I suppose Robert Rowling sees no connection at all between the LGBT money that helped make Gold's Gym so successful, and his financial support for the same people who deny them rights. After all, he's already worth $4.2 billion, a combination of the oil money he inherited (Daddy founded Tana Oil & Gas) and his purchase of Omni Hotels. (He also owns 14% of Gaylord Entertainment.) He doesn't have to care about anything other than making more money!
Everyone has a favorite machine at the gym, whether it's the elliptical trainer, the pec deck, the ab machine, or the leg curl. For Robert Rowling, the CEO of the company that owns Gold's Gym, we're guessing his favorite machine is the treadmill. After all, he's pretty good at running over his LGBT customers.
Rowling, head of TRT Holdings, which is the owner of Gold's Gym, is spending quite a bit of money this election cycle. Upwards of $2 million to be exact, through both his corporate and personal bank accounts. Where is he sending that money, which he no doubt earns on the backs of many an LGBT customer?Karl Rove.
That's right, the former Bush strategist, who co-founded a new political organization, American Crossroads, which is working to elect some of the most virulently anti-gay politicians in the country. Turns out that Rowling is one of a handful of big money men working to get Rove's organization off the ground, helping to turn it into a power player among the political elite.
Who would have thought that giving money to Gold's Gym could have such ugly consequences for the LGBT community?
Among the candidates that the owner of Gold's Gym is working to elect include Nevada GOP senate candidate Sharron Angle, who is challenging Sen. Harry Reid. Angle, you might recall, has previously said that women who are raped should turn their lemons into lemonade, and that LGBT people should be barred from adopting children.
And that's only the tip of iceberg. In years past, Sharron Angle put her blessing behind an insert that went out to voters that said homosexuality would lead to the destruction of the United States, and called gay people "sodomites" and "perverts." She even endorsed a statement that said there was no evidence to suggest homosexuality was biological, and that scientists who argue otherwise are flawed.Thanks, Gold's Gym!
Rowling isn't the first CEO to step into this mess. Target is still facing the wrath of the LGBT community after the company (and its CEO) gave money to support an anti-gay candidate in Minnesota. Best Buy and 3M have also seen a backlash as well, after giving money to support anti-gay candidates.
It might seem like a tall order, but this type of corporate activity deserves to be called out and condemned on every level. It's particularly egregious in the case of Gold's Gym, which not only has a huge LGBT membership, but often markets itself as an LGBT-friendly gym.
Perhaps that's true when you're on the stair climber, but if their CEO's political work is any indication, Gold's Gym has no interest in seeing LGBT people treated with dignity out in the real world.
What a truly brutal election. One rare exception was the crushing of Texas Oil's Proposition 23 in California (see CREDO's campaign at stoptexasoil.org), which proves that even unlimited corporate cash can be beaten back -- if it is disclosed and fought by grassroots mobilization.
At CREDO, we fight hard on the issues, but we don't take sides in partisan elections. As someone who cares about progressive issues, there is no doubt that Tuesday's results will make for even harder times for our country. It is crazy making to realize just how extreme and misinformed much of the new Congress will be.
There is little reason to expect any useful legislation from the Tea Party-dominated House or the dysfunctional Senate. Swing votes in the Senate have really troublesome names: Lieberman, Nelson, Manchin, and Pryor. In fact, this Congress will do damage to anything even remotely progressive.
So let's take a look at what happened and what we can do now. The media, unfortunately but not surprisingly, will be of no use in making sense of Tuesday's results, and even less so in helping chart a course for the future.
There is a lot of evidence that the state of the economy, and employment in particular, drive the results of elections -- and this one was no exception. As the saying goes, "If you think the economy is working, ask someone who isn't." We have an economy stuck in a deep ditch, with corporate profits and bank bonuses soaring while long-term unemployment is at near Depression levels.
The Republicans shrunk the first "stimulus" package and filled it with tax breaks, even as corporate Democrats helped them along, blocking any effort to restructure mortgages in bankruptcies, freeze foreclosures or force banks to lend money. The election outcome was partially baked in early 2009, when the White House preemptively conceded on the scale and provisions of the stimulus package and chose to coddle the banks. To watch this unfold was simply maddening.
Making matters worse were other factors. Among the most damaging were the actions of the conservative majority on the Supreme Court, which seemed energized by the new President, and took the radical step of rehearing a campaign finance case -- now known forever as Citizens United. In ruling 5-4 that corporations have the right to spend unlimited amounts of money for and against candidates, the Court transformed the electoral landscape in a way potentially more profound than its 5-4 ruling that seated George W. Bush as president. As many predicted, the Citizens United ruling unleashed the greatest wave of corporate spending in history, though it's a safe bet to say that their spending in 2012 will make this year's outlay look modest.
In an astonishing turn of events, the right wing was able to kill -- essentially murder in public view -- the organization that registered millions of poor and working class African-American and Hispanic voters in the last six years. I am speaking of ACORN, of course. By editing video completely out of context, and using the right-wing media machine to perfection, Andrew Breitbart was able to convince the mainstream media and eventually Congress, that ACORN was an election-stealing organization that had no qualms giving advice to pimps on how to increase revenues. Fulfilling Karl Rove's wildest dreams, Congress, including most Democrats, voted to block public funding for any of ACORN's laudable and effective housing or tax assistance programs, and ACORN died a quiet death. There would be no millions of new registrants.
Traditions are important in the Senate, but almost always to the detriment of progressive change. The health care reform effort was a victim of Senate conventions. Sen. Max Baucus of Montana, who chairs the critical Senate Finance Committee solely due to his long tenure, stalled development of a health reform package for many months in order to "negotiate" with Republicans on his committee. They weren't interested in the least, and walked away from the discussions muttering bizarre comments about reforms "killing grandma" and setting up "death panels" because Sarah Palin says so. The behavior of Baucus would be laughable if it were not so utterly destructive.
No matter what one thought of FOX News in the 2008 election, Murdoch's monster went on a rampage over the past two years. Serving as both an instigator and an amplifier for the craziest and most offensive pundits, FOX News misled and misinformed the American people on every issue, and effectively became the public face of the Republican Party. Glenn Beck's show became so toxic and spewed so much venom that one of his devoted fans took it upon himself to plot the execution of key leaders of the Tides Foundation and the ACLU, who had figured prominently in Beck's rants. Fortunately, the madman (the fan, not Beck) was stopped before he accomplished his mission.
We could go on, of course, on all the missed opportunities, the cave-ins, the sell outs, and the unpopular and misguided war in Afghanistan.
But the results are in. The House of Representatives is in the hands of the most corrupt Speaker-in-waiting ever, the Tea Party is ascendant, and the U.S. Senate, however dysfunctional it has been, is poised to be much worse.
For those of us who had hopes that the Obama Administration could seize the moment and enact popular progressive changes, this is a bitter pill. And like many, we grieve at the lost opportunities.
But now we need to brush off the dust, suck it up, and plunge back into substantive fights. Politics is not fair -- indeed, U.S. elections are rigged in profound ways! But walking away is not an option at CREDO Action, and we hope you will join us in some of the actions below we think are strategic in the new political landscape:
1. Commit to Taking Down FOX News. So long as FOX News has any credibility within the Beltway, it will be a pipeline for malicious material that will poison our political culture. Join our friends at Color of Change.
2.Tell the Senate to pass the DISCLOSE Act during the lame duck session. We were able to defeat the Texas Oil Initiative, Prop 23 in California, in part because we knew who the enemy was -- having disclosure of corporate contributions brings the enemy out in the open for us to take on and fight. The DISCLOSE Act passed the House and came within a single vote of passing the Senate. One vote. You can join this fight by taking action with Public Citizen at http://citizen.org/disclose-act-action.
3. Keep fighting to end the Bush tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans. This issue will get resolved during the lame duck session. Take action here.
4. Sign up for the fight for a constitutional amendment to reverse the Citizens United decision by declaring that corporations do not have the legal rights of humans. This may take years, if not decades, but we should start now. Please join Free Speech for People: http://freespeechforpeople.org/.
5. Tell the FCC to use its existing authority to establish and defend net neutrality. Our friends at Free Press are leading this charge: here.
6. Demand that the Department of Justice and the Internal Revenue Service investigate the political organizations set up by Karl Rove to launder millions of dollars in secret cash to change the outcome of elections. Act now at http://act.credoaction.com/campaign/investigate_crossroads.
7. Defend the EPA from castration by pro-coal interests in Congress. The EPA accomplished almost nothing during the Clinton years because the Gingrich-led Congress used the budget process to prohibit the agency from doing its work. This battle has already started. The Sierra Club's Beyond Coal campaign is a great way to join this fight: http://sierraclub.org/coal.
8. Convince the Obama administration to stop appealing progressive court rulings on matters like the Defense of Marriage Act, Don't Ask Don't Tell, and the state secrets defense against torture and wiretapping. Urge the Department of Justice to change its approach at http://act.credoaction.com/campaign/stop_appealing.
9. Urge Democratic senators to do away with lifetime tenure for committee chairs and open up all chair positions to majority vote elections. This will go a long way towards more progressive legislation. Take action with us here.
10. Demand that the Department of Justice enforce the provisions of the national voter registration law that require state governments to offer to register all voters at departments of public welfare and motor vehicles. Many state governments simply ignore these requirements and this is a cheaper and more inclusive way of registering voters than the campaigns of the now dead ACORN. Urge Attorney General Eric Holder to expand voter registration: http://credoaction.com/campaign/enforce_motor_voter.
I suspect you are angry and exhausted at this point. I know I am. But let us not forget that the values and ideals we fight for are greater than any one election. They still endure, and so must our fight. We have a lot of work to do.
Michael Kieschnick, CEO
CREDO Action
eric seiger
Jill Valentine, Shuma Gorath for MVC3 <b>News</b> - Page 1 | Eurogamer.net
Read our news of Jill Valentine, Shuma Gorath for MVC3.
Obama 2012 - Doug Schoen - Fox <b>News</b> | Mediaite
Fox News' Democratic analysts have thrown President Obama under the bus: Doug Schoen and Pat Caddell suggested this weekend that the Democratic Party must cut off its head to stand a chance in 2012. Schoen was back on America Live ...
Kinect doubles UK Xbox sales Xbox 360 <b>News</b> - Page 1 | Eurogamer.net
Read our Xbox 360 news of Kinect doubles UK Xbox sales.
eric seiger
I suppose Robert Rowling sees no connection at all between the LGBT money that helped make Gold's Gym so successful, and his financial support for the same people who deny them rights. After all, he's already worth $4.2 billion, a combination of the oil money he inherited (Daddy founded Tana Oil & Gas) and his purchase of Omni Hotels. (He also owns 14% of Gaylord Entertainment.) He doesn't have to care about anything other than making more money!
Everyone has a favorite machine at the gym, whether it's the elliptical trainer, the pec deck, the ab machine, or the leg curl. For Robert Rowling, the CEO of the company that owns Gold's Gym, we're guessing his favorite machine is the treadmill. After all, he's pretty good at running over his LGBT customers.
Rowling, head of TRT Holdings, which is the owner of Gold's Gym, is spending quite a bit of money this election cycle. Upwards of $2 million to be exact, through both his corporate and personal bank accounts. Where is he sending that money, which he no doubt earns on the backs of many an LGBT customer?Karl Rove.
That's right, the former Bush strategist, who co-founded a new political organization, American Crossroads, which is working to elect some of the most virulently anti-gay politicians in the country. Turns out that Rowling is one of a handful of big money men working to get Rove's organization off the ground, helping to turn it into a power player among the political elite.
Who would have thought that giving money to Gold's Gym could have such ugly consequences for the LGBT community?
Among the candidates that the owner of Gold's Gym is working to elect include Nevada GOP senate candidate Sharron Angle, who is challenging Sen. Harry Reid. Angle, you might recall, has previously said that women who are raped should turn their lemons into lemonade, and that LGBT people should be barred from adopting children.
And that's only the tip of iceberg. In years past, Sharron Angle put her blessing behind an insert that went out to voters that said homosexuality would lead to the destruction of the United States, and called gay people "sodomites" and "perverts." She even endorsed a statement that said there was no evidence to suggest homosexuality was biological, and that scientists who argue otherwise are flawed.Thanks, Gold's Gym!
Rowling isn't the first CEO to step into this mess. Target is still facing the wrath of the LGBT community after the company (and its CEO) gave money to support an anti-gay candidate in Minnesota. Best Buy and 3M have also seen a backlash as well, after giving money to support anti-gay candidates.
It might seem like a tall order, but this type of corporate activity deserves to be called out and condemned on every level. It's particularly egregious in the case of Gold's Gym, which not only has a huge LGBT membership, but often markets itself as an LGBT-friendly gym.
Perhaps that's true when you're on the stair climber, but if their CEO's political work is any indication, Gold's Gym has no interest in seeing LGBT people treated with dignity out in the real world.
What a truly brutal election. One rare exception was the crushing of Texas Oil's Proposition 23 in California (see CREDO's campaign at stoptexasoil.org), which proves that even unlimited corporate cash can be beaten back -- if it is disclosed and fought by grassroots mobilization.
At CREDO, we fight hard on the issues, but we don't take sides in partisan elections. As someone who cares about progressive issues, there is no doubt that Tuesday's results will make for even harder times for our country. It is crazy making to realize just how extreme and misinformed much of the new Congress will be.
There is little reason to expect any useful legislation from the Tea Party-dominated House or the dysfunctional Senate. Swing votes in the Senate have really troublesome names: Lieberman, Nelson, Manchin, and Pryor. In fact, this Congress will do damage to anything even remotely progressive.
So let's take a look at what happened and what we can do now. The media, unfortunately but not surprisingly, will be of no use in making sense of Tuesday's results, and even less so in helping chart a course for the future.
There is a lot of evidence that the state of the economy, and employment in particular, drive the results of elections -- and this one was no exception. As the saying goes, "If you think the economy is working, ask someone who isn't." We have an economy stuck in a deep ditch, with corporate profits and bank bonuses soaring while long-term unemployment is at near Depression levels.
The Republicans shrunk the first "stimulus" package and filled it with tax breaks, even as corporate Democrats helped them along, blocking any effort to restructure mortgages in bankruptcies, freeze foreclosures or force banks to lend money. The election outcome was partially baked in early 2009, when the White House preemptively conceded on the scale and provisions of the stimulus package and chose to coddle the banks. To watch this unfold was simply maddening.
Making matters worse were other factors. Among the most damaging were the actions of the conservative majority on the Supreme Court, which seemed energized by the new President, and took the radical step of rehearing a campaign finance case -- now known forever as Citizens United. In ruling 5-4 that corporations have the right to spend unlimited amounts of money for and against candidates, the Court transformed the electoral landscape in a way potentially more profound than its 5-4 ruling that seated George W. Bush as president. As many predicted, the Citizens United ruling unleashed the greatest wave of corporate spending in history, though it's a safe bet to say that their spending in 2012 will make this year's outlay look modest.
In an astonishing turn of events, the right wing was able to kill -- essentially murder in public view -- the organization that registered millions of poor and working class African-American and Hispanic voters in the last six years. I am speaking of ACORN, of course. By editing video completely out of context, and using the right-wing media machine to perfection, Andrew Breitbart was able to convince the mainstream media and eventually Congress, that ACORN was an election-stealing organization that had no qualms giving advice to pimps on how to increase revenues. Fulfilling Karl Rove's wildest dreams, Congress, including most Democrats, voted to block public funding for any of ACORN's laudable and effective housing or tax assistance programs, and ACORN died a quiet death. There would be no millions of new registrants.
Traditions are important in the Senate, but almost always to the detriment of progressive change. The health care reform effort was a victim of Senate conventions. Sen. Max Baucus of Montana, who chairs the critical Senate Finance Committee solely due to his long tenure, stalled development of a health reform package for many months in order to "negotiate" with Republicans on his committee. They weren't interested in the least, and walked away from the discussions muttering bizarre comments about reforms "killing grandma" and setting up "death panels" because Sarah Palin says so. The behavior of Baucus would be laughable if it were not so utterly destructive.
No matter what one thought of FOX News in the 2008 election, Murdoch's monster went on a rampage over the past two years. Serving as both an instigator and an amplifier for the craziest and most offensive pundits, FOX News misled and misinformed the American people on every issue, and effectively became the public face of the Republican Party. Glenn Beck's show became so toxic and spewed so much venom that one of his devoted fans took it upon himself to plot the execution of key leaders of the Tides Foundation and the ACLU, who had figured prominently in Beck's rants. Fortunately, the madman (the fan, not Beck) was stopped before he accomplished his mission.
We could go on, of course, on all the missed opportunities, the cave-ins, the sell outs, and the unpopular and misguided war in Afghanistan.
But the results are in. The House of Representatives is in the hands of the most corrupt Speaker-in-waiting ever, the Tea Party is ascendant, and the U.S. Senate, however dysfunctional it has been, is poised to be much worse.
For those of us who had hopes that the Obama Administration could seize the moment and enact popular progressive changes, this is a bitter pill. And like many, we grieve at the lost opportunities.
But now we need to brush off the dust, suck it up, and plunge back into substantive fights. Politics is not fair -- indeed, U.S. elections are rigged in profound ways! But walking away is not an option at CREDO Action, and we hope you will join us in some of the actions below we think are strategic in the new political landscape:
1. Commit to Taking Down FOX News. So long as FOX News has any credibility within the Beltway, it will be a pipeline for malicious material that will poison our political culture. Join our friends at Color of Change.
2.Tell the Senate to pass the DISCLOSE Act during the lame duck session. We were able to defeat the Texas Oil Initiative, Prop 23 in California, in part because we knew who the enemy was -- having disclosure of corporate contributions brings the enemy out in the open for us to take on and fight. The DISCLOSE Act passed the House and came within a single vote of passing the Senate. One vote. You can join this fight by taking action with Public Citizen at http://citizen.org/disclose-act-action.
3. Keep fighting to end the Bush tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans. This issue will get resolved during the lame duck session. Take action here.
4. Sign up for the fight for a constitutional amendment to reverse the Citizens United decision by declaring that corporations do not have the legal rights of humans. This may take years, if not decades, but we should start now. Please join Free Speech for People: http://freespeechforpeople.org/.
5. Tell the FCC to use its existing authority to establish and defend net neutrality. Our friends at Free Press are leading this charge: here.
6. Demand that the Department of Justice and the Internal Revenue Service investigate the political organizations set up by Karl Rove to launder millions of dollars in secret cash to change the outcome of elections. Act now at http://act.credoaction.com/campaign/investigate_crossroads.
7. Defend the EPA from castration by pro-coal interests in Congress. The EPA accomplished almost nothing during the Clinton years because the Gingrich-led Congress used the budget process to prohibit the agency from doing its work. This battle has already started. The Sierra Club's Beyond Coal campaign is a great way to join this fight: http://sierraclub.org/coal.
8. Convince the Obama administration to stop appealing progressive court rulings on matters like the Defense of Marriage Act, Don't Ask Don't Tell, and the state secrets defense against torture and wiretapping. Urge the Department of Justice to change its approach at http://act.credoaction.com/campaign/stop_appealing.
9. Urge Democratic senators to do away with lifetime tenure for committee chairs and open up all chair positions to majority vote elections. This will go a long way towards more progressive legislation. Take action with us here.
10. Demand that the Department of Justice enforce the provisions of the national voter registration law that require state governments to offer to register all voters at departments of public welfare and motor vehicles. Many state governments simply ignore these requirements and this is a cheaper and more inclusive way of registering voters than the campaigns of the now dead ACORN. Urge Attorney General Eric Holder to expand voter registration: http://credoaction.com/campaign/enforce_motor_voter.
I suspect you are angry and exhausted at this point. I know I am. But let us not forget that the values and ideals we fight for are greater than any one election. They still endure, and so must our fight. We have a lot of work to do.
Michael Kieschnick, CEO
CREDO Action
eric seiger
Jill Valentine, Shuma Gorath for MVC3 <b>News</b> - Page 1 | Eurogamer.net
Read our news of Jill Valentine, Shuma Gorath for MVC3.
Obama 2012 - Doug Schoen - Fox <b>News</b> | Mediaite
Fox News' Democratic analysts have thrown President Obama under the bus: Doug Schoen and Pat Caddell suggested this weekend that the Democratic Party must cut off its head to stand a chance in 2012. Schoen was back on America Live ...
Kinect doubles UK Xbox sales Xbox 360 <b>News</b> - Page 1 | Eurogamer.net
Read our Xbox 360 news of Kinect doubles UK Xbox sales.
eric seiger
eric seiger
eric seiger
Jill Valentine, Shuma Gorath for MVC3 <b>News</b> - Page 1 | Eurogamer.net
Read our news of Jill Valentine, Shuma Gorath for MVC3.
Obama 2012 - Doug Schoen - Fox <b>News</b> | Mediaite
Fox News' Democratic analysts have thrown President Obama under the bus: Doug Schoen and Pat Caddell suggested this weekend that the Democratic Party must cut off its head to stand a chance in 2012. Schoen was back on America Live ...
Kinect doubles UK Xbox sales Xbox 360 <b>News</b> - Page 1 | Eurogamer.net
Read our Xbox 360 news of Kinect doubles UK Xbox sales.
eric seiger
I suppose Robert Rowling sees no connection at all between the LGBT money that helped make Gold's Gym so successful, and his financial support for the same people who deny them rights. After all, he's already worth $4.2 billion, a combination of the oil money he inherited (Daddy founded Tana Oil & Gas) and his purchase of Omni Hotels. (He also owns 14% of Gaylord Entertainment.) He doesn't have to care about anything other than making more money!
Everyone has a favorite machine at the gym, whether it's the elliptical trainer, the pec deck, the ab machine, or the leg curl. For Robert Rowling, the CEO of the company that owns Gold's Gym, we're guessing his favorite machine is the treadmill. After all, he's pretty good at running over his LGBT customers.
Rowling, head of TRT Holdings, which is the owner of Gold's Gym, is spending quite a bit of money this election cycle. Upwards of $2 million to be exact, through both his corporate and personal bank accounts. Where is he sending that money, which he no doubt earns on the backs of many an LGBT customer?Karl Rove.
That's right, the former Bush strategist, who co-founded a new political organization, American Crossroads, which is working to elect some of the most virulently anti-gay politicians in the country. Turns out that Rowling is one of a handful of big money men working to get Rove's organization off the ground, helping to turn it into a power player among the political elite.
Who would have thought that giving money to Gold's Gym could have such ugly consequences for the LGBT community?
Among the candidates that the owner of Gold's Gym is working to elect include Nevada GOP senate candidate Sharron Angle, who is challenging Sen. Harry Reid. Angle, you might recall, has previously said that women who are raped should turn their lemons into lemonade, and that LGBT people should be barred from adopting children.
And that's only the tip of iceberg. In years past, Sharron Angle put her blessing behind an insert that went out to voters that said homosexuality would lead to the destruction of the United States, and called gay people "sodomites" and "perverts." She even endorsed a statement that said there was no evidence to suggest homosexuality was biological, and that scientists who argue otherwise are flawed.Thanks, Gold's Gym!
Rowling isn't the first CEO to step into this mess. Target is still facing the wrath of the LGBT community after the company (and its CEO) gave money to support an anti-gay candidate in Minnesota. Best Buy and 3M have also seen a backlash as well, after giving money to support anti-gay candidates.
It might seem like a tall order, but this type of corporate activity deserves to be called out and condemned on every level. It's particularly egregious in the case of Gold's Gym, which not only has a huge LGBT membership, but often markets itself as an LGBT-friendly gym.
Perhaps that's true when you're on the stair climber, but if their CEO's political work is any indication, Gold's Gym has no interest in seeing LGBT people treated with dignity out in the real world.
What a truly brutal election. One rare exception was the crushing of Texas Oil's Proposition 23 in California (see CREDO's campaign at stoptexasoil.org), which proves that even unlimited corporate cash can be beaten back -- if it is disclosed and fought by grassroots mobilization.
At CREDO, we fight hard on the issues, but we don't take sides in partisan elections. As someone who cares about progressive issues, there is no doubt that Tuesday's results will make for even harder times for our country. It is crazy making to realize just how extreme and misinformed much of the new Congress will be.
There is little reason to expect any useful legislation from the Tea Party-dominated House or the dysfunctional Senate. Swing votes in the Senate have really troublesome names: Lieberman, Nelson, Manchin, and Pryor. In fact, this Congress will do damage to anything even remotely progressive.
So let's take a look at what happened and what we can do now. The media, unfortunately but not surprisingly, will be of no use in making sense of Tuesday's results, and even less so in helping chart a course for the future.
There is a lot of evidence that the state of the economy, and employment in particular, drive the results of elections -- and this one was no exception. As the saying goes, "If you think the economy is working, ask someone who isn't." We have an economy stuck in a deep ditch, with corporate profits and bank bonuses soaring while long-term unemployment is at near Depression levels.
The Republicans shrunk the first "stimulus" package and filled it with tax breaks, even as corporate Democrats helped them along, blocking any effort to restructure mortgages in bankruptcies, freeze foreclosures or force banks to lend money. The election outcome was partially baked in early 2009, when the White House preemptively conceded on the scale and provisions of the stimulus package and chose to coddle the banks. To watch this unfold was simply maddening.
Making matters worse were other factors. Among the most damaging were the actions of the conservative majority on the Supreme Court, which seemed energized by the new President, and took the radical step of rehearing a campaign finance case -- now known forever as Citizens United. In ruling 5-4 that corporations have the right to spend unlimited amounts of money for and against candidates, the Court transformed the electoral landscape in a way potentially more profound than its 5-4 ruling that seated George W. Bush as president. As many predicted, the Citizens United ruling unleashed the greatest wave of corporate spending in history, though it's a safe bet to say that their spending in 2012 will make this year's outlay look modest.
In an astonishing turn of events, the right wing was able to kill -- essentially murder in public view -- the organization that registered millions of poor and working class African-American and Hispanic voters in the last six years. I am speaking of ACORN, of course. By editing video completely out of context, and using the right-wing media machine to perfection, Andrew Breitbart was able to convince the mainstream media and eventually Congress, that ACORN was an election-stealing organization that had no qualms giving advice to pimps on how to increase revenues. Fulfilling Karl Rove's wildest dreams, Congress, including most Democrats, voted to block public funding for any of ACORN's laudable and effective housing or tax assistance programs, and ACORN died a quiet death. There would be no millions of new registrants.
Traditions are important in the Senate, but almost always to the detriment of progressive change. The health care reform effort was a victim of Senate conventions. Sen. Max Baucus of Montana, who chairs the critical Senate Finance Committee solely due to his long tenure, stalled development of a health reform package for many months in order to "negotiate" with Republicans on his committee. They weren't interested in the least, and walked away from the discussions muttering bizarre comments about reforms "killing grandma" and setting up "death panels" because Sarah Palin says so. The behavior of Baucus would be laughable if it were not so utterly destructive.
No matter what one thought of FOX News in the 2008 election, Murdoch's monster went on a rampage over the past two years. Serving as both an instigator and an amplifier for the craziest and most offensive pundits, FOX News misled and misinformed the American people on every issue, and effectively became the public face of the Republican Party. Glenn Beck's show became so toxic and spewed so much venom that one of his devoted fans took it upon himself to plot the execution of key leaders of the Tides Foundation and the ACLU, who had figured prominently in Beck's rants. Fortunately, the madman (the fan, not Beck) was stopped before he accomplished his mission.
We could go on, of course, on all the missed opportunities, the cave-ins, the sell outs, and the unpopular and misguided war in Afghanistan.
But the results are in. The House of Representatives is in the hands of the most corrupt Speaker-in-waiting ever, the Tea Party is ascendant, and the U.S. Senate, however dysfunctional it has been, is poised to be much worse.
For those of us who had hopes that the Obama Administration could seize the moment and enact popular progressive changes, this is a bitter pill. And like many, we grieve at the lost opportunities.
But now we need to brush off the dust, suck it up, and plunge back into substantive fights. Politics is not fair -- indeed, U.S. elections are rigged in profound ways! But walking away is not an option at CREDO Action, and we hope you will join us in some of the actions below we think are strategic in the new political landscape:
1. Commit to Taking Down FOX News. So long as FOX News has any credibility within the Beltway, it will be a pipeline for malicious material that will poison our political culture. Join our friends at Color of Change.
2.Tell the Senate to pass the DISCLOSE Act during the lame duck session. We were able to defeat the Texas Oil Initiative, Prop 23 in California, in part because we knew who the enemy was -- having disclosure of corporate contributions brings the enemy out in the open for us to take on and fight. The DISCLOSE Act passed the House and came within a single vote of passing the Senate. One vote. You can join this fight by taking action with Public Citizen at http://citizen.org/disclose-act-action.
3. Keep fighting to end the Bush tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans. This issue will get resolved during the lame duck session. Take action here.
4. Sign up for the fight for a constitutional amendment to reverse the Citizens United decision by declaring that corporations do not have the legal rights of humans. This may take years, if not decades, but we should start now. Please join Free Speech for People: http://freespeechforpeople.org/.
5. Tell the FCC to use its existing authority to establish and defend net neutrality. Our friends at Free Press are leading this charge: here.
6. Demand that the Department of Justice and the Internal Revenue Service investigate the political organizations set up by Karl Rove to launder millions of dollars in secret cash to change the outcome of elections. Act now at http://act.credoaction.com/campaign/investigate_crossroads.
7. Defend the EPA from castration by pro-coal interests in Congress. The EPA accomplished almost nothing during the Clinton years because the Gingrich-led Congress used the budget process to prohibit the agency from doing its work. This battle has already started. The Sierra Club's Beyond Coal campaign is a great way to join this fight: http://sierraclub.org/coal.
8. Convince the Obama administration to stop appealing progressive court rulings on matters like the Defense of Marriage Act, Don't Ask Don't Tell, and the state secrets defense against torture and wiretapping. Urge the Department of Justice to change its approach at http://act.credoaction.com/campaign/stop_appealing.
9. Urge Democratic senators to do away with lifetime tenure for committee chairs and open up all chair positions to majority vote elections. This will go a long way towards more progressive legislation. Take action with us here.
10. Demand that the Department of Justice enforce the provisions of the national voter registration law that require state governments to offer to register all voters at departments of public welfare and motor vehicles. Many state governments simply ignore these requirements and this is a cheaper and more inclusive way of registering voters than the campaigns of the now dead ACORN. Urge Attorney General Eric Holder to expand voter registration: http://credoaction.com/campaign/enforce_motor_voter.
I suspect you are angry and exhausted at this point. I know I am. But let us not forget that the values and ideals we fight for are greater than any one election. They still endure, and so must our fight. We have a lot of work to do.
Michael Kieschnick, CEO
CREDO Action
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Fox News' Democratic analysts have thrown President Obama under the bus: Doug Schoen and Pat Caddell suggested this weekend that the Democratic Party must cut off its head to stand a chance in 2012. Schoen was back on America Live ...
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