Your activism continues to make an meaningful impact in the halls of Capitol Hill.
Just yesterday, Rep. Louise Slaughter delivered the signatures of over 130,000 CREDO members to Chief Justice John Roberts demanding action on Clarence Thomas for failing to report the source of his wife’s income over the last 13 years.
Over 90,000 CREDO members signed petitions asking their representatives to co-sign Rep. Slaughter’s letter to Chief Justice John Roberts. Then CREDO members followed up with nearly 4,000 calls asking them to sign.
In the end, 51 representatives joined Rep. Slaughter’s call for an investigation into Clarence Thomas’s unethical behavior.1
The activism of CREDO members was critical in building momentum for other members of Congress to sign on to Rep. Slaughter’s letter, and the fact that so many representatives decided to support the investigation into Clarence Thomas shows that your activism really does make a difference.
Rep. Slaughter praised the role that you and other CREDO members played and she sent us a note of thanks for us to pass on to you:
“CREDO Action members have played a huge role in our efforts to hold Clarence Thomas accountable. Thanks in part to your efforts, 52 members of Congress co-signed the letter to Chief Justice John Roberts, along with 130,000 citizens. I thank CREDO and its activists for joining me in the call for an ethics investigation of Clarence Thomas.”
P.S. We will be launching a campaign next week to demand that Clarence Thomas recuse himself from hearing the Supreme Court case challenging the constitutionality of the health care law. If you’d like to take action now, you can sign the petition by clicking here.
It is my privilege to tell you that the legendary John Seigenthaler will be joining us Oct. 1 at our Jackson Day Dinner in Nashville at the Bicentennial Mall.
As you may have heard, the Tennessee Democratic Party is paying tribute to Governor Ned Ray McWherter at this year’s Jackson Day Dinner. Gov. McWherter was a determined and dedicated Democratic leader who went to work for Tennesseans, expanding opportunity through investments in schools, health care and jobs.
Seigenthaler was a personal friend of the governor and we are thrilled to have him speak during our Jackson Day tribute to Ned McWherter.
In his lifetime of progressive work, Seigenthaler has served as an assistant to Robert F. Kennedy, aided the Freedom Riders in Montgomery, Ala. and was the longtime editor of The Tennessean until his retirement in 1991. That same year, he founded the First Amendment Center with the mission of creating national discussion, dialogue and debate about First Amendment rights and values.
Like McWherter, John Seigenthaler is a true Tennessee treasure.
Our Jackson Day Dinner is a celebration of who we are as Democrats—especially this year as we salute one of our state’s greatest home-grown Democrats, Ned McWherter. As a valuable part of the Tennessee Democratic Party, we hope you can attend.
Whatever the outcome of Thursday’s projected House vote on Speaker Boehner’s debt plan, this process has already ended the political life of one prominent member of the Washington establishment: John Maynard Keynes.
True, Keynes died in 1946. But his ghost hovered over America’s economic debate until pretty much Monday night. In their ostensibly dueling speeches, both President Obama and House Speaker Boehner embraced the language of “austerity” and performed an unwitting exorcism.
In brief, Keynes is the man whose ideas led to 2009′s stimulus policy. Looking at the problems of the 1930s, he helped develop FDR’s “New Deal” concept that you spend your way out of a recession. [see: Pres. Obama Pushes "Serious Cuts" In His Weekly Address]
Anti-Keynesians have argued that these policies don’t create real growth, but only the illusion of growth, and lead to future bubbles. Some recent anti-Keynesians have argued that his policies were all well and good in the relatively non-litigious 1930s, but that modern society means virtually nothing is “shovel-ready.” Consequently, they argue, the cost of matching the impact of – say – FDR’s programs would now be ruinously expensive. That, they say, is why the when you see signs advertising the good works of the American Reinvestment and Recovery Act (the stimulus’ official name) it is not at the site of a new Hoover Dam, but on fairly trivial things like extra paintwork for Amtrak stations.
Whatever the validity of their arguments, for now the anti-Keynesians have prevailed. Part of the reason is optics: at a time when citizens are cutting back, it looks good to engage in a bit of sympathy rhetoric about Washington “tightening its belt.” On Monday night even House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi – for so long demonized by the right as the smiling face of big government – released a pro-austerity statement. That’s a clear sign which way the wind is blowing.
If you look closely at Pelosi’s austerity-lauding you’ll see the types of pressures being brought to bear. Her full phrase was: “It is clear we must enter an age of austerity; to reduce the deficit through shared sacrifice.” The last two words are important: “shared sacrifice.” They were echoed in President Obama’s Monday night address when he suggested raising taxes on the rich, asking “millionaires and billionaires… to share in the sacrifice everyone else has to make.” In other words, embracing an austerity-laden tone did not mean they were also embracing the tax-cutting agenda that has lately been associated with it. They were trying to create a “we’re all in this together” attitude, that could pave the way for increased revenues from the “corporate jet owners” the President has consistently called out in recent speeches.
However, this tax-the-rich suggestion has gone nowhere in the subsequent debate. Indeed, of the bills lined up in the House and Senate right now, neither of them goes anywhere near a tax increase. The language of austerity has so far benefited the Republican position, which is all cuts and no taxes.
As the language has shifted right, so has the overall tenor of the situation. When President Obama used to meet with British Prime Minister David Cameron, for all their apparent bonhomie, a dark cloud hung over their relationship. It was the cloud of economic policy: Cameron had embraced the opposite approach from the US, and had heralded “austerity” in Britain. This has not so far had a significantly positive impact on the country’s GDP or employment ratings, but it has propped up its AAA credit ratings, which were under threat before the moves. As the debt debate has dragged on, President Obama has increasingly found himself facing a comparable circumstance with regards to the credit agencies, and seems set to make similar choices. A second stimulus package now seems as remote as funding for a mission to mars.
I think you guys will like this video. Give it a watch and let me know what you think Author’s Description: John Stockwell is a former CIA officer who became a critic of United States government policies after serving in the Agency for thirteen years serving seven tours of Burundi, officially the Republic of Burundi, [...] Best News & Politics
Today McDonald’s Corporation will hire 50,000 new employees nationwide. At approximately an hour making take-home pay of 0 before taxes for a 40 hour work week, this boost to the economy sounds like the punch line to a bad … Continue reading → republican-elephant.com
FORMER DEMOCRAT SENATOR AND PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE HAILS MURPHY FOR HIS OPPOSITION TO IRAQ WAR AND TO U.S. MILITARY-INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX For Immediate Release: October 15, 2008 For Further Information: John Murphy (610) 384-4460 EAST FALLOWFIELD, PA – The John Murphy for Congress Campaign is extremely happy to announce that former Senator and [...] 3rd Party – Independent Pulse
Senator John Kerry met with fishermen and city leaders in New Bedford today to discuss the fishing industry.
Sen. Kerry said, “Our fisherman across Massachusetts are hurting, not just the economy, but the government and some the decisions that have been made without sensitivity and without adequate creativity. I believe we can do better.”
NECN reports that Kerry plans to fight federal fishing rules. The fishing industry plays a major part in the Massachusetts economy, but local fisherman are ofter caught in the middle of federal trade bans that effect their incomes.
Senator Kerry has been a longtime advocate for the fishing industry here in Massachusetts.
Chris Matthews in a “Let me finish” segment states the obvious; the Republican Party has become the party of the John Birch Society.
MATTHEWS: “Let Me Finish” tonight with this unbelievable presidential campaign that’s about to begin.
Watching President Obama today explaining and defending his budget, both the substance and the politics, I was struck by the question: could any of the possible Republican candidates out there do this?
Does any one of them have the precision of mind, the command of recall, the orderly process of thinking and evaluating, the reasonable moral compass?
You can play this game, too. Think it through. Throw those names and faces onto your mental viewing screen and think deep. Romney, Huckabee, Palin, Bachmann, Barbour, Santorum, Gingrich — is there one of them we think could do what Obama can do?
I’ve been in close quarters with the president twice. The first time I came to the conclusion that this guy ought to be president of the United States. There’s a peace to his presentation, a calm understanding of the information, of his values, of the world.
A look at the Republican field, with all its negatives, I look at Nate Silver’s numbers and see the problem that the party has in finding someone to field against the president — someone who can stand up on the same platform, talk the issues with this competence and wonder — then it come to me, that they may not be in the business of looking for something with the match to Obama, simply someone to attack him. I’m talking about a protest candidate — someone who is — who yells at the government, mocks the country’s condition, is clever, sarcastic, and when it works best, cute in their cutting.
A look at the joke-telling at last week’s Conservative Political Action Convention, a look at the new poll showing a majority of Republican voters don’t believe the president was born here, even though it was announced in the newspapers at the time. I look at the strange wackiness that echoes through the one stable party of Lincoln and Teddy Roosevelt, and Ike, and wonder if they accept any of those guys today? Do you think they’d take a guy who wanted to take away states` rights? Who wants to fight for conservation of our wilderness lands, who wants to build an interstate highway system or create a federal system of loans and grants for higher education?
Forget about it, they’d never pick those guys. No, The Republicans aren’t that party anymore. They’re becoming more and more the party that doesn’t believe in science, whether it’s evolution or climate change; doesn’t believe in government; doesn’t believe the president is an American.
It’s veering off to being the party of the John Birch Society, adhering to the white parchments of that society’s latter day apostle, Glenn Beck. That’s right — the John Birch Society that said Ike was a communist; the apostle who now believes that President Obama is an avatar of a burgeoning world-dominating caliphate.
That’s HARDBALL for now. Thanks for being with us.
The Birch Society has long been considered wacky and extreme by old guard conservative leaders. William F. Buckley famously denounced the John Birch Society and its founder Robert Welch in the early 1960s as “idiotic” and “paranoid. ” Buckley’s condemnation effectively banishing the group from the mainstream conservative movement. Welch had called President Dwight D. Eisenhower a “conscious, dedicated agent of the communist conspiracy” and that the U.S. government was “under operational control of the Communist party.” Buckley argued that such paranoid rantings had no place in the conservative movement or the Republican party.
Two years after Buckley’s death, the John Birch Society is no longer banished; it is listed as one of about 100 co-sponsors of the 2010 CPAC.
The Southern Poverty Law Center has listed the John Birch Society as a group that “advocates or adheres to extreme anti-government doctrines.”
Right-wing conservatives align themselves with the banking oligarchy, which has facilitated massive transfer of wealth to the ultra-rich.
They are for no taxes on business or the wealthy, elimination of Medicare, privatization of Social Security, abolition of unions, elimination of the Corporation of Public Broadcasting, elimination of all regulatory agencies, including those that guarantee food, product and banking safety and abolition of social programs of any kind, which they believe are socialistic.
MSNBC Rachel Maddox expose on the Birchers
Those spending billions to fund the Tea Party, like the billionaire Koch Brothers, are aligned with John Birch Society. JBS advocates the abolition of income tax, and repeal of civil rights legislation, which it sees as being Communist in inspiration. They want to eliminate the Federal Reserve, the Department of Education and most of the Federal Government, with the exception of those parts of the government funneling 0 billion into defense spending annually, which includes 7.8 billion dollars to fund the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan this year.
BlogTalkRadio show Independent Kentucky chairman Michael Lewis interviews independentvoting.org national director of development John Opdycke and Independent Voters for Colorado founder Joelle Riddle. Check it out! h/t to Michael Drucker from The Independent View
In Touch with Independent Kentucky (The Independent View blog) Independent Kentucky Chairman Michael P.W. Lewis hosted a live show about the 2011 National Conference of Independents. The show hosted CUIP Director of Development John Opdycke and Independent Voters for Colorado Founder Joelle Riddle.
Minor party candidate challenges new ballot rules (Sac Bee Capitol Alert) Frederick, who ran against Gaines in November, collected and submitted 225 signatures during the seven-day truncated period for qualifying for the special election ballot. But he was told the 1,500 threshold — – more than twice the 713 Peace and Freedom Party voters registered in the district — would apply to all candidates under the Proposition 14-created top two system, which eliminates party primaries.
Barnidge: Fixing California’s broken budget requires changes (By TOM BARNIDGE, Daily Democrat – Woodland CA) Also needed are elected officials who care more about constituents than political parties — representatives who support good policy rather than rigid ideology. Thornberg said that new redistricting procedures and open primaries offer hope for reduced partisanship.
Brown’s labor allies may get involved in GOP primaries (By Steven Harmon, Contra Costa Times) A top-two primary under district lines that produces a more competitive race could allow a more moderate alternative to emerge, analysts say. In a Republican district, Democrats and independents would have to combine with moderate Republicans to oust conservative incumbents, said Gale Kaufman, a Democratic political consultant who works closely with the powerful California Teachers Association. “Folks are looking at ways to elect more moderates,” Kaufman said. “The open primary and redistricting allows you to have a conversation we’ve never had before.”
REDISTRICTING
Jones will push independent redistrict panel in House (By State House News Service, Boston Herald) House Republicans plan to call for the creation of an independent commission to recommend redistricting proposals for final signoff by the Legislature, House Minority Leader Brad Jones told the News Service Monday.
OBAMA
Regulatory Change We Can Believe In (posted by ROBERT HAHN AND PETER PASSELL, Forbes) With the White House up for grabs in 2012, both parties are looking for ways to appeal to independent voters. And applying economic common sense to regulation fits nicely in this familiar process of pre-presidential election triangulation.
REPUBLICANS
What independent voters want: Conservative policise [sic] (By: Fred Barnes, Weekly Standard in San Francisco Examiner) If the House were composed solely of independents, it would pass the same conservative legislation as Republicans on Obamacare, the individual mandate, purchasing health insurance across state lines, spending, offshore oil drilling, and Social Security reform. That’s the finding of Resurgent Republic, a Republican polling outfit that applied the views of independents to the House.
DEMOCRATS
Charlotte expects boost from 2012 Dem convention (By MITCH WEISS, The Associated Press, Washington Post) In 2008, Obama became the first Democrat since Jimmy Carter to win North Carolina in a presidential race, boosted by a large jump in black voter participation. A flood of new residents over the past decade and a rising crop of independent voters also have made the state, once solidly in the GOP column for presidential elections, far more competitive.
WYOMING
‘Citizen lobbyists’ learn how pros influence, persuade lawmakers (By RUFFIN PREVOST WyoFile.com, Billings Gazette) Simons, a part-time student at the University of Wyoming, ran unsuccessfully last year as the Democratic candidate for secretary of state, and has worked with a group promoting bills related to recognizing same-sex marriages and holding open primaries.
NEW YORK
Unionspeak: Gain is loss (Bob McManus, NY Post) Regulars like Billy Easton — a shill for the state’s public-education lobby, who responded by proclaiming upcoming cataclysm for New York schoolkids. Easton fronts a special-interest mail drop called the Alliance for Quality Education, which is instructive.
Mayor Blasts Cuomo for Budget Cuts (By MICHAEL HOWARD SAUL and ANDREW GROSSMAN, Wall Street Journal) “Unfortunately, the budget does not treat New York City equitably,” Mr. Bloomberg said in a statement. “It eliminates 100% of New York City’s revenue-sharing aid—more than 0 million—while cutting other localities by just 2%. The residents of our five counties pay a disproportionate amount of state taxes, and they deserve the same level of support.”
Posted by John Jay Myers on facebook. Myers ran as a Libertarian against Pete Sessions (R) in TX-32.
Official release:
“Thank you to all donors and volunteers! John Jay Myers raised more than any other Libertarian candidate in the 32nd district with over 00, and he received the highest percentage of any Libertarian candidate in the district’s history. Your efforts made this record year possible. As a result of your contributions, we were able to distribute 3000 flyers, launch 128 TV commercial airings, plant 100 yard signs, mail 8000 postcards to voters, and run two weeks of Facebook advertising. John Jay also personally attended dozens of radio interviews, parades, and outreach events over the past year while incumbent Pete “Bailout” Sessions remained hidden from the people he supposedly serves. Though his .8 million in corporate payoffs won Sessions reelection this time, you have proven through your contributions and support that a Libertarian campaign can get the message out and increase those vote totals. Thank you all again!”
For the next few months I am going to turn my focus on my family and my business. I will be spending only some spare time in making videos and writing to promote the party. Maybe a few hours a week.
Our facebook fan page and Johnjaymyers.com will change to a non-election format.
I know our message above sounds upbeat, but I am very disappointed in the results of the election.
Though we received a higher vote total than any other Libertarian in this district we put more into this election than any other Libertarian has. Originally I started out as a “educational” candidate, I don’t know if we ever really shifted our focus, the fact that there was no debate was a major set back.
We could not get press regardless of the message we sent out.
A few things I would do different:
1. Though our message should resonate with the “Tea Party” people it did not here in Dallas. We have a very pro-war, big religion Tea Party (in other words Republicans) which is run by members of the Republican establishment. Unfortunately most of our website and our videos etc seemed to be targeting the Tea Party voters…. who were probably all voting straight ticket. This was a mistake.
2. What should our message have been? 4 things:
A. End the Wars.
B. End Corporatism.
C. Live your life as you see fit.
D. End entitlements sooner rather than later.
That’s it. We should have approached it from that angle. Though this was our message we didn’t brand it correctly in a way that was palatable to the both the left and the right (and mainly independent).
3. We should have done radio spots months before the election. On both left and right media with a different message to each.
4. We didn’t have enough volunteers to cover the early voting locations, there were 8 in my district, I would like to have had the money to pay 8 people to work 10 days at 8 locations. (around an additional 5k) I honestly think this would have tripled our totals. We ran completely out of money about 3 days before early voting.
5. I would like to have had the money to send a letter to every likely voter in the district. Once about 3 months prior to the election, and once a week before early voting, we covered about 4% (once).
6. Dallas is incredibly partisan, I would like to educate the masses and try to break the monopoly the D’s and R’s have…. that is one of my main goals in the next two years. I would hate to say without education, we don’t have much of a chance electorally. America can not continue with this incredibly divisive “two party system”.
Americans need to understand their rights, and that Government is not the answer to all their problems. I am now more committed than ever in ending big government, especially our large corrupt Federal Government.
This is my first facebook post since the election, I needed some time off.
It is my privilege to tell you that the legendary John Seigenthaler will be joining us Oct. 1 at our Jackson Day Dinner in Nashville at the Bicentennial Mall.
