Elections 2012

Why pay people for the work they do?

Over a year after she dropped out, Republican Rep. Michele Bachmann has refused to pay five staffers from her failed presidential bid, according to a former top campaign official. Peter Waldron, her controversial former national field coordinator, told Salon the dispute started when former Iowa straw poll staffers refused to sign a nondisclosure agreement that would bar them from discussing any “unethical, immoral, or criminal activity” they witnessed on the campaign with police or reporters.

Waldron said the staffers are owed a mere $5,000, and that Bachmann has more than $2 million in her campaign account, but has refused to pay unless the staffers sign the agreement. Negotiations over payment with Bachmann Finance Chairman James Pollack eventually broke down and Waldron decided to go public with the news, posting a press release on Christian Newswire this evening.

Nondisclosure agreements are common, but this one seems to go to the extreme. Almost every state has some sort of "failure to report" law when it comes to crime, so Bachmann was telling these people to sign agreements stating that they would be willing to break the law. It makes you wonder what she was planning on hiding.

Besides President Obama and the democrats, there was another big winner in this year's election - democracy. Despite all the big money that went into the right to try and buy this election, democracy did prevail.

And who was the big loser? In a case of absolute irony, it so happens the biggest loser was a man who made his fortune on people losing bets:

Casino magnate Sheldon Adelson vowed to spend as much as $100 million to defeat President Barack Obama and help the GOP take control of Congress. According to two GOP fundraisers with close ties to the Las Vegas billionaire, he made good on that promise -- and then some. Adelson ultimately upped the ante, spending closer to a previously unreported $150 million, the fundraisers said.

Even more ironic is the fact that people like Adelson are the very same people who whine and bitch if their taxes go up a percent or two. Hopefully their loss in the election will cost them more by the way of taxes. It's time for these people to give back to the country that helped make them.

It's one thing to be upset over Obama winning last week and immediately go into the "this country sucks" mode, but this lady took the whole thing to a new level:

Upset over the result of last week's presidential election, an Arizona woman ran over her husband with her car, believing him to be directly responsible for Obama's reelection because he didn't vote.

According to police in Gilbert, 28-year-old Holly Solomon of Mesa and her husband Daniel argued loudly in a local parking lot before Holly got in her Jeep SUV and began chasing Daniel around. She eventually managed to pin him underneath the vehicle as he was trying to run away.

Daniel sustained life-threatening injuries and was rushed to Scottsdale Healthcare Osborn Medical Center where he remains in critical condition.

"According to Daniel, Holly believed her family was going to face hardship as a result of President Obama's re-election," Gilbert police Sergeant Jesse Sanger said in a statement.

The rage by some on the right over Obama's decisive victory last week has been scary. Friends are threatening friends, families are in full fight mode and not spouses are trying to kill one another.

Here's the thing people - it's a democracy! If you don't like how an election goes, then work harder next time. If it keeps going the way you don't like, then either adapt or get the hell out of the country! I'm sorry, but this whiny bullshit from the right is getting ridiculous.

True we shouldn't be shocked from such a response to Obama's victory. The right constantly pushed for democracy in the Middle East, but when the people there vote in a leader they don't like, they do the same thing.

They push to let people pick their own leader, but it better be the leader that the democracy pimps want!

And here comes the super crazies!

A Las Vegas business owner with 114 employees fired 22 workers today, apparently as a direct result of President Obama’s re-election.

“David” (he asked to remain anonymous for obvious reasons) told Host Kevin Wall on 100.5 KXNT that “elections have consequences” and that “at the end of the day, I need to survive.

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The main reasoning for firing the "mostly Latino" voters was because of "Obamacare".

Bullshit!

If this guy believes that a Romney win would have meant the end of the healthcare reform, then he is smoking some serious crack. The chances that Republicans took the Senate this year was slim to none. And then you got the filibuster. For them to get a needed 60 votes to pass repeal, well now we are talking impossible.

Healthcare reform was never going to be repealed and anyone that knows anything about our government should have seen that.

Instead this is the actions of a business owner trying to influence future elections. That's if this story is even true. I find it interesting that he didn't have the balls to say who he was or what business he runs. Seems like someone so set on their beliefs would admit to them. I seriously doubt this happened.

Yesterday I noticed a growing sentiment amongst those on the right; that they lost because of Mitt Romney. Here's a quick summary from Salon:

It’s been less than 24 hours since the polls closed and already the first shots in an emerging civil war within the conservative movement are being fired. Right-leaning pundits have been taking turns beating up on Mitt Romney and blaming him for the loss last night. Donald Trump just tweeted, “Congrats to @KarlRove on blowing $400 million this cycle. Every race @CrossroadsGPS ran ads in, the Republicans lost. What a waste of money.” And GOP leaders are already taking to the barricades on either side of the divide, which basically comes down to this question: Were Romney and the GOP too conservative or not conservative enough?

Granted, none of this is a shock. We hear this all the time from not only the right, but also the left. But as non-shocking as it may be, I always shake my head at the argument "the establishment picked this candidate". That was the meme in 2008, when John McCain won the GOP nomination. Apparently Republicans forget about that entire primary process and going to the polls earlier this year.

But there is something that has shocked me. From the same Salon article, we see a real fracture growing in the GOP:

But on the other side of the fight, Herman Cain, the former presidential candidate who still has a robust following via his popular talk radio program and speaking tours, today suggested the most clear step to open civil war: secession. Appearing on Bryan Fischer’s radio program this afternoon, Cain called for a large faction of Republican Party leaders to desert the party and form a third, more conservative party.

I've been going through the exit polls from yesterday and they reveal a big problem for the GOP, and a problem I talked about the other day.

When it comes to race, the GOP has seen a decline of 2% women votes since 2008. I'm sure all, if not more, of that can be attributed to the GOP's war on women we have seen take place over the past couple of years.

But an even bigger problem exists in race. In 2008, John McCain got 31% of the Latino vote. This year, Romney got only 27%. The GOP is pushing out a growing demographic in the American electorate, and that is a huge problem.

My suggestion is for the GOP to spend the next four years working with Obama instead of against him. Apparently Obama is doing something right amongst this group, while the GOP isn't. It's time for the GOP to grow past the "party of old, white men" and increase the size of their tent. Just because they can taut people like Herman Cain doesn't make them the party of African Americans, not does Marco Rubio make them the party of Latinos.

Republicans now have four years to regroup and try to retake the White House. They are also likely to face some tough competition in 2016, like Hillary Clinton or Joe Biden. Republicans really need to change their image and they need to start working on that today. If they don't, then they risk not being in the White House for a very long time.

For claiming to be so "patriotic", the Tea Party does a lot to go against the very grains of America:

Yesterday we reported that True the Vote was attempting to place observers at precincts in Central Ohio, focusing on African American districts. We also noted that there might be some problems with the forms they submitted to the Franklin County Board of Elections (FCBOE).

The FCBOE met today and determined that True the Vote had likely falsified the forms submitted for general election observers. The new observer forms, filed over the past few days by True the Vote representative (and Hilliard Tea Party Member) Jan Loar, used candidate signatures copied from a previous set of forms filed in early October

All but one of the six candidates whose names appeared on the original form had withdrawn permission to use their signatures prior to the submission of today’s forms. During the BOE meeting Candidate Terri Jamison spoke up to say her name was “forged” on the latest round of forms.

The form for appointing observers reads ‘election falsification is a 5th degree felony’. Election officials have confirmed that there will be a post-election investigation of True the Vote.

The forms have been rejected unanimously by all members (Rs and Ds) on the board. True the Vote observers will not be allowed in Franklin County polling locations tomorrow. Poll monitoring organizations expect they may still be stationed outside of polling locations.

There is no room in our democracy for people trying to steal it. These people need to be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. It's time for the United States to have fair elections, and these type of actions take us much further from that goal.

It used to be that politics in the workplace was a very taboo subject. I have worked for companies in the past that would go as far as reprimand any employee or management that would engage in such conversation, simply because it is so easy to create animosity amongst workers. But that was then and this is now. Now we have people like Mitt Romney, who think politics in the workplace is a very good idea.

Back in June of this year, Romney held a conference call with the conservative National Federation of Independent Business. In that call, Romney had this to say about the upcoming election:

I hope you make it very clear to your employees what you believe is in the best interest of your enterprise and therefore their job and their future in the upcoming elections. And whether you agree with me or you agree with President Obama, or whatever your political view, I hope — I hope you pass those along to your employees. Nothing illegal about you talking to your employees about what you believe is best for the business, because I think that will figure into their election decision, their voting decision and of course doing that with your family and your kids as well.

I will give Romney credit here; he played it very safe. If Romney told these people that they should tell their employees to "vote for Romney", then we would be looking at something illegal. Instead he did some wordsmithing to stay away from any legal problems.

But even if this does fall into the realm of being legal, it is still morally questionable. Having an employer say something like that to an employee carries a certain weight of threat to it. They don't have to say "vote for Romney or lose your job", but simply saying "A Romney win is in your best interest," is the nicer way of putting it.