Politics Plus

I wish I has a nickel for every time I’ve seen or heard that we have to condemn Barack Obama, because he’s about to approve the Keystone pipeline, ever since 2011.  In spite of ever mounting pressure form Big Oil and their Republican lackeys, he has still nit approved it.  Furthermore, there will apparently be no approval before 2014, if ever.

The State Department’s decision on the Keystone XL pipeline is in danger of being pushed into 2014.

State’s internal watchdog on Friday said it won’t complete until January a review of allegations that the department hired a contractor with a conflict of interest to review the pipeline project…

…At issue is whether the contractor the department selected to perform a draft environmental review of Keystone had ties to pipeline builder TransCanada Corp.

Pipeline opponents say that firm, Environmental Resources Management (ERM), had previously done consulting work for the pipeline company. They say the review ERM conducted was flawed.

The draft review from ERM said Keystone wouldn’t accelerate growth of Canada’s oil sands, and therefore wouldn’t substantially boost greenhouse gas emissions. It concluded that rail transport and other pipelines would bring the oil sands to market.

That finding has become a flashpoint in the debate over the pipeline in light of President Obama’s June comments that he’d oppose Keystone if it “significantly exacerbates” carbon pollution… [emphasis original]

Inserted from <The Hill>

Photo credit: Mad Mike’s America

Rachel Maddow discussed the issue with Chris Hayes.

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Good for the League of Conservation voters! The winter before last, I was arguing with lefty friends, who "knew" Obama was about to approve it. Looks like I’ve got bragging rights for another few months, at least. 😉

The Republican party seems to have set down roots in Russia, where it’s positions and policies are championed by Vladimir Putin.  While he is telling the IOC that there will be no persecution of LGBT people during the Sochi Olympics, his actions indicate that the exact opposite is true.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has banned protests in Sochi during the Winter Olympics next year and ordered severely restricted access to the city, according to an decree published Friday.

The presidential decree published in the official newspaper Rossiyskaya Gazeta imposes special zones on the territory of Sochi “in order to reinforce security” during the Games in the Black Sea resort in February.

It designates the Olympic venues, transport terminals, and special road checkpoints as “controlled zones” where all people and belongings will be searched.

The document also imposes a vast “forbidden zone” with restricted access, and bans all cars from Sochi unless the vehicles have special accreditation or are locally owned.

The decree also prohibits any public demonstrations “not related to the holding the Olympic Games” in the area in the period from January 7 to March 21, 2014…

Inserted from <Raw Story>

He’s turning the games into a Republican wet dream.  This is all the more reason that they should be taken from Putin and moved to Vancouver.

I’m sad to report that ALEC (American Legislative Exchange Council) is celebrating their 40th birthday.  Every year ALEC survives is a sad year for America, because ALEC is the place Koch suckers go to scheme and draft cookie cutter, plugin legislation to deprive African, Latino, Asian, Gay, Lesbian, Transgender, female, working, senior, studying, poor, middle class, other and especially voting Americans of their Constitutional rights.  The news from their birthday party is most foul.

The American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) annual meeting in Chicago earlier this month was marked by massive protests outside, but inside the walls of the Palmer House Hotel, the business of this notoriously secretive organization went forward as usual. The few quotes that have trickled out from inside the ALEC meeting are revealing…

…Who Needs Voters When We Have Money and the John Birch Society?

At a workshop titled "Calling a Convention of the States: The Constitutional Check on the Abuses of Federal Power," Mark Meckler, founder of the Tea Party Patriots and now head of a group called Citizens for Self Governance — a top sponsor of the ALEC meeting — announced the launch of a new project to encourage state legislatures to call an Article V Convention of the States to stop what they call "the runaway train of the federal government." One state representative from Arizona reportedly stood up and asked:

• "How do we utilize the John Birch Society for this effort?"

Wisconsin Rep. Chris Taylor, a Democrat who infiltrated the ALEC meeting, recounted a conversation with a private sector ALEC member who also was advocating a constitutional amendment to rein-in the federal government. He told her:

• “You really don’t need people to do this. You just need control over the legislature and you need money, and we have both.”

And, at Wednesday’s plenary lunch, the Wall Street Journal’s Stephen Moore (an ALEC "scholar") declared:

• "What we really need is more rich people."

… [emphasis original]

Inserted from <PR Watch>

Now this is just a small snip from a much more inclusive article.  To see what’s going on behind the scenes where most of the legislation being passes in states where Republicans duped voters into giving them control, click through and read the rest of it.

As hard as they have tried, Republicans have been completely unable to find a bona-fide scandal to use against the Obama Administration and the Democratic Party.  In the absence of anything authentic they have embarked on a series of pseudo-scandals.  To make them appear legitimate, the Republican House leadership has withheld key information from the House and the public.  One key example is the IRS scandal.  The real scandal, once again, is how Republicans distorted the law to enable election theft.  Finally a Democrat is doing something about it.

A key House Democrat plans to file a lawsuit Wednesday challenging the Internal Revenue Service’s interpretation of a law that governs tax-exemption eligibility for social welfare groups.

Rep. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.), the ranking member of the House Budget Committee whose office announced the action, will serve as lead plaintiff in the case, joining campaign-finance watchdogs Democracy 21, the Campaign Legal Center and Public Citizen.

The lawsuit will address one of the main concerns that surfaced with the recent IRS targeting controversy: Differences between federal law and the IRS rules on eligibility for 501(c)(4) candidates.

Current law says the organizations must engage “exclusively” in so-called “social welfare” activities, while IRS regulations require that their “primary” purpose fall into that category… [emphasis added]

Inserted from <Washington Post>

To the best of my knowledge, nobody other than me covered the fact that Republicans twisted the IRS regulation contrary to the law in 1959, before Lawrence O’Donnell did so. Here is his coverage of this story with Chris Van Hollen.

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Note that only Democratic leaning organizations, not Republican, were actually denied exempt status, contrary the Republican lies that made this a scandal.

The reason this is so important to Republicans is that, under their crooked interpretation of the law, the 0.1% billionaires, who own the Republican Party, can pour untold millions into elections, while pretending to be someone else. If Chris wins, and I think he will, at least they will have to give their names when they flood campaigns with money, as Citizens United allows. When they do, I’ll be here to call them out on it.