Koch Brothers
Wisconsin GOP’s stand could reverberate elsewhere
Priebus says RNC ‘all in’ on recalls
Priebus says RNC ‘all in’ on recalls
Democrats Score More Victories in Wisconsin Recalls
Voters in three Wisconsin State Senate districts went to the polls Tuesday, and the results are more good news for progressives. In a 38-point victory, Democratic State Senator Dave Hansen fought off a recall attempt - while Republicans held primaries in two other districts. But the bigger story here was turnout (compared with the Democratic primaries last week), and it's clear we have a glaring "enthusiasm gap" that has galvanized Democratic voters. Meanwhile, Republicans are so concerned about what will happen on August 9th - when six GOP state senators are subject to recall - that they have gone full speed ahead to pass a hyper-partisan gerrymandered map, while they still control the legislature.
Republicans push for investigation of Supreme Court Justice Kagan on Affordable Care Act
Michele Bachmann is one of 49 House Republicans asking the House Judiciary Committee to investigate Supreme Court Justice Elena Kagan s role in crafting a legal defense of President Obama s health care law, warning such work could bar her from participating in deciding legal challenges to the law when they reaches the court.
Pawlenty $1.4 million tax cut for top 0.1%. Nothing for four in ten taxpayers.
On Wednesday, I wrote about Tim Pawlenty's absurd new tax cut proposal, saying it would cost $10.3 trillion when you include the cost of extending the Bush tax cuts. According to a new analysis, it turns out that was an underestimate. The actual cost of his tax cut plan would be roughly $11.6 trillion. And most amazingly of all:
DeVos, Koch, Scaife, Walton, ALEC, AFC: The Corporate Royalists and Right-Wing Groups Propelling the GOP’s Assault on the Middle Class
In January, a small group of Indiana schoolteachers encountered their governor, Mitch Daniels, in a hallway of the state capitol. They were part of an outpouring of Hoosiers who had come to Indianapolis that day to protest Daniels' almost-gleeful political attack on the pay and even the worthiness of public employees
As recall looms, Wisconsin GOP attempts to ram through conservative wish list
Boehner tells Wall Street Republicans are willing to gut Medicare
Boehner tells Wall Street Republicans are willing to gut Medicare
GOP congressman doesn’t know why we have the oil subsidies he voted for
It's a real pattern now. Republicans voted unanimously to protect oil company subsidies earlier this year. But now that those oil companies are announcing record profits, these very same Republicans are refusing to publicly acknowledge that the reason why the subsidies are in place is because they voted for them.
Romney At Koch-Sponsored Forum: We Need To Hang Obama…Metaphorically Speaking
WaPo factchecker: GOP lawmakers Medicare claim ‘stretched’
Ask GOP reps from devastated areas if they still back Ryan’s budget that guts FEMA, NWS
I couldn't help but notice the GOP twitterati whipping out their instant and expected responses to the storms that devastated the southern tier. From Michele Bachmann to Sarah Palin to Newt Gingrich, GOPers were falling all over themselves offering their prayers for victims of the horrific weather events.
Republicans Plan For 2012: Suppressing The Minority Vote
GOP schizophrenia on debt ceiling
Coburn – Gang of Six won’t support meaningful revenue increases
Republicans file recall petitions against three Wisconsin Dems, but trail in overall intensity
At long last, Republicans have filed recall petitions against Democratic state Senators. They made three filings in total, against Jim Holperin, Dave Hansen, and Robert Wirch. In two weeks, it's possible that Republicans will submit recall petitions against Democratic state Senator Julie Lassa as well.
Huckabee trashes Glenn Beck for calling him a progressive
And so it begins. Emergency Financial Mgr. fires entire government of Benton Harbor, MI.
As you probably know, Michigan Governor Rick Snyder recently signed legislation passed by the Republican-dominated House and Senate that gives State-appointed Emergency Financial Managers (EFMs) historically broad and sweeping powers. These new powers allow the EFM to cancel or modify contracts (including with unions) and even to fire the municipality's government
Rick Santorum disowns campaign slogan when told a gay liberal poet came up with it
Long-ago Sen. Rick Santorum is running for president, despite his "Google problem," and fresh out of the gate he has already invited more mockery. His campaign website features the slogan, "Fighting to Make America America Again" (by which I think he means that America is not America when there's a Muslim in charge).
Christie: Take the bat out on female legislator
How a ‘win’ portends potential losses for the GOP
There are some real alarm numbers for the GOP in these numbers, even if they now appear to point to a decidedly narrow re-election for Prosser. Start with the obvious points of alarm, which nonetheless deserve to be repeated. Prosser had a thirty-point lead over Kloppenburg after the primary, which was less than two months ago. Even if you make the presumption that Kloppenburg should get the lion's share of the other votes in the primary, Prosser still had a ten-point lead that dissipated in about seven weeks. This despite the fact it is a virtual certainty that Prosser and his advocates had the money edge over Kloppenburg and her allies.
What the Republican budget plans tell us about Republican values
Waukesha County clerk served GOP caucus while Prosser oversaw it
Here s the full story on when Waukesha County Clerk Kathy Nickolaus, a Republican, previously worked in the Wisconsin Legislature. Nickolaus upended the tight state Supreme Court race Thursday when she announced she had failed to correctly tally thousands of votes in an unofficial report to the press. That swung the unofficial totals in the race from challenger JoAnne Kloppenburg to Justice David Prosser, who previously served as a top GOP lawmaker.
Is ALEC Leading GOP’s Charge to Suppress the Youth Vote
Newt Gingrich’s Rx Cuts, but not at NIH
GOP ‘welfare reform’ targets strikers and… abortion
Indiana prosecutor told Wisconsin governor to stage ‘false flag’ operation
Girlfriend of Wisconsin Republican state Senator gets state job, 36% raise
Wisconsin Republicans, from Scott Walker on down, have repeatedly justified their move to strip collective bargaining rights for state employees by claiming that the state is broke. However, this has not stopped them from giving a state job and a 36% raise to the 26-year-old girlfriend of Wisconsin state Senator Randy Hopper.
Sarah Palin goes to Israel, snubs influential GOP group
Sarah Palin's trip to Israel -- which has been covered a bit more extensively by the press than her trip to India -- has been a fairly predictable exercise. She said hawkish things and told high-ranking members of the Likud party that they should "stop apologizing" and she'll dine with Benjamin Netanyahu and she has repeatedly announced that she's on Team Jewish People when it comes to the various disagreements in the region.
The New Robber Barons (h t Jeffrey Sachs)
"It's pretty clear there's an agenda nationwide: Republican governors backed by the Koch Brothers [and] extreme right wing money want to crush the unions," says Columbia Professor Jeffrey Sachs. "The public is against it, but public opinion doesn't count much in this country these days." (Editor's note: The Koch Brothers have denied our repeated requests for an interview.)
The New Robber Barons (h t Jeffrey Sachs)
"It's pretty clear there's an agenda nationwide: Republican governors backed by the Koch Brothers [and] extreme right wing money want to crush the unions," says Columbia Professor Jeffrey Sachs. "The public is against it, but public opinion doesn't count much in this country these days." (Editor's note: The Koch Brothers have denied our repeated requests for an interview.)
Republicans Double-Cross the Elderly
National Right-Wing Spin Machine Gears Up In Wisconsin
Shadowy "issue ad" groups that do not disclose their funders as well as heavy hitter political action committees are rushing to the aid of embattled Wisconsin Senator Scott Walker, whose poll number are dropping like a rock. The list of outside big money attacking Wisconsin state workers and teachers read like a "who's who" of the Republican donor and special interest group apparatus.
The Grand Old Plot Against the Tea Party
ONE dirty little secret of the 2010 election is that it won t be a political tragedy for Democrats if a Tea Party icon like Sharron Angle or Joe Miller ends up in the United States Senate. Angle, now synonymous with racist ads sliming Hispanics, and Miller, already on record threatening a government shutdown, are fired up and ready to go as symbols of G.O.P. extremism for 2012 and beyond.
GOP-Linked ‘Latinos For Reform Airs Nevada Ads Urging Hispanics Not To Vote
Fear and Favor
The Very Useful Idiocy of Christine ‘Â’Donnell
The Republicans new "Pledge to America" promises the $3.8 trillion addition to the deficit and says nothing about serious budget cuts or governmental reforms that might remotely offset it. Surfing the Beltway talk shows last Sunday, you couldn t find one without a G.O.P. politician adamantly refusing to specify a single program he might cut at, say, the Department of Education (Pell grants?) or the National Institutes of Health (cancer research?). And that s just the small change. Everyone knows that tax cuts for the G.O.P. s wealthiest patrons must come out of Social Security and Medicare payments for everybody else.
It’s Witch-Hunt Season
The last time a Democrat sat in the White House, he faced a nonstop witch hunt by his political opponents. Prominent figures on the right accused Bill and Hillary Clinton of everything from drug smuggling to murder. And once Republicans took control of Congress, they subjected the Clinton administration to unrelenting harassment at one point taking 140 hours of sworn testimony over accusations that the White House had misused its Christmas card list.
The Billionaires Bankrolling the Tea Party
...Yet inexorably the Koch agenda is morphing into the G.O.P. agenda, as articulated by current Republican members of Congress, including the putative next speaker of the House, John Boehner, and Tea Party Senate candidates like Rand Paul, Sharron Angle, and the new kid on the block, Alaska s anti-Medicaid, anti-unemployment insurance Palin prot g , Joe Miller. Their program opposes a federal deficit, but has no objection to running up trillions in red ink in tax cuts to corporations and the superrich; apologizes to corporate malefactors like BP and derides money put in escrow for oil spill victims as a slush fund ; opposes the extension of unemployment benefits; and calls for a freeze on federal regulations in an era when abuses in the oil, financial, mining, pharmaceutical and even egg industries (among others) have been outrageous.
Paul Singer’s Largess Reflects G.O.P.Â’s Wall St. Support
Mr. Singer, professorial and soft-spoken, used a gathering of business and government leaders at the conservative Manhattan Institute to lash out at indiscriminate attacks by political leaders against anything that moves in the world of finance. Government efforts to take over and run the economy through more regulations, he warned, threatened to ruin the United States standing as the world leader in finance. As the head of a $17 billion hedge fund, Mr. Singer, a self-described Barry Goldwater conservative who is 66, is using his financial might to try to change those policies. He has become one of the biggest bankrollers of Republican causes, giving more than $4 million of his money and raising millions more through fund-raisers he hosts for like-minded candidates who often share his distaste for what they view as governmental over-meddling in the financial industry.
There’s a Battle Outside and It Is Still RaginÂ’
This country was rightly elated when it elected its first African-American president more than 20 months ago. That high was destined to abate, but we reached a new low last week. What does it say about America now, and where it is heading, that a racial provocateur, wielding a deceptively edited video, could not only smear an innocent woman but make every national institution that touched the story look bad? The White House, the N.A.A.C.P. and the news media were all soiled by this episode. Meanwhile, the majority of Americans, who believe in fundamental fairness for all, grapple with the poisonous residue left behind by the many powerful people of all stripes who served as accessories to a high-tech lynching.
Who Wants to Elect a Millionaire
So far this season, the Republicans have offered two new models of their future. One is the Tea Party vision, in which outsiders full of spirit and excitement overthrow the old order. In North Carolina, there was so much spirit and excitement that voters gave the top spot in a Congressional primary to a former drug addict who, according to court documents, once referred to the United States government as the Antichrist and claimed to have personally located the Ark of the Covenant.
The G.O.P. – Going to Extreme
Utah Republicans have denied Robert Bennett, a very conservative three-term senator, a place on the ballot, because he s not conservative enough. In Maine, party activists have pushed through a platform calling for, among other things, abolishing both the Federal Reserve and the Department of Education. And it s becoming ever more apparent that real power within the G.O.P. rests with the ranting talk-show hosts.
An Absence of Class in the G.O.P.
Maddow: GOP and lobbyist attempt to hijack tea party movement
Rachel Maddow talks with Libertarian political consultant and blogger Stephen Gordon about the effort by Republicans and corporate interests to take over the actual grassroots Libertarian anti-tax, small-government movement. This video is from MSNBC’s News Live, broadcast Dec. 29, 2009. Download video via RawReplay.com
GOP supported public option for property insurance
Vote suppression in the US revs up
In the 1964 presidential elections, a young political operative named Bill guarded a largely African-American polling place in South Phoenix, Arizona like a bull mastiff. Bill was a legal whiz who knew the ins and outs of voting law and insisted that every obscure provision be applied, no matter what. He even made those who spoke accented English interpret parts of the constitution to prove that they understood it. The lines were long, people fought, got tired or had to go to work, and many of them left without voting. It was a notorious episode long remembered in Phoenix political circles.
Voters Defeat Many G.O.P.-Sponsored Measures
Karl Rove’s fight club
Karl Rove first pulled the group together to coordinate independent spending in the run-up to the 2010 midterms and it worked. The coalition including groups that hadn t always played well together has been credited with helping boost Republicans to sweeping victories across the country. But this time around, the tenuous alliance is being tested. New players are joining, heightening already intense competition for money, voter intel and, in a broad sense, control of the Republican Party. Meanwhile, some conservative groups that participated in the 2010 effort - including Americans for Prosperity and the Club for Growth - seem to be keeping their distance.
The GOP War on Voting
Twitter and Sam Brownback’s Fearful Authoritarians
If you think state government should bully high schoolers for exercising their right to free speech, that it has a right to poke through the medical records of women who ve had abortions, that there shouldn t be a separation between church and state, and you re A-OK with the Koch-funded Americans for Prosperity s effort to wipe out just about all functions of the federal government that benefit anyone other than the obscenely rich, but you only hold those views when your party is in power, than your dream job is working as communications director for Kansas Republican governor Sam Brownback.
How to fight Indiana’s Right to Work law
On Wednesday Gov. Mitch Daniels delivered a body blow to organized labor, signing a bill making Indiana the 23rd "Right to Work" state. Daniels' law, which unions will protest during Sunday s Super Bowl in Indianapolis, poses a major test for Indiana's labor movement. To survive "Right to Work," Indiana unions will have to disregard one of the most popular arguments made recently by their supporters: that a union is a business.
What ‘Right to Work’ Means for Indiana’s Workers: A Pay Cut
For the past year, public employees around the country have been under attack. With collective bargaining cast as a fiscal issue, private sector workers are encouraged to vent their economic frustrations at lazy government clerks living high on the hog off others hard-earned tax dollars. "We can no longer live in a society," Scott Walker, then governor-elect of Wisconsin, argued, "where the public employees are the haves and taxpayers who foot the bills are the have-nots."
Tea Party ‘founder’ Palin, Gingrich a ‘joke’
A financial blogger and ex-CEO credited with being one of the original "founders" of the Tea Party has come out against the movement, saying it has been hijacked by the very people it was protesting and is now obsessed with "guns, gays and God." In a "message" to the Tea Party Wednesday, Karl Denninger declared that he "ought to sue" anyone who uses the Tea Party name "for defamation."
Multi-Millionaire Rep. Says He Can’t Afford A Tax Hike Because He Only Has $400K A Year After Feeding Family
Rep. John Fleming (R-LA) appeared on MSNBC with Chris Jansing this morning to attack President Obama s new deficit reduction plan, which includes some tax increases on the wealthy. Taking up the typical GOP talking point, Fleming said raising taxes on wealthy "job creators" is a terrible idea that kills jobs because many of these people are small business owners who pay taxes through personal income rates.
Does New Media make Primaries Obsolete
If you didn't know there was a major political event going on in South Carolina today a map of tweeting from mobile devices would not tell you. South Carolina, one of the most right wing states in the nation, has been erect as a key state in deciding the GOP nomination. If Romney loses tonight he will have to try and be the first candidate to lose the state's primary but pick up the GOP nomination.