republican party

Oh the problems that plague the Republicans when it comes to acceptance. While they just recently admitted that their losses in November were in no small part due to the party appearing intolerant to minorities and gays, they have done little to repair that problem. Now we have one high level Republican official in Florida resigning just because of those problems. Not just that, he has even turned over his GOP card for a Democratic one.

Pablo Pantoja, was the State Director of Florida Hispanic Outreach for the Republican National Committee. Yesterday he sent this email out to his colleagues:

Friend,

Yes, I have changed my political affiliation to the Democratic Party.

It doesn’t take much to see the culture of intolerance surrounding the Republican Party today. I have wondered before about the seemingly harsh undertones about immigrants and others. Look no further; a well-known organization recently confirms the intolerance of that which seems different or strange to them.

Think Progress adds this:

Pantoja goes on to specifically cite last week’s revelation — that an author of Heritage’s false report on the cost of the Gang of Eight’s immigration bill wrote a dissertation in which he suggested that Hispanics are at a permanent disadvantage because they have lower IQs — as the final straw in his political evolution.

I'm sue Pantoja didn't come to this decision lightly. The fact that he put his own self ahead of his party shows that Pantoja was a rare kind of Republican. He should be congratulated for his choice.

The Senate just voted 68-31 to move forward with debate on expanding background checks, a measure overwhelmingly supported by the public, including 91% of veterans in a new poll.

Of course we still have people out there that think expanded background checks won't help, like John Cornyn:

Sen. John Cornyn (Texas), the second-ranking Senate Republican, called the bill under consideration “a symbolic gesture” and said Congress should focus more on bolstering federal funding for mental-health programs: “We need to make sure that the mentally ill are getting the help they need, not guns.”

I totally agree with what Cornyn is saying here and have been saying mental health needs to be part of the gun violence debate. After all, only a mad person can go in and take so many innocent lives. But this coming from Cornyn is rather curious.

Here's a pop quiz. Which President worked hardest to destroy mental health in this country?

If you said Ronald Reagan, you would be right. During his tenure as President, Reagan cut funding for mental health treatment and research. He decided to move mental health from the public sector to the private sector and with that we started seeing the closure of our nation's mental health facilities.

When you think about gun violence in our nation, especially these mass shootings, and then consider when our mental health services were cut, you start seeing a trend. These big shootings started becoming more epidemic in the 90's and have continued growing since. On top of that, most of the shooters are ones who have grown up under the system that Reagan built. See the trend?

For all their talk about keeping government out of our lives and pursuing freedom, the Republican Party sure has a funny way of proving it. First up is this story out of Georgia:

The City Council of Nelson has approved an ordinance that requires each head of household to own a gun. The legislation passed unanimously and goes into effect in 10 days. Nelson, population about 1,300, is about 40 miles north of Atlanta.

So the government shouldn't have the right to force citizens to purchase healthcare, but they should be allowed to force citizens to purchase guns? Something seems funny there.

Then we had east to North Carolina, where this is the news of the day:

A bill filed by Republican lawmakers would allow North Carolina to declare an official religion, in violation of the Establishment Clause of the U.S. Bill of Rights, and seeks to nullify any federal ruling against Christian prayer by public bodies statewide.

Republicans. They love the Constitution, until it interferes with their true ideals of tyranny. But this is nothing new. We saw the same thing happen a couple of years ago when plans were out to build a mosque in New York City. Apparently "freedom of religion" should only apply to Christians.

And finally:

Virginia Attorney General Kenneth Cuccinelli has filed a petition with the 4th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals in Richmond asking the full 15-judge court to reconsider a decision by a three-judge panel last month that overturned the state’s sodomy law.

No this isn't an endorsement of the "wink, wink" half-term Governor from Alaska. Instead it's an attempt to highlight that Sarah Palin is nothing more than a politician that engages in her "do as I say not as I do" form of leadership:

Sarah Palin attempted to relaunch her political career and her political action committee, SarahPAC, on Thursday with a Web video called “Loaded for Bear,” which presented the former Alaska governor as the new kingmaker for conservative populists in the GOP.

The video riffed off her speech at CPAC, in which Palin railed against “the big consultants, the big money men, and the big bad media.” But there’s an irony alert ahead: the current stated purpose of SarahPAC is to raise money ahead of the 2014 election—most of which will be spent on conservative consultants.

Palin is telling conservatives not to pay for consultants. Now that's a good idea in theory, but even Palin knows it is failed logic in our current state of democracy, so she goes out and hires consultants. And how much does she pay for these people?

But the real news comes when you look at how donors’ money was actually doled out: just $298,500 to candidates. The bulk of the rest of it, more than $4.8 million, went to—you guessed it—consultants.

Consultants have become a huge cancer on our political process, driving up the costs of running for office exponentially. The problem with Palin though is that she wants to act like the good guy in all this, but that's just an act. Instead she is still an enabler for the political consultant and those numbers are proof.

Casino mogul Sheldon Adelson spent an estimated $150 million last year in campaign contributions to help Mitt Romney and other Republicans around the country win elections. Now, in a new filing with the SEC, it turns out that's not all Adelson spent money on:

In its annual regulatory report, filed with the commission on Friday, the Sands reported that its audit committee and independent accountants had determined that “there were likely violations of the books and records and internal controls provisions” of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act.

The disclosure comes amid an investigation by the Securities and Exchange Commission as well as the Department of Justice and the Federal Bureau of Investigation into the company’s business activities in China.

It is the company’s first public acknowledgment of possible wrongdoing. Ron Reese, a spokesman for the Sands, declined to comment further.

This is the first admission of possible guilt by Adelson's company in an investigation that goes back years. Adelson began a big push in China over a decade ago and that caught the eye of investigators.

But in 2010 something big happened. Steven C. Jacobs was fired from his job as President of the company's operations in Macau. He then filed a wrongful termination suit, which alleges he was pressured to engage in improper leverage against foreign officials. In the same suit Jacobs also alleges that the company turned a blind eye to China's organized crime.

Another day, another episode in the hatred of the GOP. Here's Rep. Lou Barletta (R-PA) talking about immigration reform (via Think Progress):

“It’s amnesty that America can’t afford,” Barletta said Monday. “We have to stop people from coming in illegally. This will be a green light for anyone who wants to come to America illegally and then be granted citizenship one day.” [...]

“I hope politics is not at the root of why we’re rushing to pass a bill. Anyone who believes that they’re going to win over the Latino vote is grossly mistaken,” Barletta said. “The majority that are here illegally are low-skilled or may not even have a high school diploma. The Republican Party is not going to compete over who can give more social programs out. They will become Democrats because of the social programs they’ll depend on.”

To sum it up, Barletta is saying the immigrants are dumb and will become Democrats. I'm sure the higher ups in the GOP will be lining up to condemn these words by one of their colleagues.

OK, anytime now???

Well I guess we won't be hearing that condemnation. Of course I was silly to think as much. This is very much how the GOP thinks. They have proven time and time again that Howard Dean was right when he called them the party of "old, white guys". Every action by the GOP, since those words were spoken, have done nothing but prove how truthful Dean was in his assessment.

So we won't hear Republicans get upset over what Barletta said. They might shake their heads or make some "if you were offended" faux apology, but deep down this is exactly how they feel!

I have been saying for years that one of the biggest problems the GOP faces is their own purging of the moderate Republicans. That action is greatly shrinking the size of their tent, which translates to fewer voters.

This is a problem that not only I have noticed, but many others in politics. There have even been groups formed to try and bring moderates back into the Republican fold. One of the largest groups is the Republican Main Street Partnership. But the GOP is having none of that and the group has decided to actually drop Republican from it's name and start accepting moderate Democrats into their fold. This part of the article really highlights the process of making this decision:

The organization's board of directors voted Tuesday morning to scrap party identification from its title and be known simply as "The Main Street Partnership." The group's new president, former Ohio Republican Rep. Steven LaTourette, told Yahoo News that he plans to begin conversations with Blue Dog Democrats and centrist groups in the coming months.

"The goal is to try and fill the void that is the middle," LaTourette, who resigned from Congress this year, said. "The American political system is like a doughnut: You've got sides, but you don't have anything in the middle, and it would be my goal to work with Republicans and Democrats who want to find the path forward to getting things done and compromise."

LaTourette decided to retire from Congress last year, in no small part due to the shift to the right the GOP has experienced over the past several years, so he does know what he's talking about.

Welcome to another episode of Republicans crying foul over nothing:

In a move that is rich in irony, President Obama agreed Tuesday night to sign an emergency deficit reduction bill that does almost nothing to rein in spending and then jetted out to Hawaii to resume his vacation at an extra cost of more than $3 million to taxpayers.

You can check out Memeorandum yourself to see all the right wing outrage over this.

But let's go back to March 2005, when we won't heading over the fiscal cliff. Instead the only thing the Republicans were worried about was one lady in Florida named Terri Schiavo. Congress was called back from recess to take up the late night measure. George Bush boarded Air Force One and flew from Crawford back to DC in the early hours of the morning, only to fly back out to Arizona later that day.

Now I have tried to hammer down an exact cost on all this, but haven't been able to find one. I have seen estimates that it cost between $5 and $7 million alone just for the congressional session. I wonder how much added cost was in there for Bush flying back and forth? Whatever the number, you can be damn sure it was higher than what the Republicans are whining about today.