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Oakland Police Use Rubber Bullets And Smoke Bombs To Evict Occupy Protesters

Perry: 'I Don't Care' If My Tax Plan Gives Millions To The Rich

Anti-Muslim Hate Conference Gets Kicked Out From Nashville Hotel

Economy

Perry Ditches Idea That Social Security Is Unconstitutional, Adopts Privatization Plan The Public Already Rejected

By Travis Waldron posted from ThinkProgress Economy on Oct 25, 2011 at 12:50 pm

Texas Gov. Rick Perry’s (R) views on Social Security have been well-chronicled since he jumped into the Republican presidential primary in July. In the past, Perry has called Social Security unconstitutional and a Ponzi scheme, and in his first debate appearance, he called it a “monstrous lie.” Perry’s assertions were obviously incorrect, and he drew the ire of fellow candidates like former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney (R) and GOP strategists like Karl Rove, who called Perry’s extreme views “toxic” for the Republican Party.

At other points, Perry mentioned that Social Security should be returned to the states, a “solution” that is economically impossible. Today, however, Perry walked all of that back, choosing instead to join his GOP colleagues in their support of privatizing Social Security. In a Wall Street Journal op-ed outlining his new economic plan, Perry touted the benefits of “personal” accounts, the GOP’s buzzword for privatization:

Cut, Balance and Grow also gives younger workers the option to own their Social Security contributions through personal retirement accounts that Washington politicians can never raid. Because young workers will own their contributions, they will be free to seek a market rate of return if they choose, and to leave their retirement savings to their dependents when they die.

Unfortunately for Perry, this move amounts to dropping support for a plan so toxic it couldn’t even garner consideration in favor of a plan that, while slightly less toxic, has already been rejected by the American people. Republican attempts to privatize Social Security went down in flames in 2005, and even now, with the GOP telling Americans the system is broken and ignoring the easiest way to shore up its long-term solvency, voters continue to reject the idea of privatizing one of the government’s most popular programs.

Perhaps that’s because the American people know just how dangerous private Social Security accounts could be. According to a Center for American Progress study, an October 2008 retiree would have lost $26,000 in a private Social Security account due to the financial crisis, and that analysis was done before the market hit its floor in the spring of 2009. When millions of senior citizens lost nearly all of their retirement savings in their own private investment accounts, Social Security was the only income they had left. As a result, the program kept 14 million seniors out of poverty in 2010.

While Perry has apparently ditched his Ponzi scheme talk, the idea that his plan for Social Security is as safe as the current program is its own monstrous lie. If that wasn’t bad enough, Perry also supports raising the age at which retirees would become eligible for Social Security, another incredibly regressive idea.

NEWS FLASH

Judge Blocks Florida’s Law Requiring Drug Tests For Welfare applicants | Yesterday, federal Judge Mary Scriven — a President George W. Bush appointee — temporarily blocked Florida’s law that requires welfare applicants to pass a drug test at their own expense before they can receive benefits. Scriven ruled that the law may violate the Constitution’s Fourth Amendment ban on unreasonable searches and seizures: “This potential interception of positive drug tests by law enforcement implicates a ‘far more substantial’ invasion of privacy than in ordinary civil drug testing cases.” Nearly 1,600 applicants have refused to take the test since testing began this summer, and “they aren’t required to say why.” More than 7,000 have passed while only 32 have failed. Applicants are only reimbursed for the test if they pass. Florida is the first state to enact such a law. The judge’s injunction will remain until she schedules a full hearing.

NEWS FLASH

Right-Wing Radio Host Blasts Ohio Gov. Kasich, Urges Ohioans To Vote Down Anti-Labor Law | Ohio right-wing radio host Bill Cunningham is taking a surprising stance on GOP Gov. John Kasich’s (R) anti-workers’ rights law, Senate Bill 5, which will face a referendum come Nov. 8. Cunningham, a Rush Limbaugh disciple, recently recorded a message blasting the “rock-red Republican conservative” Kasich for failing to meet with the labor unions over the elimination of their collective bargaining rights, saying “he was wrong.” “From my perspective, those affected by governmental decisions need to have a place at the bargaining table to determine the outcome of what’s being discussed,” he said. “The best Americans I know are cops, firefighters, and teachers. They’re reasonable and they’re good people,” he added, urging Ohioans to vote no on Issue 2 (which would repeal the law). Watch it:

Health

Why Mitt Romney’s Medicaid Cuts Are Even More Draconian Than Paul Ryan’s

By Igor Volsky posted from ThinkProgress Health on Oct 25, 2011 at 11:29 am

Medicaid, which is funded jointly by the states and the federal government, provides health coverage to approximately 53 million lower income Americans. The federal government matches state spending on a per-claim basis and pays a percentage of each state’s Medicaid costs (anywhere between 50 and 75 percent). Conservatives like House Budget Chairman Paul Ryan and the GOP presidential contenders have proposed reducing the federal government’s commitment to the program by block granting Medicaid and paying states pre-established grants that may not reflect actual costs. The reduction in federal spending would require states to either appropriate additional funding towards Medicaid or lower program expenditures by cutting provider payment rates, limiting eligibility, and reducing benefits, the CBO has concluded.

Former Gov. Mitt Romney (R-MA) has endorsed Ryan’s block grant proposal, and yesterday, during a radio interview with Sean Hannity, he revealed that his cuts to Medicaid could be even more draconian than Ryan’s. Ryan already aims to shrink the federal government’s contribution to Medicaid by 35 percent in 2022, converting the existing federal matching rate for each state into a block grant and growing the grant by approximately 3 percent annually (as compared to the estimated 6.5 percent to 7 percent annual growth* in federal expenditures that would occur under current law). Romney told Hannity that he would grow his Medicaid block grants by just 1 to 2 percent per year:

ROMNEY: It’s mathematically pretty straight forward how you hold down costs, which is you say, we’re going to cut it by a certain amount and then comes the hard work of saying where you’re going to cut it. And that why I’ve laid out a plan that balances our budget…taking Medicaid and giving it back to the states and growing it only 1 to 2 percent a year.

Listen:

Comparatively, Romney’s reductions would result in even steeper cuts that would affect tens of millions of low-income Medicaid beneficiaries — seniors in nursing homes, people with disabilities, children — for whom the program has become a critical source of coverage. A very rough back-of-the envelope calculation using the CBO’s projected federal Medicaid expenditures for 2012 as a baseline (and then growing that number by 1.5 percent annually through 2021) demonstrates the sheer magnitude of Rommey’s cuts as compared to current law and Ryan’s plan. The results show that Romney could reduce the size of the program by more than 40 percent over that period:

* Via Center on Budget and Policy Priorities (CBPP), this percentage normalizes the growth rate to take out the effects of 2014.

Special Topic

BREAKING: Oakland Police Use Rubber Bullets, Flash Grenades, And Smoke Bombs To Evict Occupy Oakland

By Zaid Jilani posted from ThinkProgress Special Topic on Oct 25, 2011 at 11:19 am

Late last night, Oakland police, under orders from the city, began surrounding the Occupy Oakland encampment in preparation to oust the protesters from Frank Ogawa Plaza.

Approximately an hour ago, hundreds of Oakland police officers raided the camp. Dressed in riot gear, the police used rubber bullets, flash grenades, and gas canisters to forcibly evict and/or arrest the demonstrators who remained in the plaza. The Occupy Oakland Twitter account live-tweeted the raid:

One protester at the scene captured an image of the riot police using smoke bombs:

If you have any video of the raid on Occupy Oakland, feel free to send it to ThinkProgress. Read more

NEWS FLASH

Televangelist Pat Robertson Calls GOP Field Too ‘Extreme’ To Win General Election | You know you’ve hit rock bottom when one of the most radical, hate-spewing figures in America calls you “extreme.” That’s how televangelist Pat Robertson described the field of GOP candidates, Right Wing Watch reports. On his show The 700 Club, Robertson warned that the GOP base is pushing their party’s presidential nominees to take such extreme positions that they will be unelectable. “I believe it was Lyndon Johnson that said, ‘Don’t these people realize if they push me over to an extreme position I’ll lose the election?’” he said. “Those people in the Republican primary have got to lay off of this stuff. They’re forcing their leaders, the frontrunners, into positions that will mean they lose the general election…They’ve got to stop this! It’s just so counterproductive!” Watch it:

Economy

Perry On Whether His Tax Plan Gives Millions In Tax Breaks To The Rich: ‘I Don’t Care About That’

By Pat Garofalo posted from ThinkProgress Economy on Oct 25, 2011 at 9:53 am

Texas Gov. Rick Perry (R) today became the latest GOP presidential hopeful to release a tax plan, as he tries to catch up in the polls, some of which even have him trailing former Speaker Newt Gingrich and libertarian favorite Rep. Ron Paul (R-TX). The plan, as Perry has been explaining, revolves around a 20 percent flat tax.

Perry’s flat tax was designed with the help of billionaire media mogul Steve Forbes, who ran twice for president, unsuccessfully, on a flat tax plan. As we noted yesterday, Forbes’ plan would have provided a $1.9 billion tax cut for…Steve Forbes.

Perry’s plan is slightly different that Forbes’ flat tax of a decade ago, as it has a higher rate and preserves some popular deductions. But, like with all flat tax plans, Perry’s plan would give the rich a huge tax cut, since it drops their rate from 35 percent to 20 percent and exempts their investment income from taxation at all. When CNBC’s John Harwood asked Perry today why — in an era of massive income inequality — the rich should be given a tax break worth “hundreds of thousands, maybe even millions of dollars,” Perry replied, “but I don’t care about that”:

HARWOOD: Dividends, capital gains, interest income taxes would provide a huge tax cut for wealthy people in this country. Given what’s happened with income inequality, why is that a good idea?

PERRY: We’re trying to get this country working again. And that’s what I focus on. As a matter of fact, as we looked and as we talked and as we went through what are the ways to really get incentives to those who are going to risk their capital to create the jobs. [...] Those that want to get into the class warfare and talk about ‘oh my goodness,’ there are going to be some folks here who make more money out of this or have access to more money, I’ll let them do that. I’m worried about that man or woman sitting around the coffee table tonight or in their kitchen talking about how are we going to get to work, how are we going to have the dignity to take care of our family. This plan does that. And it also is a tax cut across the board, it doesn’t make any difference what strata you’re in. It gives a tax cut across the board.

HARWOOD: But for those at the top, it is hundreds of thousands, maybe even millions of dollars for them.

PERRY: But I don’t care about that. What I care about is them having the dollars to invest in their companies.

Watch it:

Former pizza magnate Herman Cain and former Govs. Mitt Romney (R-MA) and Jon Huntsman (R-UT) have all laid out tax plans that give huge tax breaks to the wealthy, while claiming that they want to help the middle-class. It seems that Perry is now finally hopping on that train.

NEWS FLASH

Perry On Why He Went Birther: ‘It’s A Good Issue To Keep Alive’ | Texas Gov. Rick Perry (R) flirted with birtherism over the weekend, telling PARADE Magazine that he didn’t “have a definitive answer” on whether President Obama was born in the U.S., even though he believes he was. In an interview with CNBC’s John Harwood this morning, Perry admitted that the flirtation was pure political pandering. “It’s a good issue to keep alive,” Perry said, according to a tweet posted by Harwood.

Later, Perry said, “I’m really not worried about the president’s birth certificate. It’s fun to poke at him a little bit, and say, how about, ‘Let’s see your grades and your birth certificate.’” Watch it:

Politics

Morning Briefing: October 25, 2011

By ThinkProgress on Oct 25, 2011 at 9:00 am

GOP lawmakers are starkly divided over President Obama’s plan for a final withdrawal of American troops from Iraq. Several Republican presidential candidates and senators have denounced the decision, while other House Republicans have reacted with praise. The split reflects tension between foreign policy hawks and constituents who have grown weary of the war.

In a speech today in South Carolina, GOP candidate Gov. Rick Perry (TX) will announce his plan to “scrap the current tax code” and introduce a new flat tax of 20 percent. Called “Cut, Balance, Grow,” Perry’s plan will also eliminate the estate tax to benefit the wealthy, get rid of the Alternative Minimum Tax, and includes a Balanced Budget Amendment and a cap on federal spending.

U.S. banks are awash in cash as consumers continue to shy away from risky investments and park their money in bank accounts. But despite sitting on a pile of cash, banks have been reluctant to lend or invest.

BP PLC profits more than doubled in a year, raking in a total of $97.59 billion. The sharp increase is due to the $7.66 pre-tax charge BP paid for the Gulf spill in the third quarter of 2010, and BP has made “regulatory progress in resuming drilling in the Gulf of Mexico.”

Former Libyan dictator Muammar Qaddafi was buried in a secret location today after his bloody corpse sat on display to the public for four days. According to representatives of the transitional government, Qaddafi was buried in an unmarked grave “somewhere in the desert” so as to prevent it from being either desecrated or turned into a pilgrimage site for his loyalists.

A new Quinnipac University poll finds that most Ohioans want to repeal the state’s anti-union law. The poll found that 57 percent of Ohioans are for repeal; they will be going to the polls next month to decide the fate of the law.

Tunisia’s elections concluded with the victory of a moderate Islamist party. Liberal parties will form a coalition with the Islamist Ennahda, and work together to write a constitution.

The modest federal expansion of a mortgage financing program announced by President Obama yesterday will likely do little to help fix the housing market, analysts said, even as it lowers the monthly payments of roughly 1 million homeowners. Economists have argued that plans should focus on reducing how much borrowers owe rather than monthly payments.

Funding for projects like bike paths is in the cross-hairs in the congressional budget debate. Rep. John Mica (R-FL) has promised to zero out funding for the federal transportation enhancement program — making up about 2 percent of the $40.2 billion highway budget — but it is only the beginning. The 2012 transportation budget likely will be far less than $134 billion needed to fix crumbling transportation infrastructure.

And finally: Twitter is a buzz with GOP presidential hopeful Herman Cain’s strange new campaign ad, which features a close up of his chief of staff smoking a cigarette while staring intently at the camera. But as Tim Murphy at Mother Jones points out, it’s only the third weirdest campaign ad Cain has put out, with a cinematic Western taking the cake.

For breaking news and updates throughout the day, follow ThinkProgress on Facebook and Twitter.

Health

Taxpayer-Funded ‘Crisis Pregnancy Centers’ Tell Jewish Woman To Convert To Christianity Or Go To Hell

By Marie Diamond posted from ThinkProgress Health on Oct 24, 2011 at 8:45 pm

As ThinkProgress has reported, so-called “crisis pregnancy centers” that claim to help women in need are actually established by anti-abortion activists with the sole objective of shaming women out of having abortions. Despite receiving federal and state funding, they have a history of preying on and misleading pregnant women who are seeking abortions and giving them false medical information to dissuade them from making their own decisions.

After a year-long investigation, a new report to be released today by the pro-choice group NARAL reveals that those problems plague the vast majority of North Carolina’s crisis pregnancy centers. In addition to providing false medical information, many of the centers actively proselytize and tell women of non-Christian faiths to convert or face damnation:

In recent years, NARAL Pro-Choice state chapters have conducted investigations into the pregnancy clinics in New York, California, Maryland, Texas and Virginia, reaching the same general conclusions. Over the past year, the North Carolina office of the organization embarked on an identical investigation, studying the centers’ websites and other material, and sending staff and volunteers posing as pregnant women or couples into the clinics. [...]

NARAL says it found the majority of the centers it investigated in North Carolina had no medical professionals on staff, and only a quarter of them disclosed they were not medical facilities. More than two-thirds provided distorted or false information about abortion risks and consequences.

The report says one Jewish investigator who posed as a pregnant woman was told at five centers she wouldn’t go to heaven unless she converted to Christianity, and that one volunteer challenged her to become a “born-again virgin.”

The number of centers in North Carolina has nearly doubled since 2006, and there are eight times as many of them as there are abortion clinics. Carey Pope, executive director of NARAL Pro-Choice North Carolina, said the group’s investigators found numerous instances where crisis pregnancy centers were misinforming and misleading women. “Staff and volunteers often use propaganda to dissuade women from abortions,” she said.

North Carolina’s GOP lawmakers have flooded these anti-abortion centers with taxpayer money while defunding Planned Parenthood and taking money away from legitimate family planning centers that provide medical services. Two new state laws will drive even more funding and patients their way. Money from sales of the new “Choose Life” license plates will go to the centers, and starting this Wednesday, a state-run website will launch and list the places that provide free ultrasounds.

Yet while receiving this government largesse, crisis pregnancy centers are not subjected to regular inspections like abortion clinics and often avoid any scrutiny of their practices, which openly flout the line between religious advocacy and medical counseling.

In 2006, a congressional investigation found the “vast majority” of federally funded centers provided false or misleading information, often suggesting that there are links between abortion and breast cancer, infertility and mental illness.

(HT: Jezebel)

Security

Gingrich Suggests Obama Is Ushering ‘Defeat’ In Iraq, Two Days After Saying He’s ‘Right’ To Withdraw

By Ben Armbruster posted from ThinkProgress Security on Oct 24, 2011 at 8:00 pm

The GOP presidential candidates came out swinging at President Obama after he announced last week that he would follow through with President Bush’s 2008 agreement to withdraw all U.S. troops from Iraq by the end of this year. Further validating the point that the Republican party is completely lost on foreign policy issues, their attacks haven’t really made much sense. Rick Santorum said Obama lost the Iraq war and Michele Bachmann charged that Obama is a failure because the Iraqis don’t respect him.

Newt Gingrich took the charade a bit further this weekend. On Friday, Gingrich told a reporter in Florida that Obama’s decision was the right one:

“This is not about Obama,” he continued. “This is about the general effort that far transcends Iraq. That we have to really reassess our strategies in the region and what we think we’re accomplish. The president is right. You can’t just leave 3,000 or 5,000 troops there. They would simply become targets. If you’re not going to occupy the country, you have to withdraw.”

Yet two days later, in a speech at the Iowa Faith & Freedom Coalition’s presidential candidate forum, Gingrich suggested that Obama is ushering defeat by withdrawing:

GINGRICH: The president has announced what will be seen by historians as a decisive defeat for the U.S. in Iraq. … After eight years, thousands of lives, hundreds of billions of dollars, we will leave in defeat. Don’t kid yourself, it is defeat. Iran is stronger.

Watch a compilation of the two clips:

In 2006, Gingrich decided that it was an “enormous mistake” to occupy Iraq after taking Baghdad in 2003, despite the fact that up until that point, he’d been a vocal supporter of the war. And now, Gingrich is again trying to have it both ways, staking out the popular position in saying that Obama was “right” to pull all U.S. troops out of Iraq, but then pandering to the right-wing base, suggesting that his decision means defeat.

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NEWS FLASH

Just The Richest 0.2 Percent Of Households Would Be Affected By The Democrats’ Jobs Bill Surtax | This month, Senate Republicans (joined by a few conservative Democrats) successfully filibustered both President Obama’s American Jobs Act and $35 billion to help prevent public sector layoffs, using the millionaires’ surtax that Democrats had proposed as justification. “The President should drop his obsession with raising taxes,” said Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY). But as a new analysis by Citizens for Tax Justice found, just 0.2 percent of households in the country would have been subject to the tax. As the Washington Post’s Greg Sargent put it, “any senators — Democrat or Republican — who vote against the individual pieces of Obama’s jobs bill on the grounds that they impose a new surtax on millionaires is protecting the extremely narrow interests of an extremely tiny minority of their own constituents.”

Security

Tennessee Hotel Cancels Contract With Major Anti-Muslim Conference

By Scott Keyes posted from ThinkProgress Security on Oct 24, 2011 at 6:45 pm

“The Hutton Hotel is now under Sharia law.”

That was the response from William Murray, the chairman of a major anti-Muslim conference, after Hutton Hotels’ parent company cancelled its hosting contract for next month’s event in Tennessee. The “Preserving Freedom Conference” had been shaping up to be a veritable who’s-who among anti-Sharia leaders, including Atlas Shrugs blogger Pamela Gellar, Center for Security Policy president Frank Gaffney, and former Republican Congressman Fred Grandy.

According to The Tennessean, the hotel cancelled its contract after learning more about the conference’s agenda. It’s unclear whether the event organizers will be able to secure another location:

Hutton Hotels’ parent company has confirmed it won’t host the Nov. 11 Preserving Freedom conference, which was slated to include some of the nation’s leading opponent of Sharia law.

Steve Eckley, senior vice president of hotels for Amerimar Enterprises, said he wasn’t fully aware of the topic or the people involved when he booked the event in Nashville, and now he fears that resulting protests could turn violent. As well, the hotel’s other clients that day expressed concerns.

You can thank Hutton Hotel here.

Tennessee has been at the epicenter of the Islamophobia movement for some time. A proposed addition to an already-existing mosque in Murfreesboro has sparked an uproar among those suspicious of Muslims. Last year, someone poured flammable liquid on the construction site in an apparent arson attempt. More recently, leading GOP presidential candidate Herman Cain visited Murfreesboro in July and declared, incorrectly, that communities had the right to ban mosques if they so wished.

This is the second time in as many weeks that hotels have cancelled contracts rather than host anti-Muslim activists. Last week, the Hyatt Place hotel in Sugar Land, Texas cancelled a local Tea Party meeting after learning that one of the nation’s leading Islamophobes, Pam Geller, would be headlining the event.

For more information on Geller, Gaffney, and other leading anti-Muslim activists, read the Center for American Progress’ report, “Fear, Inc.: The Roots of the Islamophobia Network in America.”

Update

In a press release Tuesday, Murray said, “Today the concept of free speech took yet another blow as radical Islamists celebrated their use of threats to stop a conference of free people holding open discussions. Who will the Islamists shut up next?” Murray went to accuse the hotel of being “joined at the hip with Sharia” because a London hotel owned by the same parent company has hosted conferences on Sharia-compliant finances in the past.

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Politics

Rep. Schweikert Coddles Birther, Suggests He May ‘Ultimately Be Right’ That Obama’s Birth Certificate Is Fake

By Scott Keyes on Oct 24, 2011 at 6:00 pm

ThinkProgress filed this report from the Western Republican Leadership Conference in Las Vegas, Nevada.

Like a political zombie-hydra, birtherism reared its ugly head twice this past weekend.

First, after Rick Perry met with birther-aficionado Donald Trump, the Texas governor told Parade Magazine “I don’t know” whether President Obama’s birth certificate is authentic. (View Obama’s authentic birth certificate for yourself here.)

Now, Tea Party freshman Rep. Dave Schweikert (R-AZ) joins the fray. Schweikert was asked about Obama’s birth certificate at a Republican convention in Las Vegas on Friday, but rather than simply telling the audience member that Obama is a natural-born U.S. citizen, Schweikert proceeded to coddle the birther, never once suggesting that the man’s assertion was incorrect. Instead, the congressman declared that Republicans like him wanted to have an “intellectually sound debate,” but that Democratic consultants had cynically hijacked the issue for political gain. Schweikert ended by telling the birther that “we may ultimately be right” about the birth certificate issue:

AUDIENCE MEMBER: Since we have both members of each house here, why can’t you guys write up a thing to call him up to testify whether or not the birth certificate is valid? If the birth certificate isn’t valid, the one on the website isn’t valid, that would be a crime, that would be a high crime, and would be worthy of impeachment as well as punishment. [...]

SCHWEIKERT: I’ve got to walk you through something. This one burns in my soul. We need to win in 2012. We need to save our country. [...] Understand, why are some of the left-wing political consultants absolutely giddy every time this question comes up? They use it against us, even though you want to have an intellectually sound debate and discussion, the people that now decide our elections are this little 10, 20 percent in the middle that swing back and forth and they’re not necessarily comfortable because they think Republicans are mean, but they don’t think the Democrats have a sense of how to do things.

We are trying to convince them we are honorable and going to follow the Constitution and do what’s necessary. I’m sorry, but when we get off on some of the things that scare those independents — we may ultimately be right – you may be the one where you tell a great story, but understand, you are giving up the 2012 election.

Watch it (Sen. Mike Lee’s (R-UT) response to the audience member is excluded for brevity):

As long as Republicans like Perry and Schweikert refuse to marginalize birthers, the issue will continue its zombie-like regeneration as the 2012 election approaches.

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NEWS FLASH

Cain Spent $1 million Of His Own Money To Fund Racist Political Ads | As ThinkProgress reported, before climbing the 2012 ladder, GOP presidential front runner Herman Cain served as the spokesman for the right-wing America’s PAC. The group spent millions during the 2004 and 2006 election to run political ads on black radio stations — one of which suggested that Democrats wanted to kill “black babies.” Another ad links Democrats to the “Ku Klux Klan cracker” David Duke. Not only did Cain serve as spokesman, he also performed voice-over work in several ads. One such ad features a man telling another, “If you make a little mistake with one of your ‘hos,’ you will want to dispose of the problem tout suite, no questions asked.” But, as Right Wing Watch reports, Cain went further then lending his voice. He lent his own money — $1 million worth — to persuade African Americans to vote Republican in the 2006 election with these racially-charged ads. The Bush administration called the ads “inappropriate” and the RNC called them “racist or race-baiting in intent.” Listen to Cain in one ad here:

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