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Over the weekend, the CRomnibus budget deal passed the Senate by a 56-40 margin after narrow approval by the House. The outcome is a win for big corporations and wealthy campaign donors, and a huge letdown for 99% of Americans, who once again have been shafted by back room negotiations and legislation written to favor the rich and powerful.
There's a lot to make ordinary citizens sick about the CRomnibus. Republicans used the legislation as an end-of-year Trojan Horse to pass numerous stealth provisions that benefit the few at the expense of the many. Two of the worst are rolling back Dodd-Frank financial regulations so banks can once again gamble with money insured by taxpayers, which re-opens the door to more bank bailouts; and further gutting campaign finance reform by letting rich donors give up to $1.5 million a year to political parties, ten times the current limit.
But the one CRomnibus secret that wasn't reported anywhere in the media until after the bill cleared both the House and Senate was that the budget deal renews a lucrative perk for members of Congress: the ability for each member to spend $1000 of our tax dollars per month per car on a luxury car allowance. The number of cars members can lease is limited only by the total pool of money funding Congressional operations.
Democratic Rep. Jared Polis of Colorado was the first to alert the public to this perk's renewal, when he posted about it on Facebook last Wednesday, the day after House Republican leaders filed the legislation. The relevant language was hidden on page 982 of the 1,603-page bill:
"None of the funds made available in this Act may be used by the Chief Administrative Officer of the House of Representatives to make any payments from any Members' Representational Allowance for the leasing of a vehicle, excluding mobile district offices, in an aggregate amount that exceeds $1,000 for the vehicle in any month."
At a time when U.S. families are finally getting their feet under them again after our economy's long climb back from the Great Recession, the audacity of Congress to vote itself a luxury perk like this is breathtaking. It passed only because it was buried in an enormous spending bill, with no public discussion or media coverage.
President Obama has said he will sign the CRomnibus, but he deserves to hear the American people's opinions about it. Act right now to tell President Obama to veto this deal, and send it back to Congress for an honest debate over its Congressional luxury car cash and many other unacceptable provisions. You can call the White House at 202-456-1111, or send him a quick e-mail using this tool powered by Represent.Us:
The silver lining in this battle was that it showed Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) is willing to take on Wall Street and the super wealthy when it comes to fighting for the rest of us. The CRomnibus fight boosted her national profile overnight, and cemented her status as the Democrat who could most likely wrest the Democratic nomination from Hillary Clinton in 2016.
Where was Hillary when the CRomnibus reared its ugly head? As Politicomade clear, "Clinton has not commented on the $1.1 trillion spending bill, which Warren claims will undo (financial) reforms made under the Dodd-Frank law."
"The reason for Clinton's silence, some of her staunchest supporters say, is that she likely supported the spending bill — even if she didn't want to go on record with that support. 'I don't think she would have considered the legislation deeply flawed,' said one ally. 'She would have some issues with it, of course, and she'd think that it's not a perfect bill but I don't think she would have taken Warren's stance.'"
Other CRomnibus provisions that advance the GOP's agenda include allowing corporations to cut up to ten million workers' pensions; slashing $300 million from housing assistance to the homeless; reducing the EPA's budget by $60 million, which will lead to massive cutbacks and layoffs; and cutting $300 million from grants to low-income students.
It's good for the wealthy, the powerful, and Washington, D.C.'s luxury car rental companies. But the CRomnibus is bad for America, and President Obama needs to step up with his veto pen and do the right thing.
(UPDATE 11:30 pm: With little fanfare, earlier tonight President Obama signed the CRomnibus, a bill which also tonight was immortalized by Jon Stewart as unappealing enough to be the "Bill Cosby of legislation." Passage of the CROmnibus is sorry evidence of how corporate interests firmly control Washington, and how badly real change is needed.
President Obama's stated reason for signing it was that it was the best deal Democrats could get before the GOP assumes control of the Senate in January, and he was wrong. The GOP's brand is now so linked with government shutdowns that they don't want to be blamed for another. If more Democrats had stood unified and rejected the poison pill-packed CRomnibus, Republicans were prepared to pass a three month spending bill with current levels of funding, not shut the government down. As reported byThe Hill:
"Republicans prepared a three-month stopgap spending measure, known as a continuing resolution, just in case anything went awry. 'That was always the fallback but we were going to do everything we could to pass the bill,' said one source."
Three months from now, Obama could have then insisted the GOP pass a longer-term budget stripped of the riders the Republicans had crammed into the CRomnibus to force their agenda through, or face a veto. The unpopular provisions it was packed with could never survive up and down votes on their own. Instead, he and Congressional Democrats got rolled again.)
(CORRECTION 12/18: An earlier version of this post misstated the taxpayer-subsidized vehicle perk as new for FY2015, not a renewal of an existing perk.)
Not content with the loosened campaign finance rules made possible by Citizens United, the GOP is attempting to pass a stealth provision that would open the big money floodgates even further. Republican leaders added the measure at the last minute to the so-called "CRomnibus" spending bill now under consideration in Congress.
"A provision tucked deep inside the $1.1-trillion spending bill filed by Republicans on Tuesday night would dramatically increase the amount of money a single rich donor could give to national party committees each year -- from $97,200 to as much as $777,600. The provision, inserted as a rider to the bill only hours before it was filed, would mark a further erosion of campaign cash restrictions."
The provision was hidden on page 1,599 of a 1,603-page bill. NBC News reported that House Speaker John Boehner, "along with Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, (both) pushed for the campaign finance measure, according to an appropriations committee aide."
In a statement, campaign finance reform leader Rep. John Sarbanes (D-Md.) put the blame where it belongs. "We're seeing a preview of the Mitch McConnell Senate," said Sarbanes.
"He's attempting to drastically expand the influence of the wealthy and well-connected without even introducing a bill, holding a hearing or allowing a direct vote. By tucking this into a 1,600-page funding bill, Mitch McConnell is essentially saying 'auction off our democracy or I'll shut down the government.'"
Act right now to tell your members of Congress to reject this deal, which would further increase the corrosive influence of big money on our democracy. You can send them a quick e-mail using this tool provided by Public Citizen:
The Hill'sconstantly updated whip count for this bill shows opposition growing among Democrats and even some Republicans. Observers agree Speaker Boehner needs a substantial chunk of House Democrats to support the spending bill in order for it to pass.
The House is expected to vote on the spending bill sometime on Thursday, with the Senate facing a midnight deadline to pass it. Republican leaders have said they would offer a substitute spending bill to fund the government through January if the CRomnibus is rejected.
Another measure in the bill would give taxpayer subsidies to Wall Street derivatives trading, as first reported by The Huffington Post. The office of Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) called the deal a "Wall Street giveaway."
On Wednesday, Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) urged Senate Democrats to oppose the spending bill, denouncing it as "a giveaway to most powerful banks in this country."
"This is a democracy, and the American people didn't elect us to stand up for Citigroup, they elected us to stand up for all the people," she said on the Senate floor.
House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi said Democrats are "deeply troubled" with the bill's measures. On Wednesday, Pelosi declared, "These provisions are destructive to middle class families and to the practice of our democracy. We must get them out of the omnibus package."
Rep. Ted Deutch (D-Fla.) and other House members -- including Reps. Alcee Hastings (D-Fla.), Donna Edwards (D-Md.), Jim McGovern (D-Mass.) and Jared Polis (D-Colo.) -- issued a joint release calling for the provision to be removed or else they would not support the bill."
An amendment offered by Rep. Deutch to remove the campaign finance provision from the CRomnibus spending bill was not adopted in a House Rules Committee hearing on Wednesday night.
Take five minutes today to e-mail and call your members of Congress. Tell them to reject this blatant attempt to allow the super wealthy to buy more elections!
UPDATES
(12:30 pm: Not a single Democrat voted to set up debate on the bill, which narrowly advanced Thursday morning by a one vote margin, 214-212. The Republican-controlled House will now vote on final passage of the bill this afternoon.)
(2:45 pm: Instead of pushing ahead with a vote, the House declared recess at 2 pm, a sign Republicans are scrambling to find enough votes to pass the spending bill. Keep contacting your House members and Senators.)
(3:30 pm: House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi issued an open letter to her fellow Democrats saying the recess makes it clear that "Republicans don’t have enough votes to pass the CRomnibus." Meanwhile, liberal Senate Democrats are lining up in opposition.)
(6:40 pm: Rep. Maxine Waters (Calif.), the top Democrat on the House Financial Services Committee, gathered about 20 members in her office Thursday afternoon and worked the phones, countering a White House push to convince wavering Democrats to back the bill. "We don't like lobbying that is being done by the president or anybody else that would allow us to support a bill that...would give a big gift to Wall Street and the bankers who caused this country to almost go into a depression," said Waters. "I'm opposed to it and we're going to fight it." House Democrats went into a closed-door caucus at 5:30 pm to weigh their options.)
(9:50 pm: The CRomnibus has passed the House. The final vote was 219-206, only one more vote than needed. Now it moves on to the Senate. If the House had rejected it, the Senate leadership was prepared to quickly pass a three-month continuing resolution funding the government. Instead, as reported by CNN, "the Senate will agree to a two day extension of current funding levels to give itself time to approve the House bill." So the fight continues into the weekend.)
(Friday, 10:50 am: Outgoing Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid wants a vote on the spending bill by this evening, although the deadline for action before a shutdown is now pushed back to midnight Saturday. Whether a vote proceeds today or not depends on "possible delays prompted by Democrats who want to air complaints over contentious provisions" in the bill. We need to keep contacting our Senators.)
(Friday, 10:30 pm: The Senate has recessed without a vote on the CRomnibus. Earlier today, it passed a voice vote extending the government's current funding through midnight Wednesday.According to CBS News, a cloture vote to end debate is expected Monday when the Senate returns to work. Today, Sen. Warren introduced an amendment to strip out the bill's Wall Street giveaways. But Sen. Harry Reid shut down that option when he "made a procedural move Friday evening that would set up a vote on final passage in the Senate no later than Monday," as reported by CNN.
"By making the procedural move, Reid prevented...amendments from being considered. Amendment votes could have been risky because if (any) passed, the spending bill would have to go back to the House to be voted on again. While the House is technically in session, most members have left Washington until the new Congress convenes in early January."
Let's stand with Sen. Warren and keep calling the Senate. The toll-free number for the Capitol switchboard is 1-888-291-9824.)
(Saturday, 6:15 pm: The Senate recessed Friday night without a vote on the CRomnibus, but came back into session today. Before the recess, a small faction of Tea Party Senators led by Texas GOP Sen. Ted Cruz attempted to force a vote on President Obama's immigration executive orders, and used procedural tactics late Friday night that delayed a previously agreed-to voice vote extending the government's current funding through midnight Wednesday. That funding extension was finally passed this afternoon.)
(Saturday, 10:40 pm: In an unexpected move, Senate leaders reached an agreement on moving the CRomnibus vote forward tonight instead of Monday. The bill passed by a 56-40 vote, and now heads to President Obama's desk, who plans to sign it.
The silver lining in this battle was that it showed Sen. Elizabeth Warren is willing to take on Wall Street and the super wealthy when it comes to fighting for the American people.)
CHAPEL HILL, N.C. -- When the smoke cleared, the most expensive contest of 2014 had become the costliest Senate race in U.S. history. More than $111 million was spent by both sides in the North Carolina battle for incumbent Democratic Senator Kay Hagan's seat.
Hagan ultimately came up short, losing by 45,608 votes out of 2.9 million cast to Republican N.C. House Speaker Thom Tillis.
So what happened? As a sitting Senator running for re-election at a time when the recovering economy still hasn't translated into income gains for most voters, Hagan faced historical headwinds, and President Obama's deflated approval ratings didn't help. But beyond those national factors, here are two critical reasons why Hagan lost her seat:
(1) Wealthy right-wing outside groups led by the Koch brothers and Karl Rove spent tens of millions on attack ads and get-out-the-vote efforts against Hagan.
Big money was put up to poison the well of Hagan's support among North Carolina voters. Hagan had a huge target on her back, described in one news story after another as one of the most vulnerable Senate Democrats. The Koch brothers' political machine began pummeling her with attack ads over her support for the Affordable Care Act before it was even signed into law in early 2010.
The pace intensified in 2013, and by February of this year, the Koch brothers' dark money group Americans For Prosperity had already expended $8.2 million on TV, radio and digital ads designed to defeat her. At that point in the cycle, it was an unparalleled sum to have been spent in one state, more than all Democratic outside groups had sunk into every 2014 Senate race in the country combined.
N.C. voters couldn't escape the attack ads, which carpet bombed the state. "If anyone hasn't seen those ads, they haven't just been under a rock," said Vanessa Johnson, a voter from Winston-Salem. "They've been down in Bedrock with the Flintstones!" According to the Wesleyan Media Project, fully two-thirds were negative, the highest percentage of negative ads aired in any Senate race this year.
Crossroads GPS (the dark money group co-founded by Karl Rove) piled on, falsely claiming Hagan cast the "deciding vote" for the Affordable Care Act, and blaming her for the discredited myth that the law cut over $700 billion from Medicare. "That means North Carolina stands to lose over $16 billion in Medicare payments," one ad warned.
Other Crossroads GPS ads were full of similar distortions, accusing Hagan of wanting to "raise (the) social security retirement age," "reduce (the) home mortgage interest deduction," "increase out-of-pocket Medicare expenses," and "give us cuts to our Medicare."
In her own campaign ads, Hagan stressed her moderate, centrist philosophy, but the Koch brothers and Karl Rove defined her as a Barack Obama puppet from early on. Outside groups reported spending $34.5 million by election day to tear down Hagan and prop up Thom Tillis.
Besides financing a deluge of attack ads, the Koch brothers realized they needed to compete with the Democratic Party's ground game. So Americans For Prosperity greatly expanded its field organizing this year in North Carolina and others states with key Senate races. They announced plans to put half of the $125 million they would spend on the midterms into a stronger ground campaign, hiring 500 field staffers nationwide. In the Tar Heel state, this built on AFP's earlier organizing efforts.
A top priority of the group for years, North Carolina was one of the first states where it set up local chapters, helping build what (AFP President) Tim Phillips says is one of its "deepest state infrastructures," with more than 130,000 activists that helped defeat a Medicaid expansion in the state Legislature last year and now is singularly focused on defeating Hagan. - Politico, 2/12/14
Hagan pushed back, making the Koch brothers' attempts to buy the election a campaign issue in her ads and campaign speeches. "The people of North Carolina need to know what their agenda is," Hagan said last February. "They want to have tax cuts for corporations and the wealthy and, at the same time, put that burden on the middle class and the poor."
But her counterattacks may not have resonated with voters. "It's utterly ineffective. Elections have to be about voters and what candidates will do for them," argued Thomas Mills, a top advisor to the state's unsuccessful Democratic Senate nominee in 2010, N.C. Secretary of State Elaine Marshall. "And this strategy is more about the candidates. It says, 'Look at me! Help me -- they are spending money against me.' There's no connection between that and voters."
(2) Democratic voters were fired up about opposing Thom Tillis and the GOP agenda in North Carolina, but not overwhelmingly behind Kay Hagan.
Overall turnout was 44 percent of North Carolina's registered voters, the exact same percentage of voters who cast ballots in 2010, the last time there was a midterm Senate battle. It was nowhere near the state's record in modern history for midterm turnout, when 62 percent of registered voters showed up for the hotly contested 1990 Gantt-Helms race.
With 1.42 million votes in all, Tillis fell slightly short of the 1.46 million ballots cast in 2010 for Richard Burr, North Carolina's senior Republican Senator. But it was enough to beat Hagan's 1.38 million total, even though that was 230,000 more votes than the 1.15 million received by Burr's Democratic challenger Elaine Marshall.
Democrats cast 49 percent of all early votes, with the GOP accounting for only 31 percent. But on election day, just 36 percent of voters were registered Democrats, versus 35 percent Republicans. The 29 percent of independent voters broke for Tillis by a margin of 49%-42%, and helped push him over the top.
Why didn't more Democrats turn out for Hagan?
According to Mark Chilton, a veteran elected official in liberal Orange County, N.C. who won his first election in 1991 as a 21-year old undergraduate, "Hagan made the strategic choice to run as a centrist and the tactical decision to run a Beltway-approved, paid TV-oriented campaign." As a result, it was harder for voters to feel part of a popular movement devoted to electing her. "The Democrats needed a different electorate to show up at the polls," said Chilton. "But the same-old strategy got us the same-old electorate, and the same-old results."
Quoted in Mother Jones, an unemployed former construction worker from Raleigh expressed the lack of enthusiasm many low-income voters may have felt about their Senator, even those who planned to vote for her. "Kay Hagan, to me she's wishy-washy, she's two-faced," said Michael Curtis. "But Tillis is an out-out crook."
Hagan is no populist. Rather, she has been a centrist, business-oriented Democrat from the time she entered public office, when she was first elected to the N.C. Senate in 1998. Although she settled in North Carolina after attending law school at Wake Forest University, Hagan grew up in Florida. She is from one of the wealthiest and most politically connected families in the southwest central part of the Sunshine state, and her uncle was former Florida Governor and U.S. Senator Lawton Chiles.
Before public life, she was a corporate lawyer and eventually a vice president at North Carolina National Bank, which was later bought by Bank of America. She ran for the Democratic nomination for U.S. Senate in 2008 "with backing from the business and political establishment," as noted by a profile at the time.
Once elected, Hagan supported enough of President Obama's first-term agenda to be accused by Tillis and his billionaire backers of voting with Obama 96 percent of the time. She voted for the 2009 economic stimulus, the Affordable Care Act, and against extending the Bush tax cuts.
But she also veered to the right on several issues. She endorsed the Keystone XL pipeline, and in the election's closing weeks made the unfortunate decision to support a West African travel ban, after getting hammered by Thom Tillis' truly shameless attempts to whip up Ebola hysteria. He was the first Senate candidate to call for a travel ban, and opened the floodgates to a wave of GOP demagoguery over Ebola.
Hagan turned her back on the DREAMers when she was one of only five Democratic Senators to vote against the DREAM Act in 2010. Latino activists swore they would remember when Hagan faced re-election, and they did, disrupting some of her rallies and erecting billboards around the state denouncing Hagan's immigration-related stands. Yet their efforts may have been a wash, helping inoculate Hagan against Tillis' charges that she was too pro-immigration. Exit polls showed Latino voters only made up 3 percent of the N.C. electorate in 2014, with inconclusive results as to which candidate they preferred.
With her corporate background and a campaign that stressed her centrism, many low income voters in North Carolina, be they white, black, or brown, may not have felt Kay Hagan was leading the fight on their issues. It would explain why voters who earned less than $30,000 a year only made up 19 percent of the 2014 electorate, down from 25 percent in 2012. This was a body blow to Democrats, because the ones who did vote backed Hagan 63%-30%. By contrast, 24 percent of all voters made more than $100,000, and went for Tillis by a 59%-39% margin.
And it left an opening for the GOP to try and convince voters that Thom Tillis would do the most to look out for their economic interests and create jobs.
44 percent of North Carolina voters named the economy as the top issue facing the country, and split 52%-44% for Tillis. 64 percent of N.C. voters who cast ballots this year favored a higher minimum wage, according to exit polls. But 29 percent of them voted for Tillis, even though he explicitly opposed it, and Hagan wanted to raise it to $10.10 an hour. The minimum wage was one of the few economic issues where she drew a sharp contrast between herself and her opponent, but an insufficient number of low-income voters noticed.
During a presidential year with substantially higher turnout, Hagan more than likely would have been re-elected. When she won her first Senate term in 2008, Hagan outperformed Barack Obama in North Carolina by over 100,000 ballots, leading the statewide ticket with 2.25 million votes.
In this year's midterm election, with opposition to her party's sitting President giving Republicans all the motivation they needed to vote, enlarging the electorate was Hagan's only hope of surviving the onslaught of right-wing money determined to take her down. Her campaign ran the largest field operation ever in an N.C. Senate race, with 40 offices, 100 staffers, and an estimated 10,000 volunteers.
Yet by the time the polls closed, not enough Democratic voters had gotten excited enough about Kay Hagan to save the day. "I don't think a field operation can create enthusiasm - it can mobilize enthusiasm," observed Democratic strategist Gary Pearce.
No one should count Hagan out of politics too soon. She could still make a comeback run in two years for Republican Sen. Burr's seat. But Mark Chilton sums up what's on the mind of many North Carolina Democrats right now.
"We can lazily chalk up this result and many others across the country to 2014 being a bad year for Democrats," said Chilton. "Or we can seriously ask ourselves whether we need a new approach - on policy, on style, and on demography."
As the midterm elections approach, the volume of attack ads is deafening. Spending on broadcast TV and national cable ads for U.S. Senate, House, and gubernatorial races has now topped $1 billion for the 2014 election cycle, according to a report released Oct. 29 by the Wesleyan Media Project.
Of the 2.2 million political ads TV viewers have seen since early last year, 600,000 were aired by outside groups, not candidates themselves. Almost 40% of these came from so-called "dark money" groups, which are not legally required to reveal their donors.
Two years ago, big money Republican donors thought dark money funneled through Karl Rove's political operation was going to send President Obama packing and install a GOP Senate. Things didn't quite turn out that way. Nearly $175 million six of the eight Republican Senate candidates they tried to elect.
Karl Rove hasn't gone away, and this cycle, his groups have already spent a combined $31 million on TV ads alone. But in light of Rove's disastrous 2012 results, this year's mega-rich GOP donors initially flocked to the multi-billionaire Koch brothers, who promised a different approach. And the Koch network has stuck to this new strategy, which involves using non-ideological appeals to convince independent voters to support Republican candidates, even if these voters don't agree with the GOP candidates' right-wing policy agendas.
It is on display in the Koch-produced ads that have been pouring from TV screens in some of the nation's most closely contested Senate races.
The "closing argument" ads shown above have been airing in six states (Alaska, Arkansas, North Carolina, Colorado, Iowa and New Hampshire) since October 22. They will run through election day in a $6.5 million ad buy from Freedom Partners Action Fund (FPAF), the super PAC launched last June by the Koch brothers.
Instead of going on the attack, the ads use a gentle, testimonial style. They feature voters against a backdrop of classic Americana scenes, explaining how disappointed they are that the Democratic incumbent has strayed from local values.
Besides Charles and David Koch, who kicked in $2 million each, top donors to the FPAF super PAC include New York hedge fund mogul and rising GOP kingmaker Robert Mercer ($2.5 million), who was sued last year for allegedly stiffing his household help; Texas oil billionaire Paul Foster ($1 million), whose association with the Koch network has previously caused controversy because of his position as chairman of the University of Texas System Board of Regents; and Arkansas poultry magnate Ronald Cameron, who gave $1 million.
FPAF is on track to spend nearly $25 million to influence the 2014 elections, part of $290 million that Koch-backed groups claim they will spend altogether. It is more than either national party committee spent during the 2010 election cycle.
The Koch brothers' latest twice-annual retreat for big donors to their shadowy political network was held in California last June. Rising GOP stars came to audition and preen for a crowd of super wealthy right-wingers, knowing the cash these multi-millionaires and billionaires wield could be instrumental to turbo-charging their campaign funds. Senate Minority Leader and fierce campaign finance reform opponent Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) addressed the crowd. Three Republican U.S. Senate candidates also spoke: Iowa state senator Joni Ernst, and Congressmen Tom Cotton of Arkansas and Cory Gardner of Colorado. In August, secret tapes were released of what was said behind closed doors at this gathering, as the conservative plutocrats plotted how they could most effectively buy elections and advance their far right-wing agenda.
Of particular note were the remarks by top Koch brothers strategist Richard Fink, recently dubbed "Charles Koch's Brain" by Politico when he made #16 on their list of the 50 most influential thinkers, doers, and dreamers of America in 2014. He explained that by tailoring messages to the "non-ideological middle third of voters," they could sway them to support the fatcats' preferred candidates a lot easier than by using past methods.
"Yeah, we want to decrease regulations. Why? It's because we can make more profit, okay? Yeah, cut government spending so we don't have to pay so much taxes. When we focus on decreasing government spending, over-criminalization, decreasing taxes, it doesn't do it, okay? We've been reaching (this) third by telling them what's important - what we think is important should be important to them. And they're not responding and don't like it, okay? Well, we get business - what do we do? We want to find out what the customer wants, right, not what we want them to buy."
Audio starts at 4:18 of Richard Fink's remarks
In the run-up to Nov. 4, North Carolina has seen 2014's most intense battle of the airwaves in a Senate race, as detailed by the Wesleyan Media Project's report. There were over 20,000 ads aired in the two weeks from October 10-23, with 36.3% of the ads coming from pro-GOP outside groups, and 30.2% from pro-Democratic outside groups. Freedom Partners Action Fund ads during this period have attacked incumbent Democratic Senator Kay Hagan over non-ideological issues such as high wait times at VA hospitals and the Affordable Care Act's supposed negative effects on the quality of N.C. education.
Any voter who might be swayed by these ads would surely be interested in knowing the facts they left out. Namely, that Hagan's opponent Thom Tillis has consistently called for massive federal spending cuts and embraced Paul Ryan's budget plan, which would negatively affect the VA system. Or that as Speaker of the Republican-led N.C. House, he passed a budget last year that shortchanged education spending by $481 million, according toThe New York Times.
Iowa has experienced the second most intense Senate TV ad war, with over 17,000 ads aired during the same two week period in October. Pro-Republican ads have accounted for 9,581 of them, vs. 7,835 pro-Democratic ads, with 51.2% coming from pro-Joni Ernst outside groups and 34% from groups supporting her Democratic opponent, four-term U.S. Rep. Bruce Braley.
FPAF ads have been running non-stop accusing Braley of "disrepecting farmers" when he warned donors that a Republican-led Senate would see "a farmer from Iowa who never went to law school, never practiced law" become the next chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee. He was referring to Iowa's Republican Senator, Chuck Grassley. Another ad says Braley is setting "the wrong kind of examples for children" because he missed votes in Congress. An online ad labels him "not very Iowa" because he complained to his neighborhood association about a neighbor whose chickens were roaming freely into his yard, fowl which were also the subject of other residents' complaints. It appears to be part of a six-figure digital ad buy from the Koch brothers' dark money group Americans for Prosperity.
These ads don't say a peep about Ernst's extreme right-wing views. Or the undisputed facts that Ernst opposed the five-year farm bill that passed Congress earlier this year, and has stated she is philosophically opposed to "taxpayer subsidies" like the Renewable Fuel Standard - two things that directly benefit Iowa farmers. Or that as a state Senator, according toPolitico, "Ernst missed nearly 40 percent of the votes in the Iowa state Senate during 2014," and "has also attended only a fraction of the meetings of the Iowa boards and commissions she has been appointed to since taking office in 2010."
And the chicken controversy is full of it, described by Slate as "how a guy mishandled the problem of chickens shitting on his lawn." At their Sept. 28 debate in Des Moines, Joni Ernst was ready to make hay over the issue. "Congressman, you threatened to sue a neighbor over chickens that came onto your property," Ernst said. "That's just not true," Braley replied. "I never threatened to sue anyone." Politifact rated Ernst's claim False, concluding "there is no material evidence that Braley threatened a lawsuit against the neighbor or was even considering one. Even the neighbor says that."
But as the Koch brothers and their ultra-wealthy cronies think they've figured out, a little chicken manure goes a long way when it comes to misleading voters into supporting the GOP.
As a female Republican candidate with extreme, far right-wing views and a love for guns, Iowa's U.S. Senate hopeful Joni Ernst is a lot like Sarah Palin or Michele Bachmann. In fact, Ernst's top campaign strategist, David Polyansky, was Bachmann's deputy campaign manager during her 2012 presidential campaign.
Joni Ernst is different because she's more dangerous. Unlike those other two faded Tea Party stars, Ernst comes across as slightly less unhinged, and thus more electable. And she has worked tirelessly since her June primary victory to distance herself from the hard right positions she had previously taken on most issues.
But although she's done a good job of hiding them, Ernst's ideas are as far outside the mainstream as any of the nonsense that spews from Palin or Bachmann's Twitter accounts. An ad released over the summer by the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee featured Ernst calling Palin the "type of people that we need in our federal government," and that she was "just absolutely ecstatic to have her endorsement" after Palin backed her in the Republican primary.
Ernst, a first-term Iowa state Senator, faces four-term Democratic U.S. Rep. Bruce Braley, founder of the House Populist Caucus, in a toss-up battle for retiring Senator Tom Harkin's seat. If she wins, the GOP will probably latch onto Ernst as its latest national figure. As the rise of Palin and Bachmann showed, the GOP desperately needs more women in its ranks to counter its image as the party of rich, old white men. Of the twenty current female U.S. Senators, sixteen are Democrats and only four are Republicans, out of 45 GOP Senators in total.
Here are the top twelve reasons Joni Ernst has had to battle the glaringly obvious perception that she's "too extreme for Iowa":
(1) Wants to abolish the Environmental Protection Agency, IRS, and the U.S. Department of Education. In an April debate, Ernst called for shutting down all three federal government agencies.
(2) Opposes abortion with no exceptions for rape or incest, and believes doctors who perform abortions should face criminal punishment. In 2013, Ernst co-sponsored a fetal personhood amendment to the Iowa State Constitution that would have outlawed abortion, and contained no provisions allowing for rape or incest exceptions. In a May debate, Ernst said, "the [abortion] provider should be punished, if there were a personhood amendment."
(3) Believes "the UN is behind" a conspiracy that involves, in Ernst's words from a November, 2013 campaign event, "moving people off of their agricultural land and consolidating them into city sectors and then telling them, 'You don't have property rights anymore'." This right-wing theory has been widely debunked as a myth.
(4) Not only opposes raising the hourly minimum wage in Iowa from $7.25 to $10.10, as her opponent Bruce Braley has called for, but wants to eliminate the federal minimum wage altogether. At a candidates' forum in March, Ernst said she thinks "$7.25 is appropriate for Iowa."
(5)Supports a flat tax on income, which would give enormous tax cuts to the super wealthy and shift the country's tax burden further onto middle class and low-income families.
(6) Wants to send U.S. ground troops back to Iraq. In the campaign's third and final debate earlier this month, Ernst said she agreed with those who had "advised that we keep troops on the ground." "There is overwhelming support coming from the American people," she claimed.
(7) Thinks President Obama "has become a dictator" who "is not following our Constitution," and that "he should face...repercussions, whether that's removal from office, whether that's impeachment." She expressed these views at a candidates' forum last January.
(8) Has repeatedly called for an Ebola travel ban, prohibiting all flights into the U.S. from West Africa, which experts and sane observers agree wouldn't work and would actually make the global outbreak worse, plus lead to more U.S. cases of the deadly virus.
(9)Believes George W. Bush's discredited fairytale that there were WMD's in Iraq when the United States invaded in 2003. "I do have reason to believe there were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq," Ernst told the Des Moines Register's editorial board in May.
(10) Would support legislation to arrest government employees trying to administer the Affordable Care Act.
In response to a 2012 questionnaire from a libertarian-leaning group, Ernst replied "yes" to the question "Will you support legislation to nullify ObamaCare and authorize state and local law enforcement to arrest federal officials attempting to implement the unconstitutional health care scheme known as ObamaCare?" - Salon, 10/3/14
(11) Wants to privatize federal student loans. At an Iowa State College Republican Forum in April, Ernst said, "our students...we need to ensure that they're able to find student loans at reasonable rates within private banking entities. So let's get the federal government out of the business of student loans." Asked about her views on college affordability in August, Ernst replied, "Perhaps all of our students don't need four-year degrees."
(12) Can't see a need to change current campaign finance laws, because she believes in "political free speech," as she stated at her third and final debate with Bruce Braley, who is a strong supporter of campaign finance reform. Interviewed by Rachel Maddow in 2012 about how Citizens United had unleashed a whirlwind of big money into politics, Braley warned that "very powerful, monied interests are trying to buy the government they want. And have no restrictions, literally, on what they can spend."
In the most recent fundraising quarter, Ernst raised more than any other U.S. candidate for office in a single quarter during this election cycle. From July to September, her campaign took in a whopping $6 million, outpacing Braley's $2.8 million haul by more than 2-1. By comparison, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell only raised $3.2 million during the same period, despite being the top Senate Republican and facing a competitive, well-funded challenge from Kentucky Secretary of State Alison Lundergan Grimes.
Clearly, a lot of wealthy GOP donors very badly want Joni Ernst to be the next U.S. Senator from Iowa. And they are salivating at the possibility of her extreme right-wing views influencing the laws of our land at least through the year 2021. It's a thought that ought to give every sensible American cause for concern.
Recently, the right wing Civitas Institute directed one of their interns to write up a misinformed attack on Chapel Hill's pioneering voter-owned elections (VOE) program ("Public Financing Folly," Chapel Hill News, Feb. 28). Why are far-right conservatives so threatened by campaign finance reform? Maybe because it means their well-financed propaganda will be less likely to buy elections for favored candidates, even in low-turnout local elections.
Like what's happened in Wake County, where a conservative school board majority was elected last fall when only 31,000 out of 572,000 registered voters showed up at the polls. The Civitas Insitute's board chair, far-right businessman Bob Luddy, was the single largest individual contributor to the campaigns of the four newly elected, Republican-backed school board members.
On Nov. 3, Chapel Hill voters showed their support for voter-owned elections. Both candidates who agreed to limit their campaign spending and participated in the VOE program finished first in their races for Mayor (Mark Kleinschmidt) and Town Council (Penny Rich). Three out of four candidates who vocally opposed the program, refused to limit spending, and accepted unlimited campaign donations were defeated by voters.
Rich and Kleinschmidt on election night
One VOE opponent was Town Council candidate Matt Pohlman, who said, "I'm not sure I can get behind voter-owned elections." Another was his fellow Council challenger Jon DeHart, who claimed it was "taxation without representation." Pohlman and DeHart lost the election. Besides voting for candidates who supported VOE, polls and surveys have shown most citizens of Chapel Hill favor campaign finance reform.
During the 2009 elections, Chapel Hill became the first-ever community east of the Mississippi to conduct a voter-owned election. The program leveled the electoral playing field and helped reduce the influence of big money. Since then, Raleigh, Wilmington, and Greenville have all passed resolutions asking the N.C. General Assembly for approval to implement VOE programs.
The mayoral candidate who most vocally opposed public financing was first term Council member Matt Czajkowski. And no wonder. Czajkowski raised more than $36,500 from wealthy backers like UNC Health Care CEO Bill Roper, and spent $35,000 of it.
Commenting shortly after the election, Town Council top vote-getter Penny Rich said, "This is what voter-owned elections are supposed to curb. $30,000 to become mayor? It's just an outrageous amount of money."
In the six days leading up to the Nov. 3 vote, Czajkowski spent nearly ten thousand dollars ($9,703), more than six times the $1,523 Kleinschmidt spent during that same period. Czajkowski desperately tried to buy the election, just as he first bought his Town Council seat in 2007 by spending the then-record sum of $20,000.
Kleinschmidt and Czajkowski
That year, ninety percent of his cash, or $17,750, was money he loaned his own campaign. Czajkowski's spending was more than the other three victorious Council candidates spent combined. Foreshadowing his '09 tactics, in a last-minute flurry he blew through $15,000 in the ten days before the 2007 election.
At the time, local activists had been fighting for nearly a decade to enact campaign finance reform in Chapel Hill. The cash flood by Czajkowski in 2007 was such a blatant display of the power of money to sway local elections that it helped convince the Town Council to commit to the voter-owned elections pilot. It was approved 8-1, with only Czajkowski opposed.
Now we know the VOE program works, and most Chapel Hill voters are behind it. And its success here is spreading. Propaganda machines like the Civitas Institute can make all the noise they want, but savvy voters will continue to support candidates who recognize the value of voter-owned elections.
It must be a giddy time to be a far right-wing Republican. The Republican Party controls both houses of Congress. George W. Bush has turned out to be the most stubbornly conservative, right-wing President ever. Now, along comes the icing on the cake, and they're licking their chops like hungry wolves. Let's face it, extreme-right Republicans aren't crazy about groups devoted to causes like environmental protection, civil rights, and a woman's right to choose. Suddenly they think they've finally found a way to put America's pesky do-gooder non-profit and public interest organizations out of business. Or at least out of the business of speaking out on issues in any meaningful way.
In an ironic twist, the weapon the Republicans hope to use to silence the non-profit lambs ends up being campaign finance reform laws. Specifically, the McCain-Feingold campaign finance law, passed mostly by Democrats in 2002 against fierce Republican opposition. Republican Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky actually filed suit to stop the law from taking effect, until the Supreme Court ruled against him late last year.
Like most attempts at campaign finance reform, McCain-Feingold was designed to get big money out of politics. Its main effect was a ban on so-called "soft money" donations to the national parties. Previously, the Republicans and Democrats could solicit donations of unlimited amounts from corporations, unions, interest groups, and wealthy donors, and spend soft money on anything defined as "party-building" activities, from issue-oriented TV ads to get-out-the-vote drives. During the 2000 election cycle, Republicans raised $250 million in soft money, and the Democrats, $245 million. Now, the parties must raise "hard money," in contributions from individuals that are regulated and limited in size.
But McCain-Feingold also had another, largely unintended consequence. It included a directive Republicans are now trying hard to exploit. The law contains language that says any group trying to "influence" federal elections must register as a political committee. Can you see them drooling yet? Following the Supreme Court decision upholding McCain-Feingold, in February the Federal Election Commission (FEC) proposed additional rules for enforcing its provisions. The rules they are now considering, and accepting public comments on through April 9th mailto:politicalcommitteestatus@fec.gov, are strongly supported by the Republican National Committee. The FEC will hold public hearings on the rules April 14-15, and a final decision could come by mid-May, with the rules to take effect as early as July, 2004.
News coverage of these proposed changes has primarily focused on the threat they pose to the voter mobilization activities of 527 groups like the MoveOn.org Voter Fund or Americans Coming Together. These groups get their name from section 527 of the tax code, which covers groups that engage in politics, while not expressly advocating the election or defeat of individual candidates. Less noticed have been the potential these rules have to affect the ability of a broad range of other non-profit groups to communicate with the public. If adopted, they would have a chilling effect on the activities of many established non-profit and public interest groups.
One rule would expand the definition of a "political committee" to include many non-profits who take positions on public policy issues yet do not consider electoral politics their primary mission. A group would be forced to become a "political committee" and allowed to raise only hard money if it spends $50,000 or more in the current year or any one of the past four years on any public communication that "promotes, supports, attacks or opposes" any federal candidate, or on nonpartisan voter registration or get out the vote programs.
What kind of campaign finance reform declares nonpartisan voter registration a partisan political activity that can no longer be funded by ordinary charitable donations? In an era when half of all eligible U.S. voters don't participate in elections, why is the FEC considering making it harder for non-profit groups to conduct nonpartisan voter registration and voter turnout programs?
It gets worse, and again, the devil's in the definitions. Another proposed rule would expand the definition of a federally regulated "expenditure" to include communications that “promote, support, attack, or oppose” not only federal candidates, but their policy positions. So according to the FEC, commenting on a candidate's position statements won't be covered by something called the First Amendment. This is a radical departure from established campaign regulations that have worked well for years. FEC guidelines already restrict non-profits from engaging in "political speech." To suddenly expand this definition to include all speech about all candidates for federal office would be ludicrous.
There's also a retroactive clause thrown in for good measure. If the proposed rules pass, the FEC will "look back" at a non-profit group's activities over the past four years, to determine whether the group should be re-classified as a political committee. Never mind that McCain-Feingold only passed in 2002, and the FEC only proposed these rules this year. Even if a group played by the rules in the past, they'll be penalized tomorrow. If non-profit groups are re-classified as political committees, the FEC will require them to raise hard money to repay old expenses now covered by the new rules. Their activities will be forcibly halted until they've paid in full for supposed soft money sins of the past.
Theoretically, under these proposed rules, groups like the League of Women Voters would be re-classified as political committees if they spent more than $50,000 in 2004 sending letters urging community members to vote because it was their "civic duty." Advocacy groups such as NARAL would be prevented from contacting activists and urging them to call their members of Congress to oppose a bill banning all abortions. Rock The Vote, which works to boost nonpartisan youth voter turnout, would be forced to stop accepting money from traditional charitable sources, including corporations and foundations. A policy oriented group like the Concord Coalition that advocates a balanced budget would be banned from using records of corporate contributions to elected officials to let the public know how candidates stand on budget issues.
It's not just the liberal non-profit lambs who are endangered. In a February letter to the FEC, conservative interest groups including the National Right To Life Committee and the Club For Growth also spoke out against the FEC's proposed rules, claiming that "the issue is democracy, not political or ideological advantage," and "as a matter of principle, all voices should be heard and not reduced to silence by overly burdensome restrictions." All kinds of non-profits are threatened by these new rules, including educational groups, charities, churches, and trade associations.
But on this question, the far right-wing in control of the national Republican party is content to sacrifice its own ideological supporters. They figure there's more liberal non-profits than conservative ones doing troublesome things like nonpartisan voter registration and providing the public with useful information about public policy issues.
It's yet another example of how the old, established rules of civility in political combat no longer apply if you're a right-wing Republican in 2004 desperately seeking to hold onto political power. Republican House Majority Leader Tom DeLay masterminded the passage of a blatantly partisan redistricting plan in Texas solely designed to elect more Republicans to Congress and help make him Speaker of the House. George W. Bush has used recess appointments to elevate unqualified, right-wing ideologues to the Federal judiciary who couldn't get confirmed by the U.S. Senate. Now the far right hopes to bully the FEC into silencing non-profit groups and calling it campaign finance reform. Concerned Americans of all political persuasions should call it an outrage.
