This Is What Happens When DC Insiders Recruit Wretched Conservatives To Run As Democrats

Even a low-level Mafia thug like "Mikey Suits" Grimm was able to beat Blue Dog Mike McMahon, who consistently voted against Democratic Party values

Do you remember when Chris Van Hollen's DCCC recruited conservative Democrat Mike McMahon to run for the Staten Island congressional seat after incumbent Republican Vito Fossella was discovered to have two families, one in NY and one in Virginia? McMahon beat Republican Robert Staniere 61-33%, promptly joined the Blue Dogs, voted with the GOP almost all the time-- including against the Affordable Care Act-- and made sure no Democratic base voters would be interested in voting for him again. Two years later, the GOP ran a low-level Mafia crook, Michael "Mikey Suits" Grimm, who was able to beat McMahon while Democratic voters sat on their hands. Thanks, Chris Van Hollen (and Chuck Schumer, who had also pushed McMahon as a nice, safe DINO).

This is what happens when the Democratic Party recruits conservatives who don't share the values and principles of Democratic voters. It happens all the time when party bosses like Schumer, Van Hollen, Rahm Emanuel and Steve Israel think they know better than the voters.

Today McMahon is competing-- as a Democrat-- against Republican Joan Illuzzi for the Conservative Party endorsement in the Staten Island district attorney race. He may actually win it too; after all; he is a conservative and backs the conservative agenda.

Now let's head down South to Louisiana, the ancestral home of McMahon's disgusting Blue Dogs. Mary Landrieu was a right-wing Democratic senator who finally pissed off enough Democratic voters that she lost her seat in 2014 to actual Republican Bill Cassidy. She often voted with the Republicans on crucial matters-- more than almost any other Senate Democrat, especially when it came to anything to do with her campaign donors at Big Oil (like the Keystone XL Pipeline). She voted to confirm corporate whore John Roberts to the Supreme Court, voted for wire-tapping US citizens without court orders and opposed minimum wage increases and opposed the public option in the Affordable Care Act, which she explained by saying, "When people hear 'public option' they hear 'free health care'. Everybody wants free health care. Everybody wants health care they don't have to pay for." In 2012 National Journal named her the 47th most conservative member of the Senate.

After the voters of Louisiana tossed her out, she took a job as a lobbyist with one of DC's slimiest lobbying firms, Van Ness Feldman, and more recently she worked with Joe Lieberman to influence Democratic senators to vote against the Iran nuclear deal. She's on the board of Citizens for a Nuclear Free Iran, a front group for AIPAC and a bunch of warmongers who want to attack Iran. Landrieu and her pals-- slimy right-wing Dems like Lieberman, Evan Bayh and Shelley Berkley-- are part of the operation spending $20 million in deceitful TV ads about the Iran deal, like this one:



Meanwhile, Landrieu announced that she has $146,261 left in her campaign war chest and will hand it out to help some of her former colleagues running for reelection. "I can use that money," she said, "to help other Democratic candidates that helped Louisiana and that continue to be in a position to help Louisiana." Really? She tried persuading Ron Wyden (D-OR) to vote against the Iran deal, and failed-- he announced yesterday he's voting for it. But among the "Democratic candidates" she says she'll give money to are Republican incumbents Rob Portman (OH) and Susan Collins (ME).

This is exactly what happens when conservative careerist insiders in DC call the shots for the Democratic Party. They recruit right-wing candidates like Landrieu, McMahon, Blanche Lincoln, Heath Shuler, etc., and sell Democratic voters a bill of goods. When the voters figure it out-- once the reprobates start voting-- they stay home on Election Day and the Republicans win the seat. Landrieu, McMahon, Lincoln and Shuler were all replaced by actual Republicans-- instead of by Republicans calling themselves Democrats.

Today the DSCC-- under the thumb of Schumer and his puppet Tester-- is doing the exact same thing in Florida, where they are smearing the good name of progressive icon Alan Grayson to get their Wall Street shill, "ex"-Republican Patrick Murphy, into the seat, and the DCCC is doing the same thing by recruiting countless conservatives and even "ex"-Republicans like the execrable Monica Vernon (IA-01) and Mike Derrick (NY-21), while they undermine and sabotage solid progressives everywhere-- like these.

It's time to say NO to Chuck Schumer, Debbie Wasserman Schultz and Steve Israel at the ballot box. Don't vote for the Republicans and right-wing Democrats they are recruiting. Lesser-of-two-evils is not a good enough reason to throw the Democratic Party to the dogs.

UPDATE: Progressive Dem Wins In Oklahoma

This week, Steve Israel's, Rahm Emanuel's and Chuck Schumer's anti-progressive theory of candidate recruitment was proven wrong again. In a deep red Oklahoma legislative district once held by now-Governor Mary Fallin, right-wing Republican Chip Carter was defeated by progressive Democrat Cyndi Munson 53.7-46.3%. It's a district that hasn't been in Democratic hands in living memory. And Munson is no Republican-lite Blue Dog-type preferred as "electable" by the DCCC, DSCC and DNC. Cyndi campaigned on a platform that included LGBT equality, women's Choice and repealing a tax cut for the rich that will take effect on January 1. Carter had been endorsed by Fallin and Senators Inhofe and Lankford and had massively outspent Munson. Beltway Democratic insiders need to rethink their recruitment strategies at the DCCC and DSCC immediately and stop pushing right-wing fake Democrats like Patrick Murphy (FL) and Monica Vernon (IA).

How Will Wasserman Schultz's Post Mortem Committee Explain Mary Landrieu, Al Muratsuchi And Ileana Ros-Lehtinen?

It isn't difficult to do a post mortem on Mary Landrieu's idiotically-doomed Senate race. Saturday's runoff saw the 3-term Louisiana Senator struggle to reach beyond 40%. In 2008 she beat Republican John Kennedy 988,298 (52%) to 867,177 (46%), the same percentage she got in her 2002 reelection. Saturday's results were Cassidy 712,330 (55.94%), Landieu 561,099 (44.06%). She won 15 of the state's 64 parishes.

She never had a chance. Although she raised $18,570,680 to Bill Cassidy's $13,165,150 (as of Nov. 16), outside spending was heavily weighted against her, with conservative groups like Rove's American Crossroads, the Koch's Americans for Prosperity, the Koch's Freedom Partners Action Fund, the NRSC, the NRA, the Patriot Majority each kicking in millions to pulverize her, while liberal groups largely looked away in disgust at the Senate's second most right-wing Democrat (after Joe Manchin). Landrieu's Republican-lite shtik doesn't work anymore and her ilk of conservative careerist Bourbon-Democrats are almost entirely extinct. Like Blanche Lincoln she'll be next heard from as a slimy lobbyist, probably for Big Oil and Gas. In recent weeks she tried working with the Republicans to pass Keystone XL Pipeline and when that didn't work, she went on radio to brag that she didn't vote for Obama, which probably contributed to the depth of the loss she suffered Saturday, keeping base Democratic voters home.

As we've pointed out, Blue Dogs and New Dems-- the Republican wing of the Democratic Party-- were the big losers in this past cycle. With just one or two exceptions (and in red-leaning districts) progressives kept their seats and won open seats. Ted Lieu (CA-33) is a good example. Henry Waxman with a well-financed conservative opponent in 2012 had a close call (54-46%). But Lieu never deviated an inch from his cutting edge progressive values-- his first ad was about his legislation reigning in unconstitutional domestic spying-- and, although Adelson and his allies dumped close to a million dollars in media smears against him, Ted beat the Adelson candidate 59.2% to 40.8% with the biggest turn-out of any of L.A.'s congressional districts.

What makes this even more interesting is that, Al Muratsuchi, the conservative Democratic Assembly incumbent in AD66, a part of the congressional district that Ted did really well in (his South Bay home turf), campaigned as a Republican-lite candidate and lost to a Republican, breaking the Democrats' 2/3s supermajority in the Assembly. Democrats have a 40.4- 32.6% registration advantage in the Assembly district, which stretches from Manhattan Beach to the Palos Verdes Peninsula and east to Carson and Gardena, and Jerry Brown was in the district campaigning for Muratsuchi. Obama won the district against Romney 54.2- 43.2%. Muratsuchi only managed 49.7%.

One more race-- a non-race, this one in FL-27, a Hispanic-majority Miami-Dade district that includes West Miami, Little Havana, Westchester, Miami Springs, Coral Gables, Key Biscayne, Naranja, Homestead and part of Hialeah. Democrats have caught up with Republicans in voter registration and Obama won this district in 2012, 130,020 (53%) to 114,096 (47%). That year, DNC Chair and Florida Party boss Debbie Wasserman Schultz, who has been helping protect her GOP crony, incumbent Ileana Ros-Lehtinen for years-- and was once fired as DCCC Red-to-Blue chair for doing so publicly-- put in a place-holder, Manny Yevancey, to prevent a real Democrat from running. This year, they just made sure no one ran, period. I asked one of the Miami-Dade Democratic Party decision-makers why there was no candidate in one of the bluest districts held my a Republican in the whole state. He told me, in confidence, that Wasserman Schultz routinely threatens to end anyone's career who challenges her Republican partner in corruption.

And that brings us to the Democratic Party post mortem, which will be conducted by an ad hoc committee set up by Debbie Wasserman Schultz. I've been told that the main purpose is to make sure that no blame whatsoever is placed on... Debbie Wasserman Schultz or Steve Israel. She "appointed a 10-person “Democratic Victory Task Force” that will investigate and address systemic issues that led to the Republican triumph in federal and state-level elections this year. None of the participants are from outside a list of well-connected Insiders-- Google Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt (a big GOP donor), Kentucky Gov. Steve Beshear, DNC Vice Chair Donna Brazile, Colorado Democratic Party Chairman Rick Palacio, AFSCME president Lee Saunders and two Obamabots, Teddy Goff and Maneesh Goyal. I would bet they won't be discussing tough, thoughtful, sensible articles like this or this as part of their deliberations. One disgusted Democratic Congressmember told me that among her many other non-talents Wasserman Schultz can't even put a competent committee together. Well, if she was aiming for a meaningless whitewash... she was pretty competent in her selections.



Correction

Patriot Majority spent $3,012,977 bolstering Landrieu, not attacking her. What a waste of $3 million!

Keystone XL Pipeline Defeated By One Vote-- For Now

Chris Mooney has been doing some terrific reporting for the Washington Post, primarily on Science. Last week's look at the correlateions between a primitive or fundamental interpretation of Bronze Age religious traditions and a fear or misunderstanding of science is enlightening. He wanted to examine whether religious belief rather than political ideology, better explains why some people resist the science on issues like climate change, evolution, and stem cell research. The results varied but he concludes that "when people deny science, they do it because they think it conflicts with their personal identity. But many elements go into each of our identities, with both politics and religion constituting vital components for many people."

Predictably, Mooney wrote about the Keystone Pipeline fight just as the Senate began their debate yesterday. A party of ideological science deniers, House Republicans (with 31 Democrats from the Republican wing of the Democratic Party) passed the bill November 14. In an ill-conceived fool's errand to try to save Mary Landrieu's doomed political career (or ease her way into a cush job on K Street), Harry Reid allowed a vote in the Senate yesterday. Although there was a last minute rumor that Dick Durbin would be the 60th vote, McConnell and Landrieu only managed to come up with 59-- one short. The bill is dead... until the Republicans take over in January. Then it will pass an the Republicans and their Big Oil allies won't have the votes to overturn a presidential veto. 14 conservative Democrats crossed the aisle to help the Republicans destroy the planet. No profiles in courage in this lot:

• Michael Bennet (D-CO)

• Tom Carper (D-DE)
• Mary Landrieu (D-LA)
• Heidi Heitkamp (D-ND)
• Joe Manchin (D-WV)
• Mark Warner (D-VA)
• John Walsh (D-MT)
• Jon Tester (D-MT)
• Bob Casey (D-PA)
• Claire McCaskill (D-MO)
• Kay Hagan (D-NC)
• Joe Donnelly (D-IN)
• Mark Pryor (D-AR)
• Mark Begich (D-AK)

Filled with misinformation from from corporate media and the lack of any effective pushback from the Democrats, most Americans (65%)-- including even most Democrats-- support the Keystone XL Pipeline. Incongruously, the same survey finds that "when it comes to another issue making headlines-- a proposal to tighten greenhouse gas emissions from power plants-- the public favors stricter limits, by exactly the same margin as the Keystone pipeline (65% to 30%).

The bill, Mooney explains, "goes around a process typically handled by the executive branch. Indeed, the bill passed by the House does not merely take the process of deciding on the pipeline's approval out of the hands of the State Department. It also states that the State Department’s final supplemental environmental impact statement on Keystone “shall be considered to fully satisfy” the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) and “any other provision of law that requires Federal agency consultation or review.”

"What this bill will do, if it ends up being enacted," says Zoldan, "is take the fact-finding process…away from an executive agency, and say that it’s automatically deemed to be in compliance with the law." This may be one reason why a spokesman for Democratic Sen. Chris Coons of Delaware recently said the senator would opposes the bill because "it’s not Congress’s job to issue construction permits."

Zoldan thinks that if the bill were indeed to become law (somehow surviving President Obama's presumed veto), environmentalists might have a good case for a lawsuit over it. More generally, he explains, Congress ought to pass laws that have a general nature, and then let the executive and the judiciary apply those laws to specific situations, individuals, or companies.

Another way of putting it? Congress really ought to have more respect for the categorical imperative: "Act only according to that maxim by which you can at the same time will that it should become a universal law." Or, when making laws, make sure they apply to everyone-- or every company.

Vermont's two senators, Patrick Leahy (D) and Bernie Sanders, opposed the bill for more fundamental reasons. Leahy:

This pipeline is one of the most striking examples of how our unquenchable thirst for oil is destroying our environment. This destruction will continue until we move forward with the implementation of a comprehensive, national energy plan. The debate over the Keystone pipeline will not move us toward a sustainable energy future. Instead this pipeline ties us to an energy policy of the past, while simultaneously accelerating our impact on the climate. These tar sands require an energy-intensive process, rife with pollutions and harmful emissions, to get them out of the ground, extract them, and refine them.

We should not rubberstamp a project like this that poses such serious risks to the Nation’s and the world’s environment, and to our communities’ safety. I am astounded by the fact that in its first year of operation, the existing Keystone Pipeline-- which was billed as the safest pipeline in history when it was built in 2010-- has spilled 12 times in its first year of operation. That is more than any other pipeline in U.S. history.

These spills are even more worrisome because the tar sands oil is so hard to clean up after a spill. Just ask the communities along the Kalamazoo River in Michigan, where it has cost more than $1 billion-- so far-- to clean up a tar sands spill in 2010. Now, more than four years later, it is still a mess, and landowners continue to wait for help to restore property damaged by the spill and to rebuild the ravaged pipeline.

We do not need more empty assurances from the oil industry. Before the Valdez spill in Alaska, Exxon executives told us their oil tankers were safe.  We heard similar promises from BP, which insisted that it could handle an oil spill in a deep-water drilling operation. The images from both of those spills are still fresh in our memories.

Proponents argue that this pipeline will help our energy security here in the United States. But this tar sands oil is not headed to Americans’ gas stations to help lower the price of gas here at home. No, TransCanada is bypassing the refineries in the Midwest and heading straight for the coast so this oil can be used in export markets, pumped on ships headed for China. That may be good news for the Chinese, but it is the American people who are stuck with the safety risks, health challenges, future environmental disasters and the rapid acceleration of our contribution to climate change.

These facts are clear: The Keystone pipeline significantly worsens the problem of carbon pollution, and it is not in our national interest.

House Passes Keystone XL-- With Help From 31 Democrats

bye-bye Mary-- glad to see you go; too bad it wasn't a primary

Harry Reid has prevented a vote on the Keystone Pipeline boondoggle but the House just passed it again and this time-- at the urging of Mary Landrieu and a few other red state Democrats-- he's agreed to allow a vote. This isn't going to save Landrieu's doomed reelection; it's just going to further tarnish the Democratic brand. Although Obama has vowed to veto the bill, it's not inconceivable that the Republicans and corrupt conservative Republican wing of the Democratic Party can muster enough votes to override a veto.

Boehner let Bill Cassidy, Landrieu's opponent, take credit as the author-- the bill was actually written by lobbyists-- and it passed 252-161. Evert single Republican backed it, as did 31 craven mostly-conservative Democrats, several of whom were defeated last Tuesday precisely because of this kind of behavior. These were the Democratic sellouts-- the bolded ones were either defeated last week or have been force to resign instead of undergoing the humiliation of defeat:

• John Barrow (Blue Dog-GA)- $352,950
• Sanford Bishop (Blue Dog-GA)- $58,430
• Robert Brady (PA)- $52,775
• Jim Clyburn (SC)- $71,950
• Jim Cooper (Blue Dog-PA)- $89,875
• Henry Cuellar (Blue Dog-TX)- $400,775
• Mike Doyle (PA)- $168,012
• Al Green (TX)- $40,200
• Gene Green (TX)- $613,263
• Ruben Hinojosa (TX)- $150,334
• Sheila Jackson Lee (TX)- $222,750
• Dan Lipinski (Blue Dog-IL)- $4,000
• Dave Loebsack (IA)- $2,000
• Sean Patrick Maloney (New Dem-NY)- $2,000 (cheap date)
• Jim Matheson (Blue Dog-UT)- $442,747
• Carolyn McCarthy (New Dem-NY)- $16,600
• Mike McIntyre (Blue Dog-NC)- $117,600
• Patrick Murphy (New Dem-FL)- $19,450
• Rick Nolan (MN)- $1,500
• Donald Norcross (NJ)- n.a.
• Bill Owens (New Dem-NY)- $2,125
• Collin Peterson (Blue Dog-MN)- $81,350
• Nick Rahall (Blue Dog-WV)- $183,208
• Cedric Richmond (New Dem-LA)- $90,250
• David Scott (New Dem-GA)- $20,050
• Terri Sewell (New Dem-AL)- $29,100
• Albio Sires (NJ)- $15,000
• Bennie Thompson (MS)- $117,227
• Marc Veasey (TX)- $98,250
• Filemon Vela (New Dem-TX)- $32,800
• Tim Walz (MN)- $14,000

Since 1990, Big Oil and Gas has handed out $469,585,280 in legalistic bribes to Members of Congress and candidates for Congress. $308,979,876 has gone to Republicans and $159,221,589 has gone to Democrats, although in recent years, as Big Oil has become a blatant part of the Republican operation, less and less money goes to Democrats. In the most recent election cycle, Republicans got $31,497,088 and Democrats took in $11,712,439. The figure after each name is the amount the oil and gas sector has donated to their campaigns since they were elected to Congress. It looks like Big Oil has cut off Pete Gallego's bribes. This was the first good vote he's taken since being elected-- too late to save his seat. A CIA-financed spy beat him, Will Hurd, who will be up against Kickapoo lobbyist Pepe Aranda of Eagle Pass in 2016.

Right now Raúl Grijalva (D-AZ) is likely to win the ranking member slot on the House Natural Resources Committee. He was one of the leaders of the battle against the Keystone Pipeline deal. This was his statement today after voting NO, loudly:

"Once again, Congressional Republicans brought a vote on the Keystone XL pipeline, a project that will benefit one Canadian corporation, its customers-- namely, China-- and very few others. The risks it poses to our environment and our national security, as well as the blatant disregard being paid to treaties by proponents of this project are all cause for alarm.

"This pipeline would cross the Ogallala aquifer, which provides drinking water to eight states. The startling lack of security around key segments of the pipeline could allow for a deliberate sabotage, which could create the equivalent of the Exxon Valdez oil spill in the middle of the American Heartland-- but with a slurry of highly toxic bitumen and other hazardous chemicals seeping into the land Americans live on. A legal route through Nebraska has not even been established at this point, yet proponents are content to throw caution to the wind for the Keystone XL.

"This is energy policy passed on behalf of a Canadian corporation, conducted at the expense of our national integrity. It’s a bad deal for the American people, and I am proud to oppose it."

UPDATE: Thanks To Landrieu, Senate Votes Tuesday

Bernie Sanders, of course, like all real Democrats, will vote no. This was Bernie's statement after every House Republican (+ 31 Democrats primarily from the Republican wing of the Democratic Party) voted to hasten the end of a habitable planet:

“Rejecting the Keystone XL pipeline is a no-brainer,” Sanders said. “Instead of increasing carbon emissions and accelerating climate change so oil companies can make more profits, we should put millions of Americans back to work rebuilding our crumbling infrastructure and creating a sustainable energy future.”

The pipeline would carry some of the dirtiest crude oil on the planet from Canada’s tar sands region in Alberta to refineries along the Gulf Coast in Texas.

A member of the Senate environment and energy committees, Sanders said approving the pipeline would send a terrible message about the United States’ commitment to deal with global warming.

“The scientific community is virtually unanimous in saying that climate change is real, it is already causing devastating problems in our country and around the world and that if we do not transform our energy system away from fossil fuel that situation is only going to get worse in terms of floods and drought and extreme weather disturbances,” Sanders said.

Backers of the pipeline say it will create jobs. In fact, according to a State Department analysis, only about 50 workers would operate the completed pipeline. In terms of construction jobs, Sanders said, Congress should approve a massive program to rebuild and repair bridges, railroads, water systems, airports and other infrastructure projects. That effort would create millions of decent-paying jobs and make our country more efficient and productive.

Where Does The Anti-Democracy Koch Smear Machine Get Its Money?

Most of their wealth comes from oil and gas

This morning, you may have read that just one of the arms of Koch brothers' political Dark Money assault against democracy, a shady proto-fascist outfit called Americans for Prosperity, plans to spend a minimum of $125 million on the midterm elections. "The projected budget for Americans for Prosperity would be unprecedented for a private political group in a midterm, and would likely rival even the spending of the Republican and Democratic parties’ congressional campaign arms," writes Ken Vogel for Politico. Americans for Prosperity has already spent $35 million this cycle smearing the very conservative Democrats who have been most likely to actually back-- whether through fear or conviction-- the Koch/GOP agenda: Kay Hagan (NC), Mark Pryor (AR), Mark Begich (AK) and Mary Landrieu (LA). In Landrieu's case, the Koch smear campaign is already yielding results, her negatives rising dramatically from 28% to 58% since the Koch's gave the go-ahead for the attacks to begin. 59% of Louisiana voters now say they would rather have a new senator.

The plans-- combined with those of other groups in the sprawling political operation affiliated with the billionaire industrialists Charles and David Koch-- more closely resemble the traditional functions of a national political party than a network of private nonprofit groups.

The goal of the network is a long-term movement to expand the political playing field for conservatives-- both into new states and into non-traditional demographics including millennial, Hispanic and low-income voters.

AFP’s $125-million projected 2014 budget alone would also exceed the total 2012 fundraising hauls of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, National Republican Congressional Committee, Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee or the National Republican Senatorial Committee.

As the Koch network prepares to gather its operatives and donors next month for an annual summer fundraising seminar, it’s implementing a series of adjustments based on lessons learned from 2012. In the run-up to that election, the network spent more than $400 million only to watch President Barack Obama win reelection and his Democratic allies retain the Senate.

Some megadonors wondered what their cash bought, and privately suggested they might look to spend their money elsewhere. The Koch operation undertook a forensic analysis of what went wrong designed partly to prove to donors that it could be trusted with their political donations going forward.

AFP identified “three key areas where the Left outperformed our efforts in the field,” according to the memo, which conceded they were “tough and painful lessons-- but it’s important to remember that AFP is run like a business”:

• “Our data system was insufficient” and failed to quickly process information fed into it by thousands of canvassers and phone bankers contacting voters, causing “delays in updates, leading to some data inaccuracies during a critical phase of our organizing efforts.”

• “We were outmanned” by the left generally and Obama’s campaign, specifically, which, the memo notes “had 770 field staff on the ground” in Florida alone. By contrast, the memo notes that AFP and “other network partners” had about only 300 total field staff nationwide.

• “The Left had a superior messaging strategy and implementation that effectively identified their demographic targets, determined which issues resonated best with which groups, and delivered specific messages over TV, radio and online ads for those audiences.”

…Echoing Charles Koch’s opposition to the minimum wage, it asserts that free market, low-regulation policies “create the greatest levels of prosperity and opportunity for all Americans, especially for society’s poorest and most vulnerable.” Yet, the memo says, “we consistently see that Americans in general are concerned that free-market policy-- and its advocates-- benefit the rich and powerful more than the most vulnerable of society. …We must correct this misconception.”

The major contributors to the Koch network groups tend to skew much whiter and older than the population the groups are trying to reach. And while the emcee of the Koch donor seminars, Kevin Gentry, in April emailed a group of fundraisers for allied organizations that “we want our donors to be younger,” he added that “just doesn’t track with reality. So if we try to ‘force’ our donors to become younger-- i.e., focusing our donor acquisition more at youth cohorts, we will likely have less efficient and less economically profitable fundraising.”

Referencing the thorough research of Bloomberg reporter David de Jong, we find that two of the Koch brothers-- dangerous anti-democracy extremists David and Charles-- are, collectively, worth over $100 billion. The richest person in the world is Bill Gates ($79.5 billion) followed by Carlos Slim ($67.1 billion) and Warren Buffett ($64.5 billion). But not all the Dark Money for the anti-democarcy enterprise comes from the two anti-American brothers. They've carefully developed a whole network of wealthy, old white people who are obsessed with racism, greed, paranoia and anti-social manias. Some give immense sums and some give modestly. De Jong came across one of these hidden billionaires, the 4th richest woman in America-- the 5th richest woman in the world-- whose very controversial inheritance gave her a 15% interest in Koch Industries. 70 year old Elaine Tettemer Marshall of Dallas has managed to avoid the spotlight that billionaire status usually brings. Her stake in the Wichita, Kansas-based industrial conglomerate, which generates annual sales of $110 billion, is worth more than $12.7 billion. The only richer women, like her, did nothing to build or earn immense fortunes, just inherited them-- a couple of Waltons and the Mars candy heiress, Jacqueline Mars. Marshall gained control of the Koch stake following the death of her husband, E. Pierce Marshall in 2006, although the contested battle over the will-- with her "mother-in-law," Anna Nicole Smith a Playboy Bunny, stripper and hooker-- went all the way to the Supreme Court.

[Elaine] Marshall’s ability to stay out of the limelight stands in contrast to her father-in-law, J. Howard Marshall, who had been a Koch shareholder for more than two decades and created a spectacle with his 1994 marriage to Smith, then a 26-year-old Playboy model, whom he wed at age 89. Since then, the Marshall fortune has been in a near-constant state of turmoil.

In April 1995, four months before Howard Marshall’s death, Smith sued his son, Pierce, in Harris County, Texas, probate court, accusing him of interfering with his father’s ability to provide her spousal support. The lawsuit was the first in a stream of legal cases that led to a 16-year battle between Smith and Pierce Marshall, the end of which neither would live to see. Marshall succumbed to an infection in 2006 at age 67; Smith died of a drug overdose at age 39 in a Florida hotel in 2007.

…The partnership between the Koch and Marshall families began in 1959, when Koch Industries founder Fred C. Koch acquired a 35 percent stake in Great Northern Oil Co., a Minnesota-based refinery co-founded by Howard Marshall, for about $5 million in cash. A decade later, Koch’s second-oldest son, Charles, offered to swap the rest of Marshall’s stake in Great Northern for Koch Industries shares.

“He took stock rather than cash-- and held on to it,” said Robert L. Bradley Jr., editor of Howard Marshall’s autobiography, Done in Oil, in an e-mail. “The stock appreciated into something very, very large.”

In 1974, at the wedding reception of his oldest son, J. Howard Marshall III, the elder Marshall gave each of his two sons 4 percent of Koch Industries voting stock, telling them, “Boys, these are the Crown Jewels, take care of them,” according to documents filed by the U.S. District Court for California’s Central District in Santa Ana in 2002.

Those jewels played a crucial role in an attempted boardroom coup six years later, when two of Charles Koch’s brothers tried to oust him as CEO. With some cousins and several allies, Bill Koch and Frederick Koch controlled about 48 percent of the votes, and turned to Howard Marshall’s sons to gain the majority needed to displace Charles. Howard III sided with the dissident brothers; his younger brother, Pierce, rejected their plea.

His loyalty tied to Charles Koch, Howard Marshall thwarted the coup by buying back his oldest son’s voting stock for $8 million. According to court documents, Marshall subsequently disinherited Howard III, considering the $8 million payment “an early inheritance.”

Howard III contested his father’s will in Harris County probate court in 1995. Pierce Marshall, who was left in charge of his father’s estate following his death, countersued, claiming his older brother committed fraud when he sold his Koch Industries voting stock back to their father at an inflated price.

The court sided with the estate. According to the verdict, rendered in 2001, Howard III had engaged in fraud by stating a claim to his father’s inheritance, and was ordered to pay about $11 million to various Marshall family trusts. Howard Marshall III and his wife, Ilene, filed for bankruptcy in Los Angeles in 2002.

While dueling with his brother, Pierce Marshall was also fending off charges from Anna Nicole Smith, who filed for bankruptcy in 1996. During the bankruptcy proceedings, the former stripper-- her given name was Vickie Lynn Hogan-- claimed her late husband had intended to set up a trust in her benefit. The trust was to have contained a sum equal to half of the increased value of Marshall’s assets during their marriage. Pierce Marshall, Smith claimed, illegally interfered with the trust’s creation.

In 2000, the U.S. bankruptcy court for California’s Central District in Los Angeles awarded Smith about $475 million in damages, determining that Pierce Marshall had “deprived her of her expectancy of a substantial inter vivos gift from her deceased husband J. Howard.”

…Smith never got a dollar. The Harris County probate court, where she had filed her first lawsuit against Pierce Marshall, ruled in 2001 that she had no valid claim to the estate… After the first Supreme Court decision in 2006, Pierce Marshall transferred his Koch stake, held by a company called Trof Inc., into a Grantor Retained Annuity Trust (GRAT) named Staurolite. Marshall owned all of Trof, according to the 2002 District Court ruling. Trof held 14.6 percent of Koch Industries, according to a 2001 application to the Federal Communications Commission, which was submitted by a company in which a Koch subsidiary held an interest.

Pierce Marshall was listed as Staurolite’s grantor and Elaine as the trustee, according to the trust agreement. Pierce also created his will at that time, leaving the majority of his estate to Elaine and appointing her as executrix. In his will, Pierce Marshall directed that, upon his death, all of his interest in the Staurolite GRAT be transferred to the EPM Marital Income Trust, of which Elaine Marshall is the trustee. He died six weeks after signing his will.

In a brief submitted to the Supreme Court in March 2009, Howard K. Stern, the executor of the Anna Nicole Smith estate, accused the late Pierce Marshall of moving the family’s most valuable asset-- Koch Industries stock-- outside of his estate. Elaine Marshall responded in a court declaration that the creation of the will and GRAT was the result of “18 months of planning, reparation and drafting,” and “not caused by the Supreme Court’s decision” that granted jurisdiction to the District Court in 2006 over Smith’s claim.

“The whole advantage of a GRAT is passing appreciated property to your family members without a gift tax,” said Robert Willens, an independent tax adviser based in New York. “You can say with a straight face, if you’re called on to disclose your assets, that you no longer own the stock that you’ve put into the trust. All you have is this amorphous annuity interest.”

Elaine Marshall didn’t list the GRAT as part of his estate, according to an inventory of Pierce Marshall’s estate assets, submitted to the Supreme Court in 2009. The estate’s most valuable asset listed in the inventory was Telomere LLC, which represented more than $115 million of the estate’s reported $125 million value.

Marshall is one of nine Koch Industries board members. She donated $5,000 to the company’s political action committee in December 2011, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. She is credited with the family’s Koch stake because of her control over the EPM Marital Income Trust.

The tangled webs and hidden trusts and shady organizations layered on each other makes it impossible to know for sure where the flow of Dark Money in the Koch world is coming from and where exactly it goes. All we found on Elaine's political giving, aside from the $5,000 to the Koch PAC were a few vanilla contributions to Bush and Dole.

Bloomberg's report last month on the 2 Koch brothers net worth topping $100 billion, emphasized some of the shady political maneuverings the two are employing in their twisted, relentless war against working families in this country. The misnamed "Freedom Partners" is one of their many attack machines, which is running vicious smear campaigns aimed at polluting the political debate in Colorado and Iowa with attacks against Democrats for backing expansion of health insurance.

“The Koch brothers are pouring millions into this,” Chris Harris, a campaign spokesman for Senator Udall, said in an e-mail yesterday. “They’re only fighting for their own interests, not Coloradans’. Mark Udall has a long record of fighting for the middle class and stops at nothing to protect Colorado’s special way of life.”

…Jeff Giertz, a spokesman for Braley’s campaign, said the Kochs and the GOP candidates they support stand behind policies that would hurt Iowa’s economy.

“Bruce Braley fights for Iowa’s working families because that’s where he comes from, and he’ll keep fighting for Iowa in the U.S. Senate,” Giertz said in an e-mail yesterday.

Two Videos-- Just One Fragile Little World

The one above is the debut of James Cameron's must-see series on Climate Change, Years of Living Dangerously. It's an hour that, if you watch it, will have been well-spent. Cameron's video is-- God willing-- part of the solution to an existential threat to humanity. Below is a short, brutish political commercial. It's ugly and it will persuade many Democrats to hold their nose and just stay home rather than vote for Mary Landrieu. Her commercial is part of the problem-- a corporate shill indebted to the Big Oil interests who have financed her career in return for protection of their interests in the Senate. And the fucking spineless Senate Democrats made her chair of the Energy and Natural Resources Committee, where her inherent corruption can dip the most harm to mankind and the country. The Energy/Natural Resources sector's most bribed Members of Congress for the current election cycle:

Since 1997 the Energy/Natural Resources sector has given her $2,516,790. The only sitting Members of Congress who have gotten more are 5 of the most notoriously corrupt men to have ever served in either house of Congress: Joe "Oily Joe" Barton (R-TX-$3,931,145), John Boehner (R-Boehnerland-$3,657,761), John Cornyn (R-TX-$3,419,437), Mitch McConnell (R-KY-$3,347,641) and James Inhofe (R-OK-$2,690,417). Her bribes total even more than Vitter's mere $1,837,848. And in return… well, watch the video of Mary Landrieu staging a fake hearing the throw President Obama and the environmental and Climate Change community under the bus. Would you ever vote for this kind of Democrat?




UPDATE: Jimmy Carter Comes Out Against Keystone XL

The forces of plutocracy and their zombie army of drooling, 2-digit IQ loudmouths doesn't care much for former President Carter to begin with. By joining with a group of other Nobel laureates, including Desmond Tutu, to warn Obama about the existential dangers inherent in Keystone XL, he won't win any popularity contests in those quarters.  "You stand on the brink of making a choice that will define your legacy on one of the greatest challenges humanity has ever faced-- climate change… You know as well as us the power of precedence that this would set. This leadership by example would usher in a new era where climate change and pollution is given the urgent attention and focus it deserves in a world where the climate crisis is already a daily struggle for so many."

Mao: The Tall Stalk Gets Cut Down-- But Not In America... The Sad Saga Of The Estate Tax

2 out of 1,000 estates are paying estate taxes this year. But even those taxes expire December 31. Obama would like to replace the current legislation with a slightly fairer tax-- but so slightly that it's almost not worth mentioning. Obama's proposal would tax 3 estates out of 1,000. The Republicans, of course, want to abolish the estate tax altogether. I thought Chris Hayes put the estate tax into context very well in his book, Twilight of the Elites. The topic he's discussing is why it's so tough to move America more forthrightly towards genuine equality and how people who benefit most from extreme inequality have outsize power-- as a result of that inequality-- that they use to protect the status quo and hold egalitarian incursions at bay.

...[W]ith the exception of England, every other industrialized democracy has higher levels of income equality than the United States. Data from the OECD shows once consistent, general principle: the higher the taxes in a given country, the less inequality. This makes obvious and intuitive sense. Taxation is the primary method for redistribution, and as a general rule, the more taxation, the more redistribution; the more redistribution, the more equality. The United States collects a far smaller share of the national income in taxes than nearly every other industrialized democracy, and in recent years that rate has been dropping. Total tax revenue as percentage of GDP in the United States is at 24.8 percent, down from 29.5 percent in 2000. You can compare that to Denmark, which has the highest level of tax revenue as a percentage of GDP (48.2 percent) and the most equality out of any OECD country.

Over the last thirty years or so we've seen rising inequality in pre-tax income, which means that before the government even starts its taxing, spending, and redistribution, there has been a profound and accelerating gap between high income earners and everyone else. The rich are earning more, which the non-rich's earnings stagnate or decline. But these pre-tax earnings are run through the redistributive mechanisms of the state. And during the same time that pre-tax inequality has been growing, our tax system has grown less redistributive, further amplifying inequality rather than mitigating it.

This shouldn't be all too surprising, since we've seen inequality is autocatalytic. Those at the top can use their relative power to alter and manipulate existing institutions so as to further consolidate their gains and press their advantage. We've seen this in our own society, so much so that even the most "low-hanging fruit" of meritocratic policy has been abandoned.

Take the estate tax. The estate tax is designed to only affect those with vast fortunes, estates of more than $5 million. And it's logic is clear: We don't want an aristocracy of birth-- that's the very system our founders repudiated when they created a republic. Conservative Winston Churchill argued that an estate tax provided "a certain corrective against the development of a race of idle rich," and it was out of an ideological commitment to a kind of protomeritocratic vision of equality of opportunity that robber baron Andrew Carnegie, opponent of income and property taxes, argued for a steep and confiscatory tax on inheritance:

As a rule, a self-made millionaire is not an extravagant man himself... But as far as sons and children, they are not so constituted. They have never known what it was to figure means to the end, to live frugal lives, or to do any useful work... And I say these men, when the time comes that they must die... I say the community fails in its duty, and our legislators fail in their duty, if they do not exact a tremendous share.

And yet, over the past decade, this fundamental and basic means of gently enforcing some modicum of a level playing field has been gutted. In 2002, the rate for estates of more than $1 million was 50 percent, but it was diminished each year, until it was entirely phased out in 2009. It has since been restored (extended in December 2010 only for two years, for now), but at the historically rock-bottom rate of 35 percent, with a $10 million exemption for married couples. The New York Times said House Democrats opposed the deal brokered by Obama and congressional Republicans in the lame-duck congressional session of 2010 because it "would cost 68 billion, help only the richest of the rich-- an estimated 6,600 households-- and do nothing to stimulate the economy while adding to the national debt."

So, here we are, two years later, at another lame-duck session and with the same Barack Obama working with the same congressional Republicans on the estate tax again. A post-election poll for Americans for Tax Fairness found that by a margin of 58 to 32%, people support “increase[ing] the the estate tax, also called the inheritance tax, on estates of more than seven million dollars for a couple.” Obama is, as usual, aiming very low and asking for way too little. Even as much of a corporate shill as former Treasury secretary Robert Rubin, currently cochairman of Goldman Sachs, thinks Obama should step up his proposal. “A substantial estate tax," explained this week, "can provide revenues at a time when our federal government badly needs additional revenues."

Rubin was one of the signatories on a letter sent on Tuesday to every member of Congress urging them to expand the tax. The letter and call were organized by Responsible Wealth, a project of the nonprofit group United for a Fair Economy.

  The group said it was working with a senator's office to formally adopt the proposal and was in discussions to arrange a White House meeting with some of the letter's 36 signatories. Those signed on include investors Warren Buffett and George Soros, who rank among the top 15 richest people in the nation.

Though the fate of upper-income tax cuts has made headlines in recent weeks, changes to dozens of other provisions, including the estate tax, also make up the fiscal cliff, a $500 billion combination of tax hikes and spending cuts that go into effect at the beginning of 2013.

Tax cuts enacted under President George W. Bush reduced the estate tax between 2002 and 2009 and eliminated it in 2010. It was reinstated in 2011 at a top taxable rate of 35 percent, exempting the first $5 million of assets-- levels more favorable to the wealthy than in 2009. The exemption level will be lowered in 2013 to $1 million, ensnaring more people in the estate tax’s net, with the top taxable rate rising to 55 percent.

The Responsible Wealth letter proposes setting the exemption at $2 million per individual, indexed to inflation, with a rate beginning at 45 percent “and rising on the largest fortunes.” President Obama has proposed returning to 2009 levels-- a flat rate of 45 percent, exempting the first $3.5 million of assets-- which would raise an estimated $276 billion between 2011 and 2020, according to the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center.

Joining the entire Republican caucus in opposing estate taxes are John Tester (MT) and the 4 Democrats who always serve the interests of the wealthy over and above the interests of working families: Mary Landrieu (LA), Max Baucus (MT), Mark Pryor (AR), and Claire McCaskill (MO).

Streams Of Consciousness, Dec. 7

Does Pelosi Have Any Teeth?
This was her tweet about the outrageous Obama/McConnell plan to continue concentrating the nation's wealth in the hands of fewer and fewer families:


She's probably feeling morose because Obama left her appointee, the hapless Chris Van Hollen (D-MD), out of the negotiations. But in the end will she just buckle under and round up the Democratic votes needed to augment the 170 or so Republicans who are drooling to pass this monstrosity? Jennifer Rubin at the Washinton Post

There really is no other way to say it: the Republicans won, the liberal Democrats lost, and the president sided with the Republicans... A Republican House aide tells me tonight it is "a damn good deal."

Pelosi could do something else. She could allow an open rule which will open the debate to amendments so that it isn't a-take-it-or-leave-it package legislators have to face. She may be morose and even pissed off, but nothing from the last two years should lead anyone to believe she's that morose and pissed off.

Durbin, who lost 100% of his credibility with progressives when he switched his vote to support the Cat Food Commission's findings this week, is making pathetic noises about walking away from the deal. He has no credibility whatsoever but are there enough votes, between extreme right DeMinters (backed by the Club for Growth), a retiring George Voinovich, and progressives to successfully filibuster this nightmare? I doubt it could be a reality. Or do you think counting on Harry Reid and Chuck Schumer-- recipient of more Wall Street cash than any non-presidential candidate in history ($17,720,436)-- could be counted on to stand behind some principles or values?

Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., his party's leader in the Senate, reacted coolly to the plan.

"Now that the President has outlined his proposal, Senator Reid plans on discussing it with his caucus tomorrow," his spokesman said in a statement.

In the Senate, liberals led by Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., have been adamant that they don't want to extend tax cuts for the rich. Though they fell short of blocking such an extension Saturday, they have more than enough votes to launch a filibuster to block the new deal.

...White House aides said the plan would extend the benefits for 13 months, covering the 2 million out-of-work Americans whose checks run out this month and another 7 million who would run out of benefits over the next year.

They also predicted that the extended benefits would create 600,000 jobs as the out-of-work quickly spend their checks, sending that cash percolating through the economy.

The average family receives $290 a week in unemployment benefits. Normally, benefits can last up to 99 weeks, depending on state's jobless rate.

On the estate tax, the Bush tax cuts had cut the tax, then eliminated it altogether for this year.
As that law expired, the tax would have returned to 55 percent of all estates of more than $1 million. Under Republican pressure, it will be set for two years at 35 percent on estates of more than $5 million.

At least one prominent liberal said he doesn't like the deal, but called it the best that Obama could get now.

"The Republicans got tax cuts for the best-off 2 percent and lower estate taxes for the very wealthiest families, neither of which will do much if anything to create jobs," said Lawrence Mishel, the president of the Economic Policy Institute. "President Obama won policies that will put or keep money in the pockets of the families of the unemployed and middle and low-income families, which will increase spending and create jobs."

No one with any sense expects anything from the Congressional leadership but the grassroots is burning. In fact, according to today's Roll Call, "Liberal activists angry about President Barack Obama’s concession on tax cuts for upper-income Americans crashed phone lines at the White House and are gearing up for another onslaught of calls to Senate Democratic leaders in an eleventh-hour push to kill the deal."

And Hoyer, of all people, is grumbling aloud... as though someone is supposed to believe that he would ever oppose Obama and the Republicans on this!

House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer today expressed serious reservations with the tax cut framework President Obama reached with Senate Republicans, and declined to say whether his caucus would support the plan or even whether the leadership time would whip votes to ensure that it passes. However, Hoyer also chastised Republicans for their willingness to let all the Bush tax cuts expire, suggesting Democrats will figure out a way to assure the President's plan doesn't fail entirely-- including, perhaps, by making some changes to it.

"There was no consensus or agreement reached by the House leadership," Hoyer told reporters this morning, reiterating the broad view of the Democratic caucus that "giving tax cuts to high-income Americans is not appropriate."

Sure... when pigs fly. Congressional Progressive Caucus co-chairs Raul Grijalva and Keith Ellison, speaking for the House's largest caucus, seem to be rejecting the Obama/McConnell deal out of hand. This was their statement this afternoon:

“We call on our Congressional leaders in the House and Senate to hold firm on passing a middle class tax cut with no strings attached. We also call on Congressional Republicans to stop using unemployed Americans as bargaining chips in exchange for another tax break for the wealthy.
 
Tax breaks for billionaires don’t create jobs. The George W. Bush presidency and the Republican recession are proof of that. Giving rich people more money just for being rich does nothing to help the economy. It only increases the national debt. No amount of Republican rhetoric can change that fact.
 
We simply cannot afford to borrow another $700 billion to give tax breaks to millionaires and billionaires who aren’t paying their fair share, especially when there are millions of Americans still looking for work. Just 1 percent of that $700 billion would pay for almost 142,000 elementary school teachers for an entire year. That money should be used to create jobs, rebuild our infrastructure and educate our children, not for the wealthy to buy more yachts.
 
We agree with the President that there is no time to delay-- the recovery is fragile, and American families are hurting. We need to make the right decisions right now to boost our economy. The unemployment crisis is a harsh reality for millions of Americans, and giving more money to the super-rich won’t do anything to solve it.
 
This holiday season should be about supporting middle class Americans, not another taxpayer-funded present for the wealthy.”

Obama angrily rebuked progressives (who else?) when asked by a reporter if his cave in shows he has no core principles.

This notion that somehow we are willing to compromise too much reminds me of the debate that we had during health care. This is the public option debate all over again. I pass a signature piece of legislation where we finally get health care for all Americans, something that Democrats have been fighting for for a hundred years. But because there was a provision in there that they didn't get, that would have affected maybe a couple of million people, even though we got health insurance for 30 million people, and the potential for lower premiums for maybe 100 million people, that somehow that was a sign of weakness, of compromise.

If that's the standard by which we are measuring success or core principles, then let's face it: We will never get anything done. People will have the satisfaction of having a purist position, and no victories for the American people. And we will be able to feel good about ourselves and sanctimonious about how pure our intentions are and how tough we are.

And in the meantime the American people are still saying to themselves, [I'm] not able to get health insurance because of pre-existing conditions. Or not being able to pay their bills because their unemployment insurance ran out. That can't be the measure of how we think about public service. That can't be the measure of what it means to be a Democrat. This is a big, diverse country. Not everybody agrees with us. I know that shocks people...

This country was founded on compromise. I couldn't go through the front door at this country's founding. If we were really thinking about ideal positions, we wouldn't have a union.

Olbermann was on fire tonight. I hope Obama was watching.



Even Wall Street Shill Mary Landrieu Says She's Undecided

Maybe she's waiting to see how much Republican support it gets but Landrieu (D-LA), one of the half dozen most conservative Democrats in the Senate, was pointedly unethusiastic this afternoon. She called what Obama and McConnell cooked up "morally bankrupt," an easy way to take a cheap-- if well-deserved, shot at a president who is very unpopular in her state. "What is new to me is a concept that we're going to borrow $46 billion according to the Obama-McConnell plan-- and that's what I'm calling it...we're going to borrow 46 billion from the poor, from the middle class, from businesses all sizes, basically, to give a tax cuts to families in America today that despite the recession are making over a million dollars. This is unprecedented. Put me down as undecided, strongly objecting to that provision. Are there other provisions that I like in there? Absolutely."

But Obama's Boyfriend Ryan... He's All For It

I wouldn't be surprised if it was all Ryan's idea. It sounds a lot like the kind of crap he's always pushing anyway. He doesn't want to jump up and down and break into song but he's backing the Obama-McConnell deal.

“All things considered, I think it’s the best deal we were going to get,” he says. “It’s clearly not a good as we would’ve wanted, but far better than the alternative route.”

He stressed the importance of not decoupling the tax rates for upper-income earners, and thus rejecting the “class-warfare economic doctrine” that is harmful to economic growth.

He says the two-year extension was expected, and while he would much rather have seen a permanent arrangement, it’s still a good start. Ryan says he is ready to lead a debate over taxes starting in 2012. “I see this as a great way to set the stage for fundamental tax reform in 2013,” he says.

And Boehner was pushing that around Washington today.

Boehner Feels The Wrath of Teabaggers And Ron Paul Supporters

The Republican Steering Committee, which Boehner controls, disappointed teabagger-oriented rightists today by backing chairmanships for two unacceptable Boehner cronies. One, Hal "Prince of Pork" Rogers (R-KY) will be the shockingly corrupt new chair of the all-important House Appropriations Committee. The teabaggers wanted Jack Kingston, a lunatic fringe sociopath from Georgia. The other key chair went to moderate Republican Fred Upton of Michigan instead of right-wing favored (and Big Oil favored) Joe Barton. But that was nothing compared to a rumor that swept Wingnutia this week that Boehner was pulling strings behind the scenes to make sure Ron Paul, next in line based on seniority, would not become chairman of the Subcommittee for Domestic Monetary Policy and Technology. Wall Street and their Boehner puppet were working hard to stop Paul from taking over.

Five GOP leadership aides, speaking anonymously because a decision isn’t final, say incoming House Speaker John Boehner has discussed ways to prevent Paul from becoming chairman or to keep him on a tight leash if he does.

...Boehner and the establishment Republicans rode to victory last month on the shoulders of the Tea Party movement. Prior to the election, Tea Party activists in Maine, Colorado, and Utah focused on abolishing the Federal Reserve.

Some predicted that if Republicans were to sweep the House they would become much more confrontational with the Federal Reserve. “The popularity of Tea Party candidates in U.S. elections could spell renewed efforts to curtail the power and independence of the Federal Reserve, which has been cast as an emblem of big government overreach,” Reuters reported in late October.

Many establishment Republicans agree with senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina who insists the Tea Party and its vision of less government has no long-term vision or prospects for political viability.

...Ron Paul, Bernie Sanders, and a handful of other House and Senate renegades who are not reading from the bankster script like John Boehner and the establishment Republicans will not be allowed to hold the Federal Reserve to account.

It will take the collective outrage of grassroots supporters of Paul’s End the Fed movement to force Congress to reconsider moving against the banksters and their cartel.

Today the Republican Liberty Caucus sent this open letter to Boehner making it clear that many grassroots Republicans are more concerned with Ron Paul's reform agenda than with the GOP Leaderships' Wall Street agenda:

Dear Speaker-elect Boehner:

When word went out last week that you may seek to block Congressman Ron Paul's appointment as Chair of the House Financial Services Subcommittee, grassroots Republicans, Tea Party members and advocates of constitutionally limited government were alarmed. The implied message of such an action is one of indifference towards the concerns of those who helped move you into a position of power as Speaker of the House. We urge you to reconsider.

The resounding message of November 2nd was not just a referendum on big-spending Democrats. It was also a signal to Republicans who have forgotten the principles of limited government and fiscal restraint on which the party was built. As a matter of ethics and integrity, we see no justification for preventing Congressman Paul from taking a position that he has earned, and for which he is uniquely qualified.

Congressman Ron Paul has been an unyielding advocate of transparency, accountability, and fiscally conservative principles. He has strongly opposed policies that have brought us to the brink of disaster. As Congressman Bill Posey (R-FL) aptly pointed out, "The depth of [Ron Paul's] knowledge on monetary policy, his understanding of it all, is second to none." His message resonates with the grassroots who will continue to play a large role in the success of the Republican Party as they did in the recent election.

We are united in our belief that no one would be better qualified than Congressman Paul to head the Financial Services Subcommittee and we hope to see him in that position in January. It is a position  where he will be able to make important contributions to our nation's economic policies and move us toward the limited, accountable government voters are demanding. We strongly urge you to give him that opportunity.

RLC Chair

Boehner already kept Michele Bachmann out of the House leadership. If he does this to Ron Paul he will alienate a far larger Republican constituency than has ever supported him.

Will Redistricting Do In Georgia Blue Dog John Barrow?

Republicans redistricted him out of his original Athens-based seat, so he moved to Savannah and won what was created, though not technically under the Voting Rights Act, as an African-American district. He was nearly defeated in two primaries because he has studiously ignored his African-American constituents in a pursuit of conservative whites. But, like a cockroach, he's survived over and over. But will he survive a Republican state legislature determined to get rid of him once and for all? There are two ways for Republicans to gerrymander Barrow out of his seat this time.

One is to move more of heavily Democratic Savannah into Kingston's district in the southeast; the other is to take more of heavily Democratic Augusta and move it into Broun's 10th district in the northeast.

But it won't be easy. The Cook Political Report's David Wasserman said Republicans might have to defend such a move in court, because it would dilute the black vote in Barrow's district.

"The easiest way to crack that district is to divide Savannah and Augusta, but you're asking for a lawsuit," Wasserman said.

The Supreme Court ruled last year that the Voting Rights Act doesn't require states to draw "crossover" districts, which are favorable to minority candidates even though minorities don't comprise more than half of the district. But much remains unsettled in this section of the law, and the court's decision doesn't necessarily mean Republicans have carte blanche to dismantle such a district.

It's worth noting that Indiana Blue Dog Joe Donnelly, who survived this year by the skin of his teeth, is also likely to be gerrymandered into extinction.

By adding all of Michigan City back to Rep. Pete Visclosky's (D) district, they would be making Donnelly's seat more winnable but still very competitive. If they really want to push the envelope, though, they could try to stretch the district further east, incorporating its current base in Gary with Michigan City and, further east, South Bend. South Bend, as at happens, is Donnelly's base.

Donnelly would effectively be left with a choice between running for reelection or challenging Visclosky in a primary.

Republicans could make Donnelly's current district pretty uninhabitable by borrowing heavily Republican Elkhart and Kosciusko counties from the neighboring 3rd district and using them to replace the population from Michigan City/South Bend.

A Democratic strategist who does a lot of work in Indiana said Donnelly will likely run wherever South Bend is.

Will Cheney Get Bail?

Cheney now has an arrest warrant out for him but I suspect Interpol isn't as interested in him as they were in publisher Julian Assange. Cheney's just a war criminal and thief. Assange is the most important revolutionary in decades. But Nigeria has charged him and 8 of his cronies in a bribery and conspiracy scheme over the construction of a liquefied natural gas facility in the country that took place while Cheney was chief executive of Halliburton.

General Motors Is Back In Business-- The Business Of Bribing Congressmen

General Motors, which was saved from bankruptcy by Obama and the Democrats, started making political donations to candidates in July-- "184 individual donations totaling more than $330,000 between July and Election Day, with 52 percent benefiting Republicans." Over 25% of the donations went to politicians who opposed the bailout, politicians who wanted to see General Motors fail and go bankrupt.

Streams May Be Less Regular For A Short While... But Consciousness Will Be Acute