Tag: GOP

Congress to Face Angry Farmers

Seth Anderson0 comment

A Little Sigh
A Little Sigh

What a surprise! The anti-American GOP Congress has decided farmers are not a core constituency, or at least are not as important as defense contractors. Since the GOP doesn’t believe in climate change, the drought is just god’s will, and farmers should pray for rain, avoid asking for government assistance. 

When Congress returns to business this week, it will be met not by the Code Pink antiwar protesters or the Tea Party supporters who often gathered near the Capitol last year. Instead, farmers will be out in force, rallying for a bill that lawmakers failed to pass before they recessed five weeks ago.

That unfinished bit of business threatens to cut off aid to farmers across the nation. But lawmakers, fresh off their parties’ conventions, appear to favor action on other bills that emphasize their political agendas over actual lawmaking.

When the Senate reconvenes on Monday, it will move to begin debate on a jobs bill for veterans that is championed by President Obama. The Democratic leadership is also considering yet another vote on Representative Paul D. Ryan’s budget, for no other apparent reason than to embarrass Republicans facing tough re-election battles.

In the House, Republicans will vote on a bill that seeks to phase out the Energy Department’s loan guarantee program that financed Solyndra, the bankrupt maker of solar power equipment. They also want Senate Democrats to come up with a measure like one already passed by the House that would replace the large-scale budget cuts for the Pentagon that are scheduled to take effect with other trims on Dec. 31. The military cuts were set in motion by an agreement to raise the debt ceiling last summer, and they became automatic when a special select committee failed to come up with at least $1.2 trillion in deficit reduction over 10 years.

…

Over the summer, the Senate passed a bipartisan five-year farm bill that the House declined to take up. House leaders also refused to consider their own Agriculture Committee’s sweeping farm measure, instead pushing through a short-term $383 million package of loans and grants for livestock producers and a limited number of farmers. Senate leaders declined to take action on that measure because they said it was too limited, a view shared by many farmers.

Mr. Boehner lacks enough votes to pass a bill because Democrats dislike the $16 billion in cuts to nutrition programs, including food stamps, in the House committee’s bill. And many conservative Republicans would like to see more cuts over all in the measure.

 

(click here to continue reading Congress to Face Angry Farmers – NYTimes.com.)

Time Wasters In Congress

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We Deliver - Just not Saturdays
We Deliver – Just not Saturdays, maybe

Our Congress, hard at work…

In the 18 months the 112th Congress has been sworn in, the House has introduced 60 bills to rename post offices. Thirty-eight have passed the House and 26 have become law. During those 18 months, the House has produced 151 laws, 17 percent of which have been to rename post offices, according to Congressional Democrats. Not a single bill has come to the House floor aimed at reforming a Postal Service, which is bleeding billions of dollars because of Congressional mandates. … USPS claims that if Congress does not act, the mail service will default not only on the $5.5 billion payment due [August 1, 2012], but also on another $5.6 billion payment for future retiree’s benefit due September 30. The Postal Service has pleaded with Congress for years to end the requirement that it pre-fund its retiree’s health benefits. But many lawmakers claim that because USPS has such a massive workforce – there are 614,000 Postal Service employees-if it does not pre-fund retirement benefits, it will not be able to pay them in the future.

And as long as these disagreements persist, it looks like naming post offices is the closest Congress will get to passing postal reform.

(click here to continue reading 60 House Bills to Name Post Offices, Zero To Fix Mail Service – Yahoo! News.)

Mail Acceptance
Mail Acceptance

Paul Ryan is one of those time-wasters:

He’s been in Congress for nearly 13 years, but Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) has only seen two of his bills pass into law during that time.

Ryan, who Mitt Romney has tapped as his running mate, passed a bill into law in July 2000 that renames a post office in his district. Thanks to Ryan, the post office on 1818 Milton Ave. in Janesville, Wis., is now known as “Les Aspin Post Office Building.”

(click here to continue reading Paul Ryan Only Passed 2 Bills Into Law In More Than A Decade.)

I Won't Mind Waiting
I Won’t Mind Waiting

and speaking of wasting time, the Republican mouth-breathers in Congress have also wasted taxpayer money with symbolic votes re: the Affordable Care Act a/k/a Obamacare:

What grave business is the House of Representatives undertaking today? It is voting to do away with the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act—or, as the name of the bill puts it, on the Repeal of Obamacare Act. The title has a certain appealing conciseness, relative to what some of the other partial or entire repeal bills have been called, like the Religious Freedom Tax Repeal Act or the Repealing the Job-Killing Health-Care Law Act—Eric Cantor introduced that one, which stands as a true classic of the bill-title genre. (Reuters has a list of more.)

The names have been the bill-sponsors’ only real accomplishment, even though repeals have passed the House again and again—some thirty times, in various forms, since the G.O.P. got its majority, in 2010. Sometimes it’s been been brazen and loud (the NObamacare Act of 2012—isn’t there a ban on legislative names that rely on capitalization tricks?). And sometimes there’s an amendment that comes to Congress, as the saying goes, on little cat feet, attached to a big bill. All the significant ones have died, though, as everyone knew they would, and as today’s will as well, before getting anywhere near Senate passage, let alone the President’s desk. (If he signed it “NObama,” would that count as a veto?) The Republicans have some legislative options—reconciliation, debt-ceiling-collapsing blackmail—but not good ones. So why do they bother?

(click here to continue reading House Votes on the Repeal of Obamacare Act : The New Yorker.)

Good thing the nation is working perfectly with zero problems of any kind that need fixing so that the fools in Congress can play.

Todd Akin Is Aching to Be In Charge of Your Ladyparts

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Locked up Tightly
Locked up Tightly

Maureen Dowd says what many, many have been saying recently re: Todd Akin and his party of mouth-breathers.

Other Republicans are trying to cover up their true identity to get elected. Even as party leaders attempted to lock the crazy uncle in the attic in Missouri, they were doing their own crazy thing down in Tampa, Fla., by reiterating language in their platform calling for a no-exceptions Constitutional amendment outlawing abortion, even in cases of rape, incest and threat to the life of the mother.

Paul Ryan, who teamed up with Akin in the House to sponsor harsh anti-abortion bills, may look young and hip and new generation, with his iPod full of heavy metal jams and his cute kids. But he’s just a fresh face on a Taliban creed — the evermore antediluvian, anti-women, anti-immigrant, anti-gay conservative core. Amiable in khakis and polo shirts, Ryan is the perfect modern leader to rally medieval Republicans who believe that Adam and Eve cavorted with dinosaurs.

In asserting that women have the superpower to repel rape sperm, Akin ratcheted up the old chauvinist argument that gals who wear miniskirts and high-heels are “asking” for rape; now women who don’t have the presence of mind to conjure up a tubal spasm, a drone hormone, a magic spermicidal secretion or mere willpower to block conception during rape are “asking” for a baby.

“The biological facts are perhaps inconvenient, but whether the egg meets the sperm is a matter of luck or prevention,” says Dr. Paul Blumenthal, a professor of obstetrics and gynecology who directs the Stanford Program for International Reproductive Education and Services. “If wishing that ‘I won’t get pregnant right now’ made it so, we wouldn’t need contraceptives.”

When you wish upon a rape.

Dr. Blumenthal is alarmed that Akin is a member of the House Committee on Science, Space and Technology.

“What is very disturbing to me is that people like Mr. Akin who have postulated this secret mechanism for avoiding pregnancy have developed their own make-believe world of science based on entirely self-serving beliefs of convenience or just ignorance,” he said. “I don’t think we want these people to be responsible for the lives of others.”

But, for all the Republican cant about how they want to keep government out of the lives of others, the ultraconservatives are panting to meddle in the lives of others. Contrary to President Obama’s refreshing assertion Monday that a bunch of male politicians shouldn’t be making health care decisions for women, this troglodyte tribe of men and Bachmann-esque women craves that responsibility.

(click here to continue reading Just Think No – NYTimes.com.)

 Todd Akin ben sargent 120821
Todd Akin – Christian Taliban by Ben Sargent 120821

Akin isn’t some outlier in the GOP, he’s just voicing what most of his colleagues have the political sense not to mention on television. He shouldn’t be forced out of the election for his views, but he shouldn’t be elected either. However, the odds are still 50-50 he’ll win; there are a lot of Missouri Christian Taliban who believe exactly what Akin and the GOP do – namely that the government should be in charge of a women’s body. 

Legitimate
Legitimate

The GOP convention in Tampa is going to codify this outrage, as Jodi Jacobson explains:

As of today, Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan may find themselves in a wee bit of a bind.

For the past two days, the pair have been running around trying to assure the press and ultimately women voters that they really do believe in “real rape,” not just “legitimate rape,” that they are not as misogynistic as Missouri Rep. Todd Akin, and that, of course, a Romney-Ryan Administration would never eliminate rape and incest exceptions for abortion.

And, now it appears that, all the while, the people really in charge of the GOP—fundamentalist anti-choicers among them—have been writing a party platform that not only makes all of that a lie, but is in effect a promise to make the personhood of fertilized eggs the law of the land.

The draft official platform strongly supports a “a human life amendment” to the Constitution:

“Faithful to the ‘self-evident’ truths enshrined in the Declaration of Independence, we assert the sanctity of human life and affirm that the unborn child has a fundamental individual right to life which cannot be infringed,” the draft platform declares. “We support a human life amendment to the Constitution and endorse legislation to make clear that the Fourteenth Amendment’s protections apply to unborn children.”

Let’s be very, very clear that such an amendment—which Mitt Romney has said unequivocally he would sign—would not only criminalize abortions of any kind for any reason, but also would outlaw many forms of contraception, in-vitro fertilization, and treatment of pregnant women with life-threatening conditions such as cancer. Moreover, it would also criminalize miscarriage.

(click here to continue reading As Romney and Ryan Dissemble, RNC Prepares Radical Anti-Choice Platform Based on Personhood | RH Reality Check.)

widely mentioned as a potential vice-presidential candidate

Seth Anderson0 comment

Anything That Might Happen
Anything That Might Happen

From the Department of Small Things That I Should Probably Ignore But Can’t

The movement picked up an important ally when New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie—widely mentioned as a potential vice-presidential candidate—recently reached an agreement under which Amazon would collect sales taxes on his state’s online purchases in exchange for locating distribution facilities there.

(click here to continue reading Tax Break Online Nears End – WSJ.com.)

How did an adjective like this1 make it into this article about online sales taxes? Was there a memo from Rupert Murdoch saying that every mention of Governor Christie has to mention “widely mentioned as a potential vice-presidential candidate”? I’d say odds are against Gov. Christie joining the Romney ticket.

Footnotes:
  1. or whatever the phrase is called [↩]

Campbell Brown Is a GOP Hack

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I Will Ransom Them From The Power of the Grave
I Will Ransom Them From The Power of the Grave

The New York Times published an anti-abortion/anti-Planned Parenthood screed by Campbell Brown, who just happens to be married to one of Mitt Romney’s top advisors, Dan Senor,  formerly of the Bush Administration, and currently a shill on Fox News and the WSJ.The NYT forgot to mention that seemingly relevant fact, for some reason. 

In any case, the op-ed made my teeth grind. If I wasn’t lazy, I’d pick the op-ed apart, but since Kathleen Geier did such a good job, I’ll just post a link to her rebuttal, and you can read it yourself. 

Start with this excerpt, but make sure to click through, some of the comments are spot-on as well:

About the op-ed itself: it is one of those sleazy, totally disingenuous “I’m a pro-choicer but” arguments by someone who is trying to concern troll Planned Parenthood out of existence. Brown, never one to back down from a cliché, claims she wants abortions to be “safe, legal, and rare.” She also claims to be a Planned Parenthood supporter, but attacks the organization for very sensibly refusing to support certain so-called moderate Republican politicians who do not support their goals. One such politician is Senator Susan Collins, who Planned Parenthood declined to endorse because, among other things, she made the indefensible decision to support the nomination of Samuel Alito to the Supreme Court.

Another of the allegedly moderate Republicans that Campbell Brown wants to force Planned Parenthood to support instead of a far more ideologically friendly Democrat is Rep. Robert Dold of Illinois. To give you an idea of what a lying piece of crap this op-ed is, Brown refers to Dold as “pro-choice.” Well, it’s true that he calls himself pro-choice, but that label is completely misleading.

In 2010, Dold was backed by the anti-choice Right to Life PAC; among other things, Dold

opposes government assistance for women who cannot afford abortions, he supports the ban on late-term abortions, he supports parental involvement laws, and he supports the Unborn Child Pain Awareness Act (which requires that a script be read to women before an abortion). Dold also supported the Stupak-Pitts Amendment, which would have resulted in women losing health benefits related to abortions that they have today. In fact, Dold is so anti-choice that in 2010 he actually won the endorsement of Phyllis Schlafly’s far-right Eagle Forum. At Dold’s request, however, they rescinded the endorsement.

Sounding like an uptight schoolmarm, Campbell Brown also says she has a problem with Planned Parenthood’s “attitude”: an attitude that doesn’t ever seem to take into account that abortion is a morally complicated matter or that those on the anti-abortion side are often decent and well-intentioned people. Unsurprisingly, this is a straw man. First of all, there is absolutely no contradiction between acknowledging that, for individuals, abortion can be an extremely morally complex matter, while at the same time insisting politically that safe, legal, affordable, readily accessible abortions must be available to all women who seek them for any reason. The moral issues are strictly between the woman, her own conscience, and her God (if she has one) to sort out, and are no one else’s business whatsoever — least of all wingnut politicians, religious zealots, or fading former television personalities of no particular field of expertise.

(click here to continue reading Political Animal – Concern troll of the day: Campbell Brown.)

Girl In A Box
Girl In A Box

So who is Campbell Brown?

She used to be a journalist, but Campbell Brown’s new role is far more interesting: she’s becoming the female voice of the GOP. Brown, who worked for CNN and NBC, is married to former Bush administration operative and now Mitt Romney adviser Dan Senor. She has written her second op-ed for the New York Times, rapping Planned Parenthood for being insufficiently bipartisan (read: why aren’t you nicer to Republicans?)

In her first, she went after President Obama for being “condescending” to women (by being in favor of things most women support, and for not recognizing that most of the women she went to preparatory school with don’t need the evil federal gov’mint to be their nanny. They have their OWN nannies, after all.)

(click here to continue reading Campbell Brown: GOP hatchet-woman? : The Reid Report.)

Republicans are the problem

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Bent To The Right
Bent To The Right

Thomas Mann of the Brookings Institution and Norm Ornstein of the American Enterprise Institute say what most of us outside the Beltway bubble have believed for years: namely that the problems with our current legislative morass in Washinton isn’t a bipartisan problem, but rather the fault of the GOP.

Rep. Allen West, a Florida Republican, was recently captured on video asserting that there are “78 to 81” Democrats in Congress who are members of the Communist Party. Of course, it’s not unusual for some renegade lawmaker from either side of the aisle to say something outrageous. What made West’s comment — right out of the McCarthyite playbook of the 1950s — so striking was the almost complete lack of condemnation from Republican congressional leaders or other major party figures, including the remaining presidential candidates.

It’s not that the GOP leadership agrees with West; it is that such extreme remarks and views are now taken for granted.

We have been studying Washington politics and Congress for more than 40 years, and never have we seen them this dysfunctional. In our past writings, we have criticized both parties when we believed it was warranted. Today, however, we have no choice but to acknowledge that the core of the problem lies with the Republican Party.

The GOP has become an insurgent outlier in American politics. It is ideologically extreme; scornful of compromise; unmoved by conventional understanding of facts, evidence and science; and dismissive of the legitimacy of its political opposition.

When one party moves this far from the mainstream, it makes it nearly impossible for the political system to deal constructively with the country’s challenges.

“Both sides do it” or “There is plenty of blame to go around” are the traditional refuges for an American news media intent on proving its lack of bias, while political scientists prefer generality and neutrality when discussing partisan polarization. Many self-styled bipartisan groups, in their search for common ground, propose solutions that move both sides to the center, a strategy that is simply untenable when one side is so far out of reach.

It is clear that the center of gravity in the Republican Party has shifted sharply to the right. Its once-legendary moderate and center-right legislators in the House and the Senate — think Bob Michel, Mickey Edwards, John Danforth, Chuck Hagel — are virtually extinct.

(click here to continue reading Let’s just say it: The Republicans are the problem. – The Washington Post.)

Corporate Media
Corporate Media

Also not surprisingly, the Washington media is not that interested in discussing the topic. Liberal media, ha. Republican sycophants is more of an apt description. 

Greg Sargent reports:

Last month, Thomas Mann and Norman Ornstein published an Op ed and a book making the extremely controversial argument that both parties aren’t equally to blame for what ails Washington. They argued that the GOP — by allowing extremists to roam free and by wielding the filibuster to achieve government dysfunction as a political end in itself — were demonstrably more culpable for creating what is approaching a crisis of governance.

It turns out neither man has been invited on to the Sunday shows even once to discuss this thesis. As Bob Somerby and Kevin Drum note, these are among the most quoted people in Washington — yet suddenly this latest topic is too hot for the talkers, or not deemed relevant at all.

I ran this thesis by Ornstein himself, and he confirmed that the book’s publicity people had tried to get the authors booked on the Sunday shows, with no success.

“Not a single one of the Sunday shows has indicated an interest, and I do find it curious,” Ornstein told me, adding that the Op ed had well over 200,000 Facebook recommends and has been viral for weeks. “This is a level of attention for a book that we haven’t received before. You would think it would attract some attention from the Sunday shows.’

Ornstein also noted another interesting point. Their thesis takes on the media for falling into a false equivalence mindset and maintaining the pretense that both sides are equally to blame. Yet despite the frequent self-obsession of the media, even that angle has failed to generate any interest. What’s more, some reporters have privately indicated their frustration with their editorial overlords’ apparent deafness to this idea.

(click here to continue reading Only one party’s to blame? Don’t tell the Sunday shows. – The Plum Line – The Washington Post.)

Jonah Goldberg Is Not Smart

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Spewing
Spewing

Not sure why anyone would waste time reading anything written by Jonah Goldberg, but then I whiled away a few minutes reading a review of Goldberg’s latest turd, so…

Alex Pareene writes, in part:

The full title of the new one is “The Tyranny of Clichés: How Liberals Cheat in the War of Ideas.” (Yes, the title “The Tyranny of ___” is itself a cliché. It’s by no means the only one Goldberg employs in the book.)

I just opened “The Tyranny of Clichés” to a random page. It is the start of Chapter 9, “Slippery Slope,” and it begins with quotations from Hume, Lincoln and T.S. Eliot. Then we’re treated to the prose of Mr. Jonah Goldberg, who is here to share his presentation on “slippery slopes.” It reads very much like a high school student’s essay assignment:

Ultimately slippery slope arguments are a mixed bag. They are useful as a way to reinforce good dogma, but they are also used to reinforce bad dogma. Similarly they can scare us away from bad policies and good policies alike. There are good slippery slope arguments and bad ones for good ends and bad ends.

What insight! What a masterful grasp of nuance! Let’s try one of our own: Airplanes can be used for good things and bad things. Some airplanes carry medicine or ice cream, but other airplanes carry bombs or bad people. But an airplane with bombs might be good because the bombs are for using on bad guys, and on the other airplane maybe the ice cream has melted.

Throughout the book, Goldberg brings his disposable Bic-sharp wit to bear on the most deserving straw men he can imagine. From the chapter on “Let Them Eat Cake”:

The notion that today’s rich are the most likely to say ‘let them eat cake!’ is a form of cultural propaganda. To be sure, there are many wealthy and politically conservative individuals who are out of touch with the hardships of poverty. But the most obvious inheritors of the cocooned arrogance and self-indulgence we associate with members of the monarchical courts of Europe are to be found not in boardrooms, but among the most celebrated liberals of American life: Hollywood celebrities.

The celebrities whose excesses Goldberg goes on to document — those he deems “among the most celebrated liberals of American life” — are Jennifer Lopez, Mariah Carey, John Travolta, (Republican) Sylvester Stallone, Kim Basinger and Sean Penn. Ah yes, the modern American aristocracy.

The book is, plainly, another dumb piece of assembly line conservative argument, gussied up with extensive footnotes. It will not impress any academics or intellectuals and it will not get the blood of true believers boiling with indignation. (It will likely sell well, thanks to bulk orders and conservative book clubs.) The phony Pulitzer bragging, that bit of slightly sad résumé-enhancement, is Goldberg all over: Desperate to impress, but utterly unconvincing.

(click here to continue reading Jonah Goldberg’s desperation – Editor’s Picks – Salon.com.)

Republicans Meet An Oval Office They Understand

Seth Anderson0 comment

I don’t know who Kate Beckinsale is, I don’t think, but her satirical commercial, called Republicans, Get In My Vagina, made me laugh:

Watch it if you can…

Kate Beckinsale, Judy Greer and Andrea Savage “spread” the message that the one thing women really want in their vagina is the government.

Mars Says Goodbye to ALEC

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Chocolate city
Chocolate city

Yet another corporation whose financial viability depends upon being non-controversial has wised up and left the American-hating group, American Legislative Exchange Council.

Mars Inc., the company that makes everything from Skittles to M&M’s to Uncle Ben’s, has joined McDonald’s, Wendy’s, and a half-dozen other companies in quitting the American Legislative Exchange Council.

ALEC, as it’s known, is a corporate-funded non-profit that writes pro-business and often anti-union draft legislation for state lawmakers to introduce in their legislatures. ALEC has come under fire recently from good-government and civil rights groups for pushing voter identification bills that critics say discriminate against blacks and Hispanics. ALEC foes have also blasted the organization for promoting so-called Stand Your Ground laws like the one at the center of the Trayvon Martin shooting.

Bob Edgar, the president of Common Cause, one of the groups in the anti-ALEC coalition, hailed Mars’ decision. “Its leaders understand that continued support for ALEC’s advocacy of vigilante justice and assaults on voting and employee rights, public schools, and reasonable environmental regulations is neither good business nor good corporate citizenship,” Edgar said in a statement.

(click here to continue reading Mars Inc. Says Adios to ALEC | Mother Jones.)

 

ALEC Hunkers Down As Sponsors Run

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Get What You Deserve
Get What You Deserve

For today’s update on the America-hating GOP lobbyists who run the American Legislative Exchange Council, Crooks and Liars blogger karoli writes, in part:

Poor, poor ALEC. They’re being victimized, don’t you know? Wednesday they went into full damage control mode even as more corporate donors bailed out on them. The list now includes Wendy’s, Intuit, McDonalds, Coke, Pepsi, Kraft Foods and the Gates Foundation. More on the Gates Foundation in a minute. On Wednesday, ALEC bleated out a statement, complaining that they’re just a little non-profit organization whose sole purpose is to help businesses turn a bit of a profit, don’t you know? And they’re being victimized by those mean, nasty lefty types.

From their statement:

ALEC is an organization that supports pro-growth, pro-jobs policies and the vigorous exchange of ideas between the public and private sector to develop state based solutions. Today, we find ourselves the focus of a well-funded, expertly coordinated intimidation campaign.

Our members join ALEC because we connect state legislators with other state legislators and with job-creators in their states. They join because we support pro-business policies that promote innovation and spur local and national competitiveness. They’re ALEC members because they’re more interested in solutions than rhetoric.

For years, ALEC has partnered with legislators to research and develop better, more effective public policies – legislation that creates a more transparent, accountable government, policies that place a priority on free enterprise and consumer choice, and tax policies that are fair, simple and that spur the kind of competiveness that puts Americans back to work.

Somebody’s going to have to explain to me how Stand Your Ground laws and Voter ID laws help create jobs. That’s left me scratching my head. How is it that laws which blatantly discriminate against people of color and have absolutely nothing to do with jobs create jobs? And then there’s abortion legislation. What does abortion legislation have to do with job creation?

As to their so-called free enterprise and consumer choice policies, let’s look at one area where they’re working hard to interfere: education. And let’s bring the Gates Foundation back into focus on this one. The Gates Foundation has now declared they will not give any further grants to ALEC. Slow clap for the Gates Foundation.

I’m not particularly impressed because there are 17 months remaining on the grant they’ve already given ALEC for “education reform”

(click here to continue reading ALEC Hunkers Down As Sponsors Run, But Untold Damage Has Already Been Done | Crooks and Liars.)

Cry me a river…

Full list of supporters of ALEC’s anti-American agenda is archived here

Intuit To Drop Voter Suppression Group ALEC

Seth Anderson1 Comment

Sunset Over American Empire
Sunset Over American Empire

Inuit left the hate group, American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), a couple of days ago, btw

Software company Intuit, the makers of programs such as Turbo Tax and Quicken, announced today that they will join Coca-Cola, PepsiCo and Kraft as the fourth company to end their partnership with the right-wing American Legislative Exchange Council this week.

The Center for Media & Democracy, which launched ALECexposed.com last year, broke the news:

A stampede seems to be on the way as more and more groups break ties and dump ALEC. Intuit, Inc. (maker of Quicken and QuickBooks accounting software) told the Center for Media and Democracy (CMD) that Intuit also decided not to renew its membership after it expired in 2011. That comment came from Bernie McKay, Vice President of Government Affairs. He gave this response when CMD identified that Intuit was no longer listed on the board and contacted the company. CMD began its effort to spotlight Intuit and other corporate funders and tie these corporations to the ALEC agenda when it launched ALECexposed.org in July 2011. … Intuit’s McKay explained to CMD that the company doesn’t “usually issue statements about membership in any organization” and declined to comment further.

Although Pepsi quietly left ALEC as recently as last January, the growing exodus of companies’ from ALEC’s began earlier this week when the progressive group Color of Change announced a petition and boycott campaign targeting ALEC’s corporate supporters. Other corporations that have not yet publicly renounced their support of ALEC include Koch Industries, Wal-Mart, Pfizer, Reynolds American, Altria/Philip Morris, Procter & Gamble, Exxon Mobil and British alcohol firm Diageo (makers of Smirnoff and Johnnie Walker).

(click here to continue reading Intuit Is Now The Fourth Company To Drop Voter Suppression Group ALEC | ThinkProgress.)

Full list of supporters of ALEC’s anti-American agenda is archived here

Kraft drops membership in ALEC

Seth Anderson1 Comment

A Monster Maker an Eye
A Monster Maker an Eye

Like I said, a little sunshine goes a long way, and hate groups like ALEC need to hide their agenda from the public, or else publicly traded corporations will flee. Kudos to PepsiCo, Coca-Cola and Kraft for running away earlier than later…

Kraft Foods joined Coca-Cola in bowing to consumer pressure this week to cut ties with the American Legislative Exchange Council, a conservative lobbying group that has recently backed controversial voter ID and so-called “stand your ground” laws.

Kraft said in a statement that it has “made the decision not to renew” its ALEC membership, which is expiring. The company, based in north suburban Northfield, was opaque in its reasoning, citing “limited resources” and saying that its involvement with ALEC “has been strictly limited to discussions about economic growth and development, transportation and tax policy.”

Advocacy group Color of Change launched a boycott against Coca-Cola for its participation in ALEC’s Private Enterprise Board, but within hours, the soft drink giant issued a statement saying that it had “elected to discontinue its membership.”

The company blamed ALEC’s support of “discriminatory food and beverage taxes” instead of “issues that have no direct bearing on our business.”

“We have a long-standing policy of only taking positions on issues that impact our company and industry,” Coca-Cola said.

The withdrawals pleased ALEC detractors, which includes the Center for Media and Democracy. The liberal-leaning nonprofit said it had launched a protest campaign in tandem with Color of Change opposing what it said were ALEC’s efforts to deny climate change, undermine public schools and encourage laws that would require voters to present various forms of identification before voting.

…In January, PepsiCo quietly pulled itself off the board.

(click here to continue reading Kraft drops membership in conservative group amid protest – chicagotribune.com.)

 

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

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.)