Assessing Delaware

It's not only extreme conservative ideology or hatred (steeped in racial bigotry) for our President that sets Rush Limbaugh apart from- well, no, other conservative talk show hosts are outrageous, but don't display as much of their program on the Internet. (Limbaugh's are not traditional transcripts, but fairly close.)

Therefore, it's easy to point out how Limbaugh frequently and grossly misleads his listeners. It may not be intentional but if not, would be due to ignorance or stupidity off the charts.

And so it was that Rush on Monday commented on one of the most high profile, and one of the least important, U.S. Senate races of this cycle:

Okay, we got a new polling result in from Rasmussen in Delaware. Before the debate, what was Christine O'Donnell down? Was it 20? Twenty or a little bit higher than that? It was 19 or 20, whatever it was. She's now down 11. Since the debate she's now down by 11. She nearly cut that gap in half, and that's why Obama and Bite Me are in Delaware today.

We can't accuse Limbaugh of lying- some polling did have Christine O'Donnell down by "19 or 20, whatever it was" (real attention to detail) before her debate with Democrat Chris Coons. Unfortunately for Rush's story, it wasn't Rassmussen- which does in fact have O'Donnell down by 11 now- that had her down by close to 20 points. Revealing results of his firm's survey, Scott Rassmussen reported on October 15 that

Coons posted a similar 49% to 40% lead three weeks ago when Congressman Mike Castle whom O’Donnell defeated in the state GOP Primary was still pondering a write-in candidacy. Five percent (5%) supported Castle at that time. Castle has since announced that he will not run but has not endorsed O’Donnell, a conservative activist who remains a long-shot candidate in the traditionally moderate state.

The previous lead in the poll now showing an 11% gap was "similar" (in fact, slightly smaller at 9%). Not only does the Repub-leaning Rassmussen observe the GOP nominee "remains a long-shot" but "the contest remains Solid Democrat in the Rasmussen Reports Election 2010 Senate Balance of Power rankings."

Whatever the motive for Obama and Biden to join the campaign to defeat the GOP nominee in Delaware- and for Biden, that he is a favorite son comes into play- it's surely not because "she nearly cut that gap in half." She did not cut the gap in half and will not win.

Christine O'Donnell is neither an underdog nor even a long-shot to win. She will not win. Will not. Five Thirty Eight's Nate Silver, who was until a couple of months ago writing a lone, though highly respected, blog but now is writing it for The New York Times, evaluates every gubernatorial and senate race. He has projected the vote for the Democratic and the Republican nominees for each Senate race, as well as the likelihood that seat will be lost by the party now holding it.

Silver estimates that Democrat Coons will garner 57% of the vote while Republican O'Donnell gets 40%. And after cranking up the computer for 1,000 simulations, he has concluded that O'Donnell's chance to win the election: 0%. (That's not a typo.) Apparently, O'Donnell came out on top no more than 4 times out of 1,000, assuming he would have rounded up at 5 out of 1,000.

Now for the bad news: there are 17 Senate seats now held by Democrats in which there is a better chance than in Delaware that the GOP candidate will win. But that also indicates the absurdity of Rush's theory (stated, of course, as a fact). After eliminating the five seats which Silver estimates have a 94% or greater chance of turning over (and thus an appearance by Obama/Biden presumably would be fruitless), there remain 17 contents which are more uncertain than the one in Delaware. (These consist, obviously, of ones in which the Democrat has very little, but at least some, chance of winning to ones in which the Republican has very little, but at least some, opportunity.)

Notwithstanding characteristics of particular races, trends move nationally. Do the math: if O'Donnell were to come behind and win, she probably would become not the critical 51st Republican vote. Or the 52nd. Or the 53rd. Or the 54th- or even the 58th Republican senator. She theoretically would become the 59th member of the Republican caucus.

Possible reasons for Obama and Biden to direct their attention to Delaware abound. Certainly, President Obama and Vice-President Biden are more popular in Delaware than in most states. And if Christine O'Donnell and 17 other Republicans were to win seats now held by a Democrat, the GOP would become, with 59 votes, a mere eight Blue Dogs away from overturning a presidential veto. (Laugh if you wish. No, laugh anyway.)

Admittedly, there are only so many times Obama/Biden can visit any one state, given the risk of over exposure and the risk of diminishing returns. And defeat of the Democrat in Delaware would be embarrassing to Joe Biden, who formerly occupied the seat. Meanwhile, if Silver is to be believed (as he normally should be), there is a 54% chance that the seat then held by United States Senator Barack Obama will be won by the Republican, Mark Kirk, in the state of Illinois.

Arising is the obvious question: why isn't Barack Obama, if loss of a Senate seat in Delaware would be embarrassing to the Vice-President, focused on Illinois?

Fast-forward to November 3- or, better yet, November 4, two days after the election, in which Senate Democrats will lose few seats, lose several seats but retain the majority, or lose even more seats and relinquish majority status. Members of the media will analyze the election in the context of the President's popularity, viewing it in part as a referendum on Barack Obama's leadership. They will do it in the simplest, most superficial manner possible, by creating a won-loss record. President Obama will be heralded as, perhaps, 7 and 4 (7-4); or diminished by, for example, 3 and 8 (3-8), the totals depending on the number of states in which Bideb/Obama campaigned. Being seen and heard in Delaware starts Obama off at 1-0, a nice start for the President (though probably insufficient for the San Francisco Giants).

Is this post, therefore, about the election in Delaware or about Rush Limbaugh's convenient, partisan fantasies? You already knew Christine O'Donnell is going to lose, didn't you?

Share|

Assuming Innocence, Facts Optional

It's not just Rush Limbaugh anymore. Generally more sober and sensible members of the media have been parroting the "Democrats have no proof of their charge" accusation pertaining to evidence that the United States Chamber of Commerce has been applying contribution from foreign corporations to the funding of partisan political ads.

Now Charles Krauthammer has gotten into the act. Krauthammer, though a very (neo-) conservative columnist, has sometimes shown signs of thought. In 2008, for instance, he wrote "I'm not a global warming believer. I'm not a global warming denier. I'm a global warming agnostic," which would place him today on the far left of the Republican Party (and persona non grata, if today he were to say he's "agnostic" on anything).

Choosing to "resent an infallibly prescient scorecard of the best and worst of 2010," Krauthammmer selects for "most shameless attack campaign (national)":

President Obama's suggesting that the U.S. Chamber of Commerce is secretly using foreign money to fund its campaign ads. There's not a shred of evidence that this is true. When Bob Schieffer asked David Axelrod for evidence, he responded "Well, do you have any evidence that it's not, Bob?"

It wasn't the fault of longtime journalist Schieffer, who rhetorically asked "If the only (chuckles) charge three weeks into the election that the Democrats have to make is that somehow this may or may not be foreign money coming into the campaign, is that the best you can do?" Axelrod could have said "I think the American people are more concerned than are you with foreign interests in India and the Middle East funding political campaigns so that politicians can send American jobs abroad." But he didn't.

Now, the media is enthralled, in denial of the facts, of accusing Democrats of lacking facts. So here are a few, according to the investigation of the Center for American Progress:

- Since 1994, according to a report by Campaign Money Watch, "184,000 jobs were lost to outsourcing in the 22 congressional districts in which the Chamber has spent $4.8 million on political ads."

- Chamber CEO Tom Donohue publicly has endorsed outsourcing and the organization (successfully) fought the Creating American Jobs and End Offshoring Act, which would have discouraged the jobs-killing practice.

- At least 84 foreign companies have donated a total of at least $885,000 to the Chambers' 501(c)(6) account.

- The U.S. Chamber of Commerce, which plans to spend $75 million this election cycle, could have designated its political action committee to receive the funds. However, PACS have significant disclosure requirements- and the organization's PAC as of October had raised only $161,000 and spent only $64,000.

- While organizations usually collect international funds through a 501(c)(3) account, which is prohibited from using them for political activities, the U.S. Chamber is channeling its money to a 501(c)(6) account, from which funds may be used for such purposes.

Notwithstanding CAP's claim, perhaps the United States Chamber of Commerce is not be diverting funds from abroad to political ads opposing candidates who want jobs to remain in the U.S.A. and support fair trade. And perhaps winter may not come to the Rockies this year.

Share|

Election Season And the U.S. Chamber


Think Progress has asked a lot of (still unanswered) questions about the source of the funding used by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce to fund partisan attack ads. This past wee, Ezra Klein of The Washington Post and Chris Matthews of Hardball weighed in on the issue and came up with vastly different conclusions.

On October 11, Ezra Klein tweeted "Real talk: Demanding financial disclosures from the Chamber of Commerce will not help Dems win the election." Well, yes, "demanding financial disclosures from the Chamber of Commerce" is fruitless because the Chamber has demonstrated that it will not admit where the money has come from.

The Center for American Progress already has done the heavy lifting on that, revealing the source of the money the trade organization has received from abroad. What we don't know is where it has gone. Interviewed by Terry Gross of NPR's Fresh Air, Lee Fang, who writes for CAP's thinkprogress.org, contended

disclose who is paying for these ads; although, the bank account - the campaign account, I should say, that's receiving these foreign funds is comingled with American businesses. It's all combined and then used on the $75 million massive campaign or attack campaign, I should say.

Inasmuch as accepting campaign contributions from foreign nationals or foreign corporations is prohibited by law in the U.S.A., the charge is a serious one, and conspicuously has not been refuted. The Chamber has said it does not comingle the funds but has not said in what manner and given that money is fungible, there must be serious doubt that it has been segregated.

However, in a Post piece appearing October 12, Klein claims "As far as I can tell, no one who has seriously looked into this thinks it's any more than some election-season hardball from the Democrats." He links to a factcheck.org analysis which, not surprisingly, proves nothing of the sort, asserting that the Democrats have made a serious charge and should prove it.... which, of course, is difficult to do without the Chamber explaining how it has kept foreign-derived funds separate from domestic-derived funds.

Klein, though, writing from a far-off planet, argues

I really wish the Democrats' push on this issue was connected to a serious campaign-finance agenda. They're not going to win any races by calling for more financial disclosure from the Chamber of Commerce, but maybe they could at least unite the party around something like the Fair Elections Now Act.

Probably good policy. But as political strategy, this is beyond naive. What, you might ask, is the "Fair Elections Now Act?" We could check it out via Google or perhaps Democratic office-seekers could explain it to the American people, most of whom would understandably not be as catalyzed by the issue as is Ezra Klein. In a larger sense, few individuals care about campaign financing, or campaign financing reform (except possibly in the abstract, in which elections are not held), unless it is connected to an issue that matters to them.

Enter Chris Matthews, who knows less about the economy or health care financing or a lot of other issues than does Klein, but sometimes is singlularly insightful analyzing politics. As it appeared in the conservative blog Newsbusters (which condemned Matthews' remarks), the Hardball host on October 13 commented (video below)

Let me finish tonight by addressing the challenge Bob Schieffer of CBS News issued to the White House this Sunday. Is that the best that you can do?

Bob was challenging David Axelrod on the White House charge that the U.S. Chamber of Commerce was using money it raises from overseas to finance Republican political campaigns.

So, why is it so darn important to the average voter out there, that multinational corporations, some of them based outside of the United States, have their fingers in this election?

How about this -- it`s the central economic issue of our times. Look at how the giant corporations get their profit margins up these days. Are they out there selling hot, new products every consumer wants to get their hands on? Or are they doing the job by cost-cutting, cutting down the number of employees for whom they have to pay those tiresome health packages, those costly pensions and 401 plans? Are they doing it through those highly celebrated productivity gains by substituting robotics for people, by outsourcing the cheaper vendors overseas, over where the price of labor is dirt cheap?

No wonder the multinationals want to gift candidates who love to deregulate, love so-called free markets, love tax structures that lead them as free as possible to continue doing what they`re doing -- the kind of free-willing, cost-cutting that meets the quarterly bottom line.

No wonder the U.S. Chamber`s such a popular lobbying body for the multinational operation, in whatever country, it happens to currently find the best haven.

So, the right answer, is this is best that we can do is, is: is this the best America can do? It`s about jobs, and if all of the American people can talk about this election season as this, I say, keep on talking. You`ve finally got your finger on the pulse of this country. It`s about the economy.

There are approximately 4.7 unemployed Americans for every job available. A bill proposed by Senate Democrats to discourage off-shoring jobs is killed by the vigoroous opposition of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the vote of every single Republican in the United States Senate. Now Ezra Klein is talking about the Fair Elections Now Act, whatever that might be. Chris Matthews is talking about jobs for Americans, not Indians or Chinese. And that is- or would be- the way elections in this country are won, circa 2010.

Visit msnbc.com for

Wrong Again, "Condi"


It isn't only education. When she appeared (clip from Real Clear Politics) Thursday on Morning Joe to tout her new book, "Condoleezza Rice: A Memoir of My Extraordinary, Ordinary Family and Me," Condoleezza Rice actually remarked

the tea party is a grass roots movement that is saying to people the conversation in Washington and the conversation out in the country isn't the same and washington you need to listen to the concerns of the people, you need to listen to our anxieties, you need to listen to the fact that we're worried about the size of government, and the debt we're passing on to our children. That's how I see the tea party.

The tea party is a grass roots movement. So saith the former National Security Advisor and Secretary of State.

It is the message most of the mainstream media has chosen to push to the American electorate. But it's wrong.

Coordinating the tea party movement are two main groups: Dick Armey's Freedom Works and Americans for Prosperity, the latter a front group started by David Koch and Richard Fink, a member of the board of directors of Koch Industries, headed by Mr. Koch and brother Charles. According to the Guardian of the United Kingdom, this largest of privately-owned gas companies in the U.S.A. "has donated at least $5.9m to political candidates, some 83% of which was set aside for Republican candidates, according to the Centre for Responsive Politics (and) since 1989 has spent more than any other oil and gas company on finding favour in Congress, paying $50m to lobbying firms."

As an astroturf group, Americans for Prosperity is well experienced in hiding its consistently pro-corporate activities behind a veil of secrecy, even creating industry-friendly groups such as the ironically-named Patients United Now and Patients First, which loudly and aggressively protested the effort at reforming health care.

All along, the Kochs have denied funding Americans for Prosperity or having anything to do with the tea party movement, brother David even telling New York Magazine a few months ago "I’ve never been to a tea-party event. No one representing the tea party has ever even approached me."

Perhaps he never has been at one of the innumerable gatherings where mostly well-meaning, albeit naive, citizens have gathered to protest government and liberalism. Nor is it clear that he would have spoken directly to any tea party activist when he has the industry's (Koch and others) representatives do the talking for him. No need to get your own hands dirty when you're worth, oh, approximately $21 billion.

But a new documentary, "(Astro)Turf Wars: How Corporate America Faked a Grassroots Revolution" (video clip below), has blown the lid off that claim, with representatives of AFP explaining at a convention their success at organizing rallies on Tea Party Tax Day. (Whether the traditional media will pay any attention is another matter.)

Although the evidence is presented dramatically and conclusively, it ought not to have been a surprise to anyone, even to Condoleezza Rice. The Guardian notes that Americans for Prosperity and FreedomWorks put up their Facebook page and began organizing tea parties a mere one day after the rant on the board of the Chicago mercantile exchange by CNBC personality and former hedge fund manager Rick Santelli.

Is Condoleezza Rice aware of any of this? When she promoted fear among the American people to justify impending war against one of Al Qaeda's fiercest enemies (Sadaam Hussein) or made ignorant comments about American education, did she really understand the issues? The woman media figures like to call "Condi" may be nefarious or instead stunningly ignorant, but she has managed to portray herself as a credible, legitimate public official. And that is no mere feat.

Share|

Condoleezza Rice On Education

Back in the early days of the Bush 43 administration, Condoleezza Rice asserted a connection between Sadaam Hussein and Al Qaeda and inferred that if we did not overthrow the Iraqi dictator a mushroom cloud would appear over Washington or New York. It's hard to believe that such a person actually would know less about other topics than about foreign policy but alas, she apparently does.

Appearing Thursday morning on MSNBC's Morning Joe, "Condi" Rice remarked "I have enormous respect for teachers. My parents were teachers." (Has there ever been a public figure who didn't claim at least one parent as a teacher- before going on to denigrate teachers? Think hard.) She patronized the profession by stating "they have in some ways the hardest jobs in the world." (I might vote for nuclear physicist; "in some ways," coal mining. And that's considering only the U.S.A.). Then Mrs. Rice, who doubtless has visited schools in every district in the country, asserted

it is also true that if you're a teacher and your kids aren't learning, aren't performing, it's not the students' fault.

Now, that's the way to promote academic excellence. First, tell the children that if their grades are poor, not to worry- it's their teachers' fault, not theirs.

Condoleezza Rice isn't the only one spouting the easy, politically safe tripe about education. She may be, however, the only one who gets to say it the morning after she has her posterior kissed by demigod Jon Stewart.



Next up: If only it were just education.

Share|

Money Here, Jobs There


Some say payback is a b_ _ _ _. But for Republicans, it is proving very, very sweet.

In late July, Democrats fell three votes shy, 57-41, of cloture, thereby failing to bring to a vote in the U.S. Senate the Democracy is Strengthened by Casting Light on Spending in Elections Act. Aside from Majority Leader Reid (who voted against cloture to preserve an opportunity to bring the bill to a vote later) and the absent Joe Lieberman, all Democrats voted in favor of the DISCLOSE Act and all 40 Republicans voted against it. Really, those Republicans did not vote against the bill, but rather against even the effort to allow debate on the measure. In its summary of the DISCLOSE Act, open congress.org explained

This is the Democrats' response to the Supreme Courts' recent Citizens United v. FEC ruling. It seeks to increase transparency of corporate and special-interest money in national political campaigns. It would require organizations involved in political campaigning to disclose the identity of the large donors, and to reveal their identities in any political ads they fund. It would also bar foreign corporations, government contractors and TARP recipients from making political expenditures. Notably, the bill would exempt all long-standing, non-profit organizations with more than 500,000 members from having to disclose their donor lists.

Unilateral and unanimous opposition to this legislation attempting to bring transparency to campaign contributions was, as has been the case with much of the GOP's Bring Down The Nation effort, strategically brilliant.

In mid-July, the Dodd-Frank bill passed the Senate 60-39 with the support of only three Republicans. (One Democrat, Wisconsin's Russ Feingold, said that he voted "no" because the bill did not go far enough. Which it didn't.) This financial reform legislation, as The Washington Post described it,

establishes an independent consumer bureau within the Federal Reserve to protect borrowers against abuses in mortgage, credit card and some other types of lending. The legislation also gives the government new power to seize and shut down large, troubled financial companies -- like the failed investment bank Lehman Brothers -- and sets up a council of federal regulators to watch for threats to the financial system.

Under the new rules, the vast market for derivatives, complex financial instruments that helped fuel the crisis, will be subject to government oversight. Shareholders, meanwhile, will gain more say on how corporate executives are paid.

Apparently, Senators Snowe and Collins of Maine and Brown of Massachusetts never got the memo. Opensecrets.org reports (as indicated by its graph, below)

In both the first and second quarters of this year, the broad finance, insurance and real estate sector has favored Republican candidates and committees in its political giving, a Center for Responsive Politics analysis finds. The same holds true for both the more narrow commercial banking and securities and investment industries.




Thinkprogress.org, the blog of the pro-Democratic Center for American Progress, found earlier this month

The largest attack campaign against Democrats this fall is being waged by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, a trade association organized as a 501(c)(6) that can raise and spend unlimited funds without ever disclosing any of its donors. The Chamber has promised to spend an unprecedented $75 million to defeat candidates like Jack Conway, Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-CA), Jerry Brown, Rep. Joe Sestak (D-PA), and Rep. Tom Perriello (D-VA). As of Sept. 15th, the Chamber had aired more than 8,000 ads on behalf of GOP Senate candidates alone, according to a study from the Wesleyan Media Project. The Chamber’s spending has dwarfed every other issue group and most political party candidate committee spending. A ThinkProgress investigation has found that the Chamber funds its political attack campaign out of its general account, which solicits foreign funding. And while the Chamber will likely assert it has internal controls, foreign money is fungible, permitting the Chamber to run its unprecedented attack campaign. According to legal experts consulted by ThinkProgress, the Chamber is likely skirting longstanding campaign finance law that bans the involvement of foreign corporations in American elections.

In response, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce sent an e-mail to Politico claiming

AmChams are independent organizations and they do not fund political programs in the United States. We have a system in place for ensuring that they are not government-controlled entities.

The Chamber is proud to have global companies among our membership. We’re careful to ensure that we comply with all applicable laws. No foreign money is used to fund political activities.

Tuesday, White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs commented "If I was an enterprising reporter…I might ask the Chamber of Commerce to let me see their donors.” The Chamber has not revealed its donors- remember defeat of the DISCLOSE Act?- and still maintains that the money from foreign sources is kept separate from political activities because it goes to its general fund, then to its international division. (Interestingly, the Chamber refers to "foreign" money- but what if the money is first converted to dollars?)

But, ThinkProgress has listed 83 foreign companies and the annual dues they pay to the Chamber's 501(c)(6)- which it is using to run partisan, anti-Democratic ads in its pursuit of a GOP-controlled Congress.

But, to borrow a cliche from the late Robert F. Kennedy, in the last analysis it is all about jobs. When it announced its (successful) opposition to the Creating American Jobs and End Offshoring Act (crafted to bring jobs back to the U.S.A.), the Chamber of Commerce claimed, increduously, "replacing a job that is based in another country with a domestic job does not stimulate economic growth or enhance the competitiveness of American worldwide companies." Keeping jobs abroad and away from American shores is the real aim of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce- and of Rush Limbaugh, Michelle Malkin, Michelle Bachmann, and the other Republicans who have so vigorously defended it without regard to the facts.

Share|

Another Day, Another Falsehood

If it's not Rush Limbaugh, it's from the right- or the center- about Social Security. Yesterday, it was both, as Rush claimed

The reason why there is no cost of living increase for the second year in a row, first time since 1975, is not a coincidence. Who's president? Obama. The reason why there's no Social Security cost of living increase is 'cause the money is going to the, quote, unquote, more deserving: unions, minorities, others hit hardest by the unfair tenets of capitalism.

Uh, no. It really should not- is not- difficult to figure out. It is a cost-of-living increase, obviously unconnected to unions, minorities, Barack Obama, or any of the other targets of Rush Limbaugh's fanaticism. Rather, according to The Associated Press,

The cost-of-living adjustments, or COLAs, are automatically set each year by an inflation measure that was adopted by Congress back in the 1970s. Based on inflation so far this year, the trustees who oversee Social Security project there will be no COLA for 2011....

Federal law requires the Social Security Administration to base annual payment increases on the Consumer Price Index for Urban Wage Earners and Clerical Workers, which measures inflation. Officials compare inflation in the third quarter of each year — the months of July, August and September — with the same months in the previous year.

If inflation increases from year to year, Social Security recipients automatically get higher payments, starting in January. If inflation is negative, the payments stay unchanged.

And as part of the Administration's plot to funnel secret funds to union and minorities,

Social Security recipients got a one-time bonus payment of $250 in the spring of 2009 as part of the government's massive economic recovery package. President Barack Obama lobbied for another one last fall when it became clear seniors wouldn't get an increase in monthly benefit payments in 2010.

Limbaugh's fact-deprived and reality-challenged comment, however, was brilliant. He was able to criticize arguably his favorite demons- unions and minorities- while suggesting a conspiracy with the "jackass" he ridicules as the "little black man-child." He simultaneously claims victimhood for "capitalism," however he may define it. And all the while he infers that he would have liked to have seen elderly people get a boost in Social Security payments, which defies credulity. That's a two-fer, or perhaps a three-fer, for the man with a contempt for unions and workers and who has never met a corporate outlaw he couldn't embrace.

Share|