Why the Christian Right Believes It Has Once-in-a-Decade Chance to Impose Its Radical Worldview on America

Why the Christian Right Believes It Has Once-in-a-Decade Chance to Impose Its Radical Worldview on America

A change to obscure procedural rules in the U.S. Senate and the upcoming 2014 elections could be a dangerous window of opportunity.

November 26, 2013  

 

AlterNet / By CJ Werleman

Elections have consequences. The Senate Democrats’ detonation of the “nuclear option” has dramatically raised the stakes for secular progressives in 2014, because if there are two issues that juice the Christian Right the most, it’s women’s reproductive rights and judicial activism. On the latter, the Religious Right senses a once-in-a-decade opportunity to impose its radical worldview on America.
Last week, the Senate voted 52-48 to eliminate the ability of the minority party in the Senate to filibuster executive branch nominees and any judgeship below the Supreme Court by changing the requirements for passage to a simple majority vote. It was a historic move made because there was no other alternative, given the GOP’s unprecedented abuse of the filibuster. In the history of the United States, 168 presidential nominees have been filibustered. Half occurred under all presidents from Washington through to Bush. Remarkably, the other half has taken place under just one president: Obama.
Why such aggressive judicial obstructionism by the GOP?
Washington Post columnist E.J. Dionne Jr. writes, “This era’s conservatives will use any means at their disposal to win control of the courts. Their goal is to do all they can to limit Congress’s ability to enact social reforms.”
The Christian Right, which is the GOP’s most reliable and agitated voting bloc, is obsessed with the courts, and the Court of Appeals for the D.C. circuit is the nation’s second most important judicial body, which is why Republicans “gave the game away when all but a few of them opposed Obama’s three most recent appointments.”
Now that Democrats were forced into limiting the filibuster, the Christian Right has its incentive to mobilize for 2014. A simple majority control of the Senate gives it an opportunity to pack the courts with judges straight out of the Justice Scalia mold, who once said that separation of church and state would come under scrutiny under a Supreme Court with a Scalia majority. If the Christian Right sweeps Republicans to control the Senate in next year’s midterms, the anti-secularists will take a big step forward toward their stated ideological goals.
The recent Values Voter Summit demonstrated that the likely 2016 GOP frontrunners have a base wish to transform America’s secular state into a tyrannical theocracy — a nirvana absent gays, liberals, immigrants, Muslims and science books. The right-wing media elites are already doing their bit to gin up the far right’s judicial activists with Rush Limbaugh comparing filibuster reform to rape.
Truth in Action Ministries recently released a film titled Freedom on Trial, which features Robert Bork, the failed Reagan Supreme Court nominee, Eagle Forum founder Phyllis Schlafly, and Heritage Foundation vice president Genevieve Wood. The general theme of the documentary is that Christianity is under attack thanks to liberal "activist judges." Bork warns that courts are “teaching the people that religion is evil,” while another conservative attorney claims decisions that go against the Ten Commandments will “destroy the country.”
President Obama’s judicial nominees were being filibustered because they threaten to alter the circuit court’s philosophical balance. The Republican Party has again demonstrated that nullification and obstruction are ready-made weapons to ensure the courts remain dominated by conservatives.

Cass R. Sunstein, author of Radicals in Robes: Why Extreme Right-Wing Courts are Bad for America, writes, “Our courts now represents the most extreme elements of the Republican Party. These reformers include a number of federal judges—radicals in robes, fundamentalists on the bench….some of these judges do not hesitate to depart radically from longstanding understandings of constitutional meaning.” Political analyst James Fallows writes, “Add that to the simply unprecedented abuse of the filibuster in the years since the Democrats won control of the Senate and then took the White House, you have what we’d identify as a kind of long-term coup if we saw it happening anywhere else.”

The end of the filibuster threatens the far right’s stranglehold on our courts. Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell warned, “The solution to this problem is at the ballot box. We look forward to having a great election in November 2014.” John McCain warned, “Democrats will regret this.”
For Republicans to take back the Senate, they’ll need to win six seats. Given Democrats will need to defend 21 seats, compared to just 14 for the GOP, and that seven of those 21 Democratic seats are in states that lean Republican, expect the Christian Right to be the party’s primary water carrier in the midterms.
Former Speaker Tip O’Neill liked to say that all politics is local. He was wrong. It’s tribal. The detonation of the nuclear option ensures the always-mobilized theological tribe will turn out in high numbers in 2014. This means America’s secular state will remain in the balance should the secular left tribe do no better than its impotency in 2010.
CJ Werleman is the author of Crucifying America and God Hates You, Hate Him Back. Follow him on Twitter @cjwerleman.

Read More

Twelve Times Scott Walker Was Terrible

Twelve Times Scott Walker Was Terrible

Oh, Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker, how are you terrible? Let us count the ways….  

posted on October 23, 2013 at 6:33pm EDT

emilyslist

BuzzFeed User

This post was created by a user and has not been vetted or endorsed by BuzzFeed's editorial staff. BuzzFeed Community is a place where anyone can post awesome lists and creations." Learn more or post your buzz!

1. When he signed the mandatory ultrasound bill into law

tumblr.com

Walker signed into law a bill that will require “women seeking abortions to undergo an ultrasound and ban doctors who lack admitting privileges at nearby hospitals from performing the procedures.” Essentially, it would make it harder for a woman seeking a safe, legal abortion to get one. His law could force clinics to close and is being challenged by reproductive health advocates.

2. When he repealed the law that made it easier for victims of wage discrimination to press charges

tumblr.com

So basically, if you’re one of the women in Wisconsin who earns $0.75 for every dollar that your male colleagues make and you want to do something about losing that $4,000 every year, Scott Walker has made it more difficult. THANKS.

3. When he eliminated collective bargaining rights for all of Wisconsin’s public employees

tumblr.com

Scott Walker is no friend of unions. In 2011, he signed into law a bill that abolished collective bargaining rights for 175,000 public union employees in Wisconsin, leading to an attempt to recall him.

4. When he specifically targeted women workers while sticking it to unions

tumblr.com

As we mentioned, in 2011, when Scott Walker was stripping unions of their right to collective bargaining, he did exempt some groups: firefighter, police and state trooper unions. The majority of Wisconsin public workers are actually women, (teachers, nurses, child care workers, home health care workers, etc.) but the exempted groups were overwhelmingly male.

5. When he banned abortion coverage for policies in the ACA’s new health insurance exchange

s3-ec.buzzfed.com

This is just another example of Scott Walker’s extreme, anti-woman agenda.

6. When he ruined Wisconsin sex education

tumblr.com

tumblr.com

Scott Walker signed legislation that required teachers in schools that offered sex education to “stress abstinence as the only sure way to prevent pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases.” The legislation also declared that sex ed teachers were not required to address contraception. So that’s helpful.

7. When he eliminated all state funding for family planning services

tumblr.com

In 2011, Scott Walker proposed a budget that would have eliminated all state funding for family planning services for low-income residents, putting 50 clinics in jeopardy. 52,000 women in Wisconsin who received contraceptive care from those clinics would have to find alternative means.

8. When he forced 92,000 people off their health insurance and cost the state $119 million

tumblr.com

Scott Walker could have accepted federal money under the Affordable Care Act that would have expanded BadgerCare Plus insurance, which covers adults with children under 19 in households with incomes up to 200% of the federal poverty threshold, or $47,100 for a family of four. Instead, he rejected the money, kicked 92,000 people off their health insurance and forced them to buy a more expensive plan.

9. When he led Wisconsin to below-average job growth rates

s3-ec.buzzfed.com

The Republican Party says they’re about jobs jobs jobs - except when Scott Walker runs things and the state ranks 34th in job growth. And consider this: Walker’s #1 campaign promise was to add 250,000 private-sector jobs by the end of his term. At last count, nearly three years later, he’s only about 25% there.

10. When he signed an unconstitutional voter ID law

tumblr.com

This law would require poll workers to immediately begin asking voters to show state-issued IDs before they vote - even though voters wouldn’t be required to show them until the next year. Yeah, we’re not sure either - but basically, Walker wanted to make it harder for people to vote.

11. When he was BFFs with the Koch Brothers

tumblr.com

The Koch Brothers are long-time Scott Walker supporters. With a $43,000 donation, their PAC was the second highest donor to Walker’s 2010 campaign. They also gave $1 million to the Republican Governors Association, which streamed spending into Wisconsin on behalf of Walker. Ew.

12. When he wanted to pay teachers less

tumblr.com

Not only did Scott Walker nix the collective bargaining rights of Wisconsin teachers, but he capped future pay raises. Under Walker’s administrative rule change, he changed the pay schedule for experienced teachers. Some teachers could lose as much as 30% of their current salary under Walker’s targeted attacks.

So, in short, Scott Walker is the worst.

Luckily, EMILY’s List has endorsed Mary Burke for governor of Wisconsin

Mary Burke is an insightful problem solver who has worked in the private, government, and nonprofit sectors to grow Wisconsin’s economy and increase educational opportunities. Mary has an impressive commitment to economic justice and improving the lives of children and working families. Her intense and selfless commitment to her community will make for a striking contrast with Governor Scott Walker’s extremist agenda. Mary’s been quietly changing the world for the better for years - by breaking barriers herself and by making opportunities for others to get ahead.

lh3.googleusercontent.com

This post was created by a user and has not been vetted or endorsed by BuzzFeed's editorial staff. BuzzFeed Community is a place where anyone can post awesome lists and creations. Learn more or post your buzz!

Read More

Scott Walker: Paul Ryan, Reince Priebus And I Are A 'Cheesehead Revolution'

The Huffington Post  |  By Chris Gentilviso Posted: 11/20/2013 10:34 am EST 

Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker (R) coined a spirited term over the weekend for a trio of high-powered Republicans from the Badger State.
In a Saturday interview with USA Today’s Capital Download, Walker talked about his friendship with Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.). When asked if both he and Ryan could run for president in 2016, Walker said it was an "interesting question," adding that "who knows what the future will bring?"
What he was sure of was the success of three big-name Wisconsin Republicans, remarking how he, Ryan and Reince Priebus all grew up within miles of one another.
"Paul grew up 15 miles to the west of me," Walker said. "Reince Priebus, who’s the RNC (Republican National Committee) chair, grew up about 20 miles to the east of me. There must have been something in the water at the time….We say it’s kind of a Cheesehead Revolution."
With nearly three years to go before the 2016 presidential picture hits its peak, HuffPost Pollster's latest compilation of 27 publicly available polls shows Ryan and Walker both in the mix as potential GOP candidates. Ryan, who served as the party's 2012 vice presidential candidate, netted 11 percent of the hypothetical vote, while Walker earned eight percent.

Read More

Voters sign in to vote at the Dr. Martin Luther King Community Center for the U.S. presidential election in Racine, Wisconsin on Nov. 6, 2012.

Sara Stathas/Reuters

Wisconsin GOP aims to scrap weekend voting

11/16/13 05:00 PM

By Zachary Roth Wisconsin Republicans are pushing a bill to end early voting on the weekend. The measure would make it harder for people in the state’s most populous areas to cast a ballot—and it would hit blacks especially hard.
But state Sen. Glenn Grothman, a Republican who is sponsoring a Senate version of the bill, told msnbc it’s already easy enough to vote.
“Between [early voting], mail absentee, and voting the day of election, you know, I mean anybody who can’t vote with all those options, they’ve really got a problem,” he said. “I really don’t think they care that much about voting in the first place, right?”
The measure, which passed the state assembly Thursday, would give municipalities two choices for early voting, known in the state as in-person absentee voting: they could offer it either from 7:30 a.m. to 6 p.m. on weekdays in the two weeks before an election; or at any time on a weekday, but not to exceed 30 hours per week, again in the two weeks before an election.
That would mean a reduction in early voting hours for the state’s two biggest cities, Milwaukee and Madison—which are also its most important Democratic strongholds.
Scott McDonell, the clerk for Dane County, where Madison is located, called the effort a “voter suppression initiative.”
“This is not unintentional,” McDonell told msnbc. “This is part of a whole strategy of limiting the large cities from their ability to vote.”
In 2011, Republicans eliminated early voting on the weekend directly before the election—part of a sweeping voting bill that also included a voter ID provision currently being challenged in court. But they left the weekend before that in place. Last year, around 7,000 voters in Madison and Milwaukee alone took advantage of those two days of voting, according to numbers provided by the election commissions for those cities.
And currently, cities and towns can set their own hours, based on local needs. That’s meant they’ve been able to make game-time decisions to keep polls open during weekdays evenings, if there’s a larger-than-expected number of voters, as Madison did for the 2010 governor’s race, Madison City Clerk Maribeth Witzel-Behl told MSNBC.
In 2012, the city saw more than 1,000 early voters per day, according to Witzel-Behl. She said the reduction in hours, and the loss of flexibility, would make life more difficult for her office – and for voters.
“We always have voters who let us know that if we hadn’t been open on Saturday, they wouldn’t have been able to come in to cast an absentee ballot,” said Witzel-Behl. “If we are not able to have absentee voting on the weekends, and we’re limited during the week as well, we’re going to be under a significant time crunch to get everybody through the lines.”
While hitting big cities hard, the bill leaves voting practices in small towns largely untouched. Many small towns in Wisconsin let people make appointments to cast their ballots at the local clerk’s house, McDonell explained—something they’ll be able to keep doing.
“What this does is, it leaves in place the ability for the small communities to set their hours in different ways, but it shuts down the big cities from having the ability to do that,” said McDonell.
Grothman said his bill is intended to establish “uniformity” between the large cities and small towns. Since it would be both expensive and unnecessary for small municipalities to increase voting hours, the only fix is to reduce the hours offered by big cities.
“We can have some of these ones that are completely out of control, doing maybe 80 hours a week, we can rein them in,” Grothman said.
Asked why uniformity is important if there’s less demand for early voting in more sparsely populated areas, Grothman was indignant.
“The idea of having one set of rules to apply to one municipality and another set of rules to apply to another goes against equal protection of the laws and is contrary to all our country stands for,” he said. “Isn’t it?”
But scrapping weekend voting will hit African-Americans particularly hard, Rev. Willie Brisco, who leads an alliance of Milwaukee churches, told msnbc.
“A lot of people in our community are working two or three jobs, odd hours, having difficulty with childcare,” said Brisco. “So the weekend and the early voting reaches a lot of those people.”
Brisco said his organization ran a “Souls to the Polls” drive last year, encouraging congregants to vote en masse after church on Sunday.
“We really need our community to stay engaged in the political process, and to be a determining factor,” Brisco said. “And there is a concerted effort to make sure that doesn’t happen.”
The measure wasn’t the only voting bill that the Republican-dominated Wisconsin Assembly passed Thursday night. On a party-line vote, it also approved a bill that would slightly modify the state’s controversial 2011 voter ID law, in an effort to boost its chances of surviving the court challenge that’s currently underway. Under the new GOP bill, voters would now be able to cast a ballot without ID—if they signed an affidavit swearing that they couldn’t afford ID or had no way of geting their birth certificate.
“This bill says that poor people need to declare their indigency,” Rep. JoCasta Zamarripa, a Democrat, told The Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel. “It’s a scarlet letter.

Read More

If You're a Millennial, Black, or Latino, Good Luck Voting Quickly in 2016

—By Dana Liebelson

| Tue Nov. 19, 2013 3:00 AM PST

 

Bunnicula/Flickr

When I voted last year in downtown Washington, DC, I was able to walk down the street, cast my ballot, and get back to the office in less than 30 minutes. But according to a new report by two voting rights groups, the Advancement Project and OurTime.org, plenty of American voters weren't so lucky. According to their research, African Americans, Latinos, and millennials in Virginia and Florida—two key battleground states—faced significantly longer wait times than older white voters in 2012. This was largely because the former groups are more inclined to utilize early voting, which was restricted in both states last year. And according to the report, this new "time tax"—along with other voting obstacles, like strict ID laws—will likely continue to dampen voter turnout among these groups in 2016.
In 2012, Florida cut early voting from 14 days to 8 days, and lines were so long, more than 200,000 Florida voters gave up and went home, according to data collected by the Orlando Sentinel. The Advancement Project and OurTime.org report focused on 5,196 of the 6,100 voting precincts that were used last November in Florida—which faced some of the longest voting lines in the country—and found that young voters spent a disproportionately longer time waiting to vote. For example, in Orange County, which has the highest percentage of voters younger than 30 in the state (22 percent), precincts closed an average of 86 minutes after the 7 p.m. deadline, with one precinct closing five hours late. The report found that in Orange County, the trend indicated that the more voters under 30 there were at a certain precinct, the later the closing time.
"Regarding the number of people willing to wait in line to vote in 2012, there were others who didn't vote, and there is no guarantee that voters will always be able to wait so long to exercise their fundamental rights," says Katherine Culliton-González, director of Advancement Project's Voter Protection Program. The report makes the case that young voters have less flexibility with their work schedules, and when early voting days are cut, as they were in Florida, lines get longer. Millennials (defined in the report as people between the ages of 18 and 29) are also more racially diverse than the rest of the population, meaning that there is often an overlap between young voters and voters of color. This 2013 MIT report found that voters of color are also more likely to wait in line than white voters:

The conservative Heritage Foundation maintains that African Americans face longer voting times than white voters because they "tend to be concentrated in large urban areas" and "the most populous areas had longer wait times than those living in areas with fewer voters." But Culliton-González, from the Advancement Project, tells Mother Jones that her group's study disproves this, since their research found that there wasn't a clear correlation between longer lines and precincts with dense populations. She says that, in Virginia, for example, "unless a voter can prove they are sick, otherwise disabled, or have to travel for work on Election Day, all voters must vote on the first Tuesday in November. These limits are probably what caused the disparities, as due to socioeconomic factors, many young voters of color have less flexibility in their work schedules." Voting rights groups argue that all states should offer flexible early voting—but some states have done the opposite: North Carolina, for example, is restricting early voting from 17 days to 10 days, starting in 2014.
Culliton-González adds, "We are concerned about 2014, but even more concerned about 2016," since Florida and other states will likely not have enough early voting time so that voters can avoid long lines. (The Advancement Project didn't find evidence of the "time tax" in the state elections earlier this month, partly because voter turnout was so low.)
But even if early voting is taken care of, young voters of color are also more likely to be turned away from the polls because of identification requirements. This was true in 2012, even in states that didn't have voter ID requirements on the books (see chart below). In the state elections that occurred earlier this month, numerous voters complained of being unable to vote because of real or perceived voter ID laws.

According to data collected by the Black Youth Project, an activist group that does research on issues that affect African American youth, only 67 percent of Latino youth and 71 percent of black youth possess driver's licenses, compared to 85 percent of white youth. Additionally, three times more young black voters than white voters said that lack of an ID was the reason they didn't vote in 2012. The Advancement Project and OurTime.org have submitted their report to the Presidential Committee on Election Administration, President Obama's group that is tasked with finding ways to improve voting.

Dana Liebelson

Reporter

Dana Liebelson is a reporter in Mother Jones' Washington bureau. Her work has also appeared in The Week, TIME's Battleland, Truthout, OtherWords and Yahoo! News. RSS | Twitter

Read More

I Punk’d Scott Walker

And now he’s lying about it.

By IAN MURPHY

November 18, 2013

I never thought Scott Walker’s people would be dumb enough to put me through. It was February 2011—the height of the Wisconsin governor’s battle with the public unions, with thousands of protesters filling the streets of downtown Madison—when I called his office posing as Tea Party sugar daddy David Koch.
I told Keith Gilkes, who was then Walker’s chief of staff, that the governor couldn’t return my call because “my goddamn maid, Maria, put my phone in the washer. I’d have her deported, but she works for next to nothing.” (In reality, I was calling with a free Skype number and couldn’t receive calls from a land line at the time.)
In my business, that’s called tipping your hand. All ethical liars do it. It’s the ridiculous, implausible hints that separate the ethical prankster from the confidence man, the satirist from the unrepentant political hack. But they didn’t get the joke, and soon Walker and I were comparing notes on how he could break the backs of those pro-union demonstrators.

On Tuesday, Walker unleashes an epic gag of his own, the book Unintimidated: A Governor’s Story and a Nation’s Challenge. Aimed at duping future historians and contemporary wonks, the 255 pages of political PR—co-authored by former Dubya speechwriter Marc Thiessen—read at times more like Stalin than Sacha Baron Cohen, given their sheer propaganda quotient. But some passages are pretty funny, like the chapter where he says my prank call—which I recorded and posted on YouTube, much to the governor’s dismay and embarrassment at the time—was all part of God’s plan to teach him humility.
If anything, the lesson of Unintimidated seems to be that God is terrible at teaching humility.

***

I had no idea whether Koch and Walker had spoken before, but it was plausible that Koch would call the governor. Americans for Prosperity—the conservative advocacy group Koch founded with his brother Charles—had thrown millions of hard-to-track dollars into pro-Walker advertising and was presently “standing with Walker” via an expensive PR blitz.
I expected Gilkes to question why Koch would personally call the number on their website, suffering through busy signals and endless ringing like a common plebe, and then cavalierly trashing his undocumented maid. “I’m calling from the VOID—with the VOID, or whatever it’s called,” I said, thinking I’d strained credulity too far. “You know, the Snype!” But Gilkes just laughed and told me to call back at 2.
At the appointed hour, Walker and I enjoyed a friendly chat during which I suggested that he physically intimidate his Democratic opposition with a baseball bat, whip up a good counter-protest by dressing hobos in suits and most disturbing: that he ought to plant troublemakers to discredit the pro-union demonstrators.
“[W]e thought about that,” Walker replied, and eventually added, “My only fear would be if there’s a ruckus caused is that would scare the public into thinking maybe the governor has to settle to avoid all these problems.” So it wasn’t morality, but a cynical calculation, that saved the public from that particular ruse.

My most successful gag before the call to Walker had been covering the grand opening of Ken Ham’s Creation “Museum” as a reporter afflicted with “Asperger’s Syndrome By Proxy.” An associate and I set up a fake news website called the Special Times, wherein my alter ego professed his abiding love for cookies, the Transformers, investigative reporting and Our Lord Jesus Christ—daring Ham’s PR hacks to catch on. But the people who believe the universe was pulled from God’s magical arse 6,000 years ago never got wise. Go figure. And I ended up in their midst, clad in sweatpants, Velcro sneakers and fanny pack, crudely mocking everything they consider sacred.
I learned the pranksters’ code—giving the mark a sporting chance—from Matt Taibbi. Before becoming Rolling Stone’s resident scourge of Wall Street, Taibbi founded a biweekly rag in Buffalo, my hometown, called the BEAST. He abandoned the project before I came aboard as a delivery boy. It took me nearly a decade to claw my way to editor-in-chief. Only recently did I step down to spend less time with my family. But the BEAST ethic will always guide me. Its inaugural issue back in 2002 featured a prank involving Buffalo’s then-Mayor Anthony Masiello accepting a poetic, gangster-fraternizing cameo in an episode of The Sopranos. The tell came in the form of a purported HBO producer’s promise to send Masiello a porcelain unicorn signed by James Spader. A highly amusing plan.
The Koch call, though, was totally on the fly. No plan. No chance of success, I thought. I’d been awake for more than 24 hours, delirious, chasing my coffee with scotch and fairly stoned. My only preparation was to scrawl “Coke” on a scrap of paper. On the infinitesimal chance I got through as David Koch, I figured the guy should correctly pronounce his own name.

***

In Unintimidated, Walker says he took the call “after a week or more of insistent pleas” from his staff. False. I called three times in less than three hours.
Walker also writes, “we never—never—considered putting ‘troublemakers’ in the crowd to discredit the protesters.” He now says in his book that he fibbed to appease the co-owner of Koch Industries, parent company to Georgia Pacific Corp., which employs more than 2,000 people in its Green Bay mills. Decent yet disturbing spin. But when the news broke, Walker simply told the local media, “As you’ve heard on the tape, we dismissed that and said that wasn’t a good idea.” It was the same weak talking point he trotted out on Meet the Press. And David Gregory—renowned vanilla sasquatch of the mythological “objective media”—had zero follow-ups, allowing Walker to pivot unchallenged to the “real issue” of the 14 Democratic state senators who’d fled Wisconsin to avoid a GOP quorum.
In fact, it was one of those senators, Tim Carpenter, who’d provided the inspiration for the prank. “He’s just hard-lined—will not talk,” he told Amanda Terkel at the Huffington Post, “will not communicate, will not return phone calls.” Who would Walker talk to, I wondered? My first idea was to pose as Egyptian strongman Hosni Mubarak, who was in the midst of a mass sit-in of his own. I imagined it as a sort of dictator heart-to-heart. But after three hours of practicing the accent, I still sounded like Borat, not Mubarak, so I gave up and posed as Koch instead.
At a press conference after the story broke, Walker said, “The bottom line is the things I’ve said are the things I’ve said publicly all along.” Much to my astonishment, variations of that blatant lie appeared in headlines without reporters calling bullshit.

Read more: http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2013/11/i-punkd-scott-walker-100033.html#ixzz2l7UR6bHo

Journalists rarely invent the lie, though that does happen (see: Armstrong Williams, Stephen Glass, etc.), but often unwittingly pass it along. “There’s a whole industry, the public relations industry, that’s all about getting lies into the media—and they never reveal the hoax,” says the pseudonymous Andy Bichlbaum of America’s preeminent prank troupe the Yes Men. “They’ve sold wars (see Counterfeit Coverage), our deaths (tobacco), and now the death of the whole planet, starting with those who live in the poorest countries.”
Countering lies sometimes requires more lies. In other words, putting truth into the mouths of liars. That’s the Yes Men’s M.O. Their entire shtick is about giving the marks a sporting chance—trawling reporters with over-the-top absurd fake websites and press conferences. (I stole from their playbook when I ran for Congress in 2011, and realized my Republican opponent had not registered her own .org. Bwahaha.)
I became aware of the Yes Men in 2004 when, on the 20th anniversary of the Bhopal disaster, Bichlbaum appeared on BBC World News posing as a Dow Chemical spokesperson to accept full responsibility for the tragic Indian gas leak that caused thousands of deaths and countless injuries. “Our shareholders may take a bit of a hit,” Birchlbaum told BBC after announcing $12 billion in victim compensation. “But I think if they’re anything like me they will be ecstatic to be part of such a historic occasion of doing right by those we have wronged.”

Since then, the Yes Men have pulled numerous successful media hoaxes to satirically poignant effect—Halliburton’s SurvivaBall to protect the on-the-go businessman from any post-apocalyptic hellscape, Dow’s “Acceptable Risk” death calculator and posing as the U.S. Chamber of Commerce to announce the consortium’s noble 180 on climate change, to name just a few.
One of the Yes Men’s best coups was a two-pronged jape aimed at Shell Oil. I teamed up with them for this one. The first prong, a video of a launch party for a new Shell website—during which a miniature liquor-dispensing oil rig sprung an unstoppable leak—blew up the Internet. The second prong, the site itself, ArcticReady.com, offered an interactive function where users generated captions for images of pristine Arctic wilderness and wildlife, sharing them on social media. One example featured an Arctic fox that read: “YOU CAN’T RUN YOUR SUV ON ‘CUTE’. LET’S GO.”
The press initially reported both prongs as massive PR blunders. Business reporters were apoplectic. How could Shell be so dumb? As the man behind the official Twitter account for the fake Shell, I wrote tweets about being drunk and spilling coffee. By the time most journalists caught on, the “damage” was already done. We’d gotten our message across: Drilling for oil in the Arctic is inherently unsafe, a tragedy waiting to happen, not even factoring the release of heat-trapping carbon into Earth’s finite greenhouse. And we had gotten people talking about it in appropriately worried tones.
Birchlbaum once told me that the journalists they dupe usually don’t mind. I suspect that’s because pranksters can force journalists to cover stories they otherwise wouldn’t—or couldn’t—in their capacity as “respected” news people. But I’ve always thought of my pranks as a funny kind of undercover work.
James O’Keefe, the notorious fake pimp who killed the low-income advocacy and organizing group ACORN, doesn’t agree with me on that point. “There is a big difference between pranks and undercover investigative journalism,” he says. “I am and have never been interested in pranks for the sake of trickery or laughs. I am, however, committed to utilizing undercover investigative journalism to expose the truth and improve our society, the goal of most journalists, I believe.”
O’Keefe’s not a credible person. But I grudgingly respect him for his ability to get things done. Well, respect like I do Charles Manson. The undercover videos that led to ACORN’s downfall, wherein O’Keefe dressed as a—totally unfunny, apparently—pimp were deceptively edited, as is much of his work. He never talked to ACORN staffers dressed that way. And he ended having to pay $100,000 in damages to one ACORN worker for completely misrepresenting her as a pimp-loving criminal.
A little snip here, another there, and you can make an NPR executive call the Tea Party “xenophobic” just by leaving out the part where he attributed the description to Republicans he knew. That’s O’Keefe’s M.O. But I felt compelled to ask him some questions for this essay because that’s what I’m told journalists do. Sometimes undercover.
“Sometimes the only way to unearth dirty politicos’ fraud, and more, is to go incognito. This is a tradition with a long history that brings to life very important issues within society,” O’Keefe argues. “Nellie Bly and her famous investigation into mental health is just one example of many famous undercover journalists.”
Undercover reporting aside, the “objective” press asks a guy over here, a guy over there, and they rarely tell the news consumer the factual truth. It’s an institutional sickness. It wasn’t too long ago that the New York Times asked its readers: “Should The Times Be a Truth Vigilante?” Of course it should! That that was a serious question from the “paper of record” goes a long way to understand the coming end of civilization. “Credible scientist A says, ‘Our species is in serious trouble,’ but guy with undisclosed ties to Exxon and the Heartland Institute says, ‘Dude, chillax.’” You decide.
That every malfeasant public figure or PR hack has a valid opinion deserving equal weight next to empirically rooted reality is the deadliest jape of our era—pulling our politics further into the corporate shadows and poisoning our planet beyond repair.
Will God save us, like he did Walker? After taking his “beating” by the press, one of his “toughest days,” he turned to his devotional calendar, according to his new book. That day’s title: “The Power of Humility, the Burden of Pride.” He looked up and said, “I hear you Lord.” Whether that’s honest delusion or just pandering, and whether he truly believes targeting unions is anything other than a way to break the Democratic money base, the governor’s definitely fooling—or trying to fool—someone. And they call me the jokester.
Ian Murphy is a professional weirdo whose work has appeared at AlterNet, Salon, Crooks & Liars, the Daily Beast, Free Inquiry and, most regularly, at the Progressive. Follow him on Twitter @Ian_Murphy.

Read more: http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2013/11/i-punkd-scott-walker-100033_Page2.html#ixzz2l7UFjF2Z

Read More

House To Vote On Bill That Would Impose $5,000 Fee For Protesting Drilling Projects

By Emily Atkin on November 18, 2013 at 3:05 pm

"House To Vote On Bill That Would Impose $5,000 Fee For Protesting Drilling Projects"

CREDIT: AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite

The House is likely to vote on a number of GOP bills this week related to the oil and gas industry, arguably the most sweeping of which is the Federal Lands Jobs and Energy Security Act.
The bill, introduced by Rep. Doug Lamborn (R-CO), is broad legislation designed to make it much easier for oil and gas companies to obtain permission to drill on public lands. If signed into law, the legislation would automatically approve onshore drilling permits if the U.S. Department of Interior (DOI) failed to act on them in 60 days.
If an individual does not like a proposed drilling project and wanted to oppose it, he or she would have to pay a $5,000 fee to file an official protest.
In addition, Lamborn’s proposed bill would direct the DOI to begin commercial leasing for the development of oil shale, a controversial type of production that has been largely banned by the United States since President Herbert Hoover prohibited the leasing of federal lands for oil shale. Oil shale — which should not be confused with the more common “shale oil” — is a type of rock that needs to be heated to nearly 1,000 degrees Fahrenheit to produce crude oil, which then has to be refined.
Jessica Goad, research manager of the Center for American Progress’ Public Lands Project has said the process of producing oil shale “takes a large amount of energy and money, as well as 3-5 barrels of water per barrel of oil produced, a dangerous issue in the parched West.” The Natural Resources Defense Council calls it “the dirtiest fuel on the planet.”
Nonetheless, the largest deposits of oil shale in the world are in the United States in Colorado, Utah, and Wyoming — 70 percent of which is on land owned by the federal government. Under Lamborn’s bill, the government would be required to offer 10 leases on federal lands in 2014 for oil shale research and demonstration projects. And before 2016, the government must hold at least 5 commercial lease sales of federal lands for oil shale development, each no less than 25,000 acres.
The oil produced from the oil shale could provide the United States with energy for the next 200 years, the bill says, and create an estimated 350,000 jobs. But according to the NRDC, oil shale production would emit four times more carbon pollution than producing conventional gasoline, credited to the amount of energy it takes to get hydrocarbons out of the rock.
“This bill is not simply anachronistic; it is dangerous,” a group of Democratic Representatives said in their dissent of the bill. “It would harm the environment, short-circuit critical reviews, and establish barriers to people wishing to challenge decisions on oil and gas development in their backyards.”
The entire bill, along with amendment votes and dissents, can be read here.

Update

On Tuesday, the Obama administration announced in a statement that it would likely veto the bill if passed by both the House and Senate.

 House of Representatives Phone Numbers

Read More

Rachel Maddow Nails How Utterly Nutty Wis GOP Has Become (Now With Even More Voter Suppression)

Rachel Maddow Nails How Utterly Nutty Wis GOP Has Become (Now With Even More Voter Suppression)

by PuddytatFollow

 

Must see video (H/T to BruinKid for his comment/tip on how to embed this since the "new" MSNBC video no longer embeds):

Visit NBCNews.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Visit NBCNews.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

She nailed it from the extremism to the petty bullying that has infested our State Legislature since the Red Tide election of 2010.
After taking even more extremist anti-abortion legislation off the table as I diaried here, saying they were going to end the legislative session on a lighter note, Republicans in the State Assembly pulled out a brand new shiny Voter Suppression Bill and resurrected a bill to allow state-issued anti-abortion license plates.
They did this because they got into a snit about Assembly Democrats calling for a vote on an already approved bill to honor the victims of the Sandy Hook massacre which passed the State Senate unanimously.  Republicans in the Assembly refused to even consider that bill.  Why?  Nobody seems to know.  So, in retaliation, they brought out more extremist bills including a brand new one to further restrict voting in Wisconsin.  Yes, it's gotten that petty.

The most severe of the voter suppression measures Republicans passed in 2011, including the presentation of a state-issued ID, are on hold by the courts.  Left in place, however, are measures that restrict early voting and absentee ballots,  as well as a requirement that all voters must sign the poll book.  These measures increase the amount voters who must vote in person as well as increase the actual amount of time poll workers need to spend with each voter.  Of course, this increases the lines of people who vote, further discouraging those with busy schedules or in crowded voting precincts.  And that's the intent of those laws - to suppress the vote in Democratic areas.
That wasn't enough for Republicans, though.  Their brand new shiny voter suppression bill removes ALL weekend voting (their limitation to 1 weekend from 3 in 2011 wasn't restrictive enough to prevent electoral wins by Tammy Baldwin and Barack Obama in 2012) and restricts early voting to ONE WEEK and ONLY during the hours of 7:30 AM - 5 PM (that'll show those folks who try to vote before or after work).
Not only that, but anyone without that ID needs to sign an affidavit that they're indigent and their "vote" is not guaranteed to be counted.  A person who doesn't have the time to go during work hours to get that ID, has no transportation to a DMV for that ID, or who can't obtain the documents necessary for the ID will have to declare their indigent and possibly get their vote tossed if they aren't.
So, here we go again.
On top of all of this, they want to make the Chief Justice position based on the election of the fellow justices (currently it's the most senior Justice and has been done that way for more than 100 years).  Naturally, they want to impose the will of the RW 4 of 7 justices who have bought their seats instead of having moderate Chief Justice Shirley Abrahamson as the Chief based on her long history of service on the State Supreme Court.
And they've also succeeded in changing the reasons for recall to the reasons Scott Walker cited during his own recall.   There has been no reason necessary other than the will of the voters.  Now the recalled official must be charged and/or convicted of a felony or ethics violation.  This would make it impossible for Walker to have politically profited from the voter anger that made him Milwaukee County Executive had it been in effect 15 years ago.  It would also make it impossible for us to recall anyone for malfeasance in office or anything outside of criminal behavior.
I think we be "safe" from them for the next year.  They're done with their extremism until after the next election because they can't count on the poor memories of Wisconsinites or the power of their massive money to ensure their re-election.
They know no bottom and know no shame.
.

Originally posted to Puddytat on Sat Nov 16, 2013 at 12:29 PM PST.

Also republished by Badger State Progressive and Friends of Keith Olbermann and Rachel Maddow.

Read More

Try not to laugh: Gov Scott Walker says who would be best for a 2016 presidential run

November 17, 2013

By Anomaly

Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker (R) , union buster and  tea party derp, dismissed even a Paul Ryan run for 2016, but insisted, “I love Paul Ryan. Paul Ryan, if he had a fan club, I’d be the president of that.”
Sen. Ted Cruz, Sen. Rand Paul and Sen. Marco Rubio, are all ‘good guys’, but not for a presidential run according to Walker.


Walker offered who he think would be a good contender saying, “I think it’s got to be an outsider. I think both the presidential and the vice presidential nominee should either be a former or current governor, people who have done successful things in their states, who have taken on big reforms, who are ready to move America forward.”
Walker did not offer his definition of ‘forward’ however. And you can bet he just chose himself as the best candidate.
ABC reports, “In terms of his own future, Walker — who seemed to closely fit his own definition of the ideal GOP nominee — told ABC News he would not rule out a presidential run in 2016.”
Walker said, “I don’t rule anything out.”
Watch courtesy of ABC:

Read More

30 subpoenas issued, search warrants, investigating Gov Scott Walker’s recall Campaign

November 17, 2013

By Anomaly

Ruh roh. Gov. Scott Walker is surrounded.
According to the Wall Street Journal, Walker’s campaign, the Republican Party of Wisconsin and dozens of conservative political groups are the targets of the Milwaukee County probe. Dozens of subpoenas have been issued demanding documents related to the 2011 and 2012 campaign to recall Walker and state legislative leaders. In all, about 30 groups have been subpoenaed.


The report details those targeted: Copies of two subpoenas we’ve seen demand “all memoranda, email . . . correspondence, and communications” both internally and between the subpoena target and some 29 conservative groups, including Wisconsin and national nonprofits, political vendors and party committees. The groups include the League of American Voters, Wisconsin Family Action, Wisconsin Manufacturers & Commerce, Americans for Prosperity—Wisconsin, American Crossroads, the Republican Governors Association, Friends of Scott Walker and the Republican Party of Wisconsin.
According to the newspaper, one subpoena also demands “all records of income received, including fundraising information and the identity of persons contributing to the corporation.”
Follow the money.
Madison.com reports:

 According to the Wisconsin Democracy Campaign, spending in the 2011 and 2012 recall elections by groups mentioned in the article include:
• Right Direction Wisconsin PAC (Republican Governors Association): $9.4 million
• Club for Growth Wisconsin: $9.1 million
• Wisconsin Manufacturers & Commerce: $4.7 million
Americans for Prosperity/MacIver Institute for Public Policy: $4.5 million
The liberal Center for Media and Democracy has tracked millions of dollars that has flowed among these groups in Wisconsin.
In an interview Saturday, the group’s general counsel, Brendan Fischer, described it as a “dark money shell game” in which thousands and in some cases millions of dollars from anonymous donors are moved from one organization to another with the goal of influencing elections.

JS Online reports:

Unmentioned in the editorial is that R.J. Johnson is an adviser to both Walker’s campaign and the Wisconsin Club for Growth.
The newspaper said the subpoenas sought records and fundraising information and were related to the 2011 and 2012 recall efforts against the Republican governor and state senators.
The subpoenas come out of a second, secret John Doe investigation of Walker aides or allies. The first investigation was closed in February, but the second one is ongoing. The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel first reported on both investigations.
John Doe probes give prosecutors the power to compel people to testify and bar them from speaking about their involvement in the investigations. The Wall Street Journal editorial page reported O’Keefe was willing to discuss his subpoena, saying he “realizes the personal risk but wants the public to know what is going on.”
Search warrants were executed based on affidavits filed by Dean Nickel, according to the newspaper. Nickel served as the special agent in charge for the state Department of Justice’s public integrity unit, and the newspaper reported he has served as an investigator for the state Government Accountability Board.

Just this morning Walker was opining that a governor would be the best choice for a presidential run in 2016.
I know Scott! Maybe you can have all the investigators arrested just as you did protesters, a kid and even a few grannies.
Big thanks to tipster extraordinaire @TomCinmidlife who you can follow on Twitter here. 

Read More

ALEC Battles Voting Rights in Ohio

ALEC Battles Voting Rights in Ohio

Monday, 18 November 2013

Four GOP Anti-Voter Bills Set For Hearings This Week

The House Policy and Legislative Oversight Committee will be meeting in Room 116 this Tuesday to discuss two Republican voting bills.  (editor: It is important to note ALEC’s involvement in the battle for voting rights in Ohio, as all of the Republican politicians noted by Plunderbund are members of ALEC.)
Republican State Senator (member ALEC’s Civil Task Force) Bill’s Coley’s SB 205 prevents the Secretary of State from mailing absentee ballot applications to Ohioans during primary and special elections, and only allows ballots to be sent during a general election if the General Assembly approves funding for the ballots, which they’ll likely never do.   It also prevents any other official besides the Secretary of State from mailing ballot applications.
Secretary of State Jon Husted (R-ALEC) mailed absentee ballot applications to every registered voter in Ohio during the 2012 presidential election. Almost 1.3 million Ohioans cast an absentee ballot that November.  Coley’s bill, if passed, will ultimately end up seeing fewer people voting overall, fewer people voting absentee and more people likely voting in person.
Which is interesting, because Republican State Senator Joe Uecker’s (member of ALEC’s Commerce, Insurance, and Economic Task Force) bill, SB 200, will actually lowers the number of voting machines a county must have available for an election based on the number of votes cast in recent presidential election years.   Uecker’s bill changes the current formula, which is based on the total number of voters in two most recent presidential elections, by requiring counties to subtract the number of absentee voters from this number.
Given the huge number of absentee ballots cast in 2012, and with Coley’s bill likely to increase the number of people voting in person, voting machine shortages around the state could again become a familiar sight around our state for the next 7 years.
Later in the day, the Senate State Government Oversight and Reform Committee will be meeting (at 3:15 pm) in the South Hearing Room to discuss two more voting bills.
Republican State Senator Frank LaRose’s (member of ALEC’s Public Safety and Elections Task Force), bill SB 238, aims to cut six days off the beginning of the early voting schedule in Ohio.   This bill would not only reduce the number of early voting days from 35 to 29, it would also eliminate the so-called golden week when voters can register and vote on the same day.
Bill Seitz’s (member of ALEC’s Civil Justice Task Force) bill, SB 216, will reduce the period of time, from 10 days to 3 days, a provisional ballot voter has to provide additional information to their local BOE to get their vote counted.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
This article is written by Joseph and is entitled Four GOP Anti-voter Bills Set For Hearings This Week.  This article is posted at  http://www.plunderbund.com/2013/11/16/four-gop-anti-voter-bills-set-for-hearings-this-week/

Read More

Wisconsin Political Speech Raid

Subpoenas hit allies of Scott Walker as his re-election campaign looms.

Updated Nov. 15, 2013 6:53 p.m. ET

Americans learned in the IRS political targeting scandal that government enforcement power can be used to stifle political speech. Something similar may be unfolding in Wisconsin, where a special prosecutor is targeting conservative groups that participated in the battle over Governor Scott Walker's union reforms.

In recent weeks, special prosecutor Francis Schmitz has hit dozens of conservative groups with subpoenas demanding documents related to the 2011 and 2012 campaigns to recall Governor Walker and state legislative leaders.

Copies of two subpoenas we've seen demand "all memoranda, email . . . correspondence, and communications" both internally and between the subpoena target and some 29 conservative groups, including Wisconsin and national nonprofits, political vendors and party committees. The groups include the League of American Voters, Wisconsin Family Action, Wisconsin Manufacturers & Commerce, Americans for Prosperity—Wisconsin, American Crossroads, the Republican Governors Association, Friends of Scott Walker and the Republican Party of Wisconsin.

Enlarge Image

Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker Associated Press

One subpoena also demands "all records of income received, including fundraising information and the identity of persons contributing to the corporation." In other words, tell us who your donors are.

***

The probe began in the office of Milwaukee County Assistant District Attorney Bruce Landgraf, though no one will publicly claim credit for appointing Mr. Schmitz, the special prosecutor. The investigation is taking place under Wisconsin's John Doe law, which bars a subpoena's targets from disclosing its contents to anyone but his attorneys. John Doe probes work much like a grand jury, allowing prosecutors to issue subpoenas and conduct searches, while the gag orders leave the targets facing the resources of the state with no way to publicly defend themselves.

That makes it hard to confirm any details. But one target who did confirm receiving a subpoena is Eric O'Keefe, who realizes the personal risk but wants the public to know what is going on. Mr. O'Keefe is director of the Wisconsin Club for Growth, which advocates lower taxes, limited government and other conservative priorities. He has worked in political and policy circles for three decades, including stints as national director of the Libertarian Party in 1980 and a director of the Cato Institute, and he helped to found the Center for Competitive Politics, which focuses on protecting political speech.

Mr. O'Keefe says he received his subpoena in early October. He adds that at least three of the targets had their homes raided at dawn, with law-enforcement officers turning over belongings to seize computers and files.

Mr. O'Keefe and other sources say they don't know the genesis of the probe, and Mr. Schmitz declined comment. The first public reference appeared in an October 21 blog post by Daniel Bice of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. Mr. Bice is well known for his Democratic sources.

The kitchen-sink subpoenas deserve skepticism considering their subject and targets. The disclosure of conservative political donors has become a preoccupation of the political left across the country. In the heat of the fight over Governor Walker's reforms, unions urged boycotts of Walker contributors and DemocraticUnderground.com published a list of Walker donors for boycotting.

The subpoena demand for the names of donors to nonprofit groups that aren't legally required to disclose them is especially troubling. Readers may recall that the Cincinnati office of the IRS sent the tax-exempt applications of several conservative groups to the ProPublica news website in 2012.

The subpoenas don't spell out a specific allegation, but the demands suggest the government may be pursuing a theory of illegal campaign coordination by independent groups during the recall elections. If prosecutors are pursuing a theory that independent conservative groups coordinated with candidate campaigns during the recall, their goal may be to transform the independent expenditures into candidate committees after the fact, requiring revision of campaign-finance disclosures and possible criminal charges.

***

Another reason for skepticism is the probe's timing as Mr. Walker's 2014 re-election campaign looms. This is the second such investigation against Mr. Walker in three and a half years, following one that began in the office of Milwaukee County Democratic District Attorney John Chisholm in spring 2010.

That probe examined whether staffers used government offices for political purposes while Mr. Walker was Milwaukee County Executive, but after three years turned up nothing on Mr. Walker and embarrassingly little else. The final charges included a case of an aide sending campaign emails on county time, two Walker aides stealing money, and charges of child enticement against the domestic partner of a former staffer.

Mr. Walker's Democratic recall opponent, Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett, nonetheless used the probe against the Governor, saying in a debate that "I have a police department that arrests felons, he has a practice of hiring them." So it's notable that the new batch of subpoenas began flying just days before Democrat Mary Burke announced her candidacy for Governor. District Attorneys are partisan elected officials in Wisconsin, and Mr. Landgraf works for Mr. Chisholm. Neither of them returned our call for comment.

The investigation's focus on campaign-finance law also falls into the wheelhouse of the Government Accountability Board, Wisconsin's political speech regulator. The GAB, which is made up of retired judges appointed by the Governor, has a history of pushing aggressive regulations of issue advertising. Mr. O'Keefe's Wisconsin Club for Growth has fought in court with the GAB over regulating political speech.

A person who has seen one of the Wisconsin search warrants tells us that the warrants were executed based on the request of Dean Nickel, who filed an affidavit for probable cause. Mr. Nickel is a former head of the Wisconsin Department of Justice Public Integrity Unit and has worked as an investigator for the GAB. Mr. Nickel told us he is a contractor for the GAB but wouldn't discuss the John Doe probe. GAB Director and General Counsel Kevin Kennedy declined to comment.

***

Perhaps the probe will turn up some nefarious activity that warrants this subpoena monsoon and home raids. But in the meantime the effect is to limit political speech by intimidating these groups from participating in the 2014 campaign. Stifling allies of Mr. Walker would be an enormous in-kind contribution to Democrats. Even if no charges are filed, the subpoenas will have served as a form of speech suppression.

Mr. O'Keefe told us that the flurry of subpoenas "froze my communications and frightened many allies and vendors of the pro-taxpayer political movement in Wisconsin and across the country." Even if no one is ever convicted of a crime, he says, "the process is the punishment."

Read More