I neglected to point out the following recently (until now) by Former President Highest Disapproval Rating in Gallup Poll History, on the pages of the Murdoch Street Journal (of course – here)…
Some in both parties in Washington look at the risks inherent in democratic change—particularly in the Middle East and North Africa—and find the dangers too great. America, they argue, should be content with supporting the flawed leaders they know in the name of stability.
Like this guy, jackass? Nice job to blow him off (along with just about all else from your wretched presidency) and leave for Number 44 to clean up.
Apparently, some in our corporate media will go to any lengths in an effort to “rebrand” our 43rd president as some kind of a statesman or a visionary on foreign policy.
Part of me wishes there were a punch line to that remark, but the joke is so unbelievable that I can’t think of anything to top it.
Next, the Moustache of Understanding returned to form in the New York Times Sunday (here)…
Microsoft still does more than 80 percent of its research work in America. But that is becoming harder and harder to sustain when deadlock on Capitol Hill prevents it from acquiring sufficient (H1B) visas for the knowledge workers it needs that America’s universities are not producing enough of. The number of filled jobs at Microsoft went up this year from 40,000 to 40,500 at its campus outside Seattle, yet its list of unfilled jobs went from 4,000 to almost 5,000. Eventually, it will have no choice but to shift more research to other countries.
Naah, it’s not because our august captains of industry are rapacious, unrepentant pirates who plead for tax cuts while the middle class that built the products that made them rich are forced to settle for ever-smaller pieces of the proverbial financial pie. Don’t you see? They “have no choice” but to do the whole “engulf and devour” thing elsewhere instead.
D.C. is filled with mills that produce bogus studies to provide Congress with rose-colored glasses that deprive reality. Some studies spin H-1B workers as “entrepreneurs.” Others make absurd job claims, such as that each H-1B worker creates six additional jobs (Do the math here: With around 100,000 H-1B visas a year, that would make H-1B the single largest job creation factor in the economy.)
In fact, the opposite is true. The largest users of H-1B visas are foreign offshoring companies. They use H-1B visas to provide on-site support for projected moved to other countries. In that model, each H-1B worker here is a proxy for even more jobs lost.
In spite of a long parade of damning audits on the H-1B program, Congress has done nothing to clean up the mess. Deliberate loopholes in the law allow employers to replace Americans with lower-paid H-1B workers. Working in the computer industry, I have witnessed employers openly replacing hundreds of Americans with cheaper worker on H-1B visas.
H-1B supporters rarely forget to remind the public that the statute requires H-1B workers to be paid “the prevailing wage.” They invariably forget that, 20,000 words later, the statute redefines the term “prevailing wage” in such a manner that an employer can legally pay a software engineer in Edison, N.J., $34,133 a year less than the median wage.
How is it possible that Americans can be fired in their own country, be replaced with foreign workers, and Congress does nothing for decades? H-1Bs, bailouts to Wall Street, and subsidies to politically connected business are all symptoms of the same problem: a government that is controlled by special interests that are antithetical to those of the American people.
And on top of that, this post from 2008 tells us of a recruiter who pretty much debunked the entire mythology that there aren’t enough “knowledge workers” in this country to fill the available jobs (God forbid that employers haven’t fine-tuned their resume-screening software, or you’re out of luck, Mr. or Ms. Unemployed American Worker).
Rest assured, though, that apologists like Friedman will always return twice a week on the pages of The Old Gray Lady to reinforce the status quo (and possibly get in a plug for the economic “virtues” of China also, along with the wonders of the Internet, of course).
Finally, I give you BoBo, trying to sanitize the business exploits of Willard Mitt Romney on the matter of GST Steel (here)…
Private equity firms like Bain acquire bad companies and often replace management, compel executives to own more stock in their own company and reform company operations.
Most of the time they succeed. Research from around the world clearly confirms that companies that have been acquired by private equity firms are more productive than comparable firms.
This process involves a great deal of churn and creative destruction. It does not, on net, lead to fewer jobs. A giant study by economists from the University of Chicago, Harvard, the University of Maryland and the Census Bureau found that when private equity firms acquire a company, jobs are lost in old operations. Jobs are created in new, promising operations. The overall effect on employment is modest.
In response, I would suggest that you read the following from here (Bain bought a controlling interest in GST for $8 million, sold $120 million worth of bonds, and then paid themselves a $36 million dividend…they repeated this trick with another steel mill, combined both as “GS Industries” and ended up about $378 million in debt between the two)…
During all of this they constantly cut both the workforce and safety standards of both plants while failing to invest even minimal money into the plants upkeep much less towards making any capital improvements. Finally in 2001 “GS Industries” now over $500 million in debt declared bankruptcy and closed the plants.
It then became apparent that Bain had also declined to adequately fund the workers pension plans, employees suddenly out of work were now faced with the additional loss of promised severance pay, health insurance, and life insurance. In 2002 the U.S. Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation had to commit $44 million to make up the shortfall towards funding only the basic pension payments. The workers never did receive their promised insurance benefits…
So in this instance Romney and Bain not only cost over 750 workers their jobs and forced two previously fairly healthy businesses into bankruptcy. They also managed to line their pockets with millions of dollars while doing so and before forcing a government agency to step in and pay $44 million towards their bad pension debt.
If this is Mitt Romney’s idea of how to “create jobs and restart the economy” I don’t think I want anything to do with it.
And by the way, let us not forget this priceless little moment concerning the presumptive Repug nominee and our not-completely-still-moribund economy
I would be curious to see what would happen if the New York Times was ever acquired by a private equity firm similar to Bain. I would hope that a lot of the paper’s talented news professionals wouldn’t have to worry about their jobs, but, as the process of “creative destruction” unfolded, I would like to know how “modest” the effect would be on BoBo’s future employment.
Some more tongue-in-cheek foreign policy recommendations for Repug U.S. House Rep Joe Pitts (MISTAKE-PA16), based on this:
Encourage that foreign-country-apologizing-to President Obama to immediately begin negotiation with Emperor Napoleon of France so the U.S. can get moving on that whole “Louisiana Purchase” deal (I mean, who wants a bunch of frogs chowing down on their “Freedom Toast” right in our backyard, and I don’t mean the “ribbit at midnight on the bayou” kind).
Tell Congress to order our president to send U.S. troops to the Philippines, where they will be “greeted as liberators” (Pitts apparently has it on good information from Theodore Roosevelt that the insurgency there is in its “last throes”).
Issue a public statement of support for the pro-Democracy movement in Hungary, and, in a nod to the eternal leader of the Republican Party, encourage East German leader Erich Honecker to “tear down this wall.”
Send a congratulatory wireless telegram to aviator Charles Lindbergh upon completion of his trans-Atlantic flight.
Want to retire Pitts once and for all, at long last? Click here.
This was too stoo-pid to ignore; I give you Fix Noise pundit James P. Pinkerton here…
The Washington Post wrote recently that Newt Gingrich’s presidential campaign “will go down in the annals as just another unsuccessful enterprise, along with so many other presidential wannabes whose bright expectations crash into the reality that it was not their time and perhaps was never to be.”
Well, okay, but there’s another side to Gingrich: He has always been one of the most intellectually interesting, and politically questing, figures on the national stage. And so if there’s a little bit of Don Quixote in Gingrich, there’s also a lot of Captain James T. Kirk; he really did want to boldly go where no politician had gone before. Indeed, we might say that progress depends on Captain Kirks, or their non-fiction equivalents.
Red Alert! Picking up reading of a life form in deep space! Looks like another flatulent bloviation from The Planet Murdoch. Arm the photon torpedoes! Set phasers to utterly destroy!
In response, I’d like to point out the following…
Captain Kirk would plunge headlong into an unknown world, fight interstellar bad guys with the help of the reincarnated Abraham Lincoln (remember that episode?), fall in love with the alien, let the “red shirt” get killed, forge a treaty, intervention or some agreement with that episode’s antagonists, and end up snatching their dilithium crystals before he and the Enterprise escaped (at warp speed, of course).
Newt Gingrich, based on his military record (or lack of one), would run away from an unknown world, quote Abraham Lincoln as if the “modern” Republican Party bore any resemblance to the one to which our 16th president belonged (here), stay away from any “alien” romantic entanglements (at this point in his life anyway, lest he earn “The Wrath of Calista,” Gingrich being a “good Catholic” and all that…as noted here, though, Baby Newton Leroy has definitely been “Lost In Space”), concoct a “red card” immigration plan (to bring in all the “undocumented” workers employers would allow, depressing wages further, and leaving “red card” workers no recourse if they were fired…here), ridicule peace agreements (or embargoes anyway), and possibly, in a moment of stress, eat the dilithium crystals.
And believe it or not, Pinkerton’s column gets worse, sneaking in some idiotic comparison between Kirk and JFK (ah, so, via a fictional spaceman, Gingrich supposedly shares some leadership qualities with our 35th president).
In response, I’d like to note the following from here…
A nation which has forgotten the quality of courage which in the past has been brought to public life is not as likely to insist upon or regard that quality in its chosen leaders today – and in fact we have forgotten.
Hard to argue with that, sadly (would have been nice for Pinkerton to read up on that before he concocted that idiotic screed).
1) The Hill brought us the following item today, including this excerpt…
Democratic leaders in the House and Senate alleging GOP groups have funneled foreign money into campaign ads have seen their party raise more than $1 million from political action committees affiliated with foreign companies.
House and Senate Democrats have received about $1.02 million this cycle from such PACs, according to an analysis compiled for The Hill by the Center for Responsive Politics. House and Senate GOP leaders have taken almost $510,000 from PACs on the same list.
Oh brother – I just knew at some point we were going to get a “story” along the lines of “nyaah, nyaah,both sides are using foreign money in campaigns, so there.”
Fortunately, Media Matters brings us the reality point of view here (h/t Atrios)…
See the obvious dots that The Hill is trying to connect? It’s trying to suggest because Democrats have accused GOP-friendly attack groups, such as the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, of possibly using money foreign donations (sic) to help influence U.S. elections in the form of paying for relentless attacks ads targeting Democrats, that there’s some double standard in play because Democrats have cashed checks from “foreign-affiliated” PACs.
But of course there’s no comparison between the two. None.
The questions that continue to swirl around the Chamber revolve around unknown donors who may live in foreign countries giving undisclosed amounts.
You know what this is starting to remind me of?
Remember when the Jack Abramoff scandal broke and it was a major you-know-what storm for the Repugs? And then all of a sudden, stories started coming out to the effect of, “yeah, well, Democrats accepted donations from Abramoff clients,” as if that was supposed to even everything up (of course Abramoff’s clients were innocent, but no matter)? And then we kept hearing “well, Abramoff donated to Democrats too, but that just hasn’t come out yet” (and it never did, by the way)?
Yeah, this whole faux equivalency thing is starting to remind me of that.
Update 10/19/10: And speaking of the Chamber, I’m sure this has been going on for years, but kudos to Think Progress for highlighting it now.
2) Also, in light of the miraculous rescue of the 33 Chilean miners last week, this story tells us that mine safety has actually improved across the globe…
Hopefully no one ever again has to do anything like this,” said Alonso Contreras, a cousin of (rescued miner Carlos) Barrios. “Never again.”
That’s the sentiment of mine safety experts worldwide who are hoping that the saga will become a lesson for the mining industry, in Chile, the region, and the rest of the world.
This rescue effort is believed to be the deepest ever and the survivors have been underground longer than anyone who has made it out alive. It’s also one of the most advanced of its kind, and it could help other countries and firms increase their standards moving forward, but first an analysis of what exactly went wrong will need to be undertaken, says Keith Slack, Senior Policy Advisor and Campaign Manager for Extractive Industries at Oxfam America.
“The situation illustrates the need for stronger regulations and enforcement of existing regulations in the mining sector across Latin America” and the globe, says Mr. Slack.
In this country, though, the New York Times informed us of the following last spring (here)…
MONTCOAL, W.Va. — Rescue workers began the precarious task Tuesday of removing explosive methane gas from the coal mine where at least 25 miners died the day before. The mine owner’s dismal safety record, along with several recent evacuations of the mine, left federal officials and miners suggesting that Monday’s explosion might have been preventable.
In the past two months, miners had been evacuated three times from the Upper Big Branch because of dangerously high methane levels, according to two miners who asked for anonymity for fear of losing their jobs. Representative Nick J. Rahall II, a Democrat whose district includes the mine, said he had received similar reports from miners about recent evacuations at the mine, which as recently as last month was fined at least three times for ventilation problems, according to federal records.
The Massey Energy Company, the biggest coal mining business in central Appalachia and the owner of the Upper Big Branch mine, has drawn sharp scrutiny and fines from regulators over its safety and environmental record.
Of course, instead of ridiculous campaign photo-ops, Manchin could travel to Chile to find out what they did to save their people that we couldn’t do (or at least, he could make an arrangement to do that after November 2nd).
If I ruled the world…
3) Finally, John Harwood of the Times informed us of the following today (here, about the oh-so-untidy partisanship on display as yet another campaign season winds down to a finish)…
Across the country, Democrats are scrambling to deflect voters’ unhappiness with the party in power over the sputtering economy. In many cases, that is producing a counterattack of striking ferocity.
Sometimes that ferocity takes the form of discrediting their rivals’ backgrounds, as in a release by the House Democratic Campaign Committee late last week titled “Breaking News: Allen West (FL-22) Tied to Criminal Organization.” (The campaign of Mr. West, who is challenging Representative Ron Klein of Florida, the Democratic incumbent, said he had no ties to the organization in question, a motorcycle group.)
Other times it involves linking their opponents’ policy agendas to objects of their constituents’ fear (China’s economic might) or loathing (Wall Street executives). In Michigan, an ad for Representative Mark Schauer, a Democrat, accuses his Republican opponent, Tim Wahlberg, of helping businesses outsource jobs to China during his earlier service in the House. Mr. Wahlberg called the ad “deceptive.”
Yeah, well, it’s a funny thing about West – the story was also reported by NBC (and Talking Points Memo) here, in addition to the House Democratic Campaign Committee; it tells us the following…
West has also invited the Outlaws to participate in a campaign bike ride, and asked them to provide him with protection at one event. When asked to distance himself from the Outlaws by one Republican operative, West refused and instead came to the group’s defense.
And of course West is going to deny the story, by the way.
As for Tim Wahlberg, he called the ad of his Dem opponent Mark Schauer “deceptive,” but didn’t say it was wrong – as noted here…
JACKSON – Today the pro-outsourcing group “Americans for Prosperity” launched a $260,000 smear campaign against Congressman Mark Schauer (D-MI) with misleading TV ads that aim to distort Schauer’s record of fighting for Michigan families and businesses.
“This shadowy group was founded by a billionaire CEO whose company actually won an award for outsourcing American jobs to China,” said Zack Pohl, spokesman for Schauer’s campaign. “Since Tim Walberg has pledged to defend tax loopholes that encourage companies to ship jobs overseas, it’s no surprise that his special interest allies are willing to spend whatever it takes to buy this election. Mark Schauer doesn’t work for the special interests – he’s fighting to help our businesses create jobs here, not in China.”
And by the way, the “billionaire CEO” behind “Americans for Prosperity” is a certain David Koch, who, as noted here, has been spreading his money all over the place this election season on behalf of Repugs, having been freed to do so with impunity by the horrific Citizens United decision from Hangin’ Judge JR and The Supremes.
I know our corporate media has been pretty much yawning over the story about the Chamber of Commerce quite probably using foreign funds in its political advertising against Dems, as well as the horrific influence of the Koch brothers and their fellow travelers, but I’m still shocked that Harwood managed to miss all of this.
Update 10/19/10: Very much in heroic fashion, Think Progress continues to “connect the dots” the way Harwood and the rest of our corporate media absolutely will not here.
“Worst Persons” from last night (Comedian Ralphie May is busted in Guam by a pair of drug-sniffing dogs after he stopped to pet them – yes, I know the pot he had was for a medical reason, but seriously, how dumb was that?; Teabagger U.S. Senate candidate Joe Miller of Alaska is against unemployment comp for everyone except his wife; but fellow Repug and gubernatorial nominee Mary Fallin of Oklahoma gets the nod for refusing to answer questions in front of her opponent – $10 says she wins anyway in that state, and I’m still waiting for her to get called out over this).
Some of these are a few days old, but this is my first chance to say anything in response…
1) John Harwood of the New York Times told us the following recently (here)…
Mr. Obama aims to use President George W. Bush’s record in the same way Mr. Reagan used Mr. Carter’s. It was Mr. Bush and his Republican allies in Congress, he tells campaign audiences, who drove the economy “into a ditch.”
The velocity of contemporary media, not to mention its ferocity, may render that argument more difficult to make. In the ever-advancing news cycle, on cable television and the Internet, news tends to get old faster.
Soo…Harwood is arguing that the Internet will make people forget who created the mess that Obama inherited?
2) Also, Marc Thiessen, in the midst of some shockingly sensible commentary, provided what I thought was a hilarious observation here…
The arrival of conservative insurgents will fundamentally transform the Senate in other ways. Some of the worst bills in the Senate get approved by unanimous consent, which means all it takes is one senator to object. Today, for example, Sen. Tom Coburn of Oklahoma wages a lonely campaign for fiscal discipline by objecting to authorization bills where spending increases are not offset by spending cuts elsewhere. But it gets tiring being the skunk at the garden party every week. Soon there will be a raft of newly elected senators willing to join him in saying “no” to bad legislation.
This tells us that Coburn is holding up a food safety bill costing $1.4 billion because he claims that the bill isn’t paid for. Of course, no immediate calculation is available telling us how much it would cost to hospitalize victims of something similar to the recent egg contamination outbreak were that to occur again – my guess is that it would cost more than $1.4 billion (And as far as I’m concerned, Coburn’s supposed fiscal prudence is more Beltway media mythology – how about cutting $95 million in useless “abstinence only” funding, as noted here?).
What I object to most in Thiessen’s column, though, is the notion that, in the god awful event that people such as Ken Buck, Sharron Angle, etc. were actually elected to the Senate, they would restore some kind of fiscal rectitude.
In response, I think we should look at a hero of the teabaggers from a few months ago, and that would be Sen. Scott Brown of Massachusetts. As noted here (hat tip to lynnrockets.wordpress.com)…
WASHINGTON — Senator Scott Brown says he will fight to fund a multibillion-dollar weapons program that could generate jobs in Massachusetts but that the Pentagon insists it does not need, sparking criticism that Brown is breaking his campaign vow to rein in wasteful spending.
The Bay State Republican’s support for General Electric’s bid to build a backup engine for the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter puts the new senator in the middle of a confrontation over congressional earmarks with the Obama administration, which has threatened a presidential veto if Congress inserts funding for the engine for the fifth year in a row.
…
“This is yet another example of how ‘fiscally responsible’ lawmakers have a giant blind spot when it comes to defense spending in their districts,’’ said Laura Peterson, a senior national security analyst at Taxpayers for Common Sense, a nonpartisan budget watchdog group that monitors earmarks. “His support was clearly driven by parochial concerns rather than financial ones.’’
“If Scott Brown helps out GE he will be doing exactly the opposite of what he said he would do when he ran,’’ said Loren Thompson, a defense budget specialist at the Lexington Institute in Arlington, Va., which is supported by multiple defense firms, including Pratt & Whitney.
And in another related “pot, meet kettle” development, I give you this.
3) Finally, Joe Pitts was given more online real estate at Tucker Carlson’s Crayon Scribble Page recently to concoct the following (here)…
The first objective of the Pledge to America is to create jobs, end economic uncertainty, and make America more competitive. This means standing against job-killing tax hikes that are due to take effect on January 1, 2011. Our plan calls for growing new and existing small businesses through a tax deduction equal to 20 percent of their business income. We also need to repeal the burdensome new tax-reporting requirement created by the health care reform bill.
Republicans forecast disaster when the Democratic Congress and President Bill Clinton raised taxes in 1993, and forecast rising prosperity when taxes were cut in 2001. Both forecasts were wrong.
From the end of 1993 through the end of 2000, the American economy grew at a compound annual rate of 3.9 percent. Since then, the average rate has been 1.6 percent. The Standard & Poor’s 500-stock index rose at a compound rate of 13.1 percent a year during the first period, assuming reinvestment of dividends. Since then investors have not even broken even. Of course, there is no way to know what would have happened had tax laws not changed in those years.
Pancake Joe also tells us…
The Pledge calls for an immediate stop to stimulus spending. Over $200 billion remains unspent and we must act quickly to prevent more waste. This also means permanently cancelling the TARP bailout program and returning the money to the Treasury.
As the New York Times noted recently here in a fine editorial about the “pledge,” the recent Dodd-Frank amendment in financial reform legislation prohibited more TARP funding.
The editorial also tells us the following…
While it promises to create jobs, control deficit spending and restore Americans’ trust in government, (the “pledge”) is devoid of tough policy choices. This new “governing agenda” does not say how the Republicans would replace revenue that would be lost from permanently extending all of the Bush tax cuts, or how they would manage Medicare and Social Security, or even which discretionary programs would go when they slash $100 billion in spending. Their record at all of these things is dismal.
The best way to understand the pledge is as a bid to co-opt the Tea Party by a Republican leadership that wants to sound insurrectionist but is the same old Washington elite. These are the folks who slashed taxes on the rich, turned a surplus into a crushing deficit, and helped unleash the financial crisis that has thrown millions of Americans out of their jobs and their homes.
Not only are the players the same, the policies are the same. Just more tax cuts for the rich and more deficit spending. We find it hard to believe that even the most disaffected voters will be taken in. But again, these are strange and worrying times.
Returning to Pitts…
One way to get back to balanced budgets is to repeal the healthcare law. Contrary to White House claims, the Congressional Budget Office and Medicare’s own actuaries have shown that Obamacare will not pay for itself. This new law will be an extraordinary weight on government, businesses, and, most importantly, doctors and patients. We are committed to repealing the law and replacing it with free-market solutions.
No word on whether or not Pitts wants to “repeal” the defense budget, for example, and replace it with “free market solutions” (many expenditures in the budget will not pay for themselves and are “an extraordinary weight”…of course, Pitts con-vee-niently singles out one of his favorite targets).
Meanwhile, in the matter of the financing of health care reform, the following should be noted (here)…
(The Congressional Budget Office) has finished its work and will release the official preliminary score…But here are the basic numbers: The bill will cost $940 billion over the first 10 years and reduce the deficit by $130 billion during that period. In the second 10 years — so, 2020 to 2029 — it will reduce the deficit by $1.2 trillion. The legislation will cover 32 million Americans, or 95 percent of the legal population.
And if Pitts had read the Center for Medicaid and Medicare Services (CMS) report that was released in April of this year, he would know that increases in national health expenditures are largest in 2016 and “gradually decline thereafter” (here).
Update 10/1/10: As noted here, HCR is “paid for” anyway, so Pitts’ entire talking point looks particularly ridiculous.
When I think of the GOP’s “pledge,” I think of a household product of the same name that applies a shine to furniture, but does nothing to structurally reinforce the product to which it is applied. And in terms of making something look attractive without implementing economically sound fundamental fixes, I think of the GOP’s “pledge” in about the same way.
Once more, to help Lois Herr, Joe Pitts’ Dem opponent for his PA-16 U.S. House seat, click here.
1) It seems that “Governor Bully” is going to be appearing on “Oprah” shortly today (probably has already by now); as noted here…
The Oprah Show, which flashes on Garden State screens in just a few hours, features the Oprah-adulation of (Newark Mayor Cory) Booker you expect (she’s given millions herself to…Newark), but also features a warm hug from herself to the Governor. Makes me wonder if her people prepped her to understand that while we’re talking $100 million, he just pulled a $400 million dollar rug out from the rest of New Jersey’s kids.
Also, I thought this post (cross-posted from Blue Jersey) had some interesting thoughts on that state’s public employee pension crisis, particularly the following…
…I say we call his bluff.
If Christie’s “reforms” go through, the NJEA (that state’s most influential teacher’s union…not sure if there are any other such organizations – ed.) ought to turn to him and say: “OK, in that case, we’re out. You are on the hook for all current obligations – but our members are no longer going to contribute. Everyone not vested gets their money back with interest; no one contributes anything more into the system.
“Instead, WE”LL run the whole thing. We’ll move to defined contribution if we have to, but it will be better than the raw deal you’re proposing. We’ll take over all retirement benefits from now on, and we’ll be overseen by members, a public board, and federal regulators – certainly better than what we have now. So you don’t get to touch our money any more – you’re out.
“And we’ll negotiate employer contributions with the districts. Try to stop that and we’ll see you in the Supreme Court.”
In many ways, it would be his worst nightmare. ALL obligations would have to be met by the state’s contributions and investment returns. I’d love to see him weasel out of that one.
Well, I can dream…
No word on whether or not Christie would be amenable to this; as noted here, he’s been busy confronting hecklers at GOP campaign events, among other non-NJ-related events (and just what on earth is he doing traveling across the country campaigning for other GOP pols anyway?).
2) Also, I’ve noticed our corporate media suddenly paying attention to American Crossroads, the Karl Rove/Ed Gillespie-fronted GOP fundraising outfit relying on a few well-off donors and corporations (as this tells us, they raised $2.6 million in August).
That’s not bad, I’ll admit, but as noted here, Act Blue raised about $6.7 million in July and August; split the difference at about $3.35 mil apiece, and that still beats what American Crossroads did over the same period.
Yes, I know I shouldn’t get preoccupied with the “horserace” political stuff either, but all I’m asking is that you remember this the next time you find yourself hearing more than you’ll ever want to know about Republican party activism (particularly those zany characters with their funny hats and racist/violent signs – more on them in a minute) and next to nothing about what is going on with the other side.
3) Finally, if you’re like me, I’ll bet you’re just chomping at the bit, as it were, when it comes to finding out whether or not the core constituency (or so they think) of the Republican Party supports “Contract on America II” unveiled this week (and I’m talking about those “values voter” “fundies” – here)…
Family Research Council President Tony Perkins released a statement Thursday morning on the House Republican leadership’s “Pledge to America.”
“While I have some disappointment that the pledge to honor the values issues such as traditional marriage were not more clearly defined within the document, this is a significant improvement over the 94 Contact with America which was silent on the moral issues. The Pledge is not exceptional, but it is satisfactory, as it does lay a foundation to build upon, and it moves Congressional Republicans to a place of public acknowledgment that values issues are to be a part of the conservative way forward.”
And I guess it should be thoroughly unsurprising to note that Perkins has said that gays should be allowed to serve “if you want a military that just does parades” (here).
Despite that somewhat tepid endorsement, Ralph Reed of the Faith and Freedom Coalition stated as follows (here)…
The agenda embraces time-honored values like traditional marriage and ending taxpayer-funded abortion as well as lower taxes and reduced spending. The message was unmistakable: we will not be divided by a false choice between fiscal responsibility and strong families. We will fight for both, and indeed we must do both if we are to restore America’s promise.
And I thought this was particularly funny from Reed…
Pro-family candidates are the most likely to be fiscal conservatives, and Tea Party candidates are the most likely to be pro-life.
No word on whether or not their “pro-life” bona fides extend to those with whom they disagree of course.
In a related note, some of our lower life forms are gathering at Shady Brook Farm in Lower Makefield, PA apparently to re-enact “Lord of the Flies,” which should begin any moment (here) – my kingdom for the EPA dome over Springfield from “The Simpsons’ Movie.”
1) We know that our corporate media is just so in love with those zany teabaggers, though only now (with the victory of Christine O’Donnell in the Delaware U.S. Senate Repug primary) are they truly getting wise to the division between the frothing rank and file with their allegedly humorous signs and funny hats and the corporatist bunch fronted by Karl Rove and Ed Gillespie, among others, that truly calls the shots, and always will.
However, as the New York Times reported here yesterday, it turns out that there is at least one pretty serious intra-teabagger division, and that would be between the Tea Party Express and Tea Party Patriots…
Unlike many of the newly energized outsiders who have embraced Tea Party ideals, (Sal) Russo, 63, is a longtime Republican operative who got his start as an aide to Ronald Reagan and later raised money and managed media strategy for a string of other politicians, including former Gov. George E. Pataki of New York. His history and spending practices have prompted some former employees and other Tea Party activists to question whether he is committed to, or merely exploiting, their cause.
Mr. Russo’s group, based in California, is now the single biggest independent supporter of Tea Party candidates, raising more than $5.2 million in donations since January 2009, according to federal records. But at least $3 million of that total has since been paid to Mr. Russo’s political consulting firm or to one controlled by his wife, according to federal records.
While most of that money passed through the firms to cover advertising and other expenses, that kind of self-dealing raises red flags about possible lax oversight and excessive fees for the firms, campaign finance experts said.
“They are the classic top-down organization run by G.O.P. consultants, and it is the antithesis of what the Tea Party movement is about,” said Mark Meckler, a national spokesman for Tea Party Patriots, a coalition of grass-roots organizations that does not endorse or contribute to candidates.
The association with GOP causes and candidates disturbs those involved with the Tea Party Patriots who say they are working against the perception that the movement is merely a raucous arm of the GOP.
“Our biggest problem right now has been that the Republican Party is trying to make us part of them,” said Dawn Wildman of San Diego, the California co-coordinator for Tea Party Patriots. “We’re not all Republicans, and that notion is insulting to even those of us like myself who are Republicans.”
Hey, if it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck (or screams to the top of its lungs about “death panels” like a duck)…
And I got a bit of a kick out of this from yesterday’s Times story…
Mr. Russo estimated that Russo & Marsh, and his wife’s company, King Media Group, had been paid about $250,000 a year for their work with the Tea Party cause.
An analysis of Federal Election Commission records by The Times puts the total amount paid — for commissions, services and wages to executives and staff members — at nearly $700,000 in the last 20 months, or about 13 percent of the $5.2 million the committee has spent. (By comparison, media buyers for candidates’ campaigns typically take a 6 percent to 15 percent commission, according to one consultant.)
But the campaign finance records for the Tea Party Express also showed payments totaling more than $10,000 for stays at casino hotels, as well as bills for meals at expensive restaurants near Mr. Russo’s offices, including nearly $5,000 at Chops Steak House, which former staff members said the Tea Party Express frequented after work.
“I was kind of shocked,” said Kelly Eustis, who served as political director at the Tea Party Express until leaving last fall. “It kind of turned me off.”
Mr. Russo disputes that there was any lavish spending. “There have been a lot of cheap shots taken,” he said. “This has not been a profitable activity for us. We have plowed every penny back into this thing.”
Uh huh, sure (and keep telling me how those teabaggers are totally an organic creation without corporate support…yeah, that’s a good one).
2) Next, I give you the following from The Weakly Standard (here)…
The Florida Democratic Party sent out a mailer last week detailing Republican congressional challenger Allen West’s 2005 tax lien and court orders to pay delinquent credit card bills. West is challenging Democratic U.S. Rep. Ron Klein.
The mailer includes a reproduction of the $11,081 tax lien filed against West in Marion County, Indiana, and paid off four months later. The document, pulled from public records, includes a column titled “Identifying Number” that shows West’s nine-digit Social Security number. Although the number isn’t specifically identified as a Social Security number, West campaign manager Josh Grodin said there is no mistaking what the number is.
I will grant you that this probably wasn’t the most astute move by the Klein campaign, particularly since the lien against West was paid off a few months later. But before we start to drown in GOP crocodile tears over the publishing of sensitive information, let’s consider the following from 2008, shall we (from here, specifically concerning Ohio)…
1) A Republican sheriff in Greene County, Ohio, has demanded social security and other records from 302 local voters whose ballots he apparently wants to negate. Sheriff Gene Fischer has requested registration cards and address forms for all Greene County residents who voted in a special session established in Ohio allowing new voters to register and vote on the same day. The process was challenged in court by the GOP. The Ohio Supreme Court turned down that challenge, and allowed the same-day voting to proceed. But now Fischer claims telephone calls complaining about the potential for voter fraud have prompted him to go after the information.
…
It is widely assumed that the same-day registration/voting option was exercised primarily by students who lean heavily Democratic. In 2004, African-American students from Wright State, Central State and Wilberforce were regularly challenged on their registration credentials and forced to endure waiting in lines to vote for hours. Students at Cedarville, a Christian school, made no such reports. Sheriff Fischer’s targeting of historically black college students, the core of Obama-mania, is intended to send a chilling effect through the ranks of these Democratic voters.
2) U.S. District Court Judge George C. Smith, a Reagan appointee, has approved a GOP lawsuit demanding that the state give county boards of elections great leeway in attacking new voter registration forms. The decision, framed under the Help America Vote Act, would allow Republican challengers access to data from the Bureau of Motor Vehicles and the Social Security agency to challenge new voters. The Judge noted that Ohio law permits challenges to absentee ballots, thousands of which have been pouring in to elections boards. If allowed to stand, it could give the GOP the right to shred ballots already cast in the Buckeye State, with the precedent possibly being used to further enable a GOP nationwide disenfranchisement campaign. Smith gave Ohio Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner a week to respond. Brunner has stated she will appeal.
…
4) The New York Times has reported that boards of elections in at least nine crucial states, including Ohio, have violated federal law in conducting purges and have been illegally using Social Security data bases as part of those purges.
And besides, I’d rather have a candidate I support commit a boneheaded mistake like this than threaten his opponent to “make him scared to come out of his house” (third item here).
3) Finally, the formerly-Moonie times is here to tell us about the next phony “war” (as opposed to the real on in Afghanistan and the unofficial one in Iraq, where combat operations have officially “ended” – here), and that would be over our household appliances (I wish I were making this up)…
Modern technology has delivered a solution to this pesky problem of consumers not doing as they’re told (supposedly in In last year’s $814 billion stimulus package, President Obama poured 3.4 billion tax dollars into subsidies for “smart grid” projects designed to centralize control over major appliances that use electricity. The program, of course, is marketed as an advance that will deliver new options and savings to the consumer. The two-way communication underlying the concept, however, eventually will make it possible for big-ticket electrical items to be controlled remotely. In 1977, then-President Jimmy Carter called on every American “to lower the thermostat settings in all homes and buildings to no more than 65 degrees during the daytime and to a much lower setting at night.” Now the smart grid enables Big Brother to turn it down for you.
I can see it now – the ultimate revenge of Rosie The Robot on “The Jetsons,” who I suppose finally got tired of picking up George’s slippers and cleaning out Astro’s dog food bowl and made a deal with Spacely Sprockets to take over the household….BWAHAHAHHAHA!!! (Cue diabolical laughter).
Meanwhile, in the world of reality, this tells us more about a “smart” grid…
The function of an Electrical grid is not a single entity but an aggregate of multiple networks and multiple power generation companies with multiple operators employing varying levels of communication and coordination, most of which is manually controlled. Smart grids increase the connectivity, automation and coordination between these suppliers, consumers and networks that perform either long distance transmission or local distribution tasks.
• Transmission networks move electricity in bulk over medium to long distances, are actively managed, and generally operate from 345kV to 800kV over AC and DC lines.
• Local networks traditionally moved power in one direction, “distributing” the bulk power to consumers and businesses via lines operating at 132kV and lower.
This paradigm is changing as businesses and homes begin generating more wind and solar electricity, enabling them to sell surplus energy back to their utilities.
Wow, what a concept – actually being able to sell power back to Exelon or whomever.
Early results suggest that residential consumers will change their consumption patterns in response to real-time feedback on electricity usage. Real-time, or “direct,” feedback is typically provided by an in-home display that communicates with a consumer’s smart meter as part of a larger advanced metering infrastructure (AMI). In a 2009 survey of North American pilot projects, Ahmad Faruqui of the Brattle Group found that consumers reduced their usage from 3% to 18% in response to direct feedback from an in-home display. Another recent report by the American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy found that real-time usage feedback resulted in average energy savings of 9% across surveyed programs. As utilities proceed with scheduled AMI deployments, additional consumers will have the opportunity to participate in demand response programs through the use of in-home displays.
But I’m sure we’ll receive more warnings from wingnut media that we can’t possibly proceed with something like this. After all, Iman Rauf may be secretly trying to make sure all of our solar panels will be pointed towards Mecca, and Osama bin Laden (remember him?) may be trying turn our Kitchen-Aid mixers into nuclear warheads while the kids are sleeping and we’re “upstairs with the wife.”
(And the really sad part is that there’s probably somebody out there who thinks I’m serious.)
Or that of any human life form, I’m starting to think…by the way, all of the people featured here are running for the U.S. Senate except Carl Paladino, interviewed at the end by CNN’s Rick Sanchez…Paladino will run against Andrew Cuomo in the New York gubernatorial contest (heh).
And K.O. tells us the story (and please disregard the snickering from the peanut gallery – the day J.D. Mullane is an expert on Islam is the same day that I learn the basics of particle fusion).
Posted by doomsy 
