Rep. Tom Reed (R-NY)

Some new independent expenditure disclosures just came out, and they show that a special interest group has just dumped over $200,000 on ads to re-elect Republican congressman Tom Reed (NY). Here’s a copy of the disclosures:

Mentzer Media Services, Inc.

600 Fairmount Avenue
Suite 306
Towson, Maryland 21286

Purpose of Expenditure: Television Advertising
Name of Federal Candidate supported or opposed by expenditure: Rep. Tom Reed
Office Sought: House of Representatives
State is New York in District 23
Date Expended = 09/28/2012
Person Completing Form: Ms. Melinda Hatton
Date Signed = 09/28/2012

Amount Expended = $211960.00
Calendar YTD Per Election for Office Sought = $223928.78

McCarthy Hennings Media, Inc.

1850 M Street, NW
Suite 235
Washington, DC 20036

Purpose of Expenditure: Television Production
Name of Federal Candidate supported or opposed by expenditure: Rep. Tom Reed
Office Sought: House of Representatives
State is New York in District 23
Date Expended = 09/28/2012
Person Completing Form: Ms. Melinda Hatton
Date Signed = 09/28/2012

Amount Expended = $11968.78
Calendar YTD Per Election for Office Sought = $223928.78

This huge media buy comes on behalf of the American Hospital Association’s (AHA) political action committee. AHA is not just some friendly group of hospitals that advocates for healing the sick and aiding the poor. It’s a massive lobby that represents hospitals that gouge patients and fight real reforms of the system.

In 2010, former Senator Tom Daschle — who himself has worked for the health care industry as an informal lobbyist — revealed that AHA had demanded that the White House oppose the public option in its health care reform bill. As we know now, that demand unfortunately succeeded.

Reed doesn’t just oppose the public option, he wants to repeal the entire Affordable Care Act, including patient protections that hospitals have stridently opposed.

Voters should know that these ads are simply designed to pay back a congressman …

President Obama leads Republican candidate Mitt Romney in New Hampshire, 51 percent to Romney’s 43.5 percent, according to a new poll from Democratic-leaning Public Policy Polling and commissioned by the liberal-leaning Progressive Change Campaign Committee (PCCC).

Alan Grayson must defeat one far-right radio host before he returns to Congress

Bold progressive Alan Grayson is currently campaigning to return to Congress as a member of the House of Representatives. His opponent in the race is right-wing radio host Todd Long.

At a debate with his Republican primary opponents this past summer, Long revealed just how extreme he is. He told the audience that he would work to replace Speaker of the House John Boehner Ai??with either Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) or fellow right-wing extremist Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN):

LONG:Ai??I’ll fight passionately for a Paul Ryan, a thoughtful conservative, Michelle Bachmann or someone that has ideas and solutions based on the founders principles [to be Speaker of the House.]

Watch his remarks at around 03:42 in the following YouTube video:

This makes the choice between Long and Grayson clear. Long wants either an Ayn Rand acolyteAi??in Paul Ryan or fellow right-wing extremist in Bachmann to replace his party’s leader.

To refresh your memory, Bachmann has demanded a McCarythist witch hunt of Muslims in the federal government, has said stopping gay marriage is the biggest issue over the next thirty years, said that global warming is a “hoax” and based on “voodoo,” and has accused Obama of holding “anti-American views.”

So the good voters of Florida should know that a vote for Long is a vote for Ryan and Bachmann by proxy.

Pitch in a few dollars to help Grayson defeat Long.

Veterans suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder would likely benefit from the use of medicinal marijuana. (Photo credit: Flickr user Fort Rucker)

The fight over medical marijuana is heating up in Colorado, as police associations, corrupt drug rehab centers, and hospitality industry moguls have pledged hundreds of thousands of dollars to defeat Amendment 64, which would legalize the adult possession of small amounts of marijuana.

But Amendment 64’s backers received a boost late last week, as a new group of military veterans announced their support for the measure.

Earlier this year, veterans petitioned the Colorado Department of Health to include post-traumatic stress disorder as an allowable condition to purchase medical marijuana in the state. The state failed to act, so now veterans are organizing to pass Amendment 64 under the banner of “Veterans for 64.”

“The state’s failure to act is an effective denial of this compassionate petition,” said group founder and Vietnam vet Bob Wiley. “Our only option is to support Amendment 64, which will ensure that Coloradans 21 and older who suffer from PTSD will no longer be subject to arrest and prosecution for using marijuana to alleviate their suffering.”

One Wisconsin protester’s sign against the Kochs. (Photo credit: Flickr user Sue Peacock)

Americans For Prosperity (AFP), the group founded and funded by the right-wing billionaires the Koch Brothers, has its sights set on Arkansas.

Having just spent big in Kansas to unseat some of the state’s last moderate Republicans, AFP is now looking to swing both the House and Senate in Arkansas to the Republican Party.

The Washington Post reports today that the organization has pledged to spend a million dollars on state races there, and is already organizing astroturf events to entice voters, including free barbecues and bus tours.

Let’s put that million dollars into perspective. The Institute for Money In State Politics estimates that the average House race in the state cost $30,723 during the previous 2009-2010 cycle. The average Senate race cost a bit more at $95,626.

Arkansas Republicans only need to win three seats in the Senate and five seats in the House in order to win control of the state’s legislature. That means that if the average cost was similar to the previous cycle, the Kochs’ AFP could afford to fully subsidize each winning race through outside expenditures (which are not subject to strict limits like donating directly to a candidate).

It doesn’t have to be this way. We can kick Big Money out of our politics. Click here to join PCCC’s Take Back Democracy campaign and help kick Big Money out of our politics.

Growing income inequality help set off Occupy Wall Street last year.

Reuters today has a great articleupAi??about income inequality in the United States. One of the most pressing facts in the piece is how the richest Americans have been able to get the vast majority of income growth — meaning that most Americans have their incomes stagnating, declining, or growing only very slowly.

Reuters points to a March paper by UC Berkeley economistAi??Emmanuel Saez, who found that the top 1 percent of Americans received 93 percent of the nation’s income growth in 2010 (as the country was struggling to get out of a recession).

Income inequality has grown so severe that even some of the 1 percent themselves are starting to revolt against it. Reuters interviews former American Airlines CEO Bob Crandall, who started a blog last year to expound on various political ideas. “Income inequality of the scale we have today is destroying our democracy,” the former chief executive told the news service.

(Photo credit: Flickr user DonkeyHotey)

During tonight’sAi??MassachusettsAi??Senate debate, moderator David Gregory asked the candidates who their “model” Supreme Court Justice is. Sen. Scott Brown (R-MA) replied by saying that his model was far-right justice Antonin Scalia.

The crowd began booing, which prompted Brown to start naming off other justices he also favored, most of them conservatives. Watch it:

It’s incredibly telling that Scalia is the first one to come to Brown’s mind. Here’s a primer on Scalia’s views:

He Loves Money In Politics: Scalia was the deciding voteAi??in the Citizens United case to open new floodgates of corporate money in our elections. In a television appearance discussing the case, he compared billionaire spending in our elections to free speech. Brown helped kill the DISCLOSE Act, which would’ve exposed some of the corporations and billionaires buying our elections.
He Has Extreme Views On Immigration: Scalia was a huge backer of Arizona’s draconian anti-immigration law, and even cited Southern slavery laws in his court defense of Arizona’s measure. Perhaps Brown was taking after Scalia when he voted to kill the DREAM Act.
He Is Stridently Against Ai??Womens Rights: Scalia voted with the court’s conservative justices in the Ledbetter v. Goodyear Tire & Rubber Co. case to limit discrimination suits over equal pay. He is also tirelessly opposed to abortion rights. Keep in mind that Brown voted against women and with lobbyistsAi??by voting against the anti-discrimination Paycheck Fairness Act.
He’s An Apologist For Torture:Ai??During a 2008 radio interview, Scalia said it’s “absurd” to say the government can’t hit prisoners “in the face.”
He’s Anti-Gay: Scalia was the dissenting opinion in Lawrence v. Texas,Ai??which invalidated America’s last sodomy laws (focusing on Texas). Remember that Brown has refused to endorse …

A smile paid for by Big Oil.

The fossil fuel industry — oil, coal, gas and other dirty energy sources — are expected to get $113 billion in taxpayer subsidies over the next decade. These subsidies are bought by the industry’s lobbyists and public relations campaigns, which succeed in getting Congress in their pockets.

At a recent public event, an activist from the environmental group 350.org attempted to ask Rep. Cory Gardner (R-CO) about his votes for these subsidies. But he refused to answer her question and soon fled, with his staff in tow. Watch Gardener obfuscate and flee:

The oil and gas industry is Gardener’s top donor, and he constantly advocates for the industry’s interests from his perch on the House Energy and Commerce Committee.

We don’t have to let Big Oil’s campaign cash run our government. Click here to join PCCC’s Take Back Democracy campaign and help kick Big Money out of our politics.

Late last night, Governor Jerry Brown (D-CA) vetoed the “Domestic Worker Bill Of Rights,” which would’ve expanded sorely-needed protections to domestic workers in his state of California.

In rejecting it, Brown said that the bill “raises a number of unanswered questions,” and that he’d be unable to approve it.

The United Farm Workers (UFW)Ai??reacted harshlyAi??to Brown’s veto with the following statement:

The UFW is appalled at the governor’s decision to deny farm workers the basic legal tools to protect themselves from employers who intentionally put their lives at risk by refusing to provide them with adequate water and shade despite the dangerously high temperatures. By vetoing AB 2676, the governor continues the policy of giving animals more protections than those currently offered to farm workers.

Ironically, Brown also on the same night approved funding for a Ronald Reagan statue in the capitol building, saying that the former president and California governor had “courage and unique leadership ability.”Ai??Keep in mind that Reagan was actually the governor who ended free college tuition at all of the state’s universities, in a huge blow to progressivism.

Jerry Brown needs to take a good look at his values and decide whether he wants to walk in the shoes of Reagan or that of the Democrats.

It turns out that higher taxes aren’t sending the rich fleeing. (Photo credit: Flickr user Molly DG)

Right-wing dogma preaches that hiking taxes on the wealthy will lead the rich to simply move away to find lower tax rates elsewhere. But a new analysis shows that this isn’t necessarily the case.

The San Jose Mercury News conducted an analysis of Internal Revenue Service (IRS) data and found that states with higher taxes actually have the highest number of rich individuals, and that lower-tax states don’t necessarily have as many wealthy people:

An analysis by this newspaper of IRS tax-return data shows that states that charge high income taxes — from California to New York to New Jersey — are home to the highest number of rich people per capita. And two-thirds of the states that don’t charge any income taxes actually have fewer numbers of millionaire residents per capita, the analysis shows.

Consider Florida and Texas, which are often cited as havens for rich movie stars, CEOs and athletes because they are income-tax free. California, on the other hand, has the nation’s second-highest income tax rate.

So in those three states, how many people earn at least $1 million a year for every 100,000 taxpayers?

Florida: 202. Texas: 217. California: 252.

The data seems to debunk the myth that lower tax rates will draw the presence of rich people and that higher tax rates will send them fleeing.

Kids are being tested more and more, and lobbyists pushing big for these policies are part of the reason why.

Corporate special interests get their way not only by spending big to buy off legislators, but by working to influence public opinion behind the scenes.

On Saturday, the Austin American-Statesman published an education op-ed by Sandy Kress. Kress offered an impassioned argument in favor of neoliberal education policy, starting with a defense of the use of high-stakes standardized testing.

But what the op-ed did not see fit to mention was Kress’s own lobbying work on behalf of testing companies and other education interests. Here’s some education-related interests that Kress works for as a lobbyist. This data is drawn from the Texas Ethics Commission:

Edvance Research Inc.
9901 IH-10 West, Suite 1000 San Antonio, TX 78230
Type of Compensation: Prospective
Less Than $10,000.00
Client Start Date: 01/20/2012
Client Term Date: 02/09/2012

Pearson Education
1 Lake Street Upper Saddle River, NJ 07458
Type of Compensation: Prospective
$50,000 – $99,999.99
Client Start Date: 01/20/2012
Client Term Date: 12/31/2012

Teach For America
315 West 36th Street, 7th Floor New York, NY 10018
Type of Compensation: Prospective
$10,000 – $24,999.99
Client Start Date: 01/20/2012
Client Term Date: 12/31/2012

The paper should make every effort to disclose these …