional district—three delegates to the winner of each of the 18 CDs in the state.

Delegates for Santorum in January filed the minimum legal number of petition signatures to appear on the ballot in just four of Illinois’ 18 available congressional districts, a review of petition signatures found. In 10 others, delegates who filed signatures came far short of the 600 required to appear on the ballot, a review of the signatures found. They didn’t file any delegates in four districts. “They were woefully short,” state treasurer and Romney Illinois campaign Chairman Dan Rutherford said.

The petitions of Santorum delegates were initially challenged in January, but those challenges were withdrawn shortly after they were filed, said Illinois Board of Elections Director Rupert Borgsmiller.

So, had the Romney campaign challenged the Santorum petitions where warranted, Santorum would only be eligible to win 12 of the state’s 54 delegates. It would’ve been a default Romney victory with minimum 42 delegates (or 3.7 percent of the total he needs to clinch the nomination) and he could focus instead on upcoming states, or at least save that $3.4 million (and counting) to use against Obama. So why didn’t the Romney campaign aggressively move to deny Santorum those possible delegates, the way they forced Santorum off the ballot in Virginia? Because that aforementioned Dan Rutherford, Romney’s campaign chair in the Land of Lincoln, also happens to be gearing up for a 2014 gubernatorial challenge. And if you hope to win a contested primary, the worst thing he could do is go to the mat for Mitt Romney by denying Rick Santorum his delegates.

(click here to continue reading Daily Kos: Mitt Romney could’ve avoided epic Illinois battle.)

Oops…

Illinois Primary and GOP Hopefuls

Seth Anderson1 Comment

Flag Waving
Flag Waving1

For the first time since I moved to Chicago, the Illinois GOP primary might actually be contested…

Since Super Tuesday, I’ve been reading a lot of coverage that ignores the challenges that the delegate count poses to Rick Santorum. Here’s one quick test to see if you have a good sense for this stuff. Is Illinois a must-win state for Mr. Santorum?

The answer is basically yes.

No one state is technically a must-win, and for that matter, winning the statewide vote in Illinois has no direct bearing on the delegate count (all of its delegates are awarded by Congressional district).

But Mr. Santorum will have to win in most places like Illinois to have a decent chance at preventing Mr. Romney from securing the nomination. And he’ll have to win in states much more challenging than Illinois — possibly as challenging as California — to overtake Mr. Romney in the delegate count and have the stronger case that he should be the nominee.

Although some awareness of the delegate math is almost assuredly better than none, you really need a detail-oriented approach to come to proper conclusions about this kind of question. For instance, you need to know that Texas’s delegate allocation is quite proportional, while New Jersey’s is strictly winner-take-all based on the statewide vote, while California is mostly winner-take-all by Congressional district. And most states have some kind of twist in their rules — proportional states can become winner-take-all if candidates meet (or their opponents fail to achieve) certain vote thresholds.

 

(click here to continue reading FiveThirtyEight: Why Illinois May be a ‘Must Win’ for Santorum – NYTimes.com.)

Footnotes:
  1. actually the Chicago flag, not Illinois flag, which I don’t seem to have taken a photo of [↩]

Doonesbury Abortion Strip Censored

Seth Anderson2 Comments

Charles Pierce writes this about some newspaper publishers’ fainting over this week’s Doonesbury comic strip:

Apparently, as has happened about once a decade or so, Garry Trudeau’s “Doonesbury” is once again giving the vapors to the people who run our nation’s newspapers. The important thing to remember is that nobody is objecting that the facts of the Dildos Mandating Dildos laws on which Trudeau is riffing here are in any way untrue. The guardians of the marketplace of ideas are having problems with how directly Trudeau is expressing his opinion on those facts.

The reasons for this is that many of America’s newspapers, large and small, are now in the hands of bean-counting poltroons who wet themselves at the prospect of angry phone calls from wingnuts, or that the local mini-Rushbo on their evening drivetime station will get a hold of their names and say mean things about them.

Here, for example, is the mewling from the Oregonian. Trudeau, apparently…

“…went over the line of good taste and humor in penning a series on abortion using graphic language and images inappropriate for a comics page.”

The graphic language? “Transvaginal,” which is apparently banal enough for the Virginia House Of Delegates, but not for the delicate souls who read newspapers in Portland. Inappropriate images? Who in hell knows, although the suggestion by the Oregonian that all that graphic language, and all those inappropriate images, are okay for their readers of experience online, but not on the sacred corpses of their dead trees, gives you some idea of why newspapers are in so much trouble these days.

(click here to continue reading Doonesbury Abortion Strip Censored – Screaming Yellow Zonkers – Esquire.)

Sounds about right. More reactions from other newspapers compiled by Jim Romenesko

Monday:

Doonesbury 2012 3 12 abortion in Texas

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Tuesday:

Doonesbury 2012 3 13

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Mouth breathing still-governor of Texas, Rick Perry, was not amused, once someone read the strip to him out loud:

And Trudeau stands by the strip. “To ignore it would have been comedy malpractice,” he told the Washington Post. It’s also apparently the first time Trudeau has tackled abortion. “Roe v. Wade was decided while I was still in school” he said. “Planned Parenthood was embraced by both parties. Contraception was on its way to being used by 99-percent of American women. I thought reproductive rights was a settled issue. Who knew we had turned into a nation of sluts?”

Texas Gov. Rick Perry’s office is not amused, calling the comic tasteless. “The decision to end a life is not funny,” Perry spokesperson Lucy Nashed told TPM. “The governor’s proud of his leadership on the sonogram law … and being a staunch defender of unborn life.”

(click here to continue reading Doonesbury Comic Series On Abortion Rejected By Several Newspapers | TPMDC.)

 

GOP Clown Car – Post Super Tuesday Edition

Seth Anderson0 comment

Who Is To Blame?
Who Is To Blame?

In the weeks since we last looked at the GOP delegate scramble, primaries and caucuses have been held in Michigan, Arizona, Washington, Alaska, Georgia, Idaho, Massachusetts, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Vermont, Virginia, Wyoming, Guam, Northern Marianas Islands, Kansas, and the Virgin Islands.

Races of note: and a few haphazard comments

Arizona – despite national GOP instructions for proportional delegate allocation, Arizona awarded all 29 delegates to Romney.

The Arizona Republican Party has said the winner of the February 28 primary will be awarded all of its 29 delegates, despite the Republican National Committee mandate for pre-April event states to award delegates proportionally. The scheduling of Arizona’s Republican primary resulted in the loss of half of its expected delegates to the Republican national convention.

Michigan – Santorum nearly won, Romney squeaked out with 16 delegates to Santorum’s 14. Romney’s status as son of a fairly popular Michigan governor might have helped, but not much. One of the best lines came out of this primary race where Romney claimed the trees in Michigan were the right height, whatever the hell that means. Sounded like a faulty sub-routine in his programming.

Washington – a non-binding caucus, actual selection won’t be completed until May 30th, so who knows.

Northern Mariana Islands
Northern Mariana Islands

Guam, and Northern Marianas Islands – 18 delegates, but the votes are not binding, which is a fancy way of saying the delegates can vote any which way. The current population of Guam is in the neighborhood of 180,000, yet only 215 people voted for Mitt Romney, and nobody voted for anyone else. Yikes, that is less than 1%. In the Northern Marianas Islands (population 53,000 or so), Romney got 740 votes, Santorum 53, Gingrich 28 votes, and Ron Paul 27. Big turnout on the islands! Weather must have been cold.

Georgia – Newt Gingrich’s home state. Romney still won 15 delegates to Gingrich’s 47.

Ohio – Romney won, partially because Santorum’s organization didn’t get on the ballot everywhere. The popular vote was very close: 456,513 to 446,225, but the delegate count was not (35 to 21).

In three of the state’s 16 congressional districts, including two that are near Ohio’s border with Pennsylvania, Santorum will lose any delegates he might have won because his campaign failed to meet the state’s eligibility requirements months ago. Those three districts alone take 9 delegates out of a total of 66 off the table for Santorum. But it gets worse: Nine more Ohio delegates may also be in jeopardy. Sources say that in six other congressional districts — the third, fourth, eighth, tenth, twelfth and sixteenth — Santorum submitted fewer names than required to be eligible for all three delegates up-for-grabs in each district. That means even if he wins in those places, he might not be able to receive the full contingent of delegates. In the three districts where Santorum did not submit a delegate slate at all, he will not be able to receive any delegates. In the six where he submitted only a partial slate, he is eligible to be awarded only the number of delegates he submitted, assuming he wins a particular district.

(click here to continue reading Rick Santorum’s Ohio Delegate Problems Pile Up – ABC News.)

Virginia – we discussed this previously, only Romney and Ron Paul were organized enough to get on the ballot. Thus, Romney got 43 delegates, Ron Paul 3.

Super Delegates – as of today, Romney has 27, Ron Paul 1, Newt Gingrich 3, and Rick Santorum 2.

To Think I saw it on Morgan Street
To Think I saw it on Morgan Street

By my count, I have the current totals as:

  • Romney – 456
  • Rick Santorum – 217
  • Newt Gingrich – 107
  • Ron Paul – 47

but of course, those numbers are a bit soft with all the malleable counts for various caucuses and so on. The New York Times delegate tracker shows the count as of this morning as:

  • Romney – 454
  • Rick Santorum – 184
  • Newt Gingrich – 118
  • Ron Paul – 66

The Greenpapers lists hard total as:

  • Romney – 354
  • Rick Santorum – 131
  • Newt Gingrich – 107
  • Ron Paul – 23

Not over yet, in other words…

Doonesbury Strip on Abortion Rankles Some Newspapers

Seth Anderson3 Comments

Vigilante Man
Vigilante Man

Truth is hurtful sometimes.

A national syndicate will offer replacement “Doonesbury” comic strips to newspapers that don’t want to run a series that uses graphic imagery to lampoon a Texas law requiring women to have an ultrasound before an abortion, executives said Friday.

A handful of newspapers say they would not run this week’s series, while several others said the strips would move from the comics to opinion pages or Web sites only. Many already publish the strip by Garry Trudeau on editorial pages, given that its sarcastic swipes at society’s foibles have a history of giving headaches to newspaper editors.

(click here to continue reading ‘Doonesbury’ Strip on Abortion Rankles Some Newspapers – NYTimes.com.)

The always essential media watcher Jim Romenesko has more details about the content, or you can always just read the comics yourself at http://www.doonesbury.com/strip. My local newspaper uses the truncated version of the Sunday strip, so I’ve long just read Doonesbury at the source.

Monday: Young woman arrives for her pre-termination sonogram, is told to take a seat in the shaming room, a middle-aged male state legislator will be right with her.

Tuesday: He asks her if this is her first visit to the center, she replies no, that she’s been using the contraceptive services for some time. He says, “I see. Do your parents know you’re a slut?”

Wednesday: A different male is reading to her about the transvaginal exam process.

Thursday: In the stirrups, she is telling a nurse that she doesn’t want a transvaginal exam. Doctor says “Sorry miss, you’re first trimester. The male Republicans who run Texas require that all abortion seekers be examined with a 10″ shaming wand.” She asks “Will it hurt?” Nurse says, “Well, it’s not comfortable, honey. But Texas feels you should have thought of that.” Doctor says, “By the authority invested in me by the GOP base, I thee rape.”

Friday: Doctor is explaining that the Texas GOP requires her to have an intimate encounter with her fetus. He begins describing it to her. Last panel, he says, “Shall I describe it’s hopes and dreams?” She replies, “If it wants to be the next Rick Perry, I’ve made up my mind.”

Saturday: Back in the reception area, she asks where she goes now for the actual abortion. Receptionist tells her there’s a 24-hour waiting period: “The Republican Party is hoping you get caught in a shame spiral and change your mind.” Last panel: She says, “A final indignity.” Receptionist replies, “Not quite. Here’s your bill.”

(click here to continue reading Some newspapers won’t be running next week’s “Doonesbury” strips | JIMROMENESKO.COM.)

The Washington Post interviewed Gary Trudeau:

Comic Riffs caught up with Trudeau to ask him about how he approached the abortion series, how his syndicate supported the idea — and whether the nation’s comics editors have grown more or less skittish about controversial content on “the funny pages.”

[Note: Some language that follows merits a “PG” rating.]

MICHAEL CAVNA: In 1985, you — in apparent agreement with Lee Salem [at then-Universal Press Syndicate] — decided to pull a week of abortion-related strips around the film “The Silent Scream.” So what’s different now? Obviously the angle and execution and point of satiric attack vary some, but what’s changed that spurred you to create an abortion narrative in this climate?

GARRY TRUDEAU: In my 42 years with UPS, the “Silent Scream” week was the only series that the syndicate ever strongly objected to. Lee felt that it would be deeply harmful to the feature, and that we would lose clients permanently. They had supported me through so much for so long, I felt obliged to go with their call.

Such was not the case this week. There was no dispute over contents, just some discussion over whether to prepare a substitute week for editors who requested one. [We did.]

I chose the topic of compulsory sonograms because it was in the news and because of its relevance to the broader battle over women’s health currently being waged in several states. For some reason, the GOP has chosen 2012 to re-litigate reproductive freedom, an issue that was resolved decades ago. Why [Rick] Santorum, [Rush] Limbaugh et al. thought this would be a good time to declare war on half the electorate, I cannot say. But to ignore it would have been comedy malpractice.

…Texas’s HB-15 isn’t hard to explain: The bill says that in order for a woman to obtain a perfectly legal medical procedure, she is first compelled by law to endure a vaginal probe with a hard, plastic 10-inch wand. The World Health Organization defines rape as “physically forced or otherwise coerced penetration — even if slight — of the vulva or anus, using a penis, other body parts or an object.” You tell me the difference.

(click here to continue reading THE ‘DOONESBURY’ INTERVIEW: Garry Trudeau says to ignore abortion-law debate would have been ‘comedy malpractice’ – Comic Riffs – The Washington Post.)

Clear Channel in Trouble

Seth Anderson0 comment

Cleaning Up
Cleaning Up

I wonder when Bain Capital is going to hollow out Clear Channel, home to the Vulgar Pigboy, Rush Limbaugh.

A hedge fund is accusing a subsidiary of Clear Channel Communications Inc. of improperly moving $656 million to its debt-laden parent, which is owned by private-equity giants Bain Capital Partners and Thomas H. Lee Capital Partners.

The cash transfers, which were fully disclosed, were made from billboard company Clear Channel Outdoor Holdings Inc. The company is 89% owned by Clear Channel Communications, with the rest owned by public shareholders.

JHL Capital Group, a $1.5 billion Chicago hedge fund, argues in a letter to the billboard company that its board members may be liable for “breach of duty” due to cash transfers to the larger media company, according to the Nov. 29 letter. The hedge fund owns less than 1% of Clear Channel Outdoor, according to securities filings.

The private-equity firms, which are named in the letter, are at the center of the dispute. Bain and Thomas H. Lee teamed up to purchase Clear Channel Communications in 2008 in what has thus far been one of the more disappointing buyouts of recent years. In addition, four members of the billboard company’s board are employed by the two firms.

…Bain and Thomas H. Lee paid $17.9 billion to buy media-and-entertainment company Clear Channel Communications just before the economy headed south and radio advertising deteriorated. Today, Clear Channel’s actively traded debt is rated at the lower end of the “junk”-bond universe, even though revenue and operating income rose last year. The company has more than $12 billion in debt due in 2016 and default is a “real possibility,” said Melissa Link, an analyst at Fitch Ratings, in an interview. Clear Channel declined to comment on Ms. Link’s analysis.
The $656 million moved to Clear Channel Communications has risen from $123 million two years ago and could exceed $1 billion “in the next several years,” the company recently told investors in bond-offering papers. The company wouldn’t comment on the offering.

(click here to continue reading Transfers At Clear Channel in Dispute – WSJ.com.)

We Three Pigs
We Three Pigs

And a possible reason why Mitt Romney refuses to say much about Limbaugh – Romney still gets most of his money from Bain, remember?

Clear Channel is going to host Rush until the bitter end…

Rush Limbaugh is probably not sweating this one, folks. The critics keep piling on. But the immensely popular talk radio host has the biggest “sponsor” of all on his side: Clear Channel radio network.

Arizona Sen. John McCain, Republican presidential candidate Newt Gingrich, and New York’s Cardinal Timothy Dolan are among the latest to criticize Limbaugh for calling a Georgetown University student a “slut” and a “prostitute” after she testified in favor of birth control insurance coverage.

But Clear Channel’s Premiere Radio Networks Inc., which hosts Limbaugh’s conservative talk show, has voiced its unwavering support for Limbaugh, whose contract runs through 2016.

“The contraception debate is one that sparks strong emotion and opinions on both sides of the issue,” Premiere Networks told the Associated Press. “We respect the right of Mr. Limbaugh, as well as the rights of those who disagree with him, to express those opinions.”

A representative for Premiere declined to tell the news service how much revenue the company is losing over the recent loss of advertisers seeking to distance themselves from Limbaugh and his comments.

(click here to continue reading Rush Limbaugh has the biggest support of all from Clear Channel. – latimes.com.)

IRS May Make Political Groups Pay Dearly for Keeping Donors Secret

Seth Anderson0 comment

Get What You Deserve
Get What You Deserve

Wow! That would be great news. Not Thelonious Monk dancing (YouTube) great, but close…

For years, the IRS has done little or nothing to check the rise of overtly political groups that claim a special tax-exempt status in order to funnel secret money into election-related advertising.

But in a sign that the agency may be waking from its slumber, the IRS has sent detailed questionnaires to several Tea Party organizations — and possibly other political groups — to determine if they truly qualify for the 501(c)(4) designation intended for groups whose exclusive purpose is to promote social welfare.

Should any group currently calling itself a 501(c)(4) have its designation denied or revoked, tax experts said the consequences could be severe, including fines of 35 percent or more of the money they raised in secret.

And the groups might have to make donors’ names public.

…

The tax code requires 501(c)(4) groups to be operated “exclusively” for social welfare purposes — which does not include intervention in political campaigns. The IRS has allowed the groups to engage in political activity as long as it was not their primary purpose. But for many of these groups, it’s hard to see what other purpose they could possibly have. It’s also hard to see why a political group would file under section 501(c)(4) instead of under Section 527 — the part of the tax code explicitly designed for political groups including PACs and super PACs — other than to hide its donors. Like the C4s, the 527 groups are allowed to raise unlimited funds and pay no taxes. They just have to disclose who donates money.

Reform groups have been pressuring the IRS to enforce its rules for months. In February, a group of Democratic senators sent a letter to the IRS, which stated: “It is contrary to the letter and spirit of the statute for political organizations formed primarily to advocate for a political candidate or to run attack ads against other candidates to take advantage of section 501(c)(4).”

(click here to continue reading IRS May Make Political Groups Pay Dearly for Keeping Donors Secret — And Out Them.)

That is exactly why – hiding their donors from public scrutiny. The IRS shouldn’t drag their feet, but do this now, before the 2012 election…

 

Fresh allegations increase likelihood of News Corp being prosecuted under Foreign Corrupt Practices Act

Seth Anderson0 comment

Join The Accusations
Join The Accusations

As always, waiting with bated breath for Rupert Murdoch and News Corporation to be prosecuted. Murdoch needs to go to jail, his company needs to lose its license to broadcast over the public airwaves, and his empire should be broken apart.

This week, Metropolitan police deputy assistant commissioner Sue Akers told the Leveson inquiry, which is investigating the state of the British press following the phone-hacking scandal, that there was a “culture of illegal payments” at the Sun to a “network of corrupted officials”.

The Sun and its former sister paper, the News of the World, are owned by News International, a wholly owned subsidiary of News Corp, the US media gaint that owns Fox, the Wall Street Journal and a controlling stake in Sky, among other assets.

“This is obviously a very significant development with regards to the likelihood of a US prosecution,” said Mark MacDougall, partner in the Washington office of the law firm Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld and a former federal prosecutor. “If the British authorities are articulating a pattern, a defined scheme, to bribe officials, that is a very big deal.”

The latest allegations significantly increase the likelihood of an FCPA action, said Mike Koehler, professor of business law at Butler University and author of the FCPA Professor blog.

“Last July, when we first started talking about this, there was one newspaper, the News of the World, and one category of foreign official, the police. Now we have another newspaper and a much broader category of foreign officials,” said Koehler.

“The evidence seems to suggest that there was a recognition that these payments may have been illegal and the notion that there were attempts to disguise the nature of these payments,” said Koehler. These elements would fall under the remit of the FCPA.

The original investigation centered on payment to police officers, and there had been some argument that the police did not fit the FCPA’s definition of “foreign government officials”.

Tom Fox, a Houston-based lawyer who specialises in FCPA cases and anti-corruption law, said Akers’s allegations that payments had been made to “police, military, government, prison and health and others” had destroyed that argument.

“Speaking of a culture of corruption is really bad,” said Fox. “There are two main types of FCPA case. In the first, a company has policies in place but fails to detect corruption. The second is far worse. And that’s when there is a programme in place and you ignore it.”

(click here to continue reading News Corp: threat of US legal action raised in light of ‘illegal payment’ claim | Media | guardian.co.uk.)

 

Maria Pappas paid by the Heartland Institute

Seth Anderson0 comment

Proving Machine
Proving Machine

I wonder why Maria Pappas is tied in so closely to the scum at the Heartland Insitute? I’ve voted for her in the past, but would have to reconsider that in the future. She’s probably about to switch parties in any case, and join the Tea Baggers.

Heartland also planned to spend $210,000 to help Cook County Treasurer Maria Pappas tour the nation to speak about municipal debt, according to one document. Pappas lost to Barack Obama in the 2004 Democratic primary for a U.S. Senate seat. Pappas confirmed this in a phone interview, saying what Heartland was doing was exposing a “financial tsunami” of municipal debt.

 

(click here to continue reading INFLUENCE GAME: Leaks show group’s climate efforts.)

Embers

Embers

from the DeSmogBlog documents:

We [Heartland Institute] have tried in the past to host half-day (or shorter) programs in state capitals, with mixed success. We plan for eight such events in 2012, with some of them perhaps using Cook County Treasurer Maria Pappas as a draw…

Maria Pappas, Cook County (IL) Treasurer, has discovered that municipalities and other taxing districts in Cook County are much deeper in debt than is widely understood, or even understood by elected officials in Cook County. She has documented a looming financial crisis, driven largely by employee pension and health care promises, that could have catastrophic results for residents and businesses in the county. She warns that other counties in the U.S. are probably facing similar disasters. She’s eager to speak out on the issue not only in Illinois, but nationwide.

Heartland has agreed to work with Treasurer Pappas’s staff and other allies on three things:

(a) a research and publishing effort that results in one or more Heartland Policy Studies that factcheck, report, and interpret the Treasurers’ findings,

(b) a national communications campaign consisting of distribution of the studies, news releases, op-eds, and other promotional activities, and

(c) a national speaking tour featuring Treasurer Pappas, perhaps with events in state capitals held in conjunction with our allies in a dozen or half-dozen states. We anticipate that this project will cost about $210,000. The anonymous donor has pledged $105,000 toward this project. We are circulating a proposal to potential donors.

We don’t yet know exactly what Ms. Pappas and her buddies were going to say, but odds are it won’t be a liberal position. In the same document (PDF), Heartland also plans to:

  • circumvent the FDA and get drugs approved without study
  • continue to spread lies about climate change, and fund scientists without morals to do so
  • Operation Angry Beaver – support incumbent Governor Scott Walker in his bid to avoid recall in Wisconsin
  • Push for more “Charter” schools
  • Outreach to the 1 Percenters in the Chicago Mercantile Exchange and other bankers, and libertarian-friendly financiers
  • Get their anti-climate change agenda taught in K-12 school systems
  • Push for more hydraulic Fracking

and others. None of these projects are for the betterment of humanity, just for enrichment of the few. Sad to note that a member of the Democratic Party and the current Cook County Treasurer is a fellow traveller with the Heartland Institute.