I haven’t been able to watch the last DFL debate yet, so I don’t have any comments on it. But you shouldn’t take it from me, anyway. Watch it yourself, courtesy of The UpTake.
You truly need to see this video.
Anthony Weiner (D-NY) angrily chastised his Republican colleagues in the House after they shamefully voted against a bill to provide aid to sick rescue workers still suffering complications from their efforts on 9/11. I think his rage was completely justified, and I hope it will spread to other Democrats. After all, If the GOP will vote against this, they’ll vote against absolutely anything.
The House was debating a bill last night that would provide up to $7.4 billion in health care aid to rescue and recovery workers who have faced health problems since their work in the wake of the September 11 attacks. The bill ultimately failed to get the needed two-thirds majority, 255-159, and Rep. Anthony Weiner (D-NY) was not happy about it. Not one bit.
…
Weiner attacked those who “stand up and say, ‘Oh, if only we had a different process we’d vote yes.’ You vote yes if you believe yes! You vote in favor of something if you believe it’s the right thing! If you believe it’s the wrong thing, you vote no!” [via TPM]
Weiner is exactly right — the GOP doesn’t get to hide behind “procedure.” They’re voting against these bills, plain and simple. After all, they’ve adopted a scorched-earth strategy of using procedural tactics to try to kill absolutely every bill the Democrats bring to the floor. Think about this for a second — they voted against aid for 9/11 rescue workers just so they can help spread a political message that the Democrats in Congress haven’t gotten bills passed. This is a low point for Congress, and Weiner’s rage is 100 percent justified.
Ezra Klein had an interview yesterday with Paul Ryan, the rising Republican star who has released an ambitious — if disastrous — budget blueprint. In the interview, Ryan makes one pretty good about how to improve the economy, and a whole host of pretty bad points. The interview is particularly useful, though, because it exposes one of the fundamental differences between liberals and conservatives when it comes to balancing the budget.
Ryan pretty much sums up his entire argument in answer Klein’s very first question, about how to reduce unemployment:
I already wrote about this a bit below, but I buried the lede. The more I think about this, the more I think it’s a major story that Tom Emmer’s DWI bill was written at the request of DWI defense attorneys, especially because he’s obviously trying to mislead the public about that:
On his campaign website, Emmer said: “At the request of local prosecutors, Rep. Emmer agreed to author their bill to reform the court system and how DWIs are handled. The legislation prepared by the prosecutors and other interested parties with the assistance of nonpartisan House research staff would have provided incentives for early and immediate prosecution of first-time offenders.”
The Emmer campaign identified the “local prosecutors” as Tom Weidner and Sean Stokes, and said they are based in Stillwater, Washington County. Stokes and Weidner are attorneys specializing in DWI defense, according to the website of their law firm Eckberg, Lammers, Briggs, Wolff & Vierling. [Emphasis mine]
Local prosecutors? Excuse me? Once again, Emmer may not technically be lying, but he’s also definitely not being straight with us. He’s trying to make it sound like this bill was written to help local law enforcement officials, when in fact it was written at the request of DWI defense attorneys.
And let’s be completely clear: these weren’t attorneys contacted at random by WCCO. According to their story, they were specifically identified by Emmer as the attorneys he was working with. He was also identified by Emmer when WCCO first wrote about the story, after Marty Seifert brought the same attacks against Emmer.
Below the break, I’ve posted a screen capture from the firm Weidner and Stokes work for. You can see that these are clearly not the people who should be responsible for crafting our DWI laws.
WCCO’s Pat Kessler did a “reality check” yesterday on the Alliance for Better Minnesota’s latest ad. Their finding was that the ad was “generally accurate.” As a bonus, Kessler also showed that Emmer’s own claims about the bill he proposed to reduce penalties for DWIs are bogus.
A tough new ad against Republican Tom Emmer is raising the temperature in the governor’s race. It’s bringing up his past DWI arrests and says he tried to weaken DWI laws as a legislator. The ad from the Alliance for a Better Minnesota hits Emmer hard. It’s harsh, but it’s generally accurate.
Let’s admit three things right off the bat:
1. The minority party always loves the filibuster, and the majority always hates it.
2. The filibuster has been abused to the point where it has crippled our Congress.
3. Although it has seriously damaged their ability to push their agenda, the Democrats lack the courage, unity, and messaging skills to successfully eliminate the filibuster.
All of these points ad up to a single conculsion: The next time they have sufficient power, it will be the Republicans who eliminate the filibuster. Sure, they defend the filibuster right now. But they railed against the filibuster when they were in power before 2006, and you can expect the roles to switch again next time the Republicans are in power. Remember, the Republicans already tried to partially kill the filibuster in 2005, during a fight over judicial nominations.
Since then, the debate over the filibuster has become even more strident, as they themselves have taken the use of the procedure to new extremes. Whenever the GOP gains power next, you can be sure that the Democrats will use it much like the Republicans have over the past four years — as a tool to practically shut down Congress. And you can also be sure that the GOP, unlike the Democrats, won’t tolerate it.
So I’ll say thanks in advance to the GOP. I wish the Democrats would have the courage to do it themselves in 2011, but they won’t. We’ll have to wait for the Republicans to get rid of the filibuster, and I say good riddance.
Margaret Anderson Kelliher has released her third ad, which talks about jobs and her economic policy. This ad doesn’t have the same unique feel as her previous two ads. Instead, Kelliher speaks directly to voters about her economic plan. The ad also manages to use the phrase “leave no stone unturned” twice in a thirty-second spot.
I think it’s effective, although I think that continuing the distinctive feel of her previous ads would have been more effective. What do you think? Watch it below.
GOP front group MN Forward claims it will work to “elect candidates from both parties who support policies that enhance job growth in Minnesota.” But a fundraising solicitation sent out to Minnesota businesses (and obtained by Bluestem Prairie) makes it sound like they only have a single issue: reducing corporate taxes.
Groups interested in raising taxes to fund additional government spending are already blanketing the airwaves with their message that “corporations” aren’t paying “their fair share.” They’re spending $500,000 on their first ad. (You can view it here http://abetter.mn/CutsVideo.) Some reports say this group and others allied with it plan to spend $10 million or more by election day.
The bottom line: This year there is an important and unprecedented opportunity to help elect candidates who support our agenda to create jobs and grow Minnesota’s economy. Others are organized and moving aggressively. It is important to take action now. [read the rest at Bluestem Prairie; emphasis in original]
This raises a question: are low taxes the only important factor determining job growth? Of course they’re not. If they were, as Matt Entenza likes to say, states like Mississippi would be national leaders. Why aren’t they? Because they have no history of public investment. They don’t have the infrastructure and the education system to make them attractive places to run a business. Without good infrastructure and a well-trained workforce, no business can succeed.
To those who have been complaining that the Obama administration is somehow harming the economy, that the government is doing too much and getting in the way, or that our increased deficit is holding the economy back, you are wrong. In fact, you are disastrously wrong; without the unprecedented government intervention we’ve seen, we would have had a depression, and not a recession. That’s the conclusion of a new study by two highly-respected economists:
In a new paper, the economists argue that without the Wall Street bailout, the bank stress tests, the emergency lending and asset purchases by the Federal Reserve, and the Obama administration’s fiscal stimulus program, the nation’s gross domestic product would be about 6.5 percent lower this year.
In addition, there would be about 8.5 million fewer jobs, on top of the more than 8 million already lost; and the economy would be experiencing deflation, instead of low inflation.
So the government — not just the Obama administration, but the Bush administration as well - - has saved 8.5 million jobs. And instead of continuing with those policies, we’re trying to reduce the deficit and head off non-existent inflation, leading ourselves right back into a depression. We also get to hear prominent Republicans gleefully asking “Where are the jobs?” Well, the answer is that about 8.5 million of them — which could have been lost — are still with us.
I desperately wish we could put partisanship aside for just one day and look seriously at the lessons in this report. Instead, we’re steering ourselves back toward the cliff.
When the Roberts court overturned campaign finance regulations in the Citizens United case and opened the door for corporations to make unlimited political contributions, nobody really knew what the aftermath would be. Well, it turns out that these political contributions may prove to be more trouble for the corporations than they’re worth.
The story about Target’s $150,000 contribution to MN Forward has spread like wildfire, and has appeared in many news outlets nationwide. The story is really a cautionary tale for corporations: Political contributions, while now legal, need to be approached carefully. Particularly with the extreme polarization of American politics today, a contribution to one party — or to a group that mainly supports a single party — is likely to anger a significant portion of any business’s customers.
In the past, corporate CEOs have often maxed out their contributions to Republicans, but these were (comparatively) small amounts of money, and it was understood that they reflected a CEO’s personal political beliefs. Now, however, direct corporate contributions mean that the corporation itself is taking a stance, and that is a lot more likely to engender strong feelings from partisans on both sides of the aisle. That’s amplified further because consumers understand that a portion of their purchases is going to pay for a company’s political contributions.
Target loves to advertise that 5% of their profits go to charitable causes, as do many companies. But it’s clear that they don’t want to brag about their political contributions — they’d rather hide them. Of course, our campaign finance laws require transparency, so they don’t get to do that. They have to decide what’s more important — the political contributions or their image.
The Alliance for a Better Minnesota has come out with a new ad attacking Tom Emmer, and it’s a doozy. Like Marty Seifert did before the Republican convention, ABM brings up Emmer’s history of DWIs, as well as a bill he sponsored that would have reduced penalties for failing or refusing a sobriety test.
Yesterday, I wrote about Al Franken’s comments that Congressional Republicans don’t seem to want jobs to materialize until after the election. Predictably, the MNGOP was fake outraged:
“Al Franken’s outrageous remarks are beneath a United States senator and we would encourage him to apologize for his baseless suggestion that Republicans ‘don’t want a jobs bill because they don’t want people to get jobs before the election.’ Instead of falsely attacking his colleagues with personal insults, [blah blah blah]…”
Pretend outrage aside — the Strib’s Rachel Stassen-Berger notes that GOP Chair Tony Sutton “has been outraged or found something outrageous three times in the last ten days” — it would be tough to prove Franken wrong. After all, the GOP has voted against job-creating bills even when they sound like typical Republican proposals. For example, they voted against the Small Business Jobs Tax Relief Act. That sounds like it’s right in their wheelhouse — what other explanation is there for their votes?
Yesterday, Speaker Nancy Pelosi issued a statement about the Republican party’s disastrous record on jobs. Granted, this is about House Republicans, and Franken was talking about Senate Republicans, but it’s all the same Party of No. Take a look at their horrible record after the break, and tell me you don’t agree with Franken.
Target’s $150,000 contribution to a group that’s supporting Tom Emmer continues to harm its image. It seems Target has been getting enough complaints from its employees that CEO Gregg Steinhafel felt it necessary to release a statement to reassure them. Here’s an excerpt from Target’s letter to its workers:
In the past week I’ve heard from some of you, including our GLBT team members, regarding your concerns with Target’s recent contributions to MN Forward, an independent expenditure committee that is supported by a broad coalition of large and small businesses throughout the state, including the Minnesota Business Partnership and the Minnesota Chamber of Commerce.
As you know, Target has a history of supporting organizations and candidates, on both sides of the aisle, who seek to advance policies aligned with our business objectives, such as job creation and economic growth. MN Forward is focused specifically on those issues and is committed to supporting candidates from any party who will work to improve the state’s job climate. However, it is also important to note that we rarely endorse all advocated positions of the organizations or candidates we support, and we do not have a political or social agenda.
Target has every right, in the wake of the Roberts Court’s Citizens United decision, to make contributions to any candidates its board chooses. But those contributions can have severe consequences for its image, a lesson they appear to have learned the hard way.
When Marty Seifert conceded to Tom Emmer and agreed not to run in the primary, the Republican party spent some time crowing about “unity.” They were gleeful about their prospects; after all, the DFLers were about to spend three months beating up on each other and drawing down their campaign warchests, while Tom Emmer could quietly go about raising money and building name recognition in preparation for the general election.
Well, Emmer certainly built name recognition, but not in the way he wanted. For much of the past three months, Emmer has been on the defensive. Now that the pre-primary campaign finance reports have been released, it’s clear that his other expected advantage never materialized, either: He lags behind Margaret Anderson Kelliher in fundraising. One can’t help but wonder — has Emmer been forced to spend so much time defending himself that his fundraising has suffered?
Republican Tom Emmer has raised $785,000 this year for his gubernatorial campaign. The GOP-endorsed candidate, who faces no credible primary opposition, had $296,000 in the bank as of last week. Since launching his gubernatorial bid last year, Emmer has taken in roughly $900,000.
The numbers are similar to the fundraising figures released by DFL-endorsed candidate Margaret Anderson Kelliher yesterday. Kelliher reported raising $982,000 this year, but with $385,000 cash on hand.
Kelliher will certainly be doing some serious spending in the last two weeks of the primary campaign, and it’s quite possible that at the end, she’ll have less cash on hand than Emmer. But Emmer was expected to have a significant cash advantage, and it doesn’t look like he will. What’s more, Kelliher’s superior fundraising will probably wipe out any advantage Emmer does have after the primary is over.
A quick afterthought: Tom Horner. “Afterthought” describes him perfectly, as he has just $28,000 cash on hand.
You’ve probably read dozens of print stories this cycle discussing the possibility that Barack Obama’s poor approval ratings will be a drag on Democratic candidates up and down the ballot. New polling data out today shows that Obama isn’t the only national figure who can have a big impact on a race.
Public Policy Polling, a robo-poller, has a poll of the New Hampshire Senate race coming out tomorrow. The top lines are still unavailable, but PPP teased the poll by releasing data that shows Sarah Palin’s absolute toxicity among voters (and moderates in particular). According to PPP, 51% of New Hampshire voters are less likely to support a candidate endorsed by Palin. Only 26% of voters are more likely to support that candidate. That’s pretty awful.
But how big of an impact does Palin’s support really have? After all, these voters might not like Palin (that has been demonstrated pretty conclusively) but they also might not care that much about her. The PPP data doesn’t answer this question directly, but there is some circumstantial evidence supporting the notion that a Palin endorsement has some power. When PPP polled New Hampshire in April, Republican candidate Kelly Ayotte had a 32/27 split on fav/unfav among moderate voters. Now, that split is 27/46. That is a -24 point swing! Of course, there is no way to determine how much of that swing is attributable to the Palin endorsement, but its reasonable to assume that some of it is due to her involvement in the race.
I haven’t seen any comparable data for Minnesota, but if Minnesota moderates are anything like New Hampshire moderates, than Palin’s endorsement of Tom Emmer is going to cause him a lot of trouble.
People Are Shouting
RSS