Charles And David Koch Exposed For Insidious Role In Crafting The Modern Right
Fred Koch
Mayer’s piece builds off the original reporting conducted by ThinkProgress since the very beginning of the Tea Party movement. Here’s a review of what we’ve reported:
– In April 2009, ThinkProgress revealed that Americans for Prosperity, a group founded by David Koch, was helping to plan dozens of the first national Tea Party rallies. Americans for Prosperity staffers organized events, from making reservations, to providing talking points and signs, to calling activists to encourage them to participate.
– In August 2009, ThinkProgress obtained an exclusive memo from a Tea Party group supported by Koch’s Americans for Prosperity. The memo outlined various ways for Tea Party activists to intimidate Democratic lawmakers and disrupt their town hall meetings on health reform. ThinkProgress published half a dozen articles exposing the role of Koch-funded groups like “Patients United” in encouraging opposition to health reform. For instance, in Virginia, a Koch-funded operative Ben Marchi assisted a birther who followed Rep. Tom Perriello (D-VA) around, yelling at him at town hall meetings.
– In May 2009, the Wonk Room published a detailed history of Tim Phillips, an astroturf lobbyist Koch appointed to run his Americans for Prosperity front. Phillips had served as a business partner to Jack Abramoff and Ralph Reed.
– Writing in the Boston Globe, ThinkProgress commented on the similarities between David and Charles’ Tea Party movement to their father’s efforts to attack President John Kennedy through the John Birch Society.
– The Wonk Room reported on thirty years of Koch Industry environmental front groups. The timeline showed how Koch tried desperately to smear the cap and trade system set up to address acid rain with a “grassroots” group without a single grassroots member.
– At Rep. Michele Bachmann’s (R-MN) “House Call” rally, ThinkProgress produced a video report exposing Koch for paying for dozens of buses for anti-health reform activists to reach DC. We also captured the picture of a large banner comparing health reform to the Holocaust.
– The Wonk Room investigated Koch Industries’ role in the effort to repeal AB 32, the landmark California climate change clean energy law. The Wonk Room’s video report revealed how Koch Industries’ reliance on high-carbon Canadian crude would become less profitable if similar laws like AB 32 are enacted around the country.
– ThinkProgress reported how a variety of right-wing fronts supported by the Koch family and its political deputies not only helped overturn nearly a hundred years in campaign finance law in the Supreme Court’s Citizens United ruling, but also is lobbying aggressively against the DISCLOSE Act, which would provide transparency into the campaign spending for plutocrats like the Koch family.
– The Wonk Room’s Brad Johnson reported extensively on the multiple climate-denying campaigns orchestrated by the Koch family. Johnson has lampooned some of the Koch family’s more ridiculous attempts at billionaire populism.
– ThinkProgress partnered with Climate Progress to investigate David Koch’s funding of the Smithsonian Institute. We spoke to the Smithsonian director, who continued to express gratitude to Koch, and whitewashed Koch’s role in distorting public knowledge of climate science. Similarly, we have long chronicled the “Swift Boat” style attack campaign conducted by Koch’s various anti-science fronts.
– The Wonk Room reported on how Koch-backed groups and media outlets spread the myth that the so-called “Climategate” e-mails showed that scientists had concealed climate data from the public.
Mayer’s article sheds light on many other ways in which the Koch family has intertwined its business interests with its investment in right-wing groups. She also exposes a serious conflict of interest with David Koch’s position as a board member to the National Cancer Institute, an honor granted to him by President Bush. Mayer notes that while David Koch has been “casting himself as a champion in the fight against cancer, Koch Industries has been lobbying to prevent the E.P.A. from classifying formaldehyde, which the company produces in great quantities, as a ‘known carcinogen’ in humans.”
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Judge Suspends All Federal Funding of Embryoic Stem Cell Research
Earlier today, a federal trial judge in D.C. suspended all federal funding of embryonic stem cell (ESC) research during ongoing litigation, claiming that such funding is illegal. According to Chief Judge Royce Lamberth, a Reagan appointee, such funding violates the Dickey-Wicker Amendment, which prohibits the use of federal funds for “research in which a human embryo or embryos are destroyed”:
ESC research is clearly research in which an embryo is destroyed. To conduct ESC research, ESCs must be derived from an embryo. The process of deriving ESCs from an embryo results in the destruction of the embryo. Thus, ESC research necessarily depends upon the destruction of a human embryo.
Despite defendants’ attempt to separate the derivation of ESCs from research on the ESCs, the two cannot be separated. Derivation of ESCs from an embryo is an integral step in conducting ESC research. Indeed, it is just one of many steps in the “systematic investigation” of stem cell research. Simply because ESC research involves multiple steps does not mean that each step is a separate “piece of research” that may be federally funded, provided the step does not result in the destruction of an embryo.
Essentially, Judge Lamberth claims that all ESC research cannot be funded because it requires scientists to build upon previous research that involved the destruction of an embryo, but it’s difficult to square this decision with Supreme Court precedent. Under Chevron v. NRDC, judges are normally supposed to defer to an agency’s reading of a federal law unless the agency’s interpretation is entirely implausible, and the Obama administration quite plausibly read the Dickey-Wicker Amendment to only prohibit federal funding of the actual destruction of an embryo — not federal funding of subsequent ESC research.
Indeed, Lamberth’s decision moves the law to a worse position than it was during the Bush administration. President George W. Bush allowed federal funding for research on existing embryonic stem cell lines, but would not allow new lines to be created. Today’s opinion even forbids such entirely uncontroversial research.
Gingrich Won’t Explain Why He’s Backing Out Of Participating In 9/11 Anti-Mosque Rally
Gingrich Won’t Explain Why He’s Backing Out Of Participating In 9/11 Anti-Mosque Rally
Last week, the right-wing group Stop Islamization of America announced that former GOP House Speaker Newt Gingrich was a “confirmed” speaker for the group’s September 11th protest against the proposed Park 51 Islamic center near ground zero, in New York City. Other speakers included former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations John Bolton, right-wing media tycoon Andrew Breitbart, and, notably, the far-right Dutch Parliamentarian Geert Wilders, best known for his self-described “hate” towards Islam.
Last week, however, Gingrich spokesperson Joe DeSantis told Politico that the Gingrich — who has been an outspoken opponent of the Islamic center — “is not scheduled to be at this rally. He is not speaking.” DeSantis said Gingrich’s staff had only agreed to send a video message, not make an appearance, but that too has now been canceled, but Gingrich won’t say why:
But a spokesman for Gingrich, a possible 2012 presidential candidate, told The Hill that the former leader of the House had never confirmed his appearance. Instead, one of Gingrich’s staff had agreed to send a video message from him to be shown at the Sept. 11 rally.
That has since been canceled.
“The confusion is at least partially our fault,” said Joe DeSantis, a spokesman for Gingrich. “A staff member mistakenly promised a video message, though not an appearance. However, we are not sending a video. We informed them earlier this week.”
DeSantis did not comment on why Gingrich was no longer planning to send a video message to the rally, and attempts to contact the organizers of the rally were unsuccessful.
Given Gingrich’s extreme rhetoric on the issue and self-appointed leadership role in the opposition, it’s surprising that he would pass up this opportunity.
Rep. Peter King (R-NY) is also listed on the event’s website as an “invited speaker,” but a spokesman for King said he was not planning to attend because he “will have so many 9/11 commemorations [to attend] in his district.” King has also spoken out against the Islamic center, but his rhetoric has been more temperated than Gingrich’s, and he even publicly condemned the former Speaker for “making a Nazi comparison” about the center. “It was wrong,” King said of Gingrich’s comment that the center’s organizers are “radical Islamists” who are seeking “supremacy,” much like “Nazis.”
However, protesters will still hear from Wilders, who tweeted, “I booked a flight and a hotel. Great feeling. Important speech. No one can stop me. No mosque at ground zero!” On Wilders’ website, he touts the would-be appearance with Gingrich, calling the duo “two eagles” who will come together to heighten awareness and stop the mosque.
Cuccinelli Authorizes Same Anti-Abortion Regulations He Failed To Enact As State Senator
Cuccinelli Authorizes Same Anti-Abortion Regulations He Failed To Enact As State Senator
As a state senator, Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli consistently “supported bills that would have treated abortion clinics as ambulatory surgery centers and required them to meet hospital-type regulations with regard to equipment and space,” but none of these bills ever became law. Now that he is Attorney General, however, Cuccinelli has decided that he does not need such legislative authority to act. In an opinion issued late last week, Attorney General Cuccinelli determined that the state already has the power to do what State Senator Cuccinelli failed to accomplish in the legislature:
In addition to applying regulations governing medical facilities and health care providers in general, the relevant agencies are authorized to impose regulations particular to abortion services. … In this circuit, the parameters within which states may constitutionally regulate first trimester abortion services were articulated by the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit in Greenville Women’s Clinic v. Bryant. The Court upheld South Carolina legislation and regulations that, in essence, extended the rules already imposed on facilities offering second trimester abortions to establishments in which five or more first trimester abortions were performed. The regulations at issue concerned licensing requirements; staffing rules; specified drug, equipment and laboratory availability; detailed record keeping and reporting duties; maintenance, safety and emergency policies; sterilization procedures; and design and construction standards.
At the very least, Cuccinelli’s opinion opens the door for Virginia to enact the very same kind of restrictive regulations that are already the law in South Carolina. Moreover, as Igor Volsky points out at the Wonk Room, Cuccinelli’s opinion could lead to even more aggressive use of the kind of “so-called TRAP (Targeted Regulation of Abortion Providers) legislation that’s been passed in states across the country.” In a nutshell, TRAP laws attempt to cut off a woman’s constitutional right to choose an abortion by driving up the cost of the procedure through intentionally burdensome regulations.
Last week’s opinion is also only the latest example of Cuccinelli suddenly discovering that the law must agree with whatever his personal views are on an issue. When Congress enacted a health care law that Cuccinelli disagrees with, he immediately concluded — contrary to the Constitution and a wealth of legal precedent — that the law must be unconstitutional. When the EPA began long-overdue steps to prevent global warming, Cuccinelli suddenly decided that EPA’s actions were illegal. When a UVA scientist conducted research contradicting Cuccinelli’s global warming denialism, Cuccinelli suddenly found that he has the legal authority to pursue a witchhunt against that professor. When a federal judge struck down Arizona’s unconstitutional anti-immigrant law, Cuccinelli responded two days later with an opinion authorizing Virginia to mimic Arizona’s failed law. And, of course, it goes without saying that Cuccinelli forbids any kind of action which protects gay Virginians.
In other words, either the law magically bends to fit Ken Cuccinelli’s whims, or Cuccinelli doesn’t really care what the law says — he’ll just claim it does whatever he wants it to do.
Kasich clueless about the cost of his budget-busting tax cuts: ‘I don’t have the revenues.’
Kasich clueless about the cost of his budget-busting tax cuts: ‘I don’t have the revenues.’
John Kasich, the “former state senator, congressman, Fox News talk show host, and financial firm manager” running on the Republican gubernatorial ticket in Ohio, has taken to calling the Ohio budget a “disaster,” and plans to reinvigorate the state’s economy by completely eliminating both its income tax and its estate tax. But when asked how much his tax plan would cost the state in terms of lost revenue, Kasich admitted that he has absolutely no idea, as the Toledo Blade reported:
Ask specifics about how and when he’d follow through with his plan and where he’d reduce state spending to offset the potential loss of revenue, and the path becomes less clear. “All the specifics on this are all being constantly worked,” he told The Blade in a recent interview in his downtown Columbus campaign headquarters. “I will lay out a program whenever I feel I’m satisfied with the program, when we understand the revenue, when we’ve worked this effectively,” he said.
Kasich was even more forthcoming about his cluelessness two weeks ago, saying “people want to know the details of my plan. I don’t have the revenues.” The Wonk Room pulled up tables from the Ohio Department of Taxation to find just how much of a hole Kasich is ready to blow in his state’s budget.
Rep. Jordan: If GOP wins the House, we won’t get anything done except frame the 2012 election.
Rep. Jordan: If GOP wins the House, we won’t get anything done except frame the 2012 election.
Last Thursday, Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH) held a town hall with his constituents in Shelby, Ohio, and fielded questions on a variety of topics ranging from health care to the economy. At one point, a constituent asked him about Republicans’ plans to throw “a monkey wrench in the gears of everything Obama does” if they re-take the House of Representatives. Jordan replied by saying that “most of what [the GOP] can get done” if they happen to capture the House is “have the big fight, have the big debate, and have the framework for the 2012 election”:
AUDIENCE MEMBER: Assuming it’s accurate that Republicans will get the House, how effective will that be in throwing a monkey wrench in the gears of everything Obama does?JORDAN: If we win, what will we get done? Mostly, I’ll be honest, most of what we can get done is have the big fight, have the big debate, and have the framework for the 2012 election.
Watch it:
Jordan’s comments are the latest piece of evidence that suggests that the GOP does not have a substantive policy agenda it plans to implement if it makes gains in the 2010 congressional elections. Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN) said that if the GOP wins, “all we should do is issue subpoenas.” And Rep. Peter King (R-NY) argued the GOP shouldn’t lay out an agenda because it might become “a campaign issue.”
In Calling For Islamic Center’s Relocation, Former Bush Official Ignores Message She Touted Abroad
In Calling For Islamic Center’s Relocation, Former Bush Official Ignores Message She Touted Abroad
In stoking the paranoid hysteria over the Cordoba Initiative, right-wing opponents to the proposed Islamic center are cleaving to the sensitivity talking point: while Muslims have the right to build an Islamic center, they would be offending Americans if they did.
Yesterday, another Republican voice joined the chorus calling for relocation. President Bush’s Under Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs Karen Hughes penned an op-ed in the Washington Post asserting that the Islamic center is “contentious because it goes to the heart of who is to blame for the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.” Hughes, who promoted the center’s sponsor Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf as an ambassador of Islamic faith in America under the Bush Administration, claims his current project would be a “searing reminder of terrible deaths at the hands of murderers calling themselves Muslims” and ultimately allow terrorists to “celebrate its presence as a twisted victory over our society’s freedoms.”
But, during her tenure with the Bush administration, Hughes cited American commitment to “our society’s freedoms” as a key difference between American and Saudi Arabian society. During a week-long Middle East tour “to improve the image of the United States” in 2005, Hughes spoke to several hundred Saudi women about the non-discriminatory right of driving in America. Saudi Arabia’s ban on female drivers is “one of the more controversial” issues in Saudi Arabia that “many high ranking officials maintain” is “a societal issue.” In fact, paralleling the increasingly vitriolic debate over the center here at home, the idea of Saudi women drivers spurred Saudi conservatives and religious scholars to argue that “that giving women the right to drive will lead to a ‘Western-style’ erosion of morality and a loss of traditional values.”
Going “significantly further” than then-Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice on the subject, Hughes told the audience in ‘05 that its society’s unwillingness to allow women to drive flouted an important “symbol” of the freedoms Americans take “very seriously”:
“We in America take our freedoms very seriously,” Hughes said. “I believe women should be free and equal participants in society. I feel that as an American woman that my ability to drive is an important part of my freedom.”
Women in the audience applauded after she also mentioned that they should have a greater voice in the Saudi political system, including eventually receiving the right to vote.[...]
Asked about the contrast between her comments and Rice’s, Hughes said her remarks were part of a U.S. policy of “slowly advancing ideas” with the Saudis. “My job is to raise issues in, I hope, a respectful way, to help other countries understand concerns Americans have,” she said.[...]
“It is important for them to understand that for many American women, driving is a symbol. We can’t imagine not being able to drive ourselves to work,” she told reporters traveling with her.
Hughes went further in warning against American backlash against Muslims while speaking at the Islamic Society of North America convention in 2005. Seeing that her role was to “respond to civil liberty concerns within the United States from Muslims whose lives and travel have been disrupted,” Hughes urged “people of all faiths to speak out against the ‘backlash and widespread demonization of Islam and Muslims’ that followed the 9/11 attacks.” “It is important that we be mindful of speaking out against all voices of hate and incitement including those raised against Muslims themselves,” she said. “We want to be a welcoming country.”
Hughes’ current position hardly reflects the tone she projected in 2005. It is wrong to believe that we honor the 9/11 victims by rejecting the values they cherished while succumbing to the very fear and hatred their murderers were trying to provoke.
Rhode Island Democratic Lawmaker Goes After ‘Anchor Embryos’
Last Friday, on Fox News’ On the Record with Greta Van Susteren, conservative state lawmaker Peter Palumbo (D-RI) appeared with state Rep. Joseph Trillo (R-RI) to discuss their outreach to Arizona politicians as they craft their own tough immigration law. During the interview, Palumbo referenced “anchor babies,” a derogatory and “politically charged” term used to refer to the U.S. citizen children of undocumented parents, noting that in Rhode Island they have “anchor embryos”:
We’ve all heard of anchor babies. We have something unique to Rhode Island, and they’re called anchor embryos. And what it is is a policy that we have in the state of Rhode Island — if you’re an illegal alien woman and you’re pregnant and you come to Rhode Island, you go to the Department of Human Services — the first thing you have to do is tell them that you’re an illegal alien and you’re pregnant and the Department of Human Services will offer you, do you want Blue Cross, United, or Neighborhood Health.
Watch it:
A handful of states provide prenatal care assistance based on an unborn child’s eligibility, rather than the pregnant woman’s. When Nebraska moved to deny the unborn babies of undocumented women prenatal care Medicaid assistance, state Sen. Jeremy Nordquist called it “the biggest pro-life issue in the Legislature this year.” Pro-life advocates who support providing prenatal care assistance for undocumented mothers argue that it’s a matter of fetal rights. “We don’t accept that borders should be put ahead of babies,” said Julie Schmit-Albin, executive director of Nebraska Right to Life. Nebraska Right to Life believes that providing prenatal care “improves the chances that a woman will choose to give birth rather than seek an abortion.” Others argue that denying future U.S. citizen children prenatal care benefits boils down to an issue of public health.
Ironically, Palumbo has also sponsored the The Women’s Right to Know Act in 2002 which included provisions requiring doctors to “offer alternatives to abortion and about available public and private assistance for prenatal care, childbirth, and services available to help with children and families.” “This legislation ensures that women have all the information they need to make their decision” reasoned Palumbo.
Ron Paul breaks with GOP on New York mosque: The opposition ‘is all about hate and Islamaphobia.’
Ron Paul breaks with GOP on New York mosque: The opposition ‘is all about hate and Islamaphobia.’
In strongly-worded statement released today, Rep. Ron Paul (R-TX), a tea party favorite and perennial GOP presidential candidate, strongly condemned his “fellow conservatives” for opposing the proposed Park 51 Islamic community center near Ground Zero. The outcry over the mosque “implies that Islam alone was responsible for the 9/11 attacks,” Paul said, explaining that the rights of minorities must be protected, even when it’s unpopular. Ultimately, Paul argues that the opposition to the mosque “is all about hate and Islamaphobia,” stoked by “neo-conservatives” who “never miss a chance to use hatred toward Muslims to rally support for the ill conceived preventative wars”:
Many fellow conservatives say they understand the property rights and 1st Amendment issues and don’t want a legal ban on building the mosque. They just want everybody to be “sensitive” and force, through public pressure, cancellation of the mosque construction.
This sentiment seems to confirm that Islam itself is to be made the issue, and radical religious Islamic views were the only reasons for 9/11. If it became known that 9/11 resulted in part from a desire to retaliate against what many Muslims saw as American aggression and occupation, the need to demonize Islam would be difficult if not impossible. [...]
It is repeatedly said that 64% of the people, after listening to the political demagogues, don’t want the mosque to be built. What would we do if 75% of the people insist that no more Catholic churches be built in New York City? The point being is that majorities can become oppressors of minority rights as well as individual dictators. Statistics of support is irrelevant when it comes to the purpose of government in a free society—protecting liberty. [...]
This is all about hate and Islamaphobia.
Paul is the first national Republican leader to break with the party and call out the undercurrents of Islamaphobia in the opposition to the mosque. He is also likely to offend some of his own supporters, as many in the tea party movement have come out in strong opposition to the Park 51 project. (HT: Glenn Greenwald)
TX-17 GOP Nominee Bill Flores Repeatedly Refuses To Support John Boehner
Recently, discontent among House Republicans with Minority Leader John Boehner (R-OH) has began to build. First, Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN) hinted at overthrowing the current Republican leadership in favor of true “constitutional conservatives.” The following week, Bachmann formed the House Tea Party Caucus and was soon joined by over 50 of her GOP colleagues including leaders like Rep. Mike Pence (R-IN), but Boehner’s name was conspicuously absent. Boehner has also tried to fend off an increasing threat from Minority Whip Eric Cantor (R-VA).
Now, in Texas’s 17th congressional district, GOP nominee Bill Flores (who is running against Rep. Chet Edwards) is refusing to say if he will support Boehner as his leader. Despite running in the most heavily Republican district in the nation that is currently represented by a Democrat, Flores balked when asked about supporting Boehner, telling a voter, “I’d rather not answer that question if you don’t mind”:
VOTER: How do you feel about Boehner, the minority leader in the House?
FLORES: Next question. I really don’t want to talk about anybody today. I’ve got a race to run. But I want to add in Congress is I want to have the right leadership in every position.
VOTER: Would you support him?
FLORES: I’d rather not answer that question if you don’t mind.
Listen here:
Rubio ‘Veers From Tea Party’s Script,’ Softening Rhetoric To Attract Independent Voters
Rubio ‘Veers From Tea Party’s Script,’ Softening Rhetoric To Attract Independent Voters
For the past year, Florida GOP Senate candidate Marco Rubio has been the model tea party candidate, receiving one of the first endorsements from Sen. Jim DeMint’s (R-SC) Senate Conservatives Fund (DeMint has called Rubio “the most impressive conservative leader I have met in a long time.”) Rubio has raised more money from the movement than any of his fellow tea party-backed candidates. But after his challenger, Florida Gov. Charlie Crist (I), decided to run as an independent instead of as a Republican, Rubio has been “breaking with some Tea Party orthodoxy” in order to win over moderate voters that might now side with Crist, the New York Times reports. In an interview, Rubio’s rhetoric was noticeably tamer than in the past:
“The solution isn’t just to paralyze government,” Mr. Rubio said in an interview as he traveled the state last week from here in the Panhandle to Miami. “Vote for us because you couldn’t possibly vote for them? That’s not enough. It may win some seats, but it won’t take you where you want to be.” [...]
“I am not running for the United States Senate because I want to be the opposition to Barack Obama, Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid,” he replied in a measured tone. “I’m running for Senate because I want to create an alternative.” [...]
Does anything impress him about President Obama?
“Yeah, there’s a lot,” Mr. Rubio said. “Obviously his personal story of someone who didn’t come from wealth is a testament not just to his tenacity, but to America. I just strongly disagree with him on public policy.”
Rubio also “did not agree with flashpoints Republican candidates elsewhere have seized on.” He said he doesn’t “want Arizona to serve as a model for other states” when it comes to immigration, and said advocating for changing the 14th Amendment, as many Republicans have, “is frankly is not the highest and best use of our political attention.” When asked for his own views on immigration, Rubio broke with his party’s absolutist sloganeering on the issue, saying his position “doesn’t fit on a bumper sticker so bear with me,” before launching into an eight-minute explanation.
At Ground Zero anti-Islam rally, man harassed for looking vaguely Muslim.
At an anti-Islam rally yesterday at Ground Zero, a person of color wearing a skull cap and wandering through the crowd was targeted with insults and nearly attacked by protesters for the offense of looking vaguely Muslim. The videographer summarized the episode this way:
A man walks through the crowd at the Ground Zero protest and is mistaken as a Muslim. The crowd turns on him and confronts him. The man in the blue hard hat calls him a coward and tries to fight him. The tall man who I think was one of the organizers tried to get between the two men. Later I caught up with the man who’s name is Kenny. He is a Union carpenter who works at Ground Zero. We discussed what a scary moment that was for him.
Glenn Greenwald observes that the video “shows some extremely ugly stuff that’s been unleashed.” Watch it:
Interesting way to “honor” Ground Zero, no?
ThinkFast: August 23, 2010
ThinkFast: August 23, 2010
Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman notes in his New York Times column today that extending the Bush tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans would be the equivalent of writing checks “averaging $3 million each to the richest 120,000 people in the country.” Krugman also notes that making all the tax cuts permanent would “cost the federal government $680 billion in revenue over the next 10 years.”
The U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the country’s largest business lobby, has pledged to spend a record amount of $75 million in the 2010 elections. On top of the $190 million spent on lobbying since President Obama’s election, the numbers “give the group clout as a virtual third party and a powerful voice in what laws are made and who’s elected to write them.”
Although interest rates for the U.S. Treasury, home buyers, and companies continue to decline, they are rising quickly in one area: consumer credit cards. Yesterday, new rules went into effect that restricts banks’ abilities to assess penalty charges, and the Wall Street Journal reports that the banks “responded by pushing card rates to their highest level in nine years.”
Mother Jones reports that members of the taxpayer-funded U.S. Commission for International Religious Freedom have joined the “vociferous opposition” to the Islamic center in lower Manhattan. Commission members, who are charged with promoting “freedom of thought, conscience, and religion,” are now advocating that a place of worship for moderate Muslims cannot be tolerated.
“Daisy Khan, one of the leading organizers behind the mosque and Islamic community center near ground zero in New York City, said Sunday that moving the project to another location is not currently on the table.” Khan also told ABC’s This Week that she believes the project will be built, despite fierce opposition driven by what she described as “beyond Islamophobia — it’s hate of Muslims.”
Almost half of the “1.3 million homeowners who enrolled in the Obama administration’s flagship mortgage-relief program have fallen out.” The data, which comes from a new report by the Treasury Department, suggests that “the $75 billion government effort is failing to slow the tide of foreclosures in the United States.”
According to Army Gen. Ray Odierno, the U.S. may keep troops in Iraq past the Obama administration’s 2011 withdrawal target date. If the Iraqi Army requests American assistance with weapons systems to defend against insurgency, “we could be there (in Iraq) beyond 2011,” Odierno said on CNN’s State of the Union yesterday.
Vice President Joe Biden will address the Veterans of Foreign Wars in Indianapolis today, and will convey a positive message about progress in Iraq. Biden will tell the crowd that ongoing Iraqi political problems related to the March 7 elections will be resolved “in the near future,” according to administration officials, but he will not predict a date for a final agreement.
And finally: Nevada Assemblyman Harry Mortenson (D) is proposing a resolution to make the “Ne-VAH-da” pronunciation of his state’s name “equally acceptable to the one with the short ‘a.’” Nevadans “have long bristled” over the pronunciation, but “Mortenson says he’s not asking Nevadans to change. He just wants the Spanish pronunciation recognized.”
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BP to resume ads on ThinkProgress.
BP to resume ads on ThinkProgress.
ThinkProgress reported on Friday afternoon that BP decided to pull its ads from our site after we published a piece documenting the extent of the big oil company’s “greenwashing campaign.” Two days later, TP has been informed by our outside ad company, Common Sense Media, that BP would like to resume its ads on our site beginning Monday. This controversy provides an opportunity for me to better communicate our blog’s policy with respect to paid advertisers on our site. My view is that, in order to sustain our operation, ThinkProgress is happy to take money from those with whom we have policy or ideological disagreements, provided they understand that we will not soften or silence our progressive point-of-view. There are limits, of course, to ads that we will accept. For instance, we do not want ads that are degrading or offensive on our site. But for those advertisers who want to run messaging on our site that counters TP’s reporting, we trust readers will take both pieces of information and render their own judgments. Because we have an outside ad company servicing our ads, the editors and reporters on TP are not generally informed of who is purchasing ads on our site — and it’s better left that way. Advertisers will not influence our content, and we will not produce content to lure advertisers.
Take action: Ask 2010 midterm candidates a question.
Take action: Ask 2010 midterm candidates a question.
ThinkProgress is pleased to partner with the Personal Democracy Forum on a project called 10Questions, an effort in association with YouTube and Google to allow online readers to ask federal/state candidates direct questions in advance of the upcoming midterm elections. Some of the participating races include Minnesota’s 6th district House race (Rep. Michele Bachmann versus Tarryl Clark), California’s Senate race (Sen. Barbara Boxer versus Carly Fiorina), and Florida’s 22nd district House race (Ron Klein versus Allen West). There are many others. By visiting 10Questions.com, individuals will be given an opportunity to submit questions via online video or text. Once they are posted, citizens can vote on questions, pushing those they most want asked to the top. Questions can be posted and voted on through September 21st. The top ten questions — as selected by the public — will be posted and responded to by the candidates. The public can then vote on whether or not candidates answered the questions from October 15th through election day. It only works if you participate. So please take the opportunity to do so. Visit 10Questions.com.
Granholm calls out Armey and Ryan for wanting to ‘effectively dismantle’ the social safety net.
Granholm calls out Armey and Ryan for wanting to ‘effectively dismantle’ the social safety net.
As ThinkProgress noted, former House Speaker Dick Armey laid out a plan this week that would effectively dismantle Social Security and Medicare “as you know it” by privatizing a large portion of these critical social safety net programs. On Meet the Press today, Armey and Michigan Gov. Jennifer Granholm (D) discussed a different Republican plan to privatize and dismantle the social safety net, Rep. Paul Ryan’s (R-WI) “Roadmap for America’s Future.” Granholm calls Ryan’s plan “far outside the mainstream,” noting that 85 percent of Americans don’t want to cut Social Security to solve the deficit.” Armey responds by laughing, claiming that “no one is talking about dismantling these systems:”
GREGORY: Governor, is this an example of what they called a mainstream political movement, some of these candidates and their views?
GRANHOLM: No. I think it’s far outside of the mainstream. In fact, one of the things, you just held up Paul Ryan’s proposal regarding Medicare and regarding Social Security, I think a lot of which you’ve jumped on to as well. There was a recent poll out that says 85 percent of Americans don’t want to see Social Security cut to solve the deficit. … If you care about democracy and what every citizen believes and you want to empower them, and they don’t want the social security system to be dismantled, and they don’t want the medicare system to be dismantled because your picking and choosing and this is a contact between generations to be able to make sure all of our seniors have the funds when they retire, that they’re not going to be homeless, that they’re not going to have to go to a shelter. I’m not kidding you. The idea that 85–
ARMEY: [Laughing] You just crack me up. No one is talking about dismantling these systems.
GRANHOLM: You just crack me up too, man. Well if you ask every actuarial that’s looked at it says you effectively dismantle the system.
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As has been repeatedly noted, Ryan’s plan would destroy Social Security and Medicare as we know it, whether or not its advocates are talking about it that way. And while Armey laughs insensitively when Granholm brings up elderly homelessness, the problem was no laughing matter before the passage of these programs. Social Security and Medicare “ultimately made poorhouses obsolete.” Meanwhile, elderly homelessness is projected to rise by a third in the next ten years, and as the National Alliance to End Homesless notes, “Social Security, Medicare, and housing programs targeting the elderly will be critical for meeting the challenge and reducing risk of homelessness.”
Deficit Fraud McConnell: Why Did Tax Cuts ‘All Of A Sudden Become Something We, Quote, Pay For?’
Deficit Fraud McConnell: Why Did Tax Cuts ‘All Of A Sudden Become Something We, Quote, Pay For?’
Earlier this month, Reps. John Boehner (R-OH) and Mike Pence (R-IN) appeared on Meet the Press and were unable to explain their desire to extend the Bush tax cuts for the richest two percent of Americans with their rhetoric about deficit reduction. “Listen, what you’re trying to do is get into this Washington game and their funny accounting over there,” Boehner said, when asked if Republicans planned to pay for extending tax cuts for the rich.
Today, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) ran into the same trouble with MTP host David Gregory, and scoffed at the very notion of paying for tax cuts. “Why did it all of a sudden become something that we, quote, ‘pay for?’” McConnell asked.
MCCONNELL: What are you talking about, paid for? This is existing tax policy. It’s been in place for ten years. [...]
GREGORY: For a final time, I’ll go back to my question which is, the extension of the tax cuts would cost $3.2 trillion. That’s borrowed money, that adds to the deficit. Do you have a plan to pay for that extension?
MCCONNELL: You’re talking about current tax policy. Why did it all of a sudden become something that we, quote, ‘pay for’?
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In addition to incorrectly stating the effect that the expiration of the cuts would have on small businesses, McConnell basically summed up the Republican approach here, which is that cutting taxes for the rich is either free or worth exploding the deficit to implement. In reality, extending just the tax cuts for the richest two percent of Americans — which President Obama has proposed allowing to expire — costs $830 billion over ten years and $36 billion next year alone.
This week, the Washington Post excoriated Republicans for almost unanimously backing a proposal by Sen. Jim DeMint (R-SC) that would permanently extend all of the Bush tax cuts, calling it “a chilling sign of what a number of lawmakers believe passes for fiscal responsibility.” Of course, maybe McConnell and Senate Republicans simply agree with former Vice President Dick Cheney’s pronouncement that “deficits don’t matter.”
GOP candidate in NY gubernatorial primary calls for prison dorms for welfare recipients.
GOP candidate in NY gubernatorial primary calls for prison dorms for welfare recipients.
A consistent theme that has developed among conservative politicians this year is to degrade and demean the unemployed who are seeking unemployment benefits. From former House Speaker Newt Gingrich attacking a man who paid into the unemployment insurance system for 35 years for seeking benefits, to Rep. Zach Wamp (R-TN) suggesting that the availability of meager unemployment insurance was causing the unemployed of his state to sit back and wait instead of seek work, the conservative assault on the unemployed appear to have no end. Now, New York GOP gubernatorial primary candidate Carl Paladino, “a wealthy Buffalo real estate developer popular with many tea party activists,” is openly advocating for the creation of special prison dorms for recipients of unemployment insurance where they can receive special training and lessons in “personal hygiene“:
Republican candidate for governor Carl Paladino said he would transform some New York prisons into dormitories for welfare recipients, where they could work in state-sponsored jobs, get employment training and take lessons in “personal hygiene.” [...]
Paladino first described the idea in June at a meeting of The Journal News of White Plains and spoke about it again this week with The Associated Press. [...]
Asked at the meeting how he would achieve those savings, Paladino laid out several plans that included converting underused state prisons into centers that would house welfare recipients. There, they would do work for the state — “military service, in some cases park service, in other cases public works service,” he said — while prison guards would be retrained to work as counselors.
“Instead of handing out the welfare checks, we’ll teach people how to earn their check. We’ll teach them personal hygiene … the personal things they don’t get when they come from dysfunctional homes,” Paladino said.
Paladino did explain to the Associated Press that any such prison dorm scheme would be voluntary. What he failed to explain is why, as a tea party conservative, taking people away from their families to taxpayer-funded facilities to try to re-educate them is in any way conservative.
Despite His Anti-Government Rhetoric, Gov. McDonnell’s Budget Surplus Results From Government Assistance
Despite His Anti-Government Rhetoric, Gov. McDonnell’s Budget Surplus Results From Government Assistance
While most states are experiencing debilitating budget deficits, Virginia is “feeling flush” after turning a $1.8 billion deficit into a $403.2 million budget surplus at the close of the fiscal year. In a celebratory speech before the Virginia legislature Thursday, Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell (R) credited higher tax revenue, state agencies’ fiscal responsibility, and serious budget cuts for the state’s ability “to balance the books.”
McDonnell’s victory tour continued with a stop on the Fox Business network to tout “fiscal prudence and conservative budgeting” as “the key” to his surplus. When enamored host Gerri Willis asked him whether Washington “could learn something from Virginia,” McDonnell replied he hoped his fiscal responsibility in Richmond “would be a model for Washington”:
WILLIS: Well you know congratulations, it’s an amazing story. You started the year with $1.8 billion deficit – you turned it around completely, even have a surplus. How’d you do it?
MCDONNELL: Well it took a lot of work and a lot of bipartisan support in both houses of the legislature but I think we took a very conservative, fiscal, practical approach to budget. You can’t spend what you don’t have. [...]
WILLIS: And you mentioned some of the spending priorities in Washington, could they learn something from Virginia?
MCDONNELL: Well, as I said in my speech to the legislature today, they sure could. Everybody knows, families and businesses that are cutting in these tough economic times, this is an unsustainable level of spending. What we need to do is incentivize the free enterprise system which has been the strength of American democracy for hundreds of years to grow. And we can’t keep adding a trillion and a half dollars to the national debt every year with this deficit, you’ve got to be fiscally prudent and incentivize the free enterprise system so you don’t have more government bailouts and more dependence of people on government. It’s a very different model and I hope Richmond would be a model for Washington.
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McDonnell’s “prudence” would be a shining example for the federal government if he hadn’t relied on one important contributor: the federal government. According to a Commonwealth Institute for Fiscal Analysis report released this week, last year’s Recovery Act provided $2.5 billion in stimulus relief to “maintain crucial services for [Virginia] citizens” and “help close the state’s budget shortfall in 2010-2012.” Virginia legislators relied on $1.3 billion in enhanced Medicaid funding, $1 billion in funding for K-12 and higher education, $39 million for public safety, and $200 million in general support to reduce “what would otherwise have been a $5.4 billion budget hole.”
But McDonnell has a history of selective amnesia when it comes to Recovery funds. During his gubernatorial campaign, McDonnell continually criticized the Recovery Act as a “massive” spending bill that would “do little to help the economy.” But, while in office, McDonnell heralded $24 million in federal funding to advance health information technology while sweeping the fact that it was stimulus funding under the rug. He even requested stimulus funds to cover rising health care costs and to help build a Rolls Royce manufacturing plant in Prince George County. As one Virginia legislator put it, “we wouldn’t even be talking about the surplus if it weren’t for the stimulus.”
Rep. Jeff Fortenberry Refuses To Join Rep. Lamar Smith In Discussing Obama Impeachment
Rep. Jeff Fortenberry Refuses To Join Rep. Lamar Smith In Discussing Obama Impeachment
Last month, Rep. Lamar Smith (R-TX) became the first congressman in his party to hint at impeaching President Obama for purportedly violating his oath of office by not completely securing the border. Since then, Rep. Steve King (R-IA) has joined Smith in declaring that Obama has violated his oath of office.
ThinkProgress caught up with Rep. Jeff Fortenberry (R-NE) at a town hall meeting in Lincoln, Nebraska last week to get his take on the matter. Fortenberry, who lacks no conservative credentials with an 87% lifetime conservative rating from the American Conservative Union, was unwilling to join his colleagues. Not only did he argue that Obama had not violated his oath of office, but he also recoiled at the notion that his colleagues would make such incendiary comments:
TP: I had a quick question about immigration policy in particular. There’s a lot of hot feelings out here about it. Do you think that if President Obama doesn’t address the issue, that that would be a violation of his oath of office?
FORTENBERRY: Well, I don’t think it’d be a violation of his oath of office. The problem is, like I was asked today earlier, when is the immigration reform going to happen? [...]
TP: I know Congressman Lamar Smith has come out and said that Obama is permitting illegal immigration is coming really close to a violation of his oath of office.
FORTENBERRY: Lamar said that?
TP: Yeah, he did. If Republicans were to take back Congress next term and if he were to bring up a bill like that, you’re saying you don’t think you would support that?
FORTENBERRY: That the president had violated his oath of office? Well I don’t…These things get a little politically heated. I don’t like to throw things around like that, that’s pretty serious. I like Lamar Smith, he’s a friend of mine. [...] I just don’t want to throw stuff around like that, frankly.
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