Tag Archives: Republicans

Congressional candidate: My Christian totalitarianism > Muslim totalitarianism

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Georgia Congressional candidate, Baptist pastor, and right-wing radio host Jody B. Hice supports total hardline conservative Christianization of the United States society and government, while simultaneously arguing that main problem with Islam is its (purported) totalitarian control of territory and the political system.

“Most people think Islam is a religion,” Hice argued in a 2011 speech. “It’s not. It’s a totalitarian way of life with a religious component.” He expanded in his book: “It is a complete geo-political structure, and as such, does not deserve First Amendment protection.”

vs.

In 2012, Hice published It’s Now Or Never: A Call to Reclaim America via WestBow Press, a Christian self-publishing house. In the book, he made the dubious claim that the “Constitutional form of government that is the great American experiment is a distinctly Christian society,” To “reclaim America,” he argues, the nation must end abortion, prevent same-sex marriage, repeal hate-crime protections…

 
Does anyone have recommendations on a lawyer who can help me sue him for whiplash?

And before anyone clambers onto their high horse about “crazy Republicans,” let’s just remember that irrational U.S. anti-Muslim bigotry like this is virtually boundless, cross-partisan, and intense. Read more

Democrats need to focus on state legislatures (or stay doomed)

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It’s weird that there isn’t nearly as much discussion of gerrymandering as other U.S. governance reform problems. In 2012, the share of U.S. House seats Republicans won outperformed their popular vote share in the collective House races (versus number of seats won) by about 6 full percentage points. Had the GOP’s vote share actually gone as high as their seat share they would have received about 7 million more votes nationwide than they actually won.

2012-US-House-Election-Results-Summary-And-Map

Democratic House candidates collectively won 1 percentage point of the vote more than the House Republican candidates yet remained in the minority. This has only happened a few times in the past century. A virtual tie that slightly favored the Republicans in the number of seats would still have been possible under fair districting — but not such a wide margin as we see now.

We’ll talk about the issue of unfair districting on this week’s Arsenal For Democracy radio episode, but there’s another glaring problem: Democrats aren’t focusing enough on taking the steps necessary to correct the districting imbalance that’s hurting them so badly. That would boil down, essentially, to investing a lot of money right now into the state parties of every Democratic-leaning state, swing state, and Republican-trending-Democratic-demographic state in the country to recruit, train, and finance candidates in state legislative races and governor races in 2014, 2016, 2018, and 2020.

If executed well, Democrats would be in a position to reasonably expect in 2020 (barring some catastrophic political wave against them that year) to win a lot of majorities in state legislatures all over, to prevent Republicans from extending the post-2010 maps that have been so weighted against Democrats in Congressional races. At the very least, Democratic-led legislatures could implement fairer, nonpartisan redistricting systems that take away the self-serving bias of having legislators redraw their own districts.

When Republican social conservative scolds complain about liberals being hedonists who don’t understand the importance of delayed gratification via strategic present action, the lack of Democratic focus on the problem of gerrymandering and redistricting is the kind of thing that makes them look like they might actually have a point.

Republicans got so mad about Roe v. Wade in 1973 that they hatched and executed an elaborate multi-decade plan to gradually fill massive numbers of lower court seats with hardline but upwardly-confirmable anti-abortion judges, positioning them for future Supreme Court nominations, eventually resulting in a takeover of the Supreme Court a full 32 years later (2005). This patient effort and careful step-by-step strategy is now paying off massively on multiple policy issues.

Meanwhile, Democrats are too distracted by the 2016 presidential horse race to definitively hold the Senate this year, let alone make a play for the House or many legislatures and governorships.

We’re going to panic in October 2020 — right before the election that will determine the next round of post-census redistricting nationwide — when we suddenly realize we needed 3-4 cycles (e.g. starting 2014 or 2016) to ramp back up toward legislative majorities in a lot of states by election night in November 2020. That year will be a presidential year when the Democratic base really turns out, unlike in the 2010 non-presidential cycle. But it won’t make a bit of difference if the state parties all over the country haven’t recruited electable legislative candidates. They’re going to need consistent national Democratic support for the next six and a half years to make that happen.

Without that effort, Democrats can look forward to another ten years of Republican domination on multiple levels or full-stop obstruction of all Democratic agenda points.

Maine Gov. Paul LePage’s special friends (i.e. possible domestic terrorists)

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Maine’s Republican Governor Paul LePage is continuing his crusade to dismantle the state’s reputation for moderate, reasonable, centrist politicians.

People often don’t believe it when someone says Maine’s Gov. Paul LePage is a political loon, but he’s almost indescribably far outside the mainstream, especially when one considers that that he occupies a governorship. Even deeply off-color jokes, vindictive mural attacks, and a strange belief that wind turbines are actually turned by motors because wind power couldn’t possibly work … all of those things are just the tip of the iceberg.

In a “revelation” (via in-depth investigative reporting) that surprises essentially no one who has been following his tenure as governor, except perhaps in its depth, Maine journalist and author Mike Tipping uncovered that in 2013 the governor met 8 times (almost monthly for a while) for 16 hours total with members of a super ultra fringe movement associated with small acts of domestic terrorism, various cop-killings, and the Oklahoma City Bombing.

Gov. LePage’s buddies this time are the very dangerous “sovereign citizen” wingnuts (the same people who don’t believe the government — state let alone Federal! — can issue license plates or passports or enforce traffic laws … or exist). They’re the king of unhinged American conspiracy theories but are also on various FBI watchlists for specific plots.

Here is an excerpt from the condensed summary Maine journalist Colin Woodard — whose incredible book, incidentally, I’ll be posting a review of soon — contributed to Politico on the stunning findings by Tipping:

he had met with an obscure circle of particularly nutty conspiracy theorists at least eight times for a total of 16 hours last year, despite the objections of his staff.

Some of the members of the circle have previously identified themselves as “Sovereign Citizens,” [skip to 17:00], a movement the FBI considers a domestic terrorist threat, though at least some of them now deny any such association. Members have espoused the belief that the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks and the Sandy Hook school shootings were perpetrated by the U.S. government, which engages in “mind control” and is preparing a “holocaust” against America’s Christians. They think the government is illegitimate and that top state officials are guilty of treason.

And last February, one recounted on his pirate radio broadcast [19:00] a meeting he had just attended with Governor LePage in which he said the execution of the top leaders of the Democrat-controlled state legislature was discussed. “They’re talking about hanging them,’” Jack McCarthy, host of the Aroostook Watchman radio show, recalled LePage saying in the meeting with McCarthy and his colleagues. McCarthy shared his response to LePage with his listeners: “Praise the Lord, let’s hang a few. We’ll be done with this crap.”

Although he admits these meetings took place, LePage has denied the conversations turned to eliminating his political opponents. “It never happened,” he said in a spontaneous call to the managing editor of the Bangor Daily News, whose paper he also threatened to sue. “We did not discuss execution, arrest or hanging.”

Hanging the Democratic leadership or no, the governor’s sustained interest in the conspiracy theorists’ ideas has stunned Maine’s political class, especially as LePage had famously refused for months to meet with the very legislative leaders the extremists accused of treason.
[…]
The conspiracy theorists, variously organized as the Maine Constitutional Coalition and We The People of Maine, warned the governor and the small number of other people who would listen that all lawyers are “foreign citizens” and associated with the Communist Party, that Maine’s government was unlawful on account of using paper currency and associating with the United Nations to deprive Mainers of their property rights, and that legislators and other officials were guilty of treason, a crime punishable by death.
[…]
Eventually, LePage’s legal counsel—apparently concerned about the governor’s credulity regarding the extremists’ constitutional theories—took the time to prepare a five-page legal memo for him […] reminding him that “the power of the executive [doesn’t] extend to providing a mechanism for private citizens to declare laws to be unconstitutional.”

 
If you follow through to Tipping’s report, the governor also claimed to them that he feared for his life if he did not accept Federal funding for something. He only stopped the meetings, apparently, after Tipping’s Freedom of Information Act request began ringing enough alarm bells.

Governor LePage faces re-election this November. Our analysis from May remains essentially unchanged up to this scandal:

Maine: Paul LePage (R) is also a terrible and very unpopular governor, who is also (ideologically) a crazy person. He was only elected in a 3-way race in 2010, where the sane people made the mistake of splitting their votes between the other two candidates. Maine isn’t planning to repeat that mistake this year. Haha, just kidding: It’ll be a 3-way race again and probably a nail-biter to the end, between LePage and Congressman Mike Michaud (D). LePage is doing better (somehow) in polls more recently than he was for most of last year.

 
We’ll see how things develop from here.

flag-of-maine

Tom Tancredo is baaaaaaack, y’all

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flag-of-coloradoThe New York Times has published a comprehensive State-of-The-Race report on former 5-term Congressman and 2008 presidential also-ran Tom Tancredo’s latest explosive bid for office, this time as a Republican candidate for Governor of Colorado, ahead of the primary tomorrow. [Update: Tancredo finished second.]

Tancredo last campaigned as the American Constitution Party nominee for the same office four years ago. The ACP is notable mostly as an openly theocratic, right-wing party, with close ties to George Wallace’s segregationist movement.

So far, this latest race can (as is always true with him) best be summarized as Tommy T on the mic dropping racist hot 16s once a minute. But don’t call him racist because he’ll sue your “ass from here to Omaha” (an actual quote from him in the article). [Side note: Can public figures sue average people for making assertions about them?]

Let’s wind back to his amazingly insightful, I mean wildly racist, 2006 comment about one of our country’s fine metropolises of lesser Anglo-ness.

“Look at what has happened to Miami. It has become a Third World country. You just pick it up and take it and move it someplace. You would never know you’re in the United States of America. You would certainly say you’re in a Third World country…”

 
So as you can see, he’s not a racist. He just never says anything but racist stuff and has only racist policies.

Fifteen years after he built a national reputation as an inflammatory foe of illegal immigration, Tom Tancredo, 68, is still campaigning, without apology, as Tom Tancredo. […] He says President Obama should be impeached, but notes that “you can’t criticize him because he’s black and if you do, you’re a racist.”

 
As with the 2010 cycle, Republicans are split very hard in the state right now between “We need more conservative candidates” and “Our candidates are unelectable loons.”

And Tommy T is King of Loon Lake. As the oft-embattled and semi-immortal former state Republican Party chair Dick Wadhams said of Tancredo to the Times: “He has said so many inflammatory things — the list is unbelievable.”

But in a hilarious turn of events, an organization literally calling itself “Republicans Who Want to Win” has been running ads saying that primary voters shouldn’t choose Tancredo because he’s unelectable. Whom should the voters choose instead to be more electable?

The Colorado-based group is supporting Bob Beauprez, a former congressman who lost his 2006 bid for governor by double digits.

 
Womp-womp.

In the GOP primary polling earlier this year and late last year, Tancredo was the top candidate but Bob Beauprez was giving him a run for his money. So we’ll see how this turns out tomorrow night. I’m hoping for a Tancredo nominee. He’s got virtually no chance of beating the reasonably popular and inoffensive Democratic incumbent governor, but he could blow up the chances of a lot of other Republicans on the ballot, for Senate especially, as well as for Congress. (Or at least add to the problems, if the nearly as horrid Ken Buck also ends up on the ballot for the U.S. House after dropping his 2014 Senate bid and losing a 2010 Senate bid spectacularly.)

And if Tancredo doesn’t win the primary? Something something we the people.

GOP working hard to make sure Dems fully united in 2016

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Screen capped this from the top of Google News yesterday. It’s a pretty good summary of where the Republican top brass is right now:
Screenshot2014-05-18at4.45.37PM
From the people who brought you an ancient, walking future health emergency with anger management issues as their nominee six years ago comes… rampant, idle, and sexist speculation based on nothing!

At the rate they’re going with these absurd attacks, even the Anti-Hillary Democrats will be willing to walk through a field of land mines to get to the voting booth to elect her in November 2016.

House GOP still valiantly chasing fictional IRS “scandal”

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It’s been about a year since the House Republicans made up a scandal from whole cloth, and even less time since it was revealed to have never actually happened (see below). And yet, somehow, this just happened anyway:

The House voted Wednesday to hold former IRS official Lois Lerner in contempt of Congress for her refusal to testify about the agency’s targeting of conservative groups.

The 231-187 vote attracted just six of the most politically vulnerable Democrats. It was quickly followed by a 250-168 vote calling on Atty. Gen. Eric H. Holder Jr. to appoint a special prosecutor to take over the Justice Department’s investigation of the Internal Revenue Service scandal.

 
congress-200At least when they won’t shut up about Benghazi, there’s some room (but not much!) for mystery and debate. In stark contrast, this is a scandal where the precipitating event actually never happened.

I wonder how one goes about covering up something that didn’t happen in the first place?

I’m starting to feel like a broken record just copying & pasting the same post over and over every time news about this comes up:

Did someone forget to tell [insert any Republican here] that it turned out that the supposed IRS “scandal” was made up? Like, not even partially a thing that ever actually happened? Because, you know, the rest of us got that point cleared up quite a while back, last June. As I wrote then:

The so-called IRS scandal just fell apart completely as documents surfaced showing they were also scrutinizing applications for left/liberal/progressive code words, not just tea party code words. In other words, they were doing their jobs, not being partisan.

So why did it take so long for IRS documents showing targeting of progressives to show up after those showing tea party targeting? Oh, no reason, except that House Republicans specifically asked the IRS to audit ONLY its records on tea party groups. So NBD, they just 100% manufactured a fake scandal from thin air.

 
The IRS doing its job, and applying that equally to both conservative and liberal scofflaws, is not a scandal.

Pfizer: Screw America, we want tax havens!

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I just read NYT DealBook’s new article from Monday on the awful attempted Pfizer takeover of AstraZeneca: “Pfizer Proposes a Marriage With AstraZeneca, Easing Taxes in a Move to Britain”

On Monday, Pfizer proposed a $99 billion acquisition of its British rival AstraZeneca that would allow it to reincorporate in Britain. Doing so would allow Pfizer to escape the United States corporate tax rate and tap into a mountain of cash trapped overseas, saving it billions of dollars each year and making the company more competitive with other global drug makers.

A deal — which would be the biggest in the drug industry in more than a decade — may ultimately not be done. AstraZeneca said on Monday that it had rebuffed Pfizer, after first turning down the company in January.

 
This is disgusting. Pfizer, founded in the United States in 1849, is trying to buy one of its biggest global rivals, solely so it can reincorporate in the United Kingdom… with its half a dozen or so offshore tax evasion center crown dependencies and British Overseas Territories. Excuse me, I should say tax “avoidance,” because it’s not evasion if it’s legal.

(And while they’re at it, they would probably jack up global drug prices further through anti-competitive price-fixing by forming a cartel with AstraZeneca.)

5000-dollar-bill-madison-200Predictably, Congressional Republicans are already telling everyone that the problem is U.S. corporate tax rates aren’t low enough, when in reality, we’re trying to compete with literal tropical islands for tax evaders that are nominally outside of UK control. That’s a losing battle. We need to put pressure on the UK to stop stealing revenue from the rest of the developed world, not lower our already low effective corporate tax rate.

According to The Globalist Research Center and TaxFoundation.org:

In terms of the effective corporate tax rate, the United States is actually below the average of the big industrial countries, at about 26%, [while] the [advanced economies] OECD’s 2012 GDP-weighted average was 32%.

 
And here’s an eye-popping fact from DealBook:

At least 50 American companies have completed mergers that allowed them to reincorporate in another country, and nearly half of those deals have taken place in the last two years.

 
Put another way, that’s almost 25 tax avoidance deals in the past two years. Again, that says little about the U.S. corporate tax structure which hasn’t really changed much — and certainly not adversely to corporate America under a Republican House Majority — and everything about the total lack of civic pride our country’s corporations have right now, even though their revenues to the government are what helped build the country into such a good corporate environment for so long.

We definitely do need tax reform in some respects, but mainly to reduce tax avoidance and loopholes, unnecessary corporate tax credits and subsidies, and code inconsistency that arbitrarily allows some industries pay less than others. What we don’t need to do is to chop our tax code down to stay competitive with Guernsey, Jersey, the Isle of Man, Gibraltar, the Cayman Islands, and the British Virgin Islands.