SCOTUS could make the Koch brothers supreme dicators of America

Meet your New Supreme Dictators!
**This picture is not mine.**

UPDATE: There’s not been a ruling yet as far as I can tell; I might have gotten the date wrong.  Anyway, no verdict yet.  I’ll stay posted.

Three years after Citizens United……..

We’re at it again.  The Supreme Court of the United States will decide the case McCuthceon v. FEC.   Believe me, if the plaintiff wins, which is likely considering the fact that every suit the Roberts court heard involving campaign finance, restrictions were struck down.

The main plaintiff is Shaun McCuthceon, a filthy rich guy from Alabama who wants to dump cash on elections so crazy teabaggers win.   Luckily, there’s a limit to how much money filthy rich people can dump on elections.

Shaun McCuthceon, with help from his friends at the Republican Party, wants to change that.  Really.  WHAT THE HELL DOES HE THINK A SUPERPAC IS FOR?

Basically, McCutceon wants to strike down common sense laws designed to prevent corruption.  The GOP needs an edge.  Their approval ratings are at a record low now, so, as usual, they cheat.

Striking down the law could lead to Congress putting fundraising even higher on the list of priorities.  As the government responds less and less to its people, this is the last thing we need.

A little while ago, I wrote a post on how much of a priority fundraising has taken in Congress.   Working on that post, I listened to a shocking This American Life piece on campaign finance.  In Act III, John McCain (who along with Russ Feingold sponsored the McCain-Feingold Act that aimed to keep money out of politics) says of SCOTUS:

The questions they asked it showed they had not the slightest clue as to what a political campaign is all about.  The role of money that it plays in political campaigns and I remember when Russ and I walked out of there, I said, “Russ,” I said. “We’re gonna loose and it’s because they are clueless.”

Feingold pointed out:

It’s never been this way since 1907…that when you buy toothpaste or detergent or a gallon of gas that the next day that money can be used on a candidate that you don’t believe in.  That’s brand new.

Also from the episode:

Money in the political system helps explain why oil companies get big subsidies even while their business is booming; why the government provides flood insurance for rich people to build beech houses in hurricane zones; why corn syrup that goes in soft drinks gets federal subsidies and fruits and vegetables do not. …… It’s why we have a system where even though we passed a comprehensive health care reform bill it’s still illegal for the federal government to negotiate drug prices….People needing a new cancer drug pay eight or ten times as much in America as in any other country.

But the scariest part definitely comes in Act II, which discusses the implication of Citizens United

Even without spending the money, in a lot of instances, there will be changes in laws that’ll benefit special interest because of the threat of millions of dollars in undisclosed contributions to bludgeon somebody who thwarts them.

That’s just with Citizens United imagine what would happen if a member of congress could be lured to make a bad vote, not just by the threat of a super pac attack but by the promise of 500 grand if only they vote a certain way.

We need to get money out of politics.  Now.

Hunger Games, USA

NYT op-ed by Paul Krugman.  So good, I had to blog it:

Something terrible has happened to the soul of the Republican Party. We’ve gone beyond bad economic doctrine. We’ve even gone beyond selfishness and special interests. At this point we’re talking about a state of mind that takes positive glee in inflicting further suffering on the already miserable.

The occasion for these observations is, as you may have guessed, the monstrous farm bill the House passed last week.

For decades, farm bills have had two major pieces. One piece offers subsidies to farmers; the other offers nutritional aid to Americans in distress, mainly in the form of food stamps (these days officially known as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP).

Long ago, when subsidies helped many poor farmers, you could defend the whole package as a form of support for those in need. Over the years, however, the two pieces diverged. Farm subsidies became a fraud-ridden program that mainly benefits corporations and wealthy individuals. Meanwhile food stamps became a crucial part of the social safety net.

So House Republicans voted to maintain farm subsidies — at a higher level than either the Senate or the White House proposed — while completely eliminating food stamps from the bill.

To fully appreciate what just went down, listen to the rhetoric conservatives often use to justify eliminating safety-net programs. It goes something like this: “You’re personally free to help the poor. But the government has no right to take people’s money” — frequently, at this point, they add the words “at the point of a gun” — “and force them to give it to the poor.”

It is, however, apparently perfectly O.K. to take people’s money at the point of a gun and force them to give it to agribusinesses and the wealthy.

Now, some enemies of food stamps don’t quote libertarian philosophy; they quote the Bible instead. Representative Stephen Fincher of Tennessee, for example, cited the New Testament: “The one who is unwilling to work shall not eat.” Sure enough, it turns out that Mr. Fincher has personally received millions in farm subsidies.

Given this awesome double standard — I don’t think the word “hypocrisy” does it justice — it seems almost anti-climactic to talk about facts and figures. But I guess we must.

So: Food stamp usage has indeed soared in recent years, with the percentage of the population receiving stamps rising from 8.7 in 2007 to 15.2 in the most recent data. There is, however, no mystery here. SNAP is supposed to help families in distress, and lately a lot of families have been in distress.

In fact, SNAP usage tends to track broad measures of unemployment, like U6, which includes the underemployed and workers who have temporarily given up active job search. And U6 more than doubled in the crisis, from about 8 percent before the Great Recession to 17 percent in early 2010. It’s true that broad unemployment has since declined slightly, while food stamp numbers have continued to rise — but there’s normally some lag in the relationship, and it’s probably also true that some families have been forced to take food stamps by sharp cuts in unemployment benefits.

What about the theory, common on the right, that it’s the other way around — that we have so much unemployment thanks to government programs that, in effect, pay people not to work? (Soup kitchens caused the Great Depression!) The basic answer is, you have to be kidding. Do you really believe that Americans are living lives of leisure on $134 a month, the average SNAP benefit?

Still, let’s pretend to take this seriously. If employment is down because government aid is inducing people to stay home, reducing the labor force, then the law of supply and demand should apply: withdrawing all those workers should be causing labor shortages and rising wages, especially among the low-paid workers most likely to receive aid. In reality, of course, wages are stagnant or declining — and that’s especially true for the groups that benefit most from food stamps.

So what’s going on here? Is it just racism? No doubt the old racist canards — like Ronald Reagan’s image of the “strapping young buck” using food stamps to buy a T-bone steak — still have some traction. But these days almost half of food stamp recipients are non-Hispanic whites; in Tennessee, home of the Bible-quoting Mr. Fincher, the number is 63 percent. So it’s not all about race.

What is it about, then? Somehow, one of our nation’s two great parties has become infected by an almost pathological meanspiritedness, a contempt for what CNBC’s Rick Santelli, in the famous rant that launched the Tea Party, called “losers.” If you’re an American, and you’re down on your luck, these people don’t want to help; they want to give you an extra kick. I don’t fully understand it, but it’s a terrible thing to behold.

Stop Chris Christie

The economy has suffered greatly, yet in normally deep blue New Jersey, Christie is leading Democratic challenger Barbara Bouno 59.9% to 28% on average.

If you would like a complete list of what Christie vetoed (and signed), click here. Highlights include:

VETO: Establishing an Animal Cruelty Offense for Confining a Gestating Sow.

VETO: Requires Availability for Early Voting for Certain Elections (more about that later).

VETO: The “New Jobs for New Jersey” Act

VETO: Establishes the Clean Car Comission

VETO: Increases the Minimum Wage

VETO: Establishes the NJ Health Benefit Exchange

VETO: Requires Participation in the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative

VETO: Increases the Tax Rate on Incomes over $1 Million

That was only a selection of bills from the past year.    Notice what he vetoed: a jobs bill, which is the piece of legislation his fellow GOPers in the House of Representatives have failed to bring to the House Floor.  A minimum wage increase.    Taxes for the rich.

Courtesy of Gov. Christie, there is no same-sex marriage in New Jersey.  Thanks to Chris Christie, there is less environmental action.

And if that isn’t enough for you, consider this: New Jersey senator Frank Lautenburg died on June 3, 2013.  To fill the vacancy, Christie had three options, all of which involve an appointee to fill the vacancy until the election takes place:

1.  Adding a special election for the senate seat to the ballot in November.
2. Waiting until 2014, when Lautenburg was planning to retire, to hold an election.
3. Calling a special election in October.

Christie chose the third option, saying, “I don’t think you can put a price tag on what it’s worth to have an elected person in the United States Senate.”  However, Christie’s refusal to raise taxes for millionaires has contributed to a budget deficit and it is hard to say where New Jersey will get $24 million needed to put up an election.

If Christie’s election were in 2014, it would be one thing.  But New Jersey voters will go to the polls on October 16 (a Wednesday, which could potentially confuse some people) to elect a senator and then again on November 5 to elect a governor.   It may be hard for some of the people who tend to vote for democrats: minorities for instance, to get to the polls twice, which could help the Republicans, especially since Christie seems to be trying to prove himself to GOP voters as the 2016 presidential nominee.

It should be noted that Christie vetoed the Early Voting bill mentioned earlier because a veto would save the state of New Jersey money.   Early voting would better ensure Christie’s idea of having people the people want elected to public office.   Yet he vetoed the early voting bill that could potentially hurt him politically and called the special election that could potentially help him politically.

This is not about people’s rights, this is a new form of silent disenfranchisement, a way to slowly nudge liberals away from the ballot box.  And it is New Jersey liberals who have the power to push back.

Chris Christie seems like a RINO (Republican In Name-Only).  The average RINO is a Republican non-extremist who supports people’s rights but is an economic conservative.  Christie is against equal rights for LGBT couples.  Supporting rights?  I don’t think so.

Although he supports bipartisanship and has worked with both Barack Obama and Bill Clinton, you have to consider that there once was a Republican governor of a state more liberal than New Jersey.  His name was Mitt Romney and he seemed like a RINO.  But when that man ran for president, bang! He became nearly as conservative as his opponents, with a paradoxical liberal record backing him.

Chris Christie  is not a RINO.  He is a conservative in disguise.

Christie must be stopped both from being re-elected as governor and becoming president.  Only the people can do this.  We need to expose Christie’s wild side, the side of him that kills jobs and disenfranchises voters.  We need to empower New Jersey liberals, to go to the polls and kick Christie out.

To be frank, it is a shame that the media is silent on this issue, so I am starting a campaign to StopChristie.  There will be posts and a page (coming soon!) on this blog and Tweets dedicated to this issue on my part.  Please share this information and  tell any New Jersey residents you may know why they need to stop Christie and vote for Democrats in both election.   I believe that if we expose Christie, Barbara Bouno will have a chance, if not win, this November.