Organizing for America, the powerful activist organization with some 13 million email addresses that grew out of the Obama campaign, has launched a new website -- http://radio.barackobama.com. The website provides users with the name of a talk show that's going on right at that moment and what is being discussed. Users can listen live to the radio program directly from the website.
The purpose of the website is supply the President's supporters with liberal talking points on health care reform. Supporters are then encouraged to call in to conservative talk radio shows armed with the talking points provided and "report your call."
It's not exactly the fairness doctrine, but it doesn't seem transparent either. If you can't beat 'em, astroturf 'em
Friday, February 26, 2010
Astroturfing: Obama plans to flood conservative talk radio with liberal talking points
“A Reading Guide to the Senate Bill’s Backroom Deals”
the Senate Republican Policy Committee has compiled “A Reading Guide to the Senate Bill’s Backroom Deals.”Keep it handy:
The White House recently released its own health care proposal[ii] in the form of changes to the 2,733 page legislation (H.R. 3590) that passed the Senate in December.[iii] While the proposal purports to remove the “Nebraska FMAP provision” that saw 49 other states funding Nebraska’s Medicaid largesse (known as the “Cornhusker Kickback”), it does not address other deals negotiated by Democrats in the Senate legislation. Many other backroom agreements are included in the Senate bill, which the White House has now endorsed as the platform for Democrats to enact “health reform” into law:
Page 428—Section 2006, known as the “Louisiana Purchase,” provides an extra $300 million in Medicaid funding to Louisiana.[iv]
Page 878—Section 3201(g), known as the “Gator Aid” provision, shields certain Florida residents from Medicare Advantage cuts. In December, 57 Senate Democrats voted not to extend this special deal to all Medicare beneficiaries.[v]
Page 2132—Section 10201(e)(1) provides an increase in Medicaid Disproportionate Share Hospital (DSH) payments for Hawaii, meaning 49 other states will pay more in taxes so that Hawaii can receive this special benefit.
Page 2222—Section 10323 makes certain individuals exposed to environmental hazards eligible for Medicare coverage. The definition used in the bill ensures the only individuals eligible will be those living in Libby, Montana.
Page 2237—Section 10324 increases Medicare payments by $2 billion in “frontier states.”[vi]
Page 2354— Section 10502 spends $100 million on “debt service of, or direct construction of, a health care facility,” language which the sponsors intended to benefit Connecticut.[vii]
Page 2394—Section 10905(c) includes language exempting Nebraska Blue Cross/Blue Shield and Michigan Blue Cross/Blue Shield from the new tax on health insurance companies, despite an Administration-released report calling Michigan Blue Cross/Blue Shield’s 2009 rate increases “disturbing.”[viii]
Page 2395—Section 10905(d) exempts Medigap supplemental insurance plans sold by Mutual of Omaha, headquartered in Nebraska, from the new tax on health insurance companies.
These specific agreements and provisions also do not display the full scope of the White House’s legislative deal-making. For instance, the head of the pharmaceutical industry said the Administration approached him to negotiate a secret arrangement with his industry: “We were assured, ‘We need somebody to come in first. If you come in first, you will have a rock-solid deal.’”[ix] And former Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean publicly admitted at a town hall forum that “The reason that tort reform is not in the [health care] bill is because the [Democrat Members] who wrote it did not want to take on the trial lawyers.”[x]
Tuesday, February 16, 2010
Unionized Rhode Island Teachers Refuse To Work 25 Minutes More Per Day, So Town Fires All Of Them
A school superintendent in Rhode Island is trying to fix an abysmally bad school system.About time people started standing up to them.
Her plan calls for teachers at a local high school to work 25 minutes longer per day, each lunch with students once in a while, and help with tutoring. The teachers' union has refused to accept these apparently onerous demands.
The teachers at the high school make $70,000-$78,000, as compared to a median income in the town of $22,000. This exemplifies a nationwide trend in which public sector workers make far more than their private-sector counterparts (with better benefits).
Let's hope so.The school superintendent has responded to the union's stubbornness by firing every teacher and administrator at the school.
A sign of things to come?
ACORN funder confimed to head Corporation for National and Community Service
Democrats just can't stay away from ACORN. Even as scandal piles on top of scandal, they continue to embrace the organization. The latest is that the Senate just confirmed Patrick Corvington as chief executive of the Corporation for National and Community Service. Corvington and ACORN have quite the history [...]
The foundation Corvington worked for also funded the AFL-CIO, the pro-abortion Guttmacher Institute, National Coucil for La Raza and other extreme left-wing groups.
Why liberals are lawyers' puppets
When President Obama and his liberal Democratic allies squeal at the Supreme Court decision allowing corporations to exercise freedom of political speech, somebody should ask them why they aren't as horrified by the enormous campaign expenditures by the one industry that treats liberal politicians like chattel servants.
The industry in question is the bar of big-money plaintiffs' lawyers. A study called "Trial Lawyers Inc.," released Feb. 9 by the Manhattan Institute for Policy Research, tells the tale.
For years, during every election cycle, lawyers as a whole have donated more money than any other industry to federal and state political campaigns. This largesse included $780 million for federal and $725 million for state elections in the past decade alone. The bulk of that cash comes from plaintiffs' attorneys. Each cycle, 90 percent or more of that jackpot-justice cash goes to Democrats. Plaintiffs' firms are four of the top seven donors to the campaigns of embattled Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, Nevada Democrat. Speaker Nancy Pelosi, a California Democrat, also is deeply in political debt to these lawyer groups.
How Congressional Black Caucus got around McCain-Feingold
In the wake of the Citizens United v FEC decision by the Supreme Court, Democrats in Congress have pledged legislative action to restore the rejected components of the McCain-Feingold legislation, claiming that they have a mission to stop corporate influence on elections. Some have suggested amending the Constitution to limit the First Amendment. However, as the New York Times reports today, one select group of Democrats have had no problem cultivating corporate influence, and doing so by working around the McCain-Feingold restrictions their party claims to champion [...]
Now, consider that $55 million in light of the outrage expressed over the last few weeks over the court’s Citizens United decision. Here’s Barack Obama, scolding the court during the State of the Union speech: [...]Open the floodgates for corporations? Spend without limit? Bankrolled by America’s most powerful interests? Maybe Congress should first pass a bill that stops members of Congress from shaking down corporations to pay off mortgages. The CBC has spent the windfall on annual casino outings, big Beltway parties, golf trips, and more. In one instance, they held a fundraiser for scholarships and spent more on the caterer than they did on funding education.
Where did the rest of the $54 million go over the past five years? It went to establishing Congressional incumbents into a power network that illegitimately handicaps challengers in Congressional elections. And what let them do it? The campaign finance laws that Democrats insist were blocking corporate influence before Citizens United.
In Black Caucus, a Fund-Raising Powerhouse
WASHINGTON — When the Congressional Black Caucus wanted to pay off the mortgage on its foundation’s stately 1930s redbrick headquarters on Embassy Row, it turned to a familiar roster of friends: corporate backers like Wal-Mart, AT&T, General Motors, Coca-Cola and Altria, the nation’s largest tobacco company.
Soon enough, in 2008, a jazz band was playing at what amounted to a mortgage-burning party for the $4 million town house.Most political groups in Washington would have been barred by law from accepting that kind of direct aid from corporations. But by taking advantage of political finance laws, the caucus has built a fund-raising juggernaut unlike anything else in town.
It has a traditional political fund-raising arm subject to federal rules. But it also has a network of nonprofit groups and charities that allow it to collect unlimited amounts of money from corporations and labor unions.
From 2004 to 2008, the Congressional Black Caucus’s political and charitable wings took in at least $55 million in corporate and union contributions, according to an analysis by The New York Times, an impressive amount even by the standards of a Washington awash in cash. Only $1 million of that went to the caucus’s political action committee; the rest poured into the largely unregulated nonprofit network. (Data for 2009 is not available.)
The caucus says its nonprofit groups are intended to help disadvantaged African-Americans by providing scholarships and internships to students, researching policy and holding seminars on topics like healthy living.
But the bulk of the money has been spent on elaborate conventions that have become a high point of the Washington social season, as well as the headquarters building, golf outings by members of Congress and an annual visit to a Mississippi casino resort.